DRAMATIC AND MUSICAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9142, 25 August 1888, Page 4 (Supplement)

DRAMATIC AND MUSICAL.

"The Pirates of Penzance" has been a financial and artistic success. The Auckland Amateur Opera Club are to be congratulated on the result. There is probably no other club in the colony that could have done as well; beyond all question there is none that could have done better. These amateur performances are a welcome boon to opera goers now that professional companies are prone to stay away from New Zealand, and were they only given at shorter intervals, one might become indifferent to the absence of the professional players. At all events, they show that, when thrown upon our own resources, we are equal to the occasion. "Hans the Boatman" will be produced for the first time in Auckland at the Opera House Monday no evening. The piece and the company are both spoken of in very favourable terms by the dramatic critics of the Southern press. The very beautiful pictures which are so lavishly displayed on the hoardings throughout the town, representing scenes from the play, have attracted considerable attention not only by reason of the subjects _ depicted, but because of their high artistic character. Miss Georgie Smithson continues to provide a Saturday evening entertainment each week at the City Hall, which attracts large and steadily-increasing audience. No doubt if these popular and amusing performances were better known, Miss bmithson would receive sufficient encouragement to justify her in giving them more frequently. So far, she has proved herself to be as excellent a manageress as she is a clever and versatile artiste.

The costume and tableau lectures of Miss von Finklestein are exciting great interest in Australia. Even the Melbourne and Adelaide Town Halls were quite too small for the audiences hich flocked to hear the eloquent native of Jerusalem ; and when the Te Anau left Sydney the Y.M.C.A. Hall was crowded every night. At the close of the Sydney season Miss von Finklestein was going to the Blue Mountains for » fortnight to recruit, and at the end of her holiday she intended to go either to Queensland or New Zealand. It is expected that she will be Auckland at about the end of September or beginning of October. A Sydney paper says that what will probably be the largest organ in the world is now being built for the Sydney Town Hall. It is to contain 126 sounding stops, and will have five manuals. On the pedals is a novelty in the shape of a 64ft reed. " The Lights o'London" still draws big houses at Her Majesty's, Sydney, although it has run for six weeks, and the newspapers cannot find anything new to say about it. The attractions of " Drink" at the Royal and " Modern Wives" at the Criterion have in no way diminished. "Jack and I" was produced by Carrie Swain at the Melbourne Royal at the latter end of J lily, with Mr. G. P. Carey as Jack, and Miss Swain as Rhoda Thorn, the heroine. The piece partakes somewhat of the character of " The Miner's Daughter," but there is a good deal of killing in it, also a duel, also a narrow escape from drowning. Messrs Cates, Ogden, Joyce, and Lester, and Miss Vivienne, Mrs. Rryer, and Baby Ogden are the other members of the company. At a committee meeting of the Christchurch Musical Society it was decided to put in rehearsal for the next concert cantata ft Psyche," by Neils W. Gade, whose ff Crusaders" and "Comalg" have recently been performed by the society. " Psyche" has been performed by the Choral Society of Auckland, where it met with a most enthusiastic reception. Owing to Mr. Towsey's intended visit to Melbourne, Mr. F. M. "Wallace will conduct the rehearsals and concert. The solos have been allotted as follows :Psyche (soprano), Miss Spensley; Eros (baritone), Mr. W. Day; Mrs. Wilson, Miss Strange, and Mr. Izard taking the tries.

After the brilliant tour of Amy Sherwin through New Zealand, it is matter of great regret to have to chronicle the utter failure of her opera season in Melbourne. The culminating point was reached when her husband, Mr. Gorlitz, was compelled to file his schedule in the Melbourne Bankruptcy Court. " Der Freischutz" had been announced for the evening of that day, and a very large audience had assembled. The orchestra, however, refused to proceed with the overture until their salaries were paid, and the final result of the trouble was that the audience had their money returned—a very miserable climax to the enthusiasm evoked by the prima donna in New Zealand. The liabilities of the estate are estimated at £2775, the assets at £1718 10s lOd, leaving an apparent deficiency of £1056 19s 2d. An American piper says that a wellknown dramatic critic found at his office the other day a case of champagne and a box of fine Havanas, accompanied by a note from a star who was shortly to play in New York. It expressed a hope that hereafter the critic would no longer pursue the writer with severity, but refrain from expressing his opinions in unrestrained honesty and frankness. The critic was embarrassed. But he did not send back the paltry wine and the inconsequential cigars. On the contrary, he sat down and wrote a short reply, in which he said :—" I accept your little gift as a purely personal token of goodwill, and in that spirit I thank you for it. Nevertheless, when you present in this city the bad play that excited my critical disfavour last year, I shall be compelled to repeat exactly what I said then—in spite of your excellent wine and delicious cigars." Mr. W. S. Gilbert is busy on an adaptation for the stage of George Eliot's "Romola," which will be produced by Mr. Rutland Barrington in the London St. James' .Theatre.

Mr. Frank Thornton has bought, the Australian rights of the French comedy " Les Surprises du Divorce," and intends to play the piece at the antipodes, together with " Sweet Lavender" and " The Private Secretary." In one of the two versions of Hawthorn's "Scarlet Letter," recently produced in London, the part of the witch, Mistress Hibbins, was powerfully played by Miss Dolores Drummond, an actress known to old Australian theatre-goers as Miss Dolly Green. Miss Ailsa Craig, who is none other than a. daughter of Miss Ellen Terry, was to make her first appearance recently in St. George's Hall, London, in an adaptation from the German entitled " Woolgathering. " The performance does not necessarily imply the adoption by Miss Terry the younger of the stage as a profession. A new piece by Madame Judith Gauthier, daughter of the poet, has been produced in the Paris Od6on. It is entitled the "Marchande de Sourires" (the "Smile Seller"). The scenes are laid in Japan, and all the characters are " Japs." A little play entitled "Woodbarrow Farm," produced recently at a comedy matinee, is said to have contained so much promise that the lucky young .author, Mr. Jerome, was waited on by American and Australian agents, and even London managers of the first class, to ascertain whether he could not see his way to altering it for evening representation. Henry Petti tt's Australian drama,"Hands Across the Sea," was to be produced on July 30, at the Theatre Royal, Manchester, for the first time in England. Mr. John Coleman is about to bring out an edition de luxe of his sketches, " Players $nd Playrights I have known." It is reported that the popular London actres?, Mrs. Bernard Beere, meditates an American tour in the course of next winter. Mr. G. R. Sims is said to have no less than three dramatic irons in the fixe just now. A burlesque of " Faust" for the Gaiety Theatre, a melodrama for Mr. Wilson Barrett, and the libretto for the new comic opera, to be produced in the Alhambra. The original of the character of " Jocko, the Brazilian Ape," was Henry Leech, an Englishman, whose professional n£tfle was Ottp Motti. His body was of the size of an ordinary man's ; but his legs were only lft long. Yet such was his agility that be could outrun, on all fours', a r very fair runner. His skeleton is in MdnieTussaud's exhibition ' in London.' The Ravels afterward introduced the character in their pantomimes; but it was left to Majilton to bring it to perfection. He had wonderful strength in his hands ;' and could walk with his hands hanging under an ordinary floor joist, his whole weight depending upon the grip between "his thumbs and their opposing fingers, with perfect ease. He occasionally astonished a braggart of the profession by walking on his hands on a slack rope, or on the hawser with which the circus was towed by a steamer. This singular faculty made him an expert climber; and he would run up and down the interior $f $9 $fc\iß< and leap the

rail of the tiers, and run along with an agility which no ape could excel. He fairly rolled with laughter when ho told how he frightened the coloured people on the Mississippi. On one occasion, when he leaped among them, chattering and grimacing, many jumped in their fright through the windows of the circus into the river, and were rescued with difficulty. " For Heaven's sake, stop this,' said Spadhng afterward, "or we'll have dead niggers to pay for." In December, 1854, while playing in Charleston, he created almost a panic in the theatre. A woman was stationed in the third tier with a stuffed baby ; and Majilton, in his Jocko act, snatched it from her ; and, jumping to the side of the proscenium boxes, beat its head against the wood, and then threw it to the stage and jumped on it; the women yelling all the while, and the audience in a terrible uproar of terror and indignation. Writing recently to an English contemporary, on'' Stage science and the art of making up," Mme. Ristori said : " I have always been of the opinion of Mile. Clarion, that the less paint or powder an actor or actress employs the better. I, therefore, never employed any means beyond those absolutely necessary to bring out the characteristics of the personage I was representing." Musico-Dramaticus.

*„* All communications intended for tnis column should bo addressed " Musico-Druniaticus," Herald Office, Auckland, and should be forwarded as early as possible.