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Musical Courier 1894-11-21: Vol 29 Iss 767, 1894
101 lines. Read by computer on 22 September 2026. Printed page 28. See the scan on archive.org.
1MUSIC IN BOSTON
3BOSTON, November 18, 1894.
5"THE DEVIL'S DEPUTY," text adapted by Cheever Goodwin and music by E. Jakobowski, was produced for the first time in Boston by Francis Wilson and his company at the Tremont Theatre the 11th. Mr. Catenhusen was the conductor. The cast was the same as it was in New York, with Miss Amanda Fabris, Miss Lulu Glaser, Miss Knapp and Messrs. Wilson, Thomas and Miron.
7The piece is mounted sumptuously. The costumes are unusually good throughout, and in the second act they are of striking beauty. The chorus and the orchestra were controlled with skill, and they answered quickly to any demand. Mr. Thomas is a tenor superior vocally to the greater number of his colleagues in comic opera. Miss Glaser is delightful, now that she is not so exuberant and greedy of instantaneous admiration as she was last season. The other members of the company are excellent in their respective parts, although the voice of Miss Fabris is shrill. Mr. Wilson is funny in his fooling, which at times is downright clowning; that is, he is funny if you like him and think he is funny. I suppose in strict justice he should be classed among acrobatic comedians, although Mr. H. A. Clapp, the eminent Shakespearian critic—divine, I was about to say—takes Mr. Wilson very seriously, and has written during the past year articles in which he speaks of Mr. Wilson's intellectuality and emotional powers and subtle art, and, in a word, he analyzed him as he would Coquelin. Indeed I should not be surprised to hear that Mr. Clapp is preparing a course of lectures on "The Genius of Francis Wilson." Well, I sympathize with him in part. There are very lovable features in Wilson's stage performance, and kindly and humane is his individuality, even in the fury of clowning. But a great comedian? Go to!
9In spite of lavish stage decorations and a capable company, the operetta is a dreary thing, particularly as far as the music is concerned. Mr. Henderson is right. The music is utterly without distinction.
11The vein of melody is thin and watery. There is monotony in rhythm. There is harmonic conventionality. All that is remembered of the music of the first act is the little song of the old woman. In the second act the opening chorus and the stuttering song leave an impression; vague, to be sure, but still an impression. The stuttering song owes half its value to Mr. Wilson's delivery. In the third act the trio is a pleasing echo of scraps from "Erminie." The tenor and soprano sing ballads of the English drawing room sheet music order.
13Nor do I care for the libretto. There is a plot, however, and it does not sink away for an hour to allow the reign of the usurping variety show. The first act is interesting enough, the second is absurd, even for comic opera, and the third is pointless; but all through the piece the plot is there. Portions of the dialogue must have been written by one of the passionate press agents who contribute so much to the literature of the day. Witness this line: "He received a perfect ovation after the rendition of his song." No wonder that the "Princess" fell in love with him—"Lorenzo," not the press agent. Of course, Mr. Wilson prepares his own lines with slang and gags and coined or perverted phraseology to hook the audience. If they were spoken by anybody else would the audience laugh so immoderately? Would it unbutton its vest and cachinnate?
15The operetta is without distinction. There is not one number that rises to the level of that most characteristic song with the haunting refrain:
17I owe ten dollars to O'Grady,
18You'd think he had a mortgage on my life;
19He calls to see me early ev'ry morning,
20At night he sends his wife.
22So, too, I prefer "I had fifteen dollars in my inside pocket" or "Little Johnny Dugan." Each one of these songs has a decided character. The man dogged by the members of the O'Grady family; Mr. Flynn who was foolish enough to partake of the joys of life with "a friend of Tam'ny Hall; Dan McCarthy, who "lept in the door" and "without a provocation or a cause took a hold of Dugan"—these are living characters. They express in suitable music the sentiments that are natural to them. The song is the inevitable, the only possible expression.
24Apropos of that bottomless pit of suggestion, comic opera, the "Pall Mall Gazette" spoke thus of Gilbert in reviewing "His Excellency": "The expression of his humor is tough fibred, even (sometimes) ponderously brutal. His invention can hardly be called abundant by his warmest admirers. In construction he has, despite an admirable eye for stage effects, very much to seek. But he differs from most or all other contemporary writers of comic libretti in that he possesses, or is not ashamed of confessing, an intellect. The crass imbecility and fatuousness of the ordinary comic opera are impossible to him; his humor is a little sledge-hammer always, but it is humor; his jokes have not always an agreeable savor, but they are jokes. If you are not always pleased with his fun, at least you can listen to it alertly, and are free from the unutterable melancholy which comic opera most often induces."
26And how nicely Mr. George Grossmith is put on the broiler. "We expected to find him as the 'Governor' precisely the same as we had found him as a 'Sorcerer,' an 'Admiral,' a 'General,' a 'Mikado,' a 'Clown' and the rest of his parts, and we were not disappointed. He was a 'Governor' imitating Mr. George Grossmith."
28You know with what difficulty many novelists find a descriptive or a seducing title. The tags of songs, proverbs, flowers have been used ad nauseam. Why not return to the system of which Jane Austin's "Sense and Sensibility" is an example?
30Thus we might have "Seen and Obscene," "Colic and Bucolic, a Summer Idyl," "Tonic and Teutonic, the Romance of a Brewery," all in a neat box—like a fry.
32The second concert of the Kneisel Quartet was given the 11th in Union Hall. As I was unable to be present, and as the concert excited much comment, let me quote Mr. C. L. Capen's review, published in the Boston "Journal" the 12th:
34Few in the large audience at the Kneisel Quartet concert in Union Hall last evening could have been unduly mindful that the concert was over two hours in length; for there was the reconciling quality in attendance of an uncommonly good program. From first to last the concert was of fascinating interest. First was given a quartet in D minor by Cherubini.
36A well-known encyclopedia of music, noted for its elegant binding, would inform the musical world that Cherubini only wrote two string quartets (Sic). There are actually six in number. His first quartet was composed in 1814; No. 2, C major, in 1820; No. 3, D minor, performed last evening, 1834, and these, prior to 1837, were followed by three more.
38Musically considered, the quartet in D minor stands very near Haydn, who, more than any other composer, Cherubini so admired; and we can but find the noble pedagogue far superior to Haydn in richness and also, as need not be told, in his scholarly command of means. Would that he had not so constantly avoided homophony, and that he had imbibed more of his unpretentious yet none the less indispensable art from Father Haydn.
40The scherzo of the quartet—not so idealized a scherzo as Beethoven would have made—nevertheless charms as but few such movements can. At the moderato sans lenteur of this movement, which is really a polacca, pure and simple, the master has his say with neither reticence nor restraint, and, strangely enough from Cherubini, the lively emotion of a dance with gay, well nigh teasing humor fills the heart.
42The elevation and energy of the last movement well sustain the interest to the very end, and yet the great work as a whole is after all something of a Janus, for one of its two faces is turned backward and the other forward.
44The most valuable work on the program was easily Beethoven's opus 74, in E flat major, regarding which masterpiece there is really but little new to say. Certainly in its external proportions, if not in its depth of meaning, it surpasses the boundaries that Beethoven had hitherto reached in chamber music.
46The trio, op. 85, by Anton Rubinstein, came last, and a single hearing of the work would itself preclude the necessity of passing judgment. It certainly appears to be all that Mr. Perabo, in a recently published critique, has claimed for it; while the seriousness of thought and nobility of mood of certain portions of it are very impressive. Is the moderato—excepting, of course, the charming meno mosso—mere tone play? So it seemed at a first hearing. Wagnerish enough, to be sure, is the weird and mysterious finale; but all such thoughts are naught more than impressions; and the "magnificent work" that Mr. Perabo has found after serious and important study is doubtless a reality.
48Perhaps the trio shows but few signs of a uniform plan throughout; still it ought not to be demanded that any artistic conventionality—in other words, conventionalism—should influence a musical character so capably independent (if not always creative) as Rubinstein.
50The technical difficulties of the work are stupendous, and these are mostly confined to the piano part, which Mr. Perabo played with great clearness and all due subordinacy.
52He was "the real and only Perabo, indeed, in his piquant and winsome rendering of the quasi-berceuse with which the moderato con moto is interpolated. Of Mr. Kneisel and his associates it would seem supererogatory to say more than that both the Cherubini and Beethoven were superbly well played. Let the Cherubini quartet be repeated. It was, doubtless, as great a novelty as the Rubinstein "Trio" to a majority of the Kneisel Quartet's patrons. Thanks, gentlemen, for your liberal "cuts" in the Rubinstein. The work is too long, albeit its lengths are "heavenly."
54A concert was given in Steinert Hall the 12th by Messrs. Max Heinrich, Roth and Arthur Whiting. The program included twelve songs by Adolph Jenssen, "Gaudeamus," op. 40, poems by Scheffel, and Grieg's sonata for violin and piano, op. 18.
56Perhaps you remember that in April last Mr. Heinrich sang these songs, and there were few that heard him. The neglect fired the heart of Mr. Aphor of the "Transcript," and he wrote a review that was at once a panegyric of vinous song and an indignant denunciation of the dolts, num-skulls, chuffes, and bran—"chers Bostoniens" to quote his irony—who did not know when a good thing was offered.
58Here, again, am I to be numbered with the Philistines, for to me at least this cycus is a colossal bore. Scheffel's songs are in glorification of drinking. Students, the prophet at Ascalon, monks, Dr. Faust, parson, dwarf, physician, lawyer, Lord of Rodenstein are all men fish, moving vats, boisterous hoisters or cultivators of the phlegmatic jag, hardly to be detected by the application of the jagometer. They drink till they are without house or land. They drink till they cannot even crawl. Their livers are but fleeting remnants. Their nosterils are symphonic-poems in color.
60Now this apotheosis of rum—in the generic sense of the word—becomes tiresome after half an hour. The surroundings are not congenial. The "cultivated, refined, representative and appreciative audience" so dear to the press agent seems as out of place as a copy of Watts and Select in a billiard room. Nor are the songs conspicuous for beauty of melody or for characteristic, rollicking expression. The conviviality seems theoretical or pedantical. The piano is impertinent; it is always interrupting, chattering, diverting the attention from the bottle. Earnest labor and sound scholarship are poor substitutes for a roaring, lusty refrain. Mr. Heinrich sang the songs con amore. He breathed defiance against the Prohibitionists and the A. P. A., Frances Willard and Laura Chant. He sang with such conviction that he seemed to lend the thirsty songs an alcoholic fragrance not their own.
62The sonata is as dry as the red herring that spurs the jaded reveler to renewed crooking of the elbow, and its performance was sympathetically dry.
64Pleasant concerts of minor importance were given by Miss Mary Chandler and Mr. Eliot Hubbard last week.
66The program of the fifth Symphony concert, under Mr. Paur, was as follows:
68Symphony in E flat major………………………………………Mozart
69Symphonic poem, for flute and orchestra………………………..Benoit
70Feux Follets.
71Mélancolie.
72Danse des Follets.
73(First time.)
74Ballet Movement and Entr'acte from "Rosamunde"………….Schubert
75Ballet, Andantino.
76Entr'acte, Andantino.
77Marche, Héroïque, in B minor. No. 3, op. 40…………………Schubert
78(Scored for orchestra by Franz Liszt.)
79Overture to "La Part du Diable"……………………………Auber
80They say that Mr. Paur insisted on the title "Carlo Broschi" for the overture by Auber, as he did not like the idea of the Devil figuring in the program book. Has he never heard in Germany this same opera under the title "Des Teufel's Antheil?" Would he change the title of the "Mephisto" waltz? Would he object to a fiddler playing the "Devil's Trill," or to a singer, because she insisted on an air from "Robert le Diable?" Mr. Paur must be of kin to the soft dean who never mentioned hell to ears polite.
82And while it was a pleasure to hear an overture by the master of opéra comique, there are other overtures by him that show to fuller advantage his piquancy and elegance.
84The feature of the concert was the first performance of Benoît's concerto for flute and orchestra, the solo part of which was played by Mr. Charles Molé. Very little of Benoît's music has been heard in Boston. We have here no such enthusiastic disciple as Mr. Van der Stucken in New York. This particular work shows honesty and nobility of purpose. It is not a mere framework for the performer's technical display. Indeed the solo flute is often merely a member of an organic whole. If the concerto errs in any direction it is toward sobriety. Nor can I believe that it is among the best works of Benoît. The first movement is the most interesting, and it contains picturesque detail. There are charming bits of orchestral color also in the second movement, but the idea "Melancholy" is more beautiful than any tone picture of realistic intent. The third movement seemed more perfunctory. The great difficulties were mastered with ease by this admirable player, and the display of genuine musical taste and feeling was as marked as the technical proficiency.
86The other numbers of the program do not call for extended comment. Very noticeable, however, was the exquisite playing of oboe and clarinet in the entr'acte from "Rosamunde," and, in fact, the members of the wood wind covered themselves with glory throughout the evening. It was a delight to hear the andante of the symphony played as an andante and not dragged out till it became an adagio.
88The program of the next concert will be as follows:
90Overture, "Sappho"………………………………………Goldmark
91(First time at these concerts.)
92Aria, "Ocean, thou mighty monster"………………………..Weber
93Symphony, "Im Walde"………………………………………Raff
94Aria from "Semele," "O Sleep, why dost thou leave me?"..Händel
95Symphonic poem, "Les Préludes"……………………………Liszt
96Mrs. Elene Eaton will be the singer.
98PHILIP HALE.
100Jeanne Franko.—Jeanne Franko will be the soloist at the concert of the New York Turn-Verein next Sunday.
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