MUSIC NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1244, 19 February 1914, Page 37

MUSIC NOTES.

By

“G” String.

The concerts given in Wellington by Mr. Paul Dufault, the celebrated French-Canadian tenor, were a great success in every way. I had the pleasure of listening to this brilliant vocalist in Wellington, and must candidly say that his singing was a real treat. He is in better voice at present than on his previous visits, and that is saying something. A new opera from the pen of Humperdinck, entitled “Die Marketenderin,” is to be produced shortly at the Berlin Royal Opera. This time, it seems, the composer has gone to history rather than fairy love O’ legend for his subject, the action of the work being laid in the period of the Napoleonic wars.

The late Alfred Gaul, the Birmingham composer, whose compositions are very much sung in New Zealand and Australia, has left a considerable estate. It is stated that for a con siderable time past he had received as much as £4O per week in royalties for his cantata, “The Holy City.” This distinguished composer was born at Norwich, England, on the 30th April, 1837. He graduated as M.B. at the Cambridge University in 1863, and he held many coveted positions as teacher, conductor, and organist The most popular of Gaul s works are his oratorio “Hezekiah,” the cantatas “Ruth” and “The Holy City,” the ode “A Song of Life,” and his setting of the 9 6th Psjalm. He also composed a number of favourite glees, part songs, and solos.

The annual balance-sheet of the Royal Manchester College of Music discloses a deficit of £l9B. The students of the college number 16 7, an increase of sixteen V ver last year. Baron Alberto Franchetti, whose opera “Germania” was staged at Covent Garden about seven years ago, has had another from his pen, “Cristo foro Colombo,” produced at the Phi’adelphic Opera House. The work, though not actually new, had not previously been heard in America, where, of coursei, its subject might be erpected to make a stronger appeal to audiences than elsewhere. Franchetti’s librettist in this case, as in that of “Germania,” was Luigi Illica, who is admonished by some of the American critics on the ground that he has taken decided liberties w.th history in his “book.” The librettist has seized upon a few episodes from three stages in the life of the discoverer of America, adding incidents evollved from his own imagination in order to lend a touch here and there of romance to the “plot,” though it would seem that the opera is devoid of a “love interest.” “Franchetti, according to one critic, “has built ’a score of no little musical importance, with passages of ieal melody, a good deal of graphic appropriateness to the theme, and several instrumental climaxes of genuine power. Great music it may not be, but the score is considerably in advance of that of ‘Germania.’ ”