Music and manners; personal reminiscences and sketches of character

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text excerpt

When he [Albert Niemann] made his London debut three years ago at Her Majesty's Theatre in the declamatory part of Siegmund ( Walkuere) his delivery was not appreciably hoarser or harsher than it had been sixteen years previously. Untravelled metropolitan dilettanti who had heard and read of Albert Niemann as the first tenor singer of the Fatherland, could hardly believe their ears whilst listening to his husky declamation, with all the cracks, flaws, and roughness to which his Berlin admirers have for so many years past been accustomed that they have long ceased to regard them as defects, and not infrequently speak of them in respectful rather than critical terms as "Niemann's individual peculiarities of production." But the musical and dramatic judges of this city were unanimous in their recognition of his surpassing abilities as an interpreter of the Wagnerian ideal, in which speciality, despite his vocal shortcomings, he still knows but one rival throughout the length and breadth of Germany to wit, Hermann Winkelmann.

excerpt from 'Music and manners; personal reminiscences and sketches of character' pp. 64 (164 words)

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