May 17, 1923
MUSICAL COURIER
30
GIANNI SGHIGGHI TAKES BERLIN BY STORM
German Première Acclaimed by Public and Press—International Society Brings Out German Orchestral Novelties— Bruno Walter Receives Big Ovation on Return—John McCormack Impresses the Highbrows—
Weingartner Still an Idol
WERNER WOLFF,
conductor of the International Society Concert in Berlin, devoted to living German composers.
the city of Charlottenburg, by the way, has been trying to capture—or recapture—the Deutsches Opernhaus, in which the ousting of Director Hartmann has proved to be less simple than the powers in control—a cooperative stock company—imagined.	The City Council, which had and still
claims an interest in the house by virtue of past subventions, has held a public hearing on the subject, and at the end of it the mayor characterized the ousting of Hartmann during his absence in America as an outrage. A civil action now pending in the courts is to clarify the situation. Meantime it may be said that the new management has not raised the artistic niveau of the theater as yet, and has only accentuated the ominous “star” and “guest” system which has stamped the Deutsches Opernhaus as hopelessly provincial.
Die Oper höret nimmer auf.
If opera, like love, never ends in Berlin, the concert season does, thank goodness ! Except for isolated events, it is over now. Four important symphony concerts within the last two weeks remain to be recorded. Their conductors all begin with the same initial—Weingartner, Walter, Wolff and Wunsch—but that’s where the similarity ends. Weingartner once more honored Berlin en route—this time to Scandinavia.. The house was jammed with people attracted by the two magnetic names of Weingartner and Nikisch. Not Artur, of course, but Mitja, who carries the youthful image of his great father through the world as a pianist. He plays well, but with that name one needs to play more than well. His Liszt (E flat concerto) was rather feminine and can do with a deal more brilliance.
The great Felix gave a magnificent reading of the Flying Dutchman overture and his own patented and unsurpassed Beethoven C minor. The plaudits were not over when I left. The audience had evidently forgotten and forgiven the insufferable bore of Weingartner’s Reisenauer-Variations —forty minutes of inflated orchestration, with organ, on ä theme of the teacher-and-pupil variety, which old Papa Reisenauer had actually set for piano, four hands. It is the glorification of triviality which, one may suppose, Weingartner (it is not clear how much of the composing he did himself) intended for a parody (motto: Much ado about nothing), but forty minutes is pretty long for a joke.
Bruno Walter and John McCormack.
A demonstration that reminded one of American political conventions greeted Bruno Walter on his return from America to conduct the last of his series of Philharmonic concerts. Those who have held right along that he is the legitimate successor of Artur Nikisch and therefore ought to have been enthroned in his place seem to have had new wind put into their sails by his American success. At any rate, the quality of his reception was determined not merely by admiration but by love. And never has a conductor shown himself more worthy of popular affection. He has grown in recent years into an ideal interpreter of just those composers who make up the national musical treasure house. But, even in his presentation of the classics he is a romanticist, warm-hearted, intoxicated by his own vision of beauty. Where Furtwängler analyzes, constructs with imposing intellectual force, Walter idealizes, and in this respect he is undoubtedly closer to Nikisch.
And yet he is clear. The Brahms D major symphony he directed with a mastery of dynamic proportions that revealed its beauties to an unprecedented degree, and never—-no, never.—have I heard the Meistersinger prelude so com-pellingly played. The Philharmonic Orchestra went beyond itself in this and also in Strauss’ Don Juan. Since Nikisch no conductor has been acclaimed as Walter was after this concert.
As already stated in a cable dispatch to the Musical Courier, John McCormack made his German debut at this concert. He sang a rather ungrateful Mozart aria, Per pietà non ricercate, in rondo-form, and the great tenor aria from Christ on the Mount of Olives, by Beethoven. If the reputation that preceded him was the usual one of his being a “popular” singer, who with Irish ditties wrings easy tears from Irish eyes, the public must have been amazed. For what he sang was calculated to capture the musical highbrows, and it did, without qualifications. But the intelligent Berlin public, too (and the Bruno Walter public is very
mentality. To those who love the old Puccini, the few crumbs like the Adieu to Florence and the love duet are enough to reconcile them to the new. While the musician without prejudice is bound to admire the mastery with which Puccini uses his thematic material to illustrate the characters and situations, and the uncanny lightness and brilliance of his orchestration. With this work the “unintellectual” Puccini has done what Busoni, the super-intellectual^ has tried to do in his Arlecchino; he has revived the spirit of the old commedia dell ’arte in a modern sense, applying the musical technic of the opera buffa to a modern score.
The performance, in an excellent and easily comprehensible German translation, was excellent. The ensembles and the stage management were excellent, but the scenery was another of these painfully fantastic pseudo-style affairs that seem to have become chronic at the Berlin Opera. Emil Pirchan, the scene painter, represents Buso Donati’s house as a sort of open-air shooting pavilion in green and red. As one of the critics remarked, Gianni Schicchi should bequeath it to him as a punishment.
Repertory Filxers.
Gianni Schicchi was preceded by that delightful trifle which had a short career at the “Met” some years ago. Leo Blech’s Versiegelt. I heard it for thè first time on this occasion and was pleasantly surprised by the freshness of its tunes and the naturalness and smoothness (signs of perfect artisanship of its Wagnerian orchestration. Inconsequential as its subject is its music, but it avoids banality and cheap sentimentality, and serves as an excellent “filler” that will never frighten off the tired business man. It had a smooth and lively performance.
Another opera that has not maintained itself in the American repertory but enjoys continued public favor here is D’Albert’s Tiefland. It is surely not as bad as its reputation. As an example of German verismo its position is unique and in the Wagnerian aftermath it must be rated fairly high. A few days ago it gave an excellent opportunity to a favorite guest, Richard Tauber, the Dresden tenor, to show himself at his best. Tauber is one of the most musical tenors I have ever known, gifted with a brilliant and vibrant voice that combines German and Italian qualities in agreeable proportions.
Operatic Politics.
There are no “seasons” in German opera houses. The Staatsoper is open all-the-year-round, like a summer and winter resort. The Volksoper, too, which since last October has built up a complete repertory (the latest addition being Rigoletto), is also going to play right into the dog-days. So is the Deutsches Opernhaus, in Charlottenburg. And to these must be added the usual summer opera, run by private enterprise, at the Wallner Theater. Finally, in the early autumn the old Kroll Theater will open—not as the Volks-oper but as the Opernhaus am Königsplatz, operated as a branch of the Staatsoper. Which means that in the quiet war that has been going on between rival forces in the big Volksbühne, controlled by labor organizations, the Grosse Volksoper, now operating the Theater des Westens, and the Staatsoper, with a certain gentleman in the Ministry of Instruction as the deus ex machina, the Staatsoper has won out, having obtained control of the reconstructed theater. Whether the present Volksoper will under these circumstances be able to hold out is of course a question. Next season, at any rate, Berlin will have no less than four opera houses running, giving operatic performances every night. It will be a struggle no less interesting to watch than that of New York’s four orchestras. . . .
While the state has been capturing the Kroll Theater,
Berlin, April 28.—The first real novelty success of the opera season—unqualified, unanimous, decisive. And by Puccini—Puccini, the “popularity-monger,” the “degenerator of the public taste,” to whom the powers that be only grudgingly concede a place on the repertory, because—he is the angel of the box office. Bohême and Butterfly were the only operas of his considered worthy of the Staatsoper’s hallowed boards, and Tosca was added, as a concession to postwar taste, last year. And now, after several failures and half-successes by native composers, in romps the first Puccini novelty in a decade and conquers Berlin—public and press. It would be annoying if the Staatsoper weren’t in dire need of just this success.
Gianni Schicchi, the delightful comedy that saved the Tryptich in America, was served up by the careful management alone. It is not likely that its two sister-operas would have had so great a success, but the impression is that if Gianni Schicchi is so good, why the others can’t be so bad. So why not let us hear them?
It is easy to see why Gianni Schicchi should be so successful in Berlin. To those who abhor the Tosca-Puccini with his unctuous melody, the sprightly Gianni came as a pleasant relief, with its musical wit and cleverness, its absence of weepy tunes and its lampooning of cheap senti-
Summer Master School of Music
in connection with
The International Chautauqua Assembly at Lake Orion, Michigan
Announces the special engagement of
LEO ORNSTEIN
WORLD FAMOUS PIANIST
1923 Summer Master School 1923
Three Weeks—From July 9th to July 30th Private Lessons	Repertoire	Teachers’ Class
Other noted teachers at this Summer School will be
E. ROBERT SCHMITZ, famous composer and pianist.
HELEN NORFLEET, young American pianist. CAMERON McLEAN, noted baritone. RALPH LEO, baritone.
MABELLE HOWE MABEL, counterpoint and harmony.
PROF. ENRICO ROSATI, renowned vocal teacher from the Conservatory, Rome, Italy.
MADAME VIRGINIA COLOMBATI, renowned teacher of JOSEPHINE LUCCHESE.
RACHELLE COPELAND, noted violinist and pupil of LEOPOLD AUER.
For all information address JAMES LATTIMORE HIMROD, International Chautauqua Assembly and Summer School, 4514־ Equity Building, Detroit, Michigan
Mr, Ornstein uses a Knabe Piano