After Joyce heard Sullivan, he put aside Work in Progress (Finnigan Wake) for an extended interval of Sullivanizing.
Joyce bothered a wide range of people about Sullivan, he dragoon his friends to the opera and became in effect Sullivan's (un-wanted) agent. Giorgio and Gilbert tallied the high notes for Sullivan's role in Rossini's William Tell: "456 G's, 93 A flats, 54 B flats, 19 C sharps". Joyce said extravagant things about Sullivan in his letters. Joyce dramatically interrupted a performance of The Huguenots proclaiming "Merci, mon Dieu, pur ce miracle. Apres vingt ans, je revois la mumiere."
George Antheil was asked by Joyce to compose an opera based on Byron's Cain expressly for Sullivan. Antheil and Joyce had considered a prior collaboration for "Cyclops", but neither project came to fruition. Sullivan suspected that major opera houses had colluded against him, triggering Joyce's conspiracy gene into action. In 2932, he wrote "From A Banned Writer To A Banned Singer," which has comic moments amidst opera-drenched prose that is essentially in wakese. Even opera buffs find it heavy going.

Thank you, Bryn,

This is from the same article.
Bloom eats his meal at the Ormond Hotel with Richie Goulding. Simon Dedalu's brother-in-law, whom Simon greatly dislikes. Coulding talks obsessively about the tenor aria - Totto e Sciolta or All is lost now from Bellini's La Sonnambula. In Serens, Golding rattles on and on about Joe Maas' great rendition of the Bellini aria, he even whistles the tune. His aggravating on-song conversation finally annoys Bloom, who thinks Richie is failing. Nonetheless, Bloom finds the aria's theme painfully too close to his own loss of Molly.

The pretext for Boylan's visit to Molly is to bring her the up-coming concert program. She is scheduled to sing 'La ci darem la mano' from Mozart's Don Giovanni with J C Doyle. (Joyce sang with Doyle at the Horse Show Concert in August 1904) Molly is also to sing 'Love's Old Sweet Song@, which runs through both Bloom's and Molly's minds all through Ulysses.
In La ci darem Zarlina responds to Don Giovanni's persuasive wooing. Although she is angaged, Zerlina finds herself tempted - she says she would like to (go off with Don Giovanni) and yet she would not. We can't help but compare Don Giovanni and Masetto (her finace) with B oylan, Molly and Bloom, which JOyce surely intended. Bloom's response to Molly's relationship with B oylan can be seen as either passive or realistic. Instead of facing the implications of her affair, Bloom fixates over the pronunciation and phrasing in La ci darem, wich he characteristically has slightly wrong.

The most important song in 'Sirens' is M'appari from Martha (1847) by von Flotow. This comic opera was performed regularly up to the 1960s and is still performed occasionally today. Martha provides a second song 'This the llast Rose of Summer' which von Flotow lifted from Thomas Moore without attribution. Von Flotow had written the molody for 'M'appari' for one of his prior works. With Martha's success, the aria becaome a gold-standard for tenors, who continue to record the aria. In German we know the aria as 'Ach  so fromm, ach so traut' In English it is A so pur, Ah so fair'.' The plot of the opera revolves around false identities which Joyce utilizes. In the opera, Martha is actually Lady Harriet - in Ulysses - Bloom's secret pen-pal signs her letters Martha Clifford. For all we know she too could be a Harriet.


Simon Dedalus sings a different English (and greatly altered) adaptation of 'M'appari' by Charles Jeffreys and Charles Glaser, titled 'Martha, O Return Love!. Simon starts to play the piano in a different key from the original; Father C owley, who is a better piano player, takes over at the keyboard. Ben Dollard, Lenehan and others are also in the hoterl bar, while Bloom andFoulding are eating in the dining room. They can hear who is singing in the bar, especially after the waiter sets the door ajar. The important lines from the song that Simon sings go this way: I am lost, yes I am lost for she is gone ... Come thou lost one - Come thou dear one - Thou alone cn'st comfort me- Ah! Martha return! Come to  me!:

My edition is exactly the line divisions of the critical edition (Garland, New York, 1984).
Because of my concert and spams messages I am behind schedule in reading my chapter.

Joyce considered touring English watering places with a custom-made lute with which he would sing elizabethan songs, especially those by John Dowland. This was a poor idea and luckily came to nothing. Joyce later acknowledged to Harriet Shaw Weaver that his singing style was not suited for thses songs. Meanwhile, during the summer of 1904 Joyce sang at small concerts and private parties. He needed to borrow clothes from Gogarty, which Joyce works into Ulysses. Stephen mentally reckons his debts to Buck Mulligan: "nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair groques and ties." Let's hope that Gogarty's borrowed clothes fit Joyce better than Mullihan's brogues, which pinch Stephen's geet.

Joyce's most important Dublin appearance as a singer took place on August 27th, 1904 at the Antient Concert Rooms where he sang with John McCormack and J C Doyle, who had won the Feis Ceoil baritone Gold Medal in 1899. In Ulysses, Blazes Boylan wants J C Doyle to be Molly's singing partner for the Belfast concert tour that he is planning. In "Hades" Bloom tries to deflect attention away from the subject of Molly and Bolan by mentioning that John McCormack might be joining Molly's tour, which would be a signigicant up-grade.
the August 27th concert was the cultural centerpiece for Horse Show Week. Bloom would approve the event's many promotions and ads - such as a piece in the Evening Mail which mentioned that the concert woud include a "new young tenor whose singing has been much admired." Hmm. No doubt Joyce was proud to appear with such prominent singers, but he was also nervous becasuse Nora Barnacle was in the audience. There are confusing accounts about the evenng. The Freeman's Joynal remarked on Joyce's "pathetic" rendering of 'The Croppy Boy,' although the accompanying pianist had volted mid-concert and her replacement was unable to play the announced selections.
Resourcefully, joyce took over at the piano, changing his selections. He sang 'In her simplicity' instead of 'Th eCroppy boy,' which might have embarrassed the Freeman's Journal. This tenor aria is from the 3rh act of Mignon by Thomas Ambroise. The opera is based on Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre - albeit with an altered, happy ending. In the third act, Mignon's distress is alleviated by certain turns of the plot. She is consoloed by Wilhelm's song in praise of her appealing charm and innocence. Joyce's second selection was 'Down by the Sally Gardens' rather that the announced 'She is far from the Land.' For an encore he sang 'The North Country Lass.'

The only performance I've ever seen live was an amateur one, in Sydney. (And I could only make it to the dress rehearsal - but I did have to get to that or the soprano soloist would have made my life slightly less than worth living.)

It was damn good, for what it's worth.

The concert's mishaps were re-worked into "A Mother" in which Mrs Kearney yanks her piano-playing daughter out of a concert - again leaving singers in the lurch. Joyce pokes a bit of fun at himself in this little-noticed description of one singer:
... a fair-haired little man, who competed everyyear for prizes at the Feis Ceoil. On his fourth trial he had been awarded a bronze medal. He was extremely nervous and extremely jealous of other tenors and he covered his nervous jealousy with an ebullient friendliness.

Before the Saturday concert - in Joyce's story - two men from the press chat with some of the performers. The reporter from the Freeman's Journal makes it quite clear that he doesn't intend to sit through the concert since "concerts and artistes bored him considerably." Joyce heatly skewers the Freeman's Journal coverage of his concert.

A few of Joyce's poems and stories had been published before he an Nora left Dublin in October 10-4. They spent a short time in Pola (then in Austria) before settling in Trieste (also then in Austria) where they continued to be dogged by poverty. Joyce resumed singing lessons with Giuseppe Sinico. ("a Painful Case" in Dubliners features a Mrs Sinico.) Joyce and Nora's first child, Giorgio, was born in July 1905. A mere two days later, Joyce wrote Stannie a classic 'my kid is a genius' kind of letter, excerpted here:

...The child appears to have inherited his grandfather's and father's voices ... He has a great taste for music because while I was nursing him yesterday he eyed me with great fixity as I whistled several operatic arias for him...

In my experience, no tw-day old's vocal range can be accurately predicted, even by a tenor. Despite Joyce's certainty, Giorgio's voice matured into a bass, which Joyce accepted most reluctantly. he so wanted another tenor in the clan.

Stannie joined his brother's household in Trieste, which Joyce manipulated to his own financial advantage - causing predictable intervals of tension over the years, although there wer some good times, including their frequent nights at the opera. John McDourt has shown how musically rich these years were for Joyce, who briefly went to Rome in pursuit of more money. Joyce's demanding and tedious job as bank clerk in the eternal city soon sent him back to temporal Trieste. However, while in Rome, Joyce began his great story "The Dead " - so his stay there cannot be seen as a failure.

Joyce was frustrated about teaching english and exasperated by publishers' tactics, depite the publication of his first book in May 190. Chamber Music is a suite of 36 poems many of which could be the work of any young, romantic Edwardian poet. They match a few  passages in Stephen Hero or Giacomo Joyce, but give no indication of what Joyce is yet to write. He was pleased that  Geoffrey Molyneux Palmer (1882-1957) composed settings for 32 of these poems - this project proceeded slowly because of Palmer's health problems. Well over 140 other composers have scored selections from Chamber Music. Serious medical and eye problems assaulted Joyce precipitiously in May 1907. He made a slow recovery from rheumatic fever, but would continue to have catastrophic eye problems for the rest of his life. He was still not well when Lucia Joyce was born on July 26 of that year. In the fall, Joyce began to re-work Stephen Hero into A Protrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He again considered becoming an opera singer and resumed voice lessons with Romeo Bartoli in 1908. Joyce continued his frequent opera-going and when an opera took his fancy, he would hear its entire run.

His most impressive appearance as a singer in Trieste took place in July 1909, when he appeared in a concert singing the famous quintet from Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, Wagner's only comic opera. There is an analogy to Joyce's situation as a writer in one aspect of the plot: ofd fogies - who have made all the rules - object strongl to innovation. However, the opera's main plot asks a familiar question: can the handsome guy from out of town find glory and get the girl by writing the best song? Meistersinger's quintet is superb and remains one of the glories of opera ensembles. It is scored for two tenors - the handsome knight sings the more demanding tenor role-so - I'm guessing that Joyce sang the secondary tenor's part. No review of this concert has made its way into Joyce-land. Perhaps a stash of old papers will turn up and close this gap.

It has been suggested this has a place on this thread.