23
MUSICAL COURIER
June 15, 1922
I SEE THAT
Owing to John McCormack’s recent illness, he will not con-certize until next spring.
The San Carlo Opera Company may go to Australia next summer instead of to England.
Antonia Sawyer was married on June 10 to Ashley Miner.
Esther Harris Dua and her husband, A. G. Dua, of the Chicago College of Music, will spend the summer in Europe.
Carl Fischer had a violin eleven feet, seven inches tall on exhibition at the conference of music industries.
W. H. Brennan has taken over the management of Symphony Hall, Boston.
Mme. Cisneros made a strong appeal for the American artists in her address delivered at the New York State Federation of Music Clubs’ convention.
Greek Evans, baritone, and Henrietta Wakefield, contralto, were married several weeks ago.
The Eastman School of Music summer course will begin on June 26 and close July 29.
Much interest has been aroused in the forthcoming tour of the Ukrainian National Chorus.
Jacobinoff’s playing of “Ave Maria” at the Eastern State Penitentiary made the prisoners weep.
The book bearing the title “How to Sing,” by Enrico Caruso, is spurious.
Willard Irving Nevins was married to Helen Dickerson on May 31.
The firm of Harold Flammer, Inc., celebrated its fifth anniversary on June 6.
“That Soothing Saxophone Song” is the name of a new song by Edward C. Barroll with saxophone obligato.
Mana Zucca has returned to New York.
Samoiloff pupils are successful in opera and concert.
After a vacation in Brussels, Ysaye will devote the rest of this year to concertizing in Europe.
S. Hurok will manage the Cherniavsky Trio on its American tour during 1923-24.
This summer Los Angeles will have its first open-air symphony concert season at the Hollywood “Bowl.”
Alexander Smith Cochran has been granted a decree of divorce from Ganna Walska.
Christine Langenhan now is an artist pupil of Samuel Margolis.
The American Institute of Applied Music has just finished its thirty-sixth season.
Nora Kronold was married recently to Melvin C. Carroll.
The Grand Opera Society of New York is holding summer rehearsals at the Zilpha Barnes Wood studio.
Charlotte Peege became soloist of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, on June 4.
The Bayreuth Festivals will not be resumed until 1924.
A musical festival to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the London Royal Academy of Music will be held from July 10 to 22.
Plans are under way for the erection in New York of a great municipal opera house and two conservatories.
Lucy Gates is not superstitious; she has chosen Friday, October 13, for her next New York recital.
Mischa Levitzki will give a recital at Winthrop College, Rock Hill, S. C., next season.
Binghamton, N. Y., is to hear Nellie and Sara Kouns in December.
Nelson Illingworth has finished touring and is teaching in New York this summer.
Lynnwood Farnam is booked for an engagement in St. Paul, Minn., on June 22.
Elena Gerhardt will be soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra next February.
Sir Henry Heyman is still seriously ill.
Frieda Hempel and her husband, W. B. Kahn, celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary in London.
Over 200 vocalists and instrumentalists made application for the Stadium auditions.
Plattsburg’s third annual May Music Festival took place May 24-27.
Nellie Melba’s “Concerts for the People” in Australia have been a great success.
Frederic Lamond will play in America next season.
Carrie Louise Dunning’s Normal Class in New York is announced for August 1.
The National Musical Managers’ Association held its annual meeting for the election of officers on June 8.
On June 23 Edna Swanson Ver Haar will have filled her ninety-sixth concert engagement this season.
Ethel Newcomb has entirely recovered from her illness of last winter.
September 1 Clarence C. Robinson will become director of the School of Music at Ohio University.
The Letz Quartet will play next season at Columbia University, Brooklyn Institute and the Educational Alliance.
The General Convention of Women’s Clubs will hold its sixteenth biennial convention at Chautauqua, June 20-30.
It is the consensus of opinion that this year’s North Shore Festival was the best in the history of the series.
The New York State Federation of Music Clubs is to publish a year book.
Samuel D. Sehvitz will be William Wylie’s Western representative for the coming year.
The Stadium Auditions end June 28.
An extensive music festival is being planned for Berlin this autumn.
Arthur Shattuck leaves this week for Europe and will be away until December.
W. H. C. Burnett, the Detroit manager, and Cameron McLean, baritone, were in New York last week.
St. Louis has furnished a $40,000 guarantee for its all-:, American Municipal Opera.	G. N.
is Carl Denton and the music given selected from the best classic and modern repertory. The program book has excellent notes with musical examples written and compiled by Frederick W. Goodrich. It also contains additional notes furnished by the Public Library and a series of important articles on the Modern Orchestra. Concerts are given at the Heilig Theater and the destinies of the organization are in charge of Mrs. Donald Spencer, business manager.
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SPURIOUS CARUSO
In the New York Public Library there reposes an apparently harmless volume bearing the title “How to Sing, by Enrico Caruso.” The work was published serially in 1913 by the London Monthly-Musical Record, running through three issues, May, June and July, and then bore the title “Talks on Singing.” Subsequently it was published in book form by the John Church Co., and it was then promptly discovered that the authorship was spurious—the work was not by Caruso! Legal proceedings followed. The publishers won their case against those by whom the book was sold to them, and the existing edition, type, plates, etc., were destroyed.
That might have been expected to end the matter, but Caruso was a great man, material regarding him was always anxiously being sought by publishers, and the Musical Observer, unwittingly, without an intention of deceiving its readers, and knowing nothing of the legal history of the work, reproduced a portion of it in November, 1919.
That again might have ended it, but it seems hard to kill, and now a portion of it is again reprinted in “Caruso’s Method of Voice Production” by P. Mario Marafioti. On page 155 of this work the author says “In 1919 Caruso was requested by a musical paper to give some personal views on singing,” and gives the source of the quotation which follows as “The Musical Observer, November, 1919, taken from the Monthly Musical Record.” Dr. Marafioti was as ignorant of the spurious nature of this quotation as was the editor of the Musical Observer, and they״ were both entirely ignorant of the fact that tire articles had been collected in book form and that the books and plates had afterwards been destroyed. Questioned upon the subject, Dr. Marafioti stated that Caruso, in passing upon his manuscript book, did not see these quotations, which were added at a later date. Further information is being sought as to the exact nature of the legal proceedings and to what extent and in what manner Caruso denied authorship of the book which bore his name.
An interesting feature of the mater is that on pages 149-150 of “Caruso and the Art of Singing” by Salvatore Fucito and Barnet J. Beyer, is a passage which closely paraphrases a passage on page 32 of the spurious Caruso volume. Another no less interesting feature of the matter is that these passages do, apparently, correctly express Caruso’s views upon the points dealt with. It would appear possible, therefore, that someone really got the material in question to some extent from Caruso himself prior to its publication in the Monthly Musical Record. The editorial statement in the Monthly Musical Record did not, however, in any way suggest that these articles are the result of an interview, or suggest any doubt as to their genuineness. This editorial statement said: “To our Readers. In addition to the continuation of our new features, we have pleasure in announcing that we have secured the rights of three important articles on singing by no less an authority than the eminent operatic tenor, Signor Enrico Caruso.”
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ENTERPRISING ST. LOUIS
St. Louis is doing something in a very direct way for American opera. It has furnished a $40,000 guarantee for its Municipal Opera and proudly boasts that this opera is “all-American”—principals, orchestra, chorus. Also the first opera to be given is an American opera—De Koven’s “Highwayman.” That there will be a very limited number of American operas in the repertory is no doubt true—and perhaps no real American grand operas—but those who will be prepared to complain because of that should take into consideration the caliber of operas that have, up to the present time, and so far as is known, been turned out by American composers. First rate melodic operas like those of Verdi, Puccini, Gounod and Bizet may exist—but where are they? Such all-American undertakings as the St. Louis opera are more likely than anything else to bring them forth. The feeling on the part of the composer that here is an opera house and here is the American spirit, will do more to encourage production than all the־ “high-brow” prizes ever offered.
NEW YORK MUNICIPAL
MUSIC CENTER LAUNCHED
One wishes that the caption of this article would express the exact news, but as a matter of fact the heading should have read: “New York Music Center Plan Is Launched.” However, it is the hope and wish of everyone interested in music in America that the plan itself will soon develop into perfect reality.
Mayor Hylan, Chamberlain Berolzheimer, and the other gentlemen of the city administration who are sponsors for the great plan of erecting the institution for the advancement of music and the other arts as a war memorial, which is to be conducted along the lines of the Museum of Art and Natural History, have found that a vast army of citizens of New York are with them heart and soul in the contemplated project, even though its cost to the city will be about $30,000,000, the first $15,000,000 for the land and the other $15,000,000 for the buildings. The site that is in view for the plan is on 59th street, extending 300 feet on either side of Seventh Avenue, facing Central Park West, and running back to 57th street and Seventh Avenue, the last named thoroughfare to be closed between 57th and 59th streets.
According to Chamberlain Berolzheimer, the real father of the undertaking, the policy of the management of the projected institution or institutions will be conducted by a board of trustees after the manner of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The title to the buildings would rest in the city. The actual work will be started as soon as the Board of Estimate and Apportionment has voted the expenditure of the $15,000,000 for the buildings. At least that seems to be the general belief, although it is not without the range of possibilities that the entire $30,000,000 may be raised through other means.
It is purposed also to include a magnificent opera house in the group of buildings, and the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera House Company have been approached unofficially in order to find out whether they would be willing to sell their present opera house and its site and become tenants of the edifice which is to be part of the great Music Center.
Otto H. Kahn, chairman of the board of directors, is in Europe, but it is understood that he is very sympathetic toward the idea of the Music Center and is not opposed to the removal of the Metropolitan Opera House, in accordance with the idea of Chamberlain Berolzheimer and his associates. It would remain, of course, for the officials of both institutions to agree on the ways and means and to receive mutual assurances that the combination would be beneficial to both sides.
Other directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company, who were interviewed last week, said that in general they favored the plan, but, of course, they would not commit themselves definitely in the absence of Mr. Kahn.
Congratulations are in order to the gentlemen who have been able to bring this tremendous artistic enterprise to its present stage of advancement, and to judge by what they have already accomplished, there should be every confidence on the part of musical circles that at no very distant times New York City will have a Music Center of a kind and degree that will be the admiration and envy of all the other large cities in the world.
The whole project was in order for discussion by Mayor Hylan and others last Tuesday evening at a dinner given in the Mayor’s honor at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel by the City Chamberlain.
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A FORTY-YEAR RECORD
Portland, Ore., is one of the fortunate cities in the United States which has its own permanent symphony orchestra. The present organization is only ten years old, but it was preceded by other organizations of more or less stability which gradually led up to the present body by educating public opinion to the point where the value of orchestral music was realized and funds for the yearly deficit available. Portland’s first orchestral concert was given in 1868. In January, 1882, the first orchestral society was formed, with W. H. Kinross as conductor and C. H. Prescott as president. In 1884, Mr. Kinross left the city and Simon Harris assumed the directorship. In 1911 the present symphony orchestra came into being and is now one of the great orchestras of the United States. The work of financing it has been materially aided by William D. Wheelwright. During its ten years of existence the orchestra has given about an average of six yearly symphony concerts and some popular concerts. The best of soloists have appeared at these concerts and much has been done by way of making them available for school children. The conductor