Grau French Opera Bouffe: Rose-Bell Benefit: CANCELLED EVENT
Event Information
Venue(s):
French Theatre
Proprietor / Lessee:
Jacob Grau
Manager / Director:
Jacob Grau
Event Type:
Opera
Record Information
Status:
Published
Last Updated:
1 November 2019
Performance Date(s) and Time(s)
11 Jun 1869, EveningProgram Details
Performers and/or Works Performed
Citations
“On Friday evening Rose Bell will take a benefit, when a variety of special attractions will be offered, including choice selections from the range of opera bouffe.”
“Next Friday night Rose Bell will take a benefit, when two acts of ‘Genevieve’ and all of Masse’s comic opera, ‘Les Noces de Jeannette,’ will be performed.”
“Mr. Grau’s opera bouffe season has reached the period of spasmodic benefits which presage a speedy dissolution. Desclauzas led the van, and Rose-Bell will follow on Friday. We have had occasion to criticise [sic] the character of some of Mr. Grau’s selections with considerable freedom; but we have borne willing testimony to the excellence of his company and the perfection of his stage effects. It seems proper, before we dismiss him into the retirement of which even the managers of French opera troupes sometimes stand in need, to pass a few compliments upon those brilliant features of his season which really deserve praise; but with all our regard for Mr. Grau personally we are not sorry to lose him.”
“Mme. Rose-Bell, we hear, is not to leave us at present. The benefit that she was to have taken on Friday evening is postponed, and rumor says that she is to be the prima donna of the opera at New Orleans next season.”
“What is the matter? The project of a benefit to Mlle. Rose Bell, on Friday, is abandoned. Opera Bouffe at the French Theater has come to a sudden end, and the Company are all to sail for France on Saturday except Rose Bell, who has resolved to link her fortunes with those of the United States.”
“For some unexplained reason Mr. Grau’s opera bouffe company has been suddenly disbanded, and the performance which was to have been given on Friday evening for the benefit of Mme. Rose-Bell, will not take place. Most of the members of the troupe will sail for Europe on Saturday next. Mme. Rose-Bell, we believe, intends to stay in New York.”
“Mlle. Irma, like Mme. Rose-Belle [sic], contemplates remaining in this country. They will probably form a copartnership [sic] and give us opera bouffe next season on their own accont.”
“Through circumstances completely unknown to us, Mme Rose Bell revoked the performance that should have taken place for her benefit the day before yesterday. We regret this for ourselves and above all for her: we are persuaded that the excellent artist would have received palpable and sonorous proof that the audience holds the graceful Drogan and Madame la Colonelle in high esteem. . . .”
“We talked earlier about Desclauzas’s transfer to the 5th Avenue theater. Now we have a word to say about Mme Rose Bell, who also is a star of the first magnitude among M. Grau’s boarders.
“Mme Rose Bell had a run of bad luck. She was gravely ill at the time originally indicated for the performance of the benefit to which she had a right, and that performance had to be put off.
“She came back on the stage at the end of the season; but, at that end of the season there occurred new obstacles, some intrigue in the wings, they don’t know what, and the troupe was disbanded. There’s no more theater, today, and the benefit has fallen very deeply . . . . [Rest of article is blurred.]”