Singers' Holiday

Most evenings Tenor Herb Surface turns up at Manhattan's Mark Hellinger Theater at 8, slips into baggy trousers, tweed jacket and cap, and steps onto the stage as a member of the Cockney quartet which helps ring down the curtain on My Fair Lady's first act: "All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air . . ." But one day last week, as he has for many weeks, Tenor Surface got to Times Square early. At 5:30 he joined other members of the My Fair Lady chorus in a studio above Lindy's restaurant, and soon his strong voice soared in a very different complaint about the cold:

. . . e penso a qual poltrone di un vecchio caminetto ingannatore che vive in ozio come un gran signore. (And yet that stove of ours No fuel seems to need, the idle rascal Content to live in ease, just like a lord!)

Tenor Surface was singing Rodolfo in Puccini's La Boheme. It was the latest effort of one of the U.S.'s most remarkable opera groups, run by members of the Fair Lady cast for their own training and amusement.

Public & Private. The project was the idea of Czech-born Conductor Franz Allers. 51, a maestro of melting musical-comedy scores (Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon). Conductor Allers yearned for meatier material, and in 1947 he persuaded a bunch of the boys from the Brigadoon pit to get together in off-hours to try their hand at a little Debussy, Mozart and Beethoven. When Allers took over the baton in Fair Lady, some of the singers asked him to continue his out-of-hours musicmaking. Result: the Allers opera workshop, which in short order sang, without sets or costumes, Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, Verdi's Masked Ball and, as a Christmas special, Handel's Messiah. (Audiences usually consist of a dozen or so friends and relatives.)

The Fair Lady workshop singers (some have joined from other musical casts) have had no operatic training, but some hope for careers in opera. The Musetta in last week's Boheme rehearsal, Lola Fisher, was Julie Andrews' able understudy as Eliza Doolittle, and Mimi was Evelyn Aring, who sings on the Firestone Hour.

Mezzo Linda McNaughton of the Fair Lady chorus (and recent award winner in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air) added her voice to both roles as the spirit moved her. Most of the singers are in their 20s, and all of them are good-looking and enthusiastic about the training they are getting. "They think singing A Masked Ball in private." says Allers, "makes them sing My Fair Lady better in public."

Good & "Loverly." Because there are so many eager applicants for the workshop, roles are often double-cast; e.g., at last week's rehearsal there were two Rodolfos (Lindsey Bergen alongside Tenor Surface), and all of the singers double as members of the chorus. In all, nine singers were gathered in the rehearsal studio (each one had brought a score and paid 50-c- for the studio's weekly rental). "Straight through, and this time it will be very good," said Conductor Allers, and then he pounded out the famous score on a battered concert grand. Sight-reading their roles, the singers followed him with voices that were strong, skilled and supple. Allers lifted an occasional finger to cue a singer, threw out an occasional comment ("We all know we can sing very loud; now let's see if we can put it together''). At the last chords, they were five minutes over their scheduled time. "Late as usual," said Franz Allers, as everyone started for the door. "Thank you. Maestro," said a baritone, stuffing his score into a coat pocket. They rushed out together to bolt a sandwich before turning their attention from Puccini's Montmartre to Edwardian London and ''O, wouldn't it be loverly."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.