American in Paris

Many a talented young U.S. singer longs to sing opera in Paris, but Edis de Philippe is the only one in this year's crop who had the bravura and the bravado to make the grade. Last week she became the first American to sing a major role in Paris' vast, rococo opera house since the war. It was Edis de Philippe's first Thais, and also her first flight into big-time opera.

In Massenet's Thais, 33-year-old Edis, trained in the bel canto tradition, revealed a good dramatic soprano voice, whose only major flaw was an occasional dry, pingless top note. She also knew how to act, and her trim figure, revealed for the seduction of the monk Athanael in the first act, made Paris audiences forget all the baggy Thaises they had ever seen. Many a Frenchman (including Composer Massenet's nephew, Pierre) was reminded, in Edis' best moments, of an earlier Thais, Mary Garden. The comparison was appropriate: Manhattan-born Edis de Philippe had studied under Garden.

"It's Too Lonely." It was a big week for Edis. Just a few nights before Thais, she had sung for the Paris Opera's younger and less gaudy sister, the Opera-Comique. It was a performance to deter anyone with a less unrelenting ambition. In the heat and humidity, the Opera-Comique's production of La Traviata was so languid that it threatened to expire with each bar. The tenor bleated woefully and the rest of the cast missed cues and acted with the decisiveness of a group of tourists lost in the sewers of Paris. Nor did it help that Edis sang the role of Violetta in Italian and the rest of the cast sang in French. During the first act she tried to wake up the rest; her voice spread and her acting became exaggerated. Between acts, she took counsel with herself, decided that she never again would sing in one language with the rest of the cast singing in another ("It's too lonely"), and that "the only thing I could do was to calm down, to get my voice in place and hope for the best." The best was good enough to graduate her to the opera house.

Overheard. Trained in France and Italy, Edis made her debut in Vichy in Manon in 1937, came home to the U.S. when the war began. She sang in opera in the U.S. and Latin America, was in Mexico City recovering from an operation when she got her first break. She was practicing her scales in her hotel room when a Coca-Cola representative, attending a Rotary Club meeting in a room below, heard her and signed her for a two-year radio program.

Back in Paris after the war, she sneaked backstage between acts of La Boheme at the Opera-Comique and buttonholed balding Georges Hirsch, head of national French opera houses, told him: "Mr. Rouche thought I would be a wonderful Thais." Hirsch was flummoxed. He had never heard of her, and he had taken Jacques Rouche's place, when Rouche was removed as a collaborator. "Does Madame suggest an audition?" asked Hirsch politely. "No," said Edis, "Madame suggests a rehearsal of Manon." She got the rehearsal, got the job, and in her Opera-Comique debut in February got 13 curtain calls, a rarity in Paris.

Opera Director Hirsch had another surprise coming from Edis. After her performance of Thais last week, he went backstage to praise her, said: "Of course, I cannot congratulate you on your first performance of Thais. You have sung it, I suppose, many times." Said Edis: "You asked me one day if I had ever sung Thais and I said yes. Well, I hadn't--except in my dreams."

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