25
in New York, when, coming here some years ago, she accepted a touring engagement with a band, sang so much and so wrongly that she utterly lost her voice. Last autumn for the first time in six years she managed to produce a few tones, and now, following two months of daily work with Mrs. Mehan, feels she “has accomplished wonders,” and said she “I do love her.” Although suffering from a cold, her fine trill and flexible voice in Caro Nome, her warm tones in Beach’s Ah Love But a Day, with considerable dramatic impulse, all this showed that the fair singer deserves every encouragement. Big applause followed her appearance.
John Barnes Wells, long known as an exponent of the Mehan schooling, sang three French songs with easy flowing tone, power (in a Staub song), reaching splendid climax in Malgre Moi (Pfeiffer), and singing with utmost tenderness Sylvia (Speaks). Two. Little Magpies was his encore, and needless to say this best known Mehan artist-pupil received tremendous applause.
Mrs. Mehan and Anca Seidlova played the accompaniments in a most sympathetic fashion, and when Harry Mc-Claskey (Henry Burr) was discovered in the audience (his was the Mehan schooling) he too was urged to sing, much to everyone’s delight.
Maud Allan on European Tour
Maud Allan, on a card from Rome, sends greetings to the Musical Courier, on her way back from a short professional tour which she and Leo and Mischel Cherniavsky have just made to Gibraltar, Cairo, Alexandria and Malta, meeting with much success at each place!
4	■ ■!*I
Photo © Fernand de Gueldre.
Musical courier
Mrs. John Dennis Mehan Artist-Pupils Heard
Eight artist-pupils of Mrs. John Dennis Mehan were heard in a highly enjoyable evening of vocal music in the handsome duplex Carnegie Hall studios, June 7. Many novelty songs (nine by Americans) and at least five new singers were heard by the large invited company which attended.
Samuel Roberts, tenor, began the program, singing with poise, including high mezzo A and A flat, with robusto climax in Waller’s Poor Finish. The minor melody in a
Apeda photo
MRS. JOHN DENNIS MEHAN
Welsh song and Schubert’s Serenade were nicely interpreted; urged to sing an encore he gave Passed By Her Window. Jevva Blix’s powerful, contralto voice was heard in three Norwegian songs, by Callan and Kjerulf, •with a fine low A flat, some effective humming (with low F), and a closing number which brought her an encore. Helen Porter has been heard before in child songs, in appropriate costume, singing about Kitty being full of fiddle strings (Wells), Snippy-Snip (haircut), the Naughty Little Clock, Duck Yo’ Kinky Head, all these with ingratiating charm. Solomon Grundy, an encore nonsense song, with many rolled r-r-r’s, and other features made her singing very enjoyable.
Jane Neilson, splendid dramatic soprano, created a fine effect with Curran’s To the Sun and in the aria from Tannhäuser, her high notes as well as her splendid German enunciation being notable; she achieved a fine effect in the aria, and sang Hayfields and Butterflies as encore. Dorothy Reid, contralto, sang Chadwick’s He Loves Me tenderly and with beauty of expression, also showing range of two octaves (low F to high F) in Delibes’ Oh Mer, Ouvre toi, in which she attained special climax; she is exceedingly musical. LeRoy Weil, baritone, attained a big dramatic climax in Le Cloche, sang Dusk in June, and a Foster song, and closed with the Holder A'bendstern aria amid enthusiastic applause, for his voice has resonance, warmth, power and expression. He sang a humorous Negro Spiritual as encore.
Josephine Dunfee, coloratura soprano, was a special feature of the affair; she told the audience of her experience
MINA
HAGER
Contralto
(Formerly Chicago Grand Opera Company)
On Touir—Chicago Symphony Orchestra
FREDERICK STOCK, Conductor
Flint (Mich.) Daily Journal:
“Mina Hager, the soloist, is possessed of a charming voice of great volume and range. She received insistent encores.
Lansing (Mich.) Journal:
“The soloist for the evening was Mina Hager, a young contralto, who sang first the familiar aria ‘My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice,’ and the stirring Invocation to Ulrica from Verdi’s‘Masked Ball.’ This was fairly hurled at the audience with a defiance that should have made the universe tremble. It was stunning.”
PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE, PHYLLIS CAMPBELL, 1625 Kimball Bldg., Chicago, 111.
June 21, 1922
should he indeed decide to supersede Blech as general musical director, as has been rumored.
Julius Caesar in Berlin
The Volksoper, whose pretensions to the_ Kroll Theatre seem again to have experienced a set-back, is in the meantime continuing to build up its repertory! After a jolly and generally acceptable performance of the Fledermaus, with Otto Goritz and Albert Reiss, that familiar inseparable pair of Metropolitan fame, in the roles of Frank and Eisenstein respectively, it is today producing Handel’s Julius Caesar— the first Handel operatic revival to take place in Berlin.
The Musical Courier has published reports of the productions of Julius Caesar in Gottingen and Hanover, and the Berlin performance calls for no additional comment. Wilhelm Guttmann, who sang the role in Gottingen, was impressive as Julius Caesar, while Melanie Kurt made a fine Cleopatra, and Eleanor Reynolds, the American contralto, an equally good Cornelia. The stage settings, however, are very different from those in Hanover. Hans Strohbach,. a^cene painter with taste and original ideas, has not tried to reproduce the ancient milieu as we imagine it today, but as Handel and his time saw it, while scenes and groupings take their form from the music itself.
The three opera houses of Berlin, then, are still in full swing, though the concert season is past. Today, however, is the opening of the Austrian Music. Cesar Saerchinger.
FOREIGN NEWS IN BRIEF
New Opera by Frederick Delius.
Berlin, June 2.—The première of a new opera, entitled Hassan, or the Golden Road to Samarkand, had its première last night in the Landes Theater in Darmstadt. The music is by Frederick Delius, the English composer, and the text by James Elroy Flecker, who died prematurely in 1915. Josef Rosenstock was the musical director of the performance.	A. Q.
American Capital Backs Two Operetta Premieres in Berlin.
Berlin, June 1.—The first performance of a new operetta, entitled Sweet Susie, music by Siegfried Grzyb, took place last night in the Schiller Theater before a packed house. The audience was wildly enthusiastic about the work, and the press was also favorably impressed. The operetta is in three acts, of which the second is much the best, working up to a climax that practically exhausts its resources and leaves the final act rather tame. The music of the second act, particularly a clever Bizetesque episode, is very effective. Another operetta recently introduced was the Pretty Rival, with music by Hans Linné, well known in American theatrical circles, especially in California. Each of these performances were backed by American capital, and it is reported that Sweet Susie may eventually take a trip to New York. Whether or not the pretty Rival will follow is uncertain.	A. Q.
Reval to Have Music Festival.
Reval, Esthonia, May 25.—A great music festival will take place here from June 29 to July 2. It will be the first such occasion since the constitution of the republic of Esthonia, and a number of artists of international repute will participate.	R. P.
Hamburg Hears Another American Pianist.
Hamburg, May 24.—Ernest Bacon, a young American pianist, trained in Vienna, recently gave a recital in Hamburg where, chiefly by reason of his splendid technical equipment, he had a well earned success.	A.S.
Passion Play for Vienna.
Vienna, May 12.—The Catholic organizations of this city are now preparing a series of Passion Play performances which are intended to become a regularly recurring affair along the lines of the Oberammergau productions. Prof. Peterlini, a prominent conductor of Catholic choral organizations here, is compiling thè musical part of the performance.
P. B.
Felix Weingartner Celebrates Sixtieth Birthday.
Berlin, June 2.—Felix Weingartner is sixty years old today. Practically all the local press contained notices of admiration and well wishes for the genial Felix.	A. Q.
Ture Rangstròm’s Music to Dedicate Stockholm’s City Hall.
Stockholm, May 26.—On Saint John’s day, June 24, the new monumental city hall in Stockholm will be dedicated. A festival play with music by Ture Rangstrôm will be performed in honor of the celebration.	H. G.
Artists from Persson’s Studios at Asheville, N. G.
The studios of Frederic Persson were well represented last week at the biennial of the National Federation of Music Clubs, held at Asheville, N. C., in three artists, namely, Paul Ryman, tenor; Princess Watawasso, the Indian soprano, and Marie Tiffany, soprano of the Metropolitan Opera Company.
The first day, Mr. Ryman sang a group of American songs; the second day, Princess Watawasso rendéred the solo part in the Indian Legend, The River of Stars, by Clarence Bawden, with a chorus from Philadelphia; on the third day, Marie Tiffany was soloist with the symphony Orchestra, under the direction of. Henry Hadley.
Mr. Persson will keep his studios open all summer owing to the many reservations that have been made on his time by well known artists who wish to coach in preparation for the coming season and by out-of-town singers and teachers who have arranged to spend part of the summer in New York.
May Peterson in Northwest During April and May
Such is May Peterson’s popularity in the West and on the Coast that next season she will return to the Northwest, under the local direction of Katherine Rice, of Seattle, to fill numerous concert engagements in that territory. The Metropolitan soprano’s tour will open the middle of April and last well into May.