Who's Afraid of Joan?

By Robert T.Jones

Even to operagoers who cheer her vocal brilliance, Soprano Joan Sutherland has often seemed to have the personality of an Amazonian Barbie doll: imposing, but stiff and cool. Recently she dispelled much of that reputation with her hearty clowning in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment (TIME, Feb. 28). Last week, with her appearance in the first of two 30-minute TV shows called Who's Afraid of Opera? (PBS), her humanization seemed complete. Singing, lecturing, bantering with a trio of puppets, she was revealed as a thoroughly warm and winning woman.

Taped in London, Who's Afraid of Opera? is aimed at that sizable majority of the world's population--especially young people--who have managed to avoid being bitten by the opera bug and to whom the prospect of an evening at the Met is highly resistible. The shows cut down two Italian comic operas to half-hour nibbles, a drastic reducing plan that is still adequate for the skinny buffo plots. Sutherland trots out for a bow and a chat with the puppets and explains the story to them ("I have a bit of money, and he wants to marry me himself," she says, introducing Rossini's Barber of Seville). Then off she goes to act out key scenes, sing arias and take part in telescoped ensembles, returning to confide in the puppets when the plot gets strenuous. "Don't worry," one of them reassures her when she loses her boy friend Tonio in The Daughter of the Regiment (scheduled to be shown this week). "I've read the libretto. He comes back."

The perennial problem of televised opera--whether singers ought to look realistic or pretty--remains unsolved, for the producer has them mouthing their words to a prerecorded sound track. The result is often like watching one movie while hearing another. A further problem with such popularizations is also sidestepped: whether they should be done at all, or whether opera should be left to appeal at its own level to those who are already inclined toward it. Still, the proceedings are colorfully photographed and skillfully staged, and even Sir William, the puppet who reads scores and carps about all the cuts, seems to approve. Sir William is both a critic and an aging billy goat. Only a soprano could think of that kind of casting. . Robert T.Jones

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