The New Shows

Television Opera (Tues. 11 p.m., NBC) brings back NBC's talented Peter Herman Adler & staff for eight once-a-month productions of opera in English. The opener: Leoncavallo's Pagliaci. In spite of the singing of Soprano Elaine Malbin (Nedda) and the acting of Tenor Joseph Mordino (Canio), Pagliaci nearly fell flat for want of action and poor lighting. Even so, Director Adler proved his point that television deserves opera. Next in the series: Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame; GianCarlo Menotti's untitled opera, specially commissioned by NBC.

All Star Revue (Sat. 8 p.m., NBCTV) brings Comedian Jimmy Durante back to the air in the first of eight shows this year with a walloping 60 minutes of gags, songs and malapropisms ("I have an apperntment with some NBC indignitaries"). Unlike most revues, this one is not cluttered with long dance sequences calculated to give the star a breather. Durante was on camera virtually all the time, sharing honors with Metropolitan Opera Soprano Helen Traubel and old-time Partner Eddie Jackson. Durante, as usual, tore a piano apart, but he was at his best in the short sketches. Samples: in a supermarket, Jimmy trundled off with a beautiful girl sitting in the rolling market basket, told the audience: "I'd have taken two, but they'd get stale"; to an errant Kellogg salesman, he ordered: "Turn in your snap, popple and crack!"

Sarah Churchill (Sun. 5:45 p.m., CBS-TV) comes quietly and charmingly into the living room for a pleasantly informal 15 minutes of conversation and anecdote. As for the eventual shape of the program, Actress Churchill tells the audience, "You will have to help me with that." The star's first guest, Eleanor Roosevelt, kept the ball rolling with reminiscences of Winston, visas, passports, wartime security, then bustled off to dinner.

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