Peevish Opera

Three years ago George Antheil, Trenton (N. J.)-born composer arrived home from Paris, presented in Manhattan a program of his works which included Ballet Mechanique, scored for ten pianos, xylophones, rattles and whistles. Ballet Mechanique had a frosty reception. Critics hooted and Composer Antheil returned immediately to the land which he said understood him better. Yet even Europeans failed him last week at the premiere in Frankfort of his opera Transatlantic or The People's Choice. The scene is a hectic, cocktail-mad Manhattan; the hero a politician who beats his way up from the ranks to the U. S. presidency and loses the woman he loves. Despite Antheil's claim that he is deeply patriotic ("in the Walt Whitman way"), that Transatlantic is an idealistic, not a satiric opera, it seemed to most just a peevish wholesale burlesque of the U. S. Satire or burlesque, it was voted a petty piece musically and dramatically. It pleased only those who could be taken in by noisy orchestration and such cinematized scenes as a lady in her bath, a night-club raid and the last frenzied minutes of a presidential election.

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