Music and Drama.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 8, 23 February 1910, Page 14

Music and Drama.

By

BAYREUTH.

BOOKINGS. (Dates Subject to Alteration.) AUCKLAND—HIS MAJESTY’S. February 21 to March 12 —Carter the Magician. March 14 to 24 —Harry Rickards’ Company. March 26 (Easter Saturday) to April 16-« Marlow Dramatic Company. lApril 18 to 23 —Amy Castles. A pill 28 to May 14—J. (’• Williamson. May 16 to 29—Allan Hamilton. May 30 to June 18 —Meynell and Gunn. June 2U to July 6—J. C. Williamson. July 7 to 16—Meynell and Gunn. July 18 to 31—Hugh J. Ward. August 1 to 13—-J. C. Williamson. September I to 3 — Auckland Boxing Association. September 5 to 24—J. C. Williamson. September 26 to October 19—Allan Hamilton. October 20 to November 4—Fred Graham. THE OPERA HOUSE. In Season—Fuller’s Pictures. ROYAL ALBERT HALL. In Season—Hayward’s Pictures. WELL INGTON. —O PERA HOUSE. Feb. 21 to Feb. 25.—Black Family. Feb. 26 to March 5. —Harry Rickards. March 26 to April 16. —J. C. Williamson. April 19 to April 27.—Clarke and Meynell. April 28 to May 18. —J. C. Williamson. May 19 to June 3. —J. C. Williamson. June 4 to June 18. —Allan Hamilton. July 4 to July 23. — Clarke and Meynell. August 1 to August 13. — Hugh Ward. Sept. lio Sept. 14.—J. C. Williamson. Oct. 7 to Oct. 26.—J. Williamson. Oct. 27 to November 5. —Allan Hamilton. Nov. 12 to November 24.—Fred 11. Graham. December 24, six weeks’ season.—J. C. Williamson. THEATRE ROYAL. Vaudeville (permanent). TOWN HALL. March 17. 18, 19.—Besses o’ th’ Barn Band. Feb. 19 to 26—Fisk Jubilee Singers. The Sorrowful Fate of the World’s Librettists. THERE are many strange anomalies in the history of opera; but perhaps the strangest of these is the sorrowful role played by the librettist. For the most part unreinembered and obscure, his ranks have nevertheless been recruited from the master spirits of the world of letters. Of late we have seen Shaw set to music in “The Chocolate Soldier.” by Oscar Ftrauss. king of the operetta, melodious and delightful, while Richard Strauss, namesake of the Austrian composer, has interpreted the text of Oscar Wilde’s “Salome” with his brilliant cacophonies. Rut we learn to our surprise from Mr. Lewis M. Isaacs that among those who have attempted the difficult art of the librettist are such unlikely names as Voltaire. Goethe, eland. Addison and Fielding. ( alzabigi. Rinuccini. Boito and Coppee. likewise poetical adepts, have given their best efforts to this, the most ungrateful of Muses. The successful librettists are few, a mere handful out of the harvest of three centuries. There seems to be something in the task that eludes pursuit. Goethe experimenting in every form of poetic art and almost always justifying his attempt, wrote several librettos that have been consigned to limbo. The same story of failure may be told of many almost equally gifted. Yet. Mr. Isaacs goes on to tell in “The Forum.” literary hacks of the lowest calibre have turned out successful librettos and some of the composers theniFelves, without pretence to literary ability and actuated solely by musical considerations, have produced results of which the best of their collaborators might well have been proud. The vast majority of opera-goers under-estimate the importance of the libretto. The diminutive form of the word indicates that it was thus looked upon hy the creators of opera. But there are too many instances of poor librettos wedded to l>eautiful music and carrying it down to oblivion to justify the supercilious attitude of the composer. “How many people," the writer continues, “who have heard ‘Trovatore’ and are familiar with every note of it. ever heard of Cammarano, who wrote the libretto, or of F. M. Piave, who wrote •Rigolelto,* and many others of the early

Verdi operas, or of Felice Romano, Bellini’s collaborator in ‘Norma’ and ‘La Sonnambula’? Pugilists' Pay v. Operatic Artists. Comment. seasoned with wonder or satire, on the princely pay of favourite operatic artists or famous actors, is no longer legitimate, in view of the £20,000 and a greater sum that motion pictures will provide for two pugilists who will contest for the supremacy of white or black. Anu while these vigorous persons are waiting for the fray, they condescend to give mock exhibitions of ‘’the manly art.” in the theatre at wages which make the pay envelopes of most real actors look like courtplaster receptacles.

A New Suffragette Play. A one-act. suffragette play, “Might is Right,” introduced at the Haymarket Theatre, London, runs somewhat, counter to the doings of this political party in that city. The Secret Suffrage Society kidnaps Montagu Bealchamp. a bachelor Prime Minister, and imprisons him in a house in the Adelphi. But the members of the Society, more or

less charming in the play, treat him well. They dust the rooms, and feed their captive with solicitous care. The members even protect the Prime Minister from a suffragette who would harm him. The Prime Minister signs a promise to introduce a votes-for-women bill, in order that he may marry the president, and thus the play ends without dramatic complication. One of its amusing features is the appearance of the captive Prime Minister in a teagown lent by one of his captors in lieu of masculine negligee. According to the foregoing, the new playlet is not nearly as funny as Mr. Shaw’s “Press Cuttings,” which was interdicted. It introduced Mr. Asquith, Mr. Balfour, and Lord Kitchener under barely veiled disguises, Mr. Asquith having to reach his office in the disguise of an infuriated suffragette, and discarding his attire on the stage. Miss Ellis Jeffreys' Clever Speech. The London O.P. Club is ten years old, and the other evening it celebrated its birthday. The speakers were A. E. W. Mason, novelist and member of Parliament, and Ellis Jeffreys. Mr. Mason said the censorship report was a compromise, and he did not see what else it could possibly have done. lie had heard it stated that they were likely

to see the rise of a series of theatres given over to more or less licentious productions. That caused him no apprehension. In the music halls, where no censorship existed, the artistic and moral tone had improved in an extraordinary degree. Miss EUis Jeffreys, responding to the toast of “The Drama,” said that woman was the backbone of the drama. Her virtues and vagaries, principally the latter, formed the subject matter of the great majority of plays, and it was woman who filled the auditorium, man being a mere adjunct who had been peremptorily ordered to accompany her. The drama was, of course, “dead as a door nail.” It always had been. At one moment it was being killed by musical comedy, at another by the Censor, and again by the Budget. Every time the drama died, some one started building a couple of new theatres to perpetuate the sacred memory. Mr. Mason had shown himself inclined to bring politics on the stage, she said. The drama was woman’s perquisite, and what did woman care about politics, except a few helpless ones who could not take nourishment without masculine assistance? G.B.S.'s Plays in Germany.

Several of Bernard Shaw’s plays have been well received in Germany. The tendency of his characters to talk rather than aet, however, has at last stirred protest. Basing his remarks on the production in Berlin of “Major Barbara,” the critic of the “Berliner Tageblatt” notes that Shaw’s hero does not permit the fall of the curtain to give a period to one of his long speeches, and adds:—“Shaw has surely no objections if the pertinacity of this character is explained as self-irony on the part of the author. For he has long since ceased to allow the curtain to dam his rhetoric. It oozes through beneath, forms itself into preludes, perorations and intermezzi, and nobody is any longer surprised if a comedy in three acts is preceded by an introduction of 80 printed pages. His heroes are developing a similar mania for talk more and more unblushingly, and I am always in fear lest one of them should step across the footlights into the stalls and hand me a bulky manuscript, giving ‘Explanations of My Part.’ ” This is faintly malicious, but 1 is decidedly funny, and as Shaw’s most ardent admirers will admit, not without truth. It is moreover pungeritly put. “The Fourth Estate”—A Realistic Play of Amercian Newspaper Life. The dramatic possibilities of the newspaper seem to allure our dramatists. In England, “Earth,” a rem-arkabe play of misgovernment by the Press has set the public and the critics alike talking by the boldness of its allusions. In New York. Joseph Medill Patterson, with the assistance of Harriet Ford, has achieved a pronounced success with his portrayal of judicial misrule righted by means of the fearless editorial muck-raker. “The Evening Sun” describes the play of the young American as “one of the season’s real successes.” “The Fourth Estate.” claims a writer in the "Smart Set,” “is the best newspaper play ever put on the stage.”

Air. Patterson depicts in his play the tribulations of a fearless young newspaper man. Whele.r Brand, who definitely sets himself against the tyranny of the counting room, only to be attacked by other influences infinitely more corrupting and subtle. The find act transpires in the room of McHenry, managing editor of "The Advance.” McHenry, we gather, Iras printed a story written by Brand which reflects upon the integrity of Judge Bartelmy of the Supreme Court, and with surprising swiftness the forces of corruption come into play against the intrepid reporter, who is in love in fact, and engaged to the judge's daughter. She visits the newspaper office and asks him to apologise for the article. Brand: Can’t you see that I wasn’t writing about your father, but about a United States judge who—— Judith: That’s splitting hairs, Wheeler (S9ie moves away from him.) Brand: Judith, please, please don't let's quarrel about this. Judith: (Turning impulsively.) Oh, Wheeler, we were on the verge of it, weren't wet (His arms about her.) You're sorry, aren’t yout And you will take back that article, won’t you? Brand: You mustn’t ask me to do that, I cant.

Judith: You can't? Brand: No. - Judith: Wheeler, I came here thinking only of my father, but I suddenly; find myself facing a much more serious

question, not vhhat kind of a man he is, but -what kind of a man you axe. Brand: Judith, if you only knew the truth, all of it, things I can't tell you, you’d be with me heart and soul in what ’.’m trying to do. Judith: Against my father? Brand: Yes, against him. Judith: Oh, it’s impossible. Can't you see that you're wrong? Brand: I wish that I were. Judith: You wouldn’t do anything deliberately to hurt me, would you? Brand: Whatever I’ve done or whatever I may do, I love you. Judith: And you’re more to me than my father; but, for my sake, you mustn’t work against him. How could we ever be happy together if you did? You’ll do this for me, Wheeler, just this? I want you to carry out your ideals and live ■up to your high purposes in every other way, but you must not attack him. Promise me that you'll never do it again, won’t you promise me that, and you’ll retract that article you had this morning, you’ll do this for me, just this? Brand: Judith, it’s the truth, and, knowing that, would you have me retract it? Judith: Yes.

Brand: I ean't. (Judith begins to take Off ring. Brand stops her.) You don’t mean to do that! Judith: I most certainly do. Brand: I won’t let you mean it; I can’t let you go without your ring. You may be judge Bartelmy’s daughter, but you are going to be my wife. You’ve worn my ring for a month, and you must wear it forever. (Judith tabes off ring and throws it on table.)' Judith: I’ll not wear it again until you come to your senses. Brand: Judith! Judith: Will you do what I ask? Brand: I can’t. (Judith goes out. McHenry re-enters.) McHenry: Well, did you settle it? Brand: Yes, sir. Judith has hardly shaken the dust of the editorial rooms from her feet, when Dupuy, a corporation lawyer, compels an interview with the managing editor, and in the name of powerful advertising interests demands the removal of the dauntless young journalist. McHenry finds himself cornered, and asks for Brand's resignation. Here, fortunately, the new owner, Nolan, who has a long standing grievance against the Judge, intervenes. He emphatically endorses Brand’s attitur'e, and even places him in the chair of the managing editor. “From now on you •ft here. You are managing editor now."

“ Arms and the Man.*’ That Bernard- Shaw decidedly strikes the note of originality and get quite out of the beaten track in his treatment of his leading characters in “Arms and the Man,” which is to follow “The Lion and the Mouse” at the Sydney Theatre Royal, goes without saying. His stalwart Captain Bluntschli is not at all in line with the military heroes we read about or make the acquaintance of across the footlights of a modern melodrama. Captain Bluntschli is called the chocolate soldier, from the fact that he starts out to mingle amid the horrors of the campaign with chocolates nestling away in the receptacles in which soldiers usually carry their revolvers. This Shaw hero, moreover, is inclined to take a very mat-ter-of-fact view of things generally, and patriotic fervour in particular, and is so convinced in his own mind that his view is the right one that at last he succeeds in persuading Raina, the heroine of the story, who is also totally unlike the ordinary run of stage heroines, that he is really far more an object of admiration and regard than Sergius, the man to whom she has formerly lost her heart, and who is, after all, only one of tUs

romantic unpractical defenders of his country. Mr. Julius Knight may be trusted to get the full value out of the part of Captain Bluntschli, and Miss Katherine Grey, in the part of Raina. will also have plenty of scope to show her ability as a versatile actress. “Waterloo,” Conan Doyle’s fine one-act play, is to be added to the evening’s bill.

The Moving Picture Entertainment —What of the Future ? “Ichabod,” "lehalbod,” and yet again “Ichabod.” The word is round and full flavoured, and rolls relievingly off the tongue in such a moment of stress as this, when, and under such a noni-de-plume, too, one is expected to discourse of music and the drama in a Dominion whose theatres and concerts halls are entirely given over to moving pictures, a magician, a musical comedy company, and a couple (I think) of Vaudeville entertainments. Auckland had no other form of entertainment whatsoever last week. The AB Pathe Picture people taking possession of His Majesty’s with at least two other similar entertainments in opposition. To save argument—which is overheating this close weather—let everything be admitted that will be claimed for these modern entertainments. They are vastly improved from what they used to be. they are now practically flickerless—there is much virtue in the

word practically—and in brief they are

“ the best ever.” Gentlemen of tire management, it is as you say, I have no doubt upon the matter, but as you are strong, be merciful, do not insist on my sitting out these magnificent entertainments in order to prove to me —as one generous gentlemen offered—that there is now no strain on the eyes—even in two hours of pictures. After ten minutes I admitted it, and will yet admit, so that I may go free. But I do want to know where all this picture business is going to end. If in Auckland they are able to occupy every single notable place of entertainment during a whole week or more, and further to keep two important theatres going month in and month out all the year round, ousting even vaudeville, and running full houses even when musical comedy is in opposition. When such is the case, is it not fitting that one should cry “Ichabod,” for verily, indeed, the glory' is departed, and what hope does there appear for drama which is dead, and for music which is sleeping. It is claimed that the pictures are educative, and if this applies to the travel and industries series, I suppose one must agree, • but as the majority of the films are comic, or melodramatic. I venture to think that the effect of these last is of far greater effect, and that the balance swings on the less desirable side. The majority of comic slides are of the knock-out order. The more the victim of the “chase” picture gets cuffed, kicked, mauled about, and reduced to a wreck of humanity, the louder the yells of amusement, the more successful the film, and the bigger the house next evening. What is going to be the result of prolonged indulgence in this class of entertainment ? What kind of appetite is encouraged to grow’ on that it feeds on in the screamings over rollings in the gutter, peltings with fish and vegetables, and the w'holsesale breakages of glass and china, which form the background, foreground, and middle distance of eight out of ten moving pictures exhibited to-day. If moving pictures—with occasional musical comedy —is soon to be the sole fare of New Zea-

landers. and there seems real danger of it. what will the word “thea-tre-goer” come to mean.in a year or two’s time. If. in promising one an introduction to a friend, some years back, he was spoken of as an old threat re goer, one promised oneself an agreeable exchange of reminiscence and opinion. But in the future! NVlmt?—

No more shall we discuss plays and praise players. No longer will wrves complain that "the plays the thing” 'which keeps the pipes going and conver sat ion humming in the smoking roon well into the small hours. Who could discuss films, whom endeavour to arouse enthusiasm by recalling an absence of flicker? What then does the future hold? Echo —at present—answers a dreary, weary what? Stray Notes. In the next piece at the Sydney Pat are. "Vivian’s Papas,” Miss Celia Ghi loni will have some straightforward singing. Miss Ghiloni hasn’t let herself go as a singer since she left the Williamson Comic Opera Co. There were produced in London and district on Boxing-night no fewer that twenty-eight pantomimes and children’s plays, as compared with twenty-six in 1908, and twenty-three in 1907. while ths number of dramas, comedies, musical plays, and variety performances is larger than on any previous Boxing Day. Carter in Auckland. The Carter season in Auckland.-opene'. most auspiciously on Monday, and the magician bids fair to repeat in the northern capital the success achieved else'where. This is well deserved, t arter is neat, he has many new illusions, and his manipulation of those tricks of legerdemain which are older friends, give's them an air of freshness which makes ns forget we have enjoyed something similar before. He is quiet and effective, and hits patter is amusing ami in good taste. Moreover he has one or two exceedingly original novelties which will quite effectually close the mouth of the inevitable bore who usually “knows,” and endeavours to explain how its done.