Music and Drama.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 17, 23 April 1913, Page 13

Music and Drama.

By

BAYREUTH.

BOOKINGS. (Dates subject to alteration.) H.M. THEATRE, AUCKLAND. May 22 to June 7—J. C. Williamson, Ltd. June 9 to June 25—Geo. Marlow, Ltd. June 26 to July 5—J. C. Williamson, Ltd. July 7 to 19—-Allen Doone. August 4 to 16—J. C. Williamson, Ltd. August 28 to September 27—Brauseombe Co. October Ito 11—J. C. Williamson, Ltd. AUCKLAND PICTURE SHOWS. Globe Theatre, Queen Street—Continuous.

Unmarried Daughters—A French Dramatist's View. y—o OW can a girl brought up to be l/h merely ornamental and suddenly £ 1 forced to fend for herself earn a living? That is the theme of “La Femme Seule,” M. Brieux’s new play, says the Paris correspondent of the “Daily Mail,” which is not only filling the theatre but continues to be one of the chief topics of conversation. Or perhaps the question which M. Brieux asks ought rather to be put like this: Can such a girl earn her living in France at all? lie evidently thinks not. Let us consider the example he gives.

Therese is an orphan who has been lovingly eared for by her godfather and hip wife. They have a comfortable income. She has been well educated, and develops into a clever modern young woman with views of her own which she puts into little articles, gladly accepted as unpaid-for contributions to a woman's paper. She is engeged -to a pleasant young man (Rene), and altogether has a good time without any fears about the future.

Suddenly the clear sky above her is covered with threatening clouds. A rascally lawyer makes away with her godfathers capita). He 'and hie wife must give up their home and live humbly in a provincial town, where a relative offers some small poet in his business. They propose to take Therese with them, but if she goes she must behave as the relative thinks young ladies ought to. No more freedom. Even her reading must be “censored.” She must be a “nice girl” of the old-fashioned pattern.

Making a Career. No, sooner than submit to that she will marry Rene against his parents’ wishes, for they are, of course, opposed to the marriage now that she has no “dot.” The young couple will have no private income, but they are young; they can work. It will be a great adventure. “You do not know what there is in me,” she tells him. “Let us fashion our own life in our own way; we shall win through.” But Rene is, like most young Frenchmen of the middle class, a moral coward. “Let me see if I cannot bring my father round,” he urges; and Therese knows that he is afraid. Very well, she will make a career for herself, unaided. She will take a cheap lodging and live by her pen. Unfortunately the articles which were accepted regularly from the amateur are not good enough to be paid for as professional work. She becomes a hangeron of the woman’s paper, but sees no prospect of making much out of it until one day the proprietor offers her a secure position if—well, the conditions may be guessed. She refuses with indignation. “Sooner will I kill myself than sell myself.” Thus she receives painful proof of what another woman journalist has just been asserting—that in every direction the French working woman is liable to find her path blocked by a man who says to her, “Surrender or starve.”

The Men of France. What can she do ? Teaching is paid so badly. No use going on the stago without a wealthy “ protector.” For every vacant post in business hundreds Apply. Nothing for it but to gulp down pride and take the employment offered by the relative in the provincial town. Hero she does well until she takes it Into her head to form her fellow womenworkers into a trade union, separate from the men's. The men object and threaten to strike unless she is dismissed. Again she is face to face with

starvation. But now Rene (tiiis is rather weak) turns up again. He has been “ metamorphosed ” by the example of her pluck and grit. Will she marry him, whatever his parents say ? Aud that is what she does.

Naturally such an attack upon Frenchmen has stirred up anger. Naturally this Hat assertion of woman's helplessness has made people think and talk. On the whole there is, I think, a pretty general agreement among those who know the conditions best that, so far as the untrained woman, the " young lady,” is concerned, M. Brieux is right. There are a great many educated women earning their own living in France, but almost all of them were taught their “ metier.” The girl brought up at home and in the usual kind of school is just as helpless in Fiance as -she is in England, when faced by the necessity of supporting herself. She is even more so, for she has led a more sheltered life. And, according to M. Brieux aud his supporters, the French girl has this hardship added —that a large proportion of employers are ready to take advantage of her plight. Miserable Wages.

Even when a woman has been trained, say, in teaching or in music, it is hard to find situations which are even reasonably well paid. To teach music, for example, from nine to six for twelve shillings a weak and lunch is not attiactive. A sales-girl in a good shop gets more ■than that to start with—fifteen shillings with her lunch, and “spifs,’ as they are called in London—that is to say, small commissions on the articles she sells. There is often a vague idea in the minds of parents that languages would be useful “if anything happened.’ So they are to the extent of securing employment at thirty-two and sixpence a week as an interpreter, ready to interpret cheerfully at all hours between eight in the morning and twelve at night! Every cafe and every restaurant in France, you must have noticed, has a “ dame du comptoir ” or “ cqissiere, who sits in some dignity at a raised desk ami keeps the accounts. Here is a wide field for women, but it is not the kind of employment a “ young lady would choose. 1 heard of one lately who, in despair, applied for such a post. Thirty shiling a week was the wage offered, with meals, beer “at discretion,” coffee after lunch and dinner, and an “aperitif” before dinner “if desired —all of which might mean a good deal to a Frenchwoman. The hours were from noon until two in the morning. The poor applicant could not face them or the horrid, stale smell of smoke and alcohol. The Fairy Prince.

'M. Brieux, of course, exaggerates some aspects of the woman’s hard case. That is necessary in a play. But he also, for theatrical effect, weakens the ease of Therese by giving her both relatives upon whom she can fall back for assistance, and a lover who, like a fairy prince, rides in to rescue her at the moment of her despair. There aie many girls who have to depend entirely upon their own exertions. How would Therese have fared had she been one of these ? That is what M. Brieux would have us ask ourselves, in England as well as in France. The problem of “La Feinmc Soulo is, in trutli, more piess* ing and pitiful with us than among our neighbours, for they do all they can to provide their daughters with “dots.” How many middle-class fathers in England either give their girls marriage portions or have them trained to any occupation ? Very few. The results are forced upon our notice every day. Well, if it is useless asking fathers and mothers to cease imagining they will live for ever -and to think of their girls’ future, then the girls must themselves insist on being equipped for the struggle to live. If they marry, their training will help them to be more useful wives. If they are left with very small means or none at all, it will make all the difference to them between comfort and misery—possibly some fate worse even than that. Picture Palace Rubbish—A Friendly

Criticism. London, at four o’clock on ji winter Saturday afternoon, is a No MafrsLand.

.If you are at “a loose end” there is no amusement for you. It is too late for the mantinees, hours too early for the evening amusements—you are stranded in the ebb tide. The galleries, or museums, or your club may not a-ppeal. The streets do not entice you to lounge, for they, too, are now at their dullest. The Londoner or the London visitor, with a. modest amount to spend and the will to spend it, finds himself at a blank wall—in the capital that has dethroned Paris as the world’s city of pleasure.

Stay—there is the cinema. You can scarcely walk a hundred yards down a main thoroughfare without seeing the commissionaire in the uniform of the crack corps of Rurrtania, the thrilling posters of passion, the rollicking posters of farce, the alluring pay-box with its invitation to two horn's’ drama, comedy, and life for sixpence only—or a shilling to spendthrifts or the affianced, who want space to themselves in the seats of the mighty. Surely there is here—or should be — a filling for your stranded time. The cinema palace seems to be the happy solvent of an old stigma upon London, that until it wakes up at night it is a desert for those who have no business or social engagements. A Wonderful Invention. The cinema is a wonderful invention, still in the childhood of its freshness. As an entertainment it is catholic and elastic far beyond the theatre or musichall. Its language is cosmopolitan the lingua franca of the human eye. The largest theatre could not hold its scenery, the real scenery of the world. Its “flies” are the skies; its “backcloth” .the hills; its “wings” the forests or the labyrinths of great cities. Its company” are the living creation of all the earth. Its “properties” are real sunlight, real rain, and real snow; real rivers, lakes, and seas; real ships, trains, aeroplanes, motors, castles, and towns. The trammels and “technique” of stagecraft do not narrow it—for its stage is the open world. And sometimes it delights us with so showing us the world—as if we were flying on the magic carpet. But

more often it shows us the world that never was—the world of the “blood and thunder” of the nineteenth-century penny novelette, of the delirium of a humour” that the stage discarded when it abolished the funless fun of the clown, the pantaloon, and the red-hot poker. A Wearisome Groove. Superior people can justly sneer at the cinema for its tricky mechanism, ineffable buffooneries, sloppy sentimen tality, and messenger boy’s melodrama; but if they sneer at its other aspect, its living records of real events, its pictures of scenery and wild life, its occasional presentation of finely acted drama and < comedy, the sneer is sheer snobbery. My only complaint is that too often the purveyors of films underrate the taste and intelligence of their public. An answer to the criticism is that the picture palaces are prospering. I suggest that they are so because we all go to the cinema as people went to the musichalls of old before Charles Morton made Hie music-hall the peer of the theatre, for the grain of wheat in the bushel of chaff. And the picture palaces are still a novelty. Will they remain an attraction to 'the public, and a stable investment for deserving and enterprising .people, unless they escape from this wearisome groove of crudities and inanities?

For who are the patrons of the cinema? They are the same people who are readers of bright newspapers and the best fiction, and supporters of the leading theatres, ft is an error to assume that there is an intellectual gap between the cinema public and the theatre audience —for they are the same public. 'But they have been trained to demand a certain standard from the dramatists, and there is so far no serious criticism of the cinema. But some day they will be trained—or train themselves —to expect that standard.

What We Don’t Want. Sometimes, indeed, one thinks --sharing that patience of the cinema “audience” — that .there is something in the atmosphere of the picture palace that

narcotises criticism. Is it the drowsing of the senses by the silence and lowered lights or 'the sheer mechanical hypnotism of the passing film that makes us u« tolerant 1! >

How else can one account for gatherings of adult and sophisticated people, apparently spellbound by drama whose pristine crudity is beneath that of the yokel's itinerant penny gaff; or of knock about farces that make a Punch and Judy show Aristophanic in comparison? The only explanation is that the cinematograph public go again and again thinking 'that something must sooner or later turn up out of this wizardry of the camera that can bring the wide world into a darkened room.

One, of course, recognises the dramatic limitation of the cinematograph. It can never compete with the stage in depicting subtleties or the undercurrent <>f plots. It is without the greatest interpreter of all emotions—the human

voice. The plot of a cinema play must be utterly simple, and every action in-

stantly obvious. But if the cinema can Hot give n« half shades it can surely give us true shades? And. leaving drama alone, we are all sick of those everybody - running - and - falling • over-everybody-else ■'comics,” whose epitaph should he that they never made the audience laugh.

I cannot think ‘that these audiences of intelligent people of the world want to see for over; as in a nightmare, those aoughriders pursuing the gasping hero or villain through . that bush Ihpt we feo know by heart, or that devoted husband and wife who are for ever being baited by one of them reading only half through a letter, and for ever being reconciled (at a bed of sickness) by'a selfconscipus Infant; or, worst of all, that foreign gentleman who. because he has Rot a hew lia(’/'goes' out to bite policemen 1

A Little Less of the Cinema Eye.

This is no attack on those honest and worthy enemies of the blue devils of idleness and boredom, the popular picture palaces. It is only a little gentle urging. There is a tremendous future before them and tremendous possibilities, educational as well-as recreative. There is so much the camera can do; there is eb much happiness all day in real life that its films can record. It need not fear ‘to be banal so long as it keeps to realities. There is nothing we like to see so much as ourselves and our familiar places, Augustus Harris knew this when be brought his real horses, and hansoms, and everyday life on to the’stage. The modern journalism knew it when it first talked to the ordinary man and woman of their eating and drinking and .love-making and clothes.

And, lastly, there is so much in the ■wide world—even the jerky earlier

cinemas gave us much more of it than their smooth euceersors of to-day - Niagara leaping ovesr 'its ledges—-the wild life of the jungle the glory of the Alps—the fling of the Atlantic on the clift's of Valencia--'the Fleet, half awash, curtsying in the face of a sou’-wester—-the kaleidoscope peoples of an Empire at work and play—the pageant of the iEast, like a mosaic in motion! And •tragedies and comedies, too, we want — nobly done—the cinema is worthy of it -—with a .little rush and restlessness and obvious mess of gesture—and—oh! my masters, I pray of you, a little less rolling of that lerrifier of babes, sucklings, nnd grown men—'the cinema cyh.— Twells Briex, id the ‘'Daily Mail ” J* JI

An Intereating Revival. The graceful old instruments—the lompsitic lute, the ''sprightly, generous, and heroic viol," the virginal, the

harpsicord. the psaltery, the clavichord, and the spinet (what slumbrous dreams of lovely ladies with long fingers do the name evoke!) are coming back to us again, (says the “Daily - News" critic). Instead of the elephantine instruments ami the loud, emphatic, monotonous music “full of sound and fury signifying nothing” to which we have become accustomed, we are to have rare harmonies sweet with subtlety and colour, drawn from instruments gay with all the outward beauty of curious carving and delicacy of line which characterised the lutes and viols of the sixteenth century. So says Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, that intensely interesting musical genius and clever craftsman, who has devoted the past twenty-five years of his life solely to the study of old music, the collecting of old musical instruments (he has one of the most rare and wonderful collections in the world), and the making of

marvellous models of these, Mr Dolmetsch’s home is now in Faris. He finds the artistic Parisian quick to respond to the exquisite beauty and dignity of these old instruments. One of the largest manufacturers in Paris has engaged Mr Dolmetsch to make copies of spinets, harpsichords, clavichords, virginals, viols, and flutes, and so great is the demand for these that to keep pace with the orders is impossible. The “Twelfth Night” Virginal. When I saw Mr Dolmetsch recently his room was lined with instruments of divers kinds —lutes lay on the floor, viols were propped up against the wall, an adorable little green spinet with ebony keys stood unobtrusively in one corner, while n clavichord stood in another. A handsome harpsichord' filled the space lietween the two windows, and on the top of the harpsichord was a most engaging little virginal.' Just such a one

surely did Queen Elizabeth play upon when she asked- Sir James Melville, the Scottish Ambassador, whether she played better than Queen Mary, and, said Sir James (the eanny Scot), “I gaif her the praise.”

“Can you wonder when you look at these,” asked Mr Dolmetsch, "that we are on the eve of a renaissance of old music and old instruments? Compare this little spinet, for instance, so dainty in shape and so melodious in sound, with the ordinary modern piano, and can you doubt which is the more suitable for a lady’s drawing room? The spinet would make the most commonplace room -charming, while the piano makes the most beautiful room hideous. That is why, in the homes of all really artistic people, you find the piano tucked into a corner or else heavily draped with silk or satin hangings.”

Mr Dolmetsch touched the keys lovingly, and a soft low ripple of melody floated from his fingers. “None of the modern instruments are attuned as this is for the size of the ordinary room,” he continued. “They are all made for use in big concert halls. The result is that music has gone out of our homes and practically out of our individual lives. It is no longer a personal and individual thing as it was in the days when each person played some instrument, and the only orchestra. was the orchestra composed of the members of one household as they gathered in the firelight in the evening.” A Musicai! Curse. "Nowadays people forsake their homes and crowd to big concert-halls to listen to music which is usually loud and ears splitting and very monotonous. You will see crowds of musical students at those concerts, watching intently this famous musician or that famous musician, taking innumerable notes, and trying to catch his mannerisms and find out how he does it. It is all so superficial and mechanical and far removed from the true spirit of music. These big orchestral concerts are the curse of the age.” "But you think there is a revival of interest in old music?”

The lute is, perhaps, one of the most romantic of instruments. Poets have been inspired: to ecstatic verse on beholding their ladies playing this instrument. The 17th-century musician Thomas Mace called his lute his "beloved darling,” and certainly if his bore any resemblance to the lovely lute of the time of Henry VIII. which Mr Dolmetsch tenderly unswathed from its silken wrappings to show me, bis language was all too weak.

"The lute is the ideal instrument for women,” said Mr Dolmetsch; "it is so light and delicate and feminine. It Is a difficult instrument to learn, but it is well worth the trouble, and for 16th-cen-tury music it is incomparable.

The Age of Music. “The 16th century was the ideal age music, as it was for most other things. Music was then the same for all classes. There was no ‘popular’ or vulgar music then. I have never come across a single example of cheap or common music of that period. Besides a tenor viol which formed part of the great Bardini collection, Mr Dolmetsch has recorders and flageolets, (did not Pepys’ wife play the flageolet?). It is strange, by the way, that the modern woman does not find more pleasure in wind instruments. Not so long ago an American critic advised women to play the flute, not only because it was healthful, but also because the production of the passionate yet velvety tone of the flute needed great delicacy and flexibility Of the lips.

The Disturbing; Piano. Mr Dolmetsch might also have heard another argument in favour of the softsounding old musical instruments if he had attended a lecture given at the Women Musicians’ Society the other day, 'yhen it was demonstrated that the chief reason why women failed to “keep up” their music was tile disturbance caused by the noise of the modern piano, both to the people of the house and the neighbours. No one could bring such an accusation against the silken sounds of the clavichord or the virginal or the viol ® r the lute, which never overleap the boundaries of the rooms in which the instruments are played; nor yet against the 16th-century music, which is all for sobering the senses and settling the Affections to goodness ” M.M.B.

Saint-Saens* Great Festival. On October 9, 1835, there first saw' the light of day, in the Rue de Jardinet in Paris, Charles Comille Saint-Saens. Early in 1838 the child took his first pianoforte lesson, that is seventy-five years ago. In celebration of his entry into the musical world, in praise of his numerous compositions that are almost universal household possessions, and in honour of his exalted position arid of bis worth as artist, a Jubilee Festival, chiefly of hie music, is to be held in London next June. It is fit and proper that a musician who has been warmly welcomed here on the many occasions of his visits should so be honoured; he has added pleasure and delight to the lives of many concert-goers and oper ilovere, while vocalists and instrumentalists owe him a debt indeed.

It is a little early for complete details of the proposed festival, but so much has been settled that there will take place in Queen’s Hall on June 2, the Monday in Derby week, an orchestral concert, when Mr. Thomas Beecham will conduct the orchestra which bears his name. The programme is intended to be confined entirely to the compositions ot Saint-Saens, save only that the illustrious musician, will himself play one of Mozart’s pianoforte concertos. Further, a symphony will be included, and it will be amusing, and probably instructive to hear a juvenile work that , has been neither played in public nor printed, which also is intended to be included. In the same week the festival will be advanced by a very special performance of Saint-Saens’ opera, “Samson et Dalila,” a work that has now become one of the composer’s most popular compositions in London, where for so many years it had to be sung in the concertroom only, owing to the old prejudice against things sacred being even referred to on the operatic stage. The performance, it is needless to say, will take place at Covent Garden, in presence of the composer, whose age precludes the possibility of his^conducting in person. A Delayed Oratorio.

But this is not all that we are to hear of and from the French master during the year. It has been decided

that an entirely new work, now verging on completion, shall have its first public performance at the Three Choirs Festival to be held at Gloucester, Dr. Herbert Brewer conducting, early in September next. Obviously, this work i 4 sacred in character. Uptakes the form of a short oratorio, and is entitled "The Promised Land.” The libretto is fromthe pen of Mr. Hermann Klein. Thereby hangs a tale. It. was in the early ’eighties that Saint-Saens realised that in England oratorio was far more likely to succeed than opera. Thereupon he set Psalm xix., which setting was given, at the Norwich Festival in 1887. On the' occasion of the festival, or rather shortly after, Saint-Saens expressed to Mr. Klein his desire to write an oratorio . upon the subject of Moses, and asked for a libretto to be provided for him. Within a few- weeks the libretto was prepared by Mr. Klein, and was sent to the composer in Paris. With the greater part of it he expressed himself satisfied, and after sundry alterations had been made by the author, the composer in 1886 wrote to the effect that "I find now it is all right.” Nothing more, however, was heard of the oratorio for some considerable time. But in October, 1887, Saint-Saens wrote to Mr. Klein: “Should the oratorio be arranged for Norwich I shall be very glad. . . . ‘Moise’ will

probably be my last work. It must worthily crown my career!” The Norwich powers, however, were unwilling to pledge themselves so far ahead. Negotiations were then entered into with the Leeds Festival authorities, and there also obstacles were raised. To crown all, news was received that Rubinstein had just completed a Biblical opera on the very self-same subject. That was sufficient for the French composer. who immediately renounced alt idea of writing the oratorio. The Promised land. Now time has brought its revenge. A generation has passed since those attempts were made. Saint Saens is still —or, rather, is again—determined to crown his career with an oratorio on the subject of Moses. This time there seems to be no kind of hitch in the arrangements. Mr. Klein and Saint Saens returned to the matter last year. From what the former describes as a shelf covered with the dust of ogee, he took down the twenty-five yenr-old libretto;

he polished it up a little—as a fact, ’the libretto is now substantially the same as in the final arrangement of years ago; he sent it to the composer, who in •the early autumn completed the composition; in November and December he scored a great part of it in Algiers, and finished his score in Cairo in the fol l lowing months, so that the full score has occupied the composer nearly a bare six months—surely a wonderful achievment for so aged a musician! Indeed, Saint Saens himself has confessed that the composition of this oratorio has entirely rejuvenated him, so that he feels at least ten years younger for the work it has entailed. At the present moment the music is not available for examination, though it is in the printer’s hands. Incidentally, I may say that this is the first work Saint Saens has ever composed to an English' text. Though he steadily declines to speak English, his knowdedge of -me language is Considerable. Nevertheless the original text he set of the 19th Psalm, referred to above, was French, not English. Further, it should be stated, that not one word of other than Biblical language has been used by Mr. Klein in his libretto for “ The Promised Land.” Indeed, the Book of Exodus and the Psalms provide, I think, the entire text set out in all its beauty of language, and, indeed, it is beautiful. The point of the drama, for it is a drama, lies in the disobedience of Moses to the command of God. “ Take the rod . . . . and speak ye to the rock.” Those who read the Bible know that “Moses lifted up his hind and smote the rock.” Therefore was the wrath of the Lord kindled against Moses.” That is, Moses did not rely merely on God’s word.

Music of the Synagogue. The oratorio is subdivided into various parts, of which the titles are: The Promise; The Offence; The Punishment; The Death of Moses, ,-v feature of the music is, I am told, that practically all the choral music in which the oratorio abounds is set for double chorus. But there are some intensely interesting phases, which are entrusted to the soloists. Thus, the beautiful “ Song of Moses,” “ Give ear, O ye Heavens, and I will "•speak,” is given to the baritone. The prayer, it should be noted, is uttered even unto this day, and has been uttered (so Mr. Klein tells me) for 5,0(H): years by. every devout Jew in his daily devotions, just as the final words of Moses’s “ confession,” so to speak, “ Well hast Thou dealt with Thy servant, O Lord,” the words, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord,” are the last words uttered on earth by the pious Jew whose strength suffices when in extremis. I have said that the music is not yet available for analysis, but it has come to my knowledge that there is none of the old-time “ reeitativo seceo ” in the score. All that is narrative is simple, descriptive or dramatie. There is an important orchestral prelude at the opening, find an impressive reflective quartet after “The Punishment” section. Further, Saint Saens has imbued himself thoroughly with the music of the synagogue, without, however, using directly any' of it purely and simply; and at the close of the second part he has introduced a very remarkable melody ‘that, though entirely his own, is rather well described as a Semitic tune.

It is worthy of note by those who are a little scornful of the oratorio form that the new work is intended to last in performance only for a short half of a festival or concert programme. That is for not more than at most one hour and a quarter. Finally, it should be understood that the performance of the oratorio is in no other sense part of the Jubilee Festival, save only that by a coincidence the oratorio has been completed in the year of the Jubilee.- Robin 11. Legge in the “ Daily Telegraph.” Mrs. Hamilton Hodges' Tour. Mrs. Jean Hamilton Hodges, so well known in musical circles, has returned from her lengthy trip to America, and, in spite of interesting experiences abroad, is glad to return to New Zealand. Mrs. Hodges left Aucklaud on July sth last year, travelling first to Vancouver, where" she met a large number of New Zealanders, as well as most of the leading teachers, and musicians of the city. Musically, there was nothing of interest in the city, owing to the fact that it was the holiday season and too hot for concerts. From Vancouver Mrs. Hodgew went to New York, S|>ending several months with her mother and sister. Later on she returned to Vancouver, travelling via Pittsburg, Chicago, fit. Paul, and

Seattle. In the last-named place she spent a few months singing at various concerts and doing sonic church work, as well as .giving some private lessons. "While on the Coast,” said Mrs. Hodges to a “Graphic’’ representative, “I Ihkl' the privilege of attending some lectures by Dr. Clement B. Shaw, one of t‘he greatest authorities on vocal theory and singing. Also, I heard some truly wonderful concerts, the season being in full swing. I heard Sembrich; she is wonderful in dramatic work. Then there was Mdime. Berniee do Pasquinale, who lias a most wonderful soprano voice; she did Thomas’ mad’ scene from ‘Hamlet’ in a way which I can never forget. Best of all, I heard Nordica—Mme. Lillian Nordica — a really beautiful woman, who has done much for musie in America. She did a lovely thing, ‘Le Nile,’ by Lerouz, and a lot of little songs. The concert season is not very long, as all the singers come through from the East. I heard a great deal of rag-time music in America, though the powers that be are trying to rule it out; but I am afraid their task is well nigh an impossible one. In addition to attending the lectures given by' Dr. Clenjent B. Shaw, Mrs. Hodges' had the advantage of meeting him personally. She was naturally gratified to find as a result that her methods of teaching are in conformity with those >n use at the very best and most modern institutions. Mrs. Hodges also s«ing for Dr. Shaw, and he, after hearing several selections, expressed the opinion that her voice was just in its prime.

For the last twenty years Mrs. Hodges has not lived in her native land, seventeen years of that time having been spent in New Zealand', a country to which she is much attached. She has reopened her studio in the Queen’s Buildings, Wellesley Street West, opposite the old Y.M.C.A. buildings, where she will be prepared to receive pupils or to give information and advice on all matters relating to singing and voice production. Stray Notes. “Why have you never married?” The question was put to Mills Violet Loraine, principal boy in "Puss in Boots.” It provoked a reflective mood. "Have you had any offers?” persisted the interviewer. Then Mice Loraine woke up. "Well,” she laughed, "I cannot honestly say that I haven’t. I think most girls on the stage get them. But it's this way. They are made either by people who are rich to the point of absurdity, and so impossible that you wouldn't touch ’em with a barge pole, or by quite delightful darlings who haven’t a bob to bless themselves with, Now, can you tell me what is a girl to do?” The interviewer said he was disqualified under the second heading of her sweeping generalisation, and hoped she would find a happy medium. “He would be a very happy medium,” he added, hopelessly.

There is quite, a remarkable similarity in names between various members of the J. C. Williamson companies at present appearing in Sydney and Melbourne. There are, for example, Blanche jlrowne in “Sunshine Girl” Company, and Irene Browne in “'Milestones.” In the same piece ‘is Miss Olive Noble and Miss Grace Noble in the Asehe-Brayton Company. Julius Knight and Maggie Knight are both in “Milestones,” and in the,Comic Opera Company at Her Majesty’s, Melbourne, is the new artist Mr Lou’s Victor, to appear in “The Count of Luxembourg,” and in "Milestones is Mr Leslie Victor. It is therefore not surprising that at times the correspondence of these artists becomes somewhat mixed.