Scan 53
Musical Courier 1895-12-25: Vol 31 Iss 825, 1895
31 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 54. See the scan on archive.org.
A town on its own line is one of the directory's headings. That is where the town on a maker's page comes from.
1BROOKLYN
3(no line here) one of two readings
4BROOKLYN, December 23, 1895.
6I WONDER if some of the success of Carmen is not due to a public recognition of its triumphant personality; not merely the personality of the chief singer, which must be strong, if the work is adequately sung, but the personality of the composer, and especially the personality of the heroine? Looking back over the operas of our ancestors we are astonished to find that while they all sing more or less skilfully and agreeably, they are as indistinct as the morals of a politician or the conclusions of the average philosopher. Carmen was a revelation.
8Here was a woman who acted herself. To think with such is to do. Hers is a lost practice among civilized people, and there never was but one bold exponent of it in this land: Thoreau, namely. Carmen acts and speaks as instinct moves her. She is vital and basal humanity. Her song has all the defiant abandon of gypsy strength: it be-speaks privilege, liberty. We need to see such people in these days when they are trying to run us, willy-nilly, into communes and socialistic combines. And once in a while we need to be such people. The whole opera expresses a rebellion against the conventions.
10I believe my friend Krehbiel calls it vulgar. Hooray for that kind of vulgarity! Contrast Carmen with that more common type represented in Lucia—she of Lammermoor. The lack of personality and force in that young woman is simply "exasperating." "I am a persecuted maiden," she says, "and I wish some wideawake American girl would set an example for me. Pa wants me to marry Chump, and while Edgar is far superior to him, Edgar is noble in his blood, so that he is prevented from working, and without work it is impossible for him to support me. Therefore I shall go mad and slay the Chump after marrying him, and Edgar will consign himself to the silent tomb." Carmen appeals to our nineteenth century minds because she is not of that kind. She asserts her womanly privileges.
12And Calvé continues to be the exponent of the part. She exposed it here in our Academy of Music on Tuesday night and drew out a larger audience than any of us expected to see, because our shops are thought to be the most brilliant things about Brooklyn at holiday times, and it is a New York guide, of all things, that says they are as well stocked and as interesting as the Bon Marché, which is an unintended compliment to the Bon Marché. Indeed, there were only a few vacant rows at the back, and the people in front made so much of a front that the hiatus did not create long comment, except maybe in the box office.
14Calvé was in great form. You ought to have seen her dance the—ah—danse du ven—well, it was almost, anyway. You know she never does a thing twice alike. Leastwise she has been a different Carmen in detail every time I have ever seen her. But I never, by the same token, heard her flat a note so grievously as she did one of them that night. And she and José had a lot of trouble with her fringes, too. They kept winding up in José's buttons, and methought that José pulled himself loose once with a viciousness that was ungentlemanly. Still he never lost her good humor. The customary illness of somebody put Sophie Traubmann into the part of Michaela, and if she has two or three more turns at the part, so that she will wear out of her nervousness and sing true, she will hit the character at least as truly as Saville. She is pretty and cunning, and there is a bit of rusticity in her acting that was left out by the stately Eames.
16And, oh, say, do you remember how Calvé used to walk around Michaela when Michaela was Eames, in the third act, and look scornfully at her back and turn up her nose at her clothes, and pull down the corners of her mouth and tap her foot and fold her arms? How much of it all, do you guess, was heartfelt and how much was acting? Anyway, that bit of business was left out with Miss Traubmann.
18Lubert as José was full of snap and ginger. He showed how good an opera singer a man may be without being an awful lot of a singer. His business is new, and he is the only José we have seen who was not brushed off by his valet in the dressing room before he came on in utter forlornness in the last act. When we are crossed in love we never get our shoes blacked, but put the money into paper to write elegies and lawsuits; and you could see that José was crossed in love—or by a trolley car—just as easy as anything. Ancona, too, is the bull fighter and the Spaniard. He is the man who is gross and open and boastful in his loves. He is one of the realisms of the piece. We used to believe that there never was a toroador like Del Puente, but while that fellow was a good looker, and had a good voice, too, he never was a man of the people, and his fighting was all done with kid gloves on.
20Fritz in an Asylum, or Francis Fischer Powers, Italo Campanini and M. W. Whitney in The Wild Man of Borneo, or some more dainty little thing from The Gay Parisians might hit the popular taste and swell the box receipts. But, seriously, if we promise to be very, very good, will you please let us have something different, Mister?
22Mrs. Sapio sang the mad scene well enough. It is not worth singing in concert anyway, except for the little Swedish folk song that interrupts the number, and this was so much more feeling and beautiful than the scales that the judicious wondered why it was and why it is that singers like this will choose to merely display their technics instead of their minds and souls and the art that informs them. But it will be a long day before the music is accepted as better than the musician or the singer. The other soloist was Mr. Franz Kneisel, who did his part in the Händel largo and the Viotti concerto with skill and modesty, though in the concerto there was likewise a good deal that was not worth while. The cadenza at the end of the moderato seemed about a quarter of an hour long. As to the largo it was magnificent. It swept glooms and cobwebs out of brains, it visibly and audibly soared from the earth and took the listeners with it. Where will Brahms be in the next century? Händel will be here just the same.
24Mozart's brisk little Turkish march was played with the animation of an Armenian atrocity, and was timely because of the newspaper narratives. Richard Strauss' two preludes from Guntram wound up the bill in an awakening and pyrotechnic fashion. Turning to Mr. Apthorp's usually critical and instructive observations in the program we were all grieved to find that there was no narrative. Mr. Apthorp had sighed resignedly into print, "Neither of these two movements is susceptible of technical analysis." And no more are they, for a fact. You can't analyze the aurora borealis, or the Jabberwock, or Mr. George Francis Train his mind; therefore you cannot analyze anything so utterly formless as the Guntram episodes. Let it pass that they are more different kinds of music in ten minutes than all of the nine symphonies, and that Wagner is the master of Mr. Strauss and that the pupil tries only to follow his master.
26There is a sense of harmony in the man, too, and the second of the preludes has a rejoicing mood, but while the violins are proclaiming their happiness the drums and cymbals and triangles and jewsharps and other instruments of calathematic origin fall upon the helpless strings and wipe the academy up with them. And great is the chortling and wild the hubbub when this thing happens. Why could we not have just one sane, easy, melodious, agreeable thing for a wind up? And there will be no more symphonies until January 24.
28The Countess Gilda Ruta played in Historical Hall on Saturday night before just such an audience as countesses bring out. The place was full. Had it been plain Mrs. Jones the same woman might have mustered a corporal's guard. And the people were enthusiastic, too. She is an Italian-looking dame, with jet black hair and a comfortable physique, who is pianist and composer extraordinary to the Queen of Italy. Her execution is businesslike and prompt; she plays Beethoven without a bit of inspiration; her hand is strong and her mind is willing, for her time is her own. She played bashfully six or seven of her own compositions, and played them better than anything else. Really, if her adagio were set to the strings of a big orchestra it would not be a bad sort of thing. It has inventiveness and some sentiment. A double string quartet supported the countess, and there was some singing by a Miss Luster and a Mr. Pisacane.
30Miss Hooper's Saturday morning concerts in the Pouch mansion are inviting larger audiences every week, and if she keeps them going a little longer they will become quite the proper thing. She played at her own concert on Saturday last and played with more tone, more unconsciousness, more dash than ever before. Her selections were from Svendsen, Sarasate, Wieniawski and Max Bruch. With a little more constancy in her appearances before the public Miss Hooper will make an agreeable addition to the list of young women violinists. Laura Sanford, the infant phenomenon, was the pianist, and she was marveled at, especially by the matrons and others who form a majority of all morning audiences. A Chopin impromptu, one of Schubert's musical moments, the Liszt vulgarization of Hark, Hark, the Lark, and Raff's tarantelle were played by this child with judgment and some sentiment, no less
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