No 8 — November 1977 Edited by Michael Walters
FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE
Brooklyn, N.Y. 31 Aug.1977 Dear Michael. ....This typewriter is needed, and I have to go, but I would like to mention that I saw the opening performance of The Pirates of Penzance which you mentioned in your last newsletter. I personally thought the handling of the work a little sketchy, but the cast was excellent, I'd pay 15 dollars to watch Henry Price pick his nose, much less sing (perfectly) Frederic. Fred Billings has a comic timing and a diction all too rare in the American theatre. I don't remember if I mentioned that LOOM produced a rather nice if slightly trimmed production of Utopia. 1 will be looking forward to see if they will now take a stab at Duke. Beverly Sills & Alan Titus will be doing The Merry Widow in April. Something to get me through the winter months. My best, and write soon, STANLEY GERMAN
Littlehampton, Sussex 23 Aug. 1977
Dear Michael, So far as I an aware Gräfin Dubarry is never performed these days, and I certainly know of no recording. However, I have little doubt that Max Schönherr, for example, would have performed some of the music from the original operetta during his days as conductor of the Vienna Radio Orchestra. The other week Radio 2's Sunday evening "Glamorous Nights" included what was described as a selection from "Die Dubarry" for orchestra. It included nothing that I recognised, was wholly in waltz–tempo (after the introduction) and was orchestrated in a manner much more like that of Millöcker than Mackeben. I am wondering, therefore, whether it was, perhaps, a Vienna Radio recording of the waltz on themes from Gräfin Dubarry. Incidentally, the most recent Chappell score of Die Dubarry is a revised version by Eric Maschwitz, with music further adapted and augmented by Bernard Grun, and with a 1933 copyright date. So this must depart even further from Millöcker, presumably. On this last point, however, it is interesting to read what Grun himself writes about Die Dubarry in his Kulturgeschicte der Operette (1961, my translation):
Despite Girardi's 'natural verve', Gräfin Dubarry could achieve only 17 performances and had full half a century to wait until it succeeded – albeit in a form which retained little of the original version. The feeble, confused book of Zell and Genée was replaced by one no stronger and about as confused, and the score was subjected to revision by dismemberment. "I gulped the Millöcker music down", the musical arranger remarked in an unappealing metaphor, "and then spat it out again completely new". He thereby concealed that he had included extraneous compositions, added some more akin to the world of Kálman & Oscar Straus, transformed the lovely "Dream Waltz" from Der Feldprediger into an uncouth march, made a pathetic ballad from the brilliant Feldprediger march, & more similar sins – which nevertheless did not prevent the Berlin public enjoying the musical–dramatic expectoration 300 times consecutively. In Vienna, where they had a sounder feel for that sort of stylistical contrariety, the new Dubarry wasted away after 35 performances.
In conclusion, you may be interested to see a copy of the original of "I give my Heart" as it appears in Gräfin Dubarry – though, of course, a vocal piano score cannot indicate the orchestral changes. Note particularly the "etwas schneller" at the point in "I give my heart" where we go into the cloying refrain. Yours sincerely, ANDREW LAMB.
Web page created 6 June 1999