New-Yorker Stadt-Theater Opera Company: Die Afrikanerin

“Increased Chorus and Orchestra. Popular prices.”

“Meyerbeer’s posthumous work was given last night at the German opera house before a very large audience. The representation as unusually good as far as the two prime donne, Mme. Lichtmay and Mlle. Canissa, and the chorus and orchestra, under the baton of Herr Schramm, were concerned. The Selika of the former of the ladies is a well studied, artistically conceived and satisfactorily impersonated rôle, although her voice has lost much of its pristine power and dramatic expression. In the beautiful aria with which the second act commences Mme. Lichtmay displayed, in her style of singing, at least, qualities which belong only to a prima donna of long experience and indisputable ability. In the grand duo of the fourth act she was equally successful. The rôle of the gentle, loving Ines found a worthy representative in Mlle. Pauline Canissa, whose emotional voice and finished style of acting lent a charm to the impersonation of one of Meyerbeer’s most poetical heroines. In the second act she won well-deserved applause. When she came to the dungeon of Vasco di Gama as a messenger of peace and hope, the exquisite aria allotted to Ines immediately before the grand ensemble in which Selika, Vasco, Ines, Pedro and Nelusko take part, was delivered by Mlle. Canissa with such intensity of feeling and vocal effect that numerous recalls ensued from the enthusiastic Germans. The chorus and orchestra, although small in number, were without a flaw in the general rendering. The tenor, Herr Plfueger, has not an agreeable voice, and the best that can be said of him is that he made no mistakes in singing the music of Vasco. The Nelusko of Herr Vierling showed a decadence of voice on the part of that gentleman very remarkable. Herr Weinlich’s Don Pedro labored under the same disadvantage. ‘Die Afrikanerin,’ will be repeated on Sunday evening.”