"Schicchi"

Back to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan, after a six-year furlough, came Gianni Schicchi, one-act opera by Giacomo Puccini, last of an uninspiring triptych. Giuseppe De Luca was Schicchi, the canny peasant who, to oblige avaricious relatives, substitutes himself for the corpse only to double-cross them and leave everything to himself; was a good enough buffoon to keep people's minds off the diluted melodies sketchily flung together; and sent them home snickering.

New Composer

Feodor Chaliapin, large Russian bass, soon to tour Europe and the U. S. with his own opera company in the Barber of Seville, has a melody of his own running through his head. Last week in Detroit he hummed a few measures of it to pressmen; said that he would develop it into an operetta, take it on tour, perhaps, after the Barber.

In Washington

Diplomats and government officials and their ladies were the guests last week of Mary Louise Curtis Bok* at the new Chamber Music Hall of the Library of Congress. The occasion was the first public concert by the Curtis Quartet, organization composed of members of the faculty of the Curtis Institute ot Music in Philadelphia. The quartet, composed of Karl Flesch, Emanuel Zetlin (violinists), Louis Bailly (violist), Felix Salmond, musicians all of them before they were pedagogs, played with great skill and understanding numbers by Haydn, Beethoven and Bach, won much honest applause from the invited audience.

Glee

Tall men, small men, round shiny men, grim dour men, all black-coated, all full-throated, 1,200 of them, gave a concert one evening last week in Manhattan. They represented 25 male choruses brought together by the Associated Glee Clubs of America* for a third annual concert. Two years ago 540 of them had sung together at Carnegie Hall; found Carnegie Hall too small for glee club enthusiasts. Last year 856 of them had sung at the Metropolitan Opera House; found it too small. Last week they met at the 71st Regiment Armory, 11,000 capacity; found it a happier choice.

They sang earnestly, well; showed excellent results of careful rehearsing in their local clubs. Walter Damrosch, famed symphonic conductor, directed them. Anna Fitziu, soprano, was the assisting soloist.

In the morning they had met in the Metropolitan Auditorium for competition. Each club sang a capella, a song of their own selection, and a prize song, Henschel's "Morning Hymn." Judges Walter Henry Hall, professor of Church and Choral Music at Columbia University, Dr. Holies Daun, head of the department of musical educa-at New York University, and H. O. Osgood, associate editor of the Musical Courier put their heads together, added up points given on interpretation, ensemble, pitch, tone and diction, found that the Concordia Society of Wilkesbarre, Pa., under the direction of Professor Adolph Hanson had won first place, a point score of 273 out of a possible 300. Second came the Guido Chorus of Buffalo, N. Y., with a score of 270.

Critics Undone

There are some personalities conjoined to such abilities that critics damn themselves for the faintness of their praise and strangle their vocabularies in ecstatic anguish at the failure of their word-slaves to express the frenzy of their passion.

The man who made them word-mad last week was slight and grey and not imposing. He made strange deprecatory gestures as the crowd cheered, shouted, pounded paw on paw, while the wreaths of flowers were brought up, while a silver loving cup was produced. He appeared and bowed again, again, and still they would not stop. At the end of 15 minutes he motioned the orchestra to leave the platform and get them forth into dark places, into subways and such like. Gradually the crowd melted, having hid "farewell but not forever"* to Arturo Toscanini, incomparable Italian guest conductor of New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

At length the critics with their strange ears, shaped like scalpels to dissect the beauties of sound, allowed their trembling fingers to fall upon the keys of their typewriters. They said that the farewell was unforgetable, they said that his achievements had mounted concert by concert on his brief stay in Manhattan, they called him a quickener of masterworks and then they cursed themselves and the God who made them critics. It was embarrassing to the reader.

There was a fine range in the program that Senor Toscanini prepared for his farewell. He opened with Mozart's Symphony in D Major, he traced its fine melodic modeling with a sure hand, he wrought a depth of feeling into it and then he left it to plunge into that strange moodish vision of Debussy's imagination, La Mer, the haunted sea, the mocking sea, the incredible romantic deep, recreating with a fearless touch the extreme of the Frenchman's impressionism. Abruptly he turned to Brahms' variations on a theme by Haydn, giving it a sturdiness combined with fine melodious waywardness; then to the gilded scrollery of the Nottumo and Novelletta of Giuseppe Martucci; and finally to the volcanic movements of the prelude and finale of Tristan and Isolde. When the last chord of the Liebestod had died away there were no critics left but only eulogists.

And some averred that he had remade the Philharmonic Orchestra, that he had taught the brass and wood to sing, that never before had its tones been at once so exact, so iridescent, so delicate and resonant. But mostly they praised Toscanini's "justice", the justice of a great interpreter, master of the delicacy of phrase and detail, master of the power of crescendo and mass effect, wielder of a baton inspired to complete attunement with every mood, manner and clime of music.

*Clarence H. Mackay, famed father-in-law of Irving Berlin, announced that Toscanini would appear in the U. S. again next January for a limited number of concerts.

*Wife of Publicist Edward W. Bok, daughter of Publisher Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis.

*The Associated Glee Clubs of America was conceived by an engineer and an accountant, both glee club fans. On March 10, 1924, they succeeded in getting together representatives of over one-third of all the glee clubs of the northeastern states to consider the question of what to do "to enable the glee club to take its rightful place in the great American musical awakening." The 'idea of competition and emulation came, external stimuli to provide more members, to make them work harder and sing better, "to be of more service to their community."