Swedish Carmen

When Manager Edward Johnson announced his plans for the current Metropolitan opera season a promised high spot was to be the revival of Carmen with Rosa Ponselle. Soprano Ponselle had her chance (TIME, Jan. 6). Last week an audience was agog over another Carmen who sang in Swedish while the rest of the cast sang in French, who lost the heel of one slipper, casually attempted to mend it, finally hurled it into the wings and hopped with one shoe on & one shoe off for the remainder of the act.

The new Carmen was Gertrud Wettergren, who arrived in Manhattan with no thought of singing the role for which she is best known in Europe. But Ponselle had a cold before her first performance and Wettergren was called in for rehearsal, proved that, if need be, she could save the situation even in Swedish. Her Car men was a creature of electric vitality. She knew her music well, gave it the subtlest inflections. Most singers would have been upset over the loss of a shoe. Wettergren never missed a line, treated the incident as if it belonged to the part.

Well-mannered critics refrained from comparisons in their reviews. But the Metropolitan lobby was a hotbed of discussion as to which of the two new Carmens had done the better job. Wettergren, like Ponselle, indulged in occasional exaggerated horseplay, tweaked various noses, poked choristers in the ribs. But she was never so flagrantly vulgar as the Connecticut Carmen. Ponselle's voice is much richer, but the Swedish soprano used hers with more taste and intelligence, gave the part more variety.

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