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54
SCREENLAND
The vitality which Gerald i ne F a r r a r brough t toopera as a Metropolitan star manifests itself again in con nec t ion with her new career as microp h o ne star. Right above, Miss Farrar in her broadcasting booth at the Metropolitan Opera House. And at the extreme right, Milton J. Cross, another important ambassador of good -will for music.
If happy days are here again for opera let it thank broadcasting and the microphone stars
IT IS entirely true, as those critics say who are now scolding the broadcasters for not devoting more energy to the development of their own talent and attractions, that radio is leaning pretty heavily on opera just at present. But it is equally true that radio is proving a most important and efficient pulmotor in bringing opera's gasping breath back to more than normally brisk respiration.
If, as a result, there isn't today a larger audience than at any time in the past for operatic singers and opera itself, then a lot of radio biggies are fooling themselves — and me too, for bringing up the subject at all in this corner.
However, the • suspicion if not the conviction is that America is tremendously eager to give ear to operatic works and opera artists. How else can one account for the presence on radio programs of so many representatives of opera? With one exception (Friday), every day in radio finds that some of the most pretentious of the
day's programs include at least one star whose fame rests upon association with opera.
But if radio is hitching its little band-wagon to the star of opera, look, please, how opera — despite the lethargy of its own nominal guardians, who long were indifferent if not hostile to the idea of putting their performances on the air — look how opera, we repeat, is being lifted by its own boot-straps to a popular interest more widespread than opera knew even in those halcyon days when its glamorous stars, its gossip of the dressingrooms of the chorus and ballet was the talk of every town that had a newspaper ; just as today Hollywood supplies, more ample but no more highly flavored chitchat broadcast under the "by-lines" of syndicated columnists.
Indeed, it might be claimed that radio lavished upon the opera one of the few major refinements the broadcasters have brought to their business this year. This is the improvement made in (Continued on page 78)