Paul Bunyan

Paul Bunyan, gigantic, legendary Northwest logger, might well make music surge in some great U.S. symphony. Last week he was the hero--although he never appeared onstage--of an anemic operetta put up by two British expatriates. The librettist of the operetta, corn-shocky Poet Wystan Hugh Auden, excused himself for muscling in on U.S. mythology by declaring that Bunyan is a universal figure.

Paul Bunyan, with music by willowy Composer Benjamin Britten, had its world premiere with a semi-amateur performance at Columbia University, under the auspices of the League of Composers. The League thus gave a poor start to a good project: development of a "Composers' Theater" to give contemporary English-language opera throughout the U.S. For Paul Bunyan was as bewildering and irritating a treatment of the outsize lumberman as any two Englishmen could have devised.

Its protagonist was no more than a Bronxy sounding voice in the flies, and Babe, the Blue Ox, was nowhere to be found at all.

There was a variety of other characters, including a coloratura-soprano dog and three stuffed geese.

Paul Bunyan, full of unintelligible choristry, seemed to have as its thesis Poet Auden's words: All but heroes are unnerved, when life and love must be deserved. But there was a lot more, such as a mammy and four unclassifiable Civil War characters, billed as "The Defeated" and wheeled in on a float. Composer Britten's tunes ranged in inspiration from U.S. and British balladry to Social Satirist Marc Blitzstein (The Cradle Will Rock).

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