king's End

Hagen speared the fear-proof Siegfried in the back, Bruennhilde lit his funeral pyre, the fateful ring went back to the Rhine whence it had come, Valhalla, symbol of the gods' greed, flamed in the distance--and at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House the curtain went down last Week on Richard Wagner's Gooetterdaeammerunmg, ended a cycle of the Nibelungen Ring operas* which New Yorkers will long remember.

Three new German singers have helped to make this season's Ring performances surpass those of many years: Soprano Frida Leider, whose Briinnhilde last week made startlingly credible the creature half goddess, half woman, which Wagner imagined, dark handsome Contralto Maria Olszewska, who like Frida Leider used to sing with the Chicago Civic Opera; Basso Ludwig Hofmann whose Hagen was a model of malevolence. These three with Tenor Lauritz Melchior, the Siegfried, and Baritone Friedrich Schorr, who last week was Hagen's weak-kneed half-brother Gunther, caused Critic Lawrence Gilman to write in the Herald Tribune: ". . . The score has not been so beautifully and movingly sung as regards its principal roles since that unforgettable March afternoon at the end of a century when Jean De Reszke's dying Siegfried turned our hearts to water . . . and the Olympian Lilli [the late great Lilli Lehmann] caused us to remember always one of the things that Wagnerian sublimity can mean."

The New York Times reflected the lobby talk which has buzzed constantly since the Metropolitan announced that it would have to raise $300,000 by popular subscription or disband (TIME, Feb. 20) : "If there were no other reasons for keeping New York's opera alive, these performances of Wagner should be sufficiently cogent."

Lobbyist's Daughter

Last spring when Congress was levying taxes right & left in its last-minute effort to balance the budget, the man who lobbied most diligently to prevent a tax on symphony orchestra tickets was Lawyer Willis Irving Norton, Republican leader in Minnesota's House of Representatives. Lawyer Norton won his case. Orchestras were spared the tax, stayed classified as educational institutions.

This winter out front in the musical scene has been Lawyer Norton's daughter Eunice, 24-year-old pianist. She has soloed in competent if not peerless fashion with the big orchestras in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Manhattan. Last week, impressed by her season's record (untouched by any other U. S. woman pianist), Manhattan critics went to see what Eunice Norton would do in a Town Hall recital.

Difficult music by Bach, Weber, Hindemith and Schumann seemed like a tall undertaking for the girl who came on stage

--a slight, cropped-haired person in a red brocaded dress. But Eunice Norton compassed it all neatly. Her fingers traveled easily and accurately through Bach's E Minor French Suite, clearly traced its complicated, interweaving patterns. The Andante from Weber's lovely, slightly faded A Flat Sonata was played with a tenderness surprising in a young person who by temperament seemed better suited to the brittle, contrapuntal ways of Hindemith.

Last spring Eunice Norton worked with Paul Hindemith, Germany's prolific young modernist, thus adding a notch to the intelligent musical study on which her mother started her. Pianist Myra Hess visited Minneapolis when Eunice Norton was a high-school freshman. She heard her play, advised her to go to London to study with Tobias Matthay, Hess's old teacher. Later she went to Germany, worked with famed Artur Schnabel, who liked to mountaineer and ski as much as she did. Eunice Norton's recital last week faithfully reflected her diligent study. Critics commended her warmly but superlatives were saved for the mature, deeply communicative playing of British Myra Hess, her early adviser, who appeared in Town Hall four days later, moved an audience to cheers.

-The four operas which compose the Ring are: Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, Got-tcrdammcnng. In its annual matinee cycle the Metropolitan presents one each week.

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