Jennie Tourel, mezzo-soprano of the Metropolitan Opera Company, canceled her spring concert tour in Palestine yesterday and appealed to the United States to stop the Holy Land war by making “some great gesture.”
Miss Tourel, who was under contract with the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra to give twelve recitals in three Holy Land cities, announced her action here in an open letter to Warren R. Austin, permanent American delegate to the United Nations.
Scheduled to give her first concert in Tel Aviv on May 16, the day after expected termination of the British mandate, Miss Tourel wrote Mr. Austin that she was canceling her tour “not because I am afraid” but because “the people of Palestine will have more pressing things to do than . . listen to music.”
Miss Tourel called on Mr. Austin, “as the honored representative of the most powerful nation in the world,” to stop the Arab-Jewish warfare . . . “by some courageous move which could fire the minds and imagination of every one else.”