New Opera

Last week, in Manhattan, was produced, for the first time in the U. S., Giovanni Gallurese, an opera written 20 years ago by Italo Montemezzi, famed composer. The house was packed with operagoers who, having heard from season to season Montemezzi's exquisite L'Amore del Tre Re, were curious to see how so great a composer wrote when he was younger. Among these operagoers sat the composer himself, shyly smiling.

Music. Banal, melodious cantilenas, shreds of the wild echoes Verdi set flying--melody that has been shut up from the air until, to modern taste, it has become stiff, flaky, like stale candy. In the eight years that intervened between Giovanni Gallurese and L'Amore del Tre Re, Montemezzi must have worked hard, critics decided.

Libretto. Gallurese, a "high-souled outlaw," Maria, a lovely daughter of a poor shepherd, Rivegas, a Spanish renegado, folk dances from the Sardinian, drinking choruses, religious choruses, innocence outraged, bloody murder.

Artists. Miss Mueller, soprano, sang with a sincerity marred only by irrelevant smiles in certain love-scenes; Signer Lauri-Volpi (Gallurese) turned himself into a human cornet; Conductor Tullio Serafin imposed upon the wavering score his own electrifying power. At the close of each act, Montemezzi appeared before the curtain, bowed, smiled. On one of these occasions, a lackey delivered to him a floral wreath.

Polish Symphony

Last week, arrived in the U. S. 45 members of the National Polish Symphony Orchestra. Under the able baton of Stanislaw Namyslowski, they began giving a series of concerts in the U. S., playing the works of such Polish masters as Moniuszko, Joteyko, Moszkowski, Moussorgsky, Rozycki, Nowowiejski and Powiadomski.

In Manhattan, they gave their first concert, wearing their National costume --white blouse, black tall boots, red and black cap with four corners, raked with three brave peacock feathers. Said Critic Deems Taylor: "A very ordinary provincial symphony orchestra, with an insufficient number of strings and wind sections that play neither well nor wholly in tune."

Best Orchestra?

In Manhattan, Ernest Newman, British guest critic for the New York Evening Post, gave his impressions of U. S. orchestras.

Said he:

"I am in no way qualified to speak, for during my stay here I have only been out of New York once, and that to hear an orchestra--the Philadelphia-- that I had already heard here. I should have liked to hear the Chicago, the Detroit, the St. Louis and the Cleveland orchestras, but it has proved impossible. I have very scanty data to go upon even as regards the New York orchestras and the only two visiting organizations I have heard--the Philadelphia and the Boston Symphony. . . .

"The best that I have heard is un- doubtedly the Philadelphia; but the Philharmonic runs it close. The Boston is evidently in a transition stage. With its American tradition of long-term conductors it is bound to take a little time to give itself up entirely to a new spirit; but if it is fortunate enough to retain Koussevitzky for another year or two, and will make a few obviously necessary changes in its personnel, it will become a marvelous instrument. It is already a remarkable one. The New York Symphony Orchestra I heard only two or three times; it has apparently become so part and parcel of Mr. Damrosch that it is difficult for an outsider to estimate it purely and simply as an orchestra. The State Symphony Orchestra, again, I heard only under Mr. Stransky, and, for one concert, under Mr. Waghalter."