A Night at the Opera

Last week some two million people in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York saw ABC's telecast of the Metropolitan Opera's opening performance (see Music). Next day, with the critics' verdicts in, it was hard to believe that everyone had been looking at the same opera (Verdi's Otello). The New York Times and Sun found it "exciting" and "superb." The Philadelphia Inquirer was dazzled by "the overwhelming power and grandeur of the music and the miracle of proud and panoplied art being brought in full glory into one's own home."

Variety bluntly headlined that MET OTELLO PREEM FIZZLES, and grumbled that "it was a mediocre affair" bringing out "the static quality of opera at its worst." Variety saw no TV future for opera until it was "devised specially for the medium. It will need new sets, new costumes, new staging, new makeup. And new singers. Singers who look the part as well as sing it. Otherwise--video speaking--it rates the ax."

The New York Herald Tribune's M. C. Blackman, making a tour of Manhattan bars, found the patrons restless. In a West 38th Street saloon, Otello was largely drowned out by Buttons and Bows from the jukebox, and finally a customer shouted: "Turn on the fights--I want to see the little guy get murdered." Concluded Reporter Blackman: "Opera is not likely to supplant boxing in midtown bars and grills."

Pointing out that the whole thing was experimental, and apparently satisfied with the result, ABC officials promised to bring other operas to TV during the current Met season.

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