Long white gloves, high silk hats, flashlight photographers, society reporters, scribbling furtively on folds of paper, critics mooning in their aisle seats—these 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 of ladies). The time had come, he said, when every lady with a lot of money felt that she should have her own opera company. His reference was to three local troupes which had announced ambitious schedules at the beginning of the season: the Pennsylvania Grand Opera Company (president: Mrs. Houston Dunn) which succumbed with the stock-market crash in the fall; his own Philadelphia Civic Opera Company (president: Mrs. Henry M. Tracy) which had bravely survived six seasons; the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company (president: Mrs. Joseph Leidy).
Left alone in the field (save for the visits of Manhattan's Metropolitan) the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company opened its season with a sold-out house and a smart list of boxholders which included names like Curtis, Biddle, Lorimer and Pianist Josef Hofmann. Aïda was the first opera with Italian Tenor Aroldo Lindi, Soprano Anne Roselle, Contralto Cyrena Van Gordon, Conductor Emil Mlynarski. Le Jongleur de Notre Dame followed last week with Mary Garden again casting her curious spell as the pale, questioning little juggler, Baritone Chief Caupolican (a South American Indian) as the kindly, understanding monk, able Eugene Goossens conducting. Both performances were consistently excellent. Minor parts were capably taken, the orchestra played smoothly, sets were effective, the lighting pleased. These essentials to good opera were in large measure the contribution of another Philadelphia woman, comparatively new to the operatic fray. The Philadelphia Grand Opera Company last year became affiliated with the Curtis Institute of Music, secured the backing of a $12,500,000 endowment fund and the interest of Mary Louise Curtis Bok, wife of the late editor Edward William Bok of Ladies' Home Journal, daughter of Publisher Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis. Great pet of Mrs. Bok is the Curtis Institute given in memory of her mother. Its opera students needed an outlet for their new-trained talents. Philadelphia needed one really first-rate resident opera company. In collaboration with Mrs. Leidy, still active president, Mrs. William C. Hammer, artistic director, and William C. Hammer, business manager, Mrs. Bok now dictates the opera's policies, approves the repertoire and casts, signs the checks.