Word: opera
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...opera fans the first public appearance of a new soprano or tenor is as exciting as the trial spin of a new Class-J sloop is to yachtsmen. Last week Manhattan's debutasters trooped to the Metropolitan Opera House to size up the beam, rig and probable speed of two of the Metropolitan's brand-new singers. Chicago operagoers had already bravoed both of them long ago. But that was not enough for Manhattan. For every standee at the Metropolitan regards himself as a member of opera's supreme court, delights to reverse or qualify the opinions...
Second newcomer was Italian-born Soprano Hilde Reggiani, hit of last year's Chicago opera season. Small, plump, 25, she cooed a coy Gilda to Lawrence Tibbett's towering Rigoletto, hit super-high Ds and Es with expert marksmanship, held onto them with the tenacity of garlic. When husky Baritone Tibbett vowed to avenge her worse-than-fatal fate, and threw her, pleading, to the ground, well-rounded Soprano Reggiani rolled like a well-aimed bowling ball, ended on her back, half way across the Metropolitan stage...
Year later Rachmaninoff gave up opera conducting, spent his leisure time writing more symphonies and piano concertos. In 1909 he began touring the U. S. as a pianist. Only two or three times, during his first few years in the U. S., did he take up the baton again, and then chiefly to conduct his own works...
This season, grand opera at Manhattan's Metropolitan opened with a slightly fussier fuss than usual. Last week, however, the Met got in the groove-a few new voices and a new red carpet, but the same old scenery, same old gilded box holders, and opera's perennial bright angel, NBC, occupying Grand Tier Box 44 for the Saturday matinee, Boris Godunoff...
...most radio listeners, however, a third man in Box 44 is synonymous with opera itself. He is 42-year-old Milton John Cross, a huge, humble, bespectacled, music-charmed announcer whose cultured, genuflecting voice seems to his public to come straight from NBC's artistic soul. Radio listeners hear a tremolo of anticipation when Milton Cross's bated, bass-viol voice tells them: "The house lights are being dimmed. In a moment the great gold curtain will...