Debuts

First week is debut week at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Five new singers made their bows last week and one old-timer returned as the company swung into its well-weathered repertoire.

Of the newcomers odds were on Tenor Nino Martini to make the biggest success. He was the Duke singing with Lily Pons in Rigoletto. The other debutants were capable but they had smaller parts: Lillian Clark, a comely San Francisco soprano, was an offstage priestess in Aida. Irra Petina, a Russian emigre who trained at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute, was one of eight noisy amazons in Die Walkuere. Basso Virgilio Lazzari, lately of the Chicago Civic Opera, did his bit well in

L'Africaine. So did big Basso Emanuel List, an Austrian who twelve years ago was singing in Manhattan cinemansions. Basso List's deep, dark voice was admirably suited to the beards he wore as the Landgrave in Tannhaueser, as Hunding in Walkuere. But big, forceful bassos are much more common than slender, graceful tenors.

Tenor Martini went to the Metropolitan handsomely advertised by Columbia Broadcasting System which for the past year has sponsored his radio performances. But for all his beautiful legs and a smooth, ingratiating voice critics found him short of Metropolitan standards. He was often flat. His loudly-touted top notes were strained. It was the oldtimer who had the week's warmest reception. Soprano Claudia Muzio, who left the Met twelve years ago to sing in Chicago, returned, gave a stirring performance in La Traviata.

Critics never sharpen their pencils until after the opening night, so Deems Taylor's Peter Ibbetson passed as a patriotic gesture. Like the openings which have gone before, the Metropolitan's 1933-34 season began as a social spectacle. Chief interest seemed to be that John Pierpont Morgan was there, rabid on the subject of photographers; that Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt was wearing a diamond stomacher; and that Emil Katz, the Metropolitan's caterer who during Prohibition bought William K. Vanderbilt's cellar for $70,000, was selling champagne again, for $2.50 a glass.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.