Tourists

Met. A special train carrying eleven carloads of garrulous, good-humored people chuffed out of Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station one morning this week. The Metropolitan Opera Company, its future still undecided,* was on the way to Baltimore. There pretty Lily Pons would exhibit her clear, high trills in Rigpletto. Graceful Lucrezia Bori would sing in Pagliacci. Baritone Lawrence Tibbett would stain himself brown and enact Emperor Jones. The Company's famed Wagnerians would sing in Tristan und Isolde.

Jules Judels, the slight, frizzly-haired man who for 41 years has managed the Metropolitan tours, had sent ahead eight baggage cars full of scenery. But Jules Judels' job this year is not so big as usual. Of the several cities which have imported the Metropolitan in the past, Baltimore alone could this year raise the necessary guarantee.

Paderewski. The high-backed, red-seated chair without which Pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski refuses to play was folded up in Chicago last week, set up again in Milwaukee, then packed for Ann Arbor. This year the 72-year-old pianist is giving concerts as fast as he can travel. Unlike other years, he will not stop to rest at his ranch in Paso Robles, Calif. His private car is hitched to one fast train after another. When it stands sidetracked, trainmen still gather around it to hear the old man tirelessly practice his trills and runs, sound out his smashing chords.

Quartet. The London String Quartet gave a concert in Manhattan last week and set out for the Pacific Coast where for two months it will be sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. most generous of chamber music patrons. The Londoners play bridge on the train when they can find a fourth; long John Pennington (first violinist) refuses to play. Because constant rehearsing and traveling force them to see so much of one another they try to stay at different hotels.

Menuhin. Plenty of ice-cream was 16-year-old Yehudi Menuhin's reward this week for a Manhattan recital superbly played. With his $60,000 Stradivarius, Yehudi goes from Manhattan to play at Smith College. He wears long pants now, made for him by the tailor to the Italian Crown Prince. But he is still carefully protected from alluring young girls. His mother and his two plump little sisters, Hepzibah and Yaltah, will go with him to Northampton. Both girls play the piano expertly but Mother Menuhin decided several years ago that one prodigy in the family was enough.

Pons. Next week Lily Pons begins a concert tour with first stops at Buffalo, Harrisburg, Washington. Ita, the seven-month-old jaguar which she brought last autumn from South America, will travel with her. Ita rests most comfortably on cold, smooth steel. On the train he will sleep in the washbasin. In hotels he prefers the inside of a grand piano.

Foreign Records

Many a catchy tune exported from Europe on phonograph records becomes in time a best-seller in the U. S. "Goodnight, Sweetheart," which Ray Noble wrote in London, ran such a course.* So did "Parlez-moi d'Amour," the fragile song which Lucienne Boyer introduced in Paris, and "Zwei Herzen im 3/4 Takt" which plump, be-monocled Richard Tauber introduced in Berlin.

This winter smart Londoners danced to "What More Can I Ask?", a Ray Noble tune even smoother and more insinuating than the overworked "Goodnight, Sweetheart." Ray Noble and his orchestra have made a record of it, letting fiddles and saxophones carry the melody against an elaborate syncopation. Leslie Hutchinson, a Negro whose records are a rage in London, sings the same song to his own free & easy piano accompaniment.

In Paris Lucienne Boyer has had several new songs to keep her night club customers buying champagne far into the morning. The best ones are "Ne dis pas toujours," "Quand tu seras dans mes bras" and "Ballade" which Yvette Guilbert could have sung with no more finesse.

Greta Keller, a deep-voiced Viennese who like Mile Boyer brings a unique, personal quality to the simplest of songs, has made a record of "Eine kleine Reise," a song whose lyrics might not stand censoring.

In Berlin Richard Tauber has been lavishing his smooth, high notes on "Schweig, zagendes Herz!" and "Lange Jahre, bange Jahre," oldstyle operetta numbers from Franz Lehar's Der Fuerst der Berge.

Manhattan's Gramophone Shop reports three other big-selling records from abroad: a medley of Noel Coward's best-known songs which Coward took time to sing in his casual, high-pitched voice; a scene from the Savoy Follies given last summer in London in which Actress Florence Desmond does shrewd imitations of screen celebrities attending a Hollywood party; a comic take-off on any bad lieder singer done by the French comedian Betove. Most popular of the new classical importations are the Beethoven Concertos (First & Fifth) which German Pianist Artur Schnabel has made with the London Symphony.

Greta Keller, the husky-voiced Viennese who for several years has had a big record-following in the U. S., was to have been in the Fourth Little Show this winter. She arrived in Manhattan to rehearse but the show was never produced. She finally got a contract broadcasting twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. E.S.T.) for Tangee Lipstick. Five years ago singing for her supper was the farthest thing from Greta Keller's mind. She was playing the lead in the Viennese production of Broadway. A Prussian with pretty legs had one of the minor parts. Her name was Marlene Dietrich.

U. S. songs were then becoming the rage in Vienna. Greta Keller knew no English but she made up sounds which resembled it, sang to the girls in the dressing-room between acts. They jokingly gave her schillings and she bought brandy to treat them all. Several months later she was asked to sing her "English" songs at Vienna's famed Pavilion. She bought phonograph records of "Mean to Me" and "Annabelle Lee," learned to sing them by rote--to the amusement of two U. S. vandevillians who had joined the Pavilion troupe.

Joseph ("Joe") Sargent (Harvard, class of 1922) and Stuart Ross, a University of California graduate, had reached Vienna via vaudeville engagements in London and Berlin. Sargent sang while Ross played the piano. Sargent and Keller got married. The trio toured Europe, sang in cabarets, over the radio. In London where they had their greatest success, Greta Keller went daily to the talkies to perfect her English inflection.

Sargent & Ross are broadcasting for Tangee Lipstick with Greta Keller. They help give the program speed which, but for the excess of advertising comment, would make it one of the best on the air. Greta Keller has started making U. S. records. Best one so far is "Willow Weep for Me" (Brunswick). But her talent is wasted on stereotype jazz. With her warm, persuasive voice she can establish a dozen different moods. Critics have spotted her as an ideal performer for any brewery which, in the next year or so, decides to do its beer advertising with leisurely, old-fashioned melody.

* The most eloquent appeal for funds thus far was made last week by Geraldine Farrar. White-haired and chic, she appeared on the Metropolitan stage between acts at Parsifal, so roused the audience that people started to hand checks and dollar bills over the footlights. Next night Mrs. August Belmont spoke and three of her friends (Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mrs. Charles B. Alexander, Mrs. Robert Goelet) waved $1,000 checks from the Diamond Horseshoe. Contributions of $10,000, biggest individual ones so far, came from Pierre du Pont and Louis Eckstein who still hopes to be able to give his own opera this summer at Chicago's Ravinia Park. The Metropolitan received unexpected revenue lately when a jigsaw puzzle firm paid for the privilege of using photographs of famed singers, scenes from the opera.

* The first contingent of radio crooners pounced on "Goodnight, Sweetheart," quickly wore it out. Irving Berlin's "Say It Isn't So" is another instance of a song quickly done to death by radio. Last autumn it was played on an average of 100 times a day. The American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers kept count.

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