Scan 18
Musical Courier 1895-10-16: Vol 31 Iss 815, 1895
142 lines. Read by computer on 20 September 2026. Printed page 19. See the scan on archive.org.
1And then you go to Shanley's across the street and eat crab salad.
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5Modjeska returns to us, perfect, serene and satisfying. I imagine that Mary Stuart is her most congenial rôle. In the fine old play of Schiller she moves a true queen, a noble, sympathetic figure.
7Does any modern play give you such a thrill as does unhappy Mary when she walks with stately step to her death? I faintly remember Ristori, but I am sure that Italian actress with her old-fashioned methods was bombastic compared to the sweet, resigned simplicity of Modjeska.
9I suppose Mr. Froude did lay on the colors too thick in drawing the Stuart woman's character. But far, far better his fierce, lustful queen, the woman who loved Bothwell, Rissio, Chastelard, Douglass, who loved lovers, and not idiots such as Darnley, the woman who hated her bastard cousin, and upon whose head England's crown might have rested—far better, I say, this unscrupulous beauty than the tepid, vindicated, colorless creature of Meline.
11Elizabeth was no better than she should have been, neither was Mary Stuart. They bred women with blood in their veins in those days. To have loved was living. Is it any wonder that Schiller and Swinburne were able to make so much of these women?
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15The German poet puts in the mouth of his Scottish queen a confession of hot blooded imprudences, while Swinburne impetuously leaps the barriers of historical accuracy, and paints with fiery pigments a lithe, lustful woman, white throated, with a saint's face, a very serpent in lies. John Knox—so well named—the man that "did knock so rudely at mine heart" of this Gaelic cockatrice; John Knox, austere, hypocritical, a religious murderer, saw in Mary Stuart one of hell's harlots, and he told her this in her very teeth.
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19Modjeska's Mary is lovable, never vicious, and she wrings unwilling tears from you as she bids her faithful retinue farewell.
21What a picture she makes! What tact; what an absence of sentimentality! Dear artist! do not bid us yet farewell. Your figure, in a day without ideals, stands white-robed and as pure as your Isabella.
23O Kehrt zuruck du Kuehne Sanger.
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27The slow music of Schiller was not altogether well chanted by Modjeska's company. The time is indeed out of joint for the classics.
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31How cooling, how refreshing is the sweet art of Helena Modjeska!
33And how does she keep her youth? Art must be an admirable prophylactic against grim old age. In Magda at the Fifth avenue, last spring a year, this Polish charmer taught us the presumption of craning adolescence on our boards.
35A great realist is Modjeska, I cried. Indeed, she had the realistic touch before the new crew dreamed of its existence. Marvelous woman! She played Rosalind, and the murmuring music of Shakespeare's woodland symphony enthralled us as never before. She is Magda, a modern thing, vicious in tone, acidly voluptuous, full of fierce moods of rebellion, and then I see the chaste nun Isabella, with sweetly folded conventual hands and the halo of purity floating. Her voice grave, nocturnal and full of unsaid religious fervors.
37Aye, chastity is easy for this Isabella. Did you mark the dawning horror on her face when Claudio begged for life, screamed at death and vomited fear, ghastly, gresome, macabre fear?
39No, Isabella, the ice maiden, the one woman on earth who was pure as ice and as chaste as snow, yet on whom calumny could set no darkling seal. This Isabella is not a vital figure. She leaves an after glow in the imagination, as does one of Rossetti's faint, fair damosels. But when Isabella leaned on the bar of heaven and looked down on this earth—a fluttering feather of fire floating in a gulf of harsh profundity, the bar was not warmed by her pressure; it congealed rather.
41Modjeska gave us this Isabella. She loved her life, her brother's life, but that exquisite abstraction which the world calls chastity better than all these. She is a saint, framed by bawds.
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45Measure for Measure has a smack of the contemporaneous. It is wonderfully vulgar, charmingly coarse. It tilts at hypocrisy, and the sort of hypocrisy which now rages and barks in our metropolis.
47Mrs. Ormiston Chant should go to the Garrick Theatre and see Measure for Measure.
49She might sing another tune.
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53Beaumont Smith was a graceful picture as the graceless, fantastic Lucio, a sort of Osric—a water fly that buzzed loudly in the index.
55John Land and W. S. Hart were well cast as the Duke and Angelo, and Robert McWade, the tapster, seemed a thing of yesterday.
57Never prate to me of Sudermann, Nordmann or the rest of the veristic crew. Here is realism with a vengeance.
59Naughty houses, quoth you. I'll have none of your modern palaverers after Shakespeare. He is the only realist, after all.
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63Amelie Rives' divorce was not as much of a shock to me as the news of Edgar Saltus' remarriage.
65This is pretty consistency for you.
67The Prose Pessimist of the Manhattan Club preaches against matrimony. He hurls at the effete institution beautiful verbal brickbats. The world is married, ergo the world is marred. Alas! handsome preacher, thy artistic diatribes but attracted woman, lovely, curious woman.
69And Edgar married the most persistent Eve.
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73A great throbbing epic or the stage is the last resort of Amelie the Sang Singer.
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77Of course Cora Potter did not say all the silly things put in her mouth by several idealists of the newspaper profession. We should be by rights realists, seeing stern truth with half an eye. Yet ninety-nine newsmen are poets in embryo, are gifted with great glowing imaginations, and the immitigable splendor of their gaze is maddening.
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81Helene Hastreiter's arrival the other day was barely noticed, yet a few years ago she was on the crest of the operatic wave. In Mrs. Thurber's National Opera Company Hastreiter was a power, sharing honors with pretty Emma Juch. But that didn't last long, and the contralto went to Italy, where she has been for the last eight or nine years. Her best work was in Orfeo.
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85The name of Juch is still a power. If this musical artist chose to leave private life—she is Frank Wellman's wife—she would find lots to do on the concert stage.
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89I spoke to her cousin, the tall, stately, blond Amanda Fabbris yesterday. Why the Fabbris left the high opera stage I know not. She made a big impression in Erminie with Francis Wilson. Do you remember the gasp of admiration that burst from the first night audience at the Broadway several seasons ago? Fabbris was simply stunning.
91I asked her if she could be tempted back to the glare and tinsel of comic opera. She looked daringly demure.
93"Try me," she coyly answered.
95Operetta needs such artists as Fabbris.
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99What a surprise for many was the rich, velvety contralto of Maud Adams. This witching girl should study singing. Her tone production in speaking is rather throaty. She is musical, only I wish that she would not sing Tosti's Good-by. It brings such memories of sloppy drawing room singing. I mean sloppy singing in drawing rooms, of course. Now, if Miss Adams had sung once or twice in That Impudent Young Couple the fate of that greased lightning dramatic anecdote might have been different.
101I earnestly advise Miss Adams to study singing. Good contralto voices are scarce, and combined with her delightful acting she would be irresistible.
103* * *
105Walter Damrosch can turn on the tap of a tun of musical memories when in the right mood key. I got him talking about Liszt, Wagner, Von Bülow and Rubinstein a week ago.
107When a mere lad Walter went to Weimar. He called on Liszt of course, for he bore a letter of introduction from Liszt's old comrade, Leopold Damrosch, now gathered to his forefathers. Like Heine, when he called on Goethe, years before, Walter came nearly praising the plums on the road from Jena to Weimar. In fact, he did worse. Liszt, who was most cordial, asked him how long he intended remaining in the modern Athens.
109"To-morrow," said Walter, his eyes beaming with Wagneritis, "I go to Bayreuth."
111Liszt at once became gelid.
113You know there was near the close of their careers a slight coolness between Liszt and Wagner. Liszt felt that he was completely o'ershadowed by the man he befriended, and I imagine that Wagner put on more airs in his daily life than he did in Parsifal. At all events Liszt felt sore, and young Damrosch (he will be young Damrosch until he is a centenarian, I suppose) was made to feel the frost in the atmosphere. So strenuous became the suspense that Walter wept and Liszt relented. The Jove of the Keyboard felt nettled because one came 3,000 miles only to hear Parsifal, while he—!
115Of course all was explained, and a love feast for two pianos ensued. Walter went to Weimar, saw Wagner and lived, heard Wagner and rejoiced.
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119I have often wondered why Rubinstein acted so bitterly in the Wagner matter. I have been told on excellent authority that the great Russian pianist and composer was an ardent admirer of Cosima's before she left Von Bülow. As usual, the petticoat is mightier than the sword.
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123Mr. Damrosch insists that Von Bülow has been, is, a much misrepresented man. The fiery little virtuoso spent a loveless childhood that embittered his naturally acidulous temperament. Then, too, his marriage was not calculated to make him an optimist. He would often tell his New York pupil what a lucky young fellow he was—rich in a loving father and mother and all the world before him. Since those days Mr. Damrosch has been still luckier. In fact his latest piece of luck but only recently arrived—a new woman indeed!
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127Perhaps we have all been too harsh in our judgments of the eccentricities of Von Bülow. He had a wonderful intellect. Those who knew say that his heart was equally as large.
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131But Cosima Wagner, the daughter of a great pianist, a gifted writer, what magnetism she had for musicians! Wagner, Rubinstein and Von Bülow—the last shall be first, so is it writ.
133A Gallo-Roman Theatre.—A Gallo-Roman theatre with the classic velum is to be erected in the Arena of the Rue Murger, Paris. It will open with an historical and lyrical drama, Caesar's Romans in Gaul, in five acts and seven tableaux, music by Fisset.
135Music in Copenhagen.—Some time ago the committee of the Women's Exhibition in the Danish capital invited Scandinavian lady composers to compete for prizes to be awarded for the best written cantata for soli and choruses, with piano accompaniment; also for a violin suite, and some choruses for female voices. In this competition the Swedish ladies carried off the honors. The jury, which consisted of the Danish musicians Neruda, Bendix and Lange-Müller, decided to divide equally the prize for the cantata between the Swedish composer N. Lago and the Danish composer Madame Elizabeth Meyer. None of the five violin suites sent in for competition were considered worthy of a prize, but the Swedish musician Miss Valborg Aulin carried off the third prize for the best written choruses for female voices, with piano accompaniments.
137A unique concert was given on September 5 in Copenhagen under the auspices of the Women's Exhibition. At this musical entertainment only works by Scandinavian lady composers were performed by members of the fair sex. The concert opened with a string quartet in four movements, composed by Elfrida André. The performance of the quartet by Mesdames Ida Koppel, Anna Tryde, Kamma Christophersen and Agga Fritsche left something to be desired. Andante and finale, from a violin suite, by the Norwegian composer, Mme. Betzy Holmberg, and a melodious berceuse by N. Lago were magnificently played by Miss Ingeborg Magnus, a Danish violinist.
139Songs by the Danish composers Mesdames F. Palmer, Chr. Olsen, Johanne Fenger and Tekla Griebel were well given by Mrs. Marie English and Miss M. Thomsen. This enjoyable concert concluded with the three prize choruses for female voices, admirably composed by Miss Valborg Aulin and capitally performed by a ladies' choir under the baton of Miss Fanny Gaetje.
141Miss Valborg Aulin's three choruses for female voices will also be given this winter at one of the Philharmonic concerts in Copenhagen.—Musical News.
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