Metropolitan’s 47th

(See front cover)

One of the few U. S. pageants which survive every changing fashion took place this week in Manhattan. No preliminary folderol or new mise en scene was needed to insure its success. The order of events was essentially unchanged: a tense, gibbering line of folk waiting for admission, a battery of flashlight photographers ready to waylay bejeweled dowagers, a corps of bustling society reporters jotting down the names of people who bowed and scraped to others not really noticed since the pageant of the year before. So, as it has 46 times before, the Metropolitan Opera began a new season.

A wise impresario presents no operatic novelty on an opening night. A fashionable audience likes to come late from dinner parties, leave early for supper parties. Guilio Gatti-Casazza knows his Manhattan audiences after 23 years of sphinxlike observation. This week he gave Verdi’s Traviata for his opener, Traviata with tunes so taking that they demand no concentration from the audience, tunes that Conductor Tullio Serafin gave a new, glancing charm, that Baritone Giuseppe De Luca (a round Pere Germont) intoned with real sympathy, that Tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpi (Alfredo) for once refrained from singing piercingly to the gallery. Soprano Rosa Ponselle was the evening’s heroine. Her Lady of the Camelias, unlike her other roles, is not convention-bound. Soprano Lucrezia Bori has more of the porcelain charm in keeping with the Victorian costumes but Ponselle gave the role a dark, full-blooded warmth. Rich, sombre tones served marvelously to show her distress. Coloratura passages such as few dramatic sopranos dare undertake won her storms of applause.

Ponselle, 14 years ago, was singing four times a day in vaudeville but she was not the only singer at the Metropolitan’s 47th opening who was conspicuous for her success. Prominent in the Diamond Horseshoe sat Anna Case, daughter of a New Jersey blacksmith. Anna Case used to sing at the Metropolitan also. This evening she appeared for the first time as the wife of Director Clarence Hungerford Mackay. Inconspicuous in the orchestra sat big, shaggy, beaming Lawyer Paul Drennan Cravath, hearing his first performance as chairman instead of dapper Banker Otto Hermann Kahn.

Cicero for Maecenas-Sudden, unhinted was the announcement last week that Otto Kahn had resigned as chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Company for the perfectly logical reason that the death of Partner Mortimer L. Schiff makes it necessary for Partner Kahn to give more time to the affairs of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Talk subsided somewhat when it became known that Mr. Kahn would continue as the Opera Company’s majority stockholder, that conservative Lawyer Cravath. succeeding him as chairman, would “keep the same policies.”

The policies which Chairman Cravath means to preserve are undoubtedly these: The Board has utmost confidence in Manager Gatti-Casazza, who has complete control over artists and production, runs his house with a shrewd eye to breaking as even financially as possible. Lawyer Cravath does not pretend to the musical sophistication which is Banker Kahn’s. Mr. Kahn came from a wealthy, cultured family of German Jews. Cravath, son of an Ohio Congregationalist minister, worked his way through law school, worked hard to make his firm (Cravath. deGersdorff, Swaine & Wood) the esteemed counsel for such huge corporations as Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., International Harvester, Bethlehem Steel, Radio Corp. of America, Paramount-Publix, Baltimore & Ohio R. R.

Lawyer Cravath’s classmates at Columbia Law School called him “Cicero” because of his facial resemblance to the Roman orator. At 70, his calm, judicial expression, his enormous bulk (240 lb.. 6 ft. 4 in.) make him appear more than ever like some mighty Roman. As chairman of the Metropolitan Board, he may be less active than exquisite Banker Kahn, who used, Maecenas-like, to lavish his private time and wealth cultivating new talent, used to attend auditions, travel around Europe hearing new operas, making friends with new prima donnas. But Lawyer Cravath is likely to be more popular with the other directors and stockholders, some of whom clash with individualistic Banker Kahn.

New Singers and Operas. The Metropolitan will add seven operas and one ballet to its repertoire, present eight new singers. The operas: Jaromir Weinberger’s Schwanda du Dudelsackpfeifer, one of the most successful of modern operas abroad, full of rustic comedy and Czech folk tunes; Italo Montemezzi’s La Notte di Zoraima to be given with Rosa Ponselle; Suppe’s Donna Juanita, a light opera, with Maria Jeritza; Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra with Lawrence Tibbett; Franco Leoni’s L’Oracolo with Antonio Scotti and Lucrezia Bori; Delibes’ Lakme and Bellini’s La Sonnambula, both with the newcomer, Lily Pons. The ballet will be Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

The Metropolitan’s new singers are Swedish Soprano Gota Ljungberg, famed throughout Europe; Mezzo-soprano Marie von Essen (Mary Kent of Detroit before she went to Germany to study); Contralto Doris Doe, a native of Bar Harbor, Maine; German Tenor Max Lorenz; Italian Tenor Francesco Merli; Italian Baritone Armando Borgioli; Basso Arthur Anderson, an Ohioan who worked with Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. in Pittsburgh before he went to Italy to study; Basso Carlton Gauld of Bedford, Ind., who has sung for five years on the Riviera. Two new stage directors: German Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard and Alessandro Sanine.

Prima Donna. Two hundred years ago at a crossroads between New Haven and Hartford there stood a stone tavern which Connecticut puritans vigorously damned as a blight on their countryside. There was hard drinking there, gambling, and (it was whispered) accommodating women. Wives for leagues around dreaded the evil influence of the inn called Merry Den. The name spread from the tavern to the locality, in time shortened to Meriden, a town famed chiefly now for its silverware (International Silver Co.), shotguns (Parker Bros.), and for being the home of Rosa Ponselle.

Rosa Ponselle was Rosa Ponzillo, the third child of Beniamino Ponzillo, coal dealer from Naples. All three children were musical, like their mother. Carmela had a deep, lusty voice, earned the first money singing. Antonio (Tony) might have become a successful tenor if he had not abused his voice singing in Army camps. He settled down to drive a coal wagon for his father. Rosa at 3 used to pretend the window sill was a piano. At confirmation age Nellie Melba was her idol so she decided to take Melba for a middle name. When the priest refused to give it to her on the ground that Melba was no saint she refused to be confirmed, waited a year until the priest gave in.

At 14 she was playing in a local nickelodeon for $12 a week. Scarcely tall enough to see the screen over the battered upright piano, she rattled off loud, hectic accompaniments for villains, soft, trembling tunes for injured heroines. Occasionally from her place in the pit she would sing a song or two. Her singing got her a $50-a-week job at Mellone’s Restaurant in New Haven.

In Rosa Ponselle’s penthouse apartment a pair of blue & gold portieres hang as souvenir of the second stage of her career. They are a part of the cyclorama used by the Ponzillo sisters (Carmela & Rosa) in vaudeville. Carmela had gone to New York ahead of Rosa, worked as a cloak model and sung in a cabaret. She and Rosa were engaged for their sister act when they had no money left, no clothes except their street suits. When they arrived at the theatre for their first turn, the manager protested about their clothes. They told a cock-&-bull story about a dressmaker who had disappointed them so the manager let them go on in their shirtwaists and striped skirts, heard them bring down the house with O Sole Mio.

After three years on the Keith circuit, the sisters returned to Manhattan. Carmela determined to study seriously. William Thorner, her teacher, happened also to hear Rosa who, nothing daunted, undertook to sing the difficult Casta diva aria from Norma. Thorner interrupted her in the middle of it to call in his friend Enrico Caruso. Caruso prophesied that in two years Rosa would be singing with him. Six months later, as Rosa Ponselle, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut. Impresario Gatti-Casazza picked the name for her.

At her debut in 1918 Ponselle weighed 205 lb., moved awkwardly about the stage, sang in a big, booming voice which often lacked control. Thinner, infinitely more polished, she has progressed until now she alone at the Metropolitan is believed capable of singing the early Italian roles which only the great oldtime singers have sung successfully, roles like Norma, the priestess in La Vestale, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, operas which might never have been revived if there had not been a voice with the range and flexibility of Ponselle’s. She has still much to learn. She will never have the grace of Bori, the subtlety of Garden, the force of Jeritza. She has heavy Italian features, difficult to disguise. But her voice, critics almost without exception say, is the greatest to be heard today. It has brought her glamorous reward. Her concert earnings average $3,000 an appearance, her broadcasts $5,000 apiece.

Most of this income goes into Government bonds, for Ponselle has not only clung profitably to operatic traditions, she has never been lured by the stockmarket. The facts that her Manhattan penthouse is elaborately decorated in Renaissance style, and that she has a new Hispano-Suiza, are no real indications that she has stopped being the simple, hard-working person who sang in vaudeville. The penthouse, where she lives with Carmela, now also a Metropolitan singer, is valued by her chiefly for its long, winding terrace where she can ride her bicycle in peace. (She did her bicycle-riding on Riverside Drive until it became too conspicuous.) The Hispano-Suiza worries her because she feels it is too imposing for her to drive herself and it makes her feel slightly seasick to ride sedately inside. Spaghetti, ravioli, Italian food cooked in oil—these would be Ponselle’s diet if she were not afraid of getting fat again. She is a good cook and not above doing her own marketing. Marion Talley, in her heydey, could not believe her eyes when she saw the great Ponselle coming out of a market carrying her own bundle. Mother Ponzillo was marketing one day last summer in Meriden when the proprietess of a little radio shop came out and stopped her: “Mrs. Ponzillo, come in, come in. It’s Rosa!” Rosa was in London’s Covent Garden, singing Traviata before the King & Queen.

First Night in Chicago

For several seasons the Metropolitan and Chicago Opera Companies have rung up their curtains simultaneously. The Metropolitan curtain is a faded, dusty gold, the house shabby in all its red plush appointments. Chicago’s new house has a gaudy cinematic splendor, but it does not give Swifts, Ryersons and McCormicks the prominence that Vanderbilts and Whitneys proudly enjoy in Manhattan. Chicago socialites are almost invisible in their high-railed boxes, set in an almost straight line across the back of the house. For that reason Chicago’s first-night audience had no choice this week but to concentrate on the tribulations of Floria Tosca voiced, as they have been many times before, by Soprano Claudia Muzio.

One person distinguished Chicago’s opening performance from a dozen other Toscas: Jan Kiepura, new Polish tenor, as young and handsome a Cavaradossi as the Sardou story calls for. His voice sounded marvelously high and clear as he stood contentedly painting in the church, later as he threw away his life defying the evil Scarpia (Baritone Vanni-Marcoux), again as he contemplated his farewell to Tosca while waiting for his execution.

Qne person has been empowered this year to do more for Chicago’s opera than any singer could do. Last spring President Samuel Insull, reconciled to the fact that for years his company has needed a competent artistic director, appointed Herbert Witherspoon “Vice President in Charge of Opera,” changed Manager Herbert M. Johnson’s title to “Vice President in Charge of Business” (TIME, June 15). Herbert Witherspoon, a member of Yale’s famed class of 1895,* has a shrewd, practical understanding of U. S. audiences and methods. For ten years (1908-18) he sang basso roles at the Metropolitan Opera, since then has conducted a profitable teaching business. Vice President Witherspoon will be given good time to prove himself. His policy this season will be to strengthen the company’s Italian wing (the German wing was added to last year and the year before), to lighten the German repertoire, giving more comedy, less Wagner. Operas which will be revived or given for the first time under his regime will be Mozart’s Magic Flute, Max von Schillings’ Mona Lisa, Franco Leoni’s null Wagner’s Parsifal, Massenet’s Herodiade, Giordano’s Andrea Chenier.

Besides Jan Kiepura, a new tenor will be Italian Paolo Marion. New sopranos: Serafina Di Leo, 19-year-old daughter of a New Jersey laborer; Noel Eadie of Paisley, Scotland and the British National Opera Company; Belgian Clare Clairbert; Italians Rosetta Pampanini and Iva Pacetti; Rose Barrens, daughter of Advertising Manager John T. Barrens of the Kansas City Star, Wrilma Bonifield, Marie Buddy, Lydia Mihm and Leola Turner, the last two U. S. winners of the Chicago Civic Opera European scholarships, through which they received two years training abroad. New contraltos will be Louise Bernhardt, first-prize winner of the American Federation of Music Clubs; Helen Ornstein, another Chicago Opera Scholarship winner; Spanish Conchita Supervia, to be a guest Carmen. New baritones: Vittorio Damiani and Augusto Beuf, both Italians. New basso: Russian Sergio Benoni, who prefers the Italian version of his name.

*To which also belong Brig.-General Cornelius Vanderbilt III, Architect William Adams Delano, Governor Eugene Meyer of the Federal Reserve Board, President Mortimer Norton Buckner of the new billion-dollar National Credit Corp.. Calvin Coolidge and the late Dwight Whitney Morrow were 1895 men at Aniherst. And in 1895, Stanford graduated Herbert Clark Hoover.