Kansan's Comeback

The scene was Rigoletto's courtyard, just as it was eight years ago at New York's Metropolitan Opera House. The same girl stood in the wings, calmly waiting her cue. But the cue last week, as it did eight years ago, meant more than just running on stage and singing a duet with the hunchbacked jester.

The first time it meant the opera debut of Marion Talley, so sensationalized by the Press that headline readers were led to believe that this Kansas City telegrapher's daughter must be the world's greatest singer. Three years later when the bubble was thoroughly pricked and Marion Talley was richer by half a million dollars, she suddenly announced that she was through with singing. This time she was attempting a come back with the newborn Chicago Grand Opera (TIME, Jan. 1). And if there were no mounted police to drive off the crowds who could not get in to hear her, no delegation from Kansas City, no silver plaques, she at least established herself as a better singer, a surer actress.

For the past four years Marion Talley has lived a life of mystery, in sharp contrast to her early days at the Metropolitan when every Talley doing was stretched into a human interest story. When she retired she announced that she was going to farm and farm she did. She bought 1,600 wheat acres in Colby, Kans., made them pay until last summer when the crops were blown out of the ground. The 3,000 bushels left she was shrewd enough to save for seed, got $1 per bushel.

But wheat has not been all. Marion Talley has been studying as she never studied before. She went to Europe. In Germany she met Pianist Michael Raucheisen, married him. He left because, he said, she always had her mother and her sister Florence with her. Marion travels without the family now. She bought them a house in Kansas City last summer, left them there. She returned to New York, bought herself a La Salle limousine, Bergdorf-Goodman clothes, bobbed her hair, took to roller-skating in Central Park. She used to be plump, phlegmatic, frownish about makeup, proud of being oldfashioned. At 27 she is 15 pounds thinner than at 19. Her looks, too, have improved.

After the Chicago performance she seemed almost excited about being back in opera. The audience was almost excited too. It had not expected as much as the New Yorkers did eight years ago and it got more. The light, appealing voice seemed better controlled. The Caro Nome with its trills and top was expertly sung. The acting had some meaning. When newsmen asked Marion Talley to explain the change she answered: "Madame Schumann-Heink used to tell me I needed to live and to suffer. Well, maybe I have. That was seven years ago. . . ."

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