Best-Selling Schwanda

In an old Bohemian fairytale, Schwanda, a bagpipe player, was a perfect antidote for boredom. He melted Queen Ice-Heart who would have married him if his wife Dorota had not appeared with her carpet bag, demanding explanations. He put new life into the Devil who, before Schwanda visited him, was reduced to playing solitaire and reading Hell's tabloids. . . .

In Manhattan the opera Schwanda der Dudelsackpjeijer (Bagpipe-player) made a Metropolitan Opera audience forget last week how bored it had become with the idea of new operas, few of which survive more than one or two seasons. Not even a middle-aged Wagnerian (Baritone Friedrich Schorr), who endeavored to impersonate swaggering Schwanda by oc- casionally skipping across the stage, seemed to dim the happy effect that Czech Composer Jaromir Weinberger got with his sophisticated scoring of a theme song on life and barnyard noises, a rollicking polka, a noisy, oldtime finale. In Europe Schwanda is the best-selling modern opera. It has had over 1,000 performances, been translated into 14 languages. For the U. S. premiere last week Scenic Artist Joseph Urban designed a flaming Hell equipped with sewing-machine, typewriter, electric switchboard and elevator up to earth.

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