Page 150 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2024. Glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes ▪︎ Music Criticism – Yesterday and Today. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 7
P. 150
glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes | music criticism – yesterday and today
Irish melody.”11 What shines through here is a certain Irish national pride
in their own musical culture and their songs as popularised in Moore’s
Irish Melodies12 or The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland.13 A
much more poignant example is related by another incident during a per-
formance of Donizetti’s opera Lucrezia Borgia in Dublin in 1849 in which
the eponymous heroine was sung by the Irish soprano Catherine Hayes
(1818−1861). At some point the audience requested she insert the song “The
Harp That Once” – which Hayes did. A review in the Dublin Evening Pack-
et described the scene:
The progress of the serious opera stopped for the performance of an
Irish ballad. It was, in truth, an incident without precedent, and equal-
ly without precedent were the roars of gratification that followed: one
ardent gentleman in the middle gallery shouting with a voice that was
heard above all the tumult, “Musha! God bless you, Catherine darlin”.14
Returning to the Irish Times from 22 September 1860, the review enti-
tled “Theatre Royal – Italian Opera” is the longest and most detailed of the
three music-related texts in this issue.15 It is a review of Gluck’s “Orfeo E.
Euridice?” [sic]; of its 111 lines, 37 are dedicated to a biography of the com-
poser, followed by a synopsis of 46 lines. The actual review consists of only
24 lines – less than a quarter of the text. In this section we learn that, de-
spite the article’s title indicating an Italian work, the opera was presented in
French (“which somewhat detracted from the beauty of the music”) and that
Pauline Viardot Garcia was the prima donna. Two other female singers are
named (and praised), yet we don’t learn which roles they sang or who else
was involved – no male singer is identified. There are a few more music-spe-
cific morsels of information, such as “[t]here is little recitative”, but mostly
the text is quite bland, general and looks as if it is written by someone who
doesn’t know much about music (“The opera […] has a continuous strain of
11 Quoted in: Michael Murphy, “The Musical Press in Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” in
Music in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, eds. Michael Murphy and Jan Smaczny [Irish
Musical Studies 9] (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 270.
12 Thomas Moore, A Selection of Irish Melodies, 10 vols. (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan,
1808–1834).
13 George Petrie, The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, 2 vols. (Dublin:
The University Press, 1855).
14 Dublin Evening Packet, November 5, 1849, quoted in: Michael Murphy, “The Musical
Press,” 271.
15 Anon., “Theatre Royal – Italian Opera,” The Irish Times, September 22, 1860, 2. All
the quotations and references in the following lines come from this page.
150
Irish melody.”11 What shines through here is a certain Irish national pride
in their own musical culture and their songs as popularised in Moore’s
Irish Melodies12 or The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland.13 A
much more poignant example is related by another incident during a per-
formance of Donizetti’s opera Lucrezia Borgia in Dublin in 1849 in which
the eponymous heroine was sung by the Irish soprano Catherine Hayes
(1818−1861). At some point the audience requested she insert the song “The
Harp That Once” – which Hayes did. A review in the Dublin Evening Pack-
et described the scene:
The progress of the serious opera stopped for the performance of an
Irish ballad. It was, in truth, an incident without precedent, and equal-
ly without precedent were the roars of gratification that followed: one
ardent gentleman in the middle gallery shouting with a voice that was
heard above all the tumult, “Musha! God bless you, Catherine darlin”.14
Returning to the Irish Times from 22 September 1860, the review enti-
tled “Theatre Royal – Italian Opera” is the longest and most detailed of the
three music-related texts in this issue.15 It is a review of Gluck’s “Orfeo E.
Euridice?” [sic]; of its 111 lines, 37 are dedicated to a biography of the com-
poser, followed by a synopsis of 46 lines. The actual review consists of only
24 lines – less than a quarter of the text. In this section we learn that, de-
spite the article’s title indicating an Italian work, the opera was presented in
French (“which somewhat detracted from the beauty of the music”) and that
Pauline Viardot Garcia was the prima donna. Two other female singers are
named (and praised), yet we don’t learn which roles they sang or who else
was involved – no male singer is identified. There are a few more music-spe-
cific morsels of information, such as “[t]here is little recitative”, but mostly
the text is quite bland, general and looks as if it is written by someone who
doesn’t know much about music (“The opera […] has a continuous strain of
11 Quoted in: Michael Murphy, “The Musical Press in Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” in
Music in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, eds. Michael Murphy and Jan Smaczny [Irish
Musical Studies 9] (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 270.
12 Thomas Moore, A Selection of Irish Melodies, 10 vols. (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan,
1808–1834).
13 George Petrie, The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, 2 vols. (Dublin:
The University Press, 1855).
14 Dublin Evening Packet, November 5, 1849, quoted in: Michael Murphy, “The Musical
Press,” 271.
15 Anon., “Theatre Royal – Italian Opera,” The Irish Times, September 22, 1860, 2. All
the quotations and references in the following lines come from this page.
150
