Texaco Celebrates 50 Years of Met Broadcasts

It was New Year’s Day 1949, and soprano Lily Pons was nearing the end of the mad scene from “Lucia di Lammermoor” on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House.

Reaching for one of the fiendishly difficult high F’s that were her trademark in the role, the diminutive French diva fell short, emitting what a New York Times reviewer later called “a blemished final tone.”

But radio listeners who heard a tape-delayed broadcast of the Donizetti opera the next day never detected a false note. In its place, engineers had spliced in another high F from the same aria--one that Miss Pons had hit squarely on the mark.

The disparity between the reviews and the radio caused an uproar in the music world.

Texaco, sponsor of the Saturday matinee broadcasts, had known that many stations would delay “Lucia” because it conflicted with the Rose Bowl football game. But the incident helped bring such tape-delays into disrepute, and eventually a special network was set up just for the opera series. One requirement for membership: Stations had to agree to carry all performances live.

On Saturdays, more than 300 stations in the United States and Canada--including KUSC (91.5 FM)--are doing just that, as Texaco sponsors its 50th season of Met broadcasts--the longest continuous national sponsorship of a program in radio history.

KUSC has replaced the now defunct KFAC-FM as the Los Angeles home of the prestigious Met broadcasts. Wally Smith, president of KUSC, said the Met season was the programming plum at KFAC.

“It’s something that we have coveted for many, many years here at KUSC,” Smith said. “It was about the only program we were interested in acquiring from KFAC. . . . The broadcasts really fit into the KUSC mission to preserve culture and present the best in performance.”

By the end of the season, Texaco will have aired 990 performances of 124 different operas, without commercial interruption. The company now spends $3.5 million a year on the broadcasts, which the Met estimates are heard by 2 million to 6 million people.

For Texaco, the close identification with one of the nation’s most cherished cultural institutions has proved a public relations dream worth every dollar.

“There is nothing new about the principle on which we acted in merging oil and opera,” company president W.S.S. Rodgers said at the time of its initial broadcast--Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” on Dec. 7, 1940. “American business has long acted on the policy of success through service to the greatest number.”

Since then, Texaco radio audiences have thrilled to virtually all of the world’s leading opera singers in their prime--from Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior to Birgit Nilsson and Jon Vickers, from Licia Albanese and Eleanor Steber to Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, from Richard Tucker and Jussi Bjoerling to Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo.

They have occasionally heard history in the making, as when the great comic basso Salvatore Baccoloni made his debut on the very first broadcast. Or on the broadcast of Feb. 9, 1974, when a New Zealand soprano named Kiri Te Kanawa made an unscheduled debut as a last-minute substitute for Teresa Stratas in Verdi’s “Otello.”

And they have been witness to tragedy, as on the broadcast of Jan. 23, 1988, when an 82-year-old vocal coach jumped to his death from a balcony during intermission after Act II of Verdi’s “Macbeth.”

The announcer who conveyed that grim news to the radio audience was Peter Allen, who is launching his 15th season in the broadcast booth behind the Grand Tier. That stint might normally qualify him as an institution, were it not for the astonishing record of his predecessor, the legendary Milton Cross, who presided over the broadcasts from their pre-Texaco days in the 1930s until his death in 1975.

“I had auditioned because they thought Mr. Cross might want to retire,” said Allen, who at the time was a staff announcer for classical radio station WQXR. “I used to be a subscriber to the opera myself. To take over his job was more than anything I had dreamed of.”

Allen said he prepares for each week’s broadcast by doing research on the operas and composers, attending dress rehearsals and even prowling around the stage to inspect the scenery.

“I wander all over the place looking for details, so I can try to give the listeners a picture of what they’re missing,” Allen said. “Sometime I even notice things that most people in the auditorium don’t. Like the cafe scene of ‘La Boheme,’ where Franco Zeffirelli has used real street posters from 19th-Century Paris, advertisements for laxatives and lingerie.”

Allen also tries to anticipate things the radio audience might hear that wouldn’t make sense to them without some explanation.

“I tell them that Florestan’s chains will rattle in the prison scene in ‘Fidelio’ and that the audience will laugh when the inventor’s workshop comes to life in ‘Tales of Hoffmann,”’ he said.

Regular broadcasts continue through April 21 (see accompanying schedule). At intermission each week, Edward Downes will again preside over the Texaco Opera Quiz as he has for 32 years. Other intermission features will include analyses of the day’s opera, presented by such favorites as impresario Boris Goldovsky, who is celebrating his 45th season on the broadcasts.