Just Like the Met

Last week Oklahoma City heard more arm-waving, gut-busting grand opera than any other city outside Manhattan. The singing was tops: it was recorded (by Victor). The acting was well up to Metropolitan par: it was done by puppets. All week the Victor Puppet Opera Troupe played four-a-day in the auditorium of the John A. Brown store. On Saturday the puppets mugged their way through an extra performance of Carmen, to music broadcast from the Metropolitan.

Ernest Wolff,* 27-year-old Chicagoan, has been an opera buff ever since he was twelve, and made puppets to accompany his opera records. Once he got a job as waiter, then as chef, in a restaurant near the Met, so that he could spend his spare time there. Back in Chicago, he labored over his puppets, in 1938 gave a public show which was a critical success but a financial flop. In 1939 he was signed up by Gas Exhibits, Inc. at the New York World's Fair, performed his repertory--Carmen, Faust, Rigoletto, Pagliacci, Aida, Traviata, Cavalleria Rusticana--to audiences which were 85% grownup. Since the autumn of 1939 the troupe has toured 100,000 miles.

Puppeteer Wolff now has over 200 13-inch troupers, with wooden heads made from stock male & female models: only a wig and a beard differentiate Mephistopheles from the clown in Pagliacci. The puppets are worked not by strings from above but by rods from below stage. There a crew of five (headed by Mr. Wolff's plump, Czech-born mother), seated on rolling stools, scuttle about like water bugs. In the triumphal scene in Aida they have 75 puppets to handle. Mrs. Wolff designed the costumes, sometimes copying the Met's. Settings, too, are modeled after the Met's, although they have not all achieved the authentic faded, billowy look.

The puppet operas run 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes, cut to fit the occasion. The records are played on two turntables, are marked with oil crayon so that recitatives or whole arias can be cut out in an instant.

Mr. Wolff's $25,000 worth of puppets, sets, furniture and props fill 27 trunks. His fee for a week's engagement: $1,500. So far the puppet opera has cleared enough to pay Mrs. Wolff's debts and mortgage.

* Not to be confused with Ernst Wolff, lieder singer, or Ernst Victor Wolff, pianist and harpsichordist.

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