On this day in 1977 tenor Guy Chauvet made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Samson.

Short-lived Metropolitan Opera careers: on this day debuts of

• Soprano Radmila Bakocevic as Cio Cio San (1968) (8 performances)
• Soprano Arlene Saunders as Eva (3 performances, only role)
• Tenor Jean Cox as Walther (8 performances, only role)
• Gunther Leib as Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger (1976) (6 performances, only role)

Birthday anniversaries of writer and librettist Hans Christian Andersen (1805), novelist Emile Zola (1840), baritone George Cehanovsky and bass-baritone Rudolf Bockelmann (both in 1892), conductor Kurt Herbert Adler (1905), tenors Alain Vanzo and Fritz Uhl (both in 1928).