Last year when Artur Bodanzky resigned as German opera conductor of Manhattan's Metropolitan, his successor was immediately announced to be one Joseph Rosenstock of Wiesbaden. Few had ever heard of such a person, all marveled that a comparative unknown was to fill the most important post in the world's most important operatic organization.
Last week, at the Metropolitan's second performance, inevitably Die Meistersinger, Conductor Rosenstock made his debut. His appearance bore no resemblance to the proud, satanic figure of Bodanzky. Like a precocious, shy, near-sighted schoolboy he came out from under the stage, wangled his way almost apologetically through the string-players, bowed to a cordial hand-clapping. Out went the lights. He chose a baton from the rack and began a careful, orthodox Vorspiel. Care alone, however, could not make it clean, clear-cut. Sometimes it raced confusedly, as did parts of the opera which followed. Occasionally it groped and dragged. Never, obviously, was there an attempt for theatric effect. A left hand floating in an aimless way kept the instruments subdued, the colors pale. But it found no tender lyric lines to caress, wrested no deep significance from the great human comedy. Many kind critics suspended all judgment until further hearing. The stranger was young, his debut was an ordeal. But stern fellows like Oscar Thompson of the Evening Post and Richard L. Stokes of the Evening World wasted no words. For Critic Thompson it was "the most ragged and perfunctory Meister singer of many seasons."
Three singers made debuts during the Metropolitan's first week. Mezzo-soprano Eleanor La Mance of Jacksonville, Fla., a thin-legged, hollow-voiced girl, was "a musician" in the opening Manon Lescaut, sang her one aria nervously. Alfredo Gandolfi, who might have been any pot-bellied Italian tenor, was "a sergeant."
In La Gioconda, substituted for Norma because of the illness of Rosa Fonselle, Basso Tancredi Pasero had excellent 'Opportunity as the prisoner-husband Alvise to prove himself a notable singing-actor.