Central Park Band Concert

“At four o’clock the Mall and Terrace were deeply crowded with what might be justly termed a cosmopolitan audience, waiting impatiently for the preliminary roll of the drum and wave of the conductor’s baton. When the crashing chords of the opening piece, ‘Vive Italia,’ by Jacobi, rose from the fantastic pagoda and called aloud in trumpet tone for the liberation of that fair clime, the scene brought us back to the banks of the Arno and the shores of the Adriatic. The March of Jacobi is spirited and fiery, and Palestro Montebello and Gaeta speak in every bar of it. J. R. Thomas’ delicious melody, ‘Beautiful Isle of the Sea,’ in which a mine of tenderness and true sentiment is unfolded at the wave of the conductor’s magic wand, followed. In this charming morceau there is much of the spirit of Wallace shown .It partakes of none of the puerile and trashy nonsense that characterizes too many of the melodies of the present day, which, by the change of a measure or two, one theme is made to summon father home or to intimate to mother that we’re going to give up the ghost. We know two of those popular melodies in the second of which the theme of the first read backward, an ingenious but not very melodious arrangement. The selections from Lucia di Lammermoor were admirably rendered. The melodies and choruses of this opera are charming. The unhappy loves of Edgar Ashton and the fair bride of Lammermoor, portrayed by the magic pen of Walter Scott, will ever find a responsive echo in every breast that is capable of sympathy. The mighty bard of Scotland is well interpreted in music by Donnizetti [sic]. The solo, duet, trio, and quartet all partake of the plaintive character of the story they tell. It is curious to watch the different effects of the music on the listeners. The regular opera goer, or rather lobby lounger, can be easily told by the self sufficient air with which he announces to the bevy of boarding school misses who surround him that he cannot be deceived in an opera ‘sh-aw’ or ‘ov-eetoo.’ A more offensive creature cannot be found at a concert. He will insist upon humming over each air in unison with the band, much to the annoyance of more appreciative hearers. Observe the effect of Julien’s [sic] Royal Irish Quadrille upon that ‘broth of a Boy’ near the pagoda. His hands twitch as if they were handling a shillelagh; his pedal extremities commence a series of evolutions such as acrobat never dreamed of, and the presence of one of the gray coated guardians of the Park alone restrains him from giving vent to his feelings in a genuine Kilkenny or Tipperary war whoop. The Freedmen’s Bureau was odoriferous on the Mall yesterday. Every shade of color (to use a rather hackneyed musical expression) was there, and the aroma of Ethiopia mingled with the sweet scented favors of Flora. When the band was performing the selections from Lucia di Lammermoor, the sight of Professor Lowe’s balloon, sailing across the Park like an exaggerated waterfall, turned all eyes upward. It rapidly disappeared in a northeasterly direction. At night the Park presented a picturesque appearance. Cupid then reigns supreme. The wicked little god is busy amid the labyrinthine walks of the ramble, and many a pair of cooing doves of the human species look unutterables and exchange the usual vows, for which see lexicon of youth, Bulwer Lytton on Richelieu. No less than thirty thousand people were at the Park yesterday and they were well repaid for the ordeal of riding up town in a Third or Sixth avenue car when the thermometer is above ninety.”