Music, Drama.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IV, Issue 204, 21 June 1894, Page 8

Music, Drama.

By The Prompter.

The memory of Jenny Lind has . been kept green by a tablet in Westminster Abbey. The New York Eden Musee boasts a Hungarian Countess as to the premiere dafiseuse. Letty Lind, the most beautiful dancer of to-d»y, made her debut when she was eight years of age. I see that Mrs Colbourne-Baber has married the accompanist of the Sydney Liedertafel, so that Arthur Baber, well known to Dunedin musical people, must have gone the way of all flesh. Tins is one of the yarns told of the late Dr. Von Bulow:—An Australian lady invaded his room and begged his signature to the foot of a photograph. Von Billow, apparently in a great rage, rang the bell violently, and ordeied the servant to “ send up the man who writes my autographs.” Amongst the plays to be included, in the repertoire of Brough and Boucicault’s second New Zealand tour are The Second Mrs Tiinquerey, The Bauble Shop, A Woman of No Importance, Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Other Fellow and Sowing the Wind. The tour starts at Dunedin on November 29th. A Sydney Sunday Times correspondent suggests that in these days of the elevation of the drama it is singular that it has never occurred to Sullivan or Corbett, the actor-pugilists, to refine and ennoble the Shakespearian drama by converting the wrestling scene in As You Like It into a ten-round spar, the best man to win Rosalind and the gate money. The Tuam-street Theatre, Christchurch, is to be materially altered. A contem porary writes that the present staircases and dressing-rooms are to be removed so as to give more room and the boxes on each side will be utilised for dressing-rooms, giving four altogether. There will be two fire-escapes from the stage, and in case of fire the audience will be enabled to get through the upstairs dressingrooms from the dress circle to the fireescapes. Mr. A. H. Gee has set his popular concerts upon a bedrock of popularity, and now big audiences are the rule at the City Hall on Wednesday evenings. Last night a good attendance was experienced, and those present enjoyed one of the best programmes the pro'•’moter has so far presented. The 'various numbers were carefully chosen and in the choice of assisting artists Mr Gee was decidedly successful. One of Mr Gee’s songs, The King’s Minstrel, proved a treat, and recalled pleasant memories of the season when Walter Barker was wont to lend his masterly harp playing to the song. The artists who assisted Mr Gee were Misses Harvey, Featon, Lusk, McMaster, and Messrs Sullivan, Carter, and McKean. Writing of Oscar Wild’s play “ Lady Windermere’s Fan,” the Sydney Bulletin says : Oscar Wilde’s famous play is a curious and lop-sided production. His characters are mostly of high rank; among fourteen people—leaving out a maid and two flunkeys—there are three lords, five assorted ‘ladies,’ and one duchess. One young lord and his very youhg countess are fresh and good and pure of soul; the rest of the crowd are the most exhausted looking, battered, and worn out lot on record. They lie rdiifid wearily amid much costly furniture, smoking cigarettes and blasting other peophrs " characters, and uttering that kind of morally-diseased wit which is based on the assumption that everybody's tired and dirty of soul. When the author gets away from this one assumption his. wit is not above the average; when he is on his favourite topic he ik ! Brilliant. Still there is nothing Visibly immoral about his dialogue; it is merely filled with the flavour of satiety and disgust, and old cigar smoke, and pervaded with very, very old young men, who look boredly at the world through one weary eye-glass in a club. And seeing that all his characters, baring the pair above mentioned, have got , this disease so badly, the assumption is that these two will ’also get it when they grow older.”

The musical critic of the Melbourne Argus, T. H. Guenett, has been fined half-a-sovereign for the pleasure of knocking down David Lee, Melbourne’s city organist. Guenett has always consistently slated David Lee, and not without cause, I consider. Lee met him in the street and called Guenett a damned thief and a demon, whereupon the critic cleared his decks and sent the organist on the broad of his back. I think Guenett would consider 10s well spent, seeing that it enabled him to knock sharps and flats out of Lee.