[Met Performance] CID:167910



Un Ballo in Maschera
Metropolitan Opera House, Tue, February 8, 1955

Debut : Laurel Hurley




Un Ballo in Maschera (58)
Giuseppe Verdi | Antonio Somma
Amelia
Zinka Milanov

Riccardo
Richard Tucker

Renato
Josef Metternich

Ulrica
Jean Madeira

Oscar
Laurel Hurley [Debut]

Samuel
Lorenzo Alvary

Tom
Norman Scott

Silvano
Calvin Marsh

Judge
James McCracken

Servant
Charles Anthony


Conductor
Dimitri Mitropoulos







Review 1:

Review of Douglas Watt in the Daily News

Laurel Hurley in Met Debut

Last night was a big one for pretty Laurel Hurley, the blonde soprano out of Allentown, Pa., who made her Met debut singing the role of Oscar, the page boy, in "A Masked Ball." She did fine.

Oscar is not a large part, but it's an effective one - lending, as it does, a cheery and sympathetic note to Verdi's walloping melodrama. When, at the beginning of the work, Miss Hurley, wearing her pink silk page costume, strode smartly onto the big stage, executed a right face and stared into the vast auditorium, she seemed a bit startled. But she quickly stifled these early flutters and gave a spirited performance.

Fine Voice

She delivered her bright song with charm and authority in that first scene; and then, in the following one, in Ulrica's den, she revealed exactly how well-focused and surprisingly full her lyric soprano is by singing out clearly and beautifully opposite Richard Tucker and Jean Madeira in the ensemble passage toward the close of the act.

In a nearly-filled house, some 200 Allentown citizens were gathered to honor Miss Hurley. She's come a long way since she sang in church choirs back home. Making her professional debut some years back in a Broadway revival of "The Student Prince," she went on to operatic roles in Chicago, Central City (Colo.) and Havana, among other places, and most recently was an ornament of our own municipal opera troupe at the City Center. She looks and sounds like a winner.



Search by season: 1954-55

Search by title: Un Ballo in Maschera,



Met careers