MUSIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 547, 27 December 1928, Page 14

MUSIC

(By

F.1.R.)

The Lowbrow “I don’t know why the horns and the brasses intrude themselves at a certain phase of the piece, or exactly what is the significance of the agitated violins.” states Mr. Edgar Wallace in explaining why he never goes to concerts. “The only man I really understand and with whom I sympathise in a vague way is the fellow who hits the drum. I know just what he is trying to do —make au appropriate noise. He is the lowbrow of every orchestra, and my heart goes out to him.”

EGYPTIAN HELEN Maria Jeritza in New Big Role CREATED FOR HER A Grecian blonde once made a lot of trouble and men have never forgotten it. Long before Christ they knew her as the fairest of all women, the one the Trojan Paris stole, for whom the Greeks fought ten long years. Brave warriors died for Helen. Brave poets since have spent their dearest words on her. She has been Menelaus’s Helen, Paris’s Helen, Homer’s Helen too, and the Helen of Kit Marlowe, Alexander Pope and Andrew Lang. Last month, and for the first time, still proud and beautiful, she came to the New York Metropolitan Opera House —this time Helen of Richard Strauss’s, “The Egyptian Helen,” given new by Maria Jeritza.

Like the first Helen, Jeritza-domin-ated. She was a still white Helen asleep on a golden couch against a Mediterranean sky; a soft singing Helen beguiling Menelaus; a loud determined Helen taking matters into her own hands, mixing the last deciding potion. Maria Jeritza’s story is like an early German fairy tale. It begins in the Moravian town of Brunn with a brighthaired child playing games of makebelieve. In the school, in the choir at the church, no child sang more lustily than Maria Jeritza. Some day she would be a great singer, she felt quite sure, and she confided it to her brother. But he only laughed and pulled her pigtail, so she said no more about it. When she was 12. however, her mother decided she should go to the musikschule. Soon after she made her first public appearance, singing the wedding duet from Lohengrin. She was the bride, Elsa, all stiffly starched in white. A neighbour’s child was groom, a square-faced boy in velvet breeches.

Her operatic debut was at 16, in Olmutz. Again she was Elsa, a very wistful Elsa trying hard to be a great singer. Later an engagement, followed at Vienna. The Emperor Franz Josef liked the opera, liked especially Die Fledermaus of Johann Strauss. He went one night when Jeritza was Rosalinda, sat attentive in his box, tapped his foot to the music, tapped loudly when she sang the Czardas. Three times Jeritza curtsied deep and began again. The old Emperor beckoned an attendant. “Why have they always old fat singers at the Hofoper?”' . . . Soon Jeritza went to the Imperial Opera. Magnificently Built Then she became the great Jeritza to a gay music-loving Vienna. Her fame grew with her repertoire. A beautiful prima donna has always

seemed a phenomenon. Here was one magnificently built, with sea-blue eyes and golden hair. The public raved. Composers made their music for her. She created Strauss's Ariadne, later the Empress in Die Frauohne Schatten. She was his Salome, his Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier). He saw her in Max Reinhardt's revival of Offenbach's Belle Helene and an idea

was born. It simmered and swelled until last winter he finished for her his Helen.

In 1914 Jeritza was to go to America, but then came the war. Vienna stayed German and the Metropolitan Opera went Italian. Jeritza married Baron Leopold Popper de Podraghy, one of the wealthiest industrialists of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who turned soldier for his Emperor. She herself sang at the front and worked in hospitals. Not until 1921 did she eventually go to America. Her opening opera was Korngold's Tote Stadt, the first given in German after the war. The curtain was five minutes late and the Metropolitan curtain is never late. Patrons wondered. No one knew the fault was the new soprano’s who was so frightened that no sound would come from her throat.’ She ate some pineapple, crossed herself once, ten times, and Manager Gatti Cassezza whispered encouragement. The curtain went up and Jeritza made her debut. With her singing and acting she was a sensation. When the curtain went down she was the idol of American opera.