Don Giovanni

In Spain there once lived a dissolute nobleman named Don Juan Tenorio who, a trickster of gracious ladies and trusting peasant girls, committed the supreme effrontery of inviting to sup with him the marble effigy of an elderly commandant he had killed. Eerily enough the effigy accepted, appeared stark white at the riotous banquet hall. Awfully he warned his murderer to repent. When the swaggering Juan refused he was lapped accordingly into undying flames.

This is the legend which appealed most strongly to Poet Lorenzo da Ponte when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart asked him for an operatic subject.* Da Ponte was busy at the time with commissions from Emperor Joseph II, but working furiously, inspired by snuff, Tokay and his landlady's 16-year-old daughter, he wrote the libretto for which Mozart, writing notes with the same prodigality, composed the music of the opera known as Don Giovanni.

In the U. S. Don Giovanni has been played by such famed singers as Christine Nilsson, Marcella Sembrich, Lilli Lehmann, Lillian Nordica, Emma Eames, Edouard de ReszkGe, Maurice Renaud, Victor Maurel and Antonio Scotti, who 30 years ago made his U. S. debut as the Don. Critics everywhere name it one of the world's great operas, some say the greatest. Not for 21 years, until last week, had it been given at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House.

The revival was a gala occasion. A throat affliction prevented Soprano Rosa Ponselle from appearing as Donna Anna. But Leonora Corona, pretty, fat-cheeked Texan, sang creditably if not brilliantly a role she had had only four weeks to prepare. Other interpretations were careful, unexciting. Italian Ezio Pinza made a dashing Don in brocaded breeches and wide-plumed hats, but his voice lacked the subtlety needed for Mozart's tunes.

Pompous Beniamino Gigli was better as Don Ottavio; Elisabeth Rethberg sang primly as Donna Elvira, Editha Fleischer prettily as the peasant Zerlina. Credit for a satisfying performance, however, belonged not so much to the singers as to Conductor Tullio Serafin, who gave the score a glancing, crackling charm.

Prodigy

Strange were the gifts sent to a violinist who last week gave a recital in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall. Instead of flowers his dressing room was piled high with toys. Over the footlights he received a large model airplane, numerous boxes of candy. All this was greatly to the liking of Violinist Ruggiero Ricci, 9, who had that evening played his first Eastern recital.

Ruggiero Ricci, like famed Yehudi Menuhin, 13 (TIME, Feb. 6, 1928), is a San Franciscan and a pupil of Louis Persinger. Unlike Yehudi, he is neither chubby nor Jewish, but a slender Italian. His father is Pietro Ricci, welder in a San Francisco foundry, trombonist, onetime music teacher in San Mateo and Santa Clara public schools. The family is poor, but all the children have unusual musical talent. Rosa, 13, plays the piano; Lorraine, 10, the cornet; Ruggiero, 9, and Giorgio, 7, the violin; Emma, 4, the drums and cymbals; and even Virginia, 2, sings perfectly in tune. Three years ago the Ricci children had their own little band, picked up what pennies they could in their neighborhood. About that time Father Ricci realized Ruggiero's astonishing ability and scarcely had to persuade Teacher Persinger to instruct him.

Last year when Ruggiero played publicly for the first time in San Francisco, all who heard him marveled. Early in the fall he played the Mendelssohn Concerto with the Manhattan Symphony (TIME, Oct. 28). Critics and laymen alike forgot that they had gathered for the debut concert of Conductor Henry Hadley's orchestra, spoke only of Ricci. Next day he was a celebrity. The customary human interest stories followed--"Ruggiero is a real boy despite his genius . . . likes history, lemon pie, strawberries . . . sleeps twelve hours a night, from seven until seven. . . ."

Publicity has apparently done the boy no harm. Simply, with great poise, he came on the stage last week--a tiny picture child in his Lord Fauntleroy suit, white socks, ankle-ties. Carefully he sounded his strings, began Vieuxtemps' Fantasia Appassionata, followed with Mozart's A Major Concerto, Paganini's D Major and a concluding short group. Not only does Ruggiero play trills and double stops with a master's assurance, but his tone is finished, of great purity. Some critics pronounced him greater than Yehudi Menuhin. All considered him more important than the season's other violin prodigies--Giula Bustaba, 12, of Chicago, who learned the violin's four strings by means of color: Bennie Steinberg, 12, of Baltimore; Oskar Shumsky, 12, of Philadelphia.

*Poet da Ponte went later to the U. S., was first professor of Italian at Columbia University.

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