Music: Opera in San Francisco

Last year San Francisco made opera history by building the finest U. S. opera house. Operagoing has now become the height of fashion in San Francisco. Impresario Gaetano Merola no longer has to trot about town looking for patrons; great singers are proud to get invitations to sing with his company. Last week another San Francisco opera season began. The twelve subscription performances were sold out in advance.

First night was Samson & Delilah, in which Delilah (Contralto Cyrena Van Gordon) was bigger than Samson (Tenor Giovanni Martinelli) who got most of his effects by singing at the top of his lungs and clinging to his high notes until he was purple in the face. But these were minor discrepancies in an otherwise impressive performance. Martinelli tore down the temple with a fine display of frenzy. Cyrena Van Gordon is as handsome as she is big and she sang “My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice” with such warm rich tones that the audience gave her ten curtain calls. The chorus and the ballet were San Francisco’s own, trained in the opera school (the only one in the U. S. besides the Metropolitan’s) which Merola started last winter when it seemed certain that opera in San Francisco would be permanent and paying (TIME, Feb. 13).

For the rest of the season there are many big names: Lucrezia Bori, Gertrude Kappel, Claudia Muzio, Paul Althouse, Dino Borgioli, Richard Bonelli, Ezio Pinza, Lawrence Tibbett. Baritone Tib-bett will stain himself brown and enact Emperor Jones, his Metropolitan success of last season. Tristan und Isolde will bring solid old Alfred Hertz back into the spotlight this week. Issai Dobrowen, the flashy young Russian who leads the San Francisco Symphony, went to the hospital last week with a nervous breakdown and Hertz, his predecessor whom the symphony directors ousted, was commandeered to take his place.