NOTES BY LORGNETTE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1289, 12 November 1896, Page 17

NOTES BY LORGNETTE.

Mdlle. Trebelli gives a concert at the Opera Houso on Friday, this week, when no doubt the cantatrice will be greeted by a very large audience of music lovers. Since she was last in Wellington Mdlle. Trebelli has made a wonderfully successful tour of Australia, in which, as it will be remembered by readers of this column, she was accompanied by Mr John Prouse, who will assist at Friday's concert. A complete orchestra will also add to the attractions of the evening.

My Christchurch correspondent writes : —The carnival week has come again, and with it all the shows in the country. The Pollard Opera Company opened last week, and, in spite of the fact that people are saving all their spare money for the "great week," did splendid business —the card "standing room only" being exhibited nearly every evening. The production of " Rip Van Winkle" is one of Tom's best efforts, and he deserves all his success. Great improvement can be noticed in the company, although it is only six months since they were here. For the carnival week they changed the bill each evening, and thus secured largo 'audiences. —Charles Godfrey and his company opened at the Opera House on Monday, the great attraction being the scena "Balaclava," with, as the advertisement states, the original trappings and saddles used in the great "Chaige of the Light Brigade." Now, if I were Charles Godfrey, I would sell those saddles, &c, to, say, the British Museum, for I am sure they are too valuable to be carting about New Zealand. business was Only so so the first part of the week, but I expect they will do alriglit 'about show time. Probasco and Findlay i s Circus arrived on Saturday 'and pitched' their tent opposite the Theatre Boyal. The company is one organised in'Dunedin b,y_Mr who will bo remembered in jNow Zealand with the talking horse Mahomet, j Jfc is a complete little show, and is doing i all right.-^-Alongside the circus is a canvas- j roofed building, which would not hare l been allowed to stand in any tovn but this. It has been fitted up into a miniature theatre, and in it a performance is given at intervals. This show consists of juggling, contortion, shadowgraphy and the only Lady Boxer. — Alongside this again is the Boxing Kangaroo— At ihe Temple of Truth, which is almost, so to speak, in the suburbs, Ovide Musin, assisted by local talent, is giving concerts—3Jfr J. MacMahon, with the Cinematograph, has been raking in the dollars all rightgiving about ten shows a day.—A Catholic bazaar at the Oddfellows' Hall completes j ph& list at the time of writing.—lt is just on the cards that The Firm will send " Chinatown" for a flying visit to New Zealand prior to leaving by the December 'Frisco mail steamer, but I fancy it all depends upon the general elections. If'they take place this month or early next it will be all right—Madame Trebelli will probably give two concerts in Christchurch about the 23rd inst. —Ada Delroy, that clever little artist round New Zealand with Harry Eickards some years ago, has arrived in Dunedin with a compact little company. They will be the Christmas attraction here. Mr Tames Morgan, who will be remembered fa New Zealand with the St, Leon Circus

and afterwards with the Fau3t Family, is I piloting the company, and a more genial and business-like manager could not be I found. On Monday night Mr Tom Pollard } presented a gold-mounted whip to W.White, i the rider of Lady Zetland, the winner of j the New Zealand Cup. i

A story reaches me which may prove of interest to my readers : —A good young man, a musician, who left his home for the first time and joined a popular organisation which has toured New Zealand for some years, was recently seen cleaning windows in a popular hotel not one hundred miles from Wanganui. How this came about was related to me later on. It appears that the " boots" at the hotel was bemoaning his fate at not being able to go to the races which were taking place that day—the boss of the establishment, having a bad liver attack, had ordered him to clean the windows. The young man above-mentioned not being a sport and taking advantage of his brother pro's. | absence at the races, was engaged in his bedroom washing his only nightshirt, when the " boots," looking in his window preparatory to cleaning it, noticed him. A sort of friendly feeling sprang up between them, and a conversation ensued in f which the " boots" lamented his luck at ' not being able to go out and back a " dead bird " he knew of. " Oh," said the young man, " I never go to races myself, and I have nothing to do this afternoon. I'll clean the windows for you;" and he did, to the delight of the "boots" and another member of the company who happened to be coming that way. Fact,

The failure of Nat Goodwin to hit the Australian public —one of the worst failures of recent yeai-s —only confirms previous impressions of this journal that imported comedians of the star order won't wash here. Nat., " the greatest comedian of America," has gone the way of Johnny Toole, " the greatest comedian in England," whilst Edward Terry, another of Hingland's pet comedians, didn't do much better than either of them. The people of this land obviously won't take funny men made to order. They have to livo here, like Brough, and Elton, and Anson, to prove their enduring qualities as comedians, and if after a year or two they can still raise a laugh, then they can reckon that the great heart of this country has gone out to them. — Bulletin.

Thus a South African journal:—" Some of the bags carrying the South African mails have been made by Oscar Wilde during his stay in Reading Prison, and one of them, by a curious coincidence, brought the typewritten copies of his plays, recently produced in Johannesburg."

Some more late trades of pros.: Harry Norman, compositor; E. C. Corlesse, Civil servant; Bob Inman, draper; Wally Bentley, rate collector; Mrs Molyneux, fruiterer.

Madame Amy Sherwin's concert and opera company had a most successful time in South Africa, and the performances of the company drew immense houses at increasing prices for admission, and the whole tour resulted excellently. The company included the popular prima donna herself, Mr Henry Stockwell, of New Zealand; Mr Gladstone Wright, of Melbourne ; and Mr John Lemmone, of the same city. In the first part of one of the Capetown programme the gifted Tasmanian artiste sang " Lo! Hear the Gentle Lark," supported by Mr Lemmone. The Cape Times describes Mr Lemmone's playing as " such as has never before been heard in this country." The second part of the programme consisted of scenes from Gounod's " Faust," by an Australian cast which placed Mme. Sherwin as Marguerite, Miss (Florence Oliver as Siebel, Mr Henry Stockwell as Faust, and Mr Gladstone Wright as Mephistopheles. Herr Hugo Gorlitz directed the season, and the tariff was 7s 6d, 6s, ss, 3s, and 2s—very considerably higher than we are accustomed to. Mr and Mrs Sims Reeves were about to open their concert season at somewhat similar rates a week later. It was supposed that Mme. Sherwin would have embarked at the Cape for Australia, but such will ; not apparently be the case, as her name is announced for several concerts during the London winter season.

Melbourne Punch says "Gaiety Girl" Laura Kearney has just been married to a wealthy Englishman. She has retired from stageland, and is now honeymooning the world. '

The above item will much amuse a certain well-known Australian advance agent.

Cecil Ward, who has finally left the BiOßgh Company, is to be succeeded by an English actor, Mr Edward Ferris, who has recently been playing in the English pror vinces with Miss Fortescue's company.

In " The Coil of the Serpent," now being played at Her Majesty's, Sydney, one hundred real Chinamen appear on the stage.

Mr Frank Thornton was to sail for Australia per s.s. Orizaba on October 30. He will bring along with him "Charley's Aunt," " Mamma," " The Private Secretary," " The Bookmaker," " Sweet Lavender" and "The Strange Adventures of Miss Brown." New Zealand early in the year.

Cecil Ward's break with the Brough Comedy Company recalls to mind (says the Bulletin) his first appearance on the Australian stage. It happened at Melbourne Bijou " In Held by the Enemy," and revealed the youthful-looking Cecil as an ultra-romantic lover with an enormous capacity for gasping. His heavy method on that occasion, and for a while after wards, gave little promise of the versa

tility which has made him a popular ] favourite. Ward, as we first knew him, was an intelligent, inexperienced actor of the Charles Warner stamp, who might easily have settled down and grown old in the melodrama-hero groove had he joined, say, Bland Holt's company. Time was when the Sydney gallery-boys showed a disposition to " poke borak " at the gushful young man, but a course of farcical comedy with Brough and Boucicault developed his sense of humour and fitted him for serio-comic character sketches — stich as the aristocratic tippler in "Mrs Tanqueray." Under B. and B. management Cecil Ward played a fairly wide range of parts in a more or less admirable manner throughout the chapter. His Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, for instance, were very different people to the boozey Orreyed aforementioned. The Judge's son in "A Village Priest" was a considerable contrast to Joseph Surface, and the weak-kneed earl in ' The Amazons " had no points of resemblance to gallant Claudio in "Much Ado About Nothing." Seriously sentimental in such modern i plays as " Mrs Ebbsmith " and " The New Woman," the adaptable Ward could pla.y f the fool joyously in farces, or adopt a, bright, gentlemanly middle course as in "The Magistrate."

Edith " Trilby " Crane revisits the colonies early next year as a member of Maurice Barrymore's Company.

Says Sydney Sunday Times: —"A divorce case in which two well-known theatrical people were concerned, was settled out of court during the week. It would have been very piquant reading had it gone on in the usual way." Who were they ?

George Rignold, says Melbourne Punch, has given up all hopes of a Christmas show in Sydney. When he went to view the ladies' for the ballets, &c, he found all the best had been snapped by Williamson and Westmacott for their pantomimes.

Rignold was to revive "Henry the Fifth" at Melbourne Royal on Saturday last.

Williamson and Musgrove's lease of Sydney Lyceum is up on Boxing Night. The Firm will not renew their tenancy.

The clever young Permans, round here years ago with poor Johnny Hall, are doing well at Home, getting «£6O a weok in a Manchester panomime, managed, by the way, by our old acquaintance, " Bob" Courtneidgo.

The one-armed Hungarian pianist, Count Zichy, is shortly to appear in London and give a series of concerts.

Marie Corelli's " Sorrows of Satan" is being dramatised for Beerbohm Tree.