In Vienna

Few Americans have heard of Piccaver. Yet he is a great artistic success and celebrity in Europe. And he is an American. Fifteen years ago Alfred Piccaver, young possessor of a promising tenor voice, left Philadelphia and went to Europe to study. He made progress, sang in small companies, received ovations. Ten years ago he secured an engagement with the Vienna Opera, then in its glory. He made a prodigious triumph, established himself quickly as Vienna's favorite tenor. As seasons passed he strengthened his position until he became a veritable institution of the city, feted and acclaimed. The War came. Operatic things ceased to flourish, but Piccaver kept his place in popular and aristocratic favor. The U. S. declared war upon Germany; then upon Austria. And still Piccaver, an enemy alien, retained his prestige and vogue. During the after-War period he reigned a veritable King of Opera.

He reigned in conjunction with a Queen of Opera--Jeritza. This lovely lady was likewise the adored of Vienna. Gatti engaged her for New York's Metropolitan. It is said that there were negotiations about Piccaver's coming to the same institution, but that he demanded much money, reasoning that his high place in Viennese opera was secure and that the U.S. is a hard land to conquer, especially for an American. Jeritza came, and he remained the undisputed master of the upper Danube.

But Jeritza's contract with the Metropolitan allowed her to sing in Vienna during the off-season period. Jeritza returned from the amazing triumph of her first New York season, and during the closing weeks of opera in Vienna that Spring sang once more alongside of her old companion star, Piccaver. There was trouble now. The tenor held that the soprano, madly flushed with her New York success, had grown haughty and overbearing. She adopted the grand manner with the other singers, assumed dictatorship over the management of the company, called off rehearsals at her whim, delayed beginnings of performances, made the length of intermissions suit her pleasure. There were disputes between prima donna and tenor. But no open scandal.

Last Spring Jeritza returned after her second New York season, and Vienna greeted her with a tremendous ovation. Her feud with the tenor assumed larger proportions. The first excitement came when he refused to sing a performance of La Tosca with her in May. The composer, Puccini, had come to Vienna to direct his Manon Lescaut. He took a hand in the disturbance, effected a partial reconciliation between the angry singers. They appeared in La Tosca together.

But now the trouble has begun again. The soprano and the tenor have had a violent disagreement, and Piccaver has resigned his post at the Vienna Opera. The management is trying frantically to calm the stormy waters, for their opera troupe is sadly deficient in tenors, but Piccaver announces firmly that he is done, that he will come to the U. S., which he has not seen in 15 years, for a concert tour during the approaching season.

Thus, as a result of one of those loud and prolonged rows usual to opera, these States will receive in their concert halls an American who has achieved great fame on another continent and has remained practically unknown to his own countrymen.