The Last Rose of Flotow

Richard Tucker, the Metropolitan Opera's great tenor, marched to the front of the stage, fixed his audience with a sour look, and let forth a flood of sound:

It was just a gay adventure,

That was all it meant to you:

Just a game, a stray adventure . . .

Just a fling without emotion,

Just another rendezvous.

The rendezvous, as it happened, was one of the most improbable in recent Met history: back to the stage after a grateful absence of 32 years had come the glass-beaded old operetta known as Martha, or The Fair at Richmond.

German Composer Friedrich von Flotow (1812-83) wrote about a score of operas for the theaters of Paris, but only Martha remained in the repertory. As late as the 1920s it was a smash at the Met, with Caruso periodically igniting the house with the tenor aria "M'appari." The only other scrap of the opera likely to be familiar to modern audiences is The Last Rose of Summer, which Flotow lifted from a book of Irish folk songs, where it was known as The Groves of Blarney. When Berlioz heard Soprano Adelina Patti sing the air, he remarked wryly that "its fragrance alone was sufficient to disinfest the rest of the work."

Martha's wispy plot, laid in 18th century England, has to do with two ladies from the Queen's court who, as a joke, indenture themselves as servants to two farmers, fall in love with and marry them after one farmer has been discovered to be the Earl of Derby. Last week's production was fitted out with a new English translation by Ann Ronell, who angrily asked that her name be dropped from the program after the Met cut various changes she had made in the original libretto. The performances--by Victoria de los Angeles, Rosalind Elias, Giorgio Tozzi and Tucker--were generally first-rate. But to modern ears, Martha's music seems hopelessly dated and sickeningly sweet. The heroine was probably echoing more of her listeners than she knew when she warbled:

Anything, but let's forget this mood!

Oh, let's forget this mood.

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