Edwin and his Emilies ... or, Mr Wilson and his wives

 

Yes, it's that time again. My desktop is bulging with oldtime folk, gathered from around the internet ... so it's time for a clean out ...

Let's begin in Australia, for thats where the grave of the actor/singer/comedian known as Edwin BRETT can be found. At Bateman's Bay, New South Wales.

Theatre historians of NSW, he could do with a little wash and brush up!

The story doesn't begin in Australia, of course. Eddie was an Englishman. Born Edward Bernard WILSON in Shoreditch 3 December 1866, the son of tailor Peter Wilson and his wife Charlotte née Brett. After early life in an office, he took to the stage and I see him in 1888 playing a policeman, a Major-General and a butler in Mark Melford's Kleptomania and Turned Up company. When the troupe played the dramatic The Squire's Wife he took the role of the old Squire (with a death scene). Kleptomania came to London's Novelty Theatre and provided the young character actor with his metropolitan debut. He next went on tour as a Frenchman in Human Nature, played the villain in Robinson Crusoe at Eastbourne and in 1891, in Henry Dundas's Jack in the Box ... In the company was a young lady dubbed 'Emily Constance' [Emily CUSTANCE], and they were married September 19. They spent Christmas in panto as villain and Princess in Dick Whittington at the Brighton Aquarium ...

More of the same followed. I see him as Hatchett in van Biene's tour of Blue-Eyed Susan, in The Trumpet Call, The Plunger as a comic tramp, in Milton Bode's panto (Abanazar, with wife, now 'Custance'), supporting van Biene as Dickson in The Broken Melody ... and on 4 March 1894, Emily gave birth to Marjorie Wilson Brett.

In 1894 he played the star role of Captain Coddington in the tour of In Town, and in 1896 he was Pilkington Jones in Bode's Gentleman Joe. The role of the 'heroine' was taken by Miss Emmeline ORFORD. I presume they began their cohabitation during the tour. While the tour ran on and on, the real 'Mrs Brett' posted their five year-old wedding announcement in the trade press. She had no chance. The unofficial marriage would last for half a century. 

Miss Hook of Holland

Alderman Fitzwarren ('Staring me in the face', 'A funny kind of feeling') at Stratford East, and back to Gentleman Joe with Emmeline, until they went into Bode's next production Orlando Dando as Jonathan Q Jefferson an American millionaire ('I guess he guessed wrong'). And in 1899, when they went on the halls with an act A Ten to One Chance, they were announed as a pair. Emily, defiantly billed as Mrs Edwin Brett, was playing In Old Kentucky, and at Christmas Edwin was giving his Abanazar at Glasgow. The next year it was Dublin, while they swapped their music hall scena for another, On the Quiet.... 

In 1908, the couple took a two-years trip to Australia for J C Williamson (Hook in Miss Hook of Holland, Sergeant Brue, The Belle of Mayfair, pantomimes). They would made five Australian trips in all. . On returning to Britain they went on the road in George's Dance's A Waltz Dream (Count Lothar, Fifi), played more halls, toured variety, he played in High Jinks and The Boy and they toured together in a piece called Petticoat Fair with Walter Passmore (1919). 

In between Australian visits, I spy him in 1925 touring in Patricia, in 1927 in Oscar Asche's The Swordsman (Planchet) ...  In Australia they appeared in musical comedy (The Maid of the Mountains) and pantomime and as late as 1931, he played in Sons o'Guns.

In the 1930s, Edwin appeared in several motion pictures (His Royal Highness, Harmony Row, Diggers in Blighty).

In 1948, the couple made a final visit, from their home in South Benfleet, to the shores of Australia. They were, they said, at last, going to settle there.  Edwin died 20 July 1950. Emmeline -who had finally been billed as 'Mrs Brett' correctly after Emily's death on 12 November 1937 -- survived him, and died in Cairns 1 June 1955.

The Cuban Sylph or, a birthday brainteaser

 

I thought I'd have a quiet day today after the efforts required in hurdling the 78th fence on life's racecourse yesterday.

But, of course, I had to have my little stroll through ebay with my wake-up drink (peppermint tea). And I came on this ...

Tiens! A Cuban hermaphrodite. With bow and no arrow ...

I didn't know the lady, but I thought my friend Kevin (who is into that old business of boys dressed up as girls and vice versa) would be interested, so I had a wee delve. 

Well, there isn't much about her on the web. One can drag up a list of stage credits for her without too much trouble. But about her personal life, just a couple of tales, most prominently about her death and the fight over her legacy. This is one of the longer efforts.

M'lle Marie Zoe (1840-1885)

Actress and dancer M’lle Marie Zoe was born in Havana, Cuba, where she first performed in 1854. She debuted in the U.S. in 1855 and was billed as “The Cuban Sylph.” She specialized in breeches parts. Marie bought a house in Hempstead, Long Island, and moved there with her husband, dance master Ben Yates. In 1885 Yates claimed his wife’s mind had been “affected” and had Marie Zoe committed to the Mineola Insane Asylum. He remained undeterred by the complaints of abuse and neglect filed against it. Mrs. Yates died within a few months. Her two sisters from Philadelphia arrived and told Yates that Marie had promised them the house; they tried to evict him. Just then a will suddenly appeared among the papers of a deceased judge, stating that Mrs. Yates had left her entire estate to her husband. In this photo the young Marie Zoe poses in a military costume, complete with a mustache.

 

Well, here is one biog from her lifetime ...

And here an obit. You will note it quotes the article above on birth details. Which are incorrect. Her husband or 'husband' survived her, so the 'facts' clearly had his blessing. I would rather think he invented them.

One. Her real name was clearly not 'Marie Zoe'. Two. She was apparently the daughter of a Cuban gentlemen and an American lady. They were probably married, as 'two sisters' (unnamed) surface at legacy-grabbing time.  She always said she was born in Cuba, so maybe she was 'The Cuban Sylph' sounds uncomfortably, to me, like Cubas, the famous dancer.  Thirdly: the natal event did not happen in 1840, and she was not fourteen at the time of her soi-disant debut at the Tacon Theatre. Add a round decade, perhaps? 

Isabella Cubas

Was she the danseuse who appeared at the Broadway Theatre in 1854 with a Mons Wiethoff? And who made 'a great impression by her graceful dancing' in A Midsummer Night's Dream? They played with the Durand-Lyster opera, she dancing Fenella in Masaniello. The article above would have us believe not. 

However, in 1862 I see 'Marie Zoe' travelling with the Ravel troupe and Mr B Yates, and in 1863 the 'Brilliant professional triumphs of the fascinating Spanish danseuse Mlle Zoe' are billed at the Washington Varietes on Pennsylvania Avenue, alongside the champion lady jig dance 'Mlle Lizetta' (Betty from Brooklyn?) and Professor Yates's Ballet Troupe of Female Loveliness.  Mr Yates is the man who would become Mr Zoe. And it seems that they were married (if they ever were) around this time.

Well, I have failed in winkling out the veritable details on Zoe, but I've utterly undressed the professor, of which more anon.

I see her thereafter at Jane English's Theatre (Laura Keene's) in her new scenic ballet Diana, Goddess of the Chase, but she had found the vehicle which was to serve her from dancer to dancer-actress: Madame Celeste's famous vehicle The French Spy, which allowed her to go through disguises female and male .. and featured what became her 'spesh': the 'terrific sword combat'. Her 'accidents' were reported regularly.

She became a star act, touring the best dates with her vehicle. And Mr Yates. While a tightrope-trapezist person put herself forward as 'Mlle Zoe' 'queen of the air' from Binghampton. And she added new dramas and burlesques (Susan in Black-Eyed Susan, Bertha the Sewing Machine Girl or Death at the Wheel, Nita or Life Among the Gipsies or A Woman's Devotion, as Vanderdecken in The Flying Dutchman, Esmeralda, The Mountain Devil or The Dumb Girl of Genoa &c) to her repertoire ...  'Mlle Zoe, the legitimate successor to Mlle Celeste' was still touring The French Spy, or the Battle of Algiers with its 'grand battle scene' in which she fought what was now 'a triple broadsword combat' with a Mons Latour (?Mr Castle from Connecticut?) ...

Around 1880, she disappeared from the lists ('famous as a swordsman and a dancer' has been living for five years comfortably in Long Island'), and it was eventually reported she had been consigned to the Mineola asylum ... where she was reported as endlessly going through her famous role and the combat ... she died, 'aged 54'?  Yes, she was 40 in Queens in the 1870 census, 50 in 1880 ... oh and in 1870 they both said they were born in New York ... sigh ... they had second thoughts before 1880.

The couple's home in Hempstead Village, Long Island had been bought by 'Zoe' in her earning days. And she and her mentor-trainer-husband-manager, Ben Yates, lived there until she had to be institutionalised, died, and the ugly sisters tried to get him evicted. I'd hoped that the probate records or the court procedures might have revealed Zoe's real name, but alas ...

Ben. I have done better with Ben. His fibs were a little less opaque. Ben, in spite of all protestations to the contrary, was English. He was born in deepest Surrey around 1826, one of the multiple offsprings of a glass cutter named Alexander Yates and his wife, Fanny.  They can all be seen (or most of them) in the London Road in the 1841 census. Apparently they (or most of them) emigrated the following year (22 July 1842). Alexander became a 'clerk' and died 15 August 1857.  By that time, Ben was already 'dancing'. Teaching and performing ('with Mary Charles, Mary Partington hmmmm) ...

Ben survived his wife by half a dozen years and died in Lexington Hospital 11 June 1891.

So ...

There we go. Come on historians! Genealogists! Find the ugly sisters, the Cuban father ...

I'm off for a delicious Henri Bardouin pastis, courtesy of my neighbours ...

Amazing how long you can make a birthday last!  Here's tomorrow ..!

Knüst in May: the Valli sisters

 

These photos came to hand today, so I thought I'd enshrine them in a little article of my manufacture from pre-Internet days ..

VALLI, Valli [KNÜST, Valli Marguerite Alice] (b Berlin, 11 February 1888; d London, 3 November 1927).

 Daughter of a Swiss merchant, brought up in London, with her two sisters Lulu Valli and Ida Valli, Valli Valli had a career as a child performer which included an appearance (with Lulu) at Berlin's Theater Unter den Linden in a British production of Morocco Bound (1895; `a notable feature was the remarkably clever song and dance of two talented children, the sisters Valli'), another as Alice in Alice in Wonderland, and the creation of the part of Mundel in Bach’s opera The Lady of Longford at Drury Lane in 1896 (‘a very youthful operatic vocalist’) amidst a number of otherwise straight dramatic engagements. Although she continued in later life to play in non-musical pieces, her adult career favoured the musical theatre, beginning with a small rôle in Véronique in London (replacing sister Lulu) and in New York (1905-6, Denise) and continuing through London take-overs in A Waltz Dream (Franzi) and The Merry Widow (Sonia), through a period in revue (Mrs Merry in Oh Indeed! 1908, Empire) to another George Edwardes rôle, this time in New York, the part of Lady Binfield created for Edna May in Kitty Grey (1909).

Valli Valli

She appeared in further Edwardes pieces in America (Alice in The Dollar Princess) and in Paris (title-rôle in La Veuve joyeuse revival) and also in vaudeville and the British music-halls (After the Honeymoon w Seymour Hicks, Lincke’s Am Hochzeitsabend as In a Mirror w Pope Stamper Palace Theatre 3 May 1909), but after her marriage to American music publisher Louis Dreyfus, she made the later part of her career in America. There she was seen in a botched version of Jean Gilbert's Polnische Wirtschaftcalled The Polish Wedding (1912, Marga) which failed to make it to Broadway, in Weber and Fields's Roly-Poly (1912), The Purple Road (1913, Empress Josephine, later Wanda), The Queen of the Movies (Die Kino-Königin 1914, Celia Gill), The Lady in Red (Die Dame in Rot, 1915, Sylvia Stafford) and Miss Millions (1919, ingénue Mary Hope). She was also seen on Broadway in The Cohan Revue of 1916 (1916, Jane Clay).

Sister Lulu, [Lulu Marianne Bertha KNÜST] (b London 17 June 1886; d London 12 May 1964) who was seen as early as 1894 in The House That Jack Built (Miss Truth) at the Opera Comique, appeared as an adult as Miss Yost and deputized for Marie Studholme as Cicely in London’s The School Girl (1903) and later took over Billie Burke's rôle of Mamie and played it on Broadway (1904, without its big song `My Little Canoe' which had been appropriated by the star) as well as appearing in such diverse pieces as The Silver Slipper (1902, tour), The Orchid (1905, t/o Thisbe) at the Gaiety, The Maid and the Motor Man (1907, Kate Wicks) and Véronique.

As for little Ida [Maude Ida Fredrika KNÜST], who had done so well as a child when she appeared as Mr Hook in Frank Curzon's children's production of Miss Hook of Holland, in Little Black Sambo and Little White Barbara (1904, Topsy) and in the Gaiety Theatre’s Two Naughty Boys (1906, Agnes), she muddied the waters by changing her name to ‘Phyllis Maude’ when she reached years of discretion, and as Phyllis Maude she apparently worked in America in supporting rôles.

'The female tenor': you gotta have a gimmick!

 

MELA, Eugenia (b Palermo c 1846; d Isola della Scala February 1879)

 

Gimmicks rarely work in the world of serious music. Signorina Mela was (or was made) a gimmick.

 

Eugenia Mela was born in Palermo. But she was not ‘Sicilian’ as one Italian book insists; she was born there while her father was fulfilling an engagement at the local Teatro Carolino, over the 1846-7 season. Her father was named Vincenzo Mela, he came from Isola della Scala, according to local records, was born 27 October 1821, and he first attempted a career as a bass singer. He turns up at the San Carlo (Mose in Egitto), Cuneo, Pavia and Modena in 1844 and 1845, before moving on to Palermo (I Puritani, Le due foscari, Leonora, Chiara di Rosembergh) as third bass. Then he decided to go in for conducting and composing instead, although he occasionally still got up to air his voice in concert or even a show.

He rolled out a number of stage works, from 1853, during his years as a provincial musician (Il Feudatario, L’Alloggio militare, Il Convento di San Nicola, La Testa di Bronzo, Cristoforo Colombo) and, in July 1865, a little piece (prologue and one act) called La Casino di campagna, was given at Milan’s Teatro Re by the local Società Musicale. The tenor role of Balden was played by his teenaged (?) daughter Eugenia.

Eugenia had a contralto range. So what was unusual about a contralto playing a pants part? And playing it, apparently, with more success than Mela had had to date. The ‘gimmick’ was that Eugenia – making, it was said, her first stage appearance -- was billed by her father as ‘the female tenor’.

 

Soon after, the Melas left Italy. It is said that Vincenzo was something of a political activist and departure was necessary. It also seemed to fit with his plans. They turned up in Paris, and Eugenia, with her ambisextrous air and her seemingly ambisextrous voice became a fashionable item in certain private (not to mention wealthy and social) circles. She was to be heard in the salons of such as the Duke Pozzo di Borgo, the railway magnate Emile Pereire, and at the musical meetings of Rossini and Naudin, ‘dressed in slashed velvet pourpoint with a rapier at her side’. The fashionable world buzzed. And where fashion buzzed, Bagier of the Théâtre des Italiens had an ear. He hired Mlle Mela. And publicity flew. ‘She has astonished her own natives at Milan, and is now about to do the same for the natives at Paris. Her voice is a pure tenor …’.

Naudin

 

Of course, it was nothing of the sort. It was a plain, ordinary lowish contralto. The ‘female tenor’s’ trick was that she took her chest tones up, like the 20th century’s ‘bash’ singer, to an extreme height. Once the Parisian musical critics began to hear her, the word was out: ‘je me demande si cet organe durera longtemps ou, du moins, si la poitrine resistera’.

 

The engagement of Mlle Mela didn’t make for unanimity. Mme Grossi, engaged to sing Isabella in L’Italiana in Algieri, refused to play opposite the ‘female tenor’, and the young Carolina Zeiss took the role instead, with fellow Belgian, Agnesi, in support. 

 

‘Mlle Eugénie Mêla ne serait rien moins qu'un phénomène, ni 'homme, ni femme, ni soprano …’

 

‘Commençons par une certaine affiche monstre, annonçant la grande exhibition, au Théâtre-Italien, de la chanteuse-ténor, Mlle Mêla  … femme à la barbe  ... Mme de Girardin ayant écrit spirituellement que l'Alboni avait avalé un rossignol, ma première pensée, en entendant Mlle Mêla, a été que cette jeune personne ténorisante avait mangé Nicolini’

 

The publicity and the gimmick rebounded. The Belgians got fine notices. Eugenia did not: ‘Mlle Mela a débuté l'autre jour aux Italiens, dans l'Italiana in Algeri, et y a subi un échec très complet. Sommes-nous débarrassés des phénomènes? J'ai bien peur que non. Voici qu'il nous arrive une Miss Minken, surnommée la femme Mazeppa’. 

 

‘L'apparition de Mlle Mêla à titre de ténor, dans l'Italiana in Algerie, n'a été, il faut bien en convenir, qu'une plaisanterie vocale’.

 

Bagier must have made some major concessions to get the chouchou of the camp salons to play (albeit disastrously) at his house. When the season was over, he staged a single performance of Il Casino di Campagna with Eugenia in her original role. ‘A very poor opera’, concluded the press.

Deméric-Lablache

But fashion is fashion, and there are always a few who love a gimmick. In May, Julius Benedict announced her (‘first in England’) for his grandiose concert, a Mrs Monk hired her to sing with Titiens and Deméric-Lablache at a posh party at her Eaton Square home, Mme Gayrard Pacini, who had appeared with Eugenia in Paris concert, displayed her to London at her June concert. She was still plugging the ‘female tenor’ angle, and sang ‘M’appari’. She appeared at the Signori Pezze and Traventi’s do, chez the Marchioness of Downshire (9 July 1866), at Signor Franceschi’s matinee at a private home, duetting as a tenor. She was no more a top-liner and a billable artist, just a novelty item, like a comic song in a classic concert.

Eugenia Mela

She was back in Paris for more concerts in 1867, and its seems the Faubourg had not deserted her. Nor had her filial duty. ‘La fashion du noble faubourg et des diverses aristocraties nobiliaires et financières des autres quartiers de la capitale, avait tenu à honorer de sa présence le concert donné par Mlle Mêla, jeune et jolie cantatrice italienne … Comme à son habitude, Mlle Mela a chanté avec beaucoup de goût l'ariette Casino di Campagna. Mlle Mela a clôturé cette charmante et agréable soirée par une mazurka de la Farfalla, de la composition de son père, qui a été bissée …’ She also sang his ‘Salve Regina’, and the Traviata duet … as a man. (16 March 1867). At her own concert, she joined Tagliafico and her father in the famous ‘Pappatacci’. And the Parisian press dared to wonder ‘why was she so suddenly ejected from the Italiens?’. Two-faced lot.

 

She returned to Britain in 1868. I see her singing at Brentwood with ‘Florence de Courcey’, at one of Madame Puzzi’s concerts, at the West London Rifles concert with Fanny Holland and Bessie Palmer and, for goodness sake, at the Philharmonic Society singing alongside Edith Wynne (Gazzaniga’s ‘La morte de giusto’), at George Tedder’s cheerful do, for pianist Marian Buels, for Ganz singing his ‘Te cerco in ogni fior’, at Ernest Mottes’s …

 

And that is the end. I suppose that with Italy having been satisfactory revolutionised, it was safe to go home. Vincenzo to his career as minor musician, and Eugenia … well, I don’t see the ‘female tenor’ in the sheets any more. Until a wee notice of her death, in 1879.

 

Vincenzo Mela died 1 November 1897. Someone must have thought highly of him, for he has a street named after him in his home town. And someone has deemed it worthy to do a scholarly bibliography and worklist, on his behalf, on the web. Not so, his daughter. By whom, I suspect, he didn’t do so well. A gimmick can be dangerous to the health. She might have made a nice wee local career as a contralto.

 

The publicity around the ‘tenoressa’ has got her into modern reference works as a freak. Just for the advertising. She was undoubtedly way below Mrs Howard Paul and her imitation of Sims Reeves in posing as a ‘female tenor’, but the gimmick advertising stuck. For a couple of years. And then it was over. And then the ‘voix rauque’ of Mlle Mela was heard no more.

AROUND THE WORLD... in blackface?

 

I came upon this photo today, in the depths of ebay. The vendor had just labelled it 'Italian dancers to be identified'. I turned it over. Lille 30 April 1877. 

Giovannina PARMIGIANI 'première danseuse du théâtre de Milan' and Almerinda PASTORE 'première danseuse du Théâtre-Lyrique' ...

The photo was taken during a long-touring production of LE TOUR DU MONDE and, yes, Parmigiani is blacked up (at least I think she is) to dance the rôle of 'La Negresse' ...

The spectacle had been played at the Porte-Saint-Martin a couple of years before the tour which united our two star dancers ..

and it would make regular returns to Paris thereafter ...

Le Monde artiste wrote, on the occasion of the show's appearance as Saint-Étienne (4 July 1877): 'Que dire, en effect, sure les gracieuses et charmantes Mlles Pastore et Parmigiani, dont le succès pendant un mois a été en s'accentuant de jour en jour, et poue lesquelles la sirée d'adieu n'a été qu'une longue suite d'ovations parsemées de bouquets.

Qu dire! si ce n'est pas le pas de cheval et les variations sur les pointes dansées par Mlle Pastore nous ont permis d'applaudir et apprécier le beau talents de cette jeune et jolies choréographe

Que dire de Mlle Parmigiani, une négresse aux dents blanches, do la légèreté et la souplesse se faisaient admirer pas ses pas d'une vitesse vraiment étourdissante ...'

Mlle Pastore went on to become danseuse étoile at Brussels (1890), the Porte Saint-Martin (1890), the Châtelet (Cendrillon 1891, 'un ballet éblouissant' in Mme L'Amirale 1892, Le Tour du Monde 1893). I note that when she crosses to Brussels, in 1890, she gives her name in the records as simply 'dite' Linda Almerinda Pastore. So who knows what her real name was!

Mlle Parmigiani appears in the lists as prima ballerina at Bordeaux, Nantes (Robert le diable) ..  and at Lille in 1879 billed as 'première danseus du Théâtre de la Scala de Milan' .. I see the funeral of her sister Augustine in 1882, and several choreographic credits .. and this splendid article from Cannes ..

Anyway, I thought this photo should be saved and identified ...

ART in little Oxford (NZ): a couple of wows!

 

Sunday is usually a quiet day at Gerolstein.  A little writing, a little racing, perhaps a visit from my dearest friends, Robin and Geraldine, for a bottle and a chat ... of an often horsey flavour ...  oh! how often have the corpses of those who 'run' harness racing in New Zealand strewn, pogniarded, my living room carpet (carried home from Afghanistan by my father ....)

But this Sunday was not quiet.  Firstly and foremostly, the day was needed to get our heads in order for the morrow, when the building we signed up for 27 February 2023 is scheduled to begin to rise from its concrete slab. A fortnight short of a year ..  more on this subject, at length, very soon. Illustrated.

Secondly, our neighbours, the adorable family Schad, were having a barbecue in honour of eldest son Lloyd (who used, once, to be our boy farm-helper; now succeeded by his younger brothers) and his new bride. Alas, bride and groom clearly had a long wedding night, for after an hour they hadn't yet appeared ... and we had to go to .. but the kids (whose?) were having a ball in the hay ..

Thirdly. I don't go much to galleries, museums, art shows etc, any more. Let's face it, I don't go anywhere that requires walking or, worse, standing around much any more. We went to the Christchurch Art Show last year, to support a couple of friends, in a horrid space called Wigwam or Teepee. Never again. The quality of the art was, to be polite, hugely uneven; the judging ludicrous ...

How dare I? Well, in my time, I have been a newspaper, radio, TV etc critic and writer (mostly in England, but also Europe, Australia) not only of theatre, opera, music, restaurants but .. yes! of art. My home is decorated with paintings from the 18th to the 21st century, from wholly figurative to all but. My most recent purchases were from Canterbury artist Carol Holland a couple of years ago. 

Well, today we went to a small (hurrah!) exhibition mounted at the Oxford Art Gallery. In one small room, the Oxford people had gathered together a small (chosen) selection of mostly technically assured and in a couple of cases, truly eye-catching paintings and sculptures. No need to wade through the extraneous paid-for dross at the Canterbury Art Show.

And they served me chardonnay and found me a loo ... it was all so much friendlier. Too many speeches, but hey! there always are.  OK so each of the three judges awarded a Merit Prize. I wouldn't have picked them, myself ... a coaster mat design of flowers, a photographic landscape, and a very neat depiction of automobile parts with reflection ..

For me, there were two items way above the rest. One got the supreme award. (And sold instantly!)

I told the painter it recalled the waters of Zürich to me. She just grinned conspiratorily. I know she's never been to Zürich. But I have ...

The other was a 'sculpture' and was in a class of its own. If I were 30 or 40, instead of 80, I'd have forked out the $7k asking price. This is Serious Art ...  

 

Bother the Wooden Horse of Troy, this was the more like 'Le Cheval de bronze'. What else is there to say.

Anyway, home now ... oh milord, TOMORROW! (as Andrea McArdle once yodelled)

PS: I subsequently bought the horse head, and it now graces my verandah ...

The prolific Herr Grobe of Wilmington, Delaware ...

Desktop clearing time. What to file and what to bin.   Some stuff has been sitting there way too long. Such as Herr Grobe ... I was lured into investigating him by a couple of very pretty music covers ...

It's getting into E T Paull country, where the rule is mostly 'the prettier the cover, the more trivial the music'. I like these covers very much better than the Paull ones ...

So I let myself be hooked into investigating. Well, Grobe came to America  from Saxony (born c 1815), 27 May 1839, described as a 'bookseller'. He got a teaching job in Wilmington and apparently ran a music shop. And he composed. Endlessly. He reminds me of Britain's Ezra Read, in his outpourings of sheet music, often tenuously linked to national events, such as  the pieces above, patriotic moments,  buzzwords, or arrangements of other people's popular songs. At his death it was said he had published 2,000 pieces ... that was supposed to be to his credit. Quantity. I don't know about the quality, but I ha'e me doots.

Wikiplegia finds him, for heaven's sake, worthy of an entry. I wonder why. Anyway, I append an biographical note from the local press and leave it there

Oh dear, THREE thousand! Well, some of them have survived in collections and catalogues, mostly to my surprise, without illustrated covers ... I wonder how many copies they sold. It was an era where music of any kind sat on pianos alongside Mozart, Beethoven or ... Ezra Read. 

Does that say 38 cents with the coloured cover and 25 cents without?

Well, I leave it to Bryan Kesselman to try some Grobe (I can no longer play, with my few remaining live fingers) and tell me what it is like. Shall I get a pleasant surprise?  I doubt it, but who knows?

Oh, Charles died 20 October 1879 of a ruptured aorta.

PS Bryan has just pointed out that the Port Royal piece is numberd 'opus 1,385' .... omigrobe! And I have just unearthed tbis example of earlyish Grobiana ... 

I see he 'Saluted' a whole stack of places. With variations. 

Prolific ....

too good an event to miss!

Opus 1500!

Oh dear. Was there another one ...with a grammar problem!