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The rest of the evening was spent in uneasy warfare between those who wanted to stop the show every time Tagliavini sang a note, and those who wanted to get on with the proceedings. Critics generally found Tagliavini a very good, if not yet great, tenor who used his lyric voice with natural grace and showed a warm feeling for character. Even the Herald Tribune's Virgil Thomson, usually the Met's sharpest critic, was impressed. He wrote: "He sings high and loud [and] does not gulp or gasp or gargle salt tears. . . . Not in a very long time have we heard tenor singing at once so easy and so adequate. . . . He even at one point sang a genuine open-throated pianissimo, the first I have heard in Thirty-Ninth Street since I started reviewing opera six years ago. . . . The wonderful thing took place. . . . Italian singing actors, working under an Italian conductor before an audience that was pretty largely Mediterranean, gave us real Italian opera."
Since the days of Gigli, Martinelli and Tito Schipa, the Met's Italian wing has been singing second place to the stronger-lunged Wagnerian team. Last week it appeared that the Italians might be on the way to a bel canto comeback.