Long white gloves, high silk hats, flashlight photographers, society reporters, scribbling furtively on folds of paper, critics mooning in their aisle seatsthese adjuncts of the advent of another season of grand opera were this week on view in the opera houses of Chicago and Manhattan. In Philadelphia they had appeared the week before.
Philadelphia. Last spring when the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company disbanded (TIME, April 21), there was given an obituary luncheon at which Conductor Alexander Smallens, now assistant leader of the Philadelphia Orchestra, called opera in Philadelphia a bataille des dames (battle...