Faust First

Mephistopheles turned up in evening dress and top hat, instead of red tights. Marguerite did her hair in a high topknot instead of braids. Faust was a bumbling, bourgeois scholar working in a 19th century library (with high shelves and a stepladder) instead of a bare Gothic study. Otherwise, Gounod's Faust was Gounod's Faust, and an old-reliable choice for the Metropolitan Opera's opening night this week.

Back to conduct, after an absence of 34 years, was 78-year-old Pierre Monteux, who will head the Met's French wing (Faust, Pelleas et Melisande, Carmen) this season. Nothing about the new production startled him: "Everyone knows all of it, no? The music, it is tres aimable. There can be no surprises."

Although Faust is one of the Met's most popular shows,* it has not had its face lifted since Papa Monteux made his Met debut with it in 1917. So this year it got a $75.000 rejuvenation: new sets and costumes by Rolf Gerard, new staging by Britain's Peter Brook, and a cast of the Met's brightest stars. Director Brook listened to the music carefully, decided that its sentimental tunes and melting harmonies belonged in a French romantic setting, despite the fact that Goethe's dramatic poem was laid in 16th century Germany. The result: a period piece, but in a different period.

Most impressive singing actor on the stage was a Metropolitan debutant. Italy's Basso Nicola Rossi-Lemeni (TIME, Oct. 15, 1951), who drew the meaty role of Mephistopheles. Elegantly brandishing his black sword-cane, he swaggered and leered his satanic way about the stage, and when he flourished his red satin cape, the villagers hit the floor like a wheatfield in a high wind.

Basso Rossi-Lemeni's singing was as commanding as his stage presence, though his voice was sometimes rough and low in resonance. He was surrounded by a cast of top singers who, if their voices were finer, made comparatively paler characters.

Soprano Victoria de los Angeles, though she is only 30, made a matronly-looking Marguerite, but her singing was faultless as a flute. For a man who has just been rejuvenated by the devil, Swedish Tenor Jussi Bjoerling looked pudgy, but he sang with Gallic smoothness. Conductor Monteux. with no apparent effort, achieved a nearly perfect balance between orchestra and singers.

Fortnight before the opening, there was a question whether the Metropolitan would open at all, when the orchestra held out for a new salary contract. Several "final offers" were made and rejected before the night was saved: the singers' union stepped in and helped work out a compromise.

With opening night safely under its belt, the company settled down to its annual routine. During the season it will present 22 operas from its repertory, eight of them new Bing stagings of recent seasons. Two more--Rossini's Barber of Seville and Wagner's Tannhdueser--will get completely new productions this winter, while five others will get a cut-rate (about $10,000 apiece) reconditioning.

For the first time since Manager Bing took over, he is mounting no opera, old or new, that is novel to the present generation of Met-goers, although both Stravinsky's Rake's Progress and Debussy's Pelleas are far from familiar fare. But the opera public seems happy enough with the repertory: before the first curtain went up, it had bought more subscription tickets than ever before.

* Only Aida, Boheme, Lohengrin and Carmen have had more performances.

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