The San Francisco call., 1897-03-14

81 don't care, nothing is good enough
for me but opera in American" 1t was a
yolng person with decided manner and
brows puckered up into discon tented
frown who made this remark. She was
occupying the seat next to me at the Cali
fornia Theater on Friday evening. Albers
had just finished his glorious singing of
the barytone aria in the second act of I'll
Trovatore" and the gallery was ringing
with "bravos" and sounds Of clapping.
But the young person was not in the gal
lery. She adorned the part of the house
where people fear to tear their delicate
gloves by clapping and where calling
"bravo" is looked upon as rather vulgarly
demonstrative. The young person had
not enjoyed anything all the evening. The
tenor's neither extremities (she was far too
well bred to allude to them as anything
but linn mbs) had annoyed her, because they
were cut of the perpendicular. the con-
tralto was unsatisfactory costumed-she
had seen the part better dressed at the
Tivoli-and last, but not least, the opera
was in French-horrid French-that she
had never been able to master at school.
That was the crumpled roseleaf. The
y
in French. What did it matter how
swee.ly Albers sang? She did not know
what it was all about. Let him sing in
United States and she would come again
and take off her hat, if that would oblige
the management; in fact, there wes no
sacrifice she was not ready to make if the
opera-singers could only hold forth in the
vernacular. AS it was, she intended to go
to "Pinafore'' and forswear opera in
French forever.
If had possessed the slightest bowling
acquaintance with the young person, l
should have hastened to assure her that
it did not much matter what language
Albers sang in, for the best Parisian
present could never have unraveled the
plot from the few words and phrases that
were intelligable in his vocal score. Albers
does not enunclate SO clearly as Massart,
Provost and Nine. Fremeaux- Benati, but
if they had ali been singing in the best
United States, the young person, and other
disgruntled people like her, would have
had 10 fall back on their programmes for
the plot, or else go home with an even
more impossible story OF al Trovatore"
than the Iibrettist was guilty of imagining.
Only the veriest novice in grand opera
expects TO gather the plot from what the
singers say, and it is mere piece of SEN
timent to prefer the words in English. An
opera seldom makes lasting success un-
less the plot is made up of action that al
most speaks for Itself, but III nine cases
out OF ten the libretto is lot of jingling
nonsense. No greater rubbish was ever
strung together than "The Bohemian
Girl" but people do not find out its ab-
surdities and contradictions because they
never hear the words of more than a few
of the well known ballads. They take
the rest on faith, upheld by the comfort
ing knowledge that it is in English. How
many of the people who go perennially to
hear Balfe's "OlG Grip are aware that in
one place the Count says sag wounded
Arline's arm and on another occasion de-
clares he made the scar himself for
purposes of iden tifcation2
People like Chaucer's "Prioress," who
talk the French of Stratford atie Bowe,
'.for French of Parisis to them unknown" !"
never need be humiliated at the grand
operas, because when they once know the
plots it does not much matter whether
the words ale sung in French or low
Dutch. But in the operettas knowledge
of the language will be necessary Tor en-
joymenr. There will be jokes and topical
allusions which will fall fiat on the ears
OF the Stratford atte Bowe people. 1t Is