Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
LEQITIHATE COMIC OPERA.
It is almost always unwise for a manager
to make promises, as it is generally the case
that something unforeseen happens to frus-
trate his plans. Andrew A. McCormick as
and that portion of the public which is
ever ready to support laudable eftorts. Mr.
McCormick in choosing Smith and De Ko-
ven for the task of supplying such a work as
was promised and desired, made no mis-
where among the molecules of the gray
matter constituting the cortex of his cere-
bral organ, that he could have played
twenty-five piano recital programs with-
out repeating and without a printed page*
Since there are about two thousand meas-
ures to the hour, and two solid hours to an
ordinary Billow program, this would rep-
resent a hundred thousand measures of
music, or about our thousand large pages,
something like eight or ten thick volumes.
Even Biilow was outdone by Rubinstein,
in the field of piano music at least, if we
can trust the anecdote-mongers, for it is
claimed that in one season at St. Peters-
burg he played a series of recitals which
exhausted the literature of the piano, and
embraced one thousand three hundred dis-
tinct compositions. It is mentioned of
Mendelssohn that, on one occasion, the
score of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony
having been misplaced, he raised his baton
and directed the work from memory; but
this does not seem to me a feat in the least
remarkable, for the Pastoral Symphony is
so extremely lucid and so bewitchingly
beautiful that the only thing difficult or
remarkable would be the forgetting of it.
Mine. Patti knew forty opera roles,
and Varesi, the baritone, knew eighty.
©
JEROME SYKES—CONSTABLE QUILLER—AND CONSTABLES
director of the Broadway Theatre Opera
Co., announced that in the productions to
be made by the new organization, "that
which was frivolous and inane would be
carefully avoided, while that which is legi-
timately diverting and comic would be as-
siduously sought after."
The large and fine audience which as-
sembled at the Broadway Theatre on the
t* r
ANDREW A. M'CORMICK.
An interesting feature of Ethelbert
Humperdink's latest work, "Die Konigs-
IN "THE HIGHWAYMAN," BROADWAY THEATRE.
kinder," which was recently produced in
London,
is the most remarkable effort the
take, since it has been proven that they
composer
has made to cause his music to
were able to produce that which was ex-
become
an
integral part of the libretto,
pected of them; they fulfilled and realized
says
the
London
Musical Times. To effect
in the best sense the manager's fondest
this,
each
word
of
the text that is accom-
expectations. Of the new Broadway The-
panied
by
music
is
set just as though it
atre Opera Co., which is a permanent or-
were
intended
to
be
sung. Not only is
ganization, very much might be said in
this
method
pursued
with single-voice
praise and very little in the way of dispar-
parts,
but
when
several
characters are
agement. A better comic opera organiza-
speaking
in
rapid
succession
or together
tion has not been seen on Broadway for
their
words
are
set
out
exactly
as in an
many a long day.
operatic
chorus;
thus
the
vocal
parts
in the
To Andrew A. McCormick is due no small
riot
at
the
end
of
the
second
act
are
eight
praise for the commendable steps taken
in
number.
toward rescuing legitimate comic opera
e
from degeneracy. All honor to him.
Shanghai
with
355,000
inhabitants boasts
0
MUSICIANS MEMORIES.
of only two music teachers. A pretty
Writing on the remarkable memories of poor place for a musical paper truly; but
noted musicians, John S. Van Cleve says what a chance for our surplus graduates
that possibly the greatest case on record and teachers.
is that wonder of won-
ders, the most intellec-
tual of interpreters, the
late Dr. Hans von.
Biilow. He not only
played all of Beethoven
by heart upon the
piano, but knew all the
symphonies i he same
manner,and practically
the whole Wagnerian
output of m u s i c a l
metal, and it is claimed
that so great was the
mass of thepiano music
which Biilow retained
" within the book and
volume of his brain,"
inscribed in mysterious
first night were not disappointed; they
found that the manager, at a time when
horseplay and buffoonery had had the town
in its thrall, had been able to fulfill his
promise to the letter; that with a steady
aim he had in reality pointed his arrow
high and hit the bull's eye square in the
center. "The Highwayman" fulfills all
the hopes and promises of the managers h i e r o g l y p h i c s
SOme-
MISS
HILDA CLARK (Lady Constance), Broadway Theatre.