Tittle-tattle, Tablefare

Great last week was the tittle-tattle which floated about Manhattan concerning next year's Metropolitan Opera plans. A list of operas likely to be added to the repertoire was published by Edward Gushing (pseudonym: Suetonius Jr.), able critic and newsgatherer of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. It included Massenet's Herodiade and Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, operas in which Soprano Maria Jeritza will presumably have the leading roles; Strauss's Elektra with Soprano Gertrude Kappel, Wagner's Flying Dutchman, Verdi's Otello, Rossini's William Tell and Bohemian Jaroslav Weinberger's Schwanda, Der Dudelsackpfeifer (Schwanda, the bagpipe-player), never given in the U. S. New European singers who have signed contracts are famed Basso Ivar Andresen and German Soprano Frieda Leider, now with the Chicago Civic Opera and presumably not to join the Metropolitan until 1931. A possibility, too, is Soprano Eleanor Steele, 20, of Mansfield, Ohio.

But not to prophecy alone did Critic Gushing confine his last week's chatter. In addition he had scrambled together a list of famed musicians' food fancies. It read: "Toscanini. Kraftbruhe mit Ei (consomme with raw egg). . . . Iturbi, caviar on apples . . . Horowitz, Russian cutlets . . . Stokowski, raw vegetables . . . Hutcheson, mushrooms (he grows and eats them) . . . Cortot, bread and gravy . . . Brailowsky, lump sugar . . . Professor Erskine, raw beef . . . the Leners of the Lener Quartet, orange ice . . . Melchior, green apples . . . Gabrilovitch, sardine oil . . . Gershwin, cereal and milk . . . Schumann-Heink, onions . . . Jeritza, cabbage." Most, if not all of this list is verifiable fact.

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