Music: Old Horse, New Saddle

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The Polka Saloon. Sunset. Suddenly the sheriff rises from the faro table and snarls at an amateur gunslinger: "Ragazzo, e l'whisky che lavora [Boy, your whisky is too strong]." His angry Italian rings strangely in that watering place of the American frontier. His opponent is fast on the draw, but not fast enough: on the stairway appears a girl in fringed jerkin and boots, firing from the hip. The revolver spins out of the gunslinger's hand. The girl strides coolly across the bar. "Vi do la buona sera, sceriffo" she says to the sheriff.

The Metropolitan Opera season has not opened on a gaudier note since Maria Jeritza made her entrance as the stripteasing heroine of Thais in 1923. The cowgirl with the red braided hair was Soprano Leontyne Price (TIME cover, March 10), and the opera that rang up last week's curtain was La Fanciulla del West, or The Girl of the Golden West, by that old roughrider, Giacomo Puccini. Even among ardent Puccini fans, Fanciulla is often regarded as an embarrassing mistake, and the Met has not staged it in 30 years. But last week's production was more than good enough to remind the audience that even in horse opera there is more than one tune to sing from the horse.

Not for Singers. Puccini saw David Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West in New York in 1907, promptly announced that "I shall write the music and we shall have the American opera ... I have never been West, but I have read so much about it that I know it thoroughly." Puccini, of course, knew no more about the American West than he knew about Japan when he wrote Madama Butterfly. But operagoers in 1910, when Fanciulla had its premiere at the Met, were no fussier than televiewers are today: with Caruso and Emmy Destinn in the leads, the premiere tied up traffic for hours near the opera house. The delighted Puccini celebrated by buying a $3,000 speedboat and naming it the Minnie. Neither the Minnie nor the opera enjoyed clear sailing: the speedboat had a collision on an Italian lake and almost sank; the opera disappeared from the Met's repertory.

One reason that Fanciulla failed to catch on permanently is that it was not truly a singer's opera: moving in the direction of Turandot, Puccini at the time was experimenting with more complex harmonies, increasing the importance of the orchestra and giving the singers fewer of the swooning set pieces that illuminated works like Boheme. And although the libretto is no more farfetched than that of many another opera, it falls strangely on American ears attuned to Hollywood and TV westerns.