Giovanni Martinelli sings 'Va prononcer la mort' from Act IV of the Opera 'La Juive' in costume in medium close-up. Once done, he takes a bow wearing street clothes.
Martinelli was one of the leading tenors of New York's Metropolitan Opera company at this time, and the Warner Brothers, through their Vitaphone division, had been recording a number of high-brow performances since their first big show demonstrating the process a couple of years earlier. The purpose was not just to demonstrate the excellence of the Vitaphone process -- and it was pretty good, although there were several technical issues that caused Fox's Movietone sound process to win -- but also to serve as quality short subjects for a movie show.