Putting its best hunch forward, the Metropolitan Opera signed Vienna's buxom Soprano Irmgard Seefried this season. Last week she bowed as Susanna, the maid in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, and turned out to be the hit of the evening. She bounced around as a properly improper young peasant girl, conniving enthusiastically, clucking her disapproval of other people's peccadilloes, escaping from her own tight jams, seeming to enjoy every minute. Almost from the moment of her entrance, she had the Met audience laughing in delight.
But it was her singing that stopped the show. Her soft-textured tones are naturally appealing, and she treated...