Opera with Harmonica

The opera came to a halt. On to the stage of Philadelphia's Academy of Music, set to represent a Viennese ballroom of the bustle and muttonchop era, someone dragged a microphone. Entered a lean, intense, bug-eyed young man in white tie & tails. In his hand he bore a mouth organ. Impassively and impressively he proceeded to render a solo. The Blue Danube. Such was the operatic debut of the world's greatest harmonicist, Larry Adler.

The loud Philadelphian applause testified that it was all perfectly natural. The opera, old Vienna's "grand operetta" Die Fledermaus (The Bat) by Waltz King Johann Strauss, furnishes a place for interpolated entertainment. To hire Larry Adler for The Bat was just one more bright idea of the Philadelphia Opera Company, a young, English-singing troupe which has been tossing off bright operatic ideas for three seasons. Besides the solo Blue Danube, Larry Adler had two en cores up his sleeve--Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody. Ravel's Bolero.

The Philadelphia Opera lately made its first full-dress tour, to Boston. The Boston Herald gasped at how "Philadelphia (which we always understood was sounder to asleep collar on its this feet opera than company. Boston) ..." Next managed season, under management of smart Show man Sol Hurok, the Philadelphians will tour the U.S.

They number 19 young, talented sing ers, who expertly shake 19 operas-in-English out of their sleeves. Newest Phila delphia stunt is to have a tenor sing the incredible quasi-male operatic roles usu ally warbled by women in tights--Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, Siebel in Faust, Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, Prince Orlofsky in The Bat, Nicklausse in The Tales of Hoffmann.

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