New Operas

Hundreds of operas are composed every year, complete with millions of separate notes, arias for sopranos and tenors, overtures, choruses, ballets, stage directions. But few of these are ever produced. Still fewer find their way into the hearts of the listening multitude and into the permanent repertoires of the great companies. Nevertheless, the industry goes on unchecked, in spite of the tears and tribulations that inevitably follow. Here follows a very partial list of hopeful efforts going on at the present time:

From Maestro Pietro Mascagni, the "one-opera-man" (TIME, July 28), now in Vienna, the Opera Comique has ordered a lyric drama based on the successful Plus Que Reine, by Henri Caen. Under the title More Than Queen, it was produced in the U. S. in 1899, with Julia Arthur playing the regal part. It is a dramatization of the career of the unfortunate Empress Josephine, willowy victim of Europe's "man of destiny." Mascagni has already set himself to work transcribing her sighs into pathetic whisperings of violins and flutes.

John Drink water, author of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Stuart, Oliver Crom well, Robert E. Lee and other dramatic histories, has completed a libretto for an opera, based on the life of Robert Burns, eternal Scots laureate poet. This screed is now in the hands of composer Ernest Austin, an Englishman, known chiefly for his colossal organ tone-poem, Pilgrim's Progress, in twelve huge parts. In the new work, Austin plans to make use of many Scotch folk-tunes, including several of the familiar melodies now associated with Burns' popular lyrics.

Maurice Ravel, Frenchman of devilish cleverness and satanic fertility, is busy putting the delights and horrors of Monte Carlo into operatic form. His libretto was written by Mme. Colette, who had laid its scene on the Cote d'Azur.

It is in Italy, however, that the opera-industry really flourishes, as always. There Maestro Zandonai has already written a four-act Legende, Maestro Giordano his new Cene Beffe, Wolf-Ferrari (composer of The Jewels of the Madonna) his La Veste di Crilo and modernist Malipiero has completed no less than three "lyrical comedies."