The Metropolitan's New House

When the Paris Opéra, Charles Garnier’s monument to the already departed glories of Napoleon III, was first opened in 1875 after fourteen years of construction, a popular magazine called Le Monde Illustré published a widely reprinted crosssectional view of the mighty structure. Its six levels of seats, its ornate foyers and spiraling staircases, its vast backstage areas, its honeycombs of dressing rooms and corridors were all laid bare in meticulous detail. It was one of the world’s theatrical wonders, and so, at least structurally, it has remained to this day.

So far, no one has yet published a comparable cross section of the new Metropolitan House, which is now nearing completion in New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. And yet a visitor to the structure, now four fifths finished, is reminded forcefully of the “coupe de l’Opéra” that ran in Le Monde Illustré. One walks through labyrinthine corridors, descends into vast depths beneath the stage area, climbs the intricately intertwining double grand staircase, surveys the spacious restaurant areas, views the bare lobby walls for which Chagall has been commissioned to do murals. With its five slender and soaring front archways, its severely straight sides and rear, its extensive use of glass, and its generally unadorned and businesslike appearance, the new Metropolitan Opera presents a highly modern external picture. Yet inside the hall, a nineteenth-century Parisian, or for that matter, Milanese or Viennese, might feel reasonably at home. For in its basic concept, from the horseshoe rows of boxes that will ring its sides to the elaborate spectacles that will occupy its stage, the new Metropolitan will be a thoroughly traditional and conservative type of opera house.

This is not necessarily said in a critical sense, for the Metropolitan Opera during the fifteen-year regime of Rudolf Bing has made a remarkable success of being a traditional opera house. Its repertoire, despite an occasional foray into relatively safe modernism (such as Berg’s Wozzeek or Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress) has been thoroughly old-fashioned; its singers, despite Bing’s initial insistence on the supremacy of the ensemble, have been selected for glamour as much as for artistry; its staging, scenery, and costumes, despite an occasional infusion of new blood and new ideas, have remained not very different from generations past.

And yet, critical complaints notwithstanding, audiences have been flocking to the Met in undiminished numbers and with unabated enthusiasm during the years of the Bing regime. The present house, which accommodates an audience of 3625, averages 97 percent of capacity nightly. The company’s current seven-month season is its longest in history. Its price scale, with a $12 top, is at an all-time high. The Met has 14,000 subscribers — that is, customers who buy season tickets in advance, sight unseen, sound unheard, schedule unknown — and 9000 more would-be subscribers are on the waiting list for the new house. It is small wonder that Mr. Bing, after one Met performance had been raked over by the critics, is reputed to have remarked philosophically, “Nobody likes us except the public.”

As little inclined as the Met is toward experimentation or adventurousness in musical matters, its current management is making a determined effort to modernize its business, administrative, and laborrelations approaches. Its first effort at diversification came last summer, when the Met took over the moribund summer concerts at Lewisohn Stadium. The principal objective was to provide year-round employment for the members of the Met orchestra, with whom its labor relations have been particularly touchy. But the concerts, which featured appearances by Met singers, also were a resounding popular success, with the largest turnouts the stadium had seen in years. This fall the Met is launching its so-called National Company, a troupe of young artists who will take four operas on a nationwide tour. This is a kind of “junior Met,” with none of the bigname singers from the parent company, and some observers have questioned the effect of such a troupe on local initiative in the operatic field. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the Met is moving in the direction of becoming a yearround operatic enterprise, encompassing as wide a sphere as possible.

The centerpiece of the Met’s enterprises will, of course, be the gleaming new marble hall at Lincoln Center designed by architect Wallace K. Harrison. Met managements have been dreaming of a new house almost since the present structure was completed in 1883. The yellow brick edifice at Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street has endeared itself to several generations of operagoers, but it was nevertheless obsolete the day it opened, since its backstage conditions were wretchedly cramped and its storage space was totally nonexistent. Even today, sets are “stored” just prior to performance on the sidewalk at the rear of the house, and it is no novelty for passersby on Seventh Avenue to gaze at the Temple of Isis or the Palace of the Duke of Mantua gently swaying in the evening breezes. Met officials, like the audiences, have a sentimental attachment to the old house, but also a fiscal horror of it. They want it torn down, both to obtain the added revenue that will accrue from the erection of an office building on the site and to assure that the auditorium will not be available to a competitive enterprise. One of their great fears is that with the opening of the new house only a year away a serious effort will develop to “save” the old Met from the wreckers, in the manner of Carnegie Hall.

Certainly nothing is being spared to provide a new house sufficiently lavish, spacious, and elegant to outshine the old. The new Met will cost $43,000,000, far more than any other Lincoln Center building. Its capacity of 3800 will make it the largest opera house in the world. It will have three restaurants, and underground parking for 700 cars. Its stage floor will consist of seven separate lifts which can move — or remove— stage sets within a matter of seconds. Its backstage and sidestage areas are prairielike in their spaciousness. It will have storage room for an entire season’s sets and trappings. Its mechanical and electronic gadgetry is almost unlimited. Even the main chandelier will be motorized. In fact, Met officials are concerned lest the audience, starved as it is for elaborate staging at the present house, will pay more attention to the surroundings than the singing when the new house opens.

The man more deeply involved than any other in the planning and the particulars of the Met’s move to Lincoln Center is a forty-year-old assistant manager named Herman E. Krawitz. Krawitz’s original background was theatrical rather than operatic; he started out as a successful summer producer on Cape Cod. In recent years he has been taking on increasing administrative responsibilities at the Met, and last spring he was in the middle of a violent controversy when Lincoln Center officials tried to lure him away from the opera house to take charge of their floundering Repertory Theater. Mr. Bing insisted that Krawitz remain at the Met, and so he has.

Krawitz is well aware of the Met’s resemblance to the Paris Opera. In fact, he says that an original plan to have Parisian-style galleries circling the auditorium was scrapped reluctantly in a move to cut costs and save space. Many of the Met’s administrative offices are located along the sides of the building, and there has been some scrimping for space here too. “It took a lot of planning,” says one disgruntled Met official, “but they finally got my office down to the same size as in the old building.” Incidentally, Mr. Bing’s office possesses an unusual and possibly unique feature — a passageway which leads directly to his box, enabling him to move from the one to the other without passing through the public areas.

As traditional as the Met’s interior will be in layout and decor, some members of the administration favored an even more oldfashioned approach. “Wally Harrison didn’t want to build a strict replica of a European house,” says one of the Met’s planners. “But some of the Europeans, including Bing, inclined in that direction. You know, La Scala reconstructed piece by piece. . . . We ended up with a compromise, with the clean lines of contemporary architecture on the outside, and the horseshoe look on the inside.”

The house has also been designed to provide maximum revenues. Although its seating capacity will be only slightly larger than the old house, a substantially higher number of seats (1583 against 1185) will be located in the top-priced orchestra section. Boxes, for which there is a great demand, will also be available in greater numbers, although this has been accomplished by placing some on the Grand Tier and Dress Circle, in addition to those making up the Diamond Horseshoe. Mr. Krawitz estimates the nightly take from the new house at $35,000, as compared with $30,000 in the old, a 16 percent increase. With some two hundred performances a year, the Met’s box-office revenue will rise from $6,000,000 annually to $7,000,000. “But we’ll still lose money,” Krawitz adds quickly. “Our expenses will run much higher on everything from window cleaning to electrical costs.” The Met’s deficit for the 1964—1965 season was $1,700,000; and for 1966-1967, its first Lincoln Center season, it expects to lose $2,000,000. Many European houses run even deeper in the red, with government subventions — which the Met, of course, lacks — enabling them to stay in business.

No one at Lincoln Center is eager to make predictions these days — not after the misadventures of Philharmonic Hall, which ran into an acoustical disaster after proclaiming itself in advance a “perfect musical instrument,” or of the Repertory Theater, which almost collapsed from internal strife after a widely heralded beginning. Nevertheless, the Metropolitan Opera is heading toward its opening in September, 1966, with the confidence born of careful planning and patient experience. It will even manage to present at least an illusion of progressiveness at its Lincoln Center opening with its first-night opera choice, Antony and Cleopatra, specially commissioned from the American composer Samuel Barber. The opening-night opera for this season, the last in the old house, is, by contrast, Gounod’s Faust, which, by no coincidence, was the opera of the Met’s first opening night in 1883.

But no one really expects the Met in its new surroundings to turn into a bastion of contemporary American opera. That function it is content to leave to its Lincoln Center neighbor, the New York City Opera Company, which receives special Ford Foundation grants to stage new works. It seems a reasonably safe assumption that in the long run there will be more Gounod than Sam Barber to be heard in the new Met, as in the old.

“We’ve put up a twentieth-century setting for nineteenth-century works of art,” says Herman Krawitz, illustrating not merely the problem confronting the builders of the new Met, but the dilemma faced by opera itself today. In this sense, the new Metropolitan Opera House can be described as a paradox, but an unusually handsome paradox, and one that should flourish for years.

Record Reviews

Handel: Messiah

Otto Klemperer conducting Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, soprano; Grace Hoffman, mezzo-soprano; Nicolai Gedda, tenor; and Jerome Hines, bass; Angel SCL-3657 (stereo) and CL-3657: three records

It is no disparagement to call this a middle-of-the-road Messiah. Several recent recordings have presented Handel’s masterpiece rearranged. reorchestrated, almost rewritten. Klemperer forbids himself such liberties; his recording is thoroughly traditional in spirit, style, and content (even most of the traditional cuts are observed, which means that the work is not quite given completely). But Klemperer’s version certainly fills the need for a resoundingly good and straightforward Messiah. Occasionally, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf seems a bit calculating in her vocal effects. But the other solo singers stride right into their parts, especially Gedda, whose tenor rings forth clear and true, and Hines, whose magnificent bass makes “And the trumpet shall sound” one of the most thrilling passages in the work. The Philharmonia Chorus is superb throughout, and Klemperer, for all his eighty years, conducts at a pace that can only be described as invigorating.

Sing Joyfully: A Recital of Anthems from Tallis to Britten

The Choir of St. Michael’s College, Tenbury, directed by Lucian Nethsinga; Argo ZRG-5423 (stereo) and RG-423 The unique qualities of English cathedral church music were never set forth more enchantingly than in this collection of choral pieces from the sixteenth century to our own. St. Michael’s is a school in Worcestershire that maintains a fine boys’ choir, which is here augmented by men’s voices. It is hard to say whether the delightful freshness of this record stems more from the fervor and innocence of the young voices, or from the unusual quality of the repertory selected. In any case, the combination is superb. Among the pieces are Thomas Tallis’ “If ye love me,” Thomas Morley’s Magnificat and Agnus Dei, “Sing Joyfully,” by William Byrd, “Rejoice in the Lord Alway,” attributed to John Redford, and modern works by Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, and others. English is the language of most of the songs, and it seldom has fallen more gracefully on the ears. The record was produced in Britain and is distributed in the United States as a London import.

Hadjidakis: Lilacs out of the Dead Land

Manos Hadjidakis conducting an anonymous orchestra; Odeon OMCGA-77 (.monaural only)

Most listeners know Manos Hadjidakis, if they know him at all, as the composer of movie music for such films as Never on Sunday, America America, and Topkapi. But Hadjidakis, a forty-year-old composer who lives and works in Athens, is an ambitious and adventurous musician whose special interests include the bouzouki, the popular Greek song of cafe and cabaret. This record is a collection of instrumental versions of bouzouki-style songs, transmuted by Hadjidakis into something very closely approaching art. Their exotic instrumentation, insistent rhythm, and distinctive coloration give them a charm and flavor all their own, and Hadjidakis lias even managed to attain a variety of moods in the twelve numbers. He conducts the cafe-type orchestra himself and also writes his own jacket notes, which are printed in both Greek and English. Unfortunately, these are not very informative and do not really explain why Hadjidakis has burdened these atmospheric and altogether engagingpieces with a title taken from Eliot’s The Waste Land. The recording is manufactured in Greece, and is available here in shops that handle the Capitol Imports line.

The Weavers Reunion at Carnegie Hall, Part 2

Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman, Erik Darling, Frank Hamilton, and Bernard Krause, folk singers; Vanguard VSD-79161 (stereo) and VRS-9161 The Weavers have probably had as large a hand as any other group in the folk-song excitement of the last fifteen years, especially as concerns those songs tinged by what used to be called social significance. Over the years they have broken up, reunited, and changed membership more than once, and this is one of two records stemming from a final appearance on the stage of Carnegie Hall in May of 1963. Whether it is their last final appearance, only time will tell, but this certainly is a record that makes one hope their story is as yet unfinished. Their smooth but not slick harmonies, their crisp rhythmic sense, and their attention to verbal clarity set them apart from most other groups with similar repertory. This record contains such Weavers “standards” as “On Top of Old Smoky,” “Rock Island Line,” and “Roll On, Columbia.” There also are the fantastic humors of “Frozen Logger” (“Nobody but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb”) and the muted grimness of “Greenland Whale Fisheries,” not to mention the special flavors of several foreign numbers. So appealing is this collection of songs that one does not even resent the applause and cheers of the audience that was in the hall when the concert was taped.

WNEW’s Story of Selma

Produced by Jerry Graham and Mike Stein, with Len Chandler, Pete Seeger, and the Freedom Voices; Folkways FH5595 (monaural only)

This record can serve as a musical introduction to the civil rights movement or as a primer of folk-songcomposition. The material was originally broadcast by a New York radio station which invited some of the Selma marchers and Pete Seeger, the folk singer, to its studio to tell and sing the story of the Selma, Alabama, march. The program cuts back and forth from the voices in the studio to those of the actual massed marchers, as recorded at the scene. Seeger and Len Chandler, one of the marchers, tell how the songs were composed or improvised en route, and they sing them with spirit and feeling. Along with the emotionalism runs a strain of sharp humor, as when the singers burst forth with:

The record exudes not only conviction but confidence, and leaves a vivid impression of civil rights music, which may, in the long run, turn out to be not the least effective weapon in the movement’s arsenal.