MUSICAL AND DRAMATIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8986, 17 September 1892, Page 4 (Supplement)

MUSICAL AND DRAMATIC.

The Italian Concert Company's season closed on Wednesday. Yesterday the com- . pany left for Gisborne. • The Royal Comic Opera Company opened at the Opera House on Thursday evening. The Grattan Kiggs dramatic . season at the Opera House closed on Monday evening. By the mail steamer Alameda, which left : here for San Francisco on Saturday last, Mr. H. R. Jewett was a passenger. Before his departure from Sydney his friends gave him a benefit at the Gamete Theatre, when \ almost all the leading professionals in Sydney appeared. ' J McLean's Young Australian Company has concluded a veryJuccessful fortnight's. season at the Wellington Opera House, and are coming North/overland. Will's Surprise Party, which is said to be a very clever and compact little company, have closed a successful season at Christchurch.

Davy's Bright Lights have been doing a splendid business in Wellington. The company have reached its seventeenth week, and still plays to good houses. The Foli season concluded at Dunedin on the 3rd inst., and the company have appeared at Oamaru. They are now at Christchurch. They wore accorded a most enthusiastic reception during the Dunedin season.

The Montague-Turner Opera Company is touring £<ew South Wales. • The Alabama Minstrels, with Billy Emerson, the Prince of Minstrels, are appearing at the Garrick Theatre, Sydney, and are described as " a very clever company." The Ovide-Musin Concert Company opened at Adelaide on August 23. The Bland Holt Company are playing "The Trumpet Call" in Adelaide. Miss Harrie Ireland has replaced Miss Kate Bishop, the latter lady returning to Sydney. They have had overflowing houses in the popular parts of the house, and partly good attendances in the dress circle.

Charles Frohman has engaged Lottie Collins, of "Ta-ra ra-Boom-de-ay" fame, to appear in America from September Ist to the middle of December at a salary, it is said, of £250 a week. The new building of the Royal College of Music will not be opened till next year, when, it is hoped, the ceremony will be undertaken by the Queen. During his season at Fiji Mr. Snazelle achieved great success, the attendance at the performances being very large and enthusiastic.

An extraordinary concert-room phenomenon has appeared in San Francisco, in the person of a man named Kellog",', who warbles with his voice, which is of great power and richness, like a bird. It is stated that he has a peculiar throat formation, and that he has possessed the gift of bird like song from childhood. Immense sums are now being paid by fashionable New Yorkers to operatic stars for their services at private houses. Miss Emma Earnes, for singing at a large reception recently, received the sum of £200 ; and it is said that one of the De Keske< determinedly refused to sing at. a private house until the too tempting offer of £400 for his share in the evening's entertainment made him break through his resolution. The project of turning Mr. D'Oyly Carte's Opera House into a " variety show" has now taken a definite shape, and the company will be put before the public under the title of the " Palace Theatre." The capital will be £-200,000. £170.000 of which will be devoted to the purchase of the freehold and the theatre. The necessary music-hall license will be applied for in due course, and in the meantime the project will go forward with the Lord Chamberlain's license, and a programme embracing drama, "variety," and ballet. Sir Augustus Harris is the managing director of the Palace Theatre. It is reported that one of the wealthiest men in Russia, a M. Nechngeff-Maltzeff, has given an order to a Parisian pianoforte •manufacturer for an instrument which is to cost no less than £1900, is to be of unusually large dimensions, is to have half a dozen legs to stand u[mu, and is to emit sounds three times as loud as the ordinary instrument.

The management of the Westminster Aquarium, ever on the look-out for startling aovelties, have unearthed in the iron districts a veritable strong lady named Zulima, known there as the Iron Queen. She is now drawing crowded audiences to witness her phenomenal and unique feats of weight-lifting . and chain-breaking, winch are performed with an air of elegance and refinement rarely to he met with. She lifts above her head with one hand, and with apparent ease, two 601b weights, a dumbbell of 961b, and a bar bell of 1601b. She breaks chains upon her arm with her fist, and, by straight pulling, bends stout iron bars with her hands, and winds up by carrying upon her shoulders 560!b dead weight, consisting of a llilllb bar-bell, two 601b weitrhts, and two men.

Miss Skelton Wand, the young Australian soubrette whose vivacious acting was one of the redeeming features of "The Great Metropolis," lias engaged by Mr. and Mrs Kendal for their now pending English provincial tour. Mrs Lewis, late of Melbourne, and an actress of repute, it is stated all over Australia, is to appear in Colman's " The Jealous Wife" at the Strand Theatre. Mrs Lewis' brother, Willie Edouin, supports her.

The success of "Walker, London," continues so great that -Mr Toole expects to be able to play ib (with .1 brief vacation) '■ right up to Christmas. The veteran comedian says his Australian tour brought him luck. Ever since his return business at the little house in King William-street has been wonderfully good. Since she played in London for the first time twelve years ago, Madame Bernhardt baa not had a more successful reason than the present. The houses averaged £450 a performance, and on two occasions i'6oo was taken. Sarah gets one-third of the fross receipts. She is now playing " Frourou" and "Phedre."

Mrs Brown-Potter, writing to the Sydney Morning Herald from London, says amongst other things: -I trust when return to Australia, winch will be ere long, that you will like my work, and find that my hard study has done my art good. I have just bought a new piece of Buchanan's entitled "Gladys," a heroine who is a sort of Frou-Frou, 1 have also purchased Oscar Wilde's "Duchess of Padua," a tragedy which was played with great success in New York ; and a new historical drama on *' Mary Queen of Scots/' a fine acting play, rugged and different from what ib usually is. In contrast with this I complete my new repertoire with a strong Zola play. What will my. Sydney and Melbourne friends say to that? Mr. Belle wis playing for the summer at the Adelphi Theatre. We have nob dissolved our theatrical partnership ; for the knowledge we have of each other's system of playing, and the harmonious goodwill by which alone successes can be made in business, are too valuable to bo lightly thrown away. But we are still saddled with our South African Company, and the impossibility of getting " dates" to play them is most irritating. What we have lost simply does not bear description. Isidore de Lara, the composer of the " Light of Asia," wants to write a musical play for me on the subject of Ouida's " Two little Wooden Shoes," and we meet to-morrow (July 8) to discuss it. Her Majesty's, London, which has just been pulled down, was the third theatre built upon the same site. The first was opened in 1705, the second in 1791, and the third in 1873. The first and second were destroyed by fire. Each of the three buildings saw some "row" that has become historical. In the first, the nightly warfare between Cuzzoni and Faustina, or, rather, between the adherents of the two " leading Indies,'' was carried on mainly by means of violent applause and hisses from the rival factions; each singer was, of course, attacked in lampoons which accused her of every vice, and the quarrel wag taken up by the town generally with no less vehemence than that which divided the two prominent composers of the Opera House, and which is immortalised by Byron's epigram. In the second . theatre took place the "Tamburinj row," when the audience rose against the manager, Laporte, who had resisted the excessive terms asked by the popular singer ; if he had nob yielded the point, the season must have come to an end. The "Ingoldsby Legend" in which fchie is commemorated is one of the bestknown of the series. A bard is at present wanting to do justice to the scene in the last theatre, when a performance of "Faust" ended with the refusal of the chorus to sing unless they were paid their salaries, and when finally the half starved Italians scrambled on the stage for pence thrown them by the audience. ~.'.' Musiw-D^AMATicua.