MUSIC.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 330, 17 October 1908, Page 12

MUSIC.

a ; I I IBi Trsble CLIP.] , The Govent Garden Opera Season. The last season at, Covent Garden, London, proved tlia most brilliantly successful in the annals of the Grand Opera Syndicate. Eighty-one performances were given,' Verdi leading with 21, Wagner coming next with 15, followed by Puccini with 14. . The operas given, with the number of performances, were: "Aida," 4; "Armida," 2; "Barbicre di Siviglia," 6; "Boheme," 5; "Cannon," 2; "Cavalloria" and "Pagliacci," 4; "Faust," 2; "Fedora," 1; "Fliegender Hollander," 2; "Huguenots," 3; "Lucia," 6; "Madame Butterfly," 4; "Manon Lescaut," 3; "Moistersinger," 3; "Otello," 5; "Pescatori di Perle," ■3; "Rigoletto," 5; "Tannhauser," 2; "Tosca," 2; "Traviata," 7; "Tristan und Isolde," 3; "Walkuro," 3. It is encouraging to find Verdi's "Otello" so prominent in the list with five representations: but where is "II Trovatore" ? A Pretty Story. "It was Lady Essex, (says Dr. Osmond Carr in "M.A.P.") who first fed the musical lire that was in me, a smouldering fire, which burst into flame one day when, after she had been singing to me, I sang back to her, to her great astonishment and delight though I will not pretend that I was ever a miniature Mario or a Sims Roeves. After that, however, a musician I had to bo or nothing, and I was still further encouraged in my ambition by Lady Essex's friend, Count Fontanelle, a most delightful man and amateur of music. Vividly do I remember, ono afternoon, when perched pick-a-back on the count's shoulders, we leant over the gallery that ran round the hall, and sang Gounod's Romeo to Kitty Stephen's Juliet. I liavo heard 'Romeo and Juliot' scores of times sinco, but I do not think 1 have over soon a finer Romeo than Count Fontanelle, and certainly I have never heard a sweeter Juliet than the eighty-years-old one who trilled to us that, to me, never-to-be-forgotten day." Maori Songs. Our Sydney correspondent writes that Mr. Percy Grainger, the well-known pianist, now in Sydney with the company which is headed by the distinguished contralto, Madame Ada Crossley, is thinking of collecting • Maori songs during his visit to New Zealand, and making a, permanent record of them'. He has done a great deal in collecting the folk-songs of England, using a plionograph for the pui"pose, while travelling about amongst tho peasants of Lincolnshire;- where there are somo noted folk-singers. Tho task of collecting these was not difficult, of course, for the people had moroly to sing into the phonograph; but tho hard work came afterwards, when the sounds wore to bo committed topaper in the form of musical notation. However, Mr. Grainger has compiled a lot of information about theso songs, and has published the scores, whilst the phonograph records are now on the market in England. It will be extremely interesting if he does something of tho same kind for tho Maori songs. The legends and folk-lore of tho Maori people have been collected by industrious workers; but so far as is known there is no permanent record of their songs. Notes. Mark Hambourg, who is to appear in Wellington on Tuesday evening, in a recent interview, declared that tho most musical nation in the world at the present time is tho English—judging them by tho quality of their musical aspirations, not on the. quantity. If the latter wore the standard tho Germans would win, but ho had found of late years at any rate a very distinct advance, not only in the musical taste of tho audiences, but also in the character of tho compositions turned out by the now school of composers. From both points of view ho ought to speak with authority, for he is probably tho most popular pianist on tlfe concert platform to-day, and the scholarship he established brings the best efforts of tho younger composers under his notice. Fresh laurels have fallen to Miss Audrey Richardson, the young violinist from New Zealand, tho adjudicators at tho Guild-hall School of Music, where she has been study-, ing under Mr. Johannes Wolff, having recently awarded her the Tnbbs Prize (a goldmouiitod bow) and tho Merchant Tailors' Scholarship. Tho Wellington Orchestral Society, resuscitated from tile dust of things forgotten, by • Mr. Alfrod Hill, is to give its first concert at tho Town Hall, on November 12.