NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind in Bellini’s, ‘La Sonnambula’. Those who
attended were fortunate as Lind’s affair with the theatre lasted only a few
seasons. She quit the theatre for religious reasons. This was followed in 1854 by
a season of Italian opera featuring the famous Italian soprano, Giulia Grisi and
her tenor husband, Giovanni Matteo Mario. Grisi once got a backhanded
compliment from Jenny Lind, who never spoke well of any singer, but then she
never acknowledged any powers superior to her own. Mario was for thirty years
the world’s ranking tenor. He was an aristocrat and the son of an army general.
He trained for a career in the military academy and had such misgivings about
the proprietary of becoming a singer that he forever only signed himself Mario.
There was more than one London based Italian Opera at this time and these
performances with Grisis and Mario would have been with the Royal Italian
Opera, Covent Garden, then under the direction of Mr Gye.
The 1870s saw a blossoming of musical productions at the Theatre Royal with
all manner of touring companies presenting the full range of musical theatre from
opera to musicals. Ladies companies were to the fore with Miss Emily Soldene’s
Celebrated Opera Co., Madame Selina Dolaro’s Comic Opera Co., Miss Kate
Santley’s London Opera Co., and Madlle. D’Anka and her Specially Organised
London Opera-Bouffe Co. and Miss Florence St. John and her Comic Opera Co.
They presented, together with Mrs Liston’s Celebrated London Opera Co. light,
frothy, naughty French operettas such as Lecocq’s ‘Girofle Girofla’. ‘La Fille de
Madame Angot’ and ‘Les Pres Saint Gervais’. The plots usually dealt with young
French sexual problems or as one reviewer put it ‘in which the lady of the title
went through the pursued damsel routine with libidinous gallantry’. By the end of
the 1860s Opera-Bouffe had caught on in England, having had its best days in
France. More first rate Italian opera was being presented with further
performances by the Royal Italian Opera of Covent Garden that included ‘Faust’
(Gounod), ‘Dinorah’ (Meyebeer), ‘Fra Diavolo’ (Auber), ‘Don Giovanni’ (Mozart)
and ‘Il Trovatore’ (Verdi). Another opera company was presenting twelve nights
of operettas by Offenbach and apiece called ‘POM’, a new and original comic
opera with peasants, Indians and bridesmaids, by P Buealossi (since confined to
obscurity). The most interesting aspect of this production is that it was conducted
by E.W.D. Goossens, a Belgian, born 1845 in Bruges. He settled in England and
founded the Goossen’s Dynasty. The printed programme informs us that ‘In the
grand Incidental ballet in the second act of ‘POM’ Madlle SIDONE, Premier
Danseuse from the principal Continental Theatres, will have the honour of
making her First Appearance in Newcastle’. Madame Sidone was the conductor’s
wife and would later become the grandmother of Eugene III; conductor and
composer, Leon; oboist, Sidonie and Marie; harpists and Adolphe; horn player,
who was killed in the Great War.
Still more musical productions took place during the course of the 1880s
including yet another performance of William Shield’s ‘Rosina’, described as a
pastoral opera. This is obviously the production referred to in Charleton’s
‘Newcastle Town’ (1885) when he says, ‘The latter (Rosina) is his (Shield)
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