Reviews — The New York Times

From the New York Times - December 15, 1895

MUSIC

     The week which has just closed has been one of considerable activity in music. Just eighteen musical performances were given in this town, counting public rehearsals. The schedule ran as follows: Sunday, Dec. 8, concerts at the Opera House and Olympia; Monday, “Faust” at the Opera; Tuesday, concert of the Mendelssohn Glee Club and song recital of Emil S„nger; Wednesday, Miss Janotha and Mme. Sterling, at the Waldorf, Harlem Philharmonic rehearsal, Kneisel Quartet, and “La Navarraise,” at the Opera; Thursday, Harlem Philharmonic concert, Musical Art Society concert, and “Tannhäuser,” at the Opera, Friday, New York Philharmonic Society’s public rehearsal, and “Philemon et Baucis,” mad scene from “Hamlet,” and “Cavalleria Rusticana,” at the Opera; Saturday, “Romeo et Juliette,” at the Opera matinée, and “La Favorita” in the evening; Mr. Paderewski’s recital, and the Philharmonic concert. Most of these entertainments, in spite of the nearness of Christmas, were well attended. The people are not impoverished, and music still hath charms.
     The most important feature of the week was the production of “La Navarraise,” at the Opera. There is a well-defined feeling among the powers that govern the Metropolitan that the general public does not wish for new operas, but it would not be at all surprising if Massenet’s drum and trumpet work, with Mme. Calvé’s shocking performance of the heroine, should catch the taste of a town which hungers at all times for something highly spiced. It will not be the music that delights, for it was a curious fact that after the first rattle of musketry on Wednesday night some of the women in the house watched the proceedings on the stage, but stopped their ears with their fingers, and thenceforward by them.
     Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note.
     Queer sort of opera, isn’t it, that women are afraid to hear? Yet it is true that when one comes away from the performance of this work he remembers only the stage pictures, the action, the crushing atmosphere of gloom. “La Navarraise” is not an opera; it is not even a lyric drama. It is a melodrama as it stands, with its subordinate musical accompaniment. If the music were eliminated it would be a gruesome little tragedy. The incidents follow one another too rapidly to give the composer opportunity to make a musical moment. In a vague and unsatisfactory way he creates an instrumental agitation, in which the low register of the whole orchestra stands for gloom and the bleat of trumpets indicates war. Only twice does he have room to expand moods into musical form. The first time is immediately after the entrance of Anita’s soldier lover, Araquil. Then we get some evidence of that Massenet who wrote “Werther.” The duo, “Mon souvenir t’a protegé,” is a charming bit, and there are fluent melody and expressiveness in Araquil’s “Vous qui restez lá-bas,” which immediately follows it.
     Massenet’s other opportunity is in the little nocturne, which is played between the first and second scenes, while the soldiers, by the license of the theatre, sleep eight hours in two minutes. The nocturne is very slight music, but it is an appropriate and sympathetic accompaniment to the picture. But that completes the musical investiture of the drama, for Bustamente’s song, “J’ai trois maisons dans Madrid,” is a mere incidental piece. The rest of “La Navarraise” is rapid, feverish, hysterical movement, ending with the horrible vision of a mad girl turning back a dead man’s eyelids with her thumbs and shrieking her ghastly laughter into his pallid face. The story, which has already been told in this journal, was put into the form of a libretto by Jules Claretie and H. Cain. It is a revolting story and was designed to give people the horrors.

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     Mme. Calvé’s skill and natural gifts as an actress are not shown to the best advantage in this work, although the part of Anita was written for her. The movement of the play is so short and so rapid that she does not get time to do more than indicate the numerous emotions which chase one another with the speed of flowing water. And she is almost wholly prevented from doing any of those extremely expressive things with her voice which she knows so well how to do. In Santuzza, for instance, in the duo with Turiddo, she sings with a round, full, mellow tone admirably adapted to convey the love of the woman. And the duo lasts long enough for this tone-color to make the audience feel its influence, so that when Alfio enters and she begins to tell him of Lola’s infidelity in a hard, cold voice, the effect is very great.
     She uses both these tonal colorings in “La Navarraise.” The first is employed in the duet with Araquil, and the second is heard when she cries to Garrido, “J’ai promis, j’ai frappé. L’homme est mort!” But the second passage is so brief that only close observers or those familiar with Mme. Calvé’s methods will notice its strident and icy quality. The soprano’s portrayal of the girl’s shuddering aversion to the wedding portion she has earned by murder is splendid acting, and her brief scene of madness reminds one, by its excruciating realism, of Clara Morris’s appalling insanity in “Article 47.” It is vastly different from the gentle and tearful mania of the Ophelia in Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet.”
     Attention was called on Thursday morning to the excellence of the stage management in this production. The methods employed with such realistic results in “Held by the Enemy,” “Shenandoah,” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” were advantageously used. The men of the chorus were forced to individualize themselves instead of being complacent parts of a moving mass. The stage setting might have been improved by the advent of a little new scenery, for those “Cavalleria Rusticana” houses look just the same on the left as they do in the centre; and when one sees those raw sienna mountains he feels like exclaiming with their own William Tell:
     Ye crags and peaks! I’m with you once again.

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Last updated December 30, 2006