Every old play-goer will be glad to hear that Mme. Janauschek has found a refuge at last. She is to pass what is left to her of life at the Actors' Home on Staten Island, where she will be treated with the special consideration due to her age, to her infirmities, to her distinguished reputation and to the high value of her professional achievement. Madame Janauschek is hardly known, except by name, to the theatre-goers of to-day and at a time when the stage is so largely given up to inane farces, to so-called musical comedies and to problem plays, her art, even if it could be exhibited in all its original power and plenitude, might not arouse much admiration or attract much notice. But the older generation will always think of her with gratitude and recall her impersonations with delight.
Thirty years ago, and perhaps for as much as ten years later, she was a reigning favorite and the house was sure to be crowded whenever she appeared. In those days people took the drama more seriously than they do now. They did not go to the theatre merely to be amused. They were not impatient of any performance which, did not make them laugh. They were ready to attend and able to enjoy the tragic and the grave, and in certain lines of, tragedy Janauschek was unsurpassed if not unequaled. Her elocution was always to a certain extent embarrassed by the necessity of speaking in a language which she never completely mastered, and her accent was so marked that it was sometimes a little difficult to follow her, but she had a singularly vibrant, sonorous and expressive voice, and her delivery of her lines, in its flexibility of modulation, in its accuracy of emphasis, and in its unfailing intelligence, was to the highest degree artistic and effective.
She was the last mistress and exponent of the grand manner with which Rachel and Ristori are identified and which Sarah Bernhardt unquestionably the greatest of living actresses, does not possess. Janauschek was distinctively a tragedian, and the figures which she created were heroic in their spirit in their dimensions, and in their type. To the modern demand for naturalism on the stage she made no concession. In a certain literal and restricted sense her personages may be said not to have been true to life, that is, to the everyday life which we see around us. Her Medea and her Brunhilde, her Marie Stuart and even her Lady Dedlock transcended the ordinary experience and rose above the realism which it has been agreed to declare the cardinal merit of dramatic impersonation. But they were great imaginative creations, and only those not competent to recognise their merit could help being affected by their power. In their energy and vitality and sincerity; in the passion with which they were animated and in the constant dignity by which they were inspired, they made an appeal to the emotions even of the uncritical spectator which there was no resisting.
No such acting as that is to be seen now-a-days and it is said that nothing of the kind is in demand. Perhaps not; and yet when next a great dramatic genius does appear it is likely that he or she will win a hearing. One of the reasons why tragedy is not played is because the tragedian is wanting. There are no Booths or Forrests or Janauscheks or Ritoris or Salvinis any more, and the public is rightly intolerant of mediocrity in a great part. But this state of things is not going to last for ever. One of these days a new star of the first magnitude will rise on the horizon and then the old things will be-popular once more.
Concordia Theatre - Philadelphia
Never heard of Madam Janauschek before doing the above Philly history piece on the Concordia Theatre that claimed Janauschek as having performed there which she may have but memory is a funny thing and Madame Janauschek was more likely to have performed at the Walnut in her heyday.
While the above Inquirer human interest article is not an obit, it could be. And the Staten Island Actors's Home has moved to Jersey I think and that place is now a parking lot for the Island Zoo.
And Madame Janauschek was moved to another old age home in Long Island, perhaps farmed out to a cheaper warehouse for her dying body or maybe just for better weather for her to enjoy. I don't know. That obit does not say.
I thought the above a fitting description of her and her talents now that she is pretty much forgotten in American Theatre history.
Madame Fanny Janauschek
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