OPERA SALARIES.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13908, 8 November 1919, Page 4

OPERA SALARIES.

Opera impresarios must be feeling very uncomfortable at the spectacle of a world asking for higher wages, says the Weekly Despatch. If the opera singer applies the same argument as the scene-shifter that salaries should be double pre-war ones on ac-. count of living being now twice as dear, it would mean that several of the best-known artists would refuse to open their mouths for I'ess than £I,OOO a time.

Caruso has already put his price up, ancl it was not a very low one before the war. A few months ago he signed on at Copenhagen to appear at the Opera House and on the concert stage for a limited number of performances at £2,000 a. time plus 10 per cent-, of the profits. Previously in 1912 he had touched £6OO a night in the United States, and also did a four-weeks' concert tour of England in 1909 for £B,OOO. In the same year three performances in "Carmen," "Pagliacci," and "La Bolieme" at the Berlin Opera House brought him £SOO a time. His prewar average was about £40,000 a. year, but if he manages to acquire many contracts like this 1919 Danish, one he will soon make this figure look a mere pittance. Tetrazinni is shortly to embark on a concert tour in England. The term's of the contract have not been published, but it may be assumed she is not singing for love. Tetrazinni is by no means cheap. Oscar Ilammerstein paid her £BOO every night ,she sang at the Manhattan Theatre. New York, in January, 1908, which made the £B,OOO for forty performances she received in South America look small. In 1911 she signed contracts to sing at the New York Metropolitan Opera House at the highest salary said to have ever been paid to a woman singer. Supposing that Tetrazinni finds the cost of living twice as dear her notes will become very golden indeed. Destinnova, whom we have just heard, is another singer whose prewar salary, if doubled, would make ,an interesting figure. She was booked to sing in New York in 1916 for a limited number of performances, and oven then the price was £IO,OOO. In this case she lost the money because the Austrian Government refused to let her leave Bohemia. Tn the comparatively cheap days of 1911 she is said to have named £SOO as the smallest sum for which she would sing c the New York Metropolitan. Chaliapin, the great Russian bass, took £4OO a night when he sang at Drury Lane in 1914. He is now receiving £9OO a performance, or rather more than £50.000 a year, for singing to Bolshevik audiences in Russia. As Albert Coates, the conductor. has remarked, "he can just j about make ends meet" on this sum, and probably he was not much worse off when he was getting £2 a month in 1890 as an unknown singer. A Bolshevik fortune is generally a great misfortune. Melba at Covent Garden in 1913 received £SOO a performance, and booked a five "months' United States • tour the same year for £40,000. She signed with Kubelik, the violinist, for a. joint tour in Canada, 100 concerts, for £loo.ooo—money guaranteed. It was estimated in 1913 that Melba had earned over £500,000 on opera and concert platforTns. To this must be added a sum between £30,000 and £50,000 for singing into gramophones. But; even with all this' trouble looming ahead, impresariosn vst congratulate themselves on their gvmd fortune when they remember thai: Jean de Reske is well eruoed.led in retirement. Had he been in'the full flush of his operatic triumphs to-cb y there is no saying what lis post-w.tr salary would have been. He and his brother Edouard were stated ir 1900 to have made over a million sterling between them by their voices. In 1902, when operatic sa'aries wtrstill more or less within limits, the late Colonel Mapleson proposed to Jean de Reske a tour of !0 performances in the United Statse for £40.000—i.e., £I,OOO a performance. All the singer's very considerable expenses were to be paid in addition, The offer was, however, refused The •same- living happened when Heinrich Com-ied, the then manager of the Now YoVk Metropolitan Opera House, wanted him to sing for £450 a night. So opera directorates still have something to be thankful for, even if they do occasionally sign for those fabulous di*vs when a Melba was singing four times a week frit* £2O. and a certain Tetrazinni could be hired in Florence for £2O a month. •