There is something typically New Yorkish about the way, a week ago today, Beethoven’s student pendous Missa Solemnis and a buffoon’s party at the Metropolitan Opera shared the music spotlight.
Only a few hours intervened between the last strains of the mass, which is too lengthy and much too exacting for ecclesiastical use, and the opening remarks by Ray Knight, NBC announcer, who was master of ceremonies at the Met’s “Operatic Surprise Party of 1934, Celebrating a Half Century of Progress.” In the matinee performance at Carnegie Hall there were Toscanini at his best; the Philharmonic-Symphony; the chorus of the Schola Cantorum, and a quartet composed of Elisabeth Rothberg, Sigrid Onegin, Paul Althouse and Ezio Pinza, all remarkably well fitted for the tough afternoon???s work they put in. In the evening, at the Met, there were, merely to scratch the surface, Lauritz Melchior with and without four balloons which had been added strategically to his ample girth so he might properly impersonate Salome; Rosa Ponselle on a bicycle and in a radio station; Gladys Swarthout, Frederick Jagel and Virgilio Lazzari on other bicycles; Lawrence Tibbett in a William S. Hart Costume, with two amazing howitzers to explode from time to time; Rose Bampton as a hot-cha warbler; Lily Pons as a beautiful baby; Pompilio Malatesta as a noisy one.
ANOTHER ODD DAY
Another odd juxtaposition on a single day concerns the Met alone. “Goetterdaemmerung,” which is art, and “Linda di Chamounix,” which is located on an imaginary point midway between art and life, and partakes only slightly of either, were the Gatti-Casazza offerings. The breach was not narrowed even by the superlative singing of La Pons, Richard Crooks and Gladys Swarthout in the Donizette charade. It was too bad that Ezra Rachlin, who plays better, and Nikolai Sokoloff, who should know better, gave their attention the other night to the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3.
Sokoloff conducted his New York City Orchestra, Rachlin played with technical skill and fine tonal sense, but the concerto remained an undistinguished, fast aging piece. Wagnerian matters and the Schubert “Unfinished” took up the rest of the evening.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
