Big-League Opera

On hot summer nights in St. Louis, huge crowds--as many as 10,000--go to hear outdoor performances of light operas (Naughty Marietta, Show Boat, etc.) in Forest Park. The St. Louis Municipal Opera is the most successful permanent light-opera company in the U. S. But when opera goes grand it has hard going in St. Louis.

For 20 years a blustering impresario named Guy Golterman pushed and cranked at various makeshift means to get St. Louis grand opera going. Sometimes the singers he promised didn't show up; sometimes the operas he sold tickets for didn't get performed. His hopeful backers nearly always lost their operatic shirts. Two years ago they got tired and quit.

Last winter 150 prominent St. Louis music-lovers chipped in $200 apiece, organized a permanent St. Louis Opera Association, signed up first-magnitude stars, scheduled a short season in the spring, another for fall. Last week, with an advance sale of 18,000 seats, St. Louis' brand-new opera opened its first season with a performance of Die Walkuere (starring Lauritz Melchior and Marjorie Lawrence). Said the new company's manager, James E. Darst: "Grand opera cannot fail if St. Louis is really a big league town. And we're betting that it is."

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