Music: San Carlo

Signer Fortune Gallo is not enthusiastic about music. Some people even think he cherishes a vigorous dislike for all tonal art—and especially for opera. Nevertheless, he is an efficient and successful maestro of impresario, bringing back his San Carlo Opera Company season after season with powers undiminished and spirits unabated. He may possibly hate music, but he loves his company and lives for it alone—which is perhaps all that one ought to demand of him.

The company, on the other hand, lives for music alone, and not for anything else. Particularly not for such an unessential matter as acting. It is a real Italian company. Italian singers despise acting; they “act” only when they feel their voices going back on them, and do it only to distract attention from their vocal. weaknesses.

But critics have other ideas and make other demands. Schooled in Wagnerian traditions, they want action, and plenty of it.

All these truths were demonstrated afresh during the first week of the San Carlo season at the Jolson Theatre in Manhattan. Gallo provided the stuff that was expected of him, including Rigoletto, Tosca, La Traviata, Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci. Consequently, there was a stiletto scene on the stage almost every night. But the performers’ dagger-technique was sadly wanting in fire and dash. Manipulation of throat lozenges evidently was considered of superior importance to the handling of cold steel.

Writing of Tosca, Deems Taylor, famed critic, declared: “This performance suffered chiefly from a hearty disinclination on the part of the singers to do more than sing. Mr. Franchetti kept the tempo satisfactorily vigorous, but his baton had unfortunately no control over the histrionic part of the performance. Everyone on the stage took plenty of time in moving about and husbanded all his energies for the high notes. The passionate transports of Mario and Tosca were about as exciting to watch as a slow-motion picture of a wrestling match.”

There were two compensations for lovers of brilliance and movement. First, the costumes: Anne Roselle, as Tosca, for instance, appeared in the first act in a chrome orange satin skirt and bodice, a purple velvet jacket and hat, a bunch of crimson roses tied with baby-blue ribbon. Second, the Russian ballet divertissements which lent touches of exotic sprightliness at the conclusion of the evenings. The agonies of Tosca were thus relieved by Rimsky-Korsakov’s sinuous Siamese Dance.