DRAMATIC AND MUSICAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9244, 22 December 1888, Page 4 (Supplement)

DRAMATIC AND MUSICAL.

Gatlokd and Silbon's Company proceeded to Wellington yesterday. I am afraid their season at the Opera House

was not a financial success. The audiences

were small, and the company is an expensive one. The Silbon family alone receive £100 a week. Tho company is beyond

doubt tho cleverest in its particular lino

that has visited New Zealand, and had it been adequately announced beforehand, and its merits made thoroughly known to the public, I am satisfied that the Opera House would have been crammed each evening. Seven more members are expected from America by the next mail boat, and the company will then proceed to Melbourne, where they expect to play for several months. The Swiss Mountain Singers, who left Sydney on Thursday for Auckland, open at the Opera Hotfso on Boxing night. Haddon Chambers, the young Australian author of "Captain Swift," takes ten per cent, of the gross proceeds at the Haymarket during tho run of his piece. This means about £150 a week.

The husband of Miss Essie Jenyns is named Wood. Ho is described as "a nicelooking fellow on the right side of thirty." Miss Maribel Greenwood is being trained for STiaksperian characters by George Eignolda

From a tile of the Ceylon Independent, dated October 12, we learn that the veteran Maccabe was gathering new laurels at Colombo in his famous entertainment, " Begone Dull Care," In spite of the enormous salary paid to Mdme. Adolina Patti during her recent engagement at Buenos Ayres, the management did net. as is usually the case when star artistes obtain exorbitant remuneration, reduce themselves to beggary : far from it. A writer in "Truth says: — "I have before me the official figures, drawn up by the partners, Messrs. Abbey, Schtvitel, and Gran, of the receipts of the twenty performances given by Madame Patti at Buenos Ayres between April 4 and July 20. The highest was the first performance of * II Barbiere,' which realised over £4000, and tho lowest ' I'uritani,' which drew a little over £'2000. The total takings were ;Ci;o,lSi), or a little over £3000 per. night. After paying Madame Patti and all other expenses the parties divided upwards of £'2'2,759. Small wonder, then, that Madame Patti has been offered next summer a still higher guarantee, which amounts, itHs said, to £1-50 per night, and a specified share of any surplus over double that sum." The ttieatre, say* Mr. Henry Irving, is the best antidote to the drink demon. Your theatre-goer is not a public-house lounger. Encourage the working classes to support good creditable plays j let members of religious bodies know there is no harm, but rather good, in entering into wholesale theatrical amusements, and they will help in disarming many forces which make for moral evil.

Madame lima dl Murska, once ranked among the greatest opera singers in the world, has been sent home to Hungary to die. She was discovered in New York penniless and in a dying condition, and sufficient money was raised by the charity of a few friends to send Her back to her native country. It. is more than twentythree years ago since, on May 11, ISOo, Mdlle. lima Ui Murska, then a most exquisitely beautiful girl and a vocalist of miraculous skill, made her first appearance in London at Her Majesty's Theatre. She created a sensation far exceeding that which Patti had made at her debut four years previously, and she sang for two seasons with wonderful success. The eccentricities of poor Di Murska were much exaggerated by people who were interested in keeping her apart from the world. Shewas really a simple, easy, credulous, kindly creature, easily misled, almost incapable of any exertion outside her profession, and quite careless of luxury or display. Her foibles were unimportant, her good qualities many. Her musical training was perfect. No one could tell by watching her when she took breath, or if she ever took it at all. Roulades and trills and cadenzas came at will without pause or effort. Her voice, a little metallic, as light voices are apt to be, was yet tuneful and true, and her intonation so even and perfect that her singing was more like that of a lark in the air than a human being. Some of her tours de force were wonderful. She used to sing a Hungarian air, with variations by Doppler, during which, after a bewildering series of unaccompanied cadenzas, she sang a descending chromatic scale of two octaves, alighting finally on the note the flute was waiting to take up, never swerving a hair's-breadth of a tone. Any vocalist who will essay this extraordinaryfteat will understand its difficulty. The Sydney Morning Herald suggests the establish of a school of music. ' : We do not need," it says, " one great artist to come like a shooting star to illume our musical path for a moment; but a director for a permanent centre to which aspiring musicians may go for help, and from which music in its noblest sense may radiate. Our poverty in instrumentalists is yearly increasing, and without the importation of artists in several branches of orchestral work, the proper rendering of an overture or symphony is impossible. We want a musician of broad sympathies, of extensive culture, at the head of our school, and we must empower him to bring with him experts to till the blanks in our orchestral ranks. There must be a fund sufficient to give the artists an income for five years at least; an income sufficient to remove anxiety on the question of proper support, and to enable them to make orchestral concerts a daily performance. The head of our school should be able to attract all learners, and the skilled professors, of \» horn there are many in the colony, should be enrolled as the teaching staff. It is not enough to send our speciallygifted children to Europe to study ; we want the means for them to learn, and to learn ■well, brought amongst them ; to make good music a part of our national training and a stronghold of influence over the people. In the good old times of Queen Elizabeth, Englishmen and Englishwomen learned to read music as they read books, and everyone was supposed to be capable of taking his part in glee or madrigal at sight. Such a knowledge should be within the reach of every Australian." Quite a new feature in the London musical world is the institution of the string band called Lea Mervielleuses, the members of which are twelve ladies. They are admirably trained, and the conductor and manager'is Mrs. Hunt. They wear a kind of uniform in which blue and scarlet predominate, and large velvet caps, something like Tarn o' Shanters, and these picturesque costumes were designed for them by Mr. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan renown. They play at bazaars, garden parties, dances, &c., and it really is a good thing, for an extra band is much wanted during the London season. Though their uniform is smart, it is perfectly feminine and pretty, and people crowd round them so that they 'form quite an attraction. Mdme. Nilsson's history is a remarkable •one. Horn in lowly circumstances in 1843, :in a Swedish village, she u-ed, as a child, to go about to the fairs and public markets playing on the violin and flute, until in 1857 a lover of music sent her to Holmstadt to be educated. From there she went to Stockholm, where her beautiful voice excited the greatest admiration. She then went to Paris, and in 1864 she made her debut as Violetta in "La Traviata." Her success ■was assured at once, and a three years' engagement followed. Her fame reached London, and her success there was as marked as it had been in Paris. Her Mignon has never been surpassed, and her Martha was equally charming. In several operas she made the chief character her own by her exquisite singing and pathetic acting. Madame Nilsson's career in England has ■been a continued triumph from the first, and her popularity has never waned. Perhaps every day says an American -contemporary, the stage is growing more moral. In the days gone by the actors and actresses had to form their own society. To-day they hava somelife outside of the theatre, and they will gradually more and more come to treat acting as a business, and find their associates amongst the untheatrical society. They will then find themselves becoming amenable to the same rules, and they will find it necessary to retain the respect of that outside society, and that will be strong enough to reform the morals i of the stage to a great extent. M usico-Dramaticus.