19
MUSICAL COURIER
February 9, 1922
MANAGEMENT:
HAENSEL & JONES, Aeolian Hall, New York
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JULIA CLAUSSEN
Mezzo Soprano of the Metropolitan Opera Company Is Scoring Huge Success in Concert and Recital This Season
The audience for the third “regular” symphony concert last night in Convention Hall heard a great Wagnerian singer. Mine. Julia Claussen is quite worthy to stand among those women who have made the tradition of the Wagner music-dramas.
In a program that touched only the high places in the music of the greater Richard, the soprano was able to bring to the concert stage much of the atmosphere of the opera. As she sang it, Senta’s ballad was an epic of sea love. Mme. Claussen made her voice like some strange instrument, a part of the orchestra and yet lifted above it, unforced, yielding. She sang the sound of the wind in the sails, the need of a faithful maid and finally despair and death.
Senta’s ballad is a test for the imagination. It is_ passionate and prayerful and the picture it paints of the doomed sailor demands some of the deftest strokes in vocal literature. Although the “Love Death” carried audience and singer to greater heights of emotion, it voices a much more simple and direct sentiment. While Mme. Claussen sang it with a great outpouring of emotion and with tremendous vocal power, her success in mastering the complexities of the ballad and unfolding the salty tale was a greater vocal and imaginative feat. Undoubtedly it will be longer remembered.
In all she sang there was beauty of tone. Even against full orchestra in forte passages, there was the same warm human loveliness of tone.—Kansas City Times, Jan. 28, 1922.
Mme. Claussen, formerly a valued member of the Chicago Opera Association, now of the Metropolitan, is a rare visitor these days to Chicago, and this fact is a deplorable one, for she is a very gifted singer and a fine musical artist. She was in very good voice.—Chicago Daily News, Nov. 30, 1921.
Mme. Claussen’s singing from the first offering of the evening, the “Mon Coeur” aria from “Samson and Delila” to the last encore, was a noble exposition of the art of song. Her encore, Lieurance’s “By the Waters of Minnetonka,” has never been heard so intelligently and exquisitely interpreted in this city.
Added to her marvelous voice she has diction of unusual clarity in whatever language she sings, and her phrasing is flawless. Histrionically she was all the most discriminating could expect of a successful grand opera singer. Never was this more apparent than in her third group, which was composed of dainty little songs. She closed each according to its theme in the bright, soft, pulsing texture of her tones, in gentle shadings of tempo, modulation and color and in a poetry of mood and imagery that were as shimmering clouds laid by sensibility upon both music and voice. The audience was enthusiastic in its approval, too.
One of the best vehicles for displaying her superb voice was Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” which she gave with harp accompaniment. In. this song the velvety textures of her voice, and its flexible subtlety reached its highest expression.— Dallas Herald, Dec. 2, 1921.
Mme. Claussen, who has been a contralto of renown for a number of years, is noted for the sympathetic qualities of her voice.—Dallas Morning Post Dec. 2,1921.	w
Mme. Claussen has long been noted for the sympathetic qualities of her rich and melodious voice and for a number of seasons she was leading contralto with the Chicago Opera Company and is now with the Metropolitan Opera Company. The audience last night was charmed with her voice and the pleasing personality which she possesses.
Her first and longest number was “Mon Coeur a ta Voix,” from “Samson et Delila,” and she rendered it in artistic fashion. Madame Claussen, however, reached the height of her performance from a dramatic standpoint with the manner in which she gave Schubert’s “Erlkoenig.”
The sweetness of her voice was shown to its best advantage in Rabey’s “Tes Yeux,” and in Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” which she sang to a harp accompaniment by Miss Dilling.—Dallas Journal, Dec. 2, 1921.
Mme. Claussen, a charming woman, put a wealth of feeling and expression into her offerings, and her voice, which is remarkable for its strength, clarity and range, was greatly admired.—■Reading Eagle, Dec. 13, 1921.
Madame Claussen is the proud possessor of the “Literis Artibus” medal, bestowed by the King of Sweden, and which only twice before had been bestowed upon a singer (Patti and Nilsson). Like all good singers well versed in the ways of the opera, she has a really marked eloquence in highly dramatic effusions.
In her opening song she showed at once a most_ ardent mood and glorifying impulses and a promise of deep spiritual tonal effects that at once thrilled her hearers. The classic “Sap-pische Ode” of Brahms is one of those songs that form a part of every singer’s education, and Claussen’s interpretation of it reached a lofty tension and a true nobility, and its massive, redolent and deceptive tonality was rarely qualified.
Claussen was generous with encores, which swept her audience with thrilling effect. Artistic expression, technically well and properly presented, is the culmination of the singer’s art, and all of this was presented last evening by the singer, who is truly a “bird of paradise” on the modern concert platform.—Reading Herald-Telegram, Dec. 13, 1921.
There is little of gesture in Mme. Julia Claussen’s concert appearance, but much of voice and of interpretation. In Senta’s aria from “The Flying Dutchman” she displayed the perfect head tone with as open delivery as she used in the deep contralto with which she is blessed.— Kansas City Journal, Jan. 28, 1922.
Mme. Claussen sang three groups of songs and gave the solo part in “The• Minstrel,” by Kern. She is a great artist; one needed only to hear the glorious interpretation of Brahms’ “Sapphische Ode” to be convinced of that fact. “Vergebliches Staendchen” was excellent and the dramatic fervor of Schubert’s “Erlkoenig” impressive.—Morning Tribune, Nov. 23, 1921, Minneapolis, Minn.
Mme. Claussen, the charming mezzo soprano, was repeatedly obliged to give encore numbers, and was most generous in her bestowal. Perhaps the most popular number of the evening was “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.”—Duluth Nezvs and Tribune, Nov. 26, 1921.
A delightful concert featuring Mme. Julia Claussen, mezzo soprano, and the Duluth Glee Club, was given before a capacity audience last night at the First Methodist Church. Both the program• and the artists pleased the audience and the entertainment as a whole was a great success. Mme. Claussen has a splendid voice, well trained, and her other endowments as an artist added much to the enjoyments of her work.—Duluth Herald, Nov. 26, 1921.
Applause always precedes and follows every appearance of Mme Claussen whose simple, charming, yet dignified platform manner wins her public before she sings a note. The popular and talented atrist, so well known to operagoers was in superb voice, singing easily, gracefully, with all her characteristic velvety lusciousness of tone and warmth of expression. Her program included songs by Schumann-, Brahms, Schubert and other familiar composers.—Chicago Evening American, Nov. 30, 1921.
Mme. Claussen, the great Swedish contralto, as usual, made a deep impression with her mature voice and art, singing three big groups of songs and yet having to give several extra numbers. Singing in five languages, Mme. Claussen was equally at home in each, but her most perfect work was done in the German group.
After Beethoven’s “Wonne der Wemuth” and Schumann’s “Der Nussbaum” she gave two Brahms songs in a most wonderful manner. “Sappische Ode” with quiet pathos was realized as one of the incomparable gems of song literature and “Vergeblisches Staendchen” was sung with refined raillery. Her greatest triumph was reached in Schubert’s “Erlkoenig,” which in dramatic tenseness and shifting of voice color and rhythm was a masterly rendering. In her English group Mme. Claussen’s temperamental force made “Do Not Go, My Love” by Hageman and “The Bird of the Wilderness” memorable achievements, while Arthur Young’s “Phyllis,” Nevin’s “Oh, That We Two” and Nogero’s “My Love Is a Muleteer” formed the relieving contrasts.—The Journal, Nov. 23, 1921, Minneapolis, Minn.