New-Yorker Stadt-Theater Opera: Les Huguenots

Event Information

Venue(s):
New-Yorker Stadt-Theater [45-47 Bowery- post-Sept 1864]

Proprietor / Lessee:
Eduard Hamann [prop.-dir.]
Hermann Rosenberg

Manager / Director:
Carl Rosa
Adolph Neuendorff

Event Type:
Opera

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
17 October 2023

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

06 Nov 1871, Evening
08 Nov 1871, Evening

Performers and/or Works Performed

1)
Huguenots, Les
aka Hugenotten
Composer(s): Meyerbeer
Text Author: Scribe
Participants:  New-Yorker Stadt-Theater Opera Company;  Pauline Canissa (role: Queen);  Louise Lichtmay (role: Valentine);  Theodore Wachtel (role: Raoul)

Citations

1)
Advertisement: New-York Times, 05 November 1871, 7.
2)
Review: New York Herald, 07 November 1871, 7.

“The pressure on our columns precludes the possibility of giving at present a detailed criticism of the performance of Meyerbeer’s chef d’oeuvre, ‘Les Huguenots,’ at the Stadt last night. Suffice it to say that Wachtel’s Raoul is the best of all his rôles, and it made quite a furor last evening. Never was his magnificent voice heard to better advantage, and the applause that greeted him was of the most enthusiastic kind. Madame Lichtmay sang and acted the great rôle of Valentine with her usual spirit and Mlle. Canissa made an effective Margaret of Valois. The rest of the cast, the chorus and mechanical part of the opera do not call for commendation. But more of this anon."

3)
Review: New-York Times, 07 November 1871, 4.
“The performance of ‘The Huguenots’ at the Stadt Theatre, attracted to that house, last evening, an overflowing audience. Were not the frequenters of the Stadt very easily satisfied, we should declare that many of them must have been positively shocked. No passages of the recital were conspicuously good, and many were irredeemably bad. The opera, it is true, is almost as difficult of perfect exposition as ‘Don Giovanni,’ and few satisfying interpretations of it are remembered by local dilettanti. But last night’s was at all points the worst. The score was cut even more ruthlessly than usual; the part of the Page was shorn of all its beauties; several of the principal characters were wretchedly embodied; and the chorus was reduced to a minimum of numbers and increased to a maximum of discord. There is no occasion to be more explicit. The most agreeable impressions of the entertainment were produced by Herr Wachtel’s singing in the septet, and by his work in the duet in the fourth act, which, by the way, is the original third. Mme. Lichtmay struggled valiantly with her share of the task, and it justice to say that she won the artistic success of the representation. Miss Pauline Canissa is also to be credited with a careful delivery of the music allotted to the Queen. Of the other artists, and of the stage-setting, it is unnecessary to write.”
4)
Review: New York Post, 09 November 1871, 2.

“The second representation of ‘The Huguenots’ last night at the Stadt Theatre was not one of the most successful of this, in many respects, interesting and agreeable season. The music of Meyerbeer’s opera is so complicated and artificial in structure, and in general so wanting in fresh, natural melody, that it especially needs richness of organ, and accuracy and delicacy of execution on the part of the artists, with the most careful blending and shading in orchestral effects, to make it thoroughly enjoyable. These requisites were not efficiently answered in the representation of last evening, even the great tenor himself showing rather more of his noticeable defects in hard and mechanical delivery and faulty phrasing and intonation than is usual with him. We willingly defer more detailed remark on the opera from a desire to have a word or two about the theatre, which it is imperatively necessary to say, and with emphasis. Having been forced within the ticket-barrier by the increasing crowd last night, and having found it impossible to get back by any practicable outlet to the outer corridor, we were urgently led to recognize the terrible risk always threatening the audience at this theatre in the construction of the building. Though some improvements have, we are told, been recently made in this regard, the Stadt Theatre, even now, with it narrow, rambling galleries, tortuous, break-neck staircases, queer barriers and railings and blind-alley corridors, is as complete a rat-trap as a medieval stronghold or dungeon of the Inquisition. After watching the long and difficult process by which a few hundred people slowly filtered through the main entrance last night, we could not but fancy the scene of horror that might ensue there in case of a conflagration, or, what is equally bad, a general alarm. We say it in no unkind spirit towards a very enterprising and deserving management, that with the careful municipal provisions for life and limb so universal in Germany, such a dangerous suffocating machine as the Stadt Theatre would not be allowed to keep its doors open a week, without proper order taken in the premises. Should such a catastrophe as we have hinted at ever occur, as pray Heaven it never may, we shall, at least, have the satisfaction of having done our best to avert it by our plain and emphatic, though not ill meant, word of warning.”