Comeback

The word "opera" would be box-office poison--or so the producers of Composer Marc Blitzstein's Regina decided when it opened on Broadway four years ago. They labeled Regina a "musical drama," and invited the drama critics as well as the music critics to review it. The drama critics, whose notices are the ones that count at the Broadway box office, came and shook their heads; Blitzstein's musical version of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes seemed to them an unnecessary intrusion on a fine play. Regina ran for 56 performances, then gave up.

Last week, at Manhattan's busy City Center, Regina came back with a bang and a burst of bravos--and as opera unashamed. Composer Blitzstein had trimmed down the spoken dialogue in his libretto, tightened up the orchestration, and included three musical episodes which were dropped in the pre-Broadway tryouts of the old production. The result still showed a slight tendency to be musically episodic, but the opera more than made up for this with its sharp scoring for a set of characters more real and gutty than most modern opera can lay claim to.

The rapacity of Regina Hubbard and her scheming brothers gives Blitzstein a chance to point up their bile-laden words with incongruously sweet sounds, and he makes the most of it--as when Regina sings a waltz with such words as

I don't mind handling money, handfuls of money--

Money means things, and the things I can do with things! . . .

More feeble by far than the meek and the weak

Are the noble, the nibbling, and Not-Quite-Poor.

I'm in love with things . . .

Handsome Brenda Lewis as Regina Hubbard handles her role of super-bitch Tallulah Bankhead's in The Little Foxes) with the command of an actress as well as with a soprano of range and authority. But Regina's musical high point is the third-act Rain Quartet, which for lightness and inventive charm beats anything on Broadway for a long time.

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