Galli

In the days before Verdi's domination of Italian music, when an opera buffa meant two tunes, a plank and an ensemble, Rossini composed The Barber of Seville. Yet despite critics who have scraped fy-fying fingers, directors who have indicated with expressive gestures the works of later composers, great coloraturas continue to elect this work. Last week, Galli-Curci, famed prima donna, made in it her first appearance of the season at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan. Sweetly she rendered the falling cadenzas, the elegant trills, the brave bravuras. A great house, which came to praise, noticed that her lower register had improved, disregarded the fact that her high notes were sometimes a shade flat, sometimes thin to the point of expiration. Every loop and somersault of her voice through its silver trapezes was violently applauded. The bellowing buffoonery of Titta Ruffo, the Barber, helped to cause the family circle and half the standees to go home with red palms.