Curtains Up!

In Cleveland Artur Rodzinski thrust his baton into the air last week, scurried through the sparkling overture to Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and the curtain was up on a performance made memorable by Soprano Lotte Lehmann as the wistful, aging Princess.

In St. Louis, 6,000 people pushed their way into the huge new Convention Hall to hear Maria Jeritza in Puccini's Turandot.

In San Francisco talk was all of Wagner's Ring cycle which opened the season there last week (TIME, Nov. 4).

In the big Chicago opera house handsome Basso Ezio Pinza made a suave, red-clawed devil in Boito's Mefistofele. The Marguerite was Soprano Edith Mason, oldtime Chicago favorite. Dominant behind the scenes was Italian Paul Longone, with the title of "General Manager."

It has been a stiff battle to give Chicago opera since the Samuel Insull fiasco in the spring of 1932. Following winter there was no one to pick up the pieces and the house stayed dark. Then up popped Paul Longone who offered to be artistic director, help raise money. Backers for the first reorganized season were Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust Co. which controls the building, scenery, lights; the late George Lytton (Hub clothing store); Banker George Woodruff; Lawyer George Haight; Harold Fowler McCormick. who is always a willing patron for opera in Chicago. Deficit that first season was only $12,000. Last year it ran up to $78,000, discouraged everyone but irrepressible Paul Longone. Lawyer Haight announced then that times were unpropitious to undertake another season, withdrew a large part of the support and the name "Chicago Grand Opera." Forthwith Longone went out for new backers, won the help of Mayor Edward Joseph Kelly, renamed the organization the Chicago City Opera.

Drawback to Chicago's present arrangement is the short (five-week) season which makes it impossible to maintain a creditable resident company. Makeshift is to pay for a few big names to bolster up a list of mediocres. For his trump cards this season Longone will present Lehmann in Der Rosenkavalier, Prague's Mila Kocava in her U. S. debut, pretty Helen Jepson as the profligate Thais, the U. S. premiere of Respighi's La Fiamma, the world premiere of Ethel Leginska's Gale with John Charles Thomas singing and the bushy-haired composer conducting.

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