The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1892-04-17
DRAMATIC AND LYRIC
Why Agnes Huntington Did Not
Succeed.
THE HOME CLUB ON ITS TOUR
The Choral Society to Produce THE Light of
Asia in June-Nrs. stoddart's Death
Thomas Leaves Palmer-Notes,

1ue spectacle or Ben Stern and Marcus
Mayer porting over the box office returns
OF The Agnes Huntington engagement will
be one worth photographing. Messrs
stern and Mayer belong to the class of
managers who rarely, if ever, make mis-
takes. They broke the record in Salt Lake
with their Fanny Davenport engagement,
and when Mr.. Stern was here fortnight
ago, ne felt confident that Agnes Hunting
ton was gong to pile the figures up close
alongside those of la Tosca" He
counted on what she had done elsewhere,
and he counted on Salt Lakes known ap-
probation of good show. His surprise at
the outcome, therefore, will be only
equalled by his disappointment.
But why is it that Huntington was not
money success?
The reason is simply this: THE HERALD
putt plainly after the opening perform
ance, and all the gush and slathering full
someness of other newspaper writer's, can
not cover up the fact, that when an "opera
company is advertised, the people in
Salt Lake expect and demand COMPANY.
not an individual. Miss Huntington is a
magnificent vision of loneliness and an e1-
cellent artist, but one swallow doesn't
make summer, and, Miss Huntington
alone is not able to fill all the senses of a
critical audience which has paid rates out
OF the ordinary in the expectation
OF seeing performance out of
the common. With the single
exception of Mr.. Mostyn, there is not a
member of the Huntington support whose
singing abilities are not excelled by half
the farce comedy companies that come
along. The soprano has not con-
quered the earliest rudiments of
the art of solo singing, or she
would be able to sing in tune: the
tenor was painful the baritone and bass
were missing altogether; every one of the
minor ladies who had any singing to do
sang OIL the key. To Offset all this of course
there were sumptuous scenery, costuming
and fair--not g faultless-chorus and
there was the Huntington herself We take
OIL our hat to the Huntington. She is a
superb spectacle of womanhood, q blissful
rest Tor the weary eye, and probably
the handsomest and most graceful de-
llneator OF male parts the ranks of femi
ninity ever furnished. Then too she is an
American, and she took the Britlshers so
much by storm in their own stronghclds
that they talk OF building theatre for her.
and they sent her back home on a visit out
lifted with an English company. These
things make 1t very hard to find fault with
her, and some of US haven't been able to do
1t, even though we knew she deserved it.
But she knows it. She is too
much of thorough artist not to
know that as an opera company" her little
aggregation is a failure She knows mat
as well, too, that those great magnificent
rolling notes of hers have been cultivated
at the expense OF her upper register, and
that that regretable but relentless fact is
the only thing that kept her from being
Cary, Trebelli or Scalchi.
There will be no June festival of the
Choral society at the tabernacle this year,
owing to the impossibility of securing the
tabernacle. We shall not have, therefore,
any such ambitious event as the bringing
out of Myron w. Whitney and Emma
Thursby this year. The Choraps annual
offering to the public, however, will be a
notable one in another line. The Light
OF Asia" Dudley Bucks cantata, arranged
on Sir Edwin Arnold's sublime poem,
will be rendered in its entirety at the Salt
Lake theatre early in June, with a
chorus of 800 voices a complete
orchestra and the leading singers
of the society in the solo roles. The chorus
will completely fill the stage, and an addi-
tlonal platform will be erected. Arnolds
poem will be printed in full in the house
programme, and there is no doubt that it's
beauties and all its dainty effects will tell
to much better advantage in the theatre
than in the tabernacle. We look to see
1.-THE Light OF Asian as much of an event
as the production of THE Messia" under
Prof. Careless years ago. The secretary of
the Choral notifies all members in this issue
of The HERALD thata new roll will be made
up at the nesting to- morrow night, and all
absentees will be barred.
The Home Dramatic club, about twenty
in all, accompanied by other excursionists,
left the Union Pacific depot yesterday
afternoon for their short tour into Idaho.
Superintendent j. II. Young placed hand
some coach at their disposal. Last night
the club rendered Held by the Enemy in
Brigham City; to-day they push on to
Shoshone and pass the night there appear
ing in Boise tomorrow and Tuesday even
ings, Logan, Thursday; Brigham, Friday,
and winding up Saturday night at Ogden
with farewell performance of "Held by
the Enemy" A number of friends of the
club who cannot take the Idaho trip will
join them Saturday night in Ogden The
club knows right well how to extract the
biggest amount of pleasure out of a trip of
this sort, and there is no doubt that the
present trip is one in which enjoyment and
profit will go hand in hand.
Recent news is to the effect that Sullivan
and Gilbert are about to collaborate once