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Last evening's performance of "Die Meistersinger" at the Metropolitan excelled for several reasons, chief among them that a certain important member of the cast not noted on the program was in particularly good form - The Audience. Every offering on the stage is more dependent on this member than is generally recognized by that thoughtless majority which comes late, leaves early and gives the minimum of attention to the efforts of the artists to make music over an obligate of light conversation.

The impossible hour of seven-thirty found many who really wished to hear the opera already in their seats in an attitude of devotion. Latecomers caught the mood. Before the act was done everybody knew is was a Good Audience. It laughed often and in the right places; it applauded when it should and remained in respectful silence at certain moments otherwise easy to ruin.

The singers reacted at once and amiably tossed the compliment back over the footlights with their cards at ?Mr. Tibbett promptly toned down his badly devised Kothner of a previous appearance. Miss Easton hid all traces of what a recent cold might have done to her vocal chords and sang her prettiest Eva of the year. Mr. Whitehill as Sachs gilded an old laurel leaf by a superb and mellow-voiced performance. Mr. Taucher's Walther stoned by earnestness and dignity for certain disqualifications which seem irradicable. Meader, as David, was extraordinarily alert and pleasing. Beckmesser-Sch?tzendorf played the crochets and quavers of this gentleman's acid humor with new inspiration and Kathleen Howard, singing Magdalena for the first time this season, contributed a most satisfying delineation. The chorus, the stage band, the other members of the long cast, all stood on their tiptoes to show that they, too, could grow. Mr. Bodanzky, in the orchestra pit, was so astonished that he lost eight minutes from the tempo of the first act and then joined the procession and contributed the lion's share of the evening's superlatives.

Search by season: 1926-27

Search by title: Die Meistersinger von N?rnberg,

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