[Met Performance] CID:11210



Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Metropolitan Opera House, Sat, April 9, 1892 Matinee





Il Barbiere di Siviglia (11)
Gioachino Rossini | Cesare Sterbini
Figaro
Giuseppe Del Puente

Rosina
Adelina Patti

Count Almaviva
Italo Campanini

Dr. Bartolo
Agostino Carbone

Don Basilio
Franco Novara

Berta
Mathilde Bauermeister

Fiorello
Antonio Rinaldini


Conductor
Luigi Arditi





In the Lesson Scene Patti sang Eckert's "Swiss Echo Song," and then supplemented this selection with "Home sweet home" and "The Last Rose of Summer." After the opera ended, she sang "Comin' Thro' the Rye" as an encore.

Review 1:

Review of Henry Krehbiel in the New York Tribune

The scenes at the Metropolitan Opera House yesterday afternoon, on the occasion of Mme. Patti's last appearance in opera for the season, were scenes to be remembered. The house was crowded, with the exception of some of the boxes and a few orchestra stalls. The opera was "The Barber of Seville" and the cast was notable for containing the name of Campanini, as well as that of Patti. When it was all over people who had heard Patti many times declared that they could not remember of her ever singing so much at one performance before. The audience was enthusiastic from the start, but it really began to be aroused and to take its part in the proceedings in the scene of the singing lesson.

The program said that Mme. Patti would sing Eckert's "Echo Song," and she did, and, being liberally applauded, she sang "Home, Sweet Home," whereat the audience became unmanageable. Campanini, who had been playing the piano in dumb show, gave Patti a book which seemed to contain a song which she thought she might sing. It proved to be "The Last Rose of Summer," and she did sing it better than anybody else in the world could have done. The song suggested roses and the stage was straightway covered with them, in baskets and bouquets and loose bunches. The largest basket was from Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau.

At the end of the opera the audience seemed to see no reason for going home, and so stayed just where it was and clapped hands and shouted "Bravo!" and waved handkerchiefs and hats and wraps, and anything else that was not too heavy to wave. The curtain was rung up four times, and then Patti began to come in front of it. The second time she dragged Signor Arditi, the conductor, after her. He seemed reluctant but pleased, and then she came again alone. This time she showed plainly that she wanted the curtain to go up. She smote it with her hand, and then raised it above her head and seemed signaling to invisible powers of levitation, but the curtain, no doubt feeling itself to be down for the season, simply did nothing. Patti made a gesture of despair to show the people that it was no use, and gave it up. But not so the audience. A little more clapping and shouting and the curtain slowly went halfway. One side of the stage was set as in the last scene of the opera, and on the other a band of angels was seen bearing Margaret upward, or rather holding her still, having got no further, as it thus proved, than when the curtain fell on Friday night.

But the piano was what Patti wanted. She had this moved out in front of the curtain line, and then the curtain fell again. Patti brought forward her secretary, who sat at the piano and played an accompaniment for her, while she sang "Comin' Through the Rye." When Patti had been called once more and had kissed her hands to every corner of the house, the audience began to disperse, but those who were near the part of the stage where Patti was, crowded close, and she stood above them and shook some fifty hands that were stretched up to her. The little reception lasted for a few minutes, and then Patti disappeared, and the audience slowly did so, too.

The incidents yesterday afternoon showed in a most forcible way how genuine is the regard in which this great singer is held by her admirers, and Mme. Patti has every reason to feel glad and grateful at the admiring esteem which is awarded to her by the public of. New York.



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