A NEW ENGINE OF DESTRUCTION

The hallowed boards of the Metropolitan Opera Company may soon be graced, or disgraced, by a jazz opera--bizarre monster which could only be conceived in this land of Puritan hymnals and Hottentot orgiastic syncopation. The jazz-some scores of American popular ballads of "blues" and "mammies" are to be metamorphosed from their present fragmentary staff into an epic-like opera of the formerly humble working girl. Where princeases and courtesans footed nimbly across the stage and devastated admirers with their blasting rant, the tender shop or factory girl, the Cinderella princess of the automobile and ready-made clothes, will share her melodious sorrows and joys with stiff shirted plutocrats.

The effect of this glorification is unpredictable. Few princesses' heads have been turned in seeing themselves mimicked by plumply imposing contraltos. Peasant women seem noticeably unaffected by the rythmic nothings which curiously garbed damse's waft across the footlights. But in the case of the dine and-dance, belle, the consequences are most grave. If the stage prototype of their kind becomes immediately and universally popular, who can persuade the girls not to trill and warble? They all act already, but a working-girl opera, such as Mr. Kahn proposes to inflict upon the docile audience, will ruin the hearts and digestions of a whole generation of young Americans whose lives will be upset by the operatic tantrums of the "jazz baby."