New Magazine

Richard Wagner is often quoted as having said that the human voice is the foundation of all music. In the U. S., the human voice is more than this--it is the foundation of a great and prosperous trade. Behind the famous opera stars and song recitalists (the Rothschilds, the Astorbilts of their profession) there is a vast soviet of vocal students, church sopranos, ballad singers, cabaret songsters, 50,000 professional singers, male and female, and 250,000 assorted aspirants. Until recently the vocal industry was without a trade journal, but a fortnight ago the first issue of Singing, The Voice Magazine (Alfred Human,* Editor) appeared on the newsstands, was eagerly bought and discussed by the practitioners of the trade. Singing, its first readers found, was somewhat patchily made up. It contained an article by W. J. Henderson, critic, who pooh-poohed the popular reverence for opera stars, calling Emilio de Gogorza, concert baritone, "the supreme artist of them all." It was embellished by a page of caricatures of famed musicians, by a blurred "Art Supplement," and by a song entitled "A Memory" and beginning: Somehow I feel that thou art near, Though naught there is around, which the composer, one Rudolph Ganz, dedicated to Marguerite Namara, opera star. Odd corners of the large glazed pages were filled with practical workroom suggestions for young singers, with reviews of concerts and operas, and glib comment on vocal activities by one "Ariel." Yet, despite the fact that the first issue of any magazine is inevitably an awkward one, critics found Singing far less dull than many of the slovenly publications in which ruined musicians try to earn a living by writing about music. Vocal students bought it eagerly. Advertisers were interested.

Lost and Found

Eccentric Ethel Leginska made one of her famed disappearances last week in Evansville, Ind. She was scheduled to play at the Coliseum there before an audience of some 3,000. The evening of the concert came, almost the hour--no Leginska. It was recollected that when she left the train she had said: "I don't want to ride in your old yellow cabs. I can't play the piano tonight. I want my symphony orchestra." When she went to the hall to practice: "I don't like this old barn. I won't play the piano in this old building." Next day a note was discovered addressed to Manager S. E. MacMillen: "Dear Sam, I think I am going crazy. I cannot play tonight. I am so sorry, but I am ill."

Three days later Manager MacMillen found her in Chicago at the soda fountain of the Auditorium Hotel with her 16-year-old son, who at his mother's bidding had run away from his grandparents' home to join her there. She would never play again in public, she said. She would turn her mind to composition.

Friends spoke sorrowingly of her "nervous condition. . . . ' Less charitable observers noted that never, when slated to lead an orchestra, has Conductor Leginska been missing from her dais.

In Manhattan

A mirage that has been flickering for weeks over a whole city block on Manhattan's upper West Side, ceased flickering last week and stood motionless, a fixed vision. It has the shape of a skyscraper of the Babylo-American style. It is the home-to-be of the Metropolitan Opera Company, a towering image of efficient U. S. culture.

Just as squabbles and hair-pulling are not unknown in the Metropolitan's wings, so the course of events leading up to last week's vote in the Metropolitan board of directors was not without conflict and a tinge of acrimony. Last December Otto Hermann Kahn, chairman of the board and largest stockholder, bought the city block bounded by 56th and 57th Sts. and by 8th and 9th Aves. He did this quietly, anonymously, and proceeded to bring about the Metropolitan's vote of removal. There is a conservative faction in the producing company, stockholders with blood of deepest indigo and an inbred suspicion of change. To control this element, Mr. Kahn transfused "new blood" into the board--William Kissam Vanderbilt, Marshall Field, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and others. But there impended a split with the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, comprising the conspicuous families who built the old House 43 years ago and still own it as their social citadel. This element feared lest Distinction and Bon Ton, like old pieces of furniture left behind by the moving men, should grow dusty in the deserted edifice while in the new one--too big to be exclusive--quality rubbed shoulders with people who were merely rich. Again Mr. Kahn came to the fore. He persuaded the real estate company to let his producing company rest the decision with the present holders of parterre boxes. To these he said: "Let there be compiled, by the 121 present box-holders, a list of 150 prospective box-holders who are eligible." The split was healed. The vote went through. The vision stands.

Conductors

Otto Klemperer, seven-foot German conductor here for an engagement as guest leader of the New York Symphony, walked on the stage of Mecca Auditorium, bent his big frame to bow to a fascinated audience, turned to the orchestra. He lifted his great arms and the entire orchestra fell under the shadow of his wings, very capable wings that have sheltered most of the prominent orchestras of Europe. New Yorkers, who like to see as well as hear, watched him fascinated, saw him hunch his great head down between his shoulders, pick with his long fingers short staccatos from the very heart of the orchestra; in a passage for strings saw him turn his back on half his band, scrunch himself down to a miserly six and a half feet and, hair waving, fly at his violins, draw unfathomable" strength from their very hearts. Musicians sat with eyes closed, contented and appreciative of his reading of Haydn's Symphony in C minor, Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony and Beethoven's Seventh.

Arturo Toscanini, famed Italian now functioning as guest leader of the New York Philharmonic, conducted his third program in Carnegie Hall, honored Vivaldi, Beethoven, De Sabata, and Stravinsky with his reading of their works. De Sabata, an Italian "modern," was represented by "Gethsemane," a symphonic poem, vague, impressionistic--night in a lonely garden, a stern voice breaking through the darkness to speak the awful law of redemption through renunciation; dawn, stillness, prayer; carefully explained but shallow, unoriginal music for which even the philanthropic genius of a Toscanini could not achieve distinction. But a great public on its knees to a great conductor forgave him for playing it, lavished him with applause, drew rapture from the Vivaldi, from the Beethoven.

Walter Damrosch, dean of conductors, appeared for the last time this season as leader of the New York Symphony at the fourth concert for young people. Genial, loquacious, he said good-by to his audience, told its members that when they were still freezing in New York he would be wearing the whitest of flannels in Sicily.

Again, Tibbett

At the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, Lawrence Tibbett, young U. S. baritone who won fame overnight last year in a performance of Falstaff, succeeded Titta Ruffo as Neri in La Cena delle Beffe, again took high honors. Sophisticates who had gone expecting to hear Giordano's glittering, theatrical music sung by beautiful voices, to see unauthentic, bombastic acting, stayed after the performance to call "Tibbett! Tibbett!" and went home comparing favorably his performance with that of Lionel Barrymore in Benelli's stage version of The Jest.

"Deep River"

When A Light from St. Agnes, jazz opera, was produced in Chicago (TIME, Jan. 4), a number of ordinarily well-controlled gentlemen fell upon W. Franke Harling, the composer, as he was leaving the opera house and showered him with hugs and kisses. Composer Harling declared, in a trembling speech, that he was astounded. Nothing like that, he said, had ever happened to him--not even when he was writing cabaret revues in New York. But this incident and the opera--an amiable work, catchy, shrewd, imitative--brought him to the attention of Arthur Hopkins, famed theatrical manager. Mr. Hopkins has never yet produced a musical piece, but he stated four years ago that when the time was ripe he would present "an American opera along new lines." Last week he decided that the hour had come. He summoned to him Composer Harling and Lawrence Stallings, one-legged author of What Price Glory (drama), The Big Parade (cinema). To them he entrusted the composition of this long awaited opera, for which Mr. Stallings will write the script and Mr. Harling the score. The scene will be in Louisiana; the time 1830; negro spirituals will be used as motifs; the title will be Deep River.

Notes

Florence Mills, pastel darktown strutter, made a very serious concert bow last week before the International Composers' Guild, Manhattan, Eugene Goossens and Ottorino Respighi conducting; Mme. Respighi, soloist, and Alfredo Casella, pianist. Thin, glittering, syncopation in her eye, she sang four songs with a small jazz orchestra--"Levee Land" it was called, by William Still.

Michael Bohnen, big German bass, made his first appearance of the season in a thrilling performance of Der Freischuetz, Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan. It had been chosen for the debut of Elizabeth Kandt, German lyric soprano, who throughout the performance conducted herself without distinction.

* Previously the able editor of Musical America. (See TIME, Nov. 9).