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[Met Performance] CID:10960



Orfeo ed Euridice
Cavalleria Rusticana
Metropolitan Opera House, Fri, March 11, 1892









Review 1:

Review in The New York Times

METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE.

The last evening performance of Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel, & Grau's season of grand opera in French and Italian took place at the Metropolitan Opera House last night. Gluck's "Orfeo "and Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" were presented, and the evening's proceedings were received with kindly interest by an audience of considerable size. This afternoon "Les Huguenots" will bring the series of performances to a close, though it is decided that a short supplementary season will be given when the company concludes its Boston engagements. In that short season Mme. Patti will appear in some of the parts which many persons like to hear her sing.

Now that the season is at its end, it may be said that its last days have been much more enjoyable than its early ones. The [beginning] of this season was positively gloomy, both artistically and pecuniarily; but the managers were wise enough to see that the public taste ran in a somewhat different direction from their wishes, and they set to work to give what was desired. Except when sickness in the company and other circumstances beyond their control compelled them to repeat some of "the weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable" works brought forward early in the series, the managers have adhered to their determination to give the public such works as the public seemed to demand.

The success of "Faust" indicates very fairly the direction in which the taste of the operagoer's of the past winter has run. The empty trills and roulades of "La Sonnambula" and "Dinorah" met with small favor. The dignified and fluent beauty of Gounod's music, voiced by some of the world's greatest singers, has charmed every hearer. It has been a season of operatic stars, but the stars who have drawn have been those with dramatic tendencies, not vocal technique alone.

If, as now seems almost certain, Messrs. Abbey, Sohoeffel & Grau manage the Opera House next season, they will probably give us some of the new works of the French school. And it is to be hoped most sincerely that they will bring back the three great artists of the present company - the De Reszke brothers and M. Lassalle. Most lovers of music will hope to see Mme. Eames also a member of the company, for, although she leaves something to be desired in respect of warmth, she sings with such true musical tendencies and is withal so refined in appearance and action that her appearance has been always welcome.

One word may be said in regard to the Germans. There was at the close of the operatic season of 90-91 a bitter outcry, in which this journal joined on purely artistic grounds, against the substitution of Italian for German opera. So far as close observation of the character of the audiences of the season just ended justifies the judgment, it appears that these same Germans have sulked in their tents and refused to go near the Opera House except in small numbers when "Don Giovanni" and "Die Meistersinger" were brought forward. Some of them went to the first performance of "Lohengrin"; we do not blame them for declining to go to the second. But the point is this: after maintaining their attitude of protest during the season just ended, they have permitted it to close without any determined endeavor to wrest the Opera House from the grip of their supposed enemy. There are several pointed aphorisms about the small cost of talk and the moving eloquence of action.

Search by season: 1891-92

Search by title: Orfeo ed Euridice, Cavalleria Rusticana,



Met careers

• Auguste Vianesi [Conductor]
• Giulia Ravogli [Orfeo]
• Sofia Ravogli [Euridice]
• Mathilde Bauermeister [Amore]
• Rebecca Salmoiraghi [Dance]
• Emma Eames [Santuzza]
• Fernando Valero [Turiddu]
• Giulia Ravogli [Lola]
• Antonio Magini-Coletti [Alfio]
• Mathilde Bauermeister [Mamma Lucia]