The Singing Expatriates

To some theatergoers, the most memorable moment in the 1951 Broadway hit Two on the Aisle came when Bert Lahr opened his cavernous mouth on the song: There Never Was a Baby Like My Baby. The voice was rich, resonant, and utterly unlike Lahr. It issued not from the Lahrynx but from the throat of a burly (5 ft. 10 in., 265 Ibs.) offstage singer named James Eugene McCracken. Since then, Indiana-born Jim McCracken, 33, has firmly moved from the wings to stage center. At the Zurich Opera last week, in the title role of Verdi's Otello, he was greeted by critics and a foot-stamping audience as the most exciting new operatic tenor to appear in Europe in years. Says Zurich Opera Director Herbert Graf (until last year a stage director at the Metropolitan Opera): "He is the best Otello in the world today." Agreed the critic of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung: "We have not had a tenor of his quality here in two decades." McCracken's voice combines declamatory power with a remarkably even singing line that recalls the late great Czech tenor, Leo Slezak. Potentially, he seems a fine Wagnerian singer, but McCracken has scored his greatest, if slow-coming, successes so far in Ariadne auf Naxos and Otello. The son of the Gary, Ind. fire chief, McCracken sang in high school operettas, graduated to the male chorus of Manhattan's Roxy Theater. Later he won small parts on Broadway (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Of Thee I Sing). He began appearing in summer opera, was singing the male lead in a concert version of Sam son et Dalila when he fell in love with Sandra Warfield, a tall, blonde mezzo singing opposite him. McCracken and Sandra, who later became his wife, were both signed by the Met in 1953, and Jim made his debut in Boheme with a one-sentence declamation, mostly on high G: "Here are the toys of Parpignol." During the next four seasons, he recalls, "I was all the messengers and all the friends of the leading tenor." When McCracken asked General Manager Rudolf Bing for a raise and was turned down, he decided to head for Europe. There, too, his career moved slowly until he auditioned for Herbert von Karajan in 1959, before long had star contracts at both the Vienna and Zurich operas. Now commanding top fees, Expatriate McCracken looks forward to only one more offer: the cable from Rudolf Bing invi ing him back to the Met. McCracken is only one of a whole expeditionary force of American singers trying to carve careers for themselves in the

European opera houses, hoping to re-enact the Continental success stories of George London, Leontyne Price, Gloria Davy, et al. Although a great many of the new U.S. expatriates would prefer to sing at home, there is no room for them in the three major repertory opera theaters (the Metropolitan. Chicago and San Francisco operas). West Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, on the other hand, have about 60 thoroughly professional opera companies, most of them small houses that the musical tourist rarely hears of: Flensburg, Krefeld, Oldenburg. Hof, Saarbrucken, Augsburg. Kassel, Koblenz, Oberhausen, Bielefeld. There are some 150 U.S. singers in German-speaking houses today, constituting about 20% of the soloists. California-born Soprano Mary Gray, 29, recalls a Traviata in Karlsruhe last season: "The three leads came out for the curtain calls, and I looked around and thought, 'My gosh, we're all Americans!'' Many a U.S. singer is willing to take less than a living wage ($96 a month) in order to get a steady twelve-month contract and plenty of experience. The low pay is partially compensated for by the fact that, after 15 years, all singers in the government-run houses receive handsome pensions that they can draw on anywhere in the world.

Although most of America's expatriate singers are unknown at home, many of them have built up sizable European reputations. New York-born Claire Watson, 33, was one of the hits of last summer's Munich Festival, where she appeared as the Marschallin in Rosenkavalier and Fiordiligi in Cosi Fan Tutte. Brooklyn's Evelyn Lear, 31, of West Berlin's State Opera created a sensation at the Vienna Festival in Alban Berg's Lulu. Her Texas-born husband, Baritone Thomas Stewart, 31, was a surprise success as Amfortas in last summer's Parsifal at Bayreuth. Florida-born Negro Soprano Maroyne Betsch, 25, won rave reviews for her Salome with the Braunschweig Opera. In Bern, Tennessee-born Chloe Owen made outstanding debuts in Lohengrin and Mathis der Maler. Minnesota-born Bass-Baritone Keith Engen, 35, one of the stars of the Munich Opera, is so idolized in Germany that he obligingly changed the spelling of his first name to "Kieth" to make it easier for audiences.

But the boom for U.S. singers in Europe may not continue much longer. Although German managers are eager to get Americans, who generally have had a broader musical education than young European singers, the German Theater Union is bitterly opposed to imported talent. Germany should not be a training ground, the union argues, for foreign singers. Moreover, most of the provincial houses already have as many Americans on their rosters as they can handle, and the hundreds of hopefuls who flock across the Atlantic each year are finding jobs increasingly scarce. The U.S., one critic pointed out last week, will either have to produce fewer vocalists or more native opera houses.

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