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New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue V, 30 July 1898, Page 152

The celebrated Russian tenor, Figner, narrowly escaped death the other day at the hands of a maniac. Figner is attached to the Imperial Opera House, Marie, at St. Petersburg. At the close of the winter season he went to Moscow to give a series of concerts, and afterwards set out for Paris wTEn his wife. At Kieff, where the train stopped for breakfast, a maniac entered the carriage with a knife in his hand. Before anyone was aware of his purpose he precipitated himself upon Figner and gashed his face and neck in an alarming manner. Luckily, the wounds were not fatal, and the tenor is now recuperating at Kieff, preparatory to continuing his journey to Paris.

Sir Arthur Sullivan is anxious that the public should understand that the new Savoy piece is an entirely new departure. The work is not a comic opera, but a serious, earnest romantic drama, in which the dialogue and action are both as important as the music. The musical numbers arise in operatic libretto form, but their sequence, whether of songs, trios, or quartets, never interferes with the dramatic necessities of the play. There is a delicate humour throughout, but there are no comic songs or numbers in the ordinary acceptance of the term.

Air Gladstone was a frequent visitor to the Lyceum Theatre (says ‘The Era’), and when his increasing deafness made it difficult for him to hear from the front of the house he used to come behind and sit in a corner on the O.P. side of the stage in a place which has been known ever since as ‘Gladstone’s seat.’ The first time he occupied the seat the carpenters and property people arranged a velvet canopy over it so that Mr Gladstone might not feel any draught. Two men. moreover, were told off to stand close to him through the performance in case anything untoward should happen. Many years ago, when ‘The Corsican Brothers’ was being played Air Gladstone came behind the scenes and peeped though one of the boxes of the stage which were supposed to re]>resent the front of the opera house in the play. In the excitement of the moment he leaned out. of this box and the audience immediately saw and recognised him, and then there was a a cry, ‘Bravo, Gladstone!’ He visited the Lyceum the night after his great speech on the Home Rule Bill, and on the day of that speech he wrote Sir Henry Irving a letter concerning a visit to the theatre on the following night.

New York is to have a new German theatre, representative of the wealth and culture of its German theatregoing public.