It took a national military defeat and four years of German rule to make the Dutch take grand opera and like it. It was not that Holland had plugged its dikes against all music: it has long had fine Bach societies and a great symphony orchestra, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam. But to the restrained Dutch, opera had long seemed worldly and overemotional.
One of the few things the Dutch learned to like about the Germans was their zeal for opera. The Germans started a Dutch opera with native singers and musicians and the Dutch loved it. At war's end, they decided to keep it. Last week, at Holland's third annual music festival in Amsterdam and Scheveningen, music lovers saw the decision magnificently justified. The new Netherlands Opera gave as fine a performance of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice as had been heard in years. The cast got a dozen curtain calls and a standing ovation from happy Am-sterdamers and their visitors. Minister of Arts F. J. Rutten exclaimed in relief, "It's really quite all right, isn't it?"
The Dutch Gift. The man who did most to make it "quite all right" is ruddy, energetic Paul Cronheim, 56, prewar manager of the Concertgebouw. One of his first acts when he became director of the opera after the war was to send a cable to San Francisco: "Pierre, you must come and save me."
Tubby, benign Pierre Monteux, conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, came asaving. Last fortnight, his shoe-button eyes shining, Monteux was in the pit at Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg theater. Onstage as Orfeo was Kathleen Ferrier (TIME, March 14), the English girl whose sumptuous contralto has earned her first title to the role. The rest of the cast, including a first-rate soprano named Greet Koeman, was Dutch.
In fact, the real news of the festival was what it revealed of the range and depth of the Dutch musical gift. Dr. Anthon van der Horst's crack Netherlands Bach Society sang a glowing B Minor Mass. Along with symphonic works of Mozart and Beethoven, the concert crowds heard the music of such modern Dutch composers as Alphons Diepen-brock, Willem Pijper, Cornelis Dopper, Johan Wagenaar.
Bright & Bubbling. The festival was not merely a Dutch exposition. Jennie Tourel, perhaps the finest Carmen now singing, gave a performance in the role. The polished Vienna State Opera gave a bright and bubbling performance of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, and was scheduled to perform Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and Der Rosenkavalier before the festival ends next week.
Yet nothing pleased the Dutch more than the clear success of their own new opera. The Dutch government and the city of Amsterdam, recognizing a new national asset when they see one, have agreed to meet half the budget of the young company until 1955.