Metropolitan Prospects

An obscure California schoolteacher sat down at his desk one day last week, flicked on his pince-nez and proudly put his name to a contract which soon was advertised all over the U. S. In Manhattan a slender Irish girl of 20 bubbled to reporters: "I'm thrilled to the ears." From his murky backstage office at the Metropolitan Opera, big, bearded Giulio Gatti-Casazza had just announced his plans for next season.

The California schoolteacher was John Laurence Seymour, 41, a softspoken, nervous little man who lives with his mother in Sacramento, teaches dramatics at the State Junior College, wears gloves to keep his hands from sunburn, and composes operas. With little hope he submitted his latest effort to the Metropolitan. It was called The Eunuch. Henry Chester Tracy, a Los Angeles author, had written the libretto from a short story by Harrison Griswold Dwight (Stamboul Nights).

The Metropolitan picked John Seymour's opera for its next U. S. production and promptly renamed it In the Pasha's Garden. Gossip was that the Metropolitan judges, pessimistic about discovering a great U. S. opera, had stacked the best of the proffered scores and drawn lots. More likely, John Seymour's opera was chosen because it is brief, inexpensive to produce. It requires only one act for a pasha's wife to philander with a tenor, hide him in a chest which, thanks to a tattling eunuch, the husband orders to be buried.

For next season, probably his last, Manager Gatti has engaged a new conductor, Ettore Panizza, to replace Tullio Serafin. There will be six new singers: Tenor Dino Borgioli, German Soprano Anny Konetzni, U. S. Contraltos Kathryn Meisle and Myrtle Leonard, U. S. Sopranos Helen Jepson and Mary Elisabeth Moore. All but pretty little Mary Moore have had operatic experience. With a record of only one public performance (Baltimore. April 1933), she was engaged for five leading coloratura roles at the Metropolitan.

Mary Moore was born in West Side Manhattan, but in looks and manner she is as Irish as her ancestors. Her father, an employe of American Radiator Co., favored piano lessons but singing seemed foolish. An indulgent uncle took Mary to the opera one afternoon. After that there was no holding her back. She met the late Billy Guard, Mr. Gatti's kindly pressagent, who recommended a teacher. She had an audition early last winter. Mr. Gatti was noncommittal but he invited her to attend performances free. Her contract brought reports of an exceptionally clear voice, a range that extends to C above high C. Pretty Mary Moore commented: "It's not a very pretty note. It sounds like a mouse up in the attic."

For serious operagoers the treat next winter will be the revival of Der Rosenkavalier with Lotte Lehmann, probably the season's curtain-raiser. Seekers after the new and curious will have to travel to Cleveland or Philadelphia. In both cities Artur Rodzinski has contracted to conduct Lady Macbeth from Mtsensk, the Soviet success by Dmitri Shostakovich, in which the heroine is heckled into murder by her unhealthy bourgeois surroundings. Metropolitan box-holders who own the shabby old theatre below Times Square made additional news last week when they announced plans to mortgage the house for $600,000 in order to clean it up, modernize its equipment. Electrical engineers from New York's new Fire Prevention Bureau had found the ancient lighting system so dangerous that they threatened to withdraw the building's permit unless repairs were made. News of the heavy mortgage stilled all talk of a new Metropolitan Opera House.

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