Music and Drama.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue XVIII, 6 May 1899, Page 613

Music and Drama.

Madame Amy Sherwin has been singing at the Queen’s Hall, London, and the Green Park Club’s ‘At Home,’ and she is engaged to sing with Miss Ada Crossley in September. Herr Friedenthal, the eminent German pianist, whose recitals are now one of the attractions of Melbourne, is aid to have an irreproachable technique, brilliancy, and refinement of expression. The performance of Handel’s Israel in Egypt has been postponed by the Sydney Philharmonic Society owing to difficulty of rehearsal. It will be given in the Town Hall on June Bth. The London correspondent of the ‘Sydney Daily Telegraph’ considers it certain that Irving will visit Australia.

Miss Vera French, a former pupil of Herr Zimmerman’s, 'has been playing at concerts in the South of England lately with pleasing success. The Sussex weekly considers ‘this infant prodigy’—she is only nine—‘has all the makings of a violinist of the first rank.’

The Senate of Glasgow University have agreed to confer the degree of LL.D, upon Sir Henry Irving. The famous actor has already received similar degrees at Cambridge and Dublin. Such honours to an actor are unprecedented in the annals of the British stage. The death is announced Of Miss Alma Stanley, the well-known actress. She will be remembered here as having played with Mr Harry Paulton in ‘My Friend from India’ and ‘A Night Out.’ Miss Stanley was the daughter of a Captain Stanley, who left the English Army to volunteer for Mexico, where he was killed whilst carrying despatches to the Emperor Maximilian. When hardly in her teens Miss Stanley learned dancing at Milan, and showed such aptitude for the art that she appeared with the ballet at San Carlo, Naples. She then studied singing seriously, but ultimately found she had not sufficient voice to attain distinction in that branch of art.

Mr Hoyle, representative of Messrs Williamson and Musgrove with the Pollard Company, is now the Firm’s dramatic representative in this colony, with power to grant licenses and receive royalties on copyrights. Mr J. W. Watson, of Christchurch, is making headway as a melodramatist in the Old Country. He goes under the nom de plume of F. Brooke Warren. Mark Hambourg. the pianist, has signed a contract for 50 concerts in the United States. The ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ speaks of Mrs Brown-Potter as London’s new idol. The Gaiety Specialty Company continues to attract good houses in Auckland. A kinematograph of the SpanishAmerican war with miscellaneous pictures added commenced a short season in Auckland on Saturday last.