Music: Abroad

In Paris, Mary Garden, amid scenes of “gratifying and extraordinary enthusiasm,” made her first appearance there in seven years, sang Fiora in L’slinore dei Tre Re with a voice considerably less shrill, less honed, than in her last U. S. performances. Her acting was passionate. A huge audience of French and U. S. citizens, with a sprinkling of Italians, paid 200 francs ($10.00) for their seats—the highest price ever asked for an operatic performance in Paris. ¶The Paris Grand Opera Company, it is rumored, will give for the first time in more than 30 years Rossini’s Barber of Seville for the debut of Mme. Luella Melius, U. S. coloratura soprano. Many times has M. Rouche, Director of the Opera, attempted to revive this work; on each occasion, one of the principals has fallen ill. Savoyards have murmured: “The Barber is a jinx.” So formidable is this superstition that, if the Barber is revived, M. Rotiche will insure Mme. Melius against sickness. In Vienna, Maria Jeritza declared that Tenor Piccaver, with whom she had been singing in Cavallcria Ritsticana, had sabotaged her success, stolen her thunder, seduced her applause, refused to throw her down as his role demanded. Vienna papers recalled what had happened to Maria Jeritza when another embattled tenor, Beniamino Gigli, threw her, as his role did not demand, into the footlights of the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan (TIME. Feb. 9). That such another fall, the traditional corollary of pride, might not misbecome the famed soprano, was also suggested by the press, which commented unfavorably on her irritability. In London, Covent Garden, prostituted all winter as a profitable cinema palace, a dance hall, opened its operatic season. Prince Henry sat in the Royal Box; U. S. Ambassador Houghton was there; Covent Garden regained its pride. The yearly deficits of the Covent Garden Opera Company have run as high as £70,000. De Muro

Only the Italians knew. The Carbonari, meeting in the back rooms of cigar stores, the pungent lofts of fruit-mongers, passed the whisper with glittering eye and jerking thumb; the Black

Shirts told it to the White Collars ; and from every corner of the U. S. over which the Italian flag waves, they came to stand in line at the doors of the Manhattan Opera House, wherein Bernardo de Muro, famed Italian tenor, sang last week in Trovatorc. Next day, Manhattanites of other nationalities read with astonishment of the singing of this De Muro—how his allegro was as clear as the bells of— Capri, his pianissimo tender as the mandolins of Sorrento and how the great assembly of his countrymen in the galleries, pit and loges of the old opera house rose shouting, with cries of “Ancora,” “Bravo” and “Yeah.” De Muro, they read, is known as the greatest tenor in Italy. He lives in Milan, where he sings at La Scala, owns a fine house, runs a cork factory—the biggest cork factory in Italy, for De Muro does not compromise. He was born in Sardinia, where his success with serenades was so embarrassing that his parents, people of quality, decided that it would perhaps be more becoming if he turned professional. In 1911, at the age of 28, he made his debut in the Costanzi Theatre at Rome, created a sensation which won him a three-year contract with La Scala. Now the royal families of Italy and Spain attend his concerts. When asked by pressmen why he had never sung at the Metropolitan, the cork came out of his bottle. Said he: “Because they will not pay my price.* I can sing well. I know it. I won’t pay to be heard here. By that, I mean that I will not give an agent 40% of my earnings just for an engagement at the Metropolitan.” Philadelphia and Boston, however, are scheduled to hear him. They will pay his price.

*Five for 15¢‡Also in more expensive varieties. *$2,000 a performance.