Chicago's Worst

Last Saturday night the curtain at the Chicago Opera House fell on what was undoubtedly the worst season of opera that a resident Chicago company has ever presented. For a pageant finale there was Respighi's new La Fiamma, with massive choruses, lavish orchestration, an impassioned, queer-grained heroine who is burned at the stake for indulging in witchcraft. The heroine was Soprano Rosa Raisa, bluff in acting, uneven in voice. But Raisa, a relic of Samuel Insull's opera days, was an ace compared with the majority of the singers who have appeared in Chicago this season.* La Fiamma was by & large the City Opera Company's most creditable production. It was not enough to make subscribers forget what they had sat through before, or to wipe away the general stigma which has attached itself to Chicago's opera.

Manager Paul Longone staged a five-week season with $175,000, a pittance compared with pre-Depression days when the Insull company spent millions. But economy, observers felt, was an insufficient excuse for what Longone offered. He promised first-rate opera, put on such ragged performances that it was often hard to believe that there had been any rehearsals. He presented young singers who were blatantly unqualified for the roles they were given. Blonde Jean Tennyson, wife of President Camille Dreyfus of Celanese Corp. of America, starred in Pagliacci, La Boheme, Faust. Rosalinda Morini, a local coloratura who sings off pitch, was the heroine in Traviata. One Mildred Gerber, a protegee of Alderman Jacob M. Arvey, trilled hesitantly as Lucia di Lammermoor. Though Chicago opera audiences are notably easy to please, there was vigorous hissing when Tenor John Pane-Gasser appeared in Il Trovatore, uncontrolled laughter at Virginia Pemberton who as Micaela in Carmen gave the season's most inept performance. In Carmen Manager Longone interpolated a floor show by the popular dance team, Veloz & Yolanda. His innovation had its box-office effect but purists shuddered at his taste, as they did again when he permitted a Buick sedan to be exhibited in the opera house foyer. When Conductor Gennaro Papi resigned (TIME, Dec. 2), more than Longone's taste was questioned. Longone claimed that Papi was either unable or unwilling to conduct La Fiamma, that he was prejudiced against U. S. singers. Papi retaliated with the blazing charge that Longone permitted singers of indifferent merit to buy their way into his opera.

While Longone was irritably defending himself, one Doris Maud Underwood, plump Indian soprano who bills herself as Princess Pakanli of the Chickasaw tribe, brought suit against him for $30,000, claiming that he encouraged her to prepare for leading roles, then refused to let her perform unless she paid him a guarantee of $5,500. Similar rumors kept popping. Critic Glenn Dillard Gunn of the Herald & Examiner openly asserted that Ethel Leginska had paid for the production of her opera, Gale. Soprano Lola Fletcher admitted privately that she had to pay $125 to sing Musetta in La Boheme.

The situation reached its boiling point when it became known that Mildred Gerber's sponsor was Alderman Arvey, chairman of the Council Finance Committee and chief booster of a $15,000 grant which the Opera hopes to get from the city, in return for a radio program supposed to glorify Chicago and its music. Such a gift was badly needed to meet Longone's payroll but the thought of it infuriated many a Chicago taxpayer. Most newspapers were wary with their comments, partly because Mayor Edward J. Kelly is one of Longone's backers and the Opera's honorary president. Critic Herman Devries went so far as to say in the American: "The city of Chicago may well be proud of its own opera during the Paul Longone regime. . . ."

But out came the News with: "The affair is a scandal and a disgrace!"

*Exceptions were the few imported singers with whom Manager Paul Longone bolstered his list. The best of these: Lotte Lehmann, Greta Stueckgold, Edith Mason, John Charles Thomas, Ezio Pinza.

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