[Met Performance] CID:114650

World Premiere, New Production

Merry Mount
Metropolitan Opera House, Sat, February 10, 1934 Matinee Broadcast


Debut : Filomena Pangoni




Merry Mount (1)
Howard Hanson | Richard Stokes
Lady Marigold Sandys
Göta Ljungberg

Sir Gower Lackland
Edward Johnson

Wrestling Bradford
Lawrence Tibbett

Plentiful Tewke
Gladys Swarthout

Praise God Tewke
Louis D'Angelo

Myles Brodrib
Alfredo Gandolfi

Peregrine Brodrib
Helen Gleason

Love Brewster
Lillian Clark

Jack Prence
Marek Windheim

Thomas Morton
George Cehanovsky

Jewel Scrooby
Millo Picco

Desire Annable
Irra Petina

Jonathan Banks
Giordano Paltrinieri

Faint Not Tinker
Arnold Gabor

Bridget Crackston
Henriette Wakefield

Puritan
Max Altglass

Puritan
Pompilio Malatesta

Samoset
James Wolfe

Dance
Rita De Leporte


Conductor
Tullio Serafin


Director
Wilhelm Von Wymetal Jr.

Designer
Jo Mielziner

Costume Designer
Filomena Pangoni [Debut]

Choreographer
Rosina Galli





Merry Mount received nine performances in one season. Hanson's opera had been presented in
concert form at Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 20, 1933.

Review 1:

Review by Pitts Sanborn in the New York World-Telegram:

Fifteenth of the American works presented by Mr. Gatti-Casazza during his Metropolitan consulship, "Merry Mount", which attracted a vast and expectant audience Saturday afternoon, must be exceedingly gratifying to those musical patriots who insist on the one hundred per cent. It is not only American in authorship, but likewise in theme. Mr. Richard L. Stokes, the librettist, and Dr. Howard Hanson, the composer, both native-born have selected as their subject the brief invasion of the pious shores of Massachusetts Bay by some roistering cavaliers, who set up a big, bad Maypole and dance around it like unregenerate heathen.

Dr. Hanson's music is most effective in the choral passages, which are plentiful. Take the chant of the men within the church after the impressive choral prelude. True there is oftener the suggestion of Moussorgsky than of Massachusetts, but who would be so ungracious as to object to that? Nor has Dr. Hanson failed to assemble lively measures for the Maypole dance or to strike the witching note called for by the wild doings at the "Hellish RenDeszous". Unforfunately his writing for the solo voices is not free from awkwardness and at times the weight and density of the orchestral fabric constitutes a barrier between the word that is sung and the ears of the audience.

"Merry Mount" is almost a one-part opera and that part is Wrestling Bradford. In it Mr. Tibbett exhibits once more his intelligence and skill as a singing actor, as well as splendid courage and endurance. The wooden angularity of his movements and gestures, however, was a mistaken exaggeration. That the terrific tessitura of his part interferes with his vocal security and freedom was, of course, not his fault.



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