Grand Combination Italian and English Opera: Lurline

Event Information

Venue(s):
Academy of Music

Manager / Director:
Max Maretzek

Price: $1.50; $1; $8 private boxes

Event Type:
Opera

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
25 September 2019

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

22 May 1869, Evening

Program Details

Beginning with the opera’s American premiere on 05/13/69, to be sung in Italian and English on alternate nights. This performance in Italian.

Performers and/or Works Performed

1)
Lurline
aka Lorelei
Composer(s): Wallace
Text Author: Fitzball
Participants:  Grand Combination Italian and English Opera Company;  J. [tenor] Reichardt (role: Wilhelm);  Giuseppe B. [basso] Antonucci (role: Rhinenberg);  Wilhelm Formes (role: Zelleck);  Madame [contralto] Reichardt (role: Libe, A Spirit of the Rhine);  Maria Bonfanti;  Fanny Natali-Testa [contralto] (role: Ghiva);  Agatha [soprano] States (role: Lurline);  G. [dancer] Novissimo;  Ettore Barili (role: Baron Truenfeiss);  Theodore Habelmann (role: Count Rudolph)

Citations

1)
Advertisement: New-York Times, 17 May 1869, 7.
2)
Advertisement: Courrier des États-Unis, 18 May 1869.

"...with new staging, costumes, scenery, having cost more than $30,000."

3)
Review: New-York Daily Tribune, 24 May 1869, 5.

“‘Lurline’ runs more smoothly now than it did at first, and in nearly all respects improves as it grows older. The audiences have been remunerative and once in a while very good indeed, yet the opera has not been as brilliantly successful as the manager probably expected, or as the perfection of its setting warranted us in anticipating. It is rather late in the season for opera, and beside that the double casts contained no name of real attractiveness. Good singing, however, has been heard there, especially from Habelmann and Brookhouse Bowler. The piece will soon be withdrawn. It pays, we believe, but Mr. Fisk is tired of it.”