[Met Performance] CID:2290



Les Huguenots
Metropolitan Opera House, Wed, March 26, 1884


In Italian



Les Huguenots (2)
Giacomo Meyerbeer | Eugène Scribe/Émile Deschamps
Marguerite de Valois
Marcella Sembrich

Raoul de Nangis
Italo Campanini

Valentine
Christine Nilsson

Count de Nevers
Giuseppe Del Puente

Urbain
Sofia Scalchi

Count de Saint Bris
Giuseppe Kaschmann

Marcel
Giovanni Mirabella

Tavannes/Méru/Bois-Rosé
unknown

Lady of Honor
Miss Alberti


Conductor
Auguste Vianesi







Review 1:

Review in The New York Times:

ITALIAN OPERA - THE HUGUENOTS

The extraordinary attracting power of a Meyerbeer opera was again demonstrated by the repetition of "The Huguenots" at the Metropolitan Opera House last night. The ordinary signs were opposed to a brilliant affair, lowering weather, increased prices and the memory of a comparative failure in the same work a few days ago, combining to threaten financial disaster. All the signs failed; the house was crowded, and the listeners had their reward in a performance superior in every point to that of last week. The scenes which were especially accentuated were, of course, those which are always prominent whenever "The Huguenots" is given by a company half-way equipped, and last night they shone with an almost unique radiance. This was more particularly true of the second act, which the musical diversions of Margaret's idyllic court were given with transporting loveliness. Margaret ranks with Lucy in Mme. Sembrich's list, as an all but flawless representation and, since "Semiramide" seems to be impossible, the part of the Page marks the high-water of Mme. Scalchi's feats of vocalization this season.

Mme. Nilsson's Valentine has grown in sentient passion with the broadening of her dramatic style, and is a thrilling performance in spite of the fact that it has lost some of the vocal brilliancy which distinguished it when Violetta and Lucia were still in the regal singer's repertory. The loss is one which the growing taste for passionate expression finds it easy to accept, since such rich compensation is offered in the deeper insight and mature powers which Mme. Nilsson now displays in heroic parts. A singular change in the singing of Signor Campanini is also to be noted. It has eradicated the sentimentality which once threatened to dominate all of the tenor's utterances and actions and put a manliness in its place that befits the majority of the characters in which he now appears. He, too, was in better voice than last week and several times stirred up an excitement by the intensity of his performance, which reminded one of old scenes in the Academy when audiences seemed more susceptible to the tricks of vocalization than they have been of late.

The principal parts outside of those were in the capable hands of Signor Del Puente, Mirabella and Kaschmann.



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