Summer Bands (Cont'd)

Twenty-six years ago Louis Eckstein, rich Chicago merchant and real-estate operator, began sponsoring summer music in Ravinia Park, 37 acres of woodland which he owned on Chicago's North Shore. Depression interrupted the concerts in 1932 and Patron Eckstein died in 1935 before they were resumed. When his widow agreed to let Ravinia be used for summer music again, 25 businessmen raised $30,000 and reopened Ravinia last summer (TIME, July 13). Back to Chicago last week went Lucrezia Bori, Leon Rothier and Mario Chamlee (Archer Ragland Cholmondeley) who had helped make Ravinia opera nationally known. Day of the opening, Chamlee developed laryngitis, had to be replaced by Tenor Armand Tokatyan who in turn had to be replaced by Rolf Gerard at the Cincinnati Zoo where he was scheduled to appear. In honor of Patron Eckstein, Miss Bori gave her services free. Old Gennaro Papi, a longtime Ravinia favorite, postponed his European trip so he could conduct the Chicago Orchestra. After the opening night, Sir Ernest MacMillan of the Toronto Symphony took up his baton. Other conductors scheduled: Swiss Ernest Ansermet, Hans Kindler of Washington's National Symphony, Hans Lange, St. Louis' Vladimir Golschmann, Cincinnati's Fritz Reiner. On July 17 at Ravinia, Mischa Mischakoff, recently made concertmaster of the NBC Orchestra (TIME, May 10), will play his last for Chicago.

P: Rain deferred the opening of the Detroit Symphony's free concerts on Belle Isle. When the series finally began last week the temperature fell to nearly a record low for July. Nevertheless, 1,500 people stayed for a concert of Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens, Leoncavallo, Lehar. Because donors had provided about $35,000, Manager Murray Gordon Paterson was able to promise a full six-week season, running every night but Monday. Hungarian Victor Kolar, associated with the Detroit Symphony since 1919, was newly back from Europe and planned to conduct the whole series. At a later concert he planned to make the 1812 Overture louder than Tchaikovsky intended by setting off time-bombs instead of cannon.

P: The summer sun beat down into Manhattan's Lewisohn Stadium last week upon a towheaded young woman who, whirling to the strains of a sweating, shirtsleeved orchestra, sang and danced passionately around a plaster head on a property platter until her feet hurt and print dress was damp and dusty. She was Erica Darbo, the Scandinavian soprano whose U. S. debut set Cincinnati agog last February in Strauss' Salome, rehearsing for her first New York appearance. The night of the performance, in costume and against a background of stars and sultry violet, Miss Darbo gained full credit for the force and fury of her acting, but New Yorkers were not impressed with her wiry, imperfect voice, scarcely at its best in the open air. They thought her dance of the Seven Veils more realistic than graceful. Ivan Ivantzoff was more secure as cowardly King Herod. Conductor Alexander Smallens made the score taut and exciting, shared honors with Stage Director Ernst Lert who has produced creditable Salomes at Freiburg, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Basle, Milan. Manhattan applauded the ingenuity with which Lert changed the Stadium platform into an Oriental terrace and clothed the singers in costumes out of Edmond Dulac.

P: In Atlantic City, N. J., the Steel Pier Opera Company last week began its tenth season with an English production of Il Trovatore. Henri Elkan again conducted. Other operas listed: Verdi's Rigoletto, von Flotow's Martha, Debussy's L'Enfant prodigue, Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana.

P: The St. Louis Municipal ("Muny") Opera (not opera at all but musicomedy well-mounted on a revolving stage) has been running since June 4, when Bernice Claire, Gladys Baxter and Guy Robertson sang in The Great Waltz. Last week St. Louis applauded Oldtimer Blanche Ring's performance of Music in the Air by Hammerstein & Kern.

P: The Essex County Symphony completed its second season of four performances in a stadium near Newark, N. J. Led by Erno Rapee, supported by a 100-piece orchestra, 260 New Jersey singers participated in the Beethoven Ninth.

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