Insull's Artists

A sad story of opera singers and conductors turning fat pay checks into engraved stock certificates, then suddenly finding those certificates worthless and themselves out of jobs, was given to the Chicago Daily News by Emma Redell, large Baltimore-born soprano who sails this week to give 30 concerts in Russia on the invitation of the Soviet Government. Soprano Redell did not invest in Samuel Insull's utility corporations but she told a tale which made the News investigate the circumstances and whereabouts of Chicago Civic Opera artists who did. Said she: "Whenever some one would be engaged always there would be a snow-storm of literature telling them how much money they would make by investing in Mr. Insull's securities. I hadn't even signed my contract before my mail was simply flooded with Insull securities literature. . . ."

Samuel Insull did not press his stocks on opera singers quite so urgently as he did on his shirt-sleeved workers and scrubwomen. But the performers in his $20,000,000 opera house regarded him as a financial wizard who could do no wrong. The News found that the once high-priced Rosa Raisa had lost all that she had, was in straitened circumstances along with such investors as Conductor Giorgio Polacco & wife (Soprano Edith Mason), Conductors Emil Cooper. Egon Pollak. Roberto Moranzoni, Baritone Cesare Formichi, Stage Manager Otto Erhardt.

The News had Rosa Raisa "working in vaudeville" but she and her husband, Baritone Giacomo Rimini, who were once worth nearly $1,000,000 on paper, have been living at their villa near Verona, Italy, grateful for the farm products which grow on their acres, for an offer just made to them to sing at the Scala in Milan. The News neglected to report that Baritone Vanni-Marcoux came off handsomely by selling Insull stocks when they were still high, that careful old Basso Feodor Chaliapin ignored Insull's advice to invest $100,000 in Chicago utilities, bought Government bonds instead.

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