Merry Mount in Michigan

Two years ago when tall, sleek Richard Leroy Stokes was writing stinging musical criticisms for the late New York Evening World, an idea came to him for an opera. Each time the Metropolitan mounted the work of a U. S. composer, people complained because its subject was not native. The opera Critic Stokes had in mind would be set in colonial Quincy, Mass. Its characters would be Puritans, Cavaliers, Indians; its themes, bigotry and a parson's conflict with his lustful soul. Critic Stokes asked Rochester's Howard Hanson if he would please write the music, submitted his scheme to the Metropolitan. Manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza, knowing from experience with Composer Deems Taylor that critics are likely to be lenient with the efforts of their fellow critics, accepted the Hanson-Stokes opus when the music was scarcely begun.

The Metropolitan planned to put on Merry Mount in 1932 but Composer Hanson had not finished with his music. It was scheduled then for last winter when hard times intervened and it was shelved again. Last week Manager Gatti-Casazza generously permitted the University of Michigan to steal a march on him. The world premiere of Merry Mount was given in Ann Arbor in concert form, climax of a four-day festival. Solemn as Supreme Court judges, University students sat behind a bench backstage to sing the Puritans' choral music. Ann Arbor's festival singers sat on the stage on either side of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Composer Howard Hanson was there to conduct, waving his angular arms about to build up choral climaxes which helped atone for the weak orchestral moments. The Puritans' rugged, hymnlike theme dominated but there was a fetching, comic interlude when the Cavaliers fed firewater to the Indians, prepared for a May Pole dance on Merry Mount. The love-motif for Wrestling Bradford sounded strangely like "Limehouse Blues."

Metropolitan Opera singers helped impress Ann Arbor with Merry Mount's musical worth. Baritone John Charles Thomas, whom Manager Gatti lately engaged for next season, sang the heretic clergyman's music in a voice marvelously smooth and strong. Soprano Leonora Corona made a pneumatic Cavalier siren even in her formal, up-to-date evening dress. Demure Rose Bamplon was Plentiful Tewke, the Puritan maiden who was not quite tempting enough for Wrestling Bradford.

Ann Arbor critics prophesied a great success for Merry Mount at the Metropolitan next winter. Excerpts from Critic Stokes's libretto: Indians:

Quag -- kin -- oh -- boo,

Ha, ha, ha, ha!

Ook -- ook -- tah -- moh,

Tchick, tchick, tchick, tchick!*

Cavalier Chorus:

In wine, mighty wine.

Many comforts we spy;

If you doubt what we say,

Take a bumper and try.

Wrestling Bradford (scorning the Cavalier temptress):

Way to thy paramour!

Wilt thou this night hedge him

within thine arms.

And teach his lips to graze

Thy body's pasture?

Merry Mount ends with the Lord's Prayer.

*Gibberish, though Librettist Stokes is part Indian.

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