It is an admitted fact that no good American name goes in musical circles. If you were not born on the other side, you have to pretend you were and apologize and take a foreign moniker; or you will not be accepted in your own, your native land.
The way things are now, no American singer can possibly break in without going to Europe for a long and expensive course of study—just to get the European stamp of approval.
Some of the bitterest tragedies of this world have been those of American girls who found the doors closed to them in their own country by foreign impressarios and who struggled their way to Europe in order to work for German or Italian permission to follow their own professions in their own country. A good many found heart-aches, poverty and other worse tragedies over there.
And now coming to the point: it looks as though the logical successor of Caruso might be a young California boy of good old American stock—Mario Chamley. He is a regular young “he” American who talks baseball; goes to all the fights and is “regular” from the basement up. He has a glorious golden voice and has gone to the front in the Metropolitan more rapidly than any other young tenor in the history of American opera. The future seems to have boundless possibilities for him.
Chamley is a charming young fellow to meet. Opera singing is just a job—like any other—to him. He tells some outrageously funny stories about life in an opera company. Among other adventures, the first time he appeared in a grand role in the Metropolitan, he burst the waist band that held up his pants.
When the curtain went down and the applause began, the excited impressario tried to drag him out in front of the curtain.
The young tenor tried to tell him his pants were coming down, but he couldn’t remember how to say it in Italian. The impressario thought it was just shyness and modesty that kept him back and tried to drag him along. Just in time, one of the other singers, explained the situation and the Metropolitan audience lost a chance for a comic thrill.
And now, brethren, that will be about all for today, except that the press agent of the Ziegfield Follies has announced with heat of excitement that the girls have formed a club to prosecute and reply to those who say they go to rough parties and live wild lives. Cross my heart, I have always believed that the Ziegfield girls spent all their spare time reading dictionaries and doing tatting work and helping mother with the dishes. So they can’t get anything on me, b’ gosh.
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