The record-union., 1899-05-14

or no interchange of musical utterance
among the people. Music with them
is in an earlier and more savage period;
it is not a gift consciously exercised for
any special purpose SO much as an ele-
| mental fire smoldering in the caverns
of their nature and although its pres
ence is hardly realized by the people
themselves, it is manifested in the daily
round of their lives. If you were to
talk to an Irish peasant girl about
music she would hardly understand
you; but withdraw from her a little.
and leave her at her work; presently Gf
you have ordinary luck) you will hear
upon her lips such a melody, fearful
smiling, lonely as you would give your
right hand to invent. But Ireland is a
poor-one sometimes thinks, forgotten
country; where nature needs so much
cultivation if she is to support life, art
must needs go uncultivated. And so
her gifted sons who, if they lived in
Germany, would be sent to a conserva
toire, and, if need were, fed and clothed,
are to-day toiling for very life at the
meanest tasks; working, perhaps, in
wind and rain, on a poor moorland
farm; perhaps cutting peats on some
salt sprays while they. gather the sea-
weed from some wild, echoing beach"
Genoa newspapers give further details
regarding the opera C'King Lear') on
which Verdi is said to be at work
Among other things, it is said that the
opera is in four acts, the last, in ac-
cordance with VeIdi's custom. being
written first; that Lear, baritone, has
a pathetic lament in the second act, and
that Boito, the librettist, has somehow
introduced into the story the character
of Caliban, from THE Tempest"
On the eve of the production of Sieg-
fried Wagner's "Barenhauter'' the
young composer was interviewed in vi
emma, says the New York Tribune"
He said that the suggestion for the use
of the fairy tale as an opera subject
came to his father who had declared it
adapted for operatic treatment He
added that he believed that if his faith
er had lived longer he would have COM
posed fairy opera, and that the ideal
subject in his mind was 1.-THE Sleeping
Beauty" The first of these statements
is likely to reopen a controversy which
ragged for time last year, out of which
young Wagner emerged considerably
the worse for wear. Being accused of
having chosen the subject for his comic
opera after learning that a libretto
based on it had been written by DR.
HVette, and was in the hands of Arnold
Mendelssohn for composition, he wrose
a letter to a newspaper in Darmstadt,
in which he said that he had not learned
Of the libretto by DR.. Wette until his
own first act was nearly composed. Herr
Mendelssohn in reply proved by means
of excerpts from letters written by the
wife of Humperdinck and Frau Wag-
ner that Humperdinck had informed
Frau Wagner of the projected opera,
and had also told her that while he had
also contemplated using the material
he had abandoned it out of respect for
his friend Mendelssohn. Subsequently,
Frau Cosinla said that the prohibition
could not extend to her son, as he was
unacquainted with Mendelssohn. In
his letter Siegfried Wagner said his
attention had been directed to the sub
ject by a letter from his sister, Frau
Tbode, acquainting him with the fact
that Humperdinck had contemplated
such an opera, and abandoned it,
whereupon he had reread the fairy tales
as told by Grimm oder Barenhauter''
and 'Des TeufePs rusiger Bruder,"
which are combined in the plot, and
had concluded that something could be
done with them, and had therefore set
to work. Now 1t appears that DR..