Evening Star Newspaper, June 18, 1933, Page 77

1933. STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C.,”JI".\‘T-‘ 18, NEW APPEAL IN - MODERN OPERA Zo AUDIENCE HEARS Stokowski, With His OrchestralVentriloguism, Shows How the Fat Car- mens May Be Banished From the Stage Il'hile Their Glorious Voices Are Coupled With the Hipless Physiques of Hollywood’s Loveliest. BY MADELIN BLITZSTEIN VEN the most ardent supporters of that combination of singing, acting, orches- tral music and stage design which we call opera will admit that this hybrid art suffers for lack of one important item—illusion. No matter how sonorously Caruso sang his tragic arias in “Pagliacci,” his listeners often found it difficult to forget his stout, squat, un- romantic figure and his ungainly posturings. When the buxom Emma Calve disported her- self as Carmen, she had a plentiful supply of Spanish fire with which to delight the ears but an insufficient amount of Spanish beauty to make her altogether easy on the eyes. ‘To go through the list of languishing operatic heroes and heroines who belie their warbled words by their too sturdy figures would take Emma Calve as a goldenvoiced and plump Carmen. She might contribute the vocal effects to the nesw opera. ) o) far too much space, for all the way from the plump Tetrazzini to the ample Matzenauer their waistlines have made their vicarious sufferings seem barely plausible. Every one who has ever sat in the diamond horseshoe or the “peanut gallery” must at one time or another have stifled a broad smile as he saw in the melodious “La Boheme” a con- sumptive Mimi who tipped the scales at 225, or heard in the tantalizing “Faust” a sweet young Marguerite who would never see 40 again. In the language of the movie fans, what the opera needs, and needs badly, is sex appeal. So long as operatic tenors and sopranos re- main unprepossessing to the vision, how can they hope to captivate the great American public, Anno Domini 1933? UT if a method can be devised through the avenues of modern scientific invention which will couple the silver throats of the born songbirds with the hipless physiques of Holly- wood’s finest, why shouldn’'t opera become a most popular entertainment? The answer is that a way out has been dis- covered and from all present indications opera may see a splendid rebirth. The audiences ot the near future may find themselves watching slim, handsome Andre Cheniers, fetching Rosinas and beautiful Aidas as they hear, as 1 from the beautiful throats and lips of the per- formers themselves, the perfect voices of gifted, though hidden, singers. . The musician for whom this kind of opera has been an ambition is the man whose co- operation has helped to make its possibility into an imminent reality. Last year Leopold Stokowski, the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, let slip a few words in which he prophesied & new type of opera with beautiful actresses on the stage and the singers invisible at some distant point. When he was questioned as to the actual method of operation, he refused to divulge his secret. All he would say was that it had nothing to do with radio or recording. But now Stokowski's secret is out, and the wedding of engineering ard music proves to be even more amazing and weird than anyone had dared to imagine. Demonstrations of this new combination of physics and art were given recently in Philadelphia and in Washington. At both places the audiences were astounded by what seemed magical effects, and the pos- sibilities opened up in the operatic and orches- tral fields were practically limitless. The entire trick is pulled, not by mirrors, as the saying goes, but by telephone wires, dials, amplifiers and microphones. The method is not that of broadcasting, but a perfected sys- tem of electrical transmission which made it possible for the Philadelphia Orchestra to play in its home town while its leader, Stokowski, worked the dials in Washington for the per- formance there. In the same manner a singer could be in, say, New York, while the opera was being per- formed, say, in Cleveland. Her voice could be brought over the wires so perfectly that the audience in Cleveland would be under the complete illusion that the singing was coming from the person on the stage who was acting out the role. So remarkable is the ‘“auditory perspective,” as the engineers call it, that the listeners be- lieve they can locate the exact spot on the stage from which the sounds are coming, when in reality they are being transmitted over wires that carry them hundreds of miles. HE laboratory research took more than two years of steady work. It was done under the supervision of Dr. Harvey Fletcher, director of acoustical research in the Bell Telephone laboratories. Stokowski himseif assisted, and when the demonstrations were given, he con- trolled the sonority electrically by twisting some godgets and dials from his box in tbe audi- torfum. 4 -~ - #p VENTRILOQUIST The lights of the auditorlum were turned low. The stage curtain rose. Then from a completely empty stage came the strains of the symphony orchestra, playing with a dynamic range and volume never before attained. The strangest part of it all was that the music sounded as if the musicians were hidden some- where behind a curtain, for any experienced listener could easily tell the precise location of the separate instruments on the stage. Then the sound of feet was heard crossing the stage and finally came Brunhilde’s “Fare- well and Finale” from Wagner's “Gotterdame- rung,” with just the disembodied voice of Miss Agnes Davis flcating on the stage. If a woman had been standing on the stage, no one in the audience would have believed that the voice was not coming from her throat. What really happened was that the Philadel- phia Orchestra men and the singer were in a soundproof ball room several floors distant from the auditorium, while Stokowski, by means of two dials and three switches, controlled tbe volume and the quality of the music that came from three concealed loudspeakers on the stage, connected with three microphones in the ball room where the orchestra and the singer were being directed by Associate Conductor Alex- ander Smallens. This was the first time in history $hat orches- tral music had been transmitted with tonal fidelity over wires to an auditorium and mm such a way that the illusion was created of invisible instruments playing exactly where they ought to be on a concert stage and of voices talking as if people were standing at certain spots. - What this new method can really be called is operatic or orchestral ventriloquism. Stokowski is the ventriloquist who can figur- atively hold upon his knee, through his elec- trical control, both voices and music. On the stage he can have whatever he chooses and he can, by means of all kinds of levers, direct his distant as well as his nearby performers, O Stokowski the possibilities of this develop- ment are enormous. “It will lead,” he said, “to extensive broad- casting or transmissions of the best kind. Be- fore long the whole country—the whole world— will be wired for the presentation of music. Beer gardens and homes in the country wil hear music that is richer in quality than the music you hear from an academy stage. “I can imagine spacious gardens of pleasure in which happy idlers, after a brief day’s work, wander amid the trees while they listen to the strains of great music played in some distant music tower. “Now the problem is solved of whai we shall do with our leisure time when we have to work only a few hours a day for a living.’ Make no mistake. These are not the ordi- nary loudspeakers and “mikes.” These “mikes” make it possible to reproduce the lowest and the highest musical notes that the human ear can hear. Even more, this system reproduces the space in which the distant music is being played or sung. Three main results have been achieved by the invention which Stokowski can now employ with his invisible opera singers and his invisible musicans. The first result is called auditory perspective. This was illustrated by Dr. Fletcher in a few magical experiments. Voices up in the ball room asked each other for hammer and saw; then came the pounding of wood on the stage. A man walked across the stage in the ball room and the audience could have sworn that he had walked in front of them in full view. Unseen bells and tambourines raced around the stage. Secondly, Dr. Fletcher points out that perfect reproduction requires that all the tones and overtones present in the original music be re- produced in their correct relative intensities. This necessitates a range of pitch from three Leopold Stokowski, who foresees “happy idlers listening to great music coming from a distant tower.” octaves below middle C to nearly six above, a width of range which has never been used before. HIRDLY, the system allows reproduction of sound from a barely audible whisper to a sound so loud that nobody could stand hearing it. This should not be confused with the kind of loudness that can be obtained by the ad- justment of the loudspeaker. Doloves del Rio, who, with the Calve voice, might be turned into the most charming of Carmens.