Metropolitan Opera Archives

THE most remarkable individual performance at the Metropolitan's current season was on exhibition at the Academy of Music last night, as. Miss Lily Djanel appeared in the title role of "Salome." The Richard Strauss opera formed part of a double bill which included Puccini's quaint Florentine comedy, "Gianni Schicchi."

One would have to hark back to such singing actresses as Mary Garden, Mariette Mazarin and Barbara Kemp to find anything as completely absorbing and convincingly exciting as Miss Djanel's Salome. This singer's impersonation of the sensually tortured daughter of Herodias was so fascinating, so compelling, that it was difficult to focus attention on some of the other admirable features of the production. Miss Djanel's Salome is indeed a marvelous piece of realism, worked out to the smallest telling detail, psychologically astounding In what is revealed and implied.

She is in every way the obsessed woman, unconscious of everything, and everyone except the object of her desire, and Miss Djanel can dance and disrobe without causing embarrassment to her audience. The Dance of the Seven Veils was most expertly suggested. The soprano's strange, over-vibrant voice is ideally suited to this music and her cackling, staccato projection of some of Strauss' most salient utterances served to heighten the neuresthenic quality of the character and the nightmare atmosphere it creates.

The singer has been seen in other roles here, but her performance of Salome is on quite another plane. It is great and it is also unforgettable.

This production also benefitted by Mme. Branzell's superb delineation of Herodias; by Frederick Jagel's effective Herod, and by Julius Huehn's physically imposing Jokanaan. George Szell's conducting of the opera calls for superlatives as do the settings and the grouping of the stage crowds.

"Gianni Schicchl," which followed, turned out to be a flat and uninspired performance of one of Puccini's best works. This, despite Mr. Baccaloni's admirable work in the title role, and Mr. Sodero's conducting.

The performance was much weakened by the last-minute substitution of Nadine Conner and Alessio de Paolis for Licia Albanese and Nino Martini in the roles of the lovers. Mr. de Paolis, a first-class character actor, has neither the voice nor the presence for the role he undertook last night, while Miss Conner, though she voiced "O Mio Babbino Caro" prettily, proved light and ineffective in the swelling crescendo Puccini

calls for in the fragmentary but climactic love music.

Between operas William Mason made a plea in behalf of the Metropolitan Opera Fund.

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