Moody Squiggles

San Francisco, which takes its opera between other cities' seasons so as to get good singers, was last week in the middle of its ninth annual opera fortnight. It heard an ably done Aida (Soprano Elisabeth Rethberg, Russian Contralto Faina Petrova, Baritone Giuseppe Danise, Tenor Giovanni Martinelli, a bespectacled stage band in the triumph scene) ; a Lohengrin (Tenor Gotthelf Pistor, Soprano Maria Mueller, Baritone Friedrich Schorr, all fresh from Bayreuth) ; Andrea Chenier and Madama Butterfly. There were to be seven more performances, all sung by a distinguished troupe but none of them novelties. Most memorable event of the season, about which San Franciscans were still talking and laughing, had come with the opening night. Marouf, by French Composer Henri Benjamin Rabaud, was the opera. Opulently oriental, with an Aladdin-like plot out of the Arabian Nights, it was first performed in Paris in 1914, is pleasantly modern, sleekly and gracefully orchestrated. In it sang tall, reedy-voiced Soprano Yvonne Gall and Tenor Mario Chamlee who used to be Archer Ragland Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley), born 39 years ago in Los Angeles. Charming but not brilliant, Marouf might have caused no great stir had not the cover of its program been drawn by one of California's authentic Personages, Tennis Player Helen Wills Moody.

What did the funny squiggles (see cut) mean? wondered the audience. Did the up-&-down strokes represent the music going up & down? Said a note on the program: "The cover represents an artist's earnest experiment in translating into line drawing the equivalent of a response to music. . . . The artistic success must be left to the critical judgment of the musician, the artist and the interested audience." Amused at her cover's reception, Mrs. Moody said that she had been given a set of phonograph records from Marouf, had played them in her spare time and jotted down "impressions." Business Manager Wilfred Davis of the Opera selected the final designs.

"The drawing," said she, "is certainly not an attempt at technical analysis of music. . . . Don't let anyone think that I am too serious with this thought. What I submitted was merely an abstract thought. I believe that everyone has the right to express an individual idea."

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