New Thais

In the worst U. S. opera ever produced at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House there appeared last winter a soprano so shapely, so vividly blonde that she seemed more like a transient from Hollywood than a potential singer of real grand opera. In the Pasha's Garden was such a flaccid, sterile piece, offered such feeble opportunities, that critics would only say that Helen Jepson was unusually pretty, her smallish voice agreeable (TIME. Feb. 4). Last week in Chicago Helen Jepson was put to a stiffer test as the heroine of Thais, the role long associated there with incomparable Mary Garden.

Helen Jepson coached with Garden, simulated the Garden costumes, scrupulously followed the Garden pattern as she changed from glittering courtesan to penitent nun. So far as externals went, Helen Jepson had learned her lesson well. She sang pleasantly and surely, acted more easily than did rich-voiced John Charles Thomas who has had twice her stage experience. But for many a Chicagoan the Jepson impersonation was too careful an imitation of the one her teacher gave. Jepson's good looks were beguiling but she seemed the shadow of Garden as she made her queenly entrance, shamelessly attempted to seduce the monk Athanael, defiantly exhibited her body. Helen Jepson seemed embarrassed when she dropped her chiffon draperies, although she was absurdly well covered even then. Many of the subtleties of the role escaped her. But in a simple, direct way she succeeded, at least kept the men from lagging at the bar or in the new card room.

Determination is the chief virtue which is helping Helen Jepson to climb fast in opera. She was born 29 years ago in Titusville, Pa., where her father kept a candy and hardware store combined. Her first job was as a corset-fitter in an Akron department store. Then by selling phonograph records she became converted to opera, won a scholarship at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music.

For the next ten years Helen Jepson grubbed her way. She married George Roscoe Possell, a struggling young flautist, to whom she bore a daughter as blonde as herself. To go on studying she did the family laundry, scrubbed her own floors. First real luck came year and a half ago when Paul Whiteman engaged her for a radio series. Winters have been all work but in the summers she takes time off for fishing, becomes so absorbed in surfcasting that her husband has to remind her that her business is singing.

This season will do much to prove Helen Jepson's worth. When she finished in Chicago last week, she clapped on a man's fedora (because it was "comfortable"), flew on to San Francisco to sing in Martha and La Boheme. The Metropolitan intends to boost her again this winter. There will be no more Pasha's Garden. Handsome Helen Jepson will have a chance presumably in Martha, La Boheme, Faust, Pagliacci, Tales of Hoffmann.

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