Openings

In Chicago-A billowy lady whose arms were swathed in bandages of diamonds, whose bosom, ears and neck were involved with various gems, sat in a box to hear the Chicago Civic Opera open its season with Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. While it may have appeared that she was foolhardy to let herself be seen with so great a fortune glittering upon her person, a critic in the next box observed that she spent her time toying with an object which she took from her vanitv case. It was a police-whistle.

Unlike this woman, Cantain Roald Amundsen fixed his glance unswervingly upon the stage, His lean face, revealed against his companion's shirtfront, looked like the sharp and stubborn profile of a huge Norway beaver.

Vice President Charles G. Dawes sat with head bent forward. Few famed politicians can decently attend an operatic performance; if they laugh and talk, it is perceived that they care nothing for music; if they sit silent, it is supposed that they are asleep. The Vice President may have been defamed by people who did not know that, as a youth he was accounted a virtuoso on the violin; that he still solaces his bitter moods with fiddling; that he is a composer.

Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McCormick was not present. She had sprained her ankle.

Meanwhile, as a background for the social business of the evening --antics of begemmed matrons, observations of a grim explorer, dreams of a musician who is Vice President of the U.S.--the suave, characterless music dipped along, helped with all the resources of Rosa Raisa's opulent voice. Giorgio Polacco conducted.

In Manhattan. Having opened splendidly with La Gioconda (during which the spotlight played quite properly upon the boxholders instead of the stars), the Metropolitan (TIME, Nov. 2) went on with its season. Maria Jeritza as Tosca, lying in a lovely heap upon the floor of Scarpia's apartments, delivered a moving and irrelevant commentary upon love and art; Mme. A Ida (wife of Giulio Gatti-Casizza) appeared in La Boheme; Aida was given in Brooklyn.

Bori sang in Pelleas and Melisande, which is perhaps the most artistically perfect presentation in the Metropolitan's repertoire; again Jeritza, in Fedora; then the "novelty" of the opening week, a double bill consisting of Cornelius' Der Barbier von Bagdad and Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole, this latter with Lucrezia Bori; last of all Ponselle. amid that gorgeous exoticism L' Africaine.

In Fedora, Maria Jeritza was about to drain a glass of poison in the presence of the tenor hero (Giovanni Martinelli). She climbed upon a table, swayed there in tragic, shimmering loveliness. The table toppled, collapsed, spilled her into Martinelli's lap.