RISTORI AND DE MURSKA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4553, 23 October 1875, Page 3

RISTORI AND DE MURSKA.

The following extract from a letter received by a gentleman resident in Christchurch, from a relative in Melbourne, will be read with some interest :—“ As I wrote yesterday, I must tell you of the ‘ stars at present performing in Melbourne, although, after the Kress criticisms, my remarks are valueless, except as giving my own impressions of the representations. Kistori is simply a wonder, an artiste so unapproachable that she leaves a blank behind her no future human being could fill. ‘Lucretia Borgia ’ was Friday night’s: play, and K. K. and I got what I consider the best seats in the house, the central back of. the stalls. She paints for the stage level, so that from the boxes or upper part the lines and, coloring are perceptible, but not so honzon-i tally. X kept my glass on her alone, watohingi nervously every shade, as her face is never at rest, but, like a kaleidoscope, changes with every expression either of her own or ■ whoever occupies the stage. The effect is beyond explanation, face, head, hands, breath, all acting together, . and the audience never considered for a moment; no theatrical declamation or stage attitudes ; no fooWight demonstration to the gods or the dress circle, or changing sides with stately tread ; in fact, nothing artificial or stagey, but all a terrible reality, as if the Borgia was there In the flesh. Her smiles, duplicity, anxiety, devotion, anguish, and final struggle with her fearful desolation, keep up an excitement which produced in me, like many others, a terrible reaction, and left me staring at the curtain when it fell, endeavoring to realise what I had seen and heard. “Judith,” on Saturday evening, found R. 8., A , and myself in the same seats. Luckily, and with all my experience of the previous night, I went into the performance, and watched it with the same fascination. My flesh crept as the dreadful play went on, and I saw a new Kistori, the Jewish woman, in everything, instead of the fiendish Duchess of I errata. When I looked from off the stage, it appeared to me that the people around us should not be there ; they positively seemed intruders, and the intervals between the acts were as great rents which should not have existed. If X wrote a month X could not express my thankfulness at the opportunity of witnessing her glorious impersonations. Kistori is, of course, unapproachable ; hut were she withdrawn, the company would be such an one as has never been seen here before. Majironi is one of the three greatest living Italian actors, the others being Salviui and Kossi. I consider him superior to Brooke, Kean, or Montgomery, and yet he is dwarfed beside Riston. As the Duke and as Holofernes he was terrible ; the latter part was the finest piece of acting possible, reminding one of the infamous Nana Sahib of the Indian Mutiny. The entire company are grandly intelligent and word perfect; no acting, mind you, but conversations carried on as they might be on the flags in Collins-street ; the audience quietly ignored, and the business of the play conducted as if there was not an onlooker within hearing or seeing. The scenery is, of course, strictly accurate, and the dresses correct to a button. Everything betokens the _ highest intelligence and the most careful detail It is painfully absurd, and produces positive loathing, to even think of the mountebaukism across the street, and the degradation of such antics as those of Greville, Stewart, Harwood, and the Doceys, and Nellies, Delanceys, and Dollys, aud Tillys we have to pay our money to listen to. Monday, at the Town Hall, front seat, listening to lima de Murska in the ‘Creation,’ is as different from Kistori as a, humming bird is to an eagle. A thin, fair, girlish-looking butterfly, to all _ appearance about sixteen, or at the outside eighteen, but owing her clear complexion and childish appearance very much to art, as she has a son high up in the army. When she opens her lips,- the notes come trilling forth without any apparent exertion on her part. There is a warble and an ascending scale, up, up, up, still going higher, higher, up higher. P, p, p. P> Vt P> until, like an echo, or a dream, they fade beyond hearing, and people stare at each other wonderingly, as they might do after one of Heller’s incomprehensible mysteries. There is no strain, no swelling of the veins of the throat, no swaying or struggling, but an almost automatic figure, with notes of the sweetest at command, and almost ad libitum. The hall was packed, and there was the same wrapt attention, the same dread of a cough, or the very slightest noise, that might break the spell, as was the great feature of Ristori’s houses, where nought was heard but the heavy breathing of repressed feelings. De Murska is an artiste, hut even in her line she will never be remembered like Kistori. The Misses M worship her, and she is the bright, particular, incomparable musical star of Australian experience. My equilibrium has been completely upset by these wonderfully gifted artistes. De Murska has left for Adelaide, and Bistori goes from this in about a fortnight. They leave memories behind.”