Maretzek Italian Opera: L’ Étoile du nord

Event Information

Venue(s):
Academy of Music

Manager / Director:
Max Maretzek

Event Type:
Opera

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
21 June 2016

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

11 Mar 1867, 8:00 PM

Program Details

Incidental ballet by Mlle. Kruger and Theresa Wood.

Performers and/or Works Performed

1)
Étoile du nord, L'
aka North star; Etoile du nord
Composer(s): Meyerbeer
Text Author: Scribe
Participants:  Maretzek Italian Opera, chorus;  Maretzek Italian Opera, orchestra;  Maretzek Italian Opera Company;  Giuseppe B. [basso] Antonucci (role: Peters);  Minnie Hauk (role: Prascovia);  Clara Louise Kellogg (role: Katharina);  Monsieur Fleury;  Fernando [bass-baritone] Bellini (role: Gritsenko);  Signor [tenor] Baragli;  Theresa Wood [dancer-voc];  Wilhelm [baritone] Müller;  J. [tenor] Reichardt;  Mlle. [dancer] Kruger

Citations

1)
Announcement: New-York Times, 07 March 1867, 5.
2)
Announcement: New York Post, 09 March 1867.

“[O]n Monday we are to have ‘The Star of the North,’ which was so deservedly successful last year.”

3)
Advertisement: New-York Times, 09 March 1867.
4)
Advertisement: New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, 10 March 1867.
5)
Announcement: New York Post, 11 March 1867.
6)
Announcement: New-York Times, 11 March 1867, 3.
7)
Announcement: New-York Daily Tribune, 11 March 1867, 4.
8)
Announcement: New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, 11 March 1867, 8.

The opera stage is newly designed, and the newly-painted scenery is supposed to be brilliant.

9)
Review: New-York Daily Tribune, 12 March 1867, 4.

Reviews multiple performances. “Mr. Maretzek has thus far produced three favorite operas, none of which boast absolute novelty, but all of which have presented a fresh and excellent vocal strength….the Star of the North, one of Meyerbeer’s masterpieces, and the first extensive work yet produced, gave us Miss Kellogg in her exquisite vocal part of Katharina, and Miss Hauck as the pretty warbling Prascovia. Bellini’s Gritsenko and Antonucci’s Peters have been many times praised as characterizations and the national and military spirit of the music itself is sometimes grand, and always unique. A more strongly characterized work than this in some respects Meyerbeer did not write.”

10)
Review: New-Yorker Musik-Zeitung, 16 March 1867, 504.

Kellogg and Hauck are the audience’s favorites.  We hope that in the case of Hauck, she does not let this success go to her head and influence her performance. In Nordstern she behaved in a way that showed that she seems not to be aware of the great responsibility she has to the audience in fulfilling her task as a performer.