AT HOME
The tour of the Chicago Opera Company is reported to have resulted in a loss of $180,000.
Puccini is said to be negotiating for the operatic rights in The Darling of the Gods.
The widow of Sir George Grove, the compiler of the celebrated dictionary died recently in England.
Congratulations to Efrem Zimbalist and Alma Gluck, who are to be married this merry month of June.
Caruso has renewed his contract with the Metropolitan for 1915. It is stated that he will receive $3,000 a performance.
Performances of Jongleur and Parsifal given in Kansas City by the Chicago Grand Opera Company attracted audiences of 5,000.
Opera in St. Louis has usually been a financial success, but this year, for the first time in history, it ended in a deficit. The deficit amounted to about $2,500.
The Boston Opera Company, which is now in Paris, will open with L'Amore dei Tre Re, which has never yet been seen in the French capital.
Andreas Dippel has arranged for the appearance of Pavlova, the Russian dancer, with his Opera Comique company at the Century Opera House, New York, next season.
The distinguished vocal teacher Count Gaetano Lo' Giudice Fabri, died recently at his home in New York. He was born in Naples in 1866, and has resided in this country for the past ten years.
The sale of the right to collect the royalties on the copyrights of the late Dudley Buck's compositions, which were recently put up for auction by members of the composer's family, fetched $12,628.00.
A monument has been unveiled in the presence of fifty thousand spectators in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, to the honor of Verdi. The monument was presented to the city by Italian residents.
The noted Spanish 'cellist, Pablo Casals, recently arrived rather unexpectedly in America. The explanation of his presence is that he came over to marry Susan Metcalfe, the American mezzo-soprano.
The concert tour of Tetrazzini has been temporarily abandoned, owing to the fact that the singer was stricken with an attack of laryngitis in San Francisco.
The American Music Department of the National Federation of Musical Clubs announces a prize of $10,000.00 for an American opera open to all citizens of the United States, native or foreign born.
The famous firm of piano manufacturers of Kranich and Bach of New York have recently celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. Some of the founders are still at the head of the business and control every department.
The enterprising librarian at the Cossett Library in Memphis, Tenn., has been delivering a series of talks on opera in which the music of the operas discussed was presented as completely as possible with the aid of the talking machine.
The death has occurred of Edwin F. MacGonigle, a prominent organist and choir director of Philadelphia. He was for many years professor at the Overbrook Theological Seminary, where he taught Latin and ecclesiastical music, and was an authority on Gregorian chant.
The South Atlantic States Musical Festival was held at Converse College, Spartanburg, S. C., under the direction of Edmond Morris. Les Huguenots given in concert form was one of the features of the festival. The festival took place in early May.
A symphony in A major, by L. Leslie Loth, a young American composer, has been given in Breslau, Germany, and was received with much favor. Mr. Loth is one of the youngest representative American composers.
Tentative plans are being made in St. Louis for the building of an opera house in that city. There will be seating accommodation for 3,350, if the present plans come to anything, and prices will range from as little as twenty-five cents.
The Boston Opera Company is giving a season of opera in Paris. A crowd of five thousand people gathered together on the landing stage at Boston to see them off when the Lapland sailed. The crush was so great that several people were injured, and some of the ladies fainted.
The production of Hamilton Harty's cantata, The Mystic Trumpeter, by the Columbia University Chorus, was a prominent success. It was given at Carnegie Hall under the direction of that able choral conductor Walter Henry Hall, Professor of Choral Music at Columbia University.
The Louisiana State Music Teachers' Association held its Convention recently at Shreveport. Among those who attended are Leon Ryder Maxwell, president of the association, Dr. Giuseppe Ferrata, the composer and a large number of the principal teachers of the State.
A Huneker-Chopin recital was recently given at the Beethoven Saal in Vienna at which the distinguished American critic and biographer of Liszt and Chopin was the guest of honor. Excerpts from the works of the masters were given together with readings and recitations from some of Mr. Huneker's works.
A memorial to George Alexander Chapman was given in New York late in April. The proceeds of the concert were devoted to endowing the Chapman memorial On the estate of the late Edward MacDowell. A fine plan and a splendid purpose. Chapman was loved by many musical friends.
The distinguished head of the New England Conservatory, Boston, Mr. George W. Chadwick, has been asked to compose a male chorus for the Concordia Singing Society of Leipzig. The Concordia is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation and Mr. Chadwick has been a member since his student days in Leipzig.
Among the deaths of the month must be recorded that of Mme. Gizella Remenyi, the widow of the celebrated Hungarian violinist Remenyi. She has been living for some time in Ohio. Many of the leading musicians in Akron and Cleveland as well as many Hungarians and the Hungarian Consul of those cities attended the funeral.
The Orange Musical Art Society recently gave its thirty-sixth private concert. The novelty of the evening was a Nocturne for soprano solo, chorus of women's voices and orchestra, composed by Henry Holden Huss, and dedicated by him to the Orange Musical Art Society and to its conductor, Mr. Arthur Woodruff.
Music lovers in Washington were much interested at a recent concert of the Washington Symphony in the first performance of a Second Indian Rhapsody composed by the conductor of the orchestra, Mr. Heinrich Hammer. The themes were based on melodies collected from among the Chippewa Indians by Miss Densmore of the Smithsonian Institute.
The famous Mendelssohn Choir of Toronto is planning to make a tour of England, France and Germany next year, and the Toronto Municipal Board of Control has decided to vote $10,000 towards the necessary funds. It is felt that the work of this admirable chorus under the brilliant Dr. Vogt will be good advertising from both a commercial and artistic standpoint.
The Twenty-first Biennial May Festival was held in Cincinnati May 5-6-7-8-0. Well-known soloists including Mme. Schumann-Heink, Henri Scott and Florence Hinckle took part. This festival was founded in 1873 and is in a way the precursor of the great festivals given in all parts of our country. The B minor Mass, theNinth Symphony, theDamnation of Faust and the Manzoni Requiem were the features this year.
An undertaking is on foot for the preservation of Old World folk-songs that have survived in America since colonial days. The United States government is aiding matters, and the search for old English, Scotch and Welsh ballads is being prosecuted by the Bureau of Education of the Department of the Interior in cooperation with Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, Professor of English in the University of Virginia and founder and president of the Virginia Folklore Society.
While the German government has refused to join in the Panama Canal Exposition at San Francisco, the German-Americans are taking matters into their own hands to see that Germany is fully represented. A committee has been appointed and is going vigorously to work to raise a fund of half a million dollars from among German-Americans. The chairman of the committee is Dr. Max Magnus. The purpose is to equip and maintain at the Exposition a "Palace of German-American History and Culture."
The New York Symphony Society has been most successful, but each year closes with a deficit of fifty or sixty thousand dollars. Hitherto this deficit has been defrayed by a group of twenty-eight subscribers. This year, however, Mr. Harry Harkness Flagler, the president of the Society, has taken the burden upon his own shoulders, and made himself personally responsible for the entire amount. Furthermore it is understood that his generosity will extend beyond his own lifetime, and that henceforth the Society will be financially independent.
The Los Angeles National Grand Opera Company, Incorporated, is now in process of formation for the purpose of giving twelve weeks of opera next season. The company has the strongest social and financial backing, five hundred of the most prominent residents of Los Angeles having signed an agreement to guarantee the season of opera. Florencio Constantino has been engaged to head the list of artists. He will give in all twenty-four performances, two each week. Previous to the opening of the season next January, Constantino will make a tour of the country.
The drawing power of good old H. M. S. Pinafore continues to be as great as ever. Its powers of endurance are even able to withstand a Hippodrome performance in New York in which aSir Joseph Porter treads the decks of a real ship floating on real water. One wonders what W. S. Gilbert would have said to this. Simplicity of stage effects was a creed with him. He felt with justice that neither his lines nor Sullivan's music needed much in the way of scenic display.
A curious case of the pot calling the kettle black is that of Mr. Granville Bantock, who recently expressed himself as "weary of musical complexity, both choral and orchestral. Modern music," he goes on, "with its turgid harmonies, its thick and choked orchestration, its loose and undiscoverable rhythms, is sheer decadence … After all it is melody that matters. Nowadays we strive after stupendous effects, and have lost the art of writing tunes. We are so tremendously clever that we are unable to do what the peasant of a hundred years ago accomplished with ease." Mr. Bantock is regarded as one of the most "advanced" of modern British composers and has made all sorts of complicated musical experiments of the most cacophonous kind. Is this just an outbreak in a moment of irritation, or is it the measured utterance of a revolutionary prodigal about to return to the conservative fold?
The Aborn Brothers announce some drastic reforms in the Century Opera Company for next season. Half the present chorus will be dismissed and replaced by choristers imported from England. Most of the present principals are to go—all but eight. The orchestra is to be increased and many of the present members replaced by more efficient men at higher salaries. From $3000 to $5000 a week more is to be spent on opera next year than was spent last season, which approximated $15,000. Only popular operas, mostly of the Italian type, are to be given, and no novelty will be offered unless it is tuneful. The Aborn Brothers cheerfully admit that the past season has not been all that it should be. "We have encountered many obstacles," says Milton Aborn, "and we recognize that we have given some opera that has not been excellent. Next year there will be no excuses to offer." Good luck to them anyway! They deserve the greatest possible praise for their accomplishments in the past.
ABROAD
Preparations are being made in Italy to celebrate next August the tercentenary of the birth of Palestrina.
Leoncavallo is said to be at work on a three-act opera, called Ave Maria.
Admirers in France of the late Raoul Pugno are raising a fund for a memorial to the distinguished pianist.
The Quinlan Opera Company is back in England after having completed a world-encircling tour of 40,000 miles.
A commemorative tablet has been placed on the house in Liege where Cesar Franck was born, December 10, 1822.
A "film drama" by Gabriel d'Annunzio, the celebrated Italian poet, has been barred from Italian opera houses in Rome, Naples and Milan.
The great French poet Frédéric Mistral, author of the famous poem Mireio upon which Gounod's operaMircille is founded, died recently in Paris at the age of eighty-three.
Carl Pohlig, formerly conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, has been appointed conductor to the Court Opera of Brunswick.
Victor Herbert was stricken with appendicitis while in London on his way to the continent. An operation was necessary but the genial composer is now well on the way to recovery. His opera Madeleine is to be presented in Paris.
A collection of manuscripts and autographs of Manuel Garcia have been presented to the Paris Conservatoire by Mmes. Chamerot and A. Duvernoy, daughters of Pauline Viardot. Among them is the manuscript of Mozart'sDon Juan.
Edmond Rostand, the author of Cyrano de Bergerac, has commissioned Zandonai to make an operatic version of his work, as he claims that Walter Damrosch did the work into an opera without his authorization. Zandonai, it will be remembered, is a young Italian composer whose Conchita attracted some attention in America and in Europe a year or so ago.
The attempt of Ymelda Juliewna to introduce art dancing without music did not prove satisfactory to the dwellers in Hamburg. She employed only the occasional clash of a gong to emphasize fear, joy or other emotion. The critics, however, declared that the dancing seemed like mere acrobatics.
Padua recently enjoyed a concert at which twenty-five 'cellists performed in unison. This was followed by a performance of Goldmark's 'cello concerto by twelve 'cellists, still in unison! The French Le Ménestrel not unnaturally asks what eccentricities of this sort have to do with music.
The death of Tito Mattei will be much deplored by singers in this country who have enjoyed singing his Non è ver', Dear Heart, and other tuneful numbers. Mattei was born near Naples in 1841, but lived in London since 1863. He not only composed songs but also operas and ballets, and was also a pianist and conductor of great ability.
The Czar of Russia has decided to subsidize the Balalaika Orchestra out of his own private purse, and it will be henceforth known as the Imperial Orchestra. It will be remembered that this unique organization visited America a few years ago and created much interest in the strangely beautiful tone of that characteristic Russian instrument the Balalaika.
According to the London Daily Chronicle, wireless telephony has been successfully utilized for the transmission to the Eiffel Tower of the voice of a tenor who was singing in Brussels, 225 miles from Paris. The success of the experiment was due to the use of a microphone invented by Signor Marzi, an Italian engineer. While perfection is not yet conceded to the Marzi system, the achievement is declared by experts to constitute a tremendous advance in wireless telephony.
Hubert Bath, a well known English musician, has been appointed musical adviser to the London County Council. He will have a say in forming the programs of over fifty bands that play in the London parks. He plans to give very little space to Viennese waltzes of the kind that have been so popular of late, as he contends that there is much English dance music that can well be used to replace them. "Heavy German music" is also barred, and of course "ragtime and all that sort of thing" will be conspicuous by its absence. Thus is the public to be railroaded into listening to British music.
An estimate has been made in Berlin of the number of people who go to the Royal Opera, and it is believed that out of the four million inhabitants, only about 20,000 have entered the portals of that majestic institution. The rest find the prices prohibitive and affect the cheaper operatic resorts. Now that the copyright on the Wagner operas has expired, many hundreds of thousands of music lovers who have hitherto had no opportunity of seeing these masterworks will have an opportunity of doing so. It is said that there is a perfect craze for Wagner at the present time in Berlin.
A statue of Massenet has been erected at Monte Carlo in the garden opposite the Casino. The statue was officially unveiled in the theatre adjoining the Casino by the Prince of Monaco under somewhat distressing weather conditions. Members of the Massenet family were present and many notables were assembled on the stage. The same evening the first performance of Massenet's opera, which was completed shortly before his death, was given. Cleopatre, as the work is called, proved to be a success, and will doubtless soon be produced in Paris. It is one of three works which the master left unproduced.
