Music: New Singers

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To opera fans the first public appearance of a new soprano or tenor is as exciting as the trial spin of a new Class-J sloop is to yachtsmen. Last week Manhattan's debutasters trooped to the Metropolitan Opera House to size up the beam, rig and probable speed of two of the Metropolitan's brand-new singers. Chicago operagoers had already bravoed both of them long ago. But that was not enough for Manhattan. For every standee at the Metropolitan regards himself as a member of opera's supreme court, delights to reverse or qualify the opinions of the world's other musical centres.

First new voice to be launched was Wisconsin-born Tenor Eyvind Laholm's (real name: Johan Edwin Johnson). Tenor Laholm had already spent 14 years making himself one of the most famed Wagnerian tenors in Germany, had won personal applause from musical Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. But until two years ago, when he became Hitler's favorite singer, he was practically unknown in the U. S. Egg-bald Laholm, 40, an ex-boxer and heavyweight title holder in the U. S. Navy, exchanged his everyday toupee for a luxuriant blond Nibelung mop and took the stage as Siegmund, leaped upon Hunding's dining-room table like a tomcat after a mouse. His singing, less athletic than his jumps, was fresh and youthful, with less of the buzz saw than most run-of-the-mill German-style tenoring. His semaphoric acting bore witness to his Navy training.

Second newcomer was Italian-born Soprano Hilde Reggiani, hit of last year's Chicago opera season. Small, plump, 25, she cooed a coy Gilda to Lawrence Tibbett's towering Rigoletto, hit super-high Ds and Es with expert marksmanship, held onto them with the tenacity of garlic. When husky Baritone Tibbett vowed to avenge her worse-than-fatal fate, and threw her, pleading, to the ground, well-rounded Soprano Reggiani rolled like a well-aimed bowling ball, ended on her back, half way across the Metropolitan stage.

Debutasters rated both Tenor Laholm and Soprano Reggiani seaworthy, if not cup-defending, additions to the Metropolitan fleet.