The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1890-01-15
AMUSEMENTS.

Walter Damrosch's Lecture ON Siegfried.
The music loving public of Jersey City
will have a rare treat tomorrow night.
Walter Damrosch, the talented young
associate of Herr Seidi in the leadership
ira, is to deliver the first of
his now celebrated lectures or r~ecitais
on Wagner's Siegfried at the Jersey City
Athletic Club Theatre. This lecture
covers the first act of the great musk
drama; the second. which cover the
subsequent acts will be- given on the
The club is entitled to the cordial
thanks of the public for affording this
rare opportunity for hearing these re-
citals at an exceedingly moderate
price-the seats being less for the two
lectures than for each one when they
were delivered in New York. 1t is to be
hoped that both as a reward for the clubs
1iberality of spirit, and for the cultiya-
ton of the general taste, these lectures
will be largely attended. 1t must not for
a moment be supposed that they are a dry
or incomprehensible presentation of
fanatical views upon the music of the
tainment consists mainly of al outline
sketch of the opera, which Mr.. Damrosch
delivers with admirable dramatic force.
Touches of mimicry of the style of great
artists, characteristic gestures, forcible
expressions are woven into the discourse
until the scenes of the great play
almost spring into life before the
audience. The piano, meanwhile, is used
much as is the s~tereopticon by other
lecturers. The leading themes and mo-
tifs are given in their appropriate places,
Mr.. Damrosch explaining their relations
to the dramatis persona and to the
progress Of the plot.
Thp9n lectures are imDOrtant cOntri-
buttons to the musical culture of the
period. Wagnerian opera has suffered
mainly because people were afraid of it,
and because they were often too
INDECENT to undertake. the task Of
meets both Of these difficulties. He al
lures the timid to this new and great
field of imagination, and he smooths
away the difficulties from the way of the
indolent. AS he elucidates 1T, what was
obscure becomes bright, and what
was incomprehensible becomes beauti-
mony he picks out the threads
OF song, the opponents of passion and the
indications of thought progress. He
teaches the hearer to follow these from
scene, to scene TO deserving their natural
sequence and their native connection
with the movement of the drama.
Mr.. Damrosch, himself, is an interest
ing personality. Thrown at an early
age, by the untimely death of his father,
into a position of great conspicuousness,
he has borne himself with a general
modesty, which has wiped out all
~jealousies. He has, at the same
time, by sheer force of intellect,
industry, and rue musical feeling held
the place to which he was originally
raised by purely Fictitious circumstances.
Mr.. Damrosch is about thirty years old.
He is tall, large of frame. and somewhat
leonine of aspect. He is strikingly
handsome according to the pure Teuhy
tonic standard. One of the most inter
esting features of his recitals consists in
his easy, cool, polished delivery. He
speaks with just enough of foreign ac-
cent "to make his EngIishe swete upon
his tongue" as old CHANGER puts it.
1t will secure him the favor of all his
fair hearers to remind them that he is
soon to become a bridegroom. The bride
is to be Miss Margaret Blaine. j. L.