Met's Progress

The first week of New York's Metropolitan Opera traditionally gives debutant singers an occasion to be heard, boxholders an occasion to be photographed, critics an occasion to be lenient. Critics did not have to be lenient when, on Dec. 21, Manager Edward Johnson opened the season with a rattling good performance of Die Walkure. They were unable to be anything but enthusiastic when, two days later, Kirsten Flagstad sang Isolde with the miraculous freshness they had learned to expect from her. They were grateful to Manager Johnson for brushing up the ragged Met orchestra. When he began last fortnight to put on some of his second-string operas, critics sharpened their pencils and found cause for complaint.

Much of the complaint fell upon the pretty Belgian head of Vina Bovy, the coloratura soprano who stepped into the part of Gilda in Rigoletto 24 hours before the performance when Stella Andreva caught a cold. Critics had liked her better four days earlier when she made her Metropolitan debut singing Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata. Even then they felt a little uneasy about her pitch. In Rigoletto her colorless, inexact rendition of the great Caro Nome and her literal, lifeless acting convinced few that she was the outraged, unhappy daughter of a court fool. Lawrence Tibbett was more imaginative as her hunchback father, used his strong baritone with an accuracy that seemed almost reproving.

The record was not improved by a performance of Delibes' Lakme. New Conductor Maurice de Abravanel tortured this suave, tuneful music into Wagnerian thunder. Vina Bovy, cast as the Hindoo maid, remained Vina Bovy and gave little support to Basso Leon Rothier who made Nilakantha piteous with his fits of love and fury. Not till the middle of the week brought a competent Aida and a warm, vivid Faust in French did critics feel confidence in Director Johnson's French & Italian wings.

When Rigoletto was repeated last week. Soprano Bovy proved that she could sing truly if not more evenly, but she still seemed pathetically unequal to Tibbett. A German opera saved the week from mediocrity, when Wagner's Flying Dutchman was put on for the first time in five years. Save for Hans Clemens, who sang the Steersman in the last production, all the principals were new to the Metropolitan in their parts. Flagstad took the role of Senta for the first time in her career and made it unforgettable. Warmest praise went to Baritone Friedrich

Schorr who sang the woe of the ghostly captain with such feeling one could well believe he was doomed to sweep across the seas forever until a girl's love would win him rest.

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