From Festivals to Organ Grinders: Race and Opera in Nineteenth-Century Chicago. by Katie J. Graber

Transcription

1 From Festivals to Organ Grinders: Race and Opera in Nineteenth-Century Chicago by Katie J. Graber

2 I. Street Types Sigmund Krausz, Street Types of Chicago University of Illinois at Chicago The University Library Jane Addams Memorial Collection

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8 Only a decade ago light operas were the fashion, and the streets were merry with their melodies. The bootblack whistled their catchy airs to the early morning, and the weary pedestrian quickened his steps at the sound of their inspiring measures. The gray-bearded man of affairs hummed them softly between the coming and going of customers in his office; the pink and dimpled baby in the crib sank into restful slumber, soothed by their rythmical [sic] cadences. But more pretentious, if less musical, compositions have laid hold of the public s fancy, and these touching bits of harmony, once so familiar to our every-day life, are heard no more even the street bands have left off playing Hayes and Root to toot Volkmann and Wagner. The organ-grinder alone clings to the tripping valse of Strauss.

9 All the way from sunny, vine-clad Italy she came.

10 All the way from sunny, vine-clad Italy she came. Straggling, unkempt hair, low forehead, prominent cheekbones and eyes that glimmer like halfextinct charcoal, she would do as a model for the witch of [Endor]. Repulsive in looks, she uses her accordion as an instrument of torture on an indulgent public, producing nothing but shrill, discordant sounds.

11 We have male and female organ-grinders, of all ages; organ-grinders with one arm and one leg; organ-grinders with humped backs, with deformed limbs, with stumps for hands, with wooden legs, with goiter, and numerous other monstrous natural developments; organgrinders blind in one eye and blind in both; organ-grinders with broods of dirty children swarming over the sidewalks; organ-grinders with sick and deformed children. They have taken possession of almost every corner of our busiest thoroughfares, until our streets begin to look as if some lazar-house had been emptied into them. All day long these wretched creatures fill the air with the din of their organs, which is reinforced with discordant noises from wheezy accordions, tuneless fiddles, and cracked hurdy-gurdies. Is there no relief? - Law and Hand-Organs, Chicago Tribune Jun. 14, 1875, p. 4.

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13 The organ-grinding repertoire of the year: popular airs, the words as well as the notes of which are familiar to the multitude. Then there must be a waltz or something lively, and at least one of the old and popular Irish melodies. A selection from the music of the season s most attractive thing in opera bouffe is sometimes thrown in. - Music for the Millions, Chicago Tribune Feb. 7, 1879.

14 Each piece must be especially arranged with a view to utilizing the capabilities of the instrument It is confidently expected that the effect of the 'tick, tick, - tick, tick,' and the sudden and unaccountable stoppage of the antique timepiece on the demise of its venerable possessor, will be very fine. - Music for the Millions, Chicago Tribune Feb. 7, 1879.

15 Each piece must be especially arranged with a view to utilizing the capabilities of the instrument It is confidently expected that the effect of the 'tick, tick, - tick, tick,' and the sudden and unaccountable stoppage of the antique timepiece on the demise of its venerable possessor, will be very fine. - Music for the Millions, Chicago Tribune Feb. 7, 1879.

16 'tick, tick, - tick, tick discordant noises from wheezy accordions, tuneless fiddles, and cracked hurdy-gurdies. nothing but shrill, discordant sounds

17 II. Street Cries and Dialect

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24 All that is required is for the Chief of Police to notify the patrolmen to warn newsboys, and the musical Italian with his ban-a-noooes, and the vender of straah-ber-ries, or kindling wood, or potatoes, or feeesh that they must use their tongues less and get some other way of advertising their wares - Silence the Street Cries, Chicago Tribune March 23, 1890.

25 Is that a hand-organ, Marchese? [Marchese: Italian nobility] Si, signor, responded the Marchese, in the soft accents of the tongue of Dante and Petrarch; e vero ecche uno hando-orghano ze bes' in ge viglia. [it really is a hand-organ the best in the village.] A hand-organ a real hand-organ! said the man in rapture, as the great tears rolled down his cheeks; and this here is a bona fide monkey, redeemable at the will of the beholder I mean not a flat monkey, but a hard monkey monkey! Ees, zat is ze monokey, signor. [yes, that is the monkey, Signor.] - Article 5 No Title, Chicago Tribune Aug. 10, 1879.

26 When pronouncing the names of his singers, [Grau s] heavy Czechoslovakian accent seemed to melt miraculously as it was known to do on such occasions into an exaggerated and showy Italian dialect. Since most of the singers present were Italian, Uranus [Crosby] thought it curious that Grau chose to introduce the women with French titles, while men s names were prefaced with Italian titles. -Eugene Cropsey, Crosby's Opera House, p. 67.

27 III. The Grand Opera Festival of 1885

28 Little idea can be given of the filthy and rotten tenements, the dingy courts and tumble-down sheds, the foul stables and dilapidated outhouses, the broken sewer-pipes, the piles of garbage fairly alive with diseased odors, and of the numbers of children filling every nook, working and playing in every room, eating and sleeping in every window-sill. Those who have observed operatic events for the last decade in America, have noted the gradual withdrawal of Grand Italian Opera from the enjoyment and patronage of the masses, and its limitation as a luxury to the favored few of wealth and fashion. - Agnes Sinclair Holbrook, from Hull House Maps and Papers (1895). - S.G. Pratt, ed., First Chicago Opera Festival, Official Program (1885).

29 Operas performed at the 1885 Chicago Grand Opera Festival: Gioachino Rossini, Semiramide Giacomo Meyerbeer, L Africaine Charles-Francois Gounod, Mireille [or: Mirella] Charles-Francois Gounod, Faust Gaetano Donizetti, Linda di Chamounix Gaetano Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor Friedrich von Flotow, Martha Carl Maria von Weber, Der Freischütz Vincenzo Bellini, La Sonnambula Giuseppe Verdi, Aïda Giuseppe Verdi, Il Trovatore Giuseppe Verdi, Rigoletto Richard Wagner, Lohengrin

30 Italian: Gioachino Rossini, Semiramide Gaetano Donizetti, Linda di Chamounix Gaetano Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor Giuseppe Verdi, Aïda Giuseppe Verdi, Il Trovatore Giuseppe Verdi, Rigoletto Vincenzo Bellini, La Sonnambula French: Giacomo Meyerbeer, L Africaine [Italian/German characteristics] Charles-Francois Gounod, Mireille Charles-Francois Gounod, Faust [story from Goethe] German: Carl Maria von Weber, Der Freischütz Richard Wagner, Lohengrin Friedrich von Flotow, Martha [French characteristics]

31 Madame Fursch-Madi: the German aptitude for music in addition to all the verve and animation that are generally conceded as essentially French qualities and prerogatives Thus the solid qualities, in the musical sense, of the one race seemed united with the dramatic talents of the other. - S.G. Pratt, ed., First Chicago Opera Festival, Official Program (1885).