NEW OPERA STARS PLEASE, IS OPINION OF CRITIC

"An ensemble of singing actors they claim to be, and an ensemble of singing actors they are," Edward Ballantine, Ed. '07, assistant professor of Music and tutor in the Division of Music, told a CRIMSON reporter yesterday, speaking of the American Opera Company, which will feature "Harvard Night" at the Hollis Street Theatre this evening with its production of Gounod's "Faust."

"A performance by the American Opera Company gives to the audience not only keen artistic pleasure but a sense of participation in the making of musical history," Professor Ballantine said. "This company is an evidence of the recent growth of musical activity in America. All the singers are American, none of them over 32 years of age, and none is fat.

"While none is quite of the Metropolitan Opera calibre, all have excellent voices and there is among them a degree of teamwork which is often lacking in the company of stars. The company certainly justifies its claim of being singing actors. They sing to each other and not at the audience.

"Most of the chorus singers are soloists who take their turns in individual roles. As members of the chorus they are individualized in action, and, being a company which has worked together for four consecutive years, they bring out the dramatic value of the operas as well as the music.

"There is nothing routine about these productions of familiar operas. Rosing, the director, is full of original ideas, which are carried into execution in a spirited manner by members of the company. The settings of Robert Edmond Jones are a happy blend of impressionism and historical realism. The operas are sung in English, not in the old hack translations, but in careful adaptations of the words to the music by Robert Simon, the music critic of The New Yorker. For 'Faust' he has prepared a skilfully adapted libretto, while for the other operas English versions have been carefully, though less originally, made."