The orchestra began with "I Saw Stars." From a parterre box Announcer Raymond Knight called out that opera was about to be reborn with a Witherspoon in its mouth. A dowager in the audience sniffed and said "sacrilegious'' but even she was wheezing with laughter before the evening ended. For when Manhattan's sedate Metropolitan Opera Company chooses to kick up its heels, there is no funnier show on Broadway.
Last week's burlesque, staged on the eve of the Company's departure for Boston, showed various ways opera might be enlivened and perhaps made to pay....
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