Off & Running

Searchlights raked the skies. Limousines nosed up to the blue-and-white canopy of Indianapolis' Clowes (pronounced Clues) Memorial Hall, unloading passengers into the glare of flood lights and popping flashbulbs. Remarked one ticket holder: "In all honesty, I'd probably not walk across the street to hear an opera, but this -- this is some thing special." Special it was, not only for Indianapolis but for the U.S.: the world premiere of the Metropolitan Opera National Company. It came as the parent Met was ringing up the curtain on its New York season -- the last before it moves from its old quarters to a new building at Lincoln Center.

After a decade of discussion, nearly a year of auditions and three months of rehearsals, expectations for the nation al company were high. The company's opening production of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, a gripping tragedy of man's inhumanity to man in the name of religion, was a resounding success on all counts. The singing was polished and smoothly integrated. The acting, directed by Broadway's Jose Quintero, crackled with life. David Hays's sets-stylized landscapes that looked like 19th century needle point -- evoked a fitting mood of rural U.S.A. OUR CITY'S FINEST HOUR IN ART AND CULTURE, proclaimed the front-page banner in the Indianapolis Times.

64 out of 1,400. That refrain, hope fully, will be echoed elsewhere when the company strikes out next week in four buses and five 40-ft. vans to tour 70 cities. The christening in Indianapolis was symbolic. "We felt very strongly," explains Rise Stevens, who with Michael Manuel is co-manager of the troupe, "that if we were going to be a national company, we should start right in the center of the country."

The company's objectives are twofold: 1) to afford professional experience to young U.S. singers who of necessity, in the past, had to go abroad to make their names, and 2) to bring more first-rate opera to more people.

The Met's new enterprise was made possible by a joint grant of $600,000 from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Metropolitan Opera Association. This enabled Co-Managers Stevens and Manuel to offer singers a 52-week contract that included paid vacations and health insurance--something no other opera company can afford. Over the past year, they auditioned some 1,400 singers and selected 64. "We've tried to achieve a new element within the performance," says Rise Stevens. "We've made it theater from the moment the curtain goes up to the moment it goes down. This is what is going to help opera survive."

Bing's Gospel. In addition to Susannah, the repertory for the company's first 37-week season includes such standards as Carmen, Madama Butterfly and Cinderella. In all, the singers will perform a total of 250 times, rotating roles.

In part, the new company is frankly the first farm club for the Met's Rudolf Bing. "Mr. Bing has already told me," says Miss Stevens, "that 'If you've got anyone in there that is ready for the Met, I'm going to take them.' But what could be more wonderful?"

But its other aim is to spread the gospel of opera across the country. "Our real ambition," explains Bing, "is that in a number of years this company will no longer be necessary. If, in due course, it can inspire local companies, if it is able to persuade the American public that one can have great opera without stars, then it can disband because it will have done its job."

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