Music

FOREMOST among the “ attractions ” of the Maretzek opera troupe, of which we have lately had a two weeks’ “ season ” in Boston, stands, of course, Madame Lucca, in public esteem, as perhaps also in real merit. The more we hear and see of this wonderful woman, the more are we struck by the unmistakable, genuine power and versatility of her genius. That her genius is of a realistic type, and that other artists have the power of carrying us along with them into a higher ideal atmosphere, is undeniable, Her idealizing faculty is comparatively small. -She seems to conceive the characters she impersonates as concrete individuals rather than as artistic abstractions, or the embodiments of a moral or æsthetic principle. Her individuality is very decided, and in all her various parts she is distinctly herself, though never obtrusively or egotistically so, for self-consciousness never makes itself felt in her. Me are not forced to feel that she is Lucca and not Margherita, Zerlina, or Leonora ; neither do we feel that the person before us on the stage is Margherita, Zerlina, or Leonora viewed through and brought to a focus by Madame Lucca’s aesthetic spectacles. She has the peculiar power of placing herself in the position of the characters she impersonates ; and although all her actions evidently spring spontaneously from the instinctive promptings of her own nature, yet her genius has that convincing power which makes us unhesitatingly accept them as appropriate to the character and situation in which she stands before us. Thus her great versatility, her power of being so entirely different in different characters, seems to arise less front voluntary objectivity of conception than from a large and spherically developed nature. Some one has said that, as charity covers a multitude of sins, so could genius almost he gauged by the number and gravity of defects it could make bearable. There is surely some inkling of truth in this as in other apparent paradoxes. The defects that Madame Lucca’s genius is called upon to excuse are by no means few or small, and sometimes, as, for instance, at the words, “ I ceppi, la, morte istessa non mi dan terror,” in the prison scene in Faust, where she most unaccountably runs four beats into two, her genius is hard put to it. But in spite of the imperfections of her vocal method, despite her defective elocution, which (apart from a natural lisp that we would not take into account) is often bad, she has yet the heaven-sent and world-compelling power of placing before us a great reality in all its convincing force. Her greatness lies not in the purely artistic faculty of delighting the æsthetic sense by perfect finish and harmony of outline, and light and shade, nor in that simian power of mimicry that proves, as Browning says, “ The histrionic truth is in the natural lic,” ¹ but in the indescribable power she has of bringing us face to face with something that is stronger and more real than ourselves, something that, criticise and cavil at as we may, we must how before and reverence and acknowledge as divine in its essence. “ Qu’est-ee que le genie ? ” cries bombast out of the mouth of M. Montlucar, “ n’est-ce pas l’étincelle électrique qu’on ne pent saisir, bleu qu elle parcourt l’immensité ? ’ Every fool seems somehow to have the faculty of putting, at least, one truth into a nutshell. For a more detailed notice of the peculiar excellences of her various impersonations we would refer the reader to what we wrote about her last year.² Our opinions have only been intensified by time.

Mademoiselle Ilma di Murska stands in strong contrast to Madame Lucca in almost every point. To a beautiful, fine-drawn voice of the highest and purest soprano quality she unites a degree of vocal training that is positively marvellous. Her voice, although the traditional “ tear ” is perhaps wanting in it, is of a peculiarly fine, light quality, reminding one in delicacy and flexibility of the tones of Wieniawski’s violin ; a perfect voix blanche, as the French have it, elastic, sweet, and without breaks throughout the scale. A deficiency of resonance in the lower register tends to make all but the hightest soprano róles not entirely repaying to her, but the graceful ease with which she soars to the higher limits of the human voice tits her for realizing the composer’s ideal (a thing, by the way, not often done nowadays) in the florid, light soprano parts of the Mozart, Bellini, and Rossini operas, as well as such róles as Meyerbeer’s Diuorah, and the Queen in Les Huguenots, that of Eudoxie in Halévy’s Juice, or Gounod s Juliet. Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni seems as a whole not well suited to her voice, especially in the concerted numbers, where the want of force in her lower register is too often painfully felt. We must, however, emphatically except from this stricture her singing of Mi tradi quell' alma. Her rendering of this superb and almost unreasonably difficult song was worthy of being noted down in the brightest of red letters in the diaries of all who heard her. Such perfect phrasing, such judgment in taking breath, such absolute purity of intonation even in the most trying and adventurous modulations, together with such passionate intensity of expression, and perfection of artistic good taste, are very, very rarely brought to bear upon any song, least of all upon such a song as this. And all this in a perfectly light and clastic timbre clair, instead of the sombre tones of despair and jealousy in which some singers give voice to the lament of poor love-stricken Elvira, as if she were a foiled Medea at the very least.

In La Sonnambula, Mademoiselle di Murska’s Amina is the most perfect impersonation we have heard since we heard Miss Kellogg in the part in 1804. Miss Kellogg had, even then, the advantage of a more tear-provoking voice and more marked dramatic capacity; for Mademoiselle di Murska’s distinct histrionic power, apart from a certain weird intensity of expression which is an integral part of her physiognomy, is not of any very high order. But a superiority in phrasing, a general vocal facility, remains on Mademoiselle di Murska’s side (it must be remembered that the performance of Miss Kellogg’s that we refer to was ten years ago, when she was almost a novice). Certainly, Mademoiselle di Murska’s rendering of Come per me sereno, Sopra it sen la man mi posa, and Ah, non credea, was such as to satisfy all artistic demands and win all hearts. In the last-named song we must confess to preferring the original simple melody to Madame Malibran’s florid version of the phrase “ Potria novel vigore il pianto mio recarti,” but we suppose that it would be too great a piece of self-abnegation to ask from any singer to stick to Bellini’s text in this famous passage.

In the final Ah, non giunge, precisely the air that the New York papers had most raved about and had led us to expect the greatest things from, we were disappointed. Not that there was too much ornamentation, for the song will bear any amount of florid vocal embroidery ; but that the manner in which Mademoiselle di Murska sang the ornaments took away from the spirit and elan of the piece. It was delicately and gracefully done, but there was a want of breadth of phrasing, and especially of the proper subordination of the separate phrases to the whole melody ; each separate phrase, sometimes even each separate ornament, stood out too plainly and independently by itself. The Germans have a good name for this sort of thing,—Schablonenmusik, sample music. In the duets, as well as in most of the concerted music, Mademoiselle di Murska; had a grievous millstone round her neck in the shape of her wellintentioned hut vocally unwieldy lover. In all the concerted music in the opera, the tenor has the first, and the soprano the second part. The tenor is the voice that is to lead and bear up the soprano. There is an old story of a little bird who wanted to fly higher than all other birds, so he fastened upon the eagle’s head and thus soared above all his astonished comrades. But if the eagle’s wings had been clipped, the little bird’s flight would have been somewhat labored. Mademoiselle di Murska was in much the same predicament. We did not hear her in the Trovatore, neither can we very well imagine her in the part; certainly her assumption of it was a bit of daring after Madame Rudersdorff’s performance of it a few evenings before.

Madame Rudersdorff’s impersonation of Leonora in this opera was indeed a surprise, even to those who, like ourselves, expected great things from her. What of humanity can by any means he thrown into the part of Leonora, Madame Rudersdorff triumphantly threw into it. We had never before imagined Leonora as anything more than a mere insensible bone of contention between a raging tenor and baritone, with the additional misfortune of having very disagreeable music to sing ; but Madame Rudersdorff suddenly revealed her as a woman with a will of her own, and with considerable strong womanly feeling and passion too. Her acting in the garden scene of the second act, when, about to be carried off by the Count and his followers, she sees Manrico coming to her aid, and her enunciation of the phrase, “ E degg to .... e posso crederlo ? Ti veggo a me d' accento ! ” was sublimely conceived, and the conception wonderfully realized. The same may be said of her acting and singing in the prison scene. It was one of the very few really powerful and affecting “ hard deaths ” that we have ever seen on the operatic stage. And withal it never overstepped “ the modesty of nature ” or the bounds of artistic good taste. Her performance of the more ferocious parts of the role was invariably tine and strong ; we would particularly notice her delivery with Signor Tamberlik of that crushing denunciation in the duel scene of the first act. Only hear this passage as given by the two artists, and, to slightly change Browning’s line, “ Who wants fury, has it! ” As Paulina in the Magic Flute, Madame Rudersdorff was one of the few redeeming traits of that remarkable performance, in spite of her evident unfamiliarity with her part. We only regret, that she was not the Donna Anna in the Friday evening’s performance of Don, Giovanni. Madame Lichtmay’s performance of this role, was strong, healthy, and free from all tricks or affectation both in conception and execution, hut it lacked delicacy and artistic refinement. It also suffered from being in German.

In Signor Tamberlik we have a thorough artist, which term means a good deal. His voice, to be sure, is much worn, — let us admit that at once; hut it is still of a beautiful tenor quality, and seems to have lost nothing of its original compass. His delivery is grand and noble, his phrasing perfect, and he sings with a depth of expression that we have never heard surpassed. His elocution is so fine that every word he utters has its full effect. His dramatic power both in singing and acting is unusually great. Sometimes, in the ardor of the moment., he seems to forget that his voice is not what it once was, and is tempted to put a strain upon it that the noble organ, rendered delicate by long use, will hardly bear. Thus in some passages of passionate intensity, such as the famous “ Bell’ alma inamorata,” in Lucia, he almost loses command over his tones. Almost, but never quite. But how long is it since we have had such a tenor on our stage ? The dissatisfaction with his singing that we have, to our great astonishment, heard expressed in many quarters, even among quite musical people, only goes to prove that our public in general greatly lack discrimination in the matter of musical performance. As a rule our musical public does not show such cultivated judgment of the manner in which compositions are performed as they often do of the quality of the compositions themselves. The Italians, who arc as a nation rather poor judges of music (though he it said to their honor that Offenbach opera made a most gigantic fiasco in Naples), are yet most excellent judges of singing. The Germans, on the other hand, although much better judges of music than the Italians, know comparatively little about singing. We think that our public is rather more like the Germans than the Italians in this respect. To take one instance from among many, the manner in which Tamberlik enunciated the word cielo iu the terzetto of maskers in Don Giovanni was something so incomparably finer than anything that we have heard from other tenors on our stage, .is to be beyond comparison. Theodor Wachtel can throw out a high C that will electrify any audience,—a Howard Athenaeum audience even more, if possible, than a Music Hall one. Can Signor Tamberlik give out such a note ? Decidedly not. Something very near it, to be sure, in volume and power, and fully up to it in intensity ; but yet not quite such a note. Give any chorus singer, however uneducated, Wachtel’s physical means and his know ledge of how to produce a tone (pose de voix), and he will give you just such a note as Wachtel’s. But all the vocal power and pose de voix in the world will not enable him to turn a phrase as Signor Tamberlik does. In the stronger passages he is equally superb, and his singing of Di quella pira was the most thrilling rendering of that bloodthirsty song that we have yet heard. His perfection of style and inexhaustible verve add a new and peculiar charm to everything he takes hold of. Even that worn-out old star-company-concert hack Solo, profugo, in Martha became quite worth listening to in his and Monsieur Jamet’s hands, while his singing of Il mio tesoro in Don Giovanni was a musical treat of the very highest order. He made by far the Lest, we had almost said the only very good Don Ottavio we have ever seen. M. Jamet grows steadily in popular favor, and shows himself in all that he does a painstaking artist of a very high rank. His Leporello was particularly fine, and he performed the difficult feat of singing Madamina, if. catalogo e questo with abundant humor and piquancy, and without the faintest taint of coarseness. His Sarastro in the Magic Flute was also extremely good, although a rather heavier and larger calibre of voice is associated with the part.

It seems as if we had succeeded in finding some merits in Mr. Maretzck’s singers. Of the defects of his company we will not speak. The performances were as a rule bad, extremely bad. And the general faultfinding that they have met with shows that our public want something that is good. But if the public expect thoroughly good performances from a troupe in which there is such a galaxy of stars as Madame Lucca, Mademoiselle di Murska, and Signor Tamberlik, they expect what is simply impossible. We already grumble about prices. We want Italian opera as it is given in the first opera-houses in Europe, and are not in the least willing to pay the price for it. Probably the only first-class opera-houses in the world that — we will not say make money but — pay their own expenses are the Covent Garden and Drury Lane houses in London. At these houses Italian opera is given with superb scenery, efficient chorus and orchestra, and stars enough to glut the most astronomical appetite. The price of a stall ticket is one guinea. But we must bear in mind that this is in a city in easy reach of all the star-producing parts of Europe ; that the troupe, when once formed, stays in one place for the whole season ; and that the expense of keeping such a troupe in London is much less than in any large city in America. Our opera troupes have to bring their stars some thousand miles to start with, and then have to travel about the country like an itinerant circus, with travelling expenses that are positively appalling ; have to give operas with very little rehearsing, and set the price of orchestra tickets at four dollars. Their expenses arc vastly larger in proportion to their excellence than those of the London companies, while their receipts are much less. The quality must necessarily be far inferior, and if managers find that opera cannot subsist without almost ruinously expensive stars, of course they will cut down the accessories. If our public would be content to have operatic performances such as are given at, say the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, or the Royal Opera in Dresden (both of which theatres, by the way, look to a government subvention to pay part of their expenses), in which none of the singers are positively great, but in which the whole company are about equally and satisfactorily good, we might have operas given in a thoroughly enjoyable manner, — not so perfectly to be sure as they are at the above-mentioned theatres, for the necessary preparatory rehearsals are impossible with an itinerant troupe, but still superior to anything that we habitually sec in this country. One may travel from one end of Germany to the other without hearing anything so artistically fine in its way as Mademoiselle di Murska’s singing of Mi tradii quell’ alma or Come per me sereno; and one may search all Germany, and France into the bargain, without finding a finer quartette of singers than appeared this season in Martha ; but one would have to look very far among the respectable opera-houses in Europe before hearing a concerted piece so abominably sung —simply through want of rehearsals and the absurd inefficiency of the conductor—as were the quartet In min fè son strani invero in Martha, and the sextet in Don Giovanni (not to mention some other things), at the Boston Theatre by artists some of whom stand in the very first rank among the great singers of the world. Of the deficiencies of orchestra and chorus we will not speak. But let it be said emphatically, that if we want operatic performances with good chorus and orchestra and respectable mise-en-scène we must either payexorbitant prices or else give up the worldrenowned stars; and inversely, that it we insist upon turning up our noses at any company that does not boast two or three stars of the first magnitude, we must be content with execrable performances.

In new sheet-music ³ we gladly welcome some new American reprints of two of Robert Franz’s songs. Of all the German songwriters, Franz seems to us to have brought the Lied to its highest perfection. His natural genius, his poet’s sensibility for everything that is beautiful, his generous and genial progressiveness, which prompts him to accept and make his own all the modem enlargements of musical form and to shun pedantry as something unworthy, yet is kept in cheek by his sense of artistic fitness, refined and cultivated to the highest degree by long and thorough studies in Each mid Handel, all fit him to occupy the almost unique position he does among living song composers. His songs can almost already during his own lifetime claim to be regarded as classics ; certainly as models of poetic sensibility and finished style. Compared with the works in the same form, even of the greatest classic composers, with the songs of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann, his songs do not sulfur in such august neighborhood. Such gems as Horch, wit; still, and Wie des Mondes Abbild, will bear comparison with all that is most perfect in music. Of the latest republications of his songs we notice especially For Somebody, originally written to Pertz’s quite fascinating translation of Burns’s words, but now published, we believe for the first time, with both English and German text, and Vöglein, wohin so schnell, with a very neat translation of Geibel’s words, by the Rev. James Freeman Clarke. We hardly know what to say of these songs, except that we can scarcely imagine anything more perfect in their way, and that we can wish a musician no greater pleasure than that of becoming acquainted with them.

We have before us reprints (with a capital translation of the original German words, by John S. Dwight) of three of Wilhelm Taubert’s children’s songs. However clumsy a failure Taubert has made in some of his larger works, these little songs are thoroughly charming and artistic. The Sparrow and the Thrasher, 'the Boy after Birds, and The Dream of the Shepherd-Boy, are as much nursery songs as Eliot’s fascinating settings of Mother Goose’s Melodies, but, as with Thackeray’s Rose and the Ring and some other things that have been written for the little folks, we should begrudge the nursery an exclusive right to them.

We are also glad to see a new republication of Lucantoni’s easily flowing, melodious duct for soprano and tenor, A Wight in Venice.

Arthur Sullivan’s Give, in spite of a rather too apparent (perhaps only apparent) straining after originality, is a song of considerable power, though rather difficult to sing well on account of the unexpected strangeness of some of the modulations. The song is rather of the Blumenthal type, and has some strong climaxes in it, such as will recommend it to singers. But there is some, to us, very harsh harmony in it.

Love’s Requital, by Virginia Gabriel, has also some exceedingly queer modulations, and is rather vague in melody into the bargain. The song has, however, merit enough to deserve better poetry than the doggerel it is set to.

Campana’s Little Gypsy, and Ganz’s Sing, sweet Bird, might be considered taking by those to whom better things are unpalatable, hut have no distinct merit beyond a certain easily caught singsonginess of melody.

Molloy’s So the Story goes is absolutely drivelling, besides being badly written.

When the Tide comes in, and Dreaming, are among the best things that Harrison Millard has given us, especially the former; but we have yet to see a song of his that comes up to the standard of Waiting.

Concerning Mr. Foster’s solo, duet, and quartet, on a theme of Spohr’s, to the words Jesus, I my Cross have taken,, we can only say that it is really too bad. Not the music, which is exquisite, but its being set to such words. When will the heavenly and the earthly in music be separated by a more marked barrier ?

In piano-forte music,⁴ we would recommend Sidney Smith’s transcription of Rossini’s Soirée-Musicales Tarantella to all those to whom Liszt’s formidable transcription of the same piece presents too many difficulties, as brilliant, playable, and pianist-like.

Teresa Carreño’s Polonaise in B♭ minor is not by any means without considerable merit, and is defaced by fewer Gottsebalky mannerisms than some other of the young pianist’s compositions. It is quite brilliant, and seems to have been written soundly in earnest, showing thorough command over the resources of tinkey-board.

W. Kaffenberger’s Nocturne is a very eccentric little piece in the Tyrolienne or Styrienne vein ; quite broadly put upon the instrument and rather fascinating in parts, but excessively odd in some if its little quirks and quips.