L'Italiana di Harlem

No opera house caters to Italian opera more lavishly than New York's Metropolitan. But probably no one except Rudolf Bing could have dared, as Bing did last week, to open a big new Met season with a work like Ernani, one of Verdi's least mature operas. As a tale of romance and intrigue among 16th century grandees, Ernani mostly creaks where it should crackle. As music, it is an example of early Verdi that too often comes out merely as early oompah-pah. That Bing succeeded at all merely proves his mastery of his craft.

If not great Verdi, Ernani does at least offer signs and portents of greatness to come. Its orchestral writing heralds the style of Don Carlo and Aida. It contains a healthy portion of the soaring vocal writing that was made to order for the all-star cast that Bing assembled for the occasion. As Carlo--better known to history as the Emperor Charles V--Sherrill Milnes affirmed his pre-eminent position among American baritones, singing with truly empyreal grace and a voice that opened on many intriguing corridors of power. In a spectacular Met debut in the role of the aging Silva, Ruggero Raimondi, 28, strode the stage as if born to gray hair and villainy. A native of Bologna, Raimondi has been singing opera for only five years but his clean, coppery voice already suggests the younger Ezio Pinza.

The object of Silva's and everybody else's affections was Martina Arroyo, as Elvira. Her acting, even by the standards of opera, was on the tame side. But she provided the kind of feathery high notes, creamy middle range and sheer power that have made her one of the Met's most reliable prima donnas.

She had no chance of stealing the show from Milnes and Raimondi. The opening-night lead, though, is the biggest plum the Met can offer. In the hy-pertense backstage world of grand opera, Arroyo is a refreshingly unpretentious anti-diva--a cool, relaxed, blend of fun and kindness. Explaining how she got the part, she remarked characteristically, "My mother says it's because all the good singers were out of town."

Fourth Man. "Martina has never changed," remarks Met Coloratura Reri Grist, a longtime friend. "She is the same person whether she talks to royalty or the janitor." Perhaps that is because when she was a child in Harlem, her father sometimes had to eke out his income as a mechanical engineer by working as an apartment house superintendent. Her mother occasionally hired out as a domestic. Martina was bright enough to pass the entrance tests at a demanding but free special high school run by Manhattan's Hunter College. Later, she went through Hunter itself in three years, majoring in romance languages and singing on the side. Afterward she taught high school for a year, then worked as a case worker for the city welfare department.

In 1958 Arroyo entered and won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, and a year later found herself back there singing the celestial--but offstage--voice in Don Carlo. Eventually she graduated, as she puts it, "to Valkyries, Rhinemaidens, and the fourth man on the left." In her free time, she followed the concert circuit in Europe, singing oratorios and lieder at $75 a night. "Once we hit 45 cities in 49 days," she recalls. "And every one of them seemed to begin with Bad. You know, Bad Ems, Bad this, Bad that." Her big break came one night in February 1965, back at the Met, when in the classical situation she was asked to go on for an ailing Birgit Nilsson in Aida. "No kidding, I was told 'This is the door, that's your father and that's the audience. Don't forget.' " Then somebody pushed her onstage. She knew the role from her Dusseldorf days, and when the Met turned the lights down on the final tomb scene, the audience rose as one in Arroyo's honor.

Today, no prima donna is busier singing, and shuttling back and forth across the globe, than Martina. Now 34, she is married to Emilio Poggioni, an Italian violist who plays with a chamber music group in Florence. Twin musical careers keep them continents apart much of the time. Once in an uncanny outburst of what might be called Italian-American ESP, they each grew lonely on the same night and decided to do something about it right away. Martina boarded a TWA flight for Rome. In Milan, Emilio booked into an Alitalia jet bound for Kennedy Airport. Next morning they were still oceans apart.

If Arroyo's career seems wedded indelibly to Italian opera, she manages to maintain an ingratiating attitude of verismo about it all. But the plots often give her the giggles. Last week her true love Ernani (Tenor Carlo Bergonzi) had to commit suicide in Act IV because of one of those fatuous operatic pledges he made in Act II. "Downright silly," says Arroyo. Still, her repertory (notably Aida, and Il Trovatore) does contain some glorious music, and it was with the same roles that the still unequaled Leontyne Price opened the doors at the Met for many a black sister: Grace Bumbry, Shirley Verrett, Reri Grist and, of course, Arroyo herself. "It is not easy to carry that sort of weight, and personally I would not want to do it," says Arroyo. "But Leontyne made it easier for us, and I hope we are making it easier for the next crowd."

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