FOOTLIGHT FLASHES.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 236, 21 March 1885, Page 12

FOOTLIGHT FLASHES.

Martyn Hagan is still out of collar. Willie South is forming a company in Sydney for a Queensland tour. Miss Marion Melrose lias gone Home to' her mamma in Melbourne. Percy Shannon has joined Mr Caron's Company, and is doing Queensland. A large number of " pros." are walking about Sydney very much down on their tippers. In Melbourne ditto. Miss Annie Leaf (Mrs Read) has been and gone and done it in Adelaide. Her second husband is Mr Johnstone, better known in theatrical circles as Brooks. We have received from the composers, Messrs Wills and Goldenstein, a copy of the pretty song "Gordon of Khartoum," which is nicely got up and reads well. It should command a ready sale. That old Auckland favourite, Mr J. Cram, takes a well-deserved benefit at the Koyal on Wednesday next. Two sparkling comedies and a first-class concert will be piesented. A bumper house should greet Mr Cram, who is best remembered by Aucklanders as the "Alexis" and " Ealph Eackstraw " of Biccardi's Opera Company. Mr Abbey seems to have an idea that Americans show more kindness to women than to men on the stage. He appears to have a great stake in the ' beauty '-market just now. The last recruit who has joined the ranks is Miss Fortescue, who is to run through the States after she has completed her provincial tour Avith Mrs Saker. The death is announced of Grustav Eeichardt, one of the most popular song-writers of Germany and composer of the music to which Arndt's celebrated lyric " Was ist des Deutchen Vateriand ? " is universally sung. His father was a clergyman, in whose family litei'atui-e and art, especially music, were most zealously followed. Gustav was intended for the clerical profession, but the attraction to music prevailed. His rapid success and merit were so marked, that Zelter, Mendelssohn's master and head of the Berlin Academy of Music, iDointed to him as one of his own most distinguished successors, a prophecy which events j ustifled. Eeichardt was nearly eighty- seven years old. "There is some danger," says a writer in the Pull JS Lull Gazette, "that the j^'ima donna of the world will before long be compelled to enter into competition with a number of pigmy rirals, introduced into the musical world by an enterprising Italian, who has succeeded in training a large number of parrots as opera-singers. These gay singers have lately made their debut at Lima, Peru, the programme being a fragment from the well-known opera 'jSTorma,' with solos, chorus, and the accompaniment of an harmonium. The success is said to have been complete up to the cavatina 'Chaste Goddess,' at which the hilarity of the public became so boisterous that the performers lost all selfcontrol, and shriekingly left the stage, not to appear again that day." Humour states that one of the foremost of American managers has the intention of calling a meeting of managers to abolish diamonds in the theatrical and operatic profession. This young Mr Hopeful maintains that managers are ruined by diamonds. He says diamonds make women and girls crazy, and send up salaries a hundred per cent. He asserts that diamonds are undermining the managers' banking accounts, and that things will never come to a decent head again till real diamonds are forbidden on the stage, and only stage diamonds are allowed when the character dressing demands them. Besides, he will have it that, from a moral point of view, diamonds should be put down on the stage — they ruin the girl, says he, demurely. This young man is venturesome enough to say, " that he will engage no artist who wears diamonds."