Grand Opera: The Story of the Met by Charles Affron, Mirella Jona Affron Page B

tights, boots, shoes, and other similar articles shall be furnished by the Artist himself.” And what is more, Tibbett was expected to master twenty-seven roles, mostly comprimario and secondary parts, two leads (Amonasro and Escamillo), and one role for bass (King Dodon in Le Coq d’or ). For the next year and a half, he was little noticed by public or press. 30
    In fall 1924, Tibbett got his big break. Gatti cabled Alda, on a concert tour with Tibbett, to ask if her protégé was up to Ford, the second baritone role in Falstaff . She replied yes, definitely, and did her best to help her young colleague. But rehearsals went poorly for the inexperienced singer, who was challenged by a weak musical memory and a difficult score. The formidable, almost all-Italian cast included Antonio Scotti, as Falstaff, and Gigli; the venerated Serafin was the conductor. To top it all off, the revival had been staged expressly for Scotti’s twenty-fifth anniversary with the company. During rehearsal, annoyed that Tibbett’s on-the-job training was slowing things down, Scotti and Gigli engaged in mocking exchanges over the novice’s histrionic and vocal difficulties. Although he had never set foot in Italy and did not know Italian, Tibbett got the drift. He was furious. Then came the night of the first performance, January 2, 1925. Tibbett sang the bitter aria that concludes the first scene of the second act (“È sogno? o realtà’?”) with an extra dose of passion. During the ovation that followed, the scene’s principals took their bows. Then Scotti came out alone. But the audience kept up the clapping, stamping, whistling, and, finally, to make its will perfectly clear, began shouting, “Tibbett, Tibbett.” For once, the claque was not the instigator of the commotion. Meanwhile, assuming the tribute was for Scotti, Tibbett had repaired to his dressing room two floors above. Serafin did his best to carry on with the performance, but the audience, presuming that Tibbett had somehow been kept from appearing before the curtain alone, would not let up. A member of the orchestra was dispatched to plead that he be allowed to acknowledge the applause. Gatti acceded reluctantly; attention had shifted from the veteran Italian baritone, the honoree of the evening, to the humble newcomer: “An American audience had decided that one of its own nationality should be properly recognized for his talent” (Times) . The sixteen-and-a-half-minute demonstration subsided at last and the curtain rose on the interior of Ford’s house. From then on, Tibbett was given increasingly important assignments. He became the cornerstone of Gatti’s American opera initiative, and with his assumption of the title role in the Met’s first Simon Boccanegra, he was uncontested as the company’s leading baritone in the Italian and French repertoires. He sang the last of his 603 Met performances on March 24, 1950.
     
    FIGURE 18. Lawrence Tibbett as Ford in Falstaff , 1925 (Herman Mishkin; courtesy Metropolitan Opera Archives)
     
     
Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air
     
    Kahn’s 1925 rejoinder of “absurd” to charges that the Met had been unfair to Americans was understandable. That very year, there were forty native singers on a roster of ninety-five. The eccentric examples of Ponselle, Talley, and Tibbett offered little guidance for the company’s further Americanization: Talley was an experiment that did not bear repeating, Ponselle and Tibbett phenomena that defied repetition. What was needed was a broadly based and systematic process for the discovery of talent. The answer was the “Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air.” The opening broadcast of thecompetition took place on December 22, 1935, the first week of the season. Hosted by Johnson himself and sponsored by Sherwin-Williams, the paint company, the fifteen-week-long series (expanded to twenty-six the next year) featured “the hit tunes of opera brought down to the level of Mr.