The Pavilion — Paul Reimers concert

This is the latest in an occasional series of posts based on historic news reports about The Pavilion at Fort Ticonderoga.

Stephen H.P and Sarah Thompson Pell, who restored Fort Ticonderoga and opened it to the public, hosted Ticonderoga residents on July 25, 1920 at a concert by noted tenor Paul Reimers.

“Mr. Reimers, with W. Reddick at the piano, gave a well selected program of English, French, Spanish and Negro songs that gave him full opportunity to display in the best advantage his soft and rich voice,” the Ticonderoga Sentinel reported on July 29, 1920. “Those present are most grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Pell for having given them this opportunity to hear such music and a singer of such renown as Mr. Reimers.”

Reimers had been vacationing at The Pavilion, the Pell home and one-time hotel now being restored on the Fort Ticonderoga grounds.

The concert was held in the garage of The Pavilion.

Refreshments were served at a post-concert reception inside The Pavilion.

Reimers, over his career, released 55 recordings on the Victor and Edison labels.

“In Europe … he has been heard in practically every music center of importance from Constantinople to Helsingfors and from Madrid to Petrograd,” Musical America magazine reported on Jan. 23, 1915.

The Danish-born German tenor was a prisoner of war in France for more than three months at the outbreak of World War I, until the Prince of Battenberg intervened on his behalf.

Reimers was stopped and arrested when he was on an auto tour of the French side of the Pyrenees Mountains.

He was assigned to a work crew breaking stones.

“We were obliged to sleep on straw spread on the ground. Fortunately I had sufficient money to buy myself some covers and something more to eat than the food offered us,” he told Musical America. “I daresay that in Germany the process was merely reversed.”

Click here to read the most recent previous post in the series.