In the Family

"What is that dog howling in the night?" intoned blonde, hazel-eyed Actress Felicia Montealegre, 36, from the script. Cracked Conductor Leonard Bernstein from the podium: "That's no dog, that's my wife.'' For their first professional appearance together, Lennie and his wife Felicia were rehearsing Swiss Composer Arthur Honegger's sprawling dramatic oratorio, Joan of Arc at the Stake. Last week, with the full orchestra buttressed by assorted soloists, a boys' choir and a mixed chorus of 150 voices, the Bernsteins wound up the New York Philharmonic's season with a family triumph.

Actress Montealegre practiced her role --a speaking part that has been played by Ingrid Bergman and Vera Zorina--for six months, started rehearsing it with Lennie a week before the performance. After she got over the nervousness of working with her husband, the rehearsals went just fine. Conductor Bernstein concentrated much of his attention on the Westminster Choir ("Your ha's are fine. but your heh's are lousy"), turned to his wife to offer only an occasional piece of advice: "Darling, I would rather not make such a ritardando.''

The performance of the 20-year-old work, opening with Joan at the stake and flashing back and forth through her persecution, trial and condemnation, revealed the basic weakness in the libretto by France's late Poet-Ambassador (to the U.S. in 1927-33) Paul Claudel: its tendency to reduce a profound, many-faceted conflict to charcoal black and Rinso white. But Bernstein gave the music the surging, evocative reading that its subject demands, kept a near-perfect balance be tween orchestra, soloists and his acres of chorus. Actress Montealegre gave her reading with luminous conviction and a fine sense of tandem with the score. Both got an ovation before they hustled off to a party to celebrate the Philharmonic's departure on a seven-week Latin American tour. For Felicia Montealegre, wearing a cape and Gothic-style gown by Valentina, the most pointed appreciation came from her 2 1/2-year-old when he spied her in costume: "Ah,'' he cried, "Superman!"

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