BORROWED OPERA

Boston's brief and borrowed opera season has passed in a wave of enthusiasm. The Chicago company was hospitably received, and it departed with a cordial invitation to come again next year. Old music-lovers, recalling earlier days when the city could boast its native opera, were inclined to be suspicious of this imported product; but most of them had good sense enough not to cut off their ears to spite their faces, and made the best of what was offered them.

That best proved to be as much as any city of Boston's size could ask. It was metropolitan opera undiluted. The Chicago artists, musicians, and producers gave freely, and never for a moment treated Boston as a provincial small town--though its attitude towards art occasionally seems to deserve such treatment.

But Chicago's loan cannot be permanent, at least not on the uncertain security' of past payments. If the opera is to come again, and come regularly, there must be an organized group to sponsor it, as guarantors for the loan. Chicago has discovered for itself the futility of trying to support grand opera, even at home, on an ordinary commercial basis. The expedient of making its opera company a civic institution, supported by advance pledges from a large and widely diverse body of subscribers, has removed its financial difficulties and given it an assured future for the next five years.

The plan now undertaken is to give similar surety here. A group is being organized, to be made as inclusive as possible, whose subscriptions will give the city a part-claim on the Chicago company, and make it the civic opera of Boston as well. Since Boston cannot have its own, it can scarcely hope to do better than to take Chicago's offering by adoption.