Ballet Business

When paunchy, bearded Giulio Gatti-Casazza was General Manager of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, the Metropolitan's corps de ballet was run by his wife Rosina Galli. Balletmistress Galli, a girl with old-fashioned ideas, filled the proscenium with rose-garlanded damsels whose inexpertness became proverbial. Critics in those days were agreed that the Metropolitan had many shortcomings, but that the shortest of all was Balletmistress Galli's ballet.

Three years ago pompous Manager Gatti-Casazza resigned, retired to Italy with his wife. As General Manager he was succeeded by Edward Johnson, a trim, smiling man of progressive ideas who promised a new era in operatic production. Among other heralds of the new day came slick-haired Russian Balletmaster George Balanchine. With his youthful American Ballet corps, Balanchine was expected to give Metropolitan audiences a taste of what up-to-date operatic ballet was really like.

But critics who had hidden a smile at Balletmistress Galli's efforts soon began to think that Balanchine was not much better. Although he staged successful ballets in many a Broadway show (On Your Toes, Babes in Arms), Choreographer Balanchine never quite got the spirit of upholstered elegance appropriate to Aida, or the abandon appropriate to the Bacchanale scene in Tannhaeuser. And as pirouetting Bacchanalians, the youthful American Ballet was discouragingly apt to resemble a flock of plucked sparrows. Kindest commentators agreed it was nice, but not quite right.

Last week sad-eyed Balletmaster Balanchine announced his resignation, taking his American Ballet with him, and Manager Edward Johnson began casting about for new dancers and choreographers. Said ex-Metropolitan-Balletmaster Balanchine: "I would never advise a talented person to go to the Metropolitan. My dances the critics and dowagers did not like. They were too good."

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