New Operas

Massimilliano, the Court Jester, new opera by Eleanor Everest Freer* Chicago society leader, had its first performance last week in Philadelphia in the ballroom of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, under the auspices of the Philadelphia Music Club and the Philadelphia Operatic Society. The libretto by Elia Wilkinson Peattie tells the story of Massimilliano, a poor jester with a great hump for a back, who loving a great lady leaves a kiss on her hand and dies. Philadelphians liked hearing an opera in English, welcomed the efforts of Composer Freer, politely, cordially.

In Paris, L'Enfant et les Sortileges, new opera by Maurice Ravel, had its first performance at the Opera Comique. Critics were doubtful. There were strange harmonies, strange instruments--a rattle, a xylophone, a whip, a nutmeg-grater, a slide flute, a lutheal./- For the first time the Opera Comique orchestra played a fox-trot--for the dance of the Teapot and the Chinese Teacup,

New Tenor

Unheralded by front-page stories, Lauritz Melchior, Danish baritone turned tenor, made his U. S. debut last week at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, as Tannhaeuser in the first of six Wagner matinees. His performance was not flawless. He was not always faithful to pitch. His high tones, many of them, revealed all too plainly his baritone past. But on the whole he acquitted himself admirably, went in one afternoon to the head of the Metropolitan's class of availables for German tenor roles. An audience whose faith in German tenors has been badly shaken, took new hope, applauded him gratefully; saved its noisiest, most unrestrained approval for Maria Jeritza making as Elisabeth her last operatic appearance of the season.

New Ballet

"American life reduces itself essentially to violent alternations of Work and Play"--so says John Alden Carpenter, U. S. composer; so does he depict it in his new ballet, Skyscrapers, given its premiere last week at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan. Great steel skeletons point into the sky; steel-colored men, monotonously alike, pour life into them . . . Any Coney Island, with its merry-go-rounds, its sideshows, girls, sailors, street-cleaners, sandwich men, time clocks . . . No story, says Mr. Carpenter, just American life--Work and Play--"each with its own peculiar and distinctive rhythmic character"--American life for which Robert Edmund Jones designed the sets, for which Sammy Lee, famed director of Broadway revues, planned the choreography; in which jazz plays its restless, throbbing part, seems real, sincere because it does not pretend to be the basis.

Composer Carpenter is that happy combination, a businessman of artistic ability. True, he inherited the business (mill, railway and shipping supplies), but he did not drop it. He studied music at Harvard and entered his father's office. He met Elgar, pride of England, he studied under Bernhard Zielin, he composed the jazz panto-ballet Krazy Kat for the Chicago Orchestra and continued functioning as his company's vice president. Legerity, wit and polish are the chief characteristics of his music.

Return

Signor Gatti-Casazza issued an unusual invitation some months ago (TIME, April 27). He invited one of his oldest and best-humored friends, absent nine years, to return to his Metropolitan Opera.

Last week she came, stopped at the Waldorf-Astoria, as those of unquestionably established position still do. She was 65-year-old Ernestine Schumann-Heink.

During the nine years, she has delighted many a concert audience, filled many a drab Chautauqua tent with the mellow flooding radiance of her voice. She has had a long rest from the 150 opera roles which compose her repertoire--from Erda (Siegfried), from Frika (Die Walkure), from her astounding Minni in The Girl from the Golden West, wherein she resolutely pointed a gun. . . .

Last week she suffered one more contingent of stripling reporters to interview her, indulged them in their need for something picturesque:

"Nerves, nerves, nerves. They are the great trouble of the American women today. All the time they are sick. 'My ner-r-ves'. It is the excuse for everything.

"I think I know why the American women are so nervous. They smoke too much. They cannot have a tonic to stimulate them, and so they have a cigaret.

"No, no tonic! No brandy! No wine! I do not criticise people. I do not criticise even that old Volstead. But I suppose some one will come in one of these days to stop me from cooking Boston beans."

Tribute

So great a musician, so dependable and hard-working a conductor as Mr. Leopold Stokowski, inevitably finds admirers wherever he goes. Prominent among these is a certain Olga Samaroff who writes a daily music column for the New York Evening Post. Almost every day the name of Stokowski appears in her writings. But last week with her customary clarity, she paid him a series of tributes so handsome that they were quoted everywhere:

Stokowski has also contributed largely to the broadening of musical taste in the sphere of his activity by adding many new works to the existing repertory of the Philadelphia Orchestra, already a most comprehensive one.

"He is essentially one of those artists who go forward to meet the new in art without relinquishing one iota of his allegiance to the great things of the past. It seems to me that artists of just this broad vision are the ideal ones to be at the head of our great musical institutions. Stokowski's conducting of Les Noces, full of fire, vitality and conviction, was undoubtedly a deciding factor in the success of the performance.

"When an orchestral conductor has the magnetic gifts that Stokowski possesses it is easy to imagine that he might yield to a desire to hold the centre of the stage, but this has never been the case with Stokowski. He is obviously a many-sided artist, and like most great musicians he thoroughly enjoys concerted music."

Students of music remembered with interest and curiosity that Mme. Samaroff, divorced some years ago, was Stokowski's former wife.

*Composer also of The Legend of the Piper.

/-Belonging to the piano family, with four stops.