SONG, STAGE, AND STORY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 95, 21 April 1894, Page 3 (Supplement)

SONG, STAGE, AND STORY.

A very successful run of * Madame Favart," produced by the Auckland Amateur Opera Club, has just been brought to a close at Abbott's Opera House. Tho financial re" suit of the season of amateur opera will, no doubtt be highly satisfactory, and judged from a histrionic and musical standpoint tho production is acknowledged to have been most successful.

Wirbh'B Circus troupe, when laab heard from, were coining money in Transvaal, South Africa, March 6.

The following naive and animated critique of a concert by the Misses Albu (well known in Auckland) given at Honolulu lately, is from the 'Hawaii Holomua' of March 2nd :—' The Opera House was patronised by a rather small but a very appreciative audience who hailed the singing of the two Misses Albu with unbounded enthusiasm. The famous singers never before fulfilled the expectations which a music-loving audience entertained as they did last night. They simply sang divinely. Ib waa simply immense, and on behalf of the muaic-loving people we do regret that we are now to be deprived of the pleasure which only can be derived from cultivated and superb voices,.;as that displayed by the two Albu'girls. The house wasn't very full. But the people who enjoy music they found ib there. Enough has been said aboub tho "cult" and pretended education of the missionary shopkeepers and blumber sellers. If they insist in killing tho efforts of decent) people of liavinu occasionally homo good music here, simp y for tho purpose of booming up some of their professional and formerly despised relatives, they are welcome to do so. We are nob quarrelling with them, but wo do wish that their extremely prolongated ears would sometimes know the difference between true music and the " tom-tom !" '

A message from Melbourne, under date of last Wednesday week.says : • Miss Violet Varley, the popular member of the Royal Comic Opera Company, was quietly married to Mr Joseph Tapley, of the same company, in the Australian Church, by Dr. Strong, this morning. Only a few friends, including the lady's mother and sister, and Miss Ida Osborne and her husband (Mr Rnorcott) were present at tho ceremony.'

Mr Sims Reeves was to sing at a sacred concert, to be given at tho Queen's Hall, Langham Place, London, on Good Friday evening, March 23rd. The other vocalists were to be Madame Clementine de Vere, Miss Mary Harris, Madame Antoinette Sterling, Miss Rosa Green, Mr Herbert Grover, Signor Foli, and Mr Andrew Black.

Of all the idiotic ideas about the existence Of William Shakespeare, of Strabford-on-Avon, the following is the most drivelling (says a contemporary). A writer in ' Baooniana' now again demonstrates that Shakespeare, as a writer of plays, never existed! He explains that the Greek goddess called Pallas Athene, the patroness of literature, had as one of her endearing nicknames that of ' the shaky-lacly-with-the-spear.' In accordance with mediaeval custom, the writer of • Hamlet,' ' Othello,' 'Julius Csesar,' 'Cymbeline,' and various other plays took, as a pseudonym, the first and last words in the English title of Pallas Athene, which, of course, gave Shakyspear, Its corruption into Shakespeare and it 3 attribution to a fictitious person, who is supposed to have lived in Stratford-on-Avon, was merely a question of time. Francis Bacon knew Greek ; must have known the sobriquet of Pallas ; was fond of contractions, and must, therefore, be the author of the aforesaid plays, which he signed Shaky-Speare, to show that they were worthy of the patroness of all learning. Such is the latest theory advanced.

Our London correspondent writes : Mr and Mrs Rudyard Kipling are about to visit tho Bahamas, after which they will come to London for a time. Whilst here Mr Kipling means to see his new volume of stories (nearly all reprinted from the magazines) through the press. An interesting volume of autobiography to those who in their youth revelled in 1 Tho Life Boat.' • The Lighthouse,' • Deep Down.' ' Fighting the Flames,' and a score of similar entrancing talea will be Mr R. M. Ballantyne's • Persona} Reminiscences' published in an inexpensive little volume by Nesbit and Co. Wr BaHanbyne'a plan has always been bo found his fiction on solid fact. He began life as a cadet of the Hudson's Bay Co., and there wrote his firsb book 'The Young Fur Traders.' Later on 'The Lighthouse,' unquestionably Mr Ballantyne's besb and moeb successful story, was the result of a monthly residence on Bell Rock Lighthouse. For ' Deep Down' the author personally sampled life in the Cornish mines, and whilst writing 'Fighting the Flames,'he spent) hours each day at stations of the London Fire Brigade. Mr Ballantyne is now an old man, yet he turns oub his annual treat for the youngsters as regularly aa ever. 'The Walruß Hunters' is tho name of this winter's gift book, and I'm bound to say both,, inside and outside ib looks mosb attractive. In celebrating the twenby-fifth birthday of ' Vanity Fair,' the renowned 'Ruffler'— who out of the original staff has alone remained faithful—recalls the chorus of vilification which assailed the firsb of the ' society ' journals. After roundly abusing bhab type of intensely Conservative journalism, the able editor ' Ruffler ' saye : - •Vanity Fair' was an outrage upon the ideas of the able editor. It was meb with an outcry, as most reforms are. It was brutal! its personalities were odious; it was un-English; ib could nob live- ib must be suppressed. Never wero pilgrims more loudly hooted at, more blabanbly reviled. Bub 'Vanity Fair' has lived, and waa nob suppressed. People abused ib roundly, bub they all read ib and used ib. . . . The pilgrims refused to be howled down ; they resisted persecution, and they have prevailed. They invented a new thing, and no better proof could be of the excellence of their invention than the really flourishing concondition of those imitators who have had the enterprise to borrow sufficiently of their wares. , w Mr Jerome K. Jerome's new paper 10Day ' made its appearance on Friday without absolutely setting the Thames in flames. At a penny it might have ' knocked out ' some of the 'snippet' weeklies, but the price of twopence has been fatal to many far more pietentious prints. 'ToDay ' te in niy opinion no particular advance on Caesell's ' Saturday Journal,' which improves steadily year by year. Organ-grinding seems to be a lucrative employment in England. Aba recent law case in the Ramsgate county court ib was stacod in evidence that one of these itinerant musicians often earned £1 a day, and never less than 7s, and tbab two, who were in partnership, had collected £114 in thirby-eighb weeks. Ib is estimated that up to bhe ond of December Mr Irving's recoipbs in America totalled over £90,000 (£12.000, of which was taken from San Francisco, £29,000 from Chicago, whilst his eight weeks' receipts in New York came to £40.000). With the exception of bhe tour which Bernhardb made in 1890-91, the Lyceum season is the longest ever made by any theabrical company in America,