Radio Digest (June 1932-Mar 1933)

Record Details:

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Rosa Ponselle, American-born prima donna, and universal favorite of the Metropolitan Opera. She also is well known in Europe. TODAY the high, semi-circular balconies of the Metropolitan Opera House embrace the country from New York to San Francisco. Tuxedo Park, Mo., and Newport, Ark., sit in the Golden Horseshoe. Metropolitan Opera has become the regular fare of the radio public throughout the land. When the nation's leading opera company went on the air for the first time in its history on Christmas Day, 1931, over a nationwide network of the National Broadcasting Company, there was some question as to whether or not the plan would prove a success. Today all doubt has been removed. After a year's experience, M. H. Ayles Opera worth, president of NBC, and the officials of the Metropolitan Opera Company, have enthusiastically commenced the second season of broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera House. During the coming winter regular Saturday afternoon programs, supplemented by holiday and special occasion broadcasts, will bring portions of every opera in the Metropolitan repertory to the radio audience. Lily Pons's clear soprano, Lawrence Tibbett's brilliant performances, the mighty music of Wagner's "Ring," and the voices of Ponselle, Bori, Ljungberg, Kappel, Rethberg, Martinelli, Scotti, and de Luca in the world's greatest musical masterpieces, previously the fare of a few favored persons in the country's largest cities, are now available to all, just as much as the doings of Amos 'n' Andy, the songs of Rudy Vallee and Ed Wynn's stories about his horse. Metropolitan opera came to the homelistener, however, only after a long wait, filled with many disappointments for broadcasters who aspired to put the famous organization on the air. Great stars from the stage and moving pictures went into radio. Leading statesmen made regular use of the networks. Celebrated concert artists, and even members of the Metropolitan's own company, sang for the microphone. But officials of the company would not hear of the Metropolitan going on the air. Successful operas were given from broadcasting studios. The Chicago Civic Opera Company, next in importance to the Metropolitan, inaugurated broadcasts from its stage, and continued them year after year. Still the Metropolitan refused to recognize the artistic capacity of the microphone. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, who has piloted the Metropolitan to its position at the top of the nation's operatic organizations and now is rounding out his 25th year as its general manager, and his assistant, Edward Ziegler, are cautious and conservative men. For years they questioned the technical perfection of radio. They were afraid that broadcasting would not do justice to the beauty of their music. At last, however, O. B. Hanson, NBC manager of technical operation and en By Vance gineering, succeeded in removing their fears in this regard, and on Christmas afternoon, 1931, "Hansel and Gretel" was broadcast to the nation from the stage of the Metropolitan. The following week brought a series of Saturday afternoon broadcasts to continue throughout the season. "Beautiful Christmas gift to music lovers of the world," telegraphed Nikolai Sokoloff, director of the Cleveland Orchestra, and musical critics and authorities throughout the country echoed his comment. Patrons who had held boxes in the opera house for years breathed a sigh of relief when they entered, and found no changes or alterations in their beloved opera house. M ANY boxholders had expected to see the auditorium littered with broadcasting equipment, the artists half hidden from the audience by microphones. Instead they found everything just as it had been before the broadcasts, for there is very little evidence in the auditorium that the performance is being heard beyond the walls of the opera house. Two engineers and an announcer sit quietly in a box in one of the upper tiers, nothing but the earphones over their ears and a small black control box on a table in front of them to indicate that they are other than members of the matinee audience. Otherwise the box they occupy is furnished just like a score of other boxes in the same tier. When the announcer is on the air he steps behind the engineers into the anteroom, which is separated from the box by a sound-proof glass door instead of the usual drapery. From this point of vantage, with his microphone out of sight of everyone in the auditorium, he watches the stage through the glass door and talks to the vast radio audience without danger of being overheard by adjacent box holders. Two sets of microphones, hidden in either side of the footlights, and another microphone, unobtrusively suspended high above the orchestra and well out of line of vision, complete the broadcasting arrangements which Gerard Chatfield, technical art director of the radio company, and the man who put