Violet Gould’s Civic Opera Musical Circle
Mady Metzger-Ziegler (1897-1979), mezzosoprano, was a featured performer in the St. Paul Civic Opera Association (Civic Opera) and its associated Pops concerts. She was already an international figure when she left Germany around 1932 with her Shakespearean actor-husband, Ludwig Metzger and nine-year-old son, Maximillan (Max). Mady had degrees from Munich’s Royal Conservatory for Music and the Institute of Vocal Art in Milan and was coached by prominent European soloists, including opera superstar Elisabeth Schumann.
Her father, Wilhelm Ziegler, sang with the Royal Opera Company of Berlin and her brother, Benno, a distinguished Wagnerian basso, starred with the Frankfurt Opera for twenty-five years. A much-in-demand soloist with a specialty in German lieder, Mady performed throughout the US and Europe. On several occasions, she appeared in Civic Opera Pops concerts with Violet Gould, singing operatic duets. She also served on the opera’s honorary board.
As a teacher, she coached singers locally and nationally. Notably, she guided the international touring company of Porgy and Bess by George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, earning letters of praise from the Gershwin brothers, Harold Arlen (A Star Is Born), and Cab Calloway (who played Sportin’ Life in the production and sent Mady an orchid with his letter). She “crashed Broadway” in a well-received solo con- cert at Carnegie Hall in 1960 at age sixty-two.
In 1944, Mady founded the St. Paul Opera Workshop, which performed at the Como Lakeside Pavilion through the 1980s. The workshop engaged singers high school age and older. Many were involved in the Civic Opera chorus and Pops concerts, including Rondo neighborhood resident James Murray, who had also been on an international tour of Porgy and Bess. The workshop was one inspiration for Violet’s “dream” for an operetta school. Violet was very involved in the opera workshop, judging auditions and advising on casting; many of Violet’s operetta school graduates played leading roles.
Max Metzger, son of Mady and Ludwig, was born in 1922 in Karlsruhe, Germany. His childhood was steeped in music, as he mastered the bassoon and myriad aspects of musical performance. He was with the Civic Opera virtually from its beginning: a bit player in several productions (a jeweler in The Fortune Teller, a bartender in the musical Roberta, a drunk in Der Fledermaus) and a longstanding member of both the orchestra and chorus (along with his wife, Lill). Max played the bassoon in and conducted Civic Opera Pops concerts. He also directed many Violet Gould Operetta School productions and served as director and conductor of the St. Paul Opera Workshop. He was a nonstop music man, directing choirs in schools and churches throughout St. Paul as well as the Capital City Wind Ensemble, made up of city employees. Cheerful, graceful, but also tenacious, he was a “bulldog with a baton.” After his mother’s death in 1979, Max took over the opera workshop and expanded his work at the Como pavilion, producing and conducting both operettas and summer band concerts until shortly before his death in 2006. Pioneer Press writer Don Boxmeyer observed, “The Como Park Pops under Max were . . . a Forest Gump box of chocolates: You never really knew what you were in for,” including vocal punctuation from the lake’s ducks and geese. In his honor, the city named the street leading to the pavilion “Max Metzger Way.” Upon his death, former St. Paul Mayor and then US Senator Norm Coleman read a tribute to Max into the Congressional Record:
“For 56 summers he brought music to thousands of Minnesotans… [he] personified the thriving arts culture in St. Paul….. poet T. S. Eliot once said that ‘you are the music while the music lasts. ’ the music will last in the hearts and minds of countless Minnesotans, thanks to Mr. Max Metzger.”
Leo Kopp, conductor of the Civic Opera for thirty years (1938-1968), directed Violet in opera and Pops concerts. He also cast many of her operetta students in Civic Opera productions. Born in Budapest, he received his musical training there, Leipzig, and Paris. He had been assistant conductor of the Vienna State Opera and Koenigsberg (Germany) Opera. He conducted the Chicago City Opera for twelve years before coming to St. Paul. He continued to conduct Chicago’s Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, among others nationwide. Richard Rodgers invited Kopp to conduct a festival of his music in Toronto in 1962. It was said that the Civic Opera worked more like a family than a business. True to this description, Kopp married one of his choristers, Hazel Mattson, in 1937.
Royall H. Storey served in government positions for thirty-seven years. During World War I, he was commanding officer at the Air Service Mechanics School in St. Paul. He later transferred to the veterans agency and then to the immigration service. For twenty-three years (starting in 1943), he served as a makeup technician for the Civic Opera. Violet met Storey there and brought him on board to do makeup for the operetta school from its start through the mid-1960s.