Word: barbered
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...desperate for educated people who have retained a grain of individuality after the typically narrowing experience of a public school education. I know not the length of Superintendent Smith's hair, but he apparently wears it thick and long, perpetually covering both eyes and both ears. The barber is being called for the wrong person...
Still, it was strictly an economy-class operation. Bing would have liked to have staged something extravagant, such as Aida or Turandot. Instead, the proud company was restricted to a measly six performances of two low-budget chamber operas - Rossini's Barber of Seville and Mozart's Marriage of Figaro - at the small (1,200-seat) Odeon Theater in Paris. Thus programmed, the Met's venture was bound to run into trouble...
There were problems right off. Since it was the Whitsunday holiday weekend in Paris, the prop men were unable to find any whipped cream to use in the Barber's shaving mug. Baritone Robert Merrill experimented with a gooey mixture of sour cream and beaten egg whites, finally, in keeping with the stage directions, had to smear Basso Fernando Corena's face and mouth with the fluffy filling from French cream puffs...
...everyone was ready to join the Union. The Barber of Seville went smoothly enough, though Soprano Roberta Peters as Rosina was in woefully bad voice. At the end of one of her arias, someone shouted "Vive la Callas!"; Merrill, Corena and the 38-piece orchestra under Thomas Schippers got the most enthusiastic applause...
...critics, on the other hand, tore into the Met like hungry hawks. Much of what they had to say was deserved. Yet, for a nation where opera has been in a low state for many years, some of the criticism seemed downright tendentious. Le Monde found Barber "an ungainly spectacle." The orchestra "lacked finesse," the "comic effects were so broad that they seemed destined for a public with numb wits." Perhaps the most devastating crack of all came from France-Soir. Describing Soprano Peters' singing, Critic Jean Cotte wrote: "At each note America was risking another Pearl Harbor." Paris...