San Francisco dramatic review (1899)

THE SAN FRANCISCO DRAMATIC REVIEW April 1 8, 1908. THE SAN FRANCISCO Dramatic Review Music and Drama CHAS. H. FASSELL, Publisher Issued Every Saturday Entered at San Francisco as Second-class Mail Matter. Established 1880. Address all letters and money orders to San Francisco Dramatic Review, 287 Thirteenth Street, around the corner from Mission Street. Telephone Market 2114 Mae Keane The beautiful and talented leading woman of The Lumley Company is pictured on our front page this week. Ever since the organization of The Lumley Company, Miss Keane has been its leading woman and has succeeded in winning flattering encomiums for her work. In parts requiring intense emotion, Miss Keane is at her best. Two splendid examples of this are found in her depictions of Carmen and Glory Quayle in The Christian. Added to ability Miss Keane has a winning personality that plays a large part in her success. Ruling on Theatrical Business The Interstate Commerce Commission has modified its decision regarding advance agents' tickets and free baggage cars furnished theatrical companies. It appears that the original opinion was sent out through a misunderstanding of a clerk in the office of the Commission. Under the latest modification the roads are at liberty to count tickets sold advance agents into the number required to entitle the company to a free baggage car, but such tickets must not be counted into the number required to entitle the company to a reduced party rate — that is, when the advance agents do not travel by the same train as the entire company. Col. Caven Has Had Experiences Colonel Joseph E. Caven, who is in San Francisco as manager of Lee Willard and his company, which opens at the American Theatre tomorrow afternoon, in the comedy, The Country Squire, is a unique and interesting character in the theatrical world. The colonel served in the Confederate army. He was. a distinguished officer on the staff of that brave and gallant soldier, General Albert Sidney Johnston, who fell in the midst of victory at Shiloh and whose remains were taken to Austin, Texas, the home .of General Johnston, where a modest piece of marble covers the remains of one of the bravest soldiers of that terrible conflict. In 1862 Colonel Caven was transferred to the regular Confederate establishment, and the remainder of his military service was in the command of General Jo Shelby. He went to Mexico with Shelby's army after the downfall of the Confederacy with the intention of joining Maximilian. The withdrawal of France from Mexico left the Confederate adventurers without a cause and they drifted back into "the States'' after amnesty was declared. Since the war Colonel Caven has been principally engaged in the newspaper business. For twenty-one years he was one of the owners of the Kansas City Times. Selling his interest he went to Texas, where he lost a fortune in the cattle business. Later he was on the New York Commercial Advertiser for a number of years. He was managing editor of the Denver Times until two years ago, since which he has been connected with the theatrical business in a managerial capacity. He is a man of delightful personality, striking appearance and distinguished bearing. He has had an unusually interesting career and talks entertainingly of men and matters of the past forty years. The colonel says when the war came between the North and South he had just turned 15. The border was aflame with steel and fire and ambuscade and slaughter. He flung himself into a band of soldiers with the Confederate flag for a banner and devils for riders. "What we did. we did." said the colonel, "and it was fearful. But it was war. When the Civil War closed we had no home — proscribed, hunted, shot at, driven away. We had to live. It was our country. The graves of our kindred were there. We refused to be banished by the carpet-bag government from our birthright, and so we hunted our hunters. Many called us desperadoes, but fate made us so." The colonel, in speaking of the Union army and the Confederate army, said : "The American has ever been a wayward and truant race. There are passions which seem to belong to them by some strong fatality by birth or blood. In every port, upon every island, shipwrecked and stranded upon the barren or golden shores of adventure, Americans can be found taking fate as it comes — a devil-may-care race — loving nothing so well as their own country, except an enterprise full of wonder and peril. Whatever is uppermost finds ready hands. No soldier is more daring than American soldiers ; the women have no more ardent and faithful lovers ; the armies no more heroic fighters, learning revolver craft quickest and surest, and dying, as they love to die, game to the last." Girl of the Golden West Will Be Grand Opera "Belasco, whose Girl of the Golden West you are setting to music, is the author also of the play, Mme. Butterfly. Perhaps it was he who proposed his other work to you as a subject for an opera." The query is from a recent Boston Transcript interview with the greatest living Italian composer. "No, no," Puccini broke in, "the choice of Fanciulla dell' West (that will be the title of the Italian version ; the literal translation would be La Fanciulla dell' Occidente d'Oro, a title which seemed not sufficiently theatrical for me) was quite casual. I was in New York and heard Belasco's play at the theatre one evening. I saw in it the elements of a passionate opera. Then I went to London, and had a copy of the piece sent to me there. On reading it, I was still more impressed, decided to set it to music. So it was in London that I made my final decision. I never changed my mind once it was made up. And then there is in Belasco's drama love, passion, and that atmosphere of freedom for which I have always kept an intimate predilection." "Then, maestro," I said, "we are to have The Girl of the Golden West?" "Certainly. Every shadow of doubt has now disappeared. I come now from a confer ence with Publisher Ricordi and my collaborator, Zangarini. We have already read and discussed together two acts of the libretto, and are satisfied with them. Here and there the librettist will have to make a few sacrifices, so that the action may be developed as I feel it musically in my mind ; but this is only a matter of adjustments of small account. With regard to the libretti of my operas I am most exacting. They, indeed, give me a great deal of trouble, and occupy much of my time. It is far easier, I find, to write the music for them. In composing to a libretto I do not generally take more than seven or eight months, and then in a couple of months the orchestration is completed." "But during this period you will be working very hard ?" "On the contrary. I work for a couple of hours in the morning, then again in the evening from 10 to 1 or 2 o'clock. The presence of some intimate friend affords me a pleasant diversion, when my mind takes a brief repose. I have always had such a facility in writing music that I experience the impression of never having worked in my life. The action is unfolded in the year 1849 in the famous El Dorado, the country of the gold fever in California, and the protagonist, Minnie, is a spirited, pure-minded being, who lives, a single woman, in the midst of a crowd of miners who frequent her tavern. Though intensely loved by the 'boys,' her heart has not yet been touched. One day, however, a stranger appears in her tavern, and Minnie is fascinated by him. Out of this meeting the action of the drama arises ; it is a drama of redemption and love, exhaling the acrid perfume of the wild California landscape. The opera will run in three acts, the last, however, differing considerably from the American original. Besides that of the protagonist, there will be two big parts — one for tenor ( the brigand lover?) and the other for baritone (the sheriff?) and about fifteen less important characters. The chorus, consisting entirely of men. will appear only in the last act." "What city will have the opportunity of pronouncing the first judgment on the new opera, and when? It is said you are thinking of a foreign theatre. Is that your real intention?" "I very much hope that the Fanciulla dell' West may be completed by the spring of 1909, and, if that should be possible, I do not conceal the fact that I should like it to be performed first of all in New York, because there it would certainly arouse lively interest, as the action takes place in California. Otherwise I should prefer Covent Garden, where the public has always shown great sympathy with my music, and where I should be able to count upon singers of the first rank." Princess Theatre Phone West 663 Ellis St., near Fillmore Samuel I.,overich, Manager Absolutely "Class A" Theatre liuilcling Matinee Saturday and Sunday. Tonight, All the Week . 1 The Melodious Eccentricity LITTLE CHRISTOPHER And George V. Hobart and Victor Herbert's Musical Travesty on the HammersteinConreid Grand Opera Rivalry THE SONG BIRDS With William Burress as Oscar Hammershine. Helen Bertram. Arthur Cunningham and all the favorites in the cast. Next Edwin Stevens in WANG Prices — Evenings, 25c. 50c. 75c; Matinees (except Sundays and Holidays), 25c and 50c. New Alcazar Theatre Tel. West 6036 Cor. Sutter and Sterner Sts. Belasco & Mayer, Owners and Managers Absolutely "Class A" Building Fifty-eighth Week of the New Alca Stock Company Commencing Monday, April 20th Martin V. Merle's Dramatic Romance Early Rome The Light Eternal Splendidly Cast — Superbly Produced azar s of Prices: Nights 25c to $1; matinee*. Saturday and Sunday, 25c to 50c. April 27 — THE HEIR TO THE HO OR AH ORPHEUM Ellis Street, Near Fillmore Absolutely Class "A" Theatre Week Beginning This Sunday Afternoon Matinee Every Day Advanced Vaudeville FLO IRWIN AND CO., in Mrs. Peckham'i Carouse; CLIFF GORDON; MARIE FLORENCE; COLE AND RAGS; BANKS BREAZEALE DUO; THREE LEIGHTONS; ORTH AND FERN; NEW ORFHETTK PICTURES and last week and tremendous hit of THE EMPIRE CITY QUARTETTE. 50c, 75c; EVENING PRICES — 10c, 2; Box Seats, $1. MATINEE PRICES (Except Sundays and Holidays), 10c, 25c, 50c. Phone West 6000 Ye Liberty Playhouse OAKLAND DIRECTION H. W. BISHOP Phone Oakland 73. To-night anil remainder of Week Matinees Saturday and Sunday Last times of the original Henry Milletfj Version of THE ONLY WAY With Landers Stevens as Svdnev Carton 9 Next Week Pudd'n-Head Wilson Prices: 25c, 50c, 75. Matinees: 25c, 50c. : AMERICAN THEATRE I'hone Market 381 Market St., Near Seventh THE HOUSE OF SAFETY AND COMFORT Last Two Nights. Matinee Tomorrow Frank E. Montgomery and May Keene In! the laugh-provoking farce comedy BROWN'S IN TOWN Special prices for this attraction: Evenings — $1.00, 75c, 50c and 25c. Matinees— 76c, 50c and 25c. No higher. Next Saturday matinee — Lee Willard In The Country Squire Seats now on sale. Central Theatre 8th and Market Phone Market 777 ERNEST E. HOWELL Prop, and Mgr. Souvenir Matinee Wednesdays Regular Matinees Sundays The Home of Melodrama NEXT WEEK A Grand Scenic Production of Tony the Bootblack A play founded on facts and dealing with that terrible secret society, the Black Hand. Popular Prices — 15c, 25c and 60c SHAW-GILLE, Inc. SHOW PRINTERS HENRY G. GILLE Manager 2257 Mission Street, near 19th. Telephone Market 1865