Potent Pauly

Thirty-five years ago German Composer Richard Strauss and his librettist, Dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, went back to Greek drama for a subject. The result, Elektra, is the most hair-raising of modern operas.

Composer Strauss and his librettist laid their scene in a Hellenic back yard, envisioned livestock rooting about the grave of ax-murdered Agamemnon while his murderers' dying screeches float from backstage over the most malignant of operatic orchestrations. Their frenzied, hagridden Elektra, daughter of the slain Agamemnon and instigator of the ghastly revenge that overtakes his killers, demanded a singer of enormous endurance. Mariette Mazarin, who introduced the part to the U. S. in 1910, fainted while taking her final curtain calls. The late Ernestine Schumann-Heink, powerful Katrinka of opera singers, left the original cast at Dresden because she considered the part of nightmare-haunted Klytemnestra too strenuous.

Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera Com-pany never considered Elektra a best seller. Yet when the opera was revived last week at the Met, a capacity audience, including silk hats and standees, gave it the lustiest ovation heard there in several seasons. Principal object of their applause: a dark, hefty Hungarian soprano. Rose Pauly. who heaved and panted through 15 curtain calls after her Metropolitan debut in the title role. Other objects : the sinister, pasty-faced Klytemnestra of Kerstin Thorborg; the brilliant conducting of Artur Bodanzky. Pauly, whose last year's appearance in a concert version of Elektra under Conductor Artur Rodzinski was the sensation of the Philharmonic-Symphony season (TIME, March 29), prowled the stage like a maimed tigress, managed to give Strauss's frantic, maniacal heroine a quality of grandeur. Undaunted by gut-busting vocal hurdles, she sang, moaned and screamed her part, heating every note with emotion. Critics unanimously confirmed her European reputation as No. i Elektra and an artist of phenomenal ability.

Though she boasts a repertory of 67 operatic roles, it is her Elektra that has made Rose Pauly famous in Central European opera houses. Before a recent appearance at the Venice Opera, a dinner was given in her honor by Mussolini. During the festivities she remarked to a nearby stranger, "I think that we at least ought to see Mussolini here. I'm so disappointed because he won't be present when I'm singing ." "I'm sorry too," said the stranger, "but I have to go to Rome for " then added, "you must be almost the only woman who does not know Mussolini's face." Pauly apologized, said she didn't know much about politicians. "Brava! Brava!" exclaimed II Duce, "that is a true woman. Women should not bother themselves with politics; their business is in the home."

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