Frau Land-Goldschmidt Stands As Incomparable In Her Glittering
Renown As A Singer As Handel In His As A Composer,
With the
difference - which is in Frau Lind's favor to boot - that Handel's
works weary many people and do not
Always succeed in filling the
coffers, whereas the mere appearance of Frau Lind secures the
utmost rapture of the public, as well as that of the cashier. If,
therefore, we place the affairs of the Musical Festival simply on
the satisfying and commercial debit and credit basis, certainly
no artist, and still less any work of Art, could venture to
compete with, and to offer an equal attraction to, the high and
highly celebrated name of Frau Lind. Without raising the
slightest objection to this, I must express my common-sense
opinion that with this magnet all others would be quite
superfluous, which, however, cannot be quite so indifferent to
me; for, as Louis XIV. represented the State, so Frau Lind would
constitute the Musical Festival proper. This avowal (for which I
deserve, at the very least, stoning with the usual ingredients of
operations of that kind in our civilized age, if I did not happen
to implore grace of the divine Diva herself) - this avowal I
already made last year, on occasion of the Dusseldorf Musical
Festival, to my esteemed friend of many years, Ferdinand Hiller.
What is the use of orchestra and singers, rehearsals and
preparations, pieces and programmes, when the public only want to
hear the Lind, and then hear her again - or, more correctly
speaking, when they must be able to say they leave heard her, in
order to be able to wallow at ease in their enthusiasm for Art?
What I foresaw then was also confirmed to a hair, for it proved,
as everybody knows, that all the sympathy of the public went in
favor of whatever Frau Lind did, so that the so-called Artist-
concert on the third day was the most fully attended, because in
it there were an aria from "Beatrice di Tenda" and Swedish songs
as special attraction - for which marvels the very simplest
pianoforte accompaniment was no doubt sufficient.
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