Tenor Hunt

In Wagner's Die Meistersinger a contest is held to determine which of the singing citizens of Nuremberg is most worthy of Eva, daughter of Pogner, rich goldsmith who heads the local guild of mastersingers. In Manhattan's Knabe Hall one afternoon last week 200 New Yorkers attended a similar contest sponsored by Tenor Lauritz Melchior and Berthold Neuer of Wm. Knabe & Co. to discover a native "heroic tenor.''* At first it looked like another publicity stunt. Knabe Co., purveyor of pianos to the Metropolitan Opera, offered a prize of a Baby Grand. Melchior, the Met's foremost Wagnerian tenor, announced the contest: "Many of us look to America to produce the great Tristan or Parsifal of the future."

The contestants and the impressions they made on 20 artist-judges gave the occasion its importance. In the judges' chairs sat such worthies as Composer Arnold Schoenberg, Conductor Tullio Serafin, Tenors Paul Althouse and Giovanni Martinelli, Sopranos Gertrude Kappel, Greta Stueckgold, Frida Leider. Of the 225 contestants eight had been chosen for the finals. There were Harold Haugh, earnest, 28-year-old theological student from Cleveland; William Roveen, 25, who for four years has earned his music lessons by waiting on table in a summer camp; Paul Ward, whose last job was a clerkship in a restaurant supply house; Clifford Menz, son of a St. Paul lawyer; William Horne, a smiling, square-shouldered boy who runs errands for a Manhattan laundry; S. Powell Middleton who supervises the public school music in Mount Lebanon, Pa.; Jesse Wolk who farms in New Jersey; and Frederic Langford, 27, who clerks in a Manhattan book shop.

All eight had surprisingly good voices. Young William Horne's was light but it had an engaging, personal quality that made the judges beam. One high note cracked. Mr. Neuer asked for lenience. The aspirants, he said, were nervous. "Sure!" shouted the kindly mastersingers, "we've been there ourselves.''

Hot were the arguments over drinks and cookies before the judges returned from the jury room, asked four of the contestants to go over their scales. Frederic Langford's topnotes were the lustiest and Frederic Langford was fairly dithering when he knew that he had won. A native of Jamestown, N. Y., he has worked for six years in the Episcopal Church Book Store, recommending reading for women's auxiliaries, going evenings to the opera when he could afford admission to stand. Day after the contest a tinny borrowed piano was carted out of his rooming-house and the shiny Knabe Grand was moved in. But the 200-odd observers foresaw greater reward for Frederic Langford and the seven other finalists. In the audience were radio scouts, theatrical producers, vocal teachers ready with scholarships.

*Germans say ein Hcldcntcnor, mean a full, powerful, wide-ranged voice capable of such dramatic roles as Tristan, Parsifal, Siegfried. Like the late great Jean de Reszke, Melchior began his career as a baritone. Novelist Hugh Walpole staked him to the study that turned him out a tenor.

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