The Opera Business

Grave Gatti Rules the Proud and Profitable Metropolitan Manhattan Bulk. The close of the opera season in Manhattan brought the usual many long articles of sum mary and commentary from the critics, and might have inspired the philosopher with a few reflections. Perhaps the most striking feature to be noted in a review of the 1922-23 Metropolitan season is the large number of performances and of operas performed. In 23 weeks Mr. Gatti gave 169 performances of 40 different operas. When you con sider the amount of preparation and rehearsal that even a moderately spectacular opera needs, these are stunning figures. Morale. Now, if you strolled casually into the artists' entrance of the opera house during the height of the season and observed the laughing, joking, careless manner of the groups of singers and musicians whom you would encounter, you might easily vow that it was impossible properly to put on so many productions with such an air of levity prevailing--an air so different from the orthodox solemn bustle of " efficiency." You would, if you looked deeper, observe beneath all the care less lounging and joviality, a hard, stern pressure, relaxed when not needed, but tightened with severe discipline and promptness when the moment of work arrived. Singer, musician and stage official will have ten minutes of leisure. During those minutes the singer, musician or stage official smokes a cigarette, and is a picture of negligent loafing. He tells stories among his fellows, plays pranks and howls with laughter. Seemingly, he is constitutionally incapable of effort. But you may see him glance at the clock, and move quickly away. The clock is the slave-driver. Everything moves by exact timing. On the minute the singer hurries backstage for a rehearsal, the assistant conductor to play the organ or direct the trumpets behind the scenes, the stage official to give the signal for the curtain or the descent of the dove or the collapse of the temple. The amount of work done, especially by the men who coach the singers, lead the orchestra and direct the details of production, is enormous, and they are driven with precision and discipline that, with all the air of ease around the opera house, is nerve racking. That is how the 169 performances of 40 operas in 23 weeks is possible.

Money. As to financial details, we are in the dark. The Metropolitan makes public no financial statement, but it is known that the opera company earns a clear profit, has been a paying proposition, in fact, for a number of seasons, since the early years of Mr. Gatti's directorship. It was reported that the profit for last season was $200,000. For this year the earnings are said to be less, because of new singers and new productions; something more than $100,000, says rumor. However, these sums are not called profits by the Metropolitan company. The name given is " surplus." The earnings are not distributed among the stockholders as dividends--Metropolitan opera stock is nonpaying stock--but are held by the management to be used for new and ambitious productions. Perhaps the company is laying up cash for the new opera house, which is sadly needed, and which, it is reported, will be built.

Other Centers. An opera company that earns money has always been a very rare bird. One that breaks even or loses only a little is rare enough. The big companies of Europe all run up deficits and are usually subsidized by their governments. Deficit and opera have always been closely associated. Last season the Chicago Opera Company lost half a million. This season the deficit is less, around $300,000. Gallo's San Carlo Company, a popular-priced road troupe which is now finishing its season with a grandiose series of operas in Havana, earns a net profit, much to the comfort and happiness of its very able impresario, Fortune Gallo. The Wagnerian Festival Company, which had a rather precarious career this season, achieved a handsome deficit. The Russian Opera Company, which arrives in New York after a long road tour, has been no financial godsend to its manager, S. Hurok. Any study of operatic finances makes it the more extraordinary that the Metropolitan company, whose policy is not to make profits but to avoid deficits, stands today the world's first operatic institution and earns a considerable surplus. Mr. Gatti has indeed achieved what many in the old days would have deemed a miracle, when he thus transformed the Metropolitan's huge deficit, which was traditional in previous years, from plus to minus.

Gatti. This impresario is personally very interesting, a man whose grave dignity of face, figure, speech and manner is of public note. His intimates will tell you that his aloof reserve and unapproachableness, which qualities are so valuable in handling high-strung singers, are rooted in shyness, that the. man is a bookworm, with the sensitive timidity of his kind. Gatti began his life as a civil engineer. He has a first-rate mind, with all the shrewd subtlety that one attributes to Italians. He distinctly has the grand manner. It is this, perhaps, that makes him reluctant to talk English. He would rather talk no English than broken English. But many people underrate his knowledge of the language. You will find that Gatti knows about as much English as he wants to know. If a bore is talking to him in English, he does not understand the tongue at all. You will observe that when jokes in English are told before him, jokes with cunning plays of words, Gatti, when the point has been reached, smiles slyly to himself. Quite a prodigious fellow, this General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera House.

Home, Sweet Home

An interesting article in Musical America, apropos of the Centenary of Home, Sweet Home, relates that the melody of that famous song is an old Italian tune. Payne, who wrote the lyric, heard a peasant girl in Italy singing a lovely snatch of song. He wrote down the notes, and afterward adapted his verses to it. Curiously, when Donizetti wanted a typical English melody for his opera Anna Bolena, he chose Home, Sweet Home, not knowing that it was not English in origin, but as Italian as his own compositions.