Music: Ave

Giulio Gatti-Casazza, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera Company, sat in his Manhattan office last week and fingered the ends of a thousand strings. Very important strings they were, strings whose slightest twitch could set hundreds of singers warbling, fiddles bowing, brasses mooing

La Vestale, they announced at the bidding of him who held the strings, will open the season on the evening of Nov. 1. Rosa Ponselle will be the lovely Vestal to abandon the sacred fire for an earthly lover; Tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, the Warrior who dares to violate the sanctity of the Temple; Basso Ezio Pinza the Pontiff Maximus brought by the infuriated mob to condemn the guilty priestess to a living death. He will strip her of her white robe, leave it on the altar and cover her with a black one, blacker than any sin. Margarete Matzenauer will be the Goddess Vesta, she who sends her lightning bolt to rekindle the holy fire, she who herself forgives La Vestale before a marriage gay with singing and dancing.

Tosca will open the Metropolitan’s season in Philadelphia Nov. 2, with Maria Jeritza, a blonde, exuberant Tosca, to race the gauntlet of operatic emotions. Jealous first, then playful, loving completely Mario Cavaradossi, she brings him thus unwillingly into a political trap laid by Chief of Police Antonio Scotti, sleekest of nil Searpias, who wants the lady for himself. The second act will come with his melodramatic crescendoes. Tosca will surrender and Scarpia will supposedly draw up his pardon while Tosca’s hand, fumbling, despairing, will find the carving knife on a supper table. She will stab him, steal away hugger-mugger to the condemned Cavaradossi. But Scarpia will have double-crossed her as he has hundreds of performances before, will have served his rival a real execution instead of the blank cartridges promised. And Tosca, her own murder discovered, will jump once more on to the operatic parapet, sing an operatic farewell, fling herself far out of sight into a pillowed Tiber.

Lucia will open the Brooklyn season the same night, with Marion Talley the witless Lucy. Die Meistersinger will come next in Manhattan, then The Jewels of the Madonna, Martha, Faust for Saturday night and, in the afternoon, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, first revival of the season.

The season will receive ten new singers: Sopranos: Elda Vettori of St. Louis; Martha Attwood of Baltimore; Louise Lerch of Allentown (Pa.), pupil of Marcella Sembrich; Editha Fleischer, who came to the U. S. several seasons ago with the Wagnerian Opera Company; Tenors: Walter Kirchov, German, onetime member of the Berlin Royal Opera; Alfio Tedesco, Italian; Bassos: Joseph Macpherson, 25, son of a Nashville (Tenn.) clergyman, whose voice was discovered at a camp meeting; Pavel Ludikar, Czech; Ezio Pinza, Italian, famed in his own country and in South America, to make his debut the opening night; Baritone: George Cehanovsky, Russian.

There will be a new solo danseuse—Ruth Page, of Indianapolis, member once of Anna Pavlowa’s company, and hitherto notable for her dancing in John Alden Carpenter’s Birthday of the Infanta with the Chicago Opera; most important, a new conductor to strengthen further the Italian wing —Vincenzo Bellezza, Roman, to make his Metropolitan debut with The Jewels of the Madonna during the season’s first week.

So has Giulio Gatti-Casazza outlined his 19th season. An excellent impresario, Mr. Gatti was not trained to be an impresario at all, but a naval engineer, as did befit the son of Stefano Gatti-Casazza. True he tooted a bit on the clarinet, had for his idol Giuseppe Verdi, followed that comfortable figure up crooked streets, into cafes. But all that was merely recreation from such stern stuff as mathematics. The elder Gatti-Casazza had his recreation too, memories, much of it, of red-shirted days riding hard with Garibaldi into Sicily to Rome. . . . A good soldier, but not always a soldier, Stefano Gatti-Casazza came to be manager of the Municipal Theatre in Ferrara, left there to enter the Senate, passed his post on to his engineer son. Those were hard times for 23-year-old Giulio Gatti-Casazza, when to add a violinist to his company meant a day’s consideration of his budget. He stayed there five years and the Ferrara Theatre prospered. He was called to Milan, made General Manager of the Scala, brought a regime of order and economy there, where before had been utter chaos. In 1908 he was called to the Metropolitan.

Eighteen years have wrought many changes. Mr. Gatti is more portly now, his beard is grizzled, not black, but his eyes are just as intent, just as wise. The Metropolitan has changed more than the man who has directed its activities. It weathered the competition of Hammerstein’s company, the trials and vicissitudes of the War. It has built up its repertoire year by year, raised the standard of its production, come nearer than any operatic organization in the world to being financially independent.

A master achievement that, when the business of producing opera is considered A year beforehand, usually, Mr. Gatti names a new work for the following season. Immediately the technical directors must go about studying the period, its costumes, its modes. Then comes the knotty problem of choosing the cast. There must be a star to please the public—for sopranos, perhaps Jeritza, Bori, Ponselle, Galli-Curci or Talley; for tenors, Gigli, Martinelli or Johnson; for baritones, Scotti or Tibbett: perhaps a great basso, Feodor Chaliapin There must be capable people for routine roles. The chorus must have its rehearsals and the ballet under Rosina Galli must have its. There are rehearsals for scenery and lighting, not a figure on the stage, just Mr. Gatti somewhere in the dark, empty house passing judgment. There are separate ensemble rehearsals, a first stage rehearsal with only piano accompaniment, a general rehearsal, so-called dress rehearsal—the performance.

The standees will be there waiting, Mr. Gatti perhaps there with them, seeing how they like it. The boxes, most of them, will be empty and there will be great gaps in the orchestra. But by the first entr’acte the house will be full, though the people in the boxes will most of them be strangers, for the Metropolitan is traditionally rather than actually fashionable now, and box-holders rent their boxes, give them away. A few go regularly—Judge and Mrs. Elbert H. Gary, Mrs. Hamilton McK. Twombley, Mrs. E. Henry Harriman . . . Chauncey Mitchell Depew scooting out at ten o’clock. . . .

Cognoscenti complain as cognoscenti will. All is not flawless at the Metropolitan Opera House. There are many weaknesses. Excellent ensembles, a good German wing, equal to pre-War times, a wise choice of novelties to please the epicures—these are pleasant, surely, but then there exists a tendency to quantity production, to wear out the orchestra and singers: there is no French wing to speak of, no chance for the American artist. He makes no excuses, that imperturbable impresario with his thumbs in his armpits. But he knows, and others know, that for such a polyglot community there is the minimum amount of intrigue, that, as for individual singers, the world is at fault, producing less than it did once, but that he has nearly all the best obtainable. . . . The American artist? Mr. Gatti heaves a mighty sigh. He might quote a few figures, that of his 93 principals 37 are Americans, that the strength of his native wing is three times that of the German, twice that of the Italian, 33 times that of the French. But being Mr. Gatti-Casazza and little given to explanation in English, he will probably throw up his hands, say “Find me an American Caruso!” turn on his heel and go about his business, imperturbable again, dignified, the very personification of authority.

Diva

In a sea-green suit, two strands of pearls, many bangles and a slave anklet, 118 sinuous pounds of Mary Garden, Chicago diva, returned last week to the U. S. Newsgatherers ignored her wrinkles, flattered her appearance and she said goodness, yes, that was what came of going without dinners, especially gorgeous ones (“Lord, how I love good food!”); of not smoking or drinking; and of swimming daily in the Mediterranean, with no bathing suit and no company save two police dogs. She told her famed escape-from-a-shark story (TIME, Sept. 13), patted her bobbed hair and apropos of Maria Jeritza’s unviolated flaxen locks, accused unbobbed women of having “microbes.” She knew all about James John (“Gene”) Tunney’s having whipped Jack Dempsey for the world’s heavyweight boxing championship. “My boy won,” she said. “He’s an angel, and so good looking. . . . I wouldn’t mind a bit being engaged to that great big, handsome, blond boy. I saw him in Miami last winter and gave him a gold medal of the Blessed Virgin, and they tell me he carried it with him in the fight.”

At length she mentioned music. She was Chicago-bound, to sing for four weeks in a new opera, Judith, with music by Arthur Honegger, the Frenchman, and libretto by the French-Swiss M. Morax. Chicagoans pricked up their ears at this: “Compared with Judith, Salome** is only a nursery rhyme, a lullaby, and the critics had better start sharpening their pencils now!”

In Manhattan, a Bach choral prelude and Brahms’s C minor symphony issued in rapturous perfection from the gloom of old Carnegie Hall. Even a tone poem about a Prophet, in phrases and measures twisted to tortuous futurity by one Ernest Pingoud, 26-year-old Swiss with a Russian upbringing, became articulate; for in the gloom was hidden the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski. But the audience was slightly disconcerted during this notable visit. Desiring to “intensify the mystery and eloquence and beauty of the music” Conductor Stokowski had made his men invisible, with only steady little stars on their music stands. Obliged, nevertheless, to retain his own visibility, he had arranged for a spotlight directly over his head. This was what disconcerted, for it was no modest white spotlight, but a refulgent yellow sun. It shed a mighty and beatific radiance upon the waving Stokowski mane, which, grizzled by daylight, became golden, heavenly, divine. It almost seemed to Manhattan critics that M. Stokowski, in his desire to hide his orchestra for the music’s sake, had inadvertently made himself a cynosure for all the extra attention he had hoped to gain for his music. Unkind critics even charged Conductor Stokowski with “childish display,” with having contracted the David Belasco show-off virus.

In Cleveland. Conductor Nikolai Sokoloy, recipient of high praise as visiting conductor in Manhattan’s summer Stadium concerts, led the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra in a brilliant opening of the current season. Tall, dark, magnetic, he gave careful, rhythmic reading to Bach’s Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue; continued with Brahms’s First Symphony, in a full-throated interpretation; was clever, cacophonous, to suit Strauss’s Don Juan; ended with his now familiar spellbinding performance of Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun. Again the city congratulated itself on the musicianly foresight and executive powers of Adella Prentiss Hughes, first U. S. woman organizer and manager of a symphonic orchestra.

In San Francisco, Conductor Alfred Hertz led the first program of the San Francisco Symphony, chose Schumann’s “First Symphony,” Sibelius’ “Swan of Tuonela” and Respighi’s “Pines of Rome” for his first offerings. San Franciscans were well pleased, applauded especially the “Pines of Rome,” new there. A phonograph record, that of a nightingale’s song, was introduced for the first time, so far as is known, in a symphony orchestra.

*Rosa Ponselle, who came up from vaudeville, finished a $2,000 concert in Boston, met a reporter:

“Surely I don’t want to marry anyone in my own profession. . . . A fine type of businessman, or perhaps a great publisher or lawyer would do. It is time I married if I want to have a home or children. A woman must marry before 30 and 30 comes quickly.

“Yes, I must marry, but where is ‘he’ ? The man I marry must be a man whom I can trust and admire. A nonentity would never do. . . . Now, I wouldn’t think of marrying a man like Adolph Menjou. I have had so many romantic affairs with little men and I do so like great, big men. And I like them blond.” (See Mary Garden’s similar taste, next article.)

“I would be a very model wife, would never look at another man if I loved my husband and I won’t marry until I do.”

**Both plots involve the decapitation of a man by an outraged heroine. Salome, however, does not wield the ax herself, nor is her injury one of commission but of omission towards John the Baptist. Judith, on the other hand, as apocryphally related in the Old Testament, surrendered herself to the besieging Assyrian general, Holofernes; hacked off his head with his own sword when, weary, he had fallen asleep, returned from his tent to the Israelites’ camp with the head concealed under her maid’s cloak.