Metropolitan Opera Archives

Enrico Caruso, Madame Eames, M. Scotti, not to forget the incisive and poetic M. Toscanini, in "Aida" last night at the Metropolitan Opera House drew the largest audience that has been seen this season since the [first] night three weeks ago.

Madame Eames has associated herself in a peculiar way with the part of the Abyssinian princess, who interfered with the marital ambitions of an Egyptian princess, by no means as benevolent as she who preserved incipient legislative wisdom hidden in Nilotic bulrushes.

In the first place, Madame Eames looks like an Abyssinian ought to look like. She is not three colors at once. This in itself makes her a relief from certain of the dingy Aidas we have seen, whose hands were one color, face another and arms another.

Indeed, she presented a most artistic as well as a most rare appearance. Nor could anything have been more delightful to hear than the richly yet quietly toned and perfectly managed medium notes of that well-delivered voice.

Caruso's singing of the last act gleamed with the polish of a refined musicality. Antonio Scotti gave Amonasro all the explosive patriotism of an excited Galibaldian.

Adamo Didur sang Ramfis, the High Priest, a prosaic, stately and bass-voiced individual, with the same amiable tendency that was noticeable in our old friend the executioner in "The Mikado." Ramfis, like that executioner, is for murdering everybody.

Madame Homer, in all other respects, so praiseworthy as Amneris, will insist on taking scene calls. Surely opera is insincere and unreal enough without so painful an addition to the insincerities and unrealities.

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