Cairo

Chicago

No orchestra--just a piano is all the support which the Society of American Singers require in their series of performances of Mozart's charming opera, Cosi Fan Tutte. This is something of an innovation, and one that will gain the sympathy of people whose ears have had experience with bad orchestras. Sometimes during performances of the Wagnerian Festival Company, now on tour in this country, one wished that a skillfully played piano were in operation, rather than an atrocious orchestra. The Society of American Singers is an interesting organization. It is directed and financed by William Wade Hinshaw, a few years ago a splendid basso with the Metropolitan Opera Company. After retiring from singing, he turned to the patronage of music, and took hold of the Society of American Singers. The organization gave two or three memorable seasons of light opera in New York, including most of the Gilbert and Sullivan works. For some reason the New York appearances were discontinued, not for any lack of popular support, apparently. Hinshaw is a splendid sort of person, a big, cordial fellow, who, raised on a farm, fell in love with music in his boyhood through the medium of a cornet, and who admits that, through all his years of distinguished success, he has never lost his early flame for the little keyed trumpet.