DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4907, 24 March 1894, Page 3

DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

The "Era" announced that the final farewell concert of Madame Pafcey, whoce sadden death waa announced last week, was to be given in London in May. • 'Mr Santley's son, Mr Michael Santley, though educated for musio; has decided - to go -to the Bar. He is Baid to be ah excellent comic Binger, and also an expert performer on the banjo. According to the Bayreuth "Taechen- • Kglehder," the number of performances of Wagner's works ih the German language amounted, in the year ending June last, to 1047, an inorease of 227 on the previous year. • It ia announced in the "Queen" that Miss Amy Sherwin is going to pay a visit to Australia, and appear in forty concerts. She will first go to Bayreuth in the European summer, bo that apparently ahe maybe expected about November next. Organ-grinding seems to ba a lucrative employment in England. At a recent law case in the Bamagate county conrt it wag stated in evidence that one 1 of these itinerant musicians often earned £1 a day, and never less than 7s, and that two, who were in partnership, had collected .6114 in thirty-eight weeks. Misa Lillian Eussell, the American prima donna, was married at New Tork on Sunday, Jan. 21, to Signor Perugini — otherwise Chatterton — a tenor well known on the operatic stage. This is Miss Bussell's third matrimonial venture. A musical director and a well-known Engliah composer were (successively) her former lords, and her present partner is now playing with her in the comic opera Princess 'Nicotine. It Ib estimated that np to the end of -December Mr living's receipts in America totalled over >£90,000 (-612,000 of which was taken from San Francisco, _529,0C0 from Chicago, whilst his eight weeks' receipts in New Tork came to -£40,000). With the exception of the tour which Bernhardt made in 1890-91, the Lyceum season is the longest ever made by any theatrical company in America. The tour closes on Saturday at Abbey's Theatre in New Tork. The late David Belasco, professionally known as David James left personalty valued at _£4i,594 12s ld. He bequeathed a number of small amounts to friends and relations, and to his wife the income for her life of a sum of which on her death •is to go to such charitable institutions as tho trustees may select. It was the testator's particular desire that some of the institutions to be benefited under this bequest should bo some of those for the benefit of actors and persons connected with the theatre. The late Henry PeUitfc, the dramatist, -sold hia first play for a £5 note. During the last years of his life he is said to have enjoyed an income equal to that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He waa the fion of a civil engineer in Birmingham, and was thrown on his own resources at the age of thirteen. He was an unsuccessful actor, tried his hand at story writing, obtained a place aa clerk and waß dismissed for inattention, and served as assistant master in a London school, before taking up the profession of playwriting. Harry Payne, tha renowned English clown, in a recent interview told the foHowing incident j — "l remember, when playing at the Surrey Theatre once, the harlequin failed in his attempt to leap through a door-flap, one leg remaining Btuck in the aperture and visible to the audience. To gloss over what appeared to me to be a little mishap, I took hold of. the haoging leg and dangled it up and down, exclaiming as I did so, • Oh, my ! here's a funny man,' which appeared to tickle the audience immensely, for they buret into a roar of laughter. When the harlequin waß dra-wn through by the men behind, it was discovered that he had broken ft leg in bis abortive leap. To my deep regret I afterwards discovered that it was the fractured limb which I had unwittingly ohaken." M;3_ Sadie Martinet, an American actrc-sf, has adopted a curious "sliding Bcalo" with respect to costumes and ealsr/. She h*& been drawing a very large silfiry; and when ohe waa asked to apiM-ir in a psrb which required a "Bloomer" costume she demanded JBS aweek more for the necessary exposure. " Why, my dear Mr French," she said, to the manager, " I have been on the stage for — ahem— -we'll, I have always been in full costume; and here I find that I am expected i o come before the public in the mo_t confidential ■ manner, — tho moßt confidential manner, sir ! " " What is the matter ? " " Matter, eir ? I find that I must -xnose my ankle 3. I bave heretofore kej't the public at a distance. I demand £5 a wo_k increase in my salary." Mr French surrendered; for, as he said he wanted a lady for the part. It is estimated thatthere are ia America about 17,000 men and women who make a ! living in the theatrical business, and of these about 2000 are now in Now York looking iv vain for employment. Some are living on what they have laid by, while others have -sought work in hotels, mercantile honaes, and Btreet cars. A great many unemployed pl.yers are in destitute circumstances. Tno Actors' fund has about 160.000d01, accumulated during the past tea years, safely invested, and paying a low rate of interest. It also receives about 12,000 Jol per annum from the city aa its Bhara of the theatrical license money, and hau other sources of revenue, sucb as benefit performances' and the ten-cent tax collected in come theatres on complimentary tickets. Nevertheless so many and heavy are the demands made upon its treasury in the prese-c-t hard times, tbat its officers find themselves running behind every month, and fear that it will be necessary before long either to restrict the sphere of their charitable work or to encroach upon their invested funds. Dvordfc has recently produced in New Tork his " American Symphony," founded on themes taken from Negro melodies, thia being tho only form of "folk mueic" which Bpringa from tho American soil. According to a New York paper, the composer set to work " to eaturate himself with tha spirit and colour of Negro and Indian music." He has, we aro further told, " given himself up thoroughly to the iufluenco of Am. rican scenery, customs, feelings and liteiature." . Having thus **aboorbed the eptrio of the music, he sot himselfto invent his own themes; and the principal melodies of his symphony are in rhythm and melodic character faithful leproductions of plantation and. prairie mu-icj but they are entirely original. With ( h^B6themea Dvor&khas endeavoured to build ti symphony whoae musical spirit arid feelipg voice his conception of Americani6m as revealed by the national character and literature." Speaking of the. work as a whole, the critic says that "Dr Dvoiak'a Fifth Symphony will probably bo regarded aa hia best. The themes are exquisitely melodious, and tbe treatment id fcuporb m ita ingenuity, consistency and mth tic effect." Lav a Schirmer-Jlawleuon, a leading and popular American singer, died at NewTork o-_ Jan. 2_ of pneumonia. She mada i .'reat success; some years ago in opera, »v*_ on her marriage with Arthur Byron, au English tenor, left for Europe. After successes at the great capitals the company landed in Constantinople. The Sultan, Abdul Hamod 11, had heard of the beauty and artistic triumphs of the American -ia^t'i- Kr, d commanded her to appear before him to entertain hia court. By ii 3 order she was compelled to sing •pd to dance, and finally waa given a 'ccc of -music and told by the Grand

_ Vizier to Bing it in Turkish. Fortunately i Bhe had learned sufficient of the language 3 to enable her to undergo this ordeal, ahd t when Bhe had completed it the Sultan l appointed her court singer to the imperial 1 Ottoman court at a large salary. Then _ came strange stories of the Bingcr's life in 1 the Sultan's court. The climax waa - reached when, in October, 1888, there came 9 a story of such atrocious crime and ■ cruelty in which the prima donna figured r that it read more like a romance. Accord--1 me to this _tory she and thirteen inmates b of the Sultan's harem had been poiHoned . and their bodies thrown into tbe Bosphorus. r The story created the greatest excitement in America and led to much correspondence, both private and official, but it was Boon discovered that the report was simply a hoax. Mis 3 Schirmer lived I to organise a " most successful operatic > troupe in Constantinople, and it lasted until the death of Byron, when she left for Paris, where she appeared in grand opera. Colonel Henry Mapleson, eon of tho dist inguished impresario, met her there, and . falling ih love with the beautiful singer . married, her at the English Embassy, March 17, 1890, in the presence of a most . distinguished assemblage. They returned , to America in the autumn cf 1891, and t after a couple of seasons in concert Bhe p bacame last year the star of " The Fencing ' Master" company.

; I [-"BOM ©TO OWN COBBBSPONDBNT.j London, Jan. 2t>< "Pony" Moore has, it ie announced, l terminated, his engagement with the ' famous Moore and Burgess Minstrels and . sailed for the States. Some two years ago the Minstrels were converted into a limited liability company. I have not as yet heard of any dividend. The notices of Mr Grundy's An Old Jew have damned with such faint praise that the piece is not likely to run long, and Mr Hare wili at once put Caste in rehearsal. It iB feared under these circumstances Mrs . Bancroft will nob play the Marquise, as she might have done had the production , been postponed till June. I am glad to see John N. Sogers perking 1 up a bit and advertising the new comic opera Wapping Old .Stairs ac the Vaudeville in quite hia ancient style. To give him his due, " yours merrily " does know how to . advertise, . though I fear he. won't be able to persuade the public to patronise this venture. Qut we shall see; author and composer are both new to town. The Empire management, anxious io outdo the Palace Theatre, where the classic tableaux vivants have caught on wonderfully, offered Mra Langtry no less thau J. 600 a week if she would dumbly personate the Venus of Milo, Lady Godiva, &c, &c. The Jersey Lily's limbs are understood to be of a very special quality. To her credit, be it said, Mrs Langtry has refused to submit them to the publio gaze even for JBIOO a time. The second triple bill at the Court Theatre has not proved a success, despite Mr Brookfield's clever Under the Clock, and on Saturday the sea.on came to an abrupt close. Gudgeons, also, at Terry's Theatre, was played for the last time the same evening:. This piece would have run two or three hundred nights a few yeara ago, and even now might have caught on at a lucky house, but the good fortune of Terry's Theatre ended with the run of Sweet Lavender. As the song says, "it has never done anything since." After seeing G. W. Anson's broken-down bibulous acting in An Old Jew, Mr Harestill far from well— gave up all idea of attempting himself to play Ecoles in the pending revival of Castle, and engaged your late visitor. Anson has certainly not gone off during hia long stay at the Antipodes. It was no easy job to pick up his just position on the metropolitan stage after Euch a lengthy absence, but Mr Anson has done it. As first low comedian at the Garrick, he will indeed hold rather a superior position to the one he had at the! Adeiphi when he left England. The Charlatan, Eobert Buchanan's new play at the Haymarket, would, in all probability, never have been written had Captain Swift and Judah not seen the light. Mr Buchanan is a capital improver. The leading ideas of these two dramas have been turned over in his mind, and the result appears in a piece in many respects stronger than either. Philip Woodville, "The Charlatan," iB our old friend the villain, who, at the moment of triumph, when juet about to accomplish his " fell purpose," is converted into an exemplary specimen of the human race by the power of love. He comes into the house of the Earl of Wanborough in pursuit of Isabel Arlington, the niece of his lordship, who has already rejected his offer of marriage on the ground that he is an impostor. Already in the house is Philip's confederate, Madame Obnoskin, a Russian widow, who seepas trying to win the earl's elderly affections and hand by dosing him with Theosophy, in which ehe is not a believer. What are her relatione with Philip, what were their designs, it was impossible to guess, for it was clear that she expected him, and meant to conspire with him, and yet knew not that he came after Isabel. This pretty pair of traffickers in Theosophy are aware that Isabel is in great grie? and anxiety about her father, who has been missing for two years, and is supposed to be dead, and they have learnt that he is alive, so they arrange a trick in aid of a plot, whose object is not obviouß. They get the earl's guests together in the " White Gallery"— a wonderful piece of scenepainting and stage - carpentery — and arrange a dark stance, at which, by a device which it seems impossible that they should have worked, they present a vision of Isabel's father; immediately after it ia learnt that he is alive and returning to England. Now Philip has not succeeded in inducing Isabel to accept him as suitor ; she thinks him a worthless fellow, and is supported in this viow by her other suitor, Lord Dewsbury, a peer with a huge rentroll and good manners in inverse proportion to. ifc. So the rejected Charlatan resolves to revenge himself by ruining her. By his mesmeric influence he compels her to come to his rooma at dead of night. In her trance he geta from her a confession that she loves him, has always loved him, though believing him to be a scamp. Thereupon hia heart melts, his wicked ideas vanish, and he becomes good on the spot. Instead of sending her back to her room unawakened and unconscious of what has occurred he bringa her to her senses, tells her what a villain he has been, and sends her off to bed through a concealed door, as someone comes tapping at his room. Nest day he tells the earl and Lord Davtsbury all about the vision fraud, and naturally they are very indignant. He promises to depart at once, and haa a painful leave-taking scene with ißabel, who declares that she loves him and believes him to be a true and worthy man. At the fall of the curtain she expresses her belief and hope that Philip will return once more. Attached to this story is a subsidiary plot concerning the flirtation of the earl's daughter, Cavlotta, and her second cousin the Hon Mervyn Darrell. He at first is represented as a mental fop, who detests music because it reminds him of plump-pudding and Dickens— a "vulgar optimist." He seeks paradoxes in everything, and makes notes for his book of the good things he says in conversation. The creature, really/ a rather clever caricature of some "cultured" persons, but ultraj farcical, does not Buit Carlotta— a commonplace girl— as a lover, so to win her he suddenly announces that he haß made up his mind to change his character and renounce his old ideas, and he tells her he ! onco thrashed a bargea aud would like to ' fight another, and so secures her affections. j There are Eoma clover little touches in an ! old scientific man very ingeniously played iby Mr Holmao. Clark, and in a Bioad i Church dean who comes to the seance. Mr i Tree, of course, fits the part of Woodville j to perfection, and plays it with a convici tion which almost makea one believe in | the black sheep's suddon conversion. The I part of the neurotic Isabel also exactly ! suits Mrs Tree's lackadaisical style, and J the minor characters are, without exception, well eaßt. The scene of the stance deserve.? a ppacial word. The smallest hitch would have set the house in a roar, whereas we were held spellbound. The Charlatan was a great fiUCCCBS and should run many months.