The Busy Air

P: The New York City Ballet's version of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker has become something of a Manhattan institution at Christmas time, and CBS chose it for its only live color broadcast of 1958. Once past the opening scene's heavy-footed family frolic, the production made a softly bright delight of the land of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Avoiding the tricky camera shifts and closeups that most directors try when televising ballet, Director Ralph Nelson kept the episodes sharp, the camera steady. Result: an overall sense of gaiety and space. High point: Allegra Kent, crisp and crystalline as Dew Drop.

P: The faces glowed, the voices were beautiful, but neither belonged to the other. West Germany's Hamburg TV wedded faces and voices in a topnotch production of Smetana's bucolic opera, The Bartered Bride. This exercise in "controlled schizophrenia" (used before in movies) began three months ago with tape recordings of such fine opera stars as Soprano Anny Schlemma, Basso Oskar Czerwenka. At show time the taped music flowed through loudspeakers as more photogenic players performed and mouthed the words. "Sacrilege on the spirit of opera," cried one German critic, but most other opera buffs seemed delighted.

P: Galloping into London for a personal theater appearance, TV's Hugh (Wyatt Earp) O'Brian was bushwhacked by the critics. They spoofed his six-gun William Tell act of shooting balloons off a man's head, charged that some other hombre backstage reached out with a long pin. "Course I shoot the gun," drawled the punctured marshal. "I just don't use live ammunition." But even worse to the critics was Earp's de-Westernized act of crooning love songs in top hat and tails, plus some other "sissy stuff" of smooching with leggy gals all over the stage. Fumed Actor O'Brian: "So I kiss a girl, this is a crime? I'm a red-blooded American boy. Besides, I kiss the horse at the beginning of the show."

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