Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
definite plan of work ordetailed system until
he returns from his European vacation. He
will enter upon his new duties September i.
©
An innovation is promised in connection
with the regular summer band concerts
which were inaugurated in Central Park
last Saturday. A proposition has been
made by the People's Choral Union, to pro-
vide, without pay, a body of one thousand
vocalists to give a number of concerts in
connection with the regular force of mu-
sicians at stated periods during the summer.
Last autumn five hundred members of
the Choral Union volunteered to sing at
the final Sunday concert in the park, and
the attendance on that occasion was tre-
mendous. Almost sixty thousand people
were present, who enthusiastically applaud-
ed the singers, while the average attend-
ance at the regular concerts is from two to
three thousand.
The park commissioners have the matter
under consideration, and as President Mc-
Millan is heartily in favor of the idea, it is
very probable the request will be granted.
The educational and artistic influences
which such concerts would excite are ob-
vious, and the movement in the direction
proposed deserves the heartiest encourage-
ment. The choral concerts will serve to
relieve the monotony of the ordinary pro-
grams furnished by the band, and they
should prove a means of attracting thou-
sands to enjoy not alone good music but to
appreciate the beauty and value of the
great park of the people.
o
Tamagno, the tenor who appeared at the
Grand Opera House in this city a couple of
seasons ago, and who did not achieve any
remarkable success, has evidently won his
way into the good graces of opera-goers in
Germany.
He was paid $1200 a night
during his recent appearance in that coun-
try. It is evident that America is not the
only land where singers can pick diamonds
off the streets. As the slang phrase has it,
"there are others."
In England, Paderewski has announced
that he will accept engagements from pri-
vate parties at $5,000 an evening, and the
same price has been offered to Patti to sing
in private drawing rooms. Special talents
have always commanded and will com-
mand a market in any part of the world.
This in spite of the insularism and narrow-
mindedness of certain writers, who like to
win popular sympathy for a purpose by in-
dulging in jingoistic rodomontade.
0'
Max Maretzek, the old-time operatic im-
presario, died at his home at Pleasant
Plains, S. I., the early days of last month.
Mr. Maretzek had been prominently iden-
tified with opera in this country for almost
forty years. He was born in Briinn, Aus-
tria, seventy-six years ago. He was the
first tenant of the Academy of Music. He
had an interesting career interspersed, of
course, with success and failure. He was
a thorough musician and a genial gentle-
man who had a host of friends who admired
and respected him. Mr. Maretzek's labors
toward the introduction of opera in this
country in the earlier da)'S of our history,
and the influence generated in influencing
the musical taste of our people will ever be
remembered.
o
Siegfried Wagner has already completed
the first act of the comic opera on which
he began work last winter in Rome. He
is writing the words as well as the music.
The libretto is founded on one of Grimm's
fairy tales, which may indicate that Herr
Wagner has not been unmindful of Hum-
perdinck's success with stories of a similar
character. The action takes place during
the time of the Thirty Years' War near
Culumbach. Musicians who have had an
opportunity to hear the music agree that
it indicates a talent for music which is
fresh and melodious, as well as a particular
power of comic characterization in the gro-
tesque situations of the work,
o
Thanks to the enterprise of Chickering
& Sons of this city, lovers of orchestral
music, and they are legion, will be enabled
to enjoy some splendid concerts at popular
prices, by the Metropolitan Permanent
Orchestra, under the leadership of Anton
Seidl, the coming musical season. The
concerts will occur on Nov. 9, Dec. 7, '97;
Jan. 4, Feb. 1, March 1, and April 5, '98.
In addition to the orchestra a number of
noted artists, vocal and instrumental, will
be secured, so that the affair promises to be
an event to look forward to with interest.
The prices will be low enough to enable
everyone to enjoy these musical feasts.
©
The patrons of operatic music in Boston
have been asked to subscribe to a-guaran-
tee fund in connection with the Damrosch
operatic season, proposed to be held at the
Boston Theatre. A season of four weeks
with four operas each week is proposed.
It is estimated that the expense for the
month's presentation will not be far from
$70,000. The guarantee fund will not be
used unless there is a deficiency in receipts.
A guarantee has already been given in
Philadelphia on a similar basis.
o
Australia is a long way off, but we had
not supposed that its people are utter
greenhorns. Three plays have been per-
formed in Australian theatres, the de-
lighted audiences believing the advertise-
ments which assured them that " Shamrock
Green " had been written by the late Charles
Stewart Parnell, " T h e Factory Girl," by
the late Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the
eminent Baptist misister; and " Liberty or
Death," by William E. Gladstone!
o
The cover page of this issue contains an
artistic portrait of Martinus Sieveking, the
Dutch pianist, who has just left for Europe
after a highly successful tour of this coun-
try. Mr. Sieveking has won for himself a
most exalted position among piano virtu-
osi, and noted critics have evidently found
it a great pleasure as well as a duty to com-
mend this artist's work in no unmeasured
terms. Mr. Sieveking will return to this
country in the fall and will continue under
the management of Mr. Victor Thrane.
MME. LILLIAN BLAUVELT.
Mine. Lillian Blauvelt, the distinguished
concert soloist, sailed for Europe on Tues-
day last. She has been engaged to sing
the " Forest Bird " in " Siegfried " at Bay-
reuth; and last week Mr. Henry Wolfsohn,
who is at present in Europe, arranged for
her to appear at the Centennial Festival in
honor of Donizetti to be held in Bergamo,
Italy, in August next.
Mme. Blauvelt will return to America
in September, and will enter the concert
MME. LILLIAN KLAUVELT.
field extensively under Mr. Wolfsohn's
management. Mme. Blauvelt's vocal tal-
ents are so pronounced that she cannot fail
to win no little success abroad.
Her
many friends will watch her career in
Europe with much interest.
o
OPERA IN EUROPE.
The Imperial Opera House in Vienna,
like our own costly Metropolitan, has its
financial troubles.
Even with its large
company, its fine chorus and orchestra,
and its elaborate scenic productions, the
expenses of the establishment are undoubt-
edly much less than those which Maurice
Grau is compelled to meet here. Salaries
in Vienna are comparatively small, and the
entire cost of the season's artistic features
is on a much lower scale. The Emperor
grants to the management a subvention
of $120,000 and the use of the theatre.
Here the management of the opera gets
only the Metropolitan building. The ex-
penses of the opera amounted this year to
$520,000. The deficit at the Imperial Op-
era House this year amounted to $20,000,
which may not be a very large sum, but is
sufficient to indicate the difficulty, even in
a European capital of musical taste, in con-
ducting grand opera without loss. Another
experience of the theatre is similar to that
of the Metropolitan—the losses have come
from the production of new works which
the public would not patronize. The Im-
perial Theatre of Vienna, which has a big
subvention, reported this year a deficit of
$28,000.
There were, however, special
reasons for this large loss that do not al-
ways exist. But both the opera and the
theatre fail every year to cover their ex-
penses.