Darrell Fancourt performed in opera productions at the Academy, creating the role of Tackleton, the toy merchant, in Alexander Mackenzie's opera "The Cricket on the Hearth", and playing Colas in Mozart's "Bastien und Bastienne", and Benoit in "La bohème". "The Times" thought him "amusing but not noticeably musical" in the last. Even before completing his studies, Fancourt was building a concert career in London, the British provinces and the European continent. "The Times" said of an Aeolian Hall recital in 1912, "Mr. Fancourt has some noble notes in his voice, except when he forces it occasionally ... Schubert's "Tod und das Mädchen"
Mateo Falcone (opera) Mateo Falcone (opera) Mateo Falcone ("Матео Фальконе" in Cyrillic; "Mateo Fal'kone" in transliteration) is a one-act opera composed by César Cui during 1906–1907. (Actually, Cui designated the genre of this work as "dramatic scene.") The libretto was adapted by the composer from Prosper Mérimée's like-named story from 1829 and Vasily Zhukovsky's verse rendering thereof. It was premiered on 14 December 1907 (Old Style), at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (the work was given along with the composer's early one-act comic opera, "The Mandarin's Son"). The premiere production of "Mateo" was a failure; the work never became part of the standard