"Very Desperate Indeed"

The house lights dimmed and the Saturday-matinee crowd at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House settled down tor the second act of Tristan and Isolde. The orchestra launched into the prelude played for a minute, then stopped cold. Over a loudspeaker in the opera house--and the loudspeakers of millions of radio listeners across the U.S.--came the voice of Commentator Milton Cross: "Something has happened! The orchestra has stopped."

Commentator Cross paused, let the silence sink in for several dramatic seconds. 'I'm trying to find out what has happened," he continued, then told his listeners that there was no sign of an emergency. After more pregnant silence, Cross swung into a thoroughly premeditated appeal for contributions to the Metropolitan Opera Fund. His argument: the Met might really go silent some day if it doesn't get more help from the public. The strategem did not please the big crowd in the opera house. Angry at being tricked into false concern, they raised a thin chorus of boos and hisses.

General Manager Rudolf Bing's artistic conscience hurt. But, he insisted, the Met's financial situation is "very desperate indeed." The Met appealed to contributors last January for $1,500,000, and has netted only some $500,000 so far. Said Bing: "Money-raising in this country is a very special art. I know little about it. I didn't feel entitled to turn the suggestion down."

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