Bertha Kunz - Baker: New York

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Bertha Kunz-BakerNEW YORK
EXCLUSIVE DIRECTIONRedpath Lyceum BureauBOSTON CHICAGO
 CRITICAL COMMENTFrom		
Dr. Richard BurtonBoston, Mass.Mrs. Bertha Kunz Baker is superbly equipped for the interpretation of the best literature. She has brain power, a noble physique, a wonderful voice by which and through which to express inner things, and a nature of large spiritual endowment, so that one feels in hearing her that the loftiest things of letters are being received through a fit medium--a fine human character.  Technically, too, Mrs. Baker is thoroughly trained, but all her skill is at the service of mind and soul.  I wish she were attached to the teaching force of every important college in the land, that students everywhere might be brought by her into vital contact with thoughts that breathe and words that burn.From		
Dr. Albert ShawEditor of "The Review of Reviews," New York CityMrs. Baker understands her author, and therefore she makes her hearers understand as they could not hope to do without such marvelous interpretation.  I have often thought, since Mrs. Baker read for us, that it would be a wonderful education--in standard poetry, particularly--to hear her frequently and in a systematic fashion.  “Elocution" too often lacks the brains and knowledge to interpret literature--wherein lies Mrs. Baker’s measureless superiority over the average exponent of a somewhat discredited art.From		
Mr. Leland Powers Lexington, Mass.Mrs. Bertha Kunz Baker stands at the very head of her chosen profession. She is a woman of gracious personality and rare charm.  A scholarly mind, a sympathetic heart, a glorious voice and a masterful and exquisite art enable her to interpret grandly the masterpieces of literature.  She, herself, is an inspiration.From		
Prof. S. H. ClarkUniversity of ChicagoIt is impossible for me to refrain from sending you a line to express the unbounded pleasure your reading of Armgart  gave me.  I use the word unbounded advisedly: for I freely confess that I never listened to any reading which filled me with such exquisite aesthetic pleasure.  The portrayal of Armgart's character was a revelation--a soul laid bare.  Permit me to thank you for bringing this beautiful piece of literature home to me as it never had come through my own reading.
From		
Dr. G. R. BentonPresident Miami UniversityOxford, OhioDuring more than twenty years' experience in educational work, it has been my good fortune to hear those who have been and are considered the great readers of their day.  Mrs. Bertha Kunz Baker I unhesitatingly pronounce the best of all.  To my mind she is the greatest interpretive reader on the American platform today.  Those who hear her will gain new conceptions of the masterpieces of our literature, and the genuine soul-power upon which her interpretations are based cannot fail to make her hearers better men and women.From		
Judge E. B. Sherman	
United States Circuit CourtChicago, IllI have listened to Murdoch, Scott-Siddons and many others of the best artists of the time, and in my judgment Mrs. Kunz Baker is the peer of the greatest--primus inter pares. Her mobility of face and feature her flexibility of utterance and sweetness of tone her com-pelling sense of power, purity and tenderness, her consummate skill in ranging the gamut of passion, and yet relieving its stress by delicate humor and softening its fierceness with pathos, her masterful ease and constant charm--all these and other qualities too evasive to catch and too delicate to describe, combine to make her renditions a delight which can never be forgotten.  And this tribute is not gaudy rhetoric but a sincere expression of appreciation.From	
Prof. Franklin W. HooperDirector of Brooklyn Institute of Arts and SciencesMrs. Baker's reading of L’Aiglon and lf I Were King, before the Institute, was a source of delight to all our members who were privileged to hear her.  There is no reader on the American stage today who has greater dramatic power than Mrs. Bertha Kunz Baker.From	
Mrs. Le MoyneNew York CityMrs. Baker's entrance arrested me, and the authority of her attack at once convinced me that she understood herself and the author.  Her voice, correct English and enunciation rejoiced my heart.  All of these things are absolutely necessary for public reading, and when to these are added a sincere and sympathetic understanding, together with dramatic power of expression such as Mrs. Baker possesses, one is sure to instruct and delight.From					
Prof.  Geo.  W. KirchweyDean of The School Of Law Columbia UniversityI am not much of an admirer of public readings as a means of entertainment, but your interpretations rise above the level of mere entertainment and have a creative and transforming quality which I do not find in other work of the kind.  They seem to me as admirable from the artistic standpoint as they are informing and stimulating from the educational point of view.From						  
Mr. Thomas B. Aldrich	Boston, Mass.	I have always disliked to hear my own poems read, but it was a pleasure to to me to listen to Mrs. Baker’s reading of Judith and Holofernes.  She has, I think, that magnetic quality which is not to be taught in schools.From						 
Prof. Thos. C. TruebloodUniversity of MichiganI cannot express to you how charmed we all were with your interpretation of  Cyrano de Bergerac last evening.  Your full appreciation of the characters and the drama, and your power of spirituality transporting your audience gave us a relish of what I call the eloquence of good reading.From					
Pres. Leila S. McKeePresident, The Western College for Women, Oxford, O.From the very first word to the last Mrs. Baker held the undivided and absorbed interest of an audience distinctly collegiate in character.  Her interpretation of L’Aiglon with its variety of incident and character is matchless.  In voice, in scholarly interpretation, and her own splendid personality, Mrs. Baker has few equals and no superior.  No College or University can well afford to lose an opportunity of hearing her.From						 
Mrs. Emily M. BishopPrincipal of the ChautauquaDelsarte Department	Mrs. Baker’s reading is great reading--great in its directness, its naturalness, its effects. Such reading is an inspiration; it reveals the highest--the spiritual--side of the poem, and, in turn uplifts and inspires the listener.From						
Mrs. P.V. PennypackerPresident Texas Federation of Women’s ClubsI take great pleasure in stating that I  have heard most of the best readers of the United States and that I know of not a single one that excels Mrs. Bertha Kunz Baker.  I know of no one who equals her in spiritual force.  I have listened to Mrs. Baker in New York, in Colorado, in Austin.  She has never failed to captivate her audience, and, better than that, to leave her audience the better for having heard her.
To enable us to reach out into the world around us, to extend our sympathies beyond the experiences of the individual life, to share the joys, the sorrows, the hopes, the visions of our fellow-men, to realize our true relations to humanity, to Nature, to God, and so to lift life onto a broader, loftier plane of clearer vision, more generous feeling, more beautiful action--this is the mission of Art, of Literature; and into this service Mrs. Bertha Kunz Baker has given herself, lending her genius as an instrument through which the master-spirits of all ages may speak with a living voice unto the world today.
PROGRAMS
Parsifal:Its Story and Meaning, Richard Wagner's masterful rendering of the legend of the Holy Grail, the deepest and most moving impression of Art that the present generation has experienced. Sources of the story, analysis of the characters, symbolism.  Reading of the drama with Wagner's superb music.Armgart.George Eliot's story of a great singer's art and of her soul.L’Aiglon. (The Eaglet.) Edmond Rostand's beautifully poetic and stirring portrayal of the last two years of the life of the Great Napoleon's son.
Sweeps the whole gamut of emotions from the most brilliant gayety to the deepest pathos--but all sustained in an exquisitely poetic atmosphere.  One of the finest works of dramatic literature produced in any language within a century or more.--New York Times.Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's brilliant heroic comedy which set the whole civilized world into a blaze of enthusiasm a few years ago and caused our critics to place the author’s name in line with Shakespeare and Moliere.
Certainly it has made more stir in the literary and dramatic world than anything in the memory of the present generation.--New York Times.Shakespeare’s HAMLET, MacBETH, ROMEO AND JULIET, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, THE TEMPEST.Schiller's  The Maid of Orleans.  In all literature the noblest portrayal of the inspired soldier maiden, Joan of Arc.If I Were King.  Romantic Drama by Justin Huntly McCarthy.
Fascinating development of character and incident.Most refreshing, exhilarating, inspiring.Judith and Holofernes.  T.B. Aldrich's beautiful dramatic poem of the fair heroic woman of Bethulia, who delivered Israel out of the hands of the Assyrian tyrant.
A wonderful combination of heroic strength and tenderest charm.Modern Comedies: Rostand's THE ROMANCERS, Charles Reade's NANCE OLDFIELD and CHRISTIE JOHNSTON.Maurice Hewlett's  A Masque of Dead Florentines--wherein you may see as in a glass, Dante and Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura, Boccace and Fiametta, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Leonardo, Savonarola, Michael Angelo.
The Following Recitals are given singly or in series:
Readings from BrowningHow good is man's life, the mere living; how fit to employ	
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy.Pompilia: the heart of The Ring and the Book.Balaustion’s Adventure:  including a transcript from Euripides--that strangest, saddest, sweetest song of his, Alkestis.In a Balcony, Pippa Passes, Andrea del Sarto, and other Art Poems; Abt Vogler, Saul, Paracelsus, Lyrics, Ballads, etc.Development of American Literature
Great Truths are portions of the Soul of man; 
Great Souls are portions of Eternity.I. Washington Irving:  Father of American Prose.II. The Beginnings of Poetry:  Bryant and Whittier.III. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.IV. Ralph Waldo Emerson:  Transcendentalism.V. Nathaniel Hawthorne:  The Novel.VI. James Russell Lowell:  Ideals of Democracy.VII. Oliver Wendell Holmes:  American Humor.VIII. Nature and Purpose of Poetry:  Poe, Lanier, Whitman.IX.  The Short Story in America.X. Contemporary Writers.Forces in Modern LifeI. Poety and Every-Day Life:  A Question and an AnswerII. Theories of Life and Art:  Tolstoi, Wagner, Ruskin, etc.III. Realism:  Ibsen, Sudermann, etc.IV. Romanticism:  William Morris, etc.V. Symbolism:  Hauptmann--The Sunken Bell.VI. Mysticism:  Maeterlinck; The Celtic Revival.VII. Edmond Rostand:  His Genius and His Works.VIII. Stephen Phillips:  Poems and Dramas.IX. Omar Khayyam:  The Sweet Cup of Poison.X. R.L. Stevenson:  The Gospel of Joyous Living.XI. Kipling:  The Joy of Life unquestioned.XII. Victor Hugo:  Life and Works.XIII. Robert Browning:  Vision and Faith.XIV. Europe and the Orient:  a Contrast.Other Programs in Preparation
PRESS COMMENTOne feels in Mrs. Biker's interpretation a wealth of experience, a breadth of culture and a thorough knowledge of this splendid humanity of ours--whether it be the seventeenth or twentieth century humanity.  Through her marvelous insight into literature and her equally marvelous presentation of it, her great art touches life in a way to make it deeper and sweeter.  She makes the reader's art seem greater than that of the actor, for without the help of stage setting her characters materialize before us--they love, hate, rejoice and suffer as we do, and since these characters are the creation of one brain there is a perfect balance and proportion that one sometimes misses when a drama is presented by a company of actors, however skilled.  Then, too, in the reader's art one's imagination is given free play and its creations are ideal.  In addition to being a great artist, Mrs. Baker has such a charming personality that neither the reading nor the reader will be soon forgotten.--Journal of Northern Illinois State Normal School.Throughout Mrs. Baker's work an impression is given of great dramatic force, but it is force controlled and directed, subservient to the artistic effect, never overpowering and destroying it.  No least thought of the author is slurred over to give scope for greater elocutionary display, yet the underlying current of passion and feeling is there, and thrills you more by very contrast, with the simplicity of her manner and the quietude of her deep, rich, contralto voice.  Add to her genius as a reader, and to her wonderful voice, the attraction of a magnificent personality, and some idea may be gathered of the charm of her work.--Werner’s Magazine, New York.Sorosis at the Waldorf-Astoria.  Mrs. Baker’s selections display her versatility.  She has a beautiful voice, a magnetic personality, keen intelligence to divine her authors, and the power of making clear her conceptions.  These gifts, added to genuine feeling, great dramatic force, and an entire absence of artificiality, make her readings a rare delight.--New York Home JournalThe recital given last night by Mrs. Bertha Kunz-Baker, was an artistic event worthy to be enrolled among the red letter occasions of the year.  Mrs. Baker is a positive joy. Her work is so finished and she herself so fine that she lifts her hearers out of themselves and into the realms of the beautiful.--Cincinnati EnquirerSuperlatives of superlatives would be needed to express the enthusiasm created at the Chautauqua last evening by Mrs. Bertha Kunz-Baker's splendid rendition of Cyrano de Bergerac.From the moment the lady made her first appearance, when her powerful, yet musical and pleasing voice thrilled the large audience gathered together, till the tragic and affecting close, she commanded the intensest interest and the deepest admiration.  She appealed to the audience as an entire company, and as a company of stars.--Boulder Camera.An event of great dramatic, intellectual and literary value.  To read L'Aiglonis to underrate an enormous task.  It requires tremendous dramatic force, intellectual grasp and keen poetic insight.  Mrs. Bertha Kunz-Baker, who read the drama last night, possesses all these requirements.  She has magnificent dramatic force poetic and intellectual grasp, and a vital power of interpretation which makes her work nothing short of superb.--Grand Rapids Herald.Mrs. Baker came to this city heralded by very flattering advance notices, and it must be said that those usually conventional phrases fell far short of the real genius of the lady.  By keen and subtle understanding of every shade of thought and feeling, by artistic and adequate expression through a wonderfully melodious and flexible voice, she kindled the large audience into a glow of pleasurable emotions, and the applause that was showered on her was both sincere and merited.  At the request of hundreds who wished to hear Mrs. Baker again, she has consented to repeat the recital.  This is a great compliment, never before accorded a woman lecturer in New Orleans.--New Orleans Picayune.Mrs. Baker is a person of tremendous power, clothed with a personality wonderfully fitted to be the medium of interpreting the great dramas.  She has a voice so filled with the manifold shades of human feeling that she can well afford to do without gesture of any kind to aid her in telling the story of a great play; some of her sublimer heights were gained last night in perfect outward calm.  In this she proved herself a master reader; or she could throw the manuscript to the winds and perform the more difficult task of presenting in their actual intensity the varying emotions of a stage full of characters, so spontaneous and subtle is her emotion. This she proved in the battle-field scene which was her highest climax.--Minneapolis Times.Mrs. Baker is as delightful a reader as she is a thorough scholar.  Her recitals are marked by extraordinary force and a thorough appreciation of her subject.  She interprets the great dramas in a masterly style and never fails to enlist the sympathies of her audience, a fact which was well shown by their frequent approval last evening.--Philadelphia Times.Mrs. Bertha Kunz-Baker was compelled to use the auditorium for her eleven o'clock lecture, for ten times as many people came to hear her as could be crowded into the hall, the place announced.  Her subject wasPoetry and Every Day Life.She proved the practical value of poetry, showing that it is an interpreter and an illuminator of life.  Mrs. Baker is an artist of artists.  Yesterday, theResorterheard a gentleman who has heard all the readers of the country and knows them thoroughly, say of Mrs. Baker,She is out and out the best reader in America. Her work is the perfection of expression and her personality is as charming as her work.--Bay View Resorter.An event in Chautauqua.  Mrs. Baker's work was superb; her interpretation faultless, being pronounced by some who had made special study of the great drama, as superior in insight and comprehension to that of the actor who has made the stage version famous.  Mrs. Baker held an immense audience intensely interested during the entire reading and was enthusiastically recalled again and again at the close.--Chautauqua Assembly Herald.Perhaps no entertainer of her class ever brought more profound pleasure to the cultured and literary folk of San Antonio than did Mrs. Bertha Kunz-Baker, of New York, at the Lyceum.  Her rendering of Cyrano de Bergerac,was beyond question one of the most artistic presentations ever heard in this city.  Mrs. Baker is more than a professional reader; she is a real woman, and withal an artist in the fullest and highest sense, who feels and lives, in the presence of her auditors, the characters she so vividly portrays, and her strong, sweet-toned voice and pure, perfect English, are charming and delightful in the extreme.  As soon as it was learned that Mrs. Baker could spend part of tomorrow in the city, two additional readings were arranged.--San Antonio Express.Mrs. Baker's interpretation ofThe Eaglet, the filial, ambitious and idealistic youth, burning to redeem the fortunes of the Little Corporal, was so sympathetic and at times impassioned, that the audience seized every opportunity for applause.  Yet no less did they appreciate both the clean cut and delicate shadings that enabled the reader to reveal to the life the vain and frivolous Maria Theresa, the weak old King, the wily Metternich, the loyal old Flambeau, the sycophants in guise of tutors, a dramatis personae quite wonderful to be conjured by a single magician and with such art that not once was it visible where the roles failed to stand out clear and distinct.  Mrs. Baker in every way justified the enthusiasm of the audience, and several who had seenL'AigIonby such artists as Bernhardt and Maude Adams, expressed themselves as still further strengthened in their admiration of the play by Mrs. Baker's interpretation.--Dallas News.