New-Yorker Stadt-Theater Opera: Il Trovatore

“The arrival of Miss Marie Krebs in this country brings with it the additional advantage that she is accompanied by her mother, Mme. Krebs Michalesi, a well-known and favorite contralto of the Dresden Court Theatre. On Friday evening this lady made her début at the Stadt Theatre as Azucena in ‘Trovatore.’ Though Mme. Krebs has completed the full term of service in Dresden legally requisite for an honorable retirement, her voice retains to an astonishing degree its richness, strength, and purity. In the masculine quality of the lower register so much needed in the part of the vengeful Bohemian, its full deep tones come out most impressively. Mme. Krebs’s execution is assured and accurate, her action bold and vigorous, and her gift of singing true, acquired in twenty years of conscientious art labor in Germany, contrasted delightfully with the short-comings of the rest of the troupe, who manifested an unfortunate tendency to get on horseback on two notes, as our Gaelic friends would say. The chorus was unpleasantly brassy and shaky at the same time, and it was evident that the forte of the company lies much more in the easier paths of light opera than in the more tragic chefs d’oeuvre of the lyric stage.”