Music: Death in the Met

It was Friday afternoon and the Metropolitan Opera House was still. In the musty old office which had been Giulio Gatti-Casazza’s sat new Manager Herbert Witherspoon, 61, clearing his desk after weeks of planning and budgeting. On Saturday he was to sail for Europe, leaving an announcement of his plans for the world to know on Monday. The last of 279 auditions was over.

New Manager Witherspoon was genial and relaxed as he talked with his aide, Edward Ziegler. He beamed when Treasurer Earle Lewis came in to report that next year’s subscriptions had exceeded his greatest expectations. “That’s grand,” said Herbert Witherspoon and crumpled suddenly to the floor, the statement of his plans clutched tightly in his hand. Hour later a hearse drove up to the shabby stage entrance, carried Herbert Wither-spoon away—dead from an attack of coronary thrombosis.

Witherspoon had been boosted for general manager by the wealthy Juilliard Musical Foundation when it gave the Metropolitan $150,000 (TIME, March iS). Witherspoon was to bring in new blood, grant the proper opportunities to young U. S. singers, whose hardships he knew from personal experience. His father, a Buffalo minister, sent him to Yale, where he majored in the glee club. He sang in concerts for 13 years until Gatti-Casazza, then serving his first season in the U. S., decided that he needed an extra bass. Witherspoon sang for eight years at the Met, retired to teach. During the hazardous season which preceded Samuel Insult’s collapse, he directed the Chicago Civic Opera.

A few hours after Herbert Witherspoon’s burial, the Metropolitan directors voted to abide by the plans he had made, hoped to elect his successor this week. The most likely candidates appeared to be Edward Ziegler or Tenor Edward Johnson.