Purified Opera

All children familiar with fairy tales are aware that Hansel and Gretel's father was a good-for-nothing. All fortunate enough to have been taken to Engelbert Humperdinck's opera know that he makes his entrance dancing a jig, brandishing a bottle. Because of him, Hansel and Gretel are raggedy, hard-working children who must search the woods for strawberries, thus falling into the clutches of a horrid old witch who comes near to eating them.

Last week in Philadelphia the Woman's Christian Temperance Union demanded that the Civic Opera Company remove from its Hansel production the inebriate father whose shortcomings are so clearly shown to be of evil consequence. The Woman's Executive Committee of the Civic Opera Company held a conclave, unanimously passed a motion to ignore the Temperance Union's protest. Said Mrs. Henry M. Tracy, president of the Company: "It is perfectly idiotic and shows the lack of knowledge on the part of members of the W. C. T. U. of opera. For even if we wished to, we could not change the libretto of the opera without the permission of the composer. And Mr. Humperdinck has been dead a long time."

Bystanders reflected on the havoc that uplift organizations might wreak by the purification of opera. Few plots are essentially nice; heroines are usually either unfortunate girls who have been seduced (Marguerite in Faust, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana) or unfaithful ones (Nedda in Pagliacci, Fiora in L'Amore dei Tre Re, Melisande in Pelleas et Melisande, Isolde in Tristan und Isolde). In To sea the plot hinges on whether Tosca will give herself to Scarpia to save Cavaradossi. Double beds are the most important properties in Der Rosenkavalier. Don Giovanni is a series of rakings. Yet an opera company which eliminated these and similar operas would find itself with a sorely limited repertoire.

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