Chicago Reassured

With its Civic Opera disbanded, Chicago has little hope for opera of the old-time high excellence next season. Nevertheless it may have more in point of quantity. For several weeks Alfredo Salmaggi, showman-maestro, has been running an Open Air Opera Company in Soldier Field; last week he put on a well- publicized Carmen, with tame bulls from the stockyards. One winter possibility is twelve weeks of opera, to be performed by a semi-co-operative troupe under Conductor Isaac Van Grove of the Cincinnati Zoo Opera, formerly assistant conductor of Chicago's Civic Opera. This would be guaranteed by $200,000 of Chicago money, housed in the old, popular Auditorium Theatre of the late Civic Opera. Another possibility is a ten-week season of a company to be assembled from unemployed artists in Manhattan by Max Rabinoff. onetime manager of the late Anna Pavlova. Also, there may be begun next month at the Stadium a series of 20 Saturday night performances of popular staples at popular prices.

Last week President Charles Humphrey Hamill of the Orchestral Association reassured those worried about the future of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, endangered last spring by the bickerings be tween its backers and the Chicago Federation of Musicians. The season will open Oct. 14, with Chicago's beloved Frederick August Stock on the podium once more.

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