Synchro-Opera

Financed and encouraged by the Communist State, the 600 theatre companies scattered through Russia have in the past decade gone on to technical and artistic horizons envied by many a private producer in many a capitalist country. Last week in Moscow the Soviet Fine Arts Commissariat was pleased to witness and approve an exciting 100,000-ruble operatic experiment whose spade work had been done not in the communist U. S. S. R. but in the capitalist U. S. When the performance, an extraordinary second act of Carmen, was over, the Fine Arts officials beamed and congratulated Conductor Vladimir Shavitch for reducing opera's excess baggage, putting it within the reach of the masses. For in place of a cumbersome chorus and orchestra, Conductor Shavitch used sound-film. When the Toreador Song rang out powerfully, only 16 were singing it from the stage. In celluloid, the Moscow Grand Opera Chorus made them sound like 50.*

Vladimir Shavitch is a naturalized U. S. citizen who used to conduct the Syracuse (N. Y.) Symphony. Even then he was full of plans for blending "canned" music with living singers. Benjamin Adler, a Manhattan cotton broker, backed him when in 1933 he put on Carmen in New York. In that production Metropolitan Tenor Frederick Jagel sang against an orchestra & chorus which were recorded on discs, not film. Last summer when he was touring Russia, Shavitch persuaded the Fine Arts Commissariat to give his device a further hearing.

Shavitch calls his new method Synchro-Opera. He says he is a "synchronizer" rather than a conductor. Since his demonstration has been a success, he will be authorized to train 20 "synchronizers" for opera companies to tour the Soviet Union. Traveling light and cheaply, each company will need only 20 singers, film & sound producing devices, simple scenery. In time Shavitch hopes to put the scenery as well as the sound on films.

*Since 1924, when Russians began to make opera suit their ideology, there have been other extraordinary Carmcns. The gypsy is sometimes represented as a Jewess. She converts Captain Josef (Don Jose) to communism, falls in love with a Polish wrestler, dies uttering a paran the World State.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.