Small Gem

Slowly, solemnly, a procession of cowled monks and acolytes filed through the cloisters, chanting "Te lucis ante terminum." They entered a Spanish Renaissance courtyard and mounted a small stage shaded by a red-and-white-striped awning. "Good souls," the abbot sang, "the brothers have come today to show you a mystery."

So, in fittingly reverent fashion, began the U.S. premiere last week of Benjamin Britten's Curlew River at the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, N.Y. Styled as "a parable for church performance," the hour-long piece is based on a medieval No drama, Sumidagawa. It is a simple tale of a demented mother in search of her lost child, and it unfolds like a morality play in slow motion, all the more compelling for the stark economy of its movement and action.

The all-male cast, headed by Tenor Andrea Velis as the madwoman, masterfully performed Britten's difficult, often eerie sing-speech style of vocal writing. The score was as delicate and intricate as a spider web, interlaced with the chatter of small untuned drums and plunking strings reminiscent of Oriental music. The most impressive achievement was that, in mixing such disparate elements as modern dissonances, a morality play and No drama, there was no clash of styles but rather a smooth melding into what is a new and wholly engaging musical form.

Strange Wailings. Curlew River could not have had a more ideal setting. The leafy courtyard, surrounded by the 40-room Italian villa on the 180 wooded acres of the Caramoor estate, brims with old-world flavor. Many of the arched columns and the massive iron gate are treasures brought from Europe. The rooms opening off the courtyard and beyond are filled with one of the world's richest private collections of Renaissance art: 15th century French tapestries, hand-carved ceilings, and a commode from the palace of Frederick the Great. Evening concerts are held in a 1,500-seat outdoor theater, a short walk away from the main house through a medieval gate from the palace of the Cappellettis (Shakespeare's Capulets) in Verona. The stage of the Venetian theater is built around three dozen 9th century Greek and Roman columns that were smuggled out of Italy several years ago and subsequently bought by the owners of Caramoor.

On the afternoon of the performance, seated in a back row with her shawl around her shoulders, was the grande dame of Caramoor herself: Mrs. Lucie Bigelow Rosen. A sprightly woman in her late 70s, she is the widow of Walter Rosen, a multimillionaire investment banker who built Caramoor (from the Italian for "dear love") in 1930 and spent the rest of his life filling it with art treasures. He was an amateur pianist, and she made music on the theremin (an electronic instrument that is played by waving the hands over a magnetic field to produce strange, mellifluous wailings).

The Rosens started the Caramoor Festival in 1946 to present "things that people cannot get elsewhere, things that not everybody will want to hear." The festival was pretty much a local affair until Conductor Alfred Wallenstein was appointed music director in 1958. He enlisted such singers as Marian Anderson and Jan Peerce as well as some of the finest U.S. instrumentalists, and Caramoor soon became a summer haven for lovers of new and rarely heard music. In 1963, Julius Rudel, the enterprising head of the New York City Opera, became festival director, enlivened Caramoor further with excellent performances of Carl Orff's Die Kluge and Donizetti's Requiem for Bellini.

Gaudy Necklace. At a time when music festivals are battling each other with bigger-and better-than-ever promotion campaigns, Mrs. Rosen prefers to keep the Caramoor atmosphere small and intimate. Only recently did she allow the festival to be advertised, although she is still wary of expanding programs at the sacrifice of quality. As a result, Caramoor today is a small, brilliant gem in the busy and often gaudy necklace of summer music festivals. "Money can destroy a civilized way of life," says Lucie Rosen, brushing back her bangs, "but it can also preserve it. There is nothing quite so dull as a person with money who has no idea how to use it."

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