Zoopera

Of a steaming summer evening, many U.S. music lovers would as soon sit down to leeward of an elephant as go to a hot & heavy grand opera. Cincinnati's indefatigable music lovers, however, like to do both.

Six nights last week they gathered in the Cincinnati Zoo. There, in an open pavilion, they sat mopping and fanning, and listening to Carmen or Il Trovatore or La Traviata, sung by big voices from the Met. Admission: 90-c- to $3.50. Between acts, operagoers washed the arias down with beer, munched popcorn and fed ducks and swans on a nearby pond. The 28th season of the Cincinnati Summer Opera had begun.

It had begun, as a matter of fact, on a sour note. Critics agreed that the opening production of Carmen, with Mezzo-Soprano Gladys Swarthout and Tenor Ramon Vinay, was an unduly damp and dismal affair, even though it rained that night. But the second night's show was Giordano's Andrea Chenier, which had not had a major U.S. production for 16 years, and it was something to talk about.

"Terrific is the only word . . ." wrote the Times-Star's Louis John Johnen. "Way above what we have come to consider par," mildly agreed the Enquirer's John P. Rhodes. Soprano Stella Roman and Tenor Kurt Baum won cheers all round for their singing (he especially for the aria, Come un bel dl di Maggio)*and Stella got a few extra cheers for her natural, convincing stage manner.

First-night attendance at Giordano's little-known work was small: the company lost $5,000 on the performance. But thanks to Cincinnati's loyal music lovers, the "Zoopera" could afford such losses. Last winter, after the opera had accumulated a deficit of some $44,000, Cincinnatians subscribed to a whopping Fine Arts Fund to support the summer series along with the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Taft Museum. The opera's cut: $35,000.

Not since before the depression had the opera rested on such a fat financial cushion. When Mrs. Charles Phelps Taft and Mrs. Mary Emery died, the purse strings that had long supported the opera were cut. Public support all but failed. In 1934, the wealthy patrons were looking for a way to drop their expensive hobby. The A.F.M. local agreed to take it up. Since then, Oscar F. Hild, the union's president, has run the show. One of his shrewdest ideas: the Young Friends of Summer Opera, whose teen-age members serve as money raisers and ushers, and so spend free nights at the opera. Hild expects the Young Friends to grow up into old friends --and cash customers--of the opera.

* Like a Beautiful Day in May--not to be confused with Un bel dl DiMaggio (see SPORT).

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