Tibbett's Simone

Baritone Lawrence Tibbett sat in his shabby dressing-room at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House one night last week, making himself a nose. Baritone Tibbett's natural nose is no bigger than a grape. Whenever he sings in opera he has to build it up so that it can be seen over the footlights. But last week's nose he wanted to be particularly imposing. It was to be a nose to match trailing velvet robes, an ermine cape and a regal beehive headgear, a nose that would be worthy of the U. S. premiere of a Verdi opera (75 years after it was written) and of the biggest role that Tibbett has ever had at the Metropolitan.

Simone Boccanegra has powerful, cumulative moments but it lacks the tunes which have made Rigoletto and Trovatore hurdy-gurdy matter. The plot is a complicated brew of political intrigue, kidnapping and poisoning which few in last week's audience attempted to define. Tibbett absorbed the attention. He sang magnificently, gave great dignity and force to the corsair who rose to be Doge in Genoa, finally died by the hand of his hunchbacked henchman. In one scene where he stopped a brawl and set a curse on the cringing hunchback, he was impressive enough to suggest the Boris Godounov of Basso Feodor Chaliapin. From beginning to end he behaved like a thoroughgoing artist not in the least warped by his cinema-radio success.

Pons Puppeted

If Contralto Maria Gay, an oldtime Carmen, had not been touring the Riviera with her husband, Tenor Giovanni Zenatello, two years ago, if they had not stopped off at the opera house in Montpellier and heard an unknown French girl sing Lucia in true coloratura fashion, U. S. audiences would not be paying fancy prices this season to hear Lily Pons. The Zenatellos brought Lily Pons to Manhattan, got her an audition at the Metropolitan Opera House. Three months after her sensational debut (TIME, Jan. 19, 1931), Lily Pons abruptly left the hotel suite which she and her oldish Dutch husband shared with the Zenatellos. She cancelled her contract to pay them 15% of her earnings, discharged them as her agents.

When the Zenatellos brought suit against Lily Pons last spring, she defended herself on the grounds that they had been bad agents, had taken double commissions. She was grateful to Madame Zenatello, she said, for persuading her to come to the U. S. thus "advancing my career further and more rapidly than I could have done had I remained in Europe." But she continued, in the stilted phrases of her lawyers: "My gratitude does not in any way alter my conviction that she [Madame Zenatello] has been an untrustworthy and unfaithful agent." Husband August Mesritz gave details: "Not only did Maria Gay treat my wife as a puppet to be let out of a box or put in again at her behest but she seemed to live in deadly fear that my wife would become on intimate terms with the Metropolitan management or with other opera stars . . . constantly warned her that the people with whom she came in contact were scheming and dishonest and that no business affairs should ever be discussed with them."

The court upheld Lily Pons last spring, denied the Zenatellos their request for an injunction preventing her appearance except through their agency. Last week the matter came up again. Madame Zenatello now wants $315,000, 15% of what she thinks Lily Pons will have earned in ten years. Lily Pons appeared for a secret court examination concerning her earnings. The Press carried many a speculative figure as to income, all of which her attorneys vehemently denied as false. One fact, however, remained uncontroverted: The Metropolitan Opera's big drawing card gets a comparatively small wage, as little as $445 per week according to most guesses.

Lily Pons offered to settle for a moderate sum but she still resents the tactics Madame Zenatello used a year ago. Among other things she objects to stories Madame Zenatello gave out to newspapers such as the one about Husband Mesritz being a rich retired banker and newspaper owner. Husband Mesritz once edited a newspaper in Holland, served as Secretary of the Department of Finance during the War. Second Rhapsody

Eight years ago Paul Whiteman asked George Gershwin, young Tin Pan-Alleyman, to write some music, not for dancing, but for serious people to listen to at a jazz concert. In a scant three weeks Gershwin turned out the terse, melancholic Rhapsody in Blue. Its success made him ambitious, started him writing for symphony orchestras (Concerto in F, An American in Paris).

Last winter in Hollywood George Gershwin had time on his hands. Fox Films had commissioned him to write the music for Delicious (Charles Farrell,

Janet Gaynor) but that was soon done. Hollywood parties bored him. He started elaborating on a theme which he had suggested in the picture, a great city symbolized by relentless riveting. He thought first of calling the enlarged work "Rhapsody in Rivets" but it had become the Second Rhapsody by the time the Boston Symphony gave it its premiere last week, with Composer George Gershwin himself playing the piano.

Fox Films paid Gershwin well for the music which lasted only a few minutes in Delicious. He got $50,000 two years ago for letting Paul Whiteman use the Rhapsody in Blue in the Cinema King of Jazz.* But Gershwin's symphonic returns would never have permitted him to keep a big penthouse apartment, collect modern French paintings, smoke dollar cigars. The Boston Symphony paid him nothing for the privilege of playing his Second

Rhapsody last week but it did its best to bring him glory.

Conductor Sergei Koussevitzky and his sedate band lavished almost too much care on the hard, staccato beginnings of the rhapsody, the smart, shifting jazz rhythms which followed. People were enthusiastic about the smooth, melodic middle theme which the Koussevitzky strings played superbly but Bostonians never really accept any new music without consulting one of two critical oracles, aged Philip Hale of the Boston Herald or H. T. ("Hell-to-Pay") Parker of the Transcript. Gnomelike Critic Parker thought "this Second Rhapsody seemed tempered and in degree de-natured by reflection and manipulation. It sounded over-often from the study-table and the piano-rack." Said Critic Hale: "The music has decided individuality, which, it is to be hoped. Mr. Gershwin will preserve, and not be frightened into the smug respectability approved by professors of music and easily shocked conservative hearers."

*A drop in the bucket compared with his returns upon the musicomedies Lady, Be Good, Oh Kay, Funny Face, Girl Crazy, Rosalie, Strike Up the Band and the current Of Thee I Sing (TIME, Jan. 4).

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