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Show B I 1 ")l C f A I V Simple-Minded Tony with a jJfe? - I 1 H V 2'T Million-Dollar-a-Year-Voice, iff 9 I fiT'rtr Brother of Rosa Ponselle, IbW 1 1 . ' j Famous Young "No real man respects ac I'd rather be a 1 real man," says Tcny. "I don't want my HIP ' ' v : SBBBBSB' ' BWml ' jpSSSa II life to be oi long gargle!" I " 119S: JHI ' 7 tW'M f lk I CARUSO is the most famou.- and richest of -tenor?. 1 1 is income from his voice runs into the hundreds hun-dreds of thousands of dollars each ear. He Is courted and feted v. he ever he goes, receiving often, indeed although beginning begin-ning life as a butchers boy the honors of royalty. Hundreds of thousands of his countrymen country-men look upon Caruso with eyes of admiring ad-miring envy. Is there, In fact, one who doesn't? There certainly is! Tony Ponzlllo brother of Rosa Ponselle, prima donna of the great Metropolitan Opera Company. 1 does not. Furthermore, much as he admires ad-mires Caruso's voice, he admits, he wouldn't be a Caruso' The amazing proof of Tony Ponzillo's sincerity i3 that while shovelling coal In Connecticut there tame to him expert emissaries of that same Metropolitan grand opera on the word of his famou? sister. Hearing him sing, they declared his voice as great as Caruso's in his youth look him up to the mountain and showed IHm a vision of himself supplanting Cnru-feo, Cnru-feo, aDd straightway offered him a princely salary to begin And Tony Ponzillo refused! Surely there could be no greater proof of sincerity than (hat! "I'd rather shovel coal in overalls than be a Caruso!" declared Tony. What could be the reason for such an astonishing declaration'' A representative of this magazine called upon the prima donna's brother In the Italian quarter of Meriden, Conn., to see whether he would tell. Tony Ponzillo was delherlng coal close by and In the overalls he preferred to Caruso'6 magnificent stage costume:' He beamed and hummed as it shot through VlXj ,nr tack drop of hi? delher.' wagon, into H ''')' a patron's cellar. "Come back to my office and I'll tell you," he said. He pointed proudly at bis sign before he entered. "I'm boss!" he remarked, cryptically In the office was Mr. Ponzillo, his and the famous prima donna's father. The elder Bit s1 Ponzillo is a baker. Was it that Tony did not like Caruso'' No, he liked his voice, admired him great-ly. great-ly. Was It that he did not like to put on , opera night after opera night the silk and tinsel, wave the sword, spout heroically I about the stage? "Well." answered Tony, "something like that. I'll tell you. Did you ever hear that conundrum, 'What's a quartette?' And 1 tho answer is, 'Three men and a tenor!' "Yet it's not all that, either. I'll tell , you. I've got a voice," said Tony. "But I don't want to strut about the big stage i flnd be blinded by the sparklers from tha J horseshoe. Why should I? I don't call 1 1 that living. I want to live. i 'Hi r 'flit! II j ; "I don't v. ant to be k; a slave! Nobody who I fe,. Is on the grand opera sSt stage is anything else y v - f That for such a life'"' - y .-Jt- He snapped his strong yS&SM iTn-.vn fir revs -4fiWMH "Whet; i want to ytBK&itt&t "v i vine When I JKfi do.-.'' want to sing. 1 don't sing;. That's JBP-m m "I nm a burners 5! fSa'v5i man and my own flHi- boss. Sometimes, when I can get him, I have a man work Eu for me I am bocs; I'm not bossed H "The grand opr-ra T&kt&r tenor he sings when he 9 told and rest3 1. when he's told. Ho Bkv-'fi goes to bed when the 3jK doctor tells him and he gets up when his teacher tells him! "Slavery! Horrible! What money could nav for it' "He has to dress up in a lot of fool clothes nd strut along Fifth avenue to .show hlmaelf off to the public. Like the minstrels aud the circus that parade the ntreet to draw folks to see the show Only the grand opera singer, he parades by him-elf him-elf It's no fun to parade alone. Such a life! "The grand opera singer has to be fashionable. fash-ionable. He has to go to the Ritz or the Plaza and drink tea No real, red-blooded man likes to drink (pa. any more than any red-blooded man likes to take medicine But he drinks tea because it is expected of him that he do what society folks do So he sits and sips tea and simpers He I ats like a fool and looks like a fool. "Why not when he feels like a fool' "Such a man isn't his own master. No moie than a foolish white poodle on a leash is his own master. Society' Bah! I will be no singing poodle on a leash." Tony Ponzillo stopped to answer the telephone. "One hundred pounds' Yes. that's all I can spare. Yes, I will bring it over myself my-self in an hour. "My idea of living is to work enough to make a living, but to be your own boss. "And not work all the time. All the time the grand opera singer is working for the management Even when he takes his beauty nap on the afternoon that he is to sing, then he is working for the man agement. "I want to get up at half-past six in the morning Not at one o'clock in the afternoon. after-noon. "I want to ?o hunting on a suunv afternoon, after-noon, not drink tea. "I want to tend to business and to take a little time to study with my voice when yjjP R7'' por-.c!!eV. CnHicr Tony on Hi-. Ccal Care ' f, ttjgg-,. ffc '&jtj$&r and Kcr Father. Rosa Has Changed Her Name jE&StSP .' ' W?flr " gpP a Little from Ponzillo to Ponselle. A -Jf gri Ij I feel like it Not when the manager or the maestro says I must. I have a friend, Mike Sprunk. 'lie is a stone mason and a genius. He can Vligy and sing and compose. com-pose. Duly Mike won't keep at the piano. I call him In and he ac ompanies me. Wo used to sing together down in the camp in Texas, "I don't want to take caro of my voice as If It was a diamond that I might lose In the dust of the road. I want to sing when I am happy and to malic my fr.cn ! li.ipp;. But I don't want to make my voice a slot machine. Drop in for a note. One drops . a big or little coin, according to the note. "I don'l like it. "The nightingale don't sing that way. Nor the thru-di I don't believe the Rood God nor the Virgin ever wanted us to do what you call exploit the oiep or commercialize com-mercialize it I think it was given us to express our joy in living. "What would I have not to do if I was to be an opera tencr! I could not eat fried food. Fried things are best 1 relish them. I am miserable If I have to eat broiled meats. Most of our Italian dishes that all the world loves are fried ravioli, potatoes, macaroni, spaghetti. Do you think I would forsake mv father's national dishes to sing on the Metropolitan Opera stage? Never. "If I should slug at the Metropolitan I could not drink a Klass of beer. It is bad for the vocal chords. I was never drunk In my life, nnd I never will be. but ii' I want a second jrlass 0f beer I drink it. And if 1 want to pass my plate to my mother for more of her good spaghetti with the meat gravy. I want to pass my plate. I don't want to leave the table hungry for fear I'll gain a pound. "Oh, the thinps you cannot do because they may hur' your throat! On days that (C) 191t. International Feiture Service, lot i you are to sing you must not talk. Suppose Sup-pose Mike Snrunk came in to see me and say he just saw the Yale game and tell me about it. Am I to sit like a dummy and say nothing? No, no. no! "And to gargle your throat twenty limes a day! Bah!" "But the fortune your voice might earn? And the hundred and ten thousand dollars a year your sister Rosa earns?" "What is money to a slave? My sister Rosa is a wonderful girl. She is so we all nay in the family a miracle She can leurn in ten days what other artistg need five weeks to study There is no one else in the world like m wonderful sjster Rosa It Is all ri'ht for a woman to go into a grand opera if she wants to But it s not a man s size job. "And another reason I don't want to go into grand opera is that when I get ready o marry I want to marrv the right kind ot a Kir! "If I were in opera I suppose I'd get fool notes from fool girls. Some of them from tool married women w'.io onclit in Vnnw better. They would tell me they were in love with me. Maybe at first I'd have enough sense to know that it wasn't qio they were in love with, but Faust or l.ohen-grin, l.ohen-grin, or Tristan, or some other grand opera loer. But after a while I wouldn't. "For I'e no more sense than any other man. The difference between a tenor and other men Is tint the tenor is adored And if a man's aodred enough he gets con-celted. con-celted. Every tenor is conceited. "Another reason is that I'm a man's man i like to slap a fellow on the back and have nim nearly knock me donn by a return slap If I should be a grand opera tenor probably he would knock me down I'd be so soft and pampered by luxury and lack of Great Britain Rights RtserT Mtl esercise that i ' wouldn't have v v :4 enough strength In stand up . back. "No real man JjF rcspeds a tenor, lie laughs at him behind his ' .u- SB back and thinks, itrtf. 'Glad I'm not J that.' I tell you A. thero are more t;. things worth while than Jr m o n e y. x0 aT j man laughs at v me behind by t s. y back. Or, if he " Vi does, he's get- M ting himself ready for a thrashing bp'li "I waut a healthy, sensible girl, gnch a Tlrl as my mother must havo been; such a Klrl ps wouldn't hang around the stacre ioor of an opera house to watch th tenoi come out and gape while ho clears his throat. I want enough to have a good little home and a ood llttlo wife and a rood little car and by and bv some good little children. What more should a real man want? That's living. "And I'll be no slave!" Rosa Ponselle, the sister whoso rise in prand opera was so swift and surprlume played and sang in the little Meriden road house which her father kept as an annex to his bakery. For a little time she and pi I I Tony and His "Better- than-Caruso" Voice. ' Wi ''V her slater were in vaudeville. After onl Ave mfnths study she leaped into the WM place of a prima donna at the Metropolitan. Metropoli-tan. Her voice is a rare riuality of drania- Wt! tic soprano. Tonv and Rosa and the sec- V Ii end sister, Carme'la, went to public school mit , In Meriden. Tony enlisted when tao 1'nited States went to war. . mi "It's 'oo bad," sighs sister Rosa, of nu nviisal to take Caruso's place M1'! 'It's dreadful'" says Carmela , afeT?11 thi "But I won't go into opera." insistea Tony as be helped tho writer into a tax mj "I want to live. I don't want my life ' 0 one long gargle! A slave to my throat not me!" RoJ?1' |
