Breaking In

A little girl, 17 years old, a fledgling of Kansas City, Mo., is preparing to beat at the doors of New York's Metropolitan Opera House next fall. A rare opportunity to make an early bid for glamor and fame has descended upon this young lyric soprano, one Miss Marion Talley, in the form of a request from Gatti-Casazza "to prepare two suitable roles, with the view to a possible engagement."

Miss Talley first came to the attention of the musical Powers more than a year ago, when she sang before Gatti, Bodanzky and Moranzoni. Then she became a pupil of Prima Donna Marcella Sembrich, and is now almost ready to test her lyric pinions.

A recently published letter from Mr. Otto H. Kahn, banker and musical patron, to Mr. J. A. Harzfeld, one of Marion's Kansas City backers, vividly demonstrates the unusual qualities of the girl's chances in her forthcoming bucking of the Big Line:

"I am looking forward with great interest and high expectations to the career of that remarkably gifted American girl, and feel certain her achievements will be a cause of just pride to your city and of much gratification to yourself and those who, with you, recognized early her great artistic potentialities, and enabled her to cultivate and develop them under wise guidance and to the best purpose."

Interesting, nay even golden, forecasts--but have Messrs. Kahn and Harzfeld made any attempt to weigh or measure the buckets of true tears and tanks of temperamental tears, which Miss Talley must perforce swim through, before stardom can really be achieved, if at all?