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WITH MUSICAL SUPPLEMENT.
With which is incorporated THE KEYNOTE.
V O L . XXIX. No. 6.
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill at 3 East Fourteenth Street. New York, August 5,1899.
GRAU ON ENGLISH OPERA.
IN an interesting talk recently Maurice
* Grau, the famous impresario, defined
his views on the matter of producing- grand
opera in English. "If,"hesaid, "national
opera means operas by the best composers
of whatever nationality, sung in English
by the best artists available, of whatever
nationality, then I am so heartily in favor
of it that I would want to try it in America
the next season. I would even put on
'Lohengrin' in English. But circumstances
won't permit. It's all right in theory,
but not in practice. When you come to
sift the objections to it you get down final-
ly to just one, and that is that the artists,
as a rule, don't wish to sing in English.
I dare say that if we were to ask Mme.
Nordica, an American, born in Maine, to sing
grand opera in English she would object.
So, doubtless, would all the other singers
whose native tongue is English. It doesn't
appear to be so much that English is hard
to sing as it is that it is considered beneath
an artist's dignity to sing grand opera in
English. They seem to feel that it would
be somehow a degradation."
" But why on earth should it be a degra-
dation to sing in English?" he was asked.
" I suppose it must be because, un-
happily, English is not the native language
of grand opera. Englishmen and Ameri-
cans don't write grand opera. (?) As soon as
the English-speaking race begins to pro-
duce successful grand opera then the
stigma . on the language in the minds of
singers will begin to disappear.
" A t one time I suggested that 'The
Bohemian Girl' be put on in English. The
artists didn't object to the idea violently,
but when Jean de Reszke mentioned the
mattefr to the late Sir Augustus Harris,
that man told Jean that if he heard him
sing ' The Bohemian Girl' in English he
would never speak to him again."
"But, aren't you bound by tradition to
the old operas? If even so promising
a composer as E. A. MacDowell or any
other American were to offer you a good
grand opera would you produce it?"
"Produce it? Of course we'd produce it
if it were so good that we felt confidence
in it. Aren't we even now bringing out
an opera that is practically new, De Lara's
'Messaline?' And, by the way, if it goes,
we shall bring it out in America with Calve
in the principal part which Mr. De Lara
has agreed to rewrite for her as it
originally was arranged for mezzo-soprano.
We may bring out Jules Massenet's ' Her-
odiade,' too. An American composer,
whose name you know well, asked me if I
would put on a one-act grand opera if he
wrote one for Calve. I told him, of course,
I would if it were a good one. But he
never came around with it.
"But there haven't been five suc-
cessful grand operas brought out in the
last thirty years—really no great suc-
cesses since 'Carmen.'
However, it
isn't operas that the public goes to
hear; it is the artists. Put on ' Faust'
with an inconspicuous cast and you get a
small house. Put on a poor opera—I name
no names—with a brilliant cast, and the
house is crowded. And it is the most
useful opera manager who knows what the
public wants and gives it to them, for the
public itself is the best manager of all, and
the man who sets himself up to give it
something that it doesn't want on the
ground that it ought to want it, is foolish.
"Yet if I had to-day the ambition that I
had twenty years ago I might try to put on
grand opera in English in spite of the
prejudice against it, for I have such strong
faith in it, and it seems a pity that such
powerful supporters of grand opera as
England and America should not have it
in their own language. It has been tried,
of course, without startling success, but
times change, and I firmly believe that we
are coming around to it."
*
/GEORGE HENSCHEL, the eminent
^*-* conductor, singer and accompanist,
is to make his debut in Vienna next season
as an opera composer, with a work entitled
"Nubia."
*
IR ARTHUR SULLIVAN'S musical
memoirs are being prepared by Ar-
thur Lawrence under the supervision of
the composer himself, and will be pub-
lished shortly. In addition to interesting
particulars about his own works the book
will present a general picture of the Eng-
lish musical world of to-day. Sullivan has
known all the notable figures associated
with present musical activity. Sir Arthur
has demonstrated recently that he pos-
sesses practical merits in other directions
S
$2.00 PER YEAR.
SINGLE COPIES 10 CENTS
than musical composition. He has invent-
ed a device known as the "Sullivan Safety
Shaft," an arrangement which, when at-
tached to a carriage, allows its occupants
to release the horse in case of accident.
*
I TP in Herkimer County there is a paper
^
called the Citizen, to which is "at-
tached" a society reporter who would make
his mark as musical critic for some of our
local papers. Writing of a home wedding
which occurred recently in that locality he
interjects: "Precisely at 9 o'clock, Miss
Bertha Bucklin began playing a violin solo
accompanied on the piano by the bride's
sister, Miss Irene Ford, a soft, dreamy
composition, with a delicious recurrent
theme highly suggestive of love's sweet
endearments and blessed entanglements,
and continued playing until the ceremony
was finished, ending with a long, high but
soft tone of marvelous beauty, long drawn
out as if the artist and her wonderful violin
shrank from breaking the spell of the mo-
ment."
We learn, further, that there are also
clever parsons up that section, for the
"Rev. Mr. Atwood used no book but seemed
to make up the ceremony as he went along,
a feat few parsons would dare emulate;
biit it was soon over, and Miss Ford played
in fine style the Lohengrin bridal chorus."
A man who can write in such a poetic
style would be a decided acquisition to our
metropolitan journals.
*
EPORT speaks of a contemplated ef-
fort to give festival concerts at the
Exposition in Paris, next year, with an
enormous orchestra on the model laid down
by Berlioz in his " Treatise on Modern In-
strumentation." Should the orchestra be
identical with that of Berlioz it will con-
tain 465 instruments, divided as follows:
One hundred and twenty violins, 40 violas,
45 'celli, 18 double basses (three strings),
15 other double basses (four strings), 4
octo-basses, 6 large flutes, 4 third flutes, 4
piccolos, 6 oboes, 6 corni Inglesi, 5 saxa-
phones, 16 bassoons, 15 clarinets, (various),
16 horns, 8 trumpets, 6 cornets, 12 trom-
bones, 3 ophicleides, 2 bass-tubas, 30 harps,
30 pianofortes, 1 organ, 8 pairs of kettle-
drums, 6 drums, 3 bass drums, 4 pairs of
cymbals, 6 triangles, 6 sets of bells, 12
pairs of cymbals, 2 great bells, 2 gongs, 4
pavilions Chinois.
R