The age-herald., 1899-06-07
MISS ROWLEY
 MAKES HER DEBUT As a Play Writer and a Con-
 poser. TERRA SORTS" A TRIUMPH A Woman Wrote the Li5retto, Furnish ed the Music, and Staged the Piece All Under Her Personal
 Dir e ction.
TERRA SORTS" A TRIUMPH

tfom pit to dome, so to speak, OBrien'S opera house was filled last night with a delighted audience-an audience so highly delighted that another great audience will fill the opera house tonight.
 The audience came together on a sum- mer's night partly perhaps for sweet charty's sake for the entertainment was for the benefit of St. Vincents hospital; but every one of them went away feeling that they had received the full value of their money.
 There were few hitches, no delay, and few mistakes in any part of the entertain ment. All went along smoothly-so smoothly and elegantly that it had no amateurish character, and became subject to criticism as a professional entertain- ment. The music was pretty and tuneful, and the actors were graceful and pleas Ing. There was beauty in eery scene, and every song was lovly. As a whole it was an entertainment that outranked in pure amusement qualities nearly every profess sonal entertainment of the past theatrical season. This is saying q good deal, but the absence of amateur awkwardness and amateur errors was new, even the over ture and the orchestral music. Not a note of it had been heard before, and Miss Rowley is entitled to the credit of adding to the pleasure of Birmingham musc-loy- ing people.
 Work of a Birmingham Woman
 The charming opera presented last night is the work of Daisy Woodruff Rowley, who wrote both music and libretto. Miss Rowley is a student of the Royal Conserya- tory of Dresden, where, as she expresses it, she unlearned all she had learned before of music in America, and when she came back she began at once to write Terra Sortis." It is the work of six years, and the magnificent approval of last night is the first reward Birminghams charming composer has received for her six years of work.
 Not only has no opera of Birmingham composition ever before been presented, but in all the country no opera was ever be- fore written, music and book, rehearsed. staged and directed first last and all the time by a woman. Not a stroke of direc- tion was done by any one except by Miss Rowley herself. The management of seventy-five amateurs is enough to appall a veteran manager. but it had no terrors for the fair composer.
 The libretto of the opera presents con- sistent and reasonably ineligible and pos sible plot, differing in that respect from many of the trashy works of the present day The music, too, is bright and spark ling, and really original without being dar- ingly so. There is in it no Vild departure from previous music, and yet it is difficult to detect in it anything that is strictly ren- inscent.- Miss RoWley IS familiar with all the best music of the world but in Terra SortiS' she has wrought out melodies un- ly,- md faoa har nv sweet strains that finger long and lovingly in the mind
 With Wagner, she holds that one cannot write the book and another the music to good advantage At any rate, she has given us a whole that is charming, spark ling and delishtully entertaining, even in the hands of amateurs, assisted by a couple of trained singers.