An Impresario and His Recollections
1887; Volume: 28; Issue: 537 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3360235
ISSN2397-5326
Autores ResumoAN IMPRESARIO AND HIS :RECOLI,ECTIONS.'"THE recent death of Maurice Stralcosch has helped to bring into notice a little volume for which lle supplied the material only a short time before his departure to a region where prilole dow7ze cease from troubling and their agents are at rest.In this book we find thrown together with very little attempt at order, and expressed Wit}Iout any charm of style a mass of recollections, many of which have considerable interest for the English reader, because they concern people with whose public life lle is more or less familiar.Strakosch had a good memory, and could tell a story with considerable effect, especially when he employed svhat passed with him as English.He was suspected of being a master in the art of embellishment, and willing to sacrifice absolute fidelity for the sake of strong or picturesque results-but this did not affect his popularity as a racontelgY, or hinder admirers from counselling him to publish his souvenirs and let a wider circle than that of a dinner table enjoy them.Strakosch took the advice, his book is before us, and +ve now invite the reader to share the amusement of dipping, into its pages.Strakosch devotes a little chapter to Rossini7 and, on the authority of the composer's xvife, relates an incident evidently accepted as an explanation of the fact that he wrote no more for the public after " Guillaume Tell."It appears that, when the frst performance of that opera came to an end, Lubert7 the Director, sent for Rossini to his private room and rated him soundly; " Monsieur Rossini, what have you done ?Have you dared to write for the Grand Opera of Paris such an insipid and fragmentary work as ' Guillaume Tell ' ?The opera is so indifferent that only one course can be taken-annul the engagement which I have been foolish enough to make with you and give up the idea of composing ' Jeanne d'Arc' and ' Mahomet.? " The answer was " Don't let that trouble you.I repudiate the contract on the spot and add that never in my life will I compose another opera."Assuming that these words were ever spoken, Rossini, as we all know, sternly kept to them.Strakosch insists that, from the same moment, Rossini felt an extreme repugnance to the performance of his sv-orks in public; the impresario's statement being supported by an anecdote connected with the production of the " Messe Solennelle " at the house of Count Pillet-Will."" That Mass was sung," writes our author, " at the Count's mansion by the sisters Marchisio, then at the height of their career, and asq Alboni, who attended on the occasion, expressed to Rossini the pleasure with which she had heard it, the master said: ' Never while I live will I authorise the performance of my Mass in public, but when I am gone, and it is produced, you, my dear Marietta ought to sing it, because you were in my mind during its composition."'Strakosch's stories would hardly be determinative standing by themselves, but they add to a mass of evidence going to show that the composer of " Guillaume Tell " cherished a life-long sense of the manner in which that work was treated.There can be no doubt that his resentment was extreme and lasting.The impresario proceeds to say that, on paying a visit to Madame Rossini, after her husband's death,
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