The Music Box

If there were any doubts left about the abilities of the New England Opera Theatre, they vanished on Sunday afternoon, December 21. From various points of view that afternoon's performance of "Idomeneo" was the high-water mark of the musical season in Boston and very probably in New York, too. Singing and staging combined as they seldom do in the opera world to produce a performance which was a gem in itself and, more than that, opened up new vistas for the future of Boris Goldovsky's pet project.

The most significant artistic achievement was the opera itself, which Mr. Goldovsky and a similar cast lied presented for the first time in America at Tanglewood last summer. Like several other Mozart operas, notably "Cosi Fan Tutte," "Idomeneo" is a diamond lying neglected amidst the track of the nineteenth century. The orchestral passages are exceptional even for Mozart, and the choral writing is superior to that in his more famous operas. As presented in Mr. Goldovsky's adaptation, the first act was highly conventionalized and contained too much plot exposition in the form of recitative--arias were scarce, in fact. The second act starts, however, with a superb aria and a duet, a brilliant quartet follows, and from then on the opera becomes what Mr. Goldovsky calls it, "unquestionably one of the greatest musical masterpieces of all time."

Keystone of the success of the performance was Ann Bollinger, who sang the male lead, Idamantes, with assurance and great ability, and acted the part as well. Even the love duets, usual stumbling-block for male impersonators in the opera, went well at her hands. Naney Trickey was excellent in the part of Ilia, fulfilling particularly well the difficult assignment of holding the stage alone for more than five minutes at the start of the opera. In the role of the sinister Electra, who has the best aria of the piece, a magnificent last-act preface to suicide, Paula Lenchner looked evil but sang with only moderate control and acted rather clumsily. The one big disappointment of the day was Joseph Laderoute, who was weak and unimpressive as Idomeneo.

Mr. Goldovsky's staging surpassed all his previous efforts. The sets, designed by Richard Rychtarik, ranged from a shipwreek on a rocky coast to the gloomy interior of a pagan cave-temple and included the effective device of magic lantern projection on a backdrop. Mr. Goldovsky made excellent use of the stage in his direction of the principals and chorus and in his use of a small but good-looking ballet, reaching the peak of his imagination in the storm scene and the finale, a would-be sacrifice of Idamantes in the temple. Leo Van Witsen's costumes were also outstanding, and the sum of the production so far superior to anything at the Metropolitan that comparison is impossible--a fact all the more astonishing because of the brief history of the Opera Theatre and its lack of a permanent home.

The encouragement of "Idomeneo" leaves one wondering where Mr. Goldovsky will head after his January 18 "Don Giovanni," the last scheduled production of the series. He and his troupe ought now to struggle for the facilities to do more frequent productions, watching the quality all the while. With this first success in Opera Seria (in which, incidentally, the English translation went much better than it did in their recent Opera Buffa success, "Figaro") they might try next "La Clemenza di Tito," another Mozart work in the form and the last opera he wrote. Perhaps they might experiment with Berlioz, Giordano's "Andrea Chenier," or something very recent. If they go about their work as thoroughly and sincerely as they did for "Idomeneo," they can't miss with whatever they choose.