Music: Country Gentlewoman

A limousine was required last week to carry the flowers away after a recital in Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. Flowers in just such deluge used to arrive backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House when Geraldine Farrar sang there ten years and more ago. Farrar caused the deluge last week by returning to give one of her infrequent song recitals.

Farrar's audiences are still marveling at the change come over her since Metropolitan days. She is white-haired now. For several years she was round and matronly but she has thinned down again. The voice is small, an instrument to treat carefully. But she wisely chooses only songs which suit it, sings them with dignity and restraint.

Farrar's life is the perfect counterpart of her leisurely career.* She has an apartment in Manhattan, is often seen at concerts, the theatre, the Metropolitan which she now likens to a Ford establishment. The warm months she spends at Ridgefield, Conn., plays wholeheartedly the role of country gentlewoman. She motors, gardens, keeps a bird refuge, admires the neighbors' babies. Everyday at luncheon she entertains her father, Sidney ("Sid") Farrar, onetime professional baseballer and her neighbor. If the day is hot, re- gardless of other guests Father Farrar comes as he is most comfortable.