MUSIC NOTES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9789, 4 March 1910, Page 3

MUSIC NOTES.

Madame Molba, before leaving Melbourne for Europe on February 10, purchased the wolf-known dairy farm of Messrs Whitehead Brothers, at Yering, consisting of 228 acres, as a goiug concern, as well as an. adjoining property of 110 acres. Much of her early girlhood was passed in the neighbourhood (says the "Sydney Morning Herald"), and the whole transaction thus contradicts persistent rumours that the great singer would not return to Australia for many years. One of Madame Melba's last letters to Sydney was addressed to Maps Mylor-Burge, a soprano of brilliant timbre, who made her debut here under Mr Burns-Walker's direction last October. In this letter the great singer urges Miss Mylor-Burge to study either in Paris under Madame Marchcsi, or in Berlin under Madame Lili Lehmann, and promises to meet her in Paris and give- her personal advice in April. Miss Mylor-Burge proposes leaving Sydney towards the "middle of the year.

Engelbert Humperdinck, of " Hansel and Gretel" fame, has been the recipient of a singular distinction at the hands df the German Emperor. It appears- that the famous composer s " Konigskinder," first produced in 1898 in the guise of a melodrama, has been ontirely remodelled into an opera, and as such it was to have been performed during the early days of January at the Metropolitan Theatre in New York. On hearing that a German work by so eminent a composer as Humperdinck was to he first given to the world in the English language, the Emperor gave instructions for the imediate staging and production in German, of the opera at tho Royal Opera House in Berlin. Lamartine exclaimed of "La Marseillaise " : "It received from the circumstances from which it arose an especial character that renders it at once solemn and sinister; glory and crime, victory and death, are mingled in its strains." And Heine wrote of it in 1830: " A strong joy seizes me, as I sit writing! Music resounds under my window, and in tho elegiac rage of its large melody .1 recognise that hymn with which the handsome Barbaroux and his companions once greeted the city of Paris. What a song! It thrills me with fiery delight, it kindles within me the glowing star of enthusiasm and the swift rocket of desire. Swelling, burning torrents of song rush from the heights of freedom, in streams as bold as those with which tho Ganges leaps from the heights of the Himalaya! I can write no more, this song intoxicates my brain: louder and nearer advances the powerful chorus: ' Aux Amies, citovonst' " Ono time, when Theodore Thomas was conducting an opera in the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a party in a box talked loudly and persistently. He Bent a. man to beg them politely to desist. They replied insolently that they had paid for their box and. could do in ft what they pleased. When Mr Thomas got this message, and the talking continued, he stopped the music and pointing at the box, said to the audience that the opera would continue as soon as the talking in it ceased, and not before. Tho audience applauded him demonstratively for his speech, and the disturbers left the house hastily. A new operetta, by Hubay, the famous violin teacher of Buda- Pesth. is soon to bo produced in that city under tho name of "The Missionary Ship. The work enjoys the distinction of having been prohibited in Vienna. Richard Strauss has notified the Imperial Opera House in Vienna that he will withdraw " Electra " from the repertory unless it is perforated more frequently, since he is not receiving sufficient in royalties. Felix Weingartuer has answered that it is impossible to find a soprano willing to sing the title role, so great is the strain that it puts on the voice. The young American soprano, Lucille-Mated, who created the leading role, has refused to sing it any longer. . . , Pagan ini's favourite piece on the fourth string is known to have been his arrangement of the prayer in Moses in Egypt," from which we must conclude that his alleged imprisonment did not begin until after the production of Rossini's opera, which, according to Stendhal, had such an effect on the nerves of all the •women who heard it (especially the prayer) that many of them went into convulsions. It may have been one of these ladies who, in a fit of hysterics, provoked Paganini to such an extent that he put her to death, and forever afterwards associated her sad fate with the melody of the first prayer that was ever heard on the stage. The musical absurdities of the present day are of a different colour, and in the latest biography of Wagner we are told, not of a. woman, hut of a man who burst into tears and wept copiously at the rehearsal of " Tannhauser." Paganini's delight in playing on "a single string may, perhaps, have been tho musical expression of the severe economy with which he has often been reproached, though, on the other hand, a story is (or used to be) told of his generosity on one occasion to the unappreciated Berlioz, of whose fantastic music he entertained in any case a "since admiration. It is now known, however, that the sum of 20,000 francs presented to Berlioz by Paganini as an act of homage to a man of genius was. really the gift of Arm and Bertin, proprietor and editor of the " Journal des Debate," who knew that I coming from him the money would not |be accepted by his haughty friend. Paganini seems to have performed with good will the part Bertin had begged him to undertake. He was, at all events, a marvellous violinist, and he preserved in Italy to the very last the 1 supernatural power so long attributed to him. He died at Nice in 1840.