Metropolitan Opera Archives

The first performance of the Spring season of Smetana's delightful comic opera, "The Bartered Bride," was given at the Metropolitan yesterday afternoon. The presentation was practically identical with the one of last year, which proved such an outstanding success. There was but one change in the cast as it then stood: Hilda Burke made her initial appearance in the grateful role of Marie, and proved herself quite capable of holding her own with the rest of the popular personnel.

It happened that the opera did not draw a capacity house like those which greeted its several repetitions last Spring. If the fact indicated a falling off of interest in this production on the part of the opera-going public, or was just due to chance, remains to be seen. Smetana's music in this work possesses such potent charm, and the performance accorded it at the Metropolitan is so exuberant and full of the joy of life that it is difficult to understand why the auditorium was not as packed as heretofore at this latest staging of the opera.

That the Metropolitan turns the comic opera into musical comedy gives the score and interpretation a different character entirely. But granting those in charge the right thus to alter the accepted traditions of the work, the performance has the merit of forming first-rate entertainment, at all events. When heard as comic opera, the humor is more subtle and at the same time more realistic in its folk atmosphere than in the present version, where the slap-stick type of fooling has the upper hand. Moreover, the opera, when not treated as musical comedy, tends to heighten the peasant qualities of the music, especially in the orchestra, which yesterday lacked the sharp accentuation and pungency that used to obtain when the music was less lightly approached.

But even in its newer conception, the opera makes a definite appeal which cannot be gainsaid. It went yesterday with gusto, and the exaggerated fun-making was rewarded with constant spontaneous laughter.

Louis D'Angelo made every point tell in his well-rounded portrayal of the marriage-broker, Kezal, which was expert as low comedy, though the rôle can be more effective when less broadly treated. Mario Chamlee was sufficiently intense as the lovelorn Hans, and Norman Cordon grotesquely droll as Springer. Miss Burke entered whole-heartedly into the spirit of the work and sang acceptably from first to last. The audience was much amused at the tomfoolery of George Rasely as the simpleminded Wenzel.

Other rôles were ably taken by Lucielle Browning, John Gurney, Anna Kaskas, Natalie Bodanya and Ludwig Burgstaller. The American Ballet Ensemble danced with abandon and the chorus sang lustily and well. Wilfred Pelletier's conducting was up to his usual standard in this opera.

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