Sunday Nov 30

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Dist & Bronx
relatives

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Matt’s Notes

Once in a while Papa made a trip up to the Bronx to visit his relatives (sometimes catching a baseball game along the way) though I’m not yet sure who they were or where they lived. I am pretty sure that if he started his day at the “Dist,” a.k.a. the “District,” a.k.a. the Downtown Zionist Centre on St. Marks Place, he most likely took the 2nd Avenue IRT from 8th Street to 149th Street in the Bronx and transferred to another train there.

1939 New York City IRT map.

The more I think about “The Dist,” the more it seems like the title or subject of a TV melodrama: a bunch of passionate twentysomethings from different places, all with different problems, priorities and professions, gather each night to work, flirt and find common cause at “The Dist.” And here’s the twist: It all takes place in the roaring 20’s!

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I’ve been thinking, too, about Papa’s Thanksgiving entry, and how, in looking around for something interesting to mention about Thanksgiving that year, I learned that 1924 was the first year of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. It seems like there were so many seminal events that year: It was the first time a Presidential campaign played out on the radio, it was the year Adolph Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in prison, it was the year Jewish Labor got behind Zionism, the year of the Leopold and Loeb trial, the year J. Edgar Hoover became head of the FBI, the year the Washington Senators finally won the Series. I’m not a historian, but it looks like the modern era was a-birthing right in front of Papa’s eyes. Does every year seem this important when examined closely? Would I have been as impressed with 1925 if Papa kept his diary that year?

Monday Dec 1

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home – radio

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Matt’s Notes

This page of the diary has a printed notation at the bottom that reads:

A SUGGESTION – Time to order your diary for next year.
For duplicate of this book order by number in front.

If Papa took this suggestion, we don’t know about it. This is the only diary we’ve got, and this is the only month we have left.

Text from Papa's Diary that reads: A Reminder - Have you ordered your diary for next year? For duplicate of this book order by number in front.

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"Papa," a man who was 29 years old in 1924, dressed in a suit. He wears headphones and smokes a pipe. Behind him is an old-fashioned, handmade radio.

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Tuesday Dec 2

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Club district

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Matt’s Notes

The phrase “club district” almost certainly does not, as it might seem, refer to a New York neighborhood packed with nightclubs and speakeasies. The closest thing to that in Papa’s world would have been the stretch of lower Second Avenue known as “The Yiddish Rialto” for its concentration of Yiddish theaters and Jewish hangouts (like Cafe Royale and Kessler’s Second Avenue Theatre, and the Second Avenue Baths) but I think what he means here is the Downtown Zionist Centre on St. Marks Place.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think he referred to the Centre as “the district” or, when he was in a hurry, “the dist” because his Zionist Organization of America district meetings took place there. He may have written “Club district” in this entry because some other club he belonged to met there as well (perhaps the ball committee he joined a few weeks ago had something to do with this unnamed club) though I think it’s more likely that he had just come to think of “The Dist” as a clubhouse.

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Wednesday Dec 3

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Home & movies

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Matt’s Notes

Papa doesn’t say what movie he saw, but he had a few newcomers to choose from:

  • Isn’t Life Wonderful, directed by the already-legendary D.W. Griffith. This serious effort about the struggle of Germany’s poor to feed themselves met with good critical response when it was released and is still considered by film historians to be one of Griffith’s landmark efforts. Still, Time Magazine correctly predicted
    that “the film will not be popular.”
    Here’s a bit of it on YouTube:

  • Sundown, a Western of no apparent merit, at least according to the New York Times. Interestingly, the scan of this article in the Times archive also includes a snippet about Abraham Goldberg, an important figure in the Zionist Organization of America who Papa had met earlier in the year. Apparently, Goldberg spoke out of turn about the Z.O.A.’s positions on private investment in Palestine while visiting Germany, and the Z.O.A. disavowed his comments. This article also makes reference to the “Brandeis-Mack break,” a shakeup in the Z.O.A. that Papa had previously discussed.
  • Romola, an adaptation of George Eliot’s novel starring Lillian Gish and directed by Henry King. (King also directed The White Sister, which brought Papa to tears earlier in the year.) Its lavish production values and Florentine settings drew praise from both the New York Times‘ and Time Magazine’s critics, as did Gish’s performance. The scan of this article in the Times also contains a blurb about Thomas Edison’s interview in that week’s Collier‘s in which Edison predicted the perfection of the helicopter.
  • The Roughneck, an action-adventure story dismissed by the Times as “a boy’s idea of adventure with plenty of scenes of George O’Brien’s biceps and ankles.”

Thursday Dec 4

by


Opera Carmen
at the Metropolitan

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Matt’s Notes

It’s important to note that movies and radio, while ascendant in 1924, had not yet displaced live performance as the preferred form of entertainment in big American cities. When we see Papa going to the opera almost as much as he goes to the movies, we should remember that, while he was a true opera lover, his frequent visits to the Met were probably less unusual than my own frequent visits to the Film Forum.

Those who crowded in with Papa to see Carmen on December 5th certainly got their money’s worth. Though Irving Kolodin, in his The Story of the Metropolitan Opera, describes Ina Bourskaya as “rather dull of voice for leading roles,” the New York Times found her a “gay and vivid” as well as an “animated and vital” Carmen. Then again, the reviewer’s focus on her energy and appearance, as opposed to her voice, might be something of a veiled criticism, but I’m sure Papa didn’t begrudge her the many curtain calls she enjoyed that night.

Opposite her as Don Jose was the great tenor, Giovanni Martinelli, who was a third of the way into a storied 33-year Met career. (Martinelli had been in the unenviable position of overlapping with Caruso, but he made the most of it. “Many tenors were called to the Met” in the Caruso years, wrote the New York Times in his obituary, “but no others were chosen to stay…Only Mr. Martinelli survived the days of Caruso’s glory and emerged as an artist and personality in his own right.”)

Here’s a little snippet of Martinelli singing Don Jose (opposite Geraldine Ferrar) courtesy of YouTube:

And here’s a clip of Martinelli singing La fleur que tu m’avais jetee from Carmen.

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References:

INA BOURSKAYA AS CARMEN.; Again an Animated and Colorful Heroine of Bizet’s Opera. (The New York Times, December 5, 1924.)

Giovanni Martinelli, The Tenor, Is Dead; Giovanni Martinelli, Met Star 33 Years, Dies (The New York Times, February 3, 1969.)

The Story of Carmen at Metopera.org

Friday Dec 5

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This afternoon Martha
at Metropolitan Opera House
evening at home & Sisters

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Another day, another opera, this time a light comedy suitable for a matinee (allmusic.com describes Martha as “conventional and accessible,” though possessed of an “excellent libretto.” I haven’t seen it, but I’ve listened to it and find it a bit bouncy for my tastes, though I prefer darker stuff and am certainly no opera critic.) I’m not quite sure why Papa was able to join the daytime crowd on a Friday, though lately he’s had a few days off here and there due to his factory’s slack season.

This performance gave Papa his second look of the season at the beloved Met fixture (and future musical film star) Beniamio Gigli, and his first at Frances Alda, also a longtime Met presence. I can’t find any clips of Gigli and Alda singing Martha, but I’ve harvested a few fruits from the Internets that might help us understand what Papa’s experience was like on this day:

Here’s the great Giovanni Martinelli, who Papa had seen the previous day in Carmen, singing the well known aria “M’appari tutt’amor” from Martha:

In the original German, this aria is known as “Ach so fromm.” Helge Roswaenge takes a crack at it in this German film adaptation of Martha from 1936.

And for good measure, here’s Caruso’s take on it:

Frances Alda joins Caruso in the clip below to sing a duet from Verdi’s Trovatore:

Alas, I haven’t found any recordings of Gigli singing Martha, but here he is singing “Vesti la Giubba” from Pagliacci (which Papa also saw earlier in the year.)

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References:

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