Edouard de Reszke: The Career of a Famous Basso. 1855-1917 Author(s): Herman Klein Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 58, No. 893 (Jul. 1, 1917), pp. 301-302 Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/908418 Accessed: 30-01-2016 05:05 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Musical Times Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Musical Times. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Sat, 30 Jan 2016 05:05:36 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE MUSICAL TIMES.-JULY I, 1917. 30o as remainderthe segment measuring iooo mm.,emitting For Edouard de Reszke had also been here before.* an Eb in the ratio 12: 10 with the apparent tonic or With a four years' stage career behind him he had string note C, with which it accordingly forms a correct made his dbuit at Covent Garden in i880 as Indra in minor third. In its genesis from its generator, G, Massenet's 'Roi de Lahore,' a novelty of the previous this Et is seen to be the major third of the ratio 0 : 8, season, with Gayarre, Lassalle, and Albani in the which with the C gives the common chord on G principal parts. But the Polish basso cantante did reversed: not set the Thames on fire. He was recognised as an 8 or 4 G artist belonging to the genus 'useful.' Above 10 5 EL all, his rich, full voice had a haunting quality, a 12 6 C penetrating beauty of timbre, which it owed quite as much to nature as to art. During the last five It is unnecessary to continue the analysis of the seasons of the Gye regime he appeared in an extensive process of sounding the remainders of the string, since round of characters, proving always competent, they can be examined in Fig. 4. It will be noticed always acceptable, always hardworking and sincere. that the ratios from 12 to 6, beginning with C, the Surviving habitues of that period-among them the note of the whole string, produce the octave gapped present writer-easily recollect the delightful Italian scale already given in Fig i. for a 6-holed pipe, which purity of his legato, the charm of his phrasing, the corresponds to the Ancient Greek Phrygian Tropos ease, distinction, and authority of his style. In parts in G minor. One meaning of the word Tropos in like St. Bris ('Les Huguenots'), the Count Almaviva Greek is a 'turning' (or reversal), as in Heliotrope, a ('Figaro'), Walther ('Guillaume Tell'), Basilio turning towards the sun. The Tropos was the birth (' I Barbiere'), and Alvise (' La Gioconda'), he was of the mode on the pipes, viz., a modal sequence quite unsurpassable. But his Mephistopheles had having a characteristic ethos* due to the choice of the yet to mature ; there the memory of the 'giants' number of the aliquot segments into which the total was still vivid and hard to efface. length of the pipe was to be divided. The choice of the However, one noted that his art was constantly number at the same time determined the key of improving. During these years, between seasons, he the mode. For instance, if 12 be the number of the was singing regularly in Paris (TheAtre des Nations), aliquot parts and B the note of the pipe, then the key acquiring the best attributes of the French School is F# minor; if i be the number and B the note of and adding to his repertory operas such as the pipe, then the key is E(#) minor and the Tropos 'Sigurd,'' H6rodiade,' 'Simon Boccanegra,' 'Aben Dorian; if 13 be the aliquot number and B the note Hamet,' and 'Le Cid.' It was in the last-named of the pipe, then the key is Gtt() minor and the Tropos work, in November, I885, that his brother Jean, creating the title-r6le, won his first genuine triumph Lydian. a The key-note is always indicated by the ratio 8 as tenor and became the prime favourite of Parisian or i6, an octave of the generator, which is invariably opera-goers. This, by the way, was not at the found to correspond with the Dynamic Mese. This Itallens, but at the Opra (that is, the Acadmie de had provides a subtle but logical explanation of the true Nhist e Musque), here Edouard prm function and raison d'etre of the Mese, founded upon hs debut as Mephistopheles in the previous April. a natural law Then, a couple of years later, came Harris's season at A complete octave scale of two tetrachords, instead Drury Lane, already referred to, when the two ofgapped the sequence given in Fig. , in which the brothers, after a sensational opening (June 13, I887) is ' gap gapis formed by the ratios 7:7:6 6 of a septimaseptimal third, in'Faust,' 'Aida,' and appeared 'Lohengrin together '--all insung 'Les in Italian-andHuguenots,' may be obtained, as shown in Fig. 4, by halving theFaust,' and Lohengrin--all sung in Italian and increment of distance at 650 mm. and bridging the gap by means of their magnificent voices and superb art by introducing a B, with a ratio of 6 :4 or I3 8, helped to rekindle the dying flame of the lamp of whick would occur in the natural scale in the next Opera in this country. The immediate outcome of octave. their triumph was the reopening of Covent Garden (To be continued.) in i888 and an added quarter of a century of existence for 'fashionable' and polyglot opera on the grand scale. From that date it is almost impossible to differentiate rEDOUARDDE RESZKE: tbetweenthe careers of the two brothers down to their farewell of the stage, or even down to the tragic THE CAREER OF A FAMOUS BASSO. moment when the beginning of the war found them I855-1917. cut off from each other-Jean teaching in Paris: Edouard a prisoner with his wife and daughters on HERMAN KLEIN. at in where he eked a lvBY ad c his estate Garnek, Poland, out In the days when the De Reszkes came upon the precarious existence until he died on May 25 last. scene there were giants of the operatic stage-giants What a richly-endowed musical family were these beside whom it took time for new-comers, however De Reszkes! The sister, Josephine, who was heard gifted, to grow level in stature. To strive to compete at Covent Garden as Aida in i88I, was a fine with the great singers until after long years of hard dramatic soprano; she retired, however, when she work and experience in the theatre was hopeless and married the Baron de Kronenberg, and died at out of the question. Thus Jean de Reszke, who still Warsaw in I89I. There was, or is, a third brother, lives and teaches in Paris (he is nearly six years Victor de Reszke, who also had a good voice, but he older than was Edouard), was singing in London never became a professional singer. He visited as a baritone in I874, achieving brilliant failures Jean and Edouard the year after they first became because he was out of his element, a full decade before favourites here. They were men of singular he made his first big success as a tenor in Paris, and refinement, intelligence, and taste, and it was a thirteen years prior to the memorable Harris season privilege to be in their society, to listen when they at Drury Lane, when he and his brother at last really discussed their art and the technique of the singer or came into their own, and laid the foundations of their He was born at Warsaw, December 23, I855, and studied singing universal fame. in Italy under Ciappei and Coletti. His brother Jean also gave him some hints, but never claimed to have been one of his teachers. He * Ethos=the psychological effect of a mode 'by virtue of its formal first appeared on the stage as the King in 'Ai'da,' on the production of essence' (Aristoxenus). that opera at the Thdatre des Italiens, Paris, April 22, 1876. This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Sat, 30 Jan 2016 05:05:36 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 30o2 THE MUSICAL TIMES.-JULY I, 19I7. the actor. The great baritone, Lassalle, was at this that Chaliapin put into Boito's Mefistofele. Faure, time the constant companion of the two Polish artists, Rota, and Plan[on may have sung the Serenade as and they became known as 'le grand trio.' well, but no voice ever sounded at once so beautiful An incomparable trio, indeed, they were ! To have and so forbidding in the Church scene as Edouard's. heard them together as Faust, Valentin, and His Fr6re Laurent in 'Romeo' was a simple joy. Mephistopheles, or as Raoul, de Nevers, and His best proof of all-round genius (as in the case of Marcel, was an unforgettable experience. Later on Jean) came in the early 'nineties, at about the time came Plancon; but it was no longer quite the same when the brothers went to America for the first time.