THE STORY OF OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 630, 27 July 1951, Page 6

THE STORY OF OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN

OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN, who died in 1919, was one of the most famous figures in the unpredictable business of American theatrical production, In a few years he transformed himself from a penniless youth into an inventor, playwright, entrepreneur and operatic impresario, and finally reached the stage when he*chose to be known as the "Barnum of Opera." The story of his: life and times has now been made into @ musical and dramatic radio serial, which will be heard in New Zealand

weekly, beginning at 1YA at 9.30 p.m. on Sunday, August 5, and at other stations later. Starting out as a cigar maker, Hammerstein became dissatisfied at the slowness of production and invented a machine, only to be laughed at by the tobacco trade. He sold his rights for a song. improved the machine, and this, with nearly a hundred other contrivances, brought him a fortune. Then he wrote three plays for which he also composed music, and to exploit them, leased the Old Stadt Theatre on the

Bowery, but lost heavily. Next he built the Harlem Opera House and afterwards in succession the Columbus Theatre, the Harlem Music Hall, the Murray Hill Theatre, the Manhattan Opera House (No. 1 in 1898), the Olympia, the Victoria, the Republic and the Harris Theatres, most of which this extraordinary man managed himself. At the Olympia, Hammerstein presented three variety performances for the price of one admission, lost a million dollars and walked out penniless. Then he determined to be the first man to stage Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana in America, but Rudolph Aronson, who had the same idea, beat him to the curtain by five hours. When he built the Manhattan Opera House (No. 2) in 34th Street, Hammerstein established there a brilliant company with an important repertoire. Cleofonte Campanini was the principal conductor and_ the singers at various times included Melba, Nordica, Tetrazzini and McCormack. In a dispute over the rights of La Bohéme, ‘Hammerstein was beaten in a legal battle but won an appeal, and finally managed to stage the opera. He presented many famous works new to New York, including Pelléas and Mélisande, Louise, and Strauss’s Salome and Elektra. si 4208 he built the Philadelphia Opera ‘couse, running it in association with his New York enterprise, and so extending his rivalry with the Metropolitan. After some intense competition,

the Metropolitan bought out Hammerstein’s interests, with the stipulation that he should not produce opera in the United States for ten years. He went to London and built in Kingsway the London Opera House as a home for a resident company. It opened in November, 1911, with Nougués’s Quo Vadis? and closed in August, 1912. Hammerstein announced that he was going to throw in his hand, having lost many thousands of pounds which he proposed to recoup by building forty more opera houses-but all in the presumably more opera-minded United States. An English writer on music recalls that when walking down Kingsway shortly after the London Opera House closed, he had the melancholy experience of seeing a workman chipping from the facade of the building (by then a cinema) the projecting head of its founder. So, back to New York went Oscar Hammerstein, to build the Lexington Opera House, but the Metropolitan blocked his plans for producing opera there. He wes declared bankrupt, and became seriously ill. In 1919, the year of his death, he was still optimistic, announcing his intention of producing operas in New York in 1920. The serial, called Oscar Hammerstein, was produced by 3DB Melbourne, which was responsible for such musical and dramatic shows as Melba, Queen of Song, Holiday for Song and Glenda. It is presented by a large cast of Australian operatic, concert, dramatic and variety artists, with the Australian Symphony Orchestra and the Westminster Singers directed by Hector Crawford. Each episode will take half an hour.