On leaving Cork we had to return to Dublin, where, in consequence of enormous success, we were called upon to give an extra week. We finished up on the following Saturday evening with a performance of Wallace's Maritana, in the Italian language, to a house literally packed to the very roof. Ravelli sang the part of "Don Cæsar;" and being encored in "Let me like a soldier fall," gave it the second time in English.
We afterwards went to Liverpool, when suddenly Mdme. Minnie Hauk, without a moment's warning, left the Company. Two days afterwards I received a medical certificate from Dr. Weber, to the effect that the lady was in a precarious state of health, and utterly voiceless, so that it was necessary for her to go to a certain mountain in Switzerland to recover her health. It was the month of December.
I afterwards ascertained that en route she had sung at three concerts for her own benefit.
We next visited Nottingham, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Brighton, etc., concluding at the last-named town just before Christmas with a memorable performance of Maritana, when the curtain had to be raised no less than five times.
On the termination of the season we returned to London, where the Company disbanded for the holidays, my Italian chorus being now sent back to Italy.
It costs £8 to get an Italian chorus singer from his native land to England; and this seems money wasted when one reflects that just as good voices are to be found in this country as in Italy. If such a thing as a permanent Opera could be established in London arrangements might be made by which it would look for its chorus to one or more of our numerous musical academies, which at present seem to exist and to be multiplied solely to deluge the country with music teachers, whose keen competition lessens daily the value of their services. When the Royal Academy of Music was established the Earl of Westmorland, who presided at the first meeting of the promoters, said, in reference to the expected advantages of such an institution, that he hoped to see the day when music lessons would be given in England at the rate of 6d. an hour.
A nice time music teachers will have when ten hours' work a day will give them an income of 30s. a week! But what, if not music teachers, are the pupils of our four leading musical academies to become? The Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall School of Music, and Dr. Wylde's London Academy of Music must send out annually some thousand or two well-taught musicians who have nothing to turn to but teaching.
Except among the richer classes almost everyone who studies music ends by teaching music to someone else. Such is his fate whatever may have been his ambition. What, except a music teacher, or an orchestral player, or, by rare good luck, a concert singer, is he or she to become? In other countries there is an established musical theatre with which the recognized Academy of Music is in connection, and which in some measure depends upon it as upon a feeder. The students of the Paris Conservatoire sing in the chorus of the Grand Opera; and those students who gain prizes, or otherwise distinguish themselves, obtain an appearance, as a matter of course, at the great Lyrical Theatre, for which they may be said to have been specially trained. In England, however, we occupy ourselves exclusively with the teaching of music, never in any manner dealing with the question what the students are to do when their period of study is at an end. In other countries there is together with one musical academy one Opera-house. Here we have four musical academies and not one permanent operatic establishment.
Such is the national mania for establishing schools of music that a few years ago some £200,000 was collected for establishing a new musical academy with, for the most part, the same professors as those already employed at existing academies; and an attempt, moreover, was made to shelve Sir Arthur Sullivan (who may yet, it is to be hoped, compose an opera), by placing him at the head of this quite superfluous establishment. More recently Sir Arthur refused to allow himself to be shackled in the manner contemplated; and not many years afterwards another composer, Mr. A. C. Mackenzie, who has already proved himself capable of writing fine dramatic music, was put on the retired list in similar fashion. Mozart, Rossini, Auber, Bellini, Verdi studied at no academy; and my friend Verdi was rejected from the Conservatorio of Milan as incapable of passing the entrance examination. We, however, hope everything from music schools though we have nothing to offer our composers or our singers when, in a theoretical sort of way, they have once been formed. The money wasted in establishing the Royal College of Music might have been usefully spent in founding a permanent lyrical theatre for which our young composers might have worked, on whose boards our young vocalists might have sung. Thus only, by practice in presence of the public, can composers and singers perfect themselves in their difficult art. It should be remembered too that for operatic music the best school is an operatic establishment where fine performances can be heard.
The unhappy students, meanwhile, receive but small benefit from their tuition, seeing that they are simply turned out to swell the ranks of indigent teachers. No capital in Europe has anything like so many music schools as London, and no capital in Europe is so entirely without the means of offering suitable work to students who have once qualified themselves for performing it. We have some twenty or thirty theatres in London without one school of acting; which is possibly a mistake. But it is not such a bad mistake as to have four large music schools without one lyrical theatre. Nothing can be more preposterous. Yet there is at this moment more chance of a fifth music school being established than of an Opera-house being founded at which the shoals of composers and vocalists shot out every year would have an opportunity of pursuing their profession.