Opera Englished

In many-tongued Europe opera is usually sung in the language of the country where it is performed. In France Pagliacci becomes Paillasse, in Germany Bajazzo. But Americans, like Englishmen, take their opera neat, and often swallow an entire performance without understanding more than a few words.

When in 1928 Jules Falk, a Philadelphia musician, proposed a summer season of translated opera at Atlantic City's Steel Pier, the Pier's President, Frank Gravatt, was leery of it. But Director Falk went ahead with his plan, put on Pagliacci and one act of Boris Godounoff in English. The double bill, given in one of the gigantic Pier's five theatres, went over so well that opera in English became a permanent feature of Atlantic City's summer-season.

Last week the Steel Pier Opera Company, only 100% English-speaking and English-singing opera company in the U.S. closed its eleventh successful year. In more than 400 performances the company had produced 34 different operas.

The people who balk most strenuously at Director Falk's opera-in-Enghsh policy are neither the public nor the Pier management, but the singers themselves. U.S. singers who had learned their roles in French or Italian objected to relearning hem in English, claimed that the transated words did not roll off the tongue so trippingly as the original.

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