Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
But it was not the fatigue due to this system that finally made Niemann, the main prop in my work, recoil from the task which at the start he had undertaken with an energy full of promise. He had been informed that there was a conspiracy to ruin my work. From this time forward he was a victim to a despondency to which, in his relations with me, he sought to lend a sort of diabolical character.
The only enjoyable hours were spent at the theatre in Hanover, where I saw Niemann in Templar and Jewess, and for the first time witnessed the thoroughly studied yet perfectly natural impersonations of Marie Seebach. I also remember with much pleasure the royal riding-school in charge of General Meyer.
It is interesting as marking his first step towards the music of the future in his use of motives, his wonderful treatment of the orchestra in enforcing the expression of the text, and his combination of the voices and instrumentation in what he so aptly calls "The Music-Drama." Schröder-Devrient and Herr Niemann as Elizabeth and Tannhäuser.
But we have had Materna and Niemann and Brandt and Fischer, and Alvary and Lehmann, who have given us correct ideas of the German vocal style. Surely no one can say, on listening to Lehmann's Brünnhilde, or Fischer's Hans Sachs, or Alvary's Siegfried, that the vocal part is inferior in beauty or importance to the orchestral.
Meanwhile, he would have the drama produced in its original tongue at Strasburg, then a French city conveniently near the German border, with Albert Niemann in the titular role and an orchestra from Karlsruhe, or some other German city which had an opera-house.
The birth would probably be most easy if I were to trust the King of Hanover with the delivery. Niemann declares that the King would engage any singer, male or female, whom I should require for the model performance of my work as long as that performance took place at Hanover.
I wish I could find some one who would do justice to the real character of the part, in which case he need not be afraid of singing it even before Tichatschek. I have hinted so much to Niemann. I am thus, once more, reduced to my old capital, "Tannhauser" and "Lohengrin", and they are no longer sufficient for my present difficult position.
Herr Niemann, for instance, has moments and, indeed, whole evenings when his voice, seemingly rejuvenated, not only rises to sublime heights of dramatic passion, but possesses rare sensuous beauty; while on other occasions the sound of his voice is almost unbearable.
Fortunately I was able to hand him over to Tausig, who understood my embarrassment, and kept Tichatschek to himself pretty well the whole day, by playing cards with him. The young tenor Niemann, of whose great talent I had heard so much, soon arrived with his bride, the famous actress Seebach, and owing to his almost gigantic frame, he struck me as being just the man for Siegfried.
Patti, whom Niemann no doubt is right in pronouncing the most perfect vocalist, not only of this period, but of all times. I, for my part, have never cared much for the bel canto as such, because it is so often wasted on trashy compositions. Yet, when I heard Mme.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking