Second Start

In her Metropolitan Opera debut in the title role of Gluck's Alcestis (TIME, Dec. 19), Soprano Eileen Farrell, 40, left her fans cheering a reputation instead of a performance: the fabled power and warmth were there, but the voice wobbled shrilly in the upper registers. Last week, appearing in some of the Met's fastest company (Mezzo Nell Rankin, Tenor Richard Tucker, Baritone Robert Merrill), Singer Farrell made her second Met start--the title role in Ponchielli's La Gioconda. Blonde-wigged and almost wobble-free, she supplied the spectacular singing her audience had come to hear.

Gioconda's absurd libretto (by "Tobio Gorria," anagram for Arrigo Boito, Verdi's great librettist) revolves about a love plot of pentagonal complexity; Barnaba is in love with Gioconda, who is in love with Enzo, who is in love with Laura, who is married to Alvise. By the time Gorria-Boito sets things right, four acts and nearly that number of hours have elapsed. But La Gioconda is a singers' opera, and it gives the principals some rousing tunes, including Enzo's great second-act aria, Cielo e mar, superbly rendered last week by Tenor Tucker.

Against the fine performances of all the principals, Farrell sang not only with her fabled power but with limpid clarity and velvety richness. If she still occasionally strained on top notes, she more than made up for it with the rich play of emotion that flooded her voice in her fourth-act aria, Suicidio. And she acted surprisingly well in a role that practically invites parody. Her Gioconda demonstrated that a truly distinguished Farrell performance at the Met requires only the combination of a good night and an opera with more than pretty tunes.

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