Summer madness

On this day in 1967, the Metropolitan Opera presented La Gioconda as part of Lincoln Center’s Festival ’67.

Robert Commanday in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Great fun at the Met these days, and what a jolly “La Gioconda” Tuesday night: At first glance it looked like summer vacation on stage, everyone strolling through his part during this post-season performance for the Lincoln Center’s Festival ’67. But it really couldn’t have been that accidentally casual, not with a stellar cast of such troupers as Renata Tebaldi, Richard Tucker, Cornell MacNeil. Rosalind Elias and Belen Amparan, conducted by the old Met vet, Fausto Cleva.

By the second act, all became clear. This was a great put-on. Rudolf Bing had laid a careful trap for his critics and was going in for satire. His recipe: Take Ponchielli’s masterpiece of Kitch, dress it in Beni Montressor’s most sumptuous sets and real-life luxurious velvets and satins, then play it straight, very straight. Always face front, never relate to the other singers on the stage and above all, never blow your cool.

Only Richard Tucker was out of step and kept singing his heart out with stirring delivery, inspiring a respectable ovation in Act II’s “Cielo e mar.” Spoilsport. Maybe his colleagues were putting him on, had deliberately left him out of their sub-plot. Whichever the case, as Enzo Grimaldo, the hot-blooded Genovese prince, he kept “saving” the show.

Tucker’s most heroic, “to-the-rescue” action occurred after “The Dance of the Hours,” and had left the audience laughing (a Zachary Solov routine further botched by the Liberace-like Donald Mahler, a heavy corps de ballet, and a hapless Tania Marina.)