Scan 5
Musical Courier 1897-07-14: Vol 35 Iss 906, 1897
50 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 6. See the scan on archive.org.
1occurs in such great abundance in the first scenes in the garret room of Rudolf and Marcell. When these same utterances, however, are sung, and even rapidly sung, as they are in Puccini's La Bohème, and when they are accompanied with modern orchestration, they are lost entirely, and hardly a smile flitted across the audience during all the banter and word jolling that goes on in that top floor icy cold room when Rudolf's new drama is given to feed the stove.
3The only other delightful scene of this first act, the scene in which Mimi loses her latchkey but finds her lover, a scene so masterly described by Murger, is lost to the audience's sight, for as the candles of both lovers are extinguished by the draft, they are exactly where Moses was when the light went out, and so, of course, is the audience, unless it belongs to that enlightened portion who have read the book before they went to the performance.
5The second act, picture, scene, or whatever you want to call it, deals with the Christmas Eve happenings in front of the Café Momus. Folk life, the vendors' exclamations the children's doings are vividly enough represented and depicted, but the drama is not furthered; in fact there is little or no action at all in this act, and even the jealousy scene between Musette and Marcell, which takes place above the head of Alcindo, but is treated as mere by-play, is lost in the general hullabaloo of the Christmas Eve street scene.
7The third act is perfectly tedious in the greater first half in which absolutely nothing happens in the way of dramatic action, but the separation scene between Rudolf and Mimi at the close of the act just saves it from being absolutely and irrevocably tedious. This act is musically also the weakest of the four.
9In the last act Mimi comes home to the garret room to die in true Camille fashion, only Camille dies ever so much more aesthetically and even more touchingly, and she has not treated us and our nerves to her harrassing cough for three acts out of a possible four, as does the poor forlorn Mimi and her priggish lover Rudolf. He in fact does not elicit our sympathy at all, for he behaves in the third act like a very cad.
11I saw and spoke to Leoncavallo after the performance of Puccini's La Bohème, and although he was naturally rather chary in his remarks about his rival's work, he managed to give me to understand that dramatically his own treatment of the same subject is vastly superior to that of the collaborators of the text of Puccini's opera. I believe it, for Leoncavallo is just as good a poet and dramatist as he is a composer.
13Musically the work of Puccini, who is called the first of the Italian verists, was also a disappointment to me. I don't mean to say that he is without either talent or learning, but he is really disappointing. There are several numbers in his work which make you think that he has superior invention, such for instance as the beginning of the love duet between Rudolf and Mimi in the first act; but the inspiration which seemed to rise up like a whirlwind dies out suddenly like a flash in the pan, and the love scene comes to an end without having attained that musical climax which you expect and are longing for. There are several such attempts and short spasms of thematic productiveness, but on the whole the invention is either flagging or trivial in the extreme.
15The orchestration is the characteristic one of the modern Italian school, with a superabundance of the use of the harp. Now there is really nothing in the entire music with the single and by no means praiseworthy exception of the over use of consecutive fifths. For entire acts Puccini abuses this not very pleasing harmonic device. If a composer, to gain certain effects, makes use of the forbidden progression, as for instance Grieg and other Northerners are in the habit of doing, I am the last man to object to such a proceeding. But if a man writes only in fifths for stretches at the time, the thing becomes nauseating, and if these fifths are given out by trumpets, as Puccini does in the beginning of the second act, they grow even ear-splitting, and they made me so nervous that I could hardly stay in my seat.
17The performance of La Bohème by the personnel of the Royal Opera was on the whole a very satisfactory one. Vocally, especially fine was the tenor Naval in the part of the poet Rudolf. His acting was also very affecting in the final death scene of his sweetheart, Mimi, who was impersonated by Frau Herzog. Of course she was very sympathetic, as she always is, but still I have admired her much more in other roles than in this one, and the continuous coughing seemed to have an unpleasant effect upon the voice, which was not as brilliant as it usually appears. Fr. Dietrich was the other excellent soprano of the cast, and acted the part of the fickle but on the whole very good natured Musette convincingly. There is no alto part in the opera. Baptist Hoffmann was more than satisfactory, both vocally and histironically, in the part of the easy going but highly jealous painter Marcell, while Bachmann as Schaunard, and Krasa as Collin, completed a cast in which Moedlinger impersonated the landlord Bernhard, and Herr Alma and Schmidt the minor parts of Parpignol and Alcindor.
19Praise is due to Herr Musikdirektor Steinmann, who had prepared the work for performance, and who conducted with zeal and accuracy. He is not a man of inspiration, not a refined conductor, but he has routine, and that is something too, especially if you have to conduct a new and heterogenous summer orchestra, such as is assembled at Kroll's nowadays. Tetzlaff's mise-en-scène was as effective and carefully gotten up as usual, especially the lively pictures and folklife scene in front of the Café Momus and the snow-covered scene at the Barrière d'Enfer.
21The success of Puccini's La Bohème, which was not an undisputed one at the première, was perhaps less enthusiastic, but also an unhissed one, at the first repetition, and at this performance, which I witnessed, the composer was called before the curtain two or three times after each of the four acts of his work.
23At the Theatre des Westens Boetel, the Hamburg tenor, whom some of you may remember from his New York appearances at the Bowery German opera of six or seven years ago, has opened up a short "guesting" stagione. I did not hear him in Trovatore, but night before last he made his appearance as Chapelon in Adam's delightful opera, Le Postillon de Lonjumeau. Boetel's voice, a pure lyric tenor, has remained unimpaired, and he still gives out his ringing high C in full chest notes, not chest nuts, although one is tempted to use that word in writing of his encore piece, Abt's Gute Nacht du Mein Herzige Kind. I noted with pleasure that Boetel is now singing and acting with much more refinement than he used to display in former years.
25Miss Triebel showed good coloratura in the part of Magdalen; Herr Kirchner was amusing, but not sufficiently sonorous as Bijou, and Fourness was not a bad Marquis. Chorus and orchestra fought valiantly under Thienemann's baton.
27The Theatre des Westens will bring out next week as a novelty Spinelli's opera, A Basso Porto.
29Death has removed from this mundane sphere one of the nicest and most genial young musicians I ever met. After a not prolonged but very painful illness there died, day before yesterday, Theodore Krelle, viola player of the Royal orchestra, aged thirty-four. He was one of those rare minds who really have no enemies and whose universal kindness and amiability gain them innumerable friends. Krelle was musically highly talented also, and among his staunchest friends and admirers was Joseph Joachim. The funeral will take place this afternoon at 6 o'clock. May he rest in peace!
31Numerous were the visitors to the Berlin office of The Musical Courier during the last few days. There was David Mannes, the violinist, who came with Misses Bucklin and Cann, two young violinists recommended to me by my old friend "Bob" Thallon, alias "the Beethoven of Brooklyn." The young ladies, as well as Mr. Mannes himself, intend to make good use of their summer vacation by studying the violin, the ladies with Professor Kruse and Mr Mannes with Professor Halir, whom he will accompany to Marienbad for that purpose. Howard Brockway, the composer, called and played me some of his latest and quite beautiful works for piano, as well as a very interesting suite for orchestra, which he has just finished. Another American composer who called was Edward Schneider, of San Francisco. Then there was Mrs. S. M. McMillan, of Springfield, Ohio, with her young son Francis. Furthermore, Miss Marie Louise Goggan, from Galveston, Tex., who intends to study the piano under Professor Barth at the Royal High School for Music. Mrs. Alice Liebling called, together with Miss Newhouse, from Pennsylvania. I was glad to shake hands once more after an interval of five years with Mr. Fritz Hirschhorn, of New York, and I missed the call of Dr. Frank L. Todd, of Pittsburg, Pa., who came to-day while I was out for dinner. O. F.
33Paris Notes.
35MME. TERESA TOSTI is a vocal teacher in Paris who makes a specialty of the very important feature of German Lieder. Poet and artist by nature, she makes of the poem an all important part of the song. In fact, she has been called the Poetess of Song.
37Slurring of the words or indifference to their meaning is never found among her pupils. This being the basis of expression, her pupils cannot sing without it. It must be added that being a prominent concert singer, and in much demand for her own work, she does not waste time on pupils who possess no fitness, nor does she take them.
39In choosing pupils she has also the faculty of deciding by the timbre, not by the existing compass, whether the voice be contralto or mezzo soprano, lyric or dramatic. This saves much loss of time and possible harm to the voice. She has sung often in Vienna, Dresden, Leipsic and other Continental cities, and has been spoken to in reference to going to America. As may be imagined, she is a relative of the well-known song writer, although she does not vaunt this as a distinction, saying truly that individuals stand on their own merits.
41Madame Tosti leaves Paris soon to make a tournée in Germany at various watering places. She has given over 500 concerts alone, and with the pianist Rudolf Panzer. On the Continent she has done much for composers of worth insufficiently known. Thus MacDowell, Delines, Vidal, Fehnenberger, Godard, Holmès and Chaminade have been made welcome guests in many a corner of Europe by the tasteful style and musical enthusiasm of Madame Tosti.
43The singer is especially favored by poets, and numbers among her friends Sudermann, Wilbrandt, Paul Heyse, Wilhelm Jordan, the poet of the Nibelungen, Gustav Freytag, Auerbach, Berthold, &c.
45During the season we will have the opportunity of hearing of the actual work of this studio. For engagements see address, page 8 of this paper.
47Mrs. Walden Pell's last musical at home, as many remarked, "was the work of an angel!" So thoughtful for so many, so unthinking for self, so charitable, so sincerely kind and disinterested and making pleasure and benefit for so many—that sort of thing is the work of angels, sure enough, not of ordinary musicians or society people.
49Mrs. Pell is tuned to better things than either of these two classes, while modestly making her life circle. Born of musical saints, she may truly be said to be an abbess in the order musical. All her life has been devoted to the Master's service in this special art, and as such Mrs. Pell is a unique figure in musical history. The scores of musical people who have found their first impulse under her hospitable roof testify to this, and strange to relate, instead of histories of ingratitude, selfishness and abandonment to relate, as is the case with most philanthropists, this excellent
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