MUSICAL COURIER
February 2, 1922
The Following Uncurtailed Musical Reviews Appeared in the New York Dailies Concerning
“The Admirable Samson"
The Samson of Muratore, on the other hand, gave unexpected satisfaction, histrionically as well as vocally. For the French tenor presented a portrayal that appealed to the imagination in makeup, pose and address. Moreover he not only sang with rhetorical eloquence and fire but with due consideration for his place in the ensemble.—■New York American, January 24, 1922.
Mr. Muratore was an admirable Samson.
His voice was not in good condition and he sang with labored effort at times, but always with that fine aristocracy and plasticity of style that mark the vocalist trained in the school of the Paris Grand Opera. His acting was excellent. He had a makeup of striking merit and a wig that was a victory in itself. The makeup and costumes were such that his facial expression was enhanced. His eyes were most eloquent, and with the simplicity and repose of a real actor he conveyed clearly to the audience the growing passion of Samson, his tragic fall, his helpless blindness and his last great return of his mighty power. It was a noteworthy impersonation and will linger long in the minds of those who saw it.—New York Herald, January 24, 1922.
This opera has about as much action as “Snegourotchka,” but it had, to offset this defect, Lucien Muratore, the French tenor, who as Samson for the first time here gave a virile, aggressive and finished performance. He was a fine looking, resentful Samson, and dramatically, pitched the opening act in a restless key that the chorus took up and made much of. He put vim into the somnolent libretto and sang, of course, with consummate style.—New York Evening World, January 24, 1922.
Mr. Muratore did not seem to be bothered by the numerous things that one may have imagined to be on his mind quite other than the blandishments of Dalila or the stiff-necked singing off the pitch by the Hebrew chorus. He was, indeed, thoroughly the arresting figure, as Samson, one expected him to be; one may say, as a fact, that the present generation has never really seen the part acted until now, for great a singer as Enrico Caruso was, he was an actor only by dint of dogged hard work. And Mr. Muratore has histrionics in his blood.
But it was Mr. Muratore’s night. He flung his spell upon the great audience, working the far from sympathetic material of the character into a living mortal, heroic but human, consumed with his mission, losing it in the fire of love, flouted, betrayed, humbled, but at last victorious in a stupendous and annihilating vengeance. And this he did with a smooth application of detail, a mass of technical resource separately invisible but telling as the character was touched with it.—Evening Journal, January 24, 1922.
Mr. Muratore depicted eloquently the conflict in Samson’s soul, the struggle between the strong man’s duty as a judge in Israel and his overmastering passion for the Philistine woman. He was a tragic figure when he accepted the challenge of her cry of “Coward!” and stole at last as if every step were costing him his life’s blood, into Dalila’s house in the Valley of Sorek. Mr. Muratore’s voice was rich and expressive, and it was a pleasure to hear this music of French classic outline sung in the true French declamatory style and with an impeccable French diction. —The Globe, January 24, 1922.
Mr. Muratore hardly needed such applause; the rest of the huge audience was only too eager to applaud him without guidance. For the opera was “Samson and Dalila,” and the great tenor was at his best. He gave a magnificent performance, of thrilling dramatic intensity and emotional power. There are few actors alive who can surpass him, either upon the singing or the spoken stage.
His power lies in his great simplicity. He gestures much less than the average opera singer, certainly much less than any tenor one sees nowadays, but every gesture is meant. It starts because he meant it to start, and it finishes, not because he has forgotten what else to do, but because he has willed it to end. His singing is no less remarkable. It is much more colorful than that of the average tenor—it recalls a baritone in its richness and emotional significance—and its middle register has a smooth caressing quality that is like velvet. His singing in the great second act duet last night was a marvel of lyric tenderness that quite swept his audience off their feet.—The New York World, January 24, 1922.
In the first act Mr. Muratore showed himself a leader of men. One felt not only his great physical strength but the moral power of the man. His second act is a thrilling and
pitiful struggle against the fetters of an overpowering passion against which all his religious feeling struggles in vain. Rarely, PERHAPS NEVER, has the love scene been played in such a tragic key as last night.
Muratore’s portrayal of the blind Samson turning the mill wheel and lamenting the fate of his people was quite as touching as Caruso’s same scene. His voice, too, is one of gold, but one
hardly thinks of the voice when witnessing such a tragic masterpiece. It would be difficult to imagine anything more poignantly simple and touching than his quiet waiting in the last act, where, surrounded by the taunting jeers of the Philistines, he stands unmoved, communing with his God and praying for His help in destroying the enemies of his people.— Evening Post, January 24, 1922.
This, as a matter of fact, was Samson’s chief strength last night that the opera in which his biceps and boastings are so romantically sung featured Mr. Muratore. For there had been a rumor, refusing to be quashed, that this favorite French tenor, whose portrait hangs in all the best finishing schools, whose name is ecstasy upon the lips of so many misunderstood matineeists, whose art is penultimate, when every gesture is a sonnet, every note a pearl (synthetic perhaps, but a pearl) had broken the Chicagoan ranks for aye, nor would appear. Abashed detractors eat your slurs. Muratore did appear. He appeared with all his braids on. His Samson was an authentic illustration out of Reinach or Lubke, and it lacked the lusty, proud exuberance which made Caruso’s first acts in it so memorable, it was yet a sincere, at times affecting characterization. Heroic it scarcely was—but then neither the Bible in its legend nor Saint-Saëns in his operatic oratorio was particularly eager to cover Samson’s shorn head with laurels. This was a slim, young Samson of Mr. Muratore’s given more to persuasiveness than to battles royal.—New York Sun, January 24, 1922.
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