[Met Performance] CID:155800



Faust
Metropolitan Opera House, Wed, January 24, 1951




Faust (489)
Charles Gounod | Jules Barbier/Michel Carré
Faust
Giuseppe Di Stefano

Marguerite
Paula Lenchner

Méphistophélès
Cesare Siepi

Valentin
Robert Merrill

Siebel
Margaret Roggero

Marthe
Thelma Votipka

Wagner
Lawrence Davidson

Dance
Nana Gollner


Conductor
Fausto Cleva







Review 1:

Francis D. Peyser in the Herald Tribune

A New Marguerite

 

Delia Rigal had intended to sing Marguerite for the first time here in the season’s seventh performance of Gounod’s “Faust” at the Metropolitan Opera on Wednesday night. But the Argentine soprano was indisposed and the new Marguerite who replaced her was Paula Lenchner, a young singer of Viennese birth and American training who joined the company three seasons ago. This was the most important role which she has sung at the Metropolitan thus far. Although the psychological strain of such an assignment at short notice seemed occasionally in evidence, in occasional limitation of volume and some variability of tone, Miss Lenchner’s voice seemed suited to Marguerite’s music, and her visual interpretation of the role was appropriate to the character. In the Jewel Song, her singing was faithful to the pitch, while missing some of the aria’s brilliance; it was best in the more sustained measures of the music, where the tone was clear, well focused and expressively persuasive.

 

Giuseppe Di Stefano fared commendably in his first Metropolitan Faust of the season. Cesare Siepi reappeared as Mephistopheles and Robert Merrill as Valentin. Margaret Roggero, singing Siebel with ample volume; Thelma Votipka and Lawrence Davidson completed the cast under Fausto Cleva’s conductorship.



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