Fun With Opera

Behind the patched and faded fed velvet curtain of Philadelphia's elegant Academy of Music (built in 1857 and famed for its acoustics) lives a small brown bat. During Metropolitan Opera visits to the Academy, the bat nearly flew into the broad mouth of Tenor Beniamino Gigli; once it flew rings around Basso Feodor Chaliapin. Last week, by lying low, the bat muffed a punnish chance--a performance of Johann Strauss's bubbling, rollicking The Bat (Die Fledermaus), by the best troupe Philadelphia has had in years.

In 1934, Mrs. Mary Louise Curtis Bok sank more than $100,000 in the Philadelphia Grand Opera's production of Alban Berg's screwy, ear-splitting Wozzeck. After that, doldrums--until the Philadelphia Opera Company was born, two years ago. Its father was Charles David Hocker, a onetime bank clerk who, at 19, got ex cited about the Philadelphia Orchestra's Youth Concerts, became their manager a year later. For musical director of his opera, Hocker got a onetime piano prodigy, Sylvan Levin, who had been assistant conductor to the great, emotionally profiled Stokowski. Hocker & Levin resolved to keep their opera youthful, avoid stars like the plague, angels like leprosy. They cherished an idea which the Metropolitan has persuaded many people to believe a terrible heresy: that opera can be sung in English. (Throughout Europe, of course, it is sung in the language of the land.)

Hitting its stride during the past year, the Philadelphia Opera has attracted young audiences, has never played to more than 100 empty seats. Its current small deficit (less than $5,000) should not greatly burden the 30 "semi-angels."

Of this winter's offerings, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro was the best done, last week's The Bat the best fun. Its singers, chosen from 450 Philadelphians who showed up for auditions, averaged 27 years in age, were well above average in looks. Retranslated, by Chorus Master Vernon Hammond, was the gay, sometimes bawdy Viennese libretto (1874), which details the ballroom deceptions practiced upon a banker (Tenor Edward Nyborg, tailor's son) by his wife (Selma Amansky, wife of the Philadelphia Orchestra's trumpeter and associate conductor, Saul Caston) and his maidservant (Frances Greer, church singer). Typical couplet, sung by the banker:

Say, by the way,

Is my tie O, K.?

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