NEW YORK, THURSDAY, March 8, 1923.
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they are a necessary part of Madrid’s culture. The Daniel management has decided to arrange no further concerts until the tax is taken off.
Thus far the concert season has not witnessed anything especially noteworthy. The kernel around which local music life is built is Federigo Arbos, the conductor, who has given a series of orchestral concerts prior to his tour in France and Switzerland.	Dr. Edgar Istel.
Metropolitan Opera Company
MONA LISA, BY SCHILLINGS, WINS THROUGH
ITS INTERESTING STORY AND ITS FINE CAST
STADIUM CONCERTS
SEEK NEW AMERICAN
ORCHESTRAL WORKS
Music Is Good But Not Great—Barbara Kemp and Michael Bohnen Make Debuts—Libretto Gruesomely Fascinating-
Other Offerings of the Week
American Composers, Native Born and Naturalized, Invited to Submit Unplayed Manuscripts—Auditions for Soloists to Begin in April—Conditions for Composers and for Aspiring Soloists
The committee in charge of the annual Stadium Concerts at the Lewisohn Stadium, Columbia University, are planning for the coming summer a much more elaborate and interesting season than ever before attempted. The committee has organized this year with Adolf Lewisohn, honorary chairman; Mrs. Charles S. Guggenheimer, chairman; Mrs. Newbold Leroy Edgar, vice-chairman, and Arthur Judson, manager. Mrs. Henry Martyn Alexander will be chairman of the Educational Committee. This year an unusual opportunity is to be offered to American composers. Undiscovered, hitherto unheard and unrecognized music of high standards will have an immediate chance, and a hearing. The opportunity is to be open for the entire country. Any orchestral score by an American composer (native-born or naturalized), that has never been played by any orchestra will be examined with a view to performance, under conditions most favorable to the composer. Manuscripts will not be received after May 1. They must be addressed to Mrs. William Cowen, chairman score committee, Stadium Concerts, Fisk Building, Fifty-seventh street and Broadway, New York City. Of the manuscripts sent in, one or more scores will be accepted and played at the Stadium Concerts this summer. The selection is to be made by a competent committee, which will have the right to decline all, if it does not find sufficient merit for public brchestral performance. The names of the committee will be published after manuscripts have been selected. The following conditions must be observed:
Conditions.
Each manuscript must be signed with a nom de plume.
Each must be accompanied by a sealed envelope, containing the composer’s name and address, and on the outside the nom de plume placed on the manuscript. The sealed envelopes will not be opened until the winning manuscripts have been selected.
Any form of composition may be chosen suitable for orchestral performance. Score must not exceed twenty-five minutes in playing length.
The committee will not be responsible
(Continued on page 49)
marks the Cartusian brother. The young woman gives the monk some money for a mass for the repose of the soul of Mona Lisa—“that unfortunate woman,” she says. Her husband repeats the word “unfortunate,” as though questioning its appropriateness. The young woman, who lets him precede her as they pass out, drops a spray of white iris at the monk’s feet.
(Continued on page 34)
Three-fold Tax Causes Spanish Theaters to Close
Madrid, January 26.—This is an unusual day in Madrid. As a result of an agreement between theater owners, authors and performers, all theaters with one exception have been
Extra New York Season for German Opera
The Wagnerian Opera Festival announces that it will open a three weeks’ season at the Lexington Theater, Lexington avenue and Fifty-first street, on Monday evening, March 12. The change from the Manhattan Opera House, where the company’s performances are now being given, to the Lexington has been necessitated by the fact that the Manhattan was already under contract for another engagement.
The complete repertory for the three weeks at the Lexington will include those operas already given by the company and, in addition, Strauss’ Salome, von Weber’s Freischütz, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Nicolai’s Merry Wives of Windsor and Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. These additional three weeks will extend the Wagnerian Opera Festival’s original three weeks’ New York engagement to one of seven.
It is a coincidence that the Lexington Theater is the third house built by Oscar Hammerstein in which the Wagnerian Opera Company has played, the other two being the Metropolitan Opera House in Philadelphia, and the Manhattan Opera House in New York.
Company’s Opera Repertory Changed.
The Wagnerian Opera Festival at the Manhattan Opera House announces the following changes in the schedule of performances for this week: Friday right, Tristan and Isolde; Saturday afternoon, Tannhäuser, and Saturday night a gala performance consisting of an act from Die Walküre, an act from Lohengrin, an act from Der Fliegende Hollaender and the last scene from Die Meistersinger with a chorus of S00 voices, the largest ever heard in this work in New York.
Photo © Elzin
LAZAR S. SAMOILOFF.
In March, 1901, fifteen years ago, Lazar *S'. Samoiloff, the singing teacher, opened his studio in Carnegie Hall, New York. Coming from Russia, unheralded and unknown, he now counts among his singers Rosa Raisa, Giacomo Rimini, Galriella Besanzoni, Jean Barondess, Maria Luisa Escobar, Consuelo Escobar, Iza Kremer, Gita Glaze, Sonya Yergin, Alice Zeppilli, Constantin Buketoff, Edward Lankow, Vladimir Duhinsky, and many others. Among newcomers this season are Frances Peralta and Bianca Saroya.
closed as a protest against the new amusement tax which has been raised three hundred per cent, over its already prohibitive rate. The one exception is the so-called Royal Theater, which in reality is a profitable private enterprise paying no tax whatever, and as a result is keeping its doors open!
When one reads the list of works this house promised its gullible subscribers and compares it with what has so far been given, the result certainly gives a just cause for general complaint. With one exception, neither the works produced nor the soloists created interest.
Concert Life Hit by Tax Decree.
The movement of the theaters against the tax department has been joined by the Daniel Concert Management, the largest concert agency here, which claims that concert giving will be impossible, since the tax is five times more than that on other forms of enterprise. It seems as if concerts are viewed by the tax officials as a luxury, when in reality
The modern thing in librettos is to make them deal with young wives who do not love their middled-aged husbands, but prefer a younger admirer whose attentions usually end in the death of the offending couple. Of such stuff are made Pelleas and Melisande, Monna Vanna and The Love of Three Kings, and now comes Max Schillings’ Mona Lisa, to complete the quartet of operas of that sort. Naturally enough the elements of love, passion, cruelty, and revenge are vital factors in such a tale and therefore it offers temptation to opera composers for a musical setting of varied and picturesque moods, dramatically speaking.
Story of Mona Lisa.
Beatrice Dovsky, librettist of the work heard for the first time in America at the Metropolitan last Thursday evening, March 1, created an especially interesting background for her story when she took for her heroine the original of da Vinci’s famous portrait known as Mona Lisa (one of the priceless art treasures of the Louvre, in Paris) and also made that lady’s celebrated enigmatic smile a potent part of the plot of the play.
The libretto is pure melodrama, as the following synopsis will show:
A middle-aged tourist and his young wife are being shown through the old palace of the Florentine pearl merchant,
Francesco del Giocondo, by a young Cer-tosa monk whose order had acquired the house. The monk describes Mona Lisa, whose mysterious smile has been immortalized by Leonardo da Vinci. As he proceeds to relate the tragedy of her life the stage grows dark. Relighted, the story is enacted, the three artists of the prologue impersonating the principals in the drama,
Mona Lisa, Francesco and Giovanni.
It is carnival time and the streets of Florence resound with the joyous songs of the merry-makers and the solemn chants of Savonarola’s monks of San Marco prophesying calamity for the godless city. Conscience-stricken, the Venus of the Carnival, entering, proclaims her conversion. Presently Mona Lisa also enters.
Her elderly husband confides his grief to his friend, Pietro, that her witching smile is never for him. The arrival of Pope Alexander Borgia’s messenger, Giovanni, to purchase a special pearl for His Holiness gives Francesco an opportunity to disclose to his guests his treasures. They are kept securely in a cabinet within which is a inner chamber so tight that no human being could live in it more than an hour.
The jewels are brought forth and Francesco explains how he preserves their lustre by having Mona Lisa wear them from time to time.
Meantime Mona Lisa discovers in Giovanni a youthful suitor who had won her heart when her father insisted on her marriage to del Giocondo. The recognition is mutual, but Francesco, who realizes the situation, jealously interrupts their conversation and Giovanni leaves with the other guests.
However, while Francesco is without, locking the gate, Giovanni stealthily returns and a passionate love scene ensues. Mona Lisa promises to meet him at church the next day and flee with him. Francesco’s step is overheard. Mona Lisa bids Giovanni to hide behind the tapestry that conceals the jewel cabinet, but not before the husband has seen them in embrace. Entering the room, Francesco, who does not know just where Giovanni is hidden, assumes ignorance of what has happened.
At last he flings aside the tapestry before the cabinet. Not finding Giovanni there he realizes that he has concealed himself in the inner chamber, which had been left open. Quickly he turns the spring, locks the outer door and after enjoying Mona Lisa’s agony, throws the key out of the window into the River Arno.
Ash Wednesday is dawning as the second act opens. Mona Lisa is asleep beside the couch in the same great room. Without observing her, Dianora, her step-daughter, passes through and descends the balcony to see her new boat. Presently Mona Lisa awakes and the awful horror of the night before becomes more real, her agony more and more intense. But it is time for early mass and Dianora returns to accompany her. She has a key in her hand—she found it in her boat. Mona Lisa takes it and sends Dianora off to church, telling her she will follow shortly. Then she starts to open the jewel cabinet, but Francesco entering, she shows him the key. He is nonplussed, but presumes that she has released Giovanni—her smile would seem to indicate it. She persuades him to open the cabinet door on the plea that he let her wear the string of pearls intended for Lu-crezia Borgia, and as he does so she pushes him in and turns the key, consigning him to the fate that befell Giovanni.
The story is over and the epilogue brings us back to the present. “Such was the end of that Carnival night,” re-