Scan 37
Musical Courier 1896-12-23: Vol 33 Iss 877, 1896
90 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE last of the Wednesday matinées was given December 16, it being announced that more time is necessary for the Siegfried rehearsals, and so the management has concluded to discontinue these slimly attended affairs.
3Don Giovanni was sung last Wednesday afternoon, the Zerlina being Bauermeister, who replaced Marie Engle, and she was most satisfactory. The cast otherwise was the same as at the previous performance. Lassalle was as usual in poor voice, and sung and acted listlessly.
5In the evening a double bill was given, Lucia with Melba, and Cavalleria Rusticana with Calvé. Melba sang beautifully her numbers and acted with more spontaneity than usual. She was warmly received.
7Calvé was a superb Santuzza. It is one of her famous rôles and she has made it quite her own. She was intense, pathetic, tragic, and sang with wonderful dramatic fire. Cremonini was the Turrida. His singing is not satisfactory, although the part is one that suits his personality. One grave defect of the star system is that it gives us such poor subordinate singers, or rather that the star fills the picture at the expense of minor or indeed major characters. A well rounded performance is therefore never to be expected.
9Belina was an acceptable Lola, and Ancona a mediocre Alfio. The Edgard was Signor Ceppi, and he was only tolerable. He is a big man with a little voice. If he had been born in America he would not be tolerated in the Metropolitan Opera House as a companion to Melba. Ashton was admirably sung by Campanari, an American naturalized, but as he does not belong to the French clique he is kept as much in the background as possible.
11Oh, these musical politicians!
13On Friday Les Huguenots was repeated with the usual cast—an unusually tiresome performance, and at the Saturday matinée Carmen was played to a big house. Faust was most indifferently sung at the popular Saturday night performance. Gogny, Litvinne—the latter an absurd looking Marguerite, and Plançon a remarkable Mephisto.
15Last Monday evening La Traviata was sung for the first time by Melba, although it is the second time we have heard it this season. This was the cast:
17Violetta Valery………………………………………Mme. Melba
18(her first appearance in this character.)
19Annina…………………………………………………Mlle. Bauermeister
20Flora Bervoise………………………………………Mme. van Cauteren
21Giorgio Germont…………………………………….Sig. Ancona
22Gastone…………………………………………………Sig. Vanni
23Barone Duphol………………………………………M. Jacques Bars
24Marchese d'Obigny…………………………………Sig. Corsi
25Dottore Grenvil……………………………………..Sig. de Vaschetti
26Alfredo…………………………………………………Sig. Cremonini
27Prémire Danseuse………………………………….Mlle. Irmier
28Conductor…………………………………………….Sig. Bevignani
30The surprise at this performance was the acting of Melba. Naturally enough remarkable singing was to be expected, but only singing, nothing more. Melba, however, agreeably shocked her warmest admirers. From her first entrance it was at once seen that she was more mobile, more emotional, in a word she acted as if she intended to act. She sang the Ah Fors e Lui with great finish and beauty of tone, and Sempre Libera was delivered with phenomenal brilliancy, buoyancy and ease. Although she was suffering from a severe neuralgia Madame Melba has never, that is in New York, forgotten herself so thoroughly.
32In the interview with Germont she was affecting; she read the letter very well, and the last act was altogether well planned, although not worked out carefully as to detail. She expressed the agitation, the terrible nerve crises in Violetta's fevered life, but she looked too healthy, and was too muscularly abrupt in her movements for a dying woman. As a whole her conception was excellent, but lacking in repose. It was not a consistent piece of execution, nor did she catch the poetic side of the timeworn heroine.
34That we thus criticise Madame Melba's acting proves that she must have devoted much study to it. Perhaps her Wagner studies are helping her; certainly she has improved. Her singing was faultless; the voice exquisitely ductile and her phrasing of the familiar and pretty melodies of Verdi admirable. She was gowned superbly in the third act.
36The rest of the performance was very uneven. Ancona sang out of tune, and was absurd in his stiff, angular poses. Cremonini was fervid enough, but his singing is so faulty and so uneven that he marred the good impression he created in the opening scenes.
38The production was good, the second act setting being effective. The chorus did not compare with the Mapleton chorus. But even with Melba, or indeed with Patti, La Traviata can never be galvanized. In construction it is hopelessly conventional and its tunes are faded from ill usage by barrel organs.
40This evening Mme. Eames will make her first appearance this season as Marguerite in Faust, and the other characters will be sung by Mmes. Mantelli and Bauermeister and MM. Jean and Edouard de Reszké, Lassalle and Viviani. Signor Bevignani will direct. On Christmas night Carmen, with Mmes. Calvé and Engle and MM. Salignac, Lassalle, de Vries, Bars and Castlemary. Signor Bevignani will conduct. At the Saturday matinée Die Meistersinger will be given by MM. Edouard and Jean de Reszké, Plançon, Bispham, de Vries, d'Aubigné and Bars and Mme. Eames and Bauermeister. Signor Mancinelli will conduct. Lucia di Lammermoor will be sung on Saturday night by Mmes. Melba and Bauermeister and MM. Campanari, Cremonini and Vanni. Signor Bevignani will conduct.
42The performance of Siegfried has been postponed until December 30. Mme. Melba makes then as Brunnhilde her first appearance in German opera and sings this rôle for this first time. Jean and Edouard de Reszké appear for the first time as Siegfried and The Wanderer. Sophie Traubmann, who has been heard here before as the Forest Bird, will sing the numbers of that part, and M. Castelmary will be heard as Fafner. The Mime is to be Herr von Hubbenet, the Alberich David Bispham, and the Erda Mlle. Olitzka. Anton Seidl will conduct the opera for the first time in several years. On Monday night, December 28, Boito's Mefistofele will be sung by Mmes. Calvé and Mantelli and MM. Cremonini and Plançon. On Friday evening Hamlet will be given with Mmes. Calvé and Mantelli and M. Lassalle in the leading rôles. At the Saturday matinée Siegfried will be repeated, and at the Saturday evening performance Tannhäuser will be sung.
44Carreno Sails.
45BERLIN OFFICE THE MUSICAL COURIER, December 21, 1896.
46Carreño sails from Bremen to-day on the Aller. O. F.
48O WING to the strikes now prevalent in Hamburg no steamer is to sail from there on December 26, the date originally set for Madame Carreño's departure for America. A committee representing the Manuscript Society of New York will meet Madame Carreño on arrival of the steamer.
50Second Arion Concert.
51THE second concert of the Arion Society, Julius Lorenz director, took place in the society's hall on Sunday evening last, the 20th inst. Frau Georgine von Januschowsky and Emil Fischer were the soloists.
53The chorus was heard in a capella choruses by Donati, arrangements by Mr. Lorenz and Ottomar Neubner, and with orchestra in a chorus of Meyer-Olbersleben. The a capella work was exquisite in quality and nuance. Mr. Lorenz is keeping this society at high pitch and exacts from it the most finished and intelligent tonal effects.
55The Arions sing as with one voice, and that under the most sympathetic, intelligent control.
57The orchestral work was also good, the conductor showing unusual vigor and reserve in his work.
59Alice Verlet at Bagby's.—A "musical morning" of more than usual interest was given at the Waldorf on Monday, December 21. Mr. Bagby has the happy faculty of combination and arrangement, always sure to please the musically artistic "inner four hundred" who hail with delight "those goods the gods provide."
61He was particularly fortunate in securing for this event Mlle. Alice Verlet, of the Opéra Comique, Paris, who adds hosts of admiring friends to her list upon every appearance. She is a petite, fascinating French girl, with a rare voice, full, flexible and sympathetic.
63She has culture, a large style, maturity and powers seldom found in one so young. Her firmly sustained notes, careful phrasing, flowing grace, and just dramatic conception of the rôles she essays, win for her the enthusiastic applause of her listeners.
65The shadow song, Dinorah, Meyerbeer, exquisitely given, was followed by Massenet's Entrée de Manon and the bird song from Luthier de Crémone, of Jeno Hubay, in which the peculiarly clear, bird-like qualities of her rich and lovely voice were heard to admirable advantage.
67Cable to "The Tribune."
68IT is reported that Herr Otto Floersheim, the Berlin critic of The Musical Courier, of New York, will be dignified with the honorary title of professor upon the occasion of the coming birthday of the emperor, which will occur on January 27.
70Musical Art Society Concert.
71THE first concert this season of the Musical Art Society, Frank Damrosch director, took place on Thursday evening last, the 17th inst., in Carnegie Hall. Short choral numbers of Brahms, Cornelius and Leopold Damrosch completed a program which had for its main features the great Missae Papae Marcelli of Palestrina, sung by the chorus, and the sixth of Johann Sebastian Bach's Concerti Grossi—a now obsolete combination—written for two violas, two violas da gamba, violoncello, violin and harpsichord.
73The chorus, from the standpoint of tonal beauty, delicate precision and a smooth control of the light and sombre in vocal color, was everything to be desired. This is a very exquisite vocal body, but it is a body in which the passionless contrapuntal weavings of the ingenious Middle Ages have seemed to stamp out all freedom or temperamental glow. It cannot break away with any convincing satisfaction from the methodic ecclesiastical drone. This was painfully evident in the Sturmwind of Cornelius, in which, alack! there was no more genuine "Sturm" than in the gentle breath of a summer night. But with a chorus which gives us in such remarkable perfection the first flowers of the medieval school we must not be too captious on the score of versatility.
75The Palestrina mass was sung very beautifully. It is today principally of historic interest, and to sustain interest in the modern musical mind—even the religious mind—should be heard in the hushed, dim atmosphere of an Old World church, chanted by sexless voices and not delivered to you by modern young men and women in evening clothes straight from an obtrusive platform. As the finished development of a period, however, it was well chosen by Mr. Damrosch, 'proved a grateful lesson to many, and was most artistically sung.'
77The Bach concerto had less virtue in its revival. We can have Bach quite satisfactorily in instrumental clothes which are in vogue to-day, and his resuscitation in violas da gamba garments achieved nothing beyond the nasal emphasis of the fact that the viola da gamba was very wisely consigned to limbo many decades ago and had much more harmoniously have been left there.
79The funny little legged instruments buzzed snoringly and made a huge majority wish that the gentleman—Mr. Morris Steinert—who was proudly quoted as having supplied the fiddles—might have quietly effaced himself with his worthless possessions. There ought to have been a harpsichord in the score, but Mr. Wm. C. Carl gave organ instead. Bach hops on gaily and correctly in this work destined for a Brandenburg duke of 1721, who liked better—the composer probably knew—to order music than to listen to it.
81The one Bachian episode in the work worth the treasuring is the adagio for solo violas which was played by Messrs. Sam and Nahan Franko, very much more musically by Mr. Nahan Franko. In this Bach repeats his broad, melodic idea of the air from his suite in D and the delicate trill embellishments are identical.
83But there is no merit per se in the reproduction of a work of this kind. Age has virtue only when it teaches youth something it does not know or has forgotten. The hive of bees set forth by the Steinert collection of violas da gamba merely confirmed the fact that Mr. Steinert was no true friend to the defunct part of Bach, and Mr. Frank Damrosch not much of a friend to either.
85Kaltenborn-Beyer-Hane String Quartet.—This organization had a great success at the Carl organ recital on Saturday afternoon, and at Bagby's Waldorf musicale, Monday morning; so much so that it immediately led to the booking of dates for a number of social functions. They have also been secured for the artists' recital of the Amateur Musical Club, of Brooklyn, for Monday afternoon, February 15, 1897.
87Carlotta Desvignes in Town.—Carlotta Desvignes, the contralto, is in New York for a few days, after a most successful tour with Camilla Urso. She will set out again with Mme. Urso on, the 28th inst., and complete her tour by the end of January.
89Carl's Xmas Organ Recital.—At the Xmas organ recital by Wm. C. Carl on Saturday afternoon last the church was packed to the doors with a large and fashionable audience. Mr. Carl played several selections appropriate to the Christmas season, which proved to be very attractive. The pièce de résistance was his own Fantasia on a Welsh air, and he was rewarded with recalls and tremendous applause.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.