Spittle

Fricka, wife of the King of the Gods, in the earthly simulacrum of a Polish soprano named Olzewska, stood in the Vienna Staatsoper, lifting a curve of song that flashed over the dark orchestration like a silver simitar. Another voice was also audible. Through the cadences of Wagner's music, the brandished curve of Olzewska's voice, it issued from the wings, rising and falling in charming periods, punctuated with little ripples of laughter, like :he voice of a woman telling a funny story.

The character of Fricka seemed to become momently less goddesslike. Strutting in a manner little indicated by her role, she approached the wings, hissed a plea for silence. The voice went on. Fricka then took from her bosom a word that Austria has defended with the lives of 10,000 duelists, hurled this after her plea. The voice went on. It was a moment for desperate shifts. Queen Fricka, somewhat forgetful of the proprieties, spat a jet of saliva which, soaring through the group around the noisy raconteuse, settled on the shoulder of a Valkyr.

"I am sorry," said Mme. Olzewska, "I meant it for that farmyard animal. . . ."

"So?" shrilled the charming voice, quite loud enough now to be recognized as that of Maria Jeritza, famed Baroness Von Popper (TIME, Dec. 15, Jan. 5, Feb. 9). "You shall hear of this!"

That night the directors of the Vienna Opera sat in consultation. They knew that the temperament, the popularity of Mme. Jeritza, had long galled the other singers. Fricka's spittle criticism was the outcome of a tiff that had been flaring ever since Mme. Jeritza, roseate from her U.S. triumphs, came to fill a spring engagement in her native metropolis. Who, the directors debated, was the mightiest: the wife of Wotan, or the wife of the Baron Von Popper?

The latter, they decided.

Mme. Olzewska, forthwith ousted for "unseemly behavior," brought suit against the management. Meanwhile the public reacted in her favor.