Ganz Gut

The first phone call to the Metropolitan Opera office around noon one day last week was a little upsetting: Soprano Polyna Stoska was ill, would not be able to sing Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walkure that night. Even though she had not sung it for four years, and never at the Met, blonde Regina Resnik was told that she would have to come down from her rock as one of the Valkyries and sing the part. Then the Met got a real sticker: Helen Traubel's doctor phoned to say that she had laryngitis, would not be able to go on as Bruennhilde. The Met's other Bruennhilde, Astrid Varnay, was not available. Finally, at 4 p.m., someone recalled that the wife of new Viennese Baritone Ferdinand Frantz, who was scheduled to sing Wotan that night, had sung Bruennhilde in Vienna and Munich. Musical Director Max Rudolf picked up the phone and called Madame Frantz (stage name: Helena Braun).

"Are you sitting down?" he asked in German.

"Such a question," replied Soprano Braun placidly.

"Are you feeling well?" Rudolf asked.

"Ganz gut."

"How would you like to sing Bruennhilde tonight?"

There was a long pause and then a calm, matter-of-fact answer: "All right."

By 5 p.m. Helena Braun had dashed down to the Met, tried on a costume, had a few quick, calming words with Wagnerian Conductor Fritz Stiedry and got herself a membership in the American Guild of Musical Artists. Then she went home to rest till curtain time.

There had been no time for a rehearsal --and no critical need for one, operatic acting being as internationally stylized as it is. That night the surprised audience saw a new blonde Bruennhilde moving around the stage as though she had been singing at the Met all her life. Said Helena Braun's husband, who as Wotan was on stage with her most of the time: "We watched each other for mistakes but there were none." The critics cheered her acting performance, generally agreed that her voice, if tremolo-ridden, was strong, wide-ranging and well used.

Almost as big a surprise was 27-year-old Bronx-born opera-saver Regina Resnik (TIME, Aug. 25, 1947), whose dramatically convincing and vocally sumptuous Sieglinde was more than a match for 59-year-old veteran Tenor Lauritz Melchior's Siegmund.

For Soprano Braun there was a special bit of backstage applause too. Manager Johnson handed her a Met contract, promised her a chance to sing some more Wagner before she and her husband leave for scheduled performances in Italy in February.

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