The New York Times/1918/11/11/Opera to Open Tonight
OPERA TO OPEN TONIGHT.
Homer and Caruso Start a Week of Many New Stars.
Tonight New York's Opera House will open its doors to the first great audience of its annual performances, approaching 200 in a year, and running continuously for the next twenty-three weeks, until April 19, 1919. New artists will appear nightly at the start, and at least one opera, set for Friday, will be a work never staged in upper Broadway before.
The Metropolitan stars in the season's opening series will be, this evening, "Samson et Dalila," Caruso, Homer, Cousinou, Rothier; Wednesday, "Aïda," Music, Homer, Crimi, Montessanto, Didur; Thursday, "La Figlia del Riggimento," Hempel, Carpi, Scotti; Friday, "Forza del Destino," Caruso, Ponselle, Gentle, De Luca, Mardones; Saturday matineé, "Thaïs," Farrar, Diaz, Cousinou; Saturday night, "Cavalleria," Easton, Althouse, Chalmers, and "Pagliacci," Musio, Kingston, Scotti.
Of the new singers, Robert Cousinou, baritone, comes from the Paris Opera and Opera Comique. Guilio Crimi and Luigi Montesanto have sung in Italy, Spean and South America, and Crimi was last year in Chicago. Rose Ponselle is an American girl, born in Meriden, Conn., of Italian parents, and is said to have a remarkable soprano voice. Alice Gentle, contralto, engaged late last season but not heard as yet at the Metropolitan, is a former member of Hammerstein's company at the Manhattan. These are the chief débuts of the week on Broadway.
There are other American singers to appear later, including Roa Eton, Margaret Romaine, Mary Mallish, Mary Ellis, and Helena Marsh, as well as Cario Hackett and Reinald Werrenrath.