Fragrant Cheddar

For its 65th opening night, the Metropolitan Opera hoped that "much of the glitter generally associated with the first-night audience [would] be secondary to that on the stage." General Manager Edward Johnson had scheduled an opener that was hard to beat: the late Richard Strauss's sure-fire Der Rosenkavalier, with a cast of "unusual interest," directed by the Met's most brilliant conductor, Fritz Reiner. But last week, when the great night rolled around again, the off stage competition was as usual just too tough.

"Society," raved one social chronicler, "staged a magnificent comeback, with blazing jewels and gorgeous gowns." It turned out to be an audience of distinction in other ways: nobody stood on his head nor did any of the ladies put their feet on the tables. Before the curtain went up there were ovations for arriving celebrities, Federal Judge Harold R. Medina, dapper little U.N. General Assembly President Carlos P. Romulo, Tenor and Hollywood Actor Lauritz Melchior ("Ahhh, I'm grateful to the movies. I am discovered as a glamour boy before it is too late").

Into the Pit. Some of the enthusiasm reached the pit. From the instant Conductor Reiner slashed the air with the downbeat, the Met's musicians plunged into the lush ripeness of Strauss's score like field mice set at fragrant cheddar. But little of the enthusiasm got through to the cast onstage.

As the Marschallin, whom Strauss describes as "a beautiful woman of 32 . . . with Viennese grace and lightness," who has "one wet eye" from the loss of her young lover Octavian "and one dry" with sophistication, pretty Soprano Eleanor Steber could not quite make up in tenderness and charm what she lacked in opulence. Contralto Rise Stevens' attractive singing as Octavian was marred only by her unattractive grimacing. Even so, with Veteran Bass Eugene List as Baron Ochs, and with the help of two new imports, Dresden's Coloratura Erna Berger as a pert, brilliant Sophie, and Vienna's Buffo-Tenor Peter Klein as Valzacchi, Der Rosenkavalier added up to an opening-night success.

Out of the Warehouse. Two nights later, Met-goers saw the first performance in 19 years of Puccini's Manon Lescaut. In front of new sets that were hardly more imaginative than any of the Met's old ones, great Lyric Tenor Jussi Bjoerling and Soprano Dorothy Kirsten sang like opera stars, but acted in the old arm-flailing tradition that has long been the curse of the opera stage. The first matinee was a revival, after nine years in the warehouse, of Saint-Saens' Samson and Delilah. As a vehicle for Dramatic Tenor Ramon Vinay, the strong man, and Rise Stevens as a self-conscious seductress, the opera never got out of low gear. But in this case it was almost wholly the fault of Composer Saint-Saens: his slow-moving Samson and Delilah is more often oratorio than opera.

Manager Edward Johnson could claim with justice that his last opening night before Edinburgh's Rudolf Bing takes over next season (TIME, June 13) was "one of the best." But by the time the first week was over it was evident that the old Met had not noticeably changed its ways: it still had probably the world's best singing, some of the world's most outdated staging and acting.

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