Metropolitan Opera Archives

Brooklyn operagoers had their first view of "Koenigskinder," Engelbert Humperdinck's fairy opera, with Geraldine Farrar as the goose-girl at the Academy of Music last night. It was the sixth night of the subscription, and a conspicuous figure in the large audience that attended was Mayor Gaynor, who occupied a box on the right of the house. To judge from the enthusiasm that greeted the conclusion of the first act, when the principals were called before the curtain several times, and the repetition of the ardent demonstration after the second act, the opera found immense favor. This was due more, perhaps, to the absorbing interest of the fairy story of the king's son and the goose-girl, beautifully told in German by Ernst Rosner, and seemingly mounted with rare taste and picturesqueness, than to Humperdinck's music. The score abounds in descriptive and suggestive passages which heighten the effectiveness of the stage representation. The kettle drums, oboe and bassoons are frequently employed to produce a musical atmosphere of weirdness and impending tragedy, but there is an absence of ravishing melody until the last, when the strings carry a plaintive strain as the lovers lie dead in the snow, that lingers in the memory with haunting persistency. Geraldine Farrar's singing of the goose-girl's vague longing for life in the world of men and women, the awakening of maiden passion at the sight of the youthful wayfarer, the king's son and the final physical and mental collapse under the stress of abuse, hardship, disappointment and starvation. Carl Jorn made an acceptable king's son. One might have desired a less corpulent figure, more suggestive of youth and romance, but generally the tenor's efforts were rightly directed, and his voice was pleasing. The fiddler of Otto Goritz was a fine figure of a man and was well and sympathetically sung, while Florence Wickham gave a splendid service with her rich contralto, both as the witch and as the innkeeper's daughter. Didur sang the woodcutter, Reiss, the broom maker and Pini-Corsi, the innkeeper. Marie Mattfeld, a favorite with Brooklyn audiences, was the stable maid.

Search by season: 1910-11

Search by title: Königskinder,

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