"Very Remarkable"

Conductor Karl Boehm of the touring Vienna State Opera was hot, tired and in no mood to audition the unknown young American bass-baritone who waited for him. Nevertheless, after rehearsal on a June day in Brussels, he called for the young hopeful. In the audition he made what seemed last week to be the operatic find of the year.

In four months, tall, boyish-looking George London, 29, had become the rage of Vienna. Ever since he had first loosed his wide-ranged voice as Amonasro in A'ida, it seemed he could do no wrong. He had sung his first Mephistopheles in Faust, his first Escamillo in Carmen, his first Prince Galitsky in Prince Igor to bravos from the galleries and raves from the critics. When he sang the four baritone roles of Lindorf, Coppelius, Dappertutto and Doctor Miracle in Tales of Hoffman, there was a ten-minute ovation. Cracked one Austrian, as two Red army officers walked briskly from the opera house: "They're hurrying out to cable Moscow to quick send a singer."

Deep & Woolly. Although his parents were Russian immigrants, Montreal-born George London (real name Burnson) knew no Russian, never needed any until the Vienna Opera assigned him his biggest role. Last month, after studying hard, he sang a fine Boris Godunov--in the first full-dress performance ever sung in Russian by an American. It was his biggest hit yet. Even Vienna's senior critic, Heinrich Kralik, had to concede: "He is not yet Chaliapin, but he's very remarkable."

George London's parents moved to California when he was a child and he first lifted what he recalls as a "deep, woolly but unmanageable" voice in the Hollywood High School Glee Club. He graduated to the Los Angeles City College opera and the chorus at Hollywood Bowl. To help earn his keep, he dubbed his voice into movie sound tracks, sang in nightclubs and in Los Angeles synagogues and churches. In 1943, he got his first big break with San Francisco's crack opera company. Last summer, after a concert tour of the U.S., he decided to try his luck in Europe, "to avoid the inevitable fate of young American singers who wait hat in hand at the Metropolitan."

Back to Boris? Paid off by luck, big George was picking his way carefully. He was not quite ready for a Manhattan debut recital, he thought. But he had signed to sing in Mahler's Symphony No. 8 with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony in April and in Beethoven's Ninth with the Philadelphia Orchestra in May. Almost closed was a deal to sing in The Marriage of Figaro at the Edinburgh Festival this summer.

After that, he thought, he would like to go back to Vienna and sing some more Boris.

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