Burlesque

The orchestra began with "I Saw Stars." From a parterre box Announcer Raymond Knight called out that opera was about to be reborn with a Witherspoon in its mouth. A dowager in the audience sniffed and said "sacrilegious'' but even she was wheezing with laughter before the evening ended. For when Manhattan's sedate Metropolitan Opera Company chooses to kick up its heels, there is no funnier show on Broadway.

Last week's burlesque, staged on the eve of the Company's departure for Boston, showed various ways opera might be enlivened and perhaps made to pay. Baritone Lawrence Tibbett crawled inside the Siegfried dragon and mourned because "no cigaret or corset ever asked me to endorse it." Coming events were then advertised in lurid cinemafashion. Tosca's name was changed to "Hungry Passions." Rigoletto became "The Hunchback in the Harem." For the sake of the tired businessman, Wagner's Nibelungen Ring was whisked off in less than two minutes.

Best comedians were tiny Lily Pons and massive Lauritz Melchior who donned sequin loin cloths and indulged in acrobatics which would have been perilous without the wires which hoisted them into the air. Because the occasion was in part a farewell to Manager Giulio Gatti- Casazza every effort was made to get him to appear on the stage. But Gatti shuns the spotlight. Instead, cinema pictures of him were shown from The March of Time while the performers sang "Auld Lang Syne." The entire audience rose and clamored for the man who has guided the Metropolitan through 27 years. Gatti stood far back in his box, tears in his eyes, his arm uplifted in the Italian salute.

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