Ring's Boom

One bitter cold morning fortnight ago passersby on Broadway wondered if there had been an accident at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House. Hundreds of people jammed the front entrance, fought to get inside the lobby. That morning seats went on sale for the Wagner matinee cycle. By night every last one had been sold. Forthwith Manager Edward Johnson, by announcing that The Nibelungen Ring would be repeated in an evening series, precipitated another frantic rush for seats. This week the orchestra will sound out the rolling E flat chord which introduces Das Rheingold. The dwarfed, matty-haired Alberich will snatch the gold from the river's depths only to be tricked by the gods. Thus the way will be paved for the colossal musical saga which tracks through a dozen byways, involves a dozen innocents, reaches a peaceful ending only, when greed has completed its own destruction. Great credit for the current Wagner vogue is due Soprano Kirsten Flagstad, the mighty-voiced Norwegian who last winter won an overnight success as Isolde, went on to prove herself as Bruennhilde, the Ring's long-suffering heroine (TIME, Dec. 23 et ante}. This year Soprano Flagstad is again the Metropolitan's prime drawing-card. As Brunnhilde, she will sing in Die Walkure, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung. Many a Ring ticket was sold on her account. But wholehearted Wagnerians realized that Flagstad was only one part in the cycle, no more important than Danish Tenor Lauritz Melchior who must battle and die as Siegmund in Walkure, become the swaggering, youth ful hero in Siegfried, the valiant, mis guided pawn in Gotterdammerung, spend some nine hours on the stage in the course of the Ring production. Tenor Melchior made his Metropolitan debut the afternoon of Feb. 17, 1926. But a few hours later he was almost forgotten when Marion Talley first appeared on the same stage, won front-page headlines as a homespun Missouri miss who at 19 was deemed worthy of opera. The Talley bubble soon burst, while Melchior went on to be known as the Great Dane, partly because of his artistic prowess, partly because of his bulk (250 lb.). In Denmark Melchior ranks as a national hero. He was brought up by Kristine Jensen, a Danish "Fanny Farmer," who cared for him after his mother's death, taught him to like to cook, paid for his lessons out of her recipe earnings. Tenor Melchior was well known in Germany in 1925. So, in her own way, was Hannelore Meister, a pretty little stunt cinemactress. One day 105-lb. Fraulein Meister accidentally dropped into Melchior's garden, clutching a parachute. Soon afterward she became Frau Melchior, began her worries over her husband's weight, his costumes, his contracts.

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