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Musical Courier 1895-04-17: Vol 30 Iss 789, 1895
56 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 29. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE MUSICAL COURIER.
3OPERAS IN NEW YORK
5THE supplementary season of opera in Italian and French began last Monday night in the Metropolitan Opera House—Verdi's Falstaff, with Maurel in the title rôle. Last night that tiresome survival of a barbaric operatic age, The Huguenots, was given with the so-called ideal cast. It was a huge bore, as usual. To-night another of the same sort will be essayed for the first time this season, The Prophet, by Meyerbeer. Mr. Tamagno is to sing the part, and we may expect some old-time Italian shouting. Thursday night Falstaff is to be repeated for the benefit of the New Amsterdam Eye and Ear Hospital, and on Friday night Aida will be sung.
7At the matinée Saturday Romeo and Juliette, and in the evening Lucia with Melba at popular prices. Lucia is an opera which is dear at any price even with Melba. Next Monday night Die Meistersinger is to be presented for the first time this season, but the cast is not a particularly promising one. Altogether the supplementary season comes in the nature of an anti-climax. We are satiated with Italian opera and its inane antiquated methods.
9Music in Norway.
11CHRISTIANIA, March 30, 1896.
13GRIEG says that the amateur music of Christiania is better than that of any other city known to him, says the New York Evening Post correspondent. Its quality being thus honorably and decisively established, of its quantity there can be no doubt. For of concerts, recitals, musical occasions of all kinds and sizes, both public and private, there is no end. Besides the regular set of orchestral symphonic concerts of the Musikforening, to which every one who is any one subscribes each year as regularly as he pays his taxes, there are countless smaller affairs, so that one could spend every evening in listening to good music, if it pleased him so to do.
15Nor is this privilege confined to those of easy means. Leaving out of consideration the wonderfully cheap summer concerts, there is a provision by which, every Sunday afternoon during the winter and spring, there is given in the Gymnasium of the fortress a public entertainment, to which the admission fee is about 25 cents. The large hall is always packed to the limit of its capacity with a decent, orderly crowd, sprinkled with those who have come, not because it is cheap, but because the program is too good to be missed. The last time that I went there myself it was to hear two of the best pianists in the country, Fru Agathe Gröndahl and Martin Knutzen, some very fine ballad singing by Herr Lammers, and several recitations by Fröken Sofie Reimers, one of the first actresses of the Christiania Theatre, whose splendid presence and fine delivery of Jeanne d'Arc showed that she is strong enough to be independent of stage accessories for effect.
17But it is something to learn to accustom one's self to the stolidity of a Norwegian crowd. An actress not to the manner born might well have quailed before the unmoved solemnity with which this assembly received a spirited rendering of a translated Caudle lecture. All through the course of it I could detect a change of expression in but one of the faces before me. One callow corporal so far forgot himself as to smile, but he instantly realized his fault, as quickly recovered his gravity, and all came to a seemingly conclusion. Not to speak of anything more expensive, one would be glad here, occasionally, of a little American volatility.
19For example, one Sunday morning after church we went down to the fortress ramparts to see the trial of a new life saving apparatus, to be exhibited on a shiplying near by in the fjord. There was a delay of over an hour after the appointed time before the experiments began. Quite a thousand people must have been gathered there waiting, and the crowd was so densely packed that it was hardly possible to move. Yet it is perfectly true that not a voice was raised, not a joke was cracked in all that weary time. There was never a suggestion either of complaint or of chaffing. Every soul spoke in subdued tones or spoke not at all. It was as if we were respectfully awaiting the passing of some solemn funeral cortege. I have noticed more than once that these people, often individually enthusiastic and impulsive, are, when taken en masse, conspicuously characterized by suppression and phlegm.
21But to return to music. Every organization, every class of men in this musical nation, has apparently its choir. At this same Fortress Gymnasium I heard, not long since, a "Folke-Koncert," as these cheap Sunday entertainments are called, where the singing was by a large male choir composed of the singing clubs of the Freemasons, the clerks, the officers and the students, under the director of the University Society, Herr Gröndahl. There seems to be no music here similar to our college glees. In fact, I heard several Norwegians express politely guarded surprise at the quality of the music which a party of Harvard and Yale Glee Club boys, summer travelers, who sang at one of the English houses here, presented as specimens of the home product.
23Even these young men's clubs never give any music which they do not consider of artistic merit, and without leaving the composers of their own country, they are well able to supply themselves with very good songs indeed. I have never heard anything more fiercely effective—more saturated with picturesque qualities—than is Reissiger's music with Björnson's song of Olaf Trygvason. When that is sung by a large, well-trained male choir, I defy a man of adamant not to feel a fearful chill creep down his spine. After the exaltation of the beginning comes the wild foreboding, and—"Taken is the Long Serpent, fallen is Olaf Trygvason!" Ah! I hear it now, and Olaf Trygvason fell but yesterday. Is it in the air?
25Fru Eva Nansen, the explorer's wife, is a born singer. She has been singing in Copenhagen this winter, and always gives several concerts here, which are considered events and eagerly attended. Even the King never misses one when he is in town. A very shy woman, almost inaccessible to foreigners, she throws her whole soul into her art, and when she steps upon the stage seems to lose sight of her audience completely and to see straight into the mountains and green forests as she tosses back her head and rises in the very spirit of the song, her face glowing with strong excitement. But even were she less an artist, I think her concerts would still be crowded, from the desire that every one feels to testify all possible sympathy and interest in the young wife whose courage and whose trials are so great. One looks at her fine, strong, brave face, and thinks, as she must so often be thinking, of the terrible risks of those Arctic deserts where her husband, for years beyond the chance of any communication, is at best making his perilous way.
27The musicians, particularly those who have played under him in small orchestras, say that Grieg's influence is wonderfully inspiring, and, indeed, looking at the little man, whose body seems merely a frail and hardly sufficient weight to keep his soul on earth, it is quite easy to believe that such an ardent spirit must affect his instruments most powerfully. As he stands on the director's platform he seems almost too delicate a creature for such an exertion as the excitement of leading his own music evidently is to him. His blue eyes flash, he runs his tiny, transparent hand through his cloud of yellow hair, and it waves aloft, one lock breaking loose entirely and tossing like a cockatoo's crest over his forehead. His little feet hardly touch the floor; the whole man seems ready to float like a bit of tidedown away on the waves of his own beautiful harmonies.
29But one must know Norway to know all that Grieg's music means. One must have the spirit of the mountains and valleys in one's mind to hear the sounds as he hears them. Mrs. Grieg understands all that. An atom of a woman, smaller, if possible, than her husband, quaint and old-fashioned in dress and air, her short, dark curls well mixed with iron gray. She has no voice at all; and yet, so thoroughly does she feel her husband's music—so entirely does she lose herself in the dramatic spirit of his songs (she never sings other music)—that on the rare occasions when the Griegs give a concert, he playing, she singing, her part alone would be considered one of the gems of the season, so wonderfully does she express by force of spirit what nature has done its best to prevent her from expressing at all.
31One of the things which can hardly fail to impress a foreigner here in Christiania is the singular lack of athletic interests of the young men. Ski-running they have, and as long as that endures no exercise can be compared to it for pleasure and for benefit to both sexes. But ski-running over, what remains? Of long walking tours and much mountain climbing, to be sure, there is no end. The roads are magnificent throughout the country; there are always mountain peaks to ascend, far and near, and it one goes up into the Jötunheim, there is ski-running in midsummer. This is a race of indefatigable climbers without distinction of sex. Its lungs are of iron, its brains as fixed as the Median law. The steep ascent of a stupendous mountain, or the crossing of a dizzy comb of rock, where one misstep means a horrible death, gives them only fresh delight, just as in waltzing they twirl on and on in endless, unvarying, whizzing circles, to stop at the end of three minutes or more, quite peaceful, steady and undisturbed, "a marvel and a mystery to the world."
33Walking, climbing and ski-running they have, with skating and coasting. But gymnasium athletics are practically non-existent. I do not believe there are half a dozen pairs of boxing gloves in Christiania, and I never heard of anyone using them. There are no running matches, no jumping, few crews, no wrestling, no cricket, football or tennis, no teaching of "the manly art of self defense." The boys fight like little demons, and one would think they would aspire to do so scientifically. At one of the large boys' schools it is part of the unwritten law (of the pupils) that the classes first out of the building shall at times congregate in one corner of the great brick walled courtyard, whence it shall be the duty and pleasure of the remainder of the school to whack them forth with strenuous application of fists and heads. The best possible resistance is made, a good many eyes are blackened and some few teeth dislodged, but all casualties are received amicably (afterward) and all prowess duly accredited.
35Private quarrels are promptly settled, not in the school precincts, where such methods are discountenanced, but in the recesses of the Palace Park, where a ring is formed, seconds chosen, and all proceedings conducted in proper order. But where danger really lies is in the affrays the boys are always getting into with the belligerent ragamuffins of the town, whose habit it is to attack when they are so inclined—which happens rather often—the first well-dressed boys they see, merely for the pleasure of combat. I dare say they find foemen willing enough, too, but the mischief lies in the fact that they literally consider them worthy of their steel, and produce and use their long sheath knives with most airy inconstence, so that however willing one is to have one's boy learn not to be afraid of hard knocks one never feels quite safe when one thinks of those treacherous tolle knives.
37A Lankow Musicale.
39MRS. POWELL, a lady with liquid black eyes and a grand-niece of Daniel Webster, is a new candidate for lyrical honors. Born in Brooklyn, Mrs. Powell went to Germany some time ago and studied three years. But her teachers did not permit her to profit by her talent and she came back to America and engaged as a pupil of Mrs. Anna Lankow, of 885 Park avenue.
41Yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon Mrs. Lankow gave a musicale at the studio of Prof. Augusto Francioli, who is teaching Mrs. Powell the art of acting, that is so indispensable to a career in operatic singing. Mrs. Powell sang most creditably the first aria and the mad scene from Lucia and selections from Carmen. Her voice accommodated itself to the demands made upon it, and especially did Mrs. Powell win applause for her efforts in coloratura work.
43The object of her tutor was attained—namely, to display the dramatic as well as the vocal side of her conception of the rôles that she attempted. Mrs. Powell, through the instrumentality of Mrs. Lankow, will make her professional appearance in Frankfort, Germany, some time in June in Carmen.
45The program of the musicale yesterday was augmented by the singing of Miss Perry and Miss Lillie Herta, both pupils of Mrs. Lankow.
47Died at Bonn, Germany.—The mother of Anna Lankau, the well-known singing teacher, of this city, died March 28 at Bonn on the Rhine, aged seventy-six. She was a woman of exceptional force of character.
49Max Bruch's Latest.—Max Bruch has written an oratorio entitled Moses. It is in four parts, called: On Sinai, the Golden Calf, the Return of the Messengers from Canaan and the Promised Land and the Lament of the People Over the Death of Moses.
51A Musical Plum Pudding.—"Herr Plumpudding" is announced as the author of the parody of Hänsel und Gretel which has recently been produced at Vienna, and the popular comedian Herr Girardi plays Gretel. When this gentleman came on the stage in short frocks to teach a street boy to dance the laughter it seems was general. The name "Plumpudding" is a satirical reference to the strange mixture of scraps of folk song which Humperdinck employs.
53A New Pianist.—The musical sensation of the day in Paris is M. Eduard Zeldenrust, a young Dutchman, who within the last month has played several times in public and on each occasion his marvelous execution and great power of interpreting the composers whose works he prefers have elicited the enthusiastic applause of the Parisian musical public—perhaps the most exacting and fastidious public in the world. Not a few critics have coupled M. Zeldenrust's name with that of M. Paderewski. This is, however, apt to give a false idea of his playing, and M. Zeldenrust himself is believed to resent the comparison.
55As a matter of fact, his style is original, and in so far as it resembles that of any well-known pianist is far more like that of Rubinstein than that of M. Paderewski. Several American and English ladies, among them Mrs. Walden Pell and the Marchioness of Dufferin, have manifested great interest in him, being evidently of opinion that they have discovered a genius. M. Zeldenrust, however, appears determined to resist their blandishments, and after a final concert will leave for Berlin for five months' quiet practice. Next winter he intends to give concerts in different cities, among others in Berlin and New York. His is a name to be remembered, for we have not heard the last of him by a long way.—World.
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