Music: Honored

In Providence, R. I., last week Brown University conferred upon Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the honorary degree of Doctor of Music. Said President William H. P. Faunce: “He is a distinguished virtuoso and interpreter of the music of all peoples; leader of concerts in London, Madrid, Barcelona and Warsaw, who has crossed the seas to convey to prosaic America some of his own insight into the arts in the universal language of music.” Conductor Koussevitzky speaks little English, could think of no fitting reply, instead lifted his bass violin, played eloquently Handel’s Largo, the Andante from his own concerts, made his U. S. debut as a soloist.

Reunion

In Manhattan Das Rheingold, second of the Wagner matinee cycle, was given at the Metropolitan Opera House. Thousands jammed their way through the great front doors, determined not to miss the only performance of the season of the first “Ring” opera. In through the back door went a short, dumpy old lady, in a seagoing hat and an old brown storm coat. She was Ernestine Schumann-Heink, 65 years old, appearing at the Metropolitan for the first time in nine years, 38 years* after her debut there as Erda. It was late in the opera and an audience, unused to operas with no intermission, was shuffling restlessly. Then blue light played on one corner of the darkened stage, a trap door opened, Ernestine Schumann-Heink was back. She sang the short passage allotted to her with fine full tones, nobly, magnificently. There were many murmurs when she had finished: “A great voice, a great interpreter, a great old lady. . . .”

There were curtain calls, many of them, for an exceedingly able cast; calls for the great old lady, who finally came out alone, enveloped the entire audience with a mighty grin.

Canary

Opera singers die a thousand deaths. In almost every role, the last curtain finds them sprawled across a parapet, pierced by treacherous bullets, boiled in the oil-vat of some inquisitor or crumpled upon a doorstep with their throats, their canary throats, slit from ear to ear. But in life, as everyone knows, opera singers have to be careful of their health. This last reflection was one that occurred to Beniamino Gigli, celebrated tenor, as he sat in a Detroit hotel, one night last week, staring at a piece of paper. He read:

“If Gigli wants to adorn a slab in the morgue, let him try to sing in Detroit. We will slit his canary throat.

(Signed) “TRUE SONS OF ITALY.”

The note was a copy of one which the Detroit Chief of Police had received that morning, scrawled in illegible Italian on a piece of brown paper. Policemen had met him at the station. Detectives, ranked around him, had escorted him to his hotel. Now they watched him curiously as he sat reading the epistle that might be his death warrant. He crumpled it in his pudgy fist.

“Pack opp my bags,” he said. The Gigli secretary (Amadeo Grossi) sprang to obey. The Gigli trainer (H. J. Reilly) stepped forward with a glass of water. What would the Gigli Manhattan manager (R. E. Johnston) say to this! What would the Gigli Detroit manager (Mrs. Isobel Hurst) advise him to do? Beniamino Gigli did not know, did not care. Contract or no contract, he was going back to Manhattan.

A grim police sergeant, four detectives from the bomb squad, ten patrolmen swinging their shiny clubs, and a score of agitated friends met him in Manhattan. They escorted him through the Grand Central Terminal to his limousine, where a motorcycle corps took up the task of guarding his throat. Santa Lucia! If the Camorra wanted a man, they usually got him. And was Gigli, “the World’s Greatest Tenor,” to be sacrificed to the knife of some berserk Black Hander? So ran the talk in Gigli’s apartment, where he was reunited to his wife and children.

“I fear no man,” he said, “when I am face to face with him. But, my friend, when something comes behind your back, that is something different. … If I know they are looking to cut my throat, I cannot sing like an artist. …”

Jeritza

In Worcester, Mass., last week, Maria Jeritza gave a concert. It was a success. The audience liked her. She liked the audience. Vigorous, exuberant, she hurried off the stage, prepared to catch a train. Exuberantly she bounced up, exuberantly she bounced down, turned her ankle, sprained it badly.

Later in the week she was scheduled to sing in Brooklyn. She thought of the 2,000 people who had bought their tickets. She had a foot and ankle so badly swollen that she could not get on her shoe, so sore that she could not” bear any of her weight on them.

No vigorous, exuberant prima donna swept across the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The big curtain was down tight; another makeshift drop shut off the people seated on the stage, from the strip of stage whereon the singer was to stand. At the appointed hour, the great curtain lifted, slowly, solemnly, disclosed Jeritza, there, ready, her weight on one foot in true Bernhardtian manner. Her husband, big Baron von Popper, had carried her on, propped her against the piano, left her there to give pleasure to a great audience that applauded her singing, her pluck.

*Mme. Schumann-Heink has sung before the public for 49 years.