Thursday, April 24, 2014

The Tyrolese Minstrels. June 1857

The Tyrolese Minstrels may have looked a little bit like this image which shows a group of the same name in The Illustrated London News, London, Saturday, 6 December 1851, p. 699.


THE TYROLESE MINSTRELS.
Star Theatre
THE TYROLESE MINSTRELS. These performers made a successful debut in this district at the Star Theatre, attired in their picturesque national costume Madame Haimberger and Miss Kramer attracted the admiring gaze of a crowded audience, while their finished delivery of the mountain airs peculiar to their own homes, astonished and delighted all alike. The musical "Iodelu", which is the refrain of almost all their songs, never fails to hang on the ear and to please the memory long after its sound has ceased. The ladies really deserve the. high encomiums which have been passed upon them elsewhere, and which they most assuredly find echoed by the good folks of the Ovens. It is a great pity that the racy and original words of their songs cannot be understood by the majority of their hearers, as the absence of this understanding deprives the performance of half its merit......
...The entertainment was varied by performances on the harp and violin by Messrs Zeplin and Griffith.

THE Ovens [?] Advertiser. (1857, June 9). Ovens and Murray Advertiser (Beechworth, Vic. : 1857 - 1918), p. 2. Retrieved October 11, 2013, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article113015646

Again George performed in partnership with George Zeplin.  George Frederick Zeplin, a member of a musical family, arrived in Melbourne in October 1852 on the Nepaul aged 20.   The rest of his family, including parents, arrived in 1859 and were immediately employed as Zeplin Family Quadrille Band.