User reviews

Virginia Bruce was one of those,I know the face but i cant remember the name stars.She deserved better.A very pretty young woman, and a convincing actress, was Miss Bruce.She was however overshadowed by the Irene Dunnes, Norma Shearers,Greta Garbos that reigned Hollywood supreme.She was of those able and sometimes forgettable actresses such as Karen Morley,Frieda Inescort,Kay Johnson. However in Metropolitan, she shines in her own gentle, ladylike way.Lawrence Tibbett the great operatic baritone has some glorious moments and some great arias and songs.Miss Bruce is his love interest and if that is her singing ,which I doubt; she had a lovely voice as well. The great silent star, Alice Brady is brilliant, as the temperamental opera diva.The movie moves along at a good pace and has a nice 30's plot.It is an enjoyable film for the cultured, over 40s viewer.What a joy to not be immersed in political correctness or cringe at 4 letter words. With a cast like Tibbett, Bruce and Brady how could you go wrong?

Although the music is as grand as it gets from grand opera if you see Metropolitan you will certainly recognize the backstage plot of a lot of Warner Brothers Busby Berkeley films plus a few Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland works of the let's put n a show variety.

Diva Alice Brady makes a grand gesture and walks out of the Metropolitan Opera and announces she's forming her on company. She takes promising baritone Lawrence Tibbett with her. Tibbett looking for his big break goes along, but Brady proves excessive with all her demands artistic and personal. Especially after Tibbett pays attention to promising new singer Virginia Bruce.

If you are a fan of Lawrence Tibbett he does more singing here than in any other film. It's a regular Tibbett concert as he does a great variety of work with songs from his many concert tours..

Great music if tied indeed to a routine backstage plot.

Lawrence Tibbett's penultimate film. Oscar-nominated star of early talkies and 30s films is almost forgotten now. Good little film with terrific cast. Virginia Bruce, Alice Brady, Cesar Romero, Jane Darwell, Jessie Ralph, George Marion, Luis Alberni, Walter Brennan, Thurston Hall, Etienne Girardot, Mary Gordon are all familiar faces. Tibbett plays struggling singer who breaks free from dominating star, Brady. Several good arias and some nice cinematography. And it's not often you hear anyone referred to as "monkey wrench girl!"

A curiosity primarily for the array of character actors (Walter Brennan, Jane Darwell, Alice Brady, Jesse Ralph). The usual backstage clichés: rehearsal begins with full costumes, sets and orchestra. The backstage area is spacious and well-lighted. And the show goes on in spite of the temperamental leading lady. One of the rare film opportunities to see Lawrence Tibbett. He sings extensive operatic excerpts, and it's not as stagy as one might expect for early filmed opera. This was filmed during the peak period of his career. Sadly, as his voice declined, he faded into alcohol abuse, arrests, and a life-ending fall.

No one should expect a well-wrought, intricately developed plot from a film that was designed as a showpiece for the American baritone Laurence Tibbett,any more than one would expect it from a Warner's backstage musicals from the 1930s. Tibbett was one of the few stellar performers of the Metropolitan Opera who was equally at home and successful in popular music. (I believe at one time, toward the end of his opera career, he was featured on "Your Hit Parade", singing what were supposedly the five or six most popular songs of the week, judged by record sales.) At the Metropolitan Opera he played the lead in the premieres of American operas such as Merry Mount, Emperor Jones and The King's Henchmen. I believe that he made the first commercial recordings from Porgy and Bess as Porgy, using the same dialect as in this film when he sings the Negro spiritual "Glory Road" in a perhaps over-dramatic rendition. The role of Bess is sung by another Caucasian opera star. Helen Jepson,who made one more Hollywood appearance in the pathetic Goldwyn Follies.

The supporting cast of experience character actors,as often happens, manages to give the claptrap plot a measure of credibility. Virginia Bruce, the leading lady, was an actress/singer who never broke through to stardom, despite a lengthy filmography. She had a beautiful soprano voice and a lovely appearance, but did not project much warmth as in the manner of top stars, even in her one solo from Carmen, as the timid and loving Micaela. Her voice belonged in operetta, not in either opera or show business tunes. Jeanette MacDonald has the former cornered, and there were many with more sensuous voices who succeeded with the latter. But she did look terrific at the top of the "wedding cake" number in The Great Ziegfeld, the most prominent role of her career.

The script for this movie is really bad, a collection of tired clichés. And that's a shame, because there is enough talent here to have made a good movie.

Lawrence Tibbett was unquestionably one of the great singers of the first part of the twentieth century, and definitely one of the first American stars of opera, along with Rosa Ponselle and Grace Moore. He was a handsome guy who could act, and he had real stage presence, which you can see in this movie.

And that is what saves this movie from being a total loss. Several of Tibbett's signature roles - Tonio in Pagliacci, Escamillo in Carmen, Figaro in the Barber of Seville - get captured here, so that we can see why he delighted opera audiences for two decades at the Met. The opera excerpts are never presented or explained, however; they just get performed, leaving most of the audience to appreciate the music, if they can, without any idea what Tibbett is singing so well. That was expecting too much, I suspect, and it's a shame, because the three excerpts are good performances that could have been integrated into the script a lot better.

We also get to see Tibbett sing two popular numbers, and they are perhaps the most striking in the movie: a setting of Kipling's "On the road to Mandalay" and the spiritual "De glory road," with both of which Tibbett does a great job. Again, however, there is no effort to integrate them into the plot. At one moment, Tibbett sings them as examples of "beauty" to other musicians. Then they're over.

There isn't much else to notice in this movie. If that is Virginia Bruce doing Micaela's aria from Carmen, she does a good job of it.

The rest is all clichés. Why, you might wonder, does the movie start with Tibbett's character leaving Bruce's character stranded in the countryside with a broken down car? That should have aggravated her to no end. Instead, she falls in love with his voice.

It never gets any better.

This marked the end of Tibbett's movie career, and you can see why. But in this case the fault was not Tibbett's. The script was the villain!

"Metropolitan" is a real find for opera lovers, with its absolutely glorious music and the heroic singing of opera star Lawrence Tibbett, one of opera's very brightest lights in the 1930s. Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, "Metropolitan" showcases Tibbett in an absolutely ridiculous plot that features actors Alice Brady, Cesar Romero, Virginia Bruce, Walter Brennan and others. Brady, who later won an Oscar as Mrs. O'Leary in "In Old Chicago" is the stereotypical temperamental diva who forms her own opera company and keeps changing the premier opera every five minutes. First, it's Barber of Seville so we can hear Tibbett do "Largo al Factotum" - and Tibbett's is the version I was raised on; then after an angry fit, she decides to do Carmen - thus, we hear Tibbett do "The Toreador Song." Finally, after hearing Virginia Bruce sing "Micaela's Aria," she decides to banish the company. The group gets back on its feet before opening and decide to do "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci" instead! Those poor ticket holders! No idea what they were going to see, but we got to see Tibbett rehearse those glorious numbers plus perform "Si puo" at the end. One wonders what the vicious diva considered herself. In the beginning, she's angry that the Metropolitan Opera did not cast her in "La Sonambula" - a patently coloratura role, then she assigns herself "Barber," a coloratura role, and finally a mezzo role, Carmen! Hello.

Singing styles have changed over the last 70 years - no more fast vibrato, no more white high notes from sopranos, and the declamatory type of singing in opera, done a little bit by Tibbett in "Si puo" is reserved for very old, dried out singers close to retirement. But nothing diminishes the magnificence of Tibbett's gift. It's so wonderful to have him on film to appreciate.

Tibbett was an excellent actor as well as singer, and on stage he must have appeared quite attractive. But though his career overlapped that of Nelson Eddy and they were separated only by four years in age, Tibbett could not have achieved what Eddy did in films. While not anywhere near as good an actor, Eddy was considerably handsomer, younger in appearance, and his beautiful voice was more accessible to audiences. But if you have any interest in opera at all, try to catch this on Fox Movie Channel and listen to Tibbett sing "De Glory Road." You won't hear anything like that again.

Darryl Zanuck's first release after the merging of his 20th Century co. and Fox studio, this features the boyish baritone, Lawrence Tibbett, in his prime. He was a busy guy in the 30s: top Metropolitan Opera star, movies, concerts, recitals and many radio appearances. The usual backstage story is played out with cheerful verve by the superior cast. Tibbett singing highlights are the famous "Figaro" aria from Barber of Seville; The Toreador Song from Bizet's Carmen; the Prologue to Pagliacci; as well as his rousing concert showpieces, "On the Road To Mandalay" and "De Glory Road: a negro spiritual." Tibbett's autobiography is titled The Glory Road.

Alice Brady is ideally cast as a temperamental diva. She is believable and hilarious. The voice with which she sings seems to be her own.

Virginia Bruce, a charming performer, is OK but no more as an ingénue.

The movie is Lawrence Tibbett's. He sings arias from several composers, as well as singing some appealing songs. (Was it common in those times for Caucasian opera singers to perform spirituals? Regardless: He sings one.) The plum is a long section of "Pagliaci," in which he is, of course, superb.

This is the only commercial movie in which I've seen Tibbett. He appears a bit stodgy and is certainly not conventionally handsome. But his singing is glorious; and singing is what this movie is about.about.

This 1935 film showed recently on a TV movie channel and proved an innocent delight. The story line is simple, the ending happy, the people snappily dressed and the sets splendid. A fading prima donna is fired from the Met and starts her own opera company. A renowned conductor comes from retirement to conduct, and hires baritone Lawrence Tibbett, one of America's first operatic super stars, whose superb singing is the chief attraction of the film. He has a rich, focused voice and agreeable good looks. When the prima donna's voice fails, the conductor quits and all is about to fall apart, until the heroine Alice Brady, who wanted to be an opera star on her own, turns out to be an heiress and saves the day.The sound track suggests that someone has done a spectacular job of restoring the print; Tibbett's ringing voice impresses in baritone favorites, "The Road to Mandalay," "Largo al factotum" from Barber of Seville, "The Toreador Song" from Carmen, and "Si puo," from I Pagliacci.

Metropolitan, what can I say? A real musical treat of a film. The story is not exactly familiar territory, but the production values for example are really well done, with lovely lighting, exquisite costumes and spacious settings. Even better is the music, a real treasure trove of operatic highlights especially Largo Al Factotum, Pagliacci and The Toreador's Song. Even better than that is the performance of Lawrence Tibbet, he doesn't quite have the looks of Nelson Eddy for example but what more than compensates is his exciting presence on film and his enormously resonant voice. Virginia Bruce and Alice Brady both look alluring and sing beautifully, although Bruce's Micaela sometimes lacks warmth and this detracts from the poignancy of the role. Overall, for fans of Lawrence Tibbett and opera this is a real delight. 8/10 Bethany Cox