Judge, 1910-04-16 · page 3 of 16
Judge — April 16, 1910 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes **opera's evolution and modern performance practices**. The title "Drastic Number" appears to mock contemporary opera productions. The text describes opera's historical development—from simple storytelling to elaborate vocal training methods. It critiques a specific trend: filling auditoriums with trained "box fillers" who spoke loudly during performances to create atmosphere, later replaced by instrumental and dance acts when singers proved insufficient. The bottom cartoon, "The First Aviation Meet of the Prehistoric Aero Club," is a separate humorous illustration depicting absurdly primitive flying contraptions—dinosaurs and cavemen attempting flight with ridiculous devices. This visual joke contrasts "prehistoric" technology with modern aviation, likely mocking early aviation meet disasters or incompetent experimental aircraft designs popular in the early 1900s.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
AFal we VY UA awl Biss THE OPERA. By ELLIS 0. JONES. 'HE OPERA has made rapid strides in the past few years, but it required a coniinu- ous struggle to bring it to the present high standard. In the beginning the opera was a simple matter, consisting of a simple story taken from the legends of a people and told in song. A person of ordinary intelligence could attend the opera and, without great difficulty, could tell what it was all about. That was in the days of barbirism. Then came the time when the singers were trained not only to sing without enunciating, but, lest there remain a lin- gering trace of enunciation, the habit was introduced of using a language which was foreign to that used by the audience. The time soon came, however, when even this was corsid- ered in bad taste, when it was realized that the singers should not be heard at all. Then there was introduced the practice of filling boxes in the auditorium with people who were trained to talk loudly and incessantly, so that the vocal artists would be entirely drowned out. For a time this idea worked well, but as the vocal artists, always temperamental, had never received it with very good grace, they set to work to develop their lung power to that high degree where they could vie with the occupants of the boxes and actually make themselves heard above the din, As soon as this indication of degeneracy of the opera was noticed, instrumentalists and dancers were called in to save the day. Both welcomed the call. As a result, only rarely nowa- days may a singer come on the stage at all, but if he does, he will find the auditorium half full of orchestra thoroughly in- structed and thoroughly competent to drown him out at any cost, Old-fashioned opera may now be found only in phonographs. a Y —_ (Ain tS yf THE FIRST AVIATION MEET OF THE PREHISTORIC AERO CLUB comicbooks.com