Welcome in Paris

Paris was happy to be invaded. The arrival of Milan's famed La Scala opera company set critics to reminiscing fondly of the days when Arturo Toscanini was in the pit, and Caruso, Scotti and Sembrich were on the stage. Nothing about Paris' own two forlorn companies, at the Opera and the Opera-Comique, was of the sort to bring up such memories.

Hit of the visiting Italians was buxom, blonde Ebe Stignani, whom many European critics consider the greatest mezzo-soprano of the day. She was superb in Il Trovatore, and she even lifted a drab production of La Favorita. After Favorita one critic said that Stignani could make Three Blind Mice sound like celestial music.

Parisians were as interested in La Scala's guest conductor as in its standout singers. The conductor was slight, thirtyish Manno Wolf-Ferrari, nephew of one of Italy's last surviving big-name operatic composers, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (The Jewels of the Madonna, The Secret of Susanne).

Manno Wolf-Ferrari usually conducts at Venice's La Fernice opera house. In Paris, three French conductors joined the pit orchestra, just to get the hang of Italian opera from "Little Manno." If they learned nothing from his fine, sure beat, they learned something about making do in an emergency. On opening night Manno dropped his baton into a crack in the floor just as the curtain was going up and couldn't fish it out. He sent a violinist for something to replace it, conducted part of the first act with the rung of a chair. Said he: "I had to lie down for quite a while afterward before my strength came back."

Pleased by his Paris success, Manno is even more excited by the treat he has in store for his 71-year-old uncle, with whom he lives in Venice. In Naples next fall, Manno hopes to conduct the first Italian performance in more than 20 years of Uncle Ermanno's The Jewels of the Madonna. Mussolini had banned it because, he said, its story of Neopolitan hoodlumism gave Italy a bad name.

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