Word: tom-tom
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...which the metropolis is typified by insistent rivet-noises; and a new Rumba which George Gershwin completed last month. He got the idea last February in a low street in Havana called La Frita. The Rumba is a "symphonic overture" based on Cuban themes, for full orchestra plus bongo (tom-tom), maracas (rattle), gourd and sticks. At its first hearing it seemed lengthy, sometimes dull; but were it tightened up it might well compete with Ravel's Bolero, a work more shrewdly conceived but of considerably less musical interest...
...Productions drew largely upon Cleveland tal ent. They assembled 500 performers for Carmen, plus donkeys and mules. To last year's spectacular Aïda, they added 100 new spear-carriers. The small, patient, well-scrubbed elephant of Aïda was present once more, figured also in Tom-Tom. In Die Walkure there were not the usual nine but 17 Valkyries galloping over the mountain. Brünnehilde's eight new sisters were given made-up. Wagnerian-sounding names like "Ritthelle." "Kampfsiege," "Trautschilde." There were real gas flames, 10 to 40 ft. high...
...plantation scene, with massed slaves singing the chant of their new freedom while a band plays "John Brown's Body"; the short, jazzy cabaret scene; the death of the Voodoo Man, with Baritone Bledsoe groaning "Now, forever my tom-tom will be silent," and the Boy (Tenor Luther King) responding "No! No! Black Man! The tom-tom shall be heard...
...lighting equipment ever assembled. They built ten great ramps tilted toward the audience, broke these up into myriad levels. There is a revolving unit 30 ft. high, which last week furnished a mountain pass in Carmen, a monster throne and then a tomb in AH da, the waterfall in Tom-Tom. For the mountain in last week's Die Walküre, nothing less than a real one would do, so Laurence Productions built...
Carmen was the best show in Cleveland's opera week. Newton Diehl Baker was lustily applauded when he entered. (Later an alert observer saw him pay for some punch with an old-fashioned big $1 bill.) Carmen, unlike murky Tom-Tom, was spirited, colorful; its settings a sunburned tan for daytime, a vivid purplish grey by night. There were many ballets; some starkly modern, some in hippy rumba style, one a whirlwind affair with the performers, in long green robes, mounted on horseback. Only unreal touch: the undersized, obviously stuffed bull dragged in at the last...