Last Curtain

The dapper, slightly-stooped man who stood with a little black bag in his hand, ringing the elevator bell on the tenth floor of Manhattan's Hotel Vanderbilt one afternoon last week was nervous. Everything was in order in the room he had left. Trunks were packed with costumes, photographs, stacks of letters bound with rubber bands brittle with age. There remained to distinguish the hotel room from hundreds of others ready to be abandoned only a photograph of big-chested Enrico Caruso in a white-piped vest and a little bronze head which Caruso had made of himself. The man who waited nervously for the elevator had the hardest afternoon of his life ahead of him. He was Baritone Antonio Scotti, one of the last of the old-time opera-singers. That afternoon after 33 years at the Metropolitan he was singing his farewell.

Passing through the Metropolitan's narrow stage door Scotti managed a smile for photographers who waylaid him. He shook hands gravely with hulking Giulio Gatti-Casazza who had made his debut as manager of the Scala in Milan the night Scotti first sang there 34 years ago. Then he went upsteps to a dingy dressing-room, locked the door, took pictures of his long-dead father and mother from the little black bag and sat them down before a mirror. Slowly he smeared his face with yellow paint, donned a snakey-cued China-man's wig. For that last afternoon he had chosen to sing in Franco Leoni's L'Oracolo, a one-act opera, second rate to be sure, but one which only he had sung at the Metropolitan, one which exhibited his talent for acting and made no strenuous demands on his voice.

La Boheme was given first. Scotti paced the floor, adjusted his wig, peered closely into the mirror. The makeup concealed the signs of his 67 years, the pouches under his eyes, the two deeply chiseled lines which, under the paint, linked his beaklike nose with the corners of his tired mouth.

Intermission came with its clutter and shuffle of scenery. While he waited for the callboy's knock, Scotti tried to smoke one of his long, monogrammed cigarets, but his mouth was too parched. He had never been so nervous, he decided, not even on that first night in Malta 43 years ago when it had seemed fantastic that he, son of a Neapolitan grocer, intended for the priesthood, should be singing in opera. Finally the knock came. . . .

The curtain went up on a twisted street in San Francisco's Chinatown. Scotti slunk down the steps from a rickety frame house and the performance could have stopped then & there. People started cheering. Orchestra musicians rose to their feet. Scotti, who through all his long career has remained an artist, took one brief, graceful bow, reverted quickly to Chim-Fen, the opium dealer. People forgot that the dark hollow voice was only a shell of what it used to be. Chim-Fen's sinister shadow filled the stage while he crept up on the child he wanted to kidnap, buried a hatchet in the neck of the man who found him out. When his own sleek cue was finally twisted around his neck, his murderer bolstered him against a lamp post, talked to him casually until a policeman approached on his rounds. The policeman passed. The body fell to the ground with a gruesome, final thud.

At that point 4,000 people became possessed with emotional frenzy. For 20 minutes they cheered while Scotti stood before them, smiling, weeping. Wreaths were brought out draped with the Italian colors, baskets of roses, bunches of gladi oli. Scotti attempted a speech in English. which he had been too lazy to learn: "I t'ank you, really. You give me pleasure but it is pain. ... I do not want to leave you but my health is not so good. Goodby. God bless you. . . . Good-by." Baritone Lawrence Tibbett started the audience singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" The cheers persisted until the outside curtain dropped. Lawrence Tib bett popped into fame the night he sang Ford to Scotti's Falstaff (TIME. Jan. 16). Plump little Marcella Sembrich had sat in the third row, a stiff-brimmed hat perched on her curly pompadour. She had been mindful of the night in 1899 when she sang Zerlina and Scotti. handsome, debo nair, with luxuriant black mustaches, made his Metropolitan debut as Don Giovanni. Olive Fremstad was there and Geraldine Farrar, white-haired and sub dued. Between acts in La Boheme they had kept the aisles crowded with auto graph-hounds.

When the last curtain fell ushers and doormen tried to stop an hysterical crowd from mobbing Scotti in his dressing-room. But many got through -- Actress Ina Claire. her nose red from weeping; Sembrich, to whom the ever-gallant Scotti whispered, "Dear lady, I've never sung as well since You left'': Farrar. who ex claimed "Toto! ' to Scotti's "Geraldina! With her father and mother Farrar used to live at the old Hotel Knickerbocker when Scotti had rooms on the eighth-floor comer and Caruso lived just above him. Because phonograph records were having their boom then these three were artists known all over the U. S. Caruso and Scotti were called "the inseparables." Scotti got Caruso his first London engagement after which he came to the Metropolitan. Caruso sang in the opera company which Scotti once managed at a personal loss of $200.000. The mention of Caruso's name now causes Scotti reverently to exclaim, "What a voice!" The next minute he may candidly remark that his own voice was not one of the greatest. But he always used it intelligently. William James Henderson of the New York Sun, who witnessed the beginning of Scotti's Metropolitan career and sadly saw its end last week, wrote:

"Mr. Scotti has never been guilty of bad taste. He has succeeded-in comedy roles of various types without ever descending to buffoonery, and in serious parts without extravagance or bombast. He has gone his way steadily, a dignified and well-poised gentleman. We do not recall any exciting news stories of the doings of Scotti. He has not aired his views of times and singers and the public attitude toward art. He has remained within his field. . . ."

When Caruso sang in La Juive in December 1920, no one knew he was giving his farewell performance. He became fatally ill with pleurisy immediately afterward and Scotti nursed him. leaving him only when he had to sing at the Opera House, returning to him often with his make-up still on. When he sails for Naples Scotti will carry by hand Caruso's photograph and the little bronze head. In Naples, where Caruso is buried. Scotti will pass the rest of his life, simply, now that the stockmarket crash has taken most of his earnings. But he will not write his memoirs. Above all, he will not teach. "I have heard too many great singers." he said last week. "I would be too critical."

Tenor's Tonsillectomy

Singing at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House leaves many a tenor with a swollen head but Tenor Tito Schipa who lately finished his first season there was left with swollen tonsils. He sped to Los Angeles where last week Surgeon Edward Russell Kellogg proceeded to remove them, to adjust, as he said. Tenor Schipa's "epiglottal space." Six weeks will pass before the operation's results will be known but then Dr. Kellogg hopes that Schipa will find the range of his voice higher by two or four notes.

Torchsinger Libby Holman's tonsillectomy had opposite results. Her voice became lower, huskier, made her Broadway's overnight rage. Tampering with singers' throats is always dangerous. If Tito Schipa's voice should drop like Torch-singer Holman's, he might have to renounce his romantic tenor roles, become a villainous baritone.

*One of the many women whose names have been linked with Scotti's. Others were Sopranos Lillian Nordica, Emma Eames. Geraldine Farrar, Anna Fitziu. Actress Charlotte Ives and Mary Leavy, New York heiress who married a Spanish erandee. Undomestic Scotti was not the marrying kind.

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