Filling the House

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 648, 27 April 1929, Page 22

Filling the House

HUNDRED MEN ANSWER ADVERTISEMENT. "WITH | VIEW MAT..” OF WEALTHY | WIDOW.” I QUEST OF THE WHITE ROSE anounced from Berlin recently that an attempt by the husband of a Vienna woman conductor to ensure a good-sized audience for his wife’s debut with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Berlin was responsible for the uproar that interrupted the concert, and caused her to faint. He had deposited with the police sufficient money to redeem the tickets of those who entered the hall under the misapprehension that they were about to meet a rich and matrimofiiaily inclined widow. Lia Maria Mayer was the chief victim of her husband's ill-advised attempt. She was in the midst of her work as guest-conductor when a man in evening clothes arose, pulled a pink-seened note from his pocket, and cried: “I protest against this piece of bluff!”

Nearly 100 other men in the front rows produced similar letters, and joined in the protest. Mine. Mayer

fainted, while music-lovers In the rear rows attacked the interrupters. Finally the disturbers were marched to police headquarters. There is was learned that the men had responded to a recent newspaper advertisement saying that the widow of a rich industrialist wished to marry again, and that by sitting in the Iront rows of the philharmonic concert would be husbands could recognise her by the white roses she would wear. It was the lack of white roses on any of the women in the audience which started the uproar. Twenty-seven of the 100 victims of the hoax lodged charges of fraud against its perpetrators, but <t was said later that refunding of their ticket money had satisfied most of the complainants.