Metropolitan Opera Archives

The Metropolitan Opera Company gave its second and last appearance of a two-day stand at Indiana University, lavished its organized skills on the people’s choice – “Carmen” – here tonight. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, it drew a larger audience that “Lucia di Lammermoor,” Monday night’s production and a novelty in these parts. The house was virtually a sellout.

While everybody has seen “Carmen” often enough to augment the chorus in a pinch, its melodious score keeps its appeal and its really excellent plot, a first rate drama by any standard, retains its vitality. Moreover, it’s not every year that opera-goers in faraway places have the chance to admire Rise Stevens as Bizet’s tempestuous heroine.

The comely mezzo, who has become a major luminary in the I. U. firmament when she triumphed here as Octavian in “Der Rosenkavalier” last season, brought exciting fire to the role of the untamed gypsy girl who drives a susceptible sergeant of the Spanish Army to mutiny and murder. There may be singers who are more exacting in their regard for the role’s strictly musical requirements, but none who has performed in this vicinity lends it greater enchantment. Her combination of personal beauty, poise and expert miming with a lush voice, full of alluring warmth, was a happy one tonight.

First-Rate Cast

According to the company grapevine, in fact, Miss Stevens’ “Carmen” has been the hit of the tour. Frank St. Leger, of the Met’s administrative staff, says there is talk of sending her out next year with a shawl and castanets. But the Met has not hitched this opera to one star. She was ably, sometimes brilliantly, supported. Ramon Vinay, an excellent tenor, sang the role of Don José, who succumbs to the lady’s blandishments, with vocal finesse and dramatic fervor. He makes this desperate male count as a key character in Bizet’s vivid tale. Micaela’s tender arias were rendered with lightness and clarity by sweet-voiced Anne Bollinger. Frank Guarrera made a vigorous and impressive Toreador. All individual singing parts were competently filled, in keeping with the Met tradition.

The orchestra under the direction of Wilfred Pelletier also was splendid in its account of Bizet’s colorful music. Pelletier integrated the efforts of pit and stage performers with a firm, sure hand. The agile ballet added a bright splash to the proceedings in its welcome interludes and the work of the singing chorus was conventionally good.

Act Of Memory

Stage-wise, however, the ensembles tended to be static. The Met’s custom-bound technicians could profit in that respect by a refresher course under Ernst Hoffman and Hans Busch, whose miracles with non-professional talent in their recent production of “Parisfal” in the auditorium here are well remembered,. The Met’s staging was an act of memory and not of imagination. It lacked the dynamic, fluid quality Fabian Sevitsky gave the large group in his famous production of “Carmen” at the Butler Bowl last summer. But the music is paramount with your true opera lovers, and the Met gives them joy.

This was the renowned New York company’s fifth visit to the campus here. According to I. U. authorities, it was both a commercial and cultural success. While Monday’s audience was not as large as tonight’s, the two of them together met the expenses of the brief engagement and justified the courage of the local impresairos. Undoubtedly the Met will come here again next spring. Meanwhile, however, it will visit Purdue University before it leaves the state to present “Mignon” in the great Hall of Music here tomorrow night. Tickets for that performance were available today. It will begin at 8 p. m. CST.

Search by season: 1948-49

Search by title: Carmen,

Met careers