In Chicago

Satan loomed tall as a tower; his eye was a jewel, his voice was thunder. On the stage of the Chicago Auditorium he stood, for the first time this year. He was Feodor Chaliapin, giant Russian basso, appearing in Boito's Mefistofele. Louder than ever boomed the great voice; the mountainous man, lithe for all his bulk, stalked, the incarnation of sinister and engaging evilness upon the boards. In one of his greatest roles he outdid himself. He suited his bones to the music of his throat, executed a physical fugue; in the Brocken scene, he boiled, surged like Hell's lava; in the kermesse scene, he spun circles about the stage, silently, slowly, like Eden's snake risen from its belly. The cast supporting him had undergone changes for the better since last season: Antonia Cortis was a new, competent Faust; Claudia Muzio a tenderer Marguerite than the sprightly Edith Mason.

Thumbnail Operas

Long have composers wagged reproving fingers at the cinema, regarding it as a disorderly small boy whose grubby touch has too often smutted the dress of their lady, Music. Last week, one Josiah Zuro, Presentation Director in a Manhattan cinema theatre, pointed to a way by which composers, by casting an eye to the education of that same grimy juvenile, might better themselves, serve their, mistress to boot. "The cinema," said he, "needs opera--thumbnail opera. It needs opera to take the place of 'presentations'." Who does not know these presentations? In that uneasy ten minutes which intervenes between the showings of pictures at big cinema theatres in Manhattan, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and countless other U. S. cities, grandiose compounds of scenery, soft lights, dancing, singing, are presented. These purpose to drive home the atmosphere of the feature picture. Hero and heroine, in the film, come together at last in a canoe; in the "presentation," a baritone sings Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep with a lighthouse for backdrop. The film shows how a young society miss singes her wings; in the presentation, gauzy dancers flutter about an individual accoutred as Hell Fire. A reformed runagate finds happiness once more by his wife's side; a mixed chorus softly hums Make Me a Child Again, Just For Tonight. On the regular staff of each big cinema house is a Presentation Director whose duty it is to devise one such novelty each week. Such houses would gladly buy miniature operas with original scores, give them presentations with good orchestras, good voices, thus improving cinema programs, thus encouraging young composers. So said Josiah Zuro of Manhattan.

La Juive

At the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, was revived La Juive, Halevy's opera of medievillainy, for the first time since Caruso sang in it his last role as Eleazar, the Jew.* Gallant Giovanni Martinelli took over the part. He lifted up his manly voice, engagingly he cringed, shuddered, gnashed his teeth, implored. An accomplished actor is this Mr. Martinelli, a splendid singer; great and deserved his popularity. Whenever he sings, many good friends of his attempt to remove the roof from Mr. Gatti-Casazzi's auditorium, in which performance they are greatly assisted by the position of their seats. At the end of the opera, these friends gave Mr. Martinelli an ovation. If there were any who remembered, behind the tragic mask of Eleazar, an uglier and more famous countenance than Mr. Martinelli's, any who heard, over the notes he so excellently sang, the frail immortal singing of another throat, stopped these three years, they said nothing.

*Eleazar has a daughter, Recha, who is really the daughter of the Cardinal of Constanz. The Cardinal has burned Eleazar's children to death for being Jews, an act deeply resented by Eleazar. Despite the fact that, by the law of Constanz, it is death for a Christian to have anything sentimental to do with a Jewess, a loose young prince has an affair with Recha. When the prince is about to celebrate his wedding to a Christian lady, Recha, slighted, becomes vindictive. "He loves me; I am a Jewess; kill him!" she shouts. The Cardinal puts her and Eleazar in jail. They can become Christians and live, or die as Jews by boiling. Recha chooses death with Eleazar. They are led off. "Behold your daughter!" shouts Eleazar to the Cardinal. Plump! goes Recha into the sputtering cauldron.