After ten postponements aggregating more than a year, the Reinhardt-Werfel-Weill biblical spectacle, “The Eternal Road,” opened at the Manhattan Opera House last night before a brilliant audience of 2,700 and promptly took the city and the newspaper critics by storm.
The production, said to have cost $500,000, brought together Max Reinherdt’s showmanship, Franz Werfel’s script and Kurt Weill’s music, and Norman Bel Geddes’ settings. A cast of 225 persons is employed.
Metropolitan reviewers set up a chorus of praise in morning and afternoon newspapers. Brooks Atkinson in the Times called it “a glorious pageant of great power and beauty.” Richard Watts Jr. of the Herald Tribune, whose review was the most subdued, described the lavishness of the production, but said it suffered from “a certain inescapable dullness.”
Gilbert Gabriel in the American calls it “an experience as big, beautiful and deeply thrilling for both Jew and Gentile as the modern theatre has managed to devise.” John Mason Brown in the Post terms it “a racial pageant that rises to moments of such visual beauty and magnificence as the modern theatre has never seen equalled or approached.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
