Concert in Richmond (1915)

The 1915 Virginia Glee Club Concert in Richmond was held April 16, 1915 in the auditorium of the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia. Directed by Alfred Lawrence Hall-Quest, the concert was part of the Glee Club 1914-1915 season.

A review of the concert in the Richmond Times Dispatch was complimentary:

It isn't just a plain, old Anglo-Saxon glee club—this organization of young men from the University of Virginia. It's all of that, too: it's a super-glee club, indeed: but it's much more than that. It's a company of actors: an assortment of vaudeville acts: an aggregation of specialty performers: a group of monologists; a band of instrumentalists; an array of variety artists, and it comprises within its ranks at least one opera singer. In short, it's a glee club extraordinary, de luxe. up-to-the-minute and a little way into the future, and last night, at the Jefferson Auditorium, it filled the atmosphere with music and the audience with delight.

It happened that the performance was for the benefit of the Polish Red Cross Association, and was under the auspices of tho Commonwealth Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, but it would have spread and shed rays of purest joy if it had been presented by the Bomb and Brick Sisterhood of the Militant Suffragettes of England for the benefit of thirsty Prussian Uhlans. In short. again, worthy as was the object for which the entertainment was given, it needed no charitable purpose to make the whole affair a brilliant and delectable success—the performance carried itself.

FRESH, UNTIRED VOICES SING IN PERFECT HARMONY

"Eheu fugaces'." Which is perfectly good high-browese for "how times have changed!" And those boys proved last night that it is a blessed thing that they have changed. When they chose, they stood in the familiar semicircle in the good, old way and sang ringing. rousing choruses. No director stood before them, beating time and confusing the audience. They stood shoulder to shoulder and simply "felt" the time, and their fresh, untired young voices soared upward and thundered downward in the perfect harmony that singers attain when they work for the whole and not for the individual.

Of course, Alfred L. Hall-Quest, the member of the faculty who drilled them, deserves high praise for having taught them so carefully and thoroughly, but, after all. it was the young men who did the singing. And how they did sing! They opened the concert with the well- loved "Estudiantina," and when the audience insisted upon an encore number they came back and made "Dixie" thrill again.

REAL OPERA VOICE BELONGS TO LAW STUDENT

Later, they sang the "Barcarolle" and in it, demonstrated what Mr. Hall-Quest had taught them in the way of soft singing: then the comic choruses and the songs that will always belong to "the University"—though they call it "Virginia" now—such as "The Good Old Song," and the others that "come back and sing themselves," as James Lindsey Gordon put it. They sang them all well, gave unalloyed pleasure with them, and through every one of "the choruses boomed the majestic voice of some second bass who would be sufficient in himself to rock the whole deep, to say nothing of its cradle.

During the first part: that is to say, during the glee club portion, there was introduced the opera singer—M. W. Gannaway. He isn't an opera singer, because he is studying law at the University, but he could be. For his voice is a soft and beautiful baritone, with range and volume sufficient for almost anything, while for quality it has rarely been approached on any stage in Richmond. And he is going to waste it reading to a bored judge what a dead judge once said!

There isn't any use in expatiating on what Mr. Gannaway sang, or how he sang It: he is studying taw.

SPECIALTY PARTS AND CHARACTER ACTING

Then came "Student Days and Ways," ' which proved to be a sketch, or a skit, or a playlet, or something. with a whole lot of characters. One could tell they were characters, because one of them wore a beard and another made up as a woman, and with one of the second basses, showed all the halr-filleted girls in the audience how to do the modern dances, though dancing.

Anyhow, it served to Introduce the specialties, so the story served the same purpose as did "Introducing Father," in the Society Minstrels, and nobody had to understand it anyhow. Mr. Gannaway sang the Prologue—from "Pagliacci" and sang It beau—! He had to sing again.

The mandolin club came on and played bits from "High Jinks" in a way that would have Made Rudolf Friml proud that he hail written It; played the dance music for the nonwaltzers so that they Just had to dance, and generally covered itself with glory. H.R. Van Horne dialogued Conan Doyle's "Confessions" with himself and surprised the audience happily.

Oscar Swineford presented one of the cleverest "dippy" monologues heard here in many a season on amateur or professional stage, displaying at the same time a character impersonation of a high order; four of the glee club, calling themselves the Scrap-Iron Quartet," sang a comic song and a comic encore number in particularly good style, and the Anglo-Saxon glee club closed the performance with a college medley in which It turned itself loose.

Then the floor was cleared and the singers, actors and comedians had their reward: scores of the prettiest girls in Richmond were just waiting to be danced with.