Incendiary Prophet

Ah, my son! Blessed be thou!

Thy loving mother to thee was dearer

Than was Bertha, who claim'd thy heart!

Not for eight years has the Metropolitan rocked with that potent explosion which concludes the last act of Giacomo Meyerbeer's Le Prophete and brings an entire castle tumbling in ruins upon the cast.

Last week Margarete Matzenauer was again the mother "dearer than Bertha" to her son the Prophet-- this time Giovanni Martinelli, though Mme. Matzenauer has often been "dearer" to the late Enrico Caruso.

Both Prophet and Mother were superb in voice and gesture, last week, and their passions soared above Bertha ''Leonora Corona) with a spiritual fervor exceeding the carnal dynamics of Oedipus Rex.

Martinelli (as the prophet whose fanatical followers crown him a Dutch Rex in 16th Century Holland) put aside his tendency to blustery winds of song and wrung his effects from masterful restraint. Amid settings by Joseph Urban the "Ice Ballet" was realistically skated without ice, the castle was dynamited without dynamite, and the penultimate coronation scene achieved a splendor eclipsed only by such scenic orgies as the Metropolitan's Turandot.