Regular Features . . REPORTS ON THEATRE DESIGN AS THEATRE_ The two most significant events in theatre technology of the fall season in New York (up to press time of November 10) were the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera house with its sumptuously endowed stage, and the series of 9 EVENINGS: THEATRE AND ENGINEERING, which Happened at the 69th Regiment Armory October 13 to 23. Both were triumphs of technology over theatre--with corresponding satisfactions. The 9 Evenings no doubt aimed at the kind of outraged reception that the famous Armory Art Show received there in 1913. They pretty much got it. The Metropolitan Opera was also greeted with outrage on occasion. First for the visual mixture of the new house itself with the opening production--the specially commissioned Samuel Barber-Franco Zeffirelli opera Antony and Cleopatra. Second was a scandalized snicker that followed the mechanical difficulties when the stage turntable failed to function and one of the stage elevators stuck (above the stage) causing the cancellation of one performance. c. Ray Smith Third was the cry that went up when late-comers were locked out for one hour and twenty-five minutes, that is until a first intermission, as training for audiences to be punctual. The production of Antony, for which director-designer Zeffirelli also clumsily scrambled around Shakespeare's text, was one of the most elaborate uses of theatre design and technology since Inigo Jones's day. So dazzling were the carryings-on on stage that one could hardly tell if Barber had produced shimmering music or not. Zeffirelli based his design on a pyramid motif and constructed drops of tubular pipes vaguely suggesting the reeds of the Nile. As described by Joseph Volpe, the Met's new master mechanic, pyramidal clouds and other drops were constructed of aluminum tubing and of ethafoam tubing hung on ratlines. Step units were of steel pipe. The "Senate Scene" from Act I of Barbers Antony and Cleopatra, directed and designed by Franco Zeffirelli. Photo: Louis Melancon