New Opera

Last week, in Manhattan, was produced, for the first time in the U. S., Giovanni Gallurese, an opera written 20 years ago by Italo Montemezzi, famed composer. The house was packed with operagoers who, having heard from season to season Montemezzi's exquisite L'Amore del Tre Re, were curious to see how so great a composer wrote when he was younger. Among these operagoers sat the composer himself, shyly smiling.

Music. Banal, melodious cantilenas, shreds of the wild echoes Verdi set flying—melody that has been shut up from the air until, to modern taste, it has become stiff, flaky, like stale candy. In the eight years that intervened between Giovanni Gallurese and L'Amore del Tre Re, Montemezzi must have worked hard, critics decided.

Libretto. Gallurese, a "high-souled outlaw," Maria, a lovely daughter of a poor shepherd, Rivegas, a Spanish renegado, folk dances from the Sardinian, drinking choruses, religious choruses, innocence outraged, bloody murder.

Artists. Miss Müller, soprano, sang with a sincerity marred only by irrelevant smiles in certain love-scenes; Signer Lauri-Volpi (Gallurese) turned himself into a human cornet; Conductor Tullio Serafin imposed upon the wavering score his own electrifying power. At the close of each act, Montemezzi appeared before the curtain, bowed, smiled. On one of these occasions, a lackey delivered to him a floral wreath.

Polish Symphony

Last week, arrived in the U. S. 45 members of the National Polish Symphony Orchestra. Under the able baton of Stanislaw Namyslowski, they began giving a series of concerts in the U. S., playing the works of such Polish masters as Moniuszko, Joteyko, Moszkowski, Moussorgsky, Rozycki, Nowowiejski and Powiadomski.

In Manhattan, they gave their first concert, wearing their National costume —white blouse, black tall boots, red and black cap with four corners, raked with three brave peacock feathers. Said Critic Deems Taylor: "A very ordinary provincial symphony orchestra, with an insufficient number of strings and wind sections that play neither well nor wholly in tune."

Best Orchestra?

In Manhattan, Ernest Newman, British guest critic for the New York Evening Post, gave his impressions of U. S. orchestras.

Said he: