[Preface] [Orville's Worlds] [Family] [Young Orville ] [To New York] [To London, and back] [The Second Marriage, 1913 – 1917] [The Third Marriage, Rehabilitation] [The Met Years, Two careers 1920-1924] [Photogallery]

 

The Met Years, Two Careers 1920 - 1924

Arriving at the Met did not guarantee performing at the Met, especially in leading roles, because New York’s top opera had a deep bench. It was stated at the start of the 1921-22 season that Met general manager, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, had thirty one sopranos, fourteen contraltos, fifteen baritones, nine bassos, and fifteen tenors¹. While all were notable singers, young new arrivals received minor parts except for a few exceptional talents who were well received by audiences. Contrastingly, Orville was an old new arrival, having proven experience, and was a principal tenor. Even so, Frances Alda reported that Orville was not granted frequent leading roles until proving that he could carry big parts and was an audience pleaser². Since he also pleased critics, Orville’s Met reviews consistently noted his energetic vocal mastery, linguistics, and acting.

Met pay was structured in a parallel manner. Young new arrivals received a one-season contract paying as little as $75 per week³, with lesser supporting roles and a number of weekly performances. Recalling Orville’s Broadway start fifteen years previously, at pre-war wages of $50 per week, the Met could constitute a pay cut from theatre or vaudeville. With increasing experience and popularity, wages rose into the hundreds of dollars per week, still above two weekly appearances. A more accomplished performer, Rosa Ponselle began at $150 per week, fresh out of vaudeville, and rising through the 1920’s as a premier soprano. Principal performers in starring roles were receiving hundreds of dollars per performance, averaging between one and two performances per week. Florence Easton, who had sung with Orville at Ravinia, SOAS, and Scotti tours, early on received $50 per performance. Premier soprano, Frances Alda, was paid $800 for each performance, while Geraldine Farrar reportedly commanded $1500.

The Met’s principal tenors were as an exotic and well-compensated lot as the sopranos, led by Enrico Caruso, the only performer paid more than Geraldine Farrar. With Americans Paul Althouse and Riccardo Martin both gone, Met tenors were predominantly foreign-born singers who were carefully courted by Gatti-Casazza, leaving Orville something of a mundane addition unless he performed exceptionally. Among Orville’s main competitors were Italians, Giovanni Martinelli, Beniamino Gigli, and Giulio Crimi. Representative weekly wages among principal tenors during this period were: Crimi $700, Johannes Sembach $750, and Martinelli $1000.

Orville started at the Met with a contract for $200 per week for a twenty-four week season, requiring as many as four performances per week⁴, although his typical Met season really ran about thirty-six performances (ca. $130/performance his first year). This was a lower weekly wage than he had enjoyed with Hammerstein nearly a decade earlier. After proving his capability (and income producing potential), he received a contract for $12,000 per season⁵ ($545/week, $333/performance). Gatti-Casazza finally raised Orville to $18,000 per season, requiring only three performances per week⁵. (still actually thirty-six per season for: $820/week, $500/performance) While less per week than he had received for Hip Hip Hooray!, this was much more per performance compared to grinding out ten weekly performances at the Hippodrome. Orville spanned mid-to-upper pay range for a principal Met tenor, in a day when the average industrial wage was around $1500 per year. (Farrar and Caruso received about a year’s average income for each performance.) In addition to outright performing capability, Orville soon demonstrated versatility and ability to learn quickly, essential talents when the show must go on. It had been said of Florence Easton, at the Royal Opera of Berlin, that they could give her an opera score at 8:00 AM, and the opera stage at 8:00 PM⁶. She and Orville provided similar value (and often sang together) at the Met, Orville having performed three new operas in one week prior to the 1919 holidays. In fact, combining the Society of American Singers, Ravinia, Scotti Grand Opera, and the Met, Orville had learned and presented eight new operas in 1919.

Performers would appear in operas, in satisfying their Met contract, but also in Sunday night concerts, special performances (galas, fund raisers, etc.), and at any of four Met venues. Primary was the Metropolitan Opera House at 39^th Street and Broadway, but most performers also appeared several times each season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Philadelphia Opera House (formerly Hammerstein’s), while many also traveled to Atlanta, Georgia for a week of opera during late April. Brooklyn and Philadelphia offered opportunities to try new performances or artists in new roles. These locations saw regular Met presentations, but not always with the same cast as might appear in Manhattan. Orville’s two Met performances of Lucia were at Atlanta and Philadelphia, the latter also witnessing his only known appearance in Tosca.

More Americans were also arriving at the Met. Tenor, Charles Hackett, had debuted in the spring of 1919, just prior to Orville. Tenor, George Meader, made his first appearance at the beginning of the 1921-22 season, on the stage with Orville. In between had come soprano, Cora Chase, whose brief career may have been shortened more by her marriage than by her singing, when she wed her childhood sweetheart from Haverhill, Massachusetts. Both being world travelers, she had followed a similar course to that of Felice Lyne, going abroad with her mother while still in her teens for study in Italy, to be discovered there by Gatti-Casazza and signed to a three-year Met contract. Her future husband, John Williamson, had meanwhile become a foreign war correspondent for the New York Times, and was Times Washington correspondent when they married. They thereafter lived on Long Island and elsewhere.

After his fall 1919 debut, January 1920 began gradually for Orville, with repetitions of La Juive and La Boheme. On January 19 Orville presented his Cavalleria Rusticana for the first time at the Met. A pleased New York Times reported that Orville was the “chief distinction of the performance”, continuing, “Not only his singing was remarkably fine in its power and pathos, in the beauty of its tone and the dramatic expression he gave it, but his acting filled the part with more of the significance of the character than has for a considerable time been observed in performances of Mascagni’s well-worn opera at the Metropolitan. The esteem in which Mr. Harrold is held by the audience has been steadily and deservedly increased since he appeared here first at the beginning of the present season.” Orville followed this with a demonstration of stamina and intelligence.

The new year had Met casts scrambling for stand-ins to cover a rash of influenza and cold victims, which continued to plague them on January 24 as they prepared to present Carmen to a special group of French dignitaries and their Ambassador, at a benefit for New York’s French Hospital. Gatti-Casazza turned to Orville, who was healthy if nothing else, after two of the Italian tenors had been found to be incapacitated. Orville had already spent the day working on another new role to be debuted the following weekend, and had seemingly not sung Carmen since 1914 at the Century Opera. With no time for rehearsal, Gatti-Casazza rolled the dice on Orville and came up with⁷ “an extraordinary first appearance for the Metropolitan and will doubtless be repeated in the regular series.” The New York Herald described it as⁸, “one of the best heroes of that opera the Metropolitan stage has presented in recent years. He was dramatically strong and vocally in the best form Metropolitan audiences have heard him yet.” The French entourage complimented the Met on Orville’s fine pronunciation of the French libretto. Such was the stuff of Orville’s renegotiated contract. A fringe benefit for Geraldine Farrar, as Carmen, was that she had a Don Jose whom she could enjoy really pushing around and getting physical with, for Caruso had been avoiding her increasingly realistic physicality.

With a decade and a half of stage experience, Orville continued responding well to new opportunities and challenges in the Met’s hectic world, and to an extent, his first season was a rush to get fully up to Met speed and repertoire. The new role he had been rehearsing was tenor lead for the January 31 world premiere of Cleopatra’s Night, starring Frances Alda. The tenth American opera presented by the Met, this was composed by Henry Kimball Hadley, the Bostonian who had premiered Bianca at the Society of American Singers in 1918. Cleopatra’s Night ran for six performances during the spring of 1920, the last conducted by Hadley, plus three performances the following season. (Hadley went on to a career as an orchestra conductor, primarily with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.) The pace continued, as Orville sang La Boheme on February 13, after seven hours rehearsing during the day for yet another new role, but still netting hearty applause and complementary critical review for a robust performance⁹.

During his 1918 rebuilding, Orville had placed himself for management with New York’s Walter Anderson agency, who distributed brochures and had published such items as his “comeback” articles in music-related magazines. With advancement to the Met, he shifted to management by the Wolfsohn Musical Bureau, which years earlier had brought Madame Schumann-Heink to America. Wolfsohn began publishing full page broadsides in Musical America and Musical Courier magazines proclaiming Orville’s achievements. These quoted glowing critical reviews of his continuing new Met roles and generally endeavored to increase his reputation and public recognition to build Orville’s audiences and commercial value. Wolfsohn had extensive contract associations with American and foreign promoters who could offer concert and other engagements outside of the Met. The earliest of these broadsides appeared in the January 24, 1920 Musical America, focused on Orville’s Met triumph in La Boheme during late December, 1919.

With a Met career launched, Orville began recording during February of 1920 for the Victor Talking Machine Company at their studios in Camden, New Jersey. He continued with them for his five Met seasons, often recording during summer off-time, but also occasionally during opera season. These are mostly one-sided 78 RPM recordings, numbering over two dozen titles, and with their large production are the most common of his records.

Orville next debuted as Parsifal on February 19, his first known performance of Wagner. A number of things were new, since the Met had not presented Parsifal in three years because of the war. Scenery was completely fresh, nearly the entire cast was singing Parsifal for the first time, and the libretto was a recent English translation, since the Met was not yet returning to German opera. The performance and its text were well received, lines streaming more like English literature than an awkward translation, although it was noted that future presentations would flow more smoothly as the newly initiated cast became more practiced. While the character, Parsifal, is an innocent young adventurer, whom Orville could only match on the third count, he achieved a convincing portrayal with a combination of acting and firm yet sensitive singing with crystal diction. A Wolfsohn broadside highlighting a repeat of the role the following December recounted six laudatory reviews in six different New York papers, indicating the popularity of both Orville and opera during the period^9.5. The interesting observation on the February performance regarded pronunciation, as Richard Aldrich noted in the New York Times that¹⁰, “the total number of comprehended lines was disappointingly small.” It was not expected that American audiences would need to read text from the program. Orville’s diction was excellent, as was that of baritone, Clarence Whitehall, who sang very clearly in several languages. Beyond them, “Words, phrases, were often to be caught; a whole line or a whole sentence, unfortunately, rather seldom.” When the tables turned, European performers were no better than Americans at being understood in foreign opera, and numerous singers were often incomprehensible in their own tongues.

Another Orville “comeback” story appeared during March 1920, this time in a tabloid newspaper supplement called The World Magazine, describing how Orville and Blanche had met and parted years earlier, after which Orville became a literal “has-been” ¹¹. It then recounted their reunion and rebuilding, to where Orville had returned as the Met’s Don Jose. The continued appearance of such articles is sufficiently consistent as to likely constitute a deliberate campaign directly from Blanche and Orville, since the articles contain personal details and photos and span several different of Orville’s management firms. While the articles note a downturn of fortunes, they are positive narratives presenting nearly a Horatio Alger story built on the force of Blanche’s and Orville’s personal union. Orville must have felt some such power of relationship, having previously had contrastingly supportive and destructive marriages.

As spring progressed, Orville was in a Sunday night Met concert of popular Italian arias, a special concert at Carnegie Hall several weeks later, and an Oscar Hammerstein memorial concert at his old Manhattan Opera House on March thirtieth. His final debuting Met role of the season was Faust during late April, in an “All-American” presentation with Geraldine Farrar as Marguerite. (He had earlier sung Faust with the Met over in Brooklyn, but not at Broadway and 39^th Street.) The progressing state of opera, combined with lingering wartime patriotism, completely filled the house to hear all principal parts sung by Americans, who had previously sung them either at the Met or elsewhere. Reviews assured that the rush was completely artistically justified, prolonging each scene with curtain calls. It was noted that¹², “the tenor contributed no less than the prima donna and basso”, and that, “Marguerite’s garden sealed the triumph.” Finally, “Urban’s garden (architect and Met set designer, Joseph Urban) blossomed from fiction to reality, when the house rained bouquets from the boxes and front rows, as it has not done with so free hand since the recent “No Flowers” rule. The two men picked up a dozen great bunches and piled them in Miss Farrar’s arms until she ran off the stage. Then (Clarence) Whitehall tossed the last bouquet to Harrold, who deftly sidestepped, grinning, behind the curtain and left the audience roaring with amusement and applause.”

Days later Orville concluded his inaugural Met season with Parsifal. He had succeeded because of talent, depth of stage experience and an easygoing personality that worked will with management, cast, and audiences. With no time for enjoying the glow, he was in Atlanta, Georgia the following week, as the Met set up for summer opera there. He just had time for his usual roles in Lucia and Madame Butterfly, and then was away again.

Orville immediately set out traveling with the second Scotti Grand Opera spring tour, which had grown considerably. Starting the first week of May, they were to visit twelve cities throughout the South and Southwest, then turn north to end in Indianapolis a month later. There were new sets, with a cast of nearly all Met singers, and nearly all Americans, accompanied by additional Met chorus and orchestra, summing to over a hundred members on their special train. Additionally, their repertoire had expanded to eight operas, and was well attended despite charging nearly Broadway rates¹⁶. Among their adventures, they loaned sets to the Met summer opera setting up in Atlanta, crossed the Mississippi on “floats” by moonlight to face flooded streams and rivers throughout Texas, collected only gold and silver (there were virtually no bills) in the “wild west” environment of the Tulsa oil fields, and packed up by candlelight in flooded Springfield, Missouri to then wade to the train. Scotti was invariably hissed by appreciative audiences as the villain in L’Oracolo, while bravos and applause for Orville’s aria in La Boheme were reported to virtually “stop the show” in New Orleans¹⁷.

Orville had relaxed some while in Houston on the Scotti tour, accompanying Blanche’s younger sister, Rachel Malevinsky, to a luncheon meeting of the Business Women’s Club¹⁸ (she apparently dealt in real estate). He enjoyed the cooking, as both sisters apparently made excellent lemon pie, and announced that he was looking forward to summer at his Connecticut home. Rachel lived with the oldest of the Malevinsky sisters, Helene, plus a younger sister, Anna, with their parents nearby. Similar to Blanche, Helene went by the last name of Malley, suggesting a family connection to the name. They may have legally changed their names, as Blanche used Malli on passports she received prior to marrying Orville.

Orville had worked continuously since completing his overhaul in the spring of 1918, and was perhaps feeling sufficiently secure as to take a break. He did not return to Ravinia for the summer of 1920. On the other hand, Wolfsohn Musical Bureau announced at the beginning of June, just as the Scotti tour returned to New York, that Orville was among a number of opera performers for which it had summer engagements in London¹⁹. It is not clear that Orville took that trip, however, as he apparently lingered nearby New York for the summer.

Such lingering occurred at his new country retreat in Connecticut, which Orville had alluded to in Houston. During the previous October, just prior to his Met debut, Blanche had purchased from New York widow, Clara Rhatigan, a house and several parcels of land she had accumulated in West Norwalk Connecticut¹³ between 1914 and 1916. This was located near the Darien town line, and not far from the Silvermine District between Norwalk and Wilton, where numerous arts and entertainment personalities had country homes. Blanche and Orville had more like a small farm, which it literally became as Orville built a duck pond by damming the creek, a chicken run, pig pens, and eventually plowed fields on foot behind two white horses¹⁴. It was later reported that they had found the area when visiting an adjacent farm belonging to one of Blanche’s nieces, who could only have been Dorothy, daughter of brother Moses. They soon purchased their own, with outbuildings and a farmhouse on twenty three acres. The estate was called BoLe, where the first syllable was for Blanche and Orville, and the second was for two relatives named Larry and Edward¹⁵, unidentified and assumed related to Blanche, since no candidates appear in the Harrold line. The bottom portion of the house was finished in attractive stonework, as were a garage and springhouse, and Orville added a barn of substantial proportions. As the opera season closed in April 1920, they began extensive improvements on the farmhouse that continued into the fall. Orville appears to have spent the summer of 1920 enjoying his family and surroundings, and taking in a Broadway musical.

Patti Harrold had spent the 1919-20 season at the Park Theatre, still going by Adelina, in the chorus and as an understudy with the Society of American Singers. While she undoubtedly gained voice and stage experience, singing regularly in their Gilbert and Sullivan productions, the casts apparently remained sufficiently healthy that she got discouragingly little front stage exposure²⁰. As opera ended, she was consequently attracted to spring’s main Broadway event. Author and actor, James Montgomery, had written between 1908 and 1917 a half-dozen books and scripts that found modest success as New York plays. By 1917 he had improved his commercial success by converting several of these to musical comedies, but continued pursuing a play based on his “Cinderella story” called Irene O’Dare. After being turned down by several producers, he teamed with a new pair of songwriters, Harry Tierney and lyricist Joseph McCarthy (no relation to the senator) to switch this into another musical comedy, Irene.

Montgomery joined with producer, Carle Carleton, and Joseph Moran, part owner of the new Vanderbilt Theatre, to finance production. Irene, the musical, opened at the Vanderbilt in mid-November, 1919, staring Edith Day as Irene, for whom the part was seemingly created. Between charm and music, Irene succeeded hugely, one of the first musicals of its type, and was often copied afterward. Edith Day married Carle Carleton, producer and her manager, who then sold his part of the Broadway production to Montgomery, taking Edith to England in April 1920, where they opened Irene in London. The musical proved equally successful there, expanding eventually to the Continent. Edith Day Carleton soon divorced, remarrying to her stage “prince”, and continued on to a successful career in London west end theatre.

Irene was positioned to benefit from several period trends. Entertainment was embracing both women and America’s frontier image. Puccini’s opera La Fanciulla del West had enjoyed a highly publicized 1910 world premiere at the Met, with Caruso and Emmy Distinn, based on the David Belasco play Girl of the Golden West. (New York producer Belasco had also written the play behind Madame Butterfly, based on an English novel, and built the Belasco Theatre, where his ghost reportedly still resides.) Belasco’s play was somewhat inspired by the first female action superstar, Annie Oakley (a Greenville, Ohio Quaker), much publicized in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and at sixty-one still giving shooting exhibitions when Irene opened. (She met her husband while defeating him in a high stakes shooting match.) The All-American young woman was transforming from damsel to heroine, epitomized by clean-cut Midwestern girls, of which genuine articles were a rising Broadway commodity. The image blended with suffragists and the recent 19^th Amendment to celebrate action at home and on a local scale. Women had helped win the war, flapper girls were wearing skirts above the knee, and even wearing pants, and women were joining the workforce in large numbers. The image of the independent frontier woman continued into mid-20^th century, peaking with Oklahoma, among the first musicals to surpass Irene’s long Broadway run.

Another trend was adult themes. Art entertains, evokes, and provokes. Sexuality aside, a single 1907 Met performance of Strauss’s Salomé was sufficiently repelling that it was banned from the Met over the next twenty-seven years. Salomé sang shockingly to St. John the Baptist’s severed head, embracing it and kissing it on the lips, after which she was ordered killed by her father. (The stunned audience exited in silence.) Seductress Salomé was sometimes portrayed onstage in her Dance of the Seven Veils wearing only a body stocking, which could be exciting, while elsewhere, one of Geraldine Farrar’s opera costumes consisted solely of a skirt, assisted by several strategic jewels. New York dancer and singer, Valeska Suratt, who appeared with Orville at the Palace Theatre, had a show closed for indecency. Paris dancer, Gaby Deslys, who had once shared the Hippodrome stage with Orville, sometimes danced semi-clad, segueing naturally (so to speak) into Josephine Baker’s performances just a few years later. The early 20^th century was leaping so rapidly into modern openness that New York Mayor, Jimmy Walker, signed the 1926 padlock law. Theaters would be padlocked and casts imprisoned for portraying sex outside of marriage, prostitution, homosexuality, or outward sexuality. Mae West was jailed for three days in 1927 for writing and starring in her play, SEX.

Irene was not at all sexually graphic. While it may have lost a few patrons, it was sufficiently inoffensive to enjoy the longest Broadway run for eighteen years to come, along with at least four simultaneous road tours appearing throughout America. And yet, it would perhaps have been padlocked for juxtaposing an interesting woman with an interesting man. At the least, it moved into openly gender-bending roles.

Remaining modest throughout, Irene O’Dare is the enterprising daughter of a Manhattan widow struggling to maintain the family music store. After investing in the modern convenience of a telephone, she answers it one day to receive a piano tuning job from a wealthy Long Island bachelor. Smitten by Irene, but separated by their social stations, he contrives to keep Irene in his life by engaging her in a scheme with his wacky cousin and the cousin’s gentleman friend, who is a flamboyant cross-dressing fashion designer known as Madame Lucy. (Busby Berkley reportedly played Madame Lucy in one of the road shows.) Irene takes over marketing, posing with several of her friends as high society women wearing Madame Lucy’s creations and arranging fashion shows for the clothing line. Overcoming tribulations (Irene is troubled by continuing the ruse) and misunderstandings promoted by meddling mothers, Irene and her true love finally tumble completely for each other and warble away to happiness.

Patti Harrold, a genuine Midwestern girl, wandered into the Vanderbilt Theatre during late April 1920, just as Edith Day departed. (Adelina was dropped, since Orville had recently made the Harrold surname amply marketable in New York.) She approached James Montgomery for a part in his production, who offered her (again) a chorus position, but soon made her understudy to the starring role. Patti was exactly the same age as Irene, and had both voice training and some experience on a serious stage, attractive features among a generally young cast. Montgomery had just formed the Vanderbilt Production Company to mount Irene road shows, so that Patti rehearsed the role with them for several weeks, then rejoined the Broadway chorus²¹.

Now two-thirds owner of Irene, springtime found James Montgomery becoming wealthy, while changes rapidly followed the exit of Edith Day. In just weeks, seventeen year old Jeanette MacDonald was brought from the chorus into a speaking part, while Patti emerged from the chorus when Adele Rowland (Irene the 2^nd) suffered voice problems one Friday in late May. (History equivocates on whether Adele’s troubles were real or feigned). Montgomery teed up Patti for the following night, who practiced for much of the next twenty-four hours. She debuted²² as Irene on Saturday, May 29, about a quarter of the way into Irene’s 675 performances. Layering Cinderella reality over the musical plot, Patti completed the show’s long run, becoming the most popular and durable Irene.

New York suddenly had two Harrold Cinderella’s, and Patti had steady employment at one location for the next year and a half. The role had its challenges. Irene must act, sing, and dance. She has the bulk of the musical numbers, many of which are typical operetta material, but some of which are in the new idiom of jazz. Irene is a babbling nineteen year old lass who rattles on constantly about herself and all else, so that the part accelerates rapidly from opening curtain, and must flow continuously and smoothly to seem in character. The actress has little time to think, so must recover naturally from errors or lapses, as Irene might have behaved. The role called for a bouncy vivacious Irene, and Patti fit quickly into the role, stating that it came naturally to her so that she was essentially playing herself²³. Publicity photos soon followed, taken at both White Studios and at the studio of Edward Thayer Monroe.

In its “Plans of Musicians” section, during the first week of June, 1920, the New York Times reported simultaneously that Patti Harrold had made her debut as Irene’s prima donna, and that Beth Martin, daughter of former Met and SOAS tenor, Riccardo Martin, was appearing in a New York play²⁴. By sheer coincidence, the article also reported that a New York psychic, who claimed that the spirit of Adelina Patti had promised to teach her to sing, had held a séance to retrieve the departed soprano. Unfortunately, the temperamental singer had failed to appear, to which a disappointed participant had declared, “same old Patti in a different world.”

As a starlet might, our living Patti went on a weight loss campaign when her new role became permanent, as she had drifted up to 148 pounds²⁵. While the theatre work constituted considerable exercise, she danced and played tennis and golf as much as possible, while claiming to have subsisting for a month on nothing but fruit. She admitted that this compromised her health, but reduced her to a satisfying 122 lbs., for which she was complimented by audiences and interviewers.

Patti debuted while Orville was traveling the South with the spring Scotti opera tour. They were likely aware, as there must have been regular contact with Met New York offices. Orville certainly knew by the time of their last stop in Indianapolis, almost his hometown. The Indianapolis Star had reported on May 23^rd that Patti was in the Irene chorus, and she would have immediately wired home news of her promotion, or even used the modern convenience of a telephone, as Irene had done. Orville would certainly have visited parents and family in Muncie, at which time his son, Paul, was just completing high school junior year. With new country estates and new careers blossoming in the East, Paul began a two year sabbatical from high school and lived with Orville for at least part of the time. While Paul may not have spontaneously boarded the train that day with his father, again, he probably headed to Connecticut after school was out. Orville finally had stability, so that he remained in Connecticut for the summer of 1920, enjoying success and his children.

Irene continued to fill the Vanderbilt Theatre through summer heat, while the cast and creators made occasional benefit appearances. The Irene starlet’s rise, on her own merit, was a charming success story that received notice in the October Munsey’s Magazine and elsewhere. With rotogravure printing and the flood of WWI photographs, the New York Times had begun a tabloid newspaper publication called Mid-Week Pictorial in 1914, several decades before Life Magazine, which continued until 1937. The New York Tribune began a similar section, as did the New York Sunday Times, which became the ubiquitous Sunday supplement. A standard Mid-Week Pictorial motif after the war was a full page collage of bust portraits and brief descriptions around various entertainment themes. Patti became the first Harrold in one of these, during 1920, with a “white coat” publicity pictures from Irene on a page of Broadway theatre personalities.

The younger Harrold worked steadily through the year, while the older one seemingly relaxed until the Scotti Grand Opera Co. launched a major fall junket. Scotti’s 1920 fall event was a seven-week coast-to-coast field trip beginning in mid-September²⁶, on which Paul apparently accompanied his father. They stopped in seventeen American cities in fourteen states, plus Vancouver and ended in Montreal at the extremes of Canada. After a first performance in South Bend, Indiana, they spent two weeks reaching Vancouver, divided a week between Seattle and Portland, a week each at San Francisco and the Los Angeles Convention Center, then a fortnight heading through Salt Lake and middle-America to finally pass through Toledo and onto Montreal on October 30. Their train carried a number of added Met soloists, plus a complete chorus and orchestra of virtually all Met performers, led part of the time by the Met’s conductor Gennaro Papi. They again presented eight operas, Faust in French and the remainder in Italian.

Met rehearsals for the 1920-21 season must already have begun as the Scotti tour returned to New York. As he had for all of his Met seasons except one, Caruso sang opening night, Monday November 15, in La Juive, with Orville again singing the role of Leopold. The next night Orville performed Faust in Brooklyn with Geraldine Farrar, and the season was rolling. His Met career became more routine, having previously built repertoire and a position of standing in lead roles. His friend from Scotti opera tours, Mario Chamlee, was now on a similar course, debuting as one of several new Met tenors on November 20, as Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca. After the 1917-18 season as a Met soprano, Ruth Miller Chamlee had been giving voice lessons and performing with Scotti tours and at Ravinia. The couple now had its second Met career. Gatti Casazza had also brought in a new Italian tenor, Beniamino Gigli, at the start of the season. He quickly began appearing in new roles, of which La Boheme and Cavalleria Rusticana overlapped with Orville, so that they somewhat alternated in these operas.

Another Met career was on a downward trajectory with a series of December incidents. During Sampson and Delilah, on December 3, Enrico Caruso was hit in the back by an accidently falling pillar in the scenery, which perhaps had little to do with ensuing events, as his wife felt that his health had been declining since a lengthy summer tour. (He had long indulged generously in food, wine, and tobacco, so that his health may not have been the most robust.) Within days he developed a chill and a cough, with dull pain in his side. During a presentation of D’elisir d’amore at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, on December 11, Caruso suffered a throat hemorrhage and the performance was cancelled after one act. He remained unwell, but made three more December appearances, concluding with La Juive on Christmas Eve. Orville again sang Leopold, while Caruso suffered through his last Met performance. His discomfort grew intense over the holidays, when he was diagnosed with pleurisy and empyema. There began a series of surgeries to drain fluid from his chest and lungs, after which he returned to Italy, where he died in August of 1921 at age forty-eight.

Following Caruso’s stunning holiday exit, Orville sang in a Met Sunday night concert on January 9^th, but did not appear in an opera until January 15^th, when the Met presented its long awaited first performance of Louise, a French opera by Carpentier that had launched the career of Mary Garden. Louise had been premiered in New York by Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera in 1908, but had been staged only occasionally since then by the visiting Chicago Opera Company, likely using Hammerstein’s old sets. There were fresh sets at the Met, along with special effort with the chorus and orchestra to create Paris street music, since, to a considerable extent the city of Paris was a character in the opera. (Humble dressmaker, Louise, leaves her family to join her artist lover in Paris.) Geraldine Farrar and Orville were again paired in the lead roles, although with less passionate interaction than in Carmen, while the male lead offered much less substance to embrace than did the female lead, who interacts more with the character of her father.

With about one performance per week, Orville continued appearing in Sunday night concerts (which fulfilled his contract, just as opera performances did) and Louise throughout January and February, with Madame Butterfly added at the Philadelphia Opera House the day after Valentine’s Day. He had just sung on February 20, 1921, at the funeral of Sylvester Rawling, music editor of the New York Evening World, when his mother, Emma Chalfant Harrold, died in Indiana on the evening of February 24, as he was appearing in the fifth performance of Louise. Patti almost certainly accompanied him home for the funeral and for his mother’s burial at Beech Grove Cemetery in Muncie.

After returning from Indiana, Orville debuted in his second Wagner role as lead tenor in Lohengrin, opposite Florence Easton as Elsa. This was also sung in English, and Orville, again, filled the role on short notice. It is not apparent that he had ever before sung this opera, so had to absorb it in little time. This proved to be a popular performance that was repeated a half-dozen times, along with Faust, Carmen, and La Boheme, to fill Orville’s 1921 spring season. Also, Orville’s granddaughter had notes from an article in the New York Telegraph that Patti and the Irene cast presented a benefit concert at the Met on the afternoon of March 31, while Orville sang Rigoletto that evening²⁷. Met records have the Duke in Rigoletto sung by Charles Hackett that evening, so that one of the reports seems incorrect, although Orville might have stepped in at the last minute. It was apparently rare for two members of the same family to have appeared on the Met stage in one day.

Met performers were again in Atlanta during late April, where Orville’s La Boheme was a sensation, opposite Lucrezia Bori (who had rejoined the Met after a six-year hiatus, because of throat surgery) as Mimi, and before an audience of five-thousand²⁸. While they sweated in the heat, performing in the role of poets and artists freezing their hands in a frigid Bohemian garret apartment, Atlanta was convinced that it had witnessed the finest opera ever presented there. The Atlanta Georgian (“A Clean Newspaper for Southern Homes”) declared, “Frankly, many of us were amazed at Mr. Harrold’s singing……with the first bars of that greatest of all tenor arias, the “narrative” of Rodolfo, he held his great audience spellbound……That, of course, was Harrold’s great moment. Nothing in the opera, however beautiful, quite approaches the “narrative”. But whenever Harrold’s voice was heard again, in the duets with Scotti and with Bori, it was just as strong and impassioned and beautiful²⁹.” Among several opera-related articles in the paper, one critic opened with a digression bemoaning, “that the present prohibition law is the most outrageous infringement that was ever perpetrated upon the rights of man!!!” Returning to opera, he praised Miss Bori as an exquisite and adorable moonbeam, who moved the critic, as well as the entire audience, to open weeping with her death in the last act. It was no wonder, he praised, that Mr. Harrold acted his grief so well, and sang it so gloriously³⁰.

Orville sang in a late New York performance of Madame Butterfly on May 7, which completed his second Met season. He was soon joined in Connecticut by his father, who had closed his Indiana affairs following his wife’s death, and was moving to Orville’s farm for an indefinite period³¹. Blanche was then perhaps hosting three generations of Harrold fellows, as Orville’s son may have yet been around and there are photos of the three together, the group undoubtedly catching a performance of Irene. As a consequence, Orville was again absent from Ravinia for the summer of 1921. It is probable that daughter, Marjorie, was also in Connecticut for at least part of the summer, as she was just out of high school. Patti had been trying to coax Marjorie to New York to begin seriously studying stage and singing, for according to family lore she was at least as talented as Patti. (Paul also had an excellent voice, but was more inclined toward performing in athletics.) However, the night before Marjorie was to leave for New York, she disappeared to marry a Muncie boy named Floyd Foster³². Although this did not permanently derail New York plans, the marriage never sat well in the family, and was destined to become tragically unpopular. But, for the summer, Orville was as completely immersed in his family as he would ever be again, and the Scotti Grand Opera tour of that fall was the only one in which Orville did not participate. He apparently enjoyed a summer of contentment, at the high point of his life.

Within the family, Orville’s Connecticut farm was always discussed as being in Darien, which raises some confusion, because he died in Darien. The farm was in West Norwalk, and was sold years before Orville died. It is likely that visitors arrived there via the Darien train station, as that was the most convenient stop, which may have given rise to the misperception. Once they arrived, they found a country gentleman’s farm having a large house with decorative stonework. There were gardens around it, a country casual interior, and sunny porches across the south side of the house. A number of rooms were furnished in wicker tables, chairs, and couches, and some areas were decorated by Blanche with a collection of lucky elephants gathered from her various travels.

Fall of 1921 brought another opera season, with new Met debuts for Orville. He also caught up with Patti by being pictured in a Mid-Week Pictorial magazine spread entitled Opera Singers of International Fame. He was shown in costume as Rodolfo, while Mario Chamlee was also pictured, in addition to Antonio Scotti and Met tenors, Beniamino Gigli and Giovanni Martinelli.

Fall of 1921 also brought changes for Patti. Irene closed on Broadway during October, after which the “original” cast joined other road crews touring across America for much of the next nine months. They started in the east and moved westward, accompanied by publicity and local interviews. Amid this, there began circulating a fable that 19^th century soprano, Adelina Patti, was the godmother of Irene star, (Adeline) Patti Harrold³³. The general storyline was that Orville had sought voice training in London, had a daughter while there (1899), and that the famed soprano had participated in the christening and presented a gold ring (or gold cup, or christening dress) to the family. In reality, Orville never left the American Midwest before 1906, and was never outside the country until Hammerstein sent him to London in 1911, when Patti was age twelve. It is believed that Lydia Locke and Orville, the reigning London tenor of 1911-12, did meet Adelina Patti, who would certainly have heard that Orville’s daughter was named after her. Lydia, in her motivational talks during their Midwest tours of 1912-13, stated that she had received in London similar “hard work” advice from Adelina Patti³⁴. Patti Harrold might have had or carried some object that the soprano had passed to her through meeting Orville. While that is speculation, the rest is fabrication.

The fifth performance in the opening week of the 1921-22 Metropolitan season was the U.S. premiere of Die Tote Stadt on November 19. The best-known opera by young Erich Korngold, fifteen years before he went to Hollywood, it was the also first Met airing of German language since 1917. The opera had premiered in Germany about a year before, and the Met production served as a vehicle for the American debut of Viennese soprano, Maria Jeritza, opposite Orville in the lead role. The opera itself is an unusual work of dissonant style and strange protracted dream sequences that are difficult to follow, based on a Belgian novel that possibly flows down to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The protagonist, Paul, mourns endlessly for his deceased wife, Marie, in the dead and dark medieval-seeming city of Bruges, an allegory for post imperial Vienna after WWI, when the opera was written. Paul finally concludes from his dreams that life is for the living, so that he must leave Bruges and begin anew. Amid all this, the audience was, “..cordial, even in moments of perplexity…more friendly than enthusiastic³⁵.”

Die Tote Stadt was a lengthy opera that presented extended and difficult scores for its main characters, especially Paul. Tall and graceful Jeritza made a dramatic debut, in which it was noted that she was required to perform, “..shrieking, such strenuous shrieking as to arouse pity and concern for her beautiful voice³⁶…” Meanwhile, Orville sang, “a part more brutally treated by the composer than that of the heroine³⁷.” The Met had originally planned Johannes Sembach for the role, a German tenor who approached baritone range at his lower end. However, like William Tell, this opera required dwelling amid high C’s and D’s, where few tenors are at ease. One critic noted, “Orville Harrold has done nothing more to his credit since his debut at the Metropolitan than his delineation of Paul, a fanatic person who finds a little calm only at the very end of the opera. The music is of a frightful tessitura, there are successive pages of the score when a majority of the notes are above the staff. He did not come through unscathed as to quality, but he did sing many phrases of charm and appeal, and he succeeded in making a thankless rôle a fairly convincing one³⁸.” The Times described the role of Paul as, “much uninterrupted singing, much outpouring of high tones in full voice,….difficult and ungrateful in its dramatic outline^38.5.” It was a musical workout that considerably stressed the voice, and was doubly difficult since Orville had to stretch his linguistic talent to become proficient in German. An exciting new opportunity for Orville, he performed Die Tote Stadt seven times at the Met over a nine week period, plus once at Philadelphia in the spring, and with his rising popularity sang forty times overall for the season. Although not the twice-a-day forced march of the Hippodrome, it was a strenuous season that took a toll on Orville’s voice, already highly taxed over his career.

In planning life without Caruso, Gatti-Casazza had brought over noted Italian tenor, Aureliano Pertile, with a special contract for fifteen performances through the current season, at $800 per performance. Pertile debuted on December 1 as Cavaradossi in Tosca, opposite Maria Jeritza, who somewhat obscured his performance, but Pertile became amply popular as the season continued. Gatti-Casazza also deflected some attention away from tenors by hiring famed baritone, Titta Ruffo, who then sang with the Met throughout the 1920’s. Deflections aside, there was scrambling over who would fill both old and new tenor roles with Caruso gone.

Throughout the fall and holidays, and into January, Orville appeared in Die Tote Stadt, Sunday night concerts, and several operas he had previously performed, such as Boris Godunov and Lohengrin, the latter again with Maria Jeritza. Then, in the third week of January, he performed as the Czar in the U.S. premiere of Snegurochka, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This was a fairytale opera, also known as The Snow Maiden, in which Lucrezia Bori again sang beautifully in a “petite flower” sort of role. French language was substituted for the Russian, the event proving sufficiently popular that it was repeated three more times during the spring of 1922, and again the following spring.

In quick succession during the last week of January, 1922, Orville sang the seventh presentation of Die Tote Stadt on the 28^th, a Sunday night concert on the 29^th in which he performed Act III, Scene 3 of Lucia, virtually an extended dramatic solo, followed by Il Barbiere di Siviglia in Brooklyn on the thirty-first, the first time he had sung that opera since 1919 in Ravinia. He sang the last opposite Amelita Galli-Curci, who had finally been lured from Chicago, in a performance repeated at the Met several times through the spring. The day after Brooklyn, February 1, Orville sang at Carnegie Hall in a special memorial concert of Gustav Mahler’s Lied von der Erde (Song of Earth), for its United States premiere. He had been improving his German with Die Tote Stadt, and had to make another of his quick studies for the single presentation of this difficult symphonic poetic oratorio, under Met conductor Arthur Bodanzky.

Winter and spring continued with a number of Orville’s relatively recent roles, such as Louise, La Boheme, Carmen, and Parsifal. Besides Die Tote Stadt at Philadelphia in late March, Orville had also appeared there in late February as Cavaradossi, in his only known performance of Tosca, which was either simply a fill-in, or was deemed an unsuccessful role for him. During the final weeks of April, 1922, Orville completed his third Met season with the seventh performance of Snegurochka and his final fling with Geraldine Farrar in Carmen, in her second to last Met performance. Four years younger than Orville, Miss Farrar had enjoyed twenty years in the top tier of grand opera. Her voice was falling off its peak after 672 Met performances, so that on April 22 she sang her Met farewell in the opera Zaza. Performers who had ushered in opera’s golden age at the turn of the century were making their exits, seemingly with Orville holding the door. Their disciples, such as Rosa Ponselle, would extend the era to the end of the 1920’s, after which the Depression would reduce opera’s social presence. Opera would begin losing the generous space it had received from numerous critics in numerous newspapers, and recede to a smaller place in the public consciousness.

Orville was again with the Met in Atlanta during the last week of April, pleasing crowds in Carmen (referred to as “the greatest individual triumph of the Atlanta operatic season⁴⁰”), opposite Florence Easton, and in Faust four days later. He was making a splash around town, giving a performance at the nearby federal prison, with young Met soprano Frances Peralta, and riding to a minor league baseball game in a motorcycle sidecar driven by fellow adventurer, Cliff Wheatley, sports editor for the Atlanta Constitution. Wheatley, a WWI aviator, had five times referred to the University of Georgia football team as “bulldogs” in a 1920 article, for which the name and mascot have remained, after which he died in 1925 (at age twenty-eight) of lung complications from a WWI poison gas attack. Orville’s baseball companions that day spoofed him by discussing the game in mock-operatic-French, to which he retorted, “Say, who the hell do you fellows think I am? I was born right here in the United States, and speak English, not Chinese⁴¹.”

Within a week, Orville was off on another spring Scotti Grand Opera tour of the South, pretty much a mini-Met road show. Performing thirty-six times in twenty-seven days, they followed primarily their standard route, through Birmingham, New Orleans, Texas, up through Nashville, and then through Ohio to a completion in Buffalo. Orville likely saw his sisters-in-law along the way, and Texas was again suffering spring floods, as it had on every tour. As they arrived back in New York City during the first week of June, Orville’s La Boheme was noted as one of several personal triumphs of the trip⁴². Following a trend for both opera and Orville, this was the final Scotti Grand Opera tour, as it was just not possible for the large entourage to cover their train and accommodation expenses. But, for the moment, Orville had a little relaxation time at his Connecticut farm, after a strenuous season.

Blanche Harrold’s sister, Nona Croft, was living back in New York at this time, operating a mid-Manhattan interior decorating business. She made news during the spring by becoming the victim of a stock swindle, regarding the Page Motor Corporation. Major Victor W. Page, of Farmingdale Long Island, was a legitimate automotive engineer, author, and entrepreneur who had previously produced some cars, and reportedly raised one and half million dollars in 1922 by issuing beautiful stock certificates showing an early convertible automobile. Unfortunately, only about 128 cars were manufactured, with some uncertainty as to whether even those were all genuine functioning vehicles. His promoters falsely stated that this new enterprise had produced thousands of cars that were sold in Mexico, so that stockholders ultimately sued for fraud. When Nona Croft had a New York policeman assist her in serving a summons on the Page sales manager, the policeman “turned white and exclaimed: “I’ve got $100 invested in that stock myself.”

Elsewhere, other family members were moving about the country during spring, 1922. Marjorie Harrold Foster and her husband had arrived in New York during winter, where she began training for musical comedy⁴³. They briefly visited home, in Muncie, during early spring, and then returned east in preparation for a new show opening. Meanwhile, Patti was spending the spring seeing America on a grander scale than did any Scotti opera tour. From Boston in January, the Irene cast had been through Kansas City in February, Salt Lake City in March, Helena in April, and Bismarck in May⁴⁴. In various interviews, she had made clear the continuous hard work required for such a show business life (which she later sometimes referred to as “this lousy business”, because of its constant demands when a show was playing⁴⁵). She had been doing Irene for over a year and a half, including a sixty-two week run of seven and eight performances per week⁴⁶. She still harbored plans for opera training, although she had a somewhat light voice (she referred to it as “small”), which she hoped to strengthen with coaching and maturity. But, for the near term, she had a five-year contract with the Vanderbilt Production Company that would keep her in other work.

Cross-country interviews continued highlighting Patti’s rapid rise, her opera singing father, her diet, and other such details, with Patti always presenting herself as merely a simple and fortunate (albeit hard-working) young woman.  Like her father, she was plain-spoken and without the affectations of many high-profile personalities. An item that never arose in the interviews was that she had gotten married along the way. As if stricken by some Midwestern virus running through the family, Patti found herself married to Jack McElroy, a dancer in Irene, as the tour left Waukegan. It is unclear just when the family became aware of the event, although it was probably no later than when the tour returned to New York at the end of spring. Whatever his feelings, Orville could not have been too stridently critical of her impulsiveness, being as Patti had been conceived out of wedlock, and both of his subsequent marriages had stemmed from stage affairs. To a considerable extent, his daughters and even his grandchildren, were adventurers and risk takers from the same tree as their father.

There are no indications that Patti ever took the McElroy name, certainly not on the stage, and also not on a passport obtained a year later. The couple appeared to have remained together during the summer of 1922, and perhaps longer, but the relationship did not extend much past the mid-year end of Irene. Irene was considerably more durable, having a brief 1923 revival at Jolson’s 59^th Street Theatre, a 1940 film version with Ray Milland, and a 1973 Broadway revival staring Debbie Reynolds. Meanwhile, circumstances had the Harrold sisters and their husbands all together in New York for the remainder of 1922, working on a new project with the Vanderbilt Production Company.

With several seasons of solid Met experience, Orville’s American-boy success story continued to provide popular copy. A biographical interview appeared in Etude magazine^46.5 during June, recounting some of his youthful adventures and vaudeville years, as well as opera in London and New York.  He also penned a brief biography that appeared in Details Magazine sometime during the year. Such interviews and articles began to lose their “comeback” nature, and settle into “hard work” narratives describing the long trek from Midwest choruses, through vaudeville, to grand opera.

Orville was not in New York (or Connecticut) with his daughters over the summer, having returned to Ravinia, accompanied by Mario Chamlee and probably their wives. Besides opera, they played golf and seemed to have a summer of fun. Again among Met artists, Orville performed over twenty times and in a number of his lead roles, including La Boheme, Pagliacci, Tales of Hoffman, Rigoletto, and Martha. He frequently appeared opposite young new soprano, Queena Mario, who was debuting with the Met in the fall. Several operas, such as Lakme and L'Elisir d'Amore, were unique Ravinia roles that he had performed nowhere else, as was L’Amico Fritz. With the Scotti Grand Opera gone, Ravinia was among dwindling opportunities for traveling adventures that he always enjoyed. Orville was basking in ample stage time, accompanied by familiar and enjoyable personalities, in roles that had come to mark his career. He may also have sensed that he, personally, had dwindling opportunities for traveling opera adventures, singing under the stars, and appearing in roles that had come to mark his career. The summer of 1922 was, indeed, the last time that Orville performed in serious opera outside of the Met.

 

Following Ravinia’s August closing, and a tremendous amount of singing over most of the previous year, Orville enjoyed several months of relaxation before beginning fall opera. Meanwhile, his daughters rehearsed through the fall on a new Broadway musical, and son, Paul, returned for his high school senior year in Muncie. A little older and more settled than the other boys, he focused on a three-letter year of athletics.

Grand opera for 1922-23 got underway with Orville appearing in Boris Godunov on November 15, for the second Manhattan performance of the season. Two nights later he performed in a new production of Der Rosenkavalier, another opera in which he appeared with Maria Jeritza. In this case he was in an untitled supporting role, known simply as the “Italian Singer”, which nonetheless was a difficult part sung in high tessitura, which he sang “extremely well⁴⁷”,  “Orville Harrold sang the superfluous but very difficult tenor air, "Di Rigori," with opulence of voice and the necessary touch of affectation^47.5.” The semi-comical Der Rosenkavalier became popular, so was repeated a number of times over the season, although not always with Orville. L’Amore dei Tre Re was presented on the day between Orville’s first two performances, debuting a new tenor, Edward Johnson, who went on to a fifteen year Met career. As with Beniamino Gigli, Johnson overlapped with Orville, sometimes singing the part of Grigory in Boris Godunov. The Met made sure that there were multiple performers capable of singing each part. Orville had commonly stepped in on short notice to replace others; others would replace him.

Following the first week of opera, Orville got ahead of Patti in making the Mid-Week Pictorial magazine, among a grouping in the November 23^rd edition entitled, American and Foreign Singers in Opening Operatic Season. He was pictured in another similar tabloid pictorial at about the same time, called, World’s Greatest Male Operatic Singers. His debuts and performances of the previous season had ranked him among top opera artists, especially in New York. There were similar pictorials of top female opera performers during this period, highlighting women of the Met, most of whom Orville had appeared with. 

After Der Rosenkavalier in Brooklyn and a Sunday night concert, Orville and Maria Jeritza again sang Die Tote Stadt in late November. One reviewer had predicted that this was a novelty opera that would not last beyond two seasons, which proved correct, but there were still more performances to come. Perhaps suggesting a required rest, Orville did not perform again for a week and a half, which was another presentation of Die Tote Stadt. A substantial part of the break time had been for rehearsing a new opera.

After a three-year hiatus, the Met presented a new production of Thais on December 14, which again brought together Maria Jeritza and Orville, in his last new Met role. The story revolves around a Greek courtesan who undergoes religious conversion to become a nun, offering plot twists and sensuous scenes. Jeritza was a statuesque blonde who could keep opera glasses focused, but was afflicted with some quirkiness of movement. Theater, of course, abounds with unexpected falls, collisions, and makeshift recoveries. Florence Easton had once made a tumble down stairs seem innocuously in-character. Jeritza had previously had an exciting tumble down steps in Cavalleria Rusticana, and ended up singing prone on the floor in Tosca. For the opening of Thais, the Met had the courtesan, after rejecting the philosophical appeals of a departing gentleman, “spring after him with a leap that rattled the boards of one of Urban's platforms; then, with a hysterical laugh and gestures of frenzied helplessness, she tottered and fell to the stage-level below, the crash resounding through the opera house⁴⁸.” She completed the scene singing, unseen, from her new location.

This all must have appealed to Orville’s sense of humor. During one rehearsal for Cleopatra’s Night, where his character contrives a sneak meeting with Cleopatra by cleverly emerging from her pool, Orville rose up over the pool’s edge clad only in a towel, diaper-like around his waist. Jeritza had her adherents and detractors, her fans responding generously to her unexpected events with applause and curtain calls. For Orville’s part, “Mr. Harrold made more than a puppet of Nicias. He succeeded, in fact, in creating a character where the librettist and the composer failed to do so. Here was a Nicias who suggested the banquet table, Bacchanalian orgies, luxurious and effeminizing ease. He sang the music better than New York has heard it sung since the Hammerstein days when Dalmores appeared with Miss Garden and Renaud⁴⁹.” Orville’s voice and acting continued to please, and while some critics found Thais “musically vapid”, it remained on the schedule.

Extending on from Orville’s previous-season peak of forty appearances, the 1922-23 season was off to an even stronger start, accumulating a high water mark of thirteen appearances by new year’s eve. Combining the previous Met spring, summer at Ravinia, and the Met fall, Orville had debuted in five new operas during the year, at the top of his career. The 1922 holiday occurred amidst a sprint that began with Der Rosenkavalier on December 23, and ended with Carmen on January 4, during which he sang in seven operas and Sunday night concerts over thirteen days, including another performance of Die Tote Stadt. This was in contrast to some previous stretches that had averaged below two performances per week. Orville always stepped up when asked, and always projected energy and full voice, so that a busy season of difficult tessitura and high power was wearing thin. He may have known at Ravinia that he was approaching the bottom of his vocal well, and Gatti-Casazza may have cashed in on a similar hunch while Orville’s voice lasted. By all indications, after a season-opening rush of heavy vocal labor, the instrument was again broken by the end of January.

Winter and spring continued with presentations of Thais and some of Orville’s popular roles such as La Boheme, Lohengrin, and Carmen, but at a much slower pace. There were only five appearances during February, including Orville’s (and the Met’s) last staging of Die Tote Stadt. March likewise saw only five appearances, including Carmen, Parsifal, and spring presentations of fairytale Snegurochka, with the sprite-like Lucrezia Bori. Orville’s voice was not returning, even with resting time, so that there were only four appearances during April, including a season-closing La Boheme in Atlanta. Following a record-rapid start through mid-January, Orville’s fourth Met season, and career, had turned upside down to conclude at a new low of thirty-four total performances. Overuse had once more damaged the voice that been the source of his life’s story, so that Orville’s Met career appeared headed for an early sunset.

As 1922-23 opera progressed, Paul’s senior year back in Muncie progressed from fall football to winter basketball, which was already Indiana’s athletic passion. Their season also began at a hot pace, remaining there to second place in the state final tournament. Orville reportedly received Muncie basketball news clippings, which he showed to associates^49.5, many of whom would have met Paul. While Orville and daughters built a musical family tradition, Paul began a legacy of basketball. Almost a quarter century later, his son led Muncie to a state championship, being declared Indiana’s “Mr. Basketball” (he was also a good singer). From there, he took the University of Colorado to third place in the 1955 NCAA finals, one of Colorado’s few trips to the tournament. With a family trait of wanderlust, Orville’s grandson next went through a career as a Navy aircraft carrier pilot, and then settled in for years of teaching and marriage in Japan, before coming back to America with a hobby of flying and gliding. Meanwhile, his sister followed a parallel career teaching at American high schools in Europe and north Africa, before returning to the United States. This branch of the family was not destined to remain on the farm.

Back in New York, the Harrold sisters had opened on Christmas day, 1922, at the Vanderbilt Theatre, in a new musical presentation of the Vanderbilt Production Company called Glory. Patti played the heroine, Glory Moore, while Marjorie sang in the ensemble. A natural follow-on to Irene, Glory was another musical comedy, scripted and scored by James Montgomery and the same musical team, along a similar story line, and with some of the same actors, including the main couple. Glory is a country girl who eventually marries the boy who left town and returned wealthy. The plot apparently developed in a novel manner, and was more complex and subtle that was usual for such theatre. In a review titled ‘Glory’ Makes Hit With Pretty Tunes, Patti Harrold Charming, the reviewer remarked, “Miss Harrold was always a charming heroine, playing her scenes which bordered on pathos with a reticence, and her comedy scenes with magnetic vivacity⁵⁰.” The music was noted as irresistible, and Patti’s songs as, “especially well sung,” most importantly the closing piece; “An audience which leaves the theatre humming is a pleased audience⁵¹.” Despite good press, the show closed in two months (February 24) after seventy-four performances, from which it was clearly another forced march averaging more than one performance per day. That was the nature of Broadway theater business, which was, after all, a business.

Glory earned Patti another portrait in Mid-Week Pictorial magazine, after which the Vanderbilt Production Company was in Philadelphia during April and March of 1923, where they were visited by Patti’s mother, Effie. The theatrical company then sailed from New York on St. Patrick’s Day for England and the Continent, apparently for a summer tour that included a London show entitled So This Is London⁵². This may have been in conjunction with the English Irene company, and it is unknown what other shows they presented where. Patti and Marjorie continued receiving occasional American press, with photos, discussing such matters as hairstyles and Midwestern girls on Broadway. Marjorie and Floyd Foster probably lived during Patti’s absence at her apartment on West 78^th street. He had obtained a salesman’s position with the Turner Toy Company of New York^52.5, and they resided at Patti’s and with Patti for some time. By fall, Patti had filed for divorce, touching off Midwestern press rumblings regarding the “matrimonial jinx which seemingly has haunted the Harrold family for years⁵³.” Noting that Orville had finally settled down with a wife of the “intellectual stimulus” variety, enjoying life among chickens and cows, it was disclosed that Patti had declared that “Jack is a peach⁵⁴,” but that it was time to end the first marriage attempt. They were divorced⁵⁵ on November 22^nd, 1923.

During mid-May, just as the opera season ended, Ruth Miller Chamlee had purchased a sixteen acre home and grounds in Wilton, Connecticut⁵⁶, located about twenty minutes’ drive from Orville’s farm. (Top tier opera being lucrative, the Chamlees paid this off in two years). They may have found the property through Ruth’s voice lessons. Two adjacent homes were owned by Middlebrook family members, of which one was the father of Joseph W. MIddlebrook, successful New York lawyer, whose second wife, Jeanette Shimans Middlebrook (his office assistant during his first marriage), aspired to grand opera. Jeanette had studied voice as a child in Brooklyn, and spent a significant part of the WWI years living in Naples, Italy to study voice and opera there⁵⁷. While no absolute proof has surfaced, there are enough opera and real estate proximities to strongly suggest a Chamlee, Middlebrook, Harrold, connection, leading to another suspected intersection later in Orville’s life.

It appears that Orville was not engaged anywhere over the summer of 1923, and was likely devoted mostly to resting his voice at his Connecticut farm. Patti had been leaving the country as his Met season was deteriorating, so that Blanche was one the few individuals in his personal life, beyond the Chamlees, who had an idea of how is career was going. The American-boy success image was still succeeding in publications. His tribute article to Hammerstein had appeared in Theatre Magazine during April⁵⁸, providing interesting insights into both their careers, and making clear the affection that Orville had for the irascible impresario. The timing was perhaps ironic.  

During the fall and into 1924, Patti apparently pursued her plan of coaching for grand opera⁵⁹, although it is unknown with whom. Other opportunities would then arise for her as the year progressed. Meanwhile, in November, 1923 the Chamlees hosted at their new country “farm” a picnic and publicity photo opportunity with their son, Mr. and Mrs. Theo Karle (popular New York concert tenor), Orville and Blanche Harrold, and Mr. and Mrs. Ottkar Bartik⁶⁰ (Met ballet director). Met fall rehearsals were getting under way, and Mario Chamlee was hoping to commute from Connecticut for the season, or at least spend weekends there.

Orville had a Met contract as the 1923-24 opera season approached, but did not have a career. Rather than the usual mid-November opening, the season began on the 5^th with Thais, and without Orville.  Not only did he not sing any new roles during this season, he did not perform most of his standard Met roles of previous years, such as La Boheme, Faust, Parsifal, Thais, Madame Butterfly, and Cavalleria Rusticana. Other tenors were stepping into Orville’s parts. Armand Tokatyan, who had begun a twenty-five year Met career the previous season, sang Nicias in Thais, Tiriddu in Cavalleria Rusticana, and Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly. Mario Chamlee performed Faust, Uin-San-Lui in L’Oracolo, and Grigory in Boris Godunov. Of the Italian tenors, Beniamino Gigli sang Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly and Rodolfo in La Boheme, while Giovanni Martinelli starred in Carmen and Faust. Martinelli also sang Arnold in William Tell, one of the roles that had launched Orville’s opera career, a number of times during 1923 and 1924, although it is not known if these were in the original key. Another event of the period was the debut of an American basso from California, Lawrence Tibbett, who would remain friends over the years with Orville and the Chamlees. Orville first sang on November 17, in Der Rosencavalier, which was particularly suited to his high tenor. He sang twice in L’Oracolo (once in Brooklyn), repeated Der Rosencavalier, and appeared in several Sunday night concerts near the holidays, for a career low of only six performances in six weeks prior to the new year. Orville no longer had a voice that could keep him at the Met, and as the holidays passed he stepped into the worst year of his life.

Orville was performing only occasionally in the new year, and rarely in entire operas on the Met stage. He appeared in two Sunday night concerts during January, in which they presented complete acts from Faust and Carmen. During the first week in February, he sang his usual role as Edgardo in Lucia, presented at the Philadelphia Opera House. The following week, in mid-February, he was again in a special concert for the benefit of the Met Emergency Fund, singing another act from Carmen. Rather than performing on alternate days, as he had during his busiest Met periods, Orville was averaging one performance during alternate weeks, and after Carmen, would not appear again for nearly a month. Most of the slowdown was because of the condition of his voice, which likely required added resting time between performances. There was another reason for the extra time off during February.

About a week after his latest concert, word arrived at the Met on the morning of February 20^th that Orville’s father had died, back in Muncie⁶¹. Orville was on a train that afternoon, for a funeral at his father’s home and a reunion of his parents at Beech Grove Cemetery. In keeping with fairly substantial family longevity, his father had lived to age seventy-one. Orville may have lingered in Muncie to see his son, Paul, and other family before returning to New York and his last round of Met performances.

On March eighth he sang his first complete opera on the Met stage since December, as Win-San-Lui in L’Oracolo. Apparently because of limited vocal endurance, he performed again only after three weeks, in a repeat of L’Oracolo. Orville sang his last Don Jose in Carmen on April fifth, into the closing month of spring performances. His last opera was Boris Godunov, followed by the season’s last Sunday night concert, in which he sang Una furtiva lagrima from L'Elisir d'Amore and participated in the sextet from Lucia. He did not travel to Atlanta, and finished the 1923-24 Met season with only fifteen appearances. That brought Orville to a career total of 160 Met performances. He had made no Victor recordings during this opera season, but caught up somewhat by recording his last four pieces for them during April. His recording contract ended simultaneously with his Met contract and opera opportunities.

Orville’s five-season Met career was relatively brief compared to some Met tenors who endured for decades. He was always an unrestrained singer, so that Oscar Saenger had had to perform voice repair back in 1910. While Orville perhaps had confidence in his vocal resources during nearly two decades in New York, they were finally expended by 1923. It had been said of Emma Trentini, Orville’s leading lady at the Manhattan Opera and Naughty Marietta, “Smartest singer I ever met. She never talked or sang out loud and when she did it was always one octave lower. She saved her full voice for a real audience⁶².” Her falling out with Victor Herbert occurred because she had refused an encore that he had requested of her during the final performance of Naughty Marietta. She preferred to save her voice⁶³. Orville would have known her style, but conducted himself differently. He certainly knew the risks, and lived his career at a faster pace.

Lacking spring Scotti opera, Orville and Patti filled the month of May, 1924 with a series of concerts throughout Indiana to benefit the Paul Dresser Memorial fund. Born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1859 as J. Paul Dreiser Jr., an older brother of American novelist Theodore Dreiser, Paul Dresser had wandered between priesthood studies and petty crime to an early career as a vaudeville troubadour and minstrel show entertainer. This was accompanied by a considerable and successful outpouring of songwriting, so that he had migrated to New York by the 1880’s, where he formed the music publishing house of Howley, Haviland, & Dresser. Through the 1880’s and 1890’s, Dresser published a hundred tunes meriting the newly minted title of “hits”, which earned both acclaim and fortune. The most popular was “On the Banks of the Wabash”, which was the second best seller of sheet music during the 19^th century, became the Indiana state song in 1913, and had just been recorded by Orville for Victor during his last month at the Met. The opening line, “Round my Indiana homestead wave the cornfields”, described Orville’s brick farmhouse birthplace throughout the 20^th century.

Dresser’s songs were largely romanticized remembrances of 19^th century life, which lost popularity with young audiences after the turn of the century, in an increasingly urbanized and mechanized age of ragtime. Reckless generosity and poor business practice brought Dresser was penury and poor health, for which he died in 1906. Adding insult, Back Home Again in Indiana was written in 1917, plagiarizing lines, rhythm and music from Dresser’s greatest legacy, which his brother, Theodore, fought for some years. With his image fading, the Paul Dresser Memorial fund had been established in 1923 to erect a monument in his hometown of Terre Haute. Patti and Orville Harrold paralleled Dresser as Hoosier musicians, constituting the Indiana equivalent of Caruso and Adelina Patti. Their tour began on May 4, at the recently built Cadle Tabernacle, a unique Indianapolis landmark⁶⁴.

Built in 1921 by E. Howard Cadle, the tabernacle had a capacity of 10,000, plus room for another 1400 in the choir loft. Its façade was of an incongruous Spanish mission style, with an entrance modeled after the Alamo. Cadle was an Indiana entrepreneur who had made, lost, and remade several fortunes, acquiring religion along the way to overcome a youth of drunkenness and gambling. The operation was part business and part religion, available to preachers, evangelists, speakers, and entertainers, and hosting over the years Billy Sunday, Oral Roberts, and Martin Luther King. The tabernacle was reportedly the largest evangelistic meeting hall in America, proving as successful as his previous enterprises, so that Cadle drove a Cadillac and flew his own airplane. (The site is now occupied by Firehouse Square Townhouses.)

The concert tour was inherently popular for its all-Indiana theme. The tour committee had stirred enthusiasm with endorsements for both Dresser and the Harrolds from John Philip Sousa, Victor Herbert, and others⁶⁵. Harry E. Paris again managed the tour, in which Orville opened with solos from Martha, Patti enacted a part from Irene in costume, and they were accompanied by Emil Polak, who had been pianist with Orville and Lydia Locke during their 1916 concerts⁶⁶. Emil Polak soloed as well as participated in the scene from Irene⁶⁷. Finally, Patti sang the operatic Caro Nome from Rigoletto, after which she and Orville sang various duets. The first ostensible joint performance for Patti and Orville, the tour was important to both, especially Orville, in establishing family connection and companionship in their artistic and professional passions.

Crowds filling the Cadle Tabernacle became sufficiently large and unruly around entrances and local streets that police were called to restore order, providing some of the best publicity for the rest of the tour⁶⁸. Among various Indiana cities, Patti and Orville gave three performances in a Harrold homecoming at the auditorium of Muncie’s Central High School, where Patti had graduated in 1917, and Paul had graduated just the previous year⁶⁹.

There was no public discussion during the Indiana tour of Orville leaving the Met or finishing opera, or that his career was changing. If anything, it was suggested that his opera selections were intended to explore preferences for the coming season, which may have been true. As spring of 1924 passed, the summer presented down time for both Patti and Orville, probably spent at his Connecticut farm. Patti enjoyed gardening there, and fall theatre work was falling onto place for Patti and Marjorie. For the near term, Patti and Orville took the opportunity for a joint appearance afforded by his vaudeville popularity. They were booked for the Labor Day reopening week at the Hippodrome, now managed by the Keith-Albee interests, to present a singing variety act conveniently similar to that of their May Indiana tour⁷⁰.

Patti and Marjorie were to begin fall rehearsals for a new musical comedy, scheduled for a New York opening around the Christmas holidays⁷¹. Marjorie and Floyd Foster were living at Patti’s apartment, where there was a disagreement during mid-August such that the Foster couple left for a fortnight’s break at home in Muncie (family lore is that Patti threw them out). Near the end of the month, vaudeville news columns announced Patti and Orville were opening at the Hippodrome⁷², when news arrived early on Friday, August 29^th that Marjorie had been killed in an Indiana automobile accident.

Hippodrome management quickly arranged a private drawing room and berths for Orville and Patti on that afternoon’s Southwestern Limited to Indianapolis⁷³. At Indianapolis, several return reservations were made for Sunday and Monday on the Pennsylvania Special. Meanwhile, the Hippodrome also arranged for a replacement act, including Belle Storey, who had been Orville’s starring partner in the 1916 Hippodrome spectacular, Hip Hip Hooray!. As Orville and Patti headed west on Friday, news of their presence spread through the train, reaching Ethel Lynch and her mother, who were returning from visiting her mother’s parents in Connecticut⁷⁴. Ethel had been a schoolmate of Orville’s son, Paul, at Muncie Central High School, and the pair arranged to meet Orville in his drawing room car. Patti was sufficiently overwrought that she was unwilling to see visitors, but Orville sat with them for some time. Whatever the overall events, the intimacy of the tragic moment became part of courtship between Paul and Ethel, such that she ultimately bore Orville’s only grandchildren.

Marjorie had arrived in Muncie about ten days previous to the accident, receiving something of a celebrity reception. Having been gone nearly twenty years, Orville was not so freshly in mind, while his Broadway daughters had enthused a new generation of civic pride. On Thursday evening of the 28^th, Marjorie and Floyd had gone to a dance near Anderson, Indiana, between Muncie and Indianapolis, in the Maxwell coupe of a friend named Paul Karlen⁷⁵ (whose father was Muncie fire chief) and his date, Marie Rathel⁷⁶. The Fosters were both riding in the front passenger’s seat, Marjorie sitting in Floyd’s lap, when the car left the road on a curve, the right front side striking a telephone pole, while going about fifty-five miles per hour (about the full speed of the automobile). The telephone pole was broken into three pieces, and Marjorie was thrown about twenty feet. While the other three were, surprisingly, not seriously injured, Marjorie appears to have been hit by part of the telephone pole, suffering severe crushing damage to one side of her head⁷⁷ and nearly severing an arm⁷⁸. She was alive, but never regained conscientiousness before dying early Friday morning at the Anderson hospital.

Marjorie’s mother, Effie, did not arrive at the hospital early enough to see her alive, which would have been a disturbing sight in any event. Her son, Paul, had the unfortunate and unforgettable experience of identifying the body at the morgue, before it was taken to Muncie. Friday’s Muncie headline read, MARJORIE HARROLD MEETS DEATH, capitalized across the top of page one. Paul Karlen originally claimed that he had been blinded by oncoming headlights, but by Saturday it had been established that he had been drinking, while a resident near the accident scene stated that his car had been speeding and that there had been no other automobile⁷⁹. Karlen was charged with involuntary manslaughter, while funeral arrangements were finalized. Incredibly, a cousin of Marjorie’s in the Kiger (maternal) family was killed in an automobile accident in a nearby county, ten hours after she died⁸⁰. They might have met on Sunday at a Kiger family reunion, which must have become a dismally subdued gathering.

Orville and Patti would have arrived in Muncie on Saturday morning, hardly rested, going to Effie’s residence on South Madison Street. While Patti almost certainly remained at home with her mother, Orville stayed at the Roberts Hotel, where he received a number of consoling telegrams. There were messages from Hippodrome manager, Mark Luescher, Edward F. Albee of the Keith-Albee, Mrs. Enestinoff, the wife of his old Indianapolis mentor, and Julie Witmark, vaudeville singer and producer, as well as member of the Witmark family of music publishers. There are family stories of Orville at the wake, sitting on the porch with Effie, to no avail. Effie would not be consoled, and would take no comfort in Orville. Burial was on Sunday, beside Orville’s parents at Beech Grove Cemetery. Orville was at the cemetery for the second time in a year that had also seen his career end. He would return only once more.

Paul Karlen remained in the Muncie area, and it is unclear if he was prosecuted to completion for the accident. Five years later, in October of 1929, he was involved as a student pilot in an airplane crash near Muncie. He had gone up with his instructor, an experienced WWI pilot, on a day of severe cross winds when the plane crashed in a cornfield and burst into flame. Having partially extricated himself, Karlen was helped out by a passing mail carrier, but then returned to the burning airplane to save his instructor. The instructor died at the scene, while Karlen died of burns later that night⁸¹.

After nearly forty recordings, a myriad of opera companies, and all manner of other theatre, 1924 functionally ended Orville’s musical outpouring. He did not totally leave music or stage, but generally withdrew from entertainment. Some biographies suggest that he returned to vaudeville, but little data (appearance dates and venues) has surfaced to support this. He briefly appeared with an opera road company, but, as with the Paul Dresser tour and the August 1924 Hippodrome engagement (which may never have occurred) his public appearances were thereafter primarily with Patti, and mostly in New York. While relocating several times, he no longer traveled as a lifestyle, and for the most part remained geographically near Patti and a small group of friends and in-laws. He was occasionally heard on radio during the early 1930’s.

Gatti-Casazza reportedly stated that Orville suffered a shortened career for having entered opera too late in life⁸², but that hardly seems the case. Orville perhaps entered the Met too late in life, especially for a tenor who consumed his voice at a high burn rate. His energetic style may not have been destined for a thirty-year career, but he had broken into top tier opera in 1910, with the possibility of remaining there. Oscar Hammerstein’s productions and casts in New York, Philadelphia, and London were at the level of the Met and Covent Garden. Even Naughty Marietta was a lavish production, far above vaudeville and classic burlesque, being one of the first truly major Broadway musicals. None of Hammerstein’s performers were absorbed by the Met, which aimed to exorcise the competition, and in any event, Hammerstein refrained from putting Orville on the auction block by keeping him under contract. While London society was not supporting Hammerstein, numerous London critics were freely rating Orville amid opera’s top tenors.

One might ask what created the valley between London and the Met, recognizing that the question represents a primarily artistic viewpoint. There appears less of a valley on the basis of other professional, financial, or stage considerations. While being encouraged toward opera by his Indianapolis mentor, Alexander Ernestinoff, before going to New York, Orville had participated in a variety of choirs, social clubs, musical productions, and orchestras. Viewing Orville’s overall career as that of a general musical entertainer, the teen years in New York followed a similar course, along with the realization of grand opera. He would sing at the drop of a hat, in concerts, vaudeville, liberty bond drives during the war, Gilbert and Sullivan.

Several years after Orville’s retirement, Met conductor Arthur Bodanzky stated that opera was declining, in part because of new artists of limited background⁸³, by which he may have included Orville. An Austrian classicist who had been assistant conductor to Gustav Mahler in Vienna, Bodanzky was accustomed to principal performers who had a decade of experience before reaching major operatic venues. He was also accustomed to families who could routinely mount their own string quartets, and the state of twentieth century music in America did not meet his standards. Unquestionably, Rosa Ponselle was merely exceptional when she stepped out of vaudeville and into opera, while she had become exquisite a decade later. As Bodanzky pointed out, America did not have adequate schools for operatic training, nor did it have a large network of smaller opera companies that could prepare young performers. Finally, Bodanzky lamented the substitution of modernism for classic lyric opera, the latter presenting melody such as in “Butterfly”. After all, “who cannot hum at least two tunes from it?”

Short of tapping the limited supply of European artists, as Gatti-Casazza did at the Met, growing American operas could not hope to present such highly experienced singers. An American operatic farm system could evolve only over time, and would differ from the European model, where opera companies were ubiquitous. The European talent pool would become increasingly expensive, until even Europe could not afford it, a process cut short by the Great Depression, which made opera itself barely affordable.

Orville had the good fortune to arrive in time for a piece of opera’s golden age, and when he joined the Met he did have well over a decade of experience, although not all in opera. A number of his associates had similar experience, coming up through lesser companies such as the Aborns’ and Century Opera, and major opera under Hammerstein. Even vaudeville prepared opera performers for what is still a form of stage entertainment. (Opera struggles with the choice between pure musical presentation and acting, but the audience presumably should benefit by having their eyes open.) Some critics seem bothered that Orville spent part of the mid-teen years in “second-rate” opera companies, but that was virtually inevitable during WWI to build exactly the background that Bodanzky valued. Orville gained experience and repertoire at Century Opera, Ravinia, and the Society of American Singers.

Such companies failed unfortunately often, but Orville was an adventuresome survivor, not an idealistic artist. Far beyond surviving, Orville forged his most lucrative contract under such circumstances. For one who reveled in musical entertainment, a Hippodrome spectacular was hardly to be dismissed, even at a cost (and he had to know that it would cost his voice). Afterward, at his low point, he began at Ravinia to rebuild his opera career. Orville did not have classic European training, he gambled with his opportunities, and he devoted a substantial portion of his performing lifespan to “lesser” satisfactions. But, he endured, remained popular, and did the work required to reach top opera. He had the discipline and stamina for success, and once at the Met, demonstrated intelligence and skill in assuming his roles.

In his Etude interview, Orville stated that he had a repertoire of over thirty operas that he could perform on an hour’s notice. A careful accounting arrives at a list of thirty-eight operas in which he performed, with five additional complete operettas and shows, along with numerous opera acts and pieces from Sunday night concerts, plus many individual songs from various concerts elsewhere. There were seven song books for compete operas in residue from his estate that passed down through Patti, in addition to several compilation books of operatic songs. Notable was a 1918 soft cover Ricordi publication of La Boheme, which was among his best-received Met roles. Also present were Rigoletto and Aida. Somewhat surprising were hardcover editions of Valkyrie and Les Huguenots, for which he had no known appearances, although these could have been used for concerts. There was also HMS Pinafore, which could have been either his or Patti’s from the Society of American Singers.

It may have been that the occasion of Marjorie’s death was when the family became aware that Orville was leaving opera. The impression is that the two events became associated in family perception, such that the tragic occurrence appeared to influence a decision on Orville’s part. While there is some juxtaposition of circumstances, Orville’s operatic fate had already been determined for some time, joining a group of factors that made 1924 an extremely discouraging year for him.

Marjorie’s death forever marked the family. Although her actions may have been reasonable and justified, Patti never shed the guilt of her role in the events leading to the accident, and Orville perhaps did not either. His passions had shaped the family and much that followed. Without miring in psycho-babble, his daughters married impulsively, likely to establish stability and permanent companionship. The tragedy certainly disturbed issues and differences that had been resting forgotten and forgiven, and Orville could not have escaped some regrets in the weight of the moment. Patti thereafter spent considerable time with Orville and Blanche at Bo-Le in Connecticut, participating occasionally in local benefits and events. Orville’s relationships with Blanche and Patti became the staples of his life.

Complete shows and operas performed by Orville Harrold, with first performance date, the majority being leading roles:

    Title                               Date                     Producer                             Character
The Social Whirl                      1906                Shubert Brothers                    
The Belle of London Town      1907                Shubert Brothers                     Lord Drinkwell
Wine, Women, & Song            ca. 1907           Mortimer Theise                      Harmonists Quartet
Pagliacci                                 1910                Manhattan Opera                    Canio
Cavalleria Rusticana   1910                Manhattan Opera                    Turiddu
Rigoletto,                                 1910                Manhattan Opera                    Duke of Mantua
Naughty Marietta                     1910                Oscar Hammerstein                 Dick Warrington
William Tell                             1911                London Opera                         Arnold
Faust                                       1911                London Opera             Faust
Lucia                                       1911                London Opera             Edgardo
Les Contes d'Hoffmann           1912                London Opera*                       Hoffmann
La Traviata                             1912                London Opera             Alfredo
Romeo et Juliette                     1912                London Opera             Romeo
La Favorita                             1912                London Opera             Fernando
Les Cloches de Corneville       1912                London Opera             Jean Grenicheaux
Aida                                         1914                Century Opera                        Radames
Martha                                    1914                Century Opera                        Lionel
Madame Butterfly                    1914                Century Opera                        Pinkerton
Carmen                                   1914                Century Opera                        Don Jose
Hip Hip Hooray!                     1915                Dillingham, Hippodrome        The Hero
Les Contes d'Hoffmann           1916                Ravinia Summer Opera*         Hoffmann
The Bohemian Girl     1916                Ravinia Summer Opera           Thaddeus
Il Barbiere di Siviglia  1918                Ravinia Summer Opera           Almaviva

Manon                                     1918                Ravinia Summer Opera           Des Grieux
Lakme                                     1918                Ravinia Summer Opera           Gerald
Fra Diavolo                            1919                Society of American Singers  Fra Diavolo
Robin Hood                             1919                Society of American Singers  Robin Hood
The Mikado                             1919                Society of American Singers  Nanki-Poo
L'Oracolo                                1919                Scotti Opera                            Win-San-Lui
L'Elisir d'Amore                      1919                Ravinia Summer Opera           Nemorino
La Bohème                              1919                Metropolitan Opera                 Rodolfo
La Juive                                   1919                Metropolitan Opera                 Prince Leopold
Boris Godounov                      1919                Metropolitan Opera                 Grigory
Cleopatra's Night                    1920                Metropolitan Opera                 Meiamoun
Parsifal                                    1920                Metropolitan Opera                 Parsifal
Louise                                      1921                Metropolitan Opera                 Julien

Die Tote Stadt                         1921                Metropolitan Opera                 Paul
Lohengrin                                1921                Metropolitan Opera                 Lohengrin
Sniegourotchka                       1922                Metropolitan Opera                 The Czar
Tosca                                       1922                Metropolitan Opera                 Cavaradossi
L'Amico Fritz                          1922                Ravinia Summer Opera           Fritz Kobus
Der Rosenkavalier      1922                Metropolitan Opera                 The Italian Singer
Thaïs                                       1922                Metropolitan Opera                 Nicias
Holka Polka                            1925                Carl Reed, at the Lyric Theatre    Peter Novak                                                                 

* There is some uncertainty as to whether Orville sang Hoffmann in London, which he otherwise first sang at Ravinia in 1916

1. Opera In Crinoline and the Race of the Tenors, William B. Chase, New York Times, November 6, 1921

2. Men, Women, and Tenors, Frances Alda, Houghton Miflin Co. Boston, 1937, pg. 237

3. Discussion of Met wage scales is compiled from various portions of: The Golden Age of Opera, Robert Tuggle, Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, New York, 1983

4. ibid, pg. 158

5. ibid, and from a web discussion of Aureliano Pertile and other Met tenors of the 1921-22 season, by Robert Tuggle at metoperafamily.org

6. ibid, pg. 150

7. “Carmen” Sung For French, New York Times, January 25, 1920

8. More Singers Ill, Changes In Operas, New York Herald, January 25, 1920

9. Orville Harrold in “La Boheme”, New York Times, February 14, 1920

9.5 Orville Harrold (Wolfsohn broadside), Musical Currier, December 23, 1920, pg. 17

10. The Opera, Richard Aldrich, New York Times, February 20, 1920

11. The Comeback of Don Jose, article, The World Magazine, March 21, 1920, pg. 12

12. All-American Cast Sings Classic Faust, New York Times, April 20, 1920

13. Norwalk, CT Land Records for various years, researched by Melanie Marks

14. “Lohengrin” in Overalls In West Norwalk, The Norwalk Hour, Dec. 3, 1925, pg. 5

15. ibid.

16. Scotti as Opera Pioneer, New York Times, April 18, 1920

17. Greeting to Scotti, Impresario, New York Times, June 6, 1920

18. Orville Harrold Singing In Houston, unidentified Houston newspaper, 1920 (only part of date remaining) from Patti Harrold’s scrapbook

19. Plans of Musicians, New York Times, June 6, 1920

20. Art of Making Over A Plump Figure, Boston Sunday Globe, January 1, 1922, pg. 34, and also, The Stage section of Munsey’s Magazine, October 1920, pg. 112

21. ibid.

22. Second Harrold Succeeds, The Muskogee Times-Democrat, August 3, 1920, pg. 7

23. Patti Harrold Rejoices in Chance to Develop, The Salt Lake Tribune, March 12, 1922, pg. 6

24. Plans of Musicians, New York Times, June 6, 1920

25. Art of Making Over A Plump Figure (The Boston Sunday Globe, January 1, 1922) pg. 34

26. See America With Scotti, Music section, New York Times, September 5, 1920

27. Patti and Orville Harrold on the Met stage on the same day, from hand written notes of Orville’s granddaughter, which referenced an article in the New York Telegraph.

28. Difficult For Mimi To Shiver, John Marsh, The Atlanta Georgian, April 27 1921

29. Lucrezia Bori And Harrold At Their Best, The Atlanta Georgian, April 27 1921

30. Opera Critic On The Job, Col. John Caruthers, The Atlanta Georgian, April 27 1921

31. What Do You Know About Orville Harrold?, Muncie Evening Press, May 7, 1921

32. Art of Making Over A Plump Figure, Boston Sunday Globe, January 1, 1922, pg. 34

33. Boston Sunday Globe, December 25, 1921, also unnamed article (The Hutchinson (Kansas) News) February 27, 1922

34. Music Notes, The New York Record, September 18, 1915, Lydia Locke credits Adelina Patti, who attended London Opera, with sage advice to work hard. From the scrapbook of Lydia Locke

35. Oscar Thompson, Musical America, unknown edition, quoted in archival section of the Metropolitan Opera Company on line database at metoperafamily.org

36. opera review, Henry Krehbiel, New York Herald, November 20, 1921, quoted in archival section of the Metropolitan Opera Company on line database at metoperafamily.org

37. ibid.

38. Oscar Thompson, Musical America, unknown edition, quoted in archival section of the Metropolitan Opera Company on line database at metoperafamily.org

39 ‘Die Tote Stadt’ Fantastic Opera (Whole Conception Fantastic), New York Times, November 20, 1921

40. Harrold Risks His Neck, Fuzzy Woodruff, Atlanta Constitution, April 27, 1923, pg. 9

41. ibid.

42. unnamed article, New York Times, June 4, 1922

43. unattributed news clipping from Patti Harrold’s scrapbook

44. various newspaper articles: Boston Globe, December 25,1921, The Hutchinson (Kansas) News, February 27, 1922, Salt Lake City Tribune, March, 12, 1922, Helena (Montana) Daily Independent, April 30, 1922, Bismarck (North Dakota) Tribune, May 5, 1922

45. from personal discussions with niece of Patti Harrold

46. Patti discussing long working periods for Irene, Boston Sunday Globe, January 1, 1922, and Salt Lake City Tribune, March, 12, 1922

46.5. From Plow-Boy to Parsifal, Orville Harrold (Etude Magazine, New York, July, 1922) pg. 444

47. Opera review, Richard Aldrich, New York Times, November 18, 1922

47.5. Review by Oscar Thompson in Musical America, November, 1922, quoted in archival section of the Metropolitan Opera Company on line database at metoperafamily.org

48. Review by Oscar Thompson in Musical America, December, 1922, quoted in archival section of the Metropolitan Opera Company on line database at metoperafamily.org

49. ibid.

49.5 Harrold Rites At Mortuary, the Muncie Star, October 25, 1933, from Patti Harrold’s scrapbook

50. ‘Glory” Makes Hit With Pretty Tunes – Patti Harrold Charming, New York Times, December 26, 1922

51. ibid.

52. Orville Harrold and Daughter Patti, The Kokomo Daily Tribune, May 5, 1924, pg. 7

52.5 Orville Harrold’s Daughter, Tipton (Indiana) Daily Tribune, August 29, 1924, pg. 3

53. Pretty Patti Patterns Papa’s Precedent, The Lima News, October 21, 1923, pg. 17

54. ibid.

55. Patti Harrold Gets Divorce, New York Times, November 23, 1923

56. Wilton, CT Land Records for various years, researched by Melanie Marks

57. Jeanette Shimans Middlebrook, residences, passports, and history, researched by Melanie Marks

58. My Memories of Oscar Hammerstein, Orville Harrold (Theatre Magazine Company, New York, April, 1923) pg. 64

59. Orville Harrold and Daughter Patti, The Kokomo Daily Tribune, May 5, 1924, pg. 7

60. How Operatic Stars Spend Spare Moments, The Bridgeport Telegram, November 8, 1923

61. Orville Harrold’s Father Dies, New York Times, February 21, 1924

62 She Walks All Over Rudolf Friml, 90, Los Angeles Times, September 25,1970. p. H1, quoted in article on Emma Trentini, Wikipedia.com

63. ibid.

64. Orville Harrold and Daughter, The Kokomo Daily Tribune, May 16, 1924, pg. 3

65. From the Paul Dresser Memorial Committee, unattributed newspaper article from Patti Harrold’s scrapbook

66. Orville Harrold and Daughter Patti, The Kokomo Daily Tribune, May 5, 1924, pg. 7

67 There are various brief descriptions of the tour presentation, with more definitive details in: Want Grand Piano, Logansport (Indiana) Pharos-Tribune, May 16, 1924, pg. 1, Critic’s High Praise for Concert By Orville Harrold, Logansport Pharos-Tribune, May 17, 1924, pg. 5, and Famous Singer Comes Here Next Wednesday, Logansport Morning Press, May 18, 1924, pg. 3

68. The Harrold Concert, Logansport Pharos-Tribune, May 20, 1924, pg. 4

69. Patti Harrold in Concert With Her Father, unattributed newspaper article from Patti Harrold’s scrapbook

70. News of Vaudeville, New York Times, August 31, 1924

71. Promising Life Is Snuffed Out In Auto Crash, The Muncie Evening Press, August 29, 1924, pg. 1

72. Harrold’s Daughter Dies, New York Times, August 30, 1924

73. ibid., and telegrams describing train arrangements, from the collection of Patti Harrold

74. From personal discussions with Orville Harrold’s granddaughter

75. Promising Life Is Snuffed Out In Auto Crash, The Muncie Evening Press, August 29, 1924, pg. 1

76 Orville Harrold’s Daughter, Tipton (Indiana) Daily Tribune, August 29, 1924, pg. 3

77. Promising Life Is Snuffed Out In Auto Crash, The Muncie Evening Press, August 29, 1924, pg. 1

78 Orville Harrold’s Daughter, Tipton (Indiana) Daily Tribune, August 29, 1924, pg. 3

79. Karlen In Jail After Coroner Starts Probe, The Muncie Morning Star, August 30, 1924, pg. 1

80. Relative of Girl Dies Near Marion, The Muncie Morning Star, August 30, 1924, pg. 1

81. War Aviator, Student, Die, The Logansport (Indiana) Press, October 18, 1929

82. Orville Harrold, Opera Tenor, Dead, George E. Hogue, New York Times, October 24, 1933

83. Opera Pains Maestro, The Salt Lake Tribune, November 28, 1926, pg. 6

See also three Orville Harrold articles by Charle A Hooey:
•  Chronology
•  Discography
•  An American Original

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* Based on family accounts from later years, which might have been tainted by events more specific to that period.

[Preface] [Orville's Worlds] [Family] [Young Orville ] [To New York] [To London, and back] [The Second Marriage, 1913 – 1917] [The Third Marriage, Rehabilitation] [The Met Years, Two careers 1920-1924] [Photogallery]