New Ballet Russe

New York has not seen a real Russian ballet since Diaghilev and the great Nijinsky went back to Europe 16 years ago. It was, therefore, rare and oldtime glamour that filled St. James Theatre one night last week for the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe. Backstage had all been carpeted to protect the ballerinas' feet. Samovars and champagne pails were in the dressing-rooms. Out front were people who had paid up to $100 for their seats. There were cheers and flowers for every curtain call. At a champagne supper afterwards old Lawyer Paul Drennan Cravath was so enthusiastic that he drank a toast from a $65 slipper.

Sixty-four Russian dancers, 6,000 costumes, 84 backdrops & curtains, a 50-piece symphony orchestra, a repertoire of 22 ballets -- such was the equipment of the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe for its first U. S. season.* First night there were three ballets. In La Concurrence, two tailors fought comically for each other's trade and decked out half the dancers in richly colored furbelows. Les Presages, done to Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, was more obscure but in it Irina Baronova and David Lichine did a memorable passion dance. Le Beau Danube had an amazing mazurka done by Leonide Massine and Tatiana Riabouchinska (see cut}. Their footwork was incredibly swift and sure. But all the leading dancers were so expert that they made the most marvelous spins and leaps seem incidental. That was the way of the old Russian Ballet which Serge Diaghilev brought out of St. Petersburg into Europe. He built up its reputation to top-notch not only because he had dancers like Karsavina and Nijinsky and a choreographer like Fokine but also because he had the imagination to commission artists like Bakst, Matisse and Picasso to do his settings, composers like Ravel, Stravinsky and Milhaud to write his music. Diaghilev fathered the Monte Carlo Company. He loved the Riviera, often took his dancers there to rehearse. When he died in 1929 a few stayed on because Charlotte, the hereditary Princess of Monaco, was interested in them. When Col. Vassily de Basil, a onetime Cossack officer who had been putting on Russian opera in Paris, went down to take it over, Princess Charlotte was ready to finance him. Nijinsky was no longer there. His brain had cracked and he was in a Swiss asylum. But there was handsome Leonide Massine who, if not so great a dancer, was a better maltre de ballet, a more brilliant choreographer. And there was Leon Woizikovsky who had done many of Ni- jinsky's roles (Harlequin, Petrouchka, the faun in L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune). Woizikovsky went off with Anna Pavlova, stayed with her until she died (TIME, Feb. 2, 1931). Then he returned to Monte Carlo and the Diaghilev tradition which has no patience with dancers who feature themselves at the expense of the general ensemble.* Woizikovsky is 28, old for a ballet dancer. Most of the present members of the Monte Carlo Company are in their teens, but they have had Diaghilev dancers for teachers. There is dark-skinned Tamara Toumanova, 14, whom London calls the second Pavlova. She was born in a train in Siberia while her parents were fleeing Russia. Blonde Irina Baronova is a few days older, one of the six ballerinas who travel with their parents. It was her slipper that Lawyer Cravath drank from at the champagne supper. Tatiana Riabouchinska, who looks something like Greta Garbo, is the daughter of the late Tsar's banker, and was a pupil of Kshesinskaya, the Tsar's mistress before he married. Tatiana is the Company's greatest problem as well as one of its best dancers. In London where they just finished a 20-week run, she had so many admirers that Colonel de Basil bundled her into a taxi, drove to Lloyd's, took out a $10,000 insurance policy against her getting married. Chicago's Fresh Start

While Samuel Insull was wondering where to go next this week, lights flashed on in the mammoth opera house he built for Chicago and for the first time since he fled the country a formal Chicago opera season was about to begin. Prices were cut in half so that orchestra seats cost $3 instead of $6. Big singers were engaged, but at salaries adjusted to fit a careful budget. Chicago's socialites never liked the high-railed boxes lined up in cinema-house fashion at the back of the house. But in ten new boxes built in an old-fashioned semicircle downstairs, those who had the desire and the price could see and be seen at this week's opening. It was among the goldfish and the bull-fiddles in the Hub Store office of the late George Lytton that the new Chicago Grand Opera Company was born. George Lytton, who died fortnight ago of heart trouble (TIME. Dec. 18), and Banker George Woodruff did the figuring. A five-week season, they decided, could be put on for a little less than $150,000, approximately a third of the Insull com pany's annual deficit. With 75% capacity attendance the box-office takings would amount to $138,500, leaving a $11,500 deficit. With a $75,000 reserve fund they felt they could go ahead. They asked for it, got it. Paul Longone, a dapper little Italian, was engaged as impresario. He was handed $79,000 and told it was all he could have to pay for his artists. The talent that Impresario Longone got for the money bears evidence to the passing of fantastic fees. Soprano Maria Jeritza, who opened many a Metropolitan season, was to sing the first night in Tosca. Mario Chamlee, John Charles Thomas and Grace Moore were listed for later on. Edith Mason and Rosa Raisa, two of Insull's singers, were back New Year's Eve Marion Talley will sing in Rigoletto, the opera in which she made her sensational Metropolitan debut seven years ago (TIME, March 1, 1926) For four years Miss Talley has been in re tirement, ostensibly wheat-farming in Kansas. Because farming has not proved so profitable as singing she is attempting a comeback. Tin-Cup Season

Because the Metropolitan Opera Company went around with a tin cup last spring, begging for its life, top hats ermine coats and all other first-night finery were out last week to signal the beginning of another opera season.

In shortening its season the Metropolitan had postponed its New York opening until the night after Christmas a Tuesday which by contract belonged' to the Philadelphia subscribers. Therefore the New York pageant really began in Philadelphia when, a week ahead of time, the Company chartered its special tram and went where Stotesburys and Biddies take the place of Astors and Vanderbilts There were the same flashlights as the box-holders stepped from their limousines. Opera glasses kept up a steady scrutiny between acts. But Philadelphians also had something to look at during the performance for the prima donna of the evening was pretty little Lily Pons, costumed in a bit of a bodice and a low-hung skirt.

Lily Pons was supposed to be Lakme, daughter of a Hindu priest whose one great hate was for the British soldiers. Tenor Giovanni Martinelli was the soldier who managed to find the sacred grove where Lakme lived. The priest, in turn, found him by taking Lakme to the marketplace and making her sing the Bell Song full of trills and cadenzas and high top notes. The opera might have ended then & there for all the watery music intended to describe the death of Lakme after she had nursed the soldier back to health only to have him rejoin his regiment.

Tired of being criticized for running an Italian opera house when 60% of his singers are Americans. Manager Guilio Gatti-Casazza announced Deems Taylor's Peter Ibbetson for the New York opening. An opera in English had never before started the season. Peter Ibbetson is no masterpiece but its music is charming and finespun. Besides, it features the three members of the company who did most for the tin-cup campaign last spring.-- Lucrezia Bori is the Duchess of Towers who makes a life of dreams for Peter (Tenor Edward Johnson). And Lawrence Tibbett in whiskers and sideburns dies magnificently when Peter, unable to stand more from his cruel old guardian, smashes his head with a cane. So far as Society was concerned Ibbetson was the New York curtain-raiser. But the children of New York made such a cry that Gatti had to give another performance first. The children were accustomed to hearing Hansel und Gretel on Christmas afternoon and they had to have it again. Shivers of delight scooted down every small spine when Queena Mario came out with pigtails stiff as taffy sticks and Editha Fleischer, a raggedy Hansel, took her hand and led her out into the woods to look for strawberries. It was all just as the story book said. Snowy-white angels floated right down from the sky A real witch with matted grey hair and a nose like a spigot rode madly astride a broomstick, pausing only to tickle the nose of poor frightened Hansel, waiting to be fattened and baked into gingerbread. The supreme moment came when Gretel saved Hansel with a wave of a magic juniper-bush and together they pushed the old witch into the oven.

*The company will probably stay ten weeks in New York, then go on tour. So far bookings are definite for los Angeles and San Francisco. *Serge Lifar, one of Diaghilev's most promising young dancers, went off free-lancing like Pavlova. His much-advertised U.S. debut aroused scant enthusiasm He had a poor company, poor scenery, poor music (TIME, Nov. 13) *The "Save-the-Opera" drive was for $300,000. Large contributions were made by the Juilhard Musical Foundation ($50,000) the Carnegie Corp. ($25,000); Chicago's Louis Eckstein ($10,000); Pierre du Pont "($10,000) Much of the money came from the general opera public. House maids and shop girls contributed. So did many a person who had never been inside the Metropolitan but who for the past two years has been listening to its Saturday afternoon broadcasts.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.