The Reader’s Forum

Editor, The Jewish Daily Bulletin:

Have the 2,000,000 Jews of New York any self-respect, solidarity, or true appreciation of classical music? I am beginning to question all that and will continue to do so unless they act swiftly on a question which ought to be their concern.

I was one of the fortunate visitors to New York who found his way into. Carnegie Hall where a concert was given in honor of the eminent Jew and scientist, Professor Albert Einstein. From the moment my friends and I heard the phenomenal singing of that young Jewess, Emma Redell, we could not be content with any of the ## renditions of song. We could then better understand why the Soviet government had chosen Emma Redell as the outstanding American singer to be invited to Soviet Russia as the first American to sing under the present government; one could better realize why the highly critical Germans before the ascendancy of the Hitler barbarians called her “The Ideal Wagner Singer of Germany.”

And yet 2,000,000 New York Jews sit idly by while this great Emma Redell’s place on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House is held by foreign mediocrities! Certainly two millions of Jews in one city ought to know what talent their own people harbor. Is their famed solidarity a myth? Is their reputed musical understanding a mere joke? Emma Redell is not only the most outstanding ## soprano singer in the United ## but she is the most gifted of all the American artists since Nordica. It is therefore the duty not only of the two millions of Jews in New York, but of all Americans who are interested in native art and artists, to demand in one voice:

“Why is not Emma Redell on the Metropolitan Opera stage?”

P. H. BRADFORD. Washington, D.C.