Tchaikovsky Premiere

In 1891, when Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky returned to St. Petersburg to rest after conducting his own moody music during a tour of Europe, he was requested to write something for the Imperial Theatres. With his brother Modeste as librettist, weary Piotr Ilyitch sat down and produced his last opera, lolanthe, a little idyll about a princess of Naples who did not know she was blind because she had been so from birth. Cured by Ibn Hakia, who strokes the long white beard appropriate to a Moorish sage, she marries the noble whose love made her cure possible. Tchaikovsky speedily became engrossed in this wistful idyll, achieved a brightly lyrical score rare among his mature works.

Staged first before Tsar Alexander III in 1893, lolanthe had its U. S. premiere only last week. It was revived for the New York Musicians Emergency Fund in the outdoor theatre of Sleepy Hollow Country Club, at Scarborough. Soprano Lola Monti-Gorsey as lolanthe, Bass-Baritone Vasily Romakoff as the king, easily outdid a strident chorus of autumn katydids, sang their roles with grace and finesse. Guest of honor was sixtyish. grey-haired Margaret Eichenwald, who was coached for the role of lolanthe at its premiere by Tchaikovsky, now teaches voice at the Vocal Studio in Manhattan. The other was the conductor, Eugene Plotnikoff. In 1893, as 'cellist in the Imperial Orchestra, he heard a messenger break up a rehearsal of lolanthe with the news that Tchaikovsky was dead. Last week, conducting an eager, well-rehearsed orchestra, he showed that he had not forgotten what he once learned from the Master.

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