New Shrew in Cincinnati

Cincinnati last week showed the U.S. how to put on a new opera in English for operatic pin money. With a budget of $9,000 (mostly for sets, etc.) and a cast of home-town talent, townsmen rolled up their sleeves and mounted a three-acter by U.S. Composer Vittorio Giannini, based on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew.

Giannini's Shrew was a joint enterprise for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the city's Music-Drama Guild, whose singers sang without pay. Shrew Katharina was sung by Dorothy Short, an insurance agent, Husband Petruchio by Robert Kircher, a professional trombone player. "The important thing," said Symphony Conductor Thor Johnson, "was to give all segments of the community a chance to take part."

On opening night, an audience of 2,000 found Giannini's music agreeably oldfashioned, and although the show was no Kiss Me, Kate, they went away humming the tunes. Composer Giannini, 49, a Manhattan professor of composition, sounded more than once as if he had gone to melody school with Puccini.

The text was adapted by one of Giannini's pupils at the Juilliard School of Music, and nearly everybody was able to keep up with the lines, despite the heavy screen of sound thrown up by the full (90 pieces) Cincinnati Symphony. Composer Giannini was called to the stage for "the most tremendous ovation I ever had."

Even the press enjoyed itself. Wrote Critic Henry S. Humphreys in the Times-Star: "There has been a jinx on operas based on Shakespeare's plays. With the possible exception of Otello, not one of them has held the stage. I confidently predict that Vittorio Giannini's The Taming of the Shrew . . . will break the Shakespeare jinx."

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