Polyna Stoska was an American soprano who sang in Germany on the eve of WW2, then with the New Opera Company and the New York City Opera, scoring a breakthrough as The Composer in the latter company’s Ariadne auf Naxos, recording an aria album for Columbia, and registering the above-mentioned success in Street Scene. I saw her twice in her brief sojourn with the Met, as Donna Elvira and Elsa (substituting for Traubel), and I carry recollections of an attractive but somewhat vaguely focused voice with a tendency to breathiness toward the top. She vanished from my ken with Bing’s roster changes; then surfaced a decade later, sounding solid and mezzo-ish as Mrs. Peachum in a concert version of Die Dreigroschenoper with Lotte Lenya and, as Mr. Peachum, the fine character actor Ludwig Donath; then vanished again. Her 1948 Ellen Orford (she’d taken over the role from Regina Resnik) is the best soprano singing I have heard from her, an extremely sympathetic interpretation, marked by beautifully phrased duet singing with Sullivan at the end of the Prologue, considerable authority in the later confrontation with Peter, and a well-controlled uncoiling of the line in the Embroidery Aria. Once in a while, as in the “My child, you’re not too young to know”  passage, she’ll start an ascending line with clear, rich tone, then encounter a trace of that vagueness; but it passes. In the ’49 broadcast, she’s still engaging, but there are more tentative moments that give rise to unease.

And finally, Balstrode. And by this time, I’m sure you’re grasping the downside meaning of “rolling rep.” In many standard repertory operas, the practice can generate excitement, suspense, and pleasurable unpredictability with the mixing and matching (or not) of star singers, and helps keep a long season bubbling. But in a new work of unfamiliar idiom and elevated ensemble requirements, in which repetition and stability might be assumed to be an advantage, it seems almost perverse to find many of the parts shifting about in the course of a two-season run, so that we have not only two Peters and two Ellens, but three Aunties and now, three Balstrodes. John Brownlee sang the first couple of performances, thus teaming with Jagel to ensure long stretches of veteran imperturbability and reliable tone of well-tanned leather hue, then gave way to first Mack Harrell, then Lawrence Tibbett. Harrell, father of the recently deceased cellist Lynn Harrell, was a valuable artist whose musical intelligence, broad stylistic comprehension, and technical poise gave him access to an unusual span of repertoire. I’ve spoken in praise of his Wozzeck (see the post of Jan. 31, 2020), and can also recommend his recordings of Bach cantatas, Schumann’s Dichterliebe, and wide range of other music, ranging from Bruckner masses to the bass solo in Beethoven’s 9th. And we should remember that it was he who created the role of Olin Blitch in Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah. I saw him, I believe, only twice at the Met, as Masetto and Jokanaan, but he also participated in the first symphonic event I ever attended, as Mephistophélès in the Toscanini/NBC performance of extended excerpts from the Berlioz Roméo et Juliette and Damnation de Faust (and that was John Garris singing the Queen Mab solo). He is perhaps slightly too young and sensible-sounding for an ideal Balstrode. But it’s satisfying to hear the music sung with such sure guidance of line and sense of destination, and the verbal text given such clarity and inflectional proportion. And the voice itself, warm and ample, is by no means negligible.