[Met Concert or Gala] CID:17750



Fourth Grand Sunday Night Concert
Metropolitan Opera House, Sun, December 13, 1896




Fourth Grand Sunday Night Concert



Metropolitan Opera House
December 13, 1896

FOURTH GRAND SUNDAY NIGHT CONCERT


Tannhäuser: Overture

L'Africaine: O paradiso!
Giuseppe Cremonini

Bruch: Scottish Fantasy
Timothée Adamowski, violin

Un Ballo in Maschera: Eri tu
Mario Ancona

Hamlet: Mad Scene
Emma Calvé

Le Cid: Ballet Music

L'Amico Fritz: Suzel buon dì
Emma Calvé
Giuseppe Cremonini

Saint-Saëns: Le Rouet d'Omphale

David: La Perle du Brésil: Charmant oiseau
Unaccompanied French song (encore)
Emma Calvé

Mignon: Overture

Conductor...............Anton Seidl
Conductor...............Louis Saar
Piano...................Amherst Webber

This information comes from announcements and reviews.
It is likely that Anton Seidl conducted the works for orchestra alone, and Louis Saar
the works with orchestral accompaniment. However, reviews suggest that Amherst Webber
accompanied Calvé in the Hamlet Mad Scene and Charmant oiseau.






This information comes from announcements and reviews.
It is likely that Anton Seidl conducted the works for orchestra alone, and Louis Saar
the works with orchestral accompaniment. However, reviews suggest that Amherst Webber
accompanied Calvé in the Hamlet Mad Scene and Charmant oiseau.

Review 1:

Review in the Sun

IT WAS A CALVÉ NIGHT

She Sings Superbly at the Metropolitan Sunday Concert

Mlle. Emma Calvé has grown so ingenuous that it seems improper to allow her to sing at a concert without a chaperon. She was as coy last night at the Metropolitan as a girl reading a graduation essay. She seemed quite at a loss what to do, and she smiled questioningly at the audience as though to ask what she really should do there on the stage before so many people. She dropped her eyes modestly and then faced the spectators as if determined to do the best that was possible under so embarrassing circumstances. While she waited for her entrance in the "air du livre" from Thomas's "Hamlet" she crossed her hands in front of her holding a fan in one of them. Then she suddenly put the fan down on the piano as if that were the proper thing and smiled at the audience with a glance that plainly said:

"Try to be patient with me. I am too shy and unaccustomed to this sort of thing to know what ought to be done."

But when she sang there was no more of the naïve, shrinking manner. She sang superbly, and the audience was aroused to the particular quality of enthusiasm which only Calvé seems able to awaken.

In the duet with Sig. Cremonini from Mascagni's "L'Amico Fritz," she was as fine as ever, and proved how her marvelous powers can add distinction and significance to any music. Only when she returned to give the "Mysoil" aria from David's "Perle du Brasil," was there any recurrence of the remarkable combinations of skittishness and apprehension in her manner. But that lasted only a few moments, and she grew so pensive that, resting her elbow on the piano, she gazed with an expression of intense melancholy out into the auditorium.

The air was beautifully sung, and Mlle. Calvé was absorbed in it until, turning her back to the audience, she discovered that the flutist who was to accompany her was sitting immediately back of her. Then she smiled her apologies to him, and stepped over to the centre of the stage. The applause that followed her singing was continuous and overwhelming until she walked to the footlights and said in French:

"I will sing you a song of my own country without accompaniment."

She did it with so much fire and spirit that it had every effect except to quiet the audience. But she would sing no more.

It was a Calvé night, and the sagacious Pol Plançon sat in a box. Discretion was the better part of valor. T. Adamowski played admirably Bruch's "Fantasie On Scotch Airs." Signor Cremonini sang, and so did Signor Ancona, while Anton Seidl rendered as well as usual the ballet music from "Le Cid" and Saint Saens's "Le Rouet d'Omphale." But it was a Calvé concert.

Unsigned

Review 2:

Review in the Brooklyn Eagle

CALVÉ IN CONCERT

There was an enormous crowd at the Metropolitan Opera House last night to hear Emma Calvé sing, and the enthusiasm mounted even higher than it does for Plançon, the prime favorite of these affairs. Calvé sang the mad scene from "Hamlet" beautifully, though it lacked the dramatic significance which she is able to impart to it when she acts it. Her vocalization, however, was simply wonderful and showed that she is a great singer as well as an actress. She also sang an air from the "Pearl Fishers" by David as brilliantly as any coloratura soprano on the stage could have done it and joined with Cremonini in a duet from "L'Amico Fritz." She seemed somewhat ill at ease in having no action, but when she sang she was the great artist whom the public knows in opera, and the lack of scenery and action was not allowed to dwarf the effect of her work. Cremonini, Ancona and some other excellent artists sang, and Seidl and his orchestra played as well as usual, but they were only foils for the popular soprano. On Wednesday night Calvé and Melba will both sing, the latter in "Lucia" and the former in "Cavalleria."



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