ORIGINAL PROGRAM for the METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE production of PELLEAS ET MELISSANDE starring the American soprano HELEN JEPSON as Melissande on Friday Evening, December 20, 1940.

New York: Metropolitan Opera Association, 1940., 1940. Good. - Quarto, 10 inches high by 6-7/8 inches wide. Softcover, bound in stapled printed red & white wraps, titled in white on the front cover with a color pictorial advertisement for Chesterfield cigarettes on the rear cover. The covers are slightly soiled & creased with a short slit along the tail of the spine. 20 pages, with pictorial advertisements throughout including full-page color ads inside the front and rear covers. Good. The American lyric soprano Helen Jepson (1904-1997) sang leading roles with the Metropolitan Opera from 1935 to 1941. While her best known roles at the MET included Desdemona in Otello and Marguerite in Faust, she also performed as Bess in Porgy and Bess and was the first soprano to record that role in a performance supervised by Gershwin himself.