Opera Over Oil

As though to prove that not all is oil and Indians in Oklahoma, fortnight ago Tulsa and last week Oklahoma City brought forth some home-made opera, presented, staged and sung by native Oklahomans. Tulsa University's 83-piece Symphony Orchestra, which annually gives a series of summer concerts in a football stadium donated by Oilman William Grove Skelly, determined to present Aida. Carlo Edwards of the Metropolitan Opera, vacationing with his wife's relatives at Sand Springs, was asked to direct. Tenor Forrest Lamont of the defunct Chicago Opera (TIME, July 4, 1932) was called to sing Radames. He was the only non-Oklahoman in the cast which included a girls' chorus supplied by a high school. At the first of two performances, 6,000 Oklahomans paid $1.50 each to see Aida.

Not to be outdone, Oklahoma City's bustling Chamber of Commerce and the University of Oklahoma banded together to present Faust, with seats at 25-c-. Music lovers boasted that attendance would far outstrip Tulsa's, visioned opera as an annual event in "a Greek amphitheatre which will become the centre of cultural activity for the Southwest."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.