Metropolitan's Ball

Whether or not it was necessary to collect $300,000 from the public in order to have opera in New York next season, the Metropolitan's drive for funds had two happy results:

First, it brought forth a heroine. Lucrezia Bori, whom New Yorkers had viewed in a matter-of-fact way as a dainty, satisfactory operatic soprano, became suddenly a capable, hard-working money-raiser, speaking in her charming, broken English at opera performances, club luncheons, society dinners, signing letters of thanks even to people who sent in as little as a dollar.

Second, it splashed a gay moment of color on the drab canvas of Depression. Last week passers-by on Broadway might have thought that the season was opening at the dingy, yellow brick opera house. Cordons of police held back curious spectators. Shiny limousines rolled up, discharging richly dressed socialites. Flash-lamps flared continuously. Inside, the old theatre had changed its aspect completely. A floor had been built over the worn, red plush orchestra chairs. An improvised circle of boxes had been built under the Dia- mond Horseshoe. The scenery for La Rondine had been set up on the stage but the smart New Yorkers who crowded the opera house had no intention of sitting back and listening staidly to a Puccini per- formance. The Metropolitan was housing a ball, modeled after the balls which have occasionally been given at London's historic Covent Garden and the famed Paris Opera. The Paris Opera House during the Second Empire was the scene into which the Metropolitan had suddenly been con- verted. Mrs. August Belmont was not in the Diamond Horseshoe where she belongs. Bewigged and betrained like the Empress Eugenie she sat enthroned on the stage beside sleek Painter Boutet de Monvel who for the occasion was Napoleon III. Some 500 New Yorkers paraded the stage as titled Parisians and visiting nobility, escorted by gaily-dressed guards from New York's Seventh Regiment. The audience broke into cheers when chunky little old Maraella Sembrich came on as the Empress' mother. Grand Duchess Marie was magnificently regal as the Tsarina of Russia. Conductor Walter Damrosch, who likes to dress up, was impressively pontifical as the Abbe Franz Liszt. Jascha Heifetz was Johann Strauss, conducting the orchestra with his violin bow and fid- dling as the spirit moved him. Piano-Maker Theodore Steinway tried to impersonate bigheaded Richard Wagner. Violinist Albert Spalding caused a momentary stir when he came before the court and said: "I, Paganini, am not dead." He played none too well, and when Soprano Frieda Hempel did her old Jenny Lind act, she sang off pitch. But nobody minded, especially when Soprano Bori came forward. Soprano Bori that evening was Adelina Patti, dressed in crinoline, a wreath around her hair. "I, Adelina Patti." she said, "have a message for you from one of my much younger colleagues. Lucrezia Bori. The Metropolitan has been saved. . . . Lucrezia Bori thanks you." Well through the night the merriment went on. Royalty became democratic, went visiting around to the boxes where champagne corks kept up a steady popping. Austria's Francis Joseph (Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst) left Empress Elizabeth (Mrs. Vincent Astor) to pay his respects to Lawyer Paul Drennan Cravath, the Metropolitan's big old board chairman, who was not in costume but stayed up to the very end. Upstairs the sedate refreshment room had been transformed into a beer garden with a gambling salon leading off it. Next winter in that refreshment room, grey-haired, flat-faced Emil Katz will go on serving sandwiches and coffee as he has done since the days when his idol, Anton Seidl, was conducting at the Metropolitan. Even with the $300,000 raised, the season will be shorter than it has been for 31 years. It will not open until the night after Christmas when, experience has taught the directors, business always starts running high. In the 14 weeks to follow, the expert Wagnerian performers who saved the past season from out & out disaster will repeat their acts. Paunchy Tenor Paul Althouse, who made a Metropolitan debut 20 years ago before he was artistically mature, will rejoin the company. Last week as soon as another season was assured, Cyrena Van Gordon, onetime Chicago Opera contralto, was engaged for the Metropolitan. So was Baritone John Charles Thomas, the Pennsylvania Methodist Minister's son who after an apprenticeship in musical comedy Maytime, Apple Blossoms) has developed one of the smoothest baritone voices in the U. S.

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