The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-01-12

New York, Jan. 10.-Music and drama
are getting together more and more
Already they are so mixed that songs
are put into melodramas as well as
comedies and farces. AS dances go
commonly with the songs. is it quite
impossible that the ghost of Shakes
peake viii yet see Romeo skipping to
the tune of a serenade under Juliet's
balcony, and Othelio cakewalking in his
racial wooing of Desdemona? Anyway,
we in New York in a single week have,
in new plays, melody of a grand opera
grade in an emotional drama, Louise;
a blend of the score of THE Merry
Widow" with the nonsense of a bur-
lesque, and the more usual blends Of
songs with farcicality in "Funabashi''
nd Miss Hook of Holland"
a drama so uncommonly good as TO
be very close to great gets scant at
tention to its first performance IN
America, because Louise" is grand
opera with music so thrilling and COM
handing as to overshadow the dramatic
fiction. The same Gustave Charpen-
tier who won place among the master
musicians with a score combining the
colorful melody of Puccini with crash
ingly dramatic discords of Strauss
would have made a stir as a playwright
had his work been all spoken instead OF
partly sung. As dramatist let us look
at him. He is a Frenchman of the ap-
pearance and habits of the typical Pa
risian bohemian made internationally
familiar by Munger; and IL Is SAID tnat
this opera tells the story of his own ex-
perience in the recklessly gay Mont
martre section of the city of pleasures
with a working girl who now is his
wife. And Charles Dalmores, singing
the tenor role in Louise" DISCUSSES
himself in the long black hair and
whiskers, the soft necktie and yelveteen
Jacket of the composer, thus accurately
reproducing him.
The daughter of an ignorant labOrer
is wooed by a poet whose care-free lax
ity of life imperils her mistrustful par
ents to reject his offer of marriage.
They do not hear the call of Paris that
rings in the ears of the warm-blooded
girl. nor do they feel her thrill when,
at the prosaic family supper table, the
father, explaining that his eyes are
weak, asks her to read to him, and she,
running carelessiy over the headings.
tells him that the Paris gay season has
opened. Paris, all, Paris!" she muir
murs Wistfully as the call of 1t surges
over her in a great swell The next
two acts, depicting street life in Paris,
partially justify the cry that the opera
is too local for transportation.
Then comes a truly great last act.
The parents have reclaimed Louise
against her will. Although she lies on
her cot in a squalid room, while her
father smokes his pipe, and her mother
clatters at the dishes in the kitchen,
the music of Paris is with her. The
father tries to dispell it with the lula
by that lulled her to sleep when
child. but the voices of the city of
pleasure drown it out. Even the ven
ders' cries come as music to her ears.
Finally she can contain herself no
longer, and fights with her parents to
break the tie of home. The call OF
Paris surges in waltz rhythm, and the
girl dances TO it in a sort of delirium.
"She's mad" the mother cries, and
sinks down at the window. through
which the city can be seen, and rocks
to and fro, moaning and covering her
face with her Bingham apron. The
father. after struggling long with Lou
Use, throws her through the doorway
and hurls a chair after her. Instantly
he is sorry, and inplOres his child to
come back; but she goes to be swaI-
lowed up in the city's whirl of sin
Then he, fiinging open the window,
shakes his big, coarse fists at Paris in
Paris!" as the curtain falls. Already
/ have drifted away from my stipulated
subject of the drama in describing
Louise" as a play, when it is grand
opera; and / won't go further astray
by writing about Marie Garden, the
American prima donna who sings il.
As to Charpentier. its author, enriched
for life by the success of his one piece,
and declaring that he meant never to
do another pen stroke OF work, he IS
living his life out as a bohemian.
In hustling connection were Miss
Hook of Holland" and the travestied
version of 1.-The Merry Widow" when
put before their New York audiences.
Both were unready. Has the slang
Get the hook" reached you? 1t orig
mated with the amateur nights" in
vaudeville when aspirants are tried
and usually found wanting. Sometimes
the stage manager reached out with a
hooked pole 10 pull the worst of them
liz. After the Washington start of