31
MUSICAL COURIER
June 8, 19 2 2
LOUIS ECKSTEIN FORESEES RAVINIA’S
BUSIEST AND MOST SUCCESSFUL SEASON
Company to Be Headed by Claire Dux, Graziella Pareto, Alice Gentle, Orville Harrold, Mario Chamlee, Morgan Kingston, Giuseppe Danise and Other Stars—Sixty-three Performances of Thirty-three Different Operas, Including Four Works New to Ravinia—Hasselmans, Papi and Spadoni to Conduct, with Chicago Symphony to Play Scores
Verdi’s “Otello,” Mascagni’s “L’Amico Fritz” and Leroux’s ‘‘Le Chemineau.”
That opera, following the schedule established in 1918, will be given nightly except Monday, and that, in all, sixty-three performances will make up the season.
That the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will give concerts with soloists Monday nights and in afternoons throughout the season, with special “popular” programs for Sunday afternoons.
That the makeup of the orchestra (which the Chicago press, editorially, in 1917 called “the first orchestra in all the world today”) will be the same as in the winter subscription concerts in Orchestra Hall.
That Claire Dux will, coming to Ravinia for the first time, sing many roles which did not fall to her lot in her winter engagements in opera in Chicago and New York City.
That Graziella Pareto, the Spanish coloratura, will make her debut in the Chicago territory at Ravinia, and will maintain there the traditions of the coloratura operas.
That Alice Gentle, the mezzo soprano, will return for her fourth successive season as a prima donna of Ravinia Opera.
That Queena Mario, Bianca Saroya, Anne Roselle, Adamo Didur, Giuseppe Danise, Vicente Ballester and Pompilio Malatesta will make a first appearance with the Ravinia Opera.
That Frances Peralta will return for some of the great roles for dramatic soprano; that Orville Plarrold, after two years’ absence, will come back; that he will have as fellow tenors from the Metropolitan both Mario Chamlee and Morgan Kingston; and that other favorites of other summers to return will be Leon Rothier, Graham Marr, Philine Falco, Louis d’Angelo, Anna Correnti and Giordano Pal-tnnieri.
T hat Gennaro Papi, Louis Hasselmans and Giacomo Spadoni will all return as conductors, and that the seasoned Armando Agnini (he is already on the job) will again be stage director.
“Boris,” it is bulletined,^ will be the first opera, with Didur in the title role, which he has sung so many times m the Metropolitan, and then Dux’s famous Butterfly will be made known.	ry
Dan Beddoe Pupils in Recital
Pupils from the vocal classes of *Dan Beddoe at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music who have been heard in recital recently are Margaret Spaulding, Lulu Mastin, Clif-ford Cunard, Norma Hetsch, Marthalynn Trippeer, Anna May Payne, Minnie Leah Nobles, Mabel Todd, Vivian Breaks, Emma Burkhardt Seebaum, Melba Van Holt, Leota Coburn, Lucy B. De Young, Helen Kessing, Pearl Besumer and Vernon Jacobson.
Barclay Succeeds at North Shore Festival
John Barclay invaded the Middle West for the first time and endeared himself to the great audience at the Evanston Illinois Musical Festival on Memorial Day. He sang in the j ^־ater	Swan and Skylark״ with fine success
and his personality, musicianship and voice made an enviable impression. Mr. Barclay is one of the many excellent artists under the management of Arthur Judson, of Philadelphia.
Gadski Off for Germany
Johanna Gadski, the Wagnerian soprano and former prima donna of the Metropolitan Opera, sailed on Decoration Day for her first visit to Germany in eight years. She will return in the early fall for an extensive concert tour which will take her as far as the coast.
MARGOT HAYES Contralto
Management : Harry and Arthur CULBERTSON, Aeolian Hall, New York. 4832 Dorchester Ave., Chicago. NEW YORK-CHICACO
Chicago and vicinity are at the time of this writing a bare fortnight away from the beginning of the Ravinia Opera for 1922—a unique enterprise among the musical activities of the United States and of the world for here we have an amazing, if logical and orderly, growth of an artistic movement which has beet} carried along for more than a decade without cant or cult, without platitudes or attitudes, until today Ravinia is a place of interest known throughout the world of music and of art.
Ravinia Opera (that, by the preference of Louis Eckstein, the managing director, is the institutional name of this annual season of ten weeks and three days, commencing June 24 and ending September 4) has been brought along to its present importance without ever having pretended to possess a “message” other than the message of Nature allied with the art of the. lyric theater. It may be a sheer expenditure of words to tell again in the columns of the Musical Courier that Ravinia lies just north of Chicago on the shore of Lake Michigan, and, by the same token, just south of Milwaukee. In those cities, of themselves, the appeal of Ravinia Opera each year is to virtually 4.000,000 persons. The railways from Chicago to Ravinia “tap” Evanston, Wilmette, Winetka, Glencoe, and other north shore cities and towns, and those from Milwaukee south pass through Racine and Waukegan, among other places, so that it is conservative to say that not fewer than 5,500,000 persons are within easy reach of this opera house with its vast natural beauties, its roofed pavilion with seats for 6,000, its groves and dells and arboreal niches, its smooth and rolling meadows, and its uncounted devices for the diversion and entertainment of a clientele which has increased year by year until now, as Mr. Eckstein grimly phrases it about June 20 of each season, “it is up to the weather man !”
Here, on the evening of June 24, Mr. Eckstein will start a season embracing thirty-three operas, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as the musical basis of an organization which, while its personnel shifts from year to year, is none the less an organization in the best sense of that word. A friend of Mr. Eckstein’s, with gentle and kindly irony, not long since spoke of Ravinia Opera as being that gentleman’s avocation. Well, it is that, and it is something more. His own views on the matter are being expressed, perhaps, by his reply to another friend who, in mid-May, said: “Well, Mr. Eckstein, your labors with Ravinia will soon begin—eh ?”
“No,” rejoined Mr. Eckstein: “they will soon end. They began the day after Labor Day of 1921, and always end at 7 p. m. on the first day of each season.”
In brief, forty-two weeks, roughly, are given to perfecting the organization, which then functions of itself for ten weeks. It is this passion for certitude—this determination to make the annual schedule come off as near to the proverbial “T” as is humanly possible—that makes one realize that Ravinia Opera is, if possible, even more of an organization than even the most famous and most portentous of the opera houses of Europe and South America.
And, again, this desire for exactitude—for making execution align with preparation and design—makes of Mr. Eckste'n a reticent man when the reporter is vis-à-vis. “If I seem to retain my details,” he said to the writer, “it is because I never like to have to change the substance of a bulletin once issued. And, so far as things are gone and so far as they may be foreseen for the summer of 1922, I should like my prospectus to speak for itself.”
To look through the prospectus is to be made to realize that Mr. Eckstein has more than carried out all the promises he made back in 1912 when he applied himself to the task of “saving Ravinia.” The promises were made conditionally: he asked for public support and the aid of the press “where justified.” The press, recognizing that Ravinia Opera is an immense asset to Chicago, has been helpful, sympathetic, and encouraging. As to the prospectus for the impending season, it shows :
That, of the thirty-three operas listed, four will be new to the Ravinia repertory—Moussorgsky’s “Boris Godounoff,”
Symphony Orchestra ; Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Murphy, president of the Detroit Orchestral Association; Charlotte Tarsney, Robert Kelley, Mrs. E. FI. McCormick, Ralph Holmes and other music critics representing Detroit newspapers ; Frederick Alexander, director of the Michigan State Normal Conservatory, Ypsilanti; Mr. and Mrs. Carl Linde-gren, of the same institution; C. H. Norton, director Community Music, Flint ; Willoughby Boughton, pianist, Indianapolis, Indiana ; Honorable and Mrs. Muri H. DeFoe, Charlotte ; H. J. Martin, the venerable music critic of eighty-five years, who has heard practically all of the great musical celebrities during the past sixty-five years and who has met most of them personally.
Notes of the Festival.
The University Musical Society which conducts the May Festival is organized under an Act of the State of Michigan providing for the incorporation of “Associations not for pecuniary profit.” Its purpose is “to cultivate the public taste for music.” All fees are placed at the lowest possible point compatible with sound business principles, the financial side serving but as a means to an educational and artistic end, a fact duly recognized by the Treasury Department of the United States by exempting from War-tax admissions to concerts given under its auspices, and by the United States Post Office Department in admitting its publications to second-class privileges. Its Board of Directors consists of thè following gentlemen: Francis W. Kelsey, head of the Latin Department of the University, president; Harry B. Hutchins, President Emeritus of the University, vice-president ; D. W. Springer, superintendent of the Homeopathic Hospital, and for many years secretary of the National Educational Association, secretary ; L. D. Wines, professor in the High Schools, treasurer ; Marion L. Burton, president of the University of Michigan ; Shirley W. Smith, secretary of the University of Michigan; Victor C. Vaughn, for many years Dean of the Medical College of the University ; James H. Wade, formerly secretary of the University; Albert A. Stanley, formerly Musical Director, and G. E Allmendinger, James Inglis and H. G. Prettyman, well-known business men of the city. The business management is in charge of Charles A. Sink.
Saturday noon of Festival week the annual banquet of the Alumni Associai on of the University School of Music took place in the banquet hall at the Michigan Union. About 150 alumni from all parts of the country werie in attendance. The meeting was called to order by Vice-President Nell B. Brown, who introduced Earl V. Moore as toastmaster. Talks were given by Ruth Haller-Ottoway, President of the Miclrgan Federation of Music Clubs ; Rollin Pease, of Northwestern University ; Harper C. Maybee, Director of Music, Kalamazoo; Byrl F. Bacher, Dean of Women of the University School of Music,׳and Frederick Stock. Officers for the ensuing year were elected as follows : Martha D. Merkle, president ; Nell Brown, first vice-president ; Gertrude Lloyd Clarke, second vice-president ; Juel Mahoney Wilson, Secretary; Mrs. Walter Haller, treasurer.
An interesting feature of the Ann Arbor Festival is! the fact that a corps of about 150 ticket takers, ushers, etc., are employed. This force is made up of students in, the University who are enabled to hear the concerts in this way. The smoothness with which the vast audience is handled and the utter lack of confusion״ so often prevalent on occasions of this kind, is due to the enthusiastic co-operation of these splendid young men, whose work is directed by William C. Hollands, of the University.״ A great deal of credit for the enjoyment which patrons of the Festival receive may be traced to the manner in which all of these young men perform their duties.
That the Ann Arbor Festival is of more than local significance is indicated not only by the fact that music lovers from many surrounding cities are present,, but by the further fact that hundreds of people from surrounding cities attend each concert. As many as seventeen special inter-urban and other cars may be counted in waiting in front of the building at the close of each concert to take patrons East and West to Detroit, Jackson and intervening points and indicate the enthusiasm which music lovers outside the immediate environs have for this event, while special police regulations are necessarily provided for the regulation of the heavy automobile traffic which brings patrons from all over the country.	R. T. N.
Eight Glee Club Dates for Da Costa
Blanche Da Costa has had eight solo appearances with the following glee clubs:	Singers’ Club, Cleveland, O.;
Guido Chorus, Buffalo, N. Y.; Orpheus Club, Poughkeepsie, N. Y., reengaged; Orpheus Glee Club of Flushing, N. Y., reengaged; Glee Club and Orchestra, Commercial High School, Brooklyn, N. Y., and Banks Glee Club, Carnegie Hall, New York. This artist was one of the principals when the Society of American Singers gave a season at the Park Theater in New York. She also has appeared with success at the Lockport Festivals. After a recent appearance in Washington, D. C., the Washington Times had the following to say: “Miss Da Costa has a clear lyric soprano voice with a wide range and a very appealing sweetness in the upper register. She has that asset in singing that the English vocal teacher (William Shakespeare) extolled when he said: ‘never sing louder than lovely,’ yet this attractive singer also has a dramatic power that should make her effective as Mimi in ‘La Boheme.’ ”
Barbara Maurel to Sing in London
Barbara Maurel, the mezzo soprano, sailed for London June■ 3 on the Olypmic where she will give a recital at Wigmore Hall on June 30. It is the first time in several years that she has been abroad, where she has formerly been well known in opera and concert. After a stay in England, she will go to the continent for a while, visiting Germany and France and returning here late in September.
Eugene Bernstein Going to Spokane
As has been his custom for a number of years, Eugene Bernstein, New York pianist and teacher, will again spend the summer in and about Spokane, devoting his time both to playing and concertizing. He left for the West on June 3.
HEINRICH GEBHARD
WINS NOTABLE PRESS TRIBUTES
Chamber Concert with Jean Be-detti, November 21, 1921:
Boston Post—-“He played with a discreet sense of values often lacking i™ the most distinguished pian-
^ost°n Herald—“The accomplished Mr. Gebhard played delightfully the piano part of the sonatas, with unerring proportion and aesthetic intelligence.
urc
Chamber Concert with Quartet, April 4, 1922:
Boston Herald—“Mr. Gebhard more than a ‘sound’ ensemble plaj he !s neither assertive nor obsequit and he has a regard for beauty tone.
Boston Transcript—“Past master such ensemble playing.”
Management: A. H. HANDLEY
160 Boylston Street Boston, Mass. Baldwin Piano Duo-Art Records
Soloist with Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, January 23, 1922:
Cleveland Plain Dealer—“Mr. Gebhard played the extremely difficult piano part of the ‘Pagan Poem’ with assurance•, with abundant spirit, and with clear appreciation of its musical values. It was a notably fine performance. ׳. . . Mr. Gebhard was storm-ily applaud^a, and after several recalls he played an added number.”
Recital, Jordan Hall, February 14, 1922:
Boston Transcript—“Heinrich Geb-hard’s program in Jordan Hall, last evening, not only served well to display his ripened and distinguished powers, but it set forth interesting music in a fashion worthy of imitation.”
Christian Science Monitor—“His programs always contain a well-balanced selection of the new and old, and reveal a catholic musical taste. His interpretations are always sane and free from obtrusive mannerisms. He is a sincere artist, striving to reveal the beauty of the music which he plays, little concerned with the externals, which are, unfortunately, the end and aim of many virtuosos.”