Native No. 15

Hellfire raged at New York's Metropolitan Opera House one afternoon last week as a preacher named Wrestling Bradford wrestled with his lustful soul and lost. From Quincy, Mass. in Puritan times Librettist Richard Leroy Stokes and Composer Howard Hanson had borrowed him for the chief character in their opera, Merry Mount.

Wrestling Bradford should have married Plentiful Tewke. Her father, Praise-God Tewke, told him so in the first act, set in front of a log-cabin church. But Plentiful (Contralto Gladys Swarthout) wanted to take a maiden's time and Wrestling was impatient. Pretty Marigold Sandys (Goeta Ljungberg) came to Quincy with the giddy Cavaliers. They were bent on building a Maypole, dancing on the Holy Sabbath, an offense not half so shocking to Wrestling Bradford as the fact that Marigold intended to marry Sir Gower Lackland (Tenor Edward Johnson). The wedding was half over when Wrestling strode grimly in, leading his Puritan fanatics. Sir Gower was killed, Marigold arrested. Wrestling fell asleep in the forest to dream of the fiery netherworld, of dancers with slippery hips, of Marigold for whom he signs the devil's book, has the devil's mark seered into his forehead.

To Wrestling Bradford the dream was so real that when Indians set fire to his church and Marigold was sentenced to burn as a witch he dashed into the flames with her. To many a member of the Metropolitan audience the dream was as unreal with its slinky dancers and baskets of fruit as a Cecil B. De Mille cinema. Marigold was called upon to make two entrances in a floral cart, like Miss America in an Atlantic City parade. Swedish Goeta Ljungberg did as well as she could by a role for which she was badly miscast. Baritone Lawrence Tibbett as Wrestling came nearest to saving the performance. He struggled bravely to make the audience sympathize with the soul-wracked bigot. He sang richly, made words intelligible. Sample from the dream scene:

Aroint ye, Wantons! Back to your stews, Ye paramours of Tophet!

Merry Mount started off with a promising overture, stanch and hymnal. After that the orchestra seemed capable of only the most commonplace description. The Hell scene was noisy but unexciting. Bradford's passion for Marigold was expressed by a theme startlingly like "Limehouse Blues." The Puritan chorus had the richest music but it sang so often, intoned so many ''Amens" that at times the opera seemed more like a cantata, more suitable for a concert performance such as it received last spring in Ann Arbor (TIME, May 29).

Most of the New York critics wrote sidestepping reviews. They were dealing with home talent. Librettist Stokes, who used to be critic of the Evening World, was a friend. The polite applause was described in the New York Times as "the most enthusiastic reception given any native music drama that has been produced in New York in ten years.'' No one mentioned the hissing which came from the back of the house after the dream scene of the 15th native work to be produced by the Metropolitan.

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