Metropolitan Opera Archives

Note: The music for the ballet was selected from the French Suites by Bach and orchestrated by Eugene Goossens.
The music for the ballet was selected from the French Suites by Bach and orchestrated by Eugene Goossens.

Review 1:

Review of Quaintance Eaton in Musical America

In the second representation of the double bill which harnesses Bach and Rimsky-Korsakoff, on the evening of Jan. 31, the news interest lay with the Russian, because of the several substitutions in the cast. Rose Bok's injury at the first performance necessitated a new Queen of Shemaka, assumed by Josephine Antoine, and Ezio Pinza's illness brought a gallant substitution as King Dodon by Norman Cordon, who was also supposed to be ill but sang without a trace of discomposure. Gerhard Pechner took the role of the general sung before by Mr. Cordon, and with all this reshuffling, the opera had a better fate than it might be supposed to have had.

Miss Antoine has grown vocally since her last appearances and, although the 'Hymn to the Sun' showed plainly that she was nervous, she sang later with great freedom and a command of the high voice that was notable. Her acting did not have all of the allure that one expects of an Oriental-cum-Russian adventuress, but she avoided the pitfall of overdoing it one way or the other.

In spite of a cold, Mr. Cordon has seldom sung better. The voice sounded rich and full in the entire range, and if his king was less on the high comedy side than the pathetic, this might be attributed to lack of rehearsal and familiarity with the situations, which kept him fairly close to the prompter's box much of the time. He should be given another chance at the role.

Mr. Pechner's general was a marvel of characterization, although the music lies a little out of his range. His long grey beard over which he seemed to trip a half dozen times, his foolish inefficiency as the head of the army and his pitiful attempts to be vainglorious, raised more laughter than any other of the stage doings. Alessio de Paolis was a superb Astrologer, and Doris Doe again a delightful Nurse. Thelma Votipka sang the voice of the Cockerel with surety.

The dressy Bach work, 'Phoebus and Pan', proceeded much as at the first performance, with the vocalization neatly handled by Emery Darcy as Phoebus, John Brownlee as Pan, Arthur Carron as Midas, Frederick Jagel as Tmolus, Stella Andreva as Momus and Anna Kaskas as Mercurius. Sir Thomas Beecham again conducted both works and received the largest ovations of the evening.

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