Tenor in Power

Underground in Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal, a shapely, young-looking man sat on a baggage truck one morning last week, swinging his legs and valiantly pretending that he was not at all dazed. Few hours before in Detroit, Tenor Edward Johnson had been the dreamy hero of Deems Taylor's Peter Ibbetson. Then suddenly, on the baggage truck, he was supposed to tell reporters how it felt to be General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, the successor to Herbert Witherspoon who dropped dead two weeks after he had taken over the job from Giulio Gatti-Casazza (TIME, May 20).

Until a big black buck demanded the truck, the Metropolitan's new manager answered questions with simple charm. He had seen the papers in the train that morning, seen "Johnson" in the headlines and "honestly I couldn't realize that the stories were about me and not about the General or Jack or maybe Pussyfoot."

Newshawks continued to pepper him. His answers: "I've accepted the directorship very humbly. . . . I felt that it was a sort of call, almost like a call to the ministry. . . . I have been playing romantic roles--Romeo and Pelleas--for so many years that my views are naturally romantic. I look upon the Metropolitan with the same eager approach. . . ."

But in Gatti's gloomy old office there awaited serious business for romantic Edward Johnson. He found that he had fallen heir to nine new singers, signed up by Witherspoon just before his death.* Greatest shock came with the realization that some of the big stars had not been re-engaged, not Pons nor Ponselle nor Lehmann nor Schipa nor Tibbett. Conclusion was that the Metropolitan had resorted to poor economy but New Manager Johnson was instantly soothing. Negotiations were still in process. In the future young U. S. singers would be granted greater opportunities but not, if he could help it, at the expense of the stellar winter season.

With Witherspoon, outside engagements had been the hitch in the case of several of the stars who, because of reduced salaries and abbreviated seasons at the Met, are giving more & more time to radio and concerts. Tibbett made the point that the two radio dates which he sacrificed last winter would have paid him almost as much as his entire season in opera. Few hours after Johnson took command Rosa Ponselle was ready to cooperate. In June the new manager will sail for Europe to sign more contracts. He was expected to be more lenient than Witherspoon in the matter of concerts, although he called them hazardous. "You come in from an engagement and catch cold on a Pullman. You are unavailable, not only while you are away, but while you are ill."

In all his dealings Tenor Johnson was expected to be a fair and sympathetic arbitrator, a practical judge of the artists' rights and of what the public wants for its money. As a singer Tenor Johnson was always popular with his colleagues. Yet unlike many of them he had kept closely in touch with the everyday people who make up audiences. Johnson is a golfer, a Mason, a Rotarian. He has remained as unpretentious as his townsfolk in Guelph, Ontario, who now prize his portrait in Guelph Town Hall but who once wondered at a youth so incalculable that he would turn his back on the ministry and the law, set out on his own for Manhattan.

In Manhattan, 28 years ago, Johnson soloed in the Brick Presbyterian Church, then sang in a Broadway musical comedy to earn enough money for study in Italy. There, as in the U. S., his plain Anglo-Saxon name was a handicap. He changed it to Eduardo di Giovanni, made his mark at La Scala before he was invited home. For more than a decade he has been the No. 1 North American-born tenor. Others may sing louder. But Johnson never errs as an artist, never fails to be an attractive, credible hero. As Romeo and Pelleas he has surpassed all his contemporaries.

In Guelph, where he still goes to vacation, Edward Johnson has given $25,000 to establish music in the public schools. In Manhattan his longtime ambition has been to build up a training organization where young native artists could gain operatic experience even if they happened to be named Smith or Jones or Johnson. Having sung patiently and courteously with such novices as Mary Lewis and Grace Moore, Manager Johnson wisely promised that young aspirants would have a chance to attain a "natural growth" in a supplementary season. Said he: "I feel that the American artist has never been properly presented. If he has been accepted by the Metropolitan, he has been obliged to sing on the same stage with the greatest artists in the world who have poise and authority. It is no wonder that the young artist does not succeed."

*Josephine Antoine, Julius Huehn and Dudley Marwick are products of the Juilliard School of Music; a Charlotte Symons has toured with the San Carlo company; a Hubert Raidich sings at the Brussels Opera. Thelma Votipka, Chase Baromeo, Carlo Morelli and Eduard Habicht have sung in opera in Chicago.

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