Light-Opera Boom

Viennese operetta, the champagne of the Habsburgs, is doing its biggest U.S. business in years. In Manhattan during the past few months the lilting waltzes of Chocolate Soldier, The Merry Widow, Gypsy Baron, Beggar Student and Fledermaus have drawn throngs of moist-eyed listeners to Carnegie Hall and the Lewisohn Stadium. Produced in German by troupes of Viennese refugees, or in English by personable companies of youthful U.S. singers, Johann Strauss, Karl Millocker and Franz Lehar have played to packed houses for weeks at a time.

Last week Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus (The Bat), considered by many to be the greatest of all operettas, bubbled out of the high-brow auditoriums and hit Broadway. Broadway's Bat had undergone some important changes since Johann Strauss composed it. The changes were the work of famed Viennese Director Max Reinhardt, who used the same version he produced in Berlin 13 years ago and was afraid to take to Vienna for fear of scandalizing the tradition-minded Viennese. Director Reinhardt has whipped Fledermaus' drama into a light fluff, flavored it with a medley of Strauss waltzes from other sources, given it a new prologue, a new name (Rosalinda) and a decorous, Victorian strip tease (see cut) that leaves its leading lady more thoroughly clad than many of today's best-dressed bathing beauties.

But despite this modern dress, Rosalinda looked and sounded enough like Fledermaus to leave oldtime Strauss fans gasping with pleasure. Strauss's rose-tinted melodies (conducted by Viennese Maestro Erich Korngold, specially imported from Hollywood for the job) set its opening-night audience to swaying in their seats, caused at least one white-haired fan, Walter Damrosch, to go shagging down the aisle like a Habsburg jitterbug.

Rosalinda was a feather in the cap of Manhattan's youthful New Opera Company. Since its first appearance last year under the lavish sponsorship of Helen Huntington Astor Hull, the New Opera Company has proved that opera, sung by U.S. singers, can be smart, well-staged and easy on the eye as well as the ear. Magnificently staged and costumed, with a George Balanchine ballet that swirled and foamed like champagne, Rosalinda was all of these things.

It also had, among its vivacious, fun-loving cast, two of the most personable and best-equipped fledgling divas that U.S. opera has turned up this season. One, Brooklyn-born Dorothy Sarnoff (no relation to RCA's President David Sarnoff), got her first break as a finalist in last year's Metropolitan Opera auditions of the air. As Rosalinda, she showed that she is ready for bigger things than operetta. The other, blue-eyed Philadelphia-born Virginia MacWatters, a protege of famed Soprano Lotte Lehmann, tossed off her tricky coloratura arias with the ease and precision of a knife thrower, set critics to speculating on her rosy future.

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