Music and manners; personal reminiscences and sketches of character

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

344-346

text excerpt

There is another peculiarity of Berlin musical audiences which no lover of the divine art who has spent a winter in the German capital can have failed to notice...The peculiarity I refer to is an amazing tolerance of false intonation. Men may sing sharp, and men may sing flat ; but the Berliner endures them for ever — that is, to borrow a term from Bret Ilarte, if he "likes their style." To be persistently, remorselessly, homicidally out of tune is no offence in a popular vocalist, male or female, belonging to the Royal Opera Company, or to any of the leading operetta casts in Berlin. All tho public favourites di primo cartello whom I heard in the house on the Opernplatz between the years 1867 and 1878, with those distinguished exceptions — Pauline von Rhaden, better known by her spinster name of Lucca, Amalio von Voggenhuber, otherwise Frau Krolop, and Ernst, the lyric tenor — sang more or less out of tune...And yet I have never heard them called over the coals, or even gently rebuked, by a Hofoper audience for committing the atrocity which the Germans describe as " detonation." On the contrary, I have over and over again heard them, one and all, vehemently applauded and enthusiastically called before the curtain for singing in a manner that set my teeth on edge, and caused cold shivers to flutter down either side of my spine.

excerpt from 'Music and manners; personal reminiscences and sketches of character' pp. 344-346 (235 words)

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