The Penguins

Among the menagerie of men's organizations, the Elks, Eagles and Moose may have the edge in membership, but when it comes to elegance, manners and good breeding, none can outclass the Metropolitan Opera Club. Nicknamed "The Penguins," because its members wear white tie and tails, the club is the last vestige of the courtly pomp and pageantry that once attended grand opera. Last week members sipped champagne and dined beneath crystal chandeliers in their sumptuous clubroom in the new Met, then adjourned to their two tiers of box seats to hear Die Meistersinger. It is a weekly ritual that has been going on no matter what the opera for 73 years, but now, in the name of progress, tradition is bending.

To begin with, this season the club, for the first time in its history, accepted women members--all seven of whom are officers of various Met organizations.

Gone, too, is the tradition of wearing top hats in the clubroom and during performances; many members nowadays think it is too pretentious. Anyway, ever since last year, when one high-hatted member was mugged while en route to the opera, there has been the feeling that to wear a silk topper is to invite trouble. Nor do members wear opera capes; too many wise guys shout "Batman!" or "Phantom of the Opera!"

Poet & Boxer. The most radical change is in the clubroom facilities. At the old Met, members had an elegant and spacious pad that was only a few bars' stroll from the bar and had a private entrance tended by a liveried doorman. The new room, decorated in quiet browns and blacks, seats 80 fewer members than the old, and the screens that separated women guests from the stag section have been removed.

The club today includes 286 doctors, lawyers, businessmen and journalists. U.S. Steel Board Chairman Roger Blough is a leading Penguin, so is Investment Banker Robert Lehman, Novelist Paul Horgan, Poet Robert Lowell and opera-loving ex-Boxer Gene Tunney. One opera buff recently tried in vain to buy his way into the club with a $25,000 "gift," but membership is by invitation, and openings usually occur only when a member dies. Though the club is frequently accused of snobbism, past President Robert Snyder, a corporation lawyer, declares that "economic status is unknown and unimportant. I imagine that William Rockefeller [an attorney and great-grandnephew of John D.] is solvent, but all we talk about is whether the tenor is any good."

Pagliacci for Papinta. It is a far cry from the raucous early days of the organization, the only reminder of which is the club's emblem: a naked girl slapping a tambourine. Back in 1893, the Vaudeville Club, as it was then known, leased a room in the old Met. It was common for members to slip out of a performance of Faust, dash across the corridor to the clubroom and watch acts like "Papinta and Her Novel Chromatic and Serpentine Dances." The nightly vaudeville show became increasingly risque until a police raid obliged the members reluctantly to forgo Papinta for Pagliacci.

But, undeniably, the bond that binds the members is their common love of opera. They take advantage of the club's seats to hear a favorite opera several times a season, bone up on the club's collection of librettos, delight in the chance to march around the stage in costumes as extras. Says Snyder: "Scratch the surface of an opera-club member, and underneath you'll usually find a former choirboy like me who never got over the singing virus."

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