Scan 17
Musical Courier 1895-11-06: Vol 31 Iss 818, 1895
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1naturally which a bass teacher will not be able to do for a soprano or contralto. The argument that vocal production with a pupil is largely acquired by mimetic means has been proven not fallacious, yet on this same score a feminine teacher with only a contralto organ would fall to pieces on her own showing if called on to instruct a soprano.
3The theory would resolve itself by logic into the necessity of, first, no teacher of either sex undertaking to teach singing who did not sing well, and, second, each teacher only accepting pupils whose quality corresponded exactly with their own.
5That successes have been made contrary to this, and that failures have been made, observing it at least in part, does not detract from the interest of the argument. Is it a veracious one? Some of the best singers living have come from the studios of teachers who could not form a tone of any quality if they tried. Now, are there any enthusiasts who would like to prove that these are only the brilliant exceptions to a rule which is essential to the success of nine-tenths of the vocal students of the world? It has been claimed publicly and privately by many heads of the vocal profession that every singing teacher should sing. An outcome of this has been that many singers who know nothing whatever of teaching teach. The product of the studios of erstwhile primo tenori and prime donne can as a rule be readily recognized. They have a certain amount of style and nothing to use it with. The pupil of any former operatic star whom you find with a voice is like the drop of water in the desert—a desert of gesture, much manner and mouthedness.
7It would be grateful and enlightening to garner the views of any interested in the vocal art upon this vexed question. It is a much more vexed question than print has thus far admitted. Young women puzzle and ponder sorely between Madame and Signor on this score solely. Teachers behind their own doors deliver themselves unequivocally upon it, and if they were to do so in public, furnishing therewith their artistic or physiological arguments, it might provide interesting and improving food for discussion.
9To whom shall the vocal pupil go?
11Another Soprano and Pianist.—Miss Lilian Sanderson, who has gained a widespread renown in European countries as a Lieder singer, and Mr. Robert Freund, the famous pianist from Zurich, will sail for America in the spring. They will make their first appearance in New York, after which, during March, April and May, they will make a tour of the States.
13Marie Brema.—Miss Marie Brema will sing Brünnhilde on November 12 at one of the Mottl concerts in London; on the 13th she sails for America. The 21st, 22d and 23d of November she is engaged to sing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston and Cambridge; a few days later she will make her first appearance with the Abbey & Grau Opera Company in New York.
15Helene Hastreiter.—Mme. Helene Hastreiter, who became popular through her appearances with the American Opera Company and afterward in her concert tours with Theodore Thomas and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has recently arrived in America and will be heard in a number of concerts during the present season. While sojourning in Europe she has sung in opera in London and more recently achieved a great success in opera and concerts in the principal Italian cities.
17An Ecker Piano Pupil.—Miss Mary Willing, a pupil of Mr. John Emil Ecker, gave a piano recital on Tuesday evening, October 29, in St. Paul's Church, Toledo, Ohio, assisted by Miss Helen Mandeville, soprano, and Mr. W. H. Willett, baritone. The young pianist came through a difficult program of Beethoven, Chopin, Rubinstein, Schubert and Liszt with a good deal of finish, reflecting as much credit upon her instruction as upon her own talent.
19Howard Brockway.—A number of the works of this gifted young composer will be heard in New York this winter. Mr. Brockway has been engaged for a limited number of concerts with Marsick in New York, Boston, Chicago and other principal cities. It is to composition and not to piano playing that Mr. Brockway has given his recent years of study in Europe, and in his public appearances this season he asks to be considered as a composer playing his own works and not a piano virtuoso. The young composer is only twenty-four, is a native of Brooklyn and has just returned from five years' study with Professor Boise, in Berlin. Last February at the Singakademie he gave a recital of his own compositions with the Philharmonic Orchestra under Professors Mannstaedt, Barth and Wirth, when his Symphony, ballade for orchestra, sonata for violin and piano, cavatina for violin and orchestra and piano numbers were performed. His success was extraordinary and unprecedented for an American.
21the gibbet and a Doré would have stared at us, framed by the wide proscenium of the Abbey stage.
23No less striking was that palace hall where the wrath of Banquo was seen by the sinning man whose soul was sick unto death. The barbaric pomp, yet of a dull northern hue, a true Gothic note; the semi-savage company, the trappings and the one tone of relief, the one high light, Lady Macbeth, superbly accoutred. This scene was superb!
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27Then, too, that weird Freischütz glade, where the shades shimmered to the hideous crooning of the sisters! What exquisite effects of lighting! What a mellow moon floated high and free! The disappearances of the witches was managed admirably. A flash, a crash and a light wrack of cloud. Surely the earth hath bubbles.
29Mr. Irving's genius for stage management is almost Wagnerian. He is always in the right key. He feasts the eye, he woos the ear with music. He masses his color scheme so solidly and makes his changes so rapidly that you cry aloud: "This is not mere mumming; this is the very simulacra of life!"
31You will never forget that banquet hall. You cannot efface the stirring picture of the rousing of the sleepers after the murder most foul. To thin thunder came the fateful knocking at the gate—and I thought of those four great pulsing throbs—heartbeats in the Beethoven symphony in C minor, the fifth. So knocks fate at the door. Ah, England's marvelous symphonist learned the trick before the German master. Such moments of suspension, of terror, are worth a wilderness of speeches.
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35But the performance. It was, as far as Mr. Irving was concerned, in his very best Mathias manner. He informed us several days ago that his Macbeth differed from traditional readings inasmuch as he made the man a man—a genuine fellow, stout sinewed, fearing neither God, the devil nor his own wife. A man who cast Hamlet-like moods of irresolution and conscience breeding terrors to the wind. A poet, yet a butcher. I confessed I was amazed at this analytical program, and awaited its execution with curious dismay. My curiosity was not satisfied. Mr. Irving gave us a Thane of Cawdor the like of which has never been seen—aye, or, for the matter of that, heard before. I looked for the native hue of resolution after the encounter with the horrid sisters, but it was sickled o'er by the pale cast of a fine spun reading. "Duncan comes to-night" lent him courage, but the maze thickened, cross purposes mastered his will, and at the dagger speech melodrama boldly invaded the stage. It was Mathias who gazed vacantly at midair. I heard Mathias' voice, and listened for the sinister jingle of the bells.
37After the murder Mr. Irving became a squeaking, mouthing imbecile. There was no doubt left in my mind that Shakespeare's Macbeth was a superior Degenerate, with occasional homicidal tendencies. The abject terror was well portrayed. Mr. Irving has mastered the gamut of the thrill; he can give you a poor, drivelring wretch overcome by his conscience-kindled fears in the most approved footlight fashion. But, God of Garrick, it is artificial, it is antique, it is hopelessly theatrical. It bears as much relation to real life as does the penny dreadful.
39Remember, I do not wish to detract from the intellectual savor of this actor's work. He has a certain sort of imagination which is kindled by things which lie beyond the pale of the ordinary—the possible. There is a fine, dry, hard quality in his feeling, which appeals because of its fineness, because of its sincerity. Mr. Irving is ever sincere; is sincere in his reading of Macbeth; but it is not Macbeth that he gives us; only a stage creature, infirm of vitality, not a warrior, but a week kneed, hysterical madman. The supernatural touches were the most convincing. There was the shudder, and Irving—a mere bundle of nerves—communicated his hysteria to his auditory without difficulty.
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43I liked him best in his interview with the witches in Act IV. His stature seemed to have added inches, and he struck fire after the prophecies. But most doleful of all was the vocalism of England's greatest actor. We got our Shakespeare as if heard through the veil of a foreign tongue. There were arid stretches of unintelligibility, accompanied by angular sawing of the air. A strong, keen brain has nature dowered this man, but it is locked up in the most un-
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