OPERA VERSUS DRAMA
Why opera, which is a less old and less vital form of entertainment than drama (in America), should spring into such prominence is difficult to understand. San Francisco has raised one hundred thousand dollars towards a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar opera house, which will be owned and managed by the municipality. The Metropolitan and the Chicago and the Philadelphia and the New Orleans Opera maintain themselves as centers of real artistic work, though they are not municipal enterprises. Opera in Boston is assured for another three years, and this has been accomplished through the efforts of citizens.
But America has no endowed nor municipal theater.
I would in no way decry opera, but it is very clear that some of the energy which is now being used for opera might far better be put into the wider field of drama. Because of its very nature, opera is bound to appeal to and to reach fewer people than drama. As a force and a power for education and general uplift, it can never compare with drama. There is a considerable number of people who attend the opera because they love it, but a much larger number attend because it is fashionable. All the drama leagues and numberless organizations which are trying to cultivate taste for good plays and to better the drama are on the wrong track. It is not a cultivated, appreciative public that is needed. Let those interested in drama learn a lesson from opera. Let them employ their energies to make drama fashionable. When it becomes incumbent upon society leaders to occupy stalls in the theater for a season, we shall have an endowed theater and not until then.