Tour Program: 1937 Carnegie Hall Very Rare Opera Benefit Program Signed by 14 Great Artists!

Fourteen of the top opera singers, artists and classical musicians of the early twentieth century signed their full page photographs and work in this Limited Edition Supplemental Program that was given out to VIP Guests at Carnegie Hall on February 2, 1937, when the American Guild of Musical Artists presented a Concert to Benefit the Flood Relief Fund of the American Red Cross.

I am trying to price this book to sell, but since it's such a unique, specialty item, it's hard to do a comparable or put a value on it. If you don't agree with my price, please make me an offer. I'm sure that less than one thousand of these programs were printed, only VIP guests at Carnegie Hall on one night received them and they should certainly be worth than something like a Batman comic from the same era that was mass distributed and that now sells for thousands.

This book contains printed autographed pictures of renowned opera singers Lawrence Tibbett, Kirsten Flagstad, Charlotte "Lotte" Lehmann, Lauritz Melchior, Lily Pons, Elisabeth Rethberg and Gladys Swarthout, as well as classical musicians, conductors and composers Jascha Heifetz, Gaspar Cassadó, Josef Hofmann, José Báguena, Albert Spalding and Efrem Zimbalist Senior. The cover design, by the prominent and distinguished artist Howard Chandler Christy, is also print signed. Every one of these performers and artists is still well known today, their biographies can be found in numerous informational sources online, and their works are on Youtube, available for purchase and in libraries.

All of the 48 pages in this magazine, including the stapled inserts, are intact, untorn, unmarked and as close to white as any pages that are nearly eighty years old could possibly be. There are even numerous advertisements from event sponsors that consisted mostly of music related stores and small businesses in Midtown Manhattan, in 1937. You can feel what It was like to be in the heart of the New York City music scene, before World War II, before television, when talking pictures were in their infancy and when rock and roll and other forms of contemporary music weren’t even distant dreams.

Even at the time that it was first distributed, this book was considered a rare and valuable specialty item. Today, it is a fantasy find for any collector! If you're interested in the program, please feel free to make a reasonable offer.