File:Maurice Renaud - The grand opera singers of to-day (1912).jpg

Identifier: grandoperasinger02lahe (find matches)
Title: The grand opera singers of to-day : an account of the leading operatic stars who have sung during recent years, together with a sketch of the chief operatic enterprises
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Lahee, Henry Charles, 1856-1953
Subjects: Singers Opera
Publisher: Boston : L. C. Page
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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aits are rather the excessof his virtues, — of his varied natural gifts, hispliancy of temperament, his keenness of in-telligence, his fineness of imagination, his fond-ness for reflection, and his liking for significantand individual detail. There is romance as wellas reflection in his temperament. The following criticism of Eenauds inter-pretation of the role of Scarpia and his compar-ison with that of Scotti will be most interest-ing : The essential difference is the stress thatEenaud lays on the cruelty of Scarpia, Scotti,a hard, unscrupulous, passionate man, whocan be cruel as he can be almost anything elsethat is evil, when occasion and dispositionprompt. To Eenauds Scarpia cruelty has be-come a second nature and essential pleasure.He is cruel for the perverse sensual pleasure ofcruelty. Eenauds Scarpia suggests a man offar more acute mind than Scottis. Maurice Eenaud has been called the i EdwinBooth of the operatic stage. Among his mostfamous impersonations are Mefistofele in
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MAURICE RENAUD The Manhattan Opera-House 157 Boitos opera of the same name, Rigoletto inVerdis opera, and the monk Athanael in Mas-senets Thais. When Heinrich Conried succeeded MauriceGrau at the Metropolitan Opera-House hefound in his desk a contract which would havebound Eenaud to that theatre for a number ofyears, but, being ignorant of operatic affairsand of those pertaining to the French stage inparticular, he had never heard of Eenaud, andlet the contract go by default. Oscar Ham-merstein, better informed, sought Eenaud andkept him as one of the chief ornaments of hiscompany, as long as he continued to managethe Manhattan Opera-House. One of the leading critics wrote of him in1910: i His distinction is an artistry of the in-tellect and the imagination as well as of songand histrionic action, an artistry that is essen-tially subtle, that exacts like qualities in thosethat understand and admire, and that thus re-mains intrinsically an artistry for connoisseurs.. . . There are as m

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