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The following program was produced for national educational radio under a grant from the National Home Library Foundation by W. B U R Boston. With. Boston University radio presents Hall of song the story of the Metropolitan Opera from 1893 to 1966. You are right I. Will. You are. It will. Suit. Your hosts are miles Kasten Deek music critic of The New York World. Tribune. And Milton Cross.
Even before the last of the five years in Conrad's contract with the Metropolitan had run its course it was fairly obvious that he would not be given a renewal as early as the summer of 970 Otto Caron had met in Paris with Julio got the who was then the impresario of the scholar. God he agreed to take over as the Mets general manager in the event that Connery should be forced to resign because of ill health. When Carson returned to New York the news that Conor Reed's next season might well be his last was widely publicized and touched off speculation in the press about possible successors other than Gotti. One of the people most often mentioned was Andreas DePaul a tenor who had made his debut with the Metropolitan in 1890 and then became known as the one man opera company during the 1940s and when the frequent indisposition of various other tenors had him singing Sixteen
different roles in three languages. Another possibility for the job was Gustav Mahler who had only recently been engaged to conduct for the 1997 season in a number of ways. Conrad's final year at the Metropolitan was his most successful. There had of course been the exciting albeit unconventional performance of Sally up'n and then a fine debut by Mala January 1st conducting Tristan with from start and the Viennese Maestro later directed superb performances of Don Giovanni the ring and Fidelio given for the first time with the Leonore overture number three included after the dungeon scene. It was also in this season the Geraldine Ferraro created a lasting impression with her first VLF and Caruso sang his first Manrico in Trovatore e. Apparently Conrad expected to remain at the Metropolitan for another season. Alum Amala has recalled in her memoirs the chine her husband visited Konrad shortly after they arrived in New York. During their conversation the
Metropolitan impresario assured the conductor much to the amusement of both husband and wife that he would make his career in America. This was not to be the case however. On March 24th a gala farewell concert was given for Conrad benefit. The stage was decked with tears of flowers and almost the entire company appeared in scenes from the is repertory the directors presented the departing manager with a silver cup and thus the five year regime of Henry Connery came to the double bar. Much to his credit was the way he undertook an expansion of the repertory by adding not just the indifferent novelties which crowd attempted but rather operas which were due in due and be a real artistic significance. The weak points in Conrad's management came directly from his lack of musical knowledge. In all fairness it must be said that he ought never to have been chosen for the position at all. Why was he there. The answer is very simple and the
pragmatic one. He was able to run the Opera House at a profit. As a matter of fact money seems always to have been one of his major preoccupation and all of the others had contracts with Conrad himself not with the company and so were obliged to perform in a yearly manages benefit of major productions such as possible were frequently set aside for these occasions and in this way Conrad was always assured of a large box office. It should be remembered too that a number of the Metropolitan directors were also stockholders in Conn Reed's opera company and were therefore in time to do a share of the profits. It was only during his last two seasons when he failed to end the year in the black that it was decided that this was not the way to run Opera at the Metropolitan. Accordingly the end of the Connery DNA signaled a thorough reorganization of the Metropolitans corporate structure. The operation would now be divided between two bodies. The Metropolitan Opera and real estate company whose shareholders would own boxes in the house but not to collect any
dividends. And the Metropolitan Opera Company which would be run by a salaried impresario who was directly responsible to auto call on this company would be concerned only with producing operas at the house. From now on any profits would be salted away in the bank to provide for more opera and better opera on February 15th. 908 it was announced that God would be the new general manager of the Metropolitan and that underlay as Diplo would be the administrative manager. No one was quite sure of what this division of power actually involved but the arrangement was doomed to failure from the very beginning. After all DePaul had wanted to be impresario in his own right. A legend has it that got he received his telegram confirming his appointment during a performance of Christoph Colombo at La Scala. He was handed the message. So they say
just at the moment that Columbus sighted America in any case got he accepted book passage on the Lusitania and was in New York when he got there he found two surprises one of them was deposed. Since this was the first time he had heard anything about having a collaborator of any sort. The other surprise was the opera house itself. When he expressed dismay at the lack of backstage space rehearsal rooms and technical facilities auto call and told him not to worry because a new opera house would be built very soon and it was fifty eight years later. For the moment though the only significant improvement made was the addition of an elevator to carry the less fortunate up to the family circle when going to because it has arrived in New York from the Scala he brought with him a new conductor for the Metropolitan. The maestro was of course Arturo Toscanini and his debut
came on the very first night of the 1980 season as he conducted a performance of aïda that has remained unparalleled in metropolitan history. If you mean a cast of Caruso Scotty and Homer. But strengthen still further by Emmy destine who was making her debut in the title role. Singing With Great Power body and vibrant quality. Ah.
Yes. When that All-Star evening was over it was hard to decide what part of the performance had been
finest. But the critics were almost unanimous in giving the lion's share of credit to Toscanini greybeard said he was in the best sense an artist an interpreter a recreated and WJ Henderson commented. The advent of Toscanini would mark the beginning of an era in the history of Italian opera he might have noted too that this opening performance gave clear evidence that something very fresh and vital was happening at the Metropolitan. Scotty and Houma had sung their parts together many times before and yet that night they were obviously stimulated or inspired by the new maestro. It was obvious from the very beginning that the new regime would be a dynamic one. In the weeks ahead Toscanini threw himself completely into his work preparing butterflied Carmen and Gotterdammerung Then turning to two new works having their metropolitan premiers and Catalan is finishing that he went on to conduct a Falstaff revival cavalier Rusticana and a good Friday performance of the
band directory I'm the bigger of the Metropolitan under its new management was also evident in the bright new singers who made their debuts in that initial season on November 24th the baritone Pasquale Amato appeared in La Traviata and four days later gave the first of his many Rigoletto knows from which role he left a fine version of the Paul cottage on the author. Load.
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While the mother was virtually an instant success. The road was considerably more difficult for Francis Alger who made her debut as you know December 7. Henderson thought that her voice simply wasn't up to Metropolitan standards but another critic quickly pointed out that it was useless to waste words on Madame al those performances because it was obvious that she would sing at the Met for at least three seasons no matter what anyone said. The innuendo was based on all those relation with God and the general trend of popular opinion was that she would be around as long as it got a while since he had a contract for three years. That meant three more years for Alba. Fortunately hard to stick career ran much smoother than a romance soprano in the impresario were married during the following season but were divorced several years later. Nevertheless how does vocal talent develop considerably after a debut and she sang at the
Metropolitan until one thousand twenty nine. One of the very last roles she assume was Harriet and Martha. Here she is joined by Caruso Marcel Sharon and Josephine Jack Obi in the spinning quartet. From that opera. Yeah. Oh.
But while quartet's was singing so beautifully on stage there was a little bit of disco odd from a trio performing in the executive offices. That said the new management had been a two man affair. Gotti was general manager. Dep. was administrative manager. As the season progressed though it became very clear that a third party was also involved if only an officially at first. This of COS was Toscanini for the past 17 years or so the saying is had been telling the management what roles they would sing and would not sing and so they virtually controlled the repertoire. But Gotti made it clear from the beginning that he and Toscanini would be the ones to decide who was to sing the what and when. This left to pull somebody out in the cold. Many of the stars were still retained on the contracts negotiated with Connery and some of the agreements contain promises of special preference for certain
parts. Even with Con Reid gone they felt safe with a dip all they had to look after their interests. But here were gutty and Toscanini gradually squeezing DePaul out of the picture. Their situation became very uncomfortable when the news circulated that Guardian Toscanini had been given two extra years on their original one year contracts. There was no mention of DePaul however and the natural implication was that he would soon be dismissed in November. The board of directors received a letter signed by Caruso aims for our Scotty and Sembler urging that dippers contract be extended with Gotti to protect in their words our artistic interests and the welfare of the Metropolitan Opera House. The reply from the board was written in a very conciliatory tone but it made it quite definite that Gotti was supreme the executive head while deplores duties were to be subordinate to those of the general manager.
But this put the signers of the original letter in a rather awkward position. Caruso and Scotty made their peace with Gotti saying that they only signed out of concern for the other three names and some break withdrew from the company at the end of the season and so Geraldine Ferraro was left holding the bag. In her autobiography she recalls that after the incident Gotti was quite consistently courteous but that he never could quite forget this first sign of rebellion. Fortunately the rebellion was not sufficient to disturb the harmony of performances on stage and the 1008 season was one of the most uniformly high quality much of the credit for this must go directly to getting their way planned and organized this season in advance. Two separate choruses of 100 voices each for engage one for the French an Italian repertory and another for the German opera. Will you
know set it from the Scala and Hans Steiner from Munich where hired to direct them. The size of the orchestra swelled to 135. This to provide relief for the overworked players finally got enlarged a whole series of new productions which were to be designed and constructed in Italy among the season's novelties were conducted by Hertz and Smetana as Bartered Bride from the mall is direction. Both works have considerable popular and critical success. A fresh production of The Marriage of Figaro which was supervised by Devil made use of the newly installed adjustable flaw in the orchestra pit for the figure on the floor was raised to bring the small Mozart and orchestra into better focus in the large house. All in all it is fortunate that the Metropolitan manage so well in that year because it was a season of great activity at Oscar Hammerstein the Manhattan opera. The most novel attraction there was modern French opera and the star featured in almost every production was a Mary Garden. She
appeared in mass in a juggler. Then after that she sang salomé which this time caused somewhat less of a commotion than in the previous year. Other stars on Hammerstein's roster were Melba. Then the Telo Sheila Bair and Morris. Then that stage 31 operas Hammerstein 25. No one could deny that this was indeed strong competition even though it wasn't to last much longer. Well after such a productive season we're just a little hesitant to ask that the only important question what price glory. This time it came pretty high and Gotti ran up a deficit of more than $200000. The biggest loss since the time Henry Abbey went 600000 in the red after the very first metropolitan season. This time though it seemed more worthwhile because in addition to the
success of the long season in New York the company had also expanded its activity to include performances in Philadelphia and at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn on April 20 7th. Word came from Austria that Heinrich Khan read was dead. Otto Khan held an insurance policy on the former managers life. It was still in force and so the Metropolitan collected one hundred and fifty thousand dollars it hadn't counted on. Fifty eight thousand had to be paid to con Reeves widow to settle certain claims. But in the end there was still a good amount left to help offset some of the past losses. And it wasn't very long before Gotti was able to boast of a sizeable profit at the year's end. In the following season the Metropolitan's roster was strengthened as Laos Les Stark made his first appearance with the company and began a career that was to offer many splendid performances on next week's program you'll have a
chance to hear the conversation that our producer Richard Calhoun had with the tennis son Walter when they met in Sutekh last spring. I hope you'll all be with us then when we take a look at another of the Metropolitans great artists. For know this is Milton Cross on behalf of my old cast and Dick inviting you to join us again then. Boston University Radio has presented Hall of song the story of the Metropolitan Opera from 1883 to 966. The series is created and produced by Richard Calhoun a grant from the National Home Library Foundation has made possible the production of these
programs for national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.
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Series
Hall of song: The 'Met,' 1883-1966
Episode
1907 Through 1909
Producing Organization
WBUR (Radio station : Boston, Mass.)
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-348gjr4d
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-348gjr4d).
Description
Episode Description
1907 -1909. Beginning of Gatti's reign. Toscanini arrives. New talent: Emmy Destinn, Maria Gay, Frances Alda, Pasquale Amato, Adamo Didur.
Series Description
Documentary series on history of the Metropolitan Opera Company ("The Met") in its original home at Broadway and 39th Street in New York. "The Met" closed its old location on April 16, 1966. Series includes interviews and rare recordings of noted performers.
Broadcast Date
1966-10-11
Topics
Performing Arts
History
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:06
Credits
Host: Cross, Milton, 1897-1975
Host: Kastendieck, Miles
Performer: Destinnova_, Ema, 1878-1930
Performer: Gay, Maria, 1879-1943
Performer: Alda, Frances
Performer: Amato, Pasquale
Performer: Didur, Adam, 1874-1946
Producer: Calhoun, Richard
Producing Organization: WBUR (Radio station : Boston, Mass.)
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 66-41-8 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:28:54
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Citations
Chicago: “Hall of song: The 'Met,' 1883-1966; 1907 Through 1909,” 1966-10-11, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-348gjr4d.
MLA: “Hall of song: The 'Met,' 1883-1966; 1907 Through 1909.” 1966-10-11. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-348gjr4d>.
APA: Hall of song: The 'Met,' 1883-1966; 1907 Through 1909. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-348gjr4d