San Francisco has always been an opera city since the old Tivoli days when beer was the chief attraction and seats sold for 75¢ top. On a rainy night last week San Franciscans began another opera season.
Instead of an Italian melodrama crammed with deaths, the San Francisco opera opened with Smetana's folksy Bartered Bride. Soprano Elisabeth Rethberg sang clearly and cavorted like any plump Czech peasant girl. In the pit was bald old Alfred Hertz who conducted The Bartered Bride at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House before he went West to take over...
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