[Met Performance] CID:114910

Metropolitan Opera Premiere, New Production

Linda di Chamounix
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, March 1, 1934 Matinee





Linda di Chamounix (1)
Gaetano Donizetti | Gaetano Rossi
Linda
Lily Pons

Carlo
Richard Crooks

Pierotto
Gladys Swarthout

Antonio
Giuseppe De Luca

Maddalena
Elda Vettori

Prefect
Ezio Pinza

Boisfleury
Pompilio Malatesta

Intendant
Angelo Badà


Conductor
Tullio Serafin


Director
Armando Agnini

Composer
Gaetano Donizetti

Gaetano Donizetti



Linda di Chamounix received four performances this season.
The absence of designer credits suggests that this was an inexpensive production mounted from stock materials. In his history of the Metropolitan Opera, Irving Kolodin credits Joseph Novak as the designer.

Review 1:

Review of Francis D. Perkins in the New York Herald Tribune

'Linda" Revived at Metropolitan With Lily Pons in Role Patti Sang

Donizetti Opera Last Heard in 39th Street House 44 Years Ago is Milk Fund Benefit

As the final item in this season's list of novelties and revivals, Donizetti's "Linda di. Chamounix" was heard for the first time in this century at the Metropolitan Opera House yesterday afternoon with Lily Pons as the heroine who goes lyrically distraught according to the best traditions of Italian opera, but, unlike that mentally unbalanced Donizetti heroine, Lucia of Lammermoor, recovers her wits just before the final curtain. A large and approbative audience gave promise of substantial proceeds for the beneficiary of the occasion, the Free Milk Fund for Babies,

"Linda" has long been but a name in a catalogue to most operagoers, but for forty years and more it was one of the familiar works in the repertoire of operas featuring coloratura sopranos, It was first performed, seven years after "Lucia," in Vienna on May 7, 1842; five years later, it had its New York premiere in Palmo's Opera House, and it was frequently performed at the Academy of Music during its career as a first-class opera house, up through the middle 1880's. On April 23, 1890, it had its first and only previous representation at the Metropolitan, in a post-season series by an Italian company starring Adelina Patti. The Chicago Opera, visiting the Lexington Theater, gave it a single performance here on February 4, 1919, with Amelita Galli-Curci as a Linda who, according to Mr. Krehbiel, sang much better after losing her wits in the second act than she had sung in her previous act and a half of sanity.

The reasons for the selection of "Linda" for revival are readily understandable. With a coloratura soprano of marked drawing power at the box office, an opera company must seek beyond the confines of "Lucia" and "Rigoletto" for her roles, and, as modern composers have given such sopranos little opportunity, the search usually must be made among the once popular works of the past.

"Linda," indeed, has its pleasing points, and is probably as good a choice as any other. It does sound old fashioned, however, both in its musical style and in its libretto. The characters, especially the guileless, misunderstood and temporarily insane heroine, the loving but misunderstanding father represented by Antonio, and the amorous, elderly basso buffo, as represented by the Marquis, are stock operatic types. Thus the dramatic aspect of the opera is sometimes unconvincing. The libretto and the music likewise do not set forth the dramatic climaxes of moments such as that introducing the sextet in "Lucia," when one can forget the archaicisms and conventions of the form and find the work, for the time being, convincing.

Nevertheless the plot of "Linda" is not more unconvincing than those of several operas still in the active list, and the music is often able to charm, to impress its hearer with the still viable talent of Donizetti as a copious purveyor of ingratiating, well turned, grateful melodies, with his ability to write suitably and advantageously for the solo voice. This is where modern composers essaying opera have been most likely to fall and why Italian opera of the first half of the nineteenth century still plays an important part in the contemporary repertoire.

The opera is, perhaps, rather long. The first act, not counting the prelude, takes an hour. The second runs some fifty minutes. The third, from which a fairly extensive scene between Charles and the Prefect was cut yesterday, ran about half an hour. The musico-dramatic action sometimes halted for several minutes at a time - but still, Donizetti's fluent, graceful, well turned strains could often make a hearer forget the points in which the work might seem dated.

The performance, on the whole, deserved praise. Miss Pons looked well as the heroine, and dramatically her performance was convincing, apart from one or two unwittingly humorous moments in the action. In her song, adorned with several extra cadenzas and fioriture, she was somewhat uneven at first, although much of the aria, "O luce di quest'anima," was deftly sung. Later her voice gained in volume, warmth - and consistent fluency of quality, as well as in devotion to pitch, and the vocal flourishes, both those inherent in the score and those added later, were dealt with ably.

Mr. Crooks, as the not particularly heroic hero, Carlo, or Charles, did some excellent work, especially in his mezza-voce singing, where both the quality of tone and the musicianship of his phrasing deserved high praise. He drew the greatest individual ovation of the performance after the second act. His stature and appearance were again important assets in his general effectiveness, and his voice was generally warm in quality, fluent and generous in volume. He still did not entirely avoid hardness of tone in his top notes, which suggested some effort in their production, but he showed promise of becoming an operatic lyric tenor able to rank among the foremost.

Miss Swarthout was in excellent voice. The quality was warmer and of more consistent merit, the production freer and the volume more untrammeled than in any of her earlier performances this year, while her role of the wandering Savoyard musician was sympathetically played. Mr. De Luca played his role with dramatic conviction and sang it with his wonted and laudable musicianship and knowledge of the best vocal style. Mr. Pinza was a Prefect of imposing vocal sonority; Miss Vettori did well in a relatively minor role, and the orchestra did very commendable work under the inspiring direction of Mr. Serafin. Apart from the large cut in the third act, there were various omissions of repetitive matter and abridgements of the conclusions of certain numbers earlier in the work.

Mr. Crooks, it was learned later, suffered from the depredations of certain souvenir hunters, who annexed his socks, garters and other articles of apparel while he was taking final curtain calls. The members of the cast sent a letter to Mrs. William R. Hearst, chairman of the Free Milk Fund, expressing regret at her inability to be present, because of a recent accident.



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