Program Notes

For the past eight years at Manhattan's Metropolitan, pert French soprano Lily Pons has practically had a monopoly on old-fashioned Latin coloratura warbling. Last week, when Coloratura Pons hurried off to Palm Beach, Fla. to nurse a sudden cold, General Manager Edward Johnson shoved a brand-new Italian soprano, Lina Aimaro, into her part in Lucia di Lammermoor. A packjammed audience went to hear her, found Soprano Aimaro an earnest young Model T coloratura, with good top notes and a tendency to stall.

> Today Venetian-born Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (Jewels of the Madonna, Secret of Susanne, etc.) rates as one of the most successful of Italian opera composers. Unlike most of his lugubrious colleagues, Composer Wolf-Ferrari has devoted most of his time to operas with comic texts. Because Italians had greeted his first opera (Cenerentola) with catcalls and cabbages, Composer Wolf-Ferrari got most of his later works firsted outside Italy. But last week Milanese operagoers had a chance to chortle over a Wolf-Ferrari first. The new opera: La Nina Boba (The Stupid Girl), based on an old Spanish comedy by Lope de Vega.

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