The Johnson Era

At the first postwar opening of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera last week, there were 400 standees. The opening's $15,000 box office was the highest in four years.

For white ties, ermines and orchids, it was almost like old times. Mrs. Harry Truman and daughter Mary Margaret sat in the flag-draped center box No. 35 of Thomas J. Watson, regular holder. Ex-Singer Ganna Walska generously exposed her midriff in a Lakme sort of gown and stole the show, so far as the tabloid cameramen were concerned, from Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh, 79-year-old "Tiffany's front window," who had brought a detective and chauffeur to guard her diamond tiara. Venerable Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, wearing her hair ribbon and diamond stomacher, visited Louis Sherry's public barroom for the first time in history, and spent most of the third act of Lohengrin there--a gesture acclaimed as proof of the Met's new-found democracy.

The rule of the Met's apple-cheeked, white-haired general manager Edward Johnson, after ten years, was a financial success. The era of Johnson was also, with a few reservations, a musical success. Nowhere else in the world is there better opera today.

The Met Changes Its Accent. Canadian-born Edward Johnson at 27 earned $700 a week singing Lieut. Niki in a Broadway production of Oscar Straus's A Waltz Dream. In Italy, where he went to study with Caruso's old teacher, Vincenzo Lombardi, Edward Johnson became Eduardo di Giovanni, and sang at Milan's famed La Scala. When he joined the Met in 1922, Eduardo became Edward Johnson again. As a tenor, he was considered "reliable." In May 1935 he moved from a backstage dressing room into the manager's office. The haughty 27-year era of Giulio Gatti-Casazza had ended, with yearly deficits as high as $537,000 in 1931-32. The board had shortened its season from 24 to 14 weeks, resorted to a desperate passing of the hat.

Besides the deficit, Johnson inherited a newly hired Norwegian soprano, Kirsten Flagstad, and genial Lauritz Melchior as her costar. Johnson shrewdly shifted the Met's repertory from an Italian accent to an accent on Wagner. The first year, subscriptions jumped 35%. An oil company, broadcasting Saturday matinees, and a paint company broadcasting Sunday "Auditions of the Air," gave the Met $159,443 a year from the radio. By 1940 Johnson had raised $1,100,000 to purchase the antiquated opera house. Last year the Met persuaded Governor Dewey to exempt it from its $110,000-a-year real-estate taxes.

Getting money was easier than getting--and keeping--good singers. Flagstad returned to Norway and her quisling husband in 1941. Such seasoned stars as Gladys Swarthout, Lawrence Tibbett, Grace Moore, Nino Martini and Lily Pons sang less & less frequently as they found Hollywood and radio more rewarding. Wagnerian Lauritz (Thrill of a Romance) Melchior is busier away from the Met than ever before--he has added film acting to his concert tours. This year Johnson dropped Wagner's Ring cycle for the first time since 1924.

Made in America. Johnson went scouting for promising young Americans. In ten years he signed 164, some 50 (among them Eleanor Steber, Patrice Munsel, Leonard Warren, Frances Greer) from radio auditions.

The opening-night audience saw two Met newcomers--hefty, young Swedish Tenor Torsten Ralf (who is being groomed for Melchior roles) and Germany's famed Conductor Fritz Busch. Three nights later, Tenor Jussi Bjoerling, a pouter pigeon with a songbird's voice, sang the role of the Duke in Rigoletto after a four years' wartime absence in his native Sweden (TIME, Oct. 15). A Saturday-night audience saw the Met's most promising American, 27-year-old Dorothy Kirsten, make her debut as Mimi in La Boheme.

Johnson gets impatient with people who talk about past "golden ages." Says he: "The good old days are now." Recently he looked at some photographs of opera stars of the 90's. "They wouldn't get by now," he said. "You take a 200-lb. girl, put her in a black velvet dress, and have her singing Ki-Ki-Ki-Ki--why, people would laugh. Our audience has been educated by the movies--we have to please the eye as well as the ear."

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