New-Yorker Stadt-Theater Opera: Il trovatore

“Wachtel repeated on Monday night his popular personation of Manrico; and, as on the previous occasions when he has shouted the woes and raptures of the unfortunate troubadour, a crowded audience stamped, clapped, and screamed approval, and rose at him with an enthusiasm that seemed a little bit ferocious. As usual, he threw out his famous C in alt in his ‘Di quella pira,’ and as usual his listeners were apparently disposed to make him do it over and over again for the rest of the evening. Unlike many singers who are famous for one or two extraordinary vocal feats, he wears well. He is an artist, not indeed of the highest finish, but still of genuine culture, and he is yet in the vigor of those remarkable physical powers which made him one of the chief tenors of Europe. A season of hard work has not dimmed the brightness of his voice. The tones are as pure and firm as when we first heard him, and the indescribable magnetism of his singing loses none of its strength after repeated hearings. Not much can be said of the company by which he has been supported at the Stadt Theater, though Madame Lichtmay has done well in the ‘Huguenots’ and in the Azucena on Monday night, Madame Clara Perl, was cordially called out after her scena in the Third Act. Miss Canissa was the Leonora and Mr. Vierling a shocking Di Luna. This evening Wachtel reappears in ‘The Postilion of Longjumeau,’ and so his New York engagement closes for the present with the same opera in which he made his American debut. When we hear him again it will probably be in combination with artists of his own rank. The present season at the Stadt Theater, successful as it has been in a pecuniary sense, has been the result of accident rather than managerial design. The impresario who brought Herr Wachtel to this country had no facilities for producing opera, and knew not what to do with his prize after he had secured it. The German tenor was finally leased to Mr. Carl Rosa, who had tact and experience enough to put him to good use, though unfortunately he could not use him with the company then organized for the Academy of Music. Mr. Wachtel could not sing English, and none of the members of the Parepa-Rosa troupe, except Madame Rosa herself, could sing German. All could sing Italian; but a clause in the lease prohibited Mr. Rosa from giving Italian opera at the Academy in advance of the Nilsson season. There was nothing to be done, therefore, but to pick up what fragments of German companies could be found on short notice about the city, and on the whole the result has been as decent as could reasonably have been expected.”