A performance of "The Gondoliers" is a rarity in America. Although amateur performances have been given by Middle-sex School, Concord Academy, and the Radcliffe Idler, Boston has not seen a professional performance in twelve years. This lack of an American stage tradition for the piece is evident in its new revival at the Hollis.

In the better-known Savoy Operas, the Civic Light Opera Company has learned to be lusty in choruses, whimsical in patter-songs, and sentimental in arias. They can shake the deck of the good ship "Pinafore," snapping their fingers at a foeman's taunts, along with their sisters and their cousins and their aunts. Or, transformed into Pirates, they can sally forth to seek their prey and help themselves in a royal way. But as Gondolieri, whose life is "loving and laughing and quipping and quaffing," they miss the right note of delicate gayety. They sing "Buon' giorno, signorine!" like the police in "The Birates" who found the wisest thing, tarantara, tarantara! was to slap their chests and sing, tarantara!

"The Gondoliers" is a thing apart from the other Savoy Operas. It is true that the plot reveals the old familiar Gilbertian shreds and patches. Again you see the playwright, with the help of a Latin Little Buttercup, mix those children up, and not a creature knew it. Again, in republican Barataria, he puts down the mighty from their seat; and "ambassadors and such as they grow like asparagus in May, and dukes are three-a-penny." But the music, the whole atmosphere of the piece, is a different matter. It is flowing, Verdian, Rossinian, lightly serious, made of Latin lyricism, not of English lung-power.

But when the curtain went up at the Hollis, the flower-girls shouted their lovely and ethereal opening chorus, "List and Learn," too heartily and too fast; and the Gondolieri sang "Buon' giorno, signorine" like students at a Biergarten, "We're called Gondolieri" came off with speed and good-spirits, but without the whirling, infectious momentum that the song is capable of. In contrast to the chorus, the contadine Tessa and Gianetta showed from the moment that they were picked out of the crowd of flower-girls by the blindfolded young men that they were going to make the most of the two best ingenue parts in the Savoy Operas. Gilbert, in a particularly happy mood, made them two pert, attractive little baggages with minds of their own. Tessa and Gianetta steer a refreshing course, avoiding the Victorian doldrums (insipid Mabel, elfish Yum-Yum) and the Gilbertian caricatures (whining Ruth, tasteless Katisha). "When a Merry Maiden Marries" comes off with admirable airiness and grace, and so does the romping fantasy, "'Tis a glorious thing, I ween, to be a Regular Royal Queen." The right note of plaintiveness without nagging is reached in Tessa and Gianetta's advice to their departing husbands, "It's understood you will be good, and not too gay . . . and not address a lady less than forty-five."

The Duchess and Casilda are rather dull at best, but the Duchess at the Hollis hardly possesses the domineering thick contralto of the Savoy tradition; and her account to her daughter Casilda of how she "tamed your great progenitor at last" is more kittenish than relentless as it should be. As for Casilda, she sings too noisily, particularly in "There Was a Time," a delicious bit of Victorian sentimentalism that should be dealt with tenderly.

Mr. Frank Moulin, who quipped so brilliantly last week as the Lord High Executioner, found the part of the Duke less suited to his kind of clowning. He came rather lamely "From the Sunny Spanish Shore," returned more impressively in the Second Act "With Ducal Pomp and Ducal Pride," and at length struck the right note of whimsical sedateness as the "Courtier grave and serious."

William Danforth, lately stopped from the Mikado's throne, strode about in the mock-gloom of a black cape and hat, hissing patter-songs between his teeth, or bellowing out a sinister line a quartertone flat, to make your blood run cold.