Word: gatty
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...closed in April 1935 when Giulio Gatti-Casazza took down his nameplate and stepped forever out of the general manager's office. For 27 years, Gatti had laid down the law to the most famous opera company in the world. He had seen that company once proud & secure. He had cut down his budget on high-priced singers. He had watched the Met struggle through Depression years by shortening its season, humble itself in a desperate tin-cup campaign. Few weeks before Gatti's resignation, the harassed Opera Board signed over its independence to the Juilliard Musical Foundation...
First sign of Juilliard influence was the appointment of Herbert Witherspoon, old-time Metropolitan basso and later a member of the Juilliard teaching staff, as Gatti's successor. General Manager Witherspoon had worn his title for two weeks when he dropped dead of coronary thrombosis. Tenor Edward Johnson, long a popular favorite, stepped immediately into the post. Confronting him were union difficulties, many an important contract, many that had not been signed...
Fremstad's voice showed occasional wear & tear, but when she left the Metropolitan in 1914 her star was high. Manager Giulo Gatti-Casazza invited her to return on her own terms if she would only relearn all her Wagner roles in English, on the mere chance that subscribers might be willing to accept great music if it was not sung in German. Fremstad refused. When the Wagner operas were reinstated after the War, her health was broken and since then she has been much too smart to attempt a feeble, worn-out comeback...
...scene was atrocious. Mr. Gatti-Casazza personally assured me of his entire disapproval of it, and the whole staff despised it. I was informed that the Metropolitan had pledged itself to an experiment in modernist sets, and that they had regrettably tried it out on my opera, which, as any reader of the libretto could see, required a setting both realistic and decorative...
...week the new American Ballet worked hard, enlivened the operas in which it appeared, won praise partly because it represented such an improvement over the stodgy, lifeless dancing which went on at the Metropolitan under the Gatti-Casazza regime. The new U. S. organization gave its first substantial demonstration after the Hänsel und Gretel performance, presented comely ballerinas, several of them highly talented. Outstanding performances were given by Anatole Vilzak, once of the Russian Imperial Ballet, and young William Dollar, who has the most spectacular technique of any male dancer now appearing in public. Unfortunately the ballet...