Opera: The Lady General

Given a fighting force composed of knights too fat for their armor, horses too old to stand up, and soldiers a draft board would stamp instant 4-F, Ulysses S. Grant himself could not stir up a convincing battle. All the more amazing, then, that a 58-year-old, 5-ft. 1-in. woman can. But then, Opera Director Margherita Wallmann does not map her strategy in the thick of enemy attack but to the friendly strains of Prokofiev and Verdi, Puccini and Mozart.

Last week "Frau Professor" Wallmann's 127th production, a three-act spectacular, Clitennestra, by Italian Composer Ildebrando Pizzetti, had its world premiere at Milan's La Scala. Musically, the work was something of a dud—somber, repetitive, unnecessarily difficult to sing. But as exciting theater, the bloodthirsty Agamemnon legend is hard to beat, and Wallmann did not try: instead she moved her chorus in a plastic combination of Greek tragedy and modern ballet, guided Star Soprano Clara Petrella in a performance of icy majesty, and won unanimous critical acclaim for what Milan's Corriere d'Informazione called "a stupendous visual WESTRICH spectacle, austere, but graced with Wallmann's customary taste and knowledge."

Sudden Fall. The daughter of a Viennese leather-goods manufacturer, Margherita Wallmann danced as soon as she could stand. At 15 she was a soloist at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. But her career as a dancer came to an abrupt end in 1934. During a rehearsal at the Vienna State Opera House, a trap door opened suddenly, and Margherita plunged, she says, "like Eurydice into the underworld." She fell 14 feet onto an iron framework, breaking a hip.

It took her two years to recover. She turned to choreography as a full-time job. Not until 1952 did she consider a latter-day career directing opera, convince La Scala authorities to give her a try.

At the beginning, she remembers, "the chorus and singers made my life a misery. They didn't take me seriously, but were always playing jokes—hiding my score or shoes—and complaining to the manager that they were singers, not dancers, that it was below their dignity to move in such an effeminate way." Nonsense, cried the critics: by getting singers to move with grace, Wallmann had given Italian opera a new look. Because she insisted on mounting productions that were "brand new from the first costume down to the last piece of scenery," Wallmann became the natural choice to direct premiere performances, from Darius Milhaud's David to La Scala's now-famed 1958 rendition of Turandot with Birgit Nilsson. Now Wallmann is off to Rome and a new opera by Italian Composer Mario Zafred; next, a production of Rossini's Zelmira at Naples, and Verdi's Otello for the opening of the Athens Festival. If her schedule holds, Wallmann will make it to Manhattan in time to mount La Gioconda for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in the fall of 1966.