A Day's Work

When he left the Metropolitan Opera in 1957, Tenor James McCracken was understandably bitter. In four black years at the Met, he had been all but buried beneath a mountain of spear-carrier costumes. "I was pretty disappointed." he says now, "but I was determined to come back singing the great parts." Last week McCracken came back, and in grander style than most spear carriers could dream of: he sang Otello in the premiere of a lavish new Met production.

From the first note of the Esultate that introduces Otello, McCracken was in perfect control. His powerful portrayal of Otello's fatal jealousy had just the right measure of Moorish grief to provide motive enough for murder, and agony enough for a whole flight of heroic high notes. His voice sailed easily over the orchestra even when the musicians were at excessively symphonic pitch--the one element of real excitement in an otherwise hushed performance.

Wholly Devoted. McCracken's first tour at the Met did little more than complicate his life by elevating his taste. "Standing up to sing Home on the Range used to be a big deal for me," he says, recalling life back in Gary, Ind., where his father was fire chief. But after a year in the Roxy Theater chorus (four shows a day for 291 days running), some brief bad luck on Broadway, and a distant whiff of glory at the Met, he was wholly devoted to opera. He and his mezzo-soprano wife, Sandra Warfield. moved off to Bonn for a year, then to Milan for two, in search of the experience the Met had denied him. Europeans were quick to recognize the value of McCracken's voice, but though he sounded just right for lyric romantic roles, his size cost him the job: he is 5 ft. 10 in. tall, weighs 270 Ibs.. and has a 52-in. chest--eight inches bigger than Sonny Liston's and twelve bigger, than Jayne Mansfield's.

With some small successes behind him, McCracken went to Washington, D.C., three years ago to sing his first Otello. His mastery of the part won him other bookings in it, and since then he has sung the role more than 50 times in ten different productions. For all his familiarity with the Moor, he still dwells on Otello's mysteries and often the tragedy of it gets to him. ''Sometimes the death of Otello affects me so much," he says, "that tears fall and I begin to choke up. That's no good. The audience gets nothing."

Boy Oh Boy! McCracken will sing his Otello nine more times this season in New York and on the Met's seven-city tour. On March 23 the performance will be broadcast, and on April 7 McCracken will sing two arias and two duets from the opera over ABC-TY's Voice of Firestone. He is quite content to let Wagnerian heroes' roles await him while he plays out his fascination with Otello. "I love Otello." he says. "It's done so much for me that I'd hate to say another is my favorite role. Putting out those tones--boy oh boy, that's a day's work."

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