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Musical Courier 1928-05-10: Vol 96 Iss 19, 1928
58 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
1Atlanta Delighted With the Metropolitan Opera Season
3Artistically and Financially, Performances This Year Surpass All Previous Ones—A Gala Occasion for Entire City
5ATLANTA, GA.—The Metropolitan Opera Company, of New York, gave Atlanta its annual feast of grand opera during the week of April 22, and it is the unanimous opinion of the officers of the Atlanta Music Festival Association, H. M. Atkinson, president, under whose auspices the company comes, that it was the most successful season ever presented, both from the artistic and financial sides. The members of the New York company began to arrive Sunday morning, and from then on the station was besieged by "official welcomers," friends, photographers, newspapermen, and "just admirers." Billy Guard was kept busy answering questions, and prima donnas, tenors, baritones and bassos posed smilingly for their likenesses. It is estimated that at least two thousand people met the Sunday evening train; the branch station in the residential section where they alighted was almost jammed to capacity with enthusiasts and friends, the city's fashionable elite. Monday morning the Shriners paraded; "welcome" signs were to be seen everywhere, and an air of excitement prevailed generally. Teas and dinners were being planned for the visitors as usual, and the barbecue given annually at the fashionable Druid Hills Golf Club was well under way. This has become an institution during grand opera week, and all of the principal stars attend this social event.
7Monday night opened brilliantly with L'Africaine, starring two of Atlanta's favorites, Ponselle and Gigli, so it was a foregone conclusion that the big Auditorium, seating five thousand, would be filled. Metropolitan stars who were not in the cast could be seen seated here and there in boxes, guests of Atlanta society. Ardent admirers soon spotted them, and between acts pens and pencils were kept busy autographing programs. Gigli was given such an ovation after the O Paradiso aria that he was finally compelled to repeat it. The great tenor has never been in better voice.
9Tuesday evening's audience witnessed The Barber of Seville, the first presentation of this opera ever given here by the Metropolitan. Galli-Curci, De Luca, Tokatyan, and Ezio Pinza made this a rollicking good comedy. Galli-Curci sang Home Sweet Home during the lesson scene, by request, in English, and was received with a storm of applause. She has never sung better than in this number. Pinza's interpretation of the music master was delicious.
11Wednesday was a double bill matinee—Haensel und Gretel, and Pagliacci. Many of the Atlanta school children have learned the ten principal songs from Haensel und Gretel, and thousands were in the audience to greet the two children, the witch and the gingerbread girls and boys. The heavenly vision of the angels made the most tremendous impression. The stars of the afternoon, Editha Fleischer (Haensel), Queen Mario (Gretel), and Dorothee Manski (the witch) were all taken to one of the schools the next morning to hear the children sing the choruses from the opera. Such excitement on the part of the children you never saw! Real opera singers come to hear them!
13Pagliacci, featuring Bori, Martinelli and Tibbett, was counted by many to be the greatest performance of this work ever seen here, both vocally and dramatically.
15Rigoletto is one of Atlanta's favorites, and with DeLuca, Marion Talley and Gigli singing, drew one of the largest and most enthusiastic audiences of the season. DeLuca's Rigoletto was the finest piece of dramatic work of the evening, and he poured all of this feeling into his songs, through those marvelous tones that come forth with such clearness and strength. The famous quartet had to be repeated—it always does in Atlanta—but it was Marion Talley who received the ovation of the evening and of the week. A burst of spontaneous applause followed the Caro Nome aria, and the opera was literally stopped. Again and again she came out and bowed, and again and again the orchestra attempted to continue, but was drowned out by the applause. Miss Talley did not repeat the number, and after more than a dozen curtain calls the performance was allowed to continue.
17Bellini's Norma, with Rosa Ponselle in the title role, was greeted with mixed feelings. Ponselle's admirers were of course wildly enthusiastic; others did not care for the opera, deeming the inherent value of the score insufficient to warrant such an elaborate production.
19Carmen brought a large delegation from the neighboring state of Tennessee, for Grace Moore made her Southern operatic debut as Micaela. It was unanimously agreed that Miss Moore has a splendid voice—many were agreeably surprised. Strange to say her first appearance on the stage passed unnoticed. Only when she began her song that ends in a duet with Don Jose did the audience recognize her and give her a round of applause. She received a well deserved ovation after her aria in the third act. Florence Easton, Martinelli and Tibbett sang the principal roles. It is the consensus of opinion that Tibbett has vastly improved this past year, especially in his acting.
21Die Walkuere delighted the serious students of music, and a surprisingly large crowd turned out to hear this masterpiece. Whitehill's Wotan was superb. Easton and Kirchoff, as Sieglinde and Sigmund, did splendid work.
23La Boheme, with Bori, Gigli, Scotti and Rothier singing, closed the week. The house was packed with week-end visitors, one of the most brilliant audiences of the season, for the singers are Atlanta's favorites. Enthusiastic applause followed each of the solos, and it was with genuine regret that Atlanta saw the big curtain fall on the last evening of the 1928 season. Those who had braved the fatigue of social activities and been present at all of the eight performances said it was one of the most delightfully varied list of operas and singers that Atlanta has yet had during the eighteen years that the Metropolitan has been visiting us. Especial comment was made on the splendid choruses, under the direction of Giulio Setti; of the orchestra, conducted by Bellezza, Hasselmans, and Bamboschek, and of the ballet, particularly the one given at the Carmen performance and arranged by Rosina Galli.
25Opera is the greatest event of the entire year in this section, and the thousands of music lovers from all of the neighboring states, even from Cuba, and Texas, who come to Atlanta for the week, feel they have been amply repaid by the beautiful presentations of the Metropolitan Opera Company.
27R. H.
29George Engles to Manage the National Broadcasting Concert Bureau
31To Introduce Radio Artists in Concerts—Will Move Offices to Fifth Avenue—To Continue Other Managerial Duties
33The appointment of so eminent a manager as George Engles as managing director of the National Broadcasting Concert Bureau is an indication of the advance that has been made in radio broadcasting since its beginnings a very few years ago. Those beginnings were modest enough, and the programs then given were of a character one shudders to think of today. Success has brought progress, and although no one will claim—not even the broadcasters themselves—that conditions are now perfect or ideal, they are so far better than they were within recent memory that there is reason to believe that perfection (as nearly as ever perfection is attained in human endeavor) will come before very long.
35The appointment of Mr. Engles is a step in the right direction, and indicates the serious purpose of the National Broadcasting Company, which conducts WEAF, WJZ and associated stations. Mr. Engles was manager until its discontinuance of the New York Symphony. He has managed, and still manages, Schumann-Heink, Marion Talley, Jascha Heifetz, De Gogorza, Paul Kochanski, Elena Gerhardt, Ignaz Friedman and George Barrere. He will continue to manage these artists in addition to those he now takes over for the N. B. C. Mr. Engles' offices will be removed from Steinway Hall where they now are, to 711 Fifth Avenue, where all of his managerial business will now be conducted.
37Speaking of his new duties, Mr. Engles remarked that he had his try at radio as a listener some years ago when he was president of the National Managers Association. The managers, as will be recalled, were puzzled as to what might be the effect of broadcasting on their business, and Mr. Engles decided to find out what broadcasting might mean to a plain man, as a means of determining its effect on concert engagements. So he got himself a set and had it installed in his suburban home. He claims to be a plain man, like the millions of other plain men who listen to broadcast programs. He is not a musician, and believes that his taste is about similar to that of other business men. Perhaps it is. At all events, he says he went through the sitting-up stage—listening till all hours of the night and early morning for distant stations—which he sometimes got, and with them a thrill. Most of us know that thrill!
39Mr. Engles, being a commuter as well as a radio fan, listened on the trains, back and forth to and from his office, to the remarks and comments of other commuters about broadcasting. That, he says, has been an education to him, and he has noted with a good deal of astonishment how the men gradually became educated to music and things musical. This does not mean that they do not still listen to ball games and prize fights. It means simply that they have come to the point of liking music of the best sort and are no longer willing to listen to poor programs poorly set together. In other words, as the broadcasters themselves have become educated, so has their public.
41There are about five thousand monthly appearances over the N. B. C. chain. Five thousand! Many of those who give these appearances are musical artists or organizations, and it is to introduce them to the public as concert artists—not broadcasting artists—that the National Broadcasting Concert Bureau was organized three years ago. Mr. Engles scouts the idea that broadcasting lessens public desire to go to the concert hall. He says that, on the contrary, broadcasting has made a new concert public. Having heard an attractive feature over the air, the public wants to see the feature.
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45Cleveland Orchestra Gives Orchestra Dramas in New York
47Neighborhood Playhouse Cooperates in Combined Stage and Musical Presentation of Bloch's Israel and Other Selections
49At the Manhattan Opera House on May 4, 5 and 6, the Neighborhood Playhouse, under the direction of Alice and Irene Lewisohn, in conjunction with the Cleveland Orchestra, under the direction of Nicolai Sokoloff, gave combined stage and orchestra interpretations of Bloch's symphony, Israel; Debussy's two familiar nocturnes, Nuage and Fates, and Borodin's symphonic tone picture, On the Steppes of Central Asia, followed by the Dances from Prince Igor. Special scenery had been made for the occasion and was very attractive. The scene in the Bloch symphony represented a wailing wall, enormously high and massive, approached by a sloping flag roadway and faced by the walls of (presumably) the temple. All of the first part of the symphony was interpreted as an extended lamentation, explained on the program by quotations from Isaiah, the Psalms, Job, Joel and other Old Testament writers. The music changed to embody a character of ecstasy toward the end, and there was singing behind the scenes by the following artists: Bass—Sol Friedman; sopranos—Lillie Bell Barton, Marjorie Nash, Flora Collins, Lorraine Voigt; contraltos—Isabelle Addie, Mary Broune. The whole interpretation of this symphony appeared to be suggested by the ritual of Jewish religious ceremonial, and it is reported that Bloch had something of the sort in mind when he composed the music, which is for the most part magnificent, but appears, to this writer at least, to become dull toward the close. The anticipated ecstasy does not materialize.
51The two Debussy pieces were interpreted by Michio Ito (a fawn-like creature), Martha Graham (a passing cloud form), Benjamin Zemach of The Habimah (a storm cloud), and fifteen dancers. The scenery, which represented clouds passing across mountains, was so beautiful as to evoke a burst of hearty and spontaneous applause as the public caught sight of it when the curtain was lifted. The interpretation was effective and intimately associated with the conception of the music.
53The two Borodin pieces were given as a single scene, being an encampment of a tribe of the Golden Hordes of Tartary. The actors represented the Shaman, camel boys, Russian merchants, tribesmen, women and girls of the tribe, and a blind musician. The principal interest was in
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57ETHELYNDE SMITH, soprano, who has made seven Coast to Coast tours during the past nine seasons, each of which covered most of the country in a big circle. During that period Miss Smith also made fourteen tours of the South, one recital tour of Europe, two tours of eastern Canada, and fulfilled numerous engagements in the East and Middle West on trips in between the longer tours to the Coast, which in every instance occupied three months of her time. Miss Smith is so well received everywhere she appears that reengagements invariably result.
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