Great Women - Singers of My Life

GREAT WOMEN-SINGERS OF MY TIME by HERMAN KLEIN.Originally published in 1931. Contents include: CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD BY ERNEST NEWMAN i CHAPTER I. THE VICTORIAN PRIMA DONNA ... 9 II. THERESA TIETJENS, TRUE SUCCESSOR TO JENNY LlND . . . , . . .15 III. ADELINA PATTI : QUEEN OF SONG ** . .31 IV. PAULINE LUCCA AND HER RENOWNED RIVALS . 50 V. CHRISTINE NILSSON : THE SECOND SWEDISH NIGHTINGALE .66 VI. ILMA DI MURSKA, THE BRILLIANT BUT ECCENTRIC 80 VII, THE ENCHANTING ZELIA TREBELLI ... 89 VIII. EMMA ALBANI : CANADA’S FAMOUS SONGSTRESS 102 IX. LILLIAN NORDICA: THE AMERICAN SOPRANO . 113 X. THREE LATE-VICTORIANS . . . . . .130 I, MARCBLLA SEMBRICH . . . .132 II. NELLIE MELBA 141 IIL EMMA CALVE 149 XL SOME CELEBRATED CONTRALTOS . . .156 L MARIETTA ALBONI . . . .156 IL JANET MONACH PATEY . . . .162 IIL SOFIA SCALCHI 167 IV. GIULIA RAVOGLI 171 V. ERNESTINE SCHUMANN-HEINK . .17? VI. ANTOINETTE STERLING . . , .183 VI CONTENTS CHAPTER jAOB XIL GREAT WAGNERIAN SOPRANOS . . .186 I. AMALIA MATERNA . . . . .190 II. MARIANNE BRANDT , . . - 194 III. ROSA SUCKER 199 IV. THERESE VOGL 205 V. HEDWIG REICHER-KINDERMANN . . 208 VI. THERJ& SE MALTEN . . . . .211 VII. LILLI LEHMANN . . . . .215 VIII, KATHARINA KLAFSKY .... 224 IX. MILKA TERNINA 230 INDEX 239 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THERESA TBBTJENS FACING FACE ADELINA PATTI 32 PAULINE LUCCA . . . . . . - 50 CHRISTINE NILSSON 66 ZELIA TREBELLI ....... 90 EMMA ALBANI ....... 102 LILLIAN NORDICA 114 MARCELLA SEMBRICH . . . - . .132 EMMA CALVE ....... 150 SOFIA SCALCHI . . . . . .168 GIULIA RAVOGLI 17* ERNESTINE SCHUMANN-HEINE 178 ROSA SUCHER 200 HEDWIG REICHER-KINDERMANN . . - .208 LILLI LEHMANN .’.,..-. 216 KATHARINA KLAFSKY . . 224. FOREWORD: MR KLEIN is of the opinion that on the whole the singers of to-day are not the equals of those of tibirty to seventy years ago. It is easy to turn that off with a smile and a quotation of laudator temporis acti ; but we would do well to reflect that Mr Klein has more right to his opinion than we have to the contrary one, for while he has heard all our crack singers, the majority of us have heard very few of his. It is not everyone’s memory that can go back in music for something over sixty years ; not every one who can recall, for instance, having heard Tietjens in 1866. While Mr Klein has taken all music for his province as befitted the one-time critic of the Sunday Times he has always been par ticularly interested in singing ; and I know of no other living writer who is so equipped to tell us of the vocal glories of the past and to compare them with those of to-day. That the story is worth telling no one who has read the following pages can doubt. As Mr Klein says, it is a jpity the gramophone was not invented a few generations earlier than it was. We might then have been able to hear the great singers of the past for ourselves, and to get some faint idea of what the Fidelio of Schroeder-Devrient was like, or Nilsson’s Donna Elvira, or Tietjens’ Donna Anna, or Materna’s Brynhilde, or Tltna. di Murska’s Queen of Night, or Malten’s Kundry, or to know what Patti sounded like in her best days. It stands to reason that our fathers and grandfathers would not have raved as they did over these and other singers unless they were something quite out of the common ; and to be out of the common, one suspects, meant more in the sing ing world of that time than it does in ours, for the standard was higher. It was an age when singing, qua singing, counted for relatively more in opera than it does now, and that for two reasons. In the first place, the singing itself, we can hardly doubt, was technically better than ours ; and in the second place, the singer himself counted for relatively more in the total effect, and the work for relatively less, than is the case now. In these days we may admire our singers, but we do not worship them ; for a journalist even