Behind the Nervous Curtain

To open its 80th season, the Metropolitan Opera last week mounted a lavish new production of an old operatic warhorse, Lucia di Lammermoor. Designer Attilio Colonello created massive settings of gnarled, Sequoia-size trees and great Scottish castles. Costumes were dazzlingly extravagant. The male leads, swathed in layer upon layer of brocades, silks and laces, looked like overweight peacocks, but dashingly so.

The staging was stodgy, consisting mainly of pose striking.

But no matter. Opening-night audiences at the Met are notorious for their detachment from the proceedings on stage. Milling in the corridors, crowding the bars, they wish everyone "Happy season, darling" and skip out early. But then came Joan Sutherland singing the title role, and the detachment turned to enchantment.

Commuters at Rush Hour. With strong backing from Baritone Robert Merrill, beginning his 20th season with the Met in fine vocal fettle, and Tenor Sandor Konya, the flame-haired coloratura's performance was a masterpiece of bel canto. In the climactic Mad Scene, in which she sings a duologue with a fluttering solo flute, her glittering coloratura runs, leaps and trills won a standing ovation and 14 curtain calls.

"I love all those demented old dames of the old operas," she says. "They're loony, but the music's wonderful." The following evening offered Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, 49, making her belated debut at the Met singing the demanding role of the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. Blondly radiant, and in sure control of her pure soprano, grown a shade harder over the years, Schwarzkopf proved that her Marschallin is still the most memorable since Lotte Lehmann's in the 1930s.

Ominous Cloud. In addition to Lucia, the Met is mounting new productions of Samson et Delila and Salome. In January, Leontyne Price will sing Cosi fan Tutte for the first time, followed by the conducting debut of William Steinberg (TIME, Sept. 11) two months later. In March, after an absence of seven years, Maria Callas will make her long-awaited return to the Met to sing Tosca.

With Lucia and Rosenkavalier, the Metropolitan was off to a good start.

But one ominous cloud remained. There is a threat that the musician's union will call a strike on Nov. 1 if contract demands are not met. With no easy solution in sight, there is a very real possibility that the curtain may ring down on the Met before it is really up.

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