Mother's Mass

To their neighbors in Philadelphia it seemed as if the Gianninis made music all the time. The father, Ferruccio, was an oldtime opera singer who could boast that he had once sung with Patti. The mother, Antoinetta, played the violin. Daughters Euphemia and Dusolina sang. Son Francis had a cello when he was big enough to wield one. Son Vittorio practiced endlessly on the piano.

Dusolina was first of the young Gianninis to reach the headlines. At 19 she was suddenly called upon to substitute for Soprano Anna Case in a Manhattan concert. Critics raved over the warm beauty of her voice, its effortless production. Dusolina made $50,000 that year (1923), went on to fresh triumphs in Italy, Germany, Austria. The Metropolitan Opera engaged her last year.

While his sister toured Europe, Vittorio was. content to stay home studying. From the Juilliard he went to Rome on the Horatio Parker Fellowship. In April 1934 Mother Giannini died, a few months be fore Vittorio had his turn at being a sensation. At the world premiere of his first opera, Lucedia, a finicky Munich audience called him before the curtain 22 times. There was a rumor that Lucedia would be put on at the Metropolitan with Dusolina singing the title role, but this has never materialized.

Vittorio wrote his first symphony as a memorial to Theodore Roosevelt. Last summer he completed a Requiem Mass for his mother. At its world premiere in Vienna last week, the performers alone would have made it notable. A chorus from the Society of the Friends of Music united with the Wiener Saengerknaben Choir to sing with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. As leading soprano, Dusolina Giannini soloed eloquently for her dead mother.

Masses are seldom applauded, but the audience including Austria's pious Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, clapped and cheered after the vigorous Hosanna, again when the work was finished.

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