The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 12, 1902, Page 24

BEING COVERED MODERN ITALIAN REALISTIC SCHOOL BY TIVOLI PRODUCTIONS. i By BLANCHE PARTINGTON. G : S % e AUTHOR OF “ANDRE CHENIER,” WHICH WILL BE PRODUCED AT THE TIVOLI THIS WEEK. ! - e ITH the forthcoming Mascagal season in December next, when will be given all of the Mas- cagni- operatic repertoire; and the “Andre Chenier,” “La Tos- ca,” “I Pagliacci” and “La Boheme™ the Tivoli this season we shall ha pretty well covered the modern realistic scheol of Italian opera. Giordano’s “Andre Thenier,” to be given this week at the Tivoli, is one- of the most characteristic works of this period. Its plot and subject are of the vivid and melodramatic sort affected by the school, and the musical treatment of the story is picturesque and pleasing. The scene of the opera is laid in Paris during the revolutionary period. The hero, Andre Chenier, is 2 poet and patriot of the time, | she is inevitably an | and the necessary aristocrat, the Comtesse de Colgny. Chenier falls in love with the young Countess, but meets with parental oppo- sition because of his revolutionary ten- dencies. His rival is one Girard, high in the revolutionist ranks, but once a servant in the De Coigny family. Girard, actuated by jealousy, denounces Chenier an enemy of the state. Chenier is ar- rested and the Countess, learning of his | danger, offers herself to Girard as the | price of her lover's freedom. But it is| 100 late. The tribunal refuses to release Chenier despite the fact that Girar touched by the Countess’ devotion, te: fies that the unforfunate patriot was un- Justly denounced. The Countess can ob- tain only the privilege of dying with her lovers by bribing a jailer to permit her to DRINK FINE OLD at | *+ take the place of a condemned aristocrat. And so the opera ends. Giordano, the composer, is still under forty, author also of another well-known operatic work, “Fedora,” ana first brought to public attention through one of the Sonzogno competitions at Milan. | “Andre Chenier” was written about ten | years ago, first produced in Milan seven | years ago and given for the first time in | America by Colonel Mavleson six years | |ago at the Metropolitan Opera-house, | | New York. Agostini will have the title role and the large cast includes also De Padova, Dado, De Paoli, Cortesi,” Zani, Napoleoni, Jac- ques and Montanari, Collamarini, Pozzi and Anna Wilson, - . Sousa comes this week with that lilting, | swinging, irresistible band of his. A unique, and distinctively American figure, | | Sousa is regarded with peculiar affection i by the American audience. His band, also, as quite the best organizatien of its kind, is invariably heartily welcomed. It is impossible for those least susceptible to | Thythmic witchery to avoid falling under the charm of a Sousa programme; for the sensitive an afternoon with the band means a merry heel and heart for at least a day afterward. It has always seemed to | me that if the sick, the sorry and Luc- | chesi could be made to march a mile be- | fore breakfast every morning to the tune of “King Cotton” or “El Capitan” that things would be brighter all round for | everybody. Six concerts Sousa gives this | Ume, at the Alhambra Theater. The | ‘flrst will take place on Friday afternoon | next, the rest to be given on Friday even- | | ing and Saturday and Sunday afternoons | . and evenings. The band brings this time as soloists Miss Estelle Liebling, a soprano sald to be of much more than ordinary ability, and | Miss Grace Jenkins, who plays the violin, and that excellent trombonist, Arthur | Pryor. $ SH s A bonnie programme is that offered by Denis O’Sullivan on Tuesday evening next jat Steinway Hall, in the first and only song recital that he gives during his pres- ent visit. It is 2 programme that ranges through - Beito, Chepin, Carlos Troyer— with two Zuni Indian songs, Tauberi, Schubert and a beautiful bunch of the | Irish songs with which the singer is so | | charmingly identified. Anything fresher, more varied, and more unhackneyed, one | is unlikely to come across in the well |trodden track of the concert programme, |and that Mr. O'Sullivan will be adequate | to its exacting requirements is almost a | foregone conclusion to those familiar with | his work. The singer leaves San Fran- cisco for New York on ‘Wednesday next, so that this will be the only opportunity to_hear him; and those missing it wiil | miss a bit of song singing as human, hu- morous, touching and cxquisitely natural as can be found on the concert platform to-day. Here is the programme: I—(@) Eecco il Mondo (Mefistofele) (Boito), | () Air du Roy Henrl III (N. G. Bach).’(c) Child Songs: 1. Klelner Jakob; 2, The Far- mer and the Pigeons; 3, Butzemann (Tautert), I—(a) Polensgrabgesang (Chopin). (b) Old Scottish Alrs (by Lawsonm): 1, Bonny Earl o’ Moray;-2; Willie's Gane to Melville Castle. (c) Two songs of the: Zuni_Indiuns (transcribed and arranged by Carlos Troyer): 1, Invocation Over a Sleeping Infant; 2, Love Song (in Zuni), (d) The Vicar's Song (Sullivan). II—(a) Wandrers Nachtlied (Schubert). (b) | Auftrag (Cornelius), (c) Five Jungle (first time) M. S. (Rudyard . Kipling) (Dora Eright), (d) From ‘‘More Daisles” (Liza Leh- mann):' 1. Marching Song; 2, “Every Night M i ) s —Irish airs: (a) Savourneen Gaellc) (Stanford), (b) The Lark lnD::llt‘BEleT: Air (Esposito), (c) The Cavan Recruit (Mrs. Milligan Fox). (d) Short Cut to the Roses) The Emlm';'sonx.(su.nfarfl.).m Ny Miss Rose Relda, the young Californian soprano, who has done such good work in Paris on lyric lines, is now in-town on a short visit to her parents. Miss Relda, to her former success in “Lakme,” has add- ed the title role of “Lucia,” Nedda in “I Pagliacci,” Filina in “Mignon” and others. Too bad we cannot have Miss Relda in one or all of these roles here, but possibly she may give a song recital, like the very pleasing ‘one she gave on the oc- casion of her former visit two yeare awa _ THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1902. THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL. JOHN D, SPRECKELS, Proprietor. SENDAY .1l L L e e Address' Communications to W. S. LEAKE, Manager RN R e 4. OCTOBER 23, *1003 Publication Office.. .. /; <o hvaonsvastsasinssdiosin @ severesssisnsge.oMarket and Third Streets, S. F. . THE CORONER. N\ HE Democratic plight in Alameda County is merely a miniature exhibit of the condition of that party everywhere. The leaders of the party live there. Fitzgerald and Foote, Moffitt, the Englishes and the doctors and lawgivers of the party, its statesmen and pub- licists, are citizens of Alameda County. The Democratic candidate for Governor had his “bringing up” in Oakland, and doubtless acquired his thirst for politics by contact with the great men of the party who bestrode the town like Colossi and dictated terms to the State. In 1882 and in subsequent years the Democracy went out gunning i the open season for offices, and brought home in their bag county and city positions and their salaries. Mayors were elected, city councils were controlled and the party held up its head defiantly and contested the strong Republican influence of the county with frequent success. It was regarded by the Sachems, Wiskinskies and other war paint and feathered fighters of the Iroquois Club s good fighting-ground, and the breech-clouted braves of that militant and office thirsty organization periodically painted the field red and ate bullshead breakfasts at San Leandro, and interspersed speeches with warwhoops that made the welkin ring and caused Republican mothers to hide their babies lest they be made prisoners and reared as members of the tribe. The party vote of the county, stimuiated by various means and urged on Dy interest in local candidates, was looked upon as an important factor in the total vote of the State, for the election of State tickets, and in the national contest of 1892 it turned the scale and gave every elector but one to Mr. Cieveland. Paraphrasing Daniel Webster, in Alameda County there is the same sky overhead and the same earth under foot; all else how changed! The nomination of Dr. Pardee has dissolved the Democratic party of that county. It held its county convention, nominated a full ticket, appointed the legal purity committee and expired in an adjvournmem. The .egal time for putting nominees on the official ballot approached and one after another the Democratic candidates looked at Dr. Pardee and, like Davy Crockett’s coon, said “You needn’t shoot, we'll come down,” and they resigned from the ticket and de- clined the nomination which they had reccived with pride and pleasure, uatil, at the hour fixed by statnte for the legal listing of candidates on the official ballot, only one lone, lorn, single, sé]itary Democratic candidate presented himself and asked to be put on the ballot. Every other place on the ticket is a blank, a great white, desert place, a political Sahara, representing not a drop of water to cool the parched tongue of a party that used to slake its thirst at the public well and rise refreshed and rejuvenated. Tor historical purposes, and in that gallant spirit which lifts the hat to the last survivor, to the forlorn hope, to the wayside monument which preserves the memory of a battlefield or of a race that is gone, we salute this last remmnant of the Old Guard. He i§ the candidate for County Coroner and his name is James McManus. Here's to you, James. You age no joke. You are a very solemn fact. You have a high sense of the eternal fitness of things. Your dead party needs a Coroner and you are out for the job. : e Silent now is the wamwig of ‘the Iroquois. The council tent is at the junk man's. The feathers flap over gallant and “next-morning” heads no more. The often barbecue lives only in the bones that were picked at the feast. The tommyhawk is ignobly cracking coal or splitting kindling in the woodshed. Ichabod is written in pale chalk over the clubhouse door. The rank and file lie dead on the political field, and James McManus survives as the residuary legatee of all glories dead and turned to dust, and the last sign made by the whole party, the ultimate expression of its hope, is the desire to run a candidate for Coroner. ) When. the Democratic candidate for Governor visits his boyhood home, where he played ball in knickerbockers, struggled with mathematics and dreamed great dreams, boy fashion, of leading men in combat, he will walk gingerly between rows of mummified memaries, past which the busy people rush unheeding, and no one has the official right to greet and,soothe him except James McManus, who will exchange civilities and candidates’ cards with him, one bearing the Shakespearean picture and the legend “Franklin K. Lane, Democratic candidate for Governor,” and the other, “James McManus, Democratic candidate for Coroner.” They may clasp hands and cry “How dre the mighty fallen!” and then advise each other to look for some other job, and adjourn. WANTS Such a local extinction of a party in a great county, with populous cities,"good picnic . grounds and an atmosphere bland and favorable to oratory, has never occurred before since the Whig party went to sleep under the political daisies. Let the card of the sole candidate be in- scribed: “James McManus, the last of a long line of Democratic candidates, the only represent- ative of the late Thomas Jefferson. The party is dead. Make me Coroner and I'll do the rest.” THE GRAND ARMY COMES. Y an overwhelming vote the Grand Army of the Republic has decided to hold its next grand encampment in this .city. The decision will meet with a glad and patriotic re- sponse not only in San Francisco but throughout California. It is an assured thing that in due time preparations will be made to give the veterans of the Grand Army a welcome that will ‘be memoible in its annals and form a bright page in the history of the city itself. ~ The iarge vote given by the veterans is another proof that the fame of San Francisco as a convention city is now firmly established in the East. There was a time when invitations to meet in our city were met by a host of objections. Some talked of the distance, some talked of the railway rates and others of a supposed lack of hotel accommodations. All those old forms of op- position are matters of the past. Improved railway facilities have largely annihilated distance, while the liberality of railway managers in the way of granting reduced fares has gone far to put an end to the last complaints about the cost of crossing the continent. We are now on something like an equal footing with our Eastern competitors, and as the results of the last two or three years’ showing, we are becoming the favorite summer convention city of the Union. : California’s hospitality offers friendly hands, cordial hearts and open doors to all visitors who come with good intent, and in times past some of our receptions have filled our guests with wonder at our lavishness of welcome as well as with delight; but, all that has been achieved in the past will be as nothing to what we are going to accomplish now, The Grand Army has a thousand ciaims upon onr hearts. The coming of the veterans will be made a great patriotic festival in honor of the loyal and the brave. All California will unite with San Francisco in show- ing love and veneration to the men who pgeserved the Union and freed the slave. In some im- portant respects the encampment will be made the culmination of all the gatherings of the old heroes. To all of them then we send already our words of greeting and thanks for the honor done us by their selection. Let the commanders of the Grand Army arrange to bring the whole host to the city. California wiil do the rest. THE STATE GRANGE. - HE State Grange, which has just adjourned its annual session at Sacramento, passed a resolution against the constitutional amendment to exempt State and municipal bonds from taxation. We think this is the result of a mistaken conception of the issue. At present these bonds are taxable and no citizen of California buys them. The Call has recently ex- posed the transactions of the proxy Board of Examiners in buying these bonds for the school fund at high and unwarrantable premiums, which went into the pockets of a firm of brokers domiciled oqtsid; the State, who were the first buyers. As a matter of fact, the State now gets no taxes from bonds, because they are not owned by our citizens. The people pay the interest and it all goes out- side the State, draining us of that much money. If the bonds are exempt from taxation they will be bought by our own people, the interest will be kept at home and invested in taxable property. It will be seen, therefore, that instead of the State gaining any revenue from taxing bonds, it is a steady loser. The Grange put a new issue in focis by demanding a law that no community shall issue bonds except upon petition of two-thirds of the taxpayers, representing two-thirds of the assessed’ property. This is an interesting matter and a proposition worthy of discussion. It is put upon the ground that, as taxable property has to pay the bonds, its interests shall be considered in the con- tracting of a bonded debt. From one point of view that plan will restrain reckless issues, voted by non-taxpayers or temporary members of the community. From another point of view it will be held to restrain necessary public enterprises. Much may be said on both sides, and the Grange is entitled to the thanks of the public for opening the question and “forcing its discussion. The Grange put itself in line with every interest in the State, by demanding preservation of the forests and extension of the Federal reservations. - E \ O THAT is it! one.” “Looks harmless enough, doesn’t ger “What there is of it, eertainly.” “And yet—" “And yet here you are at the Jones Hotel instead of at the Brown Hotel in consequence of that very small entity?” “Exactly,” and Mlss Marguerita Sylva, fresh as a rose in her difficult pink kimo- no, bent down to caress “it,”” a foolish lit- tle Yorkshire terrier that looked as if it were ridiculously used to the process. ‘Two days before she had been ordered out of one of the larger hotels because she re- fused to part with the little creature, and had indignantly marched off with her pet | to the less exclusive but more hospitable hostelry in which I found her. “It has happened before,” she said, showing her white teeth in a hearty laugh, “and bas not always turned out so well. We were down South ence, in a town where there was only one hotel. After we were settled they saw Rubber— that's his name—and said he had to go, poor liitle beastie. It was already late in the day then, and we did not find another place until 9 o'clock that evening—where we had to pay 2% cents a night, by the way. (It was clean, ihough.) But my companion—who loves Rubber as much as I do—said that night: ‘I never did like that dog, anyway!" and we almost quar- reled about it.”” “Almost, but not quite, I'm sure,” I said. And it looks to me as if it would be dificult to quarrel with Miss Sylva. She has the fine good temper that goes with perfect health; her brilliant brown eyes seem concerned with anything else than her neighbor’s failings; and there is apparently not a scrap of that uneasy vanity that twists insult out of anything and everything in her wholesome make- It's a very little up. She had not had breakfast whén I saw her. I am not going to give Miss Sylva away, but it was not early. As she came in, touched with the rosy wing of some morning dream, she looked young, fresh and briiliant as a May dawning, and that in a daring pink kimono that wuuld have | simply “killed” the ordinary woman. “My fricnd promised me anything if I would get up this morning,’ she apologized, “but I'm so lazy.” “If you are net also hungry enough to be mean,” I said, but she chatted away breakfastless for an hour and a half, un- til her companion came in dressed and " hungry for the drive they were to take to the Cliff House. “I'm simply crazy about this place,” she sald. “Look”—pointing to a chiffonier full of Chinese and Japanese bric-a-brac— “we have been in Chinatown every minute that we could spare since we came here. And the strawberries and raspberries for breakfast—oh! And the violets—oh! And the roses—oh! Don’t you love them, too?"" ‘“When we remember them.’ | '“But, oh!” she went on, with a doleful change of tone, “to think that we had such a terrible opening night here. And I had looked forward so to my first night in San Franclsco. You know we freshened { up everything, clothes and scenery, just as if it were for New York or Chicago.” “I should hope so!” said the listening | patriot. ‘But everything went wrong,” Miss Sylva sighed. “Our leader had left us and the new director had only one rehearsal with us. Then our people got nervous, not remembering that if the orchestra were uncertain it was up to them to do just twice as well to make up. And I had a cold. Then one of our best numbers, ‘Lo- retta,” had been used here before, pirated | by another company. One of the papers said it was an interpolated number, but Mr. Englander wrote it for “The Strollers.” Did you see that?" “I wrote it,” I sald, “and am heartily sorry to have made the mistake. [ knew it was Englander’s, but judged by its hav- ing been used here so long ago that he had simply used it again in ‘The Strollers.” Not that it mattered, but one does not look for rechauffes in new Eastern pro- ductions.” ““Then you said, too"—Miss Sylva looked frankly at me with those dangerous brown eyes—‘‘that you did not think [ could sing—very much?” did,” I acknowledged. “1 have always thought I could, just a little,” she confessed. “But I did not none’ of us did, justice to ourselves Inst Monday night. You could not judge. Have you ever been on the stage? No? Then you do not know what it is to ng and smile while you are choking with fiervous- ness, in a strange place, with a strange leader, among strangers.” % “I knew onlv after the performance of MARGUERITASYLVA TELLS OF WOES AND JOYS OF HER VISIT TO THE FAR WEST. By GUISARD. COMEDIAN AND GROTESQUE DANCER NOW WITH “THE STROLLERS” COMPANY, - <3 your troubles,” I confessed, “but as the general uncertainty of the performance had kept my teeth pretty well on edge ail night I agy quite ready to believe that I may have been mistaken in some re- gards.” “I'll forgive you,if you'll come and hear us again,” she laughed, “and I think you will change your mind. Promise?” I promised. Then she told me a little of her forbears and career. How she is a native of Brus- sels, the daughter of a doctor and a “lady who was simply his wife and not a singing teacher, as one of the papers had it.” How she studied singing in the Brussels Conservatoire and was much ei- couraged In her stage leanings by Caesar Thomson, the great Belgian violinist. She | had the advantage of parental opposition, | that she soon overcame and made her debut in “Carmen”—‘“fancy the nerve!” she humorously comments—in London un- Ger Sir Augustus Harris' direction. But Harris died and for dramatic experience she went then for a season with Beer- bokim Tree.. Tree brought her to America as his second lead In ‘“‘Seats of the Mighty,” that failed so lamentably that it bad.to be taken off after a week's Tun. They also gave such piays as “Tne Dancing Girl,” “Trilby,” a “Bunch of Violets” and then Tree went to England. Miss Sylva was under a three years' con- tract with him, but she fell deeply in love with America and sought release. He granted her her freedom and since that time she has been liere singing in “The Lady Slavey,” “The French Maid” “The Princess Chic” and with Alice Nielsen for a season. Grau also offered her the position of pnderstudy to Calve’s “Car- men,” and® also the page’s parts “R&meo and Juliet” and “The Hugue- nots.” Next January the singer is to have a new opera, “really an opera,” of comie sort, but not the queer melange that na$ come to be known as the “musical com- edy.” It is the work of a yiew man, a Washington organist, H. ‘Wheaton How- ard, and Miss Sylva thinks quite a musi- caéeatnd interesting work. ore leaving I drew unexpected - nings from the lady’s brown op:bs by"ff:n:. Ing delicately if some violets that were flinging their spring fragrance into (ho room were from some. of Miss Sylva's “mevitable adorers. They were and that was all right. Sometimes it wasn't. There hnd‘been times—this was a time. She didn’t say much else, but I gathered that one of¥the lpcal Johnnies -has made him- self more conspicuous than beautifu! in ms& Sylva’s handsome eyes. @\ course,” she laughed, and o cluded, “there are always g lot of Igz:'ls —mostly about 15~whao say life isn't worth living without me and that sort of thing. It isn't me, of course, they are In love With. "It is that beglamored ethereal stage beauty with all the glitter of the foot- lights and music about her. The dear things! Te have an affair of the heart With an actress—why, if's better even than going to the circus!™ ——— Prunes stuffed with apricots. Townund’\“ —_— Townsend’s California Glace fruit and candles, 50c a pound, In artistic fire-etched hoxes. A nice present for East: Palace Hotel bn.lf‘dh‘m‘ €39 Maarker st.,