Old Dr. Damrosch

Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera, in its that-ain't-haydays, used to put on a U. S. opera almost every year. None was ever good enough to stay put. A typical one was a 1913 number about the swashbuckling, sword-nosed French poet of the 17th Century, Cyrano de Bergerac. Its better-than-average libretto was blank-versified out of Edmond Rostand's play by the late William J. Henderson, musicritic of the New York Sun. Its workmanlike score was put together, out of a wide knowledge of Wagner and other masters, by a conductor who had been toonering along since 1885 --Walter Damrosch. Cyrano de Bergerac had five performances, was then forgotten by most people. But not by Conductor Damrosch.

Last week white-haired, cherubicund Dr. Damrosch lovingly conducted a new version of Cyrano, which he had polished up during the past three years. The opera was given in concert form in Carnegie Hall, with soloists and full orchestra. The long performance gave Conductor Damrosch perceptible pleasure: it was practically a celebration of his 79th birthday, just past. Next day the critics behaved like good children. Nearest to the mark (that Cyrano was appallingly dull) was Edward O'Gorman of the Post: ". . . a score . . . that the average listener might not journey far to hear, but one that he would probably like once he got there, and remember with pleasure if he didn't stay too long."

In entering his 80th year, Walter Damrosch had better to boast of than his operas (he wrote three others, The Scarlet Letter, The Dove of Peace, The Man Without a Country). No man living has one more for good music in the U. S. than he. Born of a famed conductor father (Leopold Damrosch) in Breslau, Germany, Walter Damrosch took his own opera company barnstorming in the U. S., toured with the old New York Symphony to towns which had never heard a concert. Shrewd, levelheaded, anything but temperamental, he could take it in his stride when a snow-heavy trap door rattled and banged through Debussy's placid Afternoon of a Faun (as it did one night in Utica, N. Y.), or when he found himself conducting on the strippers' runway in some cramped burlesque house. He was not above giving the Pathetique Symphony the fastest performance on record so that the orchestra could catch its train.

Walter Damrosch has seldom been regarded as a great interpreter of music, but he made good programs, played new music, helped along such composers as George Gershwin. A man of immense energy and many friends, Dr. Damrosch still puts in an eight-hour work day. As NBC's musical counsel honoris causa, he has worked at a steady job for 13 years: NBC's Music Appreciation Hour. Every Friday some 7,000,000 youngsters, most of them in public-school classes, await with pencils and notebooks the mellow baritone of nice old Dr. Damrosch: "Good afternoon, my dear children!"

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