MUSIC.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1678, 27 April 1904, Page 29

MUSIC.

NOTES BY S STRiNB Madame Adelina Patti has now entered npon her sixty-second year. It was in 1861 that she first appeared in London, at a concert given at the Brighton Town Hall by Mr W. Knhe. A little later she made her debut at Covent Garden as Amina in “La Sonnambula.” Madame Patti has not met with the success her managers expected in the concert tour she recently undertook in the United States, and now the tour has been abandoned with several outstanding concert dates cancelled. The venture has been a very expensive one, as Mine. Patti’s salary was £IOOO a night. At some of the towns she had been billed the advance receipts were not sufficient to cover expenses

The King and Queen were present at a Philharmonic Society’s concert at Queen’s Hall, London, recently. The soloists were Miss Elizabeth Parkina (who is to visit Australia shortly, Miss Dorothy Maggs, and Miss Marie Hall, the violinist, the last-mentioned performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Three British sopranos are now meeting with great success in opera on the Continent. Miss Marguerite Macintyre is in Berlin, Mme. Ella Russell is in Milan, and Miss Esther Palliser, as Fraulein Espa, is singing at some of the opera houses in South Germany. It is probable that these gifted vocalists will appear at Covent Garden in May. Miss Ada Crossley had a highly prosperous tour of South Africa, where the first of five concerts at Johannesburg took place on March 2nd. Mr J. C. W'lliamson directed this enterprise, and the star was supported (as, in Australasia) by Messrs Percy Grainger, jacques Jacobs, W. A. Peterkin. and Benno Sclierek. Mr Manuel Garcia, the oldest pi’actising professor of music in the world, attained the phenomenal age of 99 in March last.

Mr Philip Newbury was offered the tenor solo in “Caractacus” at the Eilgar Festival on March 16th, but had to refuse it oAving to the Leeds engagement. Miss Nannie Tout, an American who is a pupil of M. Albert Visetti at the Royal College of Music, sang before the Queen the other day. According to the “Daily Chronicle” she has a splendid voice. She is only eighteen years of age, and entered the Royal College earlier than the regulations usually permit. Her first appearance in public was at a ballad concert in November last. The tour of Mr Watkiii Mills in Australasia as to be a brief one on account of the numerous English engagements for which he is hooked. The basso will, however, sing in all the Australian capitals, including Perth, and is to visit New Zealand. The Brisbane Choral Union has already arranged with him to sing in “The Messiah” and “Elijah.”

The talented London singer, Miss Muriel Foster lias begun an American tour under the direction- of Mr N. Vert. Mr Landon Ronald has lately composed a song-cycle for her. It is entitled “Songs of the Hill”; the lyrics are by Mr ITarold Simpson.

The author of the song “We Don’t Want to Fight,” Mr G. W. Hunt, died in the Essex County Asylum, Brentwood, a few weeks ago. He wrote the words and music of this /song in 1877 when the trouble in the Near East occupied the public mind. He sent it to “The Great Macdermott,” with the note: —“lf you don’t think this song is of any use to you, throw it in the wastepaper basket.” Macdermott tried the song, thought it unattractive in words and tune, and acted on the author’s suggestion by throwing it away. But during the evening, with a strange pers-TstKice.. the chorus kept running through Maedermott’s mind, and he was unable to get the tune out of his head. When he got home at one o’clock in the morning he asked his wife where the song was, and after an hour’s search they found it. He ran over it again at the piano, and finally he decided to try it. The song was a great success, and was sung nightly at the Pavilion.

Mr Eugen D’ Albert has, If one may judge from a letter which he recently contributed to a Frankfort journal, a poor opinion of the state of music in Germany. He writes:—“Formerly there were artists who lived only for their ideal, and cared little for material things; but in our time all has changed. The artist puts his ideal—when he has one —.behind his love of material things, and joins in'the race for wealth. There is hardly a pianoforte professor who is not a man of business, his pupils being his merchandise.” Madame Adelina Patti’s America tour at a fee of £IOOO a night is proving, a failure. Her appearance at Philadelphia had to be cancelled, and there was-mo booking for her at Scranton, Pemisy<Lvania. When Madame Patti left London the press were still saying that her voice was superb, just as they did in the (case of the late Sims Reeves, but the New York, Chicago, and Boston critics simply refused to do it. They let in a little light; but for all that the New York entrepreneurs (Messrs Weber and Field)

sci aped out of the venture with a loss of only ISOOdol (<£3oo). So immense is the interest felt in “Parsifal” in New York that a matinee performance of Wagner’s great music drama was given at the Metropolitan Opera House on February 22nd, when the performance began at 11.30 a.m. An hour before that time it was necessary to open the doors aud admit the crowds, which thronged the footpaths in the rain. Five minutes after opening the doors there was iio standing room left in the theatre. The receipts reached the neighbourhood of £3600. The tenth and last performance of the work was given two days later. Mdme. Ternina and Herr von Rooy were again tho Kundry and Parsifal. The musical critic of the London “Daily News” utters a note of warning with regard to the overcrowded state of the vocal profession in the Old Country. He says:—“There is but a small opening for the would-be singer on the concert platform to-day, for the ranks of vocalists are terribly overcrowded. We want singers who have something more than a voice to recommend them. The mere possession of a voice unless it is of that rare type of a Patti’s or a Melba’s, is not enough. There must be the right kind of temperament, the musical brain, and infinite patience and capability for hard work. In fact, these qualities are more necessary than the possession of a fine voice.” ’

The monster organ for the St. Louis Exposition will cost £20,000, and will be 62ft long and 40ft high. There will be no fewer than 140 speaking stops. An American statistician has discovered that this instrument will be capable of producing 17,179,869,183 distinct tonal effects!

Adelina Patti sailed for home on the Lucania (says an American exchange) carrying with her as the net material result of her positively last farewell visit to us the snug little sum of 200.000 dollars. She expected to do much better than this and she would have done much better than this, no doubt, under different circumstances. A people whom she had so often charmed in other days by the grace of her person and the marvellous sweetness of her voice would gladly have contributed more than this had she appealed directly to their charity. And in addition to the handsomer sum that she might have realised she would also have carried home with her on the Lucania their good opinion. It was their awakening to the fact thp4 they had been deceived which led the&f? to withhold the larger tribute and make impossible the continuance of an engagement founded npon false pretences. For the first time in her career the money which she takes home with her is begrudged, because the people wiio contributed it feel that they got nothing in return for it. Had Adelina Patti in her old age been threatened with want the case would have been different. Nothing, however, but sordidness could have prompted her to make this latest visit to a country that had always, treated her handsomely, knowing, as she must have known, that she no longer had anything to offer in return for its dollars. She has her 200,000 dollars, or whatever her profits on the adventure may amount to, but whatever they are, she has lost something that she can never regain.

Mr George Dance writes as follows to the London “Globe”:—“You recently printed an article entitled ‘The Ditty of the Day/ in which you ask who brought ‘Hiawatha’ over from America and popularised it in this country. I must confess that the sin was mine. I first introduced it into the ‘Girl from Kay’s” while on tour about twelve months ago. It at once caught the popular fancy, and now it is sung in every pantomime of the day.”