Wooing Song

In the 1890's buggy-couples wooed each other with "Connaistu le Pays?" sweet lyric by Ambroise Thomas. As old Dobbin ambled along the moon-patched road He would lean his head against her leg-of-mutton sleeve, and She would trill: "Knowest thou the Land?" So thorough a wooing song did this aria from Mignon become that the opera itself became boresome. People refused to go hear it.

Thomas (1811-96) wrote Mignon in 1866. He, born at Metz, was a learned as well as smart composer. At 4, he knew his solfeggio; at 17, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatory of Music; at 21, he won the Conservatory's Prix de Rome, and went there at the French government's expense. Three years' study in Rome prepared him to compose a laudable requiem mass and several popular operas.

Singer Christine Nilsson, who played Mignon, name part, in the first production at Paris, brought the opera to the Academy of Music in Manhattan in 1871, to the Metropolitan Opera House in 1883. The last singer to dare the role was Geraldine Farrar. She was 26 years old then, in 1908.

Last week, after almost 20 years, the Metropolitan produced Mignon again. The lyric is based, of course, on Goethe's sentimental play, Wilhelm Meister. Mignon, nobleman's daughter, had long been held captive by gypsies. But she dimly remembers her home. This memory grows intense after she meets dazed Lothario, who really is her father, gone daft. Sportive Wilhelm Meister she grows to love, and flirting Philene she hates. Marion Talley, adequate as Philene, showed progress as an operatic actress. Lucrezia Bori, who sang Mignon last week kept merry an audience of 4,000, many of whom had been cradled to "Connais-tu le pays?"