Winter’s tale, The

Event Information

Venue(s):
New-Yorker Stadt-Theater [37-39 Bowery - pre-Sept 1864]

Conductor(s):
Franz [vn, cond. and opera director] Herwig

Price: $1; $.50; $.25; $.15

Event Type:
Play With Music

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
12 August 2014

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

09 Dec 1863, 8:00 PM
10 Dec 1863, 8:00 PM
11 Dec 1863, 8:00 PM
12 Dec 1863, 8:00 PM

Program Details



Performers and/or Works Performed

1)
Winter's tale, The
aka Wintermarchen; Wintermärchen
Text Author: Shakespeare
2)
Winter's tale, The
aka Wintermärchen
Composer(s): Flotow

Citations

1)
Advertisement: New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, 09 December 1863.

Full cast list included. “For the first time.”

2)
Announcement: New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, 09 December 1863, 8.

“At the Stadttheater this evening’s performance will benefit Mr. Hoym. For this occasion, Dingelstedt’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’ will be presented for the first time here. In Germany this play was a big success, with songs, dancing and Olympic stunts (first act). Messrs. Röckl and Dornbach created several new decorations and apparatuses which will certainly cause a sensation. Additionally, new props and costumes have been promised. For Flotow’s music, the chorus has been very carefully rehearsed, and the orchestra has been augmented. The Olympic acts are going to be executed by the gymnasts, John Heinz and Fitzmeier. Our readers can grasp, from all of this, that tonight’s performance will be something extraordinary, and, if we may add more, Mr. Hoym, Mr. Knorr, Mrs. Hoym, Mrs. Becker-Grahn, Mrs. Steglich-Fuchs, et al., will be participating. Therefore, we believe we may be permitted to assert that this performance will be something extraordinarily good.”

3)
Advertisement: New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, 10 December 1863, 6.
4)
Announcement: Courrier des États-Unis, 10 December 1863, 8.

“Last evening, the play given to benefit Mr. Otto Hoym, ‘The Winter’s Tale,’ was performed before a full house. It will be performed again tonight.”

5)
Review: New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, 11 December 1863, 8.
“We must compliment the administration of the Stadttheater for producing the new adaptation of Shakespeare’s charming ‘The Winter’s Tale’ by Dingelstedt. Of the two choices a translator has, whether to be faithful to the original text even in the smallest nuances, or to convey the elegance of the original, Dingelstedt, to his credit, chose the latter. He employed all the rich stage techniques now available, though not known in Shakespeare’s time, to appeal to today’s audience, and played freely with the original. Shakespeare’s play was set in Bohemia; Dingelstedt’s is in Arcadia, probably because the great English poet had mistakenly created a seacoast in Bohemia. But, apart from that, this adaptation has won a high place among poetic works in Germany, and, given the somewhat one-sided repertoire at the Stadttheater, was a welcome novelty to us as well as to a large part of theater-goers.
 
About the performance, we are happy to report that it was, in every respect, successful. Mr. Hoym played the jealous, mistrustful Leontes convincingly, even though in the beginning we would have liked more moderation. The actor proceeded from the correct view that in nature, the tendency toward jealousy was already present to a high degree before the event making his jealousy a certainty (Hermione’s entreaty to Polyxenes to stay longer). Anyway, it would be incorrect for Leontes to make the entreaty to Polyxenes with such fierce intensity that the task must then necessarily fall to his wife. Here, a simpler, more natural tone is the best. The whole time, while Hermione is begging Polyxenes and Leontes has stepped to the side, a rich opportunity is given to the mute play, the pantomime, to unfurl the growing storm in the Leontes’ soul, right before the eyes of the audience. We must credit Mr. Hoym’s acting in the scenes of unleashed passion and his reversal into deep contrition.  Mrs. Becker-Grahn…”  
 
[Newspaper column ends here; no continuation is available.]
6)
Advertisement: New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, 12 December 1863, 6.
“For the 4th time.”
 
7)
Review: New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, 13 December 1863, 4.

“The [Stadt]theater had a big hit with Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, which was presented with brilliant scenery and costumes, and a polished performance. The fantastic tale with its half-medieval, half-classical figures, holds the spectator in suspended anticipation from beginning to end. The play is now fervently stirring, then exhilarating, then [illeg.] shocking, but throughout through the charming, gripping poetry.”