Music Drama

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue XX, 19 May 1900, Page 945

Music Drama

The Walter Bentley Company commences its Auckland season on June 4th.

A fourth Waxworks Show has been organised by Mr Ben. Fuller, which will tour the Otago and Canterbury districts. The Leslie Brothers are now in Christchurch. Their Dunedin season was a success.

The leading attractions which Dix’s Gaiety Company have to present to the public now are Miss Ida Roslyn, seriocomic actress and danseuse; the aWrsaw Brothers, musical sketch artists: and Mr Frank Yorke, who has proved such a favourite that Mr Dix has engaged him for a further term of six months. The Pollards concluded their Auckland season on Saturday last. Their stay in the North, notwithstanding that, with the exception of “The Geisha,” they played nothing new, was •continuously successful. Full houses greeted the players every night and the management must have left the northern city with light hearts and heavy pockets.

Mr. Fred. E. Baume, one of Auckland’s foremost lawyers, who has long had a brilliant reputation as a reciter and amateur actor, and who when standing for Parliamentary honours at the last general election, won instant recognition as a clever political thinker and debater, has added another accomplishment to his already long list, and now appears as the author of a blood-stirring ballad, “The Motherland Shall Never Die.” The words, which are far above the usual class of such things, have been set to appropriate music by Mr. F. Boult. On Saturday evening last the large and critical audience at the Savage Club gave Mr. Ba lime’s verses a tremendous reception, clamorously demanding an encore. At the Opera House, where “In Town” was being played, “The Motherland Shall Never Die” was sung by Mr. Fitts as an interpolated item, and was enthusiastically encored. Mr. Baume has, we understand, written several other stanzas for musie, which are likely to appear shortly.

The following are the bookings at the Auckland Opera House for the remainder of this year and the earlier months of 1901:—The Henry Dramatic Company, May 21 to 26; Banjo Club’s Concert, May. 28; Walter Bentley Company, open J une 4; J. F. Sheridan (Widow O'Brien), About October 6; Pollard Opera Company, Christmas week; “What happened to Jones,” February 19, 1901, to March 11; Holloway Dramatic Company, April 6 to 27.

Miss Alice Law, L.R.A.M. (Lon.), will give a piano recital in the Y'.M. C.A. Hall, Auckland, on Friday evening next. Mr M. Hamilton Hodges will assist.

At the matinee given by the Pollards on Saturday afternoon in the Auckland Opera House, the takings were larger by £l5 than any sum received by the management at any previous performance in Auckland.

It seems that there was an alarm of fire in the Theatre Francaise about a week before the historic house was burned down. One of the classical Tuesdays they were playing Racine's “Andromaque,” when two women seated in the balcony thought there was'.a smell of burning, moved from their seats and were followed by other spectators. The performance was interrupted, and Paul Mounet, who was on the stage at the time, said, “What does it all mean? There is really nothing the matter.” M. Claretie, from his stage box, addressed the house, saying, “There is nothing. Be seated, pray.” “Do you think,” continued Paul Mounet, “we should want to run more risk than you?” at which remark the journalist Anatole France, who happened to be in the stalls, shouted “Bravo, Mounet!” On Monday laet the Rev. Charles Clark initiated his Auckland season by delivering his lecture on “St. Paul’s, the British Temple of Honour.” There was a large attendance.

and the lecturer was listened to with the profound interest his vivid word

pictures merited. Towards the close of the evening Mr Clark referred to the wonderful growth of the Imperial spirit that has been witnessed since the outbreak of the war, and reminded his hearers that ns there were still vacant niches in St. Paul's so there were heroes to fill them. The race

of British heroes was not extinct, said he. What about Baden-Powell. French, Dundonald, George White, Buller—poor old Buller, who had -had the toughest job und hardest battle of the lot—Fighting Macdonald, Kitchener, and last, least, and greatest gallant little Bobs? Loud applause interrupted the lecturer as each of these names fell from his lips, and was especially pronounced when he spoke of Roberts. During the evening the lecturer recited Tennyson’s magnificent “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.” Last evening (Tuesday) he gave his Chas. Dickens lecture, introducing the following recitals:—“The Accommodating Waiter,” “The Death of Little Nell,” “Bob Sawyer's Party," ami “The Quarrel Between Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig.” To-night (Wednesday) he gives “Vanity Fair" and the. great Snob family. The season closes on Saturday evening. Tin’s is the way a Denver critic describes Blanche Walsh: “Those large smouldering, blue-green eyes—that mouth, a coral bow of Cupid’s framing, glorified by lurking dimples that flit hither and thither in tantalising coquetry—a broad, low brow, such as artists delight, in painting Madonas, with a halo of sun-burnished hair that glints with dark, ruddy tints of copper; the soft, silken draperies of the clinging gown suggest, such proportions as would make a fit model for a Venus de Medici—superbly tall, physically accurate —is it not befitting such a one should be the apostle of the poetry of pleasure? And this, too, in the winter time, and in Denver, where the snow caps the mountain peaks all the year round. If a glance from those large, smouldering, bot tie-green—ho, blue-green eyes, should happen to Indirected that way, there is good ground far the belief that those white-clad summits would lie transformed into roaring volcanoes, compared to which old Vesuvius would look like a bunch of stage money contrasted with a roll of crisp, new gold certificates.

There is some talk in Paris of a total and definite suppression of the claque. Progressive managers hold that the institution is quite out of date anil entails a needless expense. The result of the arrangement is that, genuine playgoers in Paris theatres hardly ever applaud.-as they know that the claque is there to do the work, and because, moreover, they do not want to look as if they belonged to the noisy force in question. There are worse drawbacks, however, to the institution. In smaller theatres the chef de claque, when lie is unscrupulous, preys upon actors and actresses who are not sufficiently well known to be able to defy him. and whom he accordingly can make or mar. The syndicate of Paris theatre managers has now determined to make a move in the matter, following the example of Sarah Bernhardt, who lias earned the gratitude of her spectators by suppressing the claque altogether in her house, and is none the less applauded.

That wonderful Patti. This is what the “Pall Mall Gazette” said of her the other day: “We have heard Patti, of course, in Opera before the occasion of last night; but her extraordinary skill in acting—after all. in discussing operatic acting, you cannot use words of higher meaning than this—had never been so patently displayed in so far as our memory goes. With quick, animate gesture, with sudden impulses, with signifiaant turns anil appeals, she showed us something altogether outside sympathy for loyalty and chivalry anil courage.' just as ‘L’Aiglon’ (the play on which M. Rostand was at this time engaged) will, I hope, bring a national thrill for unsullied patriotism and love of country.”