Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1878-11-02
Svhat an operate Debut I'm Italy
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Music Trade Review.
"First you pay a fee of about one
hundred francs to an agent; one
hundred francs there is equal TO one
hundred dollars here. The agents,
as rule, are publishers of musical
papers, which they oblige you to
subscribe for. The agent sends you
to some little town, and if you do
not PLEASE the impressariO he pro-
tests you, and back you are sent,
and lose your one hundred francs
beside. From beginning to end
there is a perfect system of eXtOr
ton and robbery of foreign music
pupils in Italy. 1t does not quite
Offset the advantages to be gained
there, but it is a serious objection to
studying in that country. In the
first place, the teacher will accept
you as a pupil whether you have
voice or not. His speciality may be
coaching in operas, and you may be
a beginner and in need of thorough
vocal training, nevertheless he will
take you and your money, no mat
ter how poorly he may be qualified
for the task. Then comes the doc
tor, if you are in Milan, and the
agents who, as do the other pub
fishers of musical papers, make you
take their Journals or else abuse you
i'm them most numerically. Why
there are four or five insignificant
papers of this sort in every small
town in Italy. They know that
the majority of de5lttdHteS want press
notices to send back to America, or
/ England, so they levy blackmail
upon you. If you concent to sub
| scribe for a month to these dirty
little sheets, they will write a few
! favOfible notices about you, but
after that you must pay for every
line of mention they insert. Hav-
ing once got you in their tolls they
will ferret you out, no matter what
part of the country you go to, until
at last you become almost frantic
with the quantity of dreadful Inu-
steal papers that pursue you every
where. Then there are other sys-
TENS of eXtortion, such as this: a
girl will go to small town to make
her debut and will be met by man
who coolly tells her that for two
or three hundred francs he will
station men about the theatre to
give her an ovation, but that if she
refuses to pay the money the men
will be sent to hiss her down.
'Do any of the students ever
make a debut at La Scala ?"
"No, never; such thing would
be almost an impOsSibility. No
novices are allowed there, except it
might be in the chorus, and l am
not sure they would have them
| there. The majority of de6utS are
made in such light operas as Son
nambula, and the regular habitues
of La Scala would not think OF
having such works performed
there. At the Opera House in vi
emma / have known them to refuse
to let Adelina Patti sing in THE
Barber as they did not wish to
have comic opera given in that
house. If you ever hear a singer
who has returned to America from
Italy talk about having made a
DEBUT at La Scala, you can set that
person down as a humbug. Singers,
/ know, are given to talking about
making their debUtS at Milan, and
they give people to understand that
La Scala was the opera house, but
it is much more probable that it
was at some little theatre on the
outskirts of the town. A singer
might make an appearance at La
Scala out of the regular season, and
without the regular habitUes in the
audience, but it would be as if
some unknown actress from the far
West should engage Wallack's for a
fortnight in July, and then, when
she returned to the prairie towns
should advertise herself from Wal
lacks Theatre, New York"