Scan 21
Musical Courier 1896-03-04: Vol 32 Iss 835, 1896
61 lines. Read by computer on 20 September 2026. Printed page 22. See the scan on archive.org.
1could compete with the attraction on the stage. A kiss made Nethersole's Carmen a flaming success. Those kisses in The Goddess of Truth would float safely into the dock of triumph any opéra comique. Osculate, mes enfants, osculate, for all the world loves honest kissers!
3Flowers played a big part at Abbey's. Joe Herbert sat down twice on the thorny path of dalliance and caused apoplectic laughter, and little Leo Dietrichstein was nearly swamped under the load of roses sent across the footlights by Lillian's admirers. Clever Leo should cut his song in the first act. He phrases nicely, but the rim is worn off his sympathetic voice. Why doesn't he introduce a variant of his Trilby speech and say: "Messieurs, mesdames, I can no sing musique, mais, I veel spik my song."
4It would be more effective.
6I met about twenty-eight managers of native comic opera in the lobbies, and they all exclaimed: "Did you see that 'business' at the last of the act? That was stolen from my piece."
7To which one might have replied: "Yes, Your Excellency, especially the dancing soldiers."
9Light opera stirs up more wrangles than religion.
11Another sporadic and idiotic outbreak in the society for the prevention of living. We are told by virtuous whiskers at Albany that Sunday concerts are immoral and must be stopped. It's all right for the music critics, who are pious and hate to work Sundays, but how about a bored public?
12Sunday is a day of horror to most people in New York, and a new terror is to be added. I suppose the logical conclusion will be the curfew and the suppression of affection on the Sabbath. In Boston, the town of Mrs. Jack Gardner and lentils, a mob of fanatics are howling down Berlioz's Damnation of Faust as being unfit for publication on Sunday. Little wonder we react and take an interest in prize fighting, even of the elocutionary order. Nature dammed up must break forth in riant pustules. Gorge, swill and be merry, for to-morrow we will be legislated!
14The song whistled by the musical thief who robbed a flat the other afternoon was She May Have Seen Better Days. The lady who unwittingly accompanied him on the piano intends suing for libel any newspaper that mentions the fact in a facetious manner. What an idea for burglars, anyhow! A live, talented professional might fetch a pianist with him to lull the house. It would boom the pianistic community, which is rather depressed since Paderewski's advent.
16I am crazy about Duse!
17So I was three years ago, and then I had but little company with me in my lunacy. Now I am sure that there exists a large Duse clientèle in this city, and one that will swell with every performance. I was surprised, even amused, at the wild enthusiasm of last Monday night a week ago at the Fifth Avenue. You might have supposed that the audience was Italian until the familiar faces of first nighters (a delectable band of cynics) were discerned.
18Such cheering, and then that bald fat man who waved his handkerchief frantically after the fourth act! He must have taken the Italian woman for Loie Fuller or some other of the brilliant shows that win the suffrages of the cultured.
20At all events, the enthusiasm was genuine and not of the "goober" sort. It came from the pit and boxes, and not from the galleries. Indeed I hear that Duse is not considered "emotional" enough by her compatriots, and does not "say" things quite as sonorously as the lovers of the old-time dramatic art would like.
21Of course her company is mediocre, and so is Bernhardt's, for that matter. The Italians, however, show less of machine drill and antiquated conservatory methods. I admit that the leading man was a sight to behold. His evening clothes were built by a butcher and his movements, while not exactly angular, were certainly not graceful or easy. He seemed raw until he had something to do, and then he did it with celerity and force. His finale of the third act was excellent, and Duse has him trained so as to make the outburst in the fourth absolutely free from the usual melodrama. His accents were sincere and his grief at the close of the play unaffected. He is called Rosaspina, and nature has not made him as pretty as his name.
23I noticed some familiar faces in Duse's troupe. Ettore Mazzante played the elder Duval here three years ago and Bertoldo and Solazzi were here before, unless I greatly mistake those Hibernian tresses of Solazzi's.
24The scene in the fourth act looked like a South Fifth avenue table d'hote. The set was shabby until Duse entered, and then!—well, then we forgot all about costumes, scenery and the uninteresting faces of her support. But, really I must award praise to the company for its ease in conversation. Italians are born talkers. The dialogue was a marvel of phrasing, and such a thing as a cue did not seem to exist. Speeches were dovetailed, clipped, interrupted, and above all hung the atmosphere of verismo.
25The group at the card table interested me. A stout woman with melting eyes who looked like a Duse without a history—Duse has a tremendous one, you know—regarded placidly the players. Beside her sat Anthony Hope Hawkins, the author of The Prisoner of Zenda, or at least his Italian counterpart. Coquetting, and with a faint mustache on her upper lip, was Mantelli, the contraalto, but Mantelli fuller and gayer, and the other men looked like anything but actors. Not a fascinating group, but they are trained, these people, and carry off with a light hand much that is spluttered and churned into theatrical fury by those who would smile pityingly at the curious dressing.
27My humble advice is to see Duse; see her as often as your pocketbook will allow you, and if you are an actor, and are lucky enough not to be playing, why, go and study and grovel at the feet of a genius, for, my dear girl and my dear boy, this is the dramatic art of the future. The public is growing tired of the obvious, the mechanical and the academic formula which says: "Move thus to express pity, and thus to represent passion."
28Duse goes to nature, and she is, as Maurel truly said (only he meant to be uncomplimentary), "anti-artistic." So she is; that is, if art must be compressed within set scholastic forms. Get thee to a Duse, I pray, and prate no more about technic! Here is the greatest of all technics, and it eludes your critical grasp because of its absolute simplicity. Get thee to a Duse, I say, and learn true art!
30When Yvette Guilbert, the lady with the vicious shoulders, declares that she earned $34,000 in America, she possibly exaggerates; but not to any large amount. She certainly earned between $25,000 and $30,000 here, and the reason I can give these figures is that her manager, Ted Divette Marks, did not tell me.
31When he doesn't say it, it's so.
33Paul Verlaine's son says that he was hypnotized, so he could not attend his distinguished parent's funeral. Anything that a son of such a sire says or does "goes." He is certainly not to blame for any eccentricities.
35Following fast on the footfalls of the news that Lomboroso was convicted of plagiarism, and that pauvre enfant Alfred Austin was praised by that jackass Nordau, comes the intelligence that the very modern Italian poet and man of letters, Gabrielle d'Annunzio, has been accused of pilfering from Sar Peladan (a literary flicher himself), Baudelaire, Shelley, Longfellow, Paul Verlaine and Maeterlinck.
36God is good to the degenerates!
38Six thousand dollars is said to be the sum subscribed by the members of Mr. Seidl's new Metropolitan Orchestra. A man flushed and indignant rushed into the Aschenbroedel Club—a club for musicians, and a good thing for them—and yelled:
39"Hev you hird vot dot geld is put up for das orchester? Nein? I tell you. Six thousand dollar, thirty thousand mark, und von hundret und twenty thousand bier. Mein Gott!"
40It does seem a shame, as Mark Twain used to say, to spend $6,000 for music when honest men are starving for beer! Six thousand dollars equals 120,000 beers. Is that correct?
42Ten years was recalled last Saturday night at Lüchow's. We got a glimpse of Joseffy socially, and the beer and conversation flowed, a tranquil duo of delight. I saw strange things. Constantin Sternberg black as midnight, and not a day older than when he passionately argued with Otto Floersheim and Franz Rummel at Lienau's about the merits of the New Russian in music. Walter Damrosch, tired but full of fight, told me that he was weary of conducting and meant to give up after this season and devote two years to composing. Happy man!
43In a corner, conversing with evident appreciation of each other's merit, were Alexander Moszkowski Lambert and Leopold Winkler. The bloody chasm has been bridged and peace reigns. Leopoldchen remarked that Lambert is so busy that he teaches all the week and on Sunday defeats the excise law by having a side door for pupils, and Monsieur Lambert retorted with admirable satire by calling our attention to the marked resemblance of Winkler to Chopin.
45Stenberg said witty things to Sam Franko, and Bruno Oscar Klein beamed admiration upon Herr Lohse, the assistant conductor of the Damrosch Opera Company. That talented and modest young man told me he had never been out alone in this country but one other time. He is devoted to his wife, the famous soprano Klafsky.
46I enjoyed Edler von Sternberg's enthusiasm over Joseffy. He came on late from Philadelphia especially to hear the Brahms concerto. Albert Mildenberg, handsome and big, and young Dannenberg, two devoted pupils of Joseffy, were there, and so was Host Lüchow, who is very fond of Joseffy's playing. I begged Harry Rowe Shelley and Bob Thallon to see Joseffy after the concert, but they are both too fond of spending Sunday in Brooklyn, besides Shelley had to play the organ. Bob recently took a header from his wheel, and the northeastern portion of his lofty dome of thought looks like a mince pie struck by lightning. Bob wears a neat little tab over his eye, and we have changed his title from the Beethoven of Brooklyn to that of the Wotan of Williamsburg.
48August Spanuth, the talented pianist and music critic of the Staats Zeitung, told me during the evening that he is at work on his second piano concerto. He is also working at Tschaikowsky's second piano concerto in G, the one introduced here by Franz Rummel. And that reminds me. Who has my copy of the piano score of this concerto? Rummel gave it me, with the cuts he made, when he played it with Seidl. I lent the piece, and to whom I can't say. This is an excellent time for a general alarm. J. F. H. Meyer, another Joseffyite, was also at this love feast.
49Al Neumann, playwright and bold, bad man, was of course to the fore, and told us of his new and forthcoming play, The Absent Boy, which is to be done at the Garden Theatre.
50And then Charles F., the dear Guvnor Tretbar, who was serene and happy over his boy's big triumph. Ah, Joseffy, you sly dog, it was worth waiting five years for such a night! Franz Kneisel, the celebrated violin virtuoso, was present to congratulate his old friend on his success.
51Joseffy was brilliant. He was witty, ironical and a perfect host. I asked for an omelette; he ordered twenty and at intervals said:
52"If only Marc Blumenberg were here," and deplored the cruelty of the piano trade that kept him in the West.
54He was delighted at Rosenthal's proposed visit—he was his pupil and is his pet, but next to Rosenthal comes for Joseffy, Paderewski, and his name was often mentioned. Anyone who was foolish enough to praise Joseffy to his face was answered with a stifled yawn:
55"You make me tired."
57Then we went up town and met Max Freeman and talked stage management until it was time to go to bed—or breakfast.
58Spring is truly with us. JAMES HUNEKER.
60Chamber Music by Poles.—The second of a series of three joint recitals of ensemble chamber music, given by Miss Antoinette Szumowska in conjunction with Messrs. T. and J. Adamowski, of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, will take place on Monday afternoon, March 9, at 2:30, and the following interesting program will be performed: Sonata, A major, Beethoven, Miss Szumowska and Mr. J. Adamowski; solo, Miss Szumowska; trio, Schumann, Miss Szumowska and Messrs. T. and J. Adamowski.
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