Scan 6
Musical Courier 1898-05-18: Vol 36 Iss 950, 1898
83 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
1SOME CHICAGO ADVERTISEMENTS.
3HARRIET DEMENT PACKARD,
4SOPRANO.
5Address Musical Courier, 224 Wabash Ave., Chicago.
7FREDERIC LILLEBRIDGE,
8PIANIST;
9Mrs. Charlotte Lachs-Lillebridge,
10SOPRANO.
11Available for Concerts, Recitals, &c.
12For terms and dates address
13THE MUSICAL COURIER,
14224 Wabash Avenue,
15CHICAGO, ILL.
17BESSIE O'BRIEN,
18MEZZO SOPRANO.
19MARCHESI.
20ORATORIO, RECITALS, MUSICALES.
21Address care MUSICAL COURIER office,
22226 Wabash Avenue, Chicago,
23or 130 West Mason Street, Springfield, Ill.
25MARY WOOD CHASE,
26Concert Pianiste.
27For terms, dates, &c., address
281000 Steinway Hall, Chicago, Ill.
30ESTELLE ROSE, …Contralto,
31Oratorio, Concert, Recital.
32Steinway Hall,
33Chicago, Ill.
35SPIERING QUARTET.
37any of them over in the same company, and can suit them to all assemblies from the parlor of a young ladies' school to the dinner table of a priest. He is a wonderful man.
39Nevada's performance of Lakmé was thoroughly enjoyed, and certainly a success. The house was a brilliant one. She was recalled several times, and after every act. It is a very difficult role to sustain, and still more difficult to do justice to. It is full of possibilities, but does not "play itself." "Pourquoï" and the "Clochette" song were gems of vocal color and facility, and the third act aroused much enthusiasm. She was touchingly gay, sad and loving by turn and always charming, a very petite, litesome and human goddess. Her remarkably pure, light voice lends itself to the pearly Delibès enunciations, and she has the merit of never forcing it. She abuses, however, the holding of high upper notes, which, while beautiful in themselves, become monotonous the instant they show their intention. If Berlioz were in the house he surely would cry out, "Stop that, stop that, madam, it is not in the print!" Nothing would have stopped him. She will sing Mignon and Mimi in Puccini's "La Bohème." Her accent? No foreigner has ever succeeded so far in singing French correctly. Some are worse, some better than others; no one has yet done it. It remains to be seen what fruits the Yersin system will bear. It is time they were showing something!
41Miss Adams is to sing "Romeo and Juliette," "Faust," "Philemon and Baucis," "Micaëla," the Queen in the "Huguenots," "Eurydice" and "Rigoletto" in Italian at Covent Garden. Saléza will be her Romeo, the most typical Romeo she says that she has ever seen.
43Calvé's voice was never so exquisitely beautiful as it is now. It seems to be more crystalline, flute-like and spiritual than ever before. There are moments in "Sapho" when it does not seem like a human voice. It is purity itself. Her pianos are marvels of tone, and she detaches the notes and colors them as no one else of the present day. She is in every way the queen of the lyric stage. Her diction is exceptional. In fact, she has so perfect a union of exceptional qualities that people do not realize them separately.
45"Sapho" is having a brilliant triumph in Milan also, it seems. Massenet is in high spirits. The papers are all talking. A Mlle. Bellincioni is the Sapho down there.
47The tenor Saléza will sing Jean to Calvé's Sapho in London. He has given up his New York contract on account of the war, and is at present playing supplemental "Carmen" representations here, the result of his success in a trial engagement. In London Calvé will sing in "Mefistofele," "Faust," "Hamlet," "Carmen," "Cavalleria" and "Navarraise."
49The administration of M. Carré at the Opéra Comique continues energetic in measures and attractive in results. Saville's engagement finished, Mlle. Salambiani continues in "Traviata," Saléza and Bouvet in "Carmen." "Fervaal" is in rehearsal. M. Bertin, who is busy as regisseur, says that he never rehearsed a piece of such complex difficulty. The representation was intended for next week, but is postponed, owing to the première of the "Prophète" at the Opéra. "L'Angelus" is the name of a piece read and accepted this week. A French version of "Hänsel and Gretel," by Catulle Mendes, is talked of, also William Radclif's "Louise," by Charpentier, "Daliba," by Padelilhe and "Beaucoup de Bruit pour rieu," by Paul Puget.
51As announced, Massenet's "Cendrillon" is in hand for the opening of the new Opéra Comique house.
53A revival of Reyer's "Sigurd" is on at the Opéra, Mlle. Breval as Brünnhilde. The "Cloche de Rhin," by Samuel Rousseau, will be given two weeks later, and the "Prophète" in between.
55***
57At the Comédie Française work is equally active with the Academies of Music. The American connoisseur knows M. Jules Claretie, its distinguished chef, as well as the French one; for his is a personality that penetrates. His position and merits have made an international character of M. Jules Claretie. In France he is a leader in thought and activity outside of theatrical work.
59The next "event" in the history of "The House" will be the Corneille anniversary, June 6. Works relative to the master dramatist, to Molière and Racine likewise, are being ordered and examined with the view of a suitable program for the occasion. The last production, "La Martyre," from the pen of M. Jean Richepin, is at present the topic of conversation. It is a drama in five acts of verse.
61The "Martyre" in the case is a heathen Roman woman who becomes a "Christian"—as most women become most anything—through love for a man! Such was the "conversion" of Thais, by the way, and such have been many other conversions, and such will be many more conversions to the end of time. For man is woman's life, past, present and to come, her world, her cause, her action first and last. She will sell her soul or buy it, gain the world or lose it, espouse cause or repudiate it, follow or stand still, go up and down, seek heaven or hell, become heathen or Christian, queen or beggar, outcast or bigot, saint or sinner, after the leading of the man she loves! It is right that it should be so, it is part of the plan, it is legitimate instinct. It is so, it was so, it will be so till—"Love is done."
63A radical error in the title and its bearing, however, does not seem to occur to anybody. Anything in the form of cant is always taken without question, this with the rest. In what sense is she "martyr"? She falls in love with a Christian apostle (as did Thais), and on the pretext of being converted follows the poor man around until she gets him into trouble with his sect, and he is taken out and crucified by them as an apostate. She in turn is struck (by a jealous lover) while embracing the crucifix on which the apostle is hung, and so is proclaimed "martyr" by—the playwright! one of two readings
64A radical error in the title and its bearing, however, does not seem to occur to anybody. Anything in the form of cant is always taken without question, this with the rest. In what sense is she "martyr"? She falls in love with a Christian apostle (as did Thais), and on the pretext of being converted follows the poor man around until she gets him into trouble with his sect, and he is taken out and crucified by them as an apostate. She in turn is struck (by a jealous lover) while embracing the crucifix on which the apostle is hung, and so is proclaimed "martyr"—by—the playwright! one of two readings
66But to be martyr she should have remained true to her pagan faith and renounced her lover for it. Instead of that she followed the lover and renounced the faith. Not only so, but she seduced the poor apostle on the pretext of going to Christ with him. Caught in her perfumed palace by his indignant comrades of sterner stuff he is dragged out and hung, of course. Because she gets struck in the mêlée and the apostle makes the sign of the cross over her with his blood and calls it "baptism" does not make her a Christian by a long way, nor by a still longer way a martyr!
68Not that there is anything wrong in a woman's giving up family, people, country and religion for the love of a man. On the contrary, she should do so when she loves him well and he loves her. It is the duplicity, the pretext, the hypocrisy which surrounds it which marks it as a base and selfish act, not a martyrdom. In her entire life there was not an action that was not prompted by common selfishness. She wanted her way, and she got it.
70Martyrs are not people who do what they want to do, but those who do what they do not want to do, through a sense of duty to a higher cause.
72In reality Thais was much more of a martyr than this woman. She really thought she was being converted. Although her idea of heavenly things was wholly the influence of the man she loved, she sacrificed her sumptuous Alexandrian life and endured terrible suffering and privation to seek the Christ and the God of his faith, and because he said so. Not only so, but at the end she gave up her love and her lover to follow those frightful old hooded nuns into their prison, there to endure still greater privation, all in the firm conviction that she was going to the God and the heaven of his faith, and because he said so. It cost her her life, poor girl, but although it was all earthly love, although love and religion became so mixed up in her mind that she did not know where one ended or the other began, she at least sacrificed for the faith she had and renounced for it. In so much she was the martyr, in two senses, indeed, to love and to the faith to which it led her. The other woman was a baggage pure and simple, selfish to the core, self-seeking, insincere, hypocritical and again selfish from first to last—in no sense a lover, as she sought her own good to his harm, which is not possible in true love, and in no sense a martyr, as she neither sacrificed nor renounced for either love or religion.
74People will never learn to make these distinctions in the character of women, least of all men, whose impression of women is wholly personal and wholly stupid consequently.
76"La Fauvette du Temple" is the name of an opera comique in three acts by M. Andree Messager. "La Reine Tlammette," a piece by Catulle Mendes, which has been in rehearsal at the Odéon, will not be given before October. A very successful piece, called "l'Amour Mouillé," which at its début was played more than a hundred times in succession, has been put on at the Athenee Comique in place of "Le Geisha." It has sentiment, farce, a droll story of a drowned statue of love coming to life as a very wet prince, and charming music by a M. Varney.
78M. Antoine is rehearsing a piece which promises to be interesting, treating an episode in the life of Marechal Ney, with the immortal date "1815." "Marechal Chau- dron" is the title of an opera comique, in three acts, at the Gaité, music by P. Lacombe. It is a history of brigands, and laid in Portugal.
80A comment on the feeling of the French capital in regard to morals is found in one of the popular plays now running. A poor but honest music teacher is really loved by a duke, rich, but equally honest. On the announcement of the fact the intentions of the young couple are misconstrued or doubted at first hearing by eight men of the girl's friends, and so many more of his—her father, brother, lover, landlord, priest, uncle and music teacher among them. Wrong instead of right was taken as the matter, of course, in every case.
82There is trouble in Vienna over the suppression of the claque which it seems involves the question of applause in general, in such a way that the suppression is little bet-
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.