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Men seldom reap ease by changing their professions. To command an Italian man-of-war would have been a sinecure compared to the business that occupies him now— a business that involves 80 principal artists, a chorus of nearly 300, an orchestra of 120, 12 assistant conductors, a ballet of 80 and 700 miscellaneous stagehands, ticket takers, officeworkers, wire-pullers. Each season 4 millions is taken in by the box office. Each season Manager Gatti-Casazza goes to probe in Europe for new operas, new singers. It was about some of these that he read so sonorously to the pressmen while kindly Mr. William Guard, interpreter, translated his words, sentence by sentence.
"The Metropolitan Opera House will open on Monday evening, Nov. 2, with a performance of Ponchielli's La Gioconda with Rosa Ponselle, Jeanne Gordon, Beniamino Gigli. . . .
"During the first week two 'novelties' will be given in a double bill LHeure Espagnole by Maurice Ravel, with Lucrezia Bori; followed by Der Barbier von Bagdad by Peter Cornelius. . . . During the second week the first Metropolitan performance will be given of Gasparo Spontini's opera, La Vestale."
The German critic popped up with a question—would there be no Wagner the opening week?
"Non," said Gatti-Casazza.
Q.—"Is the Metropolitan the greatest opera house in the world?"
A. (translated)—"I cannot say. You are the critic. You ought to know."
Q.—"Are the artists of the Metropolitan better than the artists in European opera houses?"
A.—"I don't know. They are the best available."
Q.—"Have you heard any works of importance abroad?"
A.—"I attend only to what happens here. ..."
Then the rolling voice went on to tell about certain new singers:
Lawitz Melchior, Danish tenor, six feet high. Once his voice was baritone, but like Jean de Reszke's, it grew higher-He will sing Wagnerian roles.
Carmela Ponselle, a mezzo-soprano whose vaudeville career was cut short when a critic discovered that her sister Rosa, with whom she was training in the two-a-day, had "the greatest dramatic-soprano voice in the world."
Dorothea Fisher, Pennsylvania-Dutch soprano from Allentown, Pa.
Marion Talley (TIME, Oct. 19), 18-year-old prodigy from Kansas City.
The musical reporters bustled away to tap out the ideas that had come to them while they listened to the Manager Gatti's rolling syllables. The fact that he has engaged fewer new singers than ever before is inevitable, they pointed out; he has most of the good ones now. But significant is the fact that in the thin receiving-line of operatic debutantes there are three Americans. This is Manager Gatti-Casazza's second answer to the drone of those who protest that the Metropolitan ignores native talent. His first—a remark made last year—was: "Find me an American Caruso, bring me the score of a U. S. Meistersinger."
Last week President Otto H. Kahn made his own answer in a 24-page pamphlet. Said he:
"The Metropolitan Opera Company does not believe itself called upon to lower its standards for the sake of proving its 'Americanism.'"