NEW YORK’S OPERATIC WAR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2083, 18 May 1907, Page 4

NEW YORK’S OPERATIC WAR.

Competition between the rival opera houses in New York is proving an excellent thing for the artists. Caruso has put up his prices, but it is not yet certain whether lie will succeed in gaining from Mr. Conried, at' the Metropolitan Opera House, a new contract at double his rates of the present season, and ensuring him next year £6OO for each appearance, with 50 guaranteed. His main rival, Signor Bonci, the Manhattan Opera House’s favorite tenor, has succumbed to the wiles of the Broadway management. Mr. Hammcrstcin, who discovered him for the American public, was declared to have been paying him £l6O a night, but for three years from next November, so it is said, Bonci has bound himself to Mr. Conried for a much larger consideration. “Les affaires sont les affaires,” said the tenor, but “oh, no; not simply a question of money—not of money alone—but beozuess in general. I am not on zo strike; no, but I go to sing higher up town. Voile tout!” This operatic feud has brought out the inference on what a far more liberal scale America pays its entertainers than that it adopts for its statesmen, its Judges, or its generals. Jean do Iteszko, who made much of his fortune in America, received £SOO for each of 30 performances on his last visit to New York. Tamagno could command £320, though he created no furore, and Gamparini made £I6OO a month. Thus was a great advance on earlier times. Then Duprez on his retirement from the French Opera in the middle of the last century, was thought t'o bo making a fabulous fortune from his voice by receiving £4OOO a season at his best. Among sopranos, Madame Patti has received £IOOO a night, Melba is credited with getting more than £4OO, and Sombricli, for whom each appearance now means £350, was retained by Abbey and Grau, on her first visit to America, for £25,000. On the dramatic stage foreign players of the first rank who have made potential fortunes are too numerous for mention. Modjes—ka, who is living in retirement in California, though not in affluence, at one time received £350 a week, and Mary Anderson’s returns rose to £BOO a week.