Music: TRILLER IN UNIFORM

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This week, on Saturday afternoon, Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera will loop heavenward its new $13,000 gold curtain, revealing an inner curtain painted like a picture book. On the book is a likeness of Soprano Lily Pons, in red-white-&-blue uniform and cocked hat, surrounded by Alps and military symbols.

So for the first time in 22 years, the Met revives The Daughter of the Regiment, whose bubbling tunes were written by Gaetano Donizetti a century ago. It revives it specifically as an ear-tickling, eye-tickling vehicle for Coloratura Pons, who is vocally and boxofficially about the best there is.

When the curtain of the Met goes up on a newly designed production—as it does three or four times every year—seasoned critics, subscribers and standees are prepared for anything, even the worst. The Met is one of the last great lyric stages in the world, but opera at the Met has a way of prattfalling between two stools. The Met guards the grand operatic tradition, but it also yearns to tickle its public. The Daughter of the Regiment is a tickler.

The trills, roulades, la-la-las and rarefied staccato eek-eeks of the coloratura are of ancient tradition. The most famed of all coloratura heroines, Lucia di Lammermoor (music also by Donizetti), goes mad, to the accompaniment of an implacable flute. That is typical. Most coloratura roles are in operas in which the heroine goes daft, is throttled, poisoned, knifed, or dies improbably of tuberculosis, along about 11 p.m. But in The Daughter of the Regiment, a coloratura has more chance for fun. The greatest singers of the last century—Jenny Lind, Adelina Patti, Marcella Sembrich, Luisa Tetrazzini—made the most of the chance, although the heft of the last two made the fun pretty heavy going. Lily Pons's principal worry is keeping her weight up to 105 lb., which she does by eating plenty of potatoes.

Better Lookers. As Marie, an orphan who is adopted as a mascot by the regiment, Soprano Pons beats the drum, falls in love with a peasant who turns soldier so that he may marry her. A marquise claims Marie as her niece, carries her off to a chateau to make a lady of her—but not for long. The peasant, now an officer, turns up to claim Marie, with drum rolls and general rejoicing.

This small, jolly opera might well get lost in the majestic spaces of the Met. But Viennese-born Stage Director Herbert Graf and Rumanian Scene Designer Jonel Jorgulesco, besides framing the production with its own curtain, brought the four brightly-colored sets as far down stage as possible. Ladislas Czettel designed gay costumes to match Lily Pons's, which was run up by famed, high-priced Dressmaker Valentina. To the military in the original libretto Director Graf added 24 high-stepping vivandieres, explaining: "You cannot think of a regiment with Lily Pons in it without having more female soldiers."

Besides Soprano Pons and a competent though none too handsome tenor, French-Canadian Raoul Jobin, The Daughter of the Regiment boasts, in the role of Sergeant Sulpice who foster-fathers Marie, a notable new singer, Italian Basso Buffo Salvatore Baccaloni. The Met's production ends with everyone singing La Marseillaise*—an idea contributed by Mme. Pons's band-leading husband, Andre ("Kosty") Kostelanetz.