The Metropolitan Opera filed a lawsuit seeking to ring down the curtain on a bebop, jazz band that calls itself the ``Metropolitan Bopera House.'' In its trademark infringement suit against the jazz quintet, the Met claimed the ``virtually identical'' name ``is likely to cause confusion, deception, mistake.'' But John Marshall, one of the founding members of the Metropolitan Bopera House, called Tuesday's lawsuit ``pretty silly, because we're no threat to them in any way. After all we're playing different kinds of music.'' Bebop is a form of improvisational swing popularized by Charlie ``Bird'' Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, said Marshall. Henry W. Lauterstein, general counsel for the Met, declined to comment further, saying he'd let court papers call the tune. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, seeks a restraining order against Metropolitan Bopera House to keep them ``from unfairly competing'' with the Met. ``After playing smoke-filled dates and struggling to assert itself in the rough jazz business, it is difficult for our group to see how we could possibly threaten the opera, which seems to feel it has exclusive rights to the word `metropolitan,''' said Marshall, a 35-year-old trumpeter from Brooklyn. The opera house also wants the Bopera House to turn over all their records, labels, advertising _ and anything else with the offending name _ for destruction. According to the lawsuit, the Metropolitan Opera has been the Metropolitan Opera since 1883 and even registered that name and ``Met'' as trademarks. The Met also sought an accounting of Metropolitan Bopera House's profits and unspecified damages for alleged ``willful and wanton, unfair competition and unfair business practices.'' The lawsuit claimed the boppers ``obviously intended to connote a connection or association'' with the Met and were stealing ``its name, good will and reputation.'' Not so, said Marshall, noting that his band, founded 100 years after the Met, took its moniker from a nickname for the Royal Roost, a popular Manhattan jazz club of the 1940s.
