36
January 11, 1923
MUSICAL COURIER
Recondita Armania, from Tosca, ■ Puccini; Che Gelida Manina, from Boheme, Puccini, and Cielo e Mare, from Gioconda, Ponchielli. His work won instantaneous recognition, and he was obliged to give six encores. Others on the program were Giovanni Ardizone, baritone; Rita Galsen, lyric-soprano; Enrico Pellini, violin, and Mae R. Brock.
KANSAS CITY CONSERVATORY
BEGINS ITS NEW REGIME
Activities of Arnold Volpe, New Musical Director, Create Unprecedented Interest
The chief factor in the rapidly quickening musical life of Kansas City has been the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, which has lately procured Arnold Volpe for its musical director. Realizing the civic asset of this conservatory and the reciprocal obligation its possession entails, nearly one hundred prominent citizens formed an auxiliary which has been co-operating with the board of trustees to acquire valuable additions to the faculty, to present faculty artists to the public and to undertake social functions to honor visiting celebrities. Mr. Volpe was thus secured as the new director, and other noted artists and teachers were acquired.
The Artists’ Course of the Conservatory concert series was inaugurated this fall and three concerts by faculty members, most successful artistically and financially, were given. Several songs by Mr. Volpe appeared on the programs and aroused a great deal of interest. The last attraction was the Conservatory Trio, comprised of John Thompson, pianist; Albert Rosenthal, cellist, and Arnold Volpe, violinist. The B flat major trio (Rubinstein) was the feature of the evening.
By far the most important advance has been the organization of the Kansas City Conservatory Symphony Orchestra of fifty members, under Mr. Volpe’s direction. The first concert will be given January 14, and a most attractive program is planned, including the prelude, choral and fugue by Bach-Albert; D major symphony No. 2, by Haydn; Andante Cantabile, Tschaikowsky, and Massenet’s suite Scenes Pittoresques. Mrs; W. Lawrence Dickey, mezzo soprano, is to be the soloist and will sing an aria from Samson and Delilah.
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra gave a concert־ for children on December 22. An immense crowd of children of all ages gathered to hear this splendid organization. A banquet and reception was afterward tendered Ossip Gabrilowitsch by the Auxiliary society, with Mr. and Mrs. Volpe as host and hostess. Mr. Volpe presided and introduced Mr. Gabrilowitsch, whose friend he has been for thirty years. These two eminent men were colleagues at the Imperial Conservatory in Petrograd, where Mr. Volpe was studying violin under Leopold Auer and the twelve-year-old boy, Ossip, was already winning laurels as a pianist. In a speech later on at the reception, Mr. Volpe recounted some of their experiences and told of many happy hours and substantial meals he had had at the Gabrilowitsch home, when he was merely a struggling student. Ossip’s father was a prominent lawyer and the home was pregnant with the artistic atmosphere for which the boy’s heart longed. Later Gabrilowitsch finished under Rubinstein and went on to Leschetizky, while Volpe concluded his work with Auer and came on to New York, where he was a potent factor in the musical life for twenty years. Mr. Volpe gave a highly eulogistic account of Mr. Gabrilowitsch’s latest successes as pianist and conductor and closed with a call for three cheers.
Devora Nadworney’s Engagements
Devora Nadworney, winner of the Tri-City prize in her class at the Women’s Federation of Musical Clubs’ contest last year, appeared on the WEAF Radio a fortnight ago and by special arrangement her songs were broadcasted simultaneously from two other radio stations, namely the New York and the Boston WNAC, which were connected by wires. Her next concert tour begins af ter February 1; one of her principal appearances -being with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Nyiregyhazi Stops Off at Chicago
On his way to California, where he is booked for a -tour, Erwin Nyiregyhazi stopped off at Chicago to play at a private soiree on December 27. He arrived in Los Angeles on January 1, and the day after he gave the first of his series of recitals. As usual, the audience was enthusiastic to the extreme, and encore after encore was given in response to the hearty applause.
Simmions’ Baritones Busy
Bernardo Olshansky has started upon his twenty weeks’ concert tour, which will take him as far as California. Joseph Mendelsohn, who studied with Louis Simmions for seven years, is now on the road singing Schubert, the principal role in Blossom Time.
Tea at Harrison-Irving Studio
A tea was given by Mme. J. Harrison-Irving at her studio in Carnegie Hall for the board of directors of the New York Federation of Music Clubs on January 7.
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MILAN ENJOYS INAUGURATION OF SCALA’S LYRIC SEASON
Toscanini Praised for Presentation of Verdi’s Falstaff—An Acceptable Lohengrin—Marinuzzi at Turin—Vigna Leads
Directs at Rome
of Faust will follow, besides during Holy Week, Lorenzo Perosi’s oratorio, The Resurrection of Christ.
And Serafín at Naples.
Serafín has gone to Naples, where the lyrical season at the San Carlo promises to be rich in interest and notable for the artists taking part. The opening work will be Siegfried, new for Naples, and then among others will be given Wttlliam Tell, Haensel and Gretel, Leggenda di Sakuntala, by Franco Alfano, and Colomba, by Nicola van Wésterhout, a composer from the south of Italy, who died several years ago and whose posthumous opera is entrusted to a committee of admirers and followers. Probably in the same season Morenita, by Mario Pérsico, will also -be staged ; this is a one act opera by a young graduate of the St. Pietro di Majella Conservatory, which has just been judged most favorably by the government commission for the annual lyrical contests. The other opera which received a prize from the same commission is a musical comedy by Carlo Jachino, Giocondo and his King (from Ariosto), libretto by Forzano. This opera was accepted by the management of the Felice Theater of Venice and will probably be given during the next season (conducted by Giuseppe Baroni) when the new opera, II Principe e Nuredha, by the Venetian composer, Guido Bianchini, will also be performed.
Vigna Leads Trieste.
Trieste, too, will have its lyrical season at the Comunale, under the direction of Arturo Vigna and Sergio Failoni, the latter a recent recruit in orchestra conducting. In the course of the season La Monacella Della Fontana, by G. Mulé, another of the operas which gained the government prize last year, will be given. Riccardo Zandonai will be the third conductor of the Trieste season; he will stage his Giulietta e Romeo and Via della Finestra, the third act of which he has suppressed, while he has rewritten the greater part of the second.
Gui Directs at Rome.
Vittorio Gui, who had assumed the directorship of the St. Carlo Theater of Lisbon for the last two years, is returning to Italy and, to be precise, to his native city, Rome. The season at the Costanzi has been entrusted to him with the exception of the brief parenthesis, when Klemperer of Cologne will conduct Siegfried. The bill at the Costanzi included among other works Cristoforo Colombo, by A. Franchetti (the same new edition which will be given at the Scala (i. e. without the two acts which take place in ^ America), Salome, Tristan and Isolda, and three new Italian operas: I Compagnacci, by P. Riccitelli (pupil and protege of Mascagni) ; La Grazia, by V. Michetti, and Petronio, by P. Giovannetti.
Casting up the sum total then of this estimated balance sheet, there are good reasons for satisfaction, since, in one single season, about a dozen new operas, by composers who, for some reason or other, already more or less well known, will be performed in Italy for the first time, and in this number only the bigger theaters are taken into account. We cannot, and neither do we wish to, hazard a guess about these works, although we are acquainted with the general lines of several of them. We shall wait and see therefore; and in spring, when the swallows return, we shall draw up in these same columns the final balance, firmly trusting that it will not be very different from that prognosticated. At the same time, reasons for doubt are not wanting; we call to mind one very recent one. At the end of November a new opera, La Tempesta, by Felice Lattuada, with libretto taken from Shakespeare by Arturo Rossato, was presented at the Dal Verme Theater, in Milan. Rossato’s second attempt at Shakespearean production (his first as far as we know was the not too happy Giulietta e Romeo for Zan-donai’s music) confirms us in our opinion that masterpieces must be left alone, or else handled with a poetical capacity such as is certainly not possessed by the writer in question. As for the music, it is absolutely negligible, notwithstanding all the material the composer uses and the deafening noise raised for a score, which is always heavy. There is nothing in the opera which does not recall, at one time or another, something of every opera which has been composed in the last hundred years, from Wagner in Tristan to Strauss in Salomé, from Puccini in Boheme to Mascagni in Iris. The opera, which was only performed twice, was received with applause by an audience consisting of friends and sympathizers; but such successes are like the victories of Pyrrhus, the more one wins the worse one feels.
Guido M. Gatti.
Toledo Hears Christmas Carols
Toledo, Ohio, enjoyed much holiday cheer through the revival of the old custom of having carolers go about on Christmas singing familiar carols. According to the Toledo Times: “Promptly as the bells tolled six o’clock the caroling began throughout the city. At the Courthouse park automobiles filled with people lined both sides of the street and a few sought shelter (because of the rain) in the doorways of the building. But the first notes of Come, All Ye Faithful, led by Herbert Davies, Cornelia Colton Hollister and Mrs. S. C. Walbridge, brought the people flocking from all sides and it is estimated that before the singing almost twice as many had joined in the caroling as took part last year. The red capes of the two women leading and the traditional lanterns added to the colorful effect produced by the four brilliantly lighted Christmas trees which had been placed at the base of McKinley monument.”
In commenting upon the effect the singing had upon the various audiences to which the carolers sang, the Toledo Daily Blade said: “Viola Galbraith and Cornelia Hollister sang cheer into the hearts of girls at the Crittenden Home.”
Lombardi Pupil in Successful Concert
Michele Greco, tenor, an artist pupil of G. Lombardi, New York vocal maestro, gave a concert in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, on Tuesday evening, December 19. Mr. Greco, whose beautiful and well developed voice reflected great credit upon his teacher, sang three operatic arias—
Trieste—Gui
Milan, December IS.—This year’s inauguration of the lyric season at the Scala again assumed the importance of a great artistic event ; it is easily understood therefore why the theater was full to overflowing on the evening of December 2, and also why the warmth of the enthusiasm reached unheard-of heights. Certainly if the welcome extended to Falstaff, conducted by Arthur Toscanini, was —as it seemed to us at least—even heartier ■than that of last year, the reason must be partly due to the fact that this opera is beginning to be better understood by the public and therefore more and more appreciated as the listener gradually discovers the delicate structure of the details, but also in part to the fact that this year’s performance seemed still riper and more refined than last year’s. Today it may be truly said that the performance as given us by Toscanini is perfect and worthy in every respect of the opera. If we were not afraid of seeming rhetorical or of repeating a hackneyed phrase, we should say that never have we listened to and never shall we again listen to a rendition of Verdi’s Falstaff like that which we heard a few evenings ago. Even if we wished to be ever so pedantic and meticulous, we could not find anything to criticize.
The singers all deserve honorable mention: Maria Labia (Alice), Ines Alfani-Tellini (Nannetta), Elvira Casazza (Quickly), Luisa Bertana (Meg Page), Mariano Stabile (Falstaff), Ernesto Badini (Ford), Ferdinando Ciniselli (Fenton), Francesco Dominici (Doctor Caius), Giuseppe Nessi (Bardolfo), Umberto di Lelio (Pistola). Likewise, next to Toscanini, must be mentioned the man who may be considered his most precious collaborator, Vittore Veneziani, who trains the chorus, and thanks to whom the choruses of the operas performed at the Scala are always rendered with a rhythmic precision and intonation to which we had long been a stranger.
Applause was frequent and hearty; there was on the gala night—so it seemed to us—a greater seriousness and thoughtfulness which served to augment the artistic character of the evening and. cancel the last traces of that seeming curiosity which was to be seen last year. The public came this year, not to see the alterations made in the stage, in the lighting or in the scénographie machinery, but to enjoy a work of art with no thought of anything else. And the attention with which they, listened was so intense, as to be quité amazing in an Italian audience, and especially in a Scala audience. The opera was staged by Caramba; to him were due the wonderful coloring (in the fairy scene) and the harmonious arrangement of the groups in the same scenes of Windsor Park, •which certainly represent the chief difficulty in the opera. But Caramba has overcome these difficulties brilliantly. Another novelty, which perhaps passed unobserved by the public, was the withdrawal of Ranzato, the “violino di spalla” (concert master), whose place was taken by Nastrucci, who comes to us from your Metropolitan, and also the substitution of Failoni, the master’s substitute, by Ghione.
An Acceptable Lohengrin.
On the evening after the inauguration	f the season
Maestro Antonio Guarnieri directed Lohengrin, in place of Ettore Panizza, who has gone to the Chicago Civic Opera Company. On the whole this second performance alsp met with the public approval. The staging, which was complete in every detail, particularly attracted the attention of the audience. Much appreciated, too, was the vocal and choral execution in which some of the best known Italian lyric artists took part:	Aureliano Pertile (Lohengrin), Carlo
Galeffi (Telramondo), Maria Carena (Elsa), and Maria Capuana (Ortruda).
I should like to make special mention of the basso, Ezio Pinza, who took the King’s part. He is a young singer who, in two years, has gained the appreciation of the most severe and most notable audiences in Italy and one who, for the beauty of his voice and intelligence of his interpretation, seems destined to shine shortly among the -best interpreters of the musical theater.
Maestro Guarnieri came through his trial successfully and the audience called him to the front at the end of every act, together with the artists ; his success would have been still greater if there had not been a tiresome slowness of movement which hurt the effect of more than one page of the opera, further aggravated by the suppression of all the usual cuts.
Marinuzzi at Turin.
But it is not only the Scala which is working; in every town rehearsals are in full swing for the operatic seasons about to be inaugurated. In Turin, where Gino Marinuzzi this year succeeded Tullio Serafín, the Rheingold is being prepared; the Theater Regio will open with this on the evening of December 19: Sonnambula, Rosenkavalier, Don Carlos, Lucia di Lammermoor, Louise, and the Damnation
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