Metropolitan Opera Archives

Smetana's "The Bartered Bride" had its third and last performance of the season at the Metropolitan Opera House last night, when Bruno Walter made the eighth and final appearance of his first New York season as an operatic conductor. Jarmila Novotna again was the bride whom Charles Kullman's Jenik adroitly sold to himself, but a new Kezal, Norman Cordon, was outwitted through his ignorance of the fact that Jenik was a son of Micha.

Singing the part of the marriage broker for the first time here, Mr. Cordon was an asset in the performance. His impersonation was spirited and did not underrate the opportunities for effective comedy offered by the work, but he did not overrate this element or fail to consider the role in its relation to the opera as a whole, as well as from the standpoint of individual characterization. The American basso was also in good voice and, singing in his own tongue, had a marked advantage over his Italian predecessor in the matter of intelligibility. A goodly proportion of the English text, if not all of it, reached his hearer's ears.

Mme. Novotna was a Marie highly pleasing to the eye, while not at her best vocally; Mr. Kullman sang and enunciated well, although his interpretation might have profited here and there by a slightly greater degree of assurance. Thelma Votipka and Arthur Kent fared very commendably as Marie's parents; Karl Laufkötter was a humorous Vasek. Natalie Bodanya, as Esmeralda; John Gurney and Irra Petina, as Micha and his second wife, and Messrs. Dudley and Burgstaller sang other roles in a production that has gained in coordination and atmosphere in its repetitions. There was a special round of applause at the beginning of the third act for Mr. Walter, who, fortunately, is to return to the Metropolitan next season.

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