The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-11-05
AN APPRECIATION
Review of the Recent Concert of Mime. Schumann- -Heink Her Consummate
 Vocal Art.

~AAAlNs OD6IdllC star of the first magnitude, concert singer of inexhaustible resources, graceful, good natured and largo hearted, yet exhibiting all these char acteristics without loss of natural dig nity, walked on to the stage of the Hyperion last Thursday night and with consummate vocal art thrilled. soothed, saddened or cheered, accord ing to her mood and will, one of the most enthusiastic and representative musical audiences that has eyer filled the theater.
 In every number she sang she not only excelled In her rendition of it. but added the charm of remarkable personality. One might think her rem dering of the aria from the oratorio St. Paul, 'But the Loro IS Mindful of His Own" somewhat hurried, but on second thought she has simply broken away from tradition and set up a , standard of her own, supported by the authority of an exceptional natural gift of heart and brain and by ripened l experience. She has earned the right to dictate her own vocal policy and whoever presumes to oriticizn must have achieved as much or more than | she.
 Mime. Schumann- -Heink sings---as every artist should--without the music before her She stands quietly and easily and guided by her singers instinct allows her wonderful voice and facial play to express all of mean Ting the music and text contain. Each number on the program beneath her magic touch became an incomparable Ivocal gem. If we dwelt in fairyland (and under the spell of her singing we seem to dwell there), we would be tempted to imagine that she had transformed her throat into an organ with innumerable stops.
 Can she sing low notes? Yea; even to the depths of double bass And high? Seemingly there Is no limit to height! Her highest tones, full of light, are free as air and sweet as any bird. The sudden dropping from high to very low notes brought in vivid contrast the extreme ranges of her voice. Her command of messa de voce is perfect.
 Singers, contraltos especially, who listened to her marverous singing of high notes, whether loud or soft, to her hird-like trills, must have wonder ed how so big voice acquired such deXterity and ease, From what she has written about herself, we can at tribute her remarkable development 1 to original painstaking development of breath controli to constant care in not carrying the heavy chest voice too high, and to bringing the medium quality down and blending it into the chest voice about F flat (first line treble cleft). Moreover, Mime. Schu- mann-Heink uses skillfully the so- called white voice, or that thinner quality in the upper range of contral- to voices which all contraltos must use if they expect to gain not only de- sirable voices but voices with strong contrasting shades of tone. This thin ner freer quality is indispensable to contraltos who intend doing coloratura singing.
 Mime. Schumann- -Heinks program included great variety of songs,
 which brought out about every known
 technical point in the singers art She
 is distinguished not only by technical
 skill, but by her profound grasp ot
 the meaning of text and music, the
 result of early bent of mental energy
 and concentration, eliminating in 8
 performance endowed with origina
 genius.
 At moments Thursday night she lit.
 erally held her audience spellbount
 by torrents of tone and touch; a
 other times the aeolian like murmur
 that foated from her lips penetrated
 every recess of the large auditorium
 and fingered like 8 memory. An oc
 casional glimpse was had of a wild
 turbulant spirit, when once aroused
 when the tones were delivered witt
 tremendous energy and astonishinl
 power. But Mme Schumann-Heinl
 is greatest when she either has com
 petition or the environment of gran,
 opera; then her, lion heart Is full
 aroused and she sweeps everythin
 before her. Metropolitan opera hous