Scan 15
Musical Courier 1894-08-29: Vol 29 Iss 755, 1894
57 lines. Read by computer on 22 September 2026. Printed page 16. See the scan on archive.org.
1MISS LILLIAN RUSSELL opens a season of comic opera under the management of Abbey and Grau at the Lyceum Theatre on September 8. The work selected is Messrs. Brandon Thomas and Jakobowski's new work, "The Queen of Brilliant." The company engaged includes Arthur Williams, John Le Hay, Avon Saxon, W. H. Denny, Compton Cutts, Fred. Wright and Miss Lizzie Ruggles, a thoroughly good cast and arguing well for the success of the venture.
3Miss Nancy MacIntosh is back from her visit to America, and hard at work on the rehearsals of the new opera that will be brought out at the Prince of Wales Theatre next month.
5"Little Jack Sheppard" filled the boards at the Gaiety Theatre on Saturday night and drew a crowded house, thus keeping up the record that this theatre has enjoyed since Mr. George Edwards opened it some nine years ago with this same burlesque-operatic-melodrama. Messrs. Stephen's and Yardley's piece proved as popular as before, with the new songs and concerted pieces so skilfully composed and introduced for the principal performers by that veteran interlocutor Mr. Meyer Lutz.
7A spirited discussion is just now going through the press giving the pros and cons of the capabilities of English composers to write band music suitable for the programs of the many bands that play in the open air the larger part of the year. It is admitted that their programs do not include but a very small per cent. of selections from native composers. This state of affairs is not satisfactory, as there are undoubtedly several men who have all the qualifications to write and orchestrate music that would be popular with bandmasters and the public. It has been contended that the publishers would not offer terms enough to make it any object, as they can so easily get "pot-pourris" of foreign music—for example, a number would be made up out of several selections from some opera, thus producing a highly spiced production that spoils the public for many of the good works written especially for this class of performance. No doubt one thing will be gained by this discussion, and that is increased activity in this line of work by the younger composers who have been educated at the various schools of music. Let us hope that some original and acceptable compositions will be forthcoming that will not have to bear the stamp "Made in Germany."
9Miss Evangeline Florence.
11This charming singer might well be called an American nightingale. Her upper notes are particularly bird-like, and she has literally sung her way into public favor in England. Something of her popularity may be gauged when we learn that she is already engaged for over forty appearances during the coming autumn and early winter. I learn from a contemporary that she is to marry a Scotchman, now resident in New York, the last of next month, and after the American Festival she will go to Gotham, and in due course change her name for better or worse. After the honeymoon she intends to settle in London.
13In this connection I will give a brief sketch of her career up to the present. Miss Florence was born in Cambridge, Mass., of musical parents; her three brothers and sisters were also musical. Like most musicians her budding talents early asserted themselves, and at the age of thirteen she found herself the soprano in a quartet in one of the suburban churches. At eighteen she took the title rôle in the opera, "Martha," when she was well supported by a good cast, chorus and orchestra, and made a grand success of it.
15One promotion after another came in her church work until she received an appointment to a church in Worcester, Mass., which had one of the best choirs in the State. Here she became very popular, making many friends, and it was amid every expression of regret that she left this excellent position to come abroad.
17Her teacher at home was Mrs. Edna Hall, the well-known professor of Boston, with whom she studied some four years. Miss Florence came to England in April, 1892, and immediately sang at a concert under the direction of Mr. Daniel Mayer. Several concert-givers heard her, and she was at once booked for a number of appearances, and, these leading to more engagements, she has been kept busy up to the present time.
19Her first great success perhaps was at the National Eisteddfod at Rhyll in September, 1892. She has also sung at nearly all the larger provincial towns, and at leading concerts in London.
21Her masters here have been, first, Mr. Henschell, and after he became so busy with his orchestras she changed to Mr. Blume, with whom she finds it advantageous to continue.
23The musical world would miss Miss Florence were she to retire now, but I understand that she will continue singing after her marriage, thus adding to her already enviable reputation.
25F. V. ATWATER.
27The Lesson of Bayreuth.
29IT is with certain diffidence that one approaches the criticism of Wagner's music dramas as performed at Bayreuth, because it is so evident that reverent attention and care are bestowed upon their performance, and these qualities are not common to most operatic representations. At no opera house except the Paris Opéra will you find the chorus act with so much intelligence, and it is but an empty task to seek elsewhere for such perfect ensemble. You have at Bayreuth an orchestra which speaks with the most varied expression and is conducted by men who know Wagner's scores by heart and understand them, too, and no trouble is spared in the matter of rehearsals to make the performance as perfect as possible. The scenery, too, though not by any means extraordinarily beautiful nor designed with the most unimpeachable taste, is passably good and is certainly better than the mounting which Wagner's operas have generally received in London, although it cannot be compared in many ways to the scenery to which Mr. Irving has accustomed us at the Lyceum. Still it is quite adequate, and imagination can supply that which is wanting. So far the performances at Bayreuth may be termed "model." But in another and very important respect they are not so.
31Your Wagnerian is ever ready to proclaim his belief that the ensemble of a representation is the main thing, and that though it would be desirable to have good singers in the principal rôles it is not so absolutely necessary as that the performance as a whole should realize the dramatic intentions of the composer. This view was supported by Wagner himself, who when it came to the question between a man who could sing and act ill and another who could act well and sing but ill chose the latter. But doubtless Wagner was considerably impelled to this view by his intense dislike of the conventionalities which great singers had introduced on the operatic stage; it was, as it were, a reaction against the apotheosis of the vocalist. As a matter of aesthetics one is inclined, of course, to agree with Wagner and Wagnerians, but in practice, strange to say, one finds all one's cut and dried aesthetics but as so much dust in the mouth. The ideal of course would be that a singer should be a fine actor and a fine vocalist, and that he should look the part; this ideal, it is needless to say, is almost impossible to attain. One is therefore brought face to face with the question, Are the composer's intentions best realized by a good and expressive singer who is not first of all an actor, or by an actor who is secondarily a singer?
33These two instances are, of course, extreme, but they serve to define the two points of view. As a matter of fact it is absolutely necessary that singers in Wagner's music dramas should first of all be good musicians and afterward good actors. The result is seen at Bayreuth, where you have artists who have not much voice but are good musicians and decent actors. It is presumed by certain Wagnerians that with such singers and an almost perfect stage management and orchestra you can get nearer to the realization of the ideas of a composer than by a performance in which the representatives of the principal characters are excellent, the ensemble poor, and the orchestra fairly good. Now one point always seems to be left out of account, viz., that the medium of expression of a music drama is not gesture and word-speech, but gesture and tone-speech or, to drop Wagnerian phraseology, music.
35If the medium of expression of Wagner's dramas were ordinary speech, we should insist on the words being spoken well with proper accent and meaning, and not mumbled in a slovenly way. And the same remark applies to the vocal music of his dramas. The dramatic meaning and beauty of the music cannot be rendered unless the singer can actually sing the intervals perfectly in tune, and the more sympathetic the quality of his voice the more will the power of the music touch us. Any artist who cannot do justice to the beauty of Wagner's music, who sings out of tune, or who has a hard unsympathetic voice, cannot be said to realize the composer's intentions.
37Who of London amateurs can pretend to have ever heard "Tristan's" music really sung? The wonderfully subtle, melodic phrases with which the score abounds, have they ever been adequately interpreted? And if they have not been, who can affirm that Wagner's masterpiece has received a proper interpretation? No amount of smoothness in the stage management, naturalness in the acting of the minor parts or beauty of scenery can take the place of a splendid interpretation of the vocal and orchestral music, which after all are the soul of music drama.
39If these be taken away one has only the drama of gesture and the stage pictures left. Great stress is laid on the ideas contained in Wagner's works, but it should not be forgotten that ideas alone do not make a work of art; it is the expression of these ideas that we admire, and how, if their expression be ill interpreted, are we to understand the ideas in their full beauty? To put the matter briefly, are the scenery and the ensemble of a music drama the most important factors? Are not rather the vocal and orchestral music the very body into which the composer breathes the soul of his ideas? Should not the perfection of these, then, be the first object of consideration? At Bayreuth the orchestra is well taken care of, but, probably from financial reasons, it seems almost impossible to get good singers, with the exception of two or three, to take the principal rôles.
41While this remains a fact it cannot be held that the Bayreuth performances approach anything like perfection. Indeed we will almost go so far as to affirm that, if it were not for the ruthless "cuts," you could obtain a better idea of "Die Meistersinger," for instance, by hearing it as it was performed on Monday by MM. Jean de Reszke, Plançon and Ancona and Madame Eames than if you went to Bayreuth and heard it sung by very much inferior singers but with rather better acting—not of the principals but of the chorus. You at any rate heard the soul of the work on Monday if the details were not perfection. Of course the amalgam of good singing and the Bayreuth stage management is a thing to be desired, and we do not see why, in time, this should not take place.
43There are other considerations, such as the absence of "cuts," &c., in which Bayreuth stands supreme, but until Wagner's music is properly sung there it is impossible, for reasons which we have already given, to point to the performances as perfect realizations of the composer's works. At the same time it would be idle to deny the immense good work which has been done by the reverent and careful performances at Bayreuth, and for this alone we hope the Festivals will be continued until there is no further need for them.—Musical Standard.
45A Death.—The Signora Veronica Graziella Brambilla, whose death is announced from Milan, is understood to be a niece of the famous Marietta Brambilla, the contralto who delighted opera goers half a century ago, and of whom a certain Cardinal said: "She has the finest eyes, the sweetest voice, and the best disposition in the world; and if she is discovered to possess any other merit the safety of the Catholic Church will require her excommunication." Of the Brambillas there were five sisters, all of them popular Italian operatic artists in their day. Teresina, a daughter of the third sister, married the composer Ponchielli.—London "Daily News."
47The National Conservatory of Music of America,
48125 AND 126 EAST 17TH ST., NEW YORK.
49DR. ANTONIN DVORAK…………………………………………Director.
50Reopens September 1st.
51ANNUAL ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS.
52Piano and Organ, September 4th, from 10 to 12 A. M. and 2 to 4 P. M.
53Singing, September 6th and 7th, from 9 to 11 A. M. and 2 to 5 P. M., and on the evening of the 5th CHORUS from 8 to 10 P. M.
54Violin, Viola, Contrabass, 'Cello, Harp, September 8th, from 10 to 12 A. M. and 2 to 4 P. M.
55Orchestra and all Wind Instruments. September 8th, from 2 to 4 P. M.
56Composition (Dr. Dvorak's Class). November 1st, from 9 to 12 A. M. and 2 to 5 P. M.
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