Without a Song

The air was full of golden promises; Europe was full of needy stars. In Milan, in Vienna and in Paris, they signed up; they all wanted to make their fame & fortune in the U.S. For singing with the official-sounding "United States Opera Company," Ottavio Scotto, a Chicago opera impresario who once managed Enrico Caruso and Claudia Muzio, offered salaries up to $1,000 a performance and first-class passage on the Queen Elizabeth.

On the high seas the 25 opera singers--some of them among Europe's best--sang a benefit for the children of dead British sailors, raised -L-1,500.

Last week in Chicago the singers wished they were back in Europe. They were nearly broke, sometimes hungry and always bewildered. Chicago's Civic Opera House, the house that Insull built, was ready for their premiere and so were they (with Puccini's Turandot). But Impresario Scotto, who had spent $45,000 to bring them over, was broke too. His angel, a Manhattan manufacturer of lubricating equipment, would put up no more money. The opening was postponed because there weren't enough funds to pay the stagehands and musicians.

At the Congress Hotel, Prima Donna Mafalda Favero of Milan's famed La Scala washed shirts for Baritone Danilo Checchi, who was stopping at another hotel. Favero pawned some of her jewelry, cried: "The first time I go to the jewelers to sell and not to buy. Maybe I get a mask and gun and go out Chicago style to get some money. This experience never was in the program."

Two well-to-do members of the local Italian colony took the singers into their home, fed them spaghetti, baked veal and red wine. Tenor Galliano Masini, onetime member of New York's Metropolitan Opera Company, ran around the table, punctuating his protests with bars from Tosca and Carmen. Said he: "After Caruso's death they said I was the one. Tagliavini (see below') is a good tenor but light. I am disgusted. I want to sing." The Chicago Tribune's captious Critic Claudia Cassidy interviewed Basso Nicola Rossi Lemeni by telephone, had him sing a few bars of Lamentation of a Siberian Prisoner, wrote a piece comparing him with Pinza and Chaliapin.

After two weeks' trying Scotto claimed that he had raised enough money to guarantee a week's run. Lawrence Tibbett, head of the American Guild of Musical Artists, said it was no go: Scotto would have to stick by his contract and post two weeks' salary before the 40-odd people in the U.S. chorus, all A.G.M.A. members, could participate. Sputtered Impresario Scotto: "It is to be ashamed . . . to spoil an opera season like this."

This week Scotto was still trying to raise money, but the singers had given up hope of doing any opera in the U.S. They were rehearsing a one-night benefit for themselves to pay their way home. Somebody had told them they could get passage cheap on a freight boat out of Baltimore.

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