Grand Easter Reception, and performance of Balfe's Opera, The Bohemian Girl by the Brooklyn Opera Association. Flushing Opera House, Wednesday Evening, April 24th, 1878. Souvenir programme printed on ivory silk in red within decorative border
Ca. 225 x 137 mm., including fringed edges.
Named cast includes Ella H. Rives, Effie Bryan, Carrie Clark, Ella Wingate, W.R. Wentz, Octave Whittaker, Chas. H, Parsons, J Bogle, and P. Wingate, with conductor A. Cortado, stage manager J.T. Walter, and prompter J.A. Wores.
Very slightly worn; occasional small stains.
"[Balfe was] the most successful composer of English operas in the 19th century, and the only one whose fame spread throughout Europe, he gained wide international recognition with The Bohemian Girl.
When attempting to evaluate Balfe’s works, it should be remembered that two distinct traditions of British opera existed during his lifetime, of which he was only too well aware. The English ballad opera was viewed by the public simply as entertainment, a genre set apart from the more elevated style of ‘highbrow’ opera. Of Balfe’s operas, only Falstaff and Il talismano belong to the latter category, though it is also notable that he took more trouble over the works for Paris and Italy than for those written for production in London. Throughout his life, Rossini was his mentor to an extent that has hitherto been underestimated: both men possessed the same shrewdness of artistic judgment, the same inexhaustible musical facility, and the same chameleon-like ability to adapt themselves to the situation in hand. In musical terms, the Rossinian influence is most pronounced in the early Italian works, in Falstaff and in the English operas written up to 1852. The second most prevalent idiom is French; derived principally from Auber, it finds its most natural expression in Le puits d’amour, Les quatre fils Aymon and L’étoile de Séville, though in this last work, as in some of the later Pyne-Harrison scores, a Meyerbeerian influence is present. Yet the music that made Balfe famous – the ballads which no one surpassed – remains indisputably his own. His operas, and his livelihood, relied on these ‘hit’ numbers in a manner similar to the 20th-century musical." Nigel Burton and Ian D. Halligan in Grove Music Online
An interesting piece of early 19th century American opera ephemera.
Item #38360
Price: $85.00 other currencies