Music: Blessed Event

There was very little security 27 years ago for a middle-class Jewish family named Burschstein who lived in Bielostok, Russia (now Poland). Harried by fear of Tsarism and pogroms, they had a son who belonged to a Socialist fraternity. Their eleven-year-old daughter Rosa was already being watched suspiciously by government officials, for she carried messages between her brother and his friends. Then one day came the dreaded cry: Pogrom! Rosa, with only the clothes she wore and a small satchel, was hurriedly packed off to Italy in the company of a cousin. There she grew up. The Burschstein relations in Capri were poor: Rosa must work. Working, she sang, and soon a rich woman discovered her voice, sent her off to study with Eva Tetrazzini, sister of Soprano Luisa Tetrazzini and wife of Maestro Cleofonte Campanini.

To the Burschsteins of Bielostok was born last week in Chicago a grand- daughter, Daughter Rosa's first child. If this birth was one of the year's most notable,* it was because Daughter Rosa is now a world-famed diva, Rosa Raisa of the Chicago Opera Company; and because, wife of Baritone Giacomo Rimini, she had become increasingly famed in 1928, when obstetrical forecasts in the Press were limited mainly to royalty and gossipy tabloids, by being reported "expectant" (TIME, April 30, 1928). The public had watched and waited while Soprano Raisa went with her husband to their villa at Verona, Italy. But there was no child. Summer of 1929 was spent resting at Verona, and once more there was no child. Then last January doctors ordered Soprano Raisa to go to a Chicago hotel, to rest in bed, to wait. Last week, delivered, she was happy & well, and proud was Husband Rimini. They agreed to call their child Rosa Juliet.

Less spectacular but more an artist than the unmarried Mary Garden, Rosa Raisa made her Chicago debut (in Aida) in 1913, three years after that of Chicago's Mary. She has seen the Chicago Opera undergo many a vicissitude,† and at 38 (Mary Garden who left this year is 54) she may look forward to years more of good & bad times. Tall, swart, she has neither the chic of Lucrezia Bori nor the Viennese brilliance of Maria Jeritza: she looks Jewish, and like Soprano Alma Gluck and Contralto Sophie Braslau, is proud of it. Annually (except this year) she gives a concert of which the proceeds go to the Raisa Scholarship Foundation, for the musical education of one Jewish boy singer a year. Like many a great singer, she likes to live quietly, hates large parties, guards carefully her health and voice. Most of her Chicago friends are Jewish.