Moscow Marvel

Many an artist hates and fears Sovietism as inimical to Art.* Many a Pole and Jew traditionally holds Russia in deep loathing. But Conductor Leopold Stokowski of the Philadelphia Symphony is a Polish-Jewish British-born artist who visited Soviet Russia for the first time this spring, returned last week in high enthusiasm. Back in Manhattan he told newshawks about it: The Moscow Grand Opera House was "simply marvellous. I had never heard opera until I heard this finished Moscow company sing. The big thing there is the spirit; they are alive and enthusiastic, and they are singers. . . . Not only can they sing exceptionally well, but each one is an actor. They are acting all the time. The great chorus moves back and forth along the stage and never relaxes a minute, thus giving a perfect picture. Nothing I have ever heard compares with it."

Chief Soviet musical organizations, according to the Soviet fortnightly Voks (Voices), are the leaderless Moscow Persymphance ("First Symphonic Ensemble Orchestra") of some 100 musicians with occasionally an able bourgeois soloist like Pianist Carlo Zecchi, Violinists Robert Casadesus and Joseph Szigeti; the Moscow "Opera of the Workers" which aims to train proletarian singers and musicians to sing proletarian operas; and the Moscow and Leningrad State Academic Choirs. The Leningrad Choir and Orchestra lately rehearsed a performance of Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Creation. "Creation, indeed!" thought Leningrad's atheist art censors. Last week it was announced The Creation had been banned.

At Bad Homburg

Once famed as a favorite watering place of the late King Edward VII, home of the high-crowned felt hat which he popularized, Bad Homburg is today frequented mainly by very minor German ex-royalty and old British ladies. But last week the population of its hotels and pensions was being increased; tourists and music-lovers were arriving for the first definitely organized European festival of U. S. music. Under the patronage of U. S. Ambassador to Germany Frederick Moseley Sackett Jr. and the direction of Music Critic Irving Schwerke of the Paris Chicago Tribune, it was planned not only to point to the excellence of U. S. composers but (frankly) to bring visitors to Bad Homburg.

A young lady with a fine, American-sounding name, Miss Mignon Nevada, was billed to open the festival with a recital of 18th Century colonial songs. "The Program," said the Manchester Guardian, "is of considerable interest, though one misses the skyscraping if not heaven-scaling young composers who are' intent on building an independent music future for the U. S." Program of the second day was devoted to chamber music of Frederick Jacobi, Roger Sessions, Leo Sowerby and Quincy Porter. The Frankfort Radio Orchestra under Dr. Oskar Holger was to play works of Edward MacDowell, Leo Sowerby, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, William Grant Still, Howard Hanson and Carl McKinley.

?8.oi Opera

Had Samuel Insull last year decided it was time for his Chicago Civic Opera to break even financially, had he therefore charged actual cost for seats, the patron? who attended the 1930-31 season would have had to pay an average of $8.01 per seat per performance. But Mr. Insull made no such radical decision. Chicago operagoers last season paid an average admission of $3.99. Result: a deficit for the year, announced last week, of $1,079.-473-DEG6, highest in the history of the company, nearly a halfmillion' greater than the 1930 deficit. Significant was a drop of almost one-third in attendance, from 306,018 a year ago to 208,077. This decrease, explained Mr. Insull, was only partly accounted for by the fact that this season there were but 89 performances as against 101 last. Average attendance for individual performances also dropped--from 3,030 to 2,338. What Mr. Insull did not explain, but what seemed apparent, was the fact that in addition to Depression, further cause for the decrease lay in Chicagoans' continued dissatisfaction with the new opera house and its personnel (TIME, Dec !5)'

Like most opera companies, Chicago's has a long and potent list of guarantors-- 3.000 of them. This year their share soared to $625,000. The remainder is to be made up by the Chicago Music Foundation, organized two years ago by Mr. Insull with seven trustees-- to ass'ist in defraying expenses of the opera and to promote musical talent in Chicago. The Foundation holds all the common stock of 20 Wacker Drive Building Corp. (the Civic Opera Building), some of the preferred, and also various other stocks, all contributed by "public spirited citizens."

Despite this year's loss, next year's opera will continue just the same. In the same statement in which he announced the past deficit, Mr. Insull announced plans for next season, to open Nov. 2. Present on the roster was many an old favorite--Sopranos Lotte Lehman, Frida Leider, Mary McCormic, Claudia Muzio, Contralto Cyrena Van Gordon, Tenors Charles Hackett, Tito Schipa, Baritones John Charles Thomas, Vanni-Marcoux. Notably absent from the roster was the company's biggest drawing card--oldtime Mary Garden, who last April made a quiet exit from Chicago opera, signified her intention of going on tour, or perhaps playing in Manhattan. Chicagoans last week wondered whether Mary Garden's departure would increase the deficit still more next season; whether the presence of Herbert Witherspoon as Musical Director v.ould offset the absence of Chicago's Mary.

--Notably Basso Feodor Chaliapin, who stoutly refuses to sing in Soviet Russia. He is fond of Paris, where it is currently considered chic to smoke a new "Chaliapin Cigaret," especially recommended to people who wish to cultivate bass voices.

--The seven: Stanley Field, Vice President, John Foster Gilchrist of Commonwealth Edison Co., Ernest Robert Graham (architect), Samuel Insull. Samuel Insull, Jr., George F. Mitchell, Vice President Herman Waldock of Continental Illinois Bank & Trust Co.

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