Christmas season at the Metropolitan Opera in 1920 features Enrico
Caruso and Geraldine Farrar in a varied schedule of mostly Italian
operas. For members of the Metropolitan chorus, however, the season's
main feature is danger. An urn falls on the head of a soprano chorister
in Samson and Delilah; a tenor from the chorus is found hanged in a
dressing room before the evening's performance of Mefistofele; in I
Pagliacci, a trapdoor drops open and three singers fall through.
Several people come under suspicion: Giulio Setti, chorus master from
Milan, whose career rides on the success of the season; general manager
Giulio Gatti-Casezza and his assistant Edward Ziegler, both of whom must
negotiate the chorus's demands for more money; and Alessandro Quaglia,
conducting for his second year and still in the shadow of the great
Toscanini. Although Caruso and Farrar begin an investigation of their
own, more deaths occur. Caruso sings La Juive on Christmas Eve (his last
performance), the stars arrange an elaborate trap, and the killer is
unmasked.
