Velvet

It was like something out of Hollywood's own book.

Dark-eyed Elena Nikolaidi, assured and lovely in a pale taffeta gown, stepped out on the stage of Manhattan's Town Hall, composed her hands and began to sing. Her voice, ranging from a mellow low contralto to a brilliant mezzo-soprano, glided through songs by Gluck, Haydn, Schubert, Rossini, Mahler, Ravel and De-Falla; the performance came to an end with the Sleep-Walking Scene from Verdi's Macbeth. The audience shuffled their programs to look at the name again. Thirtyish Elena Nikolaidi, making her U.S. debut and almost unknown outside Athens and Vienna, had achieved one of the smash hits of the season.

Wrote Herald Tribune Music Critic Jerome D. Bohm in next morning's paper: "In 20 years of music reviewing and in twice that number spent in listening to most of the world's best singers, I have encountered no greater voice or vocalist ... a true contralto of enormous range . . . Where have the Metropolitan's talent scouts been that they have neglected to engage [Elena Nikolaidi]?" Said the Times: ". . . Rare brilliance . . . eminent musicality . . . velvety smoothness." By 10 a.m., phone calls were buzzing in from Impresario S. Hurok, Chicago, San Francisco--and the Met itself.

Petite, fiery Elena Nikolaidi was enjoying the sensation. Reporters found her in a modest hotel on upper Broadway, with her husband Thanos Mellos and her two-year-old son Michael. She hadn't made up her mind which, if any, of the morning's offers she was going to accept. She was pleased, but not entirely surprised.

From the time she was eight, and singing small solo parts in a little church in a suburb of Athens, she had heard nice things about her voice. The directors of the Athens Conservatory heard her sing when she was 15, gave her six years' free training. In 1936 Bruno Walter gave her work at the Vienna State Opera, and she has been on the Vienna roster ever since. Last October she returned to Athens, sang Carmen eight times in two weeks.

Elena is expected back in Vienna this spring. After reading her notices last week, she was not entirely sure. Said she: "I have come to love America already."

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