Baltimore Evening Sun (9 June 1911): 6.

Every Baltimore music lover must get vast satistfaction out of the success of the spring opera season at Ford’s. For more than a month the Aborn singers have been filling that famous old playhouse nine times a week, and so well has the attendance kept up, despite the hot weather and the competition of the summer parks, that there is now talk of extending the season, which, according to the original plan, has but two more weeks to run.

This success is all the more gratifying because it affords an effective answer to the common complaints that Baltimoreans are poor patrons of the theatre–a complaint voiced by Baltimore pessimists almost as often as by pessimistic theatrical managers. As a matter of fact Baltimoreans are nothing of the sort. Put good fare before them and let them know that it is waiting--and they will drop their money into the till as eagerly as the folk of any other town. The New Theatre Company of New York, on its first tour of the country, played to better business in Baltimore than anywhere else. Good plays and good light operas nearly always prosper in our theatres. Whenever the word goes forth that something of real merit to to be seen and heard, Baltimore is quick to respond.

It is curious to note that the Aborn Company has dropped its former custom of devoting part of its annual season to light opera and musical comedy. The reason therefor is the somewhat surprising one that grand opera pays far better. It is easier, indeed, to draw a full house with “Madame Butterfly” or “Lucia di Lammermoor” than to do the same thing with “San Toy” or “The Belle of New York.” Even such comparatively. unfamiliar operas as “Thais” and “The Tales of Hoffmann” are preferred to the frankly jingly things. Baltimoreans get enough of musical comedy during the winter. When the spring brings the Aborns they want to hear serious music.

The visits of the Metropolitan Opera Company, far from satisfying the local thirst for opera, seem to have the effect of making it more keen. No doubt the reason lies in the fact that the presence of that great company arouses the interest of many persons who cannot afford to pay its extremely high prices. These persons, hearing a lot last winter about “Thais” when it was presented at the Lyric at $5, were eager to hear it when it was presented at Ford’s for $1. In this way the Metropolitan Company’s visits beneflt the city both directly and indirectly, for besides giving thousands a chance to hear good music, they encourage other thousands to seek that chance elsewhere.

Now and then one hears melancholy discourses upon the musical ignorance and indifference of Americans, with particular reference to their Indifference to opera. Every European city of more than 250,000 population, it is pointed out, supports a permanent opera company, but in the United States not more than six cities--New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco--have ever done so. This is true enough, but an inspection of the scales of prices will help show why it is so. I turn to Baedecker’s volume on North Germany and seek the prices of opera seats in Leipzig and Dresden, two cities substantially the same size Baltimore. In Leipzig the best orchestra seats cost 6 marks ($1.50); in Dreaden, at the Royal Opera, they cost 5 marks ($1.25), and one may actually get a box seat for $1.75. In the United States the standatd price for an orchestra seat for first-class grand opera is $5, and there is talk, in New York and Chicago, of raising it to $6, or even $7.50.

Another point that must be remembered is this: that save in Paris, Berlin, London, Dresden, Milan, Vienna and a few other great cities opera upon the elaborate scale made familiar to us by the Metropolitan company is unknown. The opera-lovers of such towns as Marseilles, Bremen, Moscow, Naples, Cologne, Hamburg and Madrid seldom, if ever, hear the Carusos, the Sembrichs and the Scottis. They go to their opera houses not to feast their eyes upon great stars, but to hear music. There is, in such towns, no social flavor to opera going. Provided the opera of the evening is decently sung by performers who can distinguish between C natural and B flat and the orchestra and stage management are adequate, the audience is satisfied. The result is cheap opera, but on the whole, very good opera.

That is what we are coming to in this country, with Baltimore leading rather than trailing. The Aborn Company, visiting us year after year, has at last won a definite position. Our music lovers know that it cannot afford to offer Caruso and Mary Garden, but they also know that it gives extremely painstaking and satisfactory performances, and that its prices are very modest. The result is that an opera-going class has developed in the community. There are already enough Baltimoreans in that class to make 50 or 60 performances a year profitable. Not many provincial towns of Europe support more performances a year, and not many behold better ones.

The big opera companies--the Metropolitan, the Manhattan, the Philadelphia, the Chicago and so on--have done good service in this country. They have offered us, perhaps, the best opera in the world, and as I have shown, they have developed an opera audience. But there are signs that the tide is turning against them. Their prices put a heavy burden on all ordinary folk; they tend to convert opera-going into a vapid social diversion, like bridge-whist. No doubt they will give place, in the course of time, to something better–in brief, to a large number of more modest, but still perfectly respectable, opera companies, scattered from Maine to California. When every American city begins to look forward, as Baltimore does, to its annual season of grand opera at moderate prices, then it will be no longer possible to denounce Americans for their indifference to good music.

The Voice of the People, as overheard on crowded highways:

Ain’t that fellow Preston a handsome man! Baltimore hardly couldn’t be no slower. If dirty roads wasn’t so dirty they’d be better than them cobblestones.

Twenty cents reward for the arrest and conviction of any anti-vaccinationist who is not also a believer in Fletcherising, thought transference, crystal gazing, osteopathy, the New Thought, the sublimal self, chiropratic or the Ptolemaic theory of the universe.

Additional contributions to the dictionary of foreign words and phrases adopted into American:

Premier (Fr.) Pree-meer. Au Revoir (Fr.) Aw re-voor. Chef (Fr.) Chief. Gendarme (Fr.) Jen-darm.