The Operagoer Opera in Boston

ALL OF THE SETS have been packed up, and the costumes put away, and the Metropolitan Opera has left Boston for another year. It was nice while it lasted. If you could get a ticket, and didn't mind paying five dollars for a seat with an obstructed view. Nice, if you didn't mind sitting in an auditorium with all of the acoustical purity of the Grand Canyon. Nice, if you really wanted to hear another performance of Pagliacci, or Cavalleria Rusticana .

Boston is in the throes of an opera famine. This city, which likes to think of itself as being the cultural capital of America, does not have a full time resident opera company, and it would have no place to put one if it did. The Boston Opera House was closed over a decade ago to make way for some form of progress or another, and since that time, opera in this city has been moribund.

The problem is simple enough. Sarah Caldwell, the estimable leader of the Boston Opera Company, has labored for years to keep some sort of permanent company in Boston, but she has been only mildly successful. With no regular theatre, and only the financial support which she can raise through the force of her personality, Miss Caldwell has gargantuan problems in putting on a full schedule each season. For several years now, she has attempted to produce the Boston premiere of Roger Sessions' Montezuma . but financial problems have prevented her from doing it.

The Boston Opera Company has achieved some tremendous successes. Its performance of Luigi Nono's Intoleranza several seasons ago was a major cultural event, and a source of controversy for many months. This week it will give the world premiere of Gunther Schuller's new opera. The Fisherman and His Wife . But now that the Back Bay Theatre has been torn down, the Company has to search hard to find a place to perform. This year's production of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment had to be held in a hall at Tufts University in Medford. This effectively closed the performance to people south of Boston, and to students without cars.

The lack of any suitable facilities also drives talent out of the New England area. This spring, as every year, the Metropolitan Opera held its regional auditions in Boston. Local singers won three prizes and an honorable mention, and the chances are that each of them, as well as many of the runners-up, will leave Boston to pursue a career with a viable opera company someplace else. This kind of talent exodus has made possible the forming of major opera companies in such places as Santa Fe, while Boston founders on the rocks.

THE ANSWER to this problem seems to be very simple, but no one has ever advocated it seriously. All of the major opera houses of Europe operate to one extent or another, on government subsidies. Admission is inexpensive, and the quality of the productions is generally superior to standard American fare.

There are several possibilities for state assistance. One of the most obvious would be a state supported bond issue to build a decent opera house, which could incorporate some of the more basic advances in modern acoustics which were neglected when the City of Boston built the John J. Hines Memorial (alias War Memorial) auditorium. The next logical step would be some sort of assistance to an opera company, either in the form of an outright grant to some established private group, like the Boston Opera Company, or, more preferably, the founding of an official state opera, which would reside in Boston and perform a full season. Adequate financial support, and several years of development, would assure that the company would grow to national stature.

An added advantage to such a plan would be the availability of a suitable opera house to touring companies. Since the hall would be empty on nights when the resident company is on tour, as well as in the off season, the building could be used by groups as diverse as the Met and the D'Oyly Carte Company, which presently, in their Boston tours, are forced to use whatever buildings are open. A full season would also give the resident company the opportunity for experimentation which the Boston Opera Company lacks.

Last weekend, thousands of people, brandishing their twenty-five dollar tickets, packed themselves into the Savoy Theatre. The movie screen was lifted to make way for the opera sets, and the audience saw The Fisherman and His Wife instead of The Kremlin Letter . Boston deserves better than this.