Page:Red (1925).pdf/91

 bers is obviously recognized by the managers of such theatres as the Strand and the Rialto. The close attention with which the music is followed and the very violent applause which congratulates each performer, often exacting recall numbers, are ready proofs of the pleasure experienced by the customers. What is known as cheap music is seldom played. In fact, there is so much of an air of the concert hall about these performances that I am afraid they would bore me even if the music were less familiar to my ears. I should prefer, on these occasions, more informality, more excursions into the rhythmic realms conjured up for us by Louis Hirsch and Irving Berlin. Nothing of the sort need be hoped for. The music performed, and desired by the audiences, is what is known to the less tone-educated multitudes as "classic."

Any intelligent child, therefore, with a little direction from a musical elder, could pick up the routine of the concert and opera world in a ten weeks' course at the Rialto or the Strand. Such unavoidable songs as the Prologue to Pagliacci, the subsequent tenor lament from the same opera, all three of Dalila's airs, the waltz from La Boheme, the prayer from Tosca, Celeste Aida, Cielo e mar, O Paradis, Danny Deever, Les Filles de Cadix, the Habanera from Carmen, Dich, theure Halle, The Two Grenadiers, Dost