When Maria Jeritza sings in Vienna, crowds storm the opera house, cheer her wildly, mob the stage door when the performance is over. Maria Jeritza arrived home from the U. S. in August. But her reception was chilly. After an Arkansas divorce from Baron Leopold von Popper, she had married Winfield Richard Sheehan, Hollywood cinema producer. The Catholic Press berated her roundly: “There is no room on our opera program for an artist with such an attitude toward an Austrian institution.”
Maria Jeritza then refused to sing, said: ‘”If that’s the way our countrymen feel about it, I will not embarrass them.” It took the Austrian Government to make peace. With official ceremony Maria Jeritza Sheehan last week received the Order of Knighthood, forthwith sang.
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