Covent Garden

Who shall define a triumph? The first night of Italian opera in London, Mme. Toti dal Monte swelled her ample bosom to emit the titular notes of Lucia di Lammermoor. Diffident boxes whacked their hands red. "A triumph," said the press next morning, meaning that Toti dal Monte had covered the work with her usual capability.

Another night, the Bow Street police station over the way from Covent Garden had a telephone call. Reserves, please; the crowd was getting burly. Twenty-five shilling seats ($6) had brought ten guineas ($50). People had heard that that stately young Viennese who sings Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, was given to temperamental outbursts.

There was not exactly an outburst, but after the Bow Street police had been ordered to bed, London critics were pleased to write : "Mme. Jeritza's performance was marked by nervousness, due to a somewhat overzealous bid for success."

Probably nothing could have been farther from the truth, in the sense that the criticism was meant. Had she not waited these years for England to get over its feeling against Austrian artists? Does she not tremble, feeling inadequate, and cross herself 90 times, before going on in the most unimportant performance?

And they went on, those London critics, to say that there was an unfavorable feeling about Jeritza's scarf over her head, instead of a hat, in the cathedral scene. Now Jeritza knows they do wear scarfs to church in Italy. And as for wearing one's hair down one's back in the second act, surely, if one has a glorious cascade of gold, why not loose it ?

Jeritza was delighted with her "triumph". In that first London audience were Nellie Melba, Florence Easton, and the veteran Jeritza had sung with so often, Antonio Scotti. Without a doubt, they knew a triumph when they heard one. Without a doubt they stopped backstage before going home. And the conductor, there was another thing: Conductor Sergio Failonig, prize pupil of Toscanini, who attempts to emulate his master by doing without the scores. He got the sack for appearing "not to have gained the confidence of the artists." They sent for Conductor Leopold Mugnone, the Neapolitan, a great favorite in London. Jeritza went off to the country to rest before Fedora. And going, she learned that their Britannic Majesties would be graciously pleased to attend her next Tosca.

Elizabeth Rethberg, also of the Metropolitan, had her London debut, too, in Aida. London Times: "The conspicuous thing in the diva's singing is its independence of the mere effect of climaxes. She leads one on from point to point through expansion of Verdi's melody."