Pauly Premiere

When Elektra shrilled her lust for vengeance in Carnegie Hall last week, Manhattan operagoers heard their first Strauss opera this season, their first Elektra since 1932. Because it is full of furious, hard-driven music, because it is pathologically concerned with adultery and blood, many consider the opera less appealing than Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. Others find its eery, passionate songs unforgettable. These were more than grateful when Artur Rodzinski announced he would put on a concert version of the opera with the Philharmonic-Symphony he has been guest-conducting all month (TIME, March 8), looked forward to hearing Gertrude Kappel sing again the part she had made a masterpiece four seasons ago. At the last moment, however, Soprano Kappel was taken sick, could not leave Berlin. Soprano Rosa Pauly, hailed as the greatest Strauss heroine on the Continent, came instead, to sing her first role in the U. S.

Elektra is a difficult opera in which to make a debut. It is doubly hard on the concert stage, without costumes, scenery or action, with the orchestra playing full tilt on the platform instead of in the pit. Pauly, like all the other singers, rose formally to take her cues, sat down each time she had done, did little physical acting. But her voice was so evidently equal to the difficult score, her lines so deeply felt, that listeners forgot the lack of staging.

When the opera ended the audience sat stunned a moment, then rose and cheered for ten minutes, louder and longer than any Manhattan concert audience had done since Toscanini left last spring. Much of that applause was meant for Rosa Pauly.

Though she is 41, the Hungarian soprano's voice showed no signs of wear. Conductor Otto Klemperer recognized what a voice she had when he heard her at the Cologne Opera. In 1927 he took her to the newly founded Berlin Kroll Opera, starred her in nearly every premiere. Later she went to the Paris Opera and the Budapest Op era. Now Rosa Pauly sings most often in Vienna. Strauss picked her to sing his Elektra at the Coronation Operas in Lon don this spring.

Pauly was to leave this week for Prague. At the Coronation she will' hear Artur Rodzinski conduct again. Critics who heaped praise on Soprano Pauly last week did not forget Conductor Rodzinski whose eloquent musicianship made Elektra one of the great triumphs of the season. An other honor came to Rodzinski two days later when Ambassador Jerzy Potocki pinned on him the Polonia Restituta, Poland's highest order of merit.

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