Pacific Opera

San Francisco is a moral town, but one night lately some 5,000 of its best citizens could have been observed wildly applauding a swaggering, black-eyed duke who, at the top of his lungs, was flaunting loose views about women. Only a few of the citizens, however, like Banker Amadeo Peter Giannini and his wife, could understand what the duke's words meant. For the rest of the assemblage-for the Dohrmans and Dakins; for Schweppes, Liggetts, Armsbys, Robbinses, McNears; for Novelist Gertrude Atherton sitting in onetime (1915-21) Senator James Duval Phelan's box and for Governor & Mrs. C. C. Young in the Prentis Cobb Hales's box-the music was enough to understand, the music of Rigoletto. The music mattered specially because, at this opening of the San Francisco Opera's two- week season, Tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, one of the world's best, was making his Pacific Coast debut.

A pretty Gilda (Queena Mario) sang her "Caro Nome" brightly and pleasantly. Her hunchback father (Giuseppe de Luca) had abducted her for the duke and sobbed out his torment on discovering it. But Soprano Mario and Baritone de Luca have sung in San Francisco before and Rigoletto is an old story. Not until Lauri-Volpi lifted high his smoothest tones did excitement supplant well-mannered interest. Then, not until the Quartet would the audience hush its shouting for encores and let the opera finish.

San Francisco justly prides itself on a rapid, healthy operatic development. A civic association, it is now in its seventh season. Performances, under Director Gaetano Merola. are of increasing excellence and-rare fact-they pay for themselves. Critics may carp at the routine repertoire this year: Rigoletto, L'Elisir d'Amore, Don Pasquale, Pagliacci, Gianni Schicchi, Martha, II Trovatore, Aida, Hansel und Gretel, La. Boheme, Manon, Barber of Seville, Faust. But the list of artists is impressive, includes Elisabeth Rethberg, Kathryn Meisle, Nina Morgana, Giuseppe Danise, Leon Rothier, Tito Schipa.

The much-applauded Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, new to the Pacific Coast, has been with Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera for seven years. When he arrived from Italy he was young, attractive, a War veteran who had turned from law to singing. None of his 14 brothers and sisters had a voice. He reached his present position by hard work in which he was unhampered by so-called temperament. For the U. S. which has watched his progress he has small use. Its people are not culturally old enough, he says, to appreciate music. The men are not so bad. They do their business and do not pretend to be musical. But lots of the women pretend, and have no judgment. What is worse, they are not maternal. For three years more, says Lauri-Volpi, he will come to the U. S. to fulfill his contract. Then he will stay in Europe where he is more popular.

San Francisco challenged his last statement. And, enthusiasm being what it is on the Pacific Coast, San Francisco's lusty rival, Los Angeles, will give Tenor Lauri-Volpi something to think about when he sings there in Aida on Oct. 1* with Elisabeth Rethberg.

For Sale: Theremins

Two winters ago there arrived in the U. S. a Russian scientist, one Leon Sergeievitch Theremin (pronounced Termin), with an invention whereby he claimed music could be made with a wave of the hand. Had not strange tales of his "ether music" preceded him from Europe, doubtless few would have attended his demonstrations in Manhattan (TIME, Feb. 6, 1928). But many of the curious went. They saw a slender, tense person of some 30 years take his stand unaffectedly before an instrument resembling a radio set. Then he adjusted plugs and dials on the box (by which timbre was varied and controlled), moving his hands before two antennae (the right regulating pitch, the left expression), made music which, amplified by a loud speaker, filled the hall.

His instrument, Professor Theremin announced, was to abolish the mechanical difficulties of technique, to place music-making within the scope of anyone able to hum a tune. Rights of manufacture, he hinted, were for sale.

Last week he sold the rights to Radio Corp. of America. Through the cooperation of such manufacturing concerns as General Electric and Westinghouse Electric, the Theremin instrument will soon be on sale throughout the U. S.

* The San Francisco Opera Association and the Los Angeles Opera Association work in collaboration. The producing companies and repertoires are essentially the same. The chorus is picked from local talent in both cities. The orchestra for the Los Angeles Opera is made up of players from the Los Angeles Philharmonic just as the San Francisco opera orchestra is chosen from the San Francisco Symphony.