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Most of this income goes into Government bonds, for Ponselle has not only clung profitably to operatic traditions, she has never been lured by the stockmarket. The facts that her Manhattan penthouse is elaborately decorated in Renaissance style, and that she has a new Hispano-Suiza, are no real indications that she has stopped being the simple, hard-working person who sang in vaudeville. The penthouse, where she lives with Carmela, now also a Metropolitan singer, is valued by her chiefly for its long, winding terrace where she can ride her bicycle in peace. (She did her bicycle-riding on Riverside Drive until it became too conspicuous.) The Hispano-Suiza worries her because she feels it is too imposing for her to drive herself and it makes her feel slightly seasick to ride sedately inside. Spaghetti, ravioli, Italian food cooked in oil—these would be Ponselle's diet if she were not afraid of getting fat again. She is a good cook and not above doing her own marketing. Marion Talley, in her heydey, could not believe her eyes when she saw the great Ponselle coming out of a market carrying her own bundle. Mother Ponzillo was marketing one day last summer in Meriden when the proprietess of a little radio shop came out and stopped her: "Mrs. Ponzillo, come in, come in. It's Rosa!" Rosa was in London's Covent Garden, singing Traviata before the King & Queen.
First Night in Chicago
For several seasons the Metropolitan and Chicago Opera Companies have rung up their curtains simultaneously. The Metropolitan curtain is a faded, dusty gold, the house shabby in all its red plush appointments. Chicago's new house has a gaudy cinematic splendor, but it does not give Swifts, Ryersons and McCormicks the prominence that Vanderbilts and Whitneys proudly enjoy in Manhattan. Chicago socialites are almost invisible in their high-railed boxes, set in an almost straight line across the back of the house. For that reason Chicago's first-night audience had no choice this week but to concentrate on the tribulations of Floria Tosca voiced, as they have been many times before, by Soprano Claudia Muzio.
One person distinguished Chicago's opening performance from a dozen other Toscas: Jan Kiepura, new Polish tenor, as young and handsome a Cavaradossi as the Sardou story calls for. His voice sounded marvelously high and clear as he stood contentedly painting in the church, later as he threw away his life defying the evil Scarpia (Baritone Vanni-Marcoux), again as he contemplated his farewell to Tosca while waiting for his execution.