(3 of 3)
Changes in the diamond horseshoe were few. It was whispered that old Mrs. Vanderbilt had done the incredible: rented her box for occasional performances. Absent was John North Willys, having transcended motor car making in Toledo to be U. S. ambassador to Poland while Mrs. Willys buys expensive art in Paris and their plump daughter travels about with her Argentine husband. Absent also was Edward Stephen Harkness, in Europe for the winter. But no one was so sincerely missed as Tom Bull, the courtly, white-haired gentleman who for 42 years took tickets at the front door, last summer died.
The Metropolitan has ten new singers Sopranos are Beatrice Belkin, lately of "Roxy's Gang"; Olga Didur, daughter of Polish Basso Adamo Didur; Parisian Coloratura Lily Pons; Myrna Sharlow, native of Jamestown, N. Dak. Mezzo sopranos: Faina Petrova of the Moscow Art Theater, Maria Ranzow of Vienna. Tenors: Georges Thill of the Paris Opera; Hans Clemens of Berlin. Baritones Claudio Frigerio, native of Paterson, N. J., trained abroad. Basso: Ivar Andresen, famed throughout Europe for his Wagner.
Operas new to the list are Deems Taylor's Peter Ibbetson (TIME, July 28), Felice Lattuada's Preziose Ridicole, Moussorgsky's unfinished Fair at Sorotchinsk, Franz von Suppé's Boccaccio, Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, Mascagni's Iris, Rossini's William Tell and Verdi's La Forza del Destino will be revived.
Again it is rumored that the nebulous new Metropolitan Opera House will be included in John Davison Rockefeller Jr.'s projected "Radio City" (TIME, July 7).