Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Tower of Ivory: A Novel
Styr's methods were as likely to enthral the fastidious Englishmanras the more artistic German. In a day when Sarah Bernhardt was the fashion In tragediennes, she had a still method all her own, a manner of appear ing quietly on the stage, seemingly as impersonal as a part of its setting then gradually dominating it, not only by the magic of her great golden voice and im posing height and presence, but by a force, which the critics, after long and acrimonious controversy, agreed to be an emanation from the brain. Whether she possessed also that physical magnetism, commonly indispensable to stage people, was a question still agitated when Ordham arrived in Munich, although She had then been Royal Bavarian Court Singer for six years but that she had cultivated a mental power which above all else made her the great artist she was, the most violent partisans of other prime donne, lyric and dramatic, frankly conceded. Her associates at the Hof told that at rehearsals She merely walked through her part and Princess N achmeister, boasting private acquaintance with her since her elevation to the Bavarian aristocracy as Countess Tann, confided to the world that she never practised even those slow, grand, graceful, and infinitely varied gestures of hands and arms which were as expressive as her voice, but directed them from her brain as she did her acting; that she sat for hours thinking out the minutest details, but without moving a muscle until the night of public performance. All facial expression was concentrated in her eyes. She could express more with those features for which Nature had failed to invoke her conventions, than any living actress with physical writhings and distorted visage. Therefore, when She gave way to momentary violence, as, when at Sieg fried's repudiation she seemed to be tearing her heart out, She created so profound an impression that more than Ordham rose breathless from their seats. Her.
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