In Boston

Into the Back Bay depot, Boston, last week pounded 16 special Pullman cars, 26 enormous baggage cars. From the one came forth many persons, male and female, sleepy-eyed and hungry; from the other, chairs, rocks, castles, cannons and other properties. It was the Chicago Opera Company arrived in Boston for a two-weeks' engagement. When they had rested, fed, the principals and their assistants began to give performances for enthusiastic Bostonians. La Boheme they gave with Mme. Edith Mason, Mr. Cortis; Boris Godunov with Chaliapin.

Packed was the Opera House; high were the piles of green and yellow paper in the boxoffice. But clerks surveyed these piles with mingled feelings, remembering that in Chicago is a large ledger with records that the expenditures of the Chicago Opera were, this year, about $400,000 less than its earnings.

Samuel Insull (famed Chicago public utilities man and Director of the Opera Company), back from Europe, admitted that the deficit amounted to about 80 per cent of the guarantee fund. Stanley Field, 'Chicago merchant, commented : "The losses have been great this year for several reasons." Said he:

"Mr. Insull's disciplinary methods lost to the company such singers as Galli-Curci, famed coloratura, Muratore, tenor.

"Mr. Insull has permitted the casting of mediocre stars in fat roles. Mary McCormick is given such parts as Mimi in Boheme, Nedda in Pagliacci, Marguerite in Faust--all these roles being quite beyond her.

"Edith Mason, because she is Conductor Polacco's wife, is given more performances than any other soprano.

"French and German operas are almost banished."

Bostonians, thinking not of cash or credit, continued to flock blithely to hear Mr. Insult's singers.