New Limelight at 60

Czech Composer Bohuslav Martinu wrote a slapstick one-act opera in 1937 called Comedy on the Bridge. It was a satire on war, and everybody had a good time when they heard the Prague radio premiere that year. Says Expatriate Martinu, sad-eyed, 60, and full of memories of Munich and its aftermath: "Six months later, I could not have written it."

Last week the Opera Workshop of Manhattan's Mannes School of Music honored Martinu, its most distinguished faculty member, with two bang-up performances --the first in the U.S.--of his old one-acter. Most startled with its success was Martinu himself, who had always considered the work purely a Czech chuckle. His one admonition to the Workshop group was: "Keep it a comedy." A cast of eight expert singers, accompanied by a chamber orchestra, played the well-scored opera as a near-burlesque.

A Riddle. Martinu's bridge separates two nameless warring armies. Anyone with a pass may enter the bridge, but may neither cross to the other side nor return. Thus trapped are two silly lovers and a brewer and his wife. After a brief recognition of their situation, they promptly forget it, preferring to sing to each other of their personal problems.

Skipping on to the bridge comes a Latin-spouting schoolteacher who has the solution to war, if only he can answer the riddle posed by the leader of one of the armies. The question: How can a deer escape from a field surrounded by a wall so high that it cannot be climbed and through which there is no exit? None of the group can solve the riddle, but each has a fine musical time working it over. At last the leader enters, declares a victory, answers the riddle: "[The deer] does not escape." Exit all, laughing and dancing.

A Twinkle. For Composer Martinu, the first U.S. performance of an opera by him is a step into a new limelight. Since he settled in the U.S. in 1941, his new compositions (e.g., five symphonies, a third piano concerto, many chamber works) have spread his name as a topflight instrumental writer. His orchestral works have been played by such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic-Symphony, the NBC Symphony and the Boston. But few Americans knew that he had written ten operas, or that half of the operas are comedies.

Martinu lives modestly in a third-floor Manhattan walkup. He has received a few commissions, makes most of his money teaching a weekly composition class at Mannes, another at Princeton. Only his last few U.S. works bring royalties, and they are tiny. Few recordings of his music are available here. Most of his manuscripts are still in Czechoslovakia, and irretrievable. So are his Czech royalties.

But the success of Comedy has brought a twinkle to Martinu's eye. He will compose opera again, aiming at a City Center production in Manhattan. Says he: "The Met is very fine, but it is too big."

Meanwhile, he has plans for a new Symphonie Fantastique, with the Boston Symphony's Charles Munch in mind. Says Martinu: "We need to be a little romantic in this moment, I think, a little gay."

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