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Qne person has been empowered this year to do more for Chicago's opera than any singer could do. Last spring President Samuel Insull, reconciled to the fact that for years his company has needed a competent artistic director, appointed Herbert Witherspoon "Vice President in Charge of Opera," changed Manager Herbert M. Johnson's title to "Vice President in Charge of Business" (TIME, June 15). Herbert Witherspoon, a member of Yale's famed class of 1895,* has a shrewd, practical understanding of U. S. audiences and methods. For ten years (1908-18) he sang basso roles at the Metropolitan Opera, since then has conducted a profitable teaching business. Vice President Witherspoon will be given good time to prove himself. His policy this season will be to strengthen the company's Italian wing (the German wing was added to last year and the year before), to lighten the German repertoire, giving more comedy, less Wagner. Operas which will be revived or given for the first time under his regime will be Mozart's Magic Flute, Max von Schillings' Mona Lisa, Franco Leoni's null Wagner's Parsifal, Massenet's Herodiade, Giordano's Andrea Chenier.
Besides Jan Kiepura, a new tenor will be Italian Paolo Marion. New sopranos: Serafina Di Leo, 19-year-old daughter of a New Jersey laborer; Noel Eadie of Paisley, Scotland and the British National Opera Company; Belgian Clare Clairbert; Italians Rosetta Pampanini and Iva Pacetti; Rose Barrens, daughter of Advertising Manager John T. Barrens of the Kansas City Star, Wrilma Bonifield, Marie Buddy, Lydia Mihm and Leola Turner, the last two U. S. winners of the Chicago Civic Opera European scholarships, through which they received two years training abroad. New contraltos will be Louise Bernhardt, first-prize winner of the American Federation of Music Clubs; Helen Ornstein, another Chicago Opera Scholarship winner; Spanish Conchita Supervia, to be a guest Carmen. New baritones: Vittorio Damiani and Augusto Beuf, both Italians. New basso: Russian Sergio Benoni, who prefers the Italian version of his name.
*To which also belong Brig.-General Cornelius Vanderbilt III, Architect William Adams Delano, Governor Eugene Meyer of the Federal Reserve Board, President Mortimer Norton Buckner of the new billion-dollar National Credit Corp.. Calvin Coolidge and the late Dwight Whitney Morrow were 1895 men at Aniherst. And in 1895, Stanford graduated Herbert Clark Hoover.