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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chapters of Opera, by Henry Edward Krehbiel
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chapters of Opera
+
+Author: Henry Edward Krehbiel
+
+Release Date: May 29, 2005 [EBook #5995]
+[This file was first posted on October 10, 2002]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAPTERS OF OPERA ***
+
+
+
+
+The HTML version of this text was produced by Bob Frone for
+his Opera Books page. Plain text adaption by Andrew Sly.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTERS OF OPERA
+
+
+Being
+Historical and Critical Observations
+And Records Concerning the Lyric
+Drama in New York from Its
+Earliest Days Down to
+The Present Time
+
+by
+
+HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
+
+Musical Editor of "The New York Tribune";
+Author of "How To Listen To Music,"
+"Studies In The Wagnerian Drama,"
+"Music And Manners In The Classical Period,"
+"The Philharmonic Society Of New York," etc., etc.
+
+
+
+To MARIE--WIFE
+
+and
+
+DAUGHTER HELEN
+
+Who have shared with the Author many of the
+Experiences described in this book.
+
+"Joy shared is Joy doubled."
+                --GOETHE.
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The making of this book was prompted by the fact that with the season
+1907-08 the Metropolitan Opera House in New York completed an existence
+of twenty-five years. Through all this period at public representations
+I have occupied stall D-15 on the ground floor as reviewer of musical
+affairs for The New York Tribune newspaper. I have, therefore, been a
+witness of the vicissitudes through which the institution has passed
+in a quarter-century, and a chronicler of all significant musical
+things which were done within its walls. I have seen the failure of
+the artistic policy to promote which the magnificent theater was built;
+the revolution accomplished by the stockholders under the leadership
+of Leopold Damrosch; the progress of a German régime, which did much
+to develop tastes and create ideals which, till its coming, were
+little-known quantities in American art and life; the overthrow of that
+régime in obedience to the command of fashion; the subsequent dawn and
+development of the liberal and comprehensive policy which marked the
+climax of the career of Maurice Grau as an operatic director, I have
+witnessed since then, many of the fruits of wise endeavor and astute
+management frittered away by managerial incapacity and greed, and fad
+and fashion come to rule again, where for a brief, but eventful period,
+serious artistic interest and endeavor had been dominant.
+
+The institution will enter upon a new régime with the season 1908-09.
+The time, therefore, seemed fitting for a review of the twenty-five
+years that are past. The incidents of this period are fixed; they
+may be variously viewed, but they cannot be changed. They belong to
+history, and to a presentation of that history I have devoted most
+of the pages which follow. I have been actuated in my work by deep
+seriousness of purpose, and have tried to avoid everything which
+could not make for intellectual profit, or, at least, amiable and
+illuminative entertainment.
+
+The chapters which precede the more or less detailed history of the
+Metropolitan Opera House (I-VII) were written for the sake of the
+light which they shed on existing institutions and conditions, and to
+illustrate the development of existing taste, appreciation, and interest
+touching the lyrical drama. To the same end much consideration has been
+paid to significant doings outside the Metropolitan Opera House since
+it has been the chief domicile of grand opera in New York. Especial
+attention has been given for obvious reasons to the two seasons of
+opera at Mr. Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera House.
+
+H. E. KREHBIEL.
+
+Blue Hill, Maine, the Summer of 1908.
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THIRD EDITION
+
+For the purposes of a new and popular edition of this book, the
+publishers asked the author to continue his historical narrative, his
+record of performances, and his critical survey of the operas produced
+at the two chief operatic institutions of New York, from the beginning
+of the season 1908-1909 down to the close of the season 1910-1911. This
+invitation the author felt compelled to decline for several reasons,
+one of which (quite sufficient in itself), was that he had already
+undertaken a work of great magnitude which would occupy all his working
+hours during the period between the close of the last season and the
+publication of this edition.
+
+Thereupon the publishers, who seemed to place a high valuation on
+the historical element in the book, suggested that the record of
+performances at least be brought up to date even if the criticism of new
+operas and the discussion of the other incidents of the season--such as
+the dissensions between the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House,
+the rivalry between them and the director of the Manhattan, the quarrels
+with artists, the successes achieved by some operas and the failure
+suffered by others--be postponed for the present at least for want of
+time on the part of the author to carry on the work on the scale of the
+original edition.
+
+It was finally agreed that the author should supply the record for
+the period intervening between the appearance of the first edition of
+"Chapters of Opera" and the present publication by revised excerpts
+from the annual summaries of the activities of the seasons in question
+published by him in the New York Tribune, of which newspaper he has had
+the honor of being the musical critic for thirty years past. For the
+privilege of using this material the author is deeply beholden to the
+Tribune Association and the editor, Hart Lyman, Esq. The record may be
+found in the Appendices after the last chapter.
+
+H. E. KREHBIEL.
+
+Blue Hill, Maine, Summer of 1911.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION OF OPERA IN NEW YORK
+
+  The Introduction of Italian Opera in New York
+  English Ballad Operas and Adaptations from French and Italian Works
+  Hallam's Comedians and "The Beggar's Opera"
+  The John Street Theater and Its Early Successors
+  Italian Opera's First Home
+  Manuel Garcia
+  The New Park Theater and Some of Its Rivals
+  Malibran and English Opera
+  The Bowery Theater, Richmond Hill, Niblo's and Castle Gardens
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EARLY THEATERS, MANAGERS, AND SINGERS
+
+  Of the Building of Opera Houses
+  A Study of Influences
+  The First Italian Opera House in New York
+  Early Impresarios and Singers
+  Da Ponte, Montressor, Rivafinoli
+  Signorina Pedrotti and Fornasari
+  Why Do Men Become Opera-Managers?
+  Addison and Italian Opera
+  The Vernacular Triumphant
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FIRST ITALIAN COMPANY
+
+  Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia"
+  Signorina Maria Garcia's Unfortunate Marriage
+  Lorenzo da Ponte
+  His Hebraic Origin and Checkered Career
+  "Don Giovanni"
+  An Appeal in Behalf of Italian Opera
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOUSES BUILT FOR OPERA
+
+  More Opera Houses
+  Palmo's and the Astor Place
+  Signora Borghese and the Distressful Vocal Wabble
+  Antognini and Cinti-Damoreau
+  An Orchestral Strike
+  Advent of the Patti Family
+  Don Francesco Marty y Torrens and His Havanese Company
+  Opera Gowns Fifty Years Ago
+  Edward and William Henry Fry
+  Horace Greeley and His Musical Critic
+  James H. Hackett and William Niblo
+  Tragic Consequences of Canine Interference
+  Goethe and a Poodle
+  A Dog-Show and the Astor Place Opera House
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MARETZEK, HIS RIVALS AND SINGERS
+
+  Max Maretzek
+  His Managerial Career
+  Some Anecdotes
+  "Crotchets and Quavers"
+  His Rivals and Some of His Singers
+  Bernard Ullmann
+  Marty Again
+  Bottesini and Arditi
+  Steffanone
+  Bosio
+  Tedesco
+  Salvi
+  Bettini
+  Badiali
+  Marini
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MUSIC
+
+  Operatic Warfare Half a Century Ago
+  The Academy of Music and Its Misfortunes
+  A Critic's Opera and His Ideals
+  A Roster of American Singers
+  Grisi and Mario
+  Annie Louise Cary
+  Ole Bull as Manager
+  Piccolomini and Réclame
+  Adelina Patti's Début and an Anniversary Dinner Twenty-five
+Years Later
+  A Kiss for Maretzek
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MAPLESON AND OTHER IMPRESARIOS
+
+  Colonel James H. Mapleson
+  A Diplomatic Manager
+  His Persuasiveness
+  How He Borrowed Money from an Irate Creditor
+  Maurice Strakosch
+  Musical Managers
+  Pollini
+  Sofia Scalchi and Annie Louise Cary Again
+  Campanini and His Beautiful Attack
+  Brignoli
+  His Appetite and Superstition
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE
+
+  The Academy's Successful Rival
+  Why It Was Built
+  The Demands of Fashion
+  Description of the Theater
+  War between the Metropolitan and the Academy of Music
+  Mapleson and Abbey
+  The Rival Forces
+  Patti and Nilsson
+  Gerster and Sembrich
+  A Costly Victory
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FIRST SEASON AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+  The First Season at the Metropolitan Opera House
+  Mr. Abbey's Singers
+  Gounod's "Faust" and Christine Nilsson
+  Marcella Sembrich and Her Versatility
+  Sofia Scalchi
+  Signor Kaschmann
+  Signor Stagno
+  Ambroise Thomas's "Mignon"
+  Madame Fursch-Madi
+  Ponchielli's "La Gioconda"
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OPERATIC REVOLUTIONS
+
+  The Season 1883-1884 at the Academy of Music
+  Lillian Nordica's American Début
+  German Opera Introduced at the Metropolitan Opera House
+  Parlous State of Italian Opera in London and on the Continent
+  Dr. Leopold Damrosch and His Enterprise
+  The German Singers
+  Amalia Materna
+  Marianne Brandt
+  Marie Schroeder-Hanfstängl
+  Anton Schott, the Military Tenor
+  Von Bülow's Characterization: "A Tenor is a Disease"
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GERMAN OPERA AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+  First German Season
+  Death Struggles of Italian Opera at the Academy
+  Adelina Patti and Her Art
+  Features of the German Performances
+  "Tannhäuser"
+  Marianne Brandt in Beethoven's Opera
+  "Der Freischütz"
+  "Masaniello"
+  Materna in "Die Walküre"
+  Death of Dr. Damrosch
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+END OF ITALIAN OPERA AT THE ACADEMY
+
+  The Season 1885-1886
+  End of the Mapleson Régime at the Academy of Music
+  Alma Fohström
+  The American Opera Company
+  German Opera in the Bowery
+  A Tenor Who Wanted to be Manager of the Metropolitan Opera House
+  The Coming of Anton Seidl
+  His Early Career
+  Lilli Lehmann
+  A Broken Contract
+  Unselfish Devotion to Artistic Ideals
+  Max Alvary
+  Emil Fischer
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WAGNER HOLDS THE METROPOLITAN
+
+  Second and Third German Seasons
+  The Period 1885-1888
+  More about Lilli Lehmann
+  Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba"
+  First Performance of Wagner's "Meistersinger"
+  Patti in Concert and Opera
+  A Flash in the Pan at the Academy of Music
+  The Transformed American Opera Company
+  Production of Rubinstein's "Nero"
+  An Imperial Operatic Figure
+  First American Performance of "Tristan und Isolde"
+  Albert Niemann and His Characteristics
+  His Impersonation of Siegmund
+  Anecdotes
+  A Triumph for "Fidelio"
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WAGNERIAN HIGH TIDE
+
+  Wagnerian High Tide at the Metropolitan Opera House
+  1887-1890
+  Italian Low Water Elsewhere
+  Rising of the Opposition
+  Wagner's "Siegfried"
+  Its Unconventionality
+  "Götterdämmerung"
+  "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen"
+  "Euryanthe"
+  "Ferdinand Cortez"
+  "Der Barbier von Bagdad"
+  Italo Campanini and Verdi's "Otello"
+  Patti and Italian Opera at the Metropolitan Opera House
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+END OF THE GERMAN PERIOD
+
+  End of the German Period
+  1890-1891
+  Some Extraordinary Novelties
+  Franchetti's "Asrael"
+  "Der Vasall von Szigeth"
+  A Royal Composer, His Opera and His Distribution of Decorations
+  "Diana von Solange"
+  Financial Salvation through Wagner
+  Italian Opera Redivivus
+  Ill-mannered Box-holders
+  Wagnerian Statistics
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ITALIAN OPERA AGAIN AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+  The Season 1891-1892
+  Losses of the Stockholders of the Metropolitan Opera House Company
+  Return to Italian Opera
+  Mr. Abbey's Expectations
+  Sickness of Lilli Lehmann
+  The De Reszke Brothers and Lassalle
+  Emma Eames
+  Début of Marie Van Zandt
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana"
+  Fire Damages the Opera House
+  Reorganization of the Owning Company
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE ADVENT OF MELBA AND CALVÉ
+
+  An Interregnum
+  Changes in the Management
+  Rise and Fall of Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau
+  Death of Henry E. Abbey
+  His Career
+  Season 1893-1894
+  Nellie Melba
+  Emma Calvé
+  Bourbonism of the Parisians
+  Massenet's "Werther"
+  1894-1895
+  A Breakdown on the Stage
+  "Elaine"
+  Sybil Sanderson and "Manon"
+  Shakespearian Operas
+  Verdi's "Falstaff"
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+UPRISING IN FAVOR OF GERMAN OPERA
+
+  The Public Clamor for German Opera
+  Oscar Hammerstein and His First Manhattan Opera House
+  Rivalry between Anton Seidl and Walter Damrosch
+  The Latter's Career as Manager
+  Wagner Triumphant
+  German Opera Restored at the Metropolitan
+  "The Scarlet Letter"
+  "Mataswintha"
+  "Hänsel und Gretel" in English
+  Jean de Reszke and His Influence
+  Mapleson for the Last Time
+  "Andrea Chenier"
+  Madame Melba's Disastrous Essay with Wagner
+  "Le Cid"
+  Metropolitan Performances 1893-1897
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+BEGINNING OF THE GRAU PERIOD
+
+  Beginning of the Grau Period
+  Death of Maurice Grau
+  His Managerial Career
+  An Interregnum at the Metropolitan Opera House Filled by
+Damrosch and Ellis
+  Death of Anton Seidl
+  His Funeral
+  Characteristic Traits
+  "La Bohème"
+  1898-1899
+  "Ero e Leandro" and Its Composer
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+NEW SINGERS AND OPERAS
+
+  Closing Years of Mr. Grau's Régime
+  Traits in the Manager's Character
+  Débuts of Alvarez, Scotti, Louise Homer, Lucienne Bréval and
+Other Singers
+  Ternina and "Tosca"
+  Reyer's "Salammbô"
+  Gala Performance for a Prussian Prince
+  "Messaline"
+  Paderewski's "Manru"
+  "Der Wald"
+  Performances in the Grau Period
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+HEINRICH CONRIED AND "PARSIFAL"
+
+  Beginning of the Administration of Heinrich Conried
+  Season 1903-1904
+  Mascagni's American Fiasco
+  "Iris" and "Zanetto"
+  Woful Consequences of Depreciating American Conditions
+  Mr. Conried's Theatrical Career
+  His Inheritance from Mr. Grau
+  Signor Caruso
+  The Company Recruited
+  The "Parsifal" Craze
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+END OF CONRIED'S ADMINISTRATION
+
+  Conried's Administration Concluded
+  1905-1908
+  Visits from Humperdinck and Puccini
+  The California Earthquake
+  Madame Sembrich's Generosity to the Suffering Musicians
+  "Madama Butterfly"
+  "Manon Lescaut"
+  "Fedora"
+  Production and Prohibition of "Salome"
+  A Criticism of the Work
+  "Adriana Lecouvreur"
+  A Table of Performances
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+HAMMERSTEIN AND HIS OPERA HOUSE
+
+  Oscar Hammerstein Builds a Second Manhattan Opera House
+  How the Manager Put His Doubters to Shame
+  His Earlier Experiences as Impresario
+  Cleofonte Campanini
+  A Zealous Artistic Director and Ambitious Singers
+  A Surprising Record but No Novelties in the First Season
+  Melba and Calvé as Stars
+  The Desertion of Bonci
+  Quarrels about Puccini's "Bohéme"
+  List of Performances
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A BRILLIANT SEASON AT THE MANHATTAN
+
+  Hammerstein's Second Season
+  Amazing Promises but More Amazing Achievements
+  Mary Garden and Maurice Renaud
+  Massenet's "Thaïs," Charpentier's "Louise"
+  Giordano's "Siberia" and Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" Performed for
+the First Time in America
+  Revival of Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," "Crispino e la Comare"
+of the Ricci Brothers, and Giordano's "Andrea Chenier"
+  The Tetrazzini Craze
+  Repertory of the Season
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION OF OPERA IN NEW YORK
+
+
+Considering the present state of Italian opera in New York City (I am
+writing in the year of our Lord 1908), it seems more than a little
+strange that its entire history should come within the memories of
+persons still living. It was only two years ago that an ancient factotum
+at the Metropolitan Opera House died who, for a score of years before he
+began service at that establishment, had been in various posts at the
+Academy of Music. Of Mr. Arment a kindly necrologist said that he had
+seen the Crowd gather in front of the Park Theater in 1825, when the new
+form of entertainment effected an entrance in the New World. I knew the
+little old gentleman for a quarter of a century or more, but though he
+was familiar with my interest in matters historical touching the opera
+in New York, he never volunteered information of things further back
+than the consulship of Mapleson at the Academy. Moreover, I was unable
+to reconcile the story of his recollection of the episode of 1825 with
+the circumstances of his early life. Yet the tale may have been true, or
+the opera company that had attracted his boyish attention been one that
+came within the first decade after Italian opera had its introduction.
+
+Concerning another's recollections, I have not the slightest doubt.
+Within the last year Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, entertaining some of her
+relatives and friends with an account of social doings in New York in
+her childhood, recalled the fact that she had been taken as a tiny miss
+to hear some of the performances of the Garcia Troupe, and, if I mistake
+not, had had Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist of Mozart's "Nozze di
+Figaro" and "Don Giovanni" pointed out to her by her brother. This
+brother was Samuel Ward, who enjoyed the friendship of the old poet,
+and published recollections of him not long after his death, in The
+New York Mirror. For a score of years I have enjoyed the gentle
+companionship at the opera of two sisters whose mother was an Italian
+pupil of Da Ponte's, and when, a few years ago, Professor Marchesan, of
+the University of Treviso, Italy, appealed to me for material to be used
+in the biography of Da Ponte, which he was writing, I was able, through
+my gracious and gentle operatic neighbors, to provide him with a number
+of occasional poems written, in the manner of a century ago, to their
+mother, in whom Da Ponte had awakened a love for the Italian language
+and literature. This, together with some of my own labors in uncovering
+the American history of Mozart's collaborator, has made me feel
+sometimes as if I, too, had dwelt for a brief space in that Arcadia of
+which I purpose to gossip in this chapter, and a few others which are
+to follow it.
+
+There may be other memories going back as far as Mrs. Howe's, but I
+very much doubt if there is another as lively as hers on any question
+connected with social life in New York fourscore years ago. Italian
+opera was quite as aristocratic when it made its American bow as it
+is now, and decidedly more exclusive. It is natural that memories of
+it should linger in Mrs. Howe's mind for the reason that the family
+to which she belonged moved in the circles to which the new form of
+entertainment made appeal. A memory of the incident which must have been
+even livelier than that of Mrs. Howe's, however, perished in 1906, when
+Manuel Garcia died in London, in his one hundred and first year, for he
+could say of the first American season of Italian opera what Æneas said
+of the siege of Troy, "All of which I saw, and some of which I was."
+Manuel Garcia was a son of the Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia, who
+brought the institution to our shores; he was a brother of our first
+prima donna, she who then was only the Signorina Garcia, but within
+a lustrum afterward was the great Malibran; and he sang in the first
+performance, on November 29, 1825, and probably in all the performances
+given between that date and August of the next year, when the elder
+Garcia departed, leaving the Signorina, as Mme. Malibran, aged but
+eighteen, to develop her powers in local theaters and as a chorister
+in Grace Church. Of this and other related things presently.
+
+In the sometimes faulty and incomplete records of the American stage to
+which writers on musical history have hitherto been forced to repair,
+1750 is set down as the natal year for English ballad opera in America.
+It is thought that it was in that year that "The Beggar's Opera" found
+its way to New York, after having, in all probability, been given by
+the same company of comedians in Philadelphia in the middle of the
+year preceding. But it is as little likely that these were the first
+performances of ballad operas on this side of the Atlantic as that the
+people of New York were oblivious of the nature of operatic music of
+the Italian type until Garcia's troupe came with Rossini's "Barber of
+Seville," in 1825. There are traces of ballad operas in America in the
+early decades of the eighteenth century, and there can exist no doubt at
+all that French and Italian operas were given in some form, perhaps, as
+a rule, in the adapted form which prevailed in the London theaters until
+far into the nineteenth century, before the year 1800, in the towns and
+cities of the Eastern seaboard, which were in most active communication
+with Great Britain, I quote from an article on the history of opera in
+the United States, written by me for the second edition of "Grove's
+Dictionary of Music and Musicians":
+
+
+Among French works Rousseau's "Pygmalion" and "Devin du Village,"
+Dalayrac's "Nina" and "L'Amant Statue," Monsigny's "Déserteur," Grétry's
+"Zémire et Azor," "Fausse Magie" and "Richard Coeur de Lion" and others,
+were known in Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York in
+the last decade of the eighteenth century. There were traces, too, of
+Pergolese's "Serva padrona," and it seems more than likely that an
+"opera in three acts," the text adapted by Colman, entitled "The Spanish
+Barber; or, The Futile Precaution," played in Baltimore, Philadelphia,
+and New York, in 1794, was Paisiello's "Barbiere di Siviglia." From
+1820 to about 1845 more than a score of the Italian, French, and German
+operas, which made up the staple of foreign repertories, were frequently
+performed by English singers. The earliest of these singers were members
+of the dramatic companies who introduced theatrical plays in the
+colonies. They went from London to Philadelphia, New York, Williamsburg
+(Va.), and Charleston (S. C.), but eventually established their
+strongest and most enduring foothold in New York.
+
+
+Accepting the 1750 date as the earliest of unmistakable records for a
+performance of "The Beggar's Opera" in New York, the original home of
+opera here was the Nassau Street Theater--the first of two known by that
+name. It was a two-storied house, with high gables. Six wax lights were
+in front of the stage, and from the ceiling dangled a "barrel hoop,"
+pierced by half a dozen nails on which were spiked as many candles. It
+is not necessary to take the descriptions of these early playhouses
+as baldly literal, nor as indicative of something like barbarism.
+The "barrel hoop" chandelier of the old theater in Nassau street was
+doubtless only a primitive form of the chandeliers which kept their
+vogue for nearly a century after the first comedians sang and acted at
+the Nassau Street Theater. Illuminating gas did not reach New York till
+1823, and "a thousand candles" was put forth as an attractive feature
+at a concert in the American metropolis as late as 1845. "The Beggar's
+Opera" was only twenty years old when the comedians sent to the colonies
+by William Hallam, under the management of his brother, Lewis, produced
+it, yet the historic Covent Garden Theater, in which it first saw the
+stage lights (candles they were, too), would scarcely stand comparison
+with the most modest of the metropolitan theaters nowadays. Its
+audience-room was only fifty-four or fifty-five feet deep; there were
+no footlights, the stage being illuminated by four hoops of candles,
+over which a crown hung from the borders. The orchestra held only
+fifteen or twenty musicians, though it was in this house that Handel
+produced his operas and oratorios; the boxes "were flat in front and
+had twisted double branches for candles fastened to the plaster. There
+were pedestals on each side of the boards, with elaborately-painted
+figures of Tragedy and Comedy thereon." Hallam's actors went first to
+Williamsburg, Va., but were persuaded to change their home to New York
+in the summer of 1753, among other things by the promise that they would
+find a "very fine 'Playhouse Building'" here. Nevertheless, when Lewis
+Hallam came he found the fine playhouse unsatisfactory, and may be said
+to have inaugurated the habit or custom, or whatever it may be called,
+followed by so many managers since, of beginning his enterprise by
+erecting a new theater. The old one in Nassau Street was torn down,
+and a new one built on its site. It was promised that it should be
+"very fine, large, and commodious," and it was built between June and
+September, 1753; how fine, large, and commodious it was may, therefore,
+be imagined. A year later, the German Calvinists, wanting a place of
+worship, bought the theater, and New York was without a playhouse until
+a new one on Cruger's Wharf was built by David Douglass, who had married
+Lewis Hallam's widow, Hallam having died in Jamaica, in 1755. This was
+abandoned in turn, and Mr. Douglass built a second theater, this time
+in Chapel Street. It cost $1,625, and can scarcely have been either very
+roomy or very ornate. Such as it was, however, it was the home of the
+drama in all its forms, save possibly the ballad opera, until about
+1765, and was the center around which a storm raged which culminated
+in a riot that wrecked it.
+
+The successor of this unhappy institution was the John Street Theater,
+which was opened toward the close of the year 1767. There seems to have
+been a period of about fifteen years during which the musical drama
+was absent from the amusement lists, but this house echoed, like its
+earliest predecessors, to the strains of the ballad opera which "made
+Gay rich and Rich gay." "The Beggar's Opera" was preceded, however, by
+"Love in a Village," for which Dr. Arne wrote and compiled the music;
+and Bickerstaff's "Maid of the Mill" was also in the repertory. In 1774
+it was officially recommended that all places of amusement be closed.
+Then followed the troublous times of the Revolution, and it was not
+until twelve years afterward--that is, till 1786--that English Opera
+resumed its sway. "Love in a Village" was revived, and it was followed
+by "Inkle and Yarico," an arrangement of Shakespeare's "Tempest," with
+Purcell's music, "No Song, No Supper," "Macbeth," with Locke's music,
+McNally's comic opera "Robin Hood," and other works of the same
+character; in fact, it may safely be said that few, if any, English
+operas, either with original music or music adapted from the ballad
+tunes of England, were heard in London without being speedily brought to
+New York and performed here. In the John Street Theater, too, they were
+listened to by George Washington, and the leader of the orchestra, a
+German named Pfeil, whose name was variously spelled Fyle, File, Files,
+and so on, produced that "President's March," the tune of which was
+destined to become associated with "Hail Columbia," to the words of
+which it was adapted by Joseph Hopkinson, of Philadelphia. On January
+29, 1798, a new playhouse was opened. This was the Park Theater. A
+musical piece entitled "The Purse, or American Tar," was on the program
+of the opening performance, and for more than a score of years the Park
+Theater played an important rôle in local operatic history. For a long
+term English operas of both types held the stage, along with the drama
+in all its forms, but in 1819 an English adaptation of Rossini's "Barber
+of Seville"--the opera which opened the Italian régime six years
+later--was heard on its stage, and two years after that Henry Rowley
+Bishop's arrangement of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro." At the close of
+the season of 1820 the Park Theater was destroyed by fire, to the great
+loss of its owners, one of whom was John Jacob Astor. On its site was
+erected the new Park Theater, which was the original home of Italian
+opera, performed in its original tongue, and in the Italian manner,
+though only a small minority of the performers were Italians by birth.
+
+Garcia was a Spaniard, born in Seville. Richard Grant White, writing in
+The Century Magazine for March, 1882, calls him a "Spanish Hebrew," on
+what authority I am unable to guess. Not only was Manuel Garcia, the
+elder, a chorister in the Cathedral of Seville at the age of six, but
+it seems as likely as not that he came of a family of Spanish church
+musicians who had made their mark for more than fifty years before the
+father of Malibran was born. But it is a habit with some writers to find
+Hebrew blood in nearly all persons of genius.
+
+The new Park Theater was looked upon as a magnificent playhouse in its
+day, and it is a pity that Mr. White, writing about it when it was a
+quarter of a century old, should have helped to spread the erroneous
+notion that it was quite unworthy of so elegant a form of entertainment
+as Garcia brought into it. It remained a fashionable house through all
+its career or at least for a long time after it gave refuge to the
+Italian muse, though it may not have been able to hold one of its
+candles to the first house built especially to house that muse eight
+years later. The barrel hoop of the first New York theater gave way
+to "three chandeliers and patent oil lamps, the chandeliers having
+thirty-five lights each." Mr. White's description of this house after it
+had seen about a quarter of a century's service is certainly uninviting.
+Its boxes were like pens for beasts. "Across them were stretched benches
+consisting of a mere board covered with faded red moreen, a narrower
+board, shoulder high, being stretched behind to serve for a back. But
+one seat on each of the three or four benches was without even this
+luxury, in order that the seat itself might be raised upon its hinges
+for people to pass in. These sybaritic inclosures were kept under lock
+and key by a fee-expecting creature, who was always half drunk, except
+when he was wholly drunk. The pit, which has in our modern theater
+become the parterre (or, as it is often strangely called, the parquet),
+the most desirable part of the house, was in the Park Theater hardly
+superior to that in which the Jacquerie of old stood upon the bare
+ground (par terre), and thus gave the place its French name. The floor
+was dirty and broken into holes; the seats were bare, backless benches.
+Women were never seen in the pit, and, although the excellence of the
+position (the best in the house) and the cheapness of admission (half a
+dollar) took gentlemen there, few went there who could afford to study
+comfort and luxury in their amusements. The place was pervaded with evil
+smells; and, not uncommonly, in the midst of a performance, rats ran out
+of the holes in the floor and across into the orchestra. This delectable
+place was approached by a long, underground passage, with bare,
+whitewashed walls, dimly lighted, except at a sort of booth, at which
+vile fluids and viler solids were sold. As to the house itself, it was
+the dingy abode of dreariness. The gallery was occupied by howling
+roughs, who might have taken lessons in behavior from the negroes who
+occupied a part of this tier, which was railed off for their particular
+use."
+
+This was the first home of Italian opera, strictly speaking. It had long
+housed opera in the vernacular, and remained to serve as the fortress
+of the English forces when the first battles were fought between the
+champions of the foreign exotic and the entertainment which had been so
+long established as to call itself native. Its career came to an end in
+1848, when, like its predecessor and successor, it went up in flames and
+smoke.
+
+Presently I shall tell about the houses which have been built in New
+York especially for operatic uses, but before then some attention ought
+to be given to several other old theaters which had connection with
+opera in one or another of its phases. One of these was the New York
+Theater, afterward called the Bowery, and known by that name till a
+comparatively recent date. The walls of this theater echoed first to the
+voice of Malibran, when put forth in the vernacular of the country of
+which fate seemed, for a time, to have decreed that she should remain a
+resident. This was immediately after the first season of Italian opera
+at the Park Theater. The New York Theater was then new, having been
+built in 1826. Malibran had begun the study of English in London before
+coming to New York with her father; and she continued her studies with
+a new energy and a new purpose after the departure of her father to
+Mexico had left her apparently stranded in New York with a bankrupt and
+good-for-nothing husband to support. She made her first essay in English
+opera with "The Devil's Bridge," and followed it up with "Love in a
+Village." English operas, whether of the ballad order or with original
+music, were constructed in principle on the lines of the German
+Singspiel and French opéra comique, all the dialogue being spoken; and
+Malibran's experience at the theater and Grace Church, coupled with her
+great social popularity, must have made a pretty good Englishwoman of
+her. "It is rather startling," says Mr. White, in the article already
+alluded to, "to think of the greatest prima donna, not only of her day,
+but of modern times--the most fascinating woman upon the stage in the
+first half of the nineteenth century--as singing the soprano parts of
+psalm tunes and chants in a small town then less known to the people of
+London and Paris and Vienna than Jeddo is now. Grace Church may well be
+pardoned for pride in a musical service upon the early years of which
+fell such a crown of glory, and which has since then been guided by
+taste not always unworthy of such a beginning." Malibran's performances
+at the New York Theater were successful and a source of profit, both
+to the manager and M. Malibran, to whom, it is said, a portion of the
+receipts were sent every night.
+
+Three other theaters which were identified with opera more or less
+came into the field later, and by their names, at least, testified to
+the continued popularity which a famous English institution had won a
+century before, and which endured until that name could be applied to
+the places that bore it only on the "lucus a non lucendo" principle.
+These were the theaters of Richmond Hill, Niblo's, and Castle Garden.
+The Ranelagh Gardens, which John Jones opened in New York, in June,
+1765, and the Vauxhall Gardens, opened by Mr. Samuel Francis, in
+June, 1769, were planned more or less after their English prototypes.
+Out-of-doors concerts were their chief musical features, fireworks their
+spectacular, while the serving of refreshments was relied on as the
+principal source of profit. Richmond Hill had in its palmy days been the
+villa home of Aaron Burr, and its fortunes followed the descending scale
+like those of its once illustrious master. Its site was the neighborhood
+of what is now the intersection of Varick and Charlton streets. After
+passing out of Burr's hands, but before his death, the park had become
+Richmond Hill Gardens, and the mansion the Richmond Hill Theater, both
+of somewhat shady reputation, which was temporarily rehabilitated by the
+response which the fashionable elements of the city's population made to
+an appeal made by a season of Italian opera, given in 1832. The relics
+of Niblo's Garden have disappeared as completely as those of Richmond
+Hill, but its site is still fresh in the memory of those whose
+theatrical experiences go back a quarter of a century. They must be old,
+however, who can recall enough verdure in the vicinity of Broadway and
+Prince Street to justify the name maintained by the theater to which for
+many years entrance was gained through a corridor of the Metropolitan
+Hotel. Three-quarters of a century ago Niblo's Garden was a reality.
+William Niblo, who built it and managed it with consummate cleverness,
+had been a successful coffee-house keeper downtown. Its theater opened
+refreshingly on one side into the garden (as the Terrace Garden Theater,
+at Third Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street does to-day), where one could
+eat a dish of ice cream or sip a sherry cobbler in luxurious shade, if
+such were his prompting, while play or pantomime went merrily on within.
+Writing of it in 1855 Max Maretzek, who, as manager of the Astor Place
+Opera House, had suffered from the rivalry of Niblo and his theater,
+said:
+
+
+The Metropolitan Hotel, Niblo's Theater, stores and other buildings
+occupy the locality. Of the former garden nothing remains save the
+ice cream and drinking saloons attached to the theater. These take up
+literally as much room in the building as its stage does, and prove
+that its proprietor has not altogether overlooked the earlier vocation
+which laid the foundation of his fortune. The name by which he calls it
+has never changed. It was Niblo's Garden when loving couples ate their
+creams or drank their cobblers under the shadow of the trees. It is
+Niblo's Garden now, when it is turned into a simple theater and hedged
+in with houses. Nay, in the very bills which are circulated in the
+interior of the building during the performances you may find, or
+might shortly since have found, such an announcement as the following,
+appearing in large letters:
+
+"Between the second and third acts"--or, possibly, it may run thus
+when opera is not in the ascendant--"after the conclusion of the
+first piece an intermission of twenty minutes takes place, for a
+promenade in the garden."
+
+You will, I feel certain, admit that this is a marvelously delicate
+way of intimating to a gentleman who may feel "dry" (it is the right
+word, is it not?) that he will find the time to slake his thirst.
+
+When he returns and his lady inquires where he has been he may reply,
+if he wills it:
+
+"Promenading in the garden."
+
+
+It is not plain from Mr. White's account whether or not his memory
+reached back to the veritable garden of Mr. Niblo, but his recollections
+of the theater were not jaundiced like those of Mr. Maretzek, but
+altogether amiable. Speaking of the performances of the Shireff, Seguin,
+and Wilson company of English opera singers, who came to New York in
+1838, he says:
+
+
+Miss Shireff afterward appeared at Niblo's Garden, which was on the
+corner of Broadway and Prince Street, where the Metropolitan Hotel now
+stands. Here she performed in Auber's "Masked Ball" and other light
+operas (all, of course, in English), singing in a theater that was
+open on one side to the air; for Niblo's was a great place of summer
+entertainment. It was a great New York "institution" in its day--perhaps
+the greatest and most beneficent one of its sort that New York has ever
+known. It may be safely said that most of the elder generation of New
+Yorkers now living [this was written in 1881] have had at Niblo's Garden
+the greatest pleasure they have ever enjoyed in public. There were
+careless fun and easy jollity; there whole families would go at a
+moment's warning to hear this or that singer, but most of all, year
+after year, to see the Ravels--a family of pantomimists and dancers
+upon earth and air, who have given innocent, thoughtless, side-shaking,
+brain-clearing pleasure to more Americans than ever relaxed their sad,
+silent faces for any other performers. The price of admission here was
+fifty cents, no seats reserved; "first come, first served."
+
+
+Last of all there was Castle Garden. Children of to-day can remember
+when it was still the immigrants' depot, which it had been for half a
+century. Tradition says that it was built to protect New York City from
+foreign invasion, not to harbor it; but as a fortress it must have
+suffered disarmament quite early in the nineteenth century. It is now
+an aquarium, and as such has returned to its secondary use, which was
+that of a place of entertainment. In 1830 and about that day it was a
+restaurant, but for the sale only of ice cream, lemonade, and cakes.
+You paid a shilling to go in--this to restrict the patronage to people
+of the right sort--and your ticket was redeemable on the inside in
+the innocent fluids and harmless solids aforementioned. A wooden
+bridge, flanked by floating bathhouses, connected the castle with the
+garden--i.e., Battery Park. North and east, in lower Broadway and
+Greenwich Street, were fashionable residences, whose occupants enjoyed
+the promenade under the trees, which was the proper enjoyment of the
+day, as much as their more numerous, but less fortunate fellow citizens.
+There balloons went up by day, and rockets and bombs by night, and
+there, too, the brave militia went on parade. To Mr. White we owe the
+preservation of a poetical description written by Frederick Cozzens in
+an imitation of Spenser's "Sir Clod His Undoinge":
+
+
+  With placket lined, with joyous heart he hies
+  To where the Battery's Alleys, cool and greene,
+  Amid disparted Rivers daintie lies
+  With Fortresse brown and spacious Bridge betweene
+  Two Baths, which there like panniers huge are seen:
+  In shadie paths fair Dames and Maides there be
+  With stalking Lovers basking in their eene,
+  And solitary ones who scan the sea,
+  Or list to vesper chimes of slumberous Trinity.
+
+
+The operas performed in the first season of Italian opera in America
+by the Garcia troupe in the Park Theater 1825-1826, were "Il Barbiere
+di Siviglia," "Tancredi," "Il Turco in Italia," "La Cenerentola," and
+"Semiramide" by Rossini; "Don Giovanni" by Mozart; "L'Amante astuto"
+and "La Figlia del Aria" by Garcia.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EARLY THEATERS, MANAGERS, AND SINGERS
+
+
+The first opera house built in New York City opened its doors on
+November 18, 1833, and was the home of Italian Opera for two seasons;
+the second, built eleven years later, endured in the service for which
+it was designed four years; the third, which marked as big an advance
+on its immediate predecessor in comfort and elegance as the first had
+marked on the ramshackle Park Theater described by Richard Grant White,
+was the Astor Place Opera House, built in 1847, and the nominal home of
+the precious exotic five years.
+
+The Astor Place Opera House in its external appearance is familiar
+enough to the memory of even young New Yorkers, though, unlike its
+successor, the Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place,
+it did not long permit its tarnished glories to form the surroundings
+of the spoken drama after the opera's departure. The Academy of Music
+weathered the operatic tempests of almost an entire generation, counting
+from its opening night, in 1854, to the last night on which Colonel J.
+H. Mapleson was its lessee, in 1886, and omitting the expiring gasps
+which the Italian entertainment made under Signor Angelo, in October,
+1886, under Italo Campanini, in April, 1888, and the final short spasm
+under the doughty Colonel in 1896. The first Italian Opera House (that
+was its name) became the National Theater; the second, which was known
+as Palmo's Opera House, when turned over to the spoken drama, became
+Burton's Theater; the Astor Place Opera House became the Mercantile
+Library. The Academy of Music is still known by that name, though it
+is given over chiefly to melodrama, and the educational purpose which
+existed in the minds of its creators was only a passing dream. The
+Metropolitan Opera House has housed twenty-three regular seasons of
+opera, though it has been in existence for twenty-five seasons. Once
+the sequence of subscription seasons was interrupted by the damage done
+to the theater by fire; once by the policy of its lessees, Abbey & Grau,
+who thought that the public appetite for opera might be whetted by
+enforced abstention. The Manhattan Opera House is too young to enter
+into this study of opera houses, their genesis, growth, and decay, and
+the houses which Mr. Oscar Hammerstein built before it in Harlem and in
+West Thirty-Fourth Street, near Sixth Avenue, lived too brief a time in
+operatic service to deserve more than mention.
+
+I am at a loss for data from which to evolve a rule, as I should like to
+do, governing the length of an opera house's existence in its original
+estate as the home of grand opera.
+
+The conditions which produce the need are too variable and also too
+vague to be brought under the operation of any kind of law. At present
+the growth of wealth, the increase in population, and with that
+increase the rapid multiplication of persons desirous and able to enjoy
+the privileges of social display would seem to be determining factors,
+with the mounting costliness of the luxury as a deterrent. The last
+illustration of the operation of the creative impulse based on the
+growth of wealth and social ambition is found in the building of
+the Metropolitan Opera House, Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise being
+purely individual and speculative. The movement which produced the
+Metropolitan Opera House marked the decay of the old Knickerbocker
+régime, and its amalgamation with the newer order of society of a
+quarter of a century ago. This social decay, if so it can be called
+without offense, began--if Abram C. Dayton ("Last Days of Knickerbocker
+Life in New York") is correct--about 1840, and culminated with the
+Vanderbilt ball, in 1882, to which nearly all the leaders of the old
+Knickerbocker aristocracy accepted invitations. "During the third
+quarter of the nineteenth century," said The Sun's reviewer of Mr.
+Dayton's book, "sagacious and far-sighted Knickerbockers began to
+realize that as a caste they no longer possessed sufficient money to
+sustain social ascendency, and that it behooved them to effect an
+intimate alliance with the nouveaux riches." To this may be added that
+when there were but two decades of the century left it was made plain
+that the Academy of Music could by no possibility accommodate the two
+classes of society, old and new, which had for a number of years been
+steadily approaching each other.
+
+There was an insufficiency of desirable boxes, and holders of seats
+of fashion were unwilling to surrender them to the newcomers. So the
+Metropolitan Opera House was built in 1883, and the vigor of the social
+opposition, coupled with popular appreciation of the new spirit, which
+came in with the German régime, gave the deathblow to the Academy, whose
+loss to fashion was long deplored by the admirers of its fine acoustic
+qualities and its effective architectural arrangements for the purposes
+of display.
+
+The period is not so remote that we cannot trace the influences of
+fashion and society in the rise of the first Italian Opera House, if not
+in its fall. The Park Theater was still a fashionable playhouse when
+Garcia gave his season of Italian opera in it in 1825-26, but within a
+decade thereafter the conditions so graphically described by Mr. White,
+combined with new ambitions, which seem to have been inspired to a
+large extent by Lorenzo Da Ponte, prompted a wish for a new theater:
+one specially adapted to opera. The new entertainment was recognized
+as a luxury, and it was no more than fitting that it be luxuriously
+and elegantly housed. It will be necessary to account for the potent
+influence of Da Ponte, who was only a superannuated poet and teacher of
+Italian language and literature, and this I hope to do presently; for
+the time being it is sufficient to say that it was he who persuaded the
+rich and cultured citizens of New York to build the Italian Opera House,
+which stood at the intersection of Church and Leonard streets. The
+coming of Garcia had filled Da Ponte, then already seventy-six years
+old, with dreams of a recrudescence of such activities as had been his
+in connection with Italian Opera in Vienna and London. He made haste to
+identify himself in an advisory capacity with the enterprise, persuaded
+Garcia to include "Don Giovanni" in his list of operas, although this
+necessitated the engagement of a singer not a member of the company, and
+had already brought his niece, who was a singer, from Italy, and the
+Italian composer Filippo Trajetta, from Philadelphia, when his dream
+of a permanent opera, for which he should write librettos, his friend
+compose music, and his niece sing, was dispelled by Garcia's departure
+for Mexico, and his subsequent return to Europe. For the next five years
+Da Ponte seems to have kept the waters of the operatic pool stirred, for
+there is general recognition in the records of the fact that to him was
+due the conception of the second experiment, although its execution
+was left to another, who was neither an American nor an Italian, but a
+Frenchman named Montressor. Like Garcia, he was his own tenor, which
+fact must have eased him of some of the vexations of management, though
+it added to its labors. We are told that Montressor succeeded in making
+himself personally popular. He had an agreeable voice, a tolerable
+style, and was favorably compared with Garcia, though this goes for
+little, inasmuch as Garcia was past his prime when he came here. Among
+his singers were Signorina Pedrotti, who created a great stir (though,
+I fancy, this was largely because of her beauty and the fact that the
+public, remembering the Signorina Garcia, wanted somebody to worship)
+and a basso named Fornasari.
+
+Signorina Pedrotti effected her entrance on October 17, in a new opera,
+Mercadante's "Elisa e Claudio," which made the hit of the season,
+largely because of the infatuation of the public for the new singer.
+Mr. White gives us a description of her (from hearsay and the records)
+in his article published in The Century Magazine, of March, 1882:
+
+Not much has been said of her, for she had sung only in Lisbon and in
+Bologna, and had little reputation. But she took musical New York off
+its feet again. She had a fine mezzo-soprano voice, of sympathetic
+quality; and although she was far from being a perfectly finished
+vocalist, she had an impressive dramatic style and a presence and a
+manner that enabled her to take possession of the stage. She was a
+handsome woman--tall, nobly formed, with brilliant eyes and a face
+full of expression. She carried the town by storm.
+
+Like Malibran, and many another singer since, Fornasari made a fine
+reputation here, and was afterward "discovered" in Europe, where he rose
+to fame. He seems to have been of the tribe of lady-killers, of whom
+every opera company has boasted at least one ever since opera became a
+fashion--which is only another way of saying ever since it was invented.
+But Fornasari had a noble voice, besides his mere physical attractions.
+Mr. White, who saw him long years afterward, when he chanced to be
+passing through New York on his way to Europe, describes him: He was
+very tall; his head looked like that of a youthful Jove; dark hair in
+flaky curls, an open, blazing eye; a nose just heroically curved; lips
+strong, yet beautifully bowed; sweet and persuasive (one would think
+that White got his description from some woman--what man ever before or
+since was praised by a man for having a Cupid's bow mouth?), and withal
+a large and easy grace of manner.
+
+Montressor's season opened on October 6, 1832, at the Richmond Hill
+Theater, which became respectable for the nonce, and collapsed
+after thirty-five representations. The receipts for the season were
+$25,603--let us say about half as much as a week's receipts at the
+Metropolitan Opera House to-day. The operas given were Rossini's
+"Cenerentola," "L'Italiana in Algeri"; Bellini's "Il Pirata," and
+Mercadante's "Elisa e Claudio," the last winning the largest measure of
+popularity. The chief good accomplished was the bringing to New York
+from Europe of several excellent orchestral players, who, after the
+failure of the enterprise, settled here, to the good of instrumental
+music and the next undertaking.
+
+Why men embark in operatic management, or, rather, why they continue in
+it after they have failed, has always been an enigma. Once, pointing my
+argument with excerpts from the story of all the managers in London,
+from Handel's day down to the present, I tried to prove that the desire
+to manage an opera company was a form of disease, finding admirable
+support for my contention in the confession and conduct of that English
+manager who got himself into Fleet Prison, and thence philosophically
+urged not only that it served him right (since no man insane enough to
+want to be an operatic impresario ought to be allowed at large), but
+also that a jail was the only proper headquarters for a manager, since
+there, at least, he was secure from the importunities of singers
+and dancers. Lorenzo Da Ponte was, obviously, of the stuff of which
+impresarios are made. Montressor's failure, for which he was in a degree
+responsible (and which he discussed in two pamphlets which I found
+twenty years ago in the library of the New York Historical Society),
+persuaded him that the city's greatest need was an Italian opera house.
+His powers of persuasion must have been great, for he succeeded in
+bringing a body of citizens together who set the example which has been
+followed several times since, and built the Italian Opera House at
+Church and Leonard streets, on very much the same social and economic
+lines as prevail at the Metropolitan Opera House to-day. European models
+and European taste prevailed in the structure and its adornments. It was
+the first theater in the United States which boasted a tier composed
+exclusively of boxes. This was the second balcony. The parterre was
+entered from the first balcony, a circumstance which redeemed it from
+its old plebeian association as "the pit," in which it would have been
+indecorous for ladies to sit. The seats in the parterre were mahogany
+chairs upholstered in blue damask. The seats in the first balcony were
+mahogany sofas similarly upholstered. The box fronts had a white ground,
+with emblematic medallions, and octagonal panels of crimson, blue, and
+gold. Blue silk curtains were caught up with gilt cord and tassels.
+There was a chandelier of great splendor, which threw its light into a
+dome enriched with pictures of the Muses, painted, like all the rest of
+the interior, as well as the scenery, by artists specially brought over
+for the purpose from Europe. The floors were carpeted. The price of
+the boxes was $6,000 each, and subscribers might own them for a single
+performance (evidently by arrangement with the owners) or the season.
+Apropos of this, Mr. White tells a characteristic story:
+
+
+It was told of a man who had suddenly risen to what was then great
+wealth, that, having taken a lady to the opera, he was met by the
+disappointing assurance that there were no seats to be had.
+
+"What, nowhere?"
+
+"Nowhere, sir; every seat in the house is taken, except, indeed, one of
+the private boxes that was not subscribed for."
+
+"I'll have that."
+
+"Impossible, sir. The boxes can only be occupied by subscribers and
+owners."
+
+"What is the price of your box?"
+
+"Six thousand dollars, sir."
+
+"I'll take it."
+
+And drawing out his pocketbook he filled up a check for six thousand
+dollars and escorted his lady to her seat to the surprise and, indeed,
+to the consternation of the elegant circle, which saw itself completed
+in this unexpected manner.
+
+
+The new house, which, with the ground, had cost $150,000, was opened
+on November 18, 1833, under the joint management of the Chevalier
+Rivafinoli and Da Ponte, with Rossini's "La Gazza ladra," but two months
+before that date there was a drawing for boxes, concerning which and
+some of the details of the opening performance an extract from the diary
+of Mr. Philip Hone, once mayor of the city, presents a much livelier
+picture than I could draw:
+
+
+   (From the diary of Philip Hone, Esq.)
+
+September 15, 1833. The drawing for boxes at the Italian Opera
+House took place this morning. My associates, Mr. Schermerhorn and
+General Jones, are out of town, and I attended and drew No. 8, with
+which I am well satisfied. The other boxes will be occupied by the
+following gentlemen: Gerard H. Coster, G. C. Howland, Rufus Prime,
+Mr. Panon, Robert Ray, J. F. Moulton, James J. Jones, D. Lynch, E.
+Townsend, John C. Cruger, O. Mauran, Charles H. Hall, J. G. Pierson
+and S. B. Ruggles.
+
+November 18, 1833. The long expected opening of the opera house took
+place this evening with the opera "La Gazza ladra"; all new performers
+except Signor Marozzi, who belonged to the old company. The prima donna
+soprano is Signorina Fanti. The opera, they say, went off well for a
+first performance; but to me it was tiresome, and the audience was
+not excited to any degree of applause. The performance occupied four
+hours--much too long, according to my notion, to listen to a language
+which one does not understand; but the house is superb, and the
+decorations of the proprietors' boxes (which occupy the whole of the
+second tier) are in a style of magnificence which even the extravagance
+of Europe has not yet equaled. I have one-third of box No. 8; Peter
+Schermerhorn one-third; James J. Jones one-sixth; William Moore
+one-sixth. Our box is fitted up with great taste with light blue
+hangings, gilded panels and cornice, armchairs, and a sofa. Some of
+the others have rich silk ornaments, some are painted in fresco, and
+each proprietor seems to have tried to outdo the rest in comfort and
+magnificence. The scenery is beautiful. The dome and the fronts of the
+boxes are painted in the most superb classical designs, and the sofa
+seats are exceedingly commodious. Will this splendid and refined
+amusement be supported in New York? I am doubtful.
+
+
+The outcome justified Mr. Hone in his doubts. The season was advertised,
+to last forty nights. When they were at an end a supplementary season of
+twenty-eight nights was added, which extended the time to July 21, 1834.
+Besides "La Gazza ladra," the operas given were "Il Barbiere di
+Siviglia," "La Donna del Lago," "Il Turco in Italia," "Cenerentola," and
+"Matilda di Shabran"--all by Rossini; Pacini's "Gli Arabi nelli Gallie,"
+Cimarosa's "II Matrimonio segreto," and "La Casa do Pendere," by the
+conductor, one Salvioni. The season had been socially and artistically
+brilliant, but the financial showing at the end was one of disaster. The
+prices of admission were from $2 down to fifty cents, and when the house
+was completely sold out the receipts were not more than $1,400. The
+managers took their patrons into their confidence, Rivafinoli publishing
+the fact that the receipts for the entire season--including fifteen
+nights in Philadelphia, for that city's dependence on New York for
+Italian opera began thus early--were but $51,780.89, which were exceeded
+by the expenses $29,275.09. For the next season the house was leased by
+the owners to Signor Sacchi, who had been the treasurer of Rivafinoli
+and Da Ponte, and Signor Porto, one of the singers. These managers had
+an experience similar to that which Maretzek declaimed against twenty
+years later when troubles gathered about the new Academy of Music.
+Notwithstanding that there had been a startling deficit, though the
+audiences had been as large as could be accommodated, these underlings
+of Rivafinoli and Da Ponte, who were at least men of experience in
+operatic management, took the house, giving the stockholders the free
+use of their boxes and 116 free admissions every night besides. The
+second season started brilliantly, but just as financial disaster was
+preparing to engulf it the performances were abruptly brought to an
+end by the prima donna, Signora, or Signorina, Fanti, who took French
+leave--an incident which remains unique in New York's operatic annals,
+at least in its consequences, I think.
+
+It is evident to a close student of the times that the reasons given
+were not the only ones to contribute to the downfall of the enterprise.
+Italian opera had found a vigorous rival in English, or rather in
+opera in the vernacular, for the old ballad operas were disappearing
+and German, French, and Italian opera sung in the vernacular, not by
+actresses who had tolerable voices, but by trained vocalists, was taking
+its place. The people of New York were not quite so sophisticated as
+they are to-day, and possibly were dowered with a larger degree of
+sincerity. Many of them were willing to admit the incongruity of
+behavior at which Addison made merry when he predicted that the time
+would come when the descendants of the English people of his day would
+be curious to know "why their forefathers used to sit together like an
+audience of foreigners in their own country and to hear whole plays
+acted before them in a tongue which they did not understand." We know
+that Addison was a poor prophet, for the people of Great Britain and
+America are still sitting in the same attitude as their ancestors so far
+as opera is concerned; but it is plain that arguments like his did reach
+the consciences of even the stockholders of the Italian Opera House, or
+at least the one of them who has taken posterity into his confidence.
+The season under Sacchi and Porto had scarcely begun when Mr. Hone
+wrote in his diary:
+
+
+I went to the opera, where I saw the second act of "La Straniera," by
+Bellini. The house is as pretty as ever, and the same faces were seen in
+the boxes as formerly; but it is not a popular entertainment, and will
+not be in our day, I fear. The opera did not please me. There was too
+much reiteration, and I shall never discipline my taste to like common
+colloquial expressions of life: "How do you do, madame?" or "Pretty
+well, I thank you, sir," the better for being given with orchestral
+accompaniment.
+
+
+I shrewdly suspect that Mr. Hone had been reading his Spectator.
+There were three years of opera in London, in Addison's day, when the
+English and Italian languages were mixed in the operas as German and
+Italian were in Hamburg when Handel started out on his career. "The king
+or hero of the play generally spoke in Italian and his slaves answered
+him in English; the lover frequently made his court and gained the heart
+of his princess in a language which she did not understand." At length,
+says Addison, the audience got tired of understanding half the opera,
+"and to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of thinking, so ordered
+it that the whole opera was performed in an unknown tongue." Now listen
+to our diarist:
+
+
+The Italian language is among us very little understood, and the genius
+of it certainly never entered into with spirit. To entertain an audience
+without reducing it to the necessity of thinking is doubtless a
+first-rate merit, and it is easier to produce music without sense than
+with it; but the real charm of the opera is this--it is an exclusive and
+extravagant recreation, and, above all, it is the fashion.
+
+  Italian music's sweet because 'tis dear,
+  Their vanity is tickled, not their ear;
+  Their taste would lessen if the prices fell,
+  And Shakespeare's wretched stuff do quite as well.
+
+The recitative is an affront to common sense, and if there be any
+spectacle more than another opposed to the genius of the English
+character and unsuited to its taste it is the ballet of the opera house.
+Its eternal dumbshow, with its fantastic appeals to sense and to sense
+only, may be Italian perfection, but here it is in English a tame
+absurdity. What but fashion could tempt reasonable creatures to sit and
+applaud--what was really perpetrated--Deshayes dancing "The Death of
+Nelson"?
+
+
+After the season of Sacchi and Porto Italian opera went into exile for
+ten years. Da Ponte pleaded for "the most splendid ornament" of the city
+in vain. English opera conquered, aided, no doubt, by the fact that the
+section of the city in which the Italian Opera House was situated was
+fatally unfashionable, and after standing vacant for a year the house
+was leased to James W. Wallack, father of John Lester Wallack, who
+turned it into a home for the spoken drama. In another year it went
+up in flames.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FIRST ITALIAN COMPANY
+
+
+The beginnings of Italian opera in America are intimately associated
+with two men who form an interesting link connecting the music of the
+Old World with that of the New. These men were Manuel del Popolo Vicente
+Garcia and Lorenzo Da Ponte. The opera performed in the Park Theater on
+November 29, 1825, when the precious exotic first unfolded its petals
+in the United States, was Rossini's "Il Barbiere di Siviglia." In this
+opera Garcia, then in his prime, had created, as the French say, the
+rôle of Almaviva in Rome a little less than ten years before. The
+performance was one of the most monumental fiascos in Rossini's career,
+and the story goes that Garcia, hoping to redeem it, introduced a
+Spanish song to which he himself supplied a guitar accompaniment. The
+fiasco of the first performance was largely, if not wholly, due to the
+jealous ill will of the friends of Paisiello, who had written music for
+an opera on the same story, which was much admired all over Europe, and
+which in an adapted form had reached America, as had Rossini's, before
+Garcia came with the original version. But Rossini's music was too
+fascinating to be kept under a bushel, and in it Garcia won some of his
+finest triumphs in London and Paris. In the first New York season it
+was performed twenty-three times. Garcia was also a composer, and had
+made his mark in this field before he became famous as a singer, having
+produced at least seventeen Spanish operas, nineteen Italian, and Seven
+French, most, if not all of them, before he came to America.
+
+Exactly what it was that persuaded Garcia to embark on the career of
+impresario in a new land does not appear in the story of his enterprise.
+There are intimations that he had long had the New York project in mind;
+also it used to be thought that Da Ponte had inspired him with the idea;
+the more general story is that Dominick Lynch, a New York importer of
+French wines, was at the bottom of the enterprise, but whether on his
+own account or as a sort of agent for the manager of the Park Theater,
+I have not been able to learn. Garcia's singing days were coming to an
+end, though his popularity was not yet on the wane if there is evidence
+in the circumstances that from 1823 to 1825 his salary in London had
+increased from 260 pounds to 1,250 pounds. But it was as a teacher and
+composer that he now commanded the greater respect. He had founded
+a school of singing of which it may truthfully be said that it was
+continued without loss of glory until the end of the nineteenth
+century by his son Manuel, who died in 1906, a few months after he had
+celebrated the hundredth anniversary of his birth. But, though we may
+not know all the reasons which prevailed with him to seek fortune as a
+manager after he had himself passed the half-century mark, it is easy
+to fancy that the fact that he had half the artists necessary for the
+undertaking in his own family had much to do with it. His daughter,
+Maria Felicita, had studied singing with him from childhood and at
+sixteen years of age had sung with him in Italy. His wife was an
+opera singer and his son Manuel had made a beginning in the career which
+he speedily abandoned in favor of that which gave him far greater fame
+than the stage promised. The future Malibran was singing in the chorus
+in London only a year before she disclosed her peerless talents in New
+York. In June, 1825, Pasta, who was Mr. Ebers's prima donna at the
+King's Theater, took ill. Garcia was a member of the company and came
+forward with an offer of his daughter as substitute. The offer was
+accepted, the girl effected her début as Rosina in "The Barber," and
+made so complete a hit that she was engaged for the remaining six weeks
+of the season at a salary of 500 pounds. This is the story as told by
+Fétis, which does not differ essentially from that told by Ebers in
+his account of his seven years of tenancy of the King's Theater, or
+by Lord Mount-Edgecumbe in his "Musical Reminiscences," except that
+these make no direct reference to Pasta's illness as the cause which
+gave Maria her opportunity. Lord Mount-Edgecumbe's account says that
+Ebers found it necessary, about the time of the arrival of Pasta, "to
+engage a young singer, the daughter of the tenor Garcia, who had sung
+here for several seasons. She was as yet a mere girl, and had never
+appeared on any public stage; but from the first moment of her
+appearance she showed evident talents for it, both as singer and
+actress. Her extreme youth, her prettiness, her pleasing voice and
+sprightly, easy action as Rosina in 'Il Barbiere di Siviglia,' in which
+part she made her début, gained her general favor; but she was too
+highly extolled and injudiciously put forward as a prima donna when she
+was only a promising débutante, who in time, by study and practice,
+would, in all probability, under the tuition of her father, a good
+musician, but (to my ears at least) a most disagreeable singer, rise
+to eminence in her profession."
+
+I am not more than half persuaded that this view of the future
+Malibran's talents and prospects did not tally with that of her father,
+though her tremendous success in New York ought to have persuaded him
+that a future of the most dazzling description lay before his daughter.
+There is something of a puzzle in the fact that in the midst of her
+first triumph the girl should have married M. Malibran, who was only
+apparently wealthy, and was surely forty-three years her senior, and of
+a nature which was bound to develop lack of sympathy and congeniality
+between the pair. The popular version of the story of her marriage is
+that she was forced into it by her father, and it is more than intimated
+that he was induced to act as he did by the promise of 100,000 francs
+made by Malibran as a compensation for the loss of his daughter's
+services. Did Garcia oppose his daughter's marriage, and did she
+wilfully have her own way in a matter in which she was scarcely a proper
+judge? Or was the marriage repugnant to her, and was she sacrificed to
+her father's selfishness? I cannot tell, but it has been hinted that
+there was danger of her marrying a member of the orchestra in London
+before she came to New York, and it is as like as not that the affair
+Malibran was of her wishing. Who can know the ways of a maid fourscore
+years after? The marriage was as unfortunate as could be. In a few
+months Malibran was a bankrupt, his youthful wife's father was gone to
+distant Mexico, there to make money, only to be robbed of it at Vera
+Cruz on his home journey to England, and Maria Felicita, instead of
+living in affluence as the wife of a wealthy New York merchant, was
+supporting an unworthy husband, as well as herself, by singing in
+English at the theater in the Bowery and in Grace Church on Sundays. The
+legal claims bound the ill-assorted pair for ten years, but did not gall
+the artist after she returned to Europe in 1827, little more than a year
+later. In Paris the marriage was annulled in 1836, and the singer, now
+the greatest prima donna on the stage, married Charles de Bériot, the
+violinist, with whom she had been living happily for six years, and by
+whom she had a son, born in February, 1833. The world's Book of Opera
+must supply the other chapters which tell of the great Malibran, her
+marvelous triumphs and her early death; but it is a matter of pride for
+every American to reflect that this adorable artist began her career
+with the admiring applause of our people.
+
+Manuel Garcia, the son, the senior of his sister by three years,
+survived her the whole span of life allotted to man by the Psalmist.
+Malibran died in 1836; Garcia in 1906. He achieved nothing on the stage,
+which he abandoned in 1829. Thereafter his history belongs to that of
+pedagogy. Till 1848 his field of operations was Paris; afterward, till
+his death, London. Jenny Lind was one of his pupils; Mme. Marchesi
+another.
+
+The story that Da Ponte had anything to do with inspiring Garcia's New
+York enterprise is practically disposed of by the fact that Da Ponte,
+though intimately associated with the opera in London during his sojourn
+in that city, had already been a resident of New York three years when
+Garcia made his début as a singer and never returned thither. Personally
+Garcia was a stranger to him and he to Garcia when the latter came to
+New York in the fall of 1825. This gives color of verity to a familiar
+story of their meeting. As might easily be imagined, the man who had
+written the librettos of "Le Nozze di Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "Cosi
+Fan Tutte" for Mozart, was not long in visiting Garcia after his arrival
+here. He introduced himself as the author of "Don Giovanni," and Garcia,
+clipping the old man in his arm, danced around the room like a child in
+glee, singing "Fin ch'han dal vino" the while. After that the inclusion
+of Mozart's masterpiece in Garcia's repertory was a matter of course,
+with only this embarrassment that there was no singer in the company
+capable of singing the music of Don Ottavio. This was overcome by Da
+Ponte going to his pupils for money enough to pay an extra singer for
+the part. Many a tenor, before and since, who has been cast for that
+divinely musical milksop has looked longingly at the rôle of Don
+Giovanni which Mozart gave to a barytone, and some have appropriated it.
+Garcia was one of these (he had been a tenor de forza in his day),
+and it fell to him to introduce the character in New York. Outside of
+himself, his daughter, and the basso Angrisani, the company was a poor
+affair, the orchestra not much better than that employed at the ordinary
+theater then (and now, for that matter), and the chorus composed of
+mechanics drilled to sing words they did not understand. It is scarcely
+to be wondered at, therefore, that at one of the performances of
+Mozart's opera, of which there were ten, singers and players got at
+sixes and sevens in the superb finale of the first act, whereupon
+Garcia, losing his temper, rushed to the footlights sword in hand,
+stopped the orchestra, and commanded a new beginning.
+
+It has already been told how that Da Ponte was active in the promotion
+of the first Italian opera enterprise, that he inspired Montressor's
+experiment at the Richmond Hill Theater and was the moving spirit in the
+ambitious, beautiful but unhappy Italian Opera House undertaking. To do
+all these things it was necessary that he should be a man of influence
+among the cultured and wealthy classes of the community. As a matter of
+fact he was this, and that in spite of the fact that his career had been
+checkered in Europe and was not wholly free from financial scandal, at
+least in New York. The fact is that the poet's artistic temperament was
+paired with an insatiable commercial instinct. This instinct, at least,
+may be set down as a racial inheritance. Until seven or eight years
+ago nobody seems to have taken the trouble to look into the family
+antecedents of him whom the world will always know as Lorenzo Da Ponte.
+That was not his name originally. Of this fact something only a little
+better than a suspicion had been in the minds of those who knew him and
+wrote about him during his lifetime and shortly after his death. Michael
+Kelly, the Irish tenor, who knew him in Vienna, speaks of him as "my
+friend, the abbé," and tells of his dandyish style of dressing, his
+character as a "consummate coxcomb," his strong lisp and broad Venetian
+dialect; if he knew that he was a converted Jew, he never mentioned the
+fact. Later writers hinted at the fact that he had been born a Jew, but
+had been educated by the Bishop of Ceneda and had adopted his name.
+When I investigated his American history, a matter of twenty years ago,
+my statement in The Tribune newspaper that he was the son of a Hebrew
+leather dealer provoked an almost intemperate denial by a German
+musical historian, who quoted from his memoirs a story of his religious
+observances to confound me. My statement, however, was based, not only
+on an old rumor, but also on the evidence of a pamphlet published in
+Lisbon in the course of what seems to have been a peculiarly acrimonious
+controversy between Da Ponte and a theatrical person unnamed, but
+probably one Francesco. In this pamphlet, which is not only indecorous
+but indecent, he is referred to as "the celebrated Lorenzo Daponte, who
+after having been Jew, Christian, priest, and poet in Italy and Germany
+found himself to be a layman, husband, and ass in London." It remained
+for Professor Marchesan, his successor in the chair of rhetoric in the
+University of Treviso, to give the world the facts concerning his origin
+and early family history. From Marchesan's book ("Della Vita e delle
+Opere di Lorenzo da Ponte") published in Treviso in 1900 we learn that
+the poet's father was in truth a Hebrew leather dealer, and also that
+the father's name was Jeremiah Conegliano, his mother's Rachel
+Pincherle, and his own Emanuele Conegliano. He was fourteen years old
+when not he alone, but the whole family, embraced Christianity. They
+were baptized in the cathedral of Ceneda on August 20, 1763, and the
+bishop gave the lad, whose talents he seems to have observed, his own
+name. The rest of his story up to his departure for America may be
+outlined in the words of the sketch in Grove's "Dictionary of Music
+and Musicians" (second edition, Vol. III, p. 789).
+
+After five years of study in the seminary at Ceneda (probably with the
+priesthood as an object) he went to Venice, where he indulged in amorous
+escapades which compelled his departure from that city. He went to
+Treviso and taught rhetoric in the university, incidentally took part in
+political movements, lampooned an opponent in a sonnet, and was ordered
+out of the republic. In Dresden, whither he turned his steps, he found
+no occupation for his talents, and journeyed on to Vienna. There,
+helped by Salieri, he received from Joseph II the appointment of poet
+to the imperial theater and Latin secretary. Good fortune brought
+him in contact with Mozart, who asked him to make an opera book of
+Beaumarchais's "Mariage de Figaro." The great success of Mozart's opera
+on this theme led to further co-operation, and it was on Da Ponte's
+suggestion that "Don Giovanni" was undertaken, the promptings coming
+largely from the favor enjoyed at the time by Gazzaniga's opera on the
+same subject, from which Da Ponte made generous drafts--as a comparison
+of the libretti will show. Having incurred the ill will of Leopold, Da
+Ponte was compelled to leave Vienna on the death of Joseph II. He went
+to Trieste, where Leopold was sojourning, in the hope of effecting a
+reconciliation, but failed; but there he met and married an Englishwoman
+who was thenceforth fated to share his checkered fortunes. He obtained a
+letter recommending him to the interest of Marie Antoinette, but while
+journeying toward Paris learned of the imprisonment of the Queen, and
+went to London instead. A year was spent in the British metropolis in
+idleness, and some time in Holland in a futile effort to establish an
+Italian theater there. Again he turned his face toward London, and this
+time secured employment as poet to the Italian opera and assistant to
+the manager, Taylor. He took a part of Domenico Corri's shop to sell
+Italian books, but soon ended in difficulties, and to escape his
+creditors fled to America, arriving in New York on June 4, 1805.
+
+Da Ponte lives in the respect and admiration of Dante scholars as the
+first of American teachers and commentators on "The Divine Comedy." He
+gave himself the title, and in this case adhered to the truth, which
+cannot be said of all of his statements about himself. For instance, in
+a letter to the public to be set forth presently, he calls himself "poet
+of the Emperor Joseph II." He was in the habit of thus designating
+himself and it was small wonder that his biographers almost unanimously
+interpreted these words to mean that he was poet laureate, or Caesarian
+poet. After the mischief, small enough, except perhaps in an ethical
+sense, had been done, he tried to correct it in a foot note on one of
+the pages of his "Memorie," in which he says that he was not "Poeta
+Cesario," but "poet to the Imperial theaters." In his capacity as a
+teacher his record seems to have been above reproach; and it was in
+this capacity that he first presented himself favorably to New Yorkers.
+Within two years after his arrival he gave a pamphlet to the public
+entitled "Compendium of the Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, written by
+Himself, to which is added the first Literary Conversatione held at his
+home in New York on the 10th day of March, 1807, consisting of several
+Italian compositions in verse and prose translated into English by his
+scholars." That this little brochure was designed as an advertisement
+is obvious enough; it was issued on his fifty-eighth birthday and its
+contents, besides the sketch of his life, which, so it began, he
+had promised to give his pupils, were specimens of their literary
+handicraft. In the biographical recital are echoes of the contentions in
+which he had been engaged in London a few years before. Although only
+two years had elapsed since his arrival in America, what may be called
+the first of his commercial periods was already over. He had sent his
+wife to New York ahead of him with some of the money which his English
+creditors were looking for. With this he promptly embarked in business,
+trafficking in tobacco, liquors, drugs, etc.--goods which promised
+large profits. In three months fear of yellow fever drove him to
+Elizabethtown, N. J., where he remained a year, by which time he was
+ruined. He came back to New York and began to teach the Italian
+language and literature, and the little "Compendium" recorded his first
+successes. He taught till 1811, by which time he had laid aside $4,000,
+with which he again went into business, this time as a distiller in
+Sunbury, Pa. After several years of commercial life he returned again to
+New York and resumed the profession which brought him into contact with
+people of refinement and social standing, who seem to have remained his
+friends, despite his complaints and importunities, till his death in
+1838. Among those who were sincerely attached to him were Clement Clark
+Moore, Hebrew lexicographer, trustee of Columbia College, and (best of
+all) author of "'Twas the Night before Christmas." Through Moore he
+secured the privilege of calling himself Professor of Italian Literature
+at Columbia, though without salary, managed to sell the college a large
+number of Italian books, and was engaged to make a catalogue of the
+college library. Another friend was Henry James Anderson, who became
+Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy in the college in 1825, the year
+in which Garcia came to New York with his operatic enterprise. Professor
+Anderson married his daughter and became the father of Edward Henry and
+Elbert Ellery Anderson. Other friends were Giulian C. Verplanck, Dr.
+Macneven, Maroncelli, the Italian patriot, (whose wife was one of the
+members of the opera company which Da Ponte organized with Rivafinoli),
+Samuel Ward, Dr. John W. Francis, the Cottenet family, and H. T.
+Tuckerman, who wrote a sketch of him after his death in Putnam's
+Magazine. At the time of his operatic venture, 1833-34, he lived at No.
+342 Broadway, and kept a bookstore at No. 336, which may then have been
+an adjoining house. The site is near the present Catherine Lane. Before
+then he had lived in dozens of different houses, moving, apparently,
+nearly every year. He died at No. 91 Spring Street, on August 17, 1838,
+and was buried in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Eleventh Street,
+between First Avenue and Avenue A. When the centenary of the first
+performance of "Don Giovanni" was celebrated in many European cities, in
+1887, I conceived the idea of sending a choir of trombones to the grave
+of the poet who had written the text to pay a musical tribute to his
+memory, and thus made the discovery that the place of his burial was
+as completely lost as the last resting place of the mortal remains of
+Mozart. Weeks of research were necessary to determine the fact that it
+was the old cemetery that had received his body, and that the location
+of the grave was no longer to be determined by the records. It was never
+marked.
+
+Da Ponte's ambition to see Italian opera permanently established in New
+York seems to have received a crushing blow with the failure of the
+pretentious Italian Opera House enterprise. His dream I have referred
+to; he was again to be a "poet to the opera," to write works for season
+after season which his countryman Trajetta was to set to music. His
+niece was to be a prima donna. He did write one libretto; it was for an
+opera entitled, "L'Ape Musicale," for the musical setting of which he
+despoiled Rossini. His niece, Giulia Da Ponte, did sing, but her talents
+were not of the kind to win distinction. He persuaded Montressor to give
+his season, and, rushing into print, as was his custom--the period of
+the pamphleteer was to his liking--he discussed the failure of that
+undertaking in two booklets. After the successive failures of himself
+with Rivafinoli and his underlings, who attempted to succeed where he
+had come to grief, he appended a letter to his old supporters (who had
+plainly fallen away from him) to a pamphlet devoted to setting forth the
+miseries of his existence after the great things which, in his opinion,
+he had done for the people of New York. The letter has never seen the
+light of day from the time when it was printed in 1835 till now; but it
+deserves preservation. I found it twenty years ago in the library of the
+Historical Society of New York in a bound volume of miscellaneous
+pamphlets. It is as follows:
+
+
+TO THOSE AMERICANS who love the fine arts I address myself. Hitherto I
+have vainly spoken and written. Never was more really verified the Latin
+proverb: Abyssus abyssum invocat.
+
+Let the verses that I now present you rouse you from your lethargy; yet
+should they not, I will not cease to cry aloud. I cannot now remain in
+silence while my fellow countrymen are sacrificed, the citizens of two
+noble cities deceived, and an enterprise for which I have so long and
+ardently labored, so calculated to shed luster on the nation, and so
+honorable in its commencement, ruined by those who have no means, nor
+knowledge, nor experience. Answer at least these questions: Did you not
+request from me an Italian company? It will be readily understood with
+whom I speak. Why did you ask this of me? I was offered a handsome
+premium if I would introduce a troupe of select Italian artists in
+America. Did not I, and I alone procure them? Were they not excellent?
+Have I been compensated for my labor, reimbursed my actual expenses,
+or even honored by those most benefited by my losses and labors?
+
+Had not I a right to expect thus much, or at least justice? And if you
+thought me competent to do what I have done, why should you not be
+guided by my counsels? Did I not tell you and reiterate in my writing
+and verbally that Rivafinoli was not to be trusted? That he was a
+daring, but imprudently daring, adventurer, whose failures in London,
+and in Mecico and Carolina were the sure forerunners of his failure in
+New York? And when deceived by him, whom did you take in place of him?
+PORTO! SACCHI! With what means? What talents? What judgment? What
+experience? What chances of a happy issue? Would you know why they
+wished it? I will tell you, with Juvenal--'Greculus esuriens si in
+coelum jusseris ibit.' But ignorant pretenders mostly have more
+influence than modest truth. You, gentlemen of the committee, gave the
+theater to them because, not having anything to lose, they could yield
+to everything, even to the promising of what they knew themselves
+unable to perform.
+
+One of them it is said still has some hopes from you. Before another
+disgrace occurs I beg you to look at the effects. Nemo dat quod non
+habet. I brought a company from Italy by the mere force of my word. And
+why was this? Because they knew me for an honorable man, who would not
+promise what he could not perform, who had been eleven years the poet of
+the Emperor Joseph 2d, who for another equal space of time had been the
+poet to the theater in London, who had written thirty-six operas for
+Salieri, for Martini, for Storace and Mozzart (sic).
+
+That these dramas still survive, you yourself have seen and thought its
+author not worthy of your esteem. For God's sake let the past become a
+beacon light to save you from the perils of the future. Do not destroy
+the most splendid ornament of your city. Rocco is obliged to visit
+Italy. Lease to him the theater, he will have for his advisers the
+talented and estimable Bagioli and myself. For me I wish for nothing,
+but it pains me to see spoiled by ignorance and imposture, and vanity
+that which cost me so much, or to speak more correctly, which cost me
+everything, and you so much, and it will cost you more in fame as well
+as in money.
+
+What will they say, the Trollops and the Halls and Hamiltons who
+nodum in scripto quoerunt with the microscope of national aversion?
+Rocco and he only can redeem the fortunes of your disorganized,
+betrayed, dishonored establishment by giving you a new and meritorious
+company. Listen then to him and assist him--you will lose nothing by
+it; I pledge you the word of an old man whose lips have never uttered
+an untruth. Your servant and fellow citizen,
+                                               Lorenzo Da Ponte
+
+
+The theater was not leased to Rocco. It never echoed to
+opera after the second season.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOUSES BUILT FOR OPERA
+
+
+"His wit was not so sharp as his chin, and so his career was not so long
+as his nose," says Richard Grant White of the impresario who, ten years
+after the failure of the Italian Opera House, made the third effort to
+establish Italian opera in New York of which there is a record. The man
+with a sharp chin and long nose was Ferdinand Palmo. He was the owner of
+a popular restaurant which went by the rather tropical name "Café des
+Milles Colonnes," and was situated in Broadway, just above Duane Street.
+Palmo knew how to cook and how to cater, and his restaurant made him
+fairly rich. What he did not know about managing an opera house he was
+made conscious of soon after the ambition to be an impresario took hold
+of him. His was an individual enterprise, like Mr. Hammerstein's, with
+no clogs or entangling alliances in the shape of stockholders, or
+managing directors, or amusement committees. He seems to have been
+strongly impressed with the idea that after the public had been total
+abstainers for ten years they would love opera for its own sake, and
+that it would not be necessary to give hostages to fortune in the shape
+of a beautiful house, with a large portion set apart for the exclusive
+use of wealth and fashion. Except in name, says Mr. White, there were no
+boxes. Palmo did not even build a new theater. He found one that could
+be modeled to his purposes in Stoppani's Arcade Baths, in Chambers
+Street, between Broadway and Center Street. The site is now occupied
+by the building of the American News Company. The acoustics of the new
+opera house are said to have been good, but the inconvenience of the
+location and unenviable character of the neighborhood are indicated
+quite as much as Signor Palmo's enterprising and considerate nature
+by his announcement that after the performances a large car would be
+run uptown as far as Forty-Second Street for the accommodation of
+his patrons; and also that the patrons aforesaid should have police
+protection. The house seated about eight hundred persons, the seats
+being hard benches, with slats across the back shoulder high. Opera
+lovers given to luxury were permitted to upholster their benches. The
+orchestra numbered "thirty-two professors," but their devotion to the
+art which they professed was not so great as to make them willing to
+starve for its sake or to refuse to resort to the methods of the more
+modern workingmen's unions to compel payment for their services, as
+we shall see presently. The first performance under Signor Palmo took
+place on February 3, 1844, the opera being the same one with which
+Mr. Hammerstein began his latest venture sixty-two years later--"I
+Puritani." The prima donna soprano was Borghese, who was attractive in
+appearance, though not beautiful; who dressed well, sang with passionate
+intensity, and won a popularity that found vent in praise which may
+have been extravagant. One critic, "balancing her beauties against her
+defects," pronounced her the best operatic singer that the writer had
+yet heard on this side of the Atlantic. This remark leads Mr. White
+to surmise that the critic had not been five years in America, for,
+says he, Signora Borghese was not worthy to tie the shoes of Malibran,
+Pedrotti, Fanti, Garadori, or Mrs. Wood, the last two of whom had sung
+in English opera. Her chief defect seems to have been the tremolo--that
+vice toward which the American critics of to-day are more intolerant
+than those of any other people, as they are toward the sister vice of
+a faulty intonation. Mr. White talks sensibly on the subject in his
+estimate of Borghese.
+
+
+She had a fine voice, although not a great one; her vocalization,
+regarded from a merely musical point of view, was of the corresponding
+grade, but as stage vocalization it had great power and deserved
+higher commendation. Her musical declamation was always effective and
+musico-rhetorically in good taste. She had a fine person, an expressive
+face, and much grace of manner. One might be content never to hear a
+better prima donna if one were secured against never hearing a worse.
+In her was first remarked here, among vocalists of distinction, that
+trembling of the voice when it is pressed in a crescendo, which has
+since become so common as greatly to mar our enjoyment of vocal music.
+This great fault, unknown before the appearance of Verdi, is attributed
+by some musical critics to the influence of his vociferous and strident
+style. It may be so; but that which follows is not always a consequence
+of that after which it comes. Certain it is, however, that from this
+time forward very few of the principal singers who have been heard in
+New York--only the very greatest and those whose style was formed
+before Verdi domineered the Italian lyric stage--were without this
+tremble. Grisi, Mario, Sontag, Jenny Lind, Alboni, and Salvi were
+entirely without it; their voices came from the chest pure, free and
+firm.
+
+
+I can scarcely believe that the distressful vocal wabble either came in
+with Verdi's music or was greatly promoted by it. In the lofty quality
+of style Mme. Sembrich is the most perfect exemplar whom it is the
+privilege of New Yorkers to hear to-day; and she is the best singer
+we have of Verdi's music. Did anyone ever hear a tone come out of her
+throat that was not pure, free, and firm? Frequently the tremolo is
+an affectation like the excessive vibrato of a sentimental fiddler;
+sometimes it is the product of weakness due to abuse of the vocal organ.
+In all cases it is the sign of bad taste or vicious training, or both,
+and is an abomination. On the opera stage to-day Italian prima donnas
+are most afflicted with it. In turn Verdi, Meyerbeer, and Wagner
+have been accused of having caused it, but anyone who has listened
+intelligently to the opera singers of the last forty years will testify
+with me that the truly great singers of their music have been as free
+from the vicious habit as have been those whose artistic horizons have
+been confined by the music of Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti.
+
+The tenor of the Palmo company was Antognini, who effected his entrance
+on the American stage five weeks after the opening of the season. In the
+opinion of Mr. White, he was the greatest tenor ever heard here, not
+excepting Mario and Salvi, and Mr. White's opinion is so judiciously
+expressed that one is fain to give it credence. Whether or not it can be
+extended over the period which he has covered, which is that reaching
+from the last days of the Academy of Music, when Campanini was still in
+his vocal prime but had not developed the dramatic powers which he put
+into play with the decay of his voice, I shall not undertake to say;
+taste in tenor voices has changed within the last generation in favor
+of the robust quality so magnificently exemplified in Signor Caruso. To
+judge from Mr. White's description Antognini, as a singer merely, was
+a Bonci of a manlier mould. His fame seems to have died with those who
+heard him, and perhaps this is a good reason for reprinting what Mr.
+White said about him in full:
+
+
+He (Antognini) was an artist of the first class, both by natural gifts
+and by culture. His voice, although not of notable compass, was an
+absolute tenor of a delicious quality and great power. His vocalization
+was unexceptionably pure, and his style was manly and noble. As a
+dramatic singer I never heard his equal except Ronconi; as an actor,
+I never saw his equal, except Ronconi, Rachel, and Salvini. He had in
+perfection that power which Hamlet speaks of in his soliloquy, after
+he dismisses the players, when the speech about Pyrrhus is ended:
+
+  Is it not monstrous that this player here,
+  But in a fiction, in a dream of passion
+  Could force his soul so to his own conceit
+  That from her working all his visage wann'd;
+  Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
+  A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
+  With forms to his conceit!
+
+I have seen the blood fade not only from Antognini's cheeks, but from
+his very lips, as he strode slowly forward to interrupt the nuptials
+in "Lucia di Lammermoor," and then flame back again as he broke into
+defiance of his foes. The inflections of his voice in passages of
+tenderness were ravishing, and his utterance of anger and despair was
+terrible. Nor was any tenor that has been heard here, not even Mario
+in his prime, his superior in that great test of fine vocalization, a
+sustained cantabile passage. He was one of those blond Italians who
+are found on the northern border of the peninsula. Being all this he
+nevertheless soon disappeared, and was forgotten except by a few of the
+most exacting and cultivated among his hearers; the reason of which was
+that his voice could not be depended upon for two nights together--not,
+indeed, for one alone. On Monday he would thrill the house; on Wednesday
+he would go about the stage depressed, almost silent, huskily making
+mouths at his fellow actors and the audience. His voice would even
+desert him in the middle of an evening, thus producing an impression
+that he was trifling with his audience. No judgment could have been
+more unjust, for he was a conscientious artist, but the effect of this
+defect, as Polonius might say, was therefore no less disastrous, and
+he soon gave place to artists less admirable but more to be relied
+upon.
+
+In this season there appeared a prima donna of the French school in
+the person of Laura Cinthe Montalant, known in the annals of opera
+as Cinti-Damoreau, who had come to America to sing in concerts with
+Artôt, the violinist. In the eyes of Fétis she was one of the greatest
+singers the world had known. Damoreau was the name of her husband, an
+unsuccessful French actor. When she came to America she had made her
+career in Paris and London, a great triumph coming to her in the French
+capital, where Rossini composed the principal female rôles in "Le Siège
+de Corinth" and "Moïse," and Auber those in "Domino Noir,"
+"L'Ambassadrice," and "Zanetta."
+
+[Repertory of the first season at Palmo's Opera House: "I Puritani"
+(Bellini), "Belisario" (Donizetti), "Beatrice di Tenda" (Bellini), "Il
+Barbiere di Siviglia" (Rossini), "La Sonnambula" (Bellini), "L'Elisir
+d'Amore" (Donizetti), "L'Italiana in Algeri" (Rossini). Repertory of
+the second season, 1844-1845: "Lucia di Lammermoor" (Donizetti), "II
+Pirata" (Bellini), "Chiara de Rosemberg" (Luigi Ricci), "Lucrezia
+Borgia" (Donizetti), "Belisario" (Donizetti), "La Cenerentola"
+(Rossini), "Semiramide" (Rossini).]
+
+
+It is not surprising that ill fortune became the companion of Palmo at
+the outset of his enterprise and dragged him down to the lowest depths
+before the end of his second season (according to the calendar).
+
+The first season ran its course and a second one began in November,
+1844. Amidst the usual vicissitudes it continued until January 25,
+1845. On this momentous date Borghese was before the footlights and
+about to open her mouth in song when suddenly the orchestra ceased
+playing. Not a soft complaining note from the flute, not a whimper from
+the fiddles. Borghese raved and Palmo came upon the stage to learn the
+cause of the direful silence. A colloquy with the musicians, if not
+exactly in these words, was to this effect:
+
+"What's the meaning of this? Is it a strike? Why?"
+
+"No pay."
+
+"I'll pay you to-morrow."
+
+"To-night's the time"--the musicians packing up their instruments.
+
+Palmo rushed to the box office to get the night's receipts. Alas! they
+were already in the hands of the deputy sheriff. Another opera manager
+had gone down into the vortex which had swallowed up Ebers, and Taylor,
+and Delafield, and others of their tribe in London, and Montressor and
+Rivafinoli in New York. Palmo, it is said, had literally to return to
+his pots and kettles; after serving as cook and barkeeper in the hotels
+of others the once enterprising manager of the Café of a Thousand
+Columns became a dependent upon the charity of his friends. There was
+another season of opera at Palmo's, among the managers of which were
+Sanquirico, a buffo singer, Salvatore Patti, and an Italian named
+Pogliagno. In the company were Catarina Barili and her two children,
+Clotilde and Antonio. Patti was a tenor singer. He was the husband
+of the prima donna, Catarina Barili, who was looked upon as a fine
+representative of the old school of singing, and from the pair sprang
+Carlotta and Adelina, who gave a luster to the name of Patti which the
+father would never have given it by his exertions as singer and manager.
+Both were born before their parents came to New York; Carlotta in
+Florence, in 1840, and Adelina in Madrid, in 1843. The childhood and
+youth of both were spent in New York, and here both received their
+musical training. Their artistic history belongs to the world, and since
+I am, with difficulty, trying just now to talk more about opera houses
+and those who built them to their own ruin, than about those who sang in
+them, I will not pursue it. The summer of 1847 saw Palmo's little opera
+house deserted. In 1848 it became Burton's Theater, where, as Mr. White
+observes, that most humorous of comedians made for himself in a few
+years a handsome fortune.
+
+Who shall deny that Signor Palmo, though his fortunes went down in
+disaster, made a valuable contribution to that movement--which must
+still be looked upon as in an experimental stage--which has for its aim
+the permanent establishment of opera in the United States? Experimental
+in its nature the movement must remain until the vernacular becomes the
+language of the performances and native talent provides both works and
+interpreters. The day is still far distant, but it will come. The opera
+of Germany was still Italian more than a century and a half after the
+invention of the art form, though in the meanwhile the country had
+produced a Bach and a Handel. The Palmo venture (at the bottom of which
+there seems to have been a desire to popularize or democratize a form of
+entertainment which has ever been the possession of wealth and fashion)
+revived the social sentiment upon which Da Ponte had built his hopes.
+In the opinion of the upper classes's it was not Italian opera that
+had succumbed, but only the building which housed it. This certainly
+presented an aspect of incongruity. Fine talent came from England for
+the English companies, whose career continued without interruption,
+and the moment which saw the downfall of Palmo's enterprise saw also
+the influx of a company of Italian artists under the management of Don
+Francesco Marty y Torrens, of Havana, who deserves to be kept in the
+minds of opera lovers which go back to the days of the Academy of
+Music, if for no other reason than that he brought Signor Arditi to
+New York--the hawk-billed conductor whose shining pate used to
+glisten like a stage lamp from the conductor's seat in the fine old
+house at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place.
+
+And so, in order that Italian opera might not perish from the earth, but
+live on, surrounded by the architectural splendor appropriate to it, one
+hundred and fifty men of social prominence got together and guaranteed
+to support it for five years, and Messrs. Foster, Morgan, and Colles
+built the Astor Place Opera House. Instead of the eight hundred seatings
+of Palmo's institution, this held 1,800. The theater had "a fine open
+front and an excellent ventilation." That it was an elegant playhouse
+and admirably adapted to the purpose for which it had been designed
+there are many people still alive in New York to testify. Mr. White says
+enthusiastically that it was "one of the most attractive theaters ever
+erected." Even Max Maretzek, who began his American career there, first
+as conductor, afterward as impresario, while throwing ridicule upon its
+management (his own administration excepted, of course) and its artistic
+forces, praises the architectural arrangement of the house. "Most
+agreeably surprised was I," he writes in his "Crotchets and Quavers,"
+published in 1855, "on entering this small but comfortably arranged
+bonbonnière. It contained somewhere about 1,100 excellent seats in
+parquet (the Parisian parterre), dress circle and first tier, with some
+seven hundred in the gallery. Its principal feature was that everybody
+could see, and, what is of infinitely greater consequence, could be
+seen. Never, perhaps, was any theater built that afforded a better
+opportunity for a display of dress. Believe me" (he is indulging in the
+literary fiction of a letter to a journalistic friend in Paris), "that
+were the Funambules built as ably for this grand desideratum, despite
+the locality and the grade of performance at this theater, my conviction
+is that it would be the principal and most fashionable one in Paris."
+Maretzek is, of course, here aiming chiefly to cast discredit upon one
+of the vanities and affectations of society--the love of display; but if
+Mr. White is to be believed, the patrons of the Astor Place Opera House,
+on its opening (which means the fashionable element of New York society)
+were temperate and tasteful in the matter of dress. Speaking of the
+first performance at the new house, he says: "Rarely has there been
+an assembly, at any time or in any country, so elegant, with such a
+generally suffused air of good breeding; and yet it could not be called
+splendid in any one of its circles. At the Astor Place Opera House that
+form of opera toilet for ladies which is now peculiar to New York and
+a few other American cities came into vogue--a demi-toilet of marked
+elegance and richness, and yet without that display either of apparel
+and trimmings or of the wearer's personal charms which is implied by
+full evening dress in fashionable parlance. This toilet is very pleasing
+in itself, and it is happily adapted to the social conditions of a
+country in which any public exhibition of superior wealth in places set
+apart for common enjoyment of refined pleasure is not in good taste."
+Mr. White wrote in 1881; would he have been able to be so complimentary
+to the opera audiences of 1908? What relation does the present
+extravagance of dress, the vulgar ostentation which Mr. White would
+have us believe was foreign to the taste of New York's cultured society
+in 1847, bear toward the support which opera has received since the
+Metropolitan Opera House was opened? The factors which are to determine
+the question seem to be marshaling themselves since Mr. Hammerstein
+opened the Manhattan Opera House, but they are not yet fairly opposed
+to each other. There are features in which the new opera house recalls
+memories of the old Academy which met its downfall when the amalgamation
+between the old Knickerbockers and the newer New Yorkers was effected;
+but there are also other features which make a repetition of that
+occurrence under present circumstances very improbable, and the chiefest
+of these is that inculcated by the failure of the Palmo enterprise;
+opera must have an elegant environment if it is to succeed. But it had
+this in the Astor Place Opera House; why, then, did it live its little
+span only?
+
+The question is easily answered--the Astor Place Opera House was killed
+by competition; not the competition of English opera with Italian, which
+had been in existence for twenty-five years, but of Italian opera with
+Italian opera. The first lessees of the new institution were Messrs.
+Sanquirico and Patti, who had first tried their luck in Palmo's Opera
+House. They endured a season. [At the Astor Place Opera House in its
+first season Sanquirico and Patti produced Verdi's "Ernani," Bellini's
+"Beatrice di Tenda," Donizetti's "Lucrezia Borgia," Mencadante's "Il
+Giuramento," and Verdi's "Nabucco." Mr. Fry's season in 1848 when Mr.
+Maretzek was the conductor, brought forward Donizetti's "Linda di
+Chamouni," "Lucrezia Borgia," "L'Elisir d'Amore," "Roberto Devereux,"
+and "Lucia di Lammermoor" and Verdi's "Ernani."] Then the first American
+manager appeared on the field--I mean the first American manager whose
+thoughts were directed to opera exclusively as distinguished from the
+managers of theaters who took hold of opera at intervals, as they did
+any other sort of entertainment which offered employment for their
+houses. The manager in question was Mr. E. R. Fry, who came from the
+counting house to a position of which he can have known nothing more
+than what he could acquire from attendance upon opera, of which he was
+fond, and association with his brother, W. H. Fry, who was a journalist
+by profession (long the musical critic of The Tribune) and an amateur
+composer of more than respectable attainments. Mr. Maretzek, in his
+"Crotchets and Quavers"--a book generally marked by characteristic good
+humor, but not free from malevolence--tries to make it appear that Mr.
+Edward Fry went into operatic management for the express purpose of
+performing his brother's operas; but while the animus of the statement
+is enough to cause it to be looked upon with suspicion, the fact
+that none of William Henry Fry's operas was performed at the Astor
+Place Opera House during the incumbency of Edward Fry is a complete
+refutation. "Leonora," the only grand opera by a professional critic
+ever performed in New York, so far as I know, was brought forward at
+the Academy of Music a good nine years later. Apropos of this admirable
+and respected predecessor of mine, a good story was disclosed by Charles
+A. Dana some fifteen or twenty years ago in his reminiscences of Horace
+Greeley. Mr. Dana published a large number of letters sent to him at
+various times while he was managing editor of The Tribune and Mr.
+Greeley editor-in-chief. It was in the days just before the War of
+the Rebellion. A political question of large importance had arisen
+in Congress, and Mr. Greeley was so concerned in it that he went to
+Washington to look after it in person and act as a special correspondent
+of his own newspaper. Thence one day he sent two letters to The Tribune
+on the subject, but in the issue of the day in which he expected them to
+appear in The Tribune he sought in vain for his communication. Thereupon
+he indited an epistle to Mr. Dana in these wingèd words:
+
+
+Friend Dana: What would it cost to burn the Opera House? If the price
+is reasonable have it done and send me the bill. . . . I wrote my two
+letters under the presumption (there being no paper on Wednesday) that
+the solid work of exposing their (Pierce and Gushing) perversion of
+history had of course been done by Hildreth. I should have dwelt with it
+even more gravely but for that. And now I see (the Saturday paper only
+got through last night) that you crowded out what little I did say to
+make room for Fry's eleven columns of arguments as to the feasibility of
+sustaining the opera in N. Y. if they would only play his compositions.
+I don't believe three hundred people who take the Tribune care one chew
+of Tobacco for the matter.
+
+
+The "eleven columns" was an amiable exaggeration quite in consonance
+with the remainder of the letter; but I can testify from a consultation
+of the files of the newspaper which I have served as one of Mr. Fry's
+successors for more than a quarter of a century that on the date in
+question The Tribune's critic did occupy three and a half columns
+with a discussion of the Lagrange season just ended at the Academy
+of Music and a most strenuous plea for the permanent substitution of
+English for Italian opera! Also, that most of what Mr. Fry said would
+sound just as apposite to-day as it did then, and be backed by just as
+much reason. But a taste for the elegant exotic and reason do not seem
+to go hand in hand, and managers are still strangely averse to placing
+themselves for guidance into the hands of The Tribune's critics. How
+different might not musical history in New York have shaped itself had
+William Henry Fry, George William Curtis, John R. G. Hassard, and H. E.
+K. had their way during the last sixty years! The thought is quite
+overpowering.
+
+The opposition which the Astor Place Opera House met was indeed
+formidable. It came from the company organized by Don Francesco Marty y
+Torrens for performances in Havana. This enterprising gentleman did not
+come to New York to make money, but mischief--as Messrs. Sanquirico,
+Patti, Fry, and Maretzek must have thought--and incidentally to keep
+his singers employed during the hot and unhealthy season in Havana. His
+aiders and abettors were James H. Hackett and William Niblo. The former,
+in his day an actor, was particularly famous for his impersonation of
+Falstaff. His interest in opera may have been excited more or less by
+the fact that his wife had been Catherine Leesugg, an English opera
+singer, who had sung the part of Rosina in an English version of
+Rossini's "Barber of Seville" as early as 1819. At Niblo's history
+I have already taken a glance. In the present chapter he is chiefly
+interesting, according to a story which has long had currency, as
+the manager who succeeded in putting an end to the Astor Place Opera
+House by a trick which took the bloom of caste off that aristocratic
+institution. I shall let Maretzek tell the story presently, pausing now
+to interject an anecdote which fell under my notice some years ago while
+I was turning over the records of the Grand Ducal Theater at Weimar.
+This always comes to my mind when the downfall of the Astor Place Opera
+House is mentioned, and also when, as has frequently been the case
+within the last sixteen years, I met a grandson of one of the principal
+actors in the incident in the streets of New York.
+
+In April, 1817, there came to Weimar from Vienna a gifted dog, who
+assisted his master in the presentation of a play of the melodramatic
+order, entitled "The Dog of Aubri de Mont-Didier." The director of the
+Grand Ducal Theater at the time was one Wolfgang von Goethe. To him the
+dog's manager applied for the privilege of producing his edifying piece.
+Goethe refused permission, and there was danger that the patrons of the
+playhouse which had echoed to the first sounds of the plays of Schiller
+and Goethe were to be deprived of the inestimable privilege of seeing
+a dog dash out of the door of a tavern in which a murder had been
+committed, pull a bell rope to alarm the village, carry a lantern into
+the forest, discover the murderer just at the psychological moment,
+pursue him from rock to rock, capture him at the last, and thus bring
+about the triumph of justice. But the dog's manager was not thus to be
+put down. He went with a petition to Fräulein Jagemann (whose portrait
+in the character of Sappho my readers may still find hanging on a wall
+of the library at Weimar), and solicited her intervention with the Grand
+Duke, whose reign Schiller and Goethe made glorious. Fräulein Jagemann
+was a prima donna and the Grand Duke's mistress. ("The companion of
+my leisure moments," he called her with quite a pretty euphemism.) In
+the former capacity she had given Goethe, the director, a great deal
+of trouble, and in the latter her influence had caused him many an
+annoyance. It was the dog that broke the camel's back of his patience.
+Fräulein Jagemann saw an opportunity to get in a blow against her
+artistic tyrant, and she wheedled Charles Augustus into commanding the
+production of "The Dog of Aubri de Mont-Didier." The play was given
+twice, on April 12 and 14, 1817, with uproarious success, of course,
+and on April 17th Goethe resigned the artistic direction of the Weimar
+Court Theater. As for Fräulein Jagemann, she eventually got a title
+and estates as Frau von Heygendorf.
+
+And now for the story of "The Dogs of Donetti: or, the Downfall of the
+Astor Place Opera House," by Max Maretzek; it must be prefaced by the
+statement that after Edward Fry had made a lamentable failure of his
+opera season at which he had the services of Maretzek as conductor,
+Maretzek became lessee of the house and thus remained for the years
+1849 and 1850.
+
+
+Bled to the last drop in my veins (I, of course, allude to my purse and
+my pocket), the doors of the Astor Place Opera House were closed upon
+the public. It was my determination to woo the fickle goddess Fortune
+elsewhere. Possibly her blinded eyes might not recognize her old adorer,
+and she might even yet bestow upon me a few of her faithless smiles.
+
+Again, however, after my departure, was the opera house leased. But to
+whom do you imagine it was now abandoned by the exemplary wisdom of its
+proprietors?
+
+To the identical William Niblo who had fostered and encouraged the
+opposition--the same William Niblo who had a theater (or let me give
+it his name, and call it--a garden) within the length of some three
+stone-throws from their own house. It must be granted they did not
+foresee that which was about to happen. But this will scarcely palliate
+the folly of taking the head of a rival establishment for their tenant.
+
+This gentleman engaged the troupe of dogs and monkeys, then in this
+country, under the charge of a certain Signor Donetti.
+
+Their dramatic performances were offered to the refined and intelligent
+proprietors and patrons of this classic and exclusive place of
+amusement. Naturally they protested. It was in vain. Then they sued out
+an injunction against this exhibition on the ground that in Niblo's
+lease of the premises only respectable performances were permitted to
+be given in the opera house. On the "hearing to show cause" for this
+injunction Mr. Niblo called up Donetti or some of his friends, who
+testified that his aforesaid dogs and monkeys had, in their younger
+days, appeared before princes and princesses and kings and queens.
+Moreover, witnesses were called who declared under oath that the
+previously mentioned dogs and monkeys behaved behind the scenes more
+quietly and respectably than many Italian singers. This fact I feel that
+I am not called on to dispute. . . . As might be supposed the injunction
+was dissolved.
+
+As a matter of course, the house lost all its prestige in the eyes of
+the community. Shortly afterward its contents were sold, and the shell
+of the opera was turned into a library. Its deathblow had been given it
+as a place for theatrical amusement by the astute Mr. William
+Niblo.
+
+
+Furthermore, Mr. Maretzek would have us believe that some year or
+two later, the Academy of Music having been projected meanwhile, he
+met Niblo and asked him what he thought of the prospects of the new
+enterprise.
+
+"Why," answered the manager, in his nasal voice, "I suppose I shall
+have again to engage Donetti's dogs and monkeys."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MARETZEK, HIS RIVALS AND SINGERS
+
+
+Of the operatic managers of fifty years ago Max Maretzek was the only
+one with whom I was personally acquainted, and it was not until near the
+close of his career that he swam into the circle of my activities or I
+into his. He died on September 17, 1897. His last years were spent in a
+home on Staten Island, and the public heard nothing about him after the
+memorable concert given for his benefit at the Metropolitan Opera House
+on February 12, 1889, the occasion being set down as the fiftieth
+anniversary of the beginning of his career as a conductor in America.
+All the notable conductors then living in New York took part in the
+concert--Theodore Thomas, Anton Seidl, Frank van der Stucken, Walter
+Damrosch, and Adolf Neuendorff. Maretzek was seventy-six years of age
+at the time of his death, and he had grown old, if not gracefully, at
+least good-naturedly. He did not quarrel with his fate, but even when
+he spoke of its buffetings it was in a tone of pleasant banter and with
+a twinkle in his eyes. His manner of accepting what the world brought
+him was illustrated at a meeting which I had with him in the season of
+1883-84--the first of the Metropolitan Opera House. It was on a Saturday
+afternoon that I found him standing in front of the new establishment
+after the first act of the opera was over. Not having seen him in the
+house, I asked him if he was attending the performance. He said he was,
+but that, the house being sold out, he had no seat. Thereupon I offered
+him mine, saying that it might be a pleasure to occupy it since several
+of his professional acquaintances were seated in the neighborhood who
+would be glad to greet him. "Annie Louise Cary is right back of me," I
+said, "and Clara Louise Kellogg near by." But he did not care to accept
+my offer, and I fancied I saw a rather more serious and contemplative
+look come over his grizzled face. Naturally, I asked him what he thought
+of the new house and the new enterprise, adding that I regretted that he
+was not the manager. He began with apparent solemnity:
+
+"Well, when I heard the house was to be built, I did think--I did think
+that some of the stockholders would remember what I had done for opera.
+Some of the old-timers, who used to go to the Academy of Music and Astor
+Place Opera House when I was manager there, I thought, would recollect
+what companies I gave them--Parodi, and Steffanone, and Marini, and
+Lorini, and Bettini, and Bertucca"--(how often I had heard him chant the
+list, counting off the singers on his chubby fingers!)--"and Truffi,
+and Benedetti, and Salvi. I thought somebody might remember this and the
+old man, and come to me and say, 'Max, you did a good deal for us once,
+let us do something for you now.' I didn't expect them to come and offer
+me the house, but I thought they might say this and add, 'Come, we'll
+make you head usher,' or, 'You may have the bar.' But nobody came, and
+I'm out of it completely."
+
+Maretzek's managerial career continued at least until 1874; after that
+he conducted operas for others and did something toward the last in the
+way of teaching. It was seldom that one could get into a conversation
+with him but he could grow reminiscent, and, reverting to the olden
+time, begin tolling off the members of the companies which he had led
+to artistic victories and who had helped plunge him into financial
+defeat--"Parodi, and Steffanone, and Marini, and Bettini, and Lorini,
+and Bertucca," and so on. Poor Bertucca! Few of those who in later
+years saw Mme. Maretzek, portly and sedate, enter the orchestra at the
+Academy of Music and Metropolitan Opera House, and tune her harp while
+the audience was gathering in the gilded horseshoes above, recalled
+that she had been the sprightly and bewitching Bertucca of thirty
+years before.
+
+I cannot recall that Maretzek ever grew bitter in discoursing on what
+once was and what might have been. He could be satirical and cutting,
+but his words were generally accompanied with a smile. His dominant mood
+and something of his style of expression are illustrated in his book,
+"Crotchets and Quavers, or Revelations of an Opera Manager in America,"
+which he published in 1855, most obviously with the help of some
+literary hack who, I imagine, got the thoughts from Maretzek, but
+supplied the literary dress for them. A good many old scores are paid
+off in the book, and a good many grudges fed fat; but there are not many
+instances of bad humor. There is a sugar coating even to his malice.
+Shortly before I left Cincinnati, the College of Music of that city,
+having suffered a serious loss of prestige because of the resignation
+of Theodore Thomas, made a pretentious announcement of an operatic
+department, a practical school for opera, which was to be conducted by
+Maretzek. I think it was in the fall of 1880. At any rate, it was on the
+very eve of my departure from Cincinnati for New York. Maretzek came to
+the city somewhat late in the evening, and though I called upon him at
+the Burnet House as soon as I heard of his coming, he was already in
+bed when my card reached him. Nevertheless, I was asked up to his room.
+A tea tray still stood upon the table by the side of the bed when I
+entered. He held out his hand cordially and apologized for receiving
+me in bed. I told him that my newspaper, The Gazette, wanted to know,
+for the information of its readers, what he purposed doing at the
+college. The squabble between Mr. Thomas and the college authorities had
+kept the town in a ferment for months, all of which Maretzek seemed to
+know. It was no concern of his, but he could not help having artistic
+sympathies or predispositions, and these were obviously on the side of
+the musician Thomas, who had split with the business management of the
+college because of charlatanry in its methods. There was a merry twinkle
+in Maretzek's eyes as in reply to my question he answered: "I don't
+know what I am going to do, or what I'm here for. They made me an offer,
+and I came. I'm told that I am to run an opera school." Again he held
+out his hand at parting, and his last words were:
+
+"Don't give me away!"
+
+Not many months had passed before he, too, had followed Theodore Thomas
+back to New York, I met him in the lobby of the Academy of Music between
+the acts of the opera. It was in the consulship of Mapleson. "Hello!"
+I greeted him. "Back to New York so soon? What's the matter in
+Cincinnati?"
+
+The quizzical smile with which he had greeted me grew wider as he
+replied sententiously:
+
+"I'm not a hog. I know when I've got enough!"
+
+Maretzek was a Hebrew, born in Brünn, Moravia, and educated in Vienna,
+where first he studied medicine, but, according to his own story,
+becoming disgusted with the sights of the dissecting room, he changed
+his purposes and devoted himself to music. He wrote an opera entitled
+"Hamlet" when he was twenty-two years old, and a year later, in 1844,
+found himself in London, employed under Balfe at Her Majesty's Theater.
+Thence he was brought to New York to conduct the opera for Mr. E. P.
+Fry, as has already been mentioned, in 1848. After one season as
+conductor he started in on his career as manager, which lasted
+twenty-five years, the first five of which are amusingly described
+in his book "Crotchets and Quavers." More than twenty years later he
+attempted to continue the story in a musical journal, and gathering the
+disconnected chapters together, issued them in an unattractive form
+under the title "Flats and Sharps." The first book is, to some extent,
+a contribution to musical history, though its strong personal equation
+and its effort to be entertaining mar its value and influence. The
+impression to which I have given utterance, that he was helped in its
+preparations by some penny-a-liner, is based upon the difference between
+its pages and the personal letters which I received from Maretzek in
+his later years, especially a brief autobiographical sketch which he
+prepared for me. To judge by the evidence of book and sketch, the
+latter in his own handwriting and delivered in person, one was forced
+to the conclusion either that he knew more about the English language
+six years after his first coming to New York than he did twenty years
+later or that he had hired somebody fluent but malignant of pen to put
+his thoughts into shape. It had long been the fashion for theatrical
+managers and opera impresarios to give the history of their
+administrations to the world, and Maretzek was but following it, though
+why he should have done so before he had finally and definitely retired
+from the field it is not easy to see.
+
+It was an unwise, even a dangerous, thing to do, for it involved the
+necessity of criticizing the acts of professional people and music
+patrons with whom a manager was more or less likely to come into contact
+if he expected to continue his enterprises. The style adopted in the
+book was the epistolary, the chapters being in the form of letters to
+European friends: Hector Berlioz (with whom Maretzek had been brought
+into connection in London), Fiorentino (an Italian, who had been musical
+critic of the Corsaire, of Paris), Luigi Lablache (the famous basso),
+Professor Joseph Fischof (of Vienna), Michael W. Balfe (of London,
+composer of "The Bohemian Girl" and other English operas), Frederick Gye
+(manager of the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden, London), and Carl
+Eckert (conductor of the Court Opera, Vienna). A final chapter is
+addressed to the public and is devoted to a recital of the troubles
+through which the Academy of Music passed in the earliest stages of its
+career. Eckert had been in America as conductor of the company headed by
+Henrietta Sontag, and the chapter over which his name is written tells
+of the career of that artist in the United States and her death in
+Mexico. Incidentally, also, Maretzek pays off a score owing to Bernard
+Ullmann, a manager with whom Maretzek was much in conflict and against
+whom he tried to turn the public by calling the attention of Americans
+to the sneers in which the delectable gentleman had indulged at their
+expense while he was trying to win the good graces of the Havanese.
+Nevertheless, within four years he was Ullmann's partner, for together
+they opened the season of 1859 at the Academy of Music. The quarrels of
+opera managers are very like those of lawyers inside the courtroom.
+
+But when Maretzek was holding up the heinousness of Ullmann in the
+chapter entitled "Los Americanos y su gusto por la Musica," Ullmann was
+only an agent for Maurice Strakosch, who had entered the managerial
+field. It was different with Don Francesco Marty y Torrens, the
+impresario who invaded Maretzek's territory from Havana; and he remained
+Maretzek's pet aversion to the end of the chapter. In his memoirs
+Arditi, who came to New York as conductor of one of Marty's companies,
+says that Don Francesco was among impresarios the most generous of
+men, Maretzek the cleverest (though he sets down Maurice Grau as the
+"cleverest of entrepreneurs"), and Colonel Mapleson the most astute.
+It is not unlikely that Arditi's amiable opinion of the Cuban was
+influenced not a little by the circumstance that Marty, not caring to
+make money in New York, treated his artists with unusual liberality.
+That, naturally, would not tend to increase the admiration of a rival
+manager for him. He may have been the most generous of men in the eyes
+of Arditi, but in those of Maretzek he was worse than Barbaja, the
+Neapolitan manager, who owned the gambling monopoly in the kingdom
+of Naples, and who, after animating his acquaintances with music and
+singing, and diverting their eyes with the silk fleshings and short
+muslin jupons of his dancers, fleeced them at his gambling houses and
+became richer than the King of Naples himself. Maretzek intimates that
+in his youth Don Francesco had been the mate of a pirate vessel which
+preyed on the commerce of the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent waters; that
+he betrayed his captain to death, and was rewarded with a monopoly of
+the fish trade in Cuba; that he became possessed mysteriously of enough
+money to fit out a feet of fishing boats to supply the market which he
+controlled; that from that source alone his annual income rose to about
+$160,000; that then he embarked in the slave trade, bringing negroes
+from Africa and Indians from Yucatan, which he bribed the Spanish
+officials to permit him to land; was knighted by the Spanish Crown out
+of gratitude for pecuniary help extended in a crisis; and built an opera
+house in Havana in order to acquire a social position among the proud
+people who, despite his badge of nobility, refused to "swallow the fish
+and digest the negro," as Maretzek puts it. This was the manager who, in
+the summer of 1850, brought to New York what Maretzek characterizes as
+"the greatest troupe which had been ever heard in America," and which,
+"in point of the integral talent, number, and excellence of the artists
+composing it," had "seldom been excelled in any part of the Old World."
+
+"This party consisted of three prime donne. These were the Signore
+Steffanone, Bosio, and Tedesco. Its only contralto was the Signora
+Vietti. There were three tenors--Salvi, Bettini, and Lorini. Badiali and
+Corradi Setti were the two barytones, while the two bassi were Marini
+and Coletti. At the head of this extraordinary company was the great
+contrabassist Bottesini, assisted by Arditi. It would be useless, my old
+friend, to attempt to indicate to you the excellence of this company.
+You have long since known their names, or been aware of their standing
+as artists in the world of music. The greater portion of them enjoy a
+wide and well-deserved European reputation, and their reunion anywhere
+would form an almost incomparable operatic troupe."
+
+Some of these names are those of singers whom, in his later days, I have
+said Maretzek was in the habit of chanting while telling them off on his
+fingers. His was not the credit of having brought them to the country,
+but he did, a year after they had made their first appearance in the
+Havana company, succeed in enticing them away from their generous
+manager and enlisting them under his banner at the Astor Place Opera
+House. All but Tedesco.
+
+Of these singers Maretzek has more or less to say in his book, but
+the point of view is that of the manager perpetually harassed by the
+jealousies, importunities, and recalcitrancy of his singers. Steffanone
+was a conscientious artist, but had an infirmity of body and mind which
+was exceedingly troublesome to her manager; Bosio was talented and
+industrious, but had a husband whose devotion to her interests was an
+affliction to her manager; Tedesco was husbandless, but had a father who
+was so concerned about her honorarium that he came to the opera house on
+payday with a small pair of scales in his pocket, with which he verified
+every coin that came out of the exchequer of the unfortunate manager,
+"subjecting each separate piece of gold to a peculiarly Jewish
+examination touching their Christian perfection;" Salvi was a mountain
+of conceit, who believed himself to be the Louis Quatorze of the lyric
+drama, and compelled his manager to imagine him exclaiming "L'opéra
+c'est moi!" Toward his manager Salvi was a despot, who rewarded favors
+bestowed upon himself by compelling the manager to engage persons who
+had served the tenor. Maretzek cites a ukase touching a singer named
+Sidonia:
+
+
+Caro Max: Fa di tutto per iscriturare la Sidonia, altrimenti io non
+canto ne "Don Giovanni," ne "Norma," ne altri.
+
+A 250 $ il mese, e che la scrittura porti 350 $. Amen, cosi sia.
+Il tuo,       Salvi.
+
+19. 4. 53.
+
+(In English: "Dear Max: Do everything to engage the Sidonia, otherwise
+I shall not sing in 'Don Giovanni,' 'Norma' or other operas. At $250 per
+month, but let the writing bear $350. Amen, and so be it.")
+
+
+"At $250 per month, but let the scrittura bear $350." I wonder how many
+of my readers think of this cheap device of singers and managers when
+they read about the honoraria received by opera singers to-day!
+
+Bettini drank to excess and spent whole nights in the gambling room,
+rendering him unfit for duty ever and anon; Badiali was singularly
+conscientious as an artist, and became a favorite with the public, but
+not with his colleagues, because of his extraordinary meanness and
+avarice and a jealous disposition; Marini was the greatest living
+Italian basso, save Lablache, but his voice was occasionally unreliable,
+and he frequently ill-humored, capricious, splenetic, and peevish.
+
+In private life Angiolina Bosio was Mme. Panayotis di Xindavelonis, the
+wife of a Greek gentleman, whom she had married in 1851. She was in her
+prime when she came to New York, though she had not reached the meridian
+of her reputation. Her features were irregular, and she was not comely.
+Richard Grant White claims credit for having given her the punning
+sobriquet "Beaux Yeux," by which she was widely known on account of her
+luminous and expressive eyes. "Her voice," says White:
+
+
+was a pure, silvery soprano, remarkable alike for its penetrating
+quality and for its charm so fine and delicate that it seemed almost
+intellectual. But she was not a remarkably dramatic singer, even in
+light comedy parts, which best suited her; and her style was not at all
+declamatory. She _sang_; and in her vocalization she showed the results
+of intelligent study in the old Italian school. Her phrasing was
+incomparably fine, and the delicacy of her articulation has been
+surpassed by no modern prima donna, not even by Alboni. Thus much of
+her as a vocal artist; but her charm was greatly personal. Although
+her acting was always appropriate and in good taste, and at times--as,
+for example, in the saucy widow of "Don Pasquale"--very captivating,
+she never seemed to throw herself wholly into her part. She was always
+Angiolina Bosio, and appeared on the stage like a lady performing
+admirably in private theatricals. Her bearing was a delight to her
+audience, and seemed to be a performance, whereas it was only herself.
+She sang the music of all the great operatic composers to the admiration
+of the public and the critics of the most exacting disposition; but she
+was greatest in Rossini's operas, and in Bellini's and Donizetti's. Yet
+her exquisitely charming and finished performance of Zerlina should not
+be passed over unmentioned.
+
+
+Tedesco, who came to New York with the first Havana company in April,
+1847, presented herself to the always susceptible mind of Mr. White as a
+great, handsome, ox-eyed creature, the picture of lazy loveliness until
+she was excited by music; then she poured out floods, or rather gusts,
+of rich, clear sound. "She was not a great artist, but her voice was
+so copious and so musical that she could not be heard without pleasure,
+although it was not of the highest kind." Bettini left nothing here that
+remained in the memory of New Yorkers except the half of a name which he
+gave to his wife, the contralto Trebelli-Bettini, who was a member of
+Mr. Abbey's company on the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House in
+1883. Salvi came over with the Havana company in the spring of 1848, and
+was one of the fish which Maretzek took from Marty's weirs. If we are
+to believe the testimony of contemporaneous critics he was the greatest
+tenor of his time, with the exception of Mario. That was the opinion of
+White, who wrote of him as follows in The Century Magazine for May,
+1882:
+
+
+Although Salvi was past his youth when he first sang in New York, his
+voice was yet in perfect preservation. It lacked nothing that is to be
+expected in a tenor voice of the first class; and it had that mingling
+of manliness and tenderness, of human sympathy and seraphic loftiness
+which, for lack of any other or better word, we call divine. As a
+vocalist he was not in the first rank, but he stood foremost in the
+second. His presence was manly and dignified, and he was a good actor.
+But it was as a vocalist, pure and simple, that he captivated and moved
+his audiences. He was heard in America at brief intervals during a few
+years, and his influence upon the taste of the general music-loving
+public was very considerable and wholly good. Singing at Niblo's or
+Castle Garden and other like places at which the price of admission was
+never more than $1, and was generally 50 cents, he gave to multitudes
+who would otherwise have had no such opportunity that education in art
+which is to be had only from the performances of a great artist. In
+purity of style he was unexceptionable. He lacked only a little higher
+finish, a little more brilliancy of voice and impressiveness of manner
+to take a position among tenors of the very first rank. Of these,
+however, there are never two in the world at the same time, scarcely two
+in the same generation; and so Salvi prepared the public for the coming
+Mario. His forte was the cantabile and his finest effects were those in
+mezza voce, expressive of intense suppressed feeling. More than once
+when he sang "Spirto gentil," as he rose to the crescendo of the second
+phrase, and then let his cry pass suddenly away in a dying fall, I have
+heard a whole house draw suspended breath, as if in pain, so nearly
+alike in their outward manifestation and fine, keen pleasure.
+
+
+Such were some of the singers whose names are associated in the musical
+annals of New York with that of Max Maretzek.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MUSIC
+
+
+Fifty-one years ago the center of operatic activity had shifted to the
+Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place, and there it
+remained until the Metropolitan Opera House was built. From the opening
+of the Academy in 1854 to the opening of the Metropolitan in 1883 the
+former had no rival as an establishment, though the rivalry between
+managers and singers was the liveliest that New York has ever seen
+during the first decade of the time. For twenty years Burton's Theater
+revived its early traditions, and housed an opera troupe at intervals,
+and Niblo's Theater and Castle Garden were open to every manager who
+wished to experiment with the costly enterprise. English companies
+came and went, and a new competitive element, which soon became more
+dangerous than that which several times crushed the Italian exotic,
+entered in the shape of German opera, which, though it first sought a
+modest home in the lesser theaters of the Bowery and lower Broadway,
+soon achieved recognition at the fashionable Academy. The eagerness of
+the rivalry in the Italian field alone is indicated by the fact that the
+Academy had five different managers in the first three seasons of its
+history, and that thereafter, until the coming of James H. Mapleson in
+1878, it was almost a rule that there should be a change of management
+every season. Maretzek was alternately manager and competitor over
+and over again, and the bitterest rivals of one season would be found
+associated with each other the next. Already in the first season the
+stockholders had to step in and assume some of the risks of management
+to save the enterprise from shipwreck, and, despite the attractiveness
+of the house, the excellence of the performances, the presence of such
+phenomenal artists as Mme. Grisi and Signor Mario, and generous public
+patronage, the first season cost the different managers between $50,000
+and $60,000--three times as much as Maretzek had lost in the previous
+six years, if that gentleman's word is to be taken. The figures look
+modest now, but twenty years later their duplication at the Metropolitan
+Opera House sufficed to effect a revolution in methods, and eventually
+tastes, which had a profound influence upon musical life in New York.
+
+The Academy of Music had its birth in the expiring throes of the Astor
+Place Opera House. The spirit of which it was the material expression
+seems to have been admirable. To this the name of the establishment
+bears witness. It was not alone the official title of the French
+institution, popularly spoken of as the Grand Opéra, which was in the
+minds of the promoters of the New York enterprise--the new opera house
+was to be a veritable academy of music, an educational institution.
+Not only was fashionable society to have a place in which to display
+and disport itself, but popular taste and popular knowledge were to
+be cultivated. To this end the auditorium was to be three times as
+commodious as that of the Astor Place Opera House, and the low prices
+which had been prevalent only at Niblo's, Burton's, and Castle Garden
+were to be the rule at the new establishment. In the charter granted
+by the State, dated April 10, 1852, the purposes of the Academy were
+set down as the cultivation of taste by entertainments accessible at
+moderate charges, by furnishing facilities for instruction and by
+rewards. These purposes were overlooked at the beginning, but before the
+first season had come to its end Ole Bull, for a few weeks a manager,
+proclaimed his intention to pursue them by promising to open a
+conservatory in the fall of 1855, and at once (January, 1855) offering
+a prize of $1,000 for the "best original grand opera by an American
+composer, and upon a strictly American subject." The competition ended
+with Ole Bull's announcement, for his active season endured only two
+weeks.
+
+It is doubtful if the competition would have produced anything more
+than a curiosity had it been carried to a conclusion. On the spur of
+the moment I can think of only two American musicians whose capacity
+was adequate to such a task--Mr. W. H. Fry, who was then musical critic
+and an editorial writer for The Tribune, and Mr. George F. Bristow,
+both of whom had composed operas found worthy of performance. Mr. Fry's
+"Leonora" was performed at the Academy on March 29, 1858, with Mme.
+Lagrange in the principal rôle, but the score was already a dozen years
+old, and it is not likely that the composer's state of health would
+have permitted him to undertake the writing of a new opera even if
+he had been so disposed. Mr. Bristow's "Rip Van Winkle," which had a
+production in New York in the year of Ole Bull's announcement, may, for
+all that I know to the contrary, have been written for the prize. The
+scheme of uniting a training school for singers with an opera house was
+not heard of again, so far as I can recall, until Mr. Conried became
+director of the Metropolitan Opera House. It has much to commend it, and
+might be made a power for artistic good with an operatic establishment
+on a really public-spirited, artistic, and unselfish basis; as it is,
+its influence is apt to be pernicious morally, as well as artistically.
+How seriously Mr. Fry took the proposed educational feature of the
+institution is indicated by an article on the new opera house, which he
+published in The Tribune, in the course of which he said:
+
+
+The expense of maintaining an opera house so nurtured at home will be
+at most not more than one-fourth what it would be if the artists were
+brought from Europe. American vocalists would be content with some few
+thousand dollars a year, and, if they were sought for and educated,
+boarded and lodged gratuitously the meanwhile, their services could be
+procured for several years in payment of the expenses of apprenticeship.
+In that way alone can the exorbitant demands of foreign artists be
+diminished; and the folly and extravagance of paying them from one to
+ten thousand dollars a night, as has been done in this city, will be
+forever avoided. In connection with this it may be mentioned that there
+are some Americans now studying for the operatic stage in Italy, and
+one lady of Boston has appeared in Naples with success. It may yet come
+to pass that art, in all its ramifications, may be as much esteemed as
+politics, commerce or the military profession. The dignity of American
+artists lies in their hands.
+
+
+Mr. Fry's hopes, so far as the Academy of Music is concerned, were
+never realized, and after half a century his words are echoing wherever
+writers indulge in discussion of ways and means for promoting American
+music. Yet, without schools connected with opera houses American singers
+have made their mark, not only at home, but in the lyric theaters of
+Italy, France, Germany, and England. Names like Clara Louise Kellogg,
+Annie Louise Cary, Minnie Hauk, Alwina Valleria, Emma Nevada, Lillian
+Nordica, Adelaide Phillips, Emma Albani, and Josephine Yorke are
+connected more or less intimately with the history of the Academy of
+Music, but they do not exhaust the list. To them must be added those
+of Charles Adams, Suzanne Adams, David Bispham, Robert Blass, William
+Candidus, Emma Eames, Signor Foli, Geraldine Farrar, Julia Gaylord,
+Helen Hastreiter, Eliza Hensler (the daughter of a Boston tailor who
+became the morganatic wife of Dom Fernando of Portugal), Louise Homer,
+Emma Juch, Pauline l'Allemande, Marie Litta, Isabella McCullough,
+Frederick C. Packard, Jules Perkins, Signor Perugini, Mathilde Phillips,
+Susan Strong, Minnie Tracey, Jennie Van Zandt, Emma Abbott, Bessie
+Abott, Julia Wheatley, Virginia Whiting (Signora Lorini), Edyth Walker,
+Marion Weed, Zélie de Lussan, Clarence Whitehill, Allen Hinckley, Joseph
+F. Sheehan, and half a dozen or more singers now attracting attention in
+London and Germany.
+
+Max Maretzek was the first lessee of the Academy of Music, but the
+company that opened it on October 2, 1854, was that engaged by J. H.
+Hackett to support Grisi and Mario, which had appeared at Castle Garden
+two months before. Maretzek sublet to Hackett, who thought that the
+brilliancy of his stars, and the new house, justified him in advancing
+the price of seats to $2. He had a rude awakening, for the audience on
+the first night was neither large nor brilliant. It numbered not more
+than 1,500, and on the second night the prices came down to the popular
+scale, with $1.50 as the standard. By the middle of December, though
+the stockholders had been obliged to come to the rescue of Hackett,
+the collapse of the opening enterprise was announced, and Hackett took
+Grisi and Mario to Boston for a brief season, and then came back for
+three or four performances at the Metropolitan Theater.
+
+The last performance took place on February 20, 1855. Though many
+excellent singers had been heard in New York between the coming of
+Malibran and that of Grisi and Mario, the three months of their sojourn
+in America have ever since remained memorable. For a generation
+afterward all tenors were measured by Mario's standard. Grisi created
+a less enduring impression, because the audiences that heard her were
+within the space of a few years permitted also to hear such singers as
+Jenny Lind, Henrietta Sontag, and Marietta Alboni, three names that are
+still resplendent in operatic annals. There does not seem to be any
+reason for questioning the belief that Mario was the greatest tenor
+singer that ever gladdened the ears of American music lovers. Richard
+Grant White, who was then writing the musical reviews for The Courier
+and Enquirer newspaper, had chosen Benedetti as his ideal of a dramatic
+singer, and he found Mario lacking in passion, while confessing that
+he had the sweetest tenor voice in all the world. He retired from the
+stage in 1867, but came to America in 1872, under Strakosch, and sang
+in concert with Carlotta Patti, Annie Louise Gary, Teresa Carreño, and
+Sauret. He had always been a somewhat unreliable singer, frequently
+disappointing his audiences by not singing at all, or singing listlessly
+until he reached the air in which he could produce a sensational effect,
+and when he returned to America he had only a superb presence and
+bearing, and a magnificent reputation with which to arouse interest. He
+was sixty-two years old, and had accepted an engagement for the reason
+that frequently brings worn-out artists to the scenes of their earlier
+triumphs; he needed money. Eight years later his financial condition so
+distressed his old friends and admirers in London that they got up a
+benefit concert for him. He was living in Rome when he died in 1883.
+
+Such satisfaction as can come to one from seeing a renowned artist was
+mine in 1872; but I can scarcely say that I _heard_ Mario. With Annie
+Louise Gary he sang first in a graceful little duet, "Per valli, per
+boschi," by Blangini ("Dear old Mario had to warm up in a duet before
+he would trust himself in solo," said the admired contralto, many years
+afterward), and later attempted Beethoven's "Adelaide." Romances were
+Mario's specialty, and Beethoven's divine song ought to have been an
+ideal selection for him, but it was quite beyond his powers and I do not
+now know whether to be glad or sorry that I heard him attempt it. It
+is always unfortunate when great singers who have gone into decay are
+tempted again to sing. To the generation who knew them in their prime
+they bring a double measure of disappointment--grief for the passing
+away of the art which once gave pleasure, and regret that the younger
+generation should carry down to posterity a false impression of the
+singer's voice and style. Who shall measure the heartburnings left by
+Madame Patti's last visit to America when she sold herself to a trumpery
+balladist, and, affecting the appearance and manner which had been hers
+a quarter of a century before, tried to make a new generation believe
+that it was listening to the vocalist whom veterans maintained was the
+last one entitled to be called "la Diva." How much lovelier and more
+fragrant the memory of Annie Louise Cary, whose American career began
+during the Strakosch régime at the Academy of Music, and ended with her
+marriage to Charles Mon son Raymond, when she was still in the very
+plenitude of her powers. Many a time within the first few years after
+her retirement have I seen her surrounded by young women and old, as she
+was leaving the Academy of Music or the Metropolitan Opera House, and
+heard their pleading voices: "Oh, Miss Cary! aren't you ever going to
+sing for us again?" and "Please, Miss Cary, won't you let me kiss you?"
+
+Ole Bull's management of the Academy of Music was but a fleeting
+incident, memorable only for the protestations with which it was begun
+and for its brevity. For the famous Norwegian violinist it was a
+Utopian dream with a speedy and rude awakening. After he had retired
+the Lagrange troupe came from downtown and completed the season with
+the help of the stockholders, and Maretzek, the erstwhile impresario
+and lessee, became the conductor. For four years, 1855, 1856, 1857,
+and 1858, the Academy saw Maretzek, Strakosch, and Ullmann alternately
+installed as impresarios, and then for a year there was no opera at the
+house, the three men at the head of as many different companies seeking
+their fortunes outside of the metropolis. With Ullmann Thalberg was
+associated for a space, the great pianist having come to America to
+make money under the management of Ullmann, and probably having been
+persuaded to risk some of his gains by his manager. It was but a brief
+interlude, however. Ullmann, whose activities in America extended over
+a quarter of century, lived to manage some of the artists who are
+still before the public. The beginning of his career, like that of
+Maretzek, fell in the period when Barnumism was at its zenith, and
+Ullmann was utterly unconscionable in the methods to which he resorted
+for the purpose of exploiting his artists. It was under his operatic
+consulship that the winsome Piccolomini came to New York--an artist of
+insignificant caliber, lovely to look upon and fascinating as an actress
+in soubrette parts. "A Columbine," said Chorley about her when she
+effected her début in London, "born to 'make eyes' over an apron with
+pockets, to trick the Pantaloon of the piece, to outrun the Harlequin,
+and to enjoy her own saucy confidence on the occasion of her success--with
+those before the footlights and the orchestra." But this was not
+all. "Never did any young lady, whose private claims to modest respect
+were so great as hers are known to be," said the same critic, "with such
+self-denial fling off their protection in her resolution to lay hold of
+the public at all risks. Her performances at times approached offense
+against maidenly reticence and delicacy. When she played Zerlina,
+in 'Don Giovanni,' such virtue as there was between the two seemed
+absolutely on the side of the libertine hero--so much invitation was
+thrown into the peasant girl's rusticity." Here was a capital subject
+for the methods dear to the heart of Ullmann. In London the Piccolomini
+had been proclaimed to be of a noble Roman family, the niece of a
+cardinal, who had quarreled with her relations because of her theatrical
+propensities. There may have been some truth in the statements, but
+Ullmann adorned her history still more, and proclaimed from every New
+York housetop that the lady was a lineal descendant of Charlemagne, and
+the great-grand-daughter of Schiller's tragic hero Max Piccolomini.
+
+It was under the co-consulship of Maretzek and Ullmann that Adelina
+Patti made her operatic début at the Academy of Music. The date was
+November 24, 1859, the opera "Lucia di Lammermoor." Twenty-five years
+later Patti was again the prima donna of the Academy, though Mapleson
+was now the manager. It was the second year of the rivalry between the
+Academy and the Metropolitan Opera House, and Colonel Mapleson conceived
+the idea of profiting by the anniversary. At first it was planned that
+"Lucia" should be given, with Brignoli as Edgardo, the part he had sung
+in the opera at Patti's début, but two months before the time the tenor
+died. Instead, "Martha" was performed, in a manner wholly commonplace
+in all respects except as to the titular rôle, in which Mme. Patti
+appeared, as a matter of course. There was only a little perfunctory
+applause, but Colonel Mapleson had resolved that the scene should be
+enacted, of which we have often read, in which the devotees of the prima
+donna unhitch the horses from her carriage, and themselves drag it, with
+wild rejoicings, through the streets. To make sure of such a spontaneous
+ovation in staid New York was a question which Mapleson solved by
+hiring fifty or more Italians (choristers, probably) from the familiar
+haunts in Third Avenue, and providing them with torches, to follow the
+carriage, which was prosaically dragged along to its destination at the
+Windsor Hotel. As a demonstration it was the most pitiful affair that I
+have ever witnessed. In fact, it seemed to me such a humiliation of the
+great artist that on the next opera night I suggested to my colleague
+of The Times newspaper that something adequate and appropriate to so
+interesting an anniversary be arranged. He agreed and within a fortnight
+or so a banquet was given in Mme. Patti's honor at the Hotel Brunswick,
+under the auspices of a committee consisting of a number of well-known
+gentlemen, including Judge Daly, William Steinway, and Nahum Stetson.
+The committee of arrangements, having visited Mme. Patti and gained her
+consent, went to work right merrily, but before the invitations were
+issued an obstacle was met which threatened shipwreck to the amiable
+enterprise; the wives of several gentlemen who had been invited
+privately refused pointblank to break bread with the prima donna on
+account of the scandal caused by her separation from the Marquis de Caux
+and marriage to Nicolini, the tenor. Somewhat perplexed, the two critics
+visited her a second time, and put the matter to her as delicately as
+possible. Would she, under the circumstances, be the guest of a number
+of gentlemen, representative of the legal, artistic, and literary
+professions? Again she accepted, and without a moment's hesitation. So,
+instead of the gathering that had been planned, there was a stag party
+of about seventy gentlemen in the ballroom of the Brunswick, handsomely
+decorated and discreetly lighted with wax candles.
+
+The preliminary reception was held in one of the rooms adjoining the
+banquet hall, and there a scene was enacted which brought into relief
+a trait of character which was extremely useful to the Colonel in the
+difficult task of managing his wilful and capricious prima donna. Mme.
+Patti received her hosts seated upon a divan. She looked radiant, and
+was wholly at ease after having taken a peep into the hall to see that
+the light would not be prejudicial to her complexion. One after another
+of the seventy gentlemen advanced to her, took the hand which she
+extended with a gracious smile, muttered the pretty compliment which he
+had rehearsed, and fell back to make room for the next comer. The room
+was pretty nearly full, when the Colonel appeared in the glory of that
+flawless, speckless dress suit, with the inevitable rose in the lapel
+of his coat. Not a glance did he give to right or left, but with the
+grace of a practised courtier, he sailed across the room, sank on his
+knees before the diva, and raised her hand to his lips. Such a smile as
+rewarded him! A score of breasts bulged out with envy and a score of
+brains framed the thought: "Confound it! Why didn't I think of doing
+that?"
+
+The dinner passed off without a hitch, Mme. Patti managing by a hundred
+pretty coquetries to convince nearly every one of her three-score and
+ten hosts that he had received at least one smile that was more gracious
+than that bestowed upon his fellows. Speeches were made by Judge Daly,
+William Steinway, Dr. Leopold Damrosch, William Winter and others, but,
+as Colonel Mapleson had carried off the palm by his courtliness at the
+reception, Max Maretzek made himself the most envied of men at the
+dinner. Quite informally he was asked to say something after the set
+programme had been disposed of. Where the other speakers had brought
+forward their elegantly turned oratorical tributes the grizzled old
+manager told stories about the child life and early career of the guest.
+Amongst other things he illustrated how early the divine Adelina had
+fallen into the ways of a prima donna by refusing to sing at a concert
+in Tripler Hall unless he, who was managing the concert, would first
+go out and buy her a pound of candy. He agreed to get the sweetmeats
+provided she would give him a kiss in return. In possession of her box
+she kept both of the provisions of her contract. When the toastmaster
+declared the meeting adjourned Patti bore straight down on her old
+manager and said:
+
+"Max, if I gave you a kiss for a box of candy then, I'll give you one
+for nothing now!"
+
+And she did.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MAPLESON AND OTHER IMPRESARIOS
+
+
+Memories are crowding upon me, and I find there is much still to be said
+about the Academy of Music, and the operatic folk whom it housed between
+1854 and 1886. Just now the incidents which have been narrated about
+the banquet given in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Adelina
+Patti's début recall other characteristic anecdotes of Colonel Mapleson,
+who managed the Academy of Music from 1878 to the end of the disastrous
+season of 1885-'86. When Mapleson and Abbey were drawing up their forces
+for the battle royal between the Academy of Music and the Metropolitan
+Opera House in 1883, one of the New York newspapers reported Mme. Patti
+as saying: "Colonel Mapleson comes here when he wants me to sing, and
+he calls me 'My dear child,' and he goes down on both knees and kisses
+my hands, and he has, you know, quite a supplicating face, and it is not
+easy to be firm with a man of such suavity of manners." I have often
+thought of this in connection with the outcome of the disastrous rivalry
+between the two houses and their managers. When Colonel Mapleson let
+himself down so gracefully upon his knee and pressed the prima donna's
+hand to his lips, the act was not all unselfish adoration. It used to
+be said that there was no manager alive who had succeeded in becoming
+debtor to Adelina Patti. It was golden grain alone that persuaded this
+bird to sing. The story is old of how her personal agent once hovered
+between her dressing room and the manager's office, carrying the message
+one way: "Madame Patti will not put on her slippers until she is paid,"
+returning the other way with a thousand dollars; coming again to the
+manager with: "Madame has one slipper on, but will not put on the other
+till she has her fee"--and so on. Doubtless apocryphal and yet only a
+bit fanciful and exaggerated. Yet it was known in the inner operatic
+circles in 1885 that Colonel Mapleson had succeeded in getting himself
+pretty deeply into her debt. How he did it the anecdotes of the
+reception and Mme. Patti's interview serve to indicate. In sooth, the
+persuasive powers of the doughty colonel were distinctly remarkable, and
+it was not only the prima donna who lived in an atmosphere of adulation
+who fell a victim to them. I have a story to illustrate which came to
+me straight from the lips of the confiding creditor. He was a theatrical
+costumer, moreover, and one of the tribe of whom it is said that only to
+a Connecticut Yankee will they lower the flag in a horse trade.
+
+My friend was a theatrical costumer with a shop conveniently situated
+in Union Square. When the clouds began to lower upon the Academy around
+the corner he became curious to know whether or not he was likely to
+get a balance of some $1,500 owing him for costumes furnished to the
+establishment. He sent his bill many times, and, being on amicable terms
+with Colonel Mapleson, called on him at intervals to talk over the
+situation. When he left the impresario's office he always carried away
+profuse promises of speedy payment, but nothing more. Finally, he put
+the bill into the hands of his lawyer, who at once took steps to attach
+the property of the foreign debtor, and, to bring about pressure in a
+manner that seemed likely to be effective, he instructed the deputy
+sheriff, who was to serve the legal papers, to present himself at the
+office of Colonel Mapleson an hour or so before the beginning of the
+opera. The arrangements perfected, he informed his client of what had
+been done. But there remained a kindly spot in the costumer's soul, and
+of his own volition he called on the manager in the afternoon of the day
+set apart for the coup in order to give him one more opportunity to save
+himself from the impending catastrophe.
+
+"I found the Colonel in his office," said he, in relating the incident,
+"cutting the corners off of tickets and sending them out to fill his
+house for the next performance. While he clipped he talked away at me
+in his cheerfullest and blandest style, told me how sorry he was that he
+could not pay me out of hand, and deplored the action which I had taken,
+but with such absence of all resentment that I began to feel ashamed of
+myself for having threatened to shut him up. After half an hour I agreed
+to send a messenger post-haste to my lawyer and call off the sheriff.
+This done he borrowed $75 cash from me, and I went away happy. I tell
+you I know lots of managers, but there's only one Colonel Mapleson in
+this world."
+
+Whether or not my friend ever collected his bill I do not know; but this
+I do know, that when the colonel ended the campaign of 1884-'85 Mme.
+Patti's name was on his list of creditors for a considerable sum--$5,000
+or $6,000, I believe. The next time I met him he was sauntering about in
+what passes for a foyer in Covent Garden Theater, London. The rose in
+his buttonhole was not more radiant than he.
+
+"What are you up to now, Colonel?" I asked him.
+
+"In what respect?"
+
+"In a business way, of course."
+
+"Well," with a twinkling smile, "just now I am persuading Adelina to
+sing at my benefit."
+
+"Will she do it?"
+
+"I think she will" And she did.
+
+Mapleson was one of the last of the race of managers who had practical
+training in the art in which he dealt commercially. He was a graduate
+of the Royal Academy of Music in the violin class, and had played in
+the orchestra at the opera. He had also studied singing, and in his
+youth tried his luck as an operatic tenor. In this he was like Maurice
+Strakosch, who played the pianoforte prodigiously as a child, studied
+singing three years with no less an artist than the great Pasta, and
+after singing for a space at Agram turned his attention again to the
+pianoforte. He came to New York in 1848, and his first engagement was
+with Maretzek, at the Astor Place Opera House. Afterward he was a member
+of a traveling concert company, in which he was associated with Amalia
+Patti, whom he married, and it was thus that he became the teacher,
+and, eventually, the manager of his sister-in-law, Adelina Patti. When
+Ronconi first appeared in America at Burton's Theater (which had
+been Palmo's Opera House), in the spring of 1858, Strakosch was the
+conductor. The last of the old opera managers whom I recall at this
+moment who were practical musicians as well, was Dr. Leopold Damrosch,
+who directed the destinies of the Metropolitan Opera House after one
+year of warfare with the Academy of Music had put Henry E. Abbey hors
+du combat for a while. Abbey came out of the ranks of theatrical
+managers, like Heinrich Conried, his only practical experience in music
+being as a cornet player in a brass band in Akron, Ohio, whence he came.
+
+Strakosch's associates, however, were not musical practitioners. Ullmann
+may have had some knowledge of music, but he was all showman. Thalberg,
+the pianist, was Ullmann's partner when Strakosch and Ullmann joined
+their forces in January, 1857, to manage the Academy of Music, but the
+new coalition was the sign of Thalberg's withdrawal from the managerial
+field.
+
+Like Maretzek, in his Cincinnati experience, the virtuoso knew when he
+had enough. Strakosch's later associates were his brothers, Ferdinand
+and Max. The former was the European agent for the firm, and the latter
+what might be termed the acting house man in the United States,
+especially during the later years of the Strakosch régime.
+
+In Europe Maurice Strakosch was also associated with Pollini, who
+afterward became a large factor in the field of German opera, as manager
+of the opera in Hamburg. Pollini had been Strakosch's office boy. His
+real name was Pohl, and he hailed from Cologne; but he, too, was a
+musician. Strakosch died in Paris in October, 1887. One night in July,
+1886, I met him in the theater at Altona, whither I had gone to hear a
+performance of "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," then the rage throughout
+Germany. He asked me to drive back to his hotel in Hamburg with him, for
+his physician had told him that day that he might drink a glass of beer,
+the first in six months, and he wanted a friend to share the pleasure
+with him. I brought him the latest news from the opera houses of New
+York, and, also, the intelligence that Pollini had just engaged Mme.
+Sembrich for a season at some 5,000 francs a night.
+
+"We quit partnership," said he, "back in the 70's because Pollini
+thought that money was no longer to be made in Italian opera, and wanted
+to take up German opera exclusively. I didn't agree with him, and went
+on with Nilsson and the rest. He got rich and I got poor, and now he's
+going back into the Italian field. He'll rue it."
+
+Call the roll of some of the best of the singers whose American careers
+are chiefly bound up with the history of the Academy of Music: Grisi,
+Mario, Vestvali (a much admired contralto), Badiali, Amodio (barytone),
+Steffanone, Brignoli, Lagrange, Mirate, D'Angri, Piccolomini, Adelina
+Patti, Kellogg, Nilsson, Campanini, Lucca, Cary, Parepa, Albani, Hauk,
+Gerster, Nevada. There are others whom fond recollection will call back,
+some belonging indubitably to the first rank, like Maurel, some who
+will live on because they gladdened the hearts of the young people of a
+generation ago, who were more impressionable than critical. Some men of
+middle age (as they think) now will not want to forget Mlle. Ambre or
+Mlle. Marimon, and will continue to forgive the homely features of Mme.
+Scalchi for the sake of her perfect physical poise and movement as the
+page in "Les Huguenots," as others forgave the many registers of her
+voice because of her joyous volubility of utterance. Doubtless, too,
+there are matrons of to-day who will remember the singing of Ravelli
+with as much pleasure as I recall it, and the shapely legs of the young
+tenor that walked off with the heart (we also had a story of a diamond
+ring) of a young singer from California, who afterward made a name for
+herself in Paris, with more enthusiasm than I could possibly feel.
+
+Some of these singers became intimately associated with New York life in
+a social way. Annie Louise Cary, after her marriage to Charles Monson
+Raymond, lived for years in a cheery apartment at No. 20 Fifth Avenue,
+sang occasionally with the choir in the West Presbyterian Church, in
+Forty-second Street, and shed sunshine over a circle of friends who
+loved her as enthusiastically as a woman as they had admired her as an
+artist. Now her home is in Norwalk, Conn. Her first operatic engagement
+was at Copenhagen, and she spent two seasons in the opera houses of
+the Scandinavian peninsula, and one at Brussels before the Strakosch
+brothers brought her to the United States, in 1870. The first season she
+sang in concert with Nilsson, the second (1871-72) in opera, the third
+with Carlotta Patti and Mario in concert; and thereafter till her
+retirement in 1882 in both concert and opera, winning and holding an
+almost unparalleled popularity. In the Strakosch company of 1873-74 she
+was one of a galaxy of artists that the opera-goers of that period, who
+are still living, will never cease to think of without a swelling of the
+heart--Nilsson, Cary, Campanini, Capoul, Maurel, Del Puente, and others.
+
+Campanini remained the tenor of tenors for New Yorkers for a decade
+longer. Abbey took him away from Mapleson for the first season of the
+Metropolitan Opera House, and, after the introduction of German opera
+there, his local career was practically at an end. He died in 1896
+in Italy, whither he had returned on retirement. His dramatic style
+improved as his voice decayed. When he first came he was chiefly a
+lyrical singer; his Elvino was delicious beyond description. In his last
+years he had taken on robust stature, and his passionate utterances in
+"Carmen" and "Aïda" will live till the end in the memory of those who
+heard them. He was proud of his skill as a singer pure and simple,
+though he was more or less of a "naturalist," as the Germans call a
+singer who owes more to nature than to artistic training. How greatly
+he admired the perfection of his "attack" is illustrated in an incident
+which twice grieved the soul of Theodore Thomas and some other sticklers
+for the verities in classical music.
+
+At the Cincinnati Music Festival, in May, 1880, Mr. Thomas brought
+forward Beethoven's Mass in D, the great "Missa Solemnis." In the first
+movement, "Kyrie," of this work Beethoven has created an effect of
+surpassing beauty in the successive introduction of the solo voices. At
+the outset there is a crashing chord from all the forces, including the
+full organ. The thundering sound ceases abruptly, leaving the solo tenor
+voice sustaining a tone seemingly in midair. Another loud crash projects
+the solo contralto voice, and so on. The effect is transporting; but
+the obvious intention of the composer and the loveliness of his device
+weighed nothing in Campanini's mind against the fact that it interfered
+with popular appreciation of the "attack," of which he was proud. So
+he calmly waited until the colossal D major chord was silenced, then
+intoned his D softly, and made a beautiful crescendo upon it. After
+a rehearsal I ventured to call his attention to the beautiful
+effectiveness of Beethoven's device, but he answered: "It is music for
+the head, not for the heart. If I sing it so the audience will not hear
+my beautiful attack."
+
+And at the concert he perverted the text to gratify his vanity. I
+reminded Mr. Thomas of the incident two years later, when he gave the
+mass at the festival held in the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York.
+Campanini was to sing in it again. Mr. Thomas said he would set him
+right, but at the performance we were again cheated of Beethoven's
+effect in order that the tenor might make his. When Campanini died
+Philip Hale set down his estimate of him in these words:
+
+
+No tenor who has blazed here above the opera horizon has fully equaled
+in brilliancy Campanini at his zenith. De Reszke, in point of personal
+refinement, is a greater artist, but his voice is inferior, and his
+dramatic action lacks the elementary force shown by Campanini when
+aroused. De Lucia is a greater actor of melodramatic parts, but his
+voice is too shrill. Tamagno in "Otello" is beyond comparison, but that
+is his one opera. . . . Of all tenors who have visited us since 1873
+the greatest, viewed from all points, was Campanini.
+
+
+The popular idol before Campanini was Brignoli, who held his own from
+the first days of the Academy until within less than a decade of its
+collapse. For some years before the Mapleson era, however, he had
+dropped out of the Italian operatic ranks and sung in English companies,
+and in concerts. It was in such organizations that I first heard
+him some twelve or fifteen years after he had become the popular
+"silver-voiced tenor" of New York. He came to New York in 1855, and his
+career was American, though it was in Paris that Strakosch heard him
+and turned his face toward America. He lived in New York, singing and
+occasionally managing companies in which he sang, till October, 1884,
+when he died. He was twice married, the first time to Kate Duckworth, an
+English contralto, known on the platform as Mlle. Morensi, and, after
+her death, to Isabella McCullough, an American soprano. Richard Grant
+White's mind was still obsessed by memories of Salvi, Benedetti, and
+Mario when Brignoli was basking in the sunshine of popular favor, and
+his estimate of the tenor in The Century Magazine for June, 1882, is
+scarcely flattering either to the singer or the public that liked him.
+It was Mr. White's observation that Brignoli came into the swim at the
+time that the young woman of New York became the arbiter of art and
+elegance. Says Mr. White:
+
+
+Her admiration of Brignoli was not greatly to the credit of her taste.
+He had one of those tenor voices that seem like the bleating of a sheep
+made musical. His method was perfectly good; but be sang in a very
+commonplace style, and was as awkward as the man that a child makes
+by sticking two skewers into a long potato; and he walked the stage,
+hitching forward first one side and then the other, much as the child
+would make his creature walk. But he was a very "nice" young man, was
+always ready to sing, and faute de mieux it became the fashion with
+the very young to like him. But there never was a tenor of any note in
+New York whose singing was so utterly without character or significance
+and who was so deficient in histrionic ability. His high and long
+continued favor is one of those puzzling popular freaks not uncommon
+in dramatic annals.
+
+
+Let us hope, in a spirit of Christian charity and something more
+selfish, that Brignoli never read these severely critical words.
+His vanity was that of a child, and they would have grieved him
+inordinately. There was truly something of the bleat in his voice, and
+his walk on the stage, whether in concert or opera, was provocative
+of the risibles, but even his mannerisms were fascinating. Shall we,
+because a critic did not like him, be ashamed for having thrilled a
+little when we heard his "Coot boy, sweetheart, c-o-o-o-t boy!" thirty
+years ago? I trust not. And if he were here again, and his manager were
+to come with the old request, "Do me a favor, won't you, and if you
+chance to meet dear old Brig say something pretty to him and help me
+keep him in a good humor against the concert to-night--admire his teeth
+and compliment him on his youthful appearance"--we should do it for
+old sake's sake, and with a heart full of gratitude. No one could know
+Brignoli and remain in ignorance of his frailties and foibles. He
+probably ate as no tenor ate before or since--ravenously as a Prussian
+dragoon after a fast. No contracts did he sign on a Friday or on a
+thirteenth day, and he lived in perpetual dread of the evil eye. Part of
+his traveling outfit was a pair of horns, which he relied upon to shield
+him in case the possessor of the jettatura should get into his room
+and he not have his fingers properly posed. I had been four years in the
+turmoil of New York's musical life when Brignoli died; I cannot recall
+an unkind word that was ever spoken of him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE
+
+
+Not the chronicler of musical doings but the historian of society
+should discuss the genesis of the Metropolitan Opera House, which came
+twenty-five years ago to displace the Academy of Music as the home of
+grand opera in New York. In the second of these "Chapters of Opera"
+I cited the Metropolitan Opera House as the last illustration of the
+creative impulse which springs from the growth of wealth and social
+ambition, and stated that it marked the decay of the old Knickerbocker
+régime, and its amalgamation with the newer order of society. Before
+this latter occurrence, however, it had become plain that the Academy of
+Music could not accommodate all the representatives of the two elements
+in fashionable society, who, for one reason or another, wished to own
+or occupy the boxes which were the visible sign of wealth and social
+position. There was no manifest dissatisfaction, either, with the
+Academy of Music or with the performances under the direction of Colonel
+Mapleson, though these were conventional enough and the dress of the
+operas looked particularly shabby in contrast with the new scenery and
+costumes at the new theater when once the rivalry had begun. The house
+being satisfactory, popular taste contented with the representations,
+and there being no evidences of insufficient room in any part of the
+audience room except the private boxes, it seems obvious to the merest
+observer from without that social and not artistic impulses led to the
+enterprise which produced the new establishment.
+
+The Metropolitan Opera House was built in the summer of 1883. The
+corporation which built it was called the Metropolitan Opera House
+Company (Limited), and its leading spirits were James A. Roosevelt, the
+first president of the board of directors; George Henry Warren, Luther
+Kountze, George Griswold Haven, who remained the active head of the
+amusement committee from the beginning till he died last spring; William
+K. Vanderbilt, William H. Tillinghast, Adrian Iselin, Robert Goelet,
+Joseph W. Drexel, Edward Cooper, Henry G. Marquand, George N. Curtis,
+and Levi P. Morton. The building is bounded by Broadway, Seventh Avenue,
+Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets. About one-quarter of the space
+is devoted to the audience room, another quarter to the stage and
+accessories, and the rest to administrative offices, apartments, etc.
+Its cost, including the real estate, was $1,732,978.71, and so actively
+was the work of construction pushed that the portion of the building
+devoted to the opera was completed when the first performance took place
+on October 22, 1883. J. Cleaveland Cady, the architect, had had no
+previous experience in building theaters, to which fact must be ascribed
+a few impracticable features of the house, most of which have since been
+eradicated, but he had made a careful study of the plans of the most
+celebrated opera houses of Europe, and the patrons of the house still
+have cause to be grateful to him for the care with which he looked after
+their safety and comfort. Since then the appearance of the interior has
+been changed very considerably. The two tiers of boxes were where they
+are now, but their fronts were perpendicular, and there was no bulging
+curve at the proscenium. Besides the two tiers of boxes, as they exist
+at present, there were twelve baignoirs, six on a side at the stage ends
+of the parquet circle, so-called. These were found to be unprofitable,
+and were abolished when the house was remodeled about ten years after
+the opening. The decoration of the interior was intrusted to E. P.
+Tredwill, an architect of Boston, who followed Mr. Cady's wishes in
+avoiding all garish display and tawdry effect. The deepest color in the
+audience room was the dark, rich red of the carpet on the floor. The
+silk linings of the boxes and the curtains between them and the small
+salons in the rear were of fabrics specially made for the purpose. They
+had an old gold ground and large, raised figures of conventional design
+in a darker shade, with dark red threads. The tier fronts, ceiling,
+and proscenium were of a light color, the aim having been to obtain a
+prevailing tint of ivory. Amid the filigree designs of the pilasters,
+which carried the work above the curtain opening, were pictures of
+singing and playing cherubs, and back of the bold consoles, which
+projected from the side walls, were figures called "The Chorus" and
+"The Ballet," painted by Francis Maynard, while above the middle of
+the opening, in a segmentary arch, was an allegory, with Apollo as the
+central figure, by Francis Lathrop. Statues of the Muses filled niches
+on both sides of the consoles. Over the ceiling, amidst the entwinings
+of ornamental figures, on a buff ground, were spread a large number
+of medallions of oxidized metal, which, in the illumination from the
+lights, shone with a copper luster. The house was lighted by gas, though
+preparations had been made for the installation of electrical appliances
+when that form of illumination should be found justified by economy. As
+originally built, the orchestra was sunk sufficiently below the level
+of the floor to conceal the performers from all but the occupants of
+the upper tiers. In the hope of attaining improved acoustic effects
+the floor of the orchestra was laid upon an egg-shaped sound-chamber
+of masonry. The innovation did not meet with the approval of Signor
+Vianesi, the first musical director at the opera house, and, after an
+experimental rehearsal, the floor was raised so that the old conditions
+obtained when the performances began. So the orchestra remained, the
+players spoiling the picture on the stage, until "Lohengrin" came
+to a performance. Then Signor Vianesi was prevailed upon to try the
+arrangement from which Mr. Cady had expected fine artistic results.
+The effect was good, and the device was adhered to for a space, and in
+more or less modified form ever since, though there has been continual
+experimentation with the disposition of the instrumentalists.
+
+Operatic performances began at the new house on October 22, 1883, and
+after sixty-one representations, at which nineteen operas were produced,
+the first season came to an end. I shall tell the story of the season in
+greater detail in the next chapter, contenting myself for the present
+with an account of the results of the merry war which ensued between
+the rival establishments. Colonel Mapleson was intrenched in the Academy
+of Music, which opened its doors for its regular season on the same
+evening. The advantage lay with Mr. Henry E. Abbey, who had a new house,
+the fruit of an old longing, and the realization of long cherished
+social aspirations. With the Academy of Music there rested the charm of
+ancient tradition, more potent then than it has ever been since, and the
+strength of conservatism. There were stars of rare refulgence in both
+constellations, which met the Biblical description in differing one
+from another in their glory. With Colonel Mapleson was Mme. Adelina
+Patti, who, in so far as she was an exponent of the art of beautiful
+vocalization, was without a peer the whole world over. She served then
+to keep alive the old traditions of Italian song as Mme. Sembrich does
+now. At her side stood Mme. Etelka Gerster, with a voice youthful,
+fresh, limpid, and wondrously flexible, and a style that was ripening
+in a manner that promised soon to compass all the requirements of the
+Italian stage from the sentimental characters in which she won her first
+successes to the deeper tragic parts which had begun to make appeal to
+her ambition. With Mr. Abbey was Mme. Christine Nilsson. Mme. Patti,
+though she had grown to womanhood and effected her entrance on the
+operatic as well as concert stage in New York, was not so familiar a
+figure as Mme. Nilsson. Patti had begun her operatic career at the
+Academy of Music in 1859, and had gone to Europe, where she remained
+without revisiting her old home until the fall or winter of 1881, when
+she came on a concert trip. The trip was more or less a failure, the
+public not yet being prepared to pay ten dollars for a reserved seat
+to hear anybody sing. After singing at a concert for the benefit of
+the sufferers from forest fires in Michigan, she announced a reduction
+of prices to two dollars for general admission, and five dollars for
+reserved seats. Under these conditions business improved somewhat, but
+in February, 1882, she found it necessary to organize an opera company
+in order to awaken interest fairly commensurate with her great merit
+and fame. It was a sorry company, and the performances, only a few,
+took place in the Germania Theater, on Broadway, at Thirteenth Street,
+formerly Wallack's; but they were received with much enthusiasm. So far
+as London was concerned, she was under engagement at the time to Mr.
+Gye, Colonel Mapleson's rival at Covent Garden. Mr. Abbey claimed that
+he had an option on any American engagement for opera, but she appeared
+next season at the Academy, and the doughty English manager held her as
+his trump card in the battle royal which ensued on the opening of the
+Metropolitan.
+
+In the twenty years of Mme. Patti's absence from New York, Mme. Nilsson,
+who had come to the metropolis in the heyday of her European fame in
+1870, had won her way deep into the hearts of the people. In 1883 she
+was no longer in her prime, neither her voice nor her art having stood
+the wear of time as well as those of Mme. Patti, who was six months her
+senior in age, and five years in stage experience, but she was more
+than a formidable rival in the admiration of the public. She was no less
+happy in the companionship of Mme. Sembrich as a junior partner than
+Patti was with Mme. Gerster. Both of the younger singers were fresh from
+their first great European successes. Three years later Mme. Gerster
+went back to Mme. Marchesi, her teacher, with her voice irreparably
+damaged. "The penalty of motherhood," said her friends; "the result of
+worry over the failure to hold her place in the face of opposition,"
+said more impartial observers. Mme. Sembrich went back to Europe to
+continue her triumphs after disaster had overtaken her first American
+manager, and in a decade returned, to remain an ornament of the
+Metropolitan ever since.
+
+In Mr. Abbey's ranks were also Mme. Fursch-Madi, Mme. Scalchi, Mme.
+Trebelli, Mme. Lablache (who gave way to her daughter till a quarrel
+over her between the impresarios was determined), and Mme. Valleria,
+who had come to the Academy some time before from London, though she
+was a Baltimorean by birth--a sterling artist who is remembered by
+all connoisseurs with gratitude and admiration. Chief among Colonel
+Mapleson's masculine forces was Signor Galassi, a somewhat rude but
+otherwise excellent barytone. At the head of the tenors was Signor
+Nicolini, the husband of Mme. Patti, who sang only when she did, but not
+always. The circumstance that Mme. Patti insisted upon his engagement,
+also, whenever she signed a contract gave rise to a malicious story
+to the effect that she had two prices, one of, let us say merely for
+illustration, 6,000 francs for herself alone, one of 4,000 francs for
+herself and Nicolini. The rest of the male contingent was composed
+mostly of small fry--Vicini, Perugini, and Falletti, tenors, Cherubini
+and Lombardini, basses, and Caracciolo, buffo. Mr. Abbey had carried off
+three admired men singers from the Academy--Campanini, Del Puente, and
+Novara--and brought an excellent barytone, Kaschmann, from Europe, and
+a redoubtable tenor, Stagno.
+
+There was little to interest a public supposedly weary of the
+barrel-organ list in the promises made in the rival announcements.
+Colonel Mapleson held forth the prospect of Patti in Gounod's "Roméo
+et Juliette," and "Mireille" (in Italian, of course), as well as in
+Rossini's "La Gazza ladra," a forgotten opera then and again forgotten
+now; other old works which were to be revived for her and Mme. Gerster
+were "Crispino e la Comare," and "L'Elisir d'Amore." Mme. Pappenheim's
+presence as the dramatic soprano of the company (a less necessary
+personage in the companies of that day than now) led to the promise of
+"Norma" and "Oberon." Only the Italian work was given. Mr. Abbey's book
+of good intentions embraced twenty-four operas, all of them familiar
+except "La Gioconda," which had been the novelty of the preceding
+London season.
+
+The outcome of the battle between the opera houses was defeat for both.
+The Academy of Music survived for two more campaigns, out of which the
+new house came triumphant, while the old went down forever. It was
+different with the men. Mr. Abbey retired after one season, forswearing
+opera, as he said, for all time; Colonel Mapleson, though defeated,
+was a smaller loser, and he was not only brave enough to prepare for a
+second encounter, but also adroit enough to persuade Mme. Patti to place
+herself under his guidance again. Mr. Abbey's losses have been a matter
+of speculation ever since. It was known at the time that he had lost
+all the profits of three or four other managerial enterprises, and some
+years ago I feared that I might be exaggerating when I set down the
+deficit of the Metropolitan Opera House in its first season at $300,000.
+As I write now, however, I have before me a letter from Mr. John B.
+Schoeffel, who was associated with Mr. Abbey as partner, in which he
+says that the losses of the season were "nearly $600,000."
+
+[The operas performed at the Academy of Music in the season 1883-1884
+were: "La Sonnambula," "Rigoletto," "Norma," "Faust," "Linda di
+Chamouni," "La Gazza ladra," "Marta," "La Traviata," "Aïda," "L'Elisir
+d'Amore," "Crispino e la Comare," and "Les Huguenots" (in Italian).]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FIRST SEASON AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+
+Twenty-five years ago there was no opera in the current repertory
+comparable in popularity with "Faust." If I am told that neither is
+there to-day I shall neither gainsay my informant nor permit the fact
+to give me heartburnings in spite of my attitude toward the modern
+lyric drama. To that popularity Mme. Nilsson contributed a factor of
+tremendous puissance. No singer who is still a living memory was so
+intimately associated in the local mind with Gounod's masterpiece as
+she, whose good fortune it had been to recreate the character of
+Marguerite, when, on March 3, 1869, the opera in a remodeled form was
+transferred from the Théâtre Lyrique to the Grand Opéra in Paris. Coming
+to New York soon afterward, it was she who set the standard by which,
+for a long time, all subsequent representatives of the character were
+judged. With her, Mme. Scalchi (who never had more than one rival in the
+part of Siebel so far as New Yorkers are concerned, viz., Annie Louise
+Cary), and Signor Campanini (the most popular Faust who has ever sung
+in New York) in the company, it was no wonder that the opera was chosen
+for performance on the opening night at the Metropolitan Opera House on
+October 22, 1883. The opera was sung in Italian, no manager's fancy
+having yet attained such a conception, as that all operas ought to be
+sung in the language in which they were composed--and might be; for this
+reason the names in the cast, though given in their familiar French
+forms may be transliterated into Italian if so they will better please
+the reader. The cast then was as follows: Marguerite, Mme. Nilsson;
+Siebel, Mme. Scalchi; Martha, Mlle. Lablache (whose mother had
+been expected to appear in the part, but was prevented by judicial
+injunction); Faust, Signor Campanini; Valentine, Signor Del Puente;
+Mephistopheles, Signor Novara.
+
+The performance did not differ materially from many which had taken
+place in the Academy of Music when the same artists took part. All the
+principal artists, indeed, had been heard in the opera many times when
+their powers were greater. Mme. Nilsson had been thirteen years before
+the American public, and though in this period her art had grown in
+dignity and nobility, her voice had lost the fresh bloom of its youth,
+and her figure had begun to take on matronly contours. Still, she was a
+great favorite, and hers was an extraordinary triumph, the outburst of
+popular approbation coming, as was to have been expected, in the garden
+scene of the opera. Referring to my review of the performance which
+appeared in The Tribune of the next day, I note that till that moment
+there had been little enthusiasm. After she had sung the scintillant
+waltz, however, "the last film of ice that had held the public in
+decorous check was melted," and an avalanche of plaudits overwhelmed the
+fair singer. Bouquets rained from the boxes, and baskets of flowers were
+piled over the footlights till it seemed as if there was to be no end.
+In the midst of the floral gifts there was also handed up a magnificent
+velvet casket inclosing a wreath of gold bay leaves and berries,
+ingeniously contrived to be extended into a girdle to be worn in the
+classic style, and two gold brooch medallions, bearing the profiles
+of Tragedy and Comedy, with which the girdle was to be fastened. The
+donor was not mentioned, but an inscription told that the gift was in
+"commemoration of the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House." Signor
+Campanini had spent the year before the opening in retirement, hoping
+to repair the ravages made in his voice by the previous seasons at the
+Academy of Music, and, I regret to say, possibly his careless mode of
+life. His faults had been conspicuous for several seasons, and the
+hoped-for amendment did not discover itself. "Occasionally the old-time
+sweetness, and again occasionally the old-time manly ring was apparent
+in his notes, but they were always weighted down by the evidences of
+labor, and the brilliancy of the upper tones with which he used to fire
+an audience into uncontrollable enthusiasm was gone."
+
+The regular subscription nights at the Metropolitan in the first season,
+and for all the seasons that followed down to that of 1907-08, were
+Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with afternoon performances on
+Saturdays. On the second night of the season, October 24, 1883, Mr.
+Abbey brought forward two of his new singers. The opera was "Lucia di
+Lammermoor," the first performance of which in the new house was made
+memorable by the introduction of Mme. Marcella Sembrich. She had been
+engaged by Mr. Abbey on the strength of the success achieved by her
+in the London season of 1883. She was almost at the beginning of her
+career, being little known outside of Athens, where she made her début,
+Dresden, where she had sung in German, and London. She had dazzled the
+British metropolis by her vocalization, especially in "Lucia," and it
+was for this reason that it was selected for her introduction to New
+York. Before the season came to an end she sang in "I Puritani," "Don
+Giovanni," "La Traviata," and "Hamlet." All the good qualities which
+have since then been extolled hundreds of times by the critics of the
+New York newspapers were noticeable in her first representation. I
+turn back to the files of The Tribune to see what I wrote while under
+the spell of her witching art, and find the following:
+
+
+Mme. Sembrich is a lovely singer,--lovely of person, of address, of
+voice; and her artistic acquirements, in the limited field in which
+Donizetti's opera called them into activity, at least, are of the
+highest rank. Her style is exquisite, and plainly the outgrowth of a
+thoroughly musical nature. It unites some of the highest elements of
+art. Such reposefulness of manner, such smoothness and facility in
+execution, such perfect balance of tone and refinement of expression
+can be found only in one richly endowed with deep musical feeling and
+ripe artistic intelligence. She carries her voice wondrously well
+throughout a wide register, and from her lowest note to her highest
+there is the same quality of tone. It is a voice of fine texture, too;
+it has a velvety softness, yet is brilliant; and though not magnetic
+in the same degree as the voices of other singers still before the
+public, it has a fine, sympathetic vein. It wakens echoes of Mme.
+Patti's organ, but has warmer life-blood in it.
+
+
+Of the musicianly qualities of this charming singer, recognized on this
+first acquaintance, we were to have a demonstration before her departure
+which was in the highest degree surprising. Sympathy for Mr. Abbey in
+his great losses, and admiration for the self-sacrificing manner in
+which he adhered to all his obligations to them as well as to the
+public, led the directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company to offer him
+a benefit concert. At this entertainment, which was successful beyond
+anything that local records had to show up to that time, the profits
+amounting to $16,000, Mme. Sembrich sang an aria; then came upon the
+stage and played a violin obbligato to Mme. Nilsson's performance of
+the familiar Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria"; again she appeared and this time
+played a Chopin Mazourka on the pianoforte. In every instance she
+was the complete artist, and the public, who had been charmed by her
+witcheries as Mozart's Zerlina and melted by the pathos of her singing
+in the last act of "La Traviata," were at a loss to say if she had shown
+herself a greater artist in song or in instrumental music, as a pianist
+or violinist. It was not until many years after she had returned to
+Europe to continue her operatic triumphs in St. Petersburg, Madrid,
+Vienna, Paris, and Berlin that I learned the story of her life, and with
+it the secret of her musical versatility; how she had started life as
+a player of the pianoforte and violin with her father at dances in the
+houses of the wealthy folk in her native town in Poland, gone to the
+conservatory in Lemberg to study the pianoforte, been taken to the
+Conservatory at Vienna by Professor Stengel (then her teacher, now her
+husband), because there was nothing left in his system of instruction
+from which she could profit, and there been advised to study singing
+instead of the pianoforte with Liszt, as her proud teacher had fondly
+hoped. It was Professor Epstein who gave the world one of the greatest
+singers of our generation, but in doing so he robbed it of a pianist of
+doubtless equal caliber. So far as I know, the story of Mme. Sembrich
+is without a parallel.
+
+Signor Kaschmann was the barytone of the "Lucia" performance. He had a
+handsome face and figure, a good bearing, and disclosed familiarity with
+the stage, and considerable talent as an actor, but he was afflicted
+with that distressful vocal defect which singers of his school often
+call vibrato in order to affect to find a virtue in it. There is,
+indeed, artistic merit in a true vibrato which lends vitality to a
+voice, but when it degenerates into a tremolo, or wabble, it is a
+vice of the most unpardonable kind.
+
+Another of the newcomers made his bow to the Metropolitan public on the
+third night of the season, October 26th, when "Il Trovatore" was brought
+forward. This was the tenor Signor Stagno, a stockily built, heavy,
+self-conscious man, of good stage features and bad stage manners. When
+his voice was first heard from behind the scenes, it sounded throaty, a
+squeezed-out, constrained tone, but later, when Manrico's display pieces
+came it rang out full and vibrant as a trumpet. It developed at once
+that he was a singer of the sideshow kind, with whom the be-all and
+end-all of his part and art lay in the high tones. So little of a
+musician was he that, being enthusiastically recalled after the "Di
+quella pira," he was unable to keep the key of C major in his head in
+spite of his stentorian proclamation of its tonic a few seconds before,
+and could not begin the repetition till the concert-master had plucked
+the first note of the air on his violin. A short time before I heard
+Mme. Patti perform the feat of beginning the trill which accompanies the
+melody by the orchestra in the middle of the dance song in "Dinorah"
+without a suggestive tone or chord after a hubbub and gladsome tumult
+that seemed, to have lasted several minutes. A new bass, Signor
+Mirabella, appeared in "I Puritani" on October 29th--a musical singer
+with a voice of large volume and ample range, and a self-possessed,
+easy, and effective stage presence.
+
+On her second appearance Mme. Nilsson was seen in a part with which she
+was more intimately associated in the popular mind than any other singer
+in New York or London. The opera was "Mignon," the date October 31st.
+Ambroise Thomas's opera had its first American performance at the
+Academy of Music under the management of Maurice Strakosch, on November
+22, 1871. With Mme. Nilsson, on that occasion as on this, was associated
+M. Capoul, the most ardent and fascinating lover known to opera in
+America, who not long before had risen from the ranks of French opéra
+bouffe. Mme. Trebelli, who had created the part of Frederick in London,
+where, as in New York, Mme. Nilsson was the original Mignon, and for
+whom the composer had written the rondo-gavotte, "In veder l'amata
+stanza" (taking its melody from the entr'acte music preceding the second
+act), was also a member of Mr. Abbey's company, but Mme. Scalchi, who
+could wear man's attire and walk in tights more gracefully than any
+woman who ever appeared on the American operatic stage within my memory,
+was too popular in the part to be set aside for the sake of a newcomer,
+and Mme. Trebelli had to wait until October 27th before getting a
+hearing in opera. Meanwhile she sang industriously in concerts. The
+changes which had taken place in Mme. Nilsson's person and voice during
+the dozen years between her first appearance as Mignon and the one
+under consideration might naturally have been expected to affect her
+performance of the part. Many were ready to perceive the loss of some
+of the charms of youthful freshness and grace, which are indissolubly
+connected with any conception of this most poetical of Goethe's
+creatures. The result fulfilled their anticipations in a measure, for
+Mme. Nilsson's impersonation was more remarkable for its deep feeling in
+the dramatic portions than for lightness and gracefulness in the lyric.
+This loss brought with it a compensation, however. Many protests have
+been felt, when not expressed, against the tendency of singers to make
+Mignon a mere wilful, pettish, silly young woman. The poet's ideal was
+sufficiently despoiled by the unconscionable French librettist without
+this further desecration which effectually dispelled the last glimmer of
+the poetical light that ought always to shine about this strange child
+of the South. Too much of tropical passion, too much of undefined
+longing, too much of tenderness the part could hardly be invested with,
+but it is easily made silly by over-acting in the very place where the
+tendency to do so is strongest. The whole opera is one that must either
+be represented with extreme care in avoiding extravagant expression,
+or all effort to approach even distantly the ideals of the poet must
+be abandoned and the piece be given as if Goethe had never lived, and
+"Wilhelm Meister" had never been written.
+
+Perhaps the latter plan would be the better one, for it is hard to think
+of Goethe during the performance of the opera without taking violent
+offense, and it would only be a relief to have all thought of him
+studiously kept out of mind. Yet, we would not willingly lose the
+pleasure which Ambroise Thomas provided in this, his best opera. It is
+to his credit that he felt the embarrassments which his subject caused.
+At one time he thought seriously of permitting the heroine to go the way
+of Goethe's "Mignon," and of offering the opera to the Théâtre Lyrique
+instead of the Opéra Comique, for which he had undertaken to write it.
+He did not carry out the plan, however, but instead thought to silence
+the carping of the Germans by composing a second conclusion, a
+dénouement allemand, in which Mignon falls dead, while listening to
+Philine's polacca in the last scene. A tragic end to a piece treated
+in the comedy manner throughout was too ridiculous, however, and the
+Germans would have none of the dénouement allemand. They raised a hue
+and cry against the opera, then heard it for the sake of its music, and
+ended by admiring its admirable parts without changing their minds about
+the desecration of their great poet.
+
+It is no wonder that the opera-book was made. Such scruples as
+distressed the Germans never trouble French librettists, and the
+characters which Carré and Barbier found in Goethe's romance are as if
+born for the stage. What lyric possibilities do not lie in the Harper?
+Was ever a more perfect musical coquette dreamed of than Philine? Have
+not Mignon's songs drawn forth music from nearly every composer of
+eminence since Beethoven? The filling-in parts were on the surface of
+the story, and the character of their music could not be misconceived.
+Wilhelm Meister himself, in his character of a strolling player, had
+only to sacrifice his habit of reflection to be a dashing tenor. The
+temptation was certainly strong; the sacrilege was committed, and the
+verbal skeleton constructed out of things which were dearest in German
+literature, was tricked out with piquant music and ear-tickling roulades
+by the man who was not awed even by Shakespeare. Think of "Le Songe
+d'une Nuit d'Été"! With such characters the play is easily acted, and
+the music never fails to fascinate.
+
+"La Traviata" was the next opera, produced on November 5th, with Mme.
+Sembrich as Violetta, and Capoul as Alfredo, and then came "Lohengrin"
+on November 7th. In Wagner's opera the parts of the heroine and hero
+were enacted by Nilsson and Campanini, who had sung in its first Italian
+performance at the Academy a decade before. Excellently sung in the best
+manner as understood by singers of the Italian school--a manner fully
+justified, let it be said in passing, by Signor Marchesi's Italian
+text--and magnificently dressed, the opera attracted the most numerous
+and brilliant audience since the opening night, and remained one of the
+most pronounced successes of the season. It served also to introduce
+Mme. Fursch-Madi, a dramatic singer, who, although not attractive
+in appearance, was one of the finest singers in her style and most
+conscientious artists known to her period. She was a French woman, who
+was graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, married M. Madier, a chef
+d'orchestre in the French capital, came to America to join the French
+company in New Orleans in 1874, and sang for three seasons (1879-'81)
+at Covent Garden. She spent the last years of her life in and about New
+York, singing in opera and concert, always a noble example to youthful
+aspirants, and died in poverty after great suffering in September, 1894.
+"La Sonnambula" followed on November 14th, and "Rigoletto" on November
+16th, without noteworthy incident, except the first American appearance
+of Gaudignini as the Jester, and "Robert le Diable" (in Italian), with
+Fursch-Madi as Alice, Valleria as Isabella, Stagno and Mirabella. This
+performance was enlivened by an amusing incident. It will be recalled by
+people familiar with the history of the opera that Scribe and Meyerbeer
+first designed "Robert" for the Opéra Comique, but remodeled it for the
+Grand. For a few moments in the incantation scene at this performance
+the audience seemed inclined to ignore the author's sober second
+thought, and accept the work as a comic instead of romantic opera. The
+wicked nuns, called back to life by the sorcery of Bertram, amid the
+ruins of the cloister, appeared to have been stinted by the undertaker
+in the matter of shrouds, and the procession of gray-wrapped figures
+in cutty sarks caused the liveliest merriment until the transformation
+took place, and serious interest was revived by the lovely face, form,
+and dancing of Mme. Cavalazzi.
+
+"Il Barbiere," with Sembrich as a delightfully piquant Rosina,
+nevertheless moved with leaden feet in many of its scenes, because of
+the ponderous and lugubrious Stagno, who essayed a part far from his
+province, when he tried to sing the Count. On November 28th "Don
+Giovanni" was reached with the finest distribution of women's rôles, I
+dare say, that New York has ever seen, and one that ranked well with the
+famous London one of Tietjens, Nilsson, and Patti. Mme. Fursch-Madi was
+Donna Anna, Mme. Nilsson Donna Elvira, and Mme. Sembrich Zerlina. For
+delvers in musical history the performance had curious interest because
+it partook somewhat of an anniversary character. It fell within a day of
+exactly fifty-eight years after Italian opera had first been heard in
+America (November 29, 1825). Save Mme. Patti we have heard no Zerlina
+comparable with Mme. Sembrich, and Mme. Nilsson's singing of the airs,
+"Ah, che mi dice mai," and "Mi tradi quell' alma ingrata" lingers in
+my memory as an impeccable exemplification of the true classic style.
+The performance suffered shipwreck, however, in the famous first finale,
+because of the untunefulness of the orchestra, and the incapacity
+of the enlisted stage bands. In "Mefistofele," on December 5th, Nilsson
+appeared as Marguerite and Helen of Troy, and Trebelli as Marta and
+Pantalis. Nilsson had fixed the ideal of Helen in Europe and New York,
+and it is she, I believe, who started the questionable practice of
+having one performer impersonate both Marguerite and the classic Queen.
+Boito has given us so little of Goethe's Gretchen in his delightful,
+but sketchy, opera that it does not make much difference how the part
+is acted; but Helen is a character that seemed cut to the very form of
+Nilsson--regal in beauty and carriage, soul-moving in voice, serene in
+pose and gesture. She fitted perfectly into the fairest picture that
+a lover of ancient Greek life could conjure up, and moved through the
+classic act like a veritable Hellenic queen. The beauty, majesty, the
+puissant charm of a perfect woman of the antique type--all were hers.
+Campanini, who, like Nilsson, had been seen in the opera before the
+Metropolitan Opera House entered the lists, sang on this evening with
+peculiar enthusiasm; and with reason. Not only had he been instrumental
+in giving the opera to the people of London and New York, but, on
+this occasion, he was singing under the baton of his younger brother,
+Cleofonte, then a modest maestro di cembalo trying his 'prentice hand at
+conducting; now the redoubtable leader of Mr. Hammerstein's forces at
+the Manhattan. Four years later Cleofonte Campanini came again to New
+York as conductor of his brother's company organized for the production
+of Verdi's "Otello."
+
+On December 20th the one real novelty of Mr. Abbey's list had
+production. It was Ponchielli's "La Gioconda," with the following
+distribution of parts: La Gioconda, Mme. Nilsson; Laura Adorno, Mme.
+Fursch-Madi; La Cieca, Mme. Scalchi; Enzo Grimaldo, Signor Stagno;
+Barnaba, Signor Del Puente; Alvise Badiero, Signor Novara. Ponchielli's
+opera had been the principal novelty of the London season in the summer
+of 1883, where it was brought out by Mr. Gye. On this occasion it was
+performed with a gorgeousness of stage appointments, and a strength of
+ensemble which spoke volumes for the earnestness of the effort which Mr.
+Abbey was making to give grand opera in a style worthy of the American
+metropolis, and the reception which the public gave to the work afforded
+convincing proof of the eagerness for a change from the stale list which
+had so long constituted its operatic pabulum. The house was crowded
+from floor to ceiling, and the audience, having assembled for the
+enjoyment of an unusual pleasure, was soon wrought into an extremely
+impressionable state, which the striking pictures, excited action,
+and ingenious music intensified with every act.
+
+The score of "La Gioconda" is full of ingeniously applied harmonical
+and orchestral devices, but they are all such as were learned from
+Ponchielli's great predecessor and successor, Verdi. As a matter of
+fact, Ponchielli, though he has been discovered as the father of the
+young veritist school of Italy, which seems already to have exhausted
+itself, was less original than Boito, who has distinguished himself
+above all the rout of Verdi's traducers and followers (for a space the
+category included the same names) by continence and self-criticism. As
+I write more than two decades have elapsed since he became known in
+New York, and in the interim we have seen the rise, and, also, the
+considerable fall of such imitators as Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and their
+superior, Puccini. We are now more able to see than we were twenty-five
+years ago how much Ponchielli, and all his tribe, owe to Verdi; and
+also how much ruder and less attentive to real beauty they were. Then
+we could hear besides his voice, that of Verdi in his music; now we
+can hear also tones which awaken echoes in Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and
+Puccini. Of a sometimes mooted Wagnerian influence, there is only so
+much in this score as is to be found in all scores, German and French,
+and Italian, since the shackles of instrumental form were cast off.
+Ponchielli makes a little use of a recurring melodic phrase from
+La Cieca's "Voce di donna," but he pursues the device even less
+consistently than Verdi, and in a manner that is older than Meyerbeer.
+In melody he is wholly Italian, and of Wagner's use of typical phrases
+"La Gioconda" is as guiltless as Pergolesi's "Serva padrona."
+
+What is admirable to the popular appreciation of to-day is the hot vigor
+of the drama, and the quick co-operation of music in its climacteric
+moments. This co-operation is most obvious in the employment of the
+device of contrast, which dominates the work and seems to have been the
+feature which has been most effectively seized upon by Ponchielli's
+pupils. It marks every climax in the opera, and becomes almost tiresome
+in its reiteration. In the first act the blind woman's prayer is set
+against a background composed of a gambling chorus and the wild whirl
+of the furlano, which ends abruptly with organ peals and a pious
+canticle--an effect repeated since in "Cavalleria Rusticana" and
+"Tosca." In the second act in the twinkling of an eye, Gioconda is
+transformed from a murderous devil into a protecting saint; in the third
+Laura's accents of mortal woe commingle with the sounds of a serenade
+in the distance, and the disclosure of a supposed murder is made at the
+climax of a ball; in the fourth the calls of passing gondoliers break
+in upon Gioconda's soliloquies, which have for their subject suicide,
+murder, and self-sacrifice. The device is of a coarse tissue, but it
+is of the opera operatic, and it is now more familiar than it was when
+first disclosed to the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House,
+twenty-five years ago.
+
+If it were necessary one might look for the source of this device of
+contrast in the literature to which Verdi directed attention when
+he turned his thoughts to Victor Hugo, and composed "Ernani" and
+"Rigoletto." Hugo was the prince of those novelists and dramatists
+who utilized glaring contrasts and unnatural contradictions to give
+piquancy to their creations and compel sympathy for monsters by uniting
+monumental wickedness with the most amiable of moral qualities. The
+story of "La Gioconda" is drawn from "Angelo, Tyrane de Padoue." In
+transforming this tragedy into an opera the librettist removed the scene
+from Padua to Venice, changed a wealthy actress into a poor street
+singer, and made the blind mother, who is barely mentioned in the play,
+into a prominent and moving character. There can be no question but that
+Boito ("Tobia Gorria" is but an anagramatic nom de plume of Arrigo
+Boito) was highly successful in remodeling the tragedy for operatic
+purposes, but he did not palliate its moral grossness or succeed in
+inviting our compassionate feelings for anyone entitled to them. The
+only personages who in this opera escape disaster are a pair of lovers,
+whose sufferings, as depicted or inferred, cannot be said to have
+refined the guilt out of their passion. We might infer that once the
+attachment of Enzo and Laura was pure and lovely, but all that we see of
+it is flauntingly criminal and doubly wicked. The happiness of Enzo, who
+to elope with another man's wife cruelly breaks faith with a woman whose
+love for him is so strong that she gives her life to save his, is hardly
+a consummation that ought to be set down as justifying so many blotches
+and blains, pimples and pustules, on the face of human nature. Laura's
+treachery is to Gioconda as well as to her husband, and has no redeeming
+trait. In fact, the blind woman is the only character in the opera who
+has moral health, and she seems to have been brought in only that her
+sufferings might intensify the bloody character of Barnaba, the spy.
+Even Gioconda, a character that has latent within it many effective
+elements, is sacrificed by the librettist to the one end--sensational
+effect through contrast and contradiction. Nowhere does she illustrate
+the spirit of blitheness which is put forth by her name, and only once
+does she allude to it. From the moment of her entrance till her death
+she is filled with torturing passion and conflicting emotions. Not la
+Gioconda she, but la Dolorosa--except for the bookmaker's desire for
+dramatic paradox. Against the desire to sympathize with her is thrust
+the revelation that her rival is never saved from death at her hands
+because of any repugnance of hers to murder. She would kill in an
+instant were it not that her vengefulness is overcome by gratitude to
+the benefactress of her mother. So it comes that the strongest feeling
+excited by the heroine, who dies a sacrifice to filial affection and
+passionate love, is one of simple pity--a feeling that is never absent
+from tender hearts, no matter how depraved the victim of misfortune.
+
+But opera in the estate illustrated by "La Gioconda" scarcely justifies
+even an elementary moral disquisition. Moreover, what Ponchielli
+provoked is so much worse than what he himself did that his condemnation
+can go no further than purgatorial fires. It is in the operas of his
+pupils and would-be imitators, like Giordano, Tasca, and others, that
+filth and blood are supposed to fructify the music which rasps the
+nerves, even as the dramas revolt the moral stomach. In view of the
+products of the period in which began operatic veritism, so-called, "La
+Gioconda" seems almost washed in innocency, and if its music is at times
+highly spiced, it is at least frankly and simply melodious. Naturally he
+has followed his librettist in aiming at contrast, at higgledy-piggledy
+finales, at garish orchestration, at strenuous declamation in the
+dialogue not cast in melodic forms and at abrupt changes. But he has
+plenty, if not profound melodiousness. La Cieca's air, Enzo's romance,
+Laura's "Stella del Marinar," Barnaba's barcarole, and the ballet music
+have lived on in our concert rooms from that day to this.
+
+"La Gioconda" was the last opera brought forward in the winter season,
+which ended on December 22d, leaving two out of thirty promised
+subscription performances to be supplied on the return of Mr. Abbey's
+forces from Boston, whither they went for the holidays. When he came
+back in a fortnight he gave "Carmen," on January 9th, with Trebelli,
+Campanini, and Del Puente (who had been in the cast of the original
+London production); repeated it on January 11th, and "La Gioconda"
+on January 12th.
+
+On March 10th a spring season began, which lasted till April 12th. It
+added four operas to the list. Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet" (March 10),
+Flotow's "Martha" (March 14th), Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" (March 19th),
+and "Le Prophète" (March 21st). The last, which had first been heard in
+New York at the Astor Place Opera House four years after its original
+production in Paris, on April 16, 1849, had been absent from the
+current operatic list so long that it was to all intents and purposes
+a novelty to Mr. Abbey's patrons. The last week of the season brought
+two disappointments: Mmes. Nilsson and Sembrich both fell ill, the
+indisposition of the latter (or something else) causing the abandonment
+of Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette," an opera that was new to New Yorkers,
+and was promptly brought out by Colonel Mapleson with Mme. Patti in
+his spring season at the Academy of Music.
+
+As has already been set forth, Mr. Abbey made a monumental financial
+fiasco; but his was a heroic effort to galvanize Italian opera, which
+seemed moribund, into vitality. He showed an honest desire to keep
+all his promises to the public made when he asked support for his
+enterprise, and all in all, his administration was signalized by virtues
+too frequently absent in the doings of operatic managers. His stage sets
+were uniformly handsome, and some of them showed greater sumptuousness
+than the people had seen for many years; his orchestra, though faulty in
+composition as well as execution, did some admirable work under Signor
+Vianesi; his chorus was prompt, vigorous, and tuneful; his ensembles
+were carefully and intelligently composed, and his selection of operas
+was judicious from a managerial point of view. He gave to New York the
+strongest combination of women singers that the city had ever known;
+nor has it been equaled in any one season since. The financial failure
+of the enterprise caused no surprise among intelligent and impartial
+observers. One needed not to be prophetically gifted to foretell
+twenty-five years ago that New York could not support two such costly
+establishments as the Academy of Music and the Metropolitan Opera House.
+The world of fashion, which in the nature of things is the supporter of
+Italian opera, and has been ever since the art form was invented, was
+divided in its allegiance, and divided, moreover, in a manner which made
+an interchange of courtesies all but impossible. This threw the burden
+of maintaining the rival houses upon two limited groups of persons, and
+the loss was mutual.
+
+In Mr. Abbey's prospectus he promised to produce twenty-four operas,
+which he named; he kept his promise as to all but five, these being
+"Lucrezia Borgia," "Linda di Chamouni," "Fra Diavolo," "Otello," and
+"Le Nozze di Figaro." "Roméo et Juliette," which he attempted to give,
+but failed at the last, was not in the original list. Besides these
+performances, he gave fifty-eight outside of New York in visits to
+Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis,
+Washington, and Baltimore. The local record may be tabulated as
+follows:
+
+
+   Opera                    First performance       Times given
+
+  "Faust" .................... October 22 ............ 6
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ...... October 24 ............ 3
+  "Il Trovatore" ............. October 26 ............ 3
+  "I Puritani" ............... October 29 ............ 1
+  "Mignon" ................... October 31 ............ 4
+  "La Traviata" .............. November 5 ............ 4
+  "Lohengrin" ................ November 7 ............ 6
+  "La Sonnambula" ............ November 14 ........... 2
+  "Rigoletto" ................ November 16 ........... 2
+  "Robert le Diable" ......... November 19 ........... 3
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" .. November 23 ........... 3
+  "Don Giovanni" ............. November 28 ........... 5
+  "Mefistofele" .............. December 5 ............ 2
+  "La Gioconda" .............. December 20 ........... 4
+  "Carmen" ................... January 9 ............. 5
+  "Hamlet" ................... March 10 .............. 1
+  "Martha" ................... March 14 .............. 3
+  "Les Huguenots" ............ March 19 .............. 2
+  "Le Prophète" .............. March 21 .............. 1
+
+
+There was one performance with a mixed program.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OPERATIC REVOLUTIONS
+
+
+Colonel Mapleson and the stockholders of the Academy of Music and their
+friends were little disposed to yield to the new order of things without
+a struggle. The Academy was refurnished and a season of Italian opera
+begun on the same night on which Mr. Abbey opened his doors. Colonel
+Mapleson's company comprised Mmes. Patti, Gerster, Pappenheim, Pattini,
+and Josephine Yorke, and Signori Falletti, Nicolini, Perugini,
+Cherubini, Vicini, Lombardini, and Caracciolo. The performances were
+like those that had been the rule for years, except for the brilliancy
+which Mme. Patti lent to those in which she took part. But not even she
+could hold the fickle public. On the nights when she sang the house
+was two-thirds full; Mme. Gerster had established herself as a prime
+favorite, but when she sang on the "off nights" the house was two-thirds
+empty. The season was financially disastrous, though Colonel Mapleson's
+losses were not comparable to Mr. Abbey's, and he was not only brave
+enough to prepare for the next season's campaign, but adroit enough to
+persuade Mme. Patti to place herself under his guidance again. But,
+while he held out against Mr. Abbey and the new house, he was compelled
+to yield to the Metropolitan and German opera as established by Dr.
+Damrosch. Of the singers who helped Colonel Mapleson make his fight,
+one is still in enjoyment of popular favor. This is Mme. Nordica,
+who, though not a regular member of the company, effected her American
+operatic début at the Academy on November 26, 1883, in Gounod's "Faust."
+She was announced as Mme. Norton-Gower, and of her performance I wrote
+at the time in The Tribune:
+
+
+Of Mrs. Norton-Gower the first statement must be that she gives abundant
+evidence of having been admirably trained in the spirit of Gounod's
+music and the tragedy. Nearly every number in the score which falls to
+the part of Margherita she sang with commendable intelligence and taste.
+The most obvious criticism was that the spirit so excellently conceived
+by her put a severe strain upon the matter in her control. It cost her
+a manifest effort to do what she well knew how to do, for she is not
+a phenomenal vocalist. She has a voice of fine texture, and her tones
+are generally sympathetic. She sings with feeling, but acts with more.
+Her performance was meritorious beyond the performances of any of Mr.
+Mapleson's women singers, Mmes. Patti and Gerster excepted.
+
+
+That Mr. Abbey had made losses which were so great as to make him
+unwilling to remain at the head of the operatic forces at the
+Metropolitan Opera House was known long before the close of the first
+season. Before the spring representations began he made answer to the
+proposal of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company by saying
+that he would act as their manager without compensation for the next
+year, provided they would pay the losses which the first season would
+entail upon him. The directors had agreed in their original contract to
+save him whole to the extent of $60,000--a pitiful tenth part of what,
+according to Mr. Schoeffel, the losses finally aggregated; I am inclined
+to think, however, that Mr. Schoeffel has included the losses made in
+the other cities visited by the company. There were only sixty-one
+representations at the Metropolitan Opera House, and it is inconceivable
+that they averaged a deficit of over $9,000 each. They could not have
+cost that sum in fact, and many of the performances drew houses which at
+the prevailing prices (orchestra $6) must have yielded handsome returns.
+Whatever the sum which loomed up as a prospective loss, however, it
+was great enough to dissuade the directors from adopting Mr. Abbey's
+suggestion. Instead, they made up their minds cheerfully to pay their
+own loss, and at the beginning of the spring season, all negotiations
+having come to an end, sent Mr. Abbey a letter which read as follows:
+
+
+                          Metropolitan Opera House, New York,
+                                Secretary's Office, March 14, 1884.
+
+My Dear Sir: It gives me much pleasure to say that I am instructed by
+the president to tender you the use of the Opera House on April 21,
+1884, for a benefit performance to yourself. I beg also to express my
+hope that the results of the benefit may in some measure be commensurate
+with the manner you have presented Italian opera and to say that it will
+give me great pleasure to do anything I can to aid in making the benefit
+a great success. Most sincerely yours,
+
+                                    Edmund C. Stanton, Secretary.
+  To Henry E. Abbey.
+
+
+In the meantime negotiations had already begun looking to the transfer
+of the house for the next season to Mr. Ernest Gye, who was manager at
+the time of Covent Garden, London. These negotiations were continued
+till deep in the summer and came to naught at the end. Of the reasons
+for the failure several became known to the public. One was the
+unwillingness of the directors to give Mr. Gye a free hand in the
+engagement of artists. The directors, who were active in determining
+the policy of the opera, were all devoted admirers of Mme. Nilsson;
+they were, in fact, the donors of the laurel wreath of gold which she
+received on the first night of the season. They were desirous that she
+should be re-engaged, though the weight of her contract had done much to
+break Mr. Abbey's financial back, and they were also a little fearful
+that Mr. Gye, the husband of Mme. Albani, would, not unnaturally, seek
+to put that singer in Mme. Nilsson's place. Meanwhile, the opera season
+at Covent Garden came to a close, and though Mr. Gye had not had Colonel
+Mapleson at Her Majesty's Theater to cope with, as in former seasons,
+but only English opera at Drury Lane, under the direction of Carl Rosa,
+the financial outcome was such as to suggest that Mr. Gye's attitude
+toward opera at the Metropolitan was something like that which the
+Germans describe as a cat walking about a dish of hot porridge.
+
+At intervals bits of gossip reached New York by cable, but none of
+them was of a comforting character. One week it was said to be the
+exorbitance of Mme. Nilsson's demands which gave Mr. Gye pause, and
+the next the difficulty of finding a tenor worthy of succeeding Signor
+Campanini and capable of satisfying the captious, critical, and
+fastidious people of New York. There were suspicions, too, that some
+of the embarrassments which confronted Mr. Gye and the Metropolitan
+directors were due to the machinations of that sly and persuasive old
+dog, Colonel Mapleson. Nilsson had but one rival, and she was Mme.
+Patti. Her Colonel Mapleson had secured; not only her, but, report said,
+Scalchi, Tremelli, and Tamagno also. Mme. Scalchi had been a strong prop
+of the first Metropolitan season, and Tremelli and Tamagno, though they
+had not been heard in America, had names to conjure with. Tremelli never
+came, and it was not until 1890, when Mr. Abbey was again in the traces
+of an Italian opera manager, and was exploiting both Mme. Patti and Mme.
+Albani, that Tamagno was heard in New York.
+
+Failures of such magnitude as those of Mr. Gye in London, Colonel
+Mapleson at the Academy of Music, and Mr. Abbey at the Metropolitan
+Opera House, naturally set the beards of the wiseacres a-wagging.
+Clearly the world of opera was out of joint and a prophet with a new
+evangel seemed to be needed to set it right. In New York the efforts had
+been made along old lines, but Mr. Gye had ventured on an experiment
+which suggested the polyglot scheme which became the fixed policy of
+the Metropolitan Opera House some ten years later. Along with the old
+Italian list Mr. Gye gave some of Wagner's lyric dramas in German, and
+even ventured an English opera done into German--C. Villiers Stanford's
+"Savonarola." Was Italian opera dead? So it almost seemed; but the
+incidents attending its demise were familiar to operatic history and
+as old as Italian opera in London and New York. When the art form was
+making its first struggles for habilitation in the British metropolis
+Addison thought the spectacle so amusing that he wrote an essay in
+which he pictured the amazement of the next generation on learning that
+in the days of its predecessors English men and women had sat out entire
+evenings listening to an entertainment in a foreign tongue. And he said
+in that essay many other excellent things, the truth and force of which
+are just as deserving of appreciation (and just as needful) now as they
+were in the time of the writer.
+
+The consciousness of the absurdity of Italian opera transported in the
+"original package" (to speak commercially) to England and America seems
+to have been constant with the Anglo-Saxon peoples. Of this the legion
+of managerial wrecks which strew the operatic shores or float as
+derelicts bear witness. Bankers, manufacturers, and noblemen have come
+to the rescue of ambitious managers, or become ambitious managers
+themselves, only to go down in the common disaster. Mr. Delafield wrote
+his name high among his fellows across the water by losing half a
+million of dollars in a single season--a feat which no man equaled till
+Mr. Abbey came. Taylor got himself into the King's Bench Prison by his
+venturesomeness, and, once there, found consolation in a philosophy
+which taught him that of all places in the world the properest one for
+an opera manager was a prison. But I have mentioned this before.
+
+Time was when the popular taste found complete satisfaction in the
+melodies of the Italian composers. Time was when the desire for novelty
+in the operatic field could be satisfied only by importations from
+Italy. Time was when Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen went to Italy
+to study operatic composition and wrote in the Italian manner to
+Italian texts. All this had changed at the period of which I am
+writing--Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen had operas in their own
+languages and schools of composition of their own. But still New York
+and London clung to Italian sweets.
+
+And Italy had become sterile. Verdi seemed to have ceased writing. There
+were whisperings of an "Iago" written in collaboration with Boito, but
+it was awaiting ultimate criticism and final polish while the wonderful
+old master was engaged in revamping some of his early works. Boito was
+writing essays and librettos for others, with the unfinished "Nerone"
+lying in his desk, where it is still hidden. Ponchielli had not
+succeeded in getting a hearing for anything since "La Gioconda."
+Expectations had been raised touching an opera entitled "Dejanice," by
+Catalani, but I cannot recall that it ever crossed the Italian border.
+The hot-blooded young veritists who were soon to flood Italy with their
+creations had not yet been heard of. The champions of a change from
+Italian to German ideals seemed to have the argument all in their favor.
+The spectacle presented by the lyric stage in Germany and France seemed
+to show indubitably what course opera as an art form must needs take if
+it was to live. Gluck, Weber, and Wagner, all Germans, had pointed the
+way. In 1883 five new operas by English composers reached the dignity of
+performance, and it was significant that two of them--Mr. Mackenzie's
+"Colomba" and Mr. Stanford's "Savonarola"--were performed in German, the
+former in Hamburg, the latter in London. There were many lovers of opera
+in New York besides the musical reviewer for The Tribune who believed
+that if America was ever to have a musical art of its own the way could
+best be paved by supplanting Italian performances by German at the
+principal home of opera in the United States. We should, it is true,
+still have foreign artists singing foreign works in a foreign tongue,
+but the change in repertory would promote an appreciation and an
+understanding of truthful, dramatic expression in a form which claimed
+close relationship with the drama.
+
+This was the state of affairs when, negotiations having failed with
+both Mr. Abbey and Mr. Gye, the summer days of 1884 being nearly gone
+and the prospect of a closed theater confronting the directors of the
+Metropolitan Opera House, Dr. Leopold Damrosch submitted to them a
+proposition to give opera in German under his management, but on their
+account. Either the forcefulness and plausibility of his arguments or
+the direfulness of their need led the directors to make the venture. Dr.
+Damrosch went to Germany toward the end of August; toward the end of
+September he was back in New York, ready to announce a season of opera
+in German, with a completely organized company and a promising list of
+operas. Few persons knew what was coming, and the information brought
+with it a shock of surprise. Dr. Damrosch had been a vigorous factor in
+the musical life of New York for twelve years, but he had never been
+identified with opera in the public mind, and, in fact, his practical
+familiarity with it was little. He had come to New York from Breslau,
+where he was conductor of the Orchesterverein (a symphonic organization)
+in 1871. He had had some practical experience with the theater at
+Weimar, where he played with the orchestra of the Court Theater under
+the direction of Liszt, had been musical director at the Municipal
+Theater in Posen and Breslau, but for short periods only. He had not
+gone through the career of the typical German conductor for the reason
+that he was not a musician "vom Hause aus"--as the Germans express it.
+He was a physician turned musician--a member of one of the scientific
+professions who had abandoned science for art.
+
+Dr. Damrosch was a remarkable man. He was born in Posen, Prussia,
+on October 22, 1832. He studied music in the home circle, like the
+generality of German lads, but his parents had chosen the profession of
+medicine for him, and he had acquiesced in the choice, matriculating
+in the medical department of the University of Berlin after he had
+completed the usual gymnasial course of studies. He had not abandoned
+his love for music, though he so devoted himself to medicine that in
+due course he was graduated with honors and received his degree.
+Incidentally, like Schumann at Heidelberg, he continued to study music,
+Hubert Ries being his teacher in violin playing, and the venerable
+Professor Dehn in counterpoint and composition. After graduation he
+returned to his native Posen to practise medicine, and remained there
+thus occupied till 1854.
+
+In 1855 the physician's earlier and stronger love for music achieved the
+mastery over his adopted profession, and he started out into the world
+as a concert violinist. He played at Magdeburg and at Berlin, where his
+talents were so much admired that on the recommendation of friends in
+the Prussian capital he went to Weimar, where he won the friendship
+of Liszt and joined the body of enthusiastic young musicians--Peter
+Cornelius and others--who had rallied around the great musician and were
+fighting the battles of the new German school. His musical creed was
+formed here, as he himself confessed in a series of articles written for
+the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. His first official appointment was as
+director of the music at the Stadttheater in Posen, and in 1866 he was
+called to fill the same post at Breslau. After he had resigned this
+position he remained in Breslau as director of the Orchesterverein,
+which he called into existence until he accepted the call of the
+Männergesangverein Arion in New York in 1871. Though Dr. Damrosch had
+achieved a European reputation before he came to New York, his best
+and most enduring work was accomplished here, where he organized the
+Oratorio Society, which has had a continuous existence since 1873, and
+the Symphony Society, which, amid many vicissitudes and with several
+reincarnations, has lived since 1877. The establishment of German opera,
+though it did not endure, was yet his crowning achievement, and at the
+culmination of the glory which it brought him he died. But of that
+presently and in its proper place.
+
+The artistic basis of the scheme which Dr. Damrosch put into effect was
+essentially German. It dispensed with the star system (except so far as
+the engagement of Mme. Materna was a deference to it) and substituted
+instead a good ensemble, unusual attention to the mounting of
+operas, and the bringing out of dramatic effects through other stage
+accessories. The change of base brought with it of necessity a change
+of repertory, and the Italian operas which had formed the staple of
+New York lists for years were put aside for the masterpieces of German
+and French composers. One or two efforts to include works of a lighter
+lyrical character sufficed to demonstrate the wisdom of a strict
+adherence to the list of tragic works of large dimensions and
+spectacular nature, and the sagacity of Dr. Damrosch was shown in
+nothing more clearly than in his choice of operas for representation.
+
+There were few familiar names in the list of singers printed in the
+prospectus. The most familiar, and the greatest, was that which
+has already been announced as the one concession made to the star
+system--Mme. Amalia Materna. Twenty-five years ago the story of Bayreuth
+was a household word throughout the civilized world, and Mme. Materna
+had been associated with the Wagner festivals since the first held, in
+1876. In May, 1882, she was brought to New York by Theodore Thomas for
+the Music Festival, held in the Seventh Regiment Armory, and with her
+Bayreuth colleagues--Winkelmann, tenor, and Scaria, bass--she took part
+in concerts and festivals which Mr. Thomas gave in 1884 in Boston,
+New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Chicago. After returning to
+Europe after the American engagement of 1882, she had gone straight
+to Bayreuth, where she "created" the part of Kundry in the original
+production of "Parsifal," alternating afterward in the character
+with Fräulein Brandt, who was associated with her in Dr. Damrosch's
+Metropolitan company. When she came to the Metropolitan (she made her
+first appearance after the season was well under headway, in January,
+1885) Mme. Materna was thirty-eight years old and her splendid powers
+were at their zenith. She had sung in public since her thirteenth year,
+at first in church, then in comic opera in Graz and Vienna. While
+singing at a small theater in the Austrian capital she became a member
+of the Court Opera, attracted wide attention by her dramatic abilities
+in the grand operas of its repertories, and at once leaped into fame by
+her impersonation of Brünnhilde at the first Bayreuth festival, in 1876.
+
+Next in significance in the first Metropolitan German Company was
+Marianne Brandt, whose influence in creating new ideals and developing
+new tastes among the opera-goers of New York was even greater than that
+of Mme. Materna, because her powers were no less and her labors of
+longer duration. She came here after having won praise from the critics
+of London, where she had sung at the first performance in England of
+"Tristan und Isolde" at Drury Lane in 1882. That was ten years after
+she had effected her London début. The principal Coloratursängerin of
+the company was Frau Marie Schroeder-Hanfstängl, then a member of
+the Frankfort Opera, who was a native of Breslau and a friend of the
+Damrosch family while they were there. As Mlle. Schroeder she had
+already established a reputation at that time in Paris, where she had
+sung at the Théâtre Lyrique through the mediation of her teacher,
+Mme. Viardot-Garcia. The jugendlich Dramatische was Frau Auguste
+Seidl-Krauss, who was announced throughout the season by her maiden
+name, but had been married for about a year to Anton Seidl, then
+conductor at the Stadttheater in Bremen, who was soon to become a
+most puissant factor in the sum of New York's musical activities. The
+principal tenor was Anton Schott, who had made a considerable reputation
+as a Wagnerian singer in the opera houses of Munich, Berlin, Schwerin,
+Hanover, and London, and had made the Italian tour with Angelo Neumann's
+Wagner company which Seidl conducted in 1882. Earlier in life he had
+been an artillery officer in the German army, which fact coupled
+with his explosive manner of singing prompted one of Dr. von Bülow's
+witticisms. The doctor had been conductor of the opera in Hanover when
+Schott was there and had conceived a violent dislike for him. Some years
+after the latter's New York season, conversing socially with von Bülow,
+I chanced to mention Schott's name.
+
+"Ah! do you know Schott?" asked the irascible little doctor;
+"ein eigenthümlicher Sänger, nicht war? Eigentlich ist er ein
+Militärtenor--ein Artillerist. Sie wissen er singt manchmal zu hoch--da
+distonirt er; gewöhnlich singt er zu tief--da destonirt er; und wenn er
+gelegentlich rein singt--da detonirt er!" The ingenious play on words
+is quite untranslatable, but my readers who understand German but are
+unfamiliar with musical terms will be helped to an appreciation of the
+fun by being told that "dis," "des," and "de" are the German names
+applied respectively to D sharp, D flat, and D natural. No doubt Dr.
+von Bülow had perpetrated his little joke before he shot it off for my
+benefit. It was a habit of his to have such brilliant impromptus ready
+and ingeniously to invite an occasion for their introduction. But they
+always had the effect of brilliant spontaneity. It was on another
+occasion, when he was praising the performance of another German tenor,
+and I had interposed the suggestion that to me he seemed to lack
+virility, that he burst out with:
+
+"But, my dear fellow, a tenor isn't a man; it's a disease!"
+
+I supplied the quotation marks in my mind, for though the remark was
+his, it had served him on at least one other occasion, as I chanced
+to know.
+
+Other members of the company were Anna Slach, Anna Stern, Hermine Bely,
+Adolf Robinson, barytone (another of Dr. Damrosch's professional friends
+from Breslau); Josef Staudigl (bass, son of the great Staudigl); Josef
+Koegel, bass; Emil Tiffero, Herr Udvardi, Otto Kemlitz, Ludwig Wolf,
+Josef Miller, and Herr Schneller. John Lund, who came from Kroll's,
+in Berlin, and Walter Damrosch, were chorus masters and assistant
+conductors. The first season began on November 17, 1884, with a
+performance of "Tannhäuser."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GERMAN OPERA AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+
+After German opera began at the Metropolitan Opera House it endured
+seven years. It was only at the outset that it had the opposition of
+what had been the established régime of Italian opera at the Academy of
+Music, but it was pursued throughout its career by desultory enterprises
+and hampered greatly by the fact that the stockholders were never
+unitedly and enthusiastically in favor of it or the principles of art
+which it represented. Throughout the period there was a hankering for
+the fleshpots of Egypt in the region of the Metropolitan boxes. It seems
+desirable, therefore, that, though it is my purpose more specifically
+in the next few chapters to tell the story of the seven years of German
+opera, I should turn the light occasionally on the doings at rival
+institutions. The first of the seven years at the Metropolitan Opera
+House was the seventh year of Colonel Mapleson's tenancy of the Academy
+of Music. He opened his season on November 10, 1884, but before then
+James Barton Key and Horace McVicker experimented with Italian opera
+for three weeks at the Star Theater. The organization was composed of
+operatic flotsam and jetsam, such as is always to be found plentifully
+in New York after operatic storms in South America or Mexico, and was
+neither better nor worse than scores of other companies heard here
+before and since. Like most of these, too, it had a mouth-filling
+name--the Milan Grand Opera Company--but, like few of them, it had a
+capital tenor, Signor Giannini, who at a somewhat later period we shall
+find in Colonel Mapleson's forces. Other members of the company whose
+names are worthy of preservation were Maria Peri (soprano leggiero),
+Signora Damerini (dramatic soprano), Signora Mestress (contralto), and
+Signor Serbolini (bass). The experiment resulted in financial failure,
+but it introduced to New York the South American opera, "Il Guarany,"
+by Señor Gomez. In Colonel Mapleson's company were Mme. Patti,
+Signora Ricetti, Mme. Emma Nevada, Signor Nicolini, Signor Vicini, and
+Signor Cardinali (tenors), Mme. Scalchi, Mme. Fursch-Madi, Signori de
+Pasqualis, Cherubini, Caracciolo (bassos), Signor de Anna (barytone),
+and Signor Bassetti (tenor), otherwise Mr. Charles Bassett, like Mme.
+Nevada, an American singer. The subscription ended on December 27th, and
+in the following week he gave four extra performances, at two of which
+he reduced the prices, though they were of a higher artistic order than
+the others. The relations between Mapleson and the stockholders of the
+Academy were becoming strained, and in a speech which he made at his
+annual benefit he remarked upon their absence sarcastically. It was
+plain that their patience had given out and that they were weary of
+extending to him the financial support which had helped him through
+the season. In my review of the season I find this remark, which is
+indicative of their indifference to the fate of their lessee: "The
+condition of the house gives evidence of an unwillingness to sink money
+in an unlucrative enterprise. It is somewhat discouraging to the patrons
+of the house to sit in ramshackle chairs which threaten to deposit them
+incontinently on the floor at any moment, and the collapse of a stall
+has frequently accentuated a musical or dramatic climax in the season
+just ended."
+
+The season ended with many promises unfulfilled, for which the
+impresario placed the blame upon the directors, who, he said, had not
+given him sufficient use of the Academy stage. His explanations were not
+always wholly ingenuous, however. Thus he had announced that "Lakmé"
+would be given, with the composer, M. Delibes, in the conductor's
+chair. Now, in the season before, Mme. Gerster had been so desirous to
+create the part of the heroine in America (it being one which afforded
+fine scope for her lovely powers, and which she had studied with the
+composer) that she had bought the performing rights. But nothing came of
+her ambition, and it was an open secret that Heugel, the publisher, had
+quarreled with Mapleson because of unwarranted practices with his scores
+in London. In the midst of his troubles Colonel Mapleson announced that
+he had engaged Mme. Nilsson for the season of 1885-86. There was as
+little foundation for this announcement as for the promise of "Lakmé."
+
+With ruin staring him in the face, Mapleson concluded the season. He
+bettered his fortunes a trifle in Boston and Philadelphia, but failed
+again in New Orleans and St. Louis. Then he went to San Francisco,
+where the fact that Mme. Nevada was a native of the Pacific Slope was
+a helpful factor. After the close of the season at the Metropolitan
+Opera House he gave a "spring season" of six performances in one week,
+beginning on April 20th. He repeated the performance in Boston and then
+sailed for Europe, stopping in New York only long enough to institute
+two suits at law--one against Signor Nicolini to recover $10,000 for
+failing to sing, and one against Mme. Nevada for $3,000, alleged to
+have been overpaid her. The suits, in all likelihood, were merely moves
+in the managerial game which he was playing in London and New York. In
+the seventh of these "Chapters of Opera" I described as the crowning
+achievement of Colonel Mapleson in the season full of noteworthy
+incidents the circumstance that he had succeeded in owing Mme. Patti
+some $5,000 or $6,000. Nicolini was Patti's husband.
+
+More than ever it looked in the spring of 1885 as if Italian opera had
+received its quietus. The demoralization of the Academy of Music was
+complete. In London there prevailed a state of affairs so anomalous and
+startling that the newspaper critics were cudgeling their brains in a
+vain effort to find an explanation. For the first time in one hundred
+and fifty-eight years the British metropolis was without opera; for
+the first time in thirty-nine years (except in 1856, when fire made it
+impossible) the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden had failed to open
+its doors on Easter Tuesday. Mr. Gye and his backers refused to venture
+their fortunes again, and the lease of Her Majesty's was also going
+begging. In New York Colonel Mapleson had held one good card which he
+did not seem to know how to play: the season compassed the twenty-fifth
+anniversary of the operatic début of Mme. Patti. There ought, for
+excellent and obvious reasons, to have been a fitting celebration of
+the event; but there was not. On November 26th, two days after the date,
+Colonel Mapleson gave a performance of "Martha," with Mmes. Patti
+and Scalchi in the principal women's parts. After the opera a rout of
+supernumeraries, choristers, and other boys and men engaged for the
+purpose, carrying torches, followed the diva's carriage to the Windsor
+Hotel, where she was serenaded. That was all. It was so undignified and
+inadequate that it provoked some of Mme. Patti's friends to arrange the
+banquet in her honor which I have described in Chapter VI. Had Signor
+Brignoli, who was the Edgardo to Adelina Patti's Lucia at the Academy on
+November 24, 1859, been spared in life and health a few weeks longer
+(Signor Brignoli died in October, 1884), his friends would probably
+have urged an association of the two artists in a gala performance
+of Donizetti's opera. This would have provided an appropriate and
+delightful celebration, and it would not have been difficult to marshal
+a number of interesting relics of the period which saw the operatic
+advent of Mme. Patti, though all of them would have appeared much worse
+for the wear of a quarter-century than she. Of the valiant champions
+who were leading the contending operatic armies of the time, Arditi,
+Maretzek, and Strakosch were still with us. The first was filling, as
+of yore, the leader's chair at the Academy and doing yeoman's service
+in the unobtrusive and modest manner which always characterized him;
+the second, withdrawn from all connection with operatic management, was
+watching the boiling and bubbling of the caldron with amused interest
+and spicing his comments with capitally told reminiscences of opera a
+generation before; the third was still chasing the fickle goddess with
+fugitive essays as impresario. There were even remains of the critics of
+those days still active in the world of letters--Richard Grant White,
+for instance, and George William Curtis, one of my predecessors on The
+Tribune--and they would undoubtedly have grown young again and been
+warmed into enthusiastic utterance by eager memories of the dainty
+débutante and the singers who had preceded her--Grisi, Bosio,
+Piccolomini, and the rest.
+
+A vast amount of reminiscences would have been justified by such
+a celebration, for it would have thrown a bright sidelight on the
+marvelous career of Mme. Patti, a career without parallel in the history
+of the last half-century. Within three years after she made her first
+essay "our little Patti," as she was then fondly spoken of, had achieved
+the queenship of the lyric stage; and, now, twenty-two years later, her
+title had not suffered the slightest impairment. Within the time singers
+who had won the world's admiration had been born, educated, and lifted
+to the niches prepared for them by popular appreciation, but all far
+below the place where Patti sat enthroned. Stars of great brilliancy
+had flashed across the firmament and gone out in darkness, but the
+refulgence of Patti's art remained undimmed, having only grown mellower
+and deeper and richer with time. Truth is, Mme. Patti was then, and is
+still, twenty-five years later, a musical miracle; and the fact that she
+was in New York to sing in the very spot in which she began her career
+twenty-five years before should have been celebrated as one of the
+proudest incidents in the city's musical annals. For the generation of
+opera-goers who grew up in the period which ought to be referred to
+for all time in the annals of music as The Reign of Patti, she set a
+standard by which all aspirants for public favor were judged except
+those whose activities were in a widely divergent field. Not only did
+she show them what the old art of singing was, but she demonstrated
+the possibility of its revival. And she did this while admiring
+enthusiastically the best results of the dramatic spirit which pervades
+musical composition to-day. Her talent was so many-sided and so
+astonishing, no matter from which side it was viewed, that rhapsody
+seems to be the only language left one who attempts analysis or
+description of it. Her voice, of unequaled beauty, was no more a gift
+of nature than the ability to assimilate without effort the things
+which cost ordinary mortals years of labor and vexation of soul. It was
+perpetually amazing how her singing made the best efforts of the best of
+her contemporaries pale, especially those who depended on vocal agility
+for their triumphs. Each performance of hers made it plainer than it had
+been before that her genius penetrated the mere outward glitter of the
+music and looked upon the ornament as so much means to the attainment of
+an end; that end, a beautiful interpretation of the composer's thought.
+No artist of her time was so perfect an exponent as she of the quality
+of repose. So far as appearances went it was as easy for her to burden
+the air with trills and roulades as it was to talk. She sang as the
+lark sings; the outpouring of an ecstasy of tones of almost infinite
+number and beauty seemed in her to be a natural means of expression.
+Her ideas of art were the highest, and it was a singular testimony
+of her earnestness that, while educated in the old Italian school of
+vocalization and holding her most exalted supremacy as a singer of
+Rossini's music, her warmest love, by her own confession, was given, not
+to its glittering confections, but to the serious efforts of the most
+dramatic writers. This must be remembered in the list of her astonishing
+merits now when her voice can no longer call up more than "the tender
+grace of a day that is dead"; mine was the proud privilege and great
+happiness of having heard her often in her prime. But I must get down
+to the real business of this chapter.
+
+The first German performance at the Metropolitan took place on November
+17, 1884. The opera was "Tannhäuser" and the distribution of parts
+as follows: Elizabeth, Mme. Krauss; Venus, Fräulein Slach; a Young
+Shepherd, Fräulein Stern; the Landgrave, Josef Koegel; Tannhäuser, Anton
+Schott; Wolfram, Adolf Robinson; Walther von der Vogelweide, Emil
+Tiffero; Biterolf, Josef Miller; Heinrich der Schreiber, Otto Kemlitz;
+Reinmar, Ludwig Wolf. The performance made no claim upon special
+analysis or description. Its highest significance consisted in the
+publication which it made with reference to the new ideals in operatic
+representation which came in with the new movement. No doubt to a large
+portion of the audience, still judging by the old standards, much of it
+must have been inexplicable, much of it (especially the singing of Herr
+Schott) little short of monstrous. To a smaller portion, familiar with
+the opera, the language of its book and the spirit of the play, as well
+as the music, it came as a vivid realization of the purposes of the
+poet-composer. To all but the German element in the audience the opera
+itself was practically a novelty. "Tannhäuser" had not been incorporated
+in the Italian repertory as "Lohengrin" had, and only those knew it
+who had attended the sporadic German performances of earlier decades
+conducted by such men as Bergmann, Anschütz, and Neuendorff. The
+first New York performance took place on August 27, 1859, at which the
+Männergesangverein Arion supplied the choruses.
+
+Wagner once described his Tannhäuser as "a German from head to foot,"
+and it was doubtless because Dr. Damrosch saw in it a representative
+quality that he chose it for his opening. There was patriotism as well
+as lovely artistic devotion, too, in the choice of "Fidelio" for the
+second performance, on November 19th. Beethoven's opera had almost
+as little association with Italian opera as "Tannhäuser," and it was
+noteworthy that the only portion of the audience room which was not
+filled was that occupied by the stockholders' boxes. It was an English
+company that, in September, 1839, had introduced "Fidelio" to New York,
+and with it made such successful competition with the Italian company of
+the day that it was performed fourteen times in succession. Mr. Mapleson
+made a pitiful essay with it in March, 1882, at the Academy, but to
+recall as vivid and vital a performance as that under discussion one had
+to go back to the days of Mme. Johannsen and her associates, who gave
+German opera in 1856. In Dr. Damrosch's performance Marianne Brandt
+effected her entrance on the American stage, and the memory of her
+impersonation of the heroine is still one of the liveliest and most
+fragrant memories of those memorable days. The dramatic framework of
+"Fidelio" is weak, its construction faulty. Only one ethical idea
+is presented in it with real vividness, but it is an idea which is
+peculiarly dear to the German heart--the saving power of woman's love.
+"Fidelio" is a tale of wifely devotion, and Beethoven bent all his
+energies to a glorification of his heroine's love and fidelity. To
+represent the character faithfully has been the highest ambition of
+German singers for a century. In that time not many more than a dozen
+have achieved high distinction in it; and Marianne Brandt is among the
+number. On its musical side her performance was thrillingly effective,
+but on its histrionic it rose to grandeur. Every word of her few
+speeches, every note of her songs, every look of her eyes and expression
+of her face was an exposition of that world of tenderness which filled
+the heart of Leonore. Nine-tenths of the action which falls to the
+part of Leonore is by-play, and by-play of the kind which is made
+particularly difficult by the time consumed by the music, which is not
+wisely adjusted with reference to the promotion of the action. Yet all
+these waits while Leonore is in view were filled by Fräulein Brandt
+with little actions which tended to develop the character so sadly
+left in the background by the playwright, but so lovingly treated by
+the composer. It was down to its smallest detail a picture of a woman
+impelled by one idea, in which her whole soul had been resolved, and
+which had grown out of a lofty conception of love and duty. There was
+nothing of the petty theatrical in Fräulein Brandt, and it was only an
+evidence of the sincerity of her devotion to the art work which made her
+bend over and stroke the wrist which she had freed from manacles while
+the powerful personages of the play were bowing before her as a pattern
+of conjugal love and the mimic populace were shouting their jubilations
+over salvation accomplished.
+
+At the third representation, on November 21st, Meyerbeer's "Huguenots"
+was brought forward to introduce Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl; and at the
+fourth tribute to the characteristic German spirit was paid by the
+production of Weber's "Der Freischütz." From the day of its birth this
+has been the opera in which the romantic spirit of the German race
+has found its most vivid reflection. The sombre lights and mysterious
+murmurings of the German forests pervade it; the spectres of that
+paganism from which the sturdy Northerners could be weaned only by
+compromise and artifice flit through it. The Wild Huntsman overshadows
+it and, though he says not a word, he powerfully asserts his claim upon
+the trembling admiration of those who keep open hearts for some of his
+old companions of pre-Christian days--especially for the burly fellow
+who under a new name is welcomed joyfully every Christmastide. In
+another sense, too, "Der Freischütz" is a national opera; the spirit of
+its music is drawn from the art-form which the people created. Instead
+of resting on the highly artificial product of the Italian renaissance,
+it rests upon popular song--folk-song, the song of the folk. Its
+melodies echo the cadences of the Volkslieder in which the German heart
+voices its dearest loves. Instead of shining with the light of the
+Florentine courts it glows with the rays of the setting sun filtered
+through the foliage of the Black Forest. Yet "Der Freischütz" failed on
+this its revival--failed so dismally that Dr. Damrosch did not venture
+upon a single repetition. The lesson which it taught had already been
+suggested by "Fidelio," but now it was made plain and Dr. Damrosch paid
+heed to it at once. The dimensions of the Metropolitan Opera House
+forbade the intimacy which operas founded on the German Singspiel
+demand for appreciation, and spoken dialogue, especially in a foreign
+tongue, was painfully destructive of artistic illusion. The operas which
+followed were more to the purpose: "William Tell," on November 28th,
+with Robinson as the hero, Schroeder-Hanfstängl as Mathilde, Slach as
+Gemmy, Staudigl as Gessler, Koegel as Walter, Udvardi as Arnold, and
+Brandt exemplifying a new spirit in opera by her assumption of the
+unimportant part of Tell's wife; "Lohengrin," on December 3d, with
+Krauss, Brandt, Schott, and Staudigl in the principal parts; "Don
+Giovanni," on December 10th, with Schroeder-Hanfstängl as Donna Anna,
+Hermine Bely as Zerlina, Brandt as Elvira, Robinson as the Don,
+Koegel as the Commander, and Udvardi as Ottavio; "Le Prophète," on
+December 17th, with Brandt as Fidès (one of her greatest rôles),
+Schroeder-Hanfstängl as Bertha, and Schott as John of Leyden; "La Muette
+de Portici" (otherwise "Masaniello") on December 29th, with Schott as
+the hero and Isolina Torri as Fenella. There was an interruption of
+this spectacular list on January 2, 1885, when "Rigoletto" was given
+to gratify the ambition of Herr Robinson to be seen and heard as the
+Jester, and of Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl to sing the music of Gilda. In
+this opera Fräulein Brandt played the part of Maddelena and interpolated
+a Spanish song sung in German. Then, on January 5th, came Mme. Materna's
+first operatic appearance in America, in a repetition of "Tannhäuser."
+
+Before continuing the record a few notes on some of these operas and
+their performance may not be amiss. There was little that was noteworthy
+about the representation of "Don Giovanni" except Dr. Damrosch's effort
+to do justice to the famous finale, the full effectiveness of which
+failed nevertheless because of the arrangement of the stage, which
+was that of the preceding season. "Les Huguenots" was a distinct
+disappointment. "La Muette de Portici," which was as good as new to
+the majority of the audience, acquired historical interest from close
+association with "William Tell." It was something of an anomaly that,
+though Rossini's opera had made its appearance during the many years of
+Italian domination whenever a tenor came who could be counted on to make
+a sensation with his high notes in the familiar trio of men, Auber's
+opera, its inspiration as a type, had had so few representations that
+it had passed out of memory except for its overture. But the history
+of "La Muette" is full of anomalies. Its story is Neapolitan and there
+is Neapolitan color in its music; but it is nothing if not French. It
+inspired Rossini to write "William Tell" and Meyerbeer to write "Les
+Huguenots" for the French stage, and is the masterpiece of its author;
+but Auber is the only Frenchman among the great composers for the
+Académie in the first half of the nineteenth century. Wagner defended it
+against the taste of the Parisians, who preferred Rossini and Donizetti,
+and was snubbed for his pains by the editor of the Gazette Musicale,
+who was an officer of the French government. Von Weber condemned as
+coarse the instrumentation which Wagner praised for its fire and
+truthfulness. Its heroine is dumb; yet to her is assigned the loveliest
+music in the score.
+
+"Lohengrin" better than "Tannhäuser" gave the public an opportunity to
+study the change in matter and spirit which had been introduced into
+local opera by the coming of the Germans to the Metropolitan.
+
+Mme. Materna's first appearance on January 5th was followed by a second
+on January 7th as Valentine in "Les Huguenots," and a third on January
+16th in Halévy's "La Juive." By this time Dr. Damrosch was ready with
+the first of the large Wagnerian productions which were a part of the
+dream which it was fated should be realized, not by him, but by his
+successor, whose name was thereby made illustrious in the operatic
+annals of New York. On January 30th "Die Walküre" was performed, with
+the following cast: Brünnhilde, Amalia Materna; Fricka, Marianne
+Brandt; Sieglinde, Auguste Krauss; Siegmund, Anton Schott; Wotan, Josef
+Staudigl; Hunding, Josef Koegel; Gerhilde, Marianne Brandt; Ortlinde,
+Fräulein Stern; Waltraute, Fräulein Gutjar; Schwertleite, Fräulein
+Morse; Helmwige, Frau Robinson; Siegrune, Fräulein Slach; Grimgerde,
+Frau Kemlitz; Rossweise, Fräulein Brandl.
+
+"Die Walküre" had been presented before in New York at a so-called
+Wagner festival at the Academy of Music on April 2, 1877, under the
+direction of Adolf Neuendorff; but the memories of that production
+were painful when they were not amusing, and, though much of the music
+of the Nibelung trilogy had been heard in the concert room, this was
+practically the first opportunity the people of New York had to learn
+from personal experience what it was that Wagner meant by a union of
+arts in the lyric drama. Dr. Damrosch had made an earnest effort to meet
+the standard set by the Bayreuth festivals. The original scenery and
+costumes were faithfully copied, except that for the sake of increased
+picturesqueness Herr Hock, the stage manager, had draperies replace the
+door in Hunding's hut, which, shaking loose from their fastenings, fell
+just before Siegmund began his love song, and disclosed an expanse of
+moonlit background. In the third act, too, there was a greater variety
+of colors in the costumes of the Valkyrior. Fräulein Brandt again
+disclosed her artistic devotion by enacting the part of Fricka and also
+leading the chorus of Valkyrior; but Mme. Materna was the inspiration of
+the performance. It was a surprise to those who had already learned to
+admire her to see how in the character of Brünnhilde she towered above
+herself in other rôles. Both of the strong sides of the character had
+perfect exemplification in her singing and acting--the wild, impetuous,
+exultant freedom of voice which proclaimed the Valkyria's joy in living
+and doing until the catastrophe was reached, and the deep, unselfish,
+tender nature disclosed in her sympathy with the ill-starred lovers
+and her immeasurable love for Wotan. Her complete absorption in the
+part fitted her out with a new gamut of expression. "If anything can
+establish a sympathy between us and the mythological creatures of
+Wagner's dramas," I wrote at the time, "that thing is the acting and
+singing of Materna." The drama made a tremendous impression, and in the
+three weeks which remained of the season (including some supplementary
+performances) "Die Walküre" had seven representations.
+
+The remaining incidents of the season may now be hurried over to make
+room for a record of the catastrophe which marked its close. By the
+middle of January it was reported that the receipts were double those of
+the corresponding period in the previous year, notwithstanding that the
+price of admission had been reduced nearly one-half. By this time, too,
+the board of directors had decided to continue the policy adopted at the
+suggestion of Dr. Damrosch and engage him as director for the next year.
+This decision had not been reached, however, without consideration of
+other projects. Charles Mapleson, a son of the director of the Academy
+of Music, and doubtless only his go-between, submitted a proposition for
+the directorship, and so did Adolf Neuendorff, a man of indefatigable
+energy and enterprise, who had given New York its first hearing of
+"Lohengrin" at the Stadt Theater, in the Bowery, in April, 1871. In
+January there was also a strike of the chorus, which was quickly
+settled, and all but the ringleaders in the disturbance taken back
+into favor on signing an apology.
+
+Rejoicings over the success of the enterprise gave way to general grief
+and consternation with the unexpected death of Dr. Damrosch on February
+15th. On Tuesday, February 10th, he contracted a cold from having thrown
+himself upon a bed in a cold room for a nap before dinner on returning
+from a rehearsal at the opera house. He had neglected to open the
+furnace register or cover himself, and he awoke thoroughly chilled.
+After dinner he went to a rehearsal of the Oratorio Society, which was
+preparing Verdi's Manzoni Requiem for performance the following week.
+Before the conclusion of the rehearsal he was so ill that he was
+forced to hurry home in a carriage. The next morning it was found that
+pneumonia had set in, complicated by pleurisy, and a consultation of
+physicians was held. Only one of the subscription performances at the
+Metropolitan Opera House remained to be given, but there were still
+before the director in the way of operatic work five supplementary
+performances and seasons at Boston, Chicago, and Cincinnati. This
+naturally caused the sick man a great deal of concern. He deferred to
+the wishes of his physicians and sent his son Walter, in whose talent
+and skill he felt great confidence and pride, to conduct the remaining
+subscription performance in the evening, hoping in the meantime to
+secure such good care as to enable him to be in his chair on Thursday
+evening when "Die Walküre" was to be repeated. In this hope, too, he
+was disappointed and had to send his son a second time to conduct a
+performance of the drama which had put the capstone to the astonishingly
+successful season which his zeal, learning, skill, enterprise, and
+perseverance had brought about. As on the previous day he went through
+the score with his son and called his attention to some of the details
+of the responsible and difficult task before him. The young man's
+knowledge of the score and aptitude in grasping the suggestions made to
+him comforted and quieted the father, and the representations at the
+opera house went off in a manner which caused complimentary comments on
+Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, February 15th, at
+3 o'clock A.M., a change in the sick man's condition set in, and the
+physicians, realizing that the case was hopeless, so informed the family
+early in the day. Dr. Damrosch was not disturbed by the prospect of
+death. He retained consciousness until one o'clock in the afternoon, and
+within an hour before that time called Walter to his bedside and asked
+that an opera score be brought that he might give a few more suggestions
+for the concluding representations in New York. He was assured that
+all would go well. His last thoughts and words were with his family
+and work. In disjointed phrases he repeatedly asked that nothing be
+permitted to suffer because of his sickness; that the preparations for
+the operas and concerts of the societies of which he was conductor
+should go on. With his mind thus occupied he sank into unconsciousness
+and died at a quarter after two o'clock in the afternoon of Sunday,
+February 15, 1885. His funeral took place at the opera house on
+February 18th, amidst impressive ceremonies, addresses being made by
+the Rev. Horatio Potter (Assistant Bishop of New York), the Rev. Henry
+Ward Beecher, and Professor Felix Adler. The remaining performances of
+the supplementary season were conducted by Mr. Lund, after which the
+company went on tour, Mr. Lund and Walter Damrosch sharing the work
+of conducting. The season had begun on November 17th, one week after
+Colonel Mapleson opened his seventh season at the Academy of Music. It
+lasted until February 21st, but the last subscription performance was
+that on the evening of the day after Dr. Damrosch had fallen ill. The
+subscription was for thirty-eight nights and twelve Saturday matinées.
+There was no Christmas interregnum. The list of operas produced, the
+date of first representation, and the number of times each opera was
+given can be read in the following table:
+
+
+   Opera                    First performance     Times given
+
+  "Tannhäuser" .............. November 17 ........... 9
+  "Fidelio" ................. November 19 ........... 3
+  "Les Huguenots" ........... November 21 ........... 5
+  "Der Freischütz" .......... November 24 ........... 1
+  "William Tell" ............ November 28 ........... 3
+  "Lohengrin" ............... December 3 ............ 9
+  "Don Giovanni" ............ December 10 ........... 2
+  "Le Prophète" ............. December 17 ........... 9
+  "La Muette de Portici" .... December 29 ........... 3
+  "Rigoletto" ............... January 2 ............. 1
+  "La Juive" ................ January 16 ............ 5
+  "Die Walküre" ............. January 30 ............ 7
+                                                     --
+   Total number of representations ................. 57
+
+
+Twelve out of twenty-two works promised in the prospectus were given,
+the unperformed operas being "Rienzi," "Der Fliegende Holländer,"
+"Le Nozze di Figaro," "Die Zauberflöte," "Il Barbiere di Siviglia,"
+Gounod's "Faust," "Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," "La Dame Blanche,"
+"Hans Heiling," and Kreutzer's "Nachtlager von Granada." The failure
+to produce all the operas promised was largely due to the teachings of
+the first month of the season. In the list were a number of peculiarly
+German works, in which the musical numbers alternated with spoken
+dialogue. The experience made with "Fidelio" and "Der Freischütz" showed
+that works of this character were unedifying to the persons of native
+birth in the audience, and this was one reason why it was decided
+to omit several of them. Another reason was that it was found that
+the large dimensions of the opera house detracted from even good
+performances of light works; and still another was that the style of
+the singers was adapted to vigorous and declamatory music, rather than
+to that which depends for effect upon purity and beauty of voice and
+excellence of vocalization. A comparison of the last performances
+with those which were given when the company was continually engaged
+in studying new works suggests another reason: "Der Freischütz" was
+poorly performed; the first representations of "William Tell" and
+"Les Huguenots" threatened the loss of all the prestige won by the
+performances of "Tannhäuser"; and "Fidelio" and "Don Giovanni" called
+for a vigorous exercise of good nature. Whatever disappointment came,
+therefore, from the failure to produce such interesting works as "Hans
+Heiling," one of the finest products, if not the finest, of the epigonoi
+of Weber, and "Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," unquestionably the best
+Shakespearian opera extant (Verdi's "Otello" and "Falstaff" excepted),
+was compensated for by the excellence which marked the performances
+of "Tannhäuser," "Lohengrin," "Le Prophète," and "Die Walküre." The
+production of this great work was a fitting end to Dr. Damrosch's
+artistic career. It marked the beginning of a new era in New York's
+operatic affairs, and led to the execution in the years which followed
+of his large plan to produce the entire Nibelung tragedy, "Tristan und
+Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger"--a plan carried out by his successor.
+For "Tannhäuser," "Fidelio," "William Tell," "La Muette de Portici," "La
+Juive," and "Die Walküre" new stage decorations had to be provided, and
+this was done on a scale of great liberality, in comparison with what
+New York had been accustomed to. The largest expenditure on a single
+representation was $4,000, and the average cost was $3,400. These sums
+were much smaller than those expended in the previous season on the
+hurdy-gurdy Italian list, and the stage pictures were all much finer.
+The saving was in the salaries of the artists, no two of which cost
+together as much as Mme. Nilsson alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+END OF ITALIAN OPERA AT THE ACADEMY
+
+
+The season 1885-86 witnessed the collapse of the Italian opposition at
+the Academy of Music, but also the rise of an institution in its
+place, which, had it commanded a higher order of talent and been more
+intelligently administered, might have served the lofty purposes set for
+the German opera. This was the American Opera Company, which, after an
+extremely ambitious beginning, made a miserable end a season later,
+leaving an odor of scandal, commercial and artistic, which infected the
+atmosphere for years afterward. German opera was also given throughout
+a large part of the season at the Thalia Theater, the manager being Mr.
+Gustav Amberg, and the conductor John Lund, who had come into notice at
+the Metropolitan Opera House by reason of the death of Dr. Damrosch.
+These performances were unpretentious, and divided between operetta and
+the type of opera which grew out of the Singspiel. Their significance,
+so far as this history is concerned, lay in the evidence which they bore
+of a considerable degree of interest on the part of the public outside
+of the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House in German opera. There
+were also commendable features in the repertory. Thus, the performances
+began on October 13, 1885, with "Der Freischütz," in which appeared
+Ferdinand Wachtel, a son of the famous "coachman tenor," Theodore
+Wachtel, whose sensational career in Europe and America had come to an
+end a decade before, though he did not die till 1893. The father's
+battle horse, "Le Postillon de Lonjumeau," was brought out for the son,
+but the public were not long in discovering that the latter had all the
+faults and none of the merits of the former, and he failed to become
+even a nine days' wonder. Among the operas brought forward by Mr.
+Amberg was Nicolai's "Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," and Emil Kaiser's
+"Trompeter von Säkkingen," a production obviously prompted by the
+sensational success in Europe of Nessler's opera of the same name.
+Nicolai's opera, which has never lost its popularity with the Germans,
+was probably given on its merits alone, but the fact that Dr. Damrosch
+had abandoned it after putting it in his prospectus, may have had
+something to do with its performance by Mr. Amberg's modest troupe, as
+well as by the proud American Opera Company, which brought it out in a
+specially prepared English version. Mr. Amberg's company also brought
+forward a German version of Maillart's "Les Dragons de Villars," under
+the title, "Das Glöckchen des Eremiten."
+
+Colonel Mapleson, having spent the summer bickering and negotiating
+with the directors of the Academy, after having failed to get into the
+Metropolitan Opera House under the cloak of his son Charles, began his
+eighth season in the Academy of Music, which had been furbished up for
+the occasion, on November 2, 1885. Mme. Patti had deserted him, and
+if he ever had made overtures to Mme. Nilsson, whose engagement he had
+announced, they came to naught. He now made a virtue out of necessity
+and proclaimed the merits of "good all 'round" opera, and the iniquity
+of the star system. His company, however, was the old one, with Alma
+Fohström and Minnie Hauk in place of Mme. Patti, Gerster, and Nevada.
+Among the familiar names in the prospectus were those of Mme. Lablache,
+Ravelli, de Anna, Del Puente, Cherubini, and Carraciolo; among the
+newcomers were Signor Giannini, an extremely serviceable tenor, who had
+sung in the previous season in the "Milan Grand Opera Company," compiled
+by James Barton Key and Horace McVicker, as related in the preceding
+chapter; also a Mlle. Felia Litvinoff, whom we shall meet again as Mme.
+Litvinne, sister-in-law of M. Édouard de Reszke, and member of a company
+singing at the Metropolitan Opera House. Mapleson opened with "Carmen,"
+the heroine represented by Mme. Hauk. She had created the character in
+London and New York, and set a standard which prevailed in England and
+America until the coming of Mme. Calvé; but time had dealt harshly
+with Mme. Hauk during the nineteen years which had elapsed since she,
+a lissome creature, had first sung at the Academy of Music (she had
+effected her operatic début in Brooklyn a few weeks before), and much of
+the old charm was gone from her singing, and nearly all from her acting.
+The opening was distinctly disappointing, and the season came to an end
+on November 28th, after twelve evening and four afternoon performances.
+There could scarcely have been a more convincing demonstration of how
+completely the fashionable world had abandoned the Academy of Music than
+the giving of a subscription season of only four weeks' duration. Within
+this period, moreover, there was no sign of effort to get out of the old
+rut into which Colonel Mapleson's repertory had sunk. "Carmen" was
+given three times, "Il Trovatore" twice, "Lucia di Lammermoor" twice,
+"L'Africaine" twice, "La Sonnambula" once, "La Favorita" once, "Fra
+Diavolo" twice, "Don Giovanni" twice, and "Faust" once. Mlle. Fohström
+effected her American début in a performance of "Lucia" on November
+9th. She had been announced for the second night of the season in "Il
+Trovatore," but was taken ill. She had been little heard of previous to
+her coming, though diligent observers of musical doings knew that she
+had sung for several seasons in Europe, and, I believe, South America,
+and had figured in Colonel Mapleson's spring season in London in 1885.
+She was a small creature, with features of a markedly Scandinavian
+type--she was a native of Finland--and had evidently studied the
+traditions of the Italian operatic stage to as much purpose as was
+necessary to present, acceptably, the stereotyped round of characters.
+But her gifts and attainments were not great enough to take her
+impersonations out of the rut of conventionality, nor to save her
+singing from the charge of nervelessness and monotony of color. Three
+seasons later (1888-89) she was a member of the German company at the
+Metropolitan Opera House, and sang such rôles as Marguerite de Valois
+("Les Huguenots"), Mathilde ("William Tell"), Marguerite ("Faust"),
+Bertha ("Le Prophète"), and Eudora ("La Juive"), giving place at the
+beginning of February to Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl, who had returned,
+to the delight of her admirers. In the interim she increased her
+artistic stature very considerably, her voice proving more effective
+in the new house than in the Academy of Music, which was incomparably
+better acoustically. Mapleson's singers came back to the Academy on
+December 20th to sing Wallace's "Maritana" in Italian (with Tito
+Mattei's recitatives in place of the spoken dialogue), and at the
+manager's benefit on December 23d Massenet's opera "Manon" was performed
+for the first time in America. Under the circumstances the cast deserves
+to be set forth: The Chevalier des Grieux, Signor Giannini; Lescaut,
+Signor del Puente; Monfontaine, Signor Rinaldini; the Count des Grieux,
+Signor Cherubini; du Bretigny, Signor Foscani, (Mr. Fox, an American);
+an innkeeper, Signor de Vaschetti; attendant of the Seminary of St.
+Sulpice, Signor Bieletto; Poussette, Mlle. Bauermeister; Javotte, Mme.
+Lablache; Rovette, Mlle. de Vigne; Manon, Mme. Hauk.
+
+From January 4th to April 17th the Academy of Music was occupied by the
+American Opera Company, the artistic director of which was Theodore
+Thomas, who had long stood at the head of orchestral music in America.
+As I have already intimated, rightly managed this institution might have
+become of the same significance to the future of opera in the United
+States as the German company, which had just established a domicile at
+the Metropolitan Opera House. Indeed, it might have become of greater
+significance, for the best friends of the German enterprise looked upon
+it as merely a necessary intermediary between the Italian exotic and a
+national form of art, with use of the vernacular, which every patriotic
+lover of music hoped to see installed some day in the foremost operatic
+establishment in the land. Unfortunately, its claims to excellence were
+put forward with impudent exaggeration, and there was no substantial
+or moral health in its business administration. It could not expect to
+cope with foreign organizations or local aggregations of foreign artists
+in respect of its principal artists, but it could, and did, in respect
+of scenic investiture, and in its choral and instrumental ensemble.
+Unhappily, even in these elements it was unwisely directed, though with
+a daring and a degree of confidence in popular support which may be said
+to have given it a characteristically American trait. In three respects
+the season was unique in the American history of English opera (or opera
+in English, as it would better he called, since there was not an English
+opera in its repertory), viz.: in the brilliancy of the orchestra, the
+excellence of the chorus (numerous and fresh of voice), and the
+sumptuousness of the stage attire.
+
+There were sixty-six performances in the season of light operas, and one
+ballet, the latter Delibes's "Sylvia." The operas were Goetz's "Taming
+of the Shrew" (five times), Gluck's "Orpheus" (thirteen times), Wagner's
+"Lohengrin" (ten times), Mozart's "Magic Flute" (six times), Nicolai's
+"Merry Wives of Windsor" (nine times), Delibes's "Lakmé" (eleven times),
+Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" (seven times), and Massé's "Marriage of
+Jeannette" (in conjunction with the ballet, five times). "The Taming of
+the Shrew" received its first performance in America on January 4, 1886;
+"Lakmé" on March 1st; "The Marriage of Jeannette," on March 24th, and
+"Lohengrin" (in English), on January 20th.
+
+Immediately on the death of Dr. Damrosch, trouble broke out in the
+Metropolitan company. There had been some jealousy among the women
+singers because of the large honorarium paid to Mme. Materna. It was her
+third visit to America, and she had learned to say dollars when at home
+she was accustomed to think of florins. Moreover, in the spring of the
+year she had made an extensive concert tour with Mme. Nilsson, under
+the direction of Mr. Thomas, and knew something about the liberality of
+Americans in the matter of artists' fees. Herr Schott (Dr. von Bülow's
+dis-, des-, and detonating tenor), developing a large and noisy
+managerial ambition, scarcely waited for the burial of Dr. Damrosch
+before beginning an agitation looking toward his installation in the
+dead director's place. All this might have been done in a seemly manner,
+and if it had been so done might have been carried through successfully
+and with popular approbation, for Herr Schott's project, in the main,
+was the one acted on by the directors. But Herr Schott, in an effort
+to promote his scheme, made an ungallant attack upon the artistic
+character of Mme. Materna, and this the public found to be "most
+tolerable and not to be endured." The occasion soon presented itself
+for Schott to show that he had an overweening sense of his own
+importance and popularity. At the end of the fourth of the five
+supplementary performances there was a demonstration of applause. Herr
+Schott interpreted it as a curtain call for himself, and promptly showed
+himself, and bowed his thanks. The applause was renewed, and he repeated
+this performance. Then came a third call, and again the tenor stepped
+out before the footlights. Now the applause of his friends was mingled
+with cries of "Materna!" but on a fourth call, and a fourth appearance
+of Schott, the popular feeling exploded in hisses and calls for the
+soprano. He retired unabashed, but Mme. Materna, answering the next
+call, was tumultuously greeted. So far as the overwhelming majority
+of the patrons of the house was concerned, Herr Schott's cake was now
+dough. Foolishly he, or his friends for him, proceeded to anger the
+directors from whom they were expecting favors. It was given out that
+he had submitted a proposition concerning the management of the opera
+house at the request of the directors. This met with prompt denial at
+the hands of Mr. Stanton, the secretary of the board, and by some of
+the directors themselves.
+
+Herr Schott had submitted a proposition, however, and had coupled it
+with a hint, which sounded like a threat, that in case it was not
+promptly accepted it would go to the directors of the Academy of Music.
+This vexed some of the stockholders of the older institution, who
+made public denial that they were considering German opera, even as a
+remote possibility. Herr Schott's proposition was dismissed with little
+ceremony by the Metropolitan directors, who, however, sent Mr. Stanton
+and Mr. Walter Damrosch to Europe to organize a company to carry out the
+lines already established during the coming season. In doing so they
+adopted several valuable suggestions contained in Herr Schott's plan.
+In this plan Schott was to be the musical director of the company, of
+course, but not the conductor. For this post he contemplated engaging
+Anton Seidl, then conductor of the Municipal Theater of Bremen and
+husband of the jugendlich Dramatische, who had successfully gone
+through the ordeal of one season--Auguste Krauss. Walter Damrosch was
+to be assistant conductor, Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl, Frau Krauss,
+Fräulein Brandt, and Herren Staudigl and Blum, of the old company, were
+to be kept, and the new singers were to be a Fräulein Gilbert, Fräulein
+Koppmeyer, Ferdinand Wachtel (son of Theodore, already referred to), and
+Carl Hill, bass.
+
+The organization, as finally effected, placed Mr. Stanton at its head
+as director, acting for the stockholders; Walter Damrosch, as assistant
+director, and also conductor; Lilli Lehmann, of Berlin, was the
+principal soprano; Marianne Brandt, principal contralto; Albert Stritt,
+principal tenor; Emil Fischer, of Dresden, principal bass, and Adolf
+Robinson, principal barytone. Other singers were Auguste Krauss (who now
+became Seidl-Krauss), Max Alvary, tenor; Fräulein Slach, mezzo-soprano;
+Eloi Sylva, tenor; Kemlitz, tenor; Lehmler, bass; Frau Krämer-Wiedl,
+dramatic soprano; Herr Alexi, barytone, and Fräulein Klein, soprano.
+With this company the second season of German opera was opened on
+November 23, 1885, the opera being "Lohengrin." I shall not take up
+the features of the season seriatim, nor make detailed record of
+the consecutive productions of the operas on its list. Only special
+incidents shall be recorded; but before this is done something may
+be said touching the newcomers:
+
+Anton Seidl was a young man when he came to New York, but he had filled
+the position of secretary to Richard Wagner, and been a member of his
+household for six years. Before then he had studied at the Leipsic
+Conservatory (which he entered in October, 1870), and been a chorus
+master or accompanist at the Vienna Opera. There he came under the eyes
+of Hans Richter, who sent him to Wagner when the latter asked for a
+young man who could give him such help on "The Ring of the Nibelung" as
+Richter had given him on "Die Meistersinger"--that is, to write out the
+clean score from the composer's hurried autograph. The period which he
+spent with Wagner was from 1872 to 1879. During all the preparations for
+the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876 he was one of the poet-composer's
+executive officers. He was one of the assistant conductors on the stage
+during the festival, and afterward conducted the preliminary rehearsals
+for the concerts which Wagner gave in London and elsewhere to recoup
+himself for the losses made at the festival. Then, on Wagner's
+recommendation, he was appointed conductor at the Municipal Theater
+at Leipsic (his associates being Victor Nessler and Arthur Nikisch),
+later on of Angelo Neumann's "Richard Wagner Theater," which gave
+representations of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" in many cities of Germany,
+Holland, England, and Italy, and still later of the Municipal Theater in
+Bremen--the post which he held when the death of Dr. Damrosch created
+the vacancy which brought him to New York. All this he had accomplished
+before his thirty-fifth year (he was born in Pesth on May 7, 1850), and
+he was not yet thirty when Wagner, in a speech delivered in Berlin,
+alluded to him as "the young artist whom I have brought up, and who is
+now accomplishing astounding things." Naturally, when he came to New
+York, he was looked upon as a prophet, priest, and paladin of Wagner's
+art. For twelve years he filled a large place in the music of New York,
+in concert room as well as opera house, and when he died it was like
+his predecessor, in the fulness of his powers, and in the midst of his
+activities. But this belongs to a later chapter of this story.
+
+Lilli Lehmann brought to New York chiefly the fame which she had won in
+Bayreuth at the first Wagner festival, of 1876, at which she was one of
+the Rhine daughters (Woglinde), and one of the Valkyrior (Helmwige), and
+where she also sang the music of the Forest Bird in "Siegfried." At that
+period in her career she was still classed among the light sopranos, and
+so she continued to be classed until she broke violently away from the
+clogs which tradition puts upon artists in the theaters of Germany. She
+felt the charm of freedom from the old theatrical conventions when she
+sang Isolde at Covent Garden on July 2, 1884, and her growth to a lofty
+tragic stature was rapid. She was filled with fervor for the large rôles
+of Wagner when she came to New York, and her success in them was so
+gratifying to her ambition that it led her at the expiration of her
+leave of absence from the Court Opera at Berlin (where she had been
+fifteen years as erste Coloratursängerin) to extend her stay in America
+beyond the period of her furlough, and involved her in difficulties with
+the Berlin Intendant, and the federation of German theatrical managers,
+called the Cartellverband. Having carried to her an offer from the
+president of the Cincinnati Festival Association to sing at the festival
+of May, 1886, which was the ultimate reason for her action, I am in
+a position to give the details of the story of what became a cause
+célèbre, and led to a wide discussion of the relations between the
+German managers and their singers. A short time before Miss Lehmann had
+declined an offer from the committee of the North American Sängerbund to
+take part in the Sängerfest, which was to be held in Milwaukee in June,
+1886. She had also been asked by the artistic manager of the house of
+Steinway & Sons to go on a concert tour with Franz Rummel and Ovide
+Musin. When I came to her with the dispatch from Cincinnati she spoke of
+her unwillingness to break her contract with Berlin, and of the loss of
+the lifelong pension to which her period of service at the Court Opera
+would eventually entitle her. I declined to advise her in the premises,
+but made a calculation of her prospective net earnings from the three
+engagements which were offering, and suggested that she compare the
+income from their investment with the pension which she would forfeit.
+I also agreed, if she wished it, to reopen the negotiations with the
+Sängerfest officials at Milwaukee. She took the matter under advisement,
+and in a few days, having concluded the engagement with a representative
+of the Cincinnati association, she told me she had determined to stay in
+America during June. In July, against the advice of some of her American
+friends, she paid a fine imposed upon her by the Intendant of the Court
+Opera. The amount of the fine was 13,000 marks ($3,250), and this amount
+she had received from the Milwaukee engagement. I had written to Mr.
+Catenhusen, the director of the Sängerfest, as promised, and he had
+reopened negotiations with more than willingness. Asked for her terms,
+she replied: "Three thousand three hundred dollars," and turning to a
+friend said: "I'll let the festival pay my Berlin fine." After she had
+paid the money into the royal exchequer, the manager of Kroll's Theater
+engaged her for a series of representations, but met an unexpected
+obstacle in the form of a refusal of the Intendant of the Court Theater
+to restore her to the privileges which she had forfeited by breaking
+her contract. It was long before she succeeded in making peace with
+the Governmental administration of the Court Opera, and in the public
+discussion which accompanied her efforts she took part in an eminently
+characteristic way. The newspapers were open to her, and in the Berlin
+Tageblatt (I think it was) she defended her course on the ground that
+America had enabled her to exercise her talent in a field which the
+hidebound traditions of the German theaters would have kept closed to
+her. Once a florid singer, always a florid singer, was her complaint,
+and she added: "One grows weary after singing nothing but princesses
+for fifteen years." Though she began in "Carmen," and followed with
+"Faust," Miss Lehmann soon got into the Wagnerian waters, in which she
+was longing to adventure, and in them set some channel buoys which the
+New York public still asks Brünnhildes and Isoldes to observe. It was
+then, however, and still is, characteristic of her broad ideals in art,
+that, while winning the highest favor in tragic parts, she preserved not
+only her old skill, but her old love for good singing in the old sense.
+When, at the height of her Wagnerian career, she sang at a performance
+for her own benefit, she chose "Norma."
+
+From 1885 till the time when her operatic experiences had become the
+exception to her rule of concert work, the greater part of her career
+was spent in New York; and during the whole of the period she was in all
+things artistic an inspiration, and an exemplar to her fellow artists.
+For industry, zeal, and unselfish devotion in preparing an opera I have
+never met an artist who could be even remotely compared with her. When
+"Siegfried" was in rehearsal for its first American production, she took
+a hand in setting the stage. Though she had nothing to do in the second
+act, she went into the scenic lumber room and selected bits of woodland
+scenery, and with her own hands rearranged the set so as to make
+Siegfried's posture and surroundings more effective. When the final
+dress rehearsal of "Götterdämmerung" was reached a number of the
+principal singers were still uncertain of their music. Miss Lehmann was
+letter perfect, as usual, but without a demur repeated the ensembles
+over and over again, singing always, as was her wont, with full voice
+and intense dramatic expression. This had been going on literally for
+hours when the end of the second act was reached. When she came into the
+audience room for the intermission I ventured to expostulate with her:
+
+"My dear Miss Lehmann, pray have a care. You are not effecting your
+début in New York, nor is this a public performance. Think of to-morrow.
+You will weary your voice. Why do you work so? Markiren Sie doch!"
+
+"Markiren thu Ich nie!" ("Markiren," it may be explained, is the
+technical term for singing in half-voice, or just enough to mark the
+cues.) "As for the rest, rehearsals are necessary, if not for one's
+self, then at least for the others. Don't be alarmed about my voice.
+It is easier to sing all three Brünnhildes than one Norma. You are so
+carried away by the dramatic emotion, the action, and the scene that
+you do not have to think how to sing the words. That comes of itself.
+But in Bellini you must always have a care for beauty of tone and
+correct emission. But I love 'Norma,' and Mozart's 'Entführung.'"
+
+Very different this from the conduct of Max Alvary after he had begun to
+grow into public favor. He was a son of the Düsseldorf painter, Andreas
+Achenbach, and came to New York without reputation, and engaged to
+sing second rôles. Early in the season Stritt, the first tenor, after
+creating the part of Assad in Goldmark's "Königin von Saba" yielded it
+up to Alvary, finding the range of the music a little too trying for
+his voice. Alvary's handsome face and figure, especially the latter,
+his gallant bearing, and his impeccable taste in dress, made a deep
+impression, and it was not long before he developed into a veritable
+matinée girl's idol. He developed also an enormous conceit, which near
+the end of his New York career led him to think that he was the opera,
+and that he might dictate policies to the manager and the directors back
+of him. So in the eyes of the judicious there were ragged holes in his
+shining veneer long before his career in New York came to a close. The
+preparation of "Siegfried" for performance led to an encounter between
+him and Mr. Seidl, in which the unamiable side of his disposition, and
+the shallowness of his artistic nature were disclosed. At the dress
+rehearsal, when alone on the stage, he started in to go through his
+part in dumbshow. Seidl requested him to sing.
+
+"It is not necessary; I know my part," was the ungracious reply.
+
+"But this is a rehearsal. It is not enough that you know your part
+or that you know that you know your part. I must know that you know
+it. Others must sing with you, and they must hear you."
+
+He started the orchestra again. Not a sound from the puffed up little
+tenor in his picturesque bearskin and pretty legs. Seidl rapped for
+silence, and put down his baton.
+
+"Call Mr. Stanton!" he commanded.
+
+Mr. Stanton was brought from his office, and Mr. Seidl briefly explained
+the situation. He would not go on with the rehearsal unless Mr. Alvary
+sang, and without a rehearsal there would be no first performance of
+"Siegfried" to-morrow. Mr. Alvary explained that to sing would weary
+him.
+
+"I shall not sing to-day and to-morrow. Choose; I'll sing either to-day
+or to-morrow."
+
+"Sing to-day!" said Stanton curtly, and turned away from the stage. Like
+a schoolboy Alvary now began to sing with all his might, as if bound to
+incapacitate himself for the next day. But he would have sacrificed a
+finger rather than his opportunity on the morrow, and the little misses
+and susceptible matrons got the hero whom they adored for years
+afterward.
+
+Next to Miss Lehmann, the most popular singer in the company in this
+second year of German opera at the Metropolitan was Emil Fischer, the
+bass. Except for a short period spent abroad in an effort to be an opera
+manager in Holland, Fischer has remained a New Yorker ever since he came
+in 1885. This has not been wholly of his own volition, however. He came
+from Dresden, where he was an admired member of the Court Opera. His
+coming, or his staying, involved him in difficulty with the Royal
+Intendant, and though the singer began legal proceedings against his
+liege lord, the King of Saxony, for rehabilitation, he never regained
+the privileges which he had forfeited in order to win the fame and
+money which came to him here. The fame was abiding; the money was
+not. Twenty-one year after his coming his old admirers were still so
+numerous, and their admiration so steadfast, that a benefit performance
+at the Metropolitan Opera House, in which he took part in an act of
+"Die Meistersinger," yielded nearly $10,000.
+
+The season of 1885-86 at the Metropolitan Opera House began on November
+23d, and lasted till March 6th, with an interregnum of two weeks from
+December 19th to January 4th, during which the company gave performances
+in Philadelphia, with woeful financial results, the loss to the
+stockholders being $15,000. The excellence of the management and the
+wisdom and honesty of the artists were attested by the circumstance that
+not once was an opera changed after it was announced. Nine operas were
+performed, and of these three were wholly new to the Metropolitan
+stage, two were absolutely new to America, and two were provided with
+considerable new scenery. The table of performances was as follows:
+
+
+   Opera                    First performance     Times given
+
+  "Lohengrin" .............. November 23 ............ 4
+  "Carmen" ................. November 25 ............ 2
+  "Der Prophet" ............ November 27 ............ 3
+  "Die Walküre" ............ November 30 ............ 4
+  "Die Königin von Saba" ... December 2 ............ 15
+  "Tannhäuser" ............. December 11 ............ 4
+  "Die Meistersinger" ...... January 4 .............. 8
+  "Faust" .................. January 20 ............. 5
+  "Rienzi" ................. February 5 ............. 7
+                                                     --
+  Total representations ............................ 52
+
+
+The attractive charm of a new work was shown in the success achieved
+by Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba," which was given with great pomp in its
+externals, but also finely from a musical point of view. It brought into
+the box office an average of $4,000 for fifteen performances, and was
+set down as the popular triumph of the season, though, considering that
+"Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" had a month less to run, its record
+was also remarkable. The average difference in attendance on the two
+works which led the list was about one hundred and fifty. The directors
+had fixed the assessment on the stockholders in October at $2,000 a box,
+and their receipts from this source were $136,700; from the general
+public, $171,463.13; total, $308,163.13. The cost of producing the
+operas, omitting the charges for new scenery and properties, but
+including the expenses of the Philadelphia season, was $244,981.96. The
+fixed charges on the building (taxes, interest, and rental account) were
+about $85,000 in the preceding year, and the financial outcome was so
+satisfactory to the stockholders that the directors promptly re-engaged
+Mr. Seidl, and adopted a resolution empowering the managing director,
+Edmund C. Stanton, to make contracts with artists for three years. It
+was interesting to note the effect upon the opera houses and artists
+of Germany. I cannot recall that there were any more difficulties like
+those which attended the disruption of their contracts by Fräulein
+Lehmann and Herr Fischer. Instead, the managers of the municipal
+theaters of Germany especially (and, I doubt not, court theaters also)
+found that they, too, could come in for a share of the American dollars
+by granting leaves of absence for the New York season, and taking a
+percentage of the liberal fees received by their stars.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WAGNER HOLDS THE METROPOLITAN
+
+
+The incidents of the early history of the Metropolitan Opera House come
+to me in such multitude that I find it difficult to apportion seasons
+and chapters in this record. Later, it may be, when the new order of
+things shall have been established, and again given place to the old,
+the relation may make more rapid progress. I have already devoted much
+space to the second German season, but there are a few details which
+deserve special consideration. The first of these (if the reader will
+accept the instantaneous popularity of Mr. Seidl as a conclusion from
+the remarks made in his introduction in these annals) was the first
+appearance of Lilli Lehmann. Circumstances would have it that she should
+show herself first, not as the singer of old-fashioned florid rôles,
+with which (except for her Bayreuth experience) she was associated, nor
+yet as the Wagnerian tragedienne which she became later, but in a
+transitional character--that of Carmen in Bizet's opera of that name.
+Lehmann as the gipsy cigarette maker, with her Habanera and Seguidilla,
+with her errant fancy wandering from a sentimental brigadier to a
+dashing bull fighter, is a conception which will not come easy to the
+admirers of the later Brünnhilde and Isolde; and, indeed, she was a
+puzzling phenomenon to the experienced observers of that time. Carmen
+was already a familiar apparition to New Yorkers, who had imagined that
+Minnie Hauk had spoken the last word in the interpretation of that
+character. When Fräulein Lehmann came her tall stature and erect, almost
+military, bearing were calculated to produce an effect of surprise of
+such a nature that it had to be overcome before it was possible to enter
+into the feeling with which she informed the part. To the eye, moreover,
+she was a somewhat more matronly Carmen than the fancy, stimulated by
+earlier performances of the opera or the reading of Mérimée's novel,
+was prepared to accept; but it was in harmony with the new picture that
+she stripped the character of the flippancy and playfulness popularly
+associated with it, and intensified its sinister side. In this, Fräulein
+Lehmann deviated from Mme. Hauk's impersonation and approached that
+of Mme. Trebelli, which had been brought to public notice at the
+first Italian season at the Metropolitan Opera House. In her musical
+performance she surpassed both of those admired and experienced artists.
+Her voice proved to be true, flexible, and ringing, and, also, of a most
+particularly telling quality. She disclosed ability to fill the part
+with the passionate expression and warmth of color which it called for,
+and utilized that ability judiciously and tastefully. M. Eloi Sylva, the
+new tenor, effected his American introduction in Meyerbeer's "Prophet"
+on November 27th. He was an exceedingly robust singer, with an imposing
+stage presence, a powerful voice, which, in its upper register,
+especially, was vibrant, virile, and musical. Two seasons later he
+essayed English opera, with about the same results, so far as his
+pronunciation was concerned, as he achieved in German. Fräulein Lehmann
+was first seen and heard as Brünnhilde in "Die Walküre" on November
+30th. She was statuesquely beautiful, and her voice glorified the music.
+In the first scene she brought into beautiful relief the joyful nature
+of the Wishmaiden; her cries were fairly brimming with eager, happy
+vitality. While proclaiming his fate to Siegmund, she was first inspired
+by a noble dignity, then transformed instantaneously into a sympathetic
+woman by the hero's devotion to the helpless and hapless woman who lay
+exhausted on his knees.
+
+The first of the two novelties of the season was Goldmark's opera
+"Die Königin von Saba," which had its first performance in America on
+December 2d. The cast was as follows: Sulamith, Fräulein Lebmaun;
+Königin, Frau Krämer-Wiedl; Astaroth, Fräulein Brandt; Solomon, Herr
+Robinson; Assad, Herr Stritt; Hohepriester, Herr Fischer; Baal Hanan,
+Herr Alexi. Mr. Seidl conducted. The opera (which had had its first
+production in Vienna ten years before, and had achieved almost as much
+success in Germany as Nessler's "Trompeter von Säkkingen") was produced
+with great sumptuousness, and being also admirably sung and acted, it
+made a record that provided opera-goers in New York with a sensation of
+a kind that they had not known before, and to which they did not grow
+accustomed until the later dramas of Wagner began their triumphal career
+at the Metropolitan. Twenty years afterward (season 1905-06) Mr. Conried
+revived the opera at the Metropolitan, but it was found that in the
+interim its fires had paled. In 1885 there were reasons why the public
+should not only have been charmed, but even impressed by the opera. In
+spite of its weaknesses it was then, and still is, an effective opera.
+Thoughtfully considered, the libretto is not one of any poetical worth,
+but in its handling of the things which give pleasure to the superficial
+observer it is admirable. It presents a story which is fairly rational,
+which enlists the interest, if not the sympathy, of the observers, which
+is new as a spectacle, and which is full of pomp and circumstance.
+Looked at from its ethical side and considered with reference to the
+sources of its poetical elements, it falls under condemnation. The title
+of the opera would seem to indicate that the Bible story of the visit of
+the Queen of Sheba to Solomon had been drawn on for the plot. That is
+true. The Queen of Sheba comes to Jerusalem to see Solomon in his glory,
+and that is the end of the draft on the Biblical story; the rest is the
+modern poet's invention. But that is the way of operas with Biblical
+subjects--a few names, an incident, and the rest of invention. In
+Gounod's "Reine de Saba" the magnificently storied queen tries to elope
+with the architect of Solomon's temple like any wilful millionaire's
+daughter. Salome is a favorite subject just now that the danse du
+ventre is working its way into polite society, but save for the dance
+and the names of the tetrarch and his wife, the Bible contributes
+nothing to the Salome dramas and pantomimes. Sulamith, who figures like
+an abandoned Dido, in the opera of Mosenthal and Goldmark, owes her
+name, but not her nature or any of her experiences, to the pastoral
+play which Solomon is credited with having written. The Song of Songs
+contributes, also, a few lines of poetry to the book, and a ritualistic
+service celebrated in the Temple finds its prototype in some verses from
+Psalms lxvii and cxvii, but with this I have enumerated all that "Die
+Königin von Saba" owes to the sacred Scriptures. Solomon's magnificent
+reign and marvelous wisdom, which contribute factors to the production,
+belong to profane as well as to sacred history, and persons with deeply
+rooted prejudices touching the people of Biblical story will be happiest
+if they can think of some other than the Scriptural Solomon as the
+prototype of Mosenthal and Goldmark, for in truth they make of him a
+sorry sentimentalist at best. The local color of the old story has been
+borrowed from the old story; the dramatic motive comes plainly from
+"Tannhäuser"; Sulamith is Elizabeth, the Queen Venus, Assad Tannhäuser,
+and Solomon Wolfram. Goldmark's music is highly spiced. At times it
+rushes along like a lava stream, every measure throbbing with eager,
+excited, and exciting life. He revels in instrumental color; the
+language of his orchestra is as glowing as the poetry attributed to the
+veritable King whom the operatic story celebrates. Many composers before
+him made use of Oriental cadences and rhythms, but to none did they seem
+so like a native language. It has not been every Jew who could thus
+handle a Jewish subject. Compare Halévy, Meyerbeer, and Rubinstein with
+Goldmark.
+
+The first performance of Wagner's "Meistersinger" fell on the same
+night as the production for the first time in America of Goetz's
+"Widerspänstigen Zähmung" in English by the National Opera Company.
+We thus had in juxtaposition an admirable operatic adaptation of a
+Shakespearian comedy and a modern comedy, of which I thought at the
+time I could not speak in higher praise than to say that it was truly
+Shakespearian in its delineation of character. In my book, "Studies in
+the Wagnerian Drama," I have analyzed Wagner's comedy from many points
+of view, and printed besides the results of investigations of the old
+Nuremberg mastersingers made on the spot. The significance of this
+record is that it tells of the introduction in America of a comedy
+which, though foreign in matter and manner to the thoughts, habits, and
+feelings of the American people, has, nevertheless, held a high place
+in their admiration. Later we shall see that this admiration was based
+on the sound understanding of the play which the original, performers
+inculcated. Let their names therefore be preserved. They were: Hans
+Sachs, Emil Fischer; Veit Pogner, Josef Staudigl; Kunz Vogelsang,
+Herr Dworsky; Konrad Nachtigal, Emil Sänger; Sixtus Beckmesser, Otto
+Kemlitz; Fritz Kothner, Herr Lehmler; Balthasar Zorn, Herr Hoppe; Ulrich
+Eisslinger, Herr Klaus; Augustin Moser, Herr Langer; Hermaun Ortel,
+Herr Doerfer; Hans Schwartz, Herr Eiserbeck; Hans Foltz, Herr Anlauf;
+Walther von Stolzing, Albert Stritt; David, Herr Kramer; Eva, Auguste
+Seidl-Krauss; Magdalena, Marianne Brandt; Nachtwächter, Carl Kaufmann.
+Mr. Seidl conductor.
+
+I modulate to the Metropolitan season 1886-87 through the performances
+of the opposition, which began at the Academy of Music, but ended in
+the house which was now definitely acknowledged to be the home, and
+only home, of fashionable opera. Mme. Patti provided the last bit of
+evidence. In the two preceding seasons she had led Colonel Mapleson's
+forces at the Academy; yet the public would have none of his opera. Now,
+after a year's absence, she returned to America under the management of
+Mr. Abbey, who had opposed Nilsson to her when the rivalry of the houses
+began. She gave operatic concerts, one, two, three, and four, at the
+Academy of Music, with old favorites of the New York public--Scalchi,
+Novara, and a French tenor named Guille--in her company, besides Signor
+Arditi; and she gave fragments of opera ("Semiramide" and "Martha"),
+besides a miscellaneous concert. The experiences of Mme. Patti on her
+return to her old home in 1881 were measurably repeated. The great
+singer was admired, of course, and half an operatic loaf was accepted as
+better than no bread. This was in November, 1886, and in April, 1887,
+Mr. Abbey decided to offer the operatic loaf, such as it was, but to
+cut it, not at the house with which Patti's name had been intimately
+associated, but at the Metropolitan Opera House. He was conjuring
+with the legend (then new, but afterward worn threadbare), "Patti's
+Farewell." I am writing in July, 1908, and have just been reading the
+same legend again in the London newspapers--twenty-one years after
+it served Mr. Abbey a turn. In April, then, Mr. Abbey came to the
+Metropolitan Opera House with Mme. Patti to give six "farewell"
+operatic performances. The company consisted of Scalchi, Vicini,
+Galassi, Valerga, Del Puente, Novara, Abramoff, Corsi, and Migliara,
+some of them recruited from an earlier company that had come and
+departed like a shadow in the fall season. Also Miss Gertrude Griswold,
+whom I mention because she was an American singer who had given promise
+of good things in Europe, and who helped Mme. Patti with the one and
+doubly singular performance of "Carmen," in which she was seen and
+(occasionally) heard in the United States. Mr. Abbey gave six
+performances, in all of which Mme. Patti appeared, the operas being
+"La Traviata," "Semiramide," "Faust," "Carmen," "Lucia," and "Marta."
+The financial results were phenomenal. The public paid nearly $70,000
+for the six operas! Had Colonel Mapleson been able to do fifty per cent.
+of such business the Academy of Music might have been saved. But Mr.
+Abbey, to use the slang of the stage, was playing Patti as a sensation.
+Prices of admission were abnormal, and so was the audience. Fashion
+heard Patti at the Metropolitan, and so did suburban folk, who came to
+$10 opera in business coats, bonnets, and shawls. Such audiences were
+never seen in the theater before or since.
+
+This was a little Italian opera season, but a successful one, and one
+housed at the Metropolitan. In the fall there had been another at the
+Academy of Music, which was not a success, and which ended in a quarrel
+between prima donna and manager that contributed a significant item to
+the popular knowledge of the status of Italian opera. On October 18th an
+Italian named Angelo began a season of Italian opera at the Academy. The
+name of the company was the Angelo Grand Italian Opera Company, and its
+manager's experience had been made, as an underling of Mapleson in the
+luggage department. The season, as projected, was to last five weeks,
+and a virtue proclaimed in the list was to be a departure from the
+hurdy-gurdy list which had been doing service so long. There were smiles
+among the knowing that a trunk despatcher should appear as the successor
+of his former employer, and that employer so polished a man of the world
+as James H. Mapleson; but opera makes strange bedfellows, and there have
+been stranger things than this in its history. A Hebrew boy named Pohl
+was little more than a bootblack when he entered the service of Maurice
+Strakosch, but as Herr Pollini a couple of decades later he was a
+partner of that elegant gentleman and experienced impresario, and one of
+the operatic dictators of Germany. Eventually, in the case of the Angelo
+Grand Italian Opera Company, it turned out that the Deus ex machina was
+the prima donna, Giulia Valda (Miss Julia Wheelock), an American singer,
+who had chosen this means of getting a hearing in her native land. The
+list of operas sounded like an echo of half a century before. Five
+operas were given, and four of them were by Verdi: "Luisa Miller,"
+"I Lombardi," "Un Ballo in Maschera," and "I due Foscari;" the remaining
+opera was Petrella's "Ione." Here was an escape from the threadbare
+with a vengeance. It made the critics rub their eyes and wonder if Mme.
+Valda had not been in the company of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. Five
+weeks were projected, but trouble came at the end of a fortnight--that
+is to say, it came to public notice at the end of a fortnight; it began
+probably with the season. On November 3d the persons who came to hear
+a promised performance of "La Juive" found the doors of the Academy
+closed. A few spasmodic efforts to galvanize the corpse into the
+semblance of life were made, but in vain; the Angelo Grand Italian Opera
+Company was dead. Some of its members had been heard before in other
+organizations; some were heard later. They were Giulia Valda, Mlle.
+Prandi, Mme. Valerga, Mlle. Corre, Mathilde Ricci, Mme. Mestress,
+Mme. Bianchi-Montaldo, Signor Vicini, Lalloni, Bologna, Greco,
+Giannini, Pinto, Corsi, Migliara, and Conti. The conductors were
+Logheder and Bimboni, the latter of whom was discovered as a young
+conductor of surprising merit twenty years later by Boston.
+
+One season of the American Opera Company sufficed to involve it in
+such financial difficulties that its managers deemed a reorganization
+necessary. It appeared, therefore, in the season of 1886-87 under the
+title, National Opera Company. Mr. Theodore Thomas was still its musical
+director, and Mr. Gustav Hinrichs and Arthur Mees assistant conductors;
+Charles E. Locke was the business manager. The company spent the
+greater part of the season in other cities, but gave two series of
+representations in Brooklyn, at the Academy of Music, and one series at
+the Metropolitan Opera House. The first Brooklyn season was of one week,
+from December 27th to January 1st, when the German company was idle; the
+second embraced the Thursday evenings from February 28th to March 26th,
+during which period the company gave a regular series of representations
+in New York. Among the singers were Pauline L'Allemand, Emma Juch,
+Laura Moore, Mathilde Phillips (sister of Adelaide Phillips, one of
+the singers of first rank sent out into the world by America), Jessie
+Bartlett Davis, Mme. Bertha Pierson, William Candidus, Charles Bassett
+(The Signor Bassetti of Colonel Mapleson's company in the previous
+season), William Fessenden, William Ludwig, Myron W. Whitney, Alonzo E.
+Stoddard, and William Hamilton. The notable feature of the repertory was
+the first production in America of Rubinstein's opera "Nero," on March
+14, 1887. The book had been translated for the production by Mr. John
+P. Jackson. Mr. Thomas conducted, and the cast was as follows: Nero
+Claudius, William Candidus; Julius Vindex, William Ludwig; Tigellinus,
+A. E. Stoddard; Balbillus, Myron W. Whitney; Saccus, William Fessenden;
+Sevirus and a Centurion, William Hamilton; Terpander, William H. Lee;
+Poppaea, Bertha Pierson; Epicharis, Cornelia van Santen; Chrysa, Emma
+Juch; Agrippina, Emily Sterling; Lupus, Pauline L'Allemand. So far as I
+can recall, "Nero" is the only opera of Rubinstein's that has been given
+in the United States. Its performance by the National Opera Company did
+greater justice to its spectacular than its musical features, but in
+this there was not a large measure of artistic obliquity. The opera
+seems to have been constructed with the idea that mimic reproductions
+of scenes from Rome in its most extravagant, debauched, and luxuriant
+period would prove more fascinating to the public than an effort to
+present the moral and intellectual life of the same place and period
+through the medium of an eloquent, truthful, compact, well-built, and
+logically developed drama with its essentials further vitalized by
+music. From whatever side he is viewed, Nero is an excellent operatic
+character, and the wonder is that the opera of Barbier and Rubinstein
+did not have sixty instead of only six predecessors. Not only is it
+a simple matter to group around him historical pictures of unique
+interest, brilliancy, variety, and suggestiveness, but, as the
+historians present him to us, he is as made for the stage. His cruelty,
+profligacy, effeminacy, cowardice, and artistic vanity are traits which
+invite dramatic illustration, and for each one of them the pages of
+Suetonius afford incidents which accept a dramatic dress none the less
+willingly because they are facts of historical record. Besides all this,
+there is something like poetical justice in the conceit of making a
+stage character out of the emperor who hired himself to a theatrical
+manager for 1,000,000 sesterces (say $40,000--a pretty fair honorarium
+for the time, I should say), and who employed a claque of 5,000 young
+men. To throw a sequence of the characteristic incidents in the life
+of Nero into the form of a dramatic poem, logical in its development,
+and theatrically effective, ought not to be a difficult thing to do.
+And yet, in the case of this opera, Barbier did not do it, and by a
+singularly persistent and consistent fatality Rubinstein apparently
+found every weak spot in the poet's fabric, and loosened and tangled his
+threads right there. The operas and ballets performed by the National
+Opera Company in this season besides "Nero" were "The Flying Dutchman,"
+"The Huguenots," "Faust," "Aïda," "Lakmé," "The Marriage of Jeannette,"
+Massé's "Galatea," "Martha," "Coppélia," and Rubinstein's "Bal Costumé,"
+an adaptation.
+
+"Galatea" had its first New York performance at the Academy of Music
+in Brooklyn, on December 30, 1886, under the direction of Arthur Mees;
+Delibes's ballet "Coppélia" at the Metropolitan on March 11, 1887,
+under the direction of Gustav Hinrichs. It is likely that both works
+were previously given by the National Opera Company on tour.
+
+The fourth regular subscription season of opera at the Metropolitan
+Opera House (third season of opera in German) began on November 8, 1886,
+under the management of the board of directors, the direction of Edmund
+C. Stanton, with Anton Seidl and Walter Damrosch, conductors. It
+extended over fifteen weeks, the closing date being February 26, 1887,
+and comprised forty-five subscription nights, and fifteen matinées,
+no opera having been given from December 5th to January 3d. In the
+prospectus the directors had promised to produce fourteen operas, and
+the promise was kept as to number, though two operas, "Tristan und
+Isolde" and "Fidelio," were substituted for "Siegfried" (which had been
+completely staged) and "Les Huguenots." The operas thus substituted were
+the most successful of the list, "Fidelio" being received with so much
+favor on the two occasions for which it had been announced that an
+extra performance had to be given to satisfy the popular demand. Of
+this incident more presently. This extra performance raised the number
+of representations to sixty-one, which were distributed through the list
+of operas as follows:
+
+   Opera                    First performance       Times given
+
+  "Die Königin von Saba" ........... November 8 ....... 4
+  "Die Walküre" .................... November 10 ...... 3
+  "Aïda" ........................... November 12 ...... 4
+  "Der Prophet" .................... November 17 ...... 5
+  "Das Goldene Kreutz" and ballet .. November 19 ...... 4
+  "Tannhäuser" ..................... November 28 ...... 6
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ............. December 1 ....... 8
+  "Faust" .......................... December 8 ....... 3
+  "Lohengrin" ...................... December 15 ...... 4
+  "Merlin" ......................... January 3 ........ 5
+  "Fidelio" ........................ January 14 ....... 3
+  "Die Meistersinger" .............. January 21 ....... 5
+  "Rienzi" ......................... January 31 ....... 5
+  "La Muette de Portici" ........... February 16 ...... 2
+                                                       --
+   Total performances ................................ 61
+
+
+The cost of representation was $288,400, and of maintaining the opera
+house about $154,000; in this total of about $442,000 was included the
+cost of the scenery, wardrobe, and properties. The company's receipts
+comprised $202,751 from subscriptions and box office sales, about
+$33,000 from rentals, and about $175,000 from an assessment of $2,500
+from each of the stockholders; in all about $410,751 I am able to be
+thus explicit about the financial affairs of the German régime because
+of courtesies received at the time from Mr. Stanton, with the sanction
+of the stockholders, who were inclined then to look upon their
+undertaking as one of public, not merely of private, concern. The
+figures will enable the student of this history to view intelligently
+some of the happenings at a later period, when the giving of opera
+became a business speculation pure and simple. In attendance, the
+measure of public patronage was represented by 137,399. The prices of
+admission ranged from fifty cents to four dollars, and the average
+receipts were $1.47 1/2 per individual.
+
+The incidents of a particularly interesting character in the season were
+the first American performances of "Tristan und Isolde," and Goldmark's
+opera "Merlin," and the coming and going of Albert Niemann; secondary
+in importance were the production of Wagner's "Rienzi," with which was
+connected the return of Anton Schott to the ranks of the company, the
+surprising triumph of "Fidelio," and the production of Brüll's opera,
+"Das goldene Kreutz," and the ballet, "Vienna Waltzes." "Tristan und
+Isolde" was brought forward on December 1, 1886, under the direction of
+Anton Seidl. The distribution of characters was as follows: Tristan,
+Albert Niemann; Isolde, Lilli Lehmann; König Marke, Emil Fischer;
+Kurwenal, Adolf Robinson; Melot, Rudolph von Milde; Brangäne, Marianne
+Brandt; Ein Hirt, Otto Kemlitz; Steuermann, Emil Sanger; Seemann,
+Max Alvary. The interesting character of the occurrence was fully
+appreciated by the public, and the drama was seen and heard by a
+remarkable assembly. The last seat had been sold four days before, and
+the vast audience room was crowded in every portion. The tenseness of
+the attention was almost painful, and the effect of Herr Niemann's
+acting in the climax of the third act was so vivid that an experienced
+actress who sat in a baignoir at my elbow grew faint and almost swooned.
+At the request of Mr. Stanton, or Mr. Seidl, he never ventured again
+to expose the wound in his breast, though the act is justified, if
+not demanded, by the text. The enthusiasm after the first act was
+tremendous. The performers came forward three times after the fall of
+the curtain, and then Mr. Seidl, who had won the greenest laurels that
+had yet crowned him, was called upon to join them, and twice more the
+curtain rose to enable the performers to receive the popular tribute.
+Five recalls after an act would have meant either nothing or a failure
+in an Italian theater; it was of vast meaning here. The reception
+accorded Wagner's love drama was not such an one as comes from an
+audience easily pleased or attracted by curiosity alone. It told of
+keen and lofty enjoyment and undisguised confession of the power of
+the drama. The applause came after the last note of the orchestral
+postludes. The drama was performed eight times in seven weeks, and
+took its place as the most popular work in the repertory, though in
+average attendance it fell a trifle short of the three representations
+of "Fidelio," which also served to signalize the season.
+
+I shall have something to say presently about Herr Niemann, and a
+criticism of his interpretation of the character of the hero of the
+tragedy can be spared. From a histrionic point of view it has been
+equaled only by his performances of Siegmund and Tannhäuser; nothing
+else has shown such stature that has been witnessed on the operatic
+stage of New York. Nor has his declamation of the text been equaled,
+though the compelling charm of Wagner's melody was potently presented
+years later by Jean de Reszke. Herr Niemann was long past the prime of
+life when he came to New York, and when he went back to Berlin after
+his last visit there was very little left of his public career; but the
+youngest artist in the company might have envied him the whole-souled
+enthusiasm with which he set about his tasks. How completely he
+dedicated himself to the artistic duty was illustrated when, in the
+season of 1887-88, he realized what had been the ambition of years,
+and gave a first performance of Siegfried in "Götterdämmerung." He had
+studied the part a dozen years before in the hope of appearing in it
+at the first Bayreuth festival; but Wagner did not want the illusion
+spoiled by presenting the actor of Siegmund on one evening as the actor
+of Siegfried on another, and Niemann's Siegmund was a masterpiece that
+must not be despoiled. In New York, on Niemann's second visit, he asked
+for the privilege of enacting the Volsung's part in the last division of
+the tetralogy, and studied the part ab initio with Seidl. I chanced one
+evening to be a witness of his study hour--the strangest one I ever saw.
+It was at the conductor's lodgings in the opera house. There was a
+pianoforte in the room, but it was closed. The two men sat at a table
+with the open score before them. Seidl beat time to the inaudible
+orchestral music, and Niemann sang sans support of any kind. Then
+would come discussion of readings, markings of cues, etc., all with
+indescribable gravity, while Frau Seidl-Krauss, a charming ingénue
+budding into a tragedienne, sat sewing in a corner. After the
+performance of the drama, I sat again with Niemann and Seidl over
+cigars and beer. I thanked Niemann for having discarded a universal
+trick in the scene of Siegfried's murder, and for carrying out Wagner's
+stage directions to the letter in raising his shield and advancing a
+step to crush Hagen, and then falling exhausted upon it.
+
+"I am glad you noted that," said Niemann in his broad Berlinese. "Years
+ago I was angered by the device which all Siegfrieds follow of lifting
+the shield high and throwing it behind themselves before they fall.
+Das hat doch gar kein Sinn. There's no sense in that; if he has
+strength enough to throw the shield over his head, he certainly has
+strength enough to hurl it at the man he wants to kill. He lifts the
+heavy shield for that purpose, but his strength gives way suddenly, and
+he falls upon it with a crash. It's dangerous, of course. A fellow might
+easily break a finger or a rib. But if you do a thing, do it right. I
+have waited more than ten years to sing Siegfried, and now I've done it;
+but, youngster (to Seidl), if we meet again years from now, and I've
+fifty marks in my pocket, I'll get an orchestra, and you will conduct
+just enough to let me sing 'Ach! dieses Auge, ewig nun offen,' and
+then I'll die in peace! That's the climax of Siegfried's part, and it
+must sound red, blood red--Siegfried is red; so is Tristan. Vogl sings
+Tristan well, but he's all yellow--not red, as he ought to be."
+
+I recall another bit of Niemann's characteristic criticism: Adolf
+Robinson, the barytone of the first few German seasons, was an excellent
+singer and also actor; but he belonged to the old operatic school,
+and was prone to extravagant action and exaggerated pathos. He was,
+moreover, fond of the footlights. At one of the last rehearsals for
+"Tristan und Isolde," Robinson, the Kurwenal of the occasion, was
+perpetually running from the dying hero's couch to the front of the
+stage to sing his pathetic phrases with tremendous feeling into the
+faces of the audience. Niemann, reclining on the couch, immovable as
+a recumbent statue, as was his wont, without a gesture, all evidence
+of the seething impatience which is consuming him mirrored in the
+expression of his face, and particularly his eyes, watched the
+conventional stage antics of his colleague till he could endure them no
+longer. He gave a sign to Seidl, who stopped the orchestra to hear the
+dying knight addressing his squire in wingèd, but un-Wagnerian, words
+to this effect:
+
+"My dear Robinson, this scene is not all yours--Tristan has also
+something to say here; but how am I to make my share of the dramatic
+effect if you are always going to run down to the audience and sing at
+it? After a while there will be nothing left for me to do but to get
+up and hurl my boots into the audience room. And I'm a very sick man.
+Now, there's a good fellow, come over here to the couch; stay by me
+and nurse me, and you'll see there's something in my part, too."
+
+Niemann's first American appearance was on November 10th in "Die
+Walküre." From the criticism of his performance, which I wrote for
+The Tribune on that occasion, I reprint the following extract as
+the best summing up which I am able to make of the great dramatic
+singer's art:
+
+
+The creation of a Wagnerian musical drama created also the need of
+Wagnerian singers. Those who go to see and hear Herr Niemann must go to
+see and hear him as the representative of the character that he enacts.
+It is only thus that they can do justice to themselves, to him, and to
+the art-work in which he appears. A drama can only be vitalized through
+representation, and the first claim to admiration which Herr Niemann
+puts forth is based on the intensely vivid and harmonious picture of
+the Volsung which he brings on the stage. There is scarcely one of the
+theatrical conventions which the public have been accustomed to accept
+that he employs. He takes possession of the stage like an elemental
+force. Wagner's dramas have excited the fancy of painters more than any
+dramatic works of the century, because Wagner was in a lofty sense a
+scenic artist. Niemann's genius, for less it can scarcely be called,
+utilizes this picturesque element to the full. His attitudes and
+gestures all seem parts of Wagner's creation. They are not only instinct
+with life, but instinct with the sublimated life of the hero of the
+drama. When he staggers into Hunding's hut and falls upon the bearskin
+beside the hearth a thrill passes through the observer. Part of his
+story is already told, and it is repeated with electrifying eloquence in
+the few words that he utters when his limbs refuse their office. The
+voice is as weary as the exhausted body. In the picturesque side of his
+impersonation he is aided by the physical gifts with which nature has
+generously endowed him. The figure is colossal; the head, like "the
+front of Jove himself"; the eyes large and full of luminous light, that
+seems to dart through the tangled and matted hair that conceals the
+greater portion of his face. The fate for which he has been marked out
+has set its seal in the heroic melancholy which is never absent even in
+his finest frenzies, but in the glare of those eyes there is something
+that speaks unfalteringly of the godlike element within him. This
+element asserts itself with magnificent force in the scene where
+Siegmund draws the sword from its gigantic sheath, and again when he
+calmly listens to the proclamation of his coming death, and declines
+the services of the messenger of Wotan who is sent to conduct him to
+Walhalla.
+
+There are aspects in which, even from a literary point of view, Wagner's
+"Ring of the Nibelung" seems to be the most Teutonic of the several
+German versions of the old legend which is its basis. It is a primitive
+Teutonism, however, without historical alloy; such a Teutonism as we can
+construct by letting the imagination work back from the most forceful
+qualities of the historical German to those which representatives of
+the same race may have had in a prehistoric age. The period of Wagner's
+tetralogy, it must be remembered, is purely mythical. The ruggedness of
+the type which we obtain by such a process is the strong characteristic
+of Herr Niemann's treatment of Wagner's musical and literary text. It
+is, like the drama itself, an exposition of the German esthetic ideal:
+strength before beauty. It puts truthful declamation before beautiful
+tone production in his singing and lifts dramatic color above what is
+generally considered essential musical color. That from this a new
+beauty results all those can testify who hear Herr Niemann sing the love
+song in the first act of "Die Walküre," which had previously in America
+been presented only as a lyrical effusion and given with more or less
+sweetness and sentimentality. Herr Niemann was the first representative
+of the character who made this passage an eager, vital, and personal
+expression of a mood so ecstatic that it resorts to symbolism, as if
+there was no other language for it. The charm with which he invests the
+poetry of this song (for this is poetry) can only be appreciated by one
+who is on intimate terms with the German language, but the dramatic
+effect attained by his use of tone color and his marvelous distinctness
+of enunciation all can feel.
+
+The defects in Herr Niemann's singing, the result of the long and hard
+wear to which his voice has been subjected in a career of thirty-five
+years' duration, are so obvious that I need not discuss them. To do
+so would be as idle as to attempt to deny their presence. He must be
+heard as a singing actor, as a dramatic interpreter, not as a mere
+singer.
+
+
+Niemann said farewell to the New York public at a notable performance
+of "Tristan und Isolde," the last of the season, on February 7, 1887.
+I doubt if the history of opera in New York discloses anything like
+a parallel to the occasion. Out of doors the night was distressingly
+dismal. A cold rain fell intermittently; the streets were deep with
+slush, and the soft ice made walking on the pavements uncomfortable,
+and even dangerous. But these things were not permitted to interfere
+with the determination of the lovers of the German lyric drama to bear
+testimony to their admiration for the artist who had done so much for
+their pleasure. The house was crowded in every part. Every seat had been
+sold days before. Many of the tickets had been bought by speculators,
+who, in spite of the untoward weather, reaped a rich harvest. During the
+day the prices obtained varied from ten dollars to fifteen dollars for
+the orchestra stalls (regular price, four dollars), and at night seats
+in the topmost gallery fetched as much as three dollars, which was six
+times the regular tariff. There were delegations in the audience from
+Boston, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. The enthusiasm after each act
+was of the kind that recalled familiar stories of popular outbursts in
+impressionable Italy. Herr Niemann husbanded his vocal resources in the
+first act, but after that both he and Fräulein Lehmann threw themselves
+into the work with utter abandon, such abandon, indeed, as made some of
+the prima donna's friends tremble for her voice. After two recalls had
+followed the second fall of the curtain a third round was swelled by
+a fanfare from the orchestra. To acknowledge this round Herr Niemann
+came forward alone, and was greeted with cheers, while a laurel wreath,
+bearing on one of its ribbons the significant line from "Tannhäuser,"
+"O, kehr zurück, du kühner Sänger," was handed up to him. The third act
+wrought the enthusiasm to a climax. After the curtain had been raised
+over and over again, Herr Niemann came forward and said, in German: "I
+regret exceedingly that I am not able to tell you in your own language
+how sincerely I appreciate your kindness toward me. I thank you
+heartily, and would like to say 'Auf wiedersehn.'" His place for the
+rest of the season was filled by Herr Anton Schott.
+
+I have referred to the "Fidelio" incident of the season, which may now
+be told, since Herr Niemann also figured in it. To Beethoven "Fidelio"
+was a child of sorrow; that fact is known to every student of musical
+history. On its first production it failed dismally. With his heart
+strings torn, the composer yielded to the arguments and prayers of his
+friends and revised the opera. In the new form it was revived, and made
+a better impression; but now Beethoven quarreled with his manager, and
+withdrew his opera from the Vienna theater. He offered it in Berlin, and
+it was rejected. For seven years it slept. Then it was taken in hand
+again by the composer, and adapted to a revised text. Some of the music
+elided at the first revision was restored. By this time four overtures
+had been written for it. Again it was brought forward; and this time the
+Viennese awoke to an appreciation of its splendor. Since 1814 its name
+has been almost the ineffable word for the serious musician. But sorrow
+and disaster have followed upon innumerable efforts to habilitate it
+in the opera houses of the world. We have seen that Dr. Damrosch made
+haste to produce it at the Metropolitan Opera House, but the financial
+results were so direful that two years later it was only upon the urgent
+entreaty of a few friends who stood close to him that Mr. Stanton
+consented to include it in the repertory for 1886-87.
+
+"But," said the director to his petitioners, "if I give it once I must
+give it twice, for I have two Leonores in my company, and there must be
+no quarrel."
+
+So he gave the opera on Friday, January 14th, with Fraulein Brandt
+as the heroine, and on Wednesday, January 19th, with Fräulein
+Lehmann--Niemann being the Florestan on both occasions. The enthusiasm
+was boundless, though the silly laugh of a woman in one of the boxes at
+the first performance so disconcerted Fräulein Brandt at the beginning
+of the duet in the dungeon scene that she broke down in tears, and Mr.
+Seidl had to stop the orchestra till she could sufficiently recover her
+composure to begin over again. Now, the popular interest was so great
+that Mr. Stanton gave an extra performance, with Fräulein Lehmann, and
+when the record of the season was made up, lo! Beethoven's opera led
+all the rest in average receipts and attendance. In Berlin, Dr. Ehrlich
+preached a sermon to the people of Germany with the incident as a text.
+
+As a novelty "Tristan und Isolde" had been preceded on November 19th
+by Brüll's pretty little opera, "Das goldene Kreutz," and the ballet,
+"Vienna Waltzes." It was succeeded on January 3d by Goldmark's "Merlin,"
+conducted by Walter Damrosch, with the parts distributed as follows:
+Artus, Robinson; Modrid, Kemlitz; Gawein, Heinrich; Lancelot, Basch;
+Merlin, Alvary; Viviane, Lehmann; Bedwyr, Von Milde; Glendower,
+Sieglitz; Morgana, Brandt; Dämon, Fischer. Much interest centered in
+the opera because of its newness (it had received its first production
+in Vienna less than two months before), and the great success achieved
+by its predecessor, "The Queen of Sheba;" but it failed of popular
+approval, eight operas preceding it in popularity, as evidenced by
+the attendance, and but one of them--"Tristan"--a novelty.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WAGNERIAN HIGH TIDE
+
+
+In this chapter I purpose to tell the story of a period of three years,
+from 1887 to 1890, and in order to cover the ground I shall leave out
+what appertains to the repetition of works incorporated in the repertory
+of the Metropolitan Opera House during the preceding three seasons.
+
+The period was an eventful one and marked the high-water of achievement
+and also of popularity of the German régime, but also the beginning of
+the dissatisfaction of the boxholders, which resulted two years later in
+a return to the Italian form. It witnessed the introduction of the "Ring
+of the Nibelung" in its integrity and illustrated in a surprising manner
+the superior attractiveness of Wagner's dramas to the rest of the
+operatic list. Outside of the Nibelung dramas it brought two absolute
+novelties to the knowledge of the public and revived several old operas
+of large historical and artistic significance, which had either never
+been heard at all in New York, or heard so long ago that all memory of
+them had faded from the public mind. It saw the light of competition
+flicker out completely at the Academy of Music, and after a year of
+darkness it beheld the dawn of Italian rivalry in what had become the
+home of German art.
+
+Twenty operas were brought forward in the first three years of the
+German régime. They were "Tannhäuser," "Fidelio," "Les Huguenots,"
+"Der Freischütz," "William Tell," "Lohengrin," "Don Giovanni," "The
+Prophet," "Masaniello," "Rigoletto," "La Juive," "Die Walküre,"
+"Carmen," "The Queen of Sheba," "Die Meistersinger," "Rienzi," "Aïda,"
+"Das Goldene Kreutz," "Tristan und Isolde," and "Merlin." (In this list
+I have set down the titles in the language in which they live in the
+popular mouth in order to avoid what might seem like an affectation were
+I to use the German form always in the story simply because the Italian
+and French works were sung in German.) Additions to the list in the
+season of 1887-88 were "Siegfried," "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen,"
+"Euryanthe," "Ferdinand Cortez," and "Götterdämmerung"; in the season of
+1888-89, "L'Africaine," "Das Rheingold," and "Il Trovatore"; in 1889-90,
+"Der Fliegende Holländer," "Un Ballo in Maschera," "Norma," and "Der
+Barbier von Bagdad."
+
+The record of the last two years indicated a falling off in energy,
+but though it caused disaffection at the time, it seems notable enough
+compared with the activities of the establishment twenty years later
+under much more favorable circumstances. For the last of the three
+seasons under discussion seven additions to what was called by courtesy
+the established list had been promised; but counting in "Norma," (a
+special performance for the benefit of Lilli Lehmann) and "The Flying
+Dutchman," which had been promised only by implication in the plan of
+a serial representation of Wagner's works, only four additions were
+made. Two causes operated toward the disappointing outcome. One was an
+epidemic of influenza which prevailed during the greater part of the
+winter and caused much embarrassment to the singers; the other was the
+inefficiency of the chorus--a defect which has not yet been remedied,
+but was greater in the season 1907-08 than a decade earlier. "Otello"
+was in readiness so far as the principals were concerned, but the chorus
+consumed so much time restudying old works that it had to be abandoned;
+also Lalo's "Le Roy d'Ys." Though the stockholders were giving opera
+themselves for themselves, they took no steps toward making it a
+permanent institution. Their decision to give German opera was made from
+year to year, and the end of every season brought with it practically
+a complete disruption of the company. There had to be a reorganization
+each fall. The directors were unwilling to give their own manager
+the degree of permanence which they bestowed without hesitation upon
+a lessee, and the policy of the house was thus kept continually in
+controversy. The fact is that the activities of the Germans were not
+to the taste of the stockholders, who were getting serious art where
+they were looking for fashionable diversion. This became painfully
+obvious when the conduct of the occupants of the boxes scandalized
+the institution to such a degree that the directors were compelled to
+administer a public rebuke to themselves and their associates, and a
+stigma was placed upon the institution from which it has suffered,
+very unjustly, ever since. But a discussion of these incidents can be
+more intelligently and profitably introduced later in this narrative.
+
+The fourth German season began on November 2, 1887, and ended on
+February 18, 1888, and consisted of forty-seven subscription nights,
+sixteen subscription matinées, and one extra matinée. In all fourteen
+operas were produced. The two Wagnerian novelties, "Götterdämmerung"
+and "Siegfried," were the most popular features of the season, the
+former being given seven times, though it was the last of the season's
+productions. It brought into the treasury a total of $30,324, or
+an average of $4,332, and was heard by audiences averaging 2,871.
+"Siegfried" was a good second. It had nine weeks' advantage of
+"Götterdämmerung" and was performed eleven times, with total receipts
+amounting to $37,124.50, or an average of $3,374.95. Pursued by its
+old fatality, "Fidelio" dropped to the foot of the list with four
+performances, which yielded only $8,997. The receipts for the season
+were $411,860.24, of which $190,087.24 came from the box office sales
+and subscriptions, $170,180 from the stockholders' assessment of $2,500
+on each box, and $51,593 from rentals. This assessment was only $24,000
+more than the cost of maintaining the opera-house, which was about
+$146,000. The staging of new operas cost $19,727.27, more than half of
+which was expended on Spontini's "Ferdinand Cortez." The scenery for
+"Siegfried" had been purchased the year before and also the costumes for
+that drama and "Götterdämmerung." The principal members of the company
+were Lilli Lehmann, Marianne Brandt, Auguste Seidl-Krauss, Biro di
+Marion, Louise Meisslinger, Albert Niemann, Max Alvary, Emil Fischer,
+Adolf Robinson, Rudolph von Milde, Johannes Elmblad, Herr Ferenczy,
+and Herr Alexi.
+
+The first American representation of Wagner's "Siegfried" took place on
+November 9, 1887. Anton Seidl conducted and the parts were distributed
+as follows: Siegfried, Max Alvary; Mime, Herr Ferenczy; der Wanderer,
+Emil Fischer; Alberich, Rudolph von Milde; Fafner, Johannes Elmblad;
+Erda, Marianne Brandt; Brünnhilde, Lilli Lehmann; Stimme des
+Waldvogels, Auguste Seidl-Krauss. The production of this drama was
+an invitation to the people of New York to take the longest and most
+decisive step away from the ordinary conventions of the lyric theater
+that had yet been asked of them. At the time it seemed foolishly
+presumptive to attempt a prediction of what the response would be. A
+season before "Tristan und Isolde" had been received with great favor
+and under conditions which did not admit a question of the honesty and
+intelligence of the appreciation. This was encouraging to the lovers of
+Wagner's dramas, but the difference between opera of the ordinary type
+and "Tristan und Isolde" is not so great as between "Tristan und Isolde"
+and "Siegfried," notwithstanding that in the love tragedy Wagner took
+as uncompromising a stand as ever did a Greek poet, and hewed to the
+lines of his theoretical scheme with unswerving fidelity. In the
+subject-matter of the drama lies the distinction. Despite the absence of
+the ethical element which places "Tannhäuser" immeasurably higher than
+"Tristan" as a dramatic poem, the latter drama contains an expression of
+the universal passion which is so vehement, so truthful, and so sublime
+that it seems strange that anybody susceptible to music and gifted with
+emotions could ever have been deaf to its beauties or callous to its
+appeals. Besides this, the sympathies are stirred in behalf of the
+personages of the play who stand as representatives of human nature,
+and, though the co-operation of a chorus, which has always been
+considered an essential element of the lyric drama, is restricted to
+a single act, the dramatic necessity of the restriction is so obvious
+that an audience, once engrossed in the tragedy, must needs resent such
+a violation of propriety as the introduction of a chorus in any scene
+except that of the first act would be. In "Siegfried," however, the case
+is not so plain. Here there is not only no chorus, but scarcely more
+than five minutes during which even two solo voices are blended in a
+duet. Except Siegfried and Brünnhilde, the personages of the play have
+no claim upon human sympathy, and their actions can scarcely arouse a
+loftier feeling than curiosity. Through two acts and a portion of the
+third, save in a dozen measures or so, the music of woman's voice and
+the charm of woman's presence are absent from the stage, and, instead,
+we are asked to accept a bear, a dragon, and a bird, a sublimely solemn
+peripatetic god who asks riddles and laughs once, and two dwarfs,
+repulsive of mind and hideous of body.
+
+These are the drawbacks concerning which there can be no controversy.
+To them are to be added the difficulties which result from a desire
+to employ in a serious drama mechanical devices of a kind that custom
+associates only with children's pantomimes and idle spectacles. A bear
+is brought in to frighten a dwarf; a dragon sings, vomits forth steam
+from its cavernous jaws, fights and dies with a kindly and prophetic
+warning to its slayer; a bird becomes endowed with the gift of human
+speech through a miraculous process which takes place in one of the
+people of the play. Surely these are grounds on which "Siegfried" might
+be stoutly criticized from the conventional as well as a universal point
+of view; but I have not enumerated them for the purpose of disparaging
+Wagner's drama, but rather to show the intellectual and esthetic
+attitude of the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House twenty years
+ago, who, through all these defects, saw in "Siegfried" a strangely
+beautiful and impressive creation, which, under trying circumstances,
+challenged their plaudits at the outset and soon won their enthusiastic
+admiration.
+
+More direct and emphatic was the appreciation of "Götterdämmerung," the
+last of the season's novelties, as "Siegfried" was the first. It was
+produced on January 25, 1888, only three weeks before the close of the
+season, yet it was given six times in the subscription performances
+and once outside the subscription, with the financial results already
+mentioned. The cast was as follows: Siegfried, Albert Niemann; Gunther,
+Adolf Robinson; Hagen, Emil Fischer; Alberich, Rudolph von Milde;
+Brünnhilde, Lilli Lehmann; Gutrune, Auguste Seidl-Krauss; Woglinde,
+Sophie Traubmann; Wellgunde, Marianne Brandt; Flosshilde, Louise
+Meisslinger. Mr. Seidl conducted. It was but natural that the concluding
+drama of the tetralogy should have excited warmer sympathy than its
+immediate predecessor. In it the human element becomes really active
+for the first time. This circumstance Mr. Seidl accentuated by two bold
+excisions. One of the things for which Wagner has been faulted is that
+in his treatment of the Siegfried legend he has sacrificed historical
+elements in order to bring it into closer relationship with Norse
+mythology; has, in fact, made the fate of the gods and goddesses of
+our ancestors the chief concern of the prologue and succeeding dramas.
+Except for those who prefer to see only ethical symbols in the
+characters there is some force in the objection. Like Homer in his
+"Iliad," Wagner has a celestial as well as a terrestrial plot in his
+"Ring of the Nibelung," and the men and women, or semi-divine creatures,
+in it are but the unconscious agents of the good and evil powers
+typified in the gods and dwarfs.
+
+The criticism, however, is weaker here than in Germany, where ten or a
+dozen dramas (chief of which is Geibel's "Brünnhild"), as well as the
+medieval epics, have accustomed the people to think of their national
+hero with something like historical surroundings. In these writings
+the death of Siegfried is brought about by his alliance with the
+Burgundians, whose seat was at Worms; and the Gunther of the legend
+is easily identified with King Gundikar, who was overcome by Attila
+and died A.D. 450. Wagner's original draft of "Götterdämmerung" (an
+independent drama which he called "Siegfried's Death") followed the
+accepted lines, and it was not until the tetralogy was planned that the
+mythological elements from the Eddas were drawn into the scheme, the
+theater of the play changed, its time pushed back into a prehistoric
+age, and the death of the hero made to bring about the destruction
+of the old gods--the Ragnarök of the Icelandic tales. The connection
+between the death of Siegfried and the fate of the gods is set
+forth in the two scenes which were eliminated at this production of
+"Götterdämmerung." The first is the prologue in which the Nornir (the
+Fates of Northern mythology), while twisting the golden-stranded rope of
+the world's destiny, tell of the signs which presage the Twilight of the
+Gods. The second is the interview between Brünnhilde and Waltraute, one
+of the Valkyrior, who comes to urge her sister to avert the doom which
+threatens the gods by restoring the baneful ring to the Rhine daughters.
+Both scenes are highly significant in the plan of the tragedy as a
+whole, but a public largely unfamiliar with German and unconcerned
+about Wagner's philosophical purposes can much more easily spare than
+endure them. In later years they were restored at the Metropolitan
+performances, but I make no doubt that Mr. Seidl's wise abbreviation
+had much to do with the unparalleled success of the drama in its first
+season. Persons familiar with the German tongue and the tetralogy,
+either from study of the book and music or from attendance on
+performances in Germany, were justified in being disappointed at the
+loss of two scenes highly important from a dramatic point of view and
+profoundly beautiful from a musical; but it was better to achieve
+success for the representations by adapting the drama to the capacity
+of the public than to sacrifice it bodily on the altar of integrity.
+
+Nessler's opera, "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," which had for nearly
+five years fairly devastated the German opera houses, receiving more
+performances than any three operas in the current lists, won only a
+succès d'estime. It was performed for the first time on November 23d,
+dressed most sumptuously and effectively cast (Robinson as Werner,
+Elmblad as Conradin, Kemlitz as the Major-domo, Sänger as the Baron,
+Frau Seidl-Krauss as Marie, Von Milde as Graf von Wildenstein, and
+Meisslinger as Gräfin), but it reached only seven performances, was
+fourth from the bottom in the list arranged according to popularity,
+and in the following year it was not included in the repertory. In
+1889-90 it was revived and received four performances, but its rank was
+seventeenth in a list of nineteen. Weber's "Euryanthe" fared but little
+better, though a work immeasurably greater. It, too, received four
+performances, and it was but one remove in advance of "Der Trompeter."
+To all intents and purposes it was new to the American stage when it was
+produced on December 23, 1887, with Lehmann, Brandt, Alvary, Fischer,
+and Elmblad in the parts of Euryanthe, Eglantine, Adolar, Lysiart, and
+the King, respectively. Mr. Seidl conducted. Twenty-four years before
+there had been some representations of the opera under the direction of
+Carl Anschütz in Wallack's Theater, at Broadway and Broome Street, but
+of this fact the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House had no memory.
+It was a beautiful act of devotion on the part of Herr Anschütz and his
+German singers to produce "Euryanthe" at that time, and, had it been
+possible to break down the barriers of fashion and reach the heart of
+the public, the history of the lyric theater in America during the
+quarter of a century which followed would, no doubt, read differently
+than it does. "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" were produced under similar
+circumstances, and even "Die Walküre"; but "Lohengrin" was popularized
+by the subsequent performances in Italian, and "Tannhäuser" and "Die
+Walküre" had to wait for appreciation until fortuitous circumstances
+caused fashion, fame, and fortune to smile for a space upon the German
+establishment at the Metropolitan. It may have been a benignant fate
+which preserved "Euryanthe" from representation in the interval. The
+work is one which it is impossible for a serious music lover to approach
+without affection, but appreciation of all its beauties is conditioned
+upon the acceptance of theories touching the purpose, construction,
+and representation of the lyric drama which did not obtain validity
+in America until the German artists at the Metropolitan had completed
+their missionary labors. Indeed, there are aspects of the case in which
+Weber's opera, with all its affluence of melody and all its potency
+of romantic and chivalric expression, is yet further removed from
+popular appreciation than the dramas of Wagner. In these there is
+so much orchestral pomp, so much external splendor, so much scenic
+embellishment, so much that is attractive to both eye and ear, that
+delight in them may exist independently of a recognition of their deeper
+values. "Euryanthe" still comes before us with modest consciousness of
+grievous dramatic defects and pleading for consideration and pardon
+even while demanding with proper dignity recognition of the soundness
+and beauty of the principles that underlie its score and the marvelous
+tenderness, sincerity, and intensity of its expression of passion.
+When it was first brought forward in Vienna in October, 1823, Castelli
+observed that it was come fifty years before its time. He spoke with a
+voice of prophecy. It was not until the fifty years had expired that
+"Euryanthe" really came into its rights, and it was the light reflected
+upon it by the works of Weber's great successor at Dresden that
+disclosed in what those rights consisted. After that the critical voices
+of the world agreed in pronouncing "Euryanthe" to be the starting point
+of Wagner, and, as the latter's works grew in appreciation, "Euryanthe"
+shone with ever-growing refulgence. No opera was ever prepared at the
+Metropolitan with more patience, self-sacrifice, zeal, and affection
+than this, and the spontaneous, hearty, sincere approbation to which the
+audience gave expression must have been as sweet incense to Mr. Seidl
+and the forces that he directed. But "Euryanthe" is a twin sister in
+misfortune to "Fidelio"; the public will not take it to its heart. It
+disappeared from the Metropolitan list with the end of the season which
+witnessed its revival.
+
+A dozen or more circumstances combined to give the first performance of
+Spontini's "Ferdinand Cortez," which took place on January 6, 1888, a
+unique sort of interest. In one respect it was a good deal like trying
+to resuscitate a mummy, for whatever of interest historical criticism
+found in the opera, a simple hearing of the music was sufficient to
+convince the public that Spontini was the most antiquated composer that
+had been presented to their attention in several years. Compared with
+him Gluck and Mozart had real, dewy freshness, and Weber spoke in
+the language of to-day. Nevertheless, Spontini still stands as the
+representative of a principle, and if it had been possible for Mr.
+Stanton to supplement "Ferdinand Cortez" with "Armida" or "Iphigenia in
+Aulis," the Metropolitan repertory would admirably have exemplified the
+development of the dramatic idea and its struggle with simple lyricism
+in opera composition. The public would have been asked to take the steps
+in the reverse order, it is true--Wagner, Weber, Spontini, Gluck--but
+this circumstance would only have added to the clearness of the
+historical exposition. The light which significant art works throw out
+falls brightest upon the creations which lie behind them in the pathway
+of progress. "Euryanthe" was understood through the mediation of
+"Tristan und Isolde." "Ferdinand Cortez" has an American subject; the
+conqueror of Mexico is the only naturalized American with whom we had
+an acquaintance till Pinkerton came on the stage in Puccini's "Madama
+Butterfly," and Mr. Stanton surpassed all his previous efforts in the
+line of spectacle to celebrate the glories of this archaic American
+opera. The people employed in the representation rivaled in numbers
+those who constituted the veritable Cortez's army, while the horses came
+within three of the number that the Spaniard took into Mexico. This was
+carrying realism pretty close to historical verity. A finer sense of
+dramatic propriety, however, was exhibited in the care with which the
+pictures and paraphernalia of the opera were prepared. The ancient
+architecture of Mexico, the sculptures, the symbols of various kinds
+carried in the processions, the banners of Montezuma and some of the
+costumes of his warriors were copied with painstaking fidelity from the
+remains of the civilization which existed in Mexico at the time of the
+conquest. The cast of the opera was this: Cortez, Niemann; Alvarez,
+Alvary; High Priest, Fischer; Telasko, Robinson; Montezuma, Elmblad;
+Morales, Von Milde; Amazily, Fräulein Meisslinger.
+
+The prospectus for the season of 1888-89 announced sixteen weeks of
+opera between November 28th and March 16th, the subscription to be for
+forty-seven nights and sixteen matinées. The last two weeks were set
+apart for two consecutive representations of the dramas constituting
+"The Ring of the Nibelung." The difficulties involved in an effort to
+compass the tetralogy in a week combined with other circumstances to
+compel an extension of the season for a week, much to the advantage of
+the enterprise. The final record showed that fifty evening and eighteen
+afternoon performances had taken place between the opening night and
+March 23, 1889. Sixteen works were performed, the relative popularity
+of which is indicated in the following list: "Götterdämmerung,"
+"Tannhäuser," "Das Rheingold," "La Juive," "Il Trovatore," "Lohengrin,"
+"Aïda," "Siegfried," "L'Africaine," "Die Meistersinger," "Les
+Huguenots," "Die Walküre," "Faust," "Le Prophète," "Fidelio," and
+"William Tell." The most significant new production--indeed the only
+significant one--was "Das Rheingold," which completed the acquaintance
+of the New York public with the current works of Wagner, "Parsifal"
+being still under the Bayreuth embargo, although it had several times
+been given in concert form. The total cost of the representations, not
+including scenery, costumes, properties, and music, was $333,731.31,
+or an average of $4,907.78 a representation. The total receipts from
+the opera were $213,630.99, divided as follows: Box office sales,
+$149,973.50; subscriptions, $59,607.50; privileges, $4,049.99. The
+average receipts a representation were $3,141.63. The loss to the
+stockholders on the operatic account was $1,766.15 a representation,
+which was covered by the receipt of $201,180.00 from the stockholders
+for the maintenance of the establishment, the fixed charges on
+the building, and the cost of scenery, music, etc., amounting to
+$144,455.81.
+
+"Das Rheingold" was produced for the first time on January 4, 1889,
+under the direction of Mr. Seidl, and was performed nine times in
+the ten weeks of the season which remained. The artists concerned in
+the production were Emil Fischer as Wotan, Max Alvary as Loge, Alois
+Grienauer as Donner, Albert Mittelhauser as Froh, Joseph Beck as
+Alberich, Wilhelm Sedlmayer as Mime, Eugen Weiss as Fafner, Ludwig
+Mödlinger as Fasolt, Fanny Moran-Olden as Fricka, Katti Bettaque as
+Freia, Sophie Traubmann as Woglinde, Felice Kaschowska as Wellgunde,
+Hedwig Reil as Flosshilde, and again, Hedwig Reil as Erda.
+
+The sixth season of opera in German began on November 27, 1889, and
+ended on March 22, 1890. Within this period fifty evening and seventeen
+afternoon subscription performances were given and there was an extra
+performance on February 27th for the benefit of Lilli Lehmann, who
+had stipulated for it in her contract in lieu of an increase in
+her honorarium, demanded and refused. The sixty-seven subscription
+performances were devoted to nineteen operas and dramas which are
+here named in the order of popularity as indicated by attendance and
+receipts: "Siegfried," "Don Giovanni," "Die Meistersinger," "Tristan
+und Isolde," "Lohengrin," "Das Rheingold," "Der Barbier von Bagdad,"
+"Tannhäuser," "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Götterdämmerung," "Die
+Königin von Saba," "William Tell," "Aïda," "Die Walküre," "Rienzi,"
+"Il Trovatore," "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," "Un Ballo in Maschera,"
+and "La Juive." The ballet "Die Puppenfee" was performed in connection
+with the opera "Der Barbier von Bagdad." The last three weeks of the
+season were devoted to representations in chronological order (barring
+an exchange between "Tristan" and "Meistersinger") of all the operas
+and lyric dramas of Wagner from "Rienzi" to "Götterdämmerung,"
+inclusive. The total receipts from subscriptions, box office sales,
+and privileges were $209,866.35; average, $3,132.34. The total cost of
+producing the operas (not including scenery, costumes, properties, and
+music) was $352,990.32, or an average of $5,268.52 per representation.
+On this showing the loss to the stockholders on operatic account was
+$2,136.18 a representation, which was met by an assessment of $3,000 a
+box; of this sum $1,200 went to the fixed charges on the opera house.
+
+The one novelty of the season was Peter Cornelius's "Barbier von
+Bagdad," which had its first performance on January 4, 1890. The
+production was embarrassed by mishaps and misfortunes. It had been
+announced for December 25th, but Mr. Paul Kalisch, the tenor, fell ill
+with the prevailing epidemic and a postponement became necessary. It was
+set down for January 4th, but when that day came Mr. Seidl was ill. He
+had prepared the opera with great care and loving devotion, but at the
+eleventh hour had to hand his baton to his youthful assistant, Walter
+Damrosch. The beautiful work had only four representations. The original
+cast was as follows: Caliph, Josef Beck; Mustapha, Wilhelm Sedlmayer;
+Margiana, Sophie Traubmann; Bostana, Charlotte Huhn; the Barber, Emil
+Fischer. "Die Puppenfee," ballet by J. Hassreiter and F. Gaul, music by
+Joseph Bayer, followed the opera and was conducted by Frank Damrosch.
+The most important addition to the forces in this season was Theodor
+Reichmann, who effected his entrance on the American stage on the first
+evening in Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." Herr Reichmann was known to
+American pilgrims to the Wagnerian Mecca as the admired representative
+of Amfortas in "Parsifal," but his impersonation of the Dutchman was
+equally famous in Vienna and the German capitals. On this occasion Mr.
+Seidl restored the architect's original design with reference to the
+band. Mr. Cady's device had never had a fair trial. Signor Vianesi
+condemned it in the first season. When Dr. Damrosch took the helm he
+tried it, but abandoned it and resorted to the compromise suggested by
+Vianesi, which raised the musicians nearly to the level of the first row
+of stalls in the audience room. The growth of the band sent the drummers
+outside the railing, but no one was brave enough to restore the original
+arrangement till the opening of the sixth German season.
+
+I come to the operatic activities of the period beyond the walls of the
+Metropolitan. They scarcely amounted to opposition at any time, though
+at the end of the third year there came a brief season of Italian opera
+in the home of the German institution which whetted the appetites of the
+boxholders and, no doubt, had much to do with the revolution which took
+place two years later. In 1887, beginning on October 17th and ending in
+December, there was a series of performances at the Thalia Theater which
+served again to indicate that German opera had a following among the
+people who could not afford to patronize the aristocratic establishment.
+This season was arranged to exploit Heinrich Bötel, a coachman-tenor
+of the Wachtel stripe, who came from the Stadttheater, in Hamburg. The
+prima donna was Frau Herbert-Förster, the wife of Victor Herbert,
+who had been a member of the Metropolitan company while her husband,
+afterward the most successful of writers for the American operetta
+stage, sat in Mr. Seidl's orchestra. The operas given were "Trovatore,"
+"Martha," "The Postilion of Lonjumeau," Flotow's "Stradella," "La Dame
+Blanche," and "Les Huguenots." At other theaters, too, there were
+performances of operas and operettas by the Boston Ideal Opera Company
+and other troupes, but with them these annals have no concern. The
+National Opera Company, stripped of the prestige with which it had
+started out, abandoned by Mr. Thomas and reorganized on a co-operative
+basis, made its last struggle for existence at the Academy of Music
+between April 2 and April 6, 1888. The decay of the institution seemed
+to fill it with the enterprise and energy of despair. It produced (but
+in anything but a commendable fashion) English versions of Goldmark's
+"Queen of Sheba," Rubinstein's "Nero," "Tannhäuser" (first performance
+of the opera in English in New York on April 4th), and "Lohengrin." In
+the company, besides some of the singers who had belonged to it in the
+previous two years, were Eloi Sylva, Bertha Pierson, Amanda Fabbris,
+Charles Bassett, and Barton McGuckin, the last a tenor who had made
+a notable career in Great Britain with Mr. Carl Rosa's companies.
+
+This season also saw the introduction of Verdi's "Otello" by a company
+especially organized for the purpose by Italo Campanini, who, his
+singing days being practically over, turned impresario. He had been in
+Milan when Verdi's opera was produced, on February 5, 1887, and made
+haste to procure the American rights of performance. It was a laudable
+ambition, but the enterprise was overwhelmed with disaster. Campanini
+brought from Italy a tenor named Marconi for the titular rôle; his
+sister-in-law, Eva Tetrazzini, to sing the part of Desdemona, and his
+brother, Cleofonte (who was maestro di cembalo at the Metropolitan Opera
+House during its first season), as conductor. With these he associated
+Signora Scalchi and Signor Galassi (Emilia and Iago). The first
+performance took place on April 16, 1888, in the Academy of Music, and
+four representations were given on the established opera nights and
+Saturday afternoons. The public's attitude was apathetic. The tenor did
+not please, the fashionable season was over, the music was not of the
+kind that had been expected from Verdi, and the prices of admission were
+too high for a popular audience. Signor Campanini essayed a second week
+and now threw his own popularity into the scale. Signor Marconi was
+dismissed and returned at once to Europe, never to be heard again in New
+York; Campanini, who had been the most popular tenor with New Yorkers
+since the palmy days of Brignoli, took his part; the prices of admission
+were reduced. All to no avail; ruin had overtaken the manager, and the
+eighth performance was the last. It was truly pitiable. Signor Campanini
+deserved better for his bold embarkation in a noble enterprise; but
+reasons for the failure were easily found. It was unwise to give opera
+on an ambitious scale after the amusement season had worn itself out;
+it was nothing less than foolish to do so with an ill-equipped company,
+in a house that had lost its fashionable prestige and at prices so
+large that a fatal blunder had to be confessed by their reduction at
+the end of a week. Two seasons later, the opera was announced by the
+Metropolitan director, Mr. Stanton, but was not given, for reasons
+already mentioned. How it entered the fashionable home of opera we
+shall see presently.
+
+After the lapse of twenty years it is still impossible to say that
+"Otello" has really been habilitated in New York. Its fate has not
+been quite so pitiful as that of "Falstaff," because it has been more
+frequently performed, and performed, moreover, in better style; but it
+has not won the popular heart. It is admired by the knowing, but not
+loved by the masses, as the earlier operas, especially "Aïda," is loved.
+The reason? I am still inclined to look for it where I thought I found
+it a score of years ago. At that time it seemed to me that the public,
+if it concerned itself with the matter at all (which I doubt), was at a
+loss for a point of view from which to consider it. Was it an Italian
+opera? Certainly not, if that type was represented by any of the works
+of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, or of Verdi himself when he was the
+popular idol. Was it a French opera? A German opera? A lyric drama in
+the Wagnerian manner? To the connoisseur, if not to the idle prattler
+about music, each of these designations suggests a distinct idea--a
+form, a style, a manner. Which of them might with most propriety be
+applied to this work? The circumstance that the book was in the Italian
+language had little to do with the question, no matter how loudly
+an excitable individual (as on this occasion) might shout "Viva
+l'Italiano!" to testify his admiration for Verdi's music. "The
+style--it is the man." "Otello" was composed and first brought forward
+under anomalous conditions, and though it first saw the stage lamps
+at Milan, its style is not distinctively Italian. Neither is it
+distinctively French or German. It is of its own kind, Verdian;
+characteristic of the composer of "Rigoletto," "Trovatore," and
+"Traviata" in its essence, though widely different from them in
+expression. The composer himself indicated that he desired it to be
+looked upon as outside of the old operatic conventions. According to its
+title page it is "Dramma lirico in quattro Atti." "Aïda" was still an
+"Opera in quattro Atti." The distinction was not undesigned. There are
+many other indications that he desired his work to be looked upon as
+something as far from old-fashioned opera as were Wagner's later dramas;
+that he aimed in the first instance at a presentation of its dramatic
+contents, and considered the music as a means, and not entirely as an
+end. In this he followed a Wagnerian precept. His score is filled with
+instrumental interludes designed to accompany actions or to depict
+emotions. He leaves no question in our minds on this point, but as fully
+as Wagner in his "Lohengrin" period he indicates the bodily movements
+that are to go hand in hand with the music. In the picture of a storm
+which opens the opera the manipulator of the artificial lightning is
+not left to his discretion as to the proper moment for discharging
+his brutum fulmen; in the love duet, at the close of the first act,
+the appearance of the moon and stars is sought to be intensified by
+descriptive effects in the music; and when, in the last scene, Otello
+kisses the sleeping Desdemona, and the one typical phrase of the opera
+(drawn from the love scene) is repeated, the composer indicates on what
+beat of each measure he wants each kiss to fall. These are only a few
+instances of Verdi's appreciation of the necessity of suiting the action
+to the music, the music to the action; and they sink into insignificance
+when compared with his treatment of the murder in the last act. Then
+Otello's entrance and actions up to the waking of Desdemona are
+accompanied by a solo on double basses, interrupted at intervals by
+energetic passages from the other strings. It is not difficult to recall
+other melodramas written since "Fidelio" in which similar dramatic
+effects are sought, but the audacity of Verdi's procedure is unexampled
+in Italian opera. I make no doubt that had this scene been written
+twenty years earlier it would have been received by his countrymen
+with hisses and catcalls. Yet we were told that at the opera's first
+performance in Milan the audience redemanded it uproariously and the
+Italian critics could not sufficiently express their admiration for
+it. The fact is that "Otello" disclosed an honest, consistent, and in
+many respects successful effort to realize the higher purposes which
+we associate in the conception of a lyric drama as distinguished from
+the opera. With this conception nationalism had nothing to do; Verdi's
+superb artistic nature, everything.
+
+In the season of 1888-89 there was but a single performance of Italian
+opera in New York, a circumstance singular enough to deserve special
+mention. On April 24th Signor Campanini appeared with Clementine De Vere
+in "Lucia di Lammermoor," the performance being for the once-popular
+favorite's benefit. Memories of a period in which Italian singers were
+tremendously active were called up in the minds of opera-goers of the
+older generation by an entertainment given in the Metropolitan Opera
+House on February 12th, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Max
+Maretzek's entrance in the American field as a conductor of operas. The
+affair was generously patronized and participated in on its professional
+side by Theodore Thomas, Anton Seidl, Frank van der Stucken, Adolf
+Neuendorff, and Walter Damrosch as conductors; Mme. Fursch-Madi, Miss
+Emily Winant, Miss Maud Powell, Rafael Joseffy, Max Alvary, Signor Del
+Puente, Julius Perotti, Wilhelm Sedlmayer, and Mrs. Herbert-Foerster.
+Scenes from "Siegfried," "Il Trovatore," and "Carmen" were performed.
+
+There were some performances of operas in English in the early part
+of the next season (1889-90) by the Emma Juch English Opera Company
+(Nessler's "Trumpeter of Säkkingen" being brought forward as a novelty),
+at the Harlem Opera House, owned and managed by Oscar Hammerstein. This
+house also, for a week after the close of the regular season at the
+Metropolitan, was the scene of an unsuccessful effort to prolong the
+German performances, or rather to provide German opera at popular
+prices to the residents of Harlem. The company, headed by Miss Lehmann
+and conducted by Walter Damrosch, was made up of singers from the
+Metropolitan company. The operas given were "Norma," "Les Huguenots,"
+and "Il Trovatore."
+
+The Italian company which took possession of the Metropolitan Opera
+House immediately on its vacation by the German singers was under the
+management of Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau. During the fall and
+winter months it had been giving representations in some of the larger
+cities of the United States and Mexico City. Arditi and Sapio were the
+conductors, and most of the singers were familiar to the public--Patti,
+Albani, Nordica, Fabbri, Ravelli, Vicini, Perugini, Del Puente,
+Castelmary, Novara, Migliara; newcomers were Hortense Synnerberg,
+mezzo-soprano; Signora Pettigiani, soprano leggiero; Zardo, barytone,
+and Francesco Tamagno, tenor. The presence of this singer in the troupe
+served to indicate that its purpose, outside the exploitation of Madame
+Patti, was the production of Verdi's "Otello," with which the season
+was opened on March 24th, Madame Albani being the Desdemona. Tamagno
+had created the title rôle in Milan two years before.
+
+The subscription was for sixteen evenings and four matinées, which
+were to be encompassed in a period of four weeks; but the illness of
+Madame Patti compelled a postponement of one of the performances until
+the fifth week after the opening, and then to the twenty subscription
+representations was added, a twenty-first as a "farewell" to Madame
+Patti. The operas in which this artist appeared were "La Sonnambula,"
+"Semiramide," "Lakmé," "Martha," "Lucia di Lammermoor," "Roméo et
+Juliette," "Il Barbiere," "Linda di Chamouni," and "La Traviata." The
+other operas were "Otello," "Il Trovatore," "Tell," "Aïda," "Faust,"
+"L'Africaine," "Rigoletto," and "Les Huguenots."
+
+There was no novelty in the list, unless the fact that "Lakmé" was
+transformed into a novelty by the Italian version; it had been heard
+before in English, and the performance was so desperately slipshod,
+notwithstanding that Mme. Patti impersonated the heroine, that it
+awakened only pity for Delibes's work. It would be extremely interesting
+and doubtless instructive also were I able to give such a detailed
+financial statement of the outcome of this season as Mr. Stanton's
+courtesy enabled me at the time to give of the German seasons. But here
+I am thrown on conjecture. On the evenings and afternoons when Patti
+sang the audiences unquestionably represented vast receipts to the
+management. An estimate made at the time from a study of the character
+and size of the audiences placed the receipts in round numbers at
+$100,000. It was significant as bearing on the artistic problem
+suggested by the succession of German and Italian opera--a problem that
+was destined to become of paramount interest soon--that on scarcely
+a single Patti performance were all the orchestra stalls sold, and
+that there were always unsold boxes in the tier not occupied by the
+stockholders. The bulk of the money came from the occupants of the
+balconies and gallery. The musical and fashionable elements in the
+city's population had comparatively small representation. The audiences,
+in fact, were largely composed of curiosity seekers, impelled by the
+desire to be able in the future to say that they, too, had heard the
+greatest songstress of the last generation of the nineteenth century.
+The "Patti's Farewell" trick was still effective; a few years later it
+was found that it would work no longer, and the great singer disappeared
+in a black cloud of failure, followed by the grief of all who had been
+her admirers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+END OF THE GERMAN PERIOD
+
+
+The season of 1890-91 was full of incidents, some exciting, some
+amusing, but they were all dwarfed by the announcement which came in the
+middle of January that the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House had
+concluded a contract of lease with Henry E. Abbey (or Abbey and Grau)
+under which opera was to be given in the next season in Italian and
+French. The alleged reason was that Mr. Abbey was willing to assume
+all risk of failure for the same subvention which the stockholders as
+individuals were paying themselves in their capacity as entrepreneurs;
+the real reason was that the stockholders, or a majority of them, were
+weary of German opera, and especially of the dramas of Wagner. This
+reason spoke out of the action which had been taken looking to the
+eighth season of opera (seventh in German) before an agreement had been
+reached with Mr. Abbey. Wagner had supplied the financial backbone to
+all the seasons since German opera had been introduced, as will appear
+presently; but the directors were unwilling to admit that fact until, as
+a result of their change of policy, disaster stared them in the face.
+Then they made haste to reverse their action as far as possible and
+did other works of repentance which enabled them to save a modicum of
+prestige and some money; but the hands of the clock had been set back,
+and the goal of a national opera, toward which the German movement was
+leading, was forgotten. It has never been seen since.
+
+When Mr. Stanton went to Germany in the spring of 1890 to engage singers
+and select a repertory he carried with him a definite policy, formulated
+by the directors, which was the fruit of a sentimental passion for the
+amiable Italian muse and a spirit of thrift. Italian opera under their
+own management seeming still impracticable because of its expensiveness,
+the directors conceived what they thought would prove to be a happy
+compromise; they would continue to give German opera, but would make
+a radical change in the character of the repertory. Wagner was to be
+shelved as to all but his earlier operas, such as "Tannhäuser" and
+"Lohengrin," and the season enriched with new works by Italian and
+French composers. With this purpose in view, Mr. Stanton completed his
+arrangements, and the season of 1890-91 was opened on November 26th in
+a manner that looked like a bold and successful stroke in favor of the
+new policy. "Asrael," an opera by an Italian composer, which had stirred
+up some favorable comment in Germany and Italy, was given with a great
+deal of sumptuousness in stage attire and with a company which critics
+and amateurs agreed in recognizing as, on the whole, stronger than any
+of recent years. Mme. Lehmann-Kalisch was not at its head, it is true,
+but instead there was a singer of excellent ability and considerable
+personal and artistic charm in the person of Antonia Mielke. Emil
+Fischer was retained, and also Theodor Reichmann and some of the lesser
+members of the old company, and to them were added Heinrich Gudehus,
+Jennie Broch (soprano leggiero), Marie Ritter-Goetze (mezzo-soprano),
+Andreas Dippel, Marie Jahn (soprano), and others. Mme. Minnie Hauk
+joined the forces later in the season.
+
+"Asrael" was in every respect a surprise--as strange to the audience
+as if it had been composed for the occasion. The name of the composer,
+Alberto Franchetti, had never appeared in any local list save once, in
+April, 1887, when a symphony in E minor, bearing it, had been performed
+at a concert of the Philharmonic Society under the direction of Theodore
+Thomas. The Tribune newspaper contributed all that the public learned
+about him then and since. This was to the effect that he was a young
+Italian (or, rather, Italianized Hebrew), a member of one of the
+branches of the Rothschilds, who had studied in Munich and lived much
+of his time in Dresden, where Kapellmeister Schuch sometimes gave him
+opportunities to hear his orchestral music. Also that he was very
+wealthy, having a purse as large as his artistic ambition, and was
+not disinclined, when a work of his composition was accepted for
+performance, to care for its sumptuous production by paying for the
+stage decorations out of his own pocket. He resembled Meyerbeer in being
+a Jew, and also in that it was possible for his mother to say of him:
+"My son is a musical composer, but not of necessity." The book of the
+opera proved to be a most bewildering conglomeration of scenes and
+personages from familiar operas, and though the pictures were
+magnificent and much of the music was pleasing, "Asrael" had only five
+performances, and when the record of the season was made up it was
+found to stand thirteenth in a list of seventeen operas.
+
+At the bottom of this list stood the two other novelties of the season,
+and if the public were bewildered by "Asrael" they were thrown into
+consternation by "Der Vasall von Szigeth," and into contemptuous
+merriment by "Diana von Solange." Both of these operas were sung in
+German, of course, but "Der Vasall," not only had an Italian (Anton
+Smareglia) for its composer, like "Asrael," but had originally been
+composed in Italian and borne an Italian name--"Il Vassallo di Szigeth."
+Here plainly was a concession to the Italian predilections of the
+stockholders. But the composer of "Der Vasall," or "Il Vassallo"--as you
+like it--was a Dalmatian, like Von Suppé, the operetta composer. His
+native tongue was Italian, but the influence of Austrian domination and
+Austrian art had deeply affected his nationalism, and enabled him to
+infuse an Hungarian subject (the story of "Der Vasall" was Hungarian)
+with Hungarian musical color. It therefore chanced that in this
+instance, when the stockholders seemed to have bargained for Italian
+sweets, they got a strong dose of Magyar paprika. As for the libretto,
+it offered such a sup of horrors as had never been seen on an operatic
+stage before, and has never been seen since. "Der Vasall von Szigeth,"
+which was brought forward on December 12th, had four performances in the
+season and took in $7,805.50, which was probably not much more than the
+cost of staging the opera.
+
+The amused gossip touching the potency of new influences which had begun
+with "Asrael" was given fresh fuel by the production of "Diana von
+Solange." Why an opera which had lain "so lange" (to make an obvious
+German pun) in the limbo of forgotten things, which, indeed, had never
+enjoyed a popularity of any kind, though it was thirty or forty years
+old, should have been resurrected for production in New York was a
+question well calculated to irritate curiosity and provoke many an
+ill-natured sally of wit. "Diana von Solange" was the work of Ernest II,
+Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The family to which the duke belonged had
+long dallied with music; that the public knew. His ducal highness's
+brother, the British Prince Consort, affected the art in his time, and
+left evidences of good, sound taste in the story of English music, and
+it was known that the Duke of Edinburgh (son of the Prince Consort and
+Queen Victoria) was an amateur fiddler, quite capable of leading the
+band at a London smoking concert. A complacent German lexicographer had
+even admitted Ernest II into the fellowship of Beethoven, but that fact
+was not widely known, and after "Diana von Solange" had been produced
+the most cogent argument in explanation of its production among the
+theatrical wits was based on familiar German stories of the lavishness
+of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the distribution of orders,
+especially among musicians. No anecdote was more popular for the rest of
+the season in the corridors than that which told of how a concert party
+driving away from the ducal palace discovered that the chamberlain had
+handed over one more decoration than the artists who had entertained the
+duke. "Never mind," quoth the chamberlain; "give it to the coachman!"
+The production of an opera composed by the duke without the obbligato
+distribution of orders was inconceivable, even in democratic America,
+but the tongues of waggish gossips wagged so furiously that it was said
+only the stage manager was willing to accept his bauble. Brahms's bon
+mot touching the danger of criticizing the music of royalty, "because
+no one could tell who composed it," not being current at the time,
+the music of "Diana von Solange" was mercilessly faulted, as was also
+the libretto. It was certainly right royal poetry set to right royal
+music--an infusion of immature Verdi and Meyerbeer plentifully watered.
+Archaic research discovered that the opera had been written some
+thirty-five years before, and that the composer, possessing, quite
+naturally, some influence with the management of the ducal theaters at
+Coburg and Gotha, had succeeded in having it performed in those cities
+in December, 1858, and May, 1859, and that Dresden had also honored
+it with a performance in January, 1859. Why New York blew the dust of
+generations off its score was never learned by the inquisitive newspaper
+scribes.
+
+The story of the opera concerned itself with the succession to the
+throne of Portugal on the death of Enrique, with whom the old Burgundian
+line became extinct in 1580. A wicked man plotted to give the crown
+to Philip II of Spain (who really got it), and employed a Provençal
+adventuress to help keep it from the nephew of the dying king. But
+the adventuress, who lent her name to the opera, lost heart in the
+enterprise because she fell in love with the nephew and was stabbed
+to death for her pains. The wicked man was shot by the nephew, and
+there was thus a proper amount of bloodshed to justify the historical
+character of the work, the grewsomeness of which was modified by much
+edifying declamation on the part of the dying king, expressive of the
+lofty sentiments which, the world knows, always fill the breasts of
+monarchs. The opera was performed on January 9, 1891, and received two
+representations. A third was announced for a Saturday afternoon, but
+called forth so emphatic a popular request for "Fidelio" that the
+representative of the stockholders adjudged it to be the course of
+wisdom to set aside Ernest II in favor of Beethoven.
+
+For six weeks Mr. Stanton followed the line of policy laid down by his
+directors, and within that time brought forward the three novelties
+which I have described, besides "Tannhäuser," "Lohengrin," "The Flying
+Dutchman," "Les Huguenots," "Le Prophète," and "Fidelio." Already in the
+third week of the season, however, it became manifest that the policy
+of the directors did not meet with the approbation of the public. One
+result of the German representations in the preceding six years had
+been to develop a class of opera patrons with intelligent tastes and
+warm affections. A large fraction of this public had become season
+subscribers, and among these dissatisfaction with the current repertory
+was growing daily. It may be that the panicky feeling in financial
+circles had something to do with a falling off in general attendance in
+the early part of the season, but this is scarcely borne out by the fact
+that the advance subscription amounted to $72,000, representing about
+one thousand persons, and that, though the novelties would not draw, the
+three Wagnerian works proved to be as attractive as ever they had been.
+The significance of the popular attitude, indeed, was obvious enough,
+although the directors chose to close their eyes and ears to it. It
+was, in fact, so obvious that The Tribune newspaper did not hesitate to
+predict a tremendous success for "Fidelio" when it was announced "for
+one performance only" on December 26th, and to assert in advance of the
+performance that it would have to be repeated to satisfy the demand for
+good dramatic music which had grown up because of the Wagner cult and
+been whetted by Mr. Stanton's neglect to put on the stage a few works
+imbued with the modern dramatic spirit. Two repetitions of "Fidelio"
+and the lifting of that opera to fourth place in the list attested the
+soundness of The Tribune's diagnosis of the situation.
+
+By a coincidence, on the night of the first representation for the
+season of one of the latter-day works of Wagner, which, had the
+directors chosen to read the signs of the times aright and be guided
+by them, might have ushered in the era of prosperity which they were
+sighing for but repelling by their course, the decision was reached to
+turn over the opera house to Mr. Abbey for performances in Italian and
+French. This date was January 14th. So far as the subscribers to the
+opera and the majority of its patrons were concerned, this action of the
+directors seemed like nothing else than the culmination of a conspiracy
+to set back the clock of musical progress in New York a quarter of a
+century at least. The news came upon the public like a bolt from the
+blue. The plan had been laid early in the summer (was, in fact, the
+fruition of the postprandial Patti season of 1889-90), but all concerned
+had been pledged to secrecy. Mr. Abbey seized the right moment to
+strike, and when he had bagged his game he exhibited it forthwith, and
+it was received with a loud chorus of cheers from the enemies of the
+German institution. The directors gleefully continued their course for
+a little while longer, though the handwriting on the wall had begun to
+blaze forth when all the canons of art and the fruit of years of serious
+effort were insulted by the production of the amorphous creation of one
+whose sole claim on popular attention as a composer was that he was a
+royal duke and the brother-in-law of the Queen of England.
+
+At the first performance, after the announcement of the projected
+change had been made, the public took it upon themselves to show their
+disapproval of the action of the directors. There seemed to be but one
+way to do this effectually without injury to the form of art which the
+public had learned to love, and that way was adopted: After January
+14th not a single representation was conducted by Mr. Seidl at which
+the conductor was not compelled to appear upon the stage and accept
+a tribute of popular admiration. Mr. Seidl had come to be the
+representative in an especial manner of the new spirit as opposed to
+the directors, who, by their action, had shown that they stood for the
+old. And so the directors were rebuked in the honors showered upon the
+conductor. It needed as little prophetic gift to predict what course Mr.
+Stanton would pursue in view of the new developments as it had required
+to predict the success of "Fidelio" after the experiences of 1888-89 had
+seemed to indicate that the opera had lost all charm for the public. On
+January 20th, only six days after Mr. Abbey had captured the directors,
+The Tribune, commenting editorially on the "Operatic Revolution,"
+remarked:
+
+
+Financially Wagner must save this season or it will suffer shipwreck.
+Mr. Stanton knows that, and it is not a rash prediction to say that
+the whole unperformed list will be sacrificed from this time forth
+to the production of Wagner's works. The policy will be voted wise
+by the directors because it will go further than anything else to
+save the season; it will be welcomed by the public because of their
+disappointment with the novelties which a shortsighted policy attempted
+to foist upon them.
+
+
+The prediction was fulfilled to the letter; after January 20th
+thirty-five representations took place, and all but ten of them were
+devoted to Wagner's works, notwithstanding that within this period Mme.
+Minnie Hauk was added to the company and that the two operas in which
+she appeared ("L'Africaine" and "Carmen") proved more popular than any
+works of the non-Wagnerian list, with the single exception of "Fidelio."
+An amusing evidence of the enforced change of heart in the directors
+was a promulgation of an order requesting the occupants of the boxes to
+discontinue the conversation during performances which had grown to be a
+public scandal. The resolution to publish the order was adopted, either
+at the meeting of the directors at which the agreement was reached
+with Mr. Abbey, or the day after; the order bore date January 15; the
+contract with Mr. Abbey was made on January 14th.
+
+It is proper that I devote some attention to the story of the growth of
+the spirit which eventually overthrew German opera at the Metropolitan
+Opera House, or, rather, not German opera, but opera exclusively in the
+German tongue; for it was not long in developing that the new régime
+stood no show of success unless to Italian and French German opera was
+also added. The vicissitudes which brought with them this demonstration
+must be reserved for a subsequent chapter, but before I tell the story
+of the institution's retrogression I owe to the student of history
+an outline of the doings of the season 1890-91. The season began on
+November 26th and lasted till March 21st. There were sixty-seven
+subscription performances, an extra performance of "Fidelio" for the
+benefit of the chorus, which yielded $1,849, giving each chorister
+$18.20, and a Sunday night performance of excerpts from "Parsifal,"
+which brought in $1,872. I have enumerated the operas which had been
+given up to the production of "Diana von Solange"; after this date
+came "Die Meistersinger," "L'Africaine," "Siegfried," "Der Barbier von
+Bagdad," "Die Walküre," "Götterdämmerung," "Carmen," and "Tristan und
+Isolde." Arranged in the order of their popularity as indicated by
+attendance and receipts, the entire list was as follows: "Siegfried,"
+four times; "Tannhäuser," seven times; "Götterdämmerung," four times;
+"Fidelio," three times; "Die Meistersinger," six times; "Die Walküre,"
+four times; "Lohengrin," seven times; "Carmen," three times; "The Flying
+Dutchman," four times; "L'Africaine," three times; "Le Prophète," once;
+"Tristan und Isolde," three times; "Asrael," five times; "Barber of
+Bagdad," four times; "Les Huguenots," three times; "Der Vasall von
+Szigeth," four times; "Diana von Solange," twice. The total receipts for
+the season (box office sales and subscriptions) were $198,119.25; the
+average, $2,957.
+
+The last performance of the season was given to "Die Meistersinger"
+on a Saturday afternoon. The house was crowded from floor to ceiling
+and there were signs from the beginning that there was to be a large
+expression of public opinion. After the first and second acts there were
+calls and recalls for the singers and for Mr. Seidl. But this was but a
+preparation. After the fall of the curtain on the last act the multitude
+remained in the audience room for over half an hour (remained, indeed,
+till laborers appeared on the stage to get it ready for a concert in the
+evening), and called for one after another of the persons who were in
+one way or another representative of the system that was passing away.
+The greatest bursts of enthusiasm were those which greeted Mr. Stanton
+(whose sympathies were with the German movement), Mr. Seidl and Mr.
+Fischer, though Mr. Walter Damrosch, Mr. Habelmann, Mr. Dippel, Fräulein
+Jahn, and other singers were not neglected. Mr. Stanton's unwillingness
+to receive the distinction which the audience plainly wished to shower
+upon him caused disappointment; but Mr. Stanton stood in an awkward
+position between the stockholders and the public. Finally, after an
+unusual outburst of plaudits for Mr. Fischer, that singer came forward
+carrying a gigantic wreath and half a dozen bouquets and said:
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen: It is impossible for me to express what I feel
+for your kindness and love; and I hope it is not the last time (here
+a tremendous uproar interrupted the speaker for a space) that I shall
+sing for you here, on this stage, in German.
+
+
+Had one been able to explode a ton of dynamite when Mr. Fischer ended
+it would have been accepted by the audience as not more than a fitting
+amount of approbative noise. Twenty minutes later, the audience still
+clamoring for a speech, Mr. Seidl came forward, for perhaps the
+twentieth time, and spoke as follows:
+
+
+Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, I understand the meaning of this
+great demonstration. For myself, the orchestra, and the other members
+of the company, I thank you.
+
+
+To understand the story of the overthrow of German opera managed by the
+owners of the opera house, and the reversion to the system which had
+proved disastrous at the beginning and was fated to prove disastrous
+again, it is well to bear the fact in mind that instability was, is,
+and always will be an element in the cultivation of opera so long as it
+remains an exotic; that is, until it becomes a national expression in
+art, using the vernacular and giving utterance to national ideals. The
+fickleness of the public taste, the popular craving for sensation, the
+egotism and rapacity of the artists, the lack of high purpose in the
+promoters, the domination of fashion instead of love for art, the
+lack of real artistic culture--all these things have stood from the
+beginning, as they still stand, in the way of a permanent foundation
+of opera in New York. The boxes of the Metropolitan Opera House have
+a high market value to-day, but they are a coveted asset only because
+they are visible symbols of social distinction. There were genuine
+notes of rejoicing in the stockholders' voices at the measure of
+financial success achieved in the first three seasons of German opera,
+but the lesson had not yet been learned that an institution like the
+Metropolitan Opera House can only be maintained by a subvention in
+perpetuity; that in democratic America the persons who crave and create
+the luxury must contribute from their pockets the equivalent of the
+money which in Europe comes from national exchequers and the privy
+purses of monarchs. This fact did eventually impress itself upon the
+consciousness of the stockholders of the Metropolitan Opera House, but
+when it found lodgment there it created a notion--a natural one, and
+easily understood--that their predilections, and theirs alone, ought
+to be humored in the character of the entertainment. I have displayed
+a disposition to quarrel with the artistic attitude of the directors,
+but I would not be an honest chronicler of the operatic occurrences of
+the last twenty-five years if I did not do so. The facts in the case
+were flagrant, the situation anomalous. The stockholders created an
+art spirit which was big with promise while rich in fulfilment, and
+then killed it because its manifestation bored them. An institution
+which seemed about to become permanent and a fit and adequate national
+expression in an admired form of art, was set afloat again upon the
+sea of impermanency and speculation. About the middle of the fourth
+German season the directors formally resolved to continue the German
+representations. Not long afterward it developed that the receipts
+for the season would be considerably less than had been counted on,
+and immediately a clamor arose against the management. The champions
+of Italian opera joyfully proclaimed that the knell of German opera
+had rung, and attributed the falling off in popular support to the
+predominance of Wagner's operas and dramas in the repertory. The
+disaffection threatened mischief to the enterprise and had to be met;
+the directors met it by formally asking for an expression of opinion
+from the stockholders as to the future conduct of the institution. On
+January 21, 1888, they sent out a circular letter to the stockholders,
+in which they submitted two propositions, on which they asked for a
+vote. One was "To go on with German opera with an assessment of $3,200 a
+box"; the other, "To give no opera the next season, with an assessment
+of $1,000 a box, and to resume, if possible, the following season." The
+letter, which was signed by James A. Roosevelt, president, stated that
+the giving of Italian opera was not suggested because the directors
+"were convinced that to do so in a satisfactory manner will require a
+much larger assessment upon the stockholders than to give German opera."
+It was also set forth that the directors had estimated that the opera
+could be maintained for the assessment ($2,500 on each box), provided
+the receipts from the public amounted to $3,000 a performance. The
+subscription was 50 per cent. larger than the previous year (about
+$80,000, against $52,000), and larger receipts had been expected than
+in 1886-87, when the average was about $3,300. Instead, the receipts
+had fallen off and indicated an average of only $2,500. Rentals,
+however, had increased $14,000.
+
+The answer of the stockholders was a vote of over four to one in favor
+of continuing German opera under the first proposition of the circular
+letter. Then, while the Italinissimi were still proclaiming that
+the Metropolitan opera had been killed by Wagnerism, there came the
+announcement of two weeks of consecutive representations of the three
+dramas of "The Ring of the Nibelung" (all but the prologue), which were
+in the repertory of the company. The two weeks, and a third in which
+"Götterdämmerung" was performed three times, brought more money into
+the exchequer of the opera than any preceding five weeks of the season.
+The average of $2,500 apprehended by the directors was raised to over
+$3,177.
+
+During the next season the average receipts were practically the same,
+nor was there anything to change the situation from a financial point
+of view. The stockholders had voted themselves into a mood of temporary
+quiescence, and the opera pursued its serious course unhampered by more
+than the ordinary fault-finding on the part of the representations of
+careless amusement seekers in the public press, and the grumbling in
+the boxes because the musical director and stage manager persisted in
+darkening the audience room in order to heighten the effect of the
+stage pictures.
+
+The aristocratic prejudice against gloom extended to the operas which
+contained dark scenes, and when Mr. Stanton once exercised his authority
+as director and had the stage lights going at almost full tilt in the
+dungeon scene of "Fidelio," the effect of Florestan's exclamation,
+"Gott! welch' Dunkel hier!" upon an audience fully three-fourths of
+which was composed of Germans or descendants of Germans the ludicrous
+effect may be imagined. Many stories were current among the artists
+of the blithe indifference of the occupants of the boxes to artistic
+proprieties when they interfered with the display of gowns and jewels.
+One of them was that the chairman of the amusement committee of the
+directors had requested that the last act of "Die Meistersinger" be sung
+first, as it was "the only act of the opera that had music in it," and
+the boxholders did not want to wait till the end. The conduct of the
+occupants of the boxes now grew to be so intolerable that there were
+frequent demonstrations of disapproval and rebuke from the listeners
+who sat in the parquet and balconies. The matter became a subject for
+newspaper discussion; in fact, it had been such a subject ever since the
+loud laugh of a woman at the climacteric moment of "Fidelio" had caused
+Fräulein Brandt to break down in tears in the opening measures of the
+frenetically joyous duet, "O namenlose Freude!" In the course of this
+extraordinary discussion one of the directors boldly asserted the right
+of the stockholders in the boxes to disturb the enjoyment of listeners
+in the stalls. Not only did he repeal the old rule of "noblesse oblige,"
+but he also intimated that the payment of $3,000 acquitted the box owner
+and his guests of one of the simplest and most obvious obligations
+imposed by good breeding. At length the directors were forced to rebuke
+their own behavior. On the night of January 21, 1891, the following
+notice was found hung against the wall in each of the boxes:
+
+
+                                            January 15, 1891.
+Many complaints having been made to the directors of the Opera House
+of the annoyance produced by the talking in the boxes during the
+performances, the board requests that it be discontinued.
+                                By Order of the Board of Directors.
+
+
+This was the first sop to Cerberus after the directors had concluded a
+contract with Mr. Abbey, leasing the house to him a second time and
+substituting opera in Italian and French for opera in German. The public
+had begun to speak its mind, not only by making a mighty demonstration
+in honor of Mr. Seidl and the singers when a German opera was given,
+but in remaining away when the weak-kneed novelties were given; in
+requesting by petition a performance of "Fidelio" on a Saturday
+afternoon for which the opera by the royal composer had been set down,
+and in crowding the house and giving an ovation to the singers when
+their petition was granted. The next sop was to set aside all the works
+which it had been projected should take the place of the later dramas of
+Wagner, which the stockholders (or the majority of them) did not like,
+and to devote the remainder of the season almost exclusively to Wagner.
+The operas thus sacrificed were Marschner's "Templer und Jüdin,"
+Massenet's "Esclarmonde," Lalo's "Le Roi d'Ys," Goetz's "Taming of the
+Shrew," and Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor." Not love of Wagner but
+fear of financial consequences dictated the step, which was successful
+in extricating the institution from the slough into which it had fallen.
+How much the Wagner operas and dramas did to keep the Metropolitan Opera
+House alive can be shown by the statistics of the last five German
+seasons, which I compiled at the close of the season of 1890-91, and
+printed in The Tribune of March 25th of the latter year. Here is the
+table:
+
+
+                      Season      Season      Season      Season      Season
+                     1886-1887   1887-1888   1888-1889   1889-1890   1890-1891
+Total
+representations .......... 61          64          68          67          67
+Wagnerian
+representations .......... 31          36          35          37          39
+Non-Wagnerian
+representations .......... 30          28          33          30          28
+Total
+receipts ........ $202,751.00 $185,258.50 $209,581.00 $204,644.70 $198,119.25
+Average
+receipts ........... 3,323.78    2,894.66    3,141.63    3,054.39    2,957.00
+Wagnerian
+receipts ......... 111,049.50  116,449.75  115,784.50  121,568.70  125,169.25
+Non-wagnerian
+receipts .......... 91,701.50   68,808.75   93,796.50   83,076.00   72,950.00
+Wagnerian
+average ............ 3,582.21    3,234.72    3,308.13    3,285.65    3,209.46
+Non-Wagnerian
+average ............ 3,056.71    2,457.45    2,842.32    2,769.20    2.605.37
+Average difference
+in favor of Wagner ... 525.50      777.27      465.81      516.45      604.09
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ITALIAN OPERA AGAIN AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+
+The figures which I have printed showing a loss to the stockholders of
+the Metropolitan Opera House on opera account year after year during the
+German period, do not tell the whole story of the financial condition
+into which the Metropolitan Opera House Company (Limited) had fallen.
+This condition had much to do with creating a desire on the part of the
+stockholders for a change of policy. The first German season cost the
+stockholders only about $42,000 above the amount realized from the box
+assessment, which was, I believe, $2,000--two-thirds of the sum that
+has ruled ever since. There were seventy stockholders, and in view of
+the loss made by Mr. Abbey the year previous this deficit was a trifle
+scarcely worth considering. The growth in popular interest as indicated
+by the support of the subscriptions for the season of 1890-91 was
+promising; but the stockholders themselves were not all prompt in
+meeting their obligations to their own organization. By 1890 there was
+an account of unpaid assessments amounting to $46,328. Of this, $21,112
+was canceled by the acquisition of two boxes by the company, but the
+balance sheet at the end of the last German season still showed $25,216
+due from stockholders on assessment account. The floating debt at this
+time amounted to $84,044.48. The prices of admission had been greatly
+reduced in the German years, and the capacity of the house, represented
+in money, was not more than fifty per centum of what it is to-day. The
+demands of singers were growing greater year after year, and were not
+lessened, as may easily be imagined, by the thrifty complacency of those
+German managers who granted furloughs to their singers in consideration
+of a share of their American earnings. Under the circumstances it is not
+to be wondered at that Mr. Abbey's agreement to give Italian and French
+opera at his own risk was alluring, especially to those who had never
+sympathized with the serious tendency of German opera.
+
+The contract of the directors for opera in the season of 1891-92 was
+made with Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau, who figured in all the
+announcements as the managers. With them was associated as silent
+partner Mr. John B. Schoeffel, of Boston, who had shared in all of Mr.
+Abbey's daring theatrical ventures since 1876, and, consequently, also
+in the unfortunate season of 1883-84, when Maurice Grau acted as manager
+at a salary of $15,000. Mr. Abbey's mind was not closed to the lessons
+of the German seasons. A few days after he had signed the contract he
+told me that he had had a project in contemplation to bring Materna,
+Winkelmann, Scaria, and others to America for Wagnerian opera before Mr.
+Thomas had brought them for concert work; that he looked upon German
+opera as more advantageous to the manager, not only on account of its
+smaller costliness, but, also, because it enabled a manager to adjust
+his singers to a repertory instead of the repertory to the singers. But
+he had speculated successfully with Patti under the "farewell" device,
+the managerial virus was again in his veins, and he cherished a foolish
+belief that, as one of the results of the German régime, he would
+be able to exact different service from the artists of Italian and
+French opera than they had been wont to give. On this point he was soon
+painfully disillusionized. Had it not been for the presence in his
+company of Mme. Lehmann, M. Lassalle, and the brothers Jean and Édouard
+de Reszke, whose instincts and training kept them out of the old
+Italian rut, his performances would never have gotten away from the old
+hurdy-gurdy list. As it was, when he wanted to give "L'Africaine," in
+order to present M. Lassalle in one of his most effective rôles, though
+he had Emma Eames, Marie Van Zandt, Albani, the sisters Giulia and
+Sophia Ravogli, Pettigiani, and Lillian Nordica in his company (the last
+hired specially for the purpose), he was obliged to ask Mme. Lehmann
+to learn the part of Selika. She did so, but the strain, combined with
+other things, broke down her health, and she was useless to her manager
+for the second half of the season. She had been engaged as a lure for
+the German element among the city's opera patrons, and to it also were
+offered propitiatory sacrifices in the shape of performances in Italian
+of "Fidelio," "The Flying Dutchman," and "Die Meistersinger" under the
+direction of Mr. Seidl. After the lesson had been still more thoroughly
+learned a German contingent was added to the Italian and French, and
+German opera was added to the list, making it as completely polyglot as
+it has ever been since. But before then many financial afflictions were
+in store for the enterprise.
+
+Mr. Abbey began his season December 14, 1891, after having given opera
+for five weeks in Chicago. In his company, besides the sopranos just
+named, were Mme. Scalchi and Jane de Vigne, contraltos; Jean de Reszke,
+Paul Kalisch, M. Montariol, and a younger brother of Giannini, tenors;
+Martapoura, Magini-Coletti, Lassalle, and Camera, barytones; Édouard de
+Reszke, Vinche, and Serbolini, basses, and Carbone, buffo. As conductor,
+Vianesi, known from the season of 1883-84, returned. The subscription
+season came to a close on March 12th, and presented thirty-nine
+subscription evening performances, thirteen matinées, three extra
+evenings, and one extra afternoon--in all, fifty-six representations.
+The list of operas contained not a single novelty, unless Gluck's
+"Orfeo," which had been heard in New York in 1866, and Mascagni's
+"Cavalleria Rusticana," which had been performed by two companies in
+English earlier in the season, were changed into novelties by use of the
+Italian text. But under such a classification Wagner's comic opera would
+also have to be set down as a novelty. The list included ten operas not
+in the repertories of the German companies, which had occupied the opera
+house between the two administrations of Mr. Abbey. Inasmuch as a new
+departure was signalized by this season, I present herewith a table of
+performances in the subscription season, with the extra representations
+mentioned:
+
+
+  Opera                                         First performance
+
+  "Roméo et Juliette" ............................ December 14
+  "Il Trovatore" ................................. December 16
+  "Les Huguenots" ................................ December 18
+  "Norma" ........................................ December 19
+  "La Sonnambula" ................................ December 21
+  "Rigoletto" .................................... December 23
+  "Faust" ........................................ December 25
+  "Aïda" ......................................... December 28
+  "Orfeo" and "Cavalleria Rusticana" ............. December 30
+  "Le Prophéte" .................................. January 1
+  "Martha" ....................................... January 2
+  "Lohengrin" .................................... January 4
+  "Mignon" ....................................... January 8
+  "Otello" ....................................... January 11
+  "L'Africaine" .................................. January 15
+  "Don Giovanni" ................................. January 18
+  "Dinorah" ...................................... January 29
+  "Hamlet" ....................................... February 10
+  "Lakmé" ........................................ February 22
+  "I Maestri Cantoni" ............................ March 2
+  "Carmen" ....................................... March 4
+
+
+The first and most obvious lesson of the season, so far as it was an
+index of popular taste, may be seen by a critical glance at the list of
+performances. A beginning was made on the old lines. The familiar operas
+of the Italian list were brought forward with great rapidity, but not
+one of them drew a paying house. The turning point came with the arrival
+of M. Lassalle on January 15th. Messrs. Abbey and Grau then recognized
+that salvation for their undertaking lay in one course only, which was
+to give operas of large dimensions, and in each case employ the three
+popular men who had taken the place in the admiration of the public
+usually monopolized by the prima donna--the brothers de Reszke, and M.
+Lassalle. How consistently they acted on that conviction is shown by the
+circumstance that, though seventeen operas had been brought out between
+December 14th and January 15th, only six were added to them in the
+remaining two months.
+
+It was not a "star" season in the old sense. The most popular artists
+were the three men already mentioned, but it required that they should
+all be enlisted together with Miss Eames and Mme. Scaichi to make
+the one "sensation" of the season--Gounod's "Faust," which had six
+regular performances, and two extra. Of the women singers the greatest
+popularity was won by Miss Eames, whose youthfulness, freshness of
+voice, and statuesque beauty, compelled general admiration. The
+smallness of her repertory, however, prevented her from helping the
+season to the triumphant close which it might have had if the company
+had been enlisted to carry out the policy adopted when the season was
+half over. Miss Eames's début was made on the opening night in Gounod's
+"Roméo et Juliette." In many ways she was fortunate in her introduction
+to the operatic stage of her people--her people, though she was born in
+China. She was only twenty-four years old, and there was much to laud in
+her art, and nothing to condone except its immaturity. Her endowments of
+voice and person were opulent. She appeared in the opera in which she
+had effected her entrance on the stage at the Grand Opéra in Paris less
+than three years before, and for which her gifts and graces admirably
+fitted her. She appeared, moreover, in the company of Jean de Reszke,
+who was then, and who remained till his retirement, in all things except
+mere sensuous charm of voice, the ideal Romeo. She came fresh from her
+first successes at Covent Garden, which had been made in the spring of
+the year, and disclosed at once the lovely qualities which, when they
+became riper, gave promise of the highest order of things in the way
+of dramatic expression. At the end of the period whose history I am
+trying to set down she was still one of the bright ornaments of the
+Metropolitan stage, though she had not realized all the promises which
+she held out at the close of the first decade of her career.
+
+Curiosity was piqued, and a kindly spirit of patriotism enlisted by
+the début of Miss Marie Van Zandt on December 21st. She, too, was an
+American, but she had been before the European public ten years, and
+had won as much favor as any American artist ever enjoyed in Paris.
+Mr. Abbey had pointed to her engagement (and that of Mme. Melba, whose
+star was just rising above the horizon) as a persuasive argument with
+the directors. Everything about the little lady, not excepting some
+unfortunate experiences which put an end to her Parisian career, invited
+to kindliness of utterance touching her début. Those of her hearers
+who had followed the history of opera in America for a score of years
+remembered her mother with admiration. Long before the days when every
+effort to produce opera in the vernacular was heralded as a great
+patriotic undertaking, Mme. Jenny Van Zandt headed companies which
+exploited as varied and dignified repertories as those of the German
+companies at the Metropolitan Opera House, barring the Wagnerian list.
+Miss Van Zandt, diminutive, but winsome in voice as well as figure,
+and ingratiating in manner, recalled an old observation about precious
+things being done up in small parcels. Her coming seemed to betoken the
+return of the day of small things. She appeared in "La Sonnambula," and
+it was not until two months had passed that the patrons of the opera
+were privileged to hear her in "Lakmé," the opera with which her name
+was chiefly associated in Paris. Meanwhile she appeared in "Martha,"
+"Mignon," "Don Giovanni," and "Dinorah," without rousing the public out
+of the apathy which it felt toward operas of their character. And when
+her battle-horse was led into the ring the task of sustaining interest
+in the season had fallen upon the shoulders of the masculine contingent
+in the company.
+
+Curious questionings were raised by the production of "Fidelio" and
+"Die Meistersinger" in Italian. It was generally recognized that Mr.
+Abbey offered them as sops to Cerberus; but the German element in the
+population, which they were designed to appease, plainly were lacking in
+that peculiar bent of mind necessary to understand why Beethoven's opera
+done in Italian with a cast one-half good was supposed by the management
+to be worth two-thirds more than the same opera done in a language which
+it could understand with a cast all good (two of the principals, Mme.
+Lehmann and Mr. Kalisch, being the same), during the preceding seven
+years. Was the Italian language sixty-seven per cent. more valuable
+than the German in an opera conceived in German, written in German, and
+composed in the German spirit by a German? The public thought not, and
+"Fidelio" had only two performances. A more kindly view was taken of
+the Italian "Meistersinger," Which enabled the Germans to give expression
+to their feelings by making demonstrations over Mr. Seidl. There was
+much to admire, moreover, in the singing and acting of Jean de Reszke
+as Walther, and M. Lassalle as Hans Sachs. There was nothing of the
+conventional operatic marionette in these men. One night while they and
+Édouard de Reszke were on the stage at the same time I expressed my
+admiration at the sight of three such fine specimens of physical manhood
+to Mme. Lehmann, who sat near my elbow in a baignoir.
+
+"Inspiring, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "and they might be as fine artists as they are
+men if they would but study."
+
+We all know that their American experience was as little lost on the
+brothers de Reszke as it was on Mme. Lehmann herself, who stepped into
+the foremost rank of tragic singers so soon as America offered her the
+opportunity to shuffle off the obligation of "singing princesses," as
+she called it.
+
+Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," the hot-blooded little opera which
+was destined to make so great a commotion in the world (had already
+begun to make it, indeed), had its first production at the Metropolitan
+Opera House on December 30th. The opera was no novelty, having already
+made an exciting career before the Metropolitan opera season opened;
+but there were two features of the performances calculated to live in
+the memory of serious observers as characteristic of the change in
+spirit which had come over the institution since the departure of the
+German artists: Miss Eames wore a perfectly exquisite accordion-pleated
+skirt as the distraught Sicilian peasant, and Signor Valero sang the
+siciliano on the open stage, the overture being stopped and the curtain
+raised so that he might sing his serenade to Lola with greater effect.
+He sang behind Lola's house, and winning a call in spite of his
+stridulous voice and singular phrasing, he stepped out from cover, bowed
+his acknowledgments, and, returning to his hiding place, serenaded his
+love over again. After he had come forward a second time Signor Vianesi
+found his place in the score and resumed the overture.
+
+"Cavalleria Rusticana" precipitated an amusing but extremely lively
+managerial battle when it reached New York. Those who watched the
+operatic doings of Europe were aware of the fact that the opera spread
+like wildfire from town to town immediately after its first success at
+Rome. Fast as it traveled, however, the intermezzo traveled faster.
+Seidl had seized upon it in the summer of 1891, and made it a feature of
+his concerts at Brighton Beach. Then came simultaneous announcements of
+the production of the opera by Rudolph Aronson and Oscar Hammerstein in
+the fall. Mr. Aronson wanted to open the season at the Casino with it,
+and let it introduce a change in the character of the entertainments
+given at that playhouse. Mr. Hammerstein had also announced the work,
+but he had no theater at his ready disposal. He thought Aronson was
+poaching on his preserves, and there began a diverting struggle for
+priority of performance, from which nobody profited and the opera
+suffered. Amid threats of crimination Aronson precipitated what he
+called a dress rehearsal of the work at the Casino in the afternoon of
+October 1, 1891. Like the king in the parable, he sent out into the
+highways, and bade all he could find in to the feast. Especially did
+his servants labor on the Rialto, and the affair had all the appearance
+of a professional matinée. Nothing was quite in readiness, but Mr.
+Hammerstein had announced his first performance for the evening of that
+day, and must be anticipated at all hazards. Yet there were singers
+and scenes and musicians in the orchestra, and Mr. Gustav Kerker to
+steer the little operatic ship through the breakers. On the whole, the
+performance was fair. Laura Bellini was the Santuzza of the occasion,
+Grace Golden the Lola, Helen von Doenhoff the Lucia, Charles Bassett the
+Turiddu, and William Pruette the Alfio. Heinrich Conried staged the
+production. In the evening Oscar Hammerstein pitchforked the opera on
+to the stage of the Lenox Lyceum--an open concert room, and a poor one
+at that. There was a canvas proscenium, no scenery to speak of, costumes
+copied from no particular country and no particular period, and a
+general effect of improvisation. But the musical forces were superior
+to Mr. Aronson's, and had there been a better theater the Casino
+performance would have been greatly surpassed. There was a really fine
+orchestra under the direction of Mr. Adolph Neuendorff, but it sat
+out on the floor of the hall, which reverberated like a drum. Mme.
+Janouschoffsky, an exceedingly capable artist, was the Santuzza, Mrs.
+Pemberton Hincks the Lola, Mrs. Jennie Bohner the Lucia, Payne Clarke
+the Turiddu, and Herman Gerold the Alfio. While all this pother
+was making, "Cavalleria Rusticana" was already three weeks old in
+Philadelphia, where Mr. Gustav Hinrichs had brought it forward with his
+American company at the Grand Opera House; Minnie Hauk, with a company
+of her own, had given it in Chicago the night before the New York
+struggle, and Emma Juch and her company were rushing forward the
+preparations for a production in Boston.
+
+"Cavalleria Rusticana" came upon the world like the bursting of a bomb,
+and its effect was so startling that it bewildered and confounded the
+radical leaders of musical thought. There were few, indeed, who retained
+calmness of vision enough to perceive that it was less a change of
+manner than of subject-matter, which had whirled the world off its
+critical feet. Outside of Italy there was no means of seeing the work
+of preparation which had preceded it. The annual output of hundreds of
+operas made no impression beyond the Alpine barrier, and it was easy to
+believe that the entire product was formed after the old and humdrum
+manner. No sooner had "Cavalleria Rusticana" broken down the old
+confines, however, than it was discovered that a whole brood of young
+musicians had been brought up on the same blood-heating food, and a
+dozen composers were ready to use the same formulas. Most of them,
+indeed, got the virus from the same apothecary who uttered the mortal
+drug to Mascagni--that is to say, from Amilcare Ponchielli. Had we but
+listened twenty-five years ago to "La Gioconda" as we are able to listen
+to "Cavalleria Rusticana," and its swift and multitudinous offspring
+now, we might have recognized the beginnings of what has been termed
+"Mascagnitis," not in an essentially new manner of musical composition,
+but in the appeal to the primitive passion for violence and blood which
+found expression in the operatic paraphrase of Victor Hugo's story,
+and the invitation which that passion extended to the modern musician
+suddenly emancipated from a lot of cumbersome formularies, and endowed
+with a mass of new harmonic and instrumental pigments with which to
+produce the startling contrasts and swift contradictions for which
+the new field of subjects clamors.
+
+Seventeen years ago "Cavalleria Rusticana" had no perspective. Now,
+though but a small portion of its progeny has been brought to our
+notice, we, nevertheless, look at it through a vista which looks like a
+valley of moral and physical death through which there flows a sluggish
+stream thick with filth, and red with blood. Strangely enough, in spite
+of the consequences which have followed it, the fierce little drama
+retains its old potency. It still speaks with a voice which sounds like
+the voice of truth. Its music still makes the nerves tingle, and carries
+our feelings unresistingly on its turbulent current. But the stage
+picture is less sanguinary than it looked in the beginning. It seems to
+have receded a millennium in time. It has the terrible fierceness of an
+Attic tragedy, but it also has the decorum which the Attic tragedy never
+violated. There is no slaughter in the presence of the audience, despite
+the humbleness of its personages. It does not keep us perpetually in
+sight of the shambles. It is, indeed, an exposition of chivalry, rustic,
+but chivalry, nevertheless. It was thus Clytemnestra slew her husband,
+and Orestes his mother. Note the contrast which the duel between Alfio
+and Turiddu presents with the double murder to the piquant accompaniment
+of comedy in "Pagliacci," the opera which followed so hard upon its
+heels. Since then piquancy has been the cry; the piquant contemplation
+of adultery, seduction, and murder amid the reek and stench of the
+Italian barnyard. Think of Cilèa's "Tilda," Giordano's "Mala Vita,"
+Spinelli's "A Basso Porto," and Tasca's "A Santa Lucia!"
+
+The stories chosen for operatic treatment by the champions of verismo
+are all alike. It is their filth and blood which fructifies the music,
+which rasps the nerves even as the plays revolt the moral stomach. I
+repeat: looking back over the time during which this so-called veritism
+has held its orgy, "Cavalleria Rusticana" seems almost classic. Its
+music is highly spiced and tastes "hot i' th' mouth," but its eloquence
+is, after all, in its eager, pulsating, passionate melody--like the
+music which Verdi wrote more than half a century ago for the last act
+of "Il Trovatore." If neither Mascagni himself, nor his imitators, have
+succeeded in equaling it since, it is because they have thought too
+much of the external devices of abrupt and uncouth change of modes and
+tonalities, of exotic scales and garish orchestration, and too little of
+the fundamental element of melody, which once was the be-all and end-all
+of Italian music. Another fountain of gushing melody must be opened
+before "Cavalleria Rusticana" finds a successor in all things worthy of
+the succession. Ingenious artifice, reflection, and technical cleverness
+will not suffice even with the blood and mud of the Neapolitan slums as
+a fertilizer.
+
+Messrs. Abbey and Grau had no rival opera organizations to contend with
+at any time after they opened their doors, so they created a bit of
+competition themselves. In January they brought Mme. Patti and her
+operatic concert company into the house for a pair of concerts in which
+scenes from operas were sung in costume, the famous singer's companions
+being Mlle. Fabbri, M. Guille (tenor), Signor Novara (bass), and Signor
+Del Puente. The occasion offered an opportunity to study the impulses
+which underlie popular patronage. The entertainments being concerts,
+not operas, the stockholders were not entitled to their boxes under the
+terms of their contract with Abbey & Grau, and were conspicuous by their
+absence. Nevertheless, at the second concert, which took place on an
+afternoon, I estimated the audience at four thousand--nine-tenths women.
+Mme. Patti also appeared in performances of "Lucia di Lammermoor" and
+"Il Barbiere" in a supplementary season, one feature of which, on March
+31, 1892, was the production of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" in Italian,
+with M. Lassalle in the titular part, which he sang for the first time
+in his life. "A marvelous artist indeed is this Frenchman," was my
+comment in The Tribune, "and if he and the brothers de Reszke are in
+next year's company, the lovers of the lyric drama as distinguished from
+the old sing-song opera will look into the future without trepidation."
+Unhappily there was no "next year's company."
+
+In August, 1892, the Metropolitan Opera House had a visitation of fire,
+which brought operatic matters to a crisis, caused a postponement of
+the performance for a season, a reorganization of the corporation which
+owned the building, and a remodeling of the stage and portions of the
+interior of the theater. For a considerable space before the building of
+the Metropolitan the public mind was greatly exercised over the awful
+loss of life at recent theater fires, especially the destruction of the
+Ringtheater in Vienna. When Mr. Cady planned the New York house, he
+set about making it as absolutely fireproof as such a structure can be.
+It was to be non-combustible from the bottom up. There was not a stud
+partition in it. The floors were all of iron beams and brick arches, the
+masonry being exposed in the corridors, passages and vestibules, but for
+comfort having a covering of wood in the audience room. The roof was of
+iron and masonry, the outer covering of slate being secured to masonry
+blocks. The iron roof beams of over one hundred feet span, were mounted
+on rollers to allow for contraction and expansion. The ceiling of the
+audience room was of iron. The ornamental work of the proscenium, the
+tier balustrades, and the frames of the partitions between the boxes
+were all of metal. The stage was supported by a complex iron system
+of about four thousand light pieces so adjusted as to be removable
+in sections when it was desired to open the stage floor. Theater
+fires almost invariably originate on the stage, and, as an additional
+safeguard, Mr. Cady contrived an apparatus for flooding the stage in
+the case of a threatened conflagration. A large skylight was weighted
+to fall open in case of fire, and a great water tank placed over the
+rigging loft and connected with a network of pipes with apertures
+stopped with extremely fusible solder, so that the heat of even a
+small fire would open the holes and release a drenching shower.
+
+One after another these precautions were rendered inutile. The iron
+support of the stage troubled the stage mechanics, who wanted something
+that could be more easily handled, so wooden pieces were substituted for
+the iron. The location of the tank was such that the water was in danger
+of freezing in winter, and steam pipes were arranged to keep the water
+warm. Mr. Abbey did not like the expense of warming the water, and
+therefore emptied the tank. There was a fireproof curtain, which was
+cumbrous to handle, and Mr. Abbey's men chained it up. The commodious
+stage made a superb paint shop in summer, and Mr. Abbey used it for
+painting scenery for his other theaters. It was being thus used on
+August 27, 1892, when a workman carelessly threw a lighted match among
+the "green" scenery. It caught fire, the stage was burned out, and
+the auditorium sadly disfigured. When, eventually, the building was
+repaired, the interior of the theater, all that had suffered harm, was
+thoroughly remodeled, the stockholders' boxes were reduced to a single
+row, the proscenium was given its present shape, the apron of the stage
+was removed, and the stage itself was made more practicable in many
+ways. This did not happen, however, until the question whether or not
+the opera house should be restored to its original uses had occupied the
+minds of the stockholders and public for nearly a year. In the middle
+of the season Messrs. Abbey and Grau, while protesting that they were
+satisfied with the financial outcome of their venture, announced that
+they did not intend to give opera the next year. They were shaken in
+this determination, if they ever seriously harbored it, by the success
+of "Faust" and one or two other operas, which enlisted what in the next
+season of opera came to be called the "ideal cast." But there was a
+division of opinion as to the proper course for the future among the
+stockholders, especially after Mr. Abbey, late in September, sent word
+from London that his firm would not undertake opera in the United States
+without a subvention from the Metropolitan Opera Company. Also that he
+had already canceled his contracts with singers for the American season
+of 1892-93. There was some vague talk before this on the part of Mr.
+Schoeffel of a season of opera in Mexico City, and a longer season than
+usual in Chicago, the intimation plainly being that grand opera might
+be emancipated from dependence on the metropolis. One effect of this
+indecision was to bring forth a discussion of the feasibility of endowed
+opera in New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and one or two other
+of the large cities of the country. Another was to call into new life an
+agitation in favor of the establishment of another German company. The
+first project died of inanition; the second developed in another year
+into an actuality, which created more stir than the close of the opera
+house had done. The Metropolitan Opera Company reached a decision
+some time in January, 1893. The directors had neglected to insure
+the building against fire, and provision had to be made for funds to
+rebuild, as well as to pay off existing liabilities. The opera lovers
+among the stockholders reorganized the company under the style of the
+Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, and purchased the building
+under foreclosure proceeding for $1,425,000, then raised $1,000,000 by a
+bond issue, and the summer of 1893 was devoted to a restoration of the
+theater, an agreement having also been reached for a new lease to Mr.
+Abbey and his associates.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE ADVENT OF MELBA AND CALVÉ
+
+
+For the reasons set forth at the close of the last chapter there was no
+opera at the Metropolitan Opera House in the season of 1892-93, but the
+fall of the latter year witnessed the beginning of a new period, full
+of vicissitudes. With many brilliant artistic features, it was still
+experimental to a large extent on its artistic side, the chief results
+of its empiricism being the restoration of German opera in the repertory
+on an equal footing with Italian and French. It also brought the largest
+wave of prosperity to the house that it had experienced since its
+opening, yet ended in the shipwreck of the lessees, and disaster that
+was more than financial. The lessees were again Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel
+and Grau, with whom the reorganized Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate
+Company (Limited) effected an agreement, the essential elements of which
+remained unchanged for fifteen years; that is, down to the close of the
+season of 1907-08. The term was five years. The lessees took the house
+for an annual rental of $52,000, and pledged themselves to give opera
+four times a week for thirteen weeks in the winter and spring. The
+lessors paid back to the lessees the $52,000 for their box privileges,
+and to insure representations which would be satisfactory to them,
+reserved the right to nominate six of the singers, two of whom were
+to take part in every performance in the subscription list.
+
+The first season under the new lease was enormously successful, Abbey,
+Schoeffel, and Grau realizing about $150,000, including the visits to
+other cities, and a supplementary spring season of two weeks. They made
+great losses on their other enterprises, however, especially on Abbey's
+Theater (now the Knickerbocker), and the American tours of Mounet-Sully
+and Mme. Réjane. Like results attended the seasons of 1894-95, and
+1895-96, the drag in the latter instance being the Lillian Russell Opera
+Company, which, together with other ventures, brought the firm into
+such a financial slough that it made an assignment for the benefit of
+its creditors, who were forced to take over its business to protect
+themselves. Chief of these was William Steinway, who had accommodated
+Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau with loans to the extent of $50,000. Under
+his guidance as chairman of the committee of reorganization, the stock
+company, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Limited), was formed, he becoming
+president, and Henry E. Abbey, John B. Schoeffel, and Maurice Grau
+managing directors at a salary of $20,000 a year. Ernest Goerlitz, who
+had been in the employ of the firm for some time, was made secretary
+and treasurer. He remained in an executive capacity at the Metropolitan
+until the expiration of the consulship of Conried in 1908. Mr. Steinway
+got rid of the debts of the company (or, perhaps, it would be more
+correct to say, changed their character) by issuing certificates of
+stock and notes to the creditors. In this manner some of the principal
+artists of the company became financially interested in opera giving.
+
+Before the reorganized company began the next series of performances Mr.
+Abbey died, and the season was only a fortnight old when Mr. Steinway
+followed him into the grave. A very puissant personage in the managerial
+field was Mr. Abbey during a full quarter-century of theatrical life in
+America. He was a purely speculative manager, who never permitted his
+own likes or dislikes to influence him in his chosen vocation of
+purveying amusements, so-called, to the public, though his tastes led
+him generally into the higher regions, and there is little doubt that an
+inherent love for music for its own sake made him take to opera. As a
+young man in his native city of Akron, Ohio, where he was born in 1846,
+he played cornet in the town band. When he revoked his resolution never
+to embark in an operatic enterprise again after the disastrous season of
+1883-84, I met him in Broadway, and asked him about the artists he
+intended to bring to the Metropolitan Opera House. He gave me the names
+of those whom he had in view, and I expressed my regret that one, whom I
+admired very greatly indeed, was missing. His reply was prompt: "There
+is no woman in the world I would rather engage, and no woman whose
+singing gives me greater pleasure; but she doesn't draw. I never made
+any money with her." It was an illuminative observation. As a youth he
+was interested with his father in the jewelry business in Akron, and on
+the death of his father, in 1873, the business became his; but by that
+time he was already a theatrical manager, though on a small scale. In
+1869 he had assumed charge of the Akron theater. In 1876 he associated
+himself with John B. Schoeffel, and with him gradually acquired
+theatrical properties in several of the principal cities of the East,
+and entered upon enterprises of a character which were his undoing in
+the end. The Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau Company carried through the season
+of 1896-97 with a profit of about $30,000 in New York, despite the fact
+that the financial affairs of the country were in a bad way. A four
+weeks' season in Chicago, however, was ruinous, and Mr. Gran was
+compelled to fall back on some of the artists of the company and friends
+to enable him to bring the Chicago season to a close. Jean and Édouard
+de Reszke and Lassalle were among the subscribers to a guarantee fund of
+$30,000, which he needed to carry him through. All the guarantors were
+repaid in full, when, at the end of the season, the affairs of Abbey,
+Schoeffel & Grau (Limited) were wound up, and Mr. Schoeffel bought the
+principal asset, the Tremont Theater, in Boston. Thereupon Mr. Grau and
+his associates formed a new company, which gave opera under the
+conditions which seemed to have become traditional until the end of the
+season of 1902-3. Mr. Grau was compelled by ill health to withdraw from
+active duty before the end of the last season, and the story of his
+company's doings falls naturally into another chapter of this history.
+We must now survey the artistic incidents of the period between the
+reconstruction of the opera house and the beginning of the new régime.
+This will be the business of this and the following chapter.
+
+Simply for the sake of convenience in the record, I shall devote the
+chief statistical attention in the remaining chapters of this history to
+the subscription seasons, and discuss the supplementary spring seasons
+only as they offer features of special interest. The seasons, generally
+a fortnight long, and given after the return of the singers from visits
+to Boston and Chicago, are distinguished from the subscription seasons
+very much as the fall seasons in London are from the summer seasons,
+though there is not the sharp line of demarcation so far as fashion
+goes, which the adjournment of Parliament makes on the other side of
+the Atlantic.
+
+The tenth regular season of opera then began at the Metropolitan Opera
+House on November 27, 1893, and ended on February 24, 1894. Officially
+the languages of the performances were Italian and French, but the
+operas given were, for the greater part, French and German, and the
+representations were dual in language in all cases, except the Italian
+works. I mention this fact, not because of its singularity, for it is a
+familiar phenomenon all over the operatic world, except perhaps Italy,
+but in order to point out hereafter a betterment, which came in with
+a more serious artistic striving later. The chorus always sang in the
+"soft bastard Latin," whether the principals sang in Italian or French;
+and the occasions were not a few when two languages were sung also
+by the principals--when lovers wooed in French, and received their
+replies in Italian, thus recalling things over which Addison made
+merry generations ago. The season was planned to embrace thirty-nine
+subscription nights and thirteen matinées. To these were added two
+matinées and sixteen evening representations, two of the latter
+being for the benefit of popular charities. In all, New York had
+sixty performances of opera within the period covered by the regular
+subscription, which was a smaller number than had been shown by any
+season since that of 1886-87. Eighteen operas were brought forward in
+full (that is to say, without more than the conventional cuts), and
+parts of three others. Thus of "La Traviata," though I have included it
+in the list to be presented soon, only the first and fourth acts were
+performed. There was not a single opera in the repertory which had not
+been heard in New York before, though several were new to the house.
+The nearest approach to a novelty was Mascagni's "L'Amico Fritz," which
+disappeared from the list after two representations, and had been heard
+at an improvised performance, which scarcely deserves to be considered
+in a record of this character. In the supplemental season, however,
+a novelty of real pith and moment was brought forward in the shape
+of Massenet's "Werther," which had been promised to the regular
+subscribers, and which, while it made no profound impression, was
+accepted as an earnest of the excellent and honorable intentions of the
+managers, and a proof of the difficulties which hampered them at times.
+
+The principal members of the company were Mesdames Melba, Calvé,
+Eames, Nordica, Arnoldson, Scalchi, and Mantelli, and Messrs. Jean and
+Édouard de Reszke, de Lucia, Vignas, Ancona, Plançon, Castelmary, and
+Martapoura. The subscription for the season amounted to $82,000, which
+was $10,000 more than the largest subscription in the German period. A
+great ado was made over this fact by the managers and their friends. Not
+unnaturally the lovers of German opera took up the cudgels against the
+Italianissimi, and pointed out the indubitable fact that owing to the
+difference in prices of admission and seats the subscription, instead of
+showing a large advance in popular interest, indicated a falling off to
+the extent of an attendance of six thousand in the season. Not money,
+but attendance, they argued, was the real standard of popularity. The
+managers also very unwisely, as it proved (since two years later they
+found themselves obliged to include German performances in their
+scheme), put forward a public boast that the receipts for the last
+month of the opera "nearly equaled the average gross receipts for the
+entire term of any German opera ever given in New York." Of course, the
+reference went only to the German seasons at the Metropolitan Opera
+House, for there was no record that could be consulted touching the many
+sporadic German enterprises of the earlier periods at the Academy of
+Music and other theaters. It was not at all unkind, but simply in the
+interest of historical verity that in The Tribune I called attention
+to the fact that it was scarcely ingenuous in Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau
+to choose the last month in the season for the comparison, for in that
+month there were twenty-two representations, including two for popular
+charities (at one of which, managed by the opera house directors, the
+public contributed $22,000), and six representations of "Carmen," which,
+with Mme. Calvé in the principal character, was enjoying the most
+sensational triumph ever achieved by any opera or singer. Moreover, most
+of 'these performances were outside the subscription, and the prices,
+as I have repeatedly said, were nearly double those which prevailed
+during the German régime. Besides, it was an easy task to prove from the
+figures which I had printed from year to year in my "Review of the New
+York Musical Season," that, in order to surpass the German record with
+their last month, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau would have had to show average
+nightly receipts of over $9,000, whereas only once had they, in a spirit
+of boastfulness, claimed that as much as $11,000 had been taken at a
+single performance, and that at a phenomenal "Carmen" matinée. Without
+Calvé and "Carmen" the bankruptcy which came two years later might have
+been precipitated in this season. Thanks to Bizet's opera, and its
+heroine, and the popularity of Mme. Eames and the brothers de Reszke in
+"Faust," the season was prodigiously successful, the receipts from all
+sources (including the Sunday night concerts and opera in Philadelphia
+and Brooklyn) being in the neighborhood of $550,000, and the profits,
+as I have already said, $150,000. The twelve performances of "Carmen,"
+I make no doubt, brought at least $100,000 into the exchequer of the
+managers in the subscription season, and in the supplemental post-Lenten
+season of a fortnight there were three performances more. The success of
+the opera remained without a parallel in the history of opera in New
+York till the coming of Wagner's "Parsifal."
+
+Mme. Melba effected her entrance on the operatic stage in America on
+December 4, 1893, in Donizetti's "Lucia." Five years before she had made
+her London début in the same opera, and between that time and her coming
+to New York she had won fragrant laurels in Paris in company with the
+brothers de Reszke and M. Lassalle in "Roméo et Juliette" and "Faust,"
+both of which operas she had prepared with the composer. Her repertory
+was small when she came, but in it she was unique, both for the quality
+of her voice and the quality of her art. She did not make all of her
+operas effective in her first season, partly because a large portion
+of the public had been weaned away from the purely lyric style of
+composition and song, in which she excelled, partly because the dramatic
+methods and fascinating personality of Mme. Calvé had created a fad
+which soon grew to proportions that scouted at reason; partly because
+Miss (not Mme.) Eames had become a great popular favorite, and the
+people of society, who doted on her, on Jean de Reszke, his brother
+Édouard, and on Lassalle, found all the artistic bliss of which they
+were capable in listening to their combined voices in "Faust." So
+popular had Gounod's opera become at this time with the patrons of the
+Metropolitan Opera House, that my witty colleague, Mr. W. J. Henderson,
+sarcastically dubbed it "das Faustspielhaus," in parody of the popular
+title of the theater on the hill in the Wagnerian Mecca.
+
+When Mme. Melba came she was the finest exemplar of finished
+vocalization that had been heard at the opera house since its opening,
+with the single exception of Mme. Sembrich. Though she had been singing
+in opera only five years, she had reached the zenith of her powers.
+Her voice was charmingly fresh, and exquisitely beautiful. Her
+tone-production was more natural, and quite as apparently spontaneous,
+as that of the wonderful woman who so long upheld the standard of bel
+canto throughout the world. In the case of Mme. Patti, art had already
+begun to be largely artifice, a circumstance that needed to cause no
+wonder inasmuch as her career on the operatic Stage already compassed
+a full generation; but Mme. Melba neither needed to seek for means nor
+guard against possible mishap. All that she needed--more than that:
+all that she wanted to humor her amiable disposition to be prodigal in
+utterance--lay in her voice ready at hand. Its range was commensurate
+with all that could be asked of it, and she moved with greatest ease
+in the regions which most of her rivals carefully avoided. To throw
+out those scintillant bubbles of sound which used to be looked upon as
+the highest achievement in singing seemed to be an entirely natural
+mode of expression with her. With the reasonableness of such a mode
+of expression I am not concerned now; it is enough that Mme. Melba
+came nearer to providing it with justification than any one of her
+contemporaries of that day, except Mme. Sembrich, or any of her
+contemporaries of to-day. Added to these gifts and graces, she disclosed
+most admirable musical instincts, a quality which the people had been
+taught to admire more than ever while they were learning how to give
+reverence due to the dramatic elements in the modern lyric drama.
+
+I have already intimated that Mme. Melba's operas found little favor
+with the public compared with "Carmen" and "Faust," and, perhaps, there
+was in this more than a mere indication of the educational influence
+left by the German period. I should have no hesitation whatever in
+saying so had not the "Carmen" craze reached proportions which precluded
+the thought that artistic predilections or convictions had anything to
+do with it. So much of a mere fad did Mme. Calvé in "Carmen" become that
+the public remained all but insensible to the merits of her immeasurably
+finer impersonation of Santuzza in "Cavalleria Rusticana." It was in
+Mascagni's opera that she effected her début on November 29, 1893, in
+company with Señor Vignas, a Spanish tenor, squat and ungraceful of
+figure, homely of features, restricted in intelligence, and strident of
+voice. New York knew very little of Mme. Calvé when she came, though
+she had already been twice as long on the stage as Mme. Melba, and even
+after her first appearance Mr. Abbey met my congratulations on her
+achievement with a dubious shake of the head, and the remark that, while
+he hoped my predictions touching her popularity would be fulfilled,
+he placed a much lower estimation on her powers than I. Not he, but
+Mr. Grau, was responsible for her engagement, and his hopes were all
+centered on Mme. Melba. Like most of our singers at the time, Calvé
+came to New York by way of London. The rôle of Santuzza, which she had
+created in Paris in January, 1892, and in London in the following May,
+had been hailed with gladness in both cities, but her Carmen was as
+inadequately appreciated in Paris as it was overestimated in New York
+and London, especially in later years, when the capriciousness which
+led her originally to break away from some of the traditions of the
+rôle created by Galli-Marié. and thus cost her the understanding of
+the Parisians, had become a fixed habit, which she pursued regardless
+of decent moderation, sound principles, and good taste.
+
+The Parisians attested their artistic Bourbonism not only in declining
+to recognize the excellence of the good features of Calvé's Carmen, but,
+also, in failing to appreciate her touchingly beautiful Ophelia, to
+the great grief of Ambroise Thomas, who went to Italy to see her in the
+part, and believed that had she but been given the proper support in
+Paris "Hamlet" would have ranked with "Faust" in popularity. Of course,
+this was a fond composer's too good opinion of his opera, but the trait
+of the Paris public which is unwilling to find merit in any change from
+a performance which first won their admiration has frequently stood
+in the way of first-class talent. To illustrate this I can relate an
+anecdote which was repeated to me at an artistic dinner table in the
+French capital in 1886. It is not for me to vouch for the truth of the
+story, but give it as it was told to me in explanation of some amused
+comments which I had made on the stiff conventionality of a performance
+of "L'Africaine" which I had witnessed at the Grand Opéra. Faure, the
+original of Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, had been succeeded in the rôle by
+Lassalle, whose fine art in newer works had met with full recognition
+from press and public. To Lassalle's great surprise, his Hamlet, a
+remarkably fine performance within the limit set by the pitiable
+operatic travesty of Shakespeare's play, was received coldly, and there
+was wide comment on the circumstance that he had ignored traditions of
+performance, especially in the scene between the Prince and his mother.
+In considerable distress he went to Faure, who had set the fashion:
+
+"What pose, gesture, effect of yours is it that I have failed to copy?"
+he asked of his confrère.
+
+And Faure explained:
+
+At the first performance when he reached the scene in question, he had
+found his throat suddenly clogged. Only by an act neither pleasant to
+observe nor polite to describe, could he remove the obstruction, and at
+a supreme moment he had improvised a movement which carried his face out
+of sight of the audience, so that he might free his throat unnoticed.
+Knowing nothing of the cause, the public applauded the effect, and the
+singular nuance became a part of the "business" of the piece.
+
+When Mme. Calvé flashed upon New York in "Cavalleria Rusticana,"
+her impersonation startled me into the declaration that no finer
+lyrico-dramatic performance had been witnessed in America within a
+generation. Unhesitatingly I placed it by the side of Materna's
+Brünnhilde, Brandt's Fidès, Niemann's Tristan and Siegmund, and
+Fischer's Hans Sachs, without, of course, presuming to compare the
+relative value of the dramatists' conceits. Even now I cannot recall
+anything finer in the region of combined action and song. She held her
+listeners so completely captive and swayed them so powerfully that she
+compelled even the foolishly and affectedly frantic claquers, who had
+seats near the stage, to hold their peace. They could only make their
+boisterous clamor in response to the old-fashioned appeal made by
+a high tone screeched by the stridulous tenor. There was as little
+conventionality in her singing as in her acting, though she had not
+yet adopted that indifference to rhythm which has marked her singing
+in more recent years. She saturated the music with emotion. Much of it
+she seemed to sing to herself, declaiming it like dramatic speech whose
+emotional contents had been raised to a higher power by the melody. In
+moments of extreme excitement one scarcely realized that she was singing
+at all. Carried along by the torrent of her feelings, her listeners
+accepted her song as the only proper and efficient expression for her
+emotional state. The two expressions, song and action, were one; they
+were mutually complemental. It was not nature subordinated to art, but
+art vitalized by nature. It is not possible for me to compare her
+Carmen with Galli-Marié's, which stood in the way of her appreciation
+in the part in Paris. I have heard that that was so frank in one of
+its expressions that it invited the interference of the Prefect of the
+Seine. To me, at least, in Mme. Calvé's impersonation, it seemed that
+I was enjoying my first revelation of some of the elements of the
+character of the gypsy as it had existed in the imagination of Prosper
+Mérimée when he wrote his novel. To me she presented a woman thoroughly
+wanton and diabolically equipped with the wicked witcheries which
+explained, if they did not palliate, the conduct of Don José. Here we
+had a woman without conscience, but also without the capacity for even
+a wicked affection; a woman who might have been the thief whom the
+novelist describes, who surely carried a dagger in her corsage, and who
+in some respects left absolutely nothing to the imagination, to which
+even a drama like "Carmen" makes appeal. She came upon the stage as
+Mérimée's heroine stepped into his pages: "poising herself on her
+hips, like a filly from the Cordovan stud," and with a fine simulation
+of unconsciousness, she seemed every moment about to break into one of
+those dances which the satirist castigated in the days of the Roman
+Empire:
+
+  Nec de Gadibus improbis puellae
+  Vibrabunt sine fine prurientes
+  Lascivos docili tremore lumbos.
+
+Alas! Mme. Calvé's admiration for herself was stronger than her devotion
+to an artistic ideal, and it was not long before her Carmen became
+completely merged in her own capricious personality.
+
+Massenet's "Werther" (performed in Chicago, March 29) had its first New
+York performance at the Metropolitan, April 19, 1894, with Mme. Eames,
+Sigrid Arnoldson, Jean de Reszke, M. Martapoura, and Signor Carbone.
+Signor Mancinelli conducted. The opera had one performance, and was
+repeated once in the season of 1896-97. Then it disappeared from the
+repertory of the Metropolitan, and has since then not been thought of,
+apparently, although strenuous efforts have been made ever and anon
+to give interest to the French list. I record the fact as one to be
+deplored. "Werther" is a beautiful opera; as instinct with throbbing
+life in every one of its scenes as the more widely admired "Manon" is in
+its best scene. It has its weak spots as have all of Massenet's operas,
+despite his mastery of technique, but its music will always appeal
+to refined artistic sensibilities for its lyric charm, its delicate
+workmanship, its splendid dramatic climax in the duo between Werther
+and Charlotte, beginning: "Ah! pourvu que de voie ces yeux toujours
+ouverts," and its fine scoring. It smacks more of the atmosphere of
+the Parisian salon than of the sweet breezes with which Goethe filled
+the story, but no Frenchman has yet been able to talk aught but polite
+French in music for the stage, Berlioz excepted, and the music of
+"Werther" is of finer texture than that of most of the operas produced
+by Massenet since.
+
+The season of 1894-95, consisting again of thirteen weeks, began on
+November 19th, and closed on February 16th. It was marked by a number of
+incidents, some of which made a permanent impression on the policy of
+the Metropolitan Opera House. Chief of these was a remarkable eruption
+of sentiment in favor of German opera--so vigorous an eruption,
+indeed, that it led to the incorporation of German performances in
+the Metropolitan repertory ever after, though the change involved a
+much greater augmentation of the forces of the establishment than the
+consorting of French with Italian had involved. To this I shall give
+the attention which it deserves presently. Other features were the
+introduction of Saturday night performances of opera at reduced prices
+(a feature which became permanent), the appearance of several new
+singers, and the production of two novelties, one of them Verdi's
+"Falstaff," of first-class importance.
+
+In their prospectus the managers promised a reformation of the chorus,
+and announced the re-engagement of "nearly all the great favorites
+of last year." The improvement of the chorus was not particularly
+noticeable except in appearance; a number of young and comely American
+women were enlisted, but their best service was to stand in front of the
+old stagers who knew the operas, and could sing but who seemed to have
+come down through the ages from the early days of the old Academy. The
+phrase "nearly all" was an ominous one, for it betokened the absence
+from the company of Mme. Calvé. The newcomers were Lucille Hill, Sybil
+Sanderson, Zélie de Lussan, Mira Heller, and Libia Drog, sopranos; G.
+Russitano and Francesco Tamagno, tenors, and Victor Maurel, who had been
+a popular favorite twenty years before at the Academy of Music. Luigi
+Mancinelli and E. Bevignani were the conductors, and Mr. Seidl was
+engaged to give éclat to the Sunday evening concerts. Mme. Melba's chief
+financial value to the management in the preceding season had been found
+to lie in these concerts, which this year were begun earlier than usual,
+and made a part of Melba's concert tour. The first opera was "Roméo et
+Juliette," with the cast beloved of society, and on the second night
+the introduction of the newcomers began. But woefully. The opera was
+"William Tell," and Signorina Drog sang the part of the heroine in place
+of Miss Hill, indisposed. Mathilde (or Matilda--the opera was sung in
+Italian), does not appear in the opera until the second act, and then
+she has the most familiar air in the opera to sing--"Selva opaca," an
+air which then belonged to the concert-room repertory of most florid
+sopranos. When Signorina Drog came upon the stage, it is safe to say
+that no one regretted her substitution for the English singer except
+herself. She was an exceedingly handsome person, who moved about with
+attractive freedom and grace, and disclosed a voice of good quality,
+especially in the upper register. She began her aria most tastefully,
+but scarcely had she begun when her memory played her false. For a few
+dreadful seconds she tried to pick up the thread of the melody but in
+vain. Then came the inevitable breakdown. She quit trying, and appealed
+pitifully to Signor Mancinelli for help. He seemed to have lost his
+head as completely as the lady had her memory. So had the prompter, who
+pulled his noddle into his shell like a snail and remained as mute.
+Signor Tamagno entered in character, and indulged in dumbshow to a few
+detached phrases from the orchestra. Then the awfulness of the situation
+overwhelmed him, and he fairly ran off the stage, leaving Matilda alone.
+That lady made a final appeal to the conductor, switched her dress
+nervously with her riding whip, went to the wings, got a glass of water,
+and then disappeared. The audience, which had good-humoredly applauded
+till now, began to laugh, and the demoralization was complete. It would
+have been a relief had the curtain fallen, but as this did not happen
+Signor Tamagno, Signor Ancona, and Édouard de Reszke came upon the stage
+and began the famous trio, in which Signor Tamagno sang with tremendous
+intensity and power. It was a remarkable performance of a sensational
+piece, and had it not been preceded by so frightful a catastrophe, and
+interrupted by Tamagno himself to bow his acknowledgments, pick up a
+bunch of violets thrown from a box, and repeat his first melody, its
+effect would have been dramatically electrifying. There was a long wait
+after the act to enable Signor Mancinelli to arrange the necessary cuts,
+and after the stage manager had made an apology on behalf of Signorina
+Drog, and explained that she had been seized with vertigo, but would
+finish the opera in an abbreviated form, the representation was resumed.
+It is due to the lady to add that she had never before attempted to sing
+the part, and that on the third evening she materially redeemed herself
+in "Aïda." Miss de Lussan, a native of New York, who had begun her
+operatic career a few years before in the Boston Ideal Opera Company,
+and had won a commendable degree of favor at Covent Garden as Carmen,
+had been engaged in the hope of continuing the prosperous career of
+Bizet's opera, but the hope proved abortive. It was the singer, not the
+song, which had bewitched the people of New York--Calvé, not Bizet.
+"Carmen" was excellently given, the charm of Melba's voice being called
+on for the music of Micaela's part; but the sensation had departed, and
+was waiting to be revived with the return of Calvé in the succeeding
+season.
+
+The first novelty in this season was "Elaine," an opera in four acts,
+words by Paul Ferrier, music by Herman Bemberg, brought forward on
+December 17, 1894. "Elaine" was produced because Mme. Melba and the
+brothers de Reszke wanted to appear in it out of friendship for the
+composer, who had dedicated the score to them, and come to New York to
+witness the production, as he had gone to London when it was given in
+Covent Garden. In America Bemberg was a small celebrity of the salon and
+concert room. His parents were citizens of the Argentine Republic, but
+he was born in Paris, in 1861. His father being a man of wealth, he
+had ample opportunity to cultivate his talents, and his first teachers
+in composition were Bizet and Henri Maréchal. Later he continued his
+studies at the Conservatoire, under Dubois and Massenet. In 1885 he
+carried off the Rossini prize, and in 1889 brought out a one-act opera
+at the Opéra Comique, "Le Baiser de Suzon," for which Pierre Barbier
+wrote the words. "Elaine" had its first performance at Convent Garden in
+July, 1892, with Mme. Melba, Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and M. Plançon
+in the cast. It was then withdrawn for revision, and restored to the
+stage the next year. If there is anything creditable in such a thing it
+may be said, to Mr. Bemberg's credit, that, so far as I know, he was the
+first musician who wrote music for Oscar Wilde's "Salome." The public,
+especially the people of the boxes, lent a gracious ear to the new
+opera, partly, no doubt, because of its subject, but more largely
+because of Mme. Melba, Mme. Mantelli, the brothers de Reszke, Plançon,
+and M. Castelmary, who were concerned in its production. All of Mr.
+Bemberg's music that had previously been heard in New York was of the
+lyrical order, and it seemed but natural that he was less successful in
+the developing of a dramatic situation than in hymning the emotions of
+one when he found it at hand. A ballad in the first act ("L'amour est
+pur comme la fiamme"), the scene at the close ("L'air est léger"), a
+prayer in the third act ("Dieu de pitié"), and the duets which followed
+them are all cases in point. They mark the high tide of M. Bemberg's
+graceful melodic fancy, and exemplify his good taste and genuineness of
+feeling. It is not great music, but it is sincere to the extent of its
+depth. For the note of chivalry which ought to sound all through an
+Arthurian opera M. Bemberg has chosen no less a model than "Lohengrin";
+but his trumpets are feebler echoes of the original voice than his
+harmonies on several occasions, as, for instance, the entrance of
+Lancelot into the castle of Astolat. In general his instrumentation
+is discreet and effective. He has followed his French teachers in the
+treatment of the dialogue, which aims to be intensified speech. He
+has also trodden, though at a distance, in the footsteps of Bizet and
+Massenet in the device of using typical phrases; but so timidly has this
+been done that it is doubtful if it was discovered by the audience. The
+resources of the opera house in reproducing the scenes of chivalric life
+were commensurate with the music of the opera in its attempt to bring
+its spirit to the mind through the ear. It is more exciting to read of
+a tournament in Malory than to see a mimic one on the stage. It is true
+that there were men on horses who rode together three times, that a
+spear was broken, and that they afterward fought on foot; but they
+struck their spears together as if they had been singlesticks, instead
+of receiving each his opponent's weapon on his shield, and when the
+spear broke it was not all "toshivered." Then, when they had drawn their
+swords, they did not "lash together like wild boars, thrusting and
+foining and giving either other many sad strokes, so that it was marvel
+to see how they might endure," as the gentle Sir Thomas would doubtless
+have had them do. Still, the opera was enjoyed and applauded, as it
+deserved to be for the good things that were in it, and the Lily Maid
+had more lilies and roses and holly showered about her than she could
+easily pick up and carry away.
+
+Miss Sybil Sanderson, who had gone to Paris from the Pacific Slope some
+years before, and had achieved considerable of a vogue, particularly
+in Massenet's operas, made her American début on January 16, 1895, in
+Massenet's "Manon," in which M. Jean de Reszke sang the part of the
+Chevalier des Grieux for the first time. The opera had been heard at the
+Academy of Music, in Italian, nine years before, and this was its first
+performance in the original French, a language which the fair débutante
+used with admirable distinctness and charmingly modulated cadences, a
+fact which contributed much to the pretty triumph which she celebrated
+after the first act. She did not maintain herself on the plane reached
+in this act. The second had scarcely begun before it became noticeable
+that she was wanting in passionate expression as well as in voice,
+and that her histrionic limitations went hand in hand with her vocal.
+But she was a radiant vision, and had she been able to bring out the
+ingratiating character of the music she might have held the sympathies
+of the audience, obviously predisposed in her favor, in the degree
+contemplated by the composer. This quality of graciousness is the most
+notable element in Massenet's music. As much as anything can do so
+it achieves pardon for the book, which is far less amiable than that
+of "Traviata," which deals with the same unlovely theme. Another
+quasi novelty was Saint-Saëns's "Samson et Dalila," which had one
+performance--and one only--on February 8th to afford Mme. Mantelli
+an opportunity to exhibit her musical powers, and Signor Tamagno his
+physical. The music was familiar from performances of the work as an
+oratorio; as an opera it came as near to making a fiasco as a work
+containing so much good and sound music could.
+
+The most interesting event in the whole administration of Mr. Abbey and
+his associates happened on February 4th, when Verdi's "Falstaff" was
+presented. Signor Mancinelli conducted, and the cast was as follows:
+
+
+  Mistress Ford ...................... Mme. Emma Eames
+  Anne ............................... Mlle. de Lussan
+  Mistress Page ...................... Mlle. Jane de Vigne
+  Dame Quickly ....................... Mme. Scalchi
+  Fenton ............................. Sig. Russitano
+  Ford ............................... Sig. Campanari
+  Pistol ............................. Sig. Nicolini
+  Dr. Caius .......................... Sig. Vanni
+  Bardolph ........................... Sig. Rinaldini
+  Sir John Falstaff .................. M. Victor Maurel
+               (His original creation.)
+
+
+To construct operas out of Shakespeare's plays has been an ambition
+of composers for nearly two centuries. Verdi himself yielded to the
+temptation when he wrote "Macbeth" forty years ago. Probably no one
+recognized more clearly than he did when he wrote "Falstaff" how
+the whole system of lyrico-dramatic composition should undergo a
+transformation before anything like justice could be done to the
+myriad-minded poet's creations. Who would listen now to Rossini's
+"Otello"? Yet, in its day, it was immensely popular. A careless day it
+was--the day of pretty singing, and little else; the day when there was
+so little concern for the dramatic element in opera that the grewsome
+dénouement of Rossini's opera is said once to have caused a listener
+to cry out in astonishment: "Great God! the tenor is murdering the
+soprano!" Then it might have been possible for a composer, provided he
+were a Mozart, to find a musical investment for a Shakespearian comedy,
+but assuredly not for a tragedy. No literary masterpiece was safe from
+the vandalism of opera writers at that time, however, and Shakespeare
+simply shared the fate of Goethe and their great fellows. With the dawn
+of the new era there came greater possibilities, and now it may be said
+we have a few Shakespearian operas that will endure for several decades
+at least: let us say Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor," Gounod's
+"Romeo and Juliet," Verdi's "Othello" and "Falstaff." Ambroise Thomas's
+"Hamlet" and Saint-Saëns's "Henry VIII" seem already to have outlived
+their brief day, at least in all countries save France, where the
+personal equation in favor of a native composer seems strong enough to
+keep second-class composers afloat while it permits genius to perish. As
+for Goetz's "Taming of the Shrew," it was too much like good Rhine wine,
+and too little like champagne to pass as a comic opera. When Verdi's
+last opera appeared the only Falstaff who had vitality was the fat
+knight of Nicolai's work. Yet he had had many predecessors. Balfe
+composed a "Falstaff" for the King's Theater in London, which was sung
+with the capacious-voiced Lablache in the titular part, and Grisi,
+Persiani, and Ivanoff in the cast. That was in 1838. Forty years earlier
+Salieri had composed an Italian "Falstaff" for Vienna. In 1856 Adolphe
+Adam produced a French "Falstaff" in Paris, and the antics of the greasy
+knight amused the Parisians eighty-six years earlier in Papavoine's
+"Le Vieux Coquet." Nicolai's predecessors in Germany were Peter Ritter,
+1794, and Dittersdorf, 1796.
+
+Verdi's return to Shakespearian subjects after reaching the fulness
+of his powers in his old age, and after he had turned from operas to
+lyric dramas, is in the highest degree significant of the thoroughness
+of the revolution accomplished by Wagner. The production of "Otello"
+and "Falstaff" created as great an excitement in Italy as the first
+performance of "Parsifal" did in Germany; and it must have seemed like
+the irony of fate to many that Wagner should have to be filtered through
+Verdi in order to bear fruit in the original home of the art form. But
+that is surely the lesson of "Otello," "Falstaff," and the fervid works
+of Leoncavallo, Mascagni, and Puccini.
+
+Even more strikingly than "Otello" this comic opera of the youthful
+octogenarian disclosed the importance which Boito had assumed in the
+development of Verdi. That development is one of the miracles of music.
+In manner Verdi represents a full century of operatic writing. He began
+when, in Italy at least, the libretto was a mere stalking horse on which
+arias might be hung. All that he did besides furnishing vehicles for
+airs was to provide a motive for the scene painter and the costumer.
+Later we see the growth of dramatic characterization in his ensembles,
+and the development of strongly marked and ingeniously differentiated
+moods in his arias without departure from the old-fashioned forms. In
+this element lay much of the compelling force of his melodies, even
+those commonplace ones which were pricked for the barrel organ almost
+before the palms were cool which first applauded them--like "Di quella
+pira" and "La donna è mobile." Then set in the period of reflection. The
+darling of the public began to think more of his art and less of his
+popularity. Less impetuous, less fecund, perhaps, in melodic invention,
+he began to study how to wed dramatic situations and music. This led him
+to enrich his harmonies, and to refine his instrumentation, which in
+his earlier works is frequently coarse and vulgar in the extreme. At
+this stage he gave us "La Forza del Destino" and "Aïda." Now the hack
+writers of opera books would no longer suffice him. He had already shown
+high appreciation of the virtue which lies in a good book when he chose
+Ghislanzoni to versify the Egyptian story of "Aïda." But the final step
+necessary to complete his wonderfully progressive march was taken when
+he associated himself with Boito. Here was a man who united in himself
+in a creditable degree the qualifications which Wagner demanded for his
+"Artist of the Future"; he was poet, dramatist, and musician. No one who
+has studied "Otello" can fail to see that Verdi owes much in it to the
+composer of "Mefistofele"; but the indebtedness is even greater in
+"Falstaff," where the last vestige of the old subserviency of the text
+to the music has disappeared. From the first to the last the play is
+now the dominant factor. There are no "numbers" in "Falstaff"; there
+can be no repetition of a portion of the music without interruption and
+dislocation of the action. One might as well ask Hamlet to repeat his
+soliloquy on suicide as to ask one of the characters in "Falstaff" to
+sing again a single measure once sung. The play moves almost with the
+rapidity of the spoken comedy. Only once or twice does one feel that
+there is an unnecessary eddy in the current.
+
+And how has this play been set to music? It has been plunged into a
+perfect sea of melodic champagne. All the dialogue, crisp and sparkling,
+full of humor in itself, is made crisper, more sparkling, more amusing
+by the music on which, and in which, it floats, we are almost tempted to
+say more buoyantly than comedy dialogue has floated since Mozart wrote
+"Le Nozze di Figaro." The orchestra is bearer of everything, just as
+completely as it is in the latter-day dramas of Richard Wagner; it
+supplies phrases for the singers, supports their voices, comments on
+their utterances, and gives dramatic color to even the most fleeting
+idea. It is a marvelous delineator of things external as well as
+internal. It swells the bulk of the fat knight until he sounds as if he
+weighed a ton, and gives such piquancy to the spirits of the merry women
+(Mrs. Quickly monopolizing the importance due to Mrs. Page), that one
+cannot see them come on the stage without a throb of delight. In spite
+of the tremendous strides which the art of instrumentation has made
+since Berlioz mixed the modern orchestral colors, Verdi has in
+"Falstaff" added to the variegated palette. Yet all is done so
+discreetly, with such utter lack of effect-seeking, that it seems as if
+the art had always been known. The flood upon which the vocal melody
+floats is not like that of Wagner; it is not a development of fixed
+phrases, though Verdi, too, knows the use of leading motives in a sense,
+but a current which is ever receiving new waters. The declamation is
+managed with extraordinary skill, and though it frequently grows out
+of the instrumental part, it has yet independent melodic value as the
+vocal parts of Wagner's "Die Meistersinger" have. Through this Verdi
+has acquired a comic potentiality for his voice parts which goes hand
+in hand with that of his instrumental parts.
+
+But Verdi is not only dramatically true and melodious in his vocal
+parts, he is even, when occasion offers, most simple and ingenuous.
+There is an amazing amount of the Mozartian spirit in "Falstaff," and
+once we seem even to recognize the simple graciousness of pre-Gluckian
+days. Thus the dainty fancy and idyllic feeling which opens the scene in
+Windsor Forest, with its suggestion of fays and fairies and moonlight
+(a scene, by the way, for which Verdi has found entrancing tones, yet
+without reaching the lovely grace of Nicolai), owes much of its beauty
+to a minuet measure quite in the manner of the olden time, but which is,
+after all, only an accompaniment to the declamation which it sweetens.
+The finales of "Falstaff" have been built up with all of Verdi's
+oldtime skill, and sometimes sound like Mozart rubbed through the
+Wagnerian sieve. Finally, to cap the climax, he writes a fugue. A fugue
+to wind up a comic opera! A fugue--the highest exemplification of
+oldtime artificiality in music! A difficult fugue to sing, yet it runs
+out as smoothly as the conventional tag of Shakespeare's own day, whose
+place, indeed, it takes. It is a tag suggested by "All the world's a
+stage," and though it is a fugue, it bubbles over with humor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+UPRISING IN FAVOR OF GERMAN OPERA
+
+
+In marshaling, in the preceding chapter, the chief incidents of the
+period with which I am now concerned I set down the restoration of
+German performances at the Metropolitan Opera House as the most
+significant. There was a strong influence within the company working
+to that end in the person of M. Jean de Reszke, who, though the
+organization was not adapted to such a purpose, nevertheless strove
+energetically to bring about a representation of "Tristan und Isolde"
+in the supplementary spring season of 1895. Through him "Die
+Meistersinger" in an Italian garb had been incorporated into the
+repertory, and he was more than eager not only that it and the popular
+operas "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" should recover their original
+estate as German works, but that he might gratify a noble ambition and
+demonstrate how the tragic style of "Tristan" could be consorted with
+artistic singing. He achieved that purpose in the season of 1895-96,
+and set an example that will long be memorable in the annals of the
+Wagnerian drama in America. But the force which compelled the reform was
+an external one. It came from the public. To the people, as they spoke
+through the box office, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau were always readier to
+give an ear than the stockholders or the self-constituted champions of
+Italian opera in the public press.
+
+There had been talk of a rival German institution when Mr. Abbey
+restored the Italian régime in 1891; but it was wisely discouraged by
+the more astute friends of the German art, who felt that the influence
+of seven years would bear fruit in time, and who placed the principles
+of that art above the language in which they were made manifest. The
+interregnum following the fire had led Mr. Oscar Hammerstein to enter
+the field as an impresario on a more ambitious scale than ordinary,
+and on January 24, 1893, he opened a Manhattan Opera House with a
+representation in English of Moszkowski's "Boabdil." The "season"
+lasted only two weeks, and the opera house has long since been
+forgotten. It stood in the same Street as the present Manhattan Opera
+House, and its site is part of that covered by Macy's gigantic
+mercantile establishment. Though he had no opposition, Mr. Hammerstein
+showed little of that pluck and persistence which have distinguished him
+during the two seasons in which he has conducted a rival establishment
+to the Metropolitan Opera House. After two weeks, within which he
+produced "Boabdil," "Fidelio," and some light-waisted spectacular
+things, he turned his theater over to Koster & Bial, who ran it as a
+vaudeville house until the end of its short career. There were English
+performances of the customary loose-jointed kind in the summer at the
+Grand Opera House, the first series of which, beginning in May, 1893,
+derived some dignity from the fact that it was under the management of
+Mr. Stanton, who had conducted the Metropolitan Opera House for the
+stockholders during the German seasons; and in November the Duff Opera
+Company anticipated Mr. Abbey's forces by bringing out Gounod's
+"Philémon et Baucis" in an English version.
+
+These things, however, contained no portents for the future of opera
+in New York; they were the familiar phenomena which flit by in the
+metropolis's dead seasons. Pregnant incidents came in the midst of
+the regular season. It chanced that Mme. Materna, Anton Schott, Emil
+Fischer, and Conrad Behrens, who had been identified with the earlier
+German seasons, were in New York in February, 1894, and taking
+advantage of that fact Mr. Walter Damrosch arranged two performances
+of "Die Walküre," in the Carnegie Music Hall, for the benefit of local
+charities. They were slipshod affairs, with makeshift scenery and a
+stage not at all adapted for theatrical performances; but the public
+rose at them, as the phrase goes, and Mr. Damrosch felt emboldened to
+give a representation of "Götterdämmerung," with the same principals
+at the Metropolitan Opera House, on March 28th. Again there was an
+extraordinary exhibition of popular interest which the German Press
+Club turned to good account by improvising a performance of "Tannhäuser"
+for its annual benefit on April 9. Soon there was a great stir in the
+German camp, but united action was hindered by the rivalry between Mr.
+Damrosch and Mr. Seidl. The supplementary season at the Metropolitan
+ended on April 27th, and under date of April 28th there appeared a
+circular letter, signed individually by friends of Mr. Seidl, soliciting
+subscriptions for a season of German opera in 1904-05. The plan
+contemplated forty performances between November and May, on dates which
+were not to conflict with the regular performances of Italian and French
+opera. At the same time announcement was made of the organization of a
+Wagner Society, whose purpose it was to support a season of Wagner's
+operas at the Metropolitan Opera House, beginning on November 19, 1894,
+and continuing for four weeks--twelve evening performances and four
+matinées, the company to include "the greatest Wagnerian singers from
+Bayreuth and other German opera houses." Personal friends of the two
+conductors attempted to unite the rival enterprises, and a conference
+was held at the office of William Steinway. The attempt failed because
+Messrs. Seidl and Damrosch could not agree on a division of the artistic
+labors and credits. Mr. Seidl withdrew from the negotiations. In less
+than a week Mr. Damrosch announced that he had secured subscriptions for
+his season amounting to $12,000, and also a guarantee against loss of
+$10,000 more. On May 10th he sailed for Europe to engage his company.
+When he returned in the fall he announced a season of twelve evening and
+four afternoon performances, to be devoted wholly to Wagner's operas
+and dramas, to begin on February 25, 1895. The prices ranged from $4
+for orchestra stalls to $1 for seats in the gallery. In his company were
+Rosa Sucher, Johanna Gadski, Elsa Kutscherra, Marie Brema, Max Alvary,
+Nicolaus Rothmühl, Paul Lange, Franz Schwarz, and Rudolph Oberhauser,
+besides Emil Fischer and Conrad Behrens, who had been identified with
+the earlier German regime. Adolf Baumann, of the Royal opera at Prague,
+was engaged as stage manager, but lost his life in the wreck of the
+North German Lloyd steamship Elbe on the voyage hitherward.
+
+The season began, as advertised, on February 25th and ended on March
+23d, the sixteen performances receiving an additional representation to
+enable Max Alvary to effect his one hundredth performance of Siegfried
+in the drama of that name in the city where he "created" it, as the
+French say. There were also an additional performance of "Lohengrin" and
+three extra performances at reduced prices after the subscription. The
+whole affair was Mr. Damrosch's own venture, he being at once manager,
+artistic director, and conductor, but, as I have intimated, he had the
+backing of an organization called the Wagner Society, which was chiefly
+composed of women. The season came hard on the heels of the Italian
+and French season. Mr. Damrosch's leading singers were familiar with
+Wagner's works, but practically he had to build up his institution from
+the foundation and to do it within an incredibly short time. With such
+rapid work we are familiar in America, but in Germany to have suggested
+such an undertaking as the organization of a company, the preparation of
+a theater, and the mounting, rehearsing, and performing of seven of the
+most difficult and cumbersome works in the repertory of the lyric drama
+within the space of five or six weeks would have been to have invited
+an inquest de lunatico. I do not wish to be understood as mentioning
+these things wholly in the way of praise--the results from an artistic
+point of view disclosed much too often that they were blameworthy--but
+what credit they reflect upon the tremendous energy, enterprise,
+and will power of Mr. Damrosch must be given ungrudgingly and
+enthusiastically. Plainly he was inspired with a strength of conviction
+quite out of the ordinary line of that spirit of theatrical speculation
+upon which we have so often depended for the large undertakings in
+music. It was a belief based on something like religious zeal, and under
+the circumstances what he did was an even more remarkable feat than that
+accomplished by his father in 1884. I sometimes thought at the time that
+he was driven into the enterprise more by impulse than by reason, and
+the fact that he occasionally had the same sort of a notion is evidenced
+by a letter which I received from him in response to one of mine to him
+near the close of the season. "Thanks for your congratulations on the
+financial success so far," wrote the young manager. "I shall breathe
+more freely after the next four weeks are over. The responsibility has
+been a heavy one, and it is curious that no one seemed to share my
+almost fatalistic belief in Wagner opera. Neither Abbey & Grau, nor
+Seidl, nor anyone was willing to touch it, and I was finally driven into
+it myself by an irresistible impulse which, so far, seems to have led
+me right. I am glad now, for many reasons, that events have so shaped
+themselves, and I think that the season will be productive of much good
+for the future. A curious and interesting fact in connection with the
+performances has been that the public came to hear the operas, and not
+the singers."
+
+And such a success! Not only far in advance of what the fondest
+Wagnerites had dared to hope for as a tribute to their master's art,
+but one which compelled them to rub their eyes in amazement and grope
+and stare in a search for causes. Twenty-one times in succession was
+the vast audience room crowded, and when the time was come for striking
+the balance on the subscription season there was talk, only a little
+fantastic if at all, of receipts aggregating $150,000, or nearly $9,000
+a performance. I should like to keep the thought of this unparalleled
+financial success separate from that of the artistic results attained.
+Between the financial and artistic achievements there was a wide
+disparity; but that fact only sufficed to emphasize the obvious lesson
+of the season, namely, the vast desire which the people of New York
+felt again to enjoy Wagner's dramas. Fortunately I can make a record
+of the capaciousness of that hunger without necessarily lauding its
+intelligence and discrimination. Great indeed must have been the hunger
+which could not be perverted by the vast deal of slipshod work in
+the scenic department of the representations, and the vaster deal of
+bungling and makeshift in the stage management. Many an affront was
+given to the taste and intelligence of the audiences, and dreadful was
+the choral cacophony which filled some of the evenings. Yet the people
+came; they came, as Mr. Damrosch observed in his letter, to hear
+the dramas instead of the singers, and though "Lohengrin" had been
+beautifully performed in the Italian season by artists like Nordica,
+Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and Maurel in the cast, the public crowded
+into the German representation as if expecting a special revelation from
+Fräulein Gadski, a novice, and Herr Rothmühl, a second-rate tenor, Of
+all the singers only Miss Marie Brema, a newcomer, and the veteran, Emil
+Fischer, were entirely satisfactory. For the beautiful dramatic art of
+Frau Sucher and for her loveliness of person and pose there was much
+hearty admiration, but this could not close the ears of her listeners
+to the fact that her voice had lost its freshness. The subscription
+repertory, including the Alvary anniversary, was as follows: "Tristan
+und Isolde," three times; "Siegfried," four times; "Lohengrin," twice;
+"Götterdämmerung," twice; "Tannhäuser," twice; "Die Walküre," twice,
+and "Die Meistersinger," twice. In a letter recently received from Mr.
+Damrosch he says: "My first spring season of thirteen weeks in New York,
+Chicago, Boston, and a few Western cities gave a profit of about
+$53,000, leaving me with a large stock of Vienna-made scenery, costumes,
+and properties."
+
+Mr. Damrosch had won the first battle of his campaign and taught a
+lesson of lasting value to his old and experienced rivals. Warned by the
+success of his experiment and stimulated by a petition signed by about
+two thousand persons asking that German representations under Mr. Seidl
+be included in the Metropolitan scheme, Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau
+made German opera a factor in the next season; but they did so in a
+half-hearted way, which defeated its purposes and brought punishment
+instead of reward. Nevertheless, German opera had returned to the
+Metropolitan to stay, and henceforth will call for attention along with
+the Italian and French performances in this history. Meanwhile, since
+I have begun it, let me finish the tale of the impresarioship of Mr.
+Damrosch.
+
+Flushed with victory, the young manager prepared a five months'
+campaign for the year 1896, and sought for new worlds to conquer.
+Philadelphia, in which city he began operations on February 20th,
+treated him shabbily, but he did fairly well in New York and other
+cities in the East and West. Unfortunately for him, he made an
+invasion of the South, which was not ripe for serious opera, either
+financially or artistically. A performance in one city of that section
+which cost him over $3,000 brought him exactly $220. The difference
+between the sums was what Mr. Damrosch paid to learn that knowledge
+and love of Wagner's operas had not penetrated far into Tennessee.
+
+Experience is always purchased at large cost in the operatic field.
+Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau refused Mr. Damrosch the use of the Metropolitan
+Opera House for his second New York season, and he was driven to the
+old, socially discredited Academy of Music. They did not look with
+favoring eyes upon an enterprise which had achieved so tremendous a
+triumph at its very start, and they provided a large percentage of the
+wormwood which filled the cup which Mr. Damrosch drank in 1896; but they
+embittered their own goblet by the procedure, and when the time came
+for laying out the campaign of 1896-97 they were quite as ready as Mr.
+Damrosch to sign a treaty of peace whose provisions promised to make
+for the good of both sides instead of the injury of either. The rivals
+agreed to keep out of each other's way as much as possible and even to
+help each other by an occasional exchange of singers. By this means it
+was purposed to widen the repertories of both companies, Mr. Damrosch
+providing the Metropolitan establishment with a Brünnhilde and an
+Isolde for Jean de Reszke's Siegmund, Siegfried, and Tristan, and the
+Metropolitan company lending him in return Melba, Eames, and Calvé, or
+others, to enable him to perform some of the Italian and French operas
+which he had included in his list. Mr. Damrosch yielded Chicago to his
+rivals and took Philadelphia in exchange. It was a wise compromise.
+Mr. Damrosch lost $40,000 in 1896; he made $14,000 in 1897. The next
+year, the Metropolitan Opera House being closed during the regular
+subscription period, as will appear later in this record, Mr. Damrosch
+entered into partnership with Charles A. Ellis, manager of the Boston
+Symphony Orchestra, who had undertaken the management also of Mme.
+Melba's American affairs, and Italian and French operas were added to
+the German repertory. The regular season showed a good profit, most of
+which, however, was frittered away in a spring tour made by Melba with
+a portion of the company. By this time Mr. Damrosch had concluded that
+he was too good a man and musician to surrender himself to the hateful
+business of managing a traveling opera company, and he withdrew from the
+partnership with Ellis, to whom he sold all his theatrical properties,
+and returned to concert work and composition, though for two weeks in
+the next season he was conductor of Mr. Ellis's company.
+
+And now to some of the details of the artistic work of these Damroschian
+enterprises. The year 1896 was signalized by the appearance in America
+of two singers who rapidly achieved first-class importance. These were
+Katherina Klafsky and Milka Ternina. Mme. Klafsky was the wife of Herr
+Lohse, whom Mr. Damrosch also engaged as assistant conductor. She came
+here under a cloud, so far as the managerial ethics of Germany were
+concerned. How much respect those ethics were entitled to may be judged
+from the story. I have already said, in discussing the case of Mme.
+Lehmann and her violation of contract with the Opera at Berlin, that a
+speedy result of the success of German opera under Mr. Stanton was a
+change of attitude on the part of the Intendanten of German theaters
+toward the New York institution so soon as it was found that a handsome
+proportion of the American earnings might be diverted into the pockets
+of those Intendanten or the managers of municipal theaters. When Mr.
+Damrosch engaged his second company Mme. Klafsky was a member of the
+Municipal Theater in Hamburg, of which Pollini was director. When the
+offer of an American engagement came to her she consulted with Herr
+Pollini, who graciously gave his consent to her acceptance of it on
+condition that she pay him one-half of her earnings. She refused to
+agree to do this, and, fearing that Pollini would invoke the aid of the
+courts to restrain her from coming to New York, she took French leave
+of Germany more than two months before she was needed here. Her success
+in America was emphatic, and after she had effected a reconciliation
+with Pollini she was re-engaged by Mr. Damrosch to alternate with
+Mme. Lehmann in the season of 1896-97. Within a fortnight of the
+re-engagement she died in Hamburg from a trephining operation undertaken
+to relieve her from the results of an injury to her skull, received
+while in America.
+
+Mme. Klafsky and Mr. Alvary had sung in "Tristan und Isolde," with which
+Mr. Damrosch began his campaign in Philadelphia on February 20th. Her
+success was instantaneous, and her tremendous dramatic forcefulness, the
+natural expression of an exuberant temperament, placed her higher in
+public favor during the season than Mme. Ternina, whose refined and
+ingratiating art did not receive full appreciation till later. Other
+members of the Damrosch troupe of 1896 were Wilhelm Grüning, tenor,
+and Demeter Popovici, bass, beside Gadski, Fischer, Alvary, and other
+persons already known, but of smaller importance. The New York season
+began at the Academy of Music on March 2d and ended on March 28th. The
+operas were "Fidelio," "Lohengrin," "Siegfried," "Tannhäuser," "Die
+Meistersinger," "Die Walküre," "Der Freischütz," and (in the original
+English) Mr. Damrosch's "The Scarlet Letter." This opera had its first
+performance in New York on March 6. Its libretto was written by George
+Parsons Lathrop, a son-in-law of Hawthorne, who wrote the romance on
+which it was based. The cast included Johanna Gadski as Hester Prynne,
+Barron Berthald as Arthur Dimmesdale, Conrad Behrens as Governor
+Bellingham, Gerhard Stehmann as the Rev. John Wilson, and William
+Mertens as Roger Chillingworth. The greater part of the music had been
+performed at concerts of the Oratorio Society on January 4 and 5, 1895.
+The book of the opera proved to be undramatic in the extreme, a defect
+which was emphasized by the execrable pronunciation of nearly all the
+singers at the performance on the stage at the Academy. In the music Mr.
+Damrosch essayed the style of Wagner, and did it so well, indeed, as to
+deserve hearty admiration. He was helped, it is true, by factors frankly
+and copiously copied from the pages of his great model. The nixies of
+the Rhine peeped out of the sun-flecked coverts in the forest around
+Hester Prynne's hut, as if they had become dryads for her sake; ever
+and anon the sinister Hunding was heard muttering in the ear of
+Chillingworth, and Hester wore the badge of her shame on the robes of
+Elsa, washed in innocency. But such things are venial in a first work.
+In frankly confessing his model (for it cannot be thought for a
+moment that Mr. Damrosch expected his imitations to be overlooked) he
+illustrated a rule which applies to all composers at the outset of their
+careers. The fact must be noted, but it is much more to the purpose
+that the young composer blended the elements of his composition with a
+freedom and daring quite astonishing in their exhibition of mastery.
+There is no sign of doubt or timorousness anywhere in the work, though
+the moments are not infrequent when the utterance is more fluent than
+significant. The typical phrases which he chose to symbolize the persons
+and passions of the play are most of them deficient in plasticity, and
+nearly all of them lack that expressiveness which Wagner knew so well
+how to impress upon his melodic elements; the greater, therefore, was
+the surprise that Mr. Damrosch was able to weave them together in a
+fabric which moved steadily forward for more than an hour, and reflected
+more or less truthfully and vividly the feeling of the dramatic
+situations. Unfortunately there is little variety in this feeling, so
+that in spite of Mr. Damrosch's effort, or, perhaps, because of it,
+there is a deal of monotony in the music of the first act. There is a
+fine ingenuity of orchestration throughout, however, and an amount
+of daring in harmonization which sometimes oversteps the limits of
+discretion. In an agonizing scene between Chillingworth and Hester at
+the close of the first act the orchestra and the two chief personages
+are wholly engrossed with an exposition of the dramatic feeling of the
+moment, while the chorus (supposed to be worshiping in the neighboring
+meeting-house) sing the "Old Hundredth" in unison and without
+instrumental support. It is an admirable historical touch, and the
+device is the approved one of using a psalm tune as a cantus firmus
+to the remainder of the music; but Mr. Damrosch's harmonization of the
+ensemble is such that we seem to hear two distinct and unsympathetic
+keys. There was, after the second act, a scene upon the stage in honor
+of Mr. Damrosch, in which, after several large wreaths had been bestowed
+upon him, a representative of the Wagner Society came forward, and on
+behalf of that body presented him with a handsome copy of Hawthorne's
+story and the incorrect statement that the honor was paid to him as
+the first American who had composed a grand opera on an American theme
+which had been publicly produced. In this there were as many errors
+of statement as in the famous French Academician's description of a
+lobster. George F. Bristow's "Rip Van Winkle" was composed by a native
+American and was brought out at Niblo's Garden long before Mr. Damrosch
+was born in Breslau; while Signor Arditi, who hailed from Europe, like
+Mr. Damrosch, brought out under his own direction and with considerable
+success an opera entitled "La Spia," based on Cooper's novel. This
+merely in the interest of the verities of history.
+
+The German season of 1907, a part of whose story I have already told,
+began at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 8th and lasted four
+weeks. It added no novelty to the local list, but had some interesting
+features, among them a serial performance of the dramas of Wagner's
+"Ring of the Nibelung," the first appearance of Mme. Nordica in the
+Brünnhilde of "Siegfried" on March 24th, and the joint appearance of
+Mmes. Lehmann and Nordica in "Lohengrin," the German singer, true to
+her dramatic instincts, choosing the part of Ortrud. On April 1st
+Xavier Scharwenka, who had taken a residence with his brother Philip
+in New York, borrowed the company from Mr. Damrosch and on his own
+responsibility gave a performance of his opera, entitled "Mataswintha."
+The opera was produced under difficulties. It had withstood its baptism
+of fire in Weimar seven months before, and Mr. Scharwenka had performed
+portions of it at a concert for the purpose of introducing himself to
+the people of New York. But the singers had to learn their parts from
+the beginning, there was a great deal of pageantry which had to be
+supplied from the stock furniture of the Metropolitan stage, the tenor
+Ernst Kraus took ill and caused a postponement, and even thus the
+chapter of accidents was not exhausted. When the performance finally
+took place Herr Stehmann, a barytone, had to sing Herr Kraus's part,
+which he had learned in two days. Under the circumstances it may be
+the course of wisdom to avoid an estimation of the opera's merits
+and defects and to record merely that it proved to be an extremely
+interesting work and well worth the trouble spent upon its production.
+Under different circumstances it might have lived the allotted time
+upon the stage, which, as the knowing know, is a very brief one in the
+majority of cases. The story of the opera was drawn from Felix Dahn's
+historical novel "Ein Kampf um Rom."
+
+It is high time to get back again to the story of opera at the
+Metropolitan Opera House under the direction of the lessees; but before
+then chronological orderliness requires that attention be paid to an
+incident outside the category of prime importance. This was the first
+production in New York of Humperdinck's delightful fairy opera "Hänsel
+und Gretel" at Daly's Theater on October 8, 1895. The production was
+in English. The venture looked promising, and great interest was felt
+in it. Mr. Seidl was charged with the musical direction. A company of
+singers was brought together, partly from London, partly enlisted here.
+Sir Augustus Harris, director of the opera at Covent Garden, was the
+financial backer of the enterprise. As numerous an orchestra as the
+score calls for could not be accommodated in the theater, but Mr. Seidl
+did the best he could, and the band was commendable. Three of the
+singers, Miss Jeanne Douste, Miss Louise Meisslinger, and Mr. Jacques
+Bars, disclosed ample abilities; but the English manager had no
+knowledge either of the needs of the opera or the demands of the New
+York public; Sir Augustus's speech on the opening night, indeed,
+disclosed ignorance also of the name of the composer and the history of
+the work which he had clothed with considerable sumptuousness. It was
+long remembered with amusement that to him Herr Humperdinck was "Mr.
+Humperdinckel" and the opera some "beautiful music composed for this
+occasion." And so great expectations were disappointed, and, after
+worrying along from October 8th to November 15th, the opera was withdrawn
+with a record of failure, not deserved by the work and only partly
+deserved by the performance. We shall meet the opera again in the story
+of opera at the Metropolitan Opera House a decade later, when it came
+into its rights, and the public were able to testify their admiration
+in the presence of the composer.
+
+The prospectus of Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau (which continued to be
+the official style of the managers) for the season 1895-96, contained
+this announcement: "The management has also decided to add a number of
+celebrated German artists and to present Wagner operas in the German
+language, all of which operas will be given with superior singers, equal
+to any who have ever been heard in the German language. The orchestra
+will be increased. . . . The chorus will be strengthened by a number of
+young, fresh voices, to which will be added an extra German chorus."
+Signor Mancinelli was not re-engaged as conductor, but Anton Seidl was.
+After what I have told thus far in this chapter the causes which led to
+this change of policy will be readily understood. The augmented company
+was a formidable host, though its strength remained in the French and
+Italian contingent. Had the German singers been equally capable, the
+story of Mr. Damrosch's enterprise might have read differently. Mme.
+Calvé returned and revived the furor over "Carmen"; Mesdames Melba,
+Nordica, Scaichi, Mantelli, and Messrs. Jean and Édouard de Reszke, Pol
+Plançon, Victor Maurel, and Castelmary remained; newcomers were Lola
+Beeth, Frances Saville, Marie Brema (who had been brought from Europe by
+Mr. Damrosch), Giuseppe Cremonini, Adolph Wallnöfer, Giuseppe Kaschmann
+(who had been a member of Mr. Abbey's first company twelve years
+before), and Mario Ancona. The regular subscription season consisted of
+thirteen weeks (fifty-two performances), beginning on November 18th, and
+there was a special subscription, at the same scale of prices, for a
+season of ten performances of German operas, beginning on December 5th.
+There were also performances at popular prices on Saturday evenings,
+and the entire season, excluding the spring season, which developed but
+little interest, compassed seventy-four representations. For these and
+thirteen Sunday night concerts the public paid about $575,000.
+
+"Oh! how far are we from Covent Garden!" cried Jean de Reszke on the
+night of November 27th, and he clipped in his arms the friend who had
+come to offer his congratulations to the thunderous plaudits of the
+audience. M. de Reszke was in a fine glow of enthusiasm. He had sung
+and played Tristan and opened a new era in the style of Wagnerian
+performances in New York. A few days later, while the drinking horn
+was going from hand to hand at a medieval dinner given in honor of the
+principal interpreters of Wagner's love drama (Mme. Nordica, Miss
+Brema, the brothers de Reszke, and Mr. Seidl), he responded to a toast,
+and in four languages, English, German, French, and Italian, celebrated
+the advent of what he called "international opera." Why he neglected
+to throw in a few Polish phrases for the benefit of his countryman
+Paderewski, who sat opposite him at table, his hosts could not make
+out, unless it was because he wanted his expressions of delight at the
+achievement and prospect to be understood by all his hearers. High hopes
+filled the hearts of all local lovers of the lyric drama at the period.
+The promises of Abbey and Grau had stimulated the kindliest, heartiest,
+cheeriest feeling on all hands. All bickerings between the adherents of
+the various schools were silenced by the promulgation of a policy which
+seemed as generous and public-spirited as it was liberal. Whenever it
+was practicable New York was to have performances which should respect
+not only the tongue, but also the spirit of the works chosen for
+representation. That M. de Reszke had been an active agent in the
+inauguration of the new régime was an open secret to his acquaintances,
+and he bore public testimony when he supplemented his impersonation
+of Tristan with a German Lohengrin. The significance of such an act,
+coupled with Mme. Nordica's support of him in both performances, seemed
+extraordinary even in the minds of those who were not inclined to attach
+much importance to the language used in performance, so long as the
+performance was imbued with a becoming spirit of sincerity and a desire
+to make artistic purpose replace idle diversion. It looked as if through
+the example of these two artists, seconded by the liberality of the
+management, the people of New York were to take a long step forward in
+musical culture--a step toward the foundation of an institution which
+should endure and exemplify the esthetic, moral, and physical character
+of the people of America.
+
+The expectations aroused by the announcement were woefully disappointed.
+There were nights of wondrous brilliancy and of extraordinary splendor
+in nearly every department. Some of the refulgence came from the
+new ambitions with which M. de Reszke and Mr. Seidl inspired the
+organization. The season had no prouder moments than those filled with
+the performances of "Tristan" and "Lohengrin" vouchsafed the subscribers
+to the regular subscription; but it had no deeper gloom than that which
+settled upon the subscribers to the special German season on most of
+the occasions set apart for them. The fate of "Fidelio" was utterly
+grievous; two representations of "Tristan" filled their souls with
+indignation instead of gratitude; there is no saintly intercession
+which could have won redemption for "Tannhäuser." The performances of
+"Tristan" and of the Italian "Lohengrin" at which Nordica, Brema, and
+the brothers de Reszke sang were brilliantly successful, but in each
+case the regular performance was made to precede that set apart for
+the German subscription. The circumstance would alone have sufficed
+to arouse suspicion that the management was at least willing to
+discriminate against the special Thursday nights, and the suspicion was
+wrought into conviction by the disparity between the performances of the
+two subscriptions. If it was the purpose of Abbey & Grau to put German
+opera on trial their method looked very unfair. "The drama for its
+own sake as an art work, and not for the sake of the singer" is a
+fundamental principle of German art, but it can only maintain its
+validity with the help of adequate performances. Saving the four singers
+who sang in Italian and French as well as German (Mme. Nordica, Miss
+Brema, and the brothers de Reszke), the German singers of 1895-96 were
+woefully inefficient, and the German season was an indubitable failure.
+
+I shall append a list of performances of the operas presented in the
+seasons covered by this chapter and its predecessor, and its perusal
+will, I think, enforce even upon a careless reader the fact that,
+in spite of the shortcomings to which I have called attention, the
+administration of Abbey & Grau yet marked a gigantic step in the
+direction of dramatic sanity and sense over the lists which prevailed
+in the period when this story began. In the consulship of Mapleson
+the repertory might have been turned into verse quite as dramatic as
+most of that of the opera books. Thus:
+
+
+  "Favorita," "Puritani,"
+    "Lucia di Lammermoor,"
+  "Marta," "Linda di Chamouni,"
+    "La Traviata," "Trovatore";
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia,"
+    "Roberto il Diavolo,"
+  "Don Pasquale," "Rigoletto,"
+    "Faust," "Gli Ugonotti," "Un Ballo,"
+
+
+and so on for quantity. Of the old hurdy-gurdy list "Favorita,"
+"Traviata," "Trovatore," "Lucia," and "Rigoletto" were given, but
+unitedly they had only ten representations, and most of them were on
+Saturday nights, when popular prices prevailed. Even though Melba sang
+in "Lucia," it had to be consorted at the last with "Cavalleria,"
+which Mme. Calvé made attractive. Against this fact we have the other
+that "Carmen" alone had a greater number of representations than the
+entire old-fashioned list, and that the operas which were most popular
+after it were "Tristan und Isolde," "Faust," and "Lohengrin."
+
+Of the ten German performances three were devoted to "Tristan," two to
+"Tannhäuser," one to "Fidelio," two to "Lohengrin," and two to "Die
+Walküre." "Tristan," "Tannhäuser," and "Lohengrin" were in the repertory
+of the regular subscription season. Only two unfamiliar works were
+brought forward--Bizet's "Pêcheurs de Perles" (two acts only) and
+Massenet's "La Navarraise"; but there was an interesting revival of
+Boito's "Mefistofele" after a lapse of twelve years, and a more than
+interesting revival of "Tristan und Isolde," with Mmes. Nordica and
+Brema and the brothers de Reszke in the principal parts. Mme. Melba did
+not join the company until December 27th; she added Massenet's "Manon"
+to her repertory. Jean de Reszke increased the list of parts in which
+he was known by adding Tristan to it and the German Lohengrin. Mme.
+Nordica's new rôles were Isolde, Venus in "Tannhäuser," and Elsa in
+German. Miss Brema's operas were "Tristan," "Lohengrin," "Orfeo,"
+"Aïda," and "Die Walküre," and, like Mme. Nordica, Mlle. Lola Beeth and
+Signor Kaschmann, she sang in German as well as Italian. "La Navarraise"
+was brought forward for Mme. Calvé on December 11, 1895; the two acts
+of "Les Pêcheurs de Perles" at a matinée on January 11, 1896.
+
+Colonel Mapleson provided a prelude to the Metropolitan season of
+1896-97 with a short season of Italian opera of the archaic sort at the
+Academy of Music. The doughty manager could no longer fly his old London
+colors, so he appeared as the sole director of "The New Imperial Opera
+Company." With two or three exceptions all his singers were strangers
+to the opera-goers of New York. Mme. Scalchi was again with him, and
+Signor de Anna; but the rest were newcomers. Among them were Mme.
+Hariclée-Darclée, Mme. Bonaplata-Bau, Susan Strong, and Mme. Giuseppina
+Huguet, sopranos; Mme. Parsi, Mlle. Ponzano, and Mme. Meysenheim,
+contraltos; Signori de Marchi, Randacio, Betti, Olivieri, and Durot,
+tenors; Signori Ughetto and Alberti, barytones, and Pinto, Terzi,
+Giordano, Borelli, and Dado, basses. The conductors, capable men both
+of them, were Signori Bimboni and Tango. Within a fortnight "Aïda,"
+"Trovatore," "Traviata," "Les Huguenots," "Sonnambula," and "Faust"
+had been sung and a new work brought out. This was "Andrea Chenier,"
+by Illica and Giordano, which had its first performance in America on
+November 13, 1896, the cast being as follows:
+
+
+  Andrea Chenier ................................... Durot
+  Carlo Gerard ................................... Ughetto
+  Maddalena di Coigny ...................... Bonaplata-Bau
+  La Mulatta Bersi ............................ Meysenheim
+  La Contessa di Coigny .......................... Scalchi
+  Madelon .......................................... Parsi
+  Roucher ........................................... Dado
+  Il Romanziero .................................. Alberti
+  Fouquier Tinville ............................... ------
+  Mathieu ........................................ Borelli
+  Un Incredibile |
+  L'Abate, poeta |............................... Giordano
+  Schmidt, Carceriere a San Lazzaro ................ Terzi
+  Il Maestro di Casa ............................ Olivieri
+  Dumas ............................................ Pinto
+
+
+Tango conducted and the performance had a rude forcefulness quite in
+keeping with the character of the opera. Under better conditions "Andrea
+Chenier" would doubtless have held its own for a respectable space in
+the local repertory. But the seeds of dissolution were germinating in
+the company even before the performances began, and Colonel Mapleson did
+not dare to appear long in rivalry with the Metropolitan when it opened
+its doors on November 16th. In a week or so he went to Boston, where
+after one or two performances the orchestra went on strike and the
+Imperial Opera Company went to pieces. With it the last effort of the
+veteran manager. Mapleson had held out a promise of the likelihood that
+Giordano would come to New York to give personal superintendence to
+the production of his opera and carried his fiction to the extreme of
+telling a reporter of The Sun newspaper that the composer was in the
+city. Meeting the reporter in the Academy of Music, I expressed my
+doubt touching the correctness of his information, whereupon he pointed
+out the gentleman whom Colonel Mapleson had introduced to him as the
+composer. It was Giordano, the barytone! After its introduction to
+America "Andrea Chenier" disappeared for nearly a dozen years, when,
+on March 27, 1908, it had a single performance at the Manhattan Opera
+House, so that Mme. Eva Tetrazzini, the wife of Cleofonte Campanini,
+who had retired from the stage, might help at a gala representation in
+honor of her husband.
+
+No season since the Metropolitan Opera House was opened was so full of
+vicissitudes as that of 1896-97. First came the death of Mme. Klafsky,
+who, under the reciprocal arrangement between Mr. Damrosch and Abbey &
+Grau, was to sing the chief Wagner rôles with Jean de Reszke. This
+happened in September, and was followed by the death of Mr. Abbey
+(nominally the leader of the managing directors, though from the
+beginning it was Mr. Grau who did the practical work of management), and
+of Mr. William Steinway, who had formulated and carried through the plan
+of reorganization which relieved the firm of Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau of
+its burden of indebtedness and transferred it to the shoulders of the
+Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau Company (Ltd.). Just before the season began
+Mme. Nordica, who had won her way to a high place in the favor of the
+public, and whose absence from the company's roster was widely and
+sincerely deplored, came forward with a story charging her failure
+to secure a re-engagement to the intrigues of Mme. Melba and M. Jean
+de Reszke. So far as the gentleman was concerned the story seemed
+improbable on its face, and long before the season was over Mme. Nordica
+was willing to admit publicly that she had been misinformed as to the
+facts in the case. It remained, however, that Mme. Melba had reserved
+the exclusive right to herself to sing the rôle of Brünnhilde in
+Wagner's "Siegfried." It soon turned out that the failure to secure Mme.
+Nordica was to cost the management dear. Mme. Melba sang the part once,
+and so injured her voice that she had to retire for the season and cede
+the rôle to Mme. Litvinne (the Mlle. Litvinoff of Colonel Mapleson's
+company in 1885-86), who up to that time had not succeeded in convincing
+the public that she was equal to so great a responsibility, although she
+had been engaged to sing the part of Isolde after Mme. Klafsky's death
+and the failure of negotiations between Mr. Grau and Mme. Nordica. The
+manager's judgment was never at fault in these negotiations; he wanted
+to secure the services of Mme. Nordica, for he well knew their value,
+but the unhappy contract with Melba stood in his way, and Mme. Nordica
+was beyond his reach when the failure of Melba's voice and her departure
+for France on January 23d left the company crippled. Happily the
+popularity which Mme. Calvé's impersonation of Marguerite in Gounod's
+"Faust" had found restored that perennial work to its old position as
+one of the principal magnets of the season. Mme. De Vere-Sapio was
+engaged to make possible the production of such operas as "Hamlet,"
+"Le Nozze di Figaro," and Massenet's "Le Cid." Then there fell a double
+blow: Mme. Eames went into a surgeon's hands and Mozart's scintillant
+comedy had to be withdrawn. It was to have been given on February 10th.
+Flotow's "Martha" was substituted for it, and in the midst of the
+performance the representative of Tristan, M. Castelmary, fell on the
+stage, fatally stricken with heart disease.
+
+It would be pleasant to say that the facts thus detailed exhaust the
+story of the institution's misfortunes; but they do not. I have already
+told of its financial outcome. Throughout the season a determined and
+wicked effort was made to injure the opera, and was helped along by
+columns of idle speculation and gossip in three or four newspapers.
+Without ground, so far as anybody could see, the notion was given
+publicity that there was grave doubt that opera would be given in the
+following year. The talk seemed wholly gratuitous, for if there were
+any signs of falling off in popular interest so far as the opera was
+concerned or in the confidence and satisfaction of the stockholders
+of the opera house company so far as Mr. Grau's administration was
+concerned, it escaped the notice of experienced and interested
+observers. The total attendance was larger than in the preceding season,
+and the interest displayed in the representations was fully as keen. But
+the newspaper gossips would have their way, and in the end turned out to
+be prophets, for there was no opera in 1897-98, for reasons which will
+have to be discussed in the next chapter.
+
+The season began on November 16th. The regular subscription was for
+thirteen weeks, three nights a week and Saturday afternoons. Extra
+subscription performances were thirteen Saturday nights and three
+Wednesday afternoon representations at popular prices and an extra
+week--three nights and a matinée--at subscription prices. There were,
+therefore, in all, seventy-two performances, at which twenty-four
+different operas were brought forward, as shown in the table which is to
+follow. There was a less elaborate organization than in the preceding
+season, but the average merit of the performances was higher, there
+being no ill-equipped German contingent to spoil the record. There were,
+however, quite as many German performances without the special singers
+and the extra subscription. In place of the latter, an attempt was made
+to give extra Wednesday matinées, but the experiment was abandoned after
+three weeks.
+
+The most sensational incident of the season was the collapse of Mme.
+Melba after her ill-advised effort to sing the music of Brünnhilde. To
+the loveliness of her devotion and the loftiness of her ambition honest
+tribute must be paid, but it must also be said that nature did not
+design her to be an interpreter of Wagner's tragic heroines. Her vocal
+and temperamental peculiarities put a bar to her singing the Brünnhilde
+music. It did not lie well in her voice, and she was not then, and is
+not now, of the heroic mould, and her experience should have taught her
+that her voice would not admit of the expansion necessary to fit her
+for that mould. That the music wearied her was painfully evident long
+before the end of the one scene in which Brünnhilde takes part in
+"Siegfried." Never did her voice have the lovely quality which had
+always characterized it in the music of Donizetti and Gounod. It lost
+in euphony in the broadly sustained and sweeping phrases of Wagner, and
+the difference in power and expressiveness between its higher and lower
+registers was made pitifully obvious. The music, moreover, exhausted
+her. She plunged into her apostrophe with most self-sacrificing vigor
+at the beginning of the scene, and was prodigal in the use of her voice
+in its early moments; but when the culmination of its passion was
+reached, in what would be called the stretto of the piece in the old
+nomenclature, she could not respond to its increased demands. It was an
+anti-climax. Wagner's music is like jealousy; it makes the meat it feeds
+on if one be but filled with its dramatic fervor. Recall what I have
+related of Mme. Lehmann's statement of how she was sustained by the
+emotional excitement which Wagner's dramas created in her, and how it
+made it easier for her to sing the music of Brünnhilde than that of
+Norma. But Mme. Lehmann was a woman of intense emotionality, and her
+voice was colored for tragedy and equal to its strain. It would be a
+happiness to say the same of Mme. Melba, but no judicious person would
+dream of saying it. "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory
+of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth
+from another star in glory." Mme. Melba should have been content with
+her own particular glory.
+
+Massenet's "Le Cid" was the only novelty of the season It was given on
+February 12, 1897, with the following distribution of parts:
+
+
+  Rodrigue (his original character) ............... Jean de Reszke
+  Don Diégue (his original character) .......... Édouard de Reszke
+  Le Roi ........................................... Jean Lassalle
+  Le Conte de Gormas (his original character) ........ Pol Plançon
+  St. Jacques    |
+  L'Envoye Maure | .................................. Jacques Bars
+  Don Arras ......................................... Signor Corsi
+  Don Alonzo ................................. Signor de Vaschetti
+  L'Infante ................................... Clementine de Vere
+  Chimène ......................................... Felia Litvinne
+
+  Conductor--Signor Mancinelli
+
+
+The table of performances from 1893 to 1897 follows here:
+
+
+PERFORMANCES IN REGULAR SUBSCRIPTION SEASONS
+
+   Operas                    1893-94  1894-95  1895-96  1896-97
+
+  "Faust" ..................... 8        7        8       10
+  "Philémon et Baucis" ........ 4        0        2        1
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... 7        3        7        4
+  "Lohengrin" ................. 5        5        6        6
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 2        3        3        2
+  "Hamlet" .................... 1        0        2        1
+  "Roméo et Juliette" ......... 5        4        4        5
+  "Orfeo" ..................... 1        0        1        0
+  "Pagliacci" ................. 3        2        2        0
+  "Les Huguenots" ............. 2        6        5        2
+  "Carmen" ................... 12        7       11        7
+  "Don Giovanni" .............. 1        3        0        3
+  "Rigoletto" ................. 2        4        1        1
+  "Die Meistersinger" ......... 3        0        1        3
+  "L'Amico Fritz" ............. 2        0        0        0
+  "Semiramide" ................ 3        1        0        0
+  "Tannhäuser" ................ 2        0        3        3
+  "Le Nozze di Figaro" ........ 3        0        0        0
+  "La Traviata" ............... 1        1        2        3
+  "Guillaume Tell" ............ 0        3        0        0
+  "Aïda" ...................... 0        3        4        3
+  "Il Trovatore" .............. 0        3        2        2
+  "Otello" .................... 0        4        0        0
+  "Mignon" .................... 0        1        0        0
+  "Elaine" (Bemberg) .......... 0        2        0        0
+  "Manon" (Massenet) .......... 0        4        0        0
+  "Falstaff" .................. 0        3        3        0
+  "Samson et Dalila" .......... 0        1        0        0
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ........ 0        0        6        2
+  "L'Africaine" ............... 0        1        0        1
+  "La Favorita" ............... 0        0        2        2
+  "La Navarraise" ............. 0        0        4        0
+  "Fidelio" ..................  0        1        0        0
+  "Die Walküre" ............... 0        0        2        0
+  "Les Pêcheurs de Perles" .... 0        0        1        0
+  "Mefistofele" ............... 0        0        2        4
+  "Martha" .................... 0        0        0        2
+  "Siegfried" ................. 0        0        0        6
+  * "Werther" ................. 0        0        0        1
+  "Le Cid" .................... 0        0        0        2
+
+
+* "Werther" had a single performance in the supplemental season
+of 1893-94.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+BEGINNING OF THE GRAU PERIOD
+
+
+From 1896 to the end of the season 1902-03 Maurice Grau was in name as
+well as in fact the monarch of the operatic world of America. For a
+brief space he also extended his reign to Covent Garden, but the time
+was not ripe for that union of interests between London and New York
+which has so long seemed inevitable, and his foreign reign was short. So
+was his American dictatorship; but while it lasted it was probably the
+most brilliant operatic government that the world has ever known from a
+financial point of view, and its high lights artistically were luminous
+in the extreme. At the end of the period Mr. Grau had retired from
+operatic management forever, for though his desire to remain in active
+employment was intense, his mental powers unweakened, and his will
+strong, his health was hopelessly shattered, and before another lustrum
+had passed he had gone down to his death, his last thoughts longingly
+fixed on the institution which had brought him fame and fortune in
+abundant measure. For several years he had maintained a beautiful summer
+home at Croissy-Chatou, on the Seine, about ten miles from Paris. He
+died in the French capital on March 14, 1907, of a disease of the heart
+which had compelled his abandonment of active managerial life.
+
+Mr. Grau was an Austrian by birth, his birthplace being Brünn; but he
+was brought to New York by his parents in 1854, when he was five years
+old, and all his education and business training was American. He passed
+through the classes of the city's public schools and was graduated from
+the Free Academy, now the College of the City of New York, in 1867. He
+then entered the Law School of Columbia College, and read law in the
+office of Morrison, Lauterbach & Spitgarn. His uncle, Jacob Grau, was
+an operatic and theatrical manager, and for him, as a boy, he sold
+librettos in his opera house. This opened the way into theatrical life,
+which proved to have such fascinations and hold such promises that he
+abandoned the law without having sought admission to the bar, and in
+1872 also abandoned the service of his uncle and embarked on his career
+as manager. In association with Charles A. Chizzola, the joint capital
+amounting to $1,500, he engaged Aimée, a French opéra bouffe singer, who
+had made a hit two years before at the Grand Opera House, for a season
+of seven weeks. His first week, in Bridgeport, Conn., paid the expenses
+of the entire engagement. Aimée came to America again and again, and
+always under Mr. Grau's management. The same year he managed the
+American tours of Rubinstein and Henri Wieniawski, both of whom came to
+America with the financial backing of Messrs. Steinway & Sons. It was
+before the days of phenomenal honoraria. Rubinstein was content with
+$200 a concert, and in eight months his energetic young manager had
+cleared $60,000 on his engagement alone. The next year he organized the
+Clara Louise Kellogg Opera Company, continued his management of Mlle.
+Aimée, and brought to America the Italian tragedian, Tommaso Salvini.
+In 1874 he managed three opéra bouffe and operetta companies, besides
+Adelaide Ristori, and became lessee of the Lyceum Theater, in Fourteenth
+Street. There was a season of financial stress, and in 1875 he severed
+his connection with Chizzola, after another period of bad luck. In 1876
+he gave concerts, directed by Offenbach, in the Madison Square Garden,
+which were a failure, but he recouped his losses from a forfeit of
+$20,000, which the Italian Rossi paid to him rather than give up a
+successful season in Paris. A highly successful tour of seventeen months
+in South America, Cuba, and Mexico with an opéra bouffe troupe, headed
+by the tenor Capoul, and Paola Marié continued his successes. In
+1883 began his association with Messrs. Abbey and Schoeffel, whose
+experiences, together with his own, at the Metropolitan Opera House
+have repeatedly formed the subject of discussion in these chapters of
+operatic history.
+
+The story of the management of the Metropolitan Opera House ended in
+Chapter XVII with an account of the disasters which overtook Abbey,
+Schoeffel, and Grau in 1897. Before the end of that season Mr. Grau
+announced, what had frequently been hinted at in the newspapers, that
+though he should obtain a lease of the opera house he would not give
+opera in 1897-98. The announcement had been received with incredulity,
+for though misfortune had overtaken the managers in Chicago and some of
+their other enterprises had been unfortunate, the New York season had
+turned out in all things successful. Besides, though, "Perjuria ridet
+amantum Jupiter," the public had long before learned to laugh at the
+oaths of managers. It turned out, however, that Mmes. Melba and Eames,
+who had become favorites of the stockholders, were not available for
+the next season, and the directors, who had learned to have confidence
+in Mr. Grau, were willing to let him make the experiment of a year of
+famine. As it turned out it cost them nothing except the performances,
+and Mr. Grau and the friends who had rallied around him very little
+money. The annual rental of $52,000 was made up to them by sub-rentals
+of the building to other managers, chiefly to Messrs. Ellis and
+Damrosch. Meanwhile the year of quiescence was put to a good purpose in
+strengthening the hold which Mr. Grau had resolved to obtain on opera
+in London as well as New York. Mr. Grau and his friends organized
+the Maurice Grau Opera Company and easily obtained a lease of
+the Metropolitan for three years and a release from the bankrupt
+corporation, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Ltd.). On May 4th the old company
+accepted a report which recited the story of the season 1896-97,
+recommended that it go out of business, and released Messrs. Schoeffel
+and Grau from an obligation which they had entered into with the company
+not to engage in opera management. All that remained for it to do was to
+realize on the only valuable asset which it owned--the Tremont Theater,
+in Boston. This it soon did by selling the property to Mr. Schoeffel,
+who has managed it ever since.
+
+The way now being open, Mr. Grau organized his new company, composed
+wholly of his friends. These were Edward Lauterbach, Charles Frazier,
+Robert Dunlap, Roland F. Knoedler, Henry Dazian, B. Franklin de Frece,
+F. W. Sanger, John W. Mackay, Sr., and Frederick Rullman. The capital
+stock, paid up, was $150,000, of which the Metropolitan Opera and Real
+Estate Company subscribed to $25,000. Mr. Grau was elected president
+and general director, Mr. Lauterbach vice-president, and Mr. Frazier
+treasurer. Mr. Sanger was made associate manager, with the specific
+duty of looking after the affairs of the house itself, and Mr. Ernest
+Goerlitz was appointed secretary.
+
+There was no regular subscription at the opera house in the season of
+1897-98, but the public were not without comfort. From January 17 to
+February 19, 1898, the Damrosch and Ellis company gave a series of
+performances which provided an excellent substitute. Opera-lovers were
+not even called on to forego the pleasure of hearing some of the singers
+whom they had come to consider essential to their happiness under the
+régime of Damrosch and Ellis's rivals. Mme. Melba was "not available"
+for Mr. Grau, but she was for Mr. Ellis, who was managing all her
+American business, and she headed the company. With her were Mme.
+Nordica and Mme. Gadski, and among old popular favorites were Emil
+Fischer and David Bispham. Other members of the company were Gisela
+Staudigl, who had been heard in the first German seasons; Mlle. Seygard,
+Mme. Brazzi, an American contralto with good presence, real warmth of
+feeling, and correct instincts; Miss Mattfeld, an extremely serviceable
+"juvenile," who remained such for years; Salignac and Rothmühl, tenors
+respectively for the Italian and German operas; Campanari, barytone;
+Ibos, a tenor, and Boudouresque, a bass whose name was picturesque.
+Melba added "Traviata" to her repertory at the opening performance, and
+later essayed "Aïda," only to prove, as she had done in the case of
+"Siegfried," that there are things in music which are unlike the kingdom
+of heaven in that they cannot be taken by violence. The repertory
+consisted of "La Traviata," "Tannhäuser" "Die Meistersinger," "Aïda,"
+"Lohengrin," "Il Barbiere," "Faust," "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Die
+Walküre," "Siegfried," "Götterdämmerung," and "Les Huguenots."
+
+Before the next regular season began under the new Grau administration
+Mr. Seidl, who would doubtless have continued in association with the
+institution with which he had long and efficiently been connected,
+died. The temporary suspension of the Metropolitan subscription season
+had forced him more actively than ever into the concert field. He had
+succeeded Mr. Theodore Thomas as conductor of the Philharmonic Society,
+and continued the popular triumphs of that organization. He had also
+organized a series of subscription orchestral concerts at the Hotel
+Astoria, and his friends were developing plans for a new endowed
+orchestra when he died, after an illness of only a few hours' duration,
+supposed to have been caused by ptomaine poisoning. This was on the
+night of March 28, 1898. His body was cremated after an imposing public
+funeral at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 31st, participated in
+by the Musical Mutual Protective Union, Männergesangverein Arion, the
+Philharmonic Society, German Liederkranz, the Rev. Merle St. Croix
+Wright, who delivered the memorial address, and Mr. H. E. Krehbiel,
+chairman of the committee of arrangements, who read a despatch received
+from Robert G. Ingersoll, who was absent from the city on a lecture
+trip. The pall-bearers were A. Schueler (who had been a classmate of
+the dead man at the Leipsic Conservatory); Oscar B. Weber, E. Francis
+Hyde (president of the Philharmonic Society); Henry Schmitt, Albert
+Stettheimer, Henry T. Finck (musical critic of The New York Evening
+Post); Walton H. Brown, Louis Josephtal, H. E. Krehbiel (chairman of
+the committee of arrangements and musical critic of The New York
+Tribune); Xavier Scharwenka, August Spanuth (musical critic of the New
+Yorker Staats-Zeitung); Albert Steinberg (sometime musical critic of
+The New York Herald); the Hon. Carl Schurz, Charles T. Barney, Rafael
+Joseffy, Julian Rix, James Speyer, Edgar J. Levey (musical, critic of
+The New York Commercial Advertiser); Dr. William H. Draper, Richard
+Watson Gilder, Paul Goepel, E. M. Burghard, Eugene Ysaye, Victor
+Herbert, George G. Haven, Zoltan Doeme, Edward A. MacDowell, and
+Carlos Hasselbrink.
+
+Concerning Mr. Seidl's career I have already spoken at some length in
+these chapters; it will be long before those who knew him intimately
+will cease to talk about his personal characteristics, and to tell
+anecdotes which illustrate those characteristics. He was one of those
+strong personalities that give an interest to all manner of incidents,
+even the commonplace. Like Moltke, he could hold his tongue in seven
+languages; but it is a fact that all his friends must have observed
+that his taciturnity never made his company any the less entertaining.
+Moreover, when the mood was on him, he could talk by the hour, and then
+his reminiscences of the years spent in the household of Wagner or the
+story of his experiences while carrying the gospel of Wagner through
+Europe were full of fascination. But the talkative mood seldom came
+when a crowd was about him. He was indifferent to the many and fond of
+the few; so his circle of intimate friends never grew large in spite of
+the multitudes who sought his acquaintance, and though no combination
+of circumstances could disturb his self-possession he seemed to be most
+contented and comfortable when seated quietly with a single friend. Even
+under such circumstances he could sometimes sit for minutes at a time
+without speaking himself or expecting a word from his companion, yet
+never show a sign of weariness or ennui. In this particular he was
+something like Schumann, of whom it is related that once he spent an
+hour with a bright young woman to whom he was fondly attached without
+speaking a word. Knowing his peculiarities, she too remained silent, and
+was rewarded for her self-restraint when he departed by hearing him say
+that the hour had been one in which they had perfectly understood each
+other. Seidl's hero, Wagner, was the very opposite of Schumann in this
+particular, and there is a story which indicates that he must frequently
+have been amused at his pupil's reticence. Coming to a rehearsal once he
+found that Seidl had taken a cold which had robbed him completely of his
+voice, so that he could give no instructions to the musicians. Wagner
+laughed immoderately, and with mock seriousness upbraided him for his
+bad habit of talking too much, which had now brought him to the pass
+where he could not talk at all.
+
+Seidl's epistolary habits were like his conversational--he wrote as
+little as he talked; but as the talking fit sometimes seized him, so did
+the writing fit. Then he could devote hours to a letter which had the
+proportions and sometimes the style of a formal essay. On such occasions
+he was so prone to drop into a pulpit manner that I once taxed him with
+it and asked an explanation. He paused for a moment and then smilingly
+made a sort of half-confession that he had once been destined for the
+priesthood. His Scriptural illustrations and "preachy" manner were
+relics which had clung to him from that early day. They were the only
+academic traces about him, however. It is doubtful if any of his friends
+ever heard him discuss a question in the theory or history of music. How
+far his exact knowledge in the art went may not be said; but one thing
+is certain--his practical knowledge embraced every measure of Wagner's
+works.
+
+He seldom spoke of his conservatory days at Leipsic, and then generally
+in a spirit of amusement. Complimented once by me on the excellence
+of his pianoforte playing, he said: "Oh, I made quite a stir at a
+conservatory examination once with Mendelssohn's 'Rondo Capriccioso.'
+I was to be a pianist." That he could have been trained into a virtuoso
+of merit I can easily believe, for without paying much regard to the
+graces of pianoforte playing he yet had a remarkable command of those
+tone qualities which are so helpful in expressive playing. He was
+always eloquent at the pianoforte, especially when playing excerpts
+from the dramas of Wagner. Then his performances were peculiarly full
+and orchestral, a fact largely due to the circumstance that he never
+confined himself to pianoforte arrangements, but preferred to play from
+the orchestral score. That he appreciated the importance of giving
+consideration to the peculiarities of instrumental media he illustrated
+once when at a private rehearsal of music for one of my Wagnerian
+lectures, at which he had intended to play, but had been prevented by
+a sudden duty-call at the opera, he quickened the tempo considerably
+for the pianist beyond that heard at his own readings of the opera, and
+added in explanation: "Nie langweilig werden am Clavier!" ("One must
+never be tedious at the pianoforte!")
+
+A few first representations of operas in this period outside of the
+Metropolitan Opera House call for brief mention, if not for the sake of
+the excellence of the productions, at least for the sake of completeness
+in the record. Thus on May 16, 1898, a company of Italian singers, some
+of whom had been singing in Mexico, some in South America, some in San
+Francisco--the sort of a gathering that, I think, I have described
+in these pages as New York's ordinary summer operatic flotsam and
+jetsam--gave in Wallack's Theater the first representation of Puccini's
+"La Bohème" which New Yorkers heard in their own city. The company was
+first announced as the Baggetto Grand Italian Opera Company, which was
+probably its official style in Mexico. In New York a hoary device of
+juggling with the name of Italy's chief opera house was resorted to, and
+it was called the Milan Royal Opera Company, of La Scala. Under either
+title the company proved itself capable of a deal of stressful and
+distressful singing, though a good impression was made by Giuseppe
+Agostini, a youthful tenor, and Luigi Francesconi, a barytone. "La
+Bohème" was performed on the opening night of the company's brief season
+(it made shipwreck according to rule within four or five days), with the
+following distribution of parts:
+
+
+  Mimi ........................... Linda Montanari
+  Musetta ...................... Cleopatra Vincini
+  Rodolfo ...................... Giuseppe Agostini
+  Marcello ..................... Luigi Francesconi
+  Schaunard ..................... Giovanni Scolari
+  Alcidero |
+  Benoit   |.................... Antonio Fumagalli
+  Parpignol .................... Algernon Asplandi
+
+
+Needless to say that scant justice was done to the play and score of
+"La Bohème" by the vagrant singers, and that the good opinion which the
+opera won later was shared by few among critics, lay and professional.
+After ten years of familiar acquaintance with the work, I like it better
+than I did at first, but it has not yet taken a deep and abiding place
+in my affections. I see in it, however, an earnest and ingenious effort
+to knit music, text, and action closer together than it was the wont of
+Italian composers to do before the advent of Wagner set Young Italy in
+a ferment. Music plays a very different rôle in it than it does in the
+operas of Donizetti, Bellini, and the earlier Verdi. It does not
+content itself with occasionally proclaiming the mood of a situation
+or the feelings of a conventional stage person. It attempts to supply
+life-blood for the entire drama; to flow through its veins without
+ceasing; to bear along on its surface all the whims, emotions, follies,
+and incidents of the story as fast as they appear; to body them forth
+as vividly as words and pantomime can; to color them, vitalize them,
+arouse echoes and reflections of them in the hearts of the hearers. But
+this it can do only in association with other elements of the drama, and
+when these are presented only in part, and then crudely and clumsily,
+it must fail of its purpose. And so it happens that Puccini's music
+discloses little of that brightness, vivacity, and piquancy which we are
+naturally led to expect from it by knowledge of Mürger's story, on which
+the opera is based, and acquaintance with the composer's earlier opera,
+"Manon Lescaut." One element the two works have in common: absence of
+the light touch of humor demanded by the early scenes in both dramas.
+However, this is a characteristic not of Puccini alone, but all the
+composers in the Young Italian School. They know no way to kill a
+gnat dancing in the sunlight except to blow it up with a broadside of
+trombones. Puccini's music in "La Bohème" also seems lacking in the
+element of characterization, an element which is much more essential in
+comedy music than in tragic. Whether they are celebrating the careless
+pleasures of a Bohemian carouse or proclaiming the agonies of a
+consuming passion, it is all one to his singers. So soon as they drop
+the intervallic palaver which points the way of the new style toward
+bald melodrama they soar off in a shrieking cantalena, buoyed up by the
+unison strings and imperiled by strident brass until there is no relief
+except exhaustion. Happy, careless music, such as Mozart or Rossini
+might have written for the comedy scenes in "La Bohème," there is next
+to none in Puccini's score, and seldom, indeed, does he let his measures
+play that palliative part which, as we know from Wagner's "Tristan" and
+Verdi's "Traviata,"--to cite extremes,--it is the function of music to
+perform when enlisted in the service of the drama of vice and phthisis.
+
+On October 10, 1898, another band of strolling singers, which endured
+for a week at the Casino, also performed "La Bohème," and the Castle
+Square Opera Company of Henry W. Savage gave it in English at the
+American Theater on November 28th of the same year. It did not reach
+the Metropolitan Opera House until the season 1900-01.
+
+Stockholders and subscribers of the Metropolitan Opera House having
+endured their year of privation, which, as we have seen, was not without
+its moments of refreshment, Mr. Grau opened the regular subscription
+season 1898-99 on November 29th. Its incidents of special interest
+were not many. One was the return of Mme. Sembrich, who made what Mr.
+Sutherland Edwards called Rosina's "double entry" in Rossini's "Barber"
+on the second night of the season--November 31st. On the third night
+Mme. Melba, who sang by the courtesy of Mr. Ellis, appeared in "Roméo
+et Juliette." There were first appearances of several artists whose
+names became fixed in the prospectuses for some years to come: Mme.
+Ernestine Schumann-Heink as Ortrud in "Lohengrin" on January 9, 1899;
+Ernest Van Dyck as Tannhäuser on the opening night; Albert Saléza as
+Romeo on December 2, 1898; Suzanne Adams as Juliet on January 4, 1899;
+Anton Van Rooy as Wotan in "Die Walküre" on December 14, 1898. Mr.
+Franz Schalk, the conductor engaged for the German operas in place
+of Mr. Seidl, who had taken part with Mr. Grau in the summer season
+at Covent Garden and been engaged for the New York season that was
+to follow, introduced himself to New York on the same occasion.
+
+Of acquaintances, more or less old, there were in the company
+besides Mmes. Sembrich, Eames, Lehmann, Nordica, and Mantelli, Miss
+Meisslinger, Miss Pevny, Frances Saville, Mr. Bispham, Mr. Dippel (who
+had been a member of the last German company in 1890-91), Pol Plançon,
+and Adolph Mühlmann. Newcomers besides those mentioned were Matilde
+Brugière, Herman Devries (son of Mme. Rosa Devries, a dramatic singer
+of renown half a century before), Henri Albers, barytone, and Lemprière
+Pringle, an English singer, who had worked himself up in the ranks of
+the Carl Rosa Opera Company. The two brothers, Jean and Édouard de
+Reszke, whom New York had come to look upon as indispensable to perfect
+enjoyment, were also members of the company. There were two cyclical
+performances of "The Ring of the Nibelung" to keep good Wagnerites in
+countenance, but Mr. Grau made his popular hit by a repetition of the
+device which had been successful before with "Faust"--he gave "Les
+Huguenots" with an "ideal cast." The device was simple, but it served.
+Meyerbeer's opera had been given three times, when on February 20th he
+announced it with Mme. Sembrich in the cast, and an all-'round advance
+on prices on the basis of $7, instead of $5, for orchestra chairs.
+
+Only one novelty was produced in the season. This was Signor
+Mancinelli's "Ero e Leandro," which had its first American performance
+on March 10, 1899, with the composer in the conductor's chair. The
+principal singers were Mme. Eames (Hero), Saléza (Leander), and Plançon
+(Ariofarno). Mme. Schumann-Heink was set down to sing the prologue, but
+illness prevented at the first representation, and the music was sung
+by Mme. Mantelli. The opera had a pretty success and back of it was an
+interesting history. Boito wrote the libretto for himself, but put it
+aside when the subject of "Mefistofele" took possession of his mind.
+Two of the numbers, which he had already composed, found their way into
+the score of the later opera, one of them being the beautiful duet,
+"Lontano, lontano, lontano," in the classical scene. Boito turned the
+book over to Bottesini, who composed it, but failed to make a success
+of it. Signor Mancinelli then took the libretto in hand and, having a
+commission from the Norwich (England) festival of 1896 for a choral
+work, he composed it and handed it in to be sung as a cantata. It
+was sung at the festival. The next year it received its first stage
+performance at Madrid and by way of Turin and Venice reached Covent
+Garden, London, where it was produced on July 15, 1898.
+
+What a simple tale it is that has so twined itself around the hearts of
+mankind that it has lived in classic story for ages and gotten into the
+folk-tales of more than one European people! Hero is a priestess of
+Aphrodite, who lives at Sestos, on the Thracian coast; Leander, a youth,
+whose home is at Abydos, on the Asiatic shore, beyond the Hellespont.
+The pair meet at a festival of Venus and Adonis and fall in love with
+each other at sight. The maiden's parents are unwilling that she shall
+cease her sacred functions to become a wife, and Leander swims the
+strait every night, while Hero holds a torch at the window to direct him
+to her side. One night there arises a tempest and Leander is drowned,
+and his body cast up at the foot of the tower. Then Hero throws herself
+upon the jagged rocks beside him, and the lovers are united in death.
+
+  "That tale is old, but love anew
+   May nerve young hearts to prove as true,"
+
+sang Byron after he had put discrediting doubts to shame by swimming the
+Hellespont himself and catching an ague for his pains. A simple tale,
+yet I have included more than is ordinarily found in the recital in
+order to show how Boito utilized and added to it. A simple tale, but
+with what lovely fervor have the poets sung it over and over again!
+Byron could smile at his own Quixotic feat in the lines which he wrote
+six days after its accomplishment, but in "The Bride of Abydos" he did
+not attempt to conceal the affection which he felt for the tale, or his
+pride in the fact that Helle's buoyant wave had borne his limbs as well
+as Leander's; and who can without emotion call up Keats's picture of
+
+  "Young Leander, toiling to his death,"
+
+pursing his weary lips for Hero's cheek and smiling against her smiles
+until he sinks, and
+
+  "Up bubbles all his amorous breath"?
+
+Right nobly, too, did Schiller hymn the lovers and two centuries of
+opera-writers--Italian, French, German, English, and Polish--have
+sought to weave their pitiful story into lyric dramas.
+
+Boito, as I have said, wrote the book of "Ero e Leandro" for himself,
+but eventually gave it to others. I can only speculate as to the cause
+of Boito's abandonment of his intellectual child. Probably he concluded
+that it lacked the dramatic elements which the composers of the last few
+decades, paying tribute, willingly or unwillingly, to Wagner's genius,
+have felt to be necessary to the success of a lyric drama. But dramatic
+action need not always be summed up in movement. Wagner's greatest
+tragedy has scarcely more external incident than "Ero e Leandro," and,
+indeed, is like this opera, in that the interest in each of its three
+acts centers in a meeting of the lovers and their publication of the
+play enacting on the stage of their hearts. But it takes music like
+Wagner's, music surcharged with passion, to body forth the growth of
+the dramatic personages and make us blind to paucity of incident. When
+that cannot be had, then pictures and functions of all kinds, solemn
+and festive, must be relied on to hold the interest. Boito built up
+such pictures and grouped such functions about his simple tale with a
+great deal of ingenuity. The eye is charmed at once with his classic
+landscapes in the first act--the cypresses, myrtles, and blooming
+oleanders, the temple portico, the statues and altar with its votive
+offerings, the kneeling chorus of priestesses and sailors, Hero with her
+ravishing robes (think of Mme. Eames in the part), the gallant Leander
+and the stately archon Ariofarno. It is the scene of the lovers' meeting
+at the festival, and to heighten its interest and provide something else
+than hymns and rites, Boito has turned Leander into a victor in the
+Aphrodisian games, both as swordsman and cytharist. Hero crowns him
+with laurel, and he sings two odes, which Boito cleverly borrows from
+Anacreon, the first without, the second with implied, but not expressed
+credit. The odes are the most familiar of Anacreon's odes, however, and
+no one could think of moral obliquity in connection with Boito's use of
+them. They are the address to the lyre which the poet wishes to attune
+to heroic measures, but which answers only in accents of love; and the
+tale of how the poet took Eros, shivering, out of the cold night and
+received a heart wound in return. Charmingly, indeed, do the odes fit
+into the dramatic scheme and offer two set pieces as a contrast to the
+solemn pronouncements of the archon and the excessive hymning of the
+chorus.
+
+The development of the plot is now begun. Boito has created Ariofarno
+to fill the place of the wicked nun of the German folk-tales. He is
+obsessed with guilty love for Hero and seeks to divert her service from
+the celestial Venus to the earthly. She scorns his offers of love, and
+he leaves her with threats of vengeance. Filled with forebodings, she
+seeks an omen in the voice of a sea shell which had been placed on
+the altar of Aphrodite, the Sea-born. The words are charming, and the
+occasion prettily prepared for a vocal show piece. She invokes the shell
+as the cradle of Aphrodite, hears in its murmurs the song of the sea
+nymphs, the humming of bees amid the oleander's aeolian whispers, and
+the soft confessions of a mermaid. Then the sounds grow wild, and
+stimulate her fancy to a picture of rushing waters, flying foam, and
+wrathful surge--the vision which is realized in the last act. Here the
+suggestion for musical delineation is obvious, and Signor Mancinelli
+has utilized it in such a manner as to make his song (which, for
+reasons that I shall not pursue, awakened memories of the ballatella
+in "Pagliacci") the first really triumphant thing in the opera. The
+rest of the act is chiefly devoted to a love duet, at the close of
+which Hero, kneeling before the statue of the god, invokes Apollo to
+admonish her of her fate. Ariofarno, in concealment, answers for the
+god: "Death!"
+
+In the second act, which plays in the part of the temple of Aphrodite
+devoted to the mysteries, Ariofarno carries out his plan of vengeance
+against Hero. Professing to have received an oracular command to that
+effect, he restores a service in an ancient town by the sea and to it
+consecrates Hero, who is powerless to resist his will. The duty of the
+priestess is to give warning of approaching storms, so that by priestly
+rites the angry waters may be placated. While pronouncing her sentence
+he, in an aside, offers to save her if she will accept his love. Again
+he is spurned, and when he utters the words which condemn her to the
+vigil Leander seeks to attack him. For this he is seized and banished
+to the Asian shore. Hero takes the oath, the dancers rush in and begin
+a bacchanalian, or Aphrodisian, orgy, while the chorus sings the "Io
+paean." Here Signor Mancinelli has really written with a pen of fire.
+The music is tumultuously exciting, though built on the learned forms,
+and there is the happiest union of purpose and achievement. In the last
+act, somewhat clumsily set and unnecessarily ambitious in its strivings
+for spectacular realism, the dénoument is reached. Songs of sailors come
+up from the sea; Hero sings her love and longing and lights her lover to
+his fate. Their love duet is interrupted by the bursting of the tempest,
+which had come upon them without being observed. The warning trumpet
+which she should have sounded is heard from the vaults below, and the
+chant of the approaching priests. Leander throws himself into the sea;
+the archon upbraids Hero for neglect of duty and discovers its cause.
+Her punishment, death, will be his vengeance, but the lifeless body of
+Leander is hurled upon the rocks, and comes into view when a thunderbolt
+tears away a portion of the tower wall. Hero sinks dead to the ground;
+the archon rages at the escape of his victim, and an invisible choir
+sings of a reunion of the lovers in death.
+
+As a composer Signor Mancinelli is an eclectic. It would not be easy
+to specify any particular master as a model. He admires Wagner and has
+proper appreciation of the dramatic values, the continuity of idea,
+and the effect of development which flow from the recurrent use of
+significant phrases; but his manner is not at all that of the later
+Wagner whose influence, if found at all, must be sought in a few
+harmonic progressions and in a belief in the potency of orchestral
+color. Nearer to him than the master poet-musician are Verdi,
+Ponchielli, Boito, and the eager spirits of Young Italy. His music is
+as free as the later Verdi's from the shackles of set forms, but he is,
+nevertheless, at his best when the book permits an extended piece of
+lyric writing. This being so, it is disappointing that he has done so
+little that is good in the opening scene where the book invited him to
+consult the wants of the Norwich festival and to write in the cantata
+style. In the first act, however, there is little to praise outside of
+the settings of the two Anacreonic odes and the song to the shell. There
+is much striving, but a paucity of plastic ideas. What might have been
+an unconstrained lyrical outpouring, the prologue, mere thundering in
+the index, because of the composer's mistaken impression that it ought
+to be tragic, and in the "Ercles vein." When the rites begin and a
+swelling paean is expected, there is much making of musical faces, but
+no real beginning. Matters improve in the second act, where the part of
+Ariofarno becomes dramatically puissant. Here there are noble passages
+and the duet has moments of passionate intensity; but all these things
+pale their ineffectual fires before the "Io paean," which is as thrilling
+and well applied as anything that I can recall in the operas of the
+decade which preceded "Ero e Leandro."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+NEW SINGERS AND OPERAS
+
+
+There now remained four years of Mr. Grau's administration at the
+Metropolitan Opera House. They were years of great activity, during
+which the fortunes of the manager and the institution rose steadily. Mr.
+Grau was no more of a sentimentalist in art than Mr. Abbey had been. He
+was quiet, undemonstrative, alert, and wholly willing to let the public
+dictate the course of the establishment. Outwardly he was always calm,
+urbane, neither communicative nor secretive. I sat behind him during all
+the years of his divided and undivided directorship, and never failed
+of a pleasant greeting, no matter what the expression of The Tribune
+had been on the morning of the day. He accepted congratulations with a
+"Thank you!" which had cordiality in its timbre, and let the subject
+fall at once. He met expressions of condolence in the same unperturbed
+and uneffusive manner. Only once in all the years during which we sat
+neighbors can I recall that he volunteered a remark indicative of
+either satisfaction or disappointment. It was on the night of the first
+performance of Reyer's "Salammbô," in the season 1900-01. He appeared in
+his place early and extended his gloved hand in his ordinary manner, but
+this time his eyes took a survey of the audience-room the while. Then,
+still half turned, he remarked without a touch of feeling in the tone of
+his voice: "Encouraging, isn't it? Some say the public want novelties."
+He had expended a large sum on the production, and the public had met
+him with half a house.
+
+If the public cared little for new things, it may occasionally have
+disturbed the solitary musings of Mr. Grau, but it only emphasized his
+public exhibitions of willingness to give the people the old things
+which they liked. A strongly popular favorite had a safe hold on a long
+tenure of service under him. Changes there had to be from year to year,
+but so long as the public manifested a desire to listen to a high-class
+singer, and there were no untoward circumstances to interfere, that
+singer was re-engaged. Hence there came to be at the Metropolitan in the
+higher ranks something like the theatrical stock companies of an earlier
+generation. New singers there had to be, from time to time, but year
+after year (the serious interruption is not yet) the subscribers were
+assured before one season was ended that in the next they would still
+be privileged to hear Mmes. Sembrich, Eames, Nordica, Schumann-Heink,
+Ternina, Homer, and (until he retired from his active stage career) Jean
+de Reszke, and Messrs. Édouard de Reszke, Van Dyck, Dippel, Scotti,
+Plançon, Journet, Campanari, Mühlmann, Bispham, and Albert Reiss. The
+presence of these artists of the first rank naturally determined the
+character of the repertory, which was also cut to a pattern, since the
+public always wanted to hear the artists whom they admired in the rôles
+in which they were most admirable. The German Contingent made the
+Wagnerian list inevitable, just as Mme. Sembrich made inevitable the
+operas of the florid Italian school, and Mme. Eames the two favorite
+operas of Gounod. These circumstances simplify the presentation of the
+significant incidents of the remainder of this history. I have only
+to take account of the entrance of a few stars into the Metropolitan
+system, and the first production of a few operas--some of which came
+only speedily to depart, others of which have remained in the
+establishment's repertory.
+
+First, then, as to the American débuts. Newcomers of the first rank
+there were none among the ladies in the season 1899-1900: the tenor,
+Alvarez, effected his entrance on the Metropolitan stage on the opening
+night of the season, December 18th, in Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette";
+Signor Scotti, barytone, who has remained a prime favorite ever since,
+in "Don Giovanni," on December 27th; Fritz Friedrichs, whose success
+in New York was inconsiderable compared with that which he had won in
+Bayreuth in his famous character of Beckmesser in "Die Meistersinger,"
+on January 24, 1900. The subscription season of fifteen weeks consisted,
+with all the extra performances, of 104 performances. It was full of
+disappointments because of the illness of singers, and many performances
+were slipshod because of evils that have remained with the institution,
+in spite of many protests on the part of press and public, and promises
+of reform on the part of the management. Several times the company was
+divided so that performances might be given simultaneously in New York
+and Philadelphia. Even when this was not done, the efficiency of the
+forces was sapped by wearisome midnight journeys to and from the latter
+city, which prevented adequate rehearsals. Nevertheless, there was a
+supplemental season of two weeks. Herr Hofrath Ernst von Schuch,
+director of the opera at Dresden, was a visitor, and conducted two
+performances of "Lohengrin" and four concerts. No new operas were
+produced.
+
+Before the regular subscription season, 1900-01, the Metropolitan Opera
+House was the scene of an ambitious effort to habilitate opera in
+English, which was made by Henry W. Savage in co-operation with Maurice
+Grau. Mr. Savage had some years before established his Castle Square
+Opera Company, organized in Boston, in the American Theater. The
+repertory of the company was composed largely of operettas at first,
+but gradually operas of large dimensions and serious import were added.
+After the season 1899-1900 he entered into an arrangement with Grau to
+occupy the Metropolitan Opera House from October 1 to December 15, 1900,
+and under the title Metropolitan English Grand Opera Company the two
+managers issued a prospectus which contained the names of nearly all the
+singers then known favorably to the English opera stage in America. Many
+of them had also sung in the Carl Rosa Opera Company, of England, and
+there was a better command of routine in the organization than had
+been known in English performances thitherto. The repertory was quite
+as pretentious as that of the company of foreign artists regularly
+domiciled at the Metropolitan, save that it did not include the later
+dramas of Wagner. Instead, however, it comprised some light operas or
+operettas, and some specifically English works. The promises of the
+prospectus were fulfilled to the letter in respect both of singers and
+operas, and though the enterprise proved to be less successful than had
+been those of Mr. Savage in previous years (probably because of the air
+of aristocracy which it wore, without being able to assume the social
+importance which belonged only to the foreign exotic), it is deserving
+of extended record. Some of the names of the singers stand as
+prominently in the English record as in the American, and unexpected
+laurels have been wound round the brows of some of them in still more
+foreign fields. In the list were Ingeborg Ballstrom, Grace Van
+Studdiford, Fanchon Thompson, Rita Elandi, Mae Cressy, Grace Golden,
+Josephine Ludwig, Zélie de Lussan, Elsa Marny, Louise Meisslinger,
+Frieda Stender, Phoebe Strakosch, Minnie Tracey, Barron Berthald, F. J.
+Boyle, Philip Brozel, Forrest Carr, Lloyd d'Aubigne, Harry Davies, Harry
+Hamlin, Homer Lind, William Mertens, Chauncey Moore, Winifred Goff,
+William Paull, Lemprière Pringle, William Pruette, Francis Rogers,
+Joseph F. Sheehan, Leslie Walker, William F. Wegener, and Clarence
+Whitehill. The conductors were A. Seppilli and Richard Eckhold. The
+operas performed were "Faust," "Tannhäuser," "Mignon," "Carmen,"
+"Trovatore," "Lohengrin," "The Bohemian Girl," "Traviata," "Romeo and
+Juliet," "Cavalleria Rusticana," "Pagliacci," "Martha," "The Mikado,"
+and Goring Thomas's "Esmeralda." This last opera, a novelty in
+America, was brought forward on November 19, 1900, with the following
+distribution of parts: Esmeralda, Grace Golden; Phoebus, Philip
+Brozel; Claude Frollo, Lemprière Pringle; Quasimodo, William Paull;
+Fleur-de-Lys, Grace Van Studdiford; Marquis de Chereuse, Leslie Walker;
+Gringoire, Harry Davies; Clopin, F. J. Boyle.
+
+Before taking up the history of the Metropolitan Opera House, record may
+be made of the production of another novelty earlier in the year, also
+by Mr. Savage's singers, but under the more democratic conditions which
+prevailed at the American Theater. This was Spinelli's "A basso Porto,"
+which was given for the first time by the Castle Square Company on
+January 22, 1900.
+
+Mr. Grau began the campaign of 1900-01 on the Pacific Coast, his first
+performance being in Los Angeles on November 9th. Thence he went to
+San Francisco, Denver, Kansas City, Lincoln, and Minneapolis, reaching
+New York in time to open the subscription season on December 18th. The
+season endured fifteen weeks, within which time eighty-two performances
+were given. It was an eventful period. No fewer than eight singers
+who achieved significance in the annals of the house effected their
+entrances on the New York stage. Mme. Louise Homer made her début in
+"Aïda" on December 22d; Mlle. Lucienne Bréval, in "Le Cid," on January
+16th; Miss Marguarite Macintyre, in "Mefistofele," on January 14th;
+Fritzi Scheff, in "Fidelio," on December 29th; Charles Gilibert, on the
+opening night, in "Roméo et Juliette"; Imbart de la Tour, in "Aïda," on
+December 22d; Robert Blass, in "Tannhäuser," on December 24th; Marcel
+Journet, in "Aïda," on December 22d. The first of the operas given was
+"La Bohème," but, as I have already explained, it was no novelty in
+New York, having been performed by two Italian opera companies and in
+an English version three years before. Novelties in every sense were
+Puccini's "Tosca" and Reyer's "Salammbô." The former had its first
+representation (it was also its first representation in America) on
+February 4, 1901. Signor Mancinelli conducted, and the parts were
+distributed as follows: Floria Tosca, Ternina; Cavaradossi, Cremonini;
+Angelotti, Dufriche; Il Sacristano, Gilibert; Spoletta, Bars; Sciarrone,
+Viviani; Un Carceriere, Cernusco; Scarpia, Scotti.
+
+The restraining influence of music has prevented the lyric drama from
+acquiring the variety and scope of subject material adopted by the
+spoken drama. For nearly two hundred years after its invention classic
+legend and ancient history provided the stories which the opera composer
+laid under tribute. Very properly dramatic song occupied itself at the
+outset with a celebration of that fabled singer at the sound of whose
+voice "rivers forgot to run and winds to blow." In the story of Orpheus
+and Eurydice, as told in what is set down in history as the first opera,
+music and love were mated; and they have not yet been divorced, though
+both have undergone many and great changes of character. Love--gentle,
+constant, chivalric, tried, and triumphant--has been hymned amid
+pictures suggested by a millennium of human happenings, and its
+expression has passed through all the phases that the development of
+the most direct vehicle of emotional utterance could place at its
+service--from the melodramatic strivings of the amateurs who stumbled
+upon opera in their effort to reanimate the Greek drama to the glowing
+scores of Richard Wagner, in which high art and profound science are
+joined in a product as worthy of admiration as any other product of the
+intellect fired by inspiration. In the progress from Peri to Wagner,
+however, despite many daring and dubious adventures in new territories,
+there has yet been an avoidance of material in itself ugly and
+repulsive. We have been asked to contemplate the libertinism of Don
+Juan, but at its worst it has served only as a foil to the virtue of
+his victims, which in the end emerged triumphant. We have seen exposed
+the monstrous double nature of Rigoletto, but only that the pathos of
+paternal love should thereby be thrown into brighter relief. We have
+seen convention sanctified by nature and approved by communal experience
+set at naught by Wagner's treatment of mythological tales of unspeakable
+antiquity, but only that the tragedy of human existence in its puissant
+types might be kept before the world's consciousness.
+
+The relationship occupied by music to the drama, that is to the words,
+the pantomime, the pictures and the play, in "Tosca" is that which it
+occupies in melodrama--using the term in its original and correct
+sense--with the single difference that the dialogue which is illustrated
+and mildly expounded by the music, and which the instruments seek, more
+or less vainly, to accentuate, emphasize, and intensify, is not uttered
+in the speaking, but the singing voice. Even this difference, however,
+disappears at some of the climacteric moments, and the actors resort
+to the elocutionary devices which belong to the spoken drama, and,
+foregoing pitch and rhythm, shout or whisper or hiss out the words which
+tell of the feelings by which they are swayed. Thus the first principle
+of music, which is melody, in Wagner as much as it was in Cimarosa or
+Mozart, is sacrificed. Quite as significant as the degradation of music
+thus illustrated is the degradation of the drama which has brought it
+about. There has always been a restrictive and purifying potency in
+melody. It has that which has turned our souls to sympathy with the
+apotheosis of vice and pulmonary tuberculosis in Verdi's "Traviata,"
+which has made the music of the second act and the finale of "Tristan
+und Isolde" the most powerful plea that can be made for Wagner's guilty
+lovers. Nowhere else is the ennobling and purifying capacity of music
+demonstrated as in the death song of Isolde. Without such palliation the
+vileness, the horror, the hideousness of a play like "Tosca" is more
+unpardonable in an operatic form than in the original. Its lust and
+cruelty are presented in their nakedness. There is little or no time to
+reflect upon the workings of perverted minds, to make psychological or
+physiological studies, to watch the accumulation of causes and their
+gradual development of effects, except in the moments, so plentiful
+in Puccini's operas, in which music becomes a hindrance and an
+impertinence. Dramatic action cannot be promoted by music. The province
+of the art is to develop and fix a mood or celebrate a deed. Tosca can
+sing of her love, her jealousy, her hate, her hope; she cannot sing her
+frantic efforts to escape the lustful arms of Scarpia; she cannot sing
+his murder (though she might have chanted its gory glory, if so she held
+it, after the fact); nor can she sing her own destruction. In fact,
+there is next to nothing in Sardou's drama fit for operatic song, either
+in the sense that prevailed at the time of Paisiello or prevails in the
+time of Wagner--which is now. In the opera a really fit incident for
+the lyric drama borrowed from Sardou is expanded adroitly into a scene
+which is both musically and dramatically effective. It is the scene in
+which the cantata is sung in the Queen's apartments while Scarpia is
+questioning Cavaradossi in his own. Here the set musical composition is
+a background for the dramatic dialogue. Parallel scenes provide most of
+the opportunities which Puccini has embraced for writing in what may
+be called a sustained effort outside of the scenes between Tosca and
+her lover in the first act. Thus the first finale has a pompous church
+office as its background, with tolling of bells, the booming of cannon,
+the pealing of a great organ, through all of which surges a stream of
+orchestral melody bearing the declamatory shrieks of Scarpia. All of
+this is purely irrelevant and external, and the device is cheap, but
+it serves. Similar in musical purpose, but at the opposite end of the
+color scheme, is the opening of the third act. The stage picture is
+one of great beauty. The foreground shows the platform of the Castle
+of St. Angelo. St. Peter's Cathedral and the Vatican are visible in the
+background. It is urban Rome alone that is visible, but there are sounds
+from the Campagna--the tinkling of sheep bells, the song of a shepherd
+lad mingling with a strangely languorous and fragmentary orchestral
+song. Then there arises from the distance the sound of church bells,
+large and small, while the orchestral song goes on. It is all
+mood-music, conceived with no necessary relationship to the drama, but
+providing an atmosphere which is really refreshing after the sup of
+horrors provided by the preceding act. Therefore, it must be accepted
+gratefully like the dance tune over which Scarpia and his associates
+declaim before the dreadful business of the second act begins, and the
+piteous appeal to the Virgin which Tosca makes before she conceives
+the idea of the butchery which she perpetrates a few minutes later.
+
+And the melodramatic music upon which Sardou's play floats,--what is
+it like? Much of it like shreds and patches of many things with which
+the operatic stage has long been familiar. There are efforts at
+characterization by means of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmical symbols,
+of which the most striking, and least original, is a succession of
+chords which serves as an introduction to the first scene. This and
+much else came out of Wagner's workshop, and, like all else of the same
+origin in the score, is impotent because there is no trace of Wagner's
+logical mind, either in the choice of material or its development.
+Phrases of real pith and moment are mixed with phrases of indescribable
+balderdash, yet these phrases recur with painful reiteration and with
+all the color tints which Puccini is able to scrape from a marvelously
+varied and garish orchestral palette. The most remarkable feature, the
+feature which shows the composer's constructive talent in its brightest
+aspect, is the fluency of it all. Even when reduced to the extremity
+of a tremolo of empty fifths on the strings pianissimo, or a single
+sustained tone, Puccini still manages to cling to a thread of his
+melodramatic fabric and the mind does not quite let go of his musical
+intentions.
+
+Reyer's "Salammbô" was brought forward for the first time on March 20,
+1901, with the following cast: Salammbô, Lucienne Bréval; Taanach,
+Miss Carrie Bridewell; Matho, Albert Saléza; Shahabarim, Mr. Salignac;
+Narr-Havas, Mr. Journet; Spendius, Mr. Sizes; Giscon, Mr. Gilibert;
+Authorite, Mr. Dufriche; Hamilcar, Mr. Scotti. Signor Mancinelli
+conducted. The opera received a brilliant representation. Mr. Grau
+had piled up the stage adornments with a lavish hand, and, though it
+disappeared from the Metropolitan stage after two performances, material
+traces remained for years in the settings of other spectacular operas.
+The scenes were all reproductions of the Paris models and exquisitely
+painted; the costumes were gorgeous to a degree. Mlle. Bréval's beauty
+(Semitic, as became the character) shone radiant in the part of the
+heroine, and she sang and acted with an intensity that in its supreme
+moments was positively uplifting. Flaubert's brilliant novel supplied
+the material out of which "Salammbô" was constructed. The romance has a
+large historical incident for a background, namely, the suppression of
+a mutiny among the mercenaries of the Carthaginians in the first Punic
+war. Running through the gorgeous tissue which the French novelist wove
+about this incident is the thread of story which Camille du Locle drew
+out for Reyer's use--the story of the rape of the sacred veil of Tanit
+by the leader of the revolting mercenaries, his love for Salammbô,
+daughter of the Carthaginian general; her recovery of the veil, with its
+consequence of disaster to her lover, and the pitiful death of both at
+their own hands. The authors of the opera were adepts in the field of
+what might be called musical spectacle. M. du Locle had a hand in both
+of the operas written for Paris, "Les Vêpres Sicilienne," and "Don
+Carlos." Under the eyes of Verdi at Sant' Agata he wrote the prose
+scenario of "Aïda," which Ghislanzoni turned into Italian verse for the
+composer. If a prodigal and sumptuous heaping up of stage adornments
+could make the success of an opera, "Salammbô" would have been one of
+the greatest triumphs of the French lyric stage; but pompous pictures
+are not the be-all and end-all of opera, even in Paris, and the
+fortunate co-operation of du Locle and Verdi was not repeated in the
+collaboration of du Locle and Reyer.
+
+There are, however, merits in "Salammbô" which entitle it to a better
+fate than befell it in New York. The people in the story have marked
+dramatic physiognomies; indeed, had M. Reyer's skill in characterization
+been half so great as M. Flaubert's, and M. du Locle's, there would have
+been much to praise in the work. The characters are admirably drawn, and
+show as much individuality in their intellectual and moral traits as
+they do in their physical--the crafty Greek, the treacherous Numidian,
+the energetic and manly Carthaginian, the storm-tossed heroine, and the
+lovelorn Lybian are good dramatic types, even if stamped with stage
+conventions. A genius in musical characterization, like Mozart, Wagner
+or Verdi, would have found means for making their utterances as
+picturesque as their presences; but this was beyond the powers of Reyer.
+His tastes are modern, his aims far above the frivolity which afflicts
+some of his colleagues, but his abilities do not keep pace with his
+ambition. His models are easily found; he clasps hands most warmly with
+Berlioz, and has some of the Frenchman's peculiarly Gallic reverence
+for Spontini and Gluck. There are indications in the score that "Les
+Troyens" occupied much of his attention while he was engaged upon it,
+and I fancy that that ambitiously planned, but star-crossed work, was
+also familiar to the librettist. This need not excite special wonder,
+for the association of ideas was close enough. The second part of
+Berlioz's tragedy is also Carthaginian, and ends with Dido's prophetic
+vision of the hero who should avenge her wrongs on Rome. That Reyer also
+venerates Wagner but shows itself more in the use of the German master's
+harmonic progressions than in the adoption of his methods. He adopts
+the device of reiterated phrases, but his purpose in doing so I could
+not discover. Two short melodies, which are the themes of his brief
+instrumental introduction, are brought forward again and again, but fail
+to disclose their relationship to any of the agencies or elements in
+the story, and without a sign of that organic development which is the
+distinguishing characteristic of Wagner's creative style. Reyer's
+orchestration is discreet and free from all taint of that instrumental
+Volapük which is so marked in the Young Italian school. His subject
+invites the use of Oriental intervals, and he employs them with the
+discretion which is noticeable in "Aïda," but not with Verdi's
+effectiveness. Some of his devices are admirable, others simply bizarre.
+As a whole the music is monotonous in character and color, but it is
+dignified and earnest, and for this it deserves praise.
+
+Mme. Sembrich had absented herself from Mr. Grau's company in the season
+1900-01 in order to make a tour of the country with a small opera
+company of her own; she returned to the Metropolitan fold in the next
+season, however, and has not been errant since. The newcomers in 1901-02
+were de Marchi, the tenor, who sang first in "Aïda" on January 17, 1902;
+Albert Reiss, a German tenor and specialist in Wagner's Mime, and
+Tavecchia, bass. The last-named made no deep impression, and faded
+out of view, but Mr. Reiss has been a strong prop of the Wagnerian
+performances ever since, and has proved himself an exceedingly useful
+artist in many respects. Mr. Walter Damrosch joined Mr. Grau's forces as
+conductor of the German operas; with him were associated Signor Sepilli
+and M. Flon. The record of the subscription season embraced thirty-three
+subscription evenings, eleven subscription matinées, the same number of
+popular priced performances on Saturday nights, nine extra performances,
+including four afternoons devoted to "The Ring of the Nibelung," and a
+gala performance in honor of Prince Henry of Prussia. The additions to
+the institution's repertory consisted of "Messaline," by Isidore de
+Lara, and "Manru," by Ignace Jan Paderewski. Concerning these novelties
+I shall have a word to say presently; the importance of the German
+prince's visit, from a social point of view, asks that it receive
+precedence in the narrative of the season's doings. This right royal
+incident took place on the evening of February 25, 1902. The opera house
+never looked so beautiful before, nor has it looked so beautiful since,
+as when it was garbed to welcome the nation's guest, a brother of
+the German Emperor. The material most used in adorning the house was
+Southern smilax, which all but hid all that is ordinarily seen of the
+auditorium and the corridors. All the box and balcony fronts were
+covered with it, and strings of it hung at the sides of the proscenium
+opening from the top of the opening to the stage. These strips of green
+foliage were thickly studded with white and green electric lights. The
+same scheme was carried out above the stage opening, where long garlands
+of smilax, gleaming with tiny white and green lamps, were hung in
+festoons, while the apex was formed by a standard of American and German
+flags and shields. On the balcony and box fronts the screens of smilax
+were relieved with frequent bunches of azaleas and marguerites, and with
+stars of white lamps shining through the green. The royal box was formed
+by removing the partitions separating five boxes in the middle of the
+lower tier. The front was decorated with American beauty roses, in
+addition to the smilax. The interior was hung with crimson velvet, and
+across its front was a canopy of crimson velvet and white satin. Behind
+the royal box the corridor on which it opened was cut off from the other
+boxes by hangings of tapestry. One of the most beautiful effects of all
+was made by the ceiling, where the chandeliers shone through a network
+of strings of smilax and white and green electric lights radiating
+from the center like the strands of a cobweb. As may be guessed,
+the brilliancy of the audience was in harmony with that of the
+audience-room. The price of tickets for the stalls on the main floor
+was thirty dollars, and the chairs in the other parts of the room cost
+proportionately. Persons who could pay such sums to witness the function
+could also afford to dress well, and at no public affair in my time has
+New York seen such a display of gowns and jewels. The musical program
+was elaborate, but that was the least important feature of the evening.
+Mr. Grau had determined to disclose the entire strength of his company,
+and to that end, settling the order in some diplomatic manner, into the
+secret of which he let neither reporter nor public, he made a program
+according to which Mesdames Gadski and Schumann-Heink and Messrs.
+Dippel, Bispham, Mühlmann, and Édouard de Reszke were to perform the
+first act of "Lohengrin," Mesdames Calvé, Marilly, and Bridewell and
+Messrs. Alvarez, Declery, Gilibert, Reiss, and Scotti the second act of
+"Carmen"; Mesdames Eames and Homer and Messrs. Campanari, Journet, and
+De Marchi the third act of "Aïda," Mme. Ternina and Messrs. Van Dyck,
+Blass, Bars, Reiss, Mühlmann, Viviani, and Van Rooy the second act of
+"Tannhäuser," Mesdames Sembrich and Van Cauteren, and Messrs. Vanni,
+Bars, Dufriche, Gilibert, and Salignac the first act of "La Traviata,"
+and Mlle. Bréval and Mr. Alvarez the first scene from the fourth act of
+"Le Cid." It was a generous rather than a dainty dish to set before a
+king's brother, but it served fully to disclose the wealth of resource
+in New York's chief operatic institution, and the performances took
+on a heightened brilliancy from the beautiful appearance of the
+audience-room, and the spirit of joyous excitement which animated the
+audience. Up to the last moment no one familiar with the interior
+workings of Mr. Grau's harmonious, yet unruly empire, felt certain
+that the program would be carried out as planned; and it was not. It
+was very late when the curtain of smilax and light fell on the act
+of "Tannhäuser," and, the prince having left the house long before,
+followed by a large portion of the audience, who had come to see
+royalty, not to hear regal singers, Mme. Sembrich put down her little
+foot and refused to sing. Otherwise everything went off according to
+program.
+
+"Messaline" was produced at the Metropolitan Opera House on January 22,
+1902. The list of those who took part in its performance reads thus:
+
+
+  Messaline ...................................... Mme. Calvé
+  Tyndaris ..................................... Miss Marilly
+  La Citharode ............................ Miss Van Cauteren
+  Tsilla ............................... Miss Juliette Roslyn
+  Leoconce .............................. Miss Helen Mapleson
+  Helion ........................................ Mr. Alvarez
+  Myrtille |
+  Olympias | .................................... Mr. Journet
+  Myrrho ....................................... Mr. Gilibert
+  Gallus ........................................ Mr. Declery
+  Un Rameur de Galère .......................... Mr. Dufriche
+  Un Mime Alexandrin ............................ Mr. Viviani
+  Un Poète d'Atellanes ......................... Mr. Giaccone
+  Le Loeno ........................................ Mr. Vanni
+  Un Marchand d'Eau ............................. Mr. Maestri
+  L'Edile ........................................ Mr. Judels
+  Harés .......................................... Mr. Scotti
+                   Conductor, M. Flon
+
+When Mr. Grau produced "Salammbô" it was possible for the writers in the
+newspapers to give a detailed account of the purport and progress of the
+story, and also an account of its panoramic furniture without offending
+decency. This is scarcely possible in the present instance. "Salammbô"
+was written many years ago, before the conviction had dawned upon the
+minds of opera makers that thugs and thieves, punks and paillards, were
+proper persons to present as publishers of operatic themes. Since then
+there has grown up in Italy a notion that the mud of the slums is
+ennobling material for celebration by the most ethereal of the arts,
+and in France that lust and lubricity are lofty inspirations for
+dramatic song. Gautier's delectable account of one of Cleopatra's
+nights has furnished forth an opera book; the mysteries of Astarte
+have been hymned, and Phryne, Thaïs, and Messalina have been held up
+to the admiring views of the Parisians clothed in more or less gorgeous
+sound--and little else. There is no parallel between this movement on
+the part of opera and the contemporary tendency of the spoken drama.
+Those diligent regenerators of society, Ibsen, Pinero & Co., affect
+a moral purpose to conceal an obvious aim from the simpleminded; the
+French makers of opera are franker, for they seek to glorify impudicity
+in the persons of its greatest historical representatives by lavishing
+upon the subject the most gorgeous pictures, the most ingenious
+theatrical contrivances, and the most sensuous music at their command.
+"Messaline" is a case in point. This work has Armand Sylvestre and
+Eugène Morand, two brilliant Frenchmen in their way, for the authors of
+its book, and Isidore de Lara, at the time chief of the drawing-room
+musicians of London, as its composer. The story of the opera is a sort
+of variant of "Carmen" set in an antique key, its heroine being an
+historic Roman empress instead of a gipsy cigarette girl. But any one
+who shall take the trouble to glance at the sixth satire of Juvenal will
+recognize that all its motives were drawn from that source. The likeness
+to "Carmen" is accidental, after all, though Bizet's opera was not
+without influence upon the work of librettists and composer. Like
+Carmen, Messalina, merely to gratify her lust, draws an honest-minded
+and supposedly pure man into her toils, and then throws him over for
+the next man she meets who is handsomer and lustier. In Bizet's opera
+the men are the soldier Don José, and the bullfighter, Escamillo; in
+De Lara's Harés, a singer, and Helion, a gladiator. Both operas end with
+the arena as a background--the Plaza de Toros in Seville, on the one
+hand, the Roman Circus, on the other. But here the resemblances end
+unless we pursue the traces of Bizet's music into De Lara's score, and
+this I shall not do, out of respect for the most brilliant composer that
+France has produced since Berlioz. Echeon, the harper; Glaphyrus or
+Ambrosius, the flute players, who are castigated in Juvenal's diatribe
+against marriage, are the prototypes of Messaline's first victim, as
+also is Pollio, whom a lady of lofty rank so loved that she kept for her
+kisses the plectrum with which he had strummed his lyre. That lyre she
+had incrusted with jewels, and for the sake of him who twanged it she
+had not hesitated to veil her face before the altar of Janus, and speak
+the mystic formula after the officiating priest. ("What more could she
+do were her husband sick?" asks Juvenal; "what if the physicians had
+despaired of her infant son?") As for Helion, his prototype is the
+gladiator Sergius, save that we are permitted to find him comely to look
+upon, and not as one galled by his helmet, having a huge wen between his
+nostrils and "acrid rheum forever trickling from his eye."
+
+So, too, in the exposition of Messalina's character the librettist,
+while constructing an entirely fanciful tale, and omitting all reference
+to the most notorious of her amours (the one which at the last wrung
+the decree of her death from the generally complacent Claudius),
+nevertheless managed to indicate Juvenal's description in the song which
+Harés sings against her, a recital by Myrrho, a scene in the slums,
+which she visits in disguise, and where she is rescued from a gang of
+roisterers by Helion, and in the scene of her wooing of the gladiator.
+(This scene, as it was played by Mme. Calvé, may not be pictured here.)
+A glimmer of palliation might be read out of a few passages in the
+book, and at the end there is an indication of something better than
+the groveling carnality of the woman whose name has been a byword for
+nineteen centuries in her offer of herself to Helion's sword, and her
+opening the door to the lurking assassin when the gladiator refuses to
+strike in obedience to his old vow to avenge the supposed death of his
+brother. But all of the stage Messalina's words and acts up to that time
+give the lie to the thought of her capability of feeling a single throb
+of pure sentiment. She is presented as all beast, and there is not one
+moment of cheer to relieve the horror of a play which shows how her
+lewdness compasses the death of two loving brothers, who, unknown
+to each other, were both her lovers. At the end the hand of Harés,
+stiffened in death, clings to her robe, and brings her face to face with
+that death which the veritable Messalina was too cowardly to give to
+herself when her own mother pleaded with her to do so at the fateful
+meeting in the garden of Lucullus.
+
+But there is often palliation in music. To this fact I have called
+attention before. Music can chasten and ennoble; but not music like Mr.
+De Lara's, which, when it strives for anything, strives to give an added
+atmosphere to the incontinence portrayed by the stage pictures, and
+proclaimed in the text. It is not dangerous music, however, for it is
+impotent, with all its blatant pretense. The composer seeks to fill
+the opening scene with languor and lassitude; he fills it with ennui
+instead. If De Lara's music were a hymning of anything, I should say it
+was a hymning of sensuality in its lowest terms; but there are neither
+eloquent melodies nor moving harmonies in the score. De Lara is a feeble
+distemper painter. The current of his music never really flows; it moves
+sluggishly now and then, and eddies lazily about every petty incident.
+In the scene of debauchery in the second act, it waits for a xylophone
+to rattle an accompaniment to the dice; it holds its breath for a
+muted horn to obtrude its voice with an inane vulgarity which would be
+laughable were it not pitiful to hear it in a work which is admirable
+in its dramatic contrivance and scenic equipment.
+
+Mr. Paderewski's opera, "Manru," had its first performance on February
+14, 1902. Mr. Damrosch conducted. The composer, who had taken a hand
+in the preparations, listened to the representation from a box, and
+the list of performers was this:
+
+
+  Ulana ................................... Mme. Sembrich
+  Hedwig ..................................... Mme. Homer
+  Asa ................................ Miss Fritzi Scheff
+  Manru ........................ Alexander van Bandrowski
+  Oros ..................................... Mr. Mühlmann
+  Jagu ........................................ Mr. Blass
+  Urok ...................................... Mr. Bispham
+
+
+"Manru" had its original performance at the Court Opera in Dresden, on
+May 29, 1901. Before reaching New York it was given in Cracow, Lemberg,
+Zurich, and Cologne, and Mr. Bandrowski, whom Mr. Grau engaged to sing
+the titular part, had already sung it twenty times in Europe. Its
+production at the Metropolitan Opera House brought scenes of gladsome
+excitement. Hero worshipers had an opportunity to gratify their passion
+in connection with a man who had filled a larger place in the public eye
+for a decade than any of his colleagues the world over; students were
+privileged to study a first work by an eminent musician, whose laurels
+had been won in a very different field; curiosity lovers had their
+penchant gratified to the full. The popular interest in the affair was
+disclosed by the fact that never before in the season had the audience
+at the Metropolitan been so numerous or brilliant; naturally the
+presence of the admired composer whetted interest and heightened
+enthusiasm. Long before the evening was over Mr. Paderewski was drawn
+from his secluded place in a parterre box by the plaudits of the
+audience, and compelled to acknowledge hearty appreciation of his
+achievement along with the artists who had made it possible. Despite
+the flaws which were easily found in the work, "Manru," the performance
+showed, is a remarkable first opera. There will scarcely ever be a
+critic who will say of it as one of the composers now set down as a
+classic said of the first opera of a colleague, that first operas, like
+first litters of puppies, ought properly to be drowned. "Manru" has had
+its day, but it was brilliant while it lasted, and it is possible that
+now it is not dead, but only sleeping. The story, badly told in the
+libretto made after a Polish romance by a friend of the composer, Dr.
+Nossig, has the charm of novelty, and beneath it there lies a potent
+dramatic principle. But more than the story, more than the picturesque
+costumes and stage furniture, there is a fascination about the music
+which grew with each hearing. Many of its characteristic details are
+based upon national idioms, but on the whole Mr. Paderewski wrote like
+an eclectic. He paid his tribute to the tendency which Wagner made
+dominant (where is the composer of the last thirty years who has not?)
+and, indeed, has been somewhat too frank in his acknowledgment of his
+indebtedness to that master in falling into his manner, and utilizing
+his devices whenever (as in the second act) there is a parallelism in
+situation; but he has, nevertheless, maintained an individual lyricism
+which proclaims him an ingenuous musician of the kind that the art never
+needed so much as it needs it now. As a national colorist Mr. Paderewski
+put new things upon the operatic palette.
+
+"Manru" is not an opera to be disposed of with a hurried ultimatum on
+either book or music. From several points of view it not only invites,
+it clamors for discussion. The book is awkwardly constructed, and its
+language is at times amazingly silly; yet the fundamental idea is kept
+before the mind persistently and alluringly by the devices of the
+composer. A Gipsy who forsakes his wife and child because he cannot
+resist the seductions of a maid of his own race would ordinarily be a
+contemptible character, and nothing more; but in this case, despite the
+want of dramatic and literary skill in the libretto, Manru is presented
+as a tragic type who goes to merited destruction, indeed, but doing
+so nevertheless creates the impression that he is less the victim of
+individual passion than of a fatality which is racial. I can easily
+fancy that the Polish novelist from whom the story was borrowed
+presented the psychological fact more eloquently than the librettist,
+but it is a question whether or not he did so more convincingly than Dr.
+Nossig plus Mr. Paderewski. Mr. Leland (after Mr. Borrow the closest of
+literary students of the Gipsies) has pictured for us the Romany's love
+for roaming, and our sympathy with his propensity. We look wistfully at
+the ships at sea, and wonder what quaint mysteries of life they hide;
+we watch the flight of birds and long to fly with them anywhere, over
+the world and into adventure. These emotions tell us how near we are
+to be affected or elected unto the Romany, who belong to out-of-doors
+and nature, like birds and bees. Centuries more than we think of have
+fashioned that disposition in the black-blooded people, and made it an
+irresistible impulse. Thus the poetical essence of Manru's character
+is accounted for, and the librettist has given it an expression which
+is not inept:
+
+
+  With longings wild my soul is fill'd,
+    Spring's voices shout within me;
+  Each fiber in my soul is thrill'd
+    With feelings that would win me.
+  In bush and brake
+  The buds awake,
+  Of nature's joy the woods partake,
+  And bear me helpless, spent, along
+  Where freedom lives far from the throng;
+  Thus pours the mountain torrent wild,
+    That stubborn rocks would check;
+  Thus rolls the molten lava stream,
+  Dispersing havoc dire, supreme,
+    Enfolding, whelming all in wreck!
+  Thus flies the pollen on the breeze
+    To meet its floral love;
+  The song, outgushing from the soul,
+    Thus seeks the starry vault above.
+  Is it a curse?
+  There is no other life for me.
+  'Tis written in the book of fate:
+  Thy race must ev'ry pledge abate
+  And wander, rove eternally!
+    But why? and where?
+  I know it not,--
+    I needs must fare!
+
+
+But such a life is lawless, it creates infidelity, nourishes
+incontinence; its seeming freedom is but slavery to passion, and
+this, too, the poet proclaims in Manru's confession that faithfulness
+is impossible to one to whom each new beauty offers irresistible
+allurement, and whose heart must remain unstable as his habitation.
+
+Into the music of Manru's songs, which tell of these things, Mr.
+Paderewski has poured such passionate emotional expression as makes them
+convincing, and he has done more. Music is the language of the emotions,
+and the Gipsies are an emotional folk. The people of Hungary have
+permitted the Gipsies to make their music for them so long, and have
+mixed the Romany and Magyar bloods so persistently, that in music
+Gipsy and Hungarian have become practically identical terms. It was a
+Hungarian gentleman who said: "When I hear the 'Rakoczy' I feel as if
+I must go to war to conquer the whole world. My fingers convulsively
+twitch to seize a pistol, a sword, or bludgeon, or whatever weapon may
+be at hand; I must clutch it, and march forward." It is because of this
+spirit, scarcely overstated in this story, that the Austrian Government,
+fearful of the influence of the "Rakoczy" during periods of political
+excitement, has several times prohibited its performance on public
+occasions, and confiscated the copies found in the music shops. Mr.
+Paderewski makes admirable use of this passion as a dramatic motive.
+When neither the pleadings of his tribal companions nor the seductive
+artifices of Asa suffice to break down Manru's sense of duty to his wife
+and child, the catastrophe is wrought by the music of a gipsy fiddler.
+
+As the subject of the opera has to do with the conflict between
+Christian and Pagan, Galician and Gipsy, so the music takes its color
+now from the folk-song and dance of Mr. Paderewski's own people, and
+anon from the Gipsies who frequent the mountainous scenes in which
+the opera plays. The use of an Oriental interval, beloved of Poles
+and Gipsies, characterizes the melos of the first act; the rhythm of a
+peasant dance inspires the ballet, which is not an idle divertissement,
+but an integral element of the play, and Gipsy fiddle and cimbalom lend
+color and character to the music which tempts Manru to forget his duty.
+The contest in Manru's soul has musical delineation in an extended
+orchestral introduction to the last act, in which Gipsy and Polish music
+are at war, while clouds and moon struggle for the mastery in the stage
+panorama.
+
+The season 1902-03 may be said to have been eventful only in its tragic
+outcome, of which I have already spoken--Mr. Grau's physical collapse.
+There was a painful and most unexpected echo a few weeks after the doors
+of the opera house had been closed for the summer vacation in the death
+of Mr. Frank W. Sanger, who had been acting as associate manager with
+Mr. Grau, and who had been largely instrumental in persuading Mr. Grau
+to abandon work and seek health in France. The season covered seventeen
+weeks, and comprised sixty-eight subscription nights, seventeen
+subscription matinées, seventeen popular Saturday nights, and six extra
+performances--ninety-one performances in all. Promises of a serial
+performance of the chief works of Verdi and Mozart had to be abandoned,
+partly on account of the illness of Mme. Eames. Only one new opera was
+brought forward, and that under circumstances which reflected no credit
+on the institution or its management, the opera (Miss Ethel Smyth's "Der
+Wald") not being worth the labor, except, perhaps, because it was the
+work of a woman, and the circumstances that private influences, and not
+public service, had prompted the production being too obvious to invite
+confidence in the opera. Simply for the sake of the integrity of the
+record mention is made that the production took place on March 11, 1903,
+that Alfred Hertz conducted, and that Mme. Gadski, Mme. Reuss-Belce,
+Georg Anthes, Mr. Bispham, Mr. Blass, and Mr. Mühlmann were concerned
+in the performance. The newcomers in Mr. Grau's forces were Mme.
+Reuss-Belce, Georg Anthes, Emil Gerhäuser, Aloys Burgstaller, and the
+conductor of the German operas, Mr. Hertz, who, like Mr. Burgstaller,
+has remained ever since, and they were all active agents in promoting
+the sensational feature of the first season of the administration which
+succeeded Mr. Grau's. I have tabulated the performances which took place
+in the subscription seasons under Mr. Grau as follows:
+
+
+THE GRAU PERIOD, 1898-1903
+
+   Operas                  1898-1899 *1899-1900 1900-1901 1901-1902 1902-1903
+
+  "Tannhäuser," .............. 6          5         4         2         4
+  "Il Barbiere" .............. 4          4         0         0         3
+  "Roméo et Juliette" ........ 6          5         4         3         2
+  "La Traviata" .............. 2          2         0         1         4
+  "Die Walküre" .............. 4          6         3         3         3
+  "Siegfried" ................ 1          2         1         1         3
+  "Nozze di Figaro" .......... 3          4         0         2         1
+  "Carmen" ................... 2         11         0         7         3
+  "Lohengrin" ................ 7          7         6         4         7
+  "Faust" .................... 7          9         5         5         7
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ....... 5          3         4         3         4
+  "Don Giovanni" ............. 4          1         1         0         1
+  "Aïda" ..................... 3          5         3         5         7
+  "Les Huguenots" ............ 4          2         3         3         3
+  "Das Rheingold" ............ 1          2         1         1         2
+  "Götterdämmerung" .......... 1          2         2         2         2
+  "Martha" ................... 1          0         0         0         0
+  "L'Africaine" .............. 1          1         1         0         0
+  "Rigoletto" ................ 1          1         1         0         1
+  "Le Prophète" .............. 2          2         0         0         1
+  + "Ero e Leandro" .......... 2          0         0         0         2
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ...... 1          2         2         0         0
+  "Il Trovatore" ............. 0          3         0         0         1
+  "Der Fliegende Holländer" .. 0          3         1         0         0
+  "Mignon" ................... 0          1         0         0         0
+  "Don Pasquale" ............. 0          3         0         1         1
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ..... 0          6         3         4         1
+  "Pagliacci" ................ 0          1         0         1         6
+  "Die Meistersinger" ........ 0          4         2         1         2
+  "Die Lustigen Weiber" ...... 0          1         0         0         0
+  "Fidelio" .................. 0          1         1         0         0
+  "The Magic Flute" .......... 0          5         0         3         2
+  "La Bohème" ................ 0          0         5         0         3
+  "Mefistofele" .............. 0          0         2         0         0
+  "Le Cid" ................... 0          0         3         2         0
+  + "Tosca" .................. 0          0         3         3         4
+  + "Salammbô" ............... 0          0         2         0         0
+  "Fille du Régiment" ........ 0          0         0         3         6
+  + "Messaline" .............. 0          0         0         3         0
+  "Otello" ................... 0          0         0         3         3
+  + "Manru" .................. 0          0         0         3         0
+  "Ernani" ................... 0          0         0         0         3
+  "Un Ballo in Maschera" ..... 0          0         0         0         1
+  + "Der Wald" ............... 0          0         0         0         2
+
+  * Performances in the supplementary season included.
+  + Novelties.
+
+
+Massenet's "Manon" had two performances with Saville and Van Dyck in the
+season 1898-'99; but both were outside the subscription.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+HEINRICH CONRIED AND "PARSIFAL"
+
+
+A prologue dealing with other things may with propriety accompany this
+chapter, which is concerned with the history of the Metropolitan Opera
+House under the administration of Mr. Heinrich Conried. It is called
+for by the visit which Pietro Mascagni made to the United States in
+the fall of 1902. Signor Mascagni came to America under a contract
+with Mittenthal Brothers, theatrical managers, whose activities had
+never appreciably touched the American metropolis nor the kind of
+entertainment which they sought to purvey. These things are mentioned
+thus early in the story so that light may be had from the beginning on
+the artistic side of the most sensational fiasco ever made by an artist
+of great distinction in the United States. The contract, which was
+negotiated by an agent of the Mittenthals in Italy, was for fifteen
+weeks, during which time Signor Mascagni obligated himself to produce
+and himself conduct not more than eight performances of opera or
+concerts a week. For his personal services he was to receive $60,000, in
+weekly payments of $4,000, with advances before leaving Italy and on
+arriving in New York. The contract called for performances of "Iris,"
+"Cavalleria Rusticana," "Zanetto," and "Ratcliff" by a company of
+singers and instrumentalists to be approved by Signor Mascagni. The
+composer was hailed with gladness on his arrival by his countrymen, and
+his appearance and the three operas which were unknown to the American
+public were awaited with most amiable and eager curiosity. The first
+performance took place in the Metropolitan Opera House on October 8,
+1902, and was devoted to "Zanetto" and "Cavalleria Rusticana," both
+conducted by the composer. There was a large audience and much noisy
+demonstration on the part of the Italian contingent, but the unfamiliar
+work proved disappointing and the performance of "Cavalleria" so rough
+that all the advantages which it derived from Mascagni's admirable
+conducting failed to atone for its crudities. There were three
+representations at the Metropolitan Opera House the first week, all
+devoted to the same works, and one at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn.
+Meanwhile promises of "Iris" and "Ratcliff" were held out, and work
+was done most energetically to prepare the former for performance.
+Rehearsals were held day and night and the Saturday evening performance
+abandoned to that end. "Ratcliff" was never reached, but "Iris" was given
+on October 16th with the following cast, which deserves to go on record
+since it was the first representation of the opera in the United States.
+
+
+  Iris .......................................... Marie Farneti
+  Osaka ..................................... Pietro Schiavazzi
+  Kyoto ..................................... Virgilio Bellatti
+  Il Cieco ................................ Francesco Navarrini
+  Una Guecha ................................. Dora de Fillippe
+  Un Mercianola ............................... Pasquali Blasio
+  Un Cencianola ............................ Bernardino Landino
+
+
+I shall not tell the story of "Iris," which five years after was adopted
+into the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera House, it seemed for
+the purpose of giving Mme. Eames an opportunity to contend with Miss
+Geraldine Farrar in the field of Japanese opera; but the opera calls
+for some comment. Why "Iris"? It might be easier to answer the question
+if it were put in the negative: Why not "Iris"? The name is pretty.
+It suggests roseate skies, bows of promise, flowery fields, messages
+swiftly borne and full of portent. The name invites to music and to
+radiant raiment, and it serves its purpose. Mascagni and his librettist
+do not seem to have been able to find a term with which to define their
+creation. They call it simply "Iris"; not a "dramma per musica," as the
+Florentine inventors of the opera did their art-form; nor a "melodramma"
+nor a "tragedia per musica"; nor an "opera in musica," of which the
+conventional and generic "opera" is the abbreviation; nor even a "dramma
+lirico," which is the term chosen by Verdi for his "Falstaff" and
+Puccini for his "Manon Lescaut." In truth, "Iris" is none of these. It
+begins as an allegory, grows into a play, and ends again in allegory,
+beginning and end, indeed, being the same, poetically and musically.
+Signor Illica went to Sâr Peladan and d'Annunzio for his sources,
+but placed the scene of "Iris" in Japan, the land of flowers, and so
+achieved the privilege of making it a dalliance with pseudo-philosophic
+symbols and gorgeous garments. Now, symbolism is poor dramatic matter,
+but it can furnish forth moody food for music, and "Sky robes spun of
+Iris woof" appear still more radiant to the eye when the ear, too, is
+enlisted. Grossness and purulence stain the dramatic element in the
+piece, but when all is over pictures and music have done their work of
+mitigation, and out of the feculent mire there arises a picture of
+poetic beauty, a vision of suffering and triumphant innocency which
+pleads movingly for a pardoning embrace.
+
+There are many effective bits of expressive writing in the score of
+"Iris," but most of them are fugitive and aim at coloring a word, a
+phrase, or at best a temporary situation. There is little flow of
+natural, fervent melody. What the composer accomplished with tune,
+characteristic but fluent, eloquent yet sustained, in "Cavalleria
+Rusticana," he tries to achieve in "Iris" with violent, disjointed
+shifting of keys and splashes of instrumental color. In this he is
+seldom successful, for he is not a master of orchestral writing, that
+technical facility which nearly all the young musicians have in the same
+degree that all pianists have finger technic. His orchestral stream is
+muddy; his effects generally crass and empty of euphony. He throws the
+din of outlandish instruments of percussion, a battery of gongs, big and
+little, drums and cymbals, into his score without achieving local color.
+Once only does he utilize it so as to catch the ears and stir the fancy
+of the listeners--in the beginning of the second act, where there is a
+murmur of real Japanese melody. As a rule, however, Signor Mascagni
+seems to have been careless in the matter of local color, properly so,
+perhaps, for, strictly speaking, local color in the lyric drama is for
+comedy with its petty limitations, not for tragedy with its appeal to
+large and universal passions. Yet it was in the lighter scenes, the
+scenes of comedy, like the marionette show; the scenes of mild pathos,
+like the monologues of Iris, in which the music helped Signorina
+Farneti, with her gentle face, mobile, expressive and more than comely,
+and her graceful, intelligent action, to present a really captivating
+figure of sweet innocence walking unscathed through searing fires of
+wickedness and vice, and the scenes of mere accessory decoration, like
+that of the laundresses, the mousmé in the first act, with its purling
+figure borrowed from "Les Huguenots" and its unnecessarily uncanny
+col legno effect conveyed from "L'Africaine," that the music seemed
+most effective. "Zanetto" is nothing more than an operatic sketch in one
+act. In its original shape, as it came from the pen of François Coppée,
+under the title "Le Passant," the story is a gracious and graceful idyl.
+A woman of the world, sated and weary with a life of amours, meets a
+young singer, feels the sensations of a pure love pulsing in her veins
+and sends him out of her presence uncontaminated. Here are poetry and
+beauty; but not matter for three-quarters of an hour of a rambling
+musical dialogue, such as the librettists and composer of "Cavalleria
+Rusticana" have strained and tortured it into. A drawing-room sketch
+of fifteen minutes' duration might have been tolerable. To add to the
+dulness of the piece, Mascagni, actuated by a conceit which would have
+been dainty and effective in the brief sketch hinted at, wrote the
+instrumental parts for strings, harp, and an extremely sparing use of
+the wood-wind choir and horn. Harmonies there are of the strenuous kind,
+but they are desiccated; not one juicy chord is heard from beginning to
+end, and the vitality of the listening ear is exhausted long before the
+long-drawn thing has come to an end.
+
+Signor Mascagni entered upon his second week with disaster staring him
+in the face, and before it was over it was plain to everyone that the
+enterprise was doomed to monumental failure. The public after the first
+night became curiously apathetic. This apathy would have been justified
+had any considerable number of the city's habitual opera-patrons
+attended any of the performances. The welcome came from the Italians
+dwelling within the city's boundaries; the performances themselves
+could arouse no enthusiasm. The singers were on a level with the usual
+summer itinerants; the orchestra, made up partly of inexperienced men
+from Italy and non-union players from other cities, was unpardonably
+wretched. It was foolishly reckless in the composer to think that with
+such material as he had raked together in his native land and recruited
+here he could produce four of his operas within a week of his arrival in
+America. He must have known how incapable, inexperienced, and unripe the
+foreign contingent of his orchestra was. The energy with which he threw
+himself into the task of trying to repair his blunders won the sympathy
+of the members of the critical guild, though it did not wholly atone for
+his conscious or unconscious misconception of American conditions. It
+was not pleasant to think that he had so poor an opinion of American
+knowledge and taste in music that before coming he thought that anything
+would be good enough for this country. His experience in Italy ought
+to have made him something of a student of musical affairs in other
+countries than his own, and he was unquestionably sincere in his hope
+that the American tour would win for him and his music the sympathetic
+appreciation which his countrymen had begun to withhold from him.
+Granting the sincerity of his desire to present himself fairly as a
+candidate for the good-will of the American people, it was inconceivable
+that he should have connived at or suffered such an inadequate
+preparation for the production of his works. Had he come to New York a
+month earlier than he did it would not have been a day too early.
+
+After his New York fiasco Signor Mascagni went to Boston, where troubles
+continued to pile upon him till he was overwhelmed. He fell out with his
+managers, or they with him, and in a fortnight he was under arrest for
+breach of contract in failing to produce the four operas agreed upon.
+He retorted with a countersuit for damages and attached theatrical
+properties in Worcester which the Mittenthals said did not belong to
+them, but to their brother. The scandal grew until it threatened to
+become a subject of international diplomacy, but in the end compromises
+were made and the composer departed to his own country in bodily if not
+spiritual peace. One achievement remained: the Musical Protective Union
+of New York had asked the federal authorities to deport the Italian
+instrumentalists under the Alien Labor Contract Law, and the Treasury
+Department at Washington decided in its wisdom that no matter how poor a
+musician a musician might be, he was not a laboring man, but an artist,
+and not subject to the law. Exit Mascagni.
+
+On February 14, 1903, the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real
+Estate Company by a vote of seven to six adopted a resolution directing
+the executive committee "to negotiate with Mr. Heinrich Conried
+regarding the Metropolitan Opera House, with power to conclude a lease
+in case satisfactory terms can be arranged." This was the outcome of a
+long struggle between Mr. Conried and Mr. Walter Damrosch, a few other
+candidates for the position of director of the institution making feeble
+and hopeless efforts to gain a position which all the world knew had,
+after many vicissitudes, brought fortune to Mr. Grau. The public seemed
+opera-mad and the element of uncertainty eliminated from the enterprise.
+Mr. Conried had been an actor in Austria, had come as such to New York,
+and worked himself up to the position of manager of a small German
+theater in Irving Place. He had also managed comic operetta companies,
+English and German, in the Casino and elsewhere, and acted as stage
+manager for other entrepreneurs. For a year or two his theater had
+enjoyed something of a vogue among native Americans with a knowledge
+of the German tongue, and Mr. Conried had fostered a belief in his
+high artistic purposes by presenting German plays at some of the
+universities. He became known outside the German circle by these means,
+and won a valuable championship in a considerable portion of the press.
+In the management of grand opera he had no experience, and no more
+knowledge than the ordinary theatrical man. But there was no doubt about
+his energy and business skill, though this latter quality was questioned
+in the end by such an administration as left his stockholders without
+returns, though the receipts of the institution were greater than they
+had ever been in history. He had no difficulty in organizing a company,
+which was called the Heinrich Conried Opera Company, on the lines laid
+down by Mr. Grau, and acquiring the property of the Maurice Grau Opera
+Company, which, having made large dividends for five years, sold to its
+successor at an extremely handsome figure. Mr. Conried began his
+administration with many protestations of artistic virtue and made a
+beginning which aroused high expectations. To these promises and their
+fulfillment I shall recur in a résumé of the lustrum during which Mr.
+Conried was operatic consul. Also I shall relate the story of the
+principal incidents of his consulship, but for much of the historical
+detail shall refer the reader to the table of performances covering the
+five years. The new operas produced within the period were but few.
+Some of them are scarcely worth noting even in a bald record of events;
+others have been so extensively discussed within so recent a period that
+they may be passed over without much ado here.
+
+Mr. Conried succeeded to a machine in perfect working order, the
+good-will of the public, agreements with nearly all the artists who were
+popular favorites, an obligation with the directors of the opera-house
+company to remodel the stage, and a contract with Enrico Caruso. Mr.
+Grau had also negotiated with Felix Mottl, had "signed" Miss Fremstad,
+and was holding Miss Farrar, in a sense his protégée, in reserve till
+she should "ripen" for America. The acquisition of Caruso was perhaps
+Mr. Conried's greatest asset financially, though it led to a reactionary
+policy touching the opera itself which, however pleasing to the
+boxholders, nevertheless cost the institution a loss of artistic
+prestige. I emphasize the fact that Mr. Conried acquired the contract
+with Signor Caruso from Mr. Grau because from that day to this careless
+newspaper writers, taking their cues from artful interviews put forth
+by Mr. Conried, have glorified the astuteness of the new manager in
+starting his enterprise with a discovery of the greatest tenor of his
+day. Many were the stories which were told, the most picturesque being
+that Mr. Conried, burdened with the responsibility of recruiting a
+company, had shrewdly gone among the humble Italians of New York and by
+questioning them had learned that the name of the greatest singer alive
+was Caruso. Confirmed in his decision by his bootblack, he had then gone
+to Europe and engaged the wonder. Caruso's reputation was made some
+years before he came to America, and Mr. Grau had negotiated with him at
+least a year before he got his signature on a contract for New York. Let
+the story stand as characteristic of many that enlivened the newspapers
+during the Conried period. A dozen of the singers who were continuously
+employed throughout the Conried period had already established
+themselves in public favor when his régime opened. They were Mme.
+Sembrich, Mme. Eames (who was absent during his first year), Mme.
+Homer, and Messrs. Burgstaller, Dippel, Reiss, Mühlmann, Scotti,
+Van Rooy, Blass, Journet, Plançon, and Rossi. To these Mr. Conried
+associated Caruso, Marion Weed, Olive Fremstad, Edyth Walker, Ernst
+Kraus (the tenor who had been a member of one of Mr. Damrosch's
+companies), Fran Naval, Giuseppe Campanari, Goritz, and a few people of
+minor importance. Miss Weed and Miss Fremstad and Messrs. Caruso and
+Goritz became fixtures in the institution; Miss Walker remained three
+years; Herr Kraus and Herr Naval only one season. The second season
+witnessed the accession of Bella Alten, Mme. Senger-Bettaque (who dated
+back to the German régime), Mme. Eames (returned), Signora De Macchi
+(an Italian singer whose failure was so emphatic that her activity ended
+almost as soon as it began), Mme. Melba (for one season), Mme. Nordica
+(for two seasons), Josephine Jacoby (for the rest of the term), and a
+couple more inconsequential fillers-in. The third year brought Signorina
+Boninsegna (who I believe had a single appearance), Lina Cavalieri (who
+endured to the end), Geraldine Farrar (still with the company and bearer
+of high hopes on the part of opera lovers for the future), Bessie Abott
+(a winsome singer of extremely light caliber), Marie Mattfeld (an
+acquaintance of the Damrosch days), Mme. Schumann-Heink (returned for
+a single season), Marie Rappold, Mme. Kirkby-Lunn, Carl Burrian,
+Soubeyran and Rousselière, tenors; Stracciari, barytone, and Chalmin
+and Navarini, basses. The list of German dramatic sopranos was augmented
+in the last year by Mme. Morena and Mme. Leffler-Burkhardt, the tenors
+by Bonci (who had been brought to America the year before as opposition
+to Caruso by Mr. Hammerstein), Riccardo Martin (an American), George
+Lucas; the basses by Theodore Chaliapine, a Russian, and a buffo,
+Barocchi. Among the engagements of the first season which gave rise to
+high hopes in serious and informed circles was that of Felix Mottl, as
+conductor of the German operas and Sunday night concerts (which it was
+announced were to be given a symphonic character and dignity), Anton
+Fuchs, of Munich, as stage manager, and Carl Lautenschläger, of the
+Prinz Regententheater, Munich, as stage mechanician, or technical
+director. These two men did notable work in "Parsifal," but in
+everything else found themselves so hampered by the prevailing
+conditions that after a year they retired to Germany, oppressed with a
+feeling something akin to humiliation. Likewise Herr Mottl, who made an
+effort in the line of symphony concerts on the first Sunday night of the
+season and then withdrew, to leave the field open to the old-fashioned
+popular operatic concert, which Mr. Conried commanded and the public
+unquestionably desired. His experiences in putting half-prepared operas
+on the stage also discouraged Herr Mottl, and he went through the season
+in a perfunctory manner and departed shaking the Metropolitan dust from
+his feet, and promptly installed his polished boots in the directorship
+of the Royal Court Theater at Munich.
+
+The season opened on November 23, 1903, with "Rigoletto"; Mme. Sembrich
+reappeared as Gilda and Caruso effected his American début as the Duke.
+His success was instantaneous, though there was less enthusiasm
+expressed by far on that occasion than on his last appearance, five
+years later. In the interval admiration for a beautiful voice had grown
+into adoration of a singer--an adoration which even sustained him
+through a scandal which would have sent a man of equal eminence in any
+other profession into disgraceful retirement. The season compassed
+fifteen weeks, from November 23d to March 5th, within which period there
+were ninety-seven performances of twenty-seven works, counting in a
+ballet and a single scene from "Mefistofele," in which Mme. Calvé, who
+joined Mr. Conried's forces after the season was two-thirds over, and
+yet managed to give four performances of "Carmen," helped to improve a
+trifle the pitiful showing made by the French contingent in the list.
+The French element, which had become a brilliant factor in the Grau
+period, began to wane, and subsequently the German was eliminated as far
+as seemed practicable from the subscription seasons. The boxholders were
+exerting a reactionary influence, and Mr. Conried willingly yielded to
+them, since he could thus reserve certain sensational features for the
+extra nights at special prices and put money in his purse. This policy
+had a speedy and striking illustration in the production of Wagner's
+"Parsifal," which made Mr. Conried's first year memorable, or, as some
+thought, notorious. Certainly no theatrical incident before or since
+so set the world ringing as did the act which had been long in the mind
+of the new manager, and which was one of the first things which he
+announced his intention to do after he had secured the lease from the
+owners of the opera house. The announcement was first made unofficially
+in newspaper interviews, and confirmed in the official prospectus, which
+set down Christmas as the date of production. A protest--many protests,
+indeed--followed. Mme. Wagner's was accompanied with a threat of legal
+proceedings. The ground of her appeal to Mr. Conried was that to perform
+the drama which had been specifically reserved for performance in
+Bayreuth by the composer would be irreverent and illegal. To this Mr.
+Conried made answer that inasmuch as "Parsifal" was not protected by
+law in the United States his performance would not be illegal, and that
+it was more irreverent to Wagner to prevent the many Americans who could
+not go to Bayreuth from hearing the work than to make it possible for
+them to hear it in America. Proceedings for an injunction were begun in
+the federal courts, but after hearing the arguments of counsel Judge
+Lacombe decided, on November 24, 1903, that the writ of injunction
+prayed for should not issue. The decision naturally caused a great
+commotion, especially in Germany, where the newspapers and the
+composers, conductors, and others who were strongly affiliated with
+Bayreuth manifested a disposition to hold the American people as a
+whole responsible, not only for a desecration of something more than
+sacrosanct, but of robbery also. The mildest term applied to Mr.
+Conried's act, which I am far from defending, was that it was "legalized
+theft." It was not that, because in civilized lands thievery cannot be
+made lawful. It was simply an appropriation of property for which the
+law, owing to the absence of a convention touching copyright and
+performing rights between Germany and the United States at the time,
+provided neither hindrance nor punishment. Under circumstances not at
+all favorable to success, had success been attainable (there was always
+something more than a suspicion that the proceedings were fomented by
+enemies of Mr. Conried in New York), Mme. Wagner tried by legal process
+to prevent the rape of the work, but the courts were powerless to
+interfere. Having passed triumphantly through this ordeal, Mr. Conried
+found himself in the midst of another. A number of clergymen, some
+eminent in their calling and of unquestioned sincerity, others mere
+seekers after notoriety, attacked the work as sacrilegious. A petition
+was addressed to the Mayor of the city asking that the license of
+the Metropolitan Opera House be revoked so far as the production of
+"Parsifal" was concerned. The petition was not granted, but all the
+commotion, which lasted up to the day of the first performance, was,
+as the Germans say, but water for Conried's mill. He encouraged the
+controversy with all the art of an astute showman and secured for
+"Parsifal" such an advertisement as never opera or drama had in this
+world before.
+
+Mr. Conried had concluded at the outset of his enterprise that
+"Parsifal" was too great a money-maker to be included in the regular
+subscription list of the season. He followed his general prospectus
+with a special one, in which he announced five performances of Wagner's
+festival drama on special dates, under special conditions, and at
+special prices. The first was set down for December 24; the prices for
+the stalls on the main floor, the first balcony, and the boxes which
+were at his disposal were doubled (orchestra stalls, $10), but seats
+in the upper balcony and the topmost gallery were sold at the regular
+price. The first performance took place on December 24th, the cast
+being as follows:
+
+
+  Kundry .................................... Milka Ternina
+  Parsifal .............................. Alois Burgstaller
+  Amfortas ................................. Anton Van Rooy
+  Gurnemanz .................................. Robert Blass
+  Klingsor ................................... Otto Görlitz
+  Titurel .................................. Marcel Journet
+  First Esquire ................................ Miss Moran
+  Second Esquire ............................ Miss Braendle
+  Third Esquire .............................. Albert Reiss
+  Fourth Esquire ............................... Mr. Harden
+  First Knight .................................. Mr. Bayer
+  Second Knight .............................. Mr. Mühlmann
+  A Voice .................................... Louise Homer
+
+
+Anton Fuchs and Carl Lautenschläger were in charge of the stage; Mr.
+Hertz conducted. The first half of the season had been sacrificed to the
+production. As such things are done at Bayreuth and in the best theaters
+of Germany the preparations were inadequate, but the results achieved
+set many old visitors to the Wagnerian Mecca in amaze. So far as the
+mere spectacle was concerned Mr. Conried's production was an improvement
+on that of Bayreuth in most things except the light effects. All of
+Wagner's dramas show that the poet frequently dreamed of things which
+were beyond the capacity of the stage in his day--even the splendidly
+equipped stage of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. Later improvements
+in theatrical mechanics made their realization in more or less degree
+possible. The greatest advance disclosed by New York over Bayreuth was
+in the design and manipulation of the magical scenes of the second
+act. Such scenes as that between Parsifal and the Flower Maidens
+were doubtless in the imagination of Wagner, but he never saw their
+realization. Up to the time of which I am writing the Bayreuth pictures
+were exaggerated and garish. In New York every feature of the scene
+was beautiful in conception, harmonious in color, graceful in action,
+seductive as the composer intended it to be--as alluring to the eye
+as the music was fascinating to the ear. At a later performance
+Weingartner, conductor and composer, now director of the Royal Imperial
+Court Opera of Vienna, sat beside me. After the first act he spoke in
+terms generally complimentary about the performance, but criticized its
+spirit and execution in parts. When the scene of the magical garden was
+discovered and the floral maidens came rushing in he leaned forward in
+his chair, and when the pretty bustle reached its height he could wait
+no longer to give voice to his admiration. "Ah!" he exclaimed in a
+whisper, "there's atmosphere! There's fragrance and grace!" The music of
+the drama was familiar to New Yorkers from many concert performances.
+Once, indeed, there was a "Parsifal" festival in Brooklyn, under the
+direction of Mr. Seidl, in which all the music was sung by the best
+singers of the Metropolitan Opera House on a stage set to suggest the
+Temple of the Grail. Only the action and the pictures were new to the
+city's music lovers. Nevertheless the interest on the part of the public
+was stupendous. The first five representations were over on January
+21st, but before then Mr. Conried had already announced five more,
+besides a special day performance on Washington's Birthday, February
+22d. After the eleventh performance, on February 25th, Mr. Conried
+gave out the statement to the public press that the receipts had been
+$186,308; that is, an average of $16,937.17. But this was not the end.
+Under Mr. Grau the custom had grown up in the Metropolitan Opera House
+of a special performance, the proceeds of which were the personal
+perquisites of the director. In all the contracts between the director
+and his artists there was a clause which bound the latter to sing for
+nothing at one performance. Before his retirement Mr. Grau grew ashamed
+of appearing in the light of an eleemosynary beneficiary under such
+circumstances, and explained to the newspapers that the arrangement
+between himself and the singers was purely a business one. Nevertheless
+he continued to avail himself of the rich advantage which the
+arrangement brought him, and in the spring closed the supplementary
+season with a performance of an olla podrida character, in which all of
+the artists took part. Mr. Conried continued the custom throughout his
+administration, but varied the programme in his first year by giving a
+representation of "Parsifal" instead of the customary mixed pickles.
+The act was wholly commercial. That was made plain, even if anyone had
+been inclined to think otherwise, when subsequently he substituted an
+operetta, Strauss's "Fledermaus," for the religious play, and called on
+all of his artists who did not sing in it to sit at tables in the ball
+scene, give a concert, and participate in the dancing. A year later he
+gratified an equally lofty ambition by arranging a sumptuous performance
+of another operetta by the same composer, "Der Zigeunerbaron," and
+following it with a miscellaneous concert. That operetta was never
+repeated.
+
+In the seasons 1904-05 and 1905-06 "Parsifal" was again reserved for
+special performance at double the ordinary prices of admission, and it
+was not until a year later that the patrons of the Metropolitan were
+permitted to hear it at the ordinary subscription rates. By that time
+it had taken its place with the Nibelung tragedy, having, in fact, a
+little less drawing power than the more popular dramas in the tetralogy.
+The reason was not far to seek. The craze created by the first year
+had led to all manner of shows, dramas, lectures with stereopticon
+pictures which were a degradation of the subject. Only one of the
+results possessed artistic dignity or virtue, and this justified the
+apprehension of the poet-composer touching what would happen if his
+unique work ever became a repertory piece. Mr. Savage in 1904-05 carried
+"Parsifal" throughout the length and breadth of the land in an English
+version, starting in Boston and giving representations night after night
+just before the Metropolitan season opened in the New York Theater.
+Nevertheless there were eight performances at the Metropolitan in that
+season and four in the season that followed. At regular rates in 1906-07
+only two performances were possible. All of Mr. Conried's artistic
+energies in his second season were expended on the production of "Die
+Fledermaus," which he gave for his own benefit under the circumstances
+already referred to, on February 16th. The season lasted fifteen weeks,
+and consisted of ninety-five performances of thirty operas and two
+ballets, outside of the supplementary season, which, let me repeat, are
+not included in the statistics which I am giving. An incident of the
+second season was the collapse of the bridge which is part of the first
+scene of "Carmen," and the consequent injury of ten choristers. The
+accident happened on the night of January 7, 1905, while the performance
+was in progress. Fortunately nobody was killed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+END OF CONRIED'S ADMINISTRATION
+
+
+A visit from Engelbert Humperdinck to attend the first German
+performance of his "Hänsel und Gretel" on November 25th, a strike of the
+chorus which lasted three days, a revival of Goldmark's "Königin von
+Saba" which had been the chief glory of the second German season twenty
+years before, and the squandering of thousands of dollars and so much
+time that nearly all of the operas in the repertory suffered for lack
+of rehearsals on a single production of Strauss's operetta "Der
+Zigeunerbaron," were the chief incidents of the season of 1905-06. That
+is to say, the chief local incidents. Out in San Francisco the company
+was overwhelmed by the catastrophe of the earthquake, which sent it back
+a physical and financial wreck. The calamity tested the fortitude and
+philosophy of Mr. Conried as well as the artists, but through the gloom
+there shone a cheering ray when Mme. Sembrich, herself one of the chief
+sufferers from the earthquake, postponed her return to her European home
+long enough to give a concert for the benefit of the minor members of
+the company, and distributed $7,691 to musicians who had lost their
+instruments and $2,435 to the chorus and technical staff.
+
+The season of 1906-07 marked highwater in the artistic activities of Mr.
+Conried's institution. It was the year of "Salome" and the coming of
+Signor Puccini to give éclat to the production of his operas. Outside of
+"Salome" there was only one real novelty in the season's repertory, and
+that, "Fedora," might easily have been spared; but the current list of
+the house was augmented by no less than seven works, namely, "Fedora,"
+"La Damnation de Faust," "Lakmé" (which had been absent from the list
+for many years), "L'Africaine," "Manon Lescaut," "Madama Butterfly," and
+"Salome." Berlioz's dramatic legend, "La Damnation," had been a popular
+concert piece ever since its first production by Dr. Leopold Damrosch at
+a concert of the Symphony Society more than twenty-five years before,
+and its novel features were those which grew out of the abortive efforts
+of Raoul Gunsbourg to turn it into a stage play.
+
+In the presence of the composer, who was received with great acclaim by
+a gathering notable in numbers and appearance, and amid scenes of glad
+excitement which grew from act to act, Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" was
+performed for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera House on the
+evening of January 18, 1907. Signor Puccini reached the theater in the
+middle of the third act and, unnoticed by the audience, took a seat in
+the directors' box in the grand tier. After the first act the orchestra
+saluted him with a fanfare and the audience broke into applause which
+lasted so long that, finding it impossible to quiet it by rising and
+bowing his acknowledgments, he withdrew into the rear of the box out
+of sight so that the performance might go an. After the second act he
+sent the following statement in French to the representatives of the
+newspapers:
+
+"I have always thought that an artist has something to learn at any age.
+It was with delight, therefore, that I accepted the invitation of the
+directors of the Metropolitan Opera House to come to this new world of
+which I saw a corner on my visit to Buenos Ayres and with which I was
+anxious to get better acquainted. What I have seen to-night has already
+proved to me that I did well to come here, and I consider myself happy
+to be able to say that I am among my friends, to whom I can speak in
+music with a certainty of being understood."
+
+"Manon Lescaut" was not wholly new to the opera-goers of New York, for
+it had had one or two performances by a vagrant Italian company at
+Wallack's Theater in May, 1898; but to all intents and purposes it was
+a novelty, for the musical itinerants of nine years before were not
+equal to the task set by Puccini, and gave a perversion rather than a
+performance of the opera. Why it should have waited so long and for the
+stimulus of the coming of the composer before reaching the Metropolitan
+Opera House was not easily explained by those admirers of the composer
+who knew or felt that in spite of the high opinion in which. "La
+Bohème," "Tosca," and "Madama Butterfly" were held, "Manon Lescaut"
+is fresher, more spontaneous, more unaffected and passionate in its
+dramatic climaxes, as well as more ingratiatingly charming in its comedy
+element, than any of its successors from Puccini's pen. The voice of the
+composer rings unmistakably through its measures, but it is freer from
+the formularies which have since become stereotyped, and there are a
+greater number of echoes of the tunefulness which belongs to the older
+period between which and the present the opera marks a transition. Abbé
+Prévost's story, familiar to all readers of French romance, had served
+at least four opera composers before Signor Puccini. In 1830 Halévy
+brought forward a three-act ballet dealing with the story; Balfe wrote a
+French opera with the title in 1836, Auber another in 1856, and Massenet
+still another in 1884. Scribe was Auber's collaborator, and their opera,
+which like Puccini's ended with the scene of Manon's death in America,
+received a touch of local color from the employment of Negro dances and
+Créole songs. It would be interesting to see the old score now that the
+artistic value of the folk-songs of the Southern States as an incentive
+to a distinctive school of music has challenged critical attention and
+aroused controversy. Massenet's opera, which through the influence of
+Minnie Hauk was produced at the Academy of Music on December 23, 1885,
+dropped out of the local repertory until the restoration of the Italian
+régime as has been related elsewhere in this book. The opening and
+closing incidents in Massenet's opera are the same as are used by
+Puccini, though MM. Meilhac and Gille, the French librettists, did not
+think it necessary to carry the story across the ocean for the sake of
+Manon's death scene. In their book she succumbs to nothing that is
+obvious and dies in her lover's arms on the way to the ship at Havre
+which was to transport her to the penal colony at New Orleans. The third
+act of Puccini's opera plays at Havre, its contents being an effort to
+free Manon, the deportation of a shipload of female convicts, including
+Manon, and the embarkation of des Grieux in a menial capacity on the
+convict ship. Here the composer makes one of his most ambitious attempts
+at dramatic characterization: there is a roll-call and the woman go to
+the gang-plank in various moods, while the by-standers comment on their
+appearance and manner. The whole of the last act, which plays on a
+plateau near New Orleans, is given up to the lovers. Manon dies; des
+Grieux shrieks his despair and falls lifeless upon her body. Puccini has
+followed his confrères of the concentrated agony school in introducing
+an orchestral intermezzo. He does this between the second and third acts
+and gives a clue to its purposed emotional contents by providing it with
+a descriptive title, "Imprisonment. Journey to Havre," and quoting a
+passage from the Abbé Prévost's book in which des Grieux confesses the
+overpowering strength of his passion and determines to follow Manon
+wherever she may go, "even to the ends of the world." Here, at least,
+we recognize a sincere effort to make the interlude something more than
+a stop-gap or a device to make up for the paucity of sustained music
+in the course of the dramatic action.
+
+"Madama Butterfly" in the original Italian had been anticipated by a
+long series of English performances by Mr. Savage's company at the
+Garden Theater, beginning on November 12th. This production is deserving
+of record. Walter Rothwell was the conductor, and the principal singers
+in the cast were Elza Szamosy, a Hungarian, as Cio-Cio-San; Harriet
+Behne as Suzuki, Joseph F. Sheehan as Pinkerton, and Winifred Goff as
+Sharpless. The opera reached the Metropolitan Opera House on February
+11, 1907, when it was sung in the presence of the composer by the
+following cast:
+
+
+  Cio-Cio-San ........................... Geraldine Farrar
+  Suzuki .................................... Louise Homer
+  Pinkerton ....................................... Caruso
+  Sharpless ....................................... Scotti
+  Goro ............................................. Reiss
+             Conductor, Arturo Vigna
+
+
+A great deal of the sympathetic interest which "Madama Butterfly" evoked
+on its first production and has held in steady augmentation ever since
+was due to the New York public's familiarity with the subject of the
+opera created by John Luther Long's story and Mr. Belasco's wonderfully
+pathetic drama upon which this much more pretentious edifice of Messrs.
+Illica, Giacosa, and Puccini is reared. To the popular interest in story
+and play Japan lent color in more respects than one, having at the time
+a powerful hold upon the popular imagination. We have had the Mikado's
+kingdom with its sunshine and flowers, its romantic chivalry, its
+geishas and continent and incontinent morals upon the stage before,--in
+the spoken drama, in comic operetta, in musical farce, and in serious
+musical drama. Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan used its external motives
+for one of their finest satirical skits, an incomparable model in its
+way; but the parallel in serious opera was that created by Signor
+Illica, one of the librettists of "Madama Butterfly," and Signor
+Mascagni. The opera was "Iris," the production of which at the
+Metropolitan Opera House helped to emphasize the failure of the
+composer's American visit. "Iris" is a singular blending of allegory
+which had a merit quite admirable though ill-applied, and tragedy of the
+kind to which I have already several times referred in this book. In
+"Iris" as in "Madama Butterfly" we have Japanese music,--the twanging of
+samisens and the tinkling of gongs; but it was more coarsely applied,
+with more apparent and merely outward purpose, and it was only an
+accompaniment of a vision stained all over with purulence and grossness.
+"Madama Butterfly" tells a tale of wickedness contrasted with lovely
+devotion. Its carnality has an offset in a picture of love conjugal and
+love maternal, and its final appeal is one to infinite pity. And in this
+it is beautiful. Opera-goers are familiar with Signor Puccini's manner.
+"Tosca" and "La Bohème" speak out of many measures of his latest opera,
+but there is introduced in it a mixture of local color. Genuine Japanese
+tunes come to the surface of the instrumental flood at intervals and
+tunes which copy their characteristics of rhythm, melody, and color. As
+a rule this is a dangerous proceeding except in comedy which aims to
+chastise the foibles and follies of a people and a period. Nothing is
+more admirable, however, than Signor Puccini's use of it to heighten the
+dramatic climaxes; the merry tune with which Cio-Cio-San diverts her
+child in the second act and the use of a bald native tune thundered out
+fortissimo in naked unison with periodic punctuations of harmony at the
+close are striking cases in point. Nor should the local color in the
+delineation of the break of day in the beginning of the third act, and
+the charmingly felicitous use of mellifluous gongs in the marriage scene
+be overlooked. Always the effect is musical and dramatically helpful.
+As for the rest there are many moments of a strange charm in the score,
+music filled with a haunting tenderness and poetic loveliness, music
+in which there is a beautiful meeting of the external picture and the
+spiritual content of the scene. Notable among these moments is the scene
+in which Butterfly and her attendant scatter flowers throughout the room
+in expectation of Pinkerton's return. Here melodies and harmonies are
+exhaled like the odors of the flowers.
+
+Giordano's "Fedora," first performed on December 5, 1906, was given with
+this distribution of parts:
+
+
+  Fedora ................................ Lina Cavalieri
+      (Her first appearance.)
+  Olga ..................................... Bella Alten
+  Dimitri ............................... Marie Mattfeld
+  Un piccolo Savojardo ................ Josephine Jacoby
+  Loris Ipanow ........................... Enrico Caruso
+  De Siriex ............................. Antonio Scotti
+  Il Barone Rouvel |
+  Desiré           | ........................ Mr. Paroli
+  Cirillo .................................... Mr. Bégué
+  Borow ................................... Mr. Mühlmann
+  Grech ................................... Mr. Dufriche
+  Boleslaw Lazinski ........................ Mr. Voghere
+  Lorek ................................... Mr. Navarini
+          Conductor, Arturo Vigna
+
+
+The opera is an attempt to put music to the familiar play by Sardou; an
+utterly futile attempt. A more sluggish and intolerable first act than
+the legal inquest it would be difficult to imagine. Fragments of
+inconsequential tunes float along on a turgid stream, above which the
+people of the play chatter and scream, becoming intelligible and
+interesting only when they lapse into ordinary speech. Ordinary speech,
+however, is the only kind of speech that an expeditious drama can
+tolerate, and it is not raised to a higher power by the blowing of brass
+or the beating of drums. The frankest confession of the futility of
+Giordano's effort to make a lyric drama out of "Fedora" is contained in
+the fact that only those moments in his score are musical in the
+accepted sense when the play stops, as in the case of the intermezzo
+which cuts the second act in two, or when the old operatic principles
+wake into life again, as in Loris's confession of love. Here, in the
+first instance, a mood receives musical delineation, and in the second a
+passion whose expression is naturally lyrical receives utterance. One
+device new to the operatic stage, in its externals at least, is
+ingeniously employed by the composer: the conversation in which Fedora
+extorts a confession from Loris is carried on while a pianist entertains
+a princess' guests with a solo upon his instrument. But the fact that
+singing tones, not spoken, are used adds nothing to the value of the
+scene.
+
+On returning from Europe late in the summer of 1906 Mr. Conried
+announced his intention to produce Richard Strauss's "Salome," and his
+forces had no sooner been gathered together than Mr. Hertz began the
+laborious task of preparing the opera--if opera it can be called--for
+performance. There can scarcely be a doubt that Mr. Conried hoped for
+a sensational flurry like that which had accompanied the production of
+"Parsifal"; but, with an eye to the main chance, he confined his first
+official proclamation to a single performance, which, in connection with
+a concert by all his chief singers not concerned in the opera, was to
+be given for his annual benefit. Evidently he felt less sure about the
+outcome of this production than he had about that of "Parsifal," and was
+bound to reap all the benefits that could come from a powerful appeal to
+popular curiosity touching so notorious a work as Strauss's setting of
+Oscar Wilde's drama. The performance took place with many preliminary
+flourishes beyond the ordinary on January 22d. Two days before there was
+held a public rehearsal, which was attended by about a thousand persons
+who had received invitations, most of them being stockholders of the
+opera house, old subscribers, stockholders of Mr. Conried's company,
+writers for the newspapers, and friends of the artists and the
+management. The opera was given with the following cast:
+
+
+  Salome ................................. Miss Fremstad
+  Herodias ................................... Miss Weed
+  Herodias's Page ..................... Josephine Jacoby
+  Herod's Page .......................... Marie Mattfeld
+  Herod ................................... Carl Burrian
+  Jochanaan ............................. Anton Van Rooy
+  Narraboth ............................. Andreas Dippel
+  First Jew .................................. Mr. Reiss
+  Second Jew ................................. Mr. Bayer
+  Third Jew ................................. Mr. Paroli
+  Fourth Jew .................................. Mr. Bars
+  Fifth Jew ............................... Mr. Dufriche
+  First Nazarene ........................... Mr. Journet
+  Second Nazarene ........................... Mr. Stiner
+  First Soldier ........................... Mr. Mühlmann
+  Second Soldier ............................. Mr. Blass
+  A Cappadocian .............................. Mr. Lange
+               Conductor, Alfred Hertz
+
+
+Concerning the effect produced upon the public by the performance of the
+work I shall permit Mr. W. P. Eaton, then a reporter for The Tribune,
+to speak for me.
+
+
+The concert was over a little after nine, and the real business of the
+evening began at a quarter to ten, when the lights went out, there was a
+sound from the orchestra pit, and the curtains parted on "Salome." The
+setting for "Salome" is an imaginative creation of the scene painter's
+art. The high steps to the palace door to the right, the cover of the
+cistern, backed by ironic roses in the center, and beyond the deep night
+sky and the moonlight on the distant roofs. Two cedars cut the sky,
+black and mournful. Against this background "Salome" moves like a
+tigress, the costumes of the court glow with a dun, barbaric splendor,
+and the red fire from the tripods streams silently up into the night
+till you fancy you can almost smell it. Here was atmosphere like
+Belasco's, and saturated with it the opera moved to its appointed end,
+sinister, compelling, disgusting.
+
+What the opera is is told elsewhere. It remains to record that in the
+audience at this performance, as at the dress rehearsals on Sunday, the
+effect of horror was pronounced. Many voices were hushed as the crowd
+passed out into the night, many faces were white almost as those at the
+rail of a ship. Many women were silent, and men spoke as if a bad dream
+were on them. The preceding concert was forgotten; ordinary emotions
+following an opera were banished. The grip of a strange horror or
+disgust, was on the majority. It was significant that the usual applause
+was lacking. It was scattered and brief.
+
+
+In this there is no hyperbole; it fails of a complete description
+only in neglecting to chronicle the fact that a large proportion of
+the audience left the audience-room at the beginning of the bestial
+apostrophe to the head of the Baptist. It was because of this pronounced
+rejection of the work by an audience which might have been considered
+elected to it in a peculiar manner that it was a sincere cause of regret
+that the action of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real
+Estate Company caused a prohibition of further performances. It would
+have been better and conduced more to artistic righteousness if the
+public had been permitted to kill the work by refusing to witness it. In
+my opinion there is no doubt but that this would have been the result
+had Mr. Conried attempted to give performances either at extraordinary
+or ordinary prices. Immediately after his benefit performance he
+announced three representations outside of the subscription, the first
+of which was to take place on February 1st. Two days after the first
+performance, the directors of the opera house company held a meeting and
+adopted the following resolution, which was promptly communicated to Mr.
+Conried:
+
+
+The directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company consider
+that the performance of "Salome" is objectionable and detrimental to the
+best interests of the Metropolitan Opera House. They therefore protest
+against any repetition of this opera.
+
+
+Under the terms of the contract between the directors and Mr. Conried,
+such a protest was the equivalent of a command, disobedience of which
+would have worked a forfeiture of the lease. Mr. Conried parleyed,
+pleading his cause voluminously in the public prints, as well as
+before the directors, meanwhile keeping his announcement of the three
+performances before the people. But the sale of tickets amounted to next
+to nothing, and Mr. Conried yielded with as much grace as possible, when
+on January 30th the directors refused to modify their action, though
+they expressed a willingness to recoup Mr. Conried for some of his
+expenses in mounting the opera. The directors who took this action were
+J. P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt, G. G. Haven, Charles Lanier, George
+F. Baker, D. O. Mills, George Bowdoin, A. D. Juilliard, August Belmont,
+and H. McK. Twombly. Representatives of Mr. Conried's company who argued
+the case before the directors were Otto H. Kahn, Robert Goelet, James
+Speyer, H. R. Winthrop, and R. H. Cottenet. For some time Mr. Conried
+talked about performing the opera in another theater, and the directors
+of his company formally agreed that he might do so on his own
+responsibility; but nothing came of it. Mr. Conried had probably seen
+the handwriting on the wall of his box office. The next year there were
+more solemn proclamations to the effect that it would be performed
+outside of New York. Boston sent in a protest, and the flurry was over,
+except as it was kept up in silly and mendacious reports sent to the
+newspapers of Germany touching the influences that had worked for the
+prohibition. There never was a case which asked for less speculation.
+Decent men did not want to have their house polluted with the stench
+with which Oscar Wilde's play had filled the nostrils of humanity.
+Having the power to prevent the pollution they exercised it.
+
+A reviewer ought to be equipped with a dual nature, both intellectually
+and morally, in order to pronounce fully and fairly upon the qualities
+of this drama by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss. He should be an
+embodied conscience stung into righteous fury by the moral stench
+exhaled by the decadent and pestiferous work, but, though it make him
+retch, he should be sufficiently judicial in his temperament calmly to
+look at the drama in all its aspects and determine whether or not as a
+whole it is an instructive note on the life and culture of the times
+and whether or not this exudation from the diseased and polluted will
+and imagination of the authors marks a real advance in artistic
+expression, irrespective of its contents or their fitness for dramatic
+representation. This is asking much of the harassed commentator on the
+things which the multitude of his readers receive as contributions to
+their diversion merely and permit to be crowded out of their minds by
+the next pleasant or unpleasant shock to their sensibilities. He has not
+the time, nor have his readers the patience, to enter upon a discussion
+of the questions of moral and esthetic principle which ought to pave the
+way for the investigation. If he can tell what the play is, what its
+musical investiture is like, wherein the combined elements have worked
+harmoniously and efficiently to an end which to their authors seemed
+artistic, and therefore justifiable, he will have done much. In the case
+before us even this much cannot be done until some notions which have
+long had validity are put aside. We are only concerned with "Salome" in
+its newest form,--that given it by the musical composer. If it shall
+ever win approbation here, as it seems to have done in several German
+cities, it will be because of the shape into which Richard Strauss has
+moulded it.
+
+Several attempts had been made to habilitate Oscar Wilde's drama on the
+New York stage, and had failed. If the opera succeeds it will be because
+a larger public has discovered that the music which has been consorted
+with the old pictures, actions, and words has added to them an element
+either of charm or expressive potentiality hitherto felt to be lacking.
+Is that true? Has a rock of offense been removed? Has a mephitic odor
+been changed to a sweet savor by the subtle alchemy of the musical
+composer? Has a drama abhorrent, bestial, repellent, and loathsome been
+changed into a thing of delectability by the potent agency of music?
+It used to be said that things too silly to be spoken might be sung;
+is it also true that things too vile, too foul, too nauseating for
+contemplation may be seen, so they be insidiously and wickedly glorified
+by the musician's art? As a rule, plays have not been improved by being
+turned into operas. Always their dramatic movement has been interrupted,
+their emotional current clogged, their poetry emasculated by the
+transformation. Things are better now than they were in the long ago,
+when music took no part at all in dramatic action, but waited for a mood
+which it had power to publish and celebrate; but music has acquired its
+new power only by an abnegation of its better part, by assuming new
+functions, and asking a revaluation of its elements on a new esthetic
+basis. In "Salome" music is largely a decorative element, like the
+scene,--like the costumes. It creates atmosphere, like the affected
+stylism of much of Oscar Wilde's text, with its Oriental imagery
+borrowed from "The Song of Solomon," diluted and sophisticated; it gives
+emotional significance to situations, helping the facial play of Salome
+and her gestures to proclaim the workings of her mind, when speech has
+deserted her; it is at its best as the adjunct and inspiration of the
+lascivious dance. In the last two instances, however, it reverts to
+the purpose and also the manner (with a difference) which have always
+obtained, and becomes music in the purer sense. Then the would-be
+dramatist is swallowed up in the symphonist, and Strauss is again the
+master magician who can juggle with our senses and our reason and make
+his instrumental voices body forth "the forms of things unknown."
+
+It would be wholly justifiable to characterize "Salome" as a symphonic
+poem for which the play supplies the program. The parallelism of which
+we hear between Strauss and Wagner exists only in part--only in the
+application of the principle of characterization by means of musical
+symbols or typical phrases. Otherwise the men's work on diametrically
+opposite lines. With all his musical affluence, Wagner aimed, at least,
+to make his orchestra only the bearer and servant of the dramatic word.
+Nothing can be plainer (it did not need that he should himself have
+confessed it) than that Strauss looks upon the words as necessary evils.
+His vocal parts are not song, except for brief, intensified spaces at
+long intervals. They are declamation. The song-voice is used, one is
+prone to think, only because by means of it the words can be made to
+be heard above the orchestra. Song, in the old acceptance of the word,
+implies beauty of tone and justness of intonation. It is amazing how
+indifferent the listener is to both vocal quality and intervallic
+accuracy in "Salome." Wilde's stylistic efforts are lost in the flood of
+instrumental sound; only the mood which they were designed to produce
+remains. Jochanaan sings phrases, which are frequently tuneful, and when
+they are not denunciatory are set in harmonies agreeable to the ear.
+But by reason of that fact Jochanaan comes perilously near being an
+old-fashioned operatic figure--an ascetic Marcel, with little else to
+differentiate him from his Meyerbeerian prototype than his "raiment of
+camel's hair and a leather's girdle about his loins," and an inflated
+phrase which must serve for the tunes sung by the rugged Huguenot
+soldier. Strauss characterizes by his vocal manner as well as by his
+themes and their instrumental treatment; but for his success he relies
+at least as much upon the performer as upon the musical text. A voice
+and style like Mr. Van Rooy's give an uplift, a prophetic breadth,
+dignity, and impressiveness to the utterances of Jochanaan which are
+paralleled only by the imposing instrumental apparatus employed in
+proclaiming the phrase invented to clothe his pronouncements. Six horns,
+used as Strauss knows how to use them, are a good substratum for the
+arch-colorist. The nervous staccato chatter of Herod is certainly
+characteristic of this neurasthenic. This specimen from the pathological
+museum of Messrs. Wilde and Strauss appears in a state which causes
+alarm lest his internal mechanism fly asunder and scatter his corporeal
+parts about the scene. The crepitating volubility with which Strauss
+endows him is a marvelously ingenious conceit; but it leans heavily for
+its effect, we fear, on the amazing skill of Mr. Burrian, not only in
+cackling out the words synchronously with the orchestral part, but in
+emotionally coloring them and blending them in a unity with his facial
+expression and his perturbed bodily movements. Salome sings, often in
+the explosive style of Wagner's Kundry, sometimes with something like
+fluent continuity, but from her song has been withheld all the
+symmetrical and graceful contours comprehended in the concept of melody.
+Hers are the superheated phrases invented to give expression to her
+passion, and out of them she must construct the vocal accompaniment to
+the instrumental song, which reaches its culmination in the scene which,
+instead of receiving a tonal beatification, as it does, ought to be
+relegated to the silence and darkness of the deepest dungeon of a
+madhouse or a hospital.
+
+Here is a matter, of the profoundest esthetical and ethical
+significance, which might as well be disposed of now, so far as this
+discussion is concerned, regardless of the symmetrical continuity of the
+argument. There is a vast deal of ugly music in "Salome,"--music that
+offends the ear and rasps the nerves like fiddlestrings played on by a
+coarse file. In a criticism of Strauss's "Symphonia Domestica" I took
+occasion to point out that a large latitude must be allowed to the
+dramatic composer which must be denied to the symphonist. Consort a
+dramatic or even a lyric text with music and all manner of tonal devices
+may derive explanation, if not justification, from the words. But in
+purely instrumental music the arbitrary purposes of a composer cannot
+replace the significance which must lie in the music itself--that is
+in its emotional and esthetic content. It does not lie in intellectual
+content, for thought to become articulate demands speech. The champions
+of Richard Strauss have defended ugliness in his last symphony, the work
+which immediately preceded "Salome," and his symphonic poems on the
+score that music must be an expression of truth, and truth is not always
+beautiful. In a happier day than this it was believed that the true and
+the beautiful were bound together in angelic wedlock and that all art
+found its highest mission in giving them expression. But the drama has
+been led through devious paths into the charnel house, and in "Salome"
+we must needs listen to the echoes of its dazed and drunken footfalls.
+The maxim "Truth before convention" asserts its validity and demands
+recognition under the guise of "characteristic beauty." We may refuse
+to admit that ugliness is entitled to be raised to a valid principle
+in music dissociated from words or stage pictures, on the ground that
+thereby it contravenes and contradicts its own nature; but we may no
+longer do so when it surrenders its function as an expression of the
+beautiful and becomes merely an illustrative element, an aid to dramatic
+expression. What shall be said, then, when music adorns itself with its
+loveliest attributes and lends them to the apotheosis of that which is
+indescribably, yes, inconceivably, gross and abominable? Music cannot
+lie. Not even the genius of Richard Strauss can make it discriminate in
+its soaring ecstasy between a vile object and a good. There are three
+supremely beautiful musical moments in "Salome." Two of them are purely
+instrumental, though they illustrate dramatic incidents; the third is
+predominantly instrumental, though it has an accompaniment of word and
+action. The first is an intermezzo in which all action ceases except
+that which plays in the bestially perverted heart and mind of Salome. A
+baffled amorous hunger changes to a desire for revenge. The second is
+the music of the dance. The third is the marvelous finale in which an
+impulse which can only be conceived as rising from the uttermost pit
+of degradation is beatified. Crouching over the dissevered head of
+the prophet, Salome addresses it in terms of reproach, of grief, of
+endearment and longing, and finally kisses the bloody lips and presses
+her teeth into the gelid flesh. It is incredible that an artist should
+ever have conceived such a scene for public presentation. In all the
+centuries in which the story of the dance before Herod has fascinated
+sculptors, painters, and poets, in spite of the accretions of lustful
+incident upon the simple Biblical story, it remained for a poet of our
+day to conceive this horror and a musician of our day to put forth his
+highest powers in its celebration. There was a scene before the mental
+eye of Strauss as he wrote. It was that of Isolde singing out her life
+over the dead body of Tristan. In the music of that scene, I do not
+hesitate to say again, as I have said before, there lies the most
+powerful plea ever made for the guilty lovers. It is the choicest
+flower of Wagner's creative faculty, the culmination of his powers as
+a composer, and never before or since has the purifying and ennobling
+capacity of music been so convincingly demonstrated. Strauss has striven
+to outdo it, and there are those who think that in this episode he
+actually raised music to a higher power. He has not only gone with the
+dramatist and outraged every sacred instinct of humanity by calling
+the lust for flesh, alive or dead, love, but he has celebrated her
+ghoulish passion as if he would perforce make of her an object of that
+"redemption" of which, again following Wagner but along oblique paths,
+he prates so strangely in his opera of "Guntram."
+
+It is obvious on a moment's reflection that, had Strauss desired, the
+play might easily have been modified so as to avoid this gruesome
+episode. A woman scorned, vengeful, and penitent would have furnished
+forth material enough for his finale and dismissed his audience with
+less disturbance of their moral and physical stomachs. But Strauss, to
+put it mildly, is a sensationalist despite his genius, and his business
+sense is large, as New Yorkers know ever since he wound up an artistic
+tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche
+was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's
+play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo
+in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in
+Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious
+and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen
+should sup to their full of delights and horrors.
+
+To think back, under the impressions of the final scene, to the dance
+which precipitated the catastrophe is to bring up recollections of
+little else than the striking originality of its music, its piquancies
+of rhythm and orchestration, its artfully simulated Orientalism, and the
+thrilling effect produced by a recurrence to the "love music" ("Let me
+kiss thy mouth, Jochanaan,") at a moment before the frenetic close, when
+the representation of Salome (a professional dancer, Miss Froehlich, was
+deftly substituted for Miss Fremstad at the Metropolitan performance)
+approaches the cistern in which the white flesh, black hair, and red
+lips of her idolatry are immured, and casts wistful glances into its
+depths. Since the outcome was to be what it became it would have been
+folly in Mr. Conried's performance to attempt to disguise the true
+character of the "Dance of the Seven Veils." Miss Froeblich gave us
+quite unconcernedly a danse du ventre; not quite so pronounced as it
+has been seen in the Oriental quarters at our world's fairs, not quite
+so free of bodily covering as tradition would have justified. Yet it
+served to emphasize its purpose in the play. This dance in its original
+estate is a dramatic dance; it is, indeed, the frankest example of
+terpsichorean symbolism within the whole range of the pantomimic dance.
+The conditions under which Wilde and Strauss introduce it in their drama
+spare one all need of thought; there is sufficient commentary in the.
+doddering debility of the pleading Herod and the lustful attitude of
+his protruding eyes. There are fantastical persons who like to talk
+about religious symbolism in connection with this dance, and of forms
+of worship of vast antiquity. The dance is old. It was probably danced
+in Egypt before the Exodus; in Greece probably before Orpheus sang and
+
+  "Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers."
+
+But it is not to be seriously thought that from those days to this
+there was ever any doubt as to its significance and its purpose, which
+is to pander to prurient appetites and arouse libidinous passions.
+Always, too, from those days to this, its performers have been the
+most abandoned of the courtesan class.
+
+There is not a whiff of fresh and healthy air blowing through "Salome"
+except that which exhales from the cistern, the prison house of
+Jochanaan. Even the love of Narraboth, the young Syrian captain, for the
+princess is tainted by the jealous outbursts of Herodias's page. Salome
+is the unspeakable; Herodias, though divested of her most pronounced
+historical attributes (she adjures her daughter not to dance, though
+she gloats over the revenge which it brings to her), is a human hyena;
+Herod, a neurasthenic voluptuary. A group of Jews who are shown
+disputing in the manner of Baxter Street, though conveyed by Wilde from
+Flaubert's pages, are used by Strauss to provide a comic interlude.
+Years ago a musical humorist in Vienna caused much amusement by writing
+the words of a quarrel of Jewish pedlers under the voices of the fugue
+in Mozart's overture to "The Magic Flute." Three hundred years ago
+Orazio Vecchi composed a burlesque madrigal in the severe style of that
+day, in which he tried to depict the babel of sounds in a synagogue.
+Obviously the musical Jew is supposed to be allied to the stage Jew and
+to be fit food for the humorist. Strauss's music gives a new reading to
+Wilde; it is a caricature in which cacophony reigns supreme under the
+guise of polyphony. There are five of the Jews, and each is pregnantly
+set forth in the theme with which he maintains his contention.
+
+This is but one of many instances of marvelous astuteness in the
+delineation and characteristic portions of the music. The quality which
+will he most promptly recognized by the public is its decorative and
+illustrative element. The orchestra paints incessantly; moods that are
+prevalent for a moment do not suffice the eager illustrator. The passing
+word seizes his fancy. Herod describes the jewels which he promises to
+give to Salome so she relieve him of his oath, and the music of the
+orchestra glints and glistens with a hundred prismatic tints. Salome
+wheedles the young Syrian to bring forth the prophet, and her cry,
+"Thou wilt do this thing for me," is carried to his love-mad brain by a
+voluptuous glissando of the harp which is as irresistible as her glance
+and smile. But the voluptuous music is no more striking than the tragic.
+Strauss strikes off the head of Jochanaan with more thunderous noise
+upon the kettle-drums than Wagner uses when Fafner pounds the life
+out of Fasolt with his gigantic stave; but there is nothing in all of
+Wagner's tragic pages to compare in tenseness of feeling with the moment
+of suspense while Salome is peering into the cistern and marveling that
+she hears no sound of a death struggle. At this moment there comes an
+uncanny sound from the orchestra that is positively blood-curdling. The
+multitude of instruments are silent--all but the string basses. Some
+of them maintain a tremolo on the deep E flat. Suddenly there comes a
+short, high B flat. Again and again with more rapid iteration. Such a
+voice was never heard in the orchestra before. What Strauss designed it
+to express does not matter. It accomplishes a fearful accentuation of
+the awful situation. Strauss got the hint from Berlioz, who never used
+the device (which he heard from a Piedmontese double-bass player), but
+recommended it to composers who wished to imitate in the orchestra "a
+loud female cry." Strauss in his score describes how the effect is to be
+produced and wants it to sound like a stertorous groan. It is produced
+by pinching the highest string of the double-bass at the proper node
+between the finger-board and the bridge and sounding it by a quick jerk
+of the bow. This is but one of a hundred new and strange devices with
+which the score of "Salome" has enriched instrumental music. The dance
+employs a vast apparatus, but the Oriental color impressed upon it at
+the outset by oboe and tambour remains as persistent as its rhythmical
+figure, which seems to have been invented to mark the sinuous flexure
+of the spine and the swaying of the hips of the dancer. Devices made
+familiar by the symphonic poems are introduced with increased effect,
+such as the muting of the entire army of brass instruments. Startling
+effects are obtained by a confusion of keys, confusion of rhythms,
+sudden contrasts from an overpowering tutti to the stridulous whirring
+of empty fifths on the violins, a trill on the flutes, or a dissonant
+mutter of the basses. The celesta, an instrument with keyboard and
+bell tone, contributes fascinating effects, and the xylophone is
+used;--utterances that are lascivious as well as others that are
+macabre. Dissonance runs riot and frequently carries the imagination
+away completely captive. The score is unquestionably the greatest
+triumph of reflection and ingenuity of contrivance that the literature
+of music can show. The invention that has been expended on the themes
+seems less admirable. Only the pompous proclamation of the theme which
+is dominant in Jochanaan's music saves it from being called commonplace.
+A flippant hunter of reminiscences might find its prototype in the "Lady
+Moon" chorus of Balfe's "Bohemian Girl." There is no greater originality
+in the theme which publishes Salome's amorousness for the white flesh of
+Jochanaan, which time and again shows its kinship to the andante melody
+in the first movement of Tschaikowsky's "Pathétique" symphony, but
+becomes more and more transfigured in its passionate loveliness when it
+aids the beatification of the more than ghoulish princess. There is no
+escape from the power of the music when it soars to grandiose heights in
+the duet between Salome 'and the prophet, the subsequent intermezzo and
+the wicked apotheosis. It overwhelms the senses and reduces the nervous
+system of the listeners to exhaustion.
+
+The subscription season of 1906-07 at the Metropolitan Opera House began
+on November 26th and lasted seventeen weeks, compassing sixty-eight
+subscription performances of twenty-three operas and twenty-nine extra
+performances. Mr. Conried announced at the close of the supplementary
+season that his receipts had aggregated $1,005,770.20; but this sum
+doubtless included the receipts from the Boston season. The season
+1907-08 began on November 18th and lasted twenty weeks. There were one
+hundred subscription performances (Thursday having been added to the
+subscription nights), twenty Saturday popular representations, and
+three special. Twenty-seven operas were in the list, but only one of
+them was new. This was Francesco Cilèa's "Adriana Lecouvreur," which
+was brought forward on the opening night of the season, and had one
+repetition afterward, notwithstanding that it had been incorporated
+in the repertory to give Signor Caruso an opportunity to appear in a
+new work together with Mme. Cavalieri. The cast was as follows:
+
+
+  Adriana Lecouvreur ........................ Lina Cavalieri
+  La Principessa .......................... Josephine Jacoby
+  Mlle. Jouvenot ............................ Marie Mattfeld
+  Mlle. Dangeville ............................. Mme. Girerd
+  Maurizio ................................... Enrico Caruso
+  L'Abate .................................... Georges Lucas
+  Michonnet ................................. Antonio Scotti
+  Il Principe ............................... Marcel Journet
+  Quinault .................................... Mr. Barocchi
+  Poisson ..................................... Mr. Raimondi
+  Maggiordomo ................................. Mr. Navarini
+                Conductor, Rudolfo Ferrari
+
+
+Cilèa has in this work attempted to put the familiar play of Scribe and
+Legouvé into music. Formerly, as we all know, composers used to try to
+make operas out of plays. The result is for the greater part a sort of
+spectacle recalling familiar things to the eye, accompanied by an
+undercurrent of music occasionally breaking into melody and buoying up
+long stretches of disjointed and fragmentary conversation, out of which,
+under the best of circumstances, it would be difficult to construct a
+drama and from which it is not possible to extract the pleasure which
+one can still find in the old-time style of entertainment derisively
+called a concert in costume. The manner of "Adriana Lecouvreur" is more
+or less that of Puccini, Giordano, and Spinelli--to mention the names
+that immediately preceded Cilèa's across the ocean--but it is only in
+the manner, not in the matter, except, as some disagreeable seekers
+after reminiscences will say, when that matter is borrowed. There is
+some graceful music in the score and some strains which simulate.
+passion; but to find in any of its parts the kind of music which
+vitalizes the word or heightens the dramatic situation is a hopeless
+task. It is melodramatic music, which becomes most fluent when there is
+least occasion for it, and which makes its best appeal when the heroine
+declaims above it in the speaking voice (as she does in the climax of
+the third act, when Adrienne recites a speech from Racine's "Phèdre"
+in order to accuse the Princess of adultery), when it inspires the
+heroine carefully and particularly to blow out every light in a large
+drawing-room, or when it accompanies a ballet which is neither a part
+of the play nor an incidental divertissement, but only a much-needed
+device to give the composer an opportunity for a few symmetrical pieces
+of music. Even here, however, this music must serve as a foil for the
+everlasting chit-chat of the people of the drama. A pitiful work it
+was with which to open a season. Mascagni's "Iris" was brought out
+on December 6th, and after it was all too late there was a carefully
+studied performance of "Don Giovanni" and a sumptuously, too
+sumptuously, mounted production of "Fidelio." These two works
+practically summed up the labors accomplished by Gustav Mahler, though
+he produced excellent representations (except scenically) of "Tristan"
+and "Die Walküre." Mr. Mahler, having laid down the directorship of the
+Court Opera at Vienna, was brought to New York by Mr. Conried, and his
+coming had raised high the expectations of the lovers of German opera.
+The record must also include the enlistment in the Metropolitan forces
+of Madame Berta Morena and Madame Leffler-Burckhardt, whose influence
+upon the season would have been much more marked had not Mr. Conried's
+policy of catering principally to the Italianissimi prevented them
+from becoming as large factors as they deserved to be.
+
+When Mr. Conried issued his prospectus for his fifth season it had
+already long been an open secret that some of the men whom he had
+invited to share the glories and the profits of his administration had
+decreed his downfall. During the fourth season he had been ill with
+sciatic neuritis, and there was no improvement in his physical condition
+when he entered upon his duties in 1907-08. His ability to attend to the
+arduous labors of the managing directorate was questioned. Worse than
+this, the air for months had been full of whispers of scandalous doings
+in the business department, and the chorus of dissatisfaction with
+the artistic results of his directorate, which had begun in the first
+season, had been swelling steadily. Two seasons before he had put forth
+a disingenuous apology for his administration, comparing the cost and
+difficulties of producing opera in the preceding season with the cost
+and difficulties under Mr. Grau. The matter was one which affected the
+stockholders of his company only so far as the finances were concerned;
+as to the difficulties, it was not easy to see how they could have been
+less formerly than now, when there was so much more money to spend,
+and so much more had been spent in improving the facilities for opera
+giving. The patrons of the establishment found large ground for
+complaint in contrasting the artistic achievements with the flamboyant
+promises which had been made when the new administration came in. Mr.
+Conried had told them that his first aim was to raise the standard of
+performance, and to this end he had banished all thought of profit from
+his mind. He was going to continue to employ the most refulgent
+"stars" in the world, but to abolish the "star" system. The season in
+Philadelphia was to be abandoned so that there might be more time for
+rehearsals, and less exhaustion of his artistic forces. Opera in English
+was to be added to opera in Italian, French, and German. As for the
+French and Italian works they were to be given as they had been under
+Mr. Grau, but the German was to be raised to a higher plane. Not one of
+these promises was redeemed. Italian operas were given great prominence
+over French, and the additions to the Italian list, which were really
+new, were of the poorest sort. Perfunctoriness, apathy, and ignorant
+stage management marked the German performances, which were all
+but eliminated from the subscription list. There were evidences
+of high striving at the outset in the engagement of Messrs. Mottl,
+Lautenschläger, and Fuchs, as I have already said, but the results were
+negligible because the men were unable to employ their capacities.
+There were sensational features, like the production of "Parsifal" and
+"Salome," but there were humiliating ones, like the prostitution of a
+great establishment for the performance of "Die Fledermaus" and "Der
+Zigeunerbaron" to deck out the Herr Direktor's benefits. The blight
+of commercialism had fallen on the institution. On February 11,
+1908, Mr. Conried resigned, and announcement was officially made
+of a reorganization of his company, and the engagement of Giulio
+Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel as managers of the opera for the
+season 1908-09.
+
+Following is a table of performances during the subscription seasons
+of Mr. Conried's administration:
+
+
+THE CONRIED PERIOD: 1902-'08
+
+   Operas                    1903-4  1904-5  1905-6  1906-7  1907-8
+
+  "Rigoletto" ................. 5       2       5       2       4
+  "Die Walküre" ............... 4       4       3       2       3
+  "La Bohème" ................. 3       3       5       7       7
+  "Aïda" ...................... 6       5       4       6       5
+  "Tosca" ..................... 4       4       3       6       7
+  "Tannhäuser" ................ 5       9       4       5       4
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... 8       3       0       1       0
+  "Pagliacci" ................. 5       3       3       4       4
+  "Lohengrin" ................. 5       6       5       5       2
+  "La Traviata" ............... 3       4       2       3       6
+  "Il Barbiere" ............... 4       2       2       0       6
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 3       3       5       4       1
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ........ 4       2       3       4       6
+  "The Magic Flute" ........... 4       0       0       0       0
+  "Siegfried" ................. 2       2       3       4       3
+  "L'Elisir d'Amore" .......... 4       1       2       0       0
+  "Carmen" .................... 4       4       2       1       0
+  "Coppélia" (ballet).......... 4       1       0       0       0
+  "La Dame Blanche" (Ger.) .... 1       0       0       0       0
+  "Faust" ..................... 4       4       5       4       6
+  "Mefistofele" .............. *2       0       0       0       7
+  "Roméo et Juliette" ......... 2       4       0       5       0
+  "Nozze di Figaro" ........... 1       2       0       0       0
+  + "Parsifal" ............... 11       8       4       2       0
+  "Fidelio" ................... 1       1       0       0       3
+  "Das Rheingold" ............. 1       2       2       1       0
+  "Götterdämmerung" ........... 1       2       3       1       0
+  "La Gioconda" ............... 0       4       4       0       0
+  "Die Meistersinger" ......... 0       7       4       0       4
+  "Lucrezia Borgia" ........... 0       1       0       0       0
+  "Don Pasquale" .............. 0       2       2       1       0
+  "Die Puppenfee" (ballet) .... 0       1       0       0       0
+  "Les Huguenots" ............. 0       4       0       0       0
+  "Un Ballo in Maschera" ...... 0       2       0       0       0
+  + "Die Fledermaus" .......... 0       4       1       0       0
+  "Die Königin von Saba" ...... 0       0       5       0       0
+  "Hänsel und Gretel" ......... 0       0      11       8       5
+  "La Favorita" ............... 0       0       4       0       0
+  "La Sonnambula" ............. 0       0       2       0       0
+  "Il Trovatore" .............. 0       0       4       0       6
+  "Don Giovanni" .............. 0       0       2       0       4
+  "Martha" .................... 0       0       4       3       3
+  "Der Zigeunerbaron" ......... 0       0       1       0       0
+  + "Fedora" .................. 0       0       0       4       3
+  + "La Damnation de Faust" ... 0       0       0       5       0
+  "Lakmé" ..................... 0       0       0       3       0
+  "L'Africaine" ............... 0       0       0       2       0
+  "Manon Lescaut" ............. 0       0       0       3       5
+  "Madama Butterfly" .......... 0       0       0       5       6
+  + "Salome" .................. 0       0       0       1       0
+  + "Adriana Lecouvreur" ...... 0       0       0       0       2
+  "Der Fliegende Holländer" ... 0       0       0       0       4
+  "Iris" ...................... 0       0       0       0       5
+  "Mignon" .................... 0       0       0       0       5
+
+  * One scene only. + Novelties.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+HAMMERSTEIN AND HIS OPERA HOUSE
+
+
+Before the close of the season 1905-06 at the Metropolitan Opera House,
+Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, who was building a large theater in Thirty-fourth
+Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues, announced that the building
+would be called the Manhattan Opera House, that it would be exclusively
+his property and under his management, and that it was to be devoted to
+grand opera.
+
+It is no reflection on Mr. Hammerstein to say that many who have been
+prompt and generous in their recognition of his achievements since,
+looked upon his enterprise as quixotic, down to the very day of
+the opening of his house. True, he was known to be a manager of
+extraordinary resource and indomitable energy, but he had dallied more
+or less with the operatic bauble without disclosing any ambition to have
+his name written among the managerial wrecks which have been cast upon
+the shores of Italian Opera, from Handel's day to ours, It was easy to
+recall that the new opera house was not his first, but that he had built
+one in the same street, given it the same name thirteen years before,
+and begun a season of grand opera with an ambitious novelty, only to
+abandon the enterprise after a fortnight. He had even tried German
+opera with no less popular an artist than Mme. Lehmann in his earlier
+opera house in Harlem, and entered into rivalry with an established
+institution in 1891 for the production of "Cavalleria Rusticana," then
+the reigning sensation of the hour in Europe.
+
+When the old Manhattan Opera House, so soon abandoned to the uses of
+vaudeville, opened its doors with Moszkowski's "Boabdil," on January
+23, 1893, there was no rival operatic establishment in the city, for
+the interior of the Metropolitan had been destroyed by fire, and
+Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau were resting on their oars for a season while
+the question whether or not the home of the costly and fashionable
+entertainment should be restored was under discussion by its owners.
+Yet Mr. Hammerstein was discouraged by two weeks of failure. It was not
+strange that many observers refused to believe that he was of the stuff
+out of which opera managers are made. He did not seem illogical enough,
+though he showed some symptoms of having been bitten by the opera habit.
+
+Neither was there much to encourage belief in his announcements in the
+manner in which he put them forth. He began early in the spring by
+saying that he had engaged Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and kept their
+names before the people almost up to the time of the opening. He went
+abroad to engage artists, and even after his return it looked as if it
+would be a physical impossibility to complete his theater in time for
+the date set for opening. In fact it was not completed, but when the
+season arrived he was ready to attempt all that he had said he would do,
+except keep some wild promises about singers; and when the season closed
+the fact that loomed largest in the retrospect was the undaunted
+manner in which he had carried on a difficult and dangerous enterprise,
+compelling a large element of the public to respect and admire him, and
+making it possible for him to lay out a second season on lines of real
+pith and moment, and carry an admirable enterprise to an admirable
+conclusion.
+
+Mr. Hammerstein began his first season on December 3, 1906, and closed
+it on April 20, 1907. There were a few admirable artists in his company,
+but the majority were either inexperienced or of the conventional
+Italian type. His principal soprano leggiero was Mlle. Pinkert, a Polish
+singer of good routine and fine skill; his dramatic soprano, Mlle. Russ,
+whose knowledge of the conventions of the stage was complete, and
+expressive powers excellent, though they exerted little charm. He had a
+serviceable mezzo in Mme. De Cisneros (formerly a junior member of the
+Metropolitan Opera Company, under her maiden name, Broadfoot). Miss
+Donalda, a Canadian soprano of no little charm, helped to make the
+lyric operas agreeable. But the strength of the company lay in the male
+contingent--Bonci, the most famous of living tenors, after Caruso, whom
+Mr. Conried thought it wise to carry over to the Metropolitan Opera
+House, thus precipitating a controversy, which, as such things go, was
+of real assistance to the manager whom the rival sought to injure;
+Maurice Renaud, the most finished and versatile of French operatic
+artists, whom the foresight of Maurice Grau had retained for the
+Metropolitan, but whose contract Mr. Conried canceled at the cost of a
+penalty; M. Charles Dalmorès, a sterling dramatic tenor; M. Gilibert, a
+French baritone of refined qualities; Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, who, coming
+some years before in a peripatetic French company to the Casino, had
+stirred the enthusiasm of the critics with her truthful, powerful, and
+unconventional performance of Carmen; Ancona, a barytone who had been
+an admired member of the Metropolitan company, and a serviceable bass
+named Arimondi. Melba and Calvé came later in the season.
+
+Exaggerated stories of Mr. Hammerstein's success followed the close of
+his season, and if all that Mr. Hammerstein himself said could have been
+accepted in its literalness the lesson of the season would have been
+that the people who live in New York and come to New York in the winter
+season were willing to spend, let me say, one and three-quarter millions
+of dollars every year for this one form of entertainment. It would
+appear, also, that fad and fashion were not the controlling impulse in
+this vast expenditure; for the chief things which fad and fashion had
+to offer at the Metropolitan Opera House were noticeably absent from
+the Manhattan. On a score of occasions there were large gatherings
+representative of wealth and what is called society at the house in
+Thirty-fourth Street, but generally the audiences were distinct in their
+composition. It almost seemed as if Mr. Hammerstein had been correct in
+his deduction, that there were enough people in New York who wanted to
+go to the opera, but were excluded from the Metropolitan by the extent
+of the subscription, to support a second house. If this was so it
+marked a marvelous change from the time of the last operatic rivalry,
+which ruined both Mapleson and Abbey, and destroyed the prestige of the
+Academy of Music forever. Perhaps the city's growth in population and
+wealth furnished the explanation; I can scarcely believe from a study of
+the doings at the two houses that a growth in musical taste and culture
+was the determining factor. Twenty years ago such a list of operas as
+that presented by Mr. Hammerstein in his first season would have spelled
+ruin to any manager. Not even the prestige of Adelina Patti would have
+saved it. There was not a novelty in the list.
+
+Many things contributed to the measure of success which Mr. Hammerstein
+won. There was a large fascination in the audacity of the undertaking,
+and its freedom from art-cant and affectation. Curiosity was irritated
+by the manager's daring, and admiration challenged by the manner in
+which he kept faith with the public. He seemed to be attempting the
+impossible, but he accomplished all that he said he would do. It is
+no secret--in fact, Mr. Hammerstein himself proclaimed it--that his
+artistic achievements were due in an overwhelming degree to the
+efficiency of Signor Cleofonte Campanini, his artistic director. But not
+to his efficiency alone--to his devotion and zeal also. Signor Campanini
+was not only the artistic director--he was also almost exclusively the
+conductor of the performances. His zeal fired all the forces employed at
+the opera house. A company gathered together from the ends of the earth
+succeeded in giving one hundred and thirteen performances of twenty-two
+operas, and making many of the performances of really remarkable
+excellence. The reason was obvious at nearly every presentation; from
+the principals down to the last person in the chorus and orchestra,
+every one had his heart in his work. Not only the desire to do
+their duty, but the pardonable ambition to do better than the rival
+establishment, inspired singers and players alike. It so happened that
+on one Saturday evening the same opera--Verdi's "Aïda"--was performed
+at both houses. A newspaper reporter carried the intelligence to
+the Manhattan Opera House that half the seats were empty at the
+Metropolitan, while the new house was crowded. The curtain was down at
+the time, and a score of the performers on the stage, headed by the
+conductor himself, at once formed a ring and danced a dance of triumph.
+
+For musical effects, as well as some dramatic, there were distinct
+advantages with the new house. The disposition of the seats and stage
+brought the listeners and performers nearer together. The acoustical
+conditions at the Manhattan Opera House were admirable; there could be
+no such feeling of intimacy at the Metropolitan Opera House as existed
+here. The quality appealed to the music lover pure and simple, and him
+only, however, for in the things which make the opera a fashionable
+social diversion the new building was deficient and woefully inferior
+to the old.
+
+The lovers of good singing were surprised by the excellence of Mr.
+Hammerstein's singers, especially the male contingent--a surprise
+which was heightened by the protestations, to which they had long been
+habituated, that there was no talent left in Europe comparable with that
+engaged at the Metropolitan. When in the face of such assertions the
+voices and the art of tenors like Bonci and Dalmores, and of barytones
+like Renaud and Ancona, were brought into notice their actual merit
+seemed doubled. The women singers of the first rank, save Mmes.
+Melba and Calvé, who appeared in what would have been called "star"
+engagements under the old theatrical stock régime, were in no way
+comparable with those of the Metropolitan Opera House, but those of
+the second rank were superior--a circumstance which was emphasized by
+the better ensemble performances, for which a discriminating public
+soon learned to thank Signor Campanini and the esprit de corps with
+which he inflamed the establishment's forces.
+
+The opening of the season, on December 3 1906, had been proclaimed a
+week earlier, so as to make it synchronous with that of the Metropolitan
+Opera House; but Mr. Hammerstein's house was not ready, nor were his
+singers or stage fixtures. The fact looked ominous, and the enterprise
+took a lugubrious beginning a week later, when "I Puritani," which had
+been chosen as the opening opera because it was looked upon in Europe
+as affording to Signor Bonci his finest artistic opportunity, failed to
+arouse any public interest. It was an experience which Mr. Hammerstein
+was destined to have again and again with operas like "Dinorah,"
+"Mignon," "Fra Diavolo," "Il Barbiere," and "Un Ballo in Maschera,"
+for which the public seemed suddenly to have lost all liking, while
+still clinging to works of equal antiquatedness.
+
+From the opening night to the closing the operas of the list were
+produced on the dates and in the succession indicated in the following
+table, which tells also the number of times each opera was performed.
+It must be stated, however, that there were a number of occasions in
+the course of the season when two operas or portions of several operas
+were performed on a single evening. This accounts for the large number
+of times that Mascagni's "Cavalleria" and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci"
+were given, the latter being also helped in the record by the fact
+that it was twice bracketed with Massenet's "Navarraise."
+
+
+   Opera                      First performance          Times
+
+  "I Puritani" ................. December 3 ............. 2
+  "Rigoletto" .................. December 5 ............ 11
+  "Faust" ...................... December 7 ............. 7
+  "Don Giovanni" ............... December 12 ............ 4
+  "Carmen" ..................... December 14 ........... 19
+  "Aïda" ....................... December 19 ........... 12
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ........ December 21 ............ 6
+  "Il Trovatore" ............... January 1 .............. 6
+  "La Traviata" ................ January 2 .............. 3
+  "L'Elisir d'Amore" ........... January 5 .............. 3
+  "Gil Ugonotti" ............... January 18 ............. 5
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" .... January 21 ............. 2
+  "La Sonnambula" .............. January 25 ............. 3
+  "Pagliacci" .................. February 1 ............ 10
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ....... February 1 ............. 8
+  "Mignon" ..................... February 7 ............. 3
+  "Dinorah" .................... February 20 ............ 1
+  "Un Ballo in Maschera" ....... February 27 ............ 2
+  "La Bohème" .................. March 1 ................ 4
+  "Fra Diavolo" ................ March 8 ................ 4
+  "Marta" ...................... March 23 ............... 4
+  Manzoni Requiem (Good Fri.) .. March 29 ............... 1
+  "La Navarraise" .............. April 10 ............... 2
+
+
+On three occasions the regular procedure was interrupted for the sake
+of matters of temporary and special interest. Thus, on March 2d,
+there was a miscellaneous bill, made up of an act of "Dinorah," one
+of "Faust," and all of "Cavalleria Rusticana"; on April 19th, the
+performance was little else than a concert, at which fragments of six
+operas, some of which were not in the repertory, were sung; while on
+Good Friday, Verdi's Requiem Mass, composed in honor of Manzoni, took
+the place of an opera, and was sung to popular prices, though it was
+on a regular opera night.
+
+The subscription was so small that it seemed unnecessary to
+differentiate in the table between regular and extra performances. Of
+the latter there were twenty on Saturday nights, at popular prices,
+besides others given on holidays and for benefits. Though it is to be
+noted as a matter of history that the competition of the Manhattan Opera
+House did not appreciably affect the subscription of the Metropolitan,
+it is also to be noted that as a rule the attendance on the Saturday
+night popular performances was larger at the new house.
+
+A few of the incidents of the season deserve to be passed in review.
+Of the singers whose presence in Mr. Hammerstein's company lent
+distinction to it, Signor Bonci appeared on the opening night in "I
+Puritani." The opera failed to awaken interest, but Bonci caught the
+popular fancy and held it to the end. Toward the close of February,
+however, it was announced that he had made a contract with Mr. Conried
+to sing at the Metropolitan Opera House the next season. Mr. Hammerstein
+first met the move of his rival by announcing the engagement of Signor
+Zenatello, but afterward began legal proceedings to prevent Signor Bonci
+from fulfilling his contract with the manager of the house in upper
+Broadway. M. Renaud, the great French barytone, effected his entrance
+in "Rigoletto," but he was not in his best voice and condition, and
+only later conquered recognition for his fine talents. The opera,
+however, took its place on the popular list, since it employed, at
+different times, the finest talent at the command of the management.
+The first large and complete triumph by an opera was won on December
+14th, by "Carmen," in which Mme. Bressler-Gianoli appeared as the
+heroine. She enacted the part fifteen times before Mme. Calvé came to
+take back the territory which had so long belonged to her.
+
+A second success followed hard on the heels of "Carmen." This was
+"Aïda," the triumph of which was one of ensemble, in which the chorus,
+under Signor Campanini, played no small part. Mme. Melba's coming, on
+January 2d, was the signal for the awakening of society's interest in
+Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise. She remained until March 25th, when she
+said farewell in a performance of Puccini's "Bohème," the production
+of which by Mr. Hammerstein in defiance of the rights of Mr. Conried
+(according to the allegations of the publishers, Ricordi) and the
+legal proceedings ending with the granting of an injunction against
+Mr. Hammerstein at the end of his season, was one of the diverting
+incidents of the merry operatic war. Mme. Melba sang three times
+in "La Traviata," five times in "Rigoletto," twice in "Lucia di
+Lammermoor," once in "Faust," and four times in "La Bohème."
+
+The Bonci incident and the interest created in Mr. Hammerstein's
+enterprise by Mme. Melba's popularity stimulated interest in the
+offerings for a second season, which the manager answered by announcing
+the engagement, besides Zenatello and Sammarco, of Nordica and
+Schumann-Heink, and the re-engagement of Renaud, Bressler-Gianoli,
+Gilibert, and Dalmores. He also opened his subscription for the next
+season on March 19th, and announced the day after that he had received
+subscriptions amounting to $200,000, of which $110,000 had come from
+the four principal ticket speculators in the city. Mme. Calvé, who was
+engaged to give éclat to the conclusion of the season, effected her
+entrance on March 27th, and sang nine times--four in "Carmen," three
+in "Cavalleria Rusticana," and two in "La Navarraise."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A BRILLIANT SEASON AT THE MANHATTAN
+
+
+The prospectus which Mr. Hammerstein published for his second season
+was magnificently grandiloquent in its promises, but the season itself
+marvelous in its achievements. Eight operas "never produced in this city
+or country," "masterpieces of the most celebrated composers," which were
+his "sole property," were to be brought forward, in addition to many
+familiar works. He announced the engagement of "the greatest sopranos,
+mezzo sopranos, contraltos, barytones, and bassos of the operatic
+world." The eight new operas were to be Massenet's "Thaïs," Debussy's
+"Pelléas et Mélisande," Charpentier's "Louise," Breton's "Dolores,"
+Massenet's "Jongleur de Notre Dame," Saint-Saëns's "Hélène," Offenbach's
+"Les Contes d'Hoffmann," and "an opera by our American composer, Victor
+Herbert." Offenbach's charming opera had been heard in New York before,
+from a French company managed by Maurice Grau, but it required a memory
+that compassed twenty-five years to recall that fact; so in respect
+of it Mr. Hammerstein's slip was venial at the worst. His list of the
+greatest singers in the world read as follows: Sopranos: Nellie Melba,
+Lillian Nordica, Mary Garden, Gianinna Russ, Camille Borello, Ludmilla
+Sigrist, Giuseppina Giaconia, Helen Koelling, Fanny Francisca, Mauricia
+Morichina, Jeanne Jomelli, Emma Trentini, and Alice Zeppilli; mezzo
+sopranos and contraltos: Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Bressler-Gianoli,
+Eleanore de Cisneros, J. Gerville-Reache, Emma Zaccaria, Gina Severina;
+tenors: Giovanni Zenatello, Amadeo Bassi, Charles Dalmorès, Jean
+Perier, Leone Cazauran, Carlo Albani, Emilio Venturini, Francesco Daddi;
+barytones: Maurice Renaud, Charles Gilibert, Mario Sammarco, Vincenzo
+Reschiglian, Mario Ancona, Hector Dufranne, Nicolo Fossetta; bassos:
+Adamo Didur, Victorio Arimondi, Luigi Mugnoz; basso buffo: Fernando
+Galetti-Gianoli. Cleofonte Campanini was again musical director.
+
+These the magnificent promises. Had half of them been kept the fact
+would have amazed a public whom long experience had taught to put no
+more faith in the promises of impresarios than in those of princes. As
+a matter of fact, barring the extravagant attributes alleged to be due
+to the singers, the majority of whom were worse than mediocre, more
+than half were kept, and the deficiency more than counterbalanced
+by new elements which were introduced from time to time, as happy
+emergencies called for them. Chief of these was the engagement of Luisa
+Tetrazzini; of which more in its proper place. The official announcement
+was of subscription performances on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
+evenings, and Saturday afternoons, for twenty weeks. Also there were to
+be twenty Saturday evenings at popular prices. Just before the opening
+of the season there was semi-official talk of popular performances also
+on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, which, had it been realized, would
+have kept the opera company as busy with a large repertory as the
+ordinary theatrical company with its single play running through a
+season. A beginning was made with the Thursday performances, but Mr.
+Hammerstein concluded after a short trial of the experiment, that the
+game was not worth the candle, and so abandoned it. Before the close of
+the season Mr. Hammerstein announced an extra week of five performances,
+which he invited his subscribers to enjoy without money and without
+price, on the ground that the exigencies of the season had compelled him
+to repeat operas on subscription nights. The season of twenty-one weeks,
+which began on November 4, 1907, and ended on March 28, 1908, was thus
+made to embrace 116 representations in all; that is to say, eighty
+subscription nights and matinées, twenty popular Saturday nights,
+five performances in the extra week, and eleven special afternoons
+and evenings. The discrepancy between these figures and the total of
+the last column in the appended table, showing the dates of first
+productions in the season, and the number of performances given to each
+opera, is accounted for by the fact that nine times in the course of
+the season the entertainment consisted of two operas, and once there
+was a bill of shreds and patches from various operas.
+
+To complete the statistical record of the company's activity, it must be
+added that two performances were given in Philadelphia, and that there
+were eighteen concerts on Sunday nights, at the last few of which operas
+were given in concert form. Twice the opera house was kept closed on
+Sunday nights because of the enforcement of a rigid interpretation of
+the law prohibiting theatrical entertainments on Sunday.
+
+A study of the list of performances shows that the 116 performances were
+distributed among twenty-three operas. Of these four had never been
+given in New York before (they were "Thaïs," "Louise," "Siberia," and
+"Pelléas et Mélisande"), three had been given in New York, but so long
+ago that they were to all intents and purposes novelties ("Les Contes
+d'Hoffmann," "Crispino e la Comare," and "Andrea Chenier"), and three,
+though familiar to the public, were new to the house ("La Gioconda,"
+"La Damnation de Faust," and "Ernani"); the other thirteen were in the
+Manhattan repertory for the season of 1906-07.
+
+
+   Opera        Composer              First performance   Times given
+
+
+  "La Gioconda," Ponchielli ................ Nov. 4           4
+  "Carmen," Bizet .......................... Nov. 5          11
+  "La Damnation de Faust," Berlioz ......... Nov. 6           3
+  "Trovatore," Verdi ....................... Nov. 9           5
+  "Aïda," Verdi ............................ Nov. 11          9
+  "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," Offenbach ....... Nov. 15         11
+  "Thaïs," Massenet ........................ Nov. 24          7
+  "Faust," Gounod .......................... Nov. 28          4
+  * "La Navarraise," Massenet .............. Dec. 9           5
+  * "Pagliacci," Leoncavallo ............... Dec. 9           9
+  "Ernani," Verdi .......................... Dec. 11          1
+  "Rigoletto," Verdi ....................... Dec. 20          5
+  "Un Ballo in Maschera," Verdi ............ Dec. 27          4
+  "Don Giovanni," Mozart ................... Dec. 28          3
+  * "Cavalleria Rusticana," Mascagni ....... Dec. 31          4
+  "Louise," Charpentier .................... Jan. 3          11
+  "La Traviata," Verdi ..................... Jan. 15          5
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor," Donizetti ......... Jan. 20          8
+  "Siberia," Giordano ...................... Feb. 5           3
+  "Pelléas et Mélisande," Debussy .......... Feb. 19          7
+  "Dinorah," Meyerbeer ..................... Feb. 26          1
+  "Crispino e la Comare," Ricci brothers ... Mar. 6           3
+  "Andrea Chenier," Giordano ............... Mar. 27          1
+                                                            ---
+                                                            124
+  * Parts of double bills.
+
+
+When Mr. Hammerstein issued his prospectus in the early autumn he
+promised to produce no less than eight operas which had never been
+performed in America. Managerial promises of this kind are generally
+made and accepted in a Pickwickian sense, but Mr. Hammerstein came
+nearer than is the custom to keeping his, though the season closed with
+his subscribers waiting for "Dolores," by Breton; "Le Jongleur de Notre
+Dame," by Massenet, and "Hélène," by Saint-Saëns. He also promised
+performances of three German operas ("Lohengrin," "Tannhäuser," and
+"Tristan und Isolde"), a new American opera in English, to be composed
+by Victor Herbert, and the following operas from the standard list,
+viz., "Le Prophète," Massenet's "Manon," "Roméo et Juliette,"
+"Mefistofele," and "La Bohème." He had fought in the courts for the
+privilege of performing the last opera in the preceding season, but
+abandoned it without contention this season in the face of Mr. Conried's
+assertion that he had purchased the exclusive rights to all Italian
+performances of Puccini's operas in the United States. It is not likely
+that the statement about Mr. Herbert's opera was taken very seriously
+in any quarter; he is a prolific and marvelously ready writer of comic
+operetta scores, but it is not likely that he will ever attempt to find
+a suitable grand opera book and set it to music within six or eight
+months, while occupied, as he is, with a multitude of other enterprises.
+Mr. Hammerstein had promised in his prospectus that there would also be
+performances in German of "Lohengrin," "Tannhäuser," and "Tristan und
+Isolde." This part of the manager's scheme went by the board early
+in the season. It was contingent upon the presence in the company of
+singers familiar with the three works of Wagner. Of such there was only
+one when the season began, and she, Mme. Nordica, remained a member
+of Mr. Hammerstein's forces only six weeks, during much of which time
+she was idle. Mme. Schumann-Heink, though announced as a member of the
+company, interrupted her concert activity only long enough to sing once,
+and then she sang in an Italian opera ("Il Trovatore"), albeit she did
+her part in German.
+
+Up to the coming of Signorina Tetrazzini Mr. Hammerstein pinned his
+faith on the interest which might be aroused in his French novelties. On
+the second subscription night he came forward with Berlioz's "Damnation
+de Faust," with which he had contemplated adorning his first season, and
+for which he had prepared the scenic outfit. The undramatic character of
+the transformed cantata had caused its failure at the Metropolitan Opera
+House in the season of 1906-07, and not even the fine performance of M.
+Renaud, whose impersonation of Mephistopheles is one of the noblest
+memories left by the season, the excellent singing of M. Dalmorès, and
+the beautiful pictures could save it. There was a long wait between the
+first and second representations, and after one more trial the work was
+abandoned. Meanwhile, however, Offenbach's "Contes d'Hoffmann," which
+had had a few performances at the Fifth Avenue Theater twenty-five years
+before, was brought forward. Again Messrs. Renaud and Dalmorès were
+admirably fitted with parts and scant justice done to the opera in
+the distribution of the women's rôles; but the charm of Offenbach's
+music overcame the defects of performance, and the opera achieved so
+pronounced a success that it could be given with profit eleven times
+before M. Renaud's departure from New York after the performance of
+February 4th.
+
+The libretto of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" proclaims a phase of French
+literary taste which made heroes two generations ago out of two foreign
+romancers,--the German E. T. A. Hoffmann and the American Edgar Allan
+Poe. Very much alike were these two men in some of their strongest
+characteristics. Both were possessed of genius of a high order; both led
+lives of dissipation, which wrecked them physically; both found their
+fantastic creations in the world of supernaturalism which imagination,
+stimulated by alcoholic indulgence, presented to them as realities. This
+is literally true, at least, of Hoffmann, who, coming home from his
+nightly carouses with the boon companions, whom he has celebrated in
+his "Serapion's Brüder" (the coterie somewhat vulgarly parodied in the
+beginning and end of Offenbach's opera), was wont to call for his wife
+to sit beside him through the remainder of the night to ward off the
+ghostly, ghastly, grisly creatures which his own perfervid imagination
+had conjured up. Sixty years ago France was full of admiration for the
+weird tales of Hoffmann, and in view of the singular vicissitudes of
+the fantastic romancer's life, some of them quite as startling as the
+adventures which he ascribed to his imaginary creatures, it was not
+at all strange that Barbier and Carré should have conceived the idea
+of making him the hero of a play dealing with incidents of his own
+invention. In 1851 they brought out their play in five acts at the
+Odéon. It did not endure long, but it made so deep an impression on
+the mind of Offenbach that when he was seized with the ambition to
+write a serious work, which he might leave to the world as a legacy,
+to prove that his ambitions went beyond the things with which he amused
+the careless folk of the Second Empire, he turned to the old play for
+his libretto.
+
+In a way it was a happy choice. If an author was to be blended with his
+creations and utilized for operatic purposes, history might be searched
+in vain for a better subject than Hoffmann. He was jurist, court
+councillor, romancer, caricaturist, scene painter, theatrical manager,
+and musical composer. In several ways he is living in the musical annals
+to-day. His opera, "Undine," is forgotten, though it was highly praised
+by Carl Maria von Weber, who had not feared soundly to abuse Beethoven;
+but his literary creation, the Chapelmaster Kreissler, lives in
+Schumann's "Kreissleriana," and other conceits of his filtered through
+Jean Paul, in other compositions by the same master. His criticisms,
+though cast in fantastic form, opened the eyes of many to the beauties
+of Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven. His admiration for Mozart went to such
+an extreme that he cast aside part of his baptismal name in order to
+substitute for it one of the given names of his hero--Amadeus. Of this
+admiration neither Offenbach nor his librettists were unaware, for
+when Hoffmann and Nicklausse come into the tavern where the roystering
+students greet them, in the prologue, they are still so full of the
+opera "Don Giovanni," to which they had just been listening, that
+Nicklausse quotes the words of Leporello's first song, and Offenbach
+reverently quotes the music.
+
+Let no one think that the production of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" was in
+any way analogous with the operetta performances with which Mr. Conried
+lowered the status of the Metropolitan Opera House when he performed
+"Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" at his benefits. No serious
+reader of mine will expect to see in this place dispraise of the genius
+of Johann Strauss; but the works mentioned are operettas in form and
+in spirit, while "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" was conceived in an entirely
+different vein, and shows the musician who composed it in a character
+that no one would dream was his who knew him only as the composer of the
+Bouffes Parisiens. It is a pathetic, but also lovely, document in proof
+of the fact that with all his frivolity he wanted to die at least in the
+odor of artistic sanctity. The piquant rhythms and prettily superficial
+melodies of his musical farces were a perfect reflex of the careless
+art-feeling of his day, just as the farces themselves were admirably
+adjusted to the taste of the boulevardiers who basked in the sunshine of
+Napoleon the Little, and laughed uproariously while their Emperor and
+their social institutions were being castigated by the cynical German
+Jew and his librettists. "He was the Beethoven of the sneer," said Émil
+Bergerat, when Offenbach died, and then with a fantastic pencil worthy
+of the caricaturist Hoffmann himself, he drew a dreadful picture of
+Offenbach and his times; of the mighty fiddler beating time upon the
+well-filled goatskin and sawing away across the strings, his mouth
+widened with a grin "like some drunken conception of Edgar Poe's, or
+some fantasy of Hoffmann, while the startled birds flew back to heaven,
+the moon split herself back to her ears, and the stars giggled behind
+their cloud-fans." The planetary system only revolved to frisky rhythms,
+and the earth herself, like a mad top, hummed comically about the
+horrified sun. En avant la musique! and the old edifice crumbled in dust
+around the musician. To Bergerat Offenbach was the great disillusioner
+of the age, the incarnation of what he conceived to be the spirit of the
+nineteenth century, a spirit that hated and contemned the past, mocked
+at the things which the simplicity of preceding centuries held sacred,
+threw ridicule upon social sentiments, rank, caste, ceremonialism,
+learning, and religion.
+
+The composer of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" is nothing of this. The opera
+was the child of his old age. He loved it, and labored over its score
+for years. It is full of lovely melody (the barcarolle of the second act
+will always exert a potent and lovely influence) fluent from beginning
+to end, and rich in dramatic characterization. No one is likely to
+listen to the trio at the culmination of the third act (that dealing
+with the fate of a singer's daughter) without realizing what a really
+admirable power of expression was that which Offenbach, for reasons
+explained by the spirit of the times and his own moral nature, chose
+to squander so many years on his opéras bouffes. Frequently the melodic
+line in the opera rises to admirable heights; always melody, harmony,
+and orchestration are refined, unless a burlesque effect is aimed at,
+as in the ballad of "Kleinzack," and Nicklausse's song of the doll.
+Offenbach's opera had its first performance on November 14, 1907, the
+cast being as follows:
+
+
+  Olympia ...................................... Zepilli
+  Giulietta .................................... Jomelli
+  Antonia ...................................... Borello
+  Nicklausse ............................... De Cisneros
+  A Voice ..................................... Giaconia
+  Hoffman ..................................... Dalmorès
+  Cornelius   |
+  Dappertutto |
+  Dr. Miracle | ................................. Renaud
+  Spalanzni |
+  Grespel   | ................................. Gilibert
+  Lindorff   |
+  Schlemihl  | .................................. Crabbe
+  Cochenille    |
+  Pitichinaccio | ................................ Daddi
+  Frantz ............................... Gianoli-Galetti
+  Hermann .................................. Reschiglian
+  Nathaniel .................................. Venturini
+  Luther ...................................... Fossetta
+            Conductor, Cleofonte Campanini
+
+
+On November 25, 1907, Mr. Hammerstein brought forward Massenet's
+"Thaïs," to signalize the first appearance in America of Miss Mary
+Garden. The opera was produced with the following cast:
+
+
+  Thaïs ....................................... Mary Garden
+  Crobyle ........................................ Trentini
+  Myrtale ........................................ Giaconia
+  Albine .................................. Gerville-Reache
+  Athanaël ......................................... Renaud
+  Nicias ......................................... Cazouran
+  Palemon .......................................... Mugnoz
+  Un Serviteur ................................ Reschiglian
+                       Conductor, Campanini
+
+
+With this work French opera won its second triumph. The charm of Miss
+Garden's personality was felt, but her singing compelled less tribute,
+and though the opera had seven representations before the departure of
+M. Renaud compelled its withdrawal, its success was due much more to him
+than to his fair companion. The Thaïs of MM. Gallet and Massenet is not
+the Thaïs of classical story, who induced Alexander to burn the palace
+of the Persian kings at Persepolis--"who like another Helen, fired
+another Troy"--but she is of her tribe. Also of the tribe of Phryne,
+Laïs, and Messalina, who live in history and in art because of their
+beauty and their pruriency, their loveliness and licentiousness. The
+operatic Thaïs is the invention of Anatole France, who borrowed her
+name for a courtesan of Alexandria some centuries after the historic
+woman lived. With the help of suggestions borrowed from the stories of
+innumerable saints who fled from the vicious world into the desert,
+and industriously cultivated sanctity and bodily filth, of converted
+trollops and holy Anthonys, he constructed a tale of how one of these
+desert saints, filled with ardor to save the soul of a cyprian who
+had the gay world of Alexandria at her feet, went to her, persuaded
+her to put her sinful life behind her, enter the retreat of a saintly
+sisterhood and die in grace, while he, falling at the last into the
+clutches of carnal lust, repented of his good deed and wrought his own
+damnation. Changing the name of the unfortunate zealot from Paphnuce to
+Athanaël, M. Louis Gallet made an opera-book out of France's story, and
+Massenet set it to music. It is a delectable story, but it fell into the
+hands of master craftsmen, and the admirers of "art for art's sake" and
+at any cost, have cause to rejoice at the treatment which it received.
+Glimpses into the life of the frowsy fraternity of cenobites, and
+fragments of their doleful canticles are not engaging in themselves, but
+they are fine foils to pictures of antique vice and the songs and dances
+of classic voluptuaries. There are splendid dramatic potentialities for
+those who like such things and those who find profit in exploiting in
+the juxtaposition cheek by jowl of saintliness and sin; of Christian
+hymning and harlotry; of virtue in a physical wrestle with vice, and
+coming out triumphant, but handing the palm over to the real victor at
+the end; in the picture of a monk sprinkling the couch of Venus with
+holy water, and decking his cowl with roses.
+
+Also there was a large personal note in the original creation of
+"Thaïs," and there was a large personal note in its reproduction. It is
+not altogether a pleasant one for the lover of real art to listen to.
+Had there been no Sybil Sanderson, it is doubtful if Massenet would ever
+have been directed to the subject. True, he had shown a predilection
+for frail women as his heroines before, as witness Marie Magdalen, Eve,
+Herodias, and Manon Lescaut; but in the works which exploited these
+women the personal equation did not enter so far as the world knows or
+the printed page discloses. But when he wrote "Thaïs" it was neither
+histrionic nor musical art that be aimed primarily to exploit, but the
+physical charms of an individual. Something was needed for the jaded
+boulevardiers of Paris to leer at while they feebly clapped their hands
+and piped "Ah, charmante! Ravissante!" It may be that the fine command
+of Oriental color which is supposed to have affinity in the idioms of
+music with voluptuousness in all its forms, had something to do with
+the case, but the whole structure of the piece, superb as it is in its
+contrasting elements, and theatrically ingenious and effective, points
+nevertheless to the unfortunate Sanderson. And in the same way its
+Parisian revival points to Madame Cavalieri and Miss Garden, and its
+American production to the latter. For the sake of gifted singers and
+accomplished actors merely, the opera was not created, and will not
+be kept alive. It rests for its success on the kind of argument which
+Phryne, of classic story, presented to her austere judges.
+
+The brilliancy of the play, its masterly handling of contrasts equally
+gratifying to the scenic artist, the actor, and the composer, challenged
+admiration and won it in large measure at the Manhattan performances.
+From the ordinary theatrical point of view it would not be easy to pick
+a quarrel with the drama. It would be almost churlish when there is so
+much to be grateful for, to pick flaws in M. Massenet's score. In the
+first place, compared with the vast volume of stuff poured forth by
+his younger colleagues of Italy, and even by some of his confrères of
+France, it makes appeal for approval by its evidences of consummate
+technical mastery. It never trickles; it never grows stagnant; it never
+gropes; it never fails for want of matter and manner in utterance.
+Its current is smooth and self-reliant. It carries action and scene
+buoyantly and unceasingly, even if it does not always expound them
+deeply or give them adequate external adornment. When it has no real
+warmth it simulates it admirably. Its texture is well-knit. There is
+purpose, not deep, not long-sustained, but, so far as it goes, logical,
+in the composer's application of the system of typical or representative
+phrases. There is, too, a measure of appositeness in the structure and
+character of his themes--the themes of asceticism, of Athanaël, of
+Thaïs. There is mastery of local color which makes the composer's use
+of Oriental tints as dramatically appropriate as it is engaging in all
+the scenes of ancient profligacy which fill the center of the artist's
+canvas.
+
+M. Massenet's orchestra is an active agent in the development of the
+drama, and the episodes in which it becomes dominant are not pauses
+in the action created because of a felt need for something besides an
+undercurrent for the inane chatter of dialogue; instead they carry on
+the psychological action, the concealed drama which is playing on the
+stage of the hearts of the people concerned in the story. There is
+fitness in the interlude, in which Thaïs disposes herself to reproduce
+the pantomime of the loves of Aphrodite and Adonis, and a pretty touch
+of significance in the reminiscence of the music which had disturbed
+Athanaël's dream in the first act. There is more than mere musical
+charm in the intermezzo which follows the scene in which the monk wakes
+into life the conscience of the courtesan. She has defied him to the
+last, but the struggle in her soul has begun, and while he sleeps on
+the steps of her house the progress and outcome of the struggle are
+portrayed in the instrumental number which Massenet has called a
+"Religious Meditation." In itself it is not unlike scores of pieces
+similarly intituled, but it is made significant by its introduction of
+the theme of Thaïs in a chastened mood, in the garb of solemn gravity;
+and the melody of the violin solo, borne up by almost indefinable
+harmonies, and floated by harp arpeggios, recurs again before the death
+scene of Thaïs to delineate her ecstasy and Athanaël's despair. Though
+the intermezzo, thus admirably motived, marks the highest flight of
+Massenet's genius in this opera, there are many other pages in the score
+which might be chosen for praise. Enough that while the admirers of
+"Manon" and "Werther" are not likely to find the music of those operas
+equaled, they will yet find much to fascinate them in "Thaïs."
+
+I have said, in effect, that the chief triumph in the performance
+of Massenet's opera was won by M. Renaud. Miss Garden had, indeed,
+established herself as a popular favorite, but it was not until the
+production of Charpentier's "Louise," on January 3, 1908, an opera with
+which her name was more intimately associated in popular report, that
+it could be said without qualification that French opera had won its
+battle. The principal parts in this opera were distributed amongst Mr.
+Hammerstein's singers thus:
+
+
+  Louise ..................................... Miss Mary Garden
+  Julien .................................. M. Charles Dalmorès
+  Mother of Louise ...................... Mme. Bressler-Gianoli
+  Father of Louise ........................ M. Charles Gilibert
+  Irma ................................... Mlle. Alice Zeppilli
+  Camille ..................................... Mlle. Morichini
+  Gertrude ..................................... Mlle. Giaconia
+  Suzanne ............................... Mlle. Helene Koelling
+  King of the Fools .............................. M. Venturini
+  A Ragpicker .................................. M. Reschiglian
+  A Junkman ......................................... M. Mugnoz
+  Elise            |
+  A Street Sweeper | ........................... Mlle. Severina
+  A Street Arab ................................ Mlle. Trentini
+  An Apprentice ................................. Mlle. Sigrist
+              Conductor, Campanini
+
+
+"Louise" had made a great noise, both in a literal and figurative
+sense, during the greater part of the preceding eight years. It had
+made the rounds of the principal opera houses on the European continent,
+but most of the noise came from Paris, and among those who sat in
+Mr. Hammerstein's boxes and stalls on the occasion of its American
+production there were many who had already made the acquaintance of the
+work at the Opéra Comique, in the French capital. It is likely that
+their interest in the performance was mingled more or less with curious
+questionings touching the attitude which local opera-lovers would assume
+toward it. There is a vast difference in the mood in which Americans go
+to public entertainments in Paris and at home. In a sense, though not a
+large or dignified one, the tragic element in the story of Charpentier's
+opera is universal; but its representation is in every particular
+the most local and circumscribed of any opera ever written. I am not
+disposed to waste much time or space in a discussion of things to
+which the patrons of our playhouses have often exhibited a callous
+indifference. It is only to justify a hurried analysis of the artistic
+nature of the work that attention is called to some of its essential
+characteristics. "Louise" is not a French opera, though its score is
+French, its people speak French, and its music echoes French measures
+when it is original, and also when borrowed or imitated. "Louise" is
+Parisian in its gaiety, its passions, its vulgarity, and its artistic
+viciousness. If music could in itself give expression to ethical ideas,
+it would also be proper to say that this score is Parisian in its
+immorality. Coupled with its story, which glorifies the licentiousness
+of Paris and makes mock of virtue, the sanctity of the family tie, and
+the institutions upon which social stability and human welfare have
+ever rested and must forever rest, the music may also be set down as
+immoral. Certain it is that there is nothing in it that is spiritually
+uplifting, and as little that makes for gentleness and refinement of
+artistic taste. It is not French in the historic sense, because it
+rudely tramples upon all the esthetic principles for which the French
+composers, from Lully to the best of Charpentier's contemporaries have
+stood--elegance, grace, and beauty of expression.
+
+It is, however, characteristic of the times--characteristic in subject
+and in utterance. To the intellectual and moral anarchism universally
+prevalent among the peoples of Western culture, which desires to
+have idealism outraged, sacred things ridiculed, high conceptions of
+beauty and duty dragged into the gutter, and ugliness, brutality, and
+bestiality placed upon a pedestal so long as a consuming thirst for
+things hot in the mouth may be slaked, it makes a strong appeal. To
+Mr. Hammerstein its success meant much. It was a reward for another
+exhibition of a bold and adventurous spirit; of his skill in gathering
+together a band of artists splendidly capable of presenting the works
+which he was trying to make the prop of a new lyric theater in the
+American metropolis; of a daringly enterprising purpose to make all
+the elements of his new productions harmonious and alluring--the stage
+pictures, the action, the singing, and the instrumental music. This
+achievement he accomplished when not only the large and striking
+features of the opera--its scenic outfit, its pictures of popular
+carousal on the heights of Montmartre, the roystering realism of the
+scene in a dressmakers' shop, the splendid acting of Miss Garden and
+Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, the fine singing of M. Dalmorès, and the more
+than superb acting and singing of M. Gilibert--found their complement
+in the finish of a hundred little details, insignificant in themselves,
+but singularly potent in helping to create the atmosphere without which
+"Louise" would be little better than Bowery melodrama,--a play that
+would be a hundred times more effective if its hero and heroine were
+represented as living in Williamsburg, swelling at the spectacle of
+the lights spanning the East River, and longing for the fleshpots of
+the so-called "Tenderloin District" in New York.
+
+The story of "Louise," in brief, is that of a sewing-girl who lives with
+her parents on Montmartre, up to which, night after night, blink and
+beckon the lights of the gay city. An artist, who is her neighbor, wooes
+her and offers marriage, but her parents, a harsh, unsympathetic mother
+and a tender-hearted father, are rigid in their objections to him
+because of his insufficient means and loose character. Her lover lures
+her out of her workshop, and, after he has inculcated in her the
+doctrine of free love and free life, she leaves her parents to consort
+with him. The artist's jovial companions make her queen of a Montmartre
+festival for a purpose wholly extraneous to the story, but one that
+serves the composer, who is his own librettist, and in the midst of the
+merrymaking the mother appears and pleads with the girl to return to her
+home to comfort her dying father. Her lover permits her to do so on her
+promise to return to him. At home her father entreats her to give up her
+life of dishonor. She listens to him petulantly. The music of a fête in
+the city below, voices calling her from a distance, and the flashing
+lights in the great city below, throw her into a frantic ecstasy; she
+sings of her love and calls to her lover. The mother thinks her mad,
+but the father drives her out of the house, only to repent and call
+after her a moment later. But she is gone, and the drama ends with the
+father shaking his fist at the city, and shrieking at it his hatred
+and detestation.
+
+The thoughts of opera-goers will naturally revert to "La Bohème"; but
+there are many points of difference between the story which Puccini's
+librettist pieced together out of Mürger's tales of bohemian life more
+than half a century ago, and this one of to-day. The differences are all
+in favor of the earlier opera. It was in a letter written by Lafcadio
+Hearn to me that he called attention to the fact that under the levity
+of Mürger's picturesque bohemianism there was apparent a serious
+philosophy, which had an elevating effect upon the characters of the
+romance. "They followed one principle faithfully,--so faithfully that
+only the strong survived the ordeal,--never to abandon the pursuit of an
+artistic vocation for any other occupation, however lucrative, not even
+when she remained apparently deaf and blind to her worshipers." There is
+very little in Puccini's opera to justify this observation, but the
+significant fact remains that throughout the dramatic development of the
+piece the bohemian artists and their careless companions grow in the
+sympathy of the audience. For one thing, there is no questioning their
+sincerity. For this there is only one parallel in Charpentier's opera.
+There is, in fact, only one really dramatic character in it. It is that
+of the father; in him there is honest, human feeling, a tenderness and
+love which yield only to a moment of passion when he is perplexed in the
+extreme and at a moment when the last drop of sympathy for Louise has
+oozed away. Her tender regard for her father is pathetic in the first
+act, where it is set against the foil of her mother's harshness. In
+the last act, however, she is petulant, irascible, and cold, until the
+moment of frenzy, when she surrenders to the call of Paris and her
+wretched passion. Julien is scantily and unconvincingly sketched. There
+is little indeed even to indicate sincerity in his love for Louise; at
+first, while she sings of the ecstasy of first love, he calmly reads a
+book; and when he responds, it is to invoke her to join him in a paean
+in praise, not of their love, but of Paris. Does she find him, when she
+rushes down the stairs, pursued by her father's broken-hearted calls?
+One can feel no certainty on the point. The last impression is only
+that she has gone to plunge into the flood of wickedness, never to be
+seen again.
+
+It was said some years ago, when "Louise" was celebrating its first
+triumphs, that the opera was the first number of a projected trilogy,
+and that Charpentier would tell us the rest of the story of the
+sewing-girl in other operas. But the years have passed, the composer
+has grown rich and is giving no sign. Instead, there is an organized
+"Louise" propaganda in Paris. Funds are raised to send the working girls
+of the city to the opera in droves, there to hear the alluring call to
+harlotry, under the pretense that the agonies of the father will preach
+a moral lesson.
+
+There are dramatic strength and homogeneity only in the first and last
+acts of the opera. The scenes between are shreds and patches, invented
+to give local color to the story. In the original form the picture
+of low life at dawn on Montmartre, in which charwomen, scavengers,
+ragpickers, street sweepers, milkwomen, policemen, and others figure,
+was enlivened by a mysterious personage called Le Noctambule, who
+proclaimed himself to be the soul of the city--the Pleasure of Paris.
+It was a part of the symbolism which we are asked also to find in the
+flitting visions of low life and the echoes of street cries in the
+music. But it was a note out of key, and Mr. Campanini eliminated it,
+with much else of the local color rubbish. And yet it is in the use of
+this local color that nearly all that is original and individual in the
+score consists. Until we reach the final scene of the father's wild
+anguish there is very little indeed that is striking in the music,
+except that which is built up out of the music of the street. We hear
+echoes of the declamatory style of the young Italian veritists in the
+dialogue, much that is more than suggestive of the mushy sentimentality
+of the worst of Gounod and Massenet in the moments when the music
+attempts the melodic vein, and no end of Wagnerian orchestration in the
+instrumental passages which link the scenes together. Some of this music
+is orchestrated with great beauty and discretion, like the preludes, but
+all that is conceived to accompany violent emotion is only fit to "tear
+a cat in" or to "make all split." The score, in fact, is chiefly a
+triumph of reflection, of ingenious workmanship, and there is scarcely
+a moment in the opera that takes strong hold of the fancy, for which
+the memory does not immediately supply a model, either dramatic or
+musical, or both. Wagner's marvelous close of the second act of "Die
+Meistersinger," with the night watchman walking through the quiet
+streets flooded with moonlight, singing his monotonous chant, is feebly
+mimicked at the close of the first scene of the second act of "Louise,"
+when, all the characters of the play having disappeared, an Old Clothes
+Man comes down a staircase crying his dolorous (all the street cries
+are strangely melancholy) "Marchand d'habits! Avez-vous des habits a
+vendr'?" while from the distance arise the cries of the dealers in
+birdseed and artichokes. The spinning scene in "The Flying Dutchman,"
+which reproduces a custom of vast antiquity, is replaced in "Louise"
+with a scene in the dressmaker's workshop, in which the chatter of the
+girls and the antics of the comédienne are borne up by the music of the
+orchestra, with the click-click of the sewing machines to make up for
+the melodious hum of Wagner's spinning wheels. Puccini's bohemians meet
+in front of the Café Momus, enlivened by the passing incidents of a
+popular fête; Charpentier's bohemians celebrate the crowning of the Muse
+of Montmartre with a carnival gathering and ballet. It is this fête, we
+fancy, which formed the nucleus around which Charpentier built his work.
+Twice before "Louise" was brought forward he had utilized the ideas of
+the popular festival at which a working girl was crowned and made the
+center of a procession of roysterers, and a musical score with themes
+taken from the noises of Paris. His "Couronnement de la Muse," composed
+for a Montmartre festival, was performed at Lille in 1898; from Rome he
+sent to Paris along with his picturesque orchestral piece, "Impressions
+d'Italie," a symphonic drama, "La Vie du Poète," for soli, chorus,
+and orchestra, in which he introduced "all the noises and echoes of a
+Montmartre festival, with its low dancing rooms, its drunken cornets,
+its hideous din of rattles, the wild laughter of bands of revelers, and
+the cries of hysterical women." But even here M. Charpentier is original
+in execution only, not in plan. There is scarcely a public library in
+the large cities of Europe and America which does not contain a copy
+of Georges Kastner's "Les Voix de Paris," with its supplement, "Cris
+de Paris," a "Symphonie humoristique," with its themes drawn from the
+cries of the peripatetic hucksters and street venders of the French
+Capital; and as if that were not enough, historic records and traditions
+trace the use of street cries as musical material back to the sixteenth
+century. There seems even to have been a possibility that a "Ballet des
+Cris de Paris" furnished forth an entertainment in which the Grand
+Monarch himself assisted, for the court of Louis XIV.
+
+French opera had won its battle; but even now, the way was not wholly
+clear and open, for the successful operas were too few and their
+repetition caused some grumbling.
+
+At this critical moment the star of Luisa Tetrazzini rose in London
+and threw its glare over all the operatic world. Two years before
+Mr. Conried had engaged the singer while she was in California, but
+had failed to bind the contract by depositing a guarantee with her
+banker. He failed, it is said, because when he wanted to complete the
+negotiations he could not find her. Mr. Hammerstein also negotiated
+with her for the season of 1906-07, so he said, but she proved elusive.
+Neither of the managers felt any loss at his failure to secure her. The
+London excitement may have set Mr. Conried to thinking; Mr. Hammerstein
+it stirred to action. On December 1st he announced that he had engaged
+her for the season of 1908-09, and hoped to have her for a few
+performances before the end of the season of 1907-08. A fortnight later
+he proclaimed that she would effect her New York entrance on January
+15th, and that he had secured her for fifteen representations in the
+current season, with the privilege of adding to their number. Mr.
+Conried threatened proceedings by injunction, but his threats were
+brutum fulmen; she made her début on the specified date in "La
+Traviata," and when the season closed she had added seven performances
+(one in Philadelphia) to the fifteen originally contemplated. In New
+York she sang five times in "Traviata," eight times in "Lucia," once
+in "Dinorah," three times in "Rigoletto," three times in "Crispino e
+la Comare," and once in a "mixed bill." She was rapturously acclaimed
+by the public and a portion of the press. It is useless to discuss
+the phenomenon. The whims of the populace are as unquestioning and
+as irresponsible as the fury of the elements. That was seen in the
+Tetrazzini craze in New York and in London; it was seen again in the
+reception given to that musically and dramatically amorphous thing,
+"Pelléas et Mélisande." This was as completely bewildering to the
+admirers of the melodrama as to those who are blind and deaf to its
+attractions. It should have been more so, for it is more difficult to
+affect to enjoy "Pelléas et Mélisande" than to yield to the qualities
+which dazzle in the singing of Tetrazzini. Nevertheless, "Pelléas et
+Mélisande" had seven performances within five weeks.
+
+Debussy's opera was performed for the first time on February 19, 1908,
+the parts being distributed as follows:
+
+
+  Arkël ........................................ M. Arimondi
+  Pelléas ........................................ M. Perier
+  Golaud ....................................... M. Dufranne
+  Mélisande .................................... Miss Garden
+  Yniold ..................................... Mlle. Sigrist
+  Geneviéve ........................... Mme. Gerville-Reache
+  Un Médecin ..................................... M. Crabbe
+        Conductor, Sig. Campanini
+
+
+The production of "Pelléas et Mélisande" was the most venturesome
+experiment that Mr. Hammerstein had yet made and the one most difficult
+to explain on any ground save the belief that a French novelty, no
+matter what its character or its merits, would win profitable patronage
+in New York at the moment. There was nothing in the history of the work
+itself to inspire the confidence that it would make a potent appeal to
+the tastes of the opera-lovers of New York. Nowhere outside of Paris
+had it gained a foothold, and its success in Paris was like that which
+any esthetic cult or pose may secure if diligently and ingeniously
+exploited. Mr. Hammerstein knew this and he had seen the work at the
+Opéra Comique. It could not have escaped his discerning mind that only
+a small element in the population of even so cosmopolitan a city as
+New York could by any possibility possess the intellectual and esthetic
+qualifications necessary to enthusiastic appreciation of the qualities,
+not to say merits, of the work. These qualifications are quite as much
+negative as they are positive. It is not enough to the appreciation of
+"Pelléas et Mélisande" that the listener shall understand French. He
+must have a taste--and this must be an acquired one, since it cannot
+be born in him--for the French of M. Maeterlinck's infantile plays,
+"Pelléas et Mélisande" being on the border-line between the marionette
+drama and that designed for the consumption of mature minds. He must,
+moreover, have joined the inner brotherhood of symbol worshipers, and
+be able to discern how it is that the world-old story of the union of
+December and May, of blooming youth and crabbed age with its familiar
+(and, as some poets and romancers would have us believe, inevitable)
+consequences, can be enhanced by much chatter about crowns and rings
+dropped into wells, white-haired beggars lying in a cave, stagnant and
+mephitic pools, fluttering doves, departing ships, kings who lose their
+way while hunting and are dashed against trees at twelve o'clock, maids
+who know not whence they came or why they are weeping, and a whole
+phantasmagoria more, out of all proportion to the simple incidents of
+the tragedy itself.
+
+This so far as the literary side of the matter is concerned. On
+the musical much more is demanded. He must recognize unrhythmical,
+uncadenced, disjointed, and ejaculatory prose dialogue, with scarcely a
+lyrical moment in it, as a fit vehicle for music. He must not only be
+willing to forego vocal melody, but even the semblance of melody also
+in the instrumental music upon which the dialogue floats; for everybody
+knows since the Wagnerian drama came into being that words which are in
+themselves incapable of melodious flow may be the cause of melody in the
+orchestral music which accompanies them. [There is here no allusion to
+tune in the conventional sense, tune made up of motive, phrase, period
+and section, but to a well modulated succession of musical intervals,
+expressing a feeling or illustrating a mood.] He who would enjoy the
+musical integument of this play must have cultivated a craving for
+dissonance in harmony and find relish in combinations of tones that
+sting and blister and pain and outrage the ear. He must have learned
+to contemn euphony and symmetry, with its benison of restfulness, and
+to delight in monotony of orchestral color, monotony of mood, monotony
+of dynamics, and monotony of harmonic device.
+
+It is not at all likely that Mr. Hammerstein expected to find a
+sufficient number of opera-goers thus strangely constituted among
+the patrons of his establishment to justify him in the astonishing
+exhibition of enterprise or venturesomeness illustrated by the
+production of "Pelléas et Mélisande" with artists brought especially
+from Paris only because they had been concerned in the Parisian
+performances, with new scenery, and at the cost of much money and labor
+spent in the preparation. It is therefore safe to assume that he counted
+on the potent power of public curiosity touching a well-advertised
+thing. He had fared well with Mme. Tetrazzini in presenting operas which
+represent everything that "Pelléas et Mélisande" is not. In this he had
+much encouragement. He played boldly, and won.
+
+"Pelléas et Mélisande" as it came from the hands of M. Maeterlinck, and
+in the only form which the author recognizes, had been presented in
+New York in an English version. What has been said above about the
+qualifications of him who would rise to an enjoyment of the music with
+which Debussy has consorted it ought to serve also to characterize that
+music. Nothing has been exaggerated, nothing set down in a spirit of
+illiberality. No student of music can be ignorant of the fact that the
+art, being a pure projection of the human will, is necessarily always
+in a state of flux, and in its nature, within the limitations that
+bound all the manifestations of beauty, lawless. M. Debussy might have
+proclaimed and illustrated that fact without in his capacity of a
+critical writer having sought to throw odium on dead masters who were
+better than he and living contemporaries who are at least older. The
+little Parisian community who pass the candied stick of mutual praise
+from mouth to mouth would nevertheless have given him their plaudits. In
+his proclamation of the principles of musical composition as applied to
+the drama he has proclaimed principles as old as opera. It needed no man
+who has outlived the diatonic scale to tell us that vocal music should
+be written in accordance with the rhythm and accents of the words, and
+that dramatic music should be an integral element of the drama, or, as
+he puts it, be "the atmosphere through which dramatic emotion radiates."
+The Florentine inventors of monody told us that, Gluck echoed them,
+Wagner re-enunciated the principle, and no modern composer has dreamed
+of denying its validity. The only question is whether or not such
+admirable results have been attained by M. Debussy; whether his music
+sweetens or intensifies or vitalizes the play. That question must be
+answered by the individual hearer. No one should be ashamed to proclaim
+his pleasure in four hours of uninterrupted, musically inflected speech
+over a substratum of shifting harmonies, each with its individual tang
+and instrumental color; but neither should anybody be afraid to say that
+nine-tenths of the music is a dreary monotony because of the absence
+of what to him stands for musical thought. Let him admit or deny, as
+he sees fit, that the principle of symphonic development is a proper
+concomitant of the musical drama, but let him also say whether or
+not what to some appears a flocculent, hazy web of dissonant sounds,
+now acrid, now bitter-sweet, maundering along from scene to scene,
+unrelieved by a single pregnant melodic phrase, stirs within him the
+emotions awakened by a union of melody, harmony, and rhythm, either in
+the old conception or the new. Debussy has had his fling at Wagner and
+his system of construction in the lyric drama; yet he adopts his system
+of musical symbols, It is almost a humiliation to say it. There is
+sea music and forest music in "Pelléas et Mélisande." What a flight
+of gibbering phantoms there would be if the fluttering of Tristan's
+pennants or the "hunt's up" of King Mark's horns could be heard even
+for a moment!
+
+It would be difficult accurately and honestly to say what was the
+verdict of the audience touching the merit of the work; concerning
+the performance there was never a question. The first three acts were
+followed by a respectful patter of applause. When Mr. Campanini came
+into the orchestra to begin the fourth act he received an ovation
+which was both spontaneous and cordial. The dramatic climax, which is
+accompanied by superb music of its kind, is reached in the scene of
+Pelléas's killing at the end of the fourth act. This stirred up hearty
+enthusiasm, and after all the artists, Mr. Campanini, and the stage
+manager had shared in the expression of enthusiastic gratitude, Mr.
+Hammerstein was brought before the curtain. He made a brief speech,
+saying that by its appreciation of the opera, with its poetical beauty
+and musical grandeur, New York had set itself down as the most highly
+cultivated city in the world, and that for himself the only purpose he
+had had in producing it was to endear himself to the city's people!
+Would that one dared to exclaim: "O sancta simplicitas!"
+
+Mr. Hammerstein did not perform all the novelties which he had promised
+in his prospectus, but to make good the loss he brought forward two
+operas, one a complete novelty, which he had not promised. This was
+Giordano's "Siberia." More surprising was the fact that only one day
+before the close of the season he produced the same composer's "Andrea
+Chenier" under circumstances which made the occasion a gala one for
+Signor Cleofonte Campanini, the energetic and capable director who
+more than anyone else had made the marvelous achievements of the
+Manhattan company possible. The production of "Andrea Chenier" was not
+contemplated when Mr. Hammerstein came forth in the summer with his
+official announcement of the season; it had, however, been promised
+by Mr. Conried, who seems to have found that the production of two
+novelties of a vastly inferior kind taxed to the limit the resources of
+the proud establishment in Broadway. There it was permitted to slumber
+on with "Otello," "Der Freischütz," and "Das Nachtlager von Granada,"
+whose titles graced Mr. Conried's prospectus. That circumstance may
+have had something to do with Mr. Hammerstein's resolve at the eleventh
+hour to add it to the list of five other new productions which he had
+already placed to his credit. If so, he gave no indication of the fact
+but permitted the announcement to go out that the performance was a
+compliment to Signor Campanini and his wife, who, as Signora Tetrazzini,
+had retired from the operatic stage after singing in the opera three
+years before. Incidentally the circumstance appealed to whatever
+feelings of gratitude the patrons of the Manhattan Opera House felt
+toward Signor Campanini and also to the popular curiosity to hear a
+sister of the Tetrazzini whose coming to the opera was the season's
+chief sensation.
+
+The occasion was well calculated to set the beards of memory mongers to
+wagging. Those who could recall some of the minor incidents of a
+quarter-century earlier remembered that the indefatigable director of
+to-day was a modest maestro di cembalo at the Metropolitan in its
+first season, and on a few occasions when his famous brother Italo
+Campanini sang was permitted to try his "prentice hand" at conducting.
+Next they recalled that four years later, when that brother made an
+unlucky venture as impresario and sought to rouse the people of New York
+to enthusiasm with a production of Verdi's "Otello" it was Cleofonte
+Campanini who was the conductor of the company and Signorina Eva
+Tetrazzini who was the prima donna. The original American production
+of "Andrea Chenier" took place at the Academy of Music on November 13,
+1896. At the revival on March 27, 1908, the parts were distributed as
+follows:
+
+
+  Maddalena de Coigny ................. Mme. Tetrazzini-Campanini
+  Andrea Chenier ..................................... Sig. Bassi
+  Carlo Gerard ................................... Sig. Sainmarco
+  Contessa de Coigny ............................ Sig'ra Giaconia
+  Bersi ......................................... Sig'ra Seppilli
+  Madelon ...................................... Mme. De Cisneros
+  Roucher ........................................... Sig. Crabbe
+  Fouquier-Tinville ............................... Sig. Arimondi
+  A Story Writer         |
+  Mathieu, a sansculotte | ................. Sig. Gianoli-Galetti
+  An Incroyable .................................. Sig. Venturini
+  Abbé ............................................... Sig. Daddi
+  Schmidt, a jailor ............................... Sig. Fossetta
+  Major Domo ................................... Sig. Reschiglian
+  Dumas, president of the tribunal .................. Sig. Mugnoz
+                      Conductor,  Sig. Campanini
+
+
+"Siberia" was performed on February 5, 1908, with the following cast:
+
+
+  Stephana ................................... Sig'ra Agostinelli
+  La Fanciulla .................................. Sig'ra Trentini
+  Nikona ........................................ Sig'ra Zaccaria
+  Vassili ........................................ Sig. Zenatello
+  Gleby ........................................... Sig. Sammarco
+  Walitzin .......................................... Sig. Crabbe
+  Alexis .......................................... Sig. Casauran
+  Ivan         |
+  The Sergeant | ................................. Sig. Venturini
+  The Captain ....................................... Sig. Mugnoz
+  The Invalid .............................. Sig. Gianoli-Galetti
+  Miskinsky .................................... Sig. Reschiglian
+  L'Ispravnik   |
+  The Cossack   |
+  The Inspector | ................................. Sig. Fossetta
+                    Conductor, Sig. Campanini
+
+
+Giordano's opera is an experiment along the lines faintly suggested by
+Mascagni in "Iris," but boldly and successfully drawn by Puccini in
+"Madama Butterfly" and Charpentier in "Louise." The Italian disciples of
+verismo are in full cry after nationalism and local color. A generation
+ago the scenes, the characters, and the subject of an opera were of no
+concern to the composer. His indifference to anachronism was like that
+of Shakespeare, whose stage-folk, whether supposed to be ancient Greeks,
+Romans, or Bretons, were all sixteenth-century Englishmen. When Verdi
+wrote his Egyptian opera he was content with a little splash of
+Orientalism which colors the chant of the priestess in the temple of
+Phtha; the rest of the music is Italian. So the Germans remained German
+in their music, and the Frenchmen continued to speak their own idioms,
+saving a few characteristic rhythms for the incidental ballet. Mascagni
+injected a little twanging of the Japanese samiesen into the music of
+"Iris" but let the effort to obtain local color stop there.
+
+Nevertheless the hint was seized upon by both Giordano and Puccini, and
+apparently at about the same time. The former made an excursion into
+Russia, the latter into Japan; Signor Illica acted as guide for both.
+The more daring of the two was Puccini, for Japan is musically sterile,
+while Russia has a wealth of characteristic folk-song unequaled by
+that of any other country on the face of the earth. Nevertheless there
+is nothing more admirable in the score of "Madama Butterfly" than the
+refined and ingenious skill with which the composer bent the square-toed
+rhythms and monotonous tunes of Japanese music to his purposes.
+
+The dramatic structure of "Siberia" is not strong. Incidents of convict
+life in Siberia which have formed the staple of Russian fiction for
+so long are depended on to awaken interest and provide picturesque
+stage-furniture, while sympathy is asked for the heroine who obtains
+"redemption" by an honest love and a heroic sacrifice. Of course, that
+the requisite degree of piquancy may not be wanting, the martyr is
+a bawd who surrenders the luxuries of St. Petersburg provided by a
+princely lover, to endure the privations of the Siberian mines with that
+lover's successful rival. Only in the "redemption motive," so to speak,
+is there any likeness between the story of the opera and Tolstoi's
+"Resurrection," or the play based on that book which had been seen in
+New York five years before, though the two had been associated in the
+gossip of the theaters. There are three acts. The first, in which the
+young officer Vassili, with whom the heroine Stephana is in love, draws
+his sword against his superior officer, Prince Alexis, and thereby draws
+down on himself the sentence of banishment to the mines, plays in a
+palace in St. Petersburg, which the Prince had given to Stephana, who is
+his mistress. The second act discloses incidents in the journey of the
+convicts through Siberia, Vassili being joined at a station by Stephana,
+who has sacrificed her all to follow him into exile. In the third act
+phases of convict life and customs belonging to the Russian Easter
+festival are disclosed, and there is a resumption of the dramatic story
+which now hurries rapidly to its tragic conclusion. Gleby, the seducer
+of Stephana, is found among a gang of new arrivals at the mines, and the
+governor of the province, who had been among her old admirers, renews
+his protestations of devotion and promises her liberty and a life of
+pleasure. Him she repulses gently and proclaims the joy which Siberia
+has brought to her. Gleby also attempts to regain his old influence over
+her, but is cast aside with contumely. Thereupon he denounces her to the
+community. She and her lover determine to escape but are betrayed and
+the heroine is shot in her attempted flight. She dies "redeemed."
+
+"Siberia" has no overture. In place of an instrumental introduction
+there is a chorus of mujiks, which, Russian in idea as well as in
+harmonization and manner of performance, introduces at once the most
+interesting as it is the most effective element in the score. Without
+this element the opera would be deplorably dull, so far as its music
+is concerned. Giordano's original melody is for the greater part
+commonplace and unexpressive. The dramatic scenes between the lovers in
+each of the acts are passionate only to ears accustomed or willing to
+find passion in strenuousness. Throughout Stephana and Vassili sing as
+the Irishman played the fiddle--by main strength. In the second act
+there is much more to warm the fancy and delight the ear. Here the
+lack of an opening overture is made good by an extended instrumental
+introduction of real beauty and power. In a way the music is both
+meteorological and psychological; it pictures the dreary waste of
+country; it seems to speak of the falling snow and biting frost; but it
+also gives voice to the heavy-heartedness which is the prevailing mood
+of the act. It introduces, too, as a thematic motive, the opening phrase
+of the Russian folk-song which the convicts sing as they enter. This
+melody is one of the gems of Russian folk-song so much admired by the
+composers of the Czar's empire that there are few of them who have not
+put it to artistic use. It is "Ay ouchnem," the song originally created
+for the bargemen of the Volga, who to its sighing and groaning measures,
+with broad straps across their breasts, towed heavy vessels against the
+current of the river. Now it is also used by workmen to assist them in
+the lifting and carrying of burdens. Giordano makes excellent use of it
+at the end as well as at the beginning of the act, though as a direct
+quotation, not for thematic treatment as Puccini uses the Japanese
+themes in his score. This is one of the characteristics of Giordano's
+opera and one which illustrates his inferiority as a musician to his
+more successful rival. In the second act a semi-chorus of women quote
+again from Russian folk-song by singing the melody of the air known to
+all musical folklorists by its German title, "Schöne Minka." In the
+third act there is a Russian Easter canticle which has little of the
+Russian character but makes an agreeable impression upon the popular
+ear by reason of its effective use of bell-chimes. There is another
+folk-melody in the opera which has gained publicity in a manner
+different from that which made "Ay ouchnem" and "Schöne Minka" widely
+known; it is the melody of the "Glory" song--"Slava"--which Beethoven
+used in the scherzo of one of his Rasoumowski Quartets.
+
+The season was not without its humorous incidents. A quarrel of Messrs.
+Conried and Hammerstein over MM. Dalmorès and Gilibert, who were enticed
+away from their old allegiance by Mr. Conried but would not stay
+bought, was one of these. Another was a circular letter sent out by Mr.
+Hammerstein on December 23d, scolding his subscribers because they were
+not coming up to his help against the mighty. The letter caused much
+amused comment amongst the knowing, who asked themselves whether it was
+the scolding of the innocent or the coming of "Louise," Tetrazzini,
+and "Pelléas et Mélisande" which turned the tables in the favor of the
+manager. Mr. Hammerstein seemed to believe that the letter had been
+efficacious.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX I
+
+THREE SEASONS AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE
+
+
+Season 1908-1909
+
+
+The twenty-fourth regular subscription season of grand opera at the
+Metropolitan Opera House began on November 16th, 1908, and ended
+on April 10th, 1909. The subscription was for one hundred regular
+performances in twenty weeks, on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
+evenings, and Saturday afternoons. In their prospectus the directors,
+Messrs. Giulio Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel, announced a change of
+plan in respect of the Saturday night performances which had been given
+for a number of years. Those at the reduced prices which had hitherto
+prevailed were to be limited to the first twelve and the last two weeks
+of the season; the others were to be at regular rates. From the end of
+February till April a series of special performances on Tuesday and
+Saturday nights was projected. Wagner's "Parsifal" was to be reserved
+for the customary holiday performances, and there were to be two
+performances of other works, the proceeds of which were to go into a
+pension and endowment fund, the establishment of which, it was hoped,
+would help to give greater permanency to the working forces of the
+institution. There was a promise of a large increase in the orchestra
+as well as the chorus, not only to give greater brilliancy to the local
+performances, but also to make possible a division of the company, with
+less injury than used to ensue, when it became necessary to give two
+performances on the same day--one in the Metropolitan Opera House and
+one in Philadelphia or Brooklyn as the case might be.
+
+These plans were carried out practically to the letter, Mr.
+Gatti-Casazza reinforcing the Italian side of the house, and Mr. Dippel
+the German, with artists, scenery, and choristers, as each thought
+best, under the supervision of the Executive Committee of the Board of
+Directors of what became the Metropolitan Opera Company as soon as
+that style could be legally adopted. The management found it less easy
+to keep its word in reference to the repertory. Eight novelties were
+promised, viz.: D'Albert's "Tiefland," and Smetana's "The Bartered
+Bride" in German; Catalani's "La Wally," Puccini's "Le Villi," and
+Tschaikowsky's "Pique Dame" in Italian; Laparra's "Habanera" in French;
+Frederick Converse's "Pipe of Desire," and either Goldmark's "Cricket on
+the Hearth," or Humperdinck's "Königskinder" in English. Only the first
+four of these works was produced. A promise that three operas of first
+class importance--Massenet's "Manon," Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," and
+Verdi's "Falstaff"--would be revived was brilliantly redeemed. To the
+subscription season of twenty weeks one week was added for Wagner's
+Nibelung drama and extra performances of "Aïda" and "Madama Butterfly,"
+and Verdi's "Requiem," composed in honor of Manzoni, having been twice
+brilliantly performed in the series of Sunday night concerts which
+extended through the season, was repeated instead of an opera on the
+night of Good Friday. The extra performances, outside of those of
+the last week, were the holiday representations of "Parsifal" on
+Thanksgiving Day, New Year's Day, Lincoln's birthday, and Washington's
+birthday, and benefit performances for the French Hospital, the German
+Press Club, the Music School Settlement, and the Pension and Endowment
+Fund benefit. To the latter one of the Sunday night concerts was also
+devoted. At the operatic benefit performance, as also at a special
+representation at which Mme. Sembrich bade farewell to the operatic
+stage in America (on February 6th, 1909), the program was made up of
+excerpts from various operas--a fact which must be borne in mind (as
+must also the double bills at regular performances) when the following
+tabulated statement of the season's activities is studied. The table
+which now follows gives the list of all the operas performed in the
+order of their production and the number of representations given to
+each in the entire season of twenty-one weeks:
+
+
+   Opera                        First performance       Times
+
+  "Aïda" ......................... November 16 .......... 8
+  "Die Walküre" .................. November 18 .......... 5
+  "Madama Butterfly" ............. November 19 .......... 8
+  "La Traviata" .................. November 20 .......... 5
+  "Tosca" ........................ November 21 .......... 6
+  "La Bohème" .................... November 21 .......... 7
+  "Tiefland" ..................... November 23 .......... 4
+  "Parsifal" ..................... November 26 .......... 5
+  "Rigoletto" .................... November 28 .......... 3
+  "Carmen" ....................... December 3 ........... 6
+  "Faust" ........................ December 5 ........... 7
+  "Götterdämmerung" .............. December 10 .......... 5
+  "Le Villi" ..................... December 17 .......... 5
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ......... December 17 .......... 7
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" .......... December 19 .......... 2
+  "Il Trovatore" ................. December 21 .......... 5
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ........... December 23 .......... 4
+  "L'Elisir d'Amore" ............. December 25 .......... 2
+  "Pagliacci" .................... December 26 .......... 5
+  "La Wally" ..................... January 6 ............ 4
+  "Le Nozze di Figaro" ........... January 13 ........... 6
+  "Die Meistersinger" ............ January 22 ........... 5
+  "Manon" ........................ February 3 ........... 6
+  "Tannhäuser" ................... February 5 ........... 7
+  "The Bartered Bride" ........... February 19 .......... 6
+  "Fidelio" ...................... February 20 .......... 1
+  "Falstaff" ..................... March 20 ............. 3
+  "Don Pasquale" ................. March 24 ............. 1
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ...... March 25 ............. 2
+  "Siegfried" .................... March 27 ............. 2
+  "Das Rheingold" ................ April 5 .............. 1
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+
+  Subscription weeks .......................................... 20
+  Extra week ................................................... 1
+  Regular performances (afternoons and evenings) ............. 120
+  Special representations of the dramas in "Der Ring" .......... 4
+  Special benefit and holiday performances .................... 10
+  Italian operas in the repertory ............................. 17
+  German operas in the repertory .............................. 10
+  French operas in the repertory ............................... 3
+  Bohemian opera in the repertory .............................. 1
+  German representations ...................................... 45
+  Italian representations ..................................... 79
+  French representations ...................................... 19
+  Oratorial performance on opera night ......................... 1
+  Double bills ................................................ 11
+  Mixed bills .................................................. 2
+  Novelties produced ........................................... 4
+
+
+To arrive at the sum of the company's activities there must be added
+fifteen performances given in the new Academy of Music in the Borough
+of Brooklyn; twenty-four performances in the Academy of Music,
+Philadelphia; and four performances in the Lyric Theater, Baltimore.
+Brooklyn and Baltimore were privileged to hear "Hänsel und Gretel,"
+which was denied to the Borough of Manhattan.
+
+There was an unusual number of artists new to New York in the company.
+With Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Italian General Manager, came Arturo
+Toscanini, who, though an Italian, chose Wagner's "Götterdämmerung" as
+the opera in which to make a striking demonstration of his extraordinary
+abilities as a conductor. It was he, too, who prepared the revival of
+"Falstaff" and the production of the two Italian novelties, "Le Villi"
+and "La Wally." His assistant in the Italian department was Signor
+Spetrino, to whom was intrusted the Italian and French operas of lighter
+caliber. Of the two German conductors, Mr. Mahler and Mr. Hertz, neither
+was a newcomer. The former brought about the revival of "Le Nozze di
+Figaro" and the production of "The Bartered Bride," two of the most
+signal successes of the season. Mr. Hertz placed "Tiefland" on the
+stage and added to his long Wagnerian record the first performance
+heard in America of an unabridged "Meistersinger." Singers new to
+the Metropolitan Opera House Company were Miss Emmy Destinn (whose
+engagement had been effected by Mr. Conried some two years before),
+Mmes. Alda, Gay, Di Pasquali, L'Huillier, Ranzenberg, and Flahaut; and
+Messrs. Amato (an admirable barytone), Grassi, Didur (a bass who had
+sung in previous seasons in Mr. Hammerstein's company), Hinckley,
+Feinhals, Schmedes, Jörn, and Quarti.
+
+A painful and pitiful incident of the season was the vocal shipwreck
+suffered by Signor Caruso. After the first week of March he was unable
+to sing because of an affection of his vocal organs. At the last matinée
+of the subscription season and again on the following Wednesday evening,
+he made ill-advised efforts to resume his duties, but the consequences
+were distressful to the connoisseurs and seemed so threatening to his
+physician that it was deemed advisable to relieve him of his obligation
+to go West with the company.
+
+
+Season 1909-1910
+
+
+This, the twenty-fifth subscription season at the Metropolitan Opera
+House, began on November 15th, 1909, and ended on April 2nd, 1910,
+and thus endured twenty weeks. But the twenty weeks of the local
+subscription by no means summed up the activities of the Metropolitan
+company; there was a subscription series of twenty representations in
+the Borough of Brooklyn, a subscription series of two representations
+each week during the continuance of the Metropolitan season at the New
+Theater in the Borough of Manhattan, many special performances, and
+subscription representations in Philadelphia and Baltimore which,
+though they did not belong to the local record must still be mentioned
+because of the influence which they exerted on the local performances.
+The first performance of the company took place in Brooklyn on
+November 8th, and before the season opened at the official home of
+the company representations had also been given in the distant cities
+mentioned which heard twenty performances each. There were also eleven
+performances in Boston, five in January and six in the last week
+of March. After all this there still remained before the company a
+Western tour and a visit to Atlanta, Ga. The season began with a
+proclamation of harmonious cooperation between the General Manager,
+Signor Gatti-Casazza, and the Administrative Manager, Mr. Dippel, and
+ended with what amounted to the dismissal of the latter, who solaced
+himself by accepting the directorship of the Chicago-Philadelphia Opera
+Company, which was called into existence after the principal financial
+backers of the Metropolitan Opera House had retired Mr. Hammerstein
+from the field by the purchase of the opera house which he had built in
+Philadelphia and paid him for abandoning grand opera at the Manhattan
+Opera House in New York, which had been the Metropolitan's rival for
+four years. The season of operas of a lighter character than those given
+at the Metropolitan Opera House which was undertaken at the New Theater,
+a beautiful playhouse built for high purposes by a body of gentlemen
+most of whom were interested in the larger institution, proved to be a
+disastrous failure for reasons which are not to be discussed here, but
+which were not wholly disconnected with the causes which, a year later,
+led to the abandonment of the New Theater to the same uses to which the
+other playhouses of the city are put.
+
+The local season can be most clearly and succinctly set forth in tabular
+form, it being premised that apparent discrepancies between the number
+of meetings and the number of performances are to be explained by the
+fact that frequently two, and sometimes three, works were brought
+forward on one evening or afternoon. These double and triple bills
+came to be very numerous in the last month, when it was found that
+the Russian dancers, Mme. Pavlowa and M. Mordkin, exerted a greater
+attractive power than any opera or combination of singers:
+
+
+SUBSCRIPTION SEASON AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+   Opera                       First performance    Times given
+
+  "La Gioconda" ................. November 15 ......... 5
+  "Otello" ...................... November 17 ......... 6
+  "La Traviata" ................. November 18 ......... 3
+  "Madama Butterfly" ............ November 19 ......... 6
+  "Lohengrin" ................... November 20 ......... 6
+  "La Bohème" ................... November 20 ......... 6
+  "Tosca" ....................... November 22 ......... 6
+  * "Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... November 24 ......... 7
+  * "Pagliacci" ................. November 24 ......... 7
+  "Il Trovatore" ................ November 25 ......... 6
+  "Tristan und Isolde" .......... November 27 ......... 5
+  "Aïda" ........................ December 3 .......... 6
+  "Tannhäuser" .................. December 4 .......... 4
+  "Manon" ....................... December 6 .......... 3
+  "Siegfried" ................... December 16 ......... 2
+  "Orfeo ed Eurydice" ........... December 23 ......... 5
+  "The Bartered Bride" .......... December 24 ......... 1
+  "Faust" ....................... December 25 ......... 5
+  "Rigoletto" ................... December 25 ......... 2
+  "Die Walküre" ................. January 8 ........... 3
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ..... January 15 .......... 3
+  "Germania" .................... January 22 .......... 5
+  "L'Elisir d'Amore" ............ January 27 .......... 1
+  * "Hänsel und Gretel" ......... January 29 .......... 1
+  "Don Pasquale" ................ February 2 .......... 2
+  "Stradella" ................... February 3 .......... 2
+  "Fra Diavolo" ................. February 6 .......... 3
+  "Falstaff" .................... February 16 ......... 2
+  "Das Rheingold" ............... February 24 ......... 1
+  "Werther" ..................... February 28 ......... 2
+  * "Coppélia" (ballet) ......... February 28 ......... 4
+  "Götterdämmerung" ............. March 4 ............. 1
+  "Pique Dame" .................. March 5 ............. 4
+  "Der Freischütz" .............. March 11 ............ 2
+  * "The Pipe of Desire" ........ March 18 ............ 2
+  "Die Meistersinger" ........... March 26 ............ 2
+  * "Hungary" (ballet) .......... March 31 ............ 2
+  "La Sonnambula" ............... April 2 ............. 1
+
+  * Performed only in double bills.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+  Weeks in the season ........................................ 20
+  Subscription performances ................................. 120
+  Number of operas produced .................................. 36
+  German operas .............................................. 11
+  Bohemian opera .............................................. 1
+  Russian opera ............................................... 1
+  English opera ............................................... 1
+  Italian operas ............................................. 18
+  French operas ............................................... 4
+  German performances ........................................ 34
+  French performances ........................................ 13
+  Italian performances ....................................... 79
+  English performances ........................................ 2
+  Double bills (including ballets and divertissements) ....... 23
+  Number of ballets ........................................... 2
+  Performances of complete ballets ............................ 6
+
+
+EXTRA REPRESENTATIONS AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE
+
+  "Parsifal," Thanksgiving matinée, November 25.
+  "Hänsel und Gretel," special matinées, December 21 and 28.
+  "La Bohème," benefit of Italian charities, January 4.
+  "Manon," benefit of French charities, January 18.
+  "Das Rheingold," serial matinées of "Der Ring," January 24.
+  "Die Walküre," serial matinées of "Der Ring," January 27.
+  "Siegfried," serial matinées of "Der Ring," January 28.
+  "Götterdämmerung," serial matinées of "Der Ring," February 1.
+  "Stradella," benefit of German Press Club, February 15.
+  "Vienna Waltzes," ballet, benefit of German Press Club, February 15.
+  "Parsifal," special matinée on Washington's birthday, February 22.
+  "La Gioconda," benefit of Italian charities, February 22.
+  Mixed bill, benefit of Opera House Pension Fund, March 1
+  "Aïda" and ballet divertissement, benefit of the Legal Aid Society, March 15.
+  "Hänsel und Gretel" and "Coppélia," ballet, special matinée, March 15.
+  "Parsifal," Good Friday matinée, March 25.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+
+  Total number of extra performances ...................... 16
+  German operas ............................................ 7
+  German representations .................................. 11
+  French opera ............................................. 1
+  French representation .................................... 1
+  Italian operas ........................................... 3
+  Italian representations .................................. 3
+  Miscellaneous program .................................... 1
+  Double bills (operas, ballets, and divertissements) ...... 5
+
+
+PERFORMANCES AT THE NEW THEATER
+
+
+   Opera                                First performance    Times
+
+  "Werther" ................................ November 16 ..... 4
+  "The Bartered Bride" ..................... November 17 ..... 2
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ................ November 25 ..... 3
+  "Czar und Zimmermann" .................... November 30 ..... 4
+  * "Il Maestro di Capella" ................ December 9 ...... 3
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ................... December 9 ...... 3
+  "La Fille de Madame Angot" ............... December 14 ..... 4
+  "Don Pasquale" ........................... December 23 ..... 3
+  * "Le Histoire de Pierrot" (pantomime) ... December 28 ..... 4
+  * "Pagliacci" ............................ January 6 ....... 2
+  "Fra Diavolo" ............................ January 11 ...... 2
+  "Manon" .................................. February 3 ...... 1
+  "L'Elisir d'Amore" ....................... February 4 ...... 1
+  "L'Attaque du Moulin" .................... February 8 ...... 4
+  "La Bohème" .............................. February 17 ..... 2
+  "Stradella" .............................. February 22 ..... 1
+  "Madama Butterfly" ....................... March 4 ......... 1
+  "Tosca" .................................. March 22 ........ 1
+  "La Sonnambula" .......................... March 23 ........ 1
+  * "The Awakening of Woman" (ballet) ...... March 31 ........ 1
+  * "The Pipe of Desire" ................... March 31 ........ 1
+  * "Hungary" (ballet) ..................... March 31 ........ 1
+  * "Coppélia" (ballet) .................... April 1 ......... 1
+
+    * In double bills only.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+
+  Number of performances ................................ 40
+  Number of operas produced ............................. 19
+  German operas .......................................... 2
+  Bohemian opera ......................................... 1
+  English opera .......................................... 1
+  Italian operas ......................................... 9
+  French operas .......................................... 6
+  German representations ................................. 7
+  French representations ................................ 15
+  Italian representations ............................... 20
+  English representation ................................. 1
+  Double bills (including ballets and divertissements) .. 15
+  Pantomime .............................................. 1
+  Ballets ................................................ 3
+
+
+THE BROOKLYN SEASON
+
+
+    Opera                                      Date of Performance
+
+  "Manon" ........................................ November 8
+  "Tannhäuser" ................................... November 15
+  "Madama Butterfly" ............................. November 22
+  "Tosca" ........................................ November 29
+  "Lohengrin" .................................... December 6
+  "Martha" ....................................... December 13
+  "Il Trovatore" ................................. December 20
+  "Il Maestro di Capella" and "Pagliacci" ........ January 3
+  "Aïda" ......................................... January 17
+  "Faust" ........................................ January 27
+  "Fra Diavolo" .................................. January 31
+  "Stradella" and divertissement ................. February 7
+  "L'Attaque du Moulin" .......................... February 13
+  "La Bohème" .................................... February 21
+  "Otello" ....................................... February 28
+  "La Gioconda" .................................. March 7
+  "Il Barbiere" and divertissement ............... March 14
+  "Rigoletto" .................................... March 21
+  "Der Freischütz" ............................... March 29
+  "Madama Butterfly" and "Hungary" (ballet) ...... April 4
+
+
+There was an extra performance of "Hänsel und Gretel," and ballet
+divertissement on Christmas day. New York was never before in its
+history so overburdened with opera. The following table offers an
+analytical summary of the entire season:
+
+
+  Subscription performances .................................... 160
+  Total performances ........................................... 197
+  Operas produced ............................................... 41
+  German operas produced ........................................ 13
+  Italian operas produced ....................................... 18
+  French operas produced ......................................... 7
+  Bohemian opera produced ........................................ 1
+  Russian opera produced ......................................... 1
+  English opera produced ......................................... 1
+  German representations ........................................ 56
+  Italian representations ...................................... 115
+  French representations ........................................ 23
+  Double bills (including ballets and divertissements) .......... 48
+  Performances of complete ballets .............................. 12
+
+
+"The Awakening of Woman" and "Hungary" have been treated as ballets in
+this record simply for the sake of convenience. They were, in fact, a
+testimonium paupertatis to the feature which had aroused the greatest
+interest during the dying weeks of the season. The public wanted to see
+the two Russians dance; the management cared so little for artistic
+integrity that it did not trouble itself to keep its promises even as
+to the ballet. "Vienna Waltzes," which had figured in the prospectus,
+was performed but once, and then only because it was demanded by the
+German Press Club for its annual benefit. "Die Puppenfee," "Sylvia,"
+"Les Sylphides," and "Chopin," though on the program, were not given,
+short divertissements after long operas being made to take their
+place. Operatic novelties promised but not given were: Leo Blech's
+"Versiegelt," Goetzl's "Les Précieuses Ridicules," Goldmark's "Cricket
+on the Hearth," Humperdinck's "Königskinder," Laparra's "La Habanera,"
+Lehar's "Amour des Tziganes," Leroux's "Le Chemineau," Maillart's "Les
+Dragons des Villars," Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," Rossini's
+"Il Signor Bruschino," Suppé's "Schöne Galatea," and Wolf-Ferrari's "Le
+Donne Curiose." The works which had a first production in New York were
+Franchetti's "Germania;" Tschaikowsky's "Pique Dame," Converse's "Pipe
+of Desire," and Bruneau's "L'Attaque du Moulin." In familiar operas the
+public was permitted to see new impersonations of Elsa, Floria Tosca,
+and Santuzza by Mme. Fremstad, and of Floria Tosca by Miss
+Farrar. Notable achievements from an artistic point of view were the
+representations of "Tristan und Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger,"
+under the direction of Signor Toscanini, and "Pique Dame," under
+Herr Mahler.
+
+
+SEASON 1910-1911
+
+
+The twenty-sixth season at the Metropolitan began on November 14th, and
+ended on April 15th, thus embracing twenty-two weeks. When the public
+was invited to subscribe for the season in the summer, performances were
+promised in French, Italian, German, and English. In the preceding two
+years there had been talk of producing Goldmark's "Heimchen am Heerd"
+("The Cricket on the Hearth") and Humperdinck's "Königskinder" in
+English, and so there was again this; but on his return from Europe in
+the fall Signor Gatti put a quietus on it immediately by proclaiming
+that the project was impracticable. Nevertheless, in midseason he
+announced an opera in English by an American composer (Arthur Nevin's
+"Twilight"), and withdrew it, although the public had been told to
+expect it. Meanwhile a somewhat singular combination of circumstances
+led to a partial fulfilment of the promise in the prospectus. Mr.
+Dippel, who had undertaken the management of the Chicago Opera Company
+(renamed the Philadelphia-Chicago Company after the Chicago season was
+over and that in Philadelphia begun), had carried with him from New
+York the purpose to give opera in the vernacular. He was encouraged in
+this by Mr. Clarence Mackay and Mr. Otto Kahn, the chief backers of
+the Chicago institution, but the Chicago season was not long enough
+to enable him to bring it to fruition. For his second season at the
+Manhattan Opera House, Mr. Hammerstein had promised to produce an
+English opera "by our American composer, Victor Herbert" (see p. 372).
+This opera, entitled "Natoma," had been offered to Signor Gatti-Casazza,
+and an act of it tried with orchestra on the stage of the Metropolitan;
+but the director did not care to produce it. It was then offered to
+Mr. Dippel, who accepted it, and produced it first in Philadelphia
+and then at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, where the
+Philadelphia-Chicago company gave a subscription series of French operas
+on Tuesdays from January to April. To this incident there is a pendant
+of more serious purport. The Directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company
+had met what seemed to them a challenge on the part of Mr. Hammerstein
+by offering a prize of $10,000 for the best opera in English by a
+native-born American composer. The time allowed for the competition was
+two years and the last day for the reception of scores September 15th,
+1910. On May 2nd the jury of award, composed of Alfred Hertz, Walter
+Damrosch, George W. Chadwick, and Charles Martin Loeffler, announced
+that the successful opera was a three-act musical tragedy entitled
+"Mona," of which the words were written by Brian Hooker, the music
+by Professor Horatio Parker of Yale University.
+
+The change of plan occasioned by the abandonment of the representations
+at the New Theater and in Baltimore, the latter city being left to the
+ministrations of Mr. Dippel's organization, brought with it a large
+reduction of the Metropolitan forces, but the smaller company
+nevertheless gave eight performances in Philadelphia and fourteen in
+Brooklyn besides those called for by the subscription and special
+representations in New York. Support on occasions had been promised by
+the affiliated companies in Chicago and Boston, but the little that was
+offered was not very graciously received by the New York public. Mme.
+Melba sang once in "Rigoletto," and once again in "Traviata," one of the
+two performances being in the regular subscription list. Then she was
+announced as ill, and departed for England. Mlle. Lipowska sang a few
+times, as also did Signor Constantino (who had been a member of Mr.
+Hammerstein's company and was now the principal tenor in Boston), but
+the public was indifferent to these performances of the old Verdi
+operas.
+
+Interesting incidents were the visits of Signor Puccini and Herr
+Humperdinck to superintend the rehearsals and witness the first
+performances on any stage of their operas, "La Fanciulla del West" and
+"Königskinder," the latter of which was sung in the original German
+instead of the promised English. For the Italian opera the management
+had arranged two special performances at double prices; these were
+popular failures in spite of the interest excited by Mr. David Belasco's
+play "The Girl of the Golden West," on which the opera was based. The
+presence of the Russian dancers, who had won much favor in the preceding
+season, was particularly fortunate in the closing weeks of the season,
+when another failure of Signor Caruso's voice threatened disaster. Mme.
+Pavlowa and her companion, M. Mordkin, supported by a very mediocre
+troupe of dancers, had discovered themselves to their admirers before
+the opera season opened. They then took part in the Metropolitan
+entertainments until the end of the first week of January. Thereupon
+they departed, but came back very opportunely for the second fortnight
+of March.
+
+The rest of the story may be read out of the following table and
+remarks. There were twenty-two weeks of opera with subscription
+performances on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings, and
+Saturday afternoons. At these performances operas were given as follows:
+
+
+REGULAR METROPOLITAN SUBSCRIPTION PERFORMANCES
+
+
+     Opera                              First Performance    Times
+  "Armide" ............................... November 14 ....... 3
+  "Tannhäuser" ........................... November 16 ....... 5
+  "Aïda" ................................. November 17 ....... 6
+  "Die Walküre" .......................... November 18 ....... 4
+  "Madama Butterfly" ..................... November 19 ....... 5
+  "La Bohème" ............................ November 21 ....... 5
+  "La Gioconda" .......................... November 23 ....... 6
+  "Rigoletto" ............................ November 24 ....... 3
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" (double bill) ... November 25 ....... 5
+  "Pagliacci" (double bill) .............. November 25 ....... 7
+  "Lohengrin" ............................ November 28 ....... 5
+  "Il Trovatore" ......................... December 1 ........ 5
+  "Faust" ................................ December 10 ....... 4
+  "Orfeo ed Eurydice" .................... December 10 ....... 5
+  "La Fanciulla del West" ................ December 26 ....... 7
+  "Königskinder" ......................... December 28 ....... 7
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ................... January 4 ......... 4
+  "Roméo et Juliette" .................... January 13 ........ 2
+  "Siegfried" ............................ January 14 ........ 1
+  "Die Meistersinger" .................... January 20 ........ 4
+  "Germania" ............................. February 1 ........ 2
+  "La Traviata" .......................... February 2 ........ 2
+  "Tosca" ................................ February 8 ........ 5
+  "Die Verkaufte Braut" .................. February 15 ....... 4
+  "Otello" ............................... February 27 ....... 5
+  "Ariane et Barbe-Bleue" ................ March 29 .......... 4
+  "Hänsel und Gretel" (double bill) ...... April 6 ........... 2
+
+
+There were ten Saturday evening subscriptions at regular prices at
+which the following operas were given, viz.: "Cavalleria Rusticana"
+and "Pagliacci," "Madama Butterfly," "Il Trovatore," "Parsifal,"
+"Lohengrin," "Thaïs" (Chicago Opera Company), "Aïda," "Königskinder,"
+"Tannhäuser," and "Tosca." There were holiday, benefit, and special
+performances as follows:
+
+
+EXTRA PERFORMANCES
+
+     Opera                              First Performance    Times
+
+  "Parsifal" ............................ November 24 ........ 3
+  "La Traviata" ......................... November 29 ........ 1
+  "La Fanciulla del West" ............... December 10 ........ 2
+  "Cavalleria" and ballet ............... December 24 ........ 1
+  "Hänsel und Gretel" ................... December 26 ........ 4
+  "Königskinder" ........................ December 31 ........ 3
+  "Aïda" ................................ January 7 .......... 1
+  "Rigoletto" ........................... January 14 ......... 1
+  "Roméo et Juliette" ................... January 21 ......... 1
+  "Die Meistersinger" ................... January 28 ......... 1
+  "Das Rheingold" ....................... February 2 ......... 1
+  "Madama Butterfly" .................... February 4 ......... 2
+  "Die Walküre" ......................... February 9 ......... 1
+  "Siegfried" ........................... February 13 ........ 1
+  "Götterdämmerung" ..................... February 22 ........ 1
+  "La Bohème" and ballet ................ March 30 ........... 1
+  Mixed bill ............................ April 6 ............ 1
+
+Twenty-six representations; sixteen operas.
+
+
+There was also an extra subscription season by the Chicago Opera
+Company, which made a showing as follows:
+
+
+SUBSCRIPTION SEASON OF THE PHILADELPHIA-CHICAGO COMPANY
+
+
+     Opera                                    First Performance    Times
+
+  "Thaïs" ........................................ January 24 ....... 1
+  "Louise" ....................................... January 31 ....... 2
+  "Pelléas et Mélisande" ......................... February 7 ....... 1
+  "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" ........................ February 14 ...... 1
+  "Carmen" ....................................... February 21 ...... 1
+  "Natoma" (once in double bill) ................. February 28 ...... 3
+  "Il Segreto di Susanna" (in double bill) ....... March 14 ......... 2
+  "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame" (in double bill) ... March 14 ......... 1
+  "Quo Vadis" .................................... April 4 .......... 1
+
+Eleven evenings, one extra, nine operas, three double bills.
+
+
+METROPOLITAN PERFORMANCES IN BROOKLYN
+
+
+     Opera                              First Performance    Times
+
+  "Il Trovatore" ......................... November 19 ....... 1
+  "Orfeo ed Eurydice" .................... November 26 ....... 1
+  "Tannhäuser" ........................... December 3 ........ 1
+  "Cavalleria" (double bill) ............. January 3 ......... 1
+  "Pagliacci" (double bill) .............. January 3 ......... 1
+  "Lohengrin" ............................ January 17 ........ 1
+  "Königskinder" ......................... January 24 ........ 1
+  "La Bohème" ............................ January 31 ........ 1
+  "Rigoletto" ............................ February 7 ........ 1
+  "Madama Butterfly" ..................... February 21 ....... 1
+  "Tosca" ................................ February 28 ....... 1
+  "Aïda" ................................. March 7 ........... 1
+  "Otello" ............................... March 14 .......... 1
+  "La Fanciulla del West" ................ March 18 .......... 1
+  "Parsifal" ............................. March 21 .......... 1
+
+Fourteen representations, fifteen operas, one double bill.
+
+The novelties produced in the season were Gluck's "Armide," Puccini's
+"La Fanciulla del West," Humperdinck's "Königskinder," Dukas's "Ariane
+et Barbe-Bleue," Herbert's "Natoma," Wolf-Ferrari's "Il Segreto di
+Susanna," and Nouguet's "Quo Vadis."
+
+
+
+APPENDIX II
+
+TWO SEASONS AT THE MANHATTAN OPERA HOUSE
+
+
+The third season of opera under the sole direction of Mr. Oscar
+Hammerstein at the Manhattan Opera House, New York, began on November
+9th, 1908, and lasted twenty weeks until March 27th, 1909. During
+this period there were five regular performances each week. Had there
+been no deviation from the rule there would have been one hundred
+representations, but advantage was taken of occasions which seemed
+auspicious to give extra performances, and therefore there were also
+representations on Thanksgiving Day, New Year's Day, Washington's
+birthday, and to signalize by special attention (and, incidentally,
+special prices) the coming of Richard Strauss's delectable "Salome."
+So there were added four performances to the weekly five originally
+set down for Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings, and
+Saturday afternoons.
+
+In his prospectus, issued in the summer, Mr. Hammerstein specifically
+promised to produce "Samson et Dalila," by Saint-Saëns, "Salome," by
+Richard Strauss, "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame" and "Grisélidis," by
+Massenet, and "Princesse d'Auberge," by Jan Blockx. He brought forward
+all of these except "Grisélidis." In the list of operas which he was
+less specifically bound to perform were Massenet's "Manon," Bizet's
+"Les Pécheurs des Perles," Verdi's "Falstaff," Bréton's "Dolores,"
+Giordano's "Andrea Chenier" and "Siberia," Puccini's "Madama Butterfly,"
+Donizetti's "Linda di Chamounix," Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera" and
+"Ernani," all of which fell by the board. The chief features of interest
+in the season were the productions of the novelties, "Salome," "Le
+Jongleur de Notre Dame" (with Mary Garden in the part of the Juggler,
+which was written for a man), and "Princesse d'Auberge," and the series
+of performances headed by Mme. Melba, who opened the sixth week of the
+season on December 14th in "La Bohème," and concluded her engagement on
+January 11th in "Rigoletto." Her performances were confined to these two
+operas and "Otello." For the rest let the following table speak:
+
+
+   Opera                       First performance        Times
+
+  "Tosca" ....................... November 9 ............ 5
+  "Thaïs" ....................... November 11 ........... 7
+  "Samson et Dalila" ............ November 13 ........... 6
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ..... November 14 ........... 3
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ......... November 18 ........... 7
+  "Gli Ugonotti" ................ November 20 ........... 2
+  "Carmen" ...................... November 26 ........... 2
+  "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame" ... November 27 ........... 7
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ........ December 4 ............ 5
+  "Pagliacci" ................... December 4 ............ 5
+  "Rigoletto" ................... December 5 ............ 5
+  "Traviata" .................... December 12 ........... 5
+  "La Bohème" ................... December 14 ........... 5
+  "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" ....... December 16 ........... 7
+  "Otello" ...................... December 25 ........... 6
+  "Pelléas et Mélisande" ........ January 6 ............. 4
+  "Crispino e la Comare" ........ January 9 ............. 3
+  "Salome" ...................... January 28 ........... 10
+  "Aïda" ........................ February 10 ........... 2
+  "La Sonnambula" ............... February 13 ........... 3
+  "Louise" ...................... February 19 ........... 5
+  "I Puritani" .................. February 26 ........... 2
+  "Il Trovatore" ................ March 1 ............... 1
+  "Princesse d'Auberge" ......... March 10 .............. 3
+  "La Navarraise" ............... March 20 .............. 1
+
+
+Total number of performances, 111; number of representations, 104; total
+number of operas, 25; operas composed in Italian, 14; in French, 9;
+in German, 1; in Flemish, 1; Italian representations, 59; French, 52.
+The difference between the number of representations and the total of
+performances of the different operas is due to the fact that on seven
+occasions two operas were given on the same afternoon or evening.
+
+
+SEASON 1909-1910
+
+Before beginning his fourth season Mr. Hammerstein opened his house for
+a season of "educational" opera, as he called it at first, which began
+on August 30th, 1909, and lasted until October 30th, 1909. In this
+preliminary season Mr. Hammerstein not only made trial of a considerable
+number of singers, some of whom remained with him throughout the regular
+season, but also experimented with operas, some of which went over into
+the subscription repertory with no considerable change either in casts
+or settings, while others, notably "La Juive" and "Le Prophète," might
+well have done so. In them also some singers of notable excellence
+were heard, like Zerola, the tenor; William Beck, the barytone, and
+Marguerite Sylva, but after the regular season got under way they
+were heard from chiefly in the newspapers in connection with the
+disaffections and disagreements which were almost incessant.
+
+In the season proper Mr. Hammerstein tried to give opéra comique, as he
+politely called it, though it was largely opéra bouffe, and when the
+experiment proved a failure he courageously abandoned it. The proceeding
+has its parallel in the so-called "lyric" opera conducted by the
+Metropolitan management of the New Theater. After pondering the matter
+for a space, Mr. Hammerstein substituted opera at popular prices on
+Saturday evenings for the opéra bouffe, with a result of which we are
+not in a position to speak.
+
+The promises of an impresario, whether made positively, like "The
+following operas will be performed," or vaguely, like "The repertory
+will be selected from the following lists"--an old and favorite
+device--are always accepted by the public in a Pickwickian sense. Mr.
+Hammerstein did not disturb the precedents in this respect, but he
+came creditably near to keeping his definite promises. He said that
+"Hérodiade," "Elektra," "Grisélidis," and "Sapho" would be among his
+novelties, and they were. He said that "Cendrillon," "Feuersnoth,"
+"The Violin Maker of Cremona," and Victor Herbert's "Natoma" would
+also be given--and they were not. Of old works the only ones promised
+in the list of grand operas and not given were "Crispino e la Comare,"
+"Siberia," "Lohengrin," "I Puritani," "Meistersinger," and "Le
+Prophète." Most of them were easily spared, especially the two Wagnerian
+operas, the futility of which in French must have been obvious after Mr.
+Hammerstein had admitted the failure of his French singers to grasp the
+spirit of "Tannhäuser."
+
+Here is the tabular record:
+
+
+   Opera                          First performance        Times
+
+  "Hérodiade" ...................... November 8 ........... 6
+  "Traviata" ....................... November 10 .......... 4
+  "Aïda" ........................... November 12 .......... 3
+  "Thaïs" .......................... November 13 .......... 6
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ........... November 13 .......... 4
+  "Pagliacci" ...................... November 13 .......... 8
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ............ November 16 .......... 7
+  "La Fille de Madame Angot" ....... November 16 .......... 2
+  "Sapho" .......................... November 17 .......... 3
+  "La Fille du Régiment" ........... November 22 .......... 4
+  "Mascotte" ....................... November 23 .......... 1
+  "Carmen" ......................... November 25 .......... 6
+  "Tosca" .......................... November 26 .......... 3
+  "Les Dragons des Villars" ........ November 27 .......... 2
+  "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame" ...... December 4 ........... 5
+  "Les Cloches de Corneville" ...... December 4 ........... 3
+  "Faust" .......................... December 8 ........... 3
+  "Tannhäuser" ..................... December 10 .......... 3
+  "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" .......... December 25 .......... 8
+  "Trovatore" ...................... January 8 ............ 2
+  "La Bohème" ...................... January 14 ........... 5
+  "Grisélidis" ..................... January 19 ........... 4
+  "Samson et Dalila" ............... January 28 ........... 2
+  "Elektra" ........................ February 1 ........... 7
+  "Rigoletto" ...................... February 11 .......... 4
+  "Louise" ......................... February 23 .......... 2
+  "La Navarraise" .................. February 28 .......... 2
+  "Salome" ......................... March 5 .............. 4
+  "Pelléas et Mélisande" ........... March 11 ............. 3
+  "Lakmé" .......................... March 21 ............. 1
+  Mixed bill ....................... March 25 ............. 1
+
+
+After the conclusion of the season Mr. Hammerstein sold his Philadelphia
+Opera House, which had been opened a week after the performances began
+in New York, to a company of gentlemen largely interested in the
+Metropolitan, and entered into an obligation with them not to give grand
+opera in New York City for ten years. It seems appropriate, therefore,
+to print the following tabular record of his performances during his
+four years' management of the Manhattan Opera House:
+
+
+   Operas                   1906-1907  1907-1908  1908-1909  1909-1910
+
+  "Aïda" ..................... 12          9          2          3
+  "Andrea Chenier" ............ 0          1          0          0
+  "Ballo in Maschera" ......... 2          4          0          0
+  "Barbiere di Siviglia" ...... 2          0          3          0
+  "Bohème" .................... 4          0          5          5
+  "Cavalleria" ................ 8          4          3          4
+  "Carmen" ................... 19         11          2          6
+  "Contes d'Hoffmann" ......... 0         11          7          8
+  "Cloches de Corneville" ..... 0          0          0          3
+  "Crispino e la Comare" ...... 0          3          3          0
+  "Damnation de Faust" ........ 0          3          0          0
+  "Dinorah" ................... 1          1          0          0
+  "Don Giovanni" .............. 4          3          0          0
+  "Dragons des Villars" ....... 0          0          0          2
+  "Elektra" ................... 0          0          0          7
+  "Elisir d'Amore" ............ 3          0          0          0
+  "Ernani" .................... 0          1          0          0
+  "Faust" ..................... 7          4          0          3
+  "Fille de Mme. Angot" ....... 0          0          0          2
+  "Fille du Régiment" ......... 0          0          0          2
+  "Fra Diavolo" ............... 4          0          0          0
+  "Gioconda" .................. 0          4          0          0
+  "Grisélidis" ................ 0          0          0          4
+  "Héodiade" .................. 0          0          0          6
+  "Huguenots" ................. 5          0          2          0
+  "Jongleur de Notre Dame" .... 0          0          7          5
+  "Lakmé" ..................... 0          0          0          1
+  "Louise" .................... 0         11          5          2
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 6          8          7          7
+  "Martha" .................... 4          0          0          0
+  "Mascotte" .................. 0          0          0          1
+  "Mignon" .................... 3          0          0          0
+  "Navarraise" ................ 2          5          1          2
+  "Otello" .................... 0          0          6          0
+  "Pagliacci" ................ 10          9          5          8
+  "Pelléas et Mélisande" ...... 0          7          4          3
+  "Princesse d'Auberge" ....... 0          0          3          0
+  "Puritani" .................. 2          0          2          0
+  "Rigoletto" ................ 11          5          5          4
+  "Salome" .................... 0          0         10          4
+  "Samson et Dalila" .......... 0          0          6          2
+  "Siberia" ................... 0          3          0          0
+  "Sapho" ..................... 0          0          0          3
+  "Sonnambula" ................ 3          0          3          0
+  "Tannhäuser" ................ 0          0          0          3
+  "Thaïs" ..................... 0          7          7          6
+  "Traviata" .................. 3          5          5          4
+  "Tosca" ..................... 0          0          5          3
+  "Trovatore" ................. 6          5          1          2
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Chapters of Opera, by Henry Edward Krehbiel
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+
+
+Title: Chapters of Opera
+
+Author: H.E. Krehbiel
+
+Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5995]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 10, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAPTERS OF OPERA ***
+
+
+
+
+The HTML version of this text produced by Bob Frone can be found
+at <http://www.intac.com/~rfrone/operas/Books/oper-books.htm>
+Plain text adaption by Andrew Sly.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTERS OF OPERA
+
+
+Being
+Historical and Critical Observations
+And Records Concerning the Lyric
+Drama in New York from Its
+Earliest Days Down to
+The Present Time
+
+by
+
+HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
+
+Musical Editor of "The New York Tribune";
+Author of "How To Listen To Music,"
+"Studies In The Wagnerian Drama,"
+"Music And Manners In The Classical Period,"
+"The Philharmonic Society Of New York," etc., etc.
+
+
+
+To MARIE--WIFE
+
+and
+
+DAUGHTER HELEN
+
+Who have shared with the Author many of the
+Experiences described in this book.
+
+"Joy shared is Joy doubled."
+                --GOETHE.
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The making of this book was prompted by the fact that with the season
+1907-08 the Metropolitan Opera House in New York completed an existence
+of twenty-five years. Through all this period at public representations
+I have occupied stall D-15 on the ground floor as reviewer of musical
+affairs for The New York Tribune newspaper. I have, therefore, been a
+witness of the vicissitudes through which the institution has passed
+in a quarter-century, and a chronicler of all significant musical
+things which were done within its walls. I have seen the failure of
+the artistic policy to promote which the magnificent theater was built;
+the revolution accomplished by the stockholders under the leadership
+of Leopold Damrosch; the progress of a German régime, which did much
+to develop tastes and create ideals which, till its coming, were
+little-known quantities in American art and life; the overthrow of that
+régime in obedience to the command of fashion; the subsequent dawn and
+development of the liberal and comprehensive policy which marked the
+climax of the career of Maurice Grau as an operatic director, I have
+witnessed since then, many of the fruits of wise endeavor and astute
+management frittered away by managerial incapacity and greed, and fad
+and fashion come to rule again, where for a brief, but eventful period,
+serious artistic interest and endeavor had been dominant.
+
+The institution will enter upon a new régime with the season 1908-09.
+The time, therefore, seemed fitting for a review of the twenty-five
+years that are past. The incidents of this period are fixed; they
+may be variously viewed, but they cannot be changed. They belong to
+history, and to a presentation of that history I have devoted most
+of the pages which follow. I have been actuated in my work by deep
+seriousness of purpose, and have tried to avoid everything which
+could not make for intellectual profit, or, at least, amiable and
+illuminative entertainment.
+
+The chapters which precede the more or less detailed history of the
+Metropolitan Opera House (I-VII) were written for the sake of the
+light which they shed on existing institutions and conditions, and to
+illustrate the development of existing taste, appreciation, and interest
+touching the lyrical drama. To the same end much consideration has been
+paid to significant doings outside the Metropolitan Opera House since
+it has been the chief domicile of grand opera in New York. Especial
+attention has been given for obvious reasons to the two seasons of
+opera at Mr. Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera House.
+
+H. E. KREHBIEL.
+
+Blue Hill, Maine, the Summer of 1908.
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THIRD EDITION
+
+For the purposes of a new and popular edition of this book, the
+publishers asked the author to continue his historical narrative, his
+record of performances, and his critical survey of the operas produced
+at the two chief operatic institutions of New York, from the beginning
+of the season 1908-1909 down to the close of the season 1910-1911. This
+invitation the author felt compelled to decline for several reasons,
+one of which (quite sufficient in itself), was that he had already
+undertaken a work of great magnitude which would occupy all his working
+hours during the period between the close of the last season and the
+publication of this edition.
+
+Thereupon the publishers, who seemed to place a high valuation on
+the historical element in the book, suggested that the record of
+performances at least be brought up to date even if the criticism of new
+operas and the discussion of the other incidents of the season--such as
+the dissensions between the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House,
+the rivalry between them and the director of the Manhattan, the quarrels
+with artists, the successes achieved by some operas and the failure
+suffered by others--be postponed for the present at least for want of
+time on the part of the author to carry on the work on the scale of the
+original edition.
+
+It was finally agreed that the author should supply the record for
+the period intervening between the appearance of the first edition of
+"Chapters of Opera" and the present publication by revised excerpts
+from the annual summaries of the activities of the seasons in question
+published by him in the New York Tribune, of which newspaper he has had
+the honor of being the musical critic for thirty years past. For the
+privilege of using this material the author is deeply beholden to the
+Tribune Association and the editor, Hart Lyman, Esq. The record may be
+found in the Appendices after the last chapter.
+
+H. E. KREHBIEL.
+
+Blue Hill, Maine, Summer of 1911.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION OF OPERA IN NEW YORK
+
+  The Introduction of Italian Opera in New York
+  English Ballad Operas and Adaptations from French and Italian Works
+  Hallam's Comedians and "The Beggar's Opera"
+  The John Street Theater and Its Early Successors
+  Italian Opera's First Home
+  Manuel Garcia
+  The New Park Theater and Some of Its Rivals
+  Malibran and English Opera
+  The Bowery Theater, Richmond Hill, Niblo's and Castle Gardens
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EARLY THEATERS, MANAGERS, AND SINGERS
+
+  Of the Building of Opera Houses
+  A Study of Influences
+  The First Italian Opera House in New York
+  Early Impresarios and Singers
+  Da Ponte, Montressor, Rivafinoli
+  Signorina Pedrotti and Fornasari
+  Why Do Men Become Opera-Managers?
+  Addison and Italian Opera
+  The Vernacular Triumphant
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FIRST ITALIAN COMPANY
+
+  Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia"
+  Signorina Maria Garcia's Unfortunate Marriage
+  Lorenzo da Ponte
+  His Hebraic Origin and Checkered Career
+  "Don Giovanni"
+  An Appeal in Behalf of Italian Opera
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOUSES BUILT FOR OPERA
+
+  More Opera Houses
+  Palmo's and the Astor Place
+  Signora Borghese and the Distressful Vocal Wabble
+  Antognini and Cinti-Damoreau
+  An Orchestral Strike
+  Advent of the Patti Family
+  Don Francesco Marty y Torrens and His Havanese Company
+  Opera Gowns Fifty Years Ago
+  Edward and William Henry Fry
+  Horace Greeley and His Musical Critic
+  James H. Hackett and William Niblo
+  Tragic Consequences of Canine Interference
+  Goethe and a Poodle
+  A Dog-Show and the Astor Place Opera House
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MARETZEK, HIS RIVALS AND SINGERS
+
+  Max Maretzek
+  His Managerial Career
+  Some Anecdotes
+  "Crotchets and Quavers"
+  His Rivals and Some of His Singers
+  Bernard Ullmann
+  Marty Again
+  Bottesini and Arditi
+  Steffanone
+  Bosio
+  Tedesco
+  Salvi
+  Bettini
+  Badiali
+  Marini
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MUSIC
+
+  Operatic Warfare Half a Century Ago
+  The Academy of Music and Its Misfortunes
+  A Critic's Opera and His Ideals
+  A Roster of American Singers
+  Grisi and Mario
+  Annie Louise Cary
+  Ole Bull as Manager
+  Piccolomini and Réclame
+  Adelina Patti's Début and an Anniversary Dinner Twenty-five
+Years Later
+  A Kiss for Maretzek
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MAPLESON AND OTHER IMPRESARIOS
+
+  Colonel James H. Mapleson
+  A Diplomatic Manager
+  His Persuasiveness
+  How He Borrowed Money from an Irate Creditor
+  Maurice Strakosch
+  Musical Managers
+  Pollini
+  Sofia Scalchi and Annie Louise Cary Again
+  Campanini and His Beautiful Attack
+  Brignoli
+  His Appetite and Superstition
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE
+
+  The Academy's Successful Rival
+  Why It Was Built
+  The Demands of Fashion
+  Description of the Theater
+  War between the Metropolitan and the Academy of Music
+  Mapleson and Abbey
+  The Rival Forces
+  Patti and Nilsson
+  Gerster and Sembrich
+  A Costly Victory
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FIRST SEASON AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+  The First Season at the Metropolitan Opera House
+  Mr. Abbey's Singers
+  Gounod's "Faust" and Christine Nilsson
+  Marcella Sembrich and Her Versatility
+  Sofia Scalchi
+  Signor Kaschmann
+  Signor Stagno
+  Ambroise Thomas's "Mignon"
+  Madame Fursch-Madi
+  Ponchielli's "La Gioconda"
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OPERATIC REVOLUTIONS
+
+  The Season 1883-1884at the Academy of Music
+  Lillian Nordica's American Début
+  German Opera Introduced at the Metropolitan Opera House
+  Parlous State of Italian Opera in London and on the Continent
+  Dr. Leopold Damrosch and His Enterprise
+  The German Singers
+  Amalia Materna
+  Marianne Brandt
+  Marie Schroeder-Hanfstängl
+  Anton Schott, the Military Tenor
+  Von Bülow's Characterization: "A Tenor is a Disease"
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GERMAN OPERA AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+  First German Season
+  Death Struggles of Italian Opera at the Academy
+  Adelina Patti and Her Art
+  Features of the German Performances
+  "Tannhäuser"
+  Marianne Brandt in Beethoven's Opera
+  "Der Freischütz"
+  "Masaniello"
+  Materna in "Die Walküre"
+  Death of Dr. Damrosch
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+END OF ITALIAN OPERA AT THE ACADEMY
+
+  The Season 1885-1886
+  End of the Mapleson Régime at the Academy of Music
+  Alma Fohström
+  The American Opera Company
+  German Opera in the Bowery
+  A Tenor Who Wanted to be Manager of the Metropolitan Opera House
+  The Coming of Anton Seidl
+  His Early Career
+  Lilli Lehmann
+  A Broken Contract
+  Unselfish Devotion to Artistic Ideals
+  Max Alvary
+  Emil Fischer
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WAGNER HOLDS THE METROPOLITAN
+
+  Second and Third German Seasons
+  The Period 1885-1888
+  More about Lilli Lehmann
+  Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba"
+  First Performance of Wagner's "Meistersinger"
+  Patti in Concert and Opera
+  A Flash in the Pan at the Academy of Music
+  The Transformed American Opera Company
+  Production of Rubinstein's "Nero"
+  An Imperial Operatic Figure
+  First American Performance of "Tristan und Isolde"
+  Albert Niemann and His Characteristics
+  His Impersonation of Siegmund
+  Anecdotes
+  A Triumph for "Fidelio"
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WAGNERIAN HIGH TIDE
+
+  Wagnerian High Tide at the Metropolitan Opera House
+  1887-1890
+  Italian Low Water Elsewhere
+  Rising of the Opposition
+  Wagner's "Siegfried"
+  Its Unconventionality
+  "Götterdämmerung"
+  "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen"
+  "Euryanthe"
+  "Ferdinand Cortez"
+  "Der Barbier von Bagdad"
+  Italo Campanini and Verdi's "Otello"
+  Patti and Italian Opera at the Metropolitan Opera House
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+END OF THE GERMAN PERIOD
+
+  End of the German Period
+  1890-1891
+  Some Extraordinary Novelties
+  Franchetti's "Asrael"
+  "Der Vasall von Szigeth"
+  A Royal Composer, His Opera and His Distribution of Decorations
+  "Diana von Solange"
+  Financial Salvation through Wagner
+  Italian Opera Redivivus
+  Ill-mannered Box-holders
+  Wagnerian Statistics
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ITALIAN OPERA AGAIN AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+  The Season 1891-1892
+  Losses of the Stockholders of the Metropolitan Opera House Company
+  Return to Italian Opera
+  Mr. Abbey's Expectations
+  Sickness of Lilli Lehmann
+  The De Reszke Brothers and Lassalle
+  Emma Eames
+  Début of Marie Van Zandt
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana"
+  Fire Damages the Opera House
+  Reorganization of the Owning Company
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE ADVENT OF MELBA AND CALVÉ
+
+  An Interregnum
+  Changes in the Management
+  Rise and Fall of Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau
+  Death of Henry E. Abbey
+  His Career
+  Season 1893-1894
+  Nellie Melba
+  Emma Calvé
+  Bourbonism of the Parisians
+  Massenet's "Werther"
+  1894-1895
+  A Breakdown on the Stage
+  "Elaine"
+  Sybil Sanderson and "Manon"
+  Shakespearian Operas
+  Verdi's "Falstaff"
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+UPRISING IN FAVOR OF GERMAN OPERA
+
+  The Public Clamor for German Opera
+  Oscar Hammerstein and His First Manhattan Opera House
+  Rivalry between Anton Seidl and Walter Damrosch
+  The Latter's Career as Manager
+  Wagner Triumphant
+  German Opera Restored at the Metropolitan
+  "The Scarlet Letter"
+  "Mataswintha"
+  "Hänsel und Gretel" in English
+  Jean de Reszke and His Influence
+  Mapleson for the Last Time
+  "Andrea Chenier"
+  Madame Melba's Disastrous Essay with Wagner
+  "Le Cid"
+  Metropolitan Performances 1893-1897
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+BEGINNING OF THE GRAU PERIOD
+
+  Beginning of the Grau Period
+  Death of Maurice Grau
+  His Managerial Career
+  An Interregnum at the Metropolitan Opera House Filled by
+Damrosch and Ellis
+  Death of Anton Seidl
+  His Funeral
+  Characteristic Traits
+  "La Bohème"
+  1898-1899
+  "Ero e Leandro" and Its Composer
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+NEW SINGERS AND OPERAS
+
+  Closing Years of Mr. Grau's Régime
+  Traits in the Manager's Character
+  Débuts of Alvarez, Scotti, Louise Homer, Lucienne Bréval and
+Other Singers
+  Ternina and "Tosca"
+  Reyer's "Salammbô"
+  Gala Performance for a Prussian Prince
+  "Messaline"
+  Paderewski's "Manru"
+  "Der Wald"
+  Performances in the Grau Period
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+HEINRICH CONRIED AND "PARSIFAL"
+
+  Beginning of the Administration of Heinrich Conried
+  Season 1903-1904
+  Mascagni's American Fiasco
+  "Iris" and "Zanetto"
+  Woful Consequences of Depreciating American Conditions
+  Mr. Conried's Theatrical Career
+  His Inheritance from Mr. Grau
+  Signor Caruso
+  The Company Recruited
+  The "Parsifal" Craze
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+END OF CONRIED'S ADMINISTRATION
+
+  Conried's Administration Concluded
+  1905-1908
+  Visits from Humperdinck and Puccini
+  The California Earthquake
+  Madame Sembnich's Generosity to the Suffering Musicians
+  "Madama Butterfly"
+  "Manon Lescaut"
+  "Fedora"
+  Production and Prohibition of "Salome"
+  A Criticism of the Work
+  "Adriana Lecouvreur"
+  A Table of Performances
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+HAMMERSTEIN AND HIS OPERA HOUSE
+
+  Oscar Hammerstein Builds a Second Manhattan Opera House
+  How the Manager Put His Doubters to Shame
+  His Earlier Experiences as Impresario
+  Cleofonte Campanini
+  A Zealous Artistic Director and Ambitious Singers
+  A Surprising Record but No Novelties in the First Season
+  Melba and Calvé as Stars
+  The Desertion of Bonci
+  Quarrels about Puccini's "Bohéme"
+  List of Performances
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A BRILLIANT SEASON AT THE MANHATTAN
+
+  Hammerstein's Second Season
+  Amazing Promises but More Amazing Achievements
+  Mary Garden and Maurice Renaud
+  Massenet's "Thais," Charpentier's "Louise"
+  Giordano's "Siberia" and Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" Performed for
+the First Time in America
+  Revival of Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," "Crispino e la Comare"
+of the Ricci Brothers, and Giordano's "Andrea Chenier"
+  The Tetrazzini Craze
+  Repertory of the Season
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION OF OPERA IN NEW YORK
+
+
+Considering the present state of Italian opera in New York City (I am
+writing in the year of our Lord 1908), it seems more than a little
+strange that its entire history should come within the memories of
+persons still living. It was only two years ago that an ancient factotum
+at the Metropolitan Opera House died who, for a score of years before he
+began service at that establishment, had been in various posts at the
+Academy of Music. Of Mr. Arment a kindly necrologist said that he had
+seen the Crowd gather in front of the Park Theater in 1825, when the new
+form of entertainment effected an entrance in the New World. I knew the
+little old gentleman for a quarter of a century or more, but though he
+was familiar with my interest in matters historical touching the opera
+in New York, he never volunteered information of things further back
+than the consulship of Mapleson at the Academy. Moreover, I was unable
+to reconcile the story of his recollection of the episode of 1825 with
+the circumstances of his early life. Yet the tale may have been true, or
+the opera company that had attracted his boyish attention been one that
+came within the first decade after Italian opera had its introduction.
+
+Concerning another's recollections, I have not the slightest doubt.
+Within the last year Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, entertaining some of her
+relatives and friends with an account of social doings in New York in
+her childhood, recalled the fact that she had been taken as a tiny miss
+to hear some of the performances of the Garcia Troupe, and, if I mistake
+not, had had Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist of Mozart's "Nozze di
+Figaro" and "Don Giovanni" pointed out to her by her brother. This
+brother was Samuel Ward, who enjoyed the friendship of the old poet,
+and published recollections of him not long after his death, in The
+New York Mirror. For a score of years I have enjoyed the gentle
+companionship at the opera of two sisters whose mother was an Italian
+pupil of Da Ponte's, and when, a few years ago, Professor Marchesan, of
+the University of Treviso, Italy, appealed to me for material to be used
+in the biography of Da Ponte, which he was writing, I was able, through
+my gracious and gentle operatic neighbors, to provide him with a number
+of occasional poems written, in the manner of a century ago, to their
+mother, in whom Da Ponte had awakened a love for the Italian language
+and literature. This, together with some of my own labors in uncovering
+the American history of Mozart's collaborator, has made me feel
+sometimes as if I, too, had dwelt for a brief space in that Arcadia of
+which I purpose to gossip in this chapter, and a few others which are
+to follow it.
+
+There may be other memories going back as far as Mrs. Howe's, but I
+very much doubt if there is another as lively as hers on any question
+connected with social life in New York fourscore years ago. Italian
+opera was quite as aristocratic when it made its American bow as it
+is now, and decidedly more exclusive. It is natural that memories of
+it should linger in Mrs. Howe's mind for the reason that the family
+to which she belonged moved in the circles to which the new form of
+entertainment made appeal. A memory of the incident which must have been
+even livelier than that of Mrs. Howe's, however, perished in 1906, when
+Manuel Garcia died in London, in his one hundred and first year, for he
+could say of the first American season of Italian opera what Æneas said
+of the siege of Troy, "All of which I saw, and some of which I was."
+Manuel Garcia was a son of the Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia, who
+brought the institution to our shores; he was a brother of our first
+prima donna, she who then was only the Signorina Garcia, but within
+a lustrum afterward was the great Malibran; and he sang in the first
+performance, on November 29, 1825, and probably in all the performances
+given between that date and August of the next year, when the elder
+Garcia departed, leaving the Signorina, as Mme. Malibran, aged but
+eighteen, to develop her powers in local theaters and as a chorister
+in Grace Church. Of this and other related things presently.
+
+In the sometimes faulty and incomplete records of the American stage to
+which writers on musical history have hitherto been forced to repair,
+1750 is set down as the natal year for English ballad opera in America.
+It is thought that it was in that year that "The Beggar's Opera" found
+its way to New York, after having, in all probability, been given by
+the same company of comedians in Philadelphia in the middle of the
+year preceding. But it is as little likely that these were the first
+performances of ballad operas on this side of the Atlantic as that the
+people of New York were oblivious of the nature of operatic music of
+the Italian type until Garcia's troupe came with Rossini's "Barber of
+Seville," in 1825. There are traces of ballad operas in America in the
+early decades of the eighteenth century, and there can exist no doubt at
+all that French and Italian operas were given in some form, perhaps, as
+a rule, in the adapted form which prevailed in the London theaters until
+far into the nineteenth century, before the year 1800, in the towns and
+cities of the Eastern seaboard, which were in most active communication
+with Great Britain, I quote from an article on the history of opera in
+the United States, written by me for the second edition of "Grove's
+Dictionary of Music and Musicians":
+
+
+Among French works Rousseau's "Pygmalion" and "Devin du Village,"
+Dalayrac's "Nina" and "L'Amant Statue," Monsigny's "Déserteur," Grétry's
+"Zémire et Azor," "Fausse Magie" and "Richard Coeur de Lion" and others,
+were known in Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York in
+the last decade of the eighteenth century. There were traces, too, of
+Pergolese's "Serva padrona," and it seems more than likely that an
+"opera in three acts," the text adapted by Colman, entitled "The Spanish
+Barber; or, The Futile Precaution," played in Baltimore, Philadelphia,
+and New York, in 1794, was Paisiello's "Barbiere di Siviglia." From
+1820 to about 1845 more than a score of the Italian, French, and German
+operas, which made up the staple of foreign repertories, were frequently
+performed by English singers. The earliest of these singers were members
+of the dramatic companies who introduced theatrical plays in the
+colonies. They went from London to Philadelphia, New York, Williamsburg
+(Va.), and Charleston (S. C.), but eventually established their
+strongest and most enduring foothold in New York.
+
+
+Accepting the 1750 date as the earliest of unmistakable records for a
+performance of "The Beggar's Opera" in New York, the original home of
+opera here was the Nassau Street Theater--the first of two known by that
+name. It was a two-storied house, with high gables. Six wax lights were
+in front of the stage, and from the ceiling dangled a "barrel hoop,"
+pierced by half a dozen nails on which were spiked as many candles. It
+is not necessary to take the descriptions of these early playhouses
+as baldly literal, nor as indicative of something like barbarism.
+The "barrel hoop" chandelier of the old theater in Nassau street was
+doubtless only a primitive form of the chandeliers which kept their
+vogue for nearly a century after the first comedians sang and acted at
+the Nassau Street Theater. Illuminating gas did not reach New York till
+1823, and "a thousand candles" was put forth as an attractive feature
+at a concert in the American metropolis as late as 1845. "The Beggar's
+Opera" was only twenty years old when the comedians sent to the colonies
+by William Hallam, under the management of his brother, Lewis, produced
+it, yet the historic Covent Garden Theater, in which it first saw the
+stage lights (candles they were, too), would scarcely stand comparison
+with the most modest of the metropolitan theaters nowadays. Its
+audience-room was only fifty-four or fifty-five feet deep; there were
+no footlights, the stage being illuminated by four hoops of candles,
+over which a crown hung from the borders. The orchestra held only
+fifteen or twenty musicians, though it was in this house that Handel
+produced his operas and oratorios; the boxes "were flat in front and
+had twisted double branches for candles fastened to the plaster. There
+were pedestals on each side of the boards, with elaborately-painted
+figures of Tragedy and Comedy thereon." Hallam's actors went first to
+Williamsburg, Va., but were persuaded to change their home to New York
+in the summer of 1753, among other things by the promise that they would
+find a "very fine 'Playhouse Building'" here. Nevertheless, when Lewis
+Hallam came he found the fine playhouse unsatisfactory, and may be said
+to have inaugurated the habit or custom, or whatever it may be called,
+followed by so many managers since, of beginning his enterprise by
+erecting a new theater. The old one in Nassau Street was torn down,
+and a new one built on its site. It was promised that it should be
+"very fine, large, and commodious," and it was built between June and
+September, 1753; how fine, large, and commodious it was may, therefore,
+be imagined. A year later, the German Calvinists, wanting a place of
+worship, bought the theater, and New York was without a playhouse until
+a new one on Cruger's Wharf was built by David Douglass, who had married
+Lewis Hallam's widow, Hallam having died in Jamaica, in 1755. This was
+abandoned in turn, and Mr. Douglass built a second theater, this time
+in Chapel Street. It cost $1,625, and can scarcely have been either very
+roomy or very ornate. Such as it was, however, it was the home of the
+drama in all its forms, save possibly the ballad opera, until about
+1765, and was the center around which a storm raged which culminated
+in a riot that wrecked it.
+
+The successor of this unhappy institution was the John Street Theater,
+which was opened toward the close of the year 1767. There seems to have
+been a period of about fifteen years during which the musical drama
+was absent from the amusement lists, but this house echoed, like its
+earliest predecessors, to the strains of the ballad opera which "made
+Gay rich and Rich gay." "The Beggar's Opera" was preceded, however, by
+"Love in a Village," for which Dr. Arne wrote and compiled the music;
+and Bickerstaff's "Maid of the Mill" was also in the repertory. In 1774
+it was officially recommended that all places of amusement be closed.
+Then followed the troublous times of the Revolution, and it was not
+until twelve years afterward--that is, till 1786--that English Opera
+resumed its sway. "Love in a Village" was revived, and it was followed
+by "Inkle and Yarico," an arrangement of Shakespeare's "Tempest," with
+Purcell's music, "No Song, No Supper," "Macbeth," with Locke's music,
+McNally's comic opera "Robin Hood," and other works of the same
+character; in fact, it may safely be said that few, if any, English
+operas, either with original music or music adapted from the ballad
+tunes of England, were heard in London without being speedily brought to
+New York and performed here. In the John Street Theater, too, they were
+listened to by George Washington, and the leader of the orchestra, a
+German named Pfeil, whose name was variously spelled Fyle, File, Files,
+and so on, produced that "President's March," the tune of which was
+destined to become associated with "Hail Columbia," to the words of
+which it was adapted by Joseph Hopkinson, of Philadelphia. On January
+29, 1798, a new playhouse was opened. This was the Park Theater. A
+musical piece entitled "The Purse, or American Tar," was on the program
+of the opening performance, and for more than a score of years the Park
+Theater played an important rôle in local operatic history. For a long
+term English operas of both types held the stage, along with the drama
+in all its forms, but in 1819 an English adaptation of Rossini's "Barber
+of Seville"--the opera which opened the Italian régime six years
+later--was heard on its stage, and two years after that Henry Rowley
+Bishop's arrangement of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro." At the close of
+the season of 1820 the Park Theater was destroyed by fire, to the great
+loss of its owners, one of whom was John Jacob Astor. On its site was
+erected the new Park Theater, which was the original home of Italian
+opera, performed in its original tongue, and in the Italian manner,
+though only a small minority of the performers were Italians by birth.
+
+Garcia was a Spaniard, born in Seville. Richard Grant White, writing in
+The Century Magazine for March, 1882, calls him a "Spanish Hebrew," on
+what authority I am unable to guess. Not only was Manuel Garcia, the
+elder, a chorister in the Cathedral of Seville at the age of six, but
+it seems as likely as not that he came of a family of Spanish church
+musicians who had made their mark for more than fifty years before the
+father of Malibran was born. But it is a habit with some writers to find
+Hebrew blood in nearly all persons of genius.
+
+The new Park Theater was looked upon as a magnificent playhouse in its
+day, and it is a pity that Mr. White, writing about it when it was a
+quarter of a century old, should have helped to spread the erroneous
+notion that it was quite unworthy of so elegant a form of entertainment
+as Garcia brought into it. It remained a fashionable house through all
+its career or at least for a long time after it gave refuge to the
+Italian muse, though it may not have been able to hold one of its
+candles to the first house built especially to house that muse eight
+years later. The barrel hoop of the first New York theater gave way
+to "three chandeliers and patent oil lamps, the chandeliers having
+thirty-five lights each." Mr. White's description of this house after it
+had seen about a quarter of a century's service is certainly uninviting.
+Its boxes were like pens for beasts. "Across them were stretched benches
+consisting of a mere board covered with faded red moreen, a narrower
+board, shoulder high, being stretched behind to serve for a back. But
+one seat on each of the three or four benches was without even this
+luxury, in order that the seat itself might be raised upon its hinges
+for people to pass in. These sybaritic inclosures were kept under lock
+and key by a fee-expecting creature, who was always half drunk, except
+when he was wholly drunk. The pit, which has in our modern theater
+become the parterre (or, as it is often strangely called, the parquet),
+the most desirable part of the house, was in the Park Theater hardly
+superior to that in which the Jacquerie of old stood upon the bare
+ground (par terre), and thus gave the place its French name. The floor
+was dirty and broken into holes; the seats were bare, backless benches.
+Women were never seen in the pit, and, although the excellence of the
+position (the best in the house) and the cheapness of admission (half a
+dollar) took gentlemen there, few went there who could afford to study
+comfort and luxury in their amusements. The place was pervaded with evil
+smells; and, not uncommonly, in the midst of a performance, rats ran out
+of the holes in the floor and across into the orchestra. This delectable
+place was approached by a long, underground passage, with bare,
+whitewashed walls, dimly lighted, except at a sort of booth, at which
+vile fluids and viler solids were sold. As to the house itself, it was
+the dingy abode of dreariness. The gallery was occupied by howling
+roughs, who might have taken lessons in behavior from the negroes who
+occupied a part of this tier, which was railed off for their particular
+use."
+
+This was the first home of Italian opera, strictly speaking. It had long
+housed opera in the vernacular, and remained to serve as the fortress
+of the English forces when the first battles were fought between the
+champions of the foreign exotic and the entertainment which had been so
+long established as to call itself native. Its career came to an end in
+1848, when, like its predecessor and successor, it went up in flames and
+smoke.
+
+Presently I shall tell about the houses which have been built in New
+York especially for operatic uses, but before then some attention ought
+to be given to several other old theaters which had connection with
+opera in one or another of its phases. One of these was the New York
+Theater, afterward called the Bowery, and known by that name till a
+comparatively recent date. The walls of this theater echoed first to the
+voice of Malibran, when put forth in the vernacular of the country of
+which fate seemed, for a time, to have decreed that she should remain a
+resident. This was immediately after the first season of Italian opera
+at the Park Theater. The New York Theater was then new, having been
+built in 1826. Malibran had begun the study of English in London before
+coming to New York with her father; and she continued her studies with
+a new energy and a new purpose after the departure of her father to
+Mexico had left her apparently stranded in New York with a bankrupt and
+good-for-nothing husband to support. She made her first essay in English
+opera with "The Devil's Bridge," and followed it up with "Love in a
+Village." English operas, whether of the ballad order or with original
+music, were constructed in principle on the lines of the German
+Singspiel and French opéra comique, all the dialogue being spoken; and
+Malibran's experience at the theater and Grace Church, coupled with her
+great social popularity, must have made a pretty good Englishwoman of
+her. "It is rather startling," says Mr. White, in the article already
+alluded to, "to think of the greatest prima donna, not only of her day,
+but of modern times--the most fascinating woman upon the stage in the
+first half of the nineteenth century--as singing the soprano parts of
+psalm tunes and chants in a small town then less known to the people of
+London and Paris and Vienna than Jeddo is now. Grace Church may well be
+pardoned for pride in a musical service upon the early years of which
+fell such a crown of glory, and which has since then been guided by
+taste not always unworthy of such a beginning." Malibran's performances
+at the New York Theater were successful and a source of profit, both
+to the manager and M. Malibran, to whom, it is said, a portion of the
+receipts were sent every night.
+
+Three other theaters which were identified with opera more or less
+came into the field later, and by their names, at least, testified to
+the continued popularity which a famous English institution had won a
+century before, and which endured until that name could be applied to
+the places that bore it only on the "lucus a non lucendo" principle.
+These were the theaters of Richmond Hill, Niblo's, and Castle Garden.
+The Ranelagh Gardens, which John Jones opened in New York, in June,
+1765, and the Vauxhall Gardens, opened by Mr. Samuel Francis, in
+June, 1769, were planned more or less after their English prototypes.
+Out-of-doors concerts were their chief musical features, fireworks their
+spectacular, while the serving of refreshments was relied on as the
+principal source of profit. Richmond Hill had in its palmy days been the
+villa home of Aaron Burr, and its fortunes followed the descending scale
+like those of its once illustrious master. Its site was the neighborhood
+of what is now the intersection of Varick and Charlton streets. After
+passing out of Burr's hands, but before his death, the park had become
+Richmond Hill Gardens, and the mansion the Richmond Hill Theater, both
+of somewhat shady reputation, which was temporarily rehabilitated by the
+response which the fashionable elements of the city's population made to
+an appeal made by a season of Italian opera, given in 1832. The relics
+of Niblo's Garden have disappeared as completely as those of Richmond
+Hill, but its site is still fresh in the memory of those whose
+theatrical experiences go back a quarter of a century. They must be old,
+however, who can recall enough verdure in the vicinity of Broadway and
+Prince Street to justify the name maintained by the theater to which for
+many years entrance was gained through a corridor of the Metropolitan
+Hotel. Three-quarters of a century ago Niblo's Garden was a reality.
+William Niblo, who built it and managed it with consummate cleverness,
+had been a successful coffee-house keeper downtown. Its theater opened
+refreshingly on one side into the garden (as the Terrace Garden Theater,
+at Third Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street does to-day), where one could
+eat a dish of ice cream or sip a sherry cobbler in luxurious shade, if
+such were his prompting, while play or pantomime went merrily on within.
+Writing of it in 1855 Max Maretzek, who, as manager of the Astor Place
+Opera House, had suffered from the rivalry of Niblo and his theater,
+said:
+
+
+The Metropolitan Hotel, Niblo's Theater, stores and other buildings
+occupy the locality. Of the former garden nothing remains save the
+ice cream and drinking saloons attached to the theater. These take up
+literally as much room in the building as its stage does, and prove
+that its proprietor has not altogether overlooked the earlier vocation
+which laid the foundation of his fortune. The name by which he calls it
+has never changed. It was Niblo's Garden when loving couples ate their
+creams or drank their cobblers under the shadow of the trees. It is
+Niblo's Garden now, when it is turned into a simple theater and hedged
+in with houses. Nay, in the very bills which are circulated in the
+interior of the building during the performances you may find, or
+might shortly since have found, such an announcement as the following,
+appearing in large letters:
+
+"Between the second and third acts"--or, possibly, it may run thus
+when opera is not in the ascendant--"after the conclusion of the
+first piece an intermission of twenty minutes takes place, for a
+promenade in the garden."
+
+You will, I feel certain, admit that this is a marvelously delicate
+way of intimating to a gentleman who may feel "dry" (it is the right
+word, is it not?) that he will find the time to slake his thirst.
+
+When he returns and his lady inquires where he has been he may reply,
+if he wills it:
+
+"Promenading in the garden."
+
+
+It is not plain from Mr. White's account whether or not his memory
+reached back to the veritable garden of Mr. Niblo, but his recollections
+of the theater were not jaundiced like those of Mr. Maretzek, but
+altogether amiable. Speaking of the performances of the Shireff, Seguin,
+and Wilson company of English opera singers, who came to New York in
+1838, he says:
+
+
+Miss Shireff afterward appeared at Niblo's Garden, which was on the
+corner of Broadway and Prince Street, where the Metropolitan Hotel now
+stands. Here she performed in Auber's "Masked Ball" and other light
+operas (all, of course, in English), singing in a theater that was
+open on one side to the air; for Niblo's was a great place of summer
+entertainment. It was a great New York "institution" in its day--perhaps
+the greatest and most beneficent one of its sort that New York has ever
+known. It may be safely said that most of the elder generation of New
+Yorkers now living [this was written in 1881] have had at Niblo's Garden
+the greatest pleasure they have ever enjoyed in public. There were
+careless fun and easy jollity; there whole families would go at a
+moment's warning to hear this or that singer, but most of all, year
+after year, to see the Ravels--a family of pantomimists and dancers
+upon earth and air, who have given innocent, thoughtless, side-shaking,
+brain-clearing pleasure to more Americans than ever relaxed their sad,
+silent faces for any other performers. The price of admission here was
+fifty cents, no seats reserved; "first come, first served."
+
+
+Last of all there was Castle Garden. Children of to-day can remember
+when it was still the immigrants' depot, which it had been for half a
+century. Tradition says that it was built to protect New York City from
+foreign invasion, not to harbor it; but as a fortress it must have
+suffered disarmament quite early in the nineteenth century. It is now
+an aquarium, and as such has returned to its secondary use, which was
+that of a place of entertainment. In 1830 and about that day it was a
+restaurant, but for the sale only of ice cream, lemonade, and cakes.
+You paid a shilling to go in--this to restrict the patronage to people
+of the right sort--and your ticket was redeemable on the inside in
+the innocent fluids and harmless solids aforementioned. A wooden
+bridge, flanked by floating bathhouses, connected the castle with the
+garden--i.e., Battery Park. North and east, in lower Broadway and
+Greenwich Street, were fashionable residences, whose occupants enjoyed
+the promenade under the trees, which was the proper enjoyment of the
+day, as much as their more numerous, but less fortunate fellow citizens.
+There balloons went up by day, and rockets and bombs by night, and
+there, too, the brave militia went on parade. To Mr. White we owe the
+preservation of a poetical description written by Frederick Cozzens in
+an imitation of Spenser's "Sir Clod His Undoinge":
+
+
+  With placket lined, with joyous heart he hies
+  To where the Battery's Alleys, cool and greene,
+  Amid disparted Rivers daintie lies
+  With Fortresse brown and spacious Bridge betweene
+  Two Baths, which there like panniers huge are seen:
+  In shadie paths fair Dames and Maides there be
+  With stalking Lovers basking in their eene,
+  And solitary ones who scan the sea,
+  Or list to vesper chimes of slumberous Trinity.
+
+
+The operas performed in the first season of Italian opera in America
+by the Garcia troupe in the Park Theater 1825-1826, were "Il Barbiere
+di Siviglia," "Tancredi," "Il Turco in Italia," "La Cenerentola," and
+"Semiramide" by Rossini; "Don Giovanni" by Mozart; "L'Amante astuto"
+and "La Figlia del Aria" by Garcia.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EARLY THEATERS, MANAGERS, AND SINGERS
+
+
+The first opera house built in New York City opened its doors on
+November 18, 1833, and was the home of Italian Opera for two seasons;
+the second, built eleven years later, endured in the service for which
+it was designed four years; the third, which marked as big an advance
+on its immediate predecessor in comfort and elegance as the first had
+marked on the ramshackle Park Theater described by Richard Grant White,
+was the Astor Place Opera House, built in 1847, and the nominal home of
+the precious exotic five years.
+
+The Astor Place Opera House in its external appearance is familiar
+enough to the memory of even young New Yorkers, though, unlike its
+successor, the Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place,
+it did not long permit its tarnished glories to form the surroundings
+of the spoken drama after the opera's departure. The Academy of Music
+weathered the operatic tempests of almost an entire generation, counting
+from its opening night, in 1854, to the last night on which Colonel J.
+H. Mapleson was its lessee, in 1886, and omitting the expiring gasps
+which the Italian entertainment made under Signor Angelo, in October,
+1886, under Italo Campanini, in April, 1888, and the final short spasm
+under the doughty Colonel in 1896. The first Italian Opera House (that
+was its name) became the National Theater; the second, which was known
+as Palmo's Opera House, when turned over to the spoken drama, became
+Burton's Theater; the Astor Place Opera House became the Mercantile
+Library. The Academy of Music is still known by that name, though it
+is given over chiefly to melodrama, and the educational purpose which
+existed in the minds of its creators was only a passing dream. The
+Metropolitan Opera House has housed twenty-three regular seasons of
+opera, though it has been in existence for twenty-five seasons. Once
+the sequence of subscription seasons was interrupted by the damage done
+to the theater by fire; once by the policy of its lessees, Abbey & Grau,
+who thought that the public appetite for opera might be whetted by
+enforced abstention. The Manhattan Opera House is too young to enter
+into this study of opera houses, their genesis, growth, and decay, and
+the houses which Mr. Oscar Hammerstein built before it in Harlem and in
+West Thirty-Fourth Street, near Sixth Avenue, lived too brief a time in
+operatic service to deserve more than mention.
+
+I am at a loss for data from which to evolve a rule, as I should like to
+do, governing the length of an opera house's existence in its original
+estate as the home of grand opera.
+
+The conditions which produce the need are too variable and also too
+vague to be brought under the operation of any kind of law. At present
+the growth of wealth, the increase in population, and with that
+increase the rapid multiplication of persons desirous and able to enjoy
+the privileges of social display would seem to be determining factors,
+with the mounting costliness of the luxury as a deterrent. The last
+illustration of the operation of the creative impulse based on the
+growth of wealth and social ambition is found in the building of
+the Metropolitan Opera House, Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise being
+purely individual and speculative. The movement which produced the
+Metropolitan Opera House marked the decay of the old Knickerbocker
+régime, and its amalgamation with the newer order of society of a
+quarter of a century ago. This social decay, if so it can be called
+without offense, began--if Abram C. Dayton ("Last Days of Knickerbocker
+Life in New York") is correct--about 1840, and culminated with the
+Vanderbilt ball, in 1882, to which nearly all the leaders of the old
+Knickerbocker aristocracy accepted invitations. "During the third
+quarter of the nineteenth century," said The Sun's reviewer of Mr.
+Dayton's book, "sagacious and far-sighted Knickerbockers began to
+realize that as a caste they no longer possessed sufficient money to
+sustain social ascendency, and that it behooved them to effect an
+intimate alliance with the nouveaux riches." To this may be added that
+when there were but two decades of the century left it was made plain
+that the Academy of Music could by no possibility accommodate the two
+classes of society, old and new, which had for a number of years been
+steadily approaching each other.
+
+There was an insufficiency of desirable boxes, and holders of seats
+of fashion were unwilling to surrender them to the newcomers. So the
+Metropolitan Opera House was built in 1883, and the vigor of the social
+opposition, coupled with popular appreciation of the new spirit, which
+came in with the German régime, gave the deathblow to the Academy, whose
+loss to fashion was long deplored by the admirers of its fine acoustic
+qualities and its effective architectural arrangements for the purposes
+of display.
+
+The period is not so remote that we cannot trace the influences of
+fashion and society in the rise of the first Italian Opera House, if not
+in its fall. The Park Theater was still a fashionable playhouse when
+Garcia gave his season of Italian opera in it in 1825-26, but within a
+decade thereafter the conditions so graphically described by Mr. White,
+combined with new ambitions, which seem to have been inspired to a
+large extent by Lorenzo Da Ponte, prompted a wish for a new theater:
+one specially adapted to opera. The new entertainment was recognized
+as a luxury, and it was no more than fitting that it be luxuriously
+and elegantly housed. It will be necessary to account for the potent
+influence of Da Ponte, who was only a superannuated poet and teacher of
+Italian language and literature, and this I hope to do presently; for
+the time being it is sufficient to say that it was he who persuaded the
+rich and cultured citizens of New York to build the Italian Opera House,
+which stood at the intersection of Church and Leonard streets. The
+coming of Garcia had filled Da Ponte, then already seventy-six years
+old, with dreams of a recrudescence of such activities as had been his
+in connection with Italian Opera in Vienna and London. He made haste to
+identify himself in an advisory capacity with the enterprise, persuaded
+Garcia to include "Don Giovanni" in his list of operas, although this
+necessitated the engagement of a singer not a member of the company, and
+had already brought his niece, who was a singer, from Italy, and the
+Italian composer Filippo Trajetta, from Philadelphia, when his dream
+of a permanent opera, for which he should write librettos, his friend
+compose music, and his niece sing, was dispelled by Garcia's departure
+for Mexico, and his subsequent return to Europe. For the next five years
+Da Ponte seems to have kept the waters of the operatic pool stirred, for
+there is general recognition in the records of the fact that to him was
+due the conception of the second experiment, although its execution
+was left to another, who was neither an American nor an Italian, but a
+Frenchman named Montressor. Like Garcia, he was his own tenor, which
+fact must have eased him of some of the vexations of management, though
+it added to its labors. We are told that Montressor succeeded in making
+himself personally popular. He had an agreeable voice, a tolerable
+style, and was favorably compared with Garcia, though this goes for
+little, inasmuch as Garcia was past his prime when he came here. Among
+his singers were Signorina Pedrotti, who created a great stir (though,
+I fancy, this was largely because of her beauty and the fact that the
+public, remembering the Signorina Garcia, wanted somebody to worship)
+and a basso named Fornasari.
+
+Signorina Pedrotti effected her entrance on October 17, in a new opera,
+Mercadante's "Elisa e Claudio," which made the hit of the season,
+largely because of the infatuation of the public for the new singer.
+Mr. White gives us a description of her (from hearsay and the records)
+in his article published in The Century Magazine, of March, 1882:
+
+Not much has been said of her, for she had sung only in Lisbon and in
+Bologna, and had little reputation. But she took musical New York off
+its feet again. She had a fine mezzo-soprano voice, of sympathetic
+quality; and although she was far from being a perfectly finished
+vocalist, she had an impressive dramatic style and a presence and a
+manner that enabled her to take possession of the stage. She was a
+handsome woman--tall, nobly formed, with brilliant eyes and a face
+full of expression. She carried the town by storm.
+
+Like Malibran, and many another singer since, Fornasari made a fine
+reputation here, and was afterward "discovered" in Europe, where he rose
+to fame. He seems to have been of the tribe of lady-killers, of whom
+every opera company has boasted at least one ever since opera became a
+fashion--which is only another way of saying ever since it was invented.
+But Fornasari had a noble voice, besides his mere physical attractions.
+Mr. White, who saw him long years afterward, when he chanced to be
+passing through New York on his way to Europe, describes him: He was
+very tall; his head looked like that of a youthful Jove; dark hair in
+flaky curls, an open, blazing eye; a nose just heroically curved; lips
+strong, yet beautifully bowed; sweet and persuasive (one would think
+that White got his description from some woman--what man ever before or
+since was praised by a man for having a Cupid's bow mouth?), and withal
+a large and easy grace of manner.
+
+Montressor's season opened on October 6, 1832, at the Richmond Hill
+Theater, which became respectable for the nonce, and collapsed
+after thirty-five representations. The receipts for the season were
+$25,603--let us say about half as much as a week's receipts at the
+Metropolitan Opera House to-day. The operas given were Rossini's
+"Cenerentola," "L'Italiana in Algieri"; Bellini's "Il Pirata," and
+Mercadante's "Elisa e Claudio," the last winning the largest measure of
+popularity. The chief good accomplished was the bringing to New York
+from Europe of several excellent orchestral players, who, after the
+failure of the enterprise, settled here, to the good of instrumental
+music and the next undertaking.
+
+Why men embark in operatic management, or, rather, why they continue in
+it after they have failed, has always been an enigma. Once, pointing my
+argument with excerpts from the story of all the managers in London,
+from Handel's day down to the present, I tried to prove that the desire
+to manage an opera company was a form of disease, finding admirable
+support for my contention in the confession and conduct of that English
+manager who got himself into Fleet Prison, and thence philosophically
+urged not only that it served him right (since no man insane enough to
+want to be an operatic impresario ought to be allowed at large), but
+also that a jail was the only proper headquarters for a manager, since
+there, at least, he was secure from the importunities of singers
+and dancers. Lorenzo Da Ponte was, obviously, of the stuff of which
+impresarios are made. Montressor's failure, for which he was in a degree
+responsible (and which he discussed in two pamphlets which I found
+twenty years ago in the library of the New York Historical Society),
+persuaded him that the city's greatest need was an Italian opera house.
+His powers of persuasion must have been great, for he succeeded in
+bringing a body of citizens together who set the example which has been
+followed several times since, and built the Italian Opera House at
+Church and Leonard streets, on very much the same social and economic
+lines as prevail at the Metropolitan Opera House to-day. European models
+and European taste prevailed in the structure and its adornments. It was
+the first theater in the United States which boasted a tier composed
+exclusively of boxes. This was the second balcony. The parterre was
+entered from the first balcony, a circumstance which redeemed it from
+its old plebeian association as "the pit," in which it would have been
+indecorous for ladies to sit. The seats in the parterre were mahogany
+chairs upholstered in blue damask. The seats in the first balcony were
+mahogany sofas similarly upholstered. The box fronts had a white ground,
+with emblematic medallions, and octagonal panels of crimson, blue, and
+gold. Blue silk curtains were caught up with gilt cord and tassels.
+There was a chandelier of great splendor, which threw its light into a
+dome enriched with pictures of the Muses, painted, like all the rest of
+the interior, as well as the scenery, by artists specially brought over
+for the purpose from Europe. The floors were carpeted. The price of
+the boxes was $6,000 each, and subscribers might own them for a single
+performance (evidently by arrangement with the owners) or the season.
+Apropos of this, Mr. White tells a characteristic story:
+
+
+It was told of a man who had suddenly risen to what was then great
+wealth, that, having taken a lady to the opera, he was met by the
+disappointing assurance that there were no seats to be had.
+
+"What, nowhere?"
+
+"Nowhere, sir; every seat in the house is taken, except, indeed, one of
+the private boxes that was not subscribed for."
+
+"I'll have that."
+
+"Impossible, sir. The boxes can only be occupied by subscribers and
+owners."
+
+"What is the price of your box?"
+
+"Six thousand dollars, sir."
+
+"I'll take it."
+
+And drawing out his pocketbook he filled up a check for six thousand
+dollars and escorted his lady to her seat to the surprise and, indeed,
+to the consternation of the elegant circle, which saw itself completed
+in this unexpected manner.
+
+
+The new house, which, with the ground, had cost $150,000, was opened
+on November 18, 1833, under the joint management of the Chevalier
+Rivafinoli and Da Ponte, with Rossini's "La Gazza ladra," but two months
+before that date there was a drawing for boxes, concerning which and
+some of the details of the opening performance an extract from the diary
+of Mr. Philip Hone, once mayor of the city, presents a much livelier
+picture than I could draw:
+
+
+   (From the diary of Philip Hone, Esq.)
+
+September 15, 1833. The drawing for boxes at the Italian Opera
+House took place this morning. My associates, Mr. Schermerhorn and
+General Jones, are out of town, and I attended and drew No. 8, with
+which I am well satisfied. The other boxes will be occupied by the
+following gentlemen: Gerard H. Coster, G. C. Howland, Rufus Prime,
+Mr. Panon, Robert Ray, J. F. Moulton, James J. Jones, D. Lynch, E.
+Townsend, John C. Cruger, O. Mauran, Charles H. Hall, J. G. Pierson
+and S. B. Ruggles.
+
+November 18, 1833. The long expected opening of the opera house took
+place this evening with the opera "La Gazza ladra"; all new performers
+except Signor Marozzi, who belonged to the old company. The prima donna
+soprano is Signorina Fanti. The opera, they say, went off well for a
+first performance; but to me it was tiresome, and the audience was
+not excited to any degree of applause. The performance occupied four
+hours--much too long, according to my notion, to listen to a language
+which one does not understand; but the house is superb, and the
+decorations of the proprietors' boxes (which occupy the whole of the
+second tier) are in a style of magnificence which even the extravagance
+of Europe has not yet equaled. I have one-third of box No. 8; Peter
+Schermerhorn one-third; James J. Jones one-sixth; William Moore
+one-sixth. Our box is fitted up with great taste with light blue
+hangings, gilded panels and cornice, armchairs, and a sofa. Some of
+the others have rich silk ornaments, some are painted in fresco, and
+each proprietor seems to have tried to outdo the rest in comfort and
+magnificence. The scenery is beautiful. The dome and the fronts of the
+boxes are painted in the most superb classical designs, and the sofa
+seats are exceedingly commodious. Will this splendid and refined
+amusement be supported in New York? I am doubtful.
+
+
+The outcome justified Mr. Hone in his doubts. The season was advertised,
+to last forty nights. When they were at an end a supplementary season of
+twenty-eight nights was added, which extended the time to July 21, 1834.
+Besides "La Gazza ladra," the operas given were "Il Barbiere di
+Siviglia," "La Donna del Lago," "Il Turco in Italia," "Cenerentola," and
+"Matilda di Shabran"--all by Rossini; Pacini's "Gli Arabi nelli Gallie,"
+Cimarosa's "II Matrimonio segreto," and "La Casa do Pendere," by the
+conductor, one Salvioni. The season had been socially and artistically
+brilliant, but the financial showing at the end was one of disaster. The
+prices of admission were from $2 down to fifty cents, and when the house
+was completely sold out the receipts were not more than $1,400. The
+managers took their patrons into their confidence, Rivafinoli publishing
+the fact that the receipts for the entire season--including fifteen
+nights in Philadelphia, for that city's dependence on New York for
+Italian opera began thus early--were but $51,780.89, which were exceeded
+by the expenses $29,275.09. For the next season the house was leased by
+the owners to Signor Sacchi, who had been the treasurer of Rivafinoli
+and Da Ponte, and Signor Porto, one of the singers. These managers had
+an experience similar to that which Maretzek declaimed against twenty
+years later when troubles gathered about the new Academy of Music.
+Notwithstanding that there had been a startling deficit, though the
+audiences had been as large as could be accommodated, these underlings
+of Rivafinoli and Da Ponte, who were at least men of experience in
+operatic management, took the house, giving the stockholders the free
+use of their boxes and 116 free admissions every night besides. The
+second season started brilliantly, but just as financial disaster was
+preparing to engulf it the performances were abruptly brought to an
+end by the prima donna, Signora, or Signorina, Fanti, who took French
+leave--an incident which remains unique in New York's operatic annals,
+at least in its consequences, I think.
+
+It is evident to a close student of the times that the reasons given
+were not the only ones to contribute to the downfall of the enterprise.
+Italian opera had found a vigorous rival in English, or rather in
+opera in the vernacular, for the old ballad operas were disappearing
+and German, French, and Italian opera sung in the vernacular, not by
+actresses who had tolerable voices, but by trained vocalists, was taking
+its place. The people of New York were not quite so sophisticated as
+they are to-day, and possibly were dowered with a larger degree of
+sincerity. Many of them were willing to admit the incongruity of
+behavior at which Addison made merry when he predicted that the time
+would come when the descendants of the English people of his day would
+be curious to know "why their forefathers used to sit together like an
+audience of foreigners in their own country and to hear whole plays
+acted before them in a tongue which they did not understand." We know
+that Addison was a poor prophet, for the people of Great Britain and
+America are still sitting in the same attitude as their ancestors so far
+as opera is concerned; but it is plain that arguments like his did reach
+the consciences of even the stockholders of the Italian Opera House, or
+at least the one of them who has taken posterity into his confidence.
+The season under Sacchi and Porto had scarcely begun when Mr. Hone
+wrote in his diary:
+
+
+I went to the opera, where I saw the second act of "La Straniera," by
+Bellini. The house is as pretty as ever, and the same faces were seen in
+the boxes as formerly; but it is not a popular entertainment, and will
+not be in our day, I fear. The opera did not please me. There was too
+much reiteration, and I shall never discipline my taste to like common
+colloquial expressions of life: "How do you do, madame?" or "Pretty
+well, I thank you, sir," the better for being given with orchestral
+accompaniment.
+
+
+I shrewdly suspect that Mr. Hone had been reading his Spectator.
+There were three years of opera in London, in Addison's day, when the
+English and Italian languages were mixed in the operas as German and
+Italian were in Hamburg when Handel started out on his career. "The king
+or hero of the play generally spoke in Italian and his slaves answered
+him in English; the lover frequently made his court and gained the heart
+of his princess in a language which she did not understand." At length,
+says Addison, the audience got tired of understanding half the opera,
+"and to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of thinking, so ordered
+it that the whole opera was performed in an unknown tongue." Now listen
+to our diarist:
+
+
+The Italian language is among us very little understood, and the genius
+of it certainly never entered into with spirit. To entertain an audience
+without reducing it to the necessity of thinking is doubtless a
+first-rate merit, and it is easier to produce music without sense than
+with it; but the real charm of the opera is this--it is an exclusive and
+extravagant recreation, and, above all, it is the fashion.
+
+  Italian music's sweet because 'tis dear,
+  Their vanity is tickled, not their ear;
+  Their taste would lessen if the prices fell,
+  And Shakespeare's wretched stuff do quite as well.
+
+The recitative is an affront to common sense, and if there be any
+spectacle more than another opposed to the genius of the English
+character and unsuited to its taste it is the ballet of the opera house.
+Its eternal dumbshow, with its fantastic appeals to sense and to sense
+only, may be Italian perfection, but here it is in English a tame
+absurdity. What but fashion could tempt reasonable creatures to sit and
+applaud--what was really perpetrated--Deshayes dancing "The Death of
+Nelson"?
+
+
+After the season of Sacchi and Porto Italian opera went into exile for
+ten years. Da Ponte pleaded for "the most splendid ornament" of the city
+in vain. English opera conquered, aided, no doubt, by the fact that the
+section of the city in which the Italian Opera House was situated was
+fatally unfashionable, and after standing vacant for a year the house
+was leased to James W. Wallack, father of John Lester Wallack, who
+turned it into a home for the spoken drama. In another year it went
+up in flames.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FIRST ITALIAN COMPANY
+
+
+The beginnings of Italian opera in America are intimately associated
+with two men who form an interesting link connecting the music of the
+Old World with that of the New. These men were Manuel del Popolo Vicente
+Garcia and Lorenzo Da Ponte. The opera performed in the Park Theater on
+November 29, 1825, when the precious exotic first unfolded its petals
+in the United States, was Rossini's "Il Barbiere di Siviglia." In this
+opera Garcia, then in his prime, had created, as the French say, the
+rôle of Almaviva in Rome a little less than ten years before. The
+performance was one of the most monumental fiascos in Rossini's career,
+and the story goes that Garcia, hoping to redeem it, introduced a
+Spanish song to which he himself supplied a guitar accompaniment. The
+fiasco of the first performance was largely, if not wholly, due to the
+jealous ill will of the friends of Paisiello, who had written music for
+an opera on the same story, which was much admired all over Europe, and
+which in an adapted form had reached America, as had Rossini's, before
+Garcia came with the original version. But Rossini's music was too
+fascinating to be kept under a bushel, and in it Garcia won some of his
+finest triumphs in London and Paris. In the first New York season it
+was performed twenty-three times. Garcia was also a composer, and had
+made his mark in this field before he became famous as a singer, having
+produced at least seventeen Spanish operas, nineteen Italian, and Seven
+French, most, if not all of them, before he came to America.
+
+Exactly what it was that persuaded Garcia to embark on the career of
+impresario in a new land does not appear in the story of his enterprise.
+There are intimations that he had long had the New York project in mind;
+also it used to be thought that Da Ponte had inspired him with the idea;
+the more general story is that Dominick Lynch, a New York importer of
+French wines, was at the bottom of the enterprise, but whether on his
+own account or as a sort of agent for the manager of the Park Theater,
+I have not been able to learn. Garcia's singing days were coming to an
+end, though his popularity was not yet on the wane if there is evidence
+in the circumstances that from 1823 to 1825 his salary in London had
+increased from 260 pounds to 1,250 pounds. But it was as a teacher and
+composer that he now commanded the greater respect. He had founded
+a school of singing of which it may truthfully be said that it was
+continued without loss of glory until the end of the nineteenth
+century by his son Manuel, who died in 1906, a few months after he had
+celebrated the hundredth anniversary of his birth. But, though we may
+not know all the reasons which prevailed with him to seek fortune as a
+manager after he had himself passed the half-century mark, it is easy
+to fancy that the fact that he had half the artists necessary for the
+undertaking in his own family had much to do with it. His daughter,
+Maria Felicita, had studied singing with him from childhood and at
+sixteen years of age had sung with him in Italy. His wife was an
+opera singer and his son Manuel had made a beginning in the career which
+he speedily abandoned in favor of that which gave him far greater fame
+than the stage promised. The future Malibran was singing in the chorus
+in London only a year before she disclosed her peerless talents in New
+York. In June, 1825, Pasta, who was Mr. Ebers's prima donna at the
+King's Theater, took ill. Garcia was a member of the company and came
+forward with an offer of his daughter as substitute. The offer was
+accepted, the girl effected her début as Rosina in "The Barber," and
+made so complete a hit that she was engaged for the remaining six weeks
+of the season at a salary of 500 pounds. This is the story as told by
+Fétis, which does not differ essentially from that told by Ebers in
+his account of his seven years of tenancy of the King's Theater, or
+by Lord Mount-Edgecumbe in his "Musical Reminiscences," except that
+these make no direct reference to Pasta's illness as the cause which
+gave Maria her opportunity. Lord Mount-Edgecumbe's account says that
+Ebers found it necessary, about the time of the arrival of Pasta, "to
+engage a young singer, the daughter of the tenor Garcia, who had sung
+here for several seasons. She was as yet a mere girl, and had never
+appeared on any public stage; but from the first moment of her
+appearance she showed evident talents for it, both as singer and
+actress. Her extreme youth, her prettiness, her pleasing voice and
+sprightly, easy action as Rosina in 'Il Barbiere di Siviglia,' in which
+part she made her début, gained her general favor; but she was too
+highly extolled and injudiciously put forward as a prima donna when she
+was only a promising débutante, who in time, by study and practice,
+would, in all probability, under the tuition of her father, a good
+musician, but (to my ears at least) a most disagreeable singer, rise
+to eminence in her profession."
+
+I am not more than half persuaded that this view of the future
+Malibran's talents and prospects did not tally with that of her father,
+though her tremendous success in New York ought to have persuaded him
+that a future of the most dazzling description lay before his daughter.
+There is something of a puzzle in the fact that in the midst of her
+first triumph the girl should have married M. Malibran, who was only
+apparently wealthy, and was surely forty-three years her senior, and of
+a nature which was bound to develop lack of sympathy and congeniality
+between the pair. The popular version of the story of her marriage is
+that she was forced into it by her father, and it is more than intimated
+that he was induced to act as he did by the promise of 100,000 francs
+made by Malibran as a compensation for the loss of his daughter's
+services. Did Garcia oppose his daughter's marriage, and did she
+wilfully have her own way in a matter in which she was scarcely a proper
+judge? Or was the marriage repugnant to her, and was she sacrificed to
+her father's selfishness? I cannot tell, but it has been hinted that
+there was danger of her marrying a member of the orchestra in London
+before she came to New York, and it is as like as not that the affair
+Malibran was of her wishing. Who can know the ways of a maid fourscore
+years after? The marriage was as unfortunate as could be. In a few
+months Malibran was a bankrupt, his youthful wife's father was gone to
+distant Mexico, there to make money, only to be robbed of it at Vera
+Cruz on his home journey to England, and Maria Felicita, instead of
+living in affluence as the wife of a wealthy New York merchant, was
+supporting an unworthy husband, as well as herself, by singing in
+English at the theater in the Bowery and in Grace Church on Sundays. The
+legal claims bound the ill-assorted pair for ten years, but did not gall
+the artist after she returned to Europe in 1827, little more than a year
+later. In Paris the marriage was annulled in 1836, and the singer, now
+the greatest prima donna on the stage, married Charles de Bériot, the
+violinist, with whom she had been living happily for six years, and by
+whom she had a son, born in February, 1833. The world's Book of Opera
+must supply the other chapters which tell of the great Malibran, her
+marvelous triumphs and her early death; but it is a matter of pride for
+every American to reflect that this adorable artist began her career
+with the admiring applause of our people.
+
+Manuel Garcia, the son, the senior of his sister by three years,
+survived her the whole span of life allotted to man by the Psalmist.
+Malibran died in 1836; Garcia in 1906. He achieved nothing on the stage,
+which he abandoned in 1829. Thereafter his history belongs to that of
+pedagogy. Till 1848 his field of operations was Paris; afterward, till
+his death, London. Jenny Lind was one of his pupils; Mme. Marchesi
+another.
+
+The story that Da Ponte had anything to do with inspiring Garcia's New
+York enterprise is practically disposed of by the fact that Da Ponte,
+though intimately associated with the opera in London during his sojourn
+in that city, had already been a resident of New York three years when
+Garcia made his début as a singer and never returned thither. Personally
+Garcia was a stranger to him and he to Garcia when the latter came to
+New York in the fall of 1825. This gives color of verity to a familiar
+story of their meeting. As might easily be imagined, the man who had
+written the librettos of "Le Nozze di Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "Cosi
+Fan Tutte" for Mozart, was not long in visiting Garcia after his arrival
+here. He introduced himself as the author of "Don Giovanni," and Garcia,
+clipping the old man in his arm, danced around the room like a child in
+glee, singing "Fin ch'han dal vino" the while. After that the inclusion
+of Mozart's masterpiece in Garcia's repertory was a matter of course,
+with only this embarrassment that there was no singer in the company
+capable of singing the music of Don Ottavio. This was overcome by Da
+Ponte going to his pupils for money enough to pay an extra singer for
+the part. Many a tenor, before and since, who has been cast for that
+divinely musical milksop has looked longingly at the rôle of Don
+Giovanni which Mozart gave to a barytone, and some have appropriated it.
+Garcia was one of these (he had been a tenor de forza in his day),
+and it fell to him to introduce the character in New York. Outside of
+himself, his daughter, and the basso Angrisani, the company was a poor
+affair, the orchestra not much better than that employed at the ordinary
+theater then (and now, for that matter), and the chorus composed of
+mechanics drilled to sing words they did not understand. It is scarcely
+to be wondered at, therefore, that at one of the performances of
+Mozart's opera, of which there were ten, singers and players got at
+sixes and sevens in the superb finale of the first act, whereupon
+Garcia, losing his temper, rushed to the footlights sword in hand,
+stopped the orchestra, and commanded a new beginning.
+
+It has already been told how that Da Ponte was active in the promotion
+of the first Italian opera enterprise, that he inspired Montressor's
+experiment at the Richmond Hill Theater and was the moving spirit in the
+ambitious, beautiful but unhappy Italian Opera House undertaking. To do
+all these things it was necessary that he should be a man of influence
+among the cultured and wealthy classes of the community. As a matter of
+fact he was this, and that in spite of the fact that his career had been
+checkered in Europe and was not wholly free from financial scandal, at
+least in New York. The fact is that the poet's artistic temperament was
+paired with an insatiable commercial instinct. This instinct, at least,
+may be set down as a racial inheritance. Until seven or eight years
+ago nobody seems to have taken the trouble to look into the family
+antecedents of him whom the world will always know as Lorenzo Da Ponte.
+That was not his name originally. Of this fact something only a little
+better than a suspicion had been in the minds of those who knew him and
+wrote about him during his lifetime and shortly after his death. Michael
+Kelly, the Irish tenor, who knew him in Vienna, speaks of him as "my
+friend, the abbé," and tells of his dandyish style of dressing, his
+character as a "consummate coxcomb," his strong lisp and broad Venetian
+dialect; if he knew that he was a converted Jew, he never mentioned the
+fact. Later writers hinted at the fact that he had been born a Jew, but
+had been educated by the Bishop of Ceneda and had adopted his name.
+When I investigated his American history, a matter of twenty years ago,
+my statement in The Tribune newspaper that he was the son of a Hebrew
+leather dealer provoked an almost intemperate denial by a German
+musical historian, who quoted from his memoirs a story of his religious
+observances to confound me. My statement, however, was based, not only
+on an old rumor, but also on the evidence of a pamphlet published in
+Lisbon in the course of what seems to have been a peculiarly acrimonious
+controversy between Da Ponte and a theatrical person unnamed, but
+probably one Francesco. In this pamphlet, which is not only indecorous
+but indecent, he is referred to as "the celebrated Lorenzo Daponte, who
+after having been Jew, Christian, priest, and poet in Italy and Germany
+found himself to be a layman, husband, and ass in London." It remained
+for Professor Marchesan, his successor in the chair of rhetoric in the
+University of Treviso, to give the world the facts concerning his origin
+and early family history. From Marchesan's book ("Della Vita e delle
+Opere di Lorenzo da Ponte") published in Treviso in 1900 we learn that
+the poet's father was in truth a Hebrew leather dealer, and also that
+the father's name was Jeremiah Conegliano, his mother's Rachel
+Pincherle, and his own Emanuele Conegliano. He was fourteen years old
+when not he alone, but the whole family, embraced Christianity. They
+were baptized in the cathedral of Ceneda on August 20, 1763, and the
+bishop gave the lad, whose talents he seems to have observed, his own
+name. The rest of his story up to his departure for America may be
+outlined in the words of the sketch in Grove's "Dictionary of Music
+and Musicians" (second edition, Vol. III, p. 789).
+
+After five years of study in the seminary at Ceneda (probably with the
+priesthood as an object) he went to Venice, where he indulged in amorous
+escapades which compelled his departure from that city. He went to
+Treviso and taught rhetoric in the university, incidentally took part in
+political movements, lampooned an opponent in a sonnet, and was ordered
+out of the republic. In Dresden, whither he turned his steps, he found
+no occupation for his talents, and journeyed on to Vienna. There,
+helped by Salieri, he received from Joseph II the appointment of poet
+to the imperial theater and Latin secretary. Good fortune brought
+him in contact with Mozart, who asked him to make an opera book of
+Beaumarchais's "Mariage de Figaro." The great success of Mozart's opera
+on this theme led to further co-operation, and it was on Da Ponte's
+suggestion that "Don Giovanni" was undertaken, the promptings coming
+largely from the favor enjoyed at the time by Gazzaniga's opera on the
+same subject, from which Da Ponte made generous drafts--as a comparison
+of the libretti will show. Having incurred the ill will of Leopold, Da
+Ponte was compelled to leave Vienna on the death of Joseph II. He went
+to Trieste, where Leopold was sojourning, in the hope of effecting a
+reconciliation, but failed; but there he met and married an Englishwoman
+who was thenceforth fated to share his checkered fortunes. He obtained a
+letter recommending him to the interest of Marie Antoinette, but while
+journeying toward Paris learned of the imprisonment of the Queen, and
+went to London instead. A year was spent in the British metropolis in
+idleness, and some time in Holland in a futile effort to establish an
+Italian theater there. Again he turned his face toward London, and this
+time secured employment as poet to the Italian opera and assistant to
+the manager, Taylor. He took a part of Domenico Corri's shop to sell
+Italian books, but soon ended in difficulties, and to escape his
+creditors fled to America, arriving in New York on June 4, 1805.
+
+Da Ponte lives in the respect and admiration of Dante scholars as the
+first of American teachers and commentators on "The Divine Comedy." He
+gave himself the title, and in this case adhered to the truth, which
+cannot be said of all of his statements about himself. For instance, in
+a letter to the public to be set forth presently, he calls himself "poet
+of the Emperor Joseph II." He was in the habit of thus designating
+himself and it was small wonder that his biographers almost unanimously
+interpreted these words to mean that he was poet laureate, or Caesarian
+poet. After the mischief, small enough, except perhaps in an ethical
+sense, had been done, he tried to correct it in a foot note on one of
+the pages of his "Memorie," in which he says that he was not "Poeta
+Cesario," but "poet to the Imperial theaters." In his capacity as a
+teacher his record seems to have been above reproach; and it was in
+this capacity that he first presented himself favorably to New Yorkers.
+Within two years after his arrival he gave a pamphlet to the public
+entitled "Compendium of the Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, written by
+Himself, to which is added the first Literary Conversatione held at his
+home in New York on the 10th day of March, 1807, consisting of several
+Italian compositions in verse and prose translated into English by his
+scholars." That this little brochure was designed as an advertisement
+is obvious enough; it was issued on his fifty-eighth birthday and its
+contents, besides the sketch of his life, which, so it began, he
+had promised to give his pupils, were specimens of their literary
+handicraft. In the biographical recital are echoes of the contentions in
+which he had been engaged in London a few years before. Although only
+two years had elapsed since his arrival in America, what may be called
+the first of his commercial periods was already over. He had sent his
+wife to New York ahead of him with some of the money which his English
+creditors were looking for. With this he promptly embarked in business,
+trafficking in tobacco, liquors, drugs, etc.--goods which promised
+large profits. In three months fear of yellow fever drove him to
+Elizabethtown, N. J., where he remained a year, by which time he was
+ruined. He came back to New York and began to teach the Italian
+language and literature, and the little "Compendium" recorded his first
+successes. He taught till 1811, by which time he had laid aside $4,000,
+with which he again went into business, this time as a distiller in
+Sunbury, Pa. After several years of commercial life he returned again to
+New York and resumed the profession which brought him into contact with
+people of refinement and social standing, who seem to have remained his
+friends, despite his complaints and importunities, till his death in
+1838. Among those who were sincerely attached to him were Clement Clark
+Moore, Hebrew lexicographer, trustee of Columbia College, and (best of
+all) author of "'Twas the Night before Christmas." Through Moore he
+secured the privilege of calling himself Professor of Italian Literature
+at Columbia, though without salary, managed to sell the college a large
+number of Italian books, and was engaged to make a catalogue of the
+college library. Another friend was Henry James Anderson, who became
+Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy in the college in 1825, the year
+in which Garcia came to New York with his operatic enterprise. Professor
+Anderson married his daughter and became the father of Edward Henry and
+Elbert Ellery Anderson. Other friends were Giulian C. Verplanck, Dr.
+Macneven, Maroncelli, the Italian patriot, (whose wife was one of the
+members of the opera company which Da Ponte organized with Rivafinoli),
+Samuel Ward, Dr. John W. Francis, the Cottenet family, and H. T.
+Tuckerman, who wrote a sketch of him after his death in Putnam's
+Magazine. At the time of his operatic venture, 1833-34, he lived at No.
+342 Broadway, and kept a bookstore at No. 336, which may then have been
+an adjoining house. The site is near the present Catherine Lane. Before
+then he had lived in dozens of different houses, moving, apparently,
+nearly every year. He died at No. 91 Spring Street, on August 17, 1838,
+and was buried in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Eleventh Street,
+between First Avenue and Avenue A. When the centenary of the first
+performance of "Don Giovanni" was celebrated in many European cities, in
+1887, I conceived the idea of sending a choir of trombones to the grave
+of the poet who had written the text to pay a musical tribute to his
+memory, and thus made the discovery that the place of his burial was
+as completely lost as the last resting place of the mortal remains of
+Mozart. Weeks of research were necessary to determine the fact that it
+was the old cemetery that had received his body, and that the location
+of the grave was no longer to be determined by the records. It was never
+marked.
+
+Da Ponte's ambition to see Italian opera permanently established in New
+York seems to have received a crushing blow with the failure of the
+pretentious Italian Opera House enterprise. His dream I have referred
+to; he was again to be a "poet to the opera," to write works for season
+after season which his countryman Trajetta was to set to music. His
+niece was to be a prima donna. He did write one libretto; it was for an
+opera entitled, "L'Ape Musicale," for the musical setting of which he
+despoiled Rossini. His niece, Giulia Da Ponte, did sing, but her talents
+were not of the kind to win distinction. He persuaded Montressor to give
+his season, and, rushing into print, as was his custom--the period of
+the pamphleteer was to his liking--he discussed the failure of that
+undertaking in two booklets. After the successive failures of himself
+with Rivafinoli and his underlings, who attempted to succeed where he
+had come to grief, he appended a letter to his old supporters (who had
+plainly fallen away from him) to a pamphlet devoted to setting forth the
+miseries of his existence after the great things which, in his opinion,
+he had done for the people of New York. The letter has never seen the
+light of day from the time when it was printed in 1835 till now; but it
+deserves preservation. I found it twenty years ago in the library of the
+Historical Society of New York in a bound volume of miscellaneous
+pamphlets. It is as follows:
+
+
+TO THOSE AMERICANS who love the fine arts I address myself. Hitherto I
+have vainly spoken and written. Never was more really verified the Latin
+proverb: Abyssus abyssum invocat.
+
+Let the verses that I now present you rouse you from your lethargy; yet
+should they not, I will not cease to cry aloud. I cannot now remain in
+silence while my fellow countrymen are sacrificed, the citizens of two
+noble cities deceived, and an enterprise for which I have so long and
+ardently labored, so calculated to shed luster on the nation, and so
+honorable in its commencement, ruined by those who have no means, nor
+knowledge, nor experience. Answer at least these questions: Did you not
+request from me an Italian company? It will be readily understood with
+whom I speak. Why did you ask this of me? I was offered a handsome
+premium if I would introduce a troupe of select Italian artists in
+America. Did not I, and I alone procure them? Were they not excellent?
+Have I been compensated for my labor, reimbursed my actual expenses,
+or even honored by those most benefited by my losses and labors?
+
+Had not I a right to expect thus much, or at least justice? And if you
+thought me competent to do what I have done, why should you not be
+guided by my counsels? Did I not tell you and reiterate in my writing
+and verbally that Rivafinoli was not to be trusted? That he was a
+daring, but imprudently daring, adventurer, whose failures in London,
+and in Mecico and Carolina were the sure forerunners of his failure in
+New York? And when deceived by him, whom did you take in place of him?
+PORTO! SACCHI! With what means? What talents? What judgment? What
+experience? What chances of a happy issue? Would you know why they
+wished it? I will tell you, with Juvenal--'Greculus esuriens si in
+coelum jusseris ibit.' But ignorant pretenders mostly have more
+influence than modest truth. You, gentlemen of the committee, gave the
+theater to them because, not having anything to lose, they could yield
+to everything, even to the promising of what they knew themselves
+unable to perform.
+
+One of them it is said still has some hopes from you. Before another
+disgrace occurs I beg you to look at the effects. Nemo dat quod non
+habet. I brought a company from Italy by the mere force of my word. And
+why was this? Because they knew me for an honorable man, who would not
+promise what he could not perform, who had been eleven years the poet of
+the Emperor Joseph 2d, who for another equal space of time had been the
+poet to the theater in London, who had written thirty-six operas for
+Salieri, for Martini, for Storace and Mozzart (sic).
+
+That these dramas still survive, you yourself have seen and thought its
+author not worthy of your esteem. For God's sake let the past become a
+beacon light to save you from the perils of the future. Do not destroy
+the most splendid ornament of your city. Rocco is obliged to visit
+Italy. Lease to him the theater, he will have for his advisers the
+talented and estimable Bagioli and myself. For me I wish for nothing,
+but it pains me to see spoiled by ignorance and imposture, and vanity
+that which cost me so much, or to speak more correctly, which cost me
+everything, and you so much, and it will cost you more in fame as well
+as in money.
+
+What will they say, the Trollops and the Halls and Hamiltons who
+nodum in scripto quoerunt with the microscope of national aversion?
+Rocco and he only can redeem the fortunes of your disorganized,
+betrayed, dishonored establishment by giving you a new and meritorious
+company. Listen then to him and assist him--you will lose nothing by
+it; I pledge you the word of an old man whose lips have never uttered
+an untruth. Your servant and fellow citizen,
+                                               Lorenzo Da Ponte
+
+
+The theater was not leased to Rocco. It never echoed to
+opera after the second season.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOUSES BUILT FOR OPERA
+
+
+"His wit was not so sharp as his chin, and so his career was not so long
+as his nose," says Richard Grant White of the impresario who, ten years
+after the failure of the Italian Opera House, made the third effort to
+establish Italian opera in New York of which there is a record. The man
+with a sharp chin and long nose was Ferdinand Palmo. He was the owner of
+a popular restaurant which went by the rather tropical name "Café des
+Milles Colonnes," and was situated in Broadway, just above Duane Street.
+Palmo knew how to cook and how to cater, and his restaurant made him
+fairly rich. What he did not know about managing an opera house he was
+made conscious of soon after the ambition to be an impresario took hold
+of him. His was an individual enterprise, like Mr. Hammerstein's, with
+no clogs or entangling alliances in the shape of stockholders, or
+managing directors, or amusement committees. He seems to have been
+strongly impressed with the idea that after the public had been total
+abstainers for ten years they would love opera for its own sake, and
+that it would not be necessary to give hostages to fortune in the shape
+of a beautiful house, with a large portion set apart for the exclusive
+use of wealth and fashion. Except in name, says Mr. White, there were no
+boxes. Palmo did not even build a new theater. He found one that could
+be modeled to his purposes in Stoppani's Arcade Baths, in Chambers
+Street, between Broadway and Center Street. The site is now occupied
+by the building of the American News Company. The acoustics of the new
+opera house are said to have been good, but the inconvenience of the
+location and unenviable character of the neighborhood are indicated
+quite as much as Signor Palmo's enterprising and considerate nature
+by his announcement that after the performances a large car would be
+run uptown as far as Forty-Second Street for the accommodation of
+his patrons; and also that the patrons aforesaid should have police
+protection. The house seated about eight hundred persons, the seats
+being hard benches, with slats across the back shoulder high. Opera
+lovers given to luxury were permitted to upholster their benches. The
+orchestra numbered "thirty-two professors," but their devotion to the
+art which they professed was not so great as to make them willing to
+starve for its sake or to refuse to resort to the methods of the more
+modern workingmen's unions to compel payment for their services, as
+we shall see presently. The first performance under Signor Palmo took
+place on February 3, 1844, the opera being the same one with which
+Mr. Hammerstein began his latest venture sixty-two years later--"I
+Puritani." The prima donna soprano was Borghese, who was attractive in
+appearance, though not beautiful; who dressed well, sang with passionate
+intensity, and won a popularity that found vent in praise which may
+have been extravagant. One critic, "balancing her beauties against her
+defects," pronounced her the best operatic singer that the writer had
+yet heard on this side of the Atlantic. This remark leads Mr. White
+to surmise that the critic had not been five years in America, for,
+says he, Signora Borghese was not worthy to tie the shoes of Malibran,
+Pedrotti, Fanti, Garadori, or Mrs. Wood, the last two of whom had sung
+in English opera. Her chief defect seems to have been the tremolo--that
+vice toward which the American critics of to-day are more intolerant
+than those of any other people, as they are toward the sister vice of
+a faulty intonation. Mr. White talks sensibly on the subject in his
+estimate of Borghese.
+
+
+She had a fine voice, although not a great one; her vocalization,
+regarded from a merely musical point of view, was of the corresponding
+grade, but as stage vocalization it had great power and deserved
+higher commendation. Her musical declamation was always effective and
+musico-rhetorically in good taste. She had a fine person, an expressive
+face, and much grace of manner. One might be content never to hear a
+better prima donna if one were secured against never hearing a worse.
+In her was first remarked here, among vocalists of distinction, that
+trembling of the voice when it is pressed in a crescendo, which has
+since become so common as greatly to mar our enjoyment of vocal music.
+This great fault, unknown before the appearance of Verdi, is attributed
+by some musical critics to the influence of his vociferous and strident
+style. It may be so; but that which follows is not always a consequence
+of that after which it comes. Certain it is, however, that from this
+time forward very few of the principal singers who have been heard in
+New York--only the very greatest and those whose style was formed
+before Verdi domineered the Italian lyric stage--were without this
+tremble. Grisi, Mario, Sontag, Jenny Lind, Alboni, and Salvi were
+entirely without it; their voices came from the chest pure, free and
+firm.
+
+
+I can scarcely believe that the distressful vocal wabble either came in
+with Verdi's music or was greatly promoted by it. In the lofty quality
+of style Mme. Sembrich is the most perfect exemplar whom it is the
+privilege of New Yorkers to hear to-day; and she is the best singer
+we have of Verdi's music. Did anyone ever hear a tone come out of her
+throat that was not pure, free, and firm? Frequently the tremolo is
+an affectation like the excessive vibrato of a sentimental fiddler;
+sometimes it is the product of weakness due to abuse of the vocal organ.
+In all cases it is the sign of bad taste or vicious training, or both,
+and is an abomination. On the opera stage to-day Italian prima donnas
+are most afflicted with it. In turn Verdi, Meyerbeer, and Wagner
+have been accused of having caused it, but anyone who has listened
+intelligently to the opera singers of the last forty years will testify
+with me that the truly great singers of their music have been as free
+from the vicious habit as have been those whose artistic horizons have
+been confined by the music of Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti.
+
+The tenor of the Palmo company was Antognini, who effected his entrance
+on the American stage five weeks after the opening of the season. In the
+opinion of Mr. White, he was the greatest tenor ever heard here, not
+excepting Mario and Salvi, and Mr. White's opinion is so judiciously
+expressed that one is fain to give it credence. Whether or not it can be
+extended over the period which he has covered, which is that reaching
+from the last days of the Academy of Music, when Campanini was still in
+his vocal prime but had not developed the dramatic powers which he put
+into play with the decay of his voice, I shall not undertake to say;
+taste in tenor voices has changed within the last generation in favor
+of the robust quality so magnificently exemplified in Signor Caruso. To
+judge from Mr. White's description Antognini, as a singer merely, was
+a Bonci of a manlier mould. His fame seems to have died with those who
+heard him, and perhaps this is a good reason for reprinting what Mr.
+White said about him in full:
+
+
+He (Antognini) was an artist of the first class, both by natural gifts
+and by culture. His voice, although not of notable compass, was an
+absolute tenor of a delicious quality and great power. His vocalization
+was unexceptionably pure, and his style was manly and noble. As a
+dramatic singer I never heard his equal except Ronconi; as an actor,
+I never saw his equal, except Ronconi, Rachel, and Salvini. He had in
+perfection that power which Hamlet speaks of in his soliloquy, after
+he dismisses the players, when the speech about Pyrrhus is ended:
+
+  Is it not monstrous that this player here,
+  But in a fiction, in a dream of passion
+  Could force his soul so to his own conceit
+  That from her working all his visage wann'd;
+  Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
+  A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
+  With forms to his conceit!
+
+I have seen the blood fade not only from Antognini's cheeks, but from
+his very lips, as he strode slowly forward to interrupt the nuptials
+in "Lucia di Lammermoor," and then flame back again as he broke into
+defiance of his foes. The inflections of his voice in passages of
+tenderness were ravishing, and his utterance of anger and despair was
+terrible. Nor was any tenor that has been heard here, not even Mario
+in his prime, his superior in that great test of fine vocalization, a
+sustained cantabile passage. He was one of those blond Italians who
+are found on the northern border of the peninsula. Being all this he
+nevertheless soon disappeared, and was forgotten except by a few of the
+most exacting and cultivated among his hearers; the reason of which was
+that his voice could not be depended upon for two nights together--not,
+indeed, for one alone. On Monday he would thrill the house; on Wednesday
+he would go about the stage depressed, almost silent, huskily making
+mouths at his fellow actors and the audience. His voice would even
+desert him in the middle of an evening, thus producing an impression
+that he was trifling with his audience. No judgment could have been
+more unjust, for he was a conscientious artist, but the effect of this
+defect, as Polonius might say, was therefore no less disastrous, and
+he soon gave place to artists less admirable but more to be relied
+upon.
+
+In this season there appeared a prima donna of the French school in
+the person of Laura Cinthe Montalant, known in the annals of opera
+as Cinti-Damoreau, who had come to America to sing in concerts with
+Artôt, the violinist. In the eyes of Fétis she was one of the greatest
+singers the world had known. Damoreau was the name of her husband, an
+unsuccessful French actor. When she came to America she had made her
+career in Paris and London, a great triumph coming to her in the French
+capital, where Rossini composed the principal female rôles in "Le Siège
+de Corinth" and "Moïse," and Auber those in "Domino Noir,"
+"L'Ambassadrice," and "Zanetta."
+
+[Repertory of the first season at Palmo's Opera House: "I Puritani"
+(Bellini), "Belisario" (Donizetti), "Beatrice di Tenda" (Bellini), "Il
+Barbiere di Siviglia" (Rossini), "La Sonnambula" (Bellini), "L'Elisir
+d'Amore" (Donizetti), "L'Italiani in Algeria" (Rossini). Repertory of
+the second season, 1844-1845: "Lucia di Lammermoor" (Donizetti), "II
+Pirata" (Bellini), "Chiara de Rosemberg" (Luigi Ricci), "Lucrezia
+Borgia" (Donizetti), "Belisario" (Donizetti), "La Cenerentola"
+(Rossini), "Semiramide" (Rossini).]
+
+
+It is not surprising that ill fortune became the companion of Palmo at
+the outset of his enterprise and dragged him down to the lowest depths
+before the end of his second season (according to the calendar).
+
+The first season ran its course and a second one began in November,
+1844. Amidst the usual vicissitudes it continued until January 25,
+1845. On this momentous date Borghese was before the footlights and
+about to open her mouth in song when suddenly the orchestra ceased
+playing. Not a soft complaining note from the flute, not a whimper from
+the fiddles. Borghese raved and Palmo came upon the stage to learn the
+cause of the direful silence. A colloquy with the musicians, if not
+exactly in these words, was to this effect:
+
+"What's the meaning of this? Is it a strike? Why?"
+
+"No pay."
+
+"I'll pay you to-morrow."
+
+"To-night's the time"--the musicians packing up their instruments.
+
+Palmo rushed to the box office to get the night's receipts. Alas! they
+were already in the hands of the deputy sheriff. Another opera manager
+had gone down into the vortex which had swallowed up Ebers, and Taylor,
+and Delafield, and others of their tribe in London, and Montressor and
+Rivafinoli in New York. Palmo, it is said, had literally to return to
+his pots and kettles; after serving as cook and barkeeper in the hotels
+of others the once enterprising manager of the Café of a Thousand
+Columns became a dependent upon the charity of his friends. There was
+another season of opera at Palmo's, among the managers of which were
+Sanquirico, a buffo singer, Salvatore Patti, and an Italian named
+Pogliagno. In the company were Catarina Barili and her two children,
+Clotilde and Antonio. Patti was a tenor singer. He was the husband
+of the prima donna, Catarina Barili, who was looked upon as a fine
+representative of the old school of singing, and from the pair sprang
+Carlotta and Adelina, who gave a luster to the name of Patti which the
+father would never have given it by his exertions as singer and manager.
+Both were born before their parents came to New York; Carlotta in
+Florence, in 1840, and Adelina in Madrid, in 1843. The childhood and
+youth of both were spent in New York, and here both received their
+musical training. Their artistic history belongs to the world, and since
+I am, with difficulty, trying just now to talk more about opera houses
+and those who built them to their own ruin, than about those who sang in
+them, I will not pursue it. The summer of 1847 saw Palmo's little opera
+house deserted. In 1848 it became Burton's Theater, where, as Mr. White
+observes, that most humorous of comedians made for himself in a few
+years a handsome fortune.
+
+Who shall deny that Signor Palmo, though his fortunes went down in
+disaster, made a valuable contribution to that movement--which must
+still be looked upon as in an experimental stage--which has for its aim
+the permanent establishment of opera in the United States? Experimental
+in its nature the movement must remain until the vernacular becomes the
+language of the performances and native talent provides both works and
+interpreters. The day is still far distant, but it will come. The opera
+of Germany was still Italian more than a century and a half after the
+invention of the art form, though in the meanwhile the country had
+produced a Bach and a Handel. The Palmo venture (at the bottom of which
+there seems to have been a desire to popularize or democratize a form of
+entertainment which has ever been the possession of wealth and fashion)
+revived the social sentiment upon which Da Ponte had built his hopes.
+In the opinion of the upper classes's it was not Italian opera that
+had succumbed, but only the building which housed it. This certainly
+presented an aspect of incongruity. Fine talent came from England for
+the English companies, whose career continued without interruption,
+and the moment which saw the downfall of Palmo's enterprise saw also
+the influx of a company of Italian artists under the management of Don
+Francesco Marty y Torrens, of Havana, who deserves to be kept in the
+minds of opera lovers which go back to the days of the Academy of
+Music, if for no other reason than that he brought Signor Arditi to
+New York--the hawk-billed conductor whose shining pate used to
+glisten like a stage lamp from the conductor's seat in the fine old
+house at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place.
+
+And so, in order that Italian opera might not perish from the earth, but
+live on, surrounded by the architectural splendor appropriate to it, one
+hundred and fifty men of social prominence got together and guaranteed
+to support it for five years, and Messrs. Foster, Morgan, and Colles
+built the Astor Place Opera House. Instead of the eight hundred seatings
+of Palmo's institution, this held 1,800. The theater had "a fine open
+front and an excellent ventilation." That it was an elegant playhouse
+and admirably adapted to the purpose for which it had been designed
+there are many people still alive in New York to testify. Mr. White says
+enthusiastically that it was "one of the most attractive theaters ever
+erected." Even Max Maretzek, who began his American career there, first
+as conductor, afterward as impresario, while throwing ridicule upon its
+management (his own administration excepted, of course) and its artistic
+forces, praises the architectural arrangement of the house. "Most
+agreeably surprised was I," he writes in his "Crotchets and Quavers,"
+published in 1855, "on entering this small but comfortably arranged
+bonbonnière. It contained somewhere about 1,100 excellent seats in
+parquet (the Parisian parterre), dress circle and first tier, with some
+seven hundred in the gallery. Its principal feature was that everybody
+could see, and, what is of infinitely greater consequence, could be
+seen. Never, perhaps, was any theater built that afforded a better
+opportunity for a display of dress. Believe me" (he is indulging in the
+literary fiction of a letter to a journalistic friend in Paris), "that
+were the Funambules built as ably for this grand desideratum, despite
+the locality and the grade of performance at this theater, my conviction
+is that it would be the principal and most fashionable one in Paris."
+Maretzek is, of course, here aiming chiefly to cast discredit upon one
+of the vanities and affectations of society--the love of display; but if
+Mr. White is to be believed, the patrons of the Astor Place Opera House,
+on its opening (which means the fashionable element of New York society)
+were temperate and tasteful in the matter of dress. Speaking of the
+first performance at the new house, he says: "Rarely has there been
+an assembly, at any time or in any country, so elegant, with such a
+generally suffused air of good breeding; and yet it could not be called
+splendid in any one of its circles. At the Astor Place Opera House that
+form of opera toilet for ladies which is now peculiar to New York and
+a few other American cities came into vogue--a demi-toilet of marked
+elegance and richness, and yet without that display either of apparel
+and trimmings or of the wearer's personal charms which is implied by
+full evening dress in fashionable parlance. This toilet is very pleasing
+in itself, and it is happily adapted to the social conditions of a
+country in which any public exhibition of superior wealth in places set
+apart for common enjoyment of refined pleasure is not in good taste."
+Mr. White wrote in 1881; would he have been able to be so complimentary
+to the opera audiences of 1908? What relation does the present
+extravagance of dress, the vulgar ostentation which Mr. White would
+have us believe was foreign to the taste of New York's cultured society
+in 1847, bear toward the support which opera has received since the
+Metropolitan Opera House was opened? The factors which are to determine
+the question seem to be marshaling themselves since Mr. Hammerstein
+opened the Manhattan Opera House, but they are not yet fairly opposed
+to each other. There are features in which the new opera house recalls
+memories of the old Academy which met its downfall when the amalgamation
+between the old Knickerbockers and the newer New Yorkers was effected;
+but there are also other features which make a repetition of that
+occurrence under present circumstances very improbable, and the chiefest
+of these is that inculcated by the failure of the Palmo enterprise;
+opera must have an elegant environment if it is to succeed. But it had
+this in the Astor Place Opera House; why, then, did it live its little
+span only?
+
+The question is easily answered--the Astor Place Opera House was killed
+by competition; not the competition of English opera with Italian, which
+had been in existence for twenty-five years, but of Italian opera with
+Italian opera. The first lessees of the new institution were Messrs.
+Sanquirico and Patti, who had first tried their luck in Palmo's Opera
+House. They endured a season. [At the Astor Place Opera House in its
+first season Sanquinico and Patti produced Verdi's "Ernani," Bellini's
+"Beatrice di Tenda," Donizetti's "Lucrezia Borgia," Mencadante's "Il
+Giuramento," and Verdi's "Nabucco." Mr. Fry's season in 1848 when Mr.
+Maretzek was the conductor, brought forward Donizetti's "Linda di
+Chamouni," "Lucrezia Borgia," "L'Elisir d'Amore," "Roberto Devereux,"
+and "Lucia di Lammermoor" and Verdi's "Ernani."] Then the first American
+manager appeared on the field--I mean the first American manager whose
+thoughts were directed to opera exclusively as distinguished from the
+managers of theaters who took hold of opera at intervals, as they did
+any other sort of entertainment which offered employment for their
+houses. The manager in question was Mr. E. R. Fry, who came from the
+counting house to a position of which he can have known nothing more
+than what he could acquire from attendance upon opera, of which he was
+fond, and association with his brother, W. H. Fry, who was a journalist
+by profession (long the musical critic of The Tribune) and an amateur
+composer of more than respectable attainments. Mr. Maretzek, in his
+"Crotchets and Quavers"--a book generally marked by characteristic good
+humor, but not free from malevolence--tries to make it appear that Mr.
+Edward Fry went into operatic management for the express purpose of
+performing his brother's operas; but while the animus of the statement
+is enough to cause it to be looked upon with suspicion, the fact
+that none of William Henry Fry's operas was performed at the Astor
+Place Opera House during the incumbency of Edward Fry is a complete
+refutation. "Leonora," the only grand opera by a professional critic
+ever performed in New York, so far as I know, was brought forward at
+the Academy of Music a good nine years later. Apropos of this admirable
+and respected predecessor of mine, a good story was disclosed by Charles
+A. Dana some fifteen or twenty years ago in his reminiscences of Horace
+Greeley. Mr. Dana published a large number of letters sent to him at
+various times while he was managing editor of The Tribune and Mr.
+Greeley editor-in-chief. It was in the days just before the War of
+the Rebellion. A political question of large importance had arisen
+in Congress, and Mr. Greeley was so concerned in it that he went to
+Washington to look after it in person and act as a special correspondent
+of his own newspaper. Thence one day he sent two letters to The Tribune
+on the subject, but in the issue of the day in which he expected them to
+appear in The Tribune he sought in vain for his communication. Thereupon
+he indited an epistle to Mr. Dana in these wingèd words:
+
+
+Friend Dana: What would it cost to burn the Opera House? If the price
+is reasonable have it done and send me the bill. . . . I wrote my two
+letters under the presumption (there being no paper on Wednesday) that
+the solid work of exposing their (Pierce and Gushing) perversion of
+history had of course been done by Hildreth. I should have dwelt with it
+even more gravely but for that. And now I see (the Saturday paper only
+got through last night) that you crowded out what little I did say to
+make room for Fry's eleven columns of arguments as to the feasibility of
+sustaining the opera in N. Y. if they would only play his compositions.
+I don't believe three hundred people who take the Tribune care one chew
+of Tobacco for the matter.
+
+
+The "eleven columns" was an amiable exaggeration quite in consonance
+with the remainder of the letter; but I can testify from a consultation
+of the files of the newspaper which I have served as one of Mr. Fry's
+successors for more than a quarter of a century that on the date in
+question The Tribune's critic did occupy three and a half columns
+with a discussion of the Lagrange season just ended at the Academy
+of Music and a most strenuous plea for the permanent substitution of
+English for Italian opera! Also, that most of what Mr. Fry said would
+sound just as apposite to-day as it did then, and be backed by just as
+much reason. But a taste for the elegant exotic and reason do not seem
+to go hand in hand, and managers are still strangely averse to placing
+themselves for guidance into the hands of The Tribune's critics. How
+different might not musical history in New York have shaped itself had
+William Henry Fry, George William Curtis, John R. G. Hassard, and H. E.
+K. had their way during the last sixty years! The thought is quite
+overpowering.
+
+The opposition which the Astor Place Opera House met was indeed
+formidable. It came from the company organized by Don Francesco Marty y
+Torrens for performances in Havana. This enterprising gentleman did not
+come to New York to make money, but mischief--as Messrs. Sanquirico,
+Patti, Fry, and Maretzek must have thought--and incidentally to keep
+his singers employed during the hot and unhealthy season in Havana. His
+aiders and abettors were James H. Hackett and William Niblo. The former,
+in his day an actor, was particularly famous for his impersonation of
+Falstaff. His interest in opera may have been excited more or less by
+the fact that his wife had been Catherine Leesugg, an English opera
+singer, who had sung the part of Rosina in an English version of
+Rossini's "Barber of Seville" as early as 1819. At Niblo's history
+I have already taken a glance. In the present chapter he is chiefly
+interesting, according to a story which has long had currency, as
+the manager who succeeded in putting an end to the Astor Place Opera
+House by a trick which took the bloom of caste off that aristocratic
+institution. I shall let Maretzek tell the story presently, pausing now
+to interject an anecdote which fell under my notice some years ago while
+I was turning over the records of the Grand Ducal Theater at Weimar.
+This always comes to my mind when the downfall of the Astor Place Opera
+House is mentioned, and also when, as has frequently been the case
+within the last sixteen years, I met a grandson of one of the principal
+actors in the incident in the streets of New York.
+
+In April, 1817, there came to Weimar from Vienna a gifted dog, who
+assisted his master in the presentation of a play of the melodramatic
+order, entitled "The Dog of Aubri de Mont-Didier." The director of the
+Grand Ducal Theater at the time was one Wolfgang von Goethe. To him the
+dog's manager applied for the privilege of producing his edifying piece.
+Goethe refused permission, and there was danger that the patrons of the
+playhouse which had echoed to the first sounds of the plays of Schiller
+and Goethe were to be deprived of the inestimable privilege of seeing
+a dog dash out of the door of a tavern in which a murder had been
+committed, pull a bell rope to alarm the village, carry a lantern into
+the forest, discover the murderer just at the psychological moment,
+pursue him from rock to rock, capture him at the last, and thus bring
+about the triumph of justice. But the dog's manager was not thus to be
+put down. He went with a petition to Fräulein Jagemann (whose portrait
+in the character of Sappho my readers may still find hanging on a wall
+of the library at Weimar), and solicited her intervention with the Grand
+Duke, whose reign Schiller and Goethe made glorious. Fräulein Jagemann
+was a prima donna and the Grand Duke's mistress. ("The companion of
+my leisure moments," he called her with quite a pretty euphemism.) In
+the former capacity she had given Goethe, the director, a great deal
+of trouble, and in the latter her infuence had caused him many an
+annoyance. It was the dog that broke the camel's back of his patience.
+Fräulein Jagemann saw an opportunity to get in a blow against her
+artistic tyrant, and she wheedled Charles Augustus into commanding the
+production of "The Dog of Aubri de Mont-Didier." The play was given
+twice, on April 12 and 14, 1817, with uproarious success, of course,
+and on April 17th Goethe resigned the artistic direction of the Weimar
+Court Theater. As for Fräulein Jagemann, she eventually got a title
+and estates as Frau von Heygendorf.
+
+And now for the story of "The Dogs of Donetti: or, the Downfall of the
+Astor Place Opera House," by Max Maretzek; it must be prefaced by the
+statement that after Edward Fry had made a lamentable failure of his
+opera season at which he had the services of Maretzek as conductor,
+Maretzek became lessee of the house and thus remained for the years
+1849 and 1850.
+
+
+Bled to the last drop in my veins (I, of course, allude to my purse and
+my pocket), the doors of the Astor Place Opera House were closed upon
+the public. It was my determination to woo the fickle goddess Fortune
+elsewhere. Possibly her blinded eyes might not recognize her old adorer,
+and she might even yet bestow upon me a few of her faithless smiles.
+
+Again, however, after my departure, was the opera house leased. But to
+whom do you imagine it was now abandoned by the exemplary wisdom of its
+proprietors?
+
+To the identical William Niblo who had fostered and encouraged the
+opposition--the same William Niblo who had a theater (or let me give
+it his name, and call it--a garden) within the length of some three
+stone-throws from their own house. It must be granted they did not
+foresee that which was about to happen. But this will scarcely palliate
+the folly of taking the head of a rival establishment for their tenant.
+
+This gentleman engaged the troupe of dogs and monkeys, then in this
+country, under the charge of a certain Signor Donetti.
+
+Their dramatic performances were offered to the refined and intelligent
+proprietors and patrons of this classic and exclusive place of
+amusement. Naturally they protested. It was in vain. Then they sued out
+an injunction against this exhibition on the ground that in Niblo's
+lease of the premises only respectable performances were permitted to
+be given in the opera house. On the "hearing to show cause" for this
+injunction Mr. Niblo called up Donetti or some of his friends, who
+testified that his aforesaid dogs and monkeys had, in their younger
+days, appeared before princes and princesses and kings and queens.
+Moreover, witnesses were called who declared under oath that the
+previously mentioned dogs and monkeys behaved behind the scenes more
+quietly and respectably than many Italian singers. This fact I feel that
+I am not called on to dispute. . . . As might be supposed the injunction
+was dissolved.
+
+As a matter of course, the house lost all its prestige in the eyes of
+the community. Shortly afterward its contents were sold, and the shell
+of the opera was turned into a library. Its deathblow had been given it
+as a place for theatrical amusement by the astute Mr. William
+Niblo.
+
+
+Furthermore, Mr. Maretzek would have us believe that some year or
+two later, the Academy of Music having been projected meanwhile, he
+met Niblo and asked him what he thought of the prospects of the new
+enterprise.
+
+"Why," answered the manager, in his nasal voice, "I suppose I shall
+have again to engage Donetti's dogs and monkeys."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MARETZEK, HIS RIVALS AND SINGERS
+
+
+Of the operatic managers of fifty years ago Max Maretzek was the only
+one with whom I was personally acquainted, and it was not until near the
+close of his career that he swam into the circle of my activities or I
+into his. He died on September 17, 1897. His last years were spent in a
+home on Staten Island, and the public heard nothing about him after the
+memorable concert given for his benefit at the Metropolitan Opera House
+on February 12, 1889, the occasion being set down as the fiftieth
+anniversary of the beginning of his career as a conductor in America.
+All the notable conductors then living in New York took part in the
+concert--Theodore Thomas, Anton Seidl, Frank van der Stucken, Walter
+Damrosch, and Adolf Neuendorff. Maretzek was seventy-six years of age
+at the time of his death, and he had grown old, if not gracefully, at
+least good-naturedly. He did not quarrel with his fate, but even when
+he spoke of its buffetings it was in a tone of pleasant banter and with
+a twinkle in his eyes. His manner of accepting what the world brought
+him was illustrated at a meeting which I had with him in the season of
+1883-84--the first of the Metropolitan Opera House. It was on a Saturday
+afternoon that I found him standing in front of the new establishment
+after the first act of the opera was over. Not having seen him in the
+house, I asked him if he was attending the performance. He said he was,
+but that, the house being sold out, he had no seat. Thereupon I offered
+him mine, saying that it might be a pleasure to occupy it since several
+of his professional acquaintances were seated in the neighborhood who
+would be glad to greet him. "Annie Louise Cary is right back of me," I
+said, "and Clara Louise Kellogg near by." But he did not care to accept
+my offer, and I fancied I saw a rather more serious and contemplative
+look come over his grizzled face. Naturally, I asked him what he thought
+of the new house and the new enterprise, adding that I regretted that he
+was not the manager. He began with apparent solemnity:
+
+"Well, when I heard the house was to be built, I did think--I did think
+that some of the stockholders would remember what I had done for opera.
+Some of the old-timers, who used to go to the Academy of Music and Astor
+Place Opera House when I was manager there, I thought, would recollect
+what companies I gave them--Parodi, and Steffanone, and Marini, and
+Lorini, and Bettini, and Bertucca"--(how often I had heard him chant the
+list, counting off the singers on his chubby fingers!)--"and Truffi,
+and Benedetti, and Salvi. I thought somebody might remember this and the
+old man, and come to me and say, 'Max, you did a good deal for us once,
+let us do something for you now.' I didn't expect them to come and offer
+me the house, but I thought they might say this and add, 'Come, we'll
+make you head usher,' or, 'You may have the bar.' But nobody came, and
+I'm out of it completely."
+
+Maretzek's managerial career continued at least until 1874; after that
+he conducted operas for others and did something toward the last in the
+way of teaching. It was seldom that one could get into a conversation
+with him but he could grow reminiscent, and, reverting to the olden
+time, begin tolling off the members of the companies which he had led
+to artistic victories and who had helped plunge him into financial
+defeat--"Parodi, and Steffanone, and Marini, and Bettini, and Lorini,
+and Bertucca," and so on. Poor Bertucca! Few of those who in later
+years saw Mme. Maretzek, portly and sedate, enter the orchestra at the
+Academy of Music and Metropolitan Opera House, and tune her harp while
+the audience was gathering in the gilded horseshoes above, recalled
+that she had been the sprightly and bewitching Bertucca of thirty
+years before.
+
+I cannot recall that Maretzek ever grew bitter in discoursing on what
+once was and what might have been. He could be satirical and cutting,
+but his words were generally accompanied with a smile. His dominant mood
+and something of his style of expression are illustrated in his book,
+"Crotchets and Quavers, or Revelations of an Opera Manager in America,"
+which he published in 1855, most obviously with the help of some
+literary hack who, I imagine, got the thoughts from Maretzek, but
+supplied the literary dress for them. A good many old scores are paid
+off in the book, and a good many grudges fed fat; but there are not many
+instances of bad humor. There is a sugar coating even to his malice.
+Shortly before I left Cincinnati, the College of Music of that city,
+having suffered a serious loss of prestige because of the resignation
+of Theodore Thomas, made a pretentious announcement of an operatic
+department, a practical school for opera, which was to be conducted by
+Maretzek. I think it was in the fall of 1880. At any rate, it was on the
+very eve of my departure from Cincinnati for New York. Maretzek came to
+the city somewhat late in the evening, and though I called upon him at
+the Burnet House as soon as I heard of his coming, he was already in
+bed when my card reached him. Nevertheless, I was asked up to his room.
+A tea tray still stood upon the table by the side of the bed when I
+entered. He held out his hand cordially and apologized for receiving
+me in bed. I told him that my newspaper, The Gazette, wanted to know,
+for the information of its readers, what he purposed doing at the
+college. The squabble between Mr. Thomas and the college authorities had
+kept the town in a ferment for months, all of which Maretzek seemed to
+know. It was no concern of his, but he could not help having artistic
+sympathies or predispositions, and these were obviously on the side of
+the musician Thomas, who had split with the business management of the
+college because of charlatanry in its methods. There was a merry twinkle
+in Maretzek's eyes as in reply to my question he answered: "I don't
+know what I am going to do, or what I'm here for. They made me an offer,
+and I came. I'm told that I am to run an opera school." Again he held
+out his hand at parting, and his last words were:
+
+"Don't give me away!"
+
+Not many months had passed before he, too, had followed Theodore Thomas
+back to New York, I met him in the lobby of the Academy of Music between
+the acts of the opera. It was in the consulship of Mapleson. "Hello!"
+I greeted him. "Back to New York so soon? What's the matter in
+Cincinnati?"
+
+The quizzical smile with which he had greeted me grew wider as he
+replied sententiously:
+
+"I'm not a hog. I know when I've got enough!"
+
+Maretzek was a Hebrew, born in Brünn, Moravia, and educated in Vienna,
+where first he studied medicine, but, according to his own story,
+becoming disgusted with the sights of the dissecting room, he changed
+his purposes and devoted himself to music. He wrote an opera entitled
+"Hamlet" when he was twenty-two years old, and a year later, in 1844,
+found himself in London, employed under Balfe at Her Majesty's Theater.
+Thence he was brought to New York to conduct the opera for Mr. E. P.
+Fry, as has already been mentioned, in 1848. After one season as
+conductor he started in on his career as manager, which lasted
+twenty-five years, the first five of which are amusingly described
+in his book "Crotchets and Quavers." More than twenty years later he
+attempted to continue the story in a musical journal, and gathering the
+disconnected chapters together, issued them in an unattractive form
+under the title "Flats and Sharps." The first book is, to some extent,
+a contribution to musical history, though its strong personal equation
+and its effort to be entertaining mar its value and influence. The
+impression to which I have given utterance, that he was helped in its
+preparations by some penny-a-liner, is based upon the difference between
+its pages and the personal letters which I received from Maretzek in
+his later years, especially a brief autobiographical sketch which he
+prepared for me. To judge by the evidence of book and sketch, the
+latter in his own handwriting and delivered in person, one was forced
+to the conclusion either that he knew more about the English language
+six years after his first coming to New York than he did twenty years
+later or that he had hired somebody fluent but malignant of pen to put
+his thoughts into shape. It had long been the fashion for theatrical
+managers and opera impresarios to give the history of their
+administrations to the world, and Maretzek was but following it, though
+why he should have done so before he had finally and definitely retired
+from the field it is not easy to see.
+
+It was an unwise, even a dangerous, thing to do, for it involved the
+necessity of criticizing the acts of professional people and music
+patrons with whom a manager was more or less likely to come into contact
+if he expected to continue his enterprises. The style adopted in the
+book was the epistolary, the chapters being in the form of letters to
+European friends: Hector Berlioz (with whom Maretzek had been brought
+into connection in London), Fiorentino (an Italian, who had been musical
+critic of the Corsaire, of Paris), Luigi Lablache (the famous basso),
+Professor Joseph Fischof (of Vienna), Michael W. Balfe (of London,
+composer of "The Bohemian Girl" and other English operas), Frederick Gye
+(manager of the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden, London), and Carl
+Eckert (conductor of the Court Opera, Vienna). A final chapter is
+addressed to the public and is devoted to a recital of the troubles
+through which the Academy of Music passed in the earliest stages of its
+career. Eckert had been in America as conductor of the company headed by
+Henrietta Sontag, and the chapter over which his name is written tells
+of the career of that artist in the United States and her death in
+Mexico. Incidentally, also, Maretzek pays off a score owing to Bernard
+Ullmann, a manager with whom Maretzek was much in conflict and against
+whom he tried to turn the public by calling the attention of Americans
+to the sneers in which the delectable gentleman had indulged at their
+expense while he was trying to win the good graces of the Havanese.
+Nevertheless, within four years he was Ullmann's partner, for together
+they opened the season of 1859 at the Academy of Music. The quarrels of
+opera managers are very like those of lawyers inside the courtroom.
+
+But when Maretzek was holding up the heinousness of Ullmann in the
+chapter entitled "Los Americanos y su gusto por la Musica," Ullmann was
+only an agent for Maurice Strakosch, who had entered the managerial
+field. It was different with Don Francesco Marty y Torrens, the
+impresario who invaded Maretzek's territory from Havana; and he remained
+Maretzek's pet aversion to the end of the chapter. In his memoirs
+Arditi, who came to New York as conductor of one of Marty's companies,
+says that Don Francesco was among impresarios the most generous of
+men, Maretzek the cleverest (though he sets down Maurice Grau as the
+"cleverest of entrepreneurs"), and Colonel Mapleson the most astute.
+It is not unlikely that Arditi's amiable opinion of the Cuban was
+influenced not a little by the circumstance that Marty, not caring to
+make money in New York, treated his artists with unusual liberality.
+That, naturally, would not tend to increase the admiration of a rival
+manager for him. He may have been the most generous of men in the eyes
+of Arditi, but in those of Maretzek he was worse than Barbaja, the
+Neapolitan manager, who owned the gambling monopoly in the kingdom
+of Naples, and who, after animating his acquaintances with music and
+singing, and diverting their eyes with the silk fleshings and short
+muslin jupons of his dancers, fleeced them at his gambling houses and
+became richer than the King of Naples himself. Maretzek intimates that
+in his youth Don Francesco had been the mate of a pirate vessel which
+preyed on the commerce of the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent waters; that
+he betrayed his captain to death, and was rewarded with a monopoly of
+the fish trade in Cuba; that he became possessed mysteriously of enough
+money to fit out a feet of fishing boats to supply the market which he
+controlled; that from that source alone his annual income rose to about
+$160,000; that then he embarked in the slave trade, bringing negroes
+from Africa and Indians from Yucatan, which he bribed the Spanish
+officials to permit him to land; was knighted by the Spanish Crown out
+of gratitude for pecuniary help extended in a crisis; and built an opera
+house in Havana in order to acquire a social position among the proud
+people who, despite his badge of nobility, refused to "swallow the fish
+and digest the negro," as Maretzek puts it. This was the manager who, in
+the summer of 1850, brought to New York what Maretzek characterizes as
+"the greatest troupe which had been ever heard in America," and which,
+"in point of the integral talent, number, and excellence of the artists
+composing it," had "seldom been excelled in any part of the Old World."
+
+"This party consisted of three prime donne. These were the Signore
+Steffanone, Bosio, and Tedesco. Its only contralto was the Signora
+Vietti. There were three tenors--Salvi, Bettini, and Lorini. Badiali and
+Corradi Setti were the two barytones, while the two bassi were Marini
+and Coletti. At the head of this extraordinary company was the great
+contrabassist Bottesini, assisted by Arditi. It would be useless, my old
+friend, to attempt to indicate to you the excellence of this company.
+You have long since known their names, or been aware of their standing
+as artists in the world of music. The greater portion of them enjoy a
+wide and well-deserved European reputation, and their reunion anywhere
+would form an almost incomparable operatic troupe."
+
+Some of these names are those of singers whom, in his later days, I have
+said Maretzek was in the habit of chanting while telling them off on his
+fingers. His was not the credit of having brought them to the country,
+but he did, a year after they had made their first appearance in the
+Havana company, succeed in enticing them away from their generous
+manager and enlisting them under his banner at the Astor Place Opera
+House. All but Tedesco.
+
+Of these singers Maretzek has more or less to say in his book, but
+the point of view is that of the manager perpetually harassed by the
+jealousies, importunities, and recalcitrancy of his singers. Steffanone
+was a conscientious artist, but had an infirmity of body and mind which
+was exceedingly troublesome to her manager; Bosio was talented and
+industrious, but had a husband whose devotion to her interests was an
+affliction to her manager; Tedesco was husbandless, but had a father who
+was so concerned about her honorarium that he came to the opera house on
+payday with a small pair of scales in his pocket, with which he verified
+every coin that came out of the exchequer of the unfortunate manager,
+"subjecting each separate piece of gold to a peculiarly Jewish
+examination touching their Christian perfection;" Salvi was a mountain
+of conceit, who believed himself to be the Louis Quatorze of the lyric
+drama, and compelled his manager to imagine him exclaiming "L'opéra
+c'est moi!" Toward his manager Salvi was a despot, who rewarded favors
+bestowed upon himself by compelling the manager to engage persons who
+had served the tenor. Maretzek cites a ukase touching a singer named
+Sidonia:
+
+
+Caro Max: Fa di tutto per iscriturare la Sidonia, altrimenti io non
+canto ne "Don Giovanni," ne "Norma," ne altri.
+
+A 250 $ il mese, e che la scrittura porti 350 $. Amen, cosi sia.
+Il tuo,       Salvi.
+
+19. 4. 53.
+
+(In English: "Dear Max: Do everything to engage the Sidonia, otherwise
+I shall not sing in 'Don Giovanni,' 'Norma' or other operas. At $250 per
+month, but let the writing bear $350. Amen, and so be it.")
+
+
+"At $250 per month, but let the scrittura bear $350." I wonder how many
+of my readers think of this cheap device of singers and managers when
+they read about the honoraria received by opera singers to-day!
+
+Bettini drank to excess and spent whole nights in the gambling room,
+rendering him unfit for duty ever and anon; Badiali was singularly
+conscientious as an artist, and became a favorite with the public, but
+not with his colleagues, because of his extraordinary meanness and
+avarice and a jealous disposition; Marini was the greatest living
+Italian basso, save Lablache, but his voice was occasionally unreliable,
+and he frequently ill-humored, capricious, splenetic, and peevish.
+
+In private life Angiolina Bosio was Mme. Panayotis di Xindavelonis, the
+wife of a Greek gentleman, whom she had married in 1851. She was in her
+prime when she came to New York, though she had not reached the meridian
+of her reputation. Her features were irregular, and she was not comely.
+Richard Grant White claims credit for having given her the punning
+sobriquet "Beaux Yeux," by which she was widely known on account of her
+luminous and expressive eyes. "Her voice," says White:
+
+
+was a pure, silvery soprano, remarkable alike for its penetrating
+quality and for its charm so fine and delicate that it seemed almost
+intellectual. But she was not a remarkably dramatic singer, even in
+light comedy parts, which best suited her; and her style was not at all
+declamatory. She _sang_; and in her vocalization she showed the results
+of intelligent study in the old Italian school. Her phrasing was
+incomparably fine, and the delicacy of her articulation has been
+surpassed by no modern prima donna, not even by Alboni. Thus much of
+her as a vocal artist; but her charm was greatly personal. Although
+her acting was always appropriate and in good taste, and at times--as,
+for example, in the saucy widow of "Don Pasquale"--very captivating,
+she never seemed to throw herself wholly into her part. She was always
+Angiolina Bosio, and appeared on the stage like a lady performing
+admirably in private theatricals. Her bearing was a delight to her
+audience, and seemed to be a performance, whereas it was only herself.
+She sang the music of all the great operatic composers to the admiration
+of the public and the critics of the most exacting disposition; but she
+was greatest in Rossini's operas, and in Bellini's and Donizetti's. Yet
+her exquisitely charming and finished performance of Zerlina should not
+be passed over unmentioned.
+
+
+Tedesco, who came to New York with the first Havana company in April,
+1847, presented herself to the always susceptible mind of Mr. White as a
+great, handsome, ox-eyed creature, the picture of lazy loveliness until
+she was excited by music; then she poured out floods, or rather gusts,
+of rich, clear sound. "She was not a great artist, but her voice was
+so copious and so musical that she could not be heard without pleasure,
+although it was not of the highest kind." Bettini left nothing here that
+remained in the memory of New Yorkers except the half of a name which he
+gave to his wife, the contralto Trebelli-Bettini, who was a member of
+Mr. Abbey's company on the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House in
+1883. Salvi came over with the Havana company in the spring of 1848, and
+was one of the fish which Maretzek took from Marty's weirs. If we are
+to believe the testimony of contemporaneous critics he was the greatest
+tenor of his time, with the exception of Mario. That was the opinion of
+White, who wrote of him as follows in The Century Magazine for May,
+1882:
+
+
+Although Salvi was past his youth when he first sang in New York, his
+voice was yet in perfect preservation. It lacked nothing that is to be
+expected in a tenor voice of the first class; and it had that mingling
+of manliness and tenderness, of human sympathy and seraphic loftiness
+which, for lack of any other or better word, we call divine. As a
+vocalist he was not in the first rank, but he stood foremost in the
+second. His presence was manly and dignified, and he was a good actor.
+But it was as a vocalist, pure and simple, that he captivated and moved
+his audiences. He was heard in America at brief intervals during a few
+years, and his influence upon the taste of the general music-loving
+public was very considerable and wholly good. Singing at Niblo's or
+Castle Garden and other like places at which the price of admission was
+never more than $1, and was generally 50 cents, he gave to multitudes
+who would otherwise have had no such opportunity that education in art
+which is to be had only from the performances of a great artist. In
+purity of style he was unexceptionable. He lacked only a little higher
+finish, a little more brilliancy of voice and impressiveness of manner
+to take a position among tenors of the very first rank. Of these,
+however, there are never two in the world at the same time, scarcely two
+in the same generation; and so Salvi prepared the public for the coming
+Mario. His forte was the cantabile and his finest effects were those in
+mezza voce, expressive of intense suppressed feeling. More than once
+when he sang "Spirto gentil," as he rose to the crescendo of the second
+phrase, and then let his cry pass suddenly away in a dying fall, I have
+heard a whole house draw suspended breath, as if in pain, so nearly
+alike in their outward manifestation and fine, keen pleasure.
+
+
+Such were some of the singers whose names are associated in the musical
+annals of New York with that of Max Maretzek.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MUSIC
+
+
+Fifty-one years ago the center of operatic activity had shifted to the
+Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place, and there it
+remained until the Metropolitan Opera House was built. From the opening
+of the Academy in 1854 to the opening of the Metropolitan in 1883 the
+former had no rival as an establishment, though the rivalry between
+managers and singers was the liveliest that New York has ever seen
+during the first decade of the time. For twenty years Burton's Theater
+revived its early traditions, and housed an opera troupe at intervals,
+and Niblo's Theater and Castle Garden were open to every manager who
+wished to experiment with the costly enterprise. English companies
+came and went, and a new competitive element, which soon became more
+dangerous than that which several times crushed the Italian exotic,
+entered in the shape of German opera, which, though it first sought a
+modest home in the lesser theaters of the Bowery and lower Broadway,
+soon achieved recognition at the fashionable Academy. The eagerness of
+the rivalry in the Italian field alone is indicated by the fact that the
+Academy had five different managers in the first three seasons of its
+history, and that thereafter, until the coming of James H. Mapleson in
+1878, it was almost a rule that there should be a change of management
+every season. Maretzek was alternately manager and competitor over
+and over again, and the bitterest rivals of one season would be found
+associated with each other the next. Already in the first season the
+stockholders had to step in and assume some of the risks of management
+to save the enterprise from shipwreck, and, despite the attractiveness
+of the house, the excellence of the performances, the presence of such
+phenomenal artists as Mme. Grisi and Signor Mario, and generous public
+patronage, the first season cost the different managers between $50,000
+and $60,000--three times as much as Maretzek had lost in the previous
+six years, if that gentleman's word is to be taken. The figures look
+modest now, but twenty years later their duplication at the Metropolitan
+Opera House sufficed to effect a revolution in methods, and eventually
+tastes, which had a profound influence upon musical life in New York.
+
+The Academy of Music had its birth in the expiring throes of the Astor
+Place Opera House. The spirit of which it was the material expression
+seems to have been admirable. To this the name of the establishment
+bears witness. It was not alone the official title of the French
+institution, popularly spoken of as the Grand Opéra, which was in the
+minds of the promoters of the New York enterprise--the new opera house
+was to be a veritable academy of music, an educational institution.
+Not only was fashionable society to have a place in which to display
+and disport itself, but popular taste and popular knowledge were to
+be cultivated. To this end the auditorium was to be three times as
+commodious as that of the Astor Place Opera House, and the low prices
+which had been prevalent only at Niblo's, Burton's, and Castle Garden
+were to be the rule at the new establishment. In the charter granted
+by the State, dated April 10, 1852, the purposes of the Academy were
+set down as the cultivation of taste by entertainments accessible at
+moderate charges, by furnishing facilities for instruction and by
+rewards. These purposes were overlooked at the beginning, but before the
+first season had come to its end Ole Bull, for a few weeks a manager,
+proclaimed his intention to pursue them by promising to open a
+conservatory in the fall of 1855, and at once (January, 1855) offering
+a prize of $1,000 for the "best original grand opera by an American
+composer, and upon a strictly American subject." The competition ended
+with Ole Bull's announcement, for his active season endured only two
+weeks.
+
+It is doubtful if the competition would have produced anything more
+than a curiosity had it been carried to a conclusion. On the spur of
+the moment I can think of only two American musicians whose capacity
+was adequate to such a task--Mr. W. H. Fry, who was then musical critic
+and an editorial writer for The Tribune, and Mr. George F. Bristow,
+both of whom had composed operas found worthy of performance. Mr. Fry's
+"Leonora" was performed at the Academy on March 29, 1858, with Mme.
+Lagrange in the principal rôle, but the score was already a dozen years
+old, and it is not likely that the composer's state of health would
+have permitted him to undertake the writing of a new opera even if
+he had been so disposed. Mr. Bristow's "Rip Van Winkle," which had a
+production in New York in the year of Ole Bull's announcement, may, for
+all that I know to the contrary, have been written for the prize. The
+scheme of uniting a training school for singers with an opera house was
+not heard of again, so far as I can recall, until Mr. Conried became
+director of the Metropolitan Opera House. It has much to commend it, and
+might be made a power for artistic good with an operatic establishment
+on a really public-spirited, artistic, and unselfish basis; as it is,
+its influence is apt to be pernicious morally, as well as artistically.
+How seriously Mr. Fry took the proposed educational feature of the
+institution is indicated by an article on the new opera house, which he
+published in The Tribune, in the course of which he said:
+
+
+The expense of maintaining an opera house so nurtured at home will be
+at most not more than one-fourth what it would be if the artists were
+brought from Europe. American vocalists would be content with some few
+thousand dollars a year, and, if they were sought for and educated,
+boarded and lodged gratuitously the meanwhile, their services could be
+procured for several years in payment of the expenses of apprenticeship.
+In that way alone can the exorbitant demands of foreign artists be
+diminished; and the folly and extravagance of paying them from one to
+ten thousand dollars a night, as has been done in this city, will be
+forever avoided. In connection with this it may be mentioned that there
+are some Americans now studying for the operatic stage in Italy, and
+one lady of Boston has appeared in Naples with success. It may yet come
+to pass that art, in all its ramifications, may be as much esteemed as
+politics, commerce or the military profession. The dignity of Amercan
+artists lies in their hands.
+
+
+Mr. Fry's hopes, so far as the Academy of Music is concerned, were
+never realized, and after half a century his words are echoing wherever
+writers indulge in discussion of ways and means for promoting American
+music. Yet, without schools connected with opera houses American singers
+have made their mark, not only at home, but in the lyric theaters of
+Italy, France, Germany, and England. Names like Clara Louise Kellogg,
+Annie Louise Cary, Minnie Hauk, Alwina Valleria, Emma Nevada, Lillian
+Nordica, Adelaide Phillips, Emma Albani, and Josephine Yorke are
+connected more or less intimately with the history of the Academy of
+Music, but they do not exhaust the list. To them must be added those
+of Charles Adams, Suzanne Adams, David Bispham, Robert Blass, William
+Candidus, Emma Eames, Signor Foli, Geraldine Farrar, Julia Gaylord,
+Helen Hastreiter, Eliza Hensler (the daughter of a Boston tailor who
+became the morganatic wife of Dom Fernando of Portugal), Louise Homer,
+Emma Juch, Pauline l'Allemande, Marie Litta, Isabella McCullough,
+Frederick C. Packard, Jules Perkins, Signor Perugini, Mathilde Phillips,
+Susan Strong, Minnie Tracey, Jennie Van Zandt, Emma Abbott, Bessie
+Abott, Julia Wheatley, Virginia Whiting (Signora Lorini), Edyth Walker,
+Marion Weed, Zélie de Lussan, Clarence Whitehill, Allen Hinckley, Joseph
+F. Sheehan, and half a dozen or more singers now attracting attention in
+London and Germany.
+
+Max Maretzek was the first lessee of the Academy of Music, but the
+company that opened it on October 2, 1854, was that engaged by J. H.
+Hackett to support Grisi and Mario, which had appeared at Castle Garden
+two months before. Maretzek sublet to Hackett, who thought that the
+brilliancy of his stars, and the new house, justified him in advancing
+the price of seats to $2. He had a rude awakening, for the audience on
+the first night was neither large nor brilliant. It numbered not more
+than 1,500, and on the second night the prices came down to the popular
+scale, with $1.50 as the standard. By the middle of December, though
+the stockholders had been obliged to come to the rescue of Hackett,
+the collapse of the opening enterprise was announced, and Hackett took
+Grisi and Mario to Boston for a brief season, and then came back for
+three or four performances at the Metropolitan Theater.
+
+The last performance took place on February 20, 1855. Though many
+excellent singers had been heard in New York between the coming of
+Malibran and that of Grisi and Mario, the three months of their sojourn
+in America have ever since remained memorable. For a generation
+afterward all tenors were measured by Mario's standard. Grisi created
+a less enduring impression, because the audiences that heard her were
+within the space of a few years permitted also to hear such singers as
+Jenny Lind, Henrietta Sontag, and Marietta Alboni, three names that are
+still resplendent in operatic annals. There does not seem to be any
+reason for questioning the belief that Mario was the greatest tenor
+singer that ever gladdened the ears of American music lovers. Richard
+Grant White, who was then writing the musical reviews for The Courier
+and Enquirer newspaper, had chosen Benedetti as his ideal of a dramatic
+singer, and he found Mario lacking in passion, while confessing that
+he had the sweetest tenor voice in all the world. He retired from the
+stage in 1867, but came to America in 1872, under Strakosch, and sang
+in concert with Carlotta Patti, Annie Louise Gary, Teresa Carreño, and
+Sauret. He had always been a somewhat unreliable singer, frequently
+disappointing his audiences by not singing at all, or singing listlessly
+until he reached the air in which he could produce a sensational effect,
+and when he returned to America he had only a superb presence and
+bearing, and a magnificent reputation with which to arouse interest. He
+was sixty-two years old, and had accepted an engagement for the reason
+that frequently brings worn-out artists to the scenes of their earlier
+triumphs; he needed money. Eight years later his financial condition so
+distressed his old friends and admirers in London that they got up a
+benefit concert for him. He was living in Rome when he died in 1883.
+
+Such satisfaction as can come to one from seeing a renowned artist was
+mine in 1872; but I can scarcely say that I _heard_ Mario. With Annie
+Louise Gary he sang first in a graceful little duet, "Per valli, per
+boschi," by Blangini ("Dear old Mario had to warm up in a duet before
+he would trust himself in solo," said the admired contralto, many years
+afterward), and later attempted Beethoven's "Adelaide." Romances were
+Mario's specialty, and Beethoven's divine song ought to have been an
+ideal selection for him, but it was quite beyond his powers and I do not
+now know whether to be glad or sorry that I heard him attempt it. It
+is always unfortunate when great singers who have gone into decay are
+tempted again to sing. To the generation who knew them in their prime
+they bring a double measure of disappointment--grief for the passing
+away of the art which once gave pleasure, and regret that the younger
+generation should carry down to posterity a false impression of the
+singer's voice and style. Who shall measure the heartburnings left by
+Madame Patti's last visit to America when she sold herself to a trumpery
+balladist, and, affecting the appearance and manner which had been hers
+a quarter of a century before, tried to make a new generation believe
+that it was listening to the vocalist whom veterans maintained was the
+last one entitled to be called "la Diva." How much lovelier and more
+fragrant the memory of Annie Louise Cary, whose American career began
+during the Strakosch régime at the Academy of Music, and ended with her
+marriage to Charles Mon son Raymond, when she was still in the very
+plenitude of her powers. Many a time within the first few years after
+her retirement have I seen her surrounded by young women and old, as she
+was leaving the Academy of Music or the Metropolitan Opera House, and
+heard their pleading voices: "Oh, Miss Cary! aren't you ever going to
+sing for us again?" and "Please, Miss Cary, won't you let me kiss you?"
+
+Ole Bull's management of the Academy of Music was but a fleeting
+incident, memorable only for the protestations with which it was begun
+and for its brevity. For the famous Norwegian violinist it was a
+Utopian dream with a speedy and rude awakening. After he had retired
+the Lagrange troupe came from downtown and completed the season with
+the help of the stockholders, and Maretzek, the erstwhile impresario
+and lessee, became the conductor. For four years, 1855, 1856, 1857,
+and 1858, the Academy saw Maretzek, Strakosch, and Ullmann alternately
+installed as impresarios, and then for a year there was no opera at the
+house, the three men at the head of as many different companies seeking
+their fortunes outside of the metropolis. With Ullmann Thalberg was
+associated for a space, the great pianist having come to America to
+make money under the management of Ullmann, and probably having been
+persuaded to risk some of his gains by his manager. It was but a brief
+interlude, however. Ullmann, whose activities in America extended over
+a quarter of century, lived to manage some of the artists who are
+still before the public. The beginning of his career, like that of
+Maretzek, fell in the period when Barnumism was at its zenith, and
+Ullmann was utterly unconscionable in the methods to which he resorted
+for the purpose of exploiting his artists. It was under his operatic
+consulship that the winsome Piccolomini came to New York--an artist of
+insignificant caliber, lovely to look upon and fascinating as an actress
+in soubrette parts. "A Columbine," said Chorley about her when she
+effected her début in London, "born to 'make eyes' over an apron with
+pockets, to trick the Pantaloon of the piece, to outrun the Harlequin,
+and to enjoy her own saucy confidence on the occasion of her success--
+with those before the footlights and the orchestra." But this was not
+all. "Never did any young lady, whose private claims to modest respect
+were so great as hers are known to be," said the same critic, "with such
+self-denial fling off their protection in her resolution to lay hold of
+the public at all risks. Her performances at times approached offense
+against maidenly reticence and delicacy. When she played Zerlina,
+in 'Don Giovanni,' such virtue as there was between the two seemed
+absolutely on the side of the libertine hero--so much invitation was
+thrown into the peasant girl's rusticity." Here was a capital subject
+for the methods dear to the heart of Ullmann. In London the Piccolomini
+had been proclaimed to be of a noble Roman family, the niece of a
+cardinal, who had quarreled with her relations because of her theatrical
+propensities. There may have been some truth in the statements, but
+Ullmann adorned her history still more, and proclaimed from every New
+York housetop that the lady was a lineal descendant of Charlemagne, and
+the great-grand-daughter of Schiller's tragic hero Max Piccolomini.
+
+It was under the co-consulship of Maretzek and Ullmann that Adelina
+Patti made her operatic début at the Academy of Music. The date was
+November 24, 1859, the opera "Lucia di Lammermoor." Twenty-five years
+later Patti was again the prima donna of the Academy, though Mapleson
+was now the manager. It was the second year of the rivalry between the
+Academy and the Metropolitan Opera House, and Colonel Mapleson conceived
+the idea of profiting by the anniversary. At first it was planned that
+"Lucia" should be given, with Brignoli as Edgardo, the part he had sung
+in the opera at Patti's début, but two months before the time the tenor
+died. Instead, "Martha" was performed, in a manner wholly commonplace
+in all respects except as to the titular rôle, in which Mme. Patti
+appeared, as a matter of course. There was only a little perfunctory
+applause, but Colonel Mapleson had resolved that the scene should be
+enacted, of which we have often read, in which the devotees of the prima
+donna unhitch the horses from her carriage, and themselves drag it, with
+wild rejoicings, through the streets. To make sure of such a spontaneous
+ovation in staid New York was a question which Mapleson solved by
+hiring fifty or more Italians (choristers, probably) from the familiar
+haunts in Third Avenue, and providing them with torches, to follow the
+carriage, which was prosaically dragged along to its destination at the
+Windsor Hotel. As a demonstration it was the most pitiful affair that I
+have ever witnessed. In fact, it seemed to me such a humiliation of the
+great artist that on the next opera night I suggested to my colleague
+of The Times newspaper that something adequate and appropriate to so
+interesting an anniversary be arranged. He agreed and within a fortnight
+or so a banquet was given in Mme. Patti's honor at the Hotel Brunswick,
+under the auspices of a committee consisting of a number of well-known
+gentlemen, including Judge Daly, William Steinway, and Nahum Stetson.
+The committee of arrangements, having visited Mme. Patti and gained her
+consent, went to work right merrily, but before the invitations were
+issued an obstacle was met which threatened shipwreck to the amiable
+enterprise; the wives of several gentlemen who had been invited
+privately refused pointblank to break bread with the prima donna on
+account of the scandal caused by her separation from the Marquis de Caux
+and marriage to Nicolini, the tenor. Somewhat perplexed, the two critics
+visited her a second time, and put the matter to her as delicately as
+possible. Would she, under the circumstances, be the guest of a number
+of gentlemen, representative of the legal, artistic, and literary
+professions? Again she accepted, and without a moment's hesitation. So,
+instead of the gathering that had been planned, there was a stag party
+of about seventy gentlemen in the ballroom of the Brunswick, handsomely
+decorated and discreetly lighted with wax candles.
+
+The preliminary reception was held in one of the rooms adjoining the
+banquet hall, and there a scene was enacted which brought into relief
+a trait of character which was extremely useful to the Colonel in the
+difficult task of managing his wilful and capricious prima donna. Mme.
+Patti received her hosts seated upon a divan. She looked radiant, and
+was wholly at ease after having taken a peep into the hall to see that
+the light would not be prejudicial to her complexion. One after another
+of the seventy gentlemen advanced to her, took the hand which she
+extended with a gracious smile, muttered the pretty compliment which he
+had rehearsed, and fell back to make room for the next comer. The room
+was pretty nearly full, when the Colonel appeared in the glory of that
+flawless, speckless dress suit, with the inevitable rose in the lapel
+of his coat. Not a glance did he give to right or left, but with the
+grace of a practised courtier, he sailed across the room, sank on his
+knees before the diva, and raised her hand to his lips. Such a smile as
+rewarded him! A score of breasts bulged out with envy and a score of
+brains framed the thought: "Confound it! Why didn't I think of doing
+that?"
+
+The dinner passed off without a hitch, Mme. Patti managing by a hundred
+pretty coquetries to convince nearly every one of her three-score and
+ten hosts that he had received at least one smile that was more gracious
+than that bestowed upon his fellows. Speeches were made by Judge Daly,
+William Steinway, Dr. Leopold Damrosch, William Winter and others, but,
+as Colonel Mapleson had carried off the palm by his courtliness at the
+reception, Max Maretzek made himself the most envied of men at the
+dinner. Quite informally he was asked to say something after the set
+programme had been disposed of. Where the other speakers had brought
+forward their elegantly turned oratorical tributes the grizzled old
+manager told stories about the child life and early career of the guest.
+Amongst other things he illustrated how early the divine Adelina had
+fallen into the ways of a prima donna by refusing to sing at a concert
+in Tripler Hall unless he, who was managing the concert, would first
+go out and buy her a pound of candy. He agreed to get the sweetmeats
+provided she would give him a kiss in return. In possession of her box
+she kept both of the provisions of her contract. When the toastmaster
+declared the meeting adjourned Patti bore straight down on her old
+manager and said:
+
+"Max, if I gave you a kiss for a box of candy then, I'll give you one
+for nothing now!"
+
+And she did.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MAPLESON AND OTHER IMPRESARIOS
+
+
+Memories are crowding upon me, and I find there is much still to be said
+about the Academy of Music, and the operatic folk whom it housed between
+1854 and 1886. Just now the incidents which have been narrated about
+the banquet given in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Adelina
+Patti's début recall other characteristic anecdotes of Colonel Mapleson,
+who managed the Academy of Music from 1878 to the end of the disastrous
+season of 1885-'86. When Mapleson and Abbey were drawing up their forces
+for the battle royal between the Academy of Music and the Metropolitan
+Opera House in 1883, one of the New York newspapers reported Mme. Patti
+as saying: "Colonel Mapleson comes here when he wants me to sing, and
+he calls me 'My dear child,' and he goes down on both knees and kisses
+my hands, and he has, you know, quite a supplicating face, and it is not
+easy to be firm with a man of such suavity of manners." I have often
+thought of this in connection with the outcome of the disastrous rivalry
+between the two houses and their managers. When Colonel Mapleson let
+himself down so gracefully upon his knee and pressed the prima donna's
+hand to his lips, the act was not all unselfish adoration. It used to
+be said that there was no manager alive who had succeeded in becoming
+debtor to Adelina Patti. It was golden grain alone that persuaded this
+bird to sing. The story is old of how her personal agent once hovered
+between her dressing room and the manager's office, carrying the message
+one way: "Madame Patti will not put on her slippers until she is paid,"
+returning the other way with a thousand dollars; coming again to the
+manager with: "Madame has one slipper on, but will not put on the other
+till she has her fee"--and so on. Doubtless apocryphal and yet only a
+bit fanciful and exaggerated. Yet it was known in the inner operatic
+circles in 1885 that Colonel Mapleson had succeeded in getting himself
+pretty deeply into her debt. How he did it the anecdotes of the
+reception and Mme. Patti's interview serve to indicate. In sooth, the
+persuasive powers of the doughty colonel were distinctly remarkable, and
+it was not only the prima donna who lived in an atmosphere of adulation
+who fell a victim to them. I have a story to illustrate which came to
+me straight from the lips of the confiding creditor. He was a theatrical
+costumer, moreover, and one of the tribe of whom it is said that only to
+a Connecticut Yankee will they lower the flag in a horse trade.
+
+My friend was a theatrical costumer with a shop conveniently situated
+in Union Square. When the clouds began to lower upon the Academy around
+the corner he became curious to know whether or not he was likely to
+get a balance of some $1,500 owing him for costumes furnished to the
+establishment. He sent his bill many times, and, being on amicable terms
+with Colonel Mapleson, called on him at intervals to talk over the
+situation. When he left the impresario's office he always carried away
+profuse promises of speedy payment, but nothing more. Finally, he put
+the bill into the hands of his lawyer, who at once took steps to attach
+the property of the foreign debtor, and, to bring about pressure in a
+manner that seemed likely to be effective, he instructed the deputy
+sheriff, who was to serve the legal papers, to present himself at the
+office of Colonel Mapleson an hour or so before the beginning of the
+opera. The arrangements perfected, he informed his client of what had
+been done. But there remained a kindly spot in the costumer's soul, and
+of his own volition he called on the manager in the afternoon of the day
+set apart for the coup in order to give him one more opportunity to save
+himself from the impending catastrophe.
+
+"I found the Colonel in his office," said he, in relating the incident,
+"cutting the corners off of tickets and sending them out to fill his
+house for the next performance. While he clipped he talked away at me
+in his cheerfullest and blandest style, told me how sorry he was that he
+could not pay me out of hand, and deplored the action which I had taken,
+but with such absence of all resentment that I began to feel ashamed of
+myself for having threatened to shut him up. After half an hour I agreed
+to send a messenger post-haste to my lawyer and call off the sheriff.
+This done he borrowed $75 cash from me, and I went away happy. I tell
+you I know lots of managers, but there's only one Colonel Mapleson in
+this world."
+
+Whether or not my friend ever collected his bill I do not know; but this
+I do know, that when the colonel ended the campaign of 1884-'85 Mme.
+Patti's name was on his list of creditors for a considerable sum--$5,000
+or $6,000, I believe. The next time I met him he was sauntering about in
+what passes for a foyer in Covent Garden Theater, London. The rose in
+his buttonhole was not more radiant than he.
+
+"What are you up to now, Colonel?" I asked him.
+
+"In what respect?"
+
+"In a business way, of course."
+
+"Well," with a twinkling smile, "just now I am persuading Adelina to
+sing at my benefit."
+
+"Will she do it?"
+
+"I think she will" And she did.
+
+Mapleson was one of the last of the race of managers who had practical
+training in the art in which he dealt commercially. He was a graduate
+of the Royal Academy of Music in the violin class, and had played in
+the orchestra at the opera. He had also studied singing, and in his
+youth tried his luck as an operatic tenor. In this he was like Maurice
+Strakosch, who played the pianoforte prodigiously as a child, studied
+singing three years with no less an artist than the great Pasta, and
+after singing for a space at Agram turned his attention again to the
+pianoforte. He came to New York in 1848, and his first engagement was
+with Maretzek, at the Astor Place Opera House. Afterward he was a member
+of a traveling concert company, in which he was associated with Amalia
+Patti, whom he married, and it was thus that he became the teacher,
+and, eventually, the manager of his sister-in-law, Adelina Patti. When
+Ronconi first appeared in America at Burton's Theater (which had
+been Palmo's Opera House), in the spring of 1858, Strakosch was the
+conductor. The last of the old opera managers whom I recall at this
+moment who were practical musicians as well, was Dr. Leopold Damrosch,
+who directed the destinies of the Metropolitan Opera House after one
+year of warfare with the Academy of Music had put Henry E. Abbey hors
+du combat for a while. Abbey came out of the ranks of theatrical
+managers, like Heinrich Conried, his only practical experience in music
+being as a cornet player in a brass band in Akron, Ohio, whence he came.
+
+Strakosch's associates, however, were not musical practitioners. Ullmann
+may have had some knowledge of music, but he was all showman. Thalberg,
+the pianist, was Ullmann's partner when Strakosch and Ullmann joined
+their forces in January, 1857, to manage the Academy of Music, but the
+new coalition was the sign of Thalberg's withdrawal from the managerial
+field.
+
+Like Maretzek, in his Cincinnati experience, the virtuoso knew when he
+had enough. Strakosch's later associates were his brothers, Ferdinand
+and Max. The former was the European agent for the firm, and the latter
+what might be termed the acting house man in the United States,
+especially during the later years of the Strakosch régime.
+
+In Europe Maurice Strakosch was also associated with Pollini, who
+afterward became a large factor in the field of German opera, as manager
+of the opera in Hamburg. Pollini had been Strakosch's office boy. His
+real name was Pohl, and he hailed from Cologne; but he, too, was a
+musician. Strakosch died in Paris in October, 1887. One night in July,
+1886, I met him in the theater at Altona, whither I had gone to hear a
+performance of "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," then the rage throughout
+Germany. He asked me to drive back to his hotel in Hamburg with him, for
+his physician had told him that day that he might drink a glass of beer,
+the first in six months, and he wanted a friend to share the pleasure
+with him. I brought him the latest news from the opera houses of New
+York, and, also, the intelligence that Pollini had just engaged Mme.
+Sembrich for a season at some 5,000 francs a night.
+
+"We quit partnership," said he, "back in the 70's because Pollini
+thought that money was no longer to be made in Italian opera, and wanted
+to take up German opera exclusively. I didn't agree with him, and went
+on with Nilsson and the rest. He got rich and I got poor, and now he's
+going back into the Italian field. He'll rue it."
+
+Call the roll of some of the best of the singers whose American careers
+are chiefly bound up with the history of the Academy of Music: Grisi,
+Mario, Vestvali (a much admired contralto), Badiali, Amodio (barytone),
+Steffanone, Brignoli, Lagrange, Mirate, D'Angri, Piccolomini, Adelina
+Patti, Kellogg, Nilsson, Campanini, Lucca, Cary, Parepa, Albani, Hauk,
+Gerster, Nevada. There are others whom fond recollection will call back,
+some belonging indubitably to the first rank, like Maurel, some who
+will live on because they gladdened the hearts of the young people of a
+generation ago, who were more impressionable than critical. Some men of
+middle age (as they think) now will not want to forget Mlle. Ambre or
+Mlle. Marimon, and will continue to forgive the homely features of Mme.
+Scalchi for the sake of her perfect physical poise and movement as the
+page in "Les Huguenots," as others forgave the many registers of her
+voice because of her joyous volubility of utterance. Doubtless, too,
+there are matrons of to-day who will remember the singing of Ravelli
+with as much pleasure as I recall it, and the shapely legs of the young
+tenor that walked off with the heart (we also had a story of a diamond
+ring) of a young singer from California, who afterward made a name for
+herself in Paris, with more enthusiasm than I could possibly feel.
+
+Some of these singers became intimately associated with New York life in
+a social way. Annie Louise Cary, after her marriage to Charles Monson
+Raymond, lived for years in a cheery apartment at No. 20 Fifth Avenue,
+sang occasionally with the choir in the West Presbyterian Church, in
+Forty-second Street, and shed sunshine over a circle of friends who
+loved her as enthusiastically as a woman as they had admired her as an
+artist. Now her home is in Norwalk, Conn. Her first operatic engagement
+was at Copenhagen, and she spent two seasons in the opera houses of
+the Scandinavian peninsula, and one at Brussels before the Strakosch
+brothers brought her to the United States, in 1870. The first season she
+sang in concert with Nilsson, the second (1871-72) in opera, the third
+with Carlotta Patti and Mario in concert; and thereafter till her
+retirement in 1882 in both concert and opera, winning and holding an
+almost unparalleled popularity. In the Strakosch company of 1873-74 she
+was one of a galaxy of artists that the opera-goers of that period, who
+are still living, will never cease to think of without a swelling of the
+heart--Nilsson, Cary, Campanini, Capoul, Maurel, Del Puente, and others.
+
+Campanini remained the tenor of tenors for New Yorkers for a decade
+longer. Abbey took him away from Mapleson for the first season of the
+Metropolitan Opera House, and, after the introduction of German opera
+there, his local career was practically at an end. He died in 1896
+in Italy, whither he had returned on retirement. His dramatic style
+improved as his voice decayed. When he first came he was chiefly a
+lyrical singer; his Elvino was delicious beyond description. In his last
+years he had taken on robust stature, and his passionate utterances in
+"Carmen" and "Aïda" will live till the end in the memory of those who
+heard them. He was proud of his skill as a singer pure and simple,
+though he was more or less of a "naturalist," as the Germans call a
+singer who owes more to nature than to artistic training. How greatly
+he admired the perfection of his "attack" is illustrated in an incident
+which twice grieved the soul of Theodore Thomas and some other sticklers
+for the verities in classical music.
+
+At the Cincinnati Music Festival, in May, 1880, Mr. Thomas brought
+forward Beethoven's Mass in D, the great "Missa Solennis." In the first
+movement, "Kyrie," of this work Beethoven has created an effect of
+surpassing beauty in the successive introduction of the solo voices. At
+the outset there is a crashing chord from all the forces, including the
+full organ. The thundering sound ceases abruptly, leaving the solo tenor
+voice sustaining a tone seemingly in midair. Another loud crash projects
+the solo contralto voice, and so on. The effect is transporting; but
+the obvious intention of the composer and the loveliness of his device
+weighed nothing in Campanini's mind against the fact that it interfered
+with popular appreciation of the "attack," of which he was proud. So
+he calmly waited until the colossal D major chord was silenced, then
+intoned his D softly, and made a beautiful crescendo upon it. After
+a rehearsal I ventured to call his attention to the beautiful
+effectiveness of Beethoven's device, but he answered: "It is music for
+the head, not for the heart. If I sing it so the audience will not hear
+my beautiful attack."
+
+And at the concert he perverted the text to gratify his vanity. I
+reminded Mr. Thomas of the incident two years later, when he gave the
+mass at the festival held in the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York.
+Campanini was to sing in it again. Mr. Thomas said he would set him
+right, but at the performance we were again cheated of Beethoven's
+effect in order that the tenor might make his. When Campanini died
+Philip Hale set down his estimate of him in these words:
+
+
+No tenor who has blazed here above the opera horizon has fully equaled
+in brilliancy Campanini at his zenith. De Reszke, in point of personal
+refinement, is a greater artist, but his voice is inferior, and his
+dramatic action lacks the elementary force shown by Campanini when
+aroused. De Lucia is a greater actor of melodramatic parts, but his
+voice is too shrill. Tamagno in "Otello" is beyond comparison, but that
+is his one opera. . . . Of all tenors who have visited us since 1873
+the greatest, viewed from all points, was Campanini.
+
+
+The popular idol before Campanini was Brignoli, who held his own from
+the first days of the Academy until within less than a decade of its
+collapse. For some years before the Mapleson era, however, he had
+dropped out of the Italian operatic ranks and sung in English companies,
+and in concerts. It was in such organizations that I first heard
+him some twelve or fifteen years after he had become the popular
+"silver-voiced tenor" of New York. He came to New York in 1855, and his
+career was American, though it was in Paris that Strakosch heard him
+and turned his face toward America. He lived in New York, singing and
+occasionally managing companies in which he sang, till October, 1884,
+when he died. He was twice married, the first time to Kate Duckworth, an
+English contralto, known on the platform as Mlle. Morensi, and, after
+her death, to Isabella McCullough, an American soprano. Richard Grant
+White's mind was still obsessed by memories of Salvi, Benedetti, and
+Mario when Brignoli was basking in the sunshine of popular favor, and
+his estimate of the tenor in The Century Magazine for June, 1882, is
+scarcely flattering either to the singer or the public that liked him.
+It was Mr. White's observation that Brignoli came into the swim at the
+time that the young woman of New York became the arbiter of art and
+elegance. Says Mr. White:
+
+
+Her admiration of Brignoli was not greatly to the credit of her taste.
+He had one of those tenor voices that seem like the bleating of a sheep
+made musical. His method was perfectly good; but be sang in a very
+commonplace style, and was as awkward as the man that a child makes
+by sticking two skewers into a long potato; and he walked the stage,
+hitching forward first one side and then the other, much as the child
+would make his creature walk. But he was a very "nice" young man, was
+always ready to sing, and faute de mieux it became the fashion with
+the very young to like him. But there never was a tenor of any note in
+New York whose singing was so utterly without character or significance
+and who was so deficient in histrionic ability. His high and long
+continued favor is one of those puzzling popular freaks not uncommon
+in dramatic annals.
+
+
+Let us hope, in a spirit of Christian charity and something more
+selfish, that Brignoli never read these severely critical words.
+His vanity was that of a child, and they would have grieved him
+inordinately. There was truly something of the bleat in his voice, and
+his walk on the stage, whether in concert or opera, was provocative
+of the risibles, but even his mannerisms were fascinating. Shall we,
+because a critic did not like him, be ashamed for having thrilled a
+little when we heard his "Coot boy, sweetheart, c-o-o-o-t boy!" thirty
+years ago? I trust not. And if he were here again, and his manager were
+to come with the old request, "Do me a favor, won't you, and if you
+chance to meet dear old Brig say something pretty to him and help me
+keep him in a good humor against the concert to-night--admire his teeth
+and compliment him on his youthful appearance"--we should do it for
+old sake's sake, and with a heart full of gratitude. No one could know
+Brignoli and remain in ignorance of his frailties and foibles. He
+probably ate as no tenor ate before or since--ravenously as a Prussian
+dragoon after a fast. No contracts did he sign on a Friday or on a
+thirteenth day, and he lived in perpetual dread of the evil eye. Part of
+his traveling outfit was a pair of horns, which he relied upon to shield
+him in case the possessor of the jettatura should get into his room
+and he not have his fingers properly posed. I had been four years in the
+turmoil of New York's musical life when Brignoli died; I cannot recall
+an unkind word that was ever spoken of him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE
+
+
+Not the chronicler of musical doings but the historian of society
+should discuss the genesis of the Metropolitan Opera House, which came
+twenty-five years ago to displace the Academy of Music as the home of
+grand opera in New York. In the second of these "Chapters of Opera"
+I cited the Metropolitan Opera House as the last illustration of the
+creative impulse which springs from the growth of wealth and social
+ambition, and stated that it marked the decay of the old Knickerbocker
+régime, and its amalgamation with the newer order of society. Before
+this latter occurrence, however, it had become plain that the Academy of
+Music could not accommodate all the representatives of the two elements
+in fashionable society, who, for one reason or another, wished to own
+or occupy the boxes which were the visible sign of wealth and social
+position. There was no manifest dissatisfaction, either, with the
+Academy of Music or with the performances under the direction of Colonel
+Mapleson, though these were conventional enough and the dress of the
+operas looked particularly shabby in contrast with the new scenery and
+costumes at the new theater when once the rivalry had begun. The house
+being satisfactory, popular taste contented with the representations,
+and there being no evidences of insufficient room in any part of the
+audience room except the private boxes, it seems obvious to the merest
+observer from without that social and not artistic impulses led to the
+enterprise which produced the new establishment.
+
+The Metropolitan Opera House was built in the summer of 1883. The
+corporation which built it was called the Metropolitan Opera House
+Company (Limited), and its leading spirits were James A. Roosevelt, the
+first president of the board of directors; George Henry Warren, Luther
+Kountze, George Griswold Haven, who remained the active head of the
+amusement committee from the beginning till he died last spring; William
+K. Vanderbilt, William H. Tillinghast, Adrian Iselin, Robert Goelet,
+Joseph W. Drexel, Edward Cooper, Henry G. Marquand, George N. Curtis,
+and Levi P. Morton. The building is bounded by Broadway, Seventh Avenue,
+Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets. About one-quarter of the space
+is devoted to the audience room, another quarter to the stage and
+accessories, and the rest to administrative offices, apartments, etc.
+Its cost, including the real estate, was $1,732,978.71, and so actively
+was the work of construction pushed that the portion of the building
+devoted to the opera was completed when the first performance took place
+on October 22, 1883. J. Cleaveland Cady, the architect, had had no
+previous experience in building theaters, to which fact must be ascribed
+a few impracticable features of the house, most of which have since been
+eradicated, but he had made a careful study of the plans of the most
+celebrated opera houses of Europe, and the patrons of the house still
+have cause to be grateful to him for the care with which he looked after
+their safety and comfort. Since then the appearance of the interior has
+been changed very considerably. The two tiers of boxes were where they
+are now, but their fronts were perpendicular, and there was no bulging
+curve at the proscenium. Besides the two tiers of boxes, as they exist
+at present, there were twelve baignoirs, six on a side at the stage ends
+of the parquet circle, so-called. These were found to be unprofitable,
+and were abolished when the house was remodeled about ten years after
+the opening. The decoration of the interior was intrusted to E. P.
+Tredwill, an architect of Boston, who followed Mr. Cady's wishes in
+avoiding all garish display and tawdry effect. The deepest color in the
+audience room was the dark, rich red of the carpet on the floor. The
+silk linings of the boxes and the curtains between them and the small
+salons in the rear were of fabrics specially made for the purpose. They
+had an old gold ground and large, raised figures of conventional design
+in a darker shade, with dark red threads. The tier fronts, ceiling,
+and proscenium were of a light color, the aim having been to obtain a
+prevailing tint of ivory. Amid the filigree designs of the pilasters,
+which carried the work above the curtain opening, were pictures of
+singing and playing cherubs, and back of the bold consoles, which
+projected from the side walls, were figures called "The Chorus" and
+"The Ballet," painted by Francis Maynard, while above the middle of
+the opening, in a segmentary arch, was an allegory, with Apollo as the
+central figure, by Francis Lathrop. Statues of the Muses filled niches
+on both sides of the consoles. Over the ceiling, amidst the entwinings
+of ornamental figures, on a buff ground, were spread a large number
+of medallions of oxidized metal, which, in the illumination from the
+lights, shone with a copper luster. The house was lighted by gas, though
+preparations had been made for the installation of electrical appliances
+when that form of illumination should be found justified by economy. As
+originally built, the orchestra was sunk sufficiently below the level
+of the floor to conceal the performers from all but the occupants of
+the upper tiers. In the hope of attaining improved acoustic effects
+the floor of the orchestra was laid upon an egg-shaped sound-chamber
+of masonry. The innovation did not meet with the approval of Signor
+Vianesi, the first musical director at the opera house, and, after an
+experimental rehearsal, the floor was raised so that the old conditions
+obtained when the performances began. So the orchestra remained, the
+players spoiling the picture on the stage, until "Lohengrin" came
+to a performance. Then Signor Vianesi was prevailed upon to try the
+arrangement from which Mr. Cady had expected fine artistic results.
+The effect was good, and the device was adhered to for a space, and in
+more or less modified form ever since, though there has been continual
+experimentation with the disposition of the instrumentalists.
+
+Operatic performances began at the new house on October 22, 1883, and
+after sixty-one representations, at which nineteen operas were produced,
+the first season came to an end. I shall tell the story of the season in
+greater detail in the next chapter, contenting myself for the present
+with an account of the results of the merry war which ensued between
+the rival establishments. Colonel Mapleson was intrenched in the Academy
+of Music, which opened its doors for its regular season on the same
+evening. The advantage lay with Mr. Henry E. Abbey, who had a new house,
+the fruit of an old longing, and the realization of long cherished
+social aspirations. With the Academy of Music there rested the charm of
+ancient tradition, more potent then than it has ever been since, and the
+strength of conservatism. There were stars of rare refulgence in both
+constellations, which met the Biblical description in differing one
+from another in their glory. With Colonel Mapleson was Mme. Adelina
+Patti, who, in so far as she was an exponent of the art of beautiful
+vocalization, was without a peer the whole world over. She served then
+to keep alive the old traditions of Italian song as Mme. Sembrich does
+now. At her side stood Mme. Etelka Gerster, with a voice youthful,
+fresh, limpid, and wondrously flexible, and a style that was ripening
+in a manner that promised soon to compass all the requirements of the
+Italian stage from the sentimental characters in which she won her first
+successes to the deeper tragic parts which had begun to make appeal to
+her ambition. With Mr. Abbey was Mme. Christine Nilsson. Mme. Patti,
+though she had grown to womanhood and effected her entrance on the
+operatic as well as concert stage in New York, was not so familiar a
+figure as Mme. Nilsson. Patti had begun her operatic career at the
+Academy of Music in 1859, and had gone to Europe, where she remained
+without revisiting her old home until the fall or winter of 1881, when
+she came on a concert trip. The trip was more or less a failure, the
+public not yet being prepared to pay ten dollars for a reserved seat
+to hear anybody sing. After singing at a concert for the benefit of
+the sufferers from forest fires in Michigan, she announced a reduction
+of prices to two dollars for general admission, and five dollars for
+reserved seats. Under these conditions business improved somewhat, but
+in February, 1882, she found it necessary to organize an opera company
+in order to awaken interest fairly commensurate with her great merit
+and fame. It was a sorry company, and the performances, only a few,
+took place in the Germania Theater, on Broadway, at Thirteenth Street,
+formerly Wallack's; but they were received with much enthusiasm. So far
+as London was concerned, she was under engagement at the time to Mr.
+Gye, Colonel Mapleson's rival at Covent Garden. Mr. Abbey claimed that
+he had an option on any American engagement for opera, but she appeared
+next season at the Academy, and the doughty English manager held her as
+his trump card in the battle royal which ensued on the opening of the
+Metropolitan.
+
+In the twenty years of Mme. Patti's absence from New York, Mme. Nilsson,
+who had come to the metropolis in the heyday of her European fame in
+1870, had won her way deep into the hearts of the people. In 1883 she
+was no longer in her prime, neither her voice nor her art having stood
+the wear of time as well as those of Mme. Patti, who was six months her
+senior in age, and five years in stage experience, but she was more
+than a formidable rival in the admiration of the public. She was no less
+happy in the companionship of Mme. Sembrich as a junior partner than
+Patti was with Mme. Gerster. Both of the younger singers were fresh from
+their first great European successes. Three years later Mme. Gerster
+went back to Mme. Marchesi, her teacher, with her voice irreparably
+damaged. "The penalty of motherhood," said her friends; "the result of
+worry over the failure to hold her place in the face of opposition,"
+said more impartial observers. Mme. Sembrich went back to Europe to
+continue her triumphs after disaster had overtaken her first American
+manager, and in a decade returned, to remain an ornament of the
+Metropolitan ever since.
+
+In Mr. Abbey's ranks were also Mme. Fursch-Madi, Mme. Scalchi, Mme.
+Trebelli, Mme. Lablache (who gave way to her daughter till a quarrel
+over her between the impresarios was determined), and Mme. Valleria,
+who had come to the Academy some time before from London, though she
+was a Baltimorean by birth--a sterling artist who is remembered by
+all connoisseurs with gratitude and admiration. Chief among Colonel
+Mapleson's masculine forces was Signor Galassi, a somewhat rude but
+otherwise excellent barytone. At the head of the tenors was Signor
+Nicolini, the husband of Mme. Patti, who sang only when she did, but not
+always. The circumstance that Mme. Patti insisted upon his engagement,
+also, whenever she signed a contract gave rise to a malicious story
+to the effect that she had two prices, one of, let us say merely for
+illustration, 6,000 francs for herself alone, one of 4,000 francs for
+herself and Nicolini. The rest of the male contingent was composed
+mostly of small fry--Vicini, Perugini, and Falletti, tenors, Cherubini
+and Lombardini, basses, and Caracciolo, buffo. Mr. Abbey had carried off
+three admired men singers from the Academy--Campanini, Del Puente, and
+Novara--and brought an excellent barytone, Kaschmann, from Europe, and
+a redoubtable tenor, Stagno.
+
+There was little to interest a public supposedly weary of the
+barrel-organ list in the promises made in the rival announcements.
+Colonel Mapleson held forth the prospect of Patti in Gounod's "Roméo
+et Juliette," and "Mireille" (in Italian, of course), as well as in
+Rossini's "La Gazza ladra," a forgotten opera then and again forgotten
+now; other old works which were to be revived for her and Mme. Gerster
+were "Crispino e la Comare," and "L'Elisir d'Amore." Mme. Pappenheim's
+presence as the dramatic soprano of the company (a less necessary
+personage in the companies of that day than now) led to the promise of
+"Norma" and "Oberon." Only the Italian work was given. Mr. Abbey's book
+of good intentions embraced twenty-four operas, all of them familiar
+except "La Gioconda," which had been the novelty of the preceding
+London season.
+
+The outcome of the battle between the opera houses was defeat for both.
+The Academy of Music survived for two more campaigns, out of which the
+new house came triumphant, while the old went down forever. It was
+different with the men. Mr. Abbey retired after one season, forswearing
+opera, as he said, for all time; Colonel Mapleson, though defeated,
+was a smaller loser, and he was not only brave enough to prepare for a
+second encounter, but also adroit enough to persuade Mme. Patti to place
+herself under his guidance again. Mr. Abbey's losses have been a matter
+of speculation ever since. It was known at the time that he had lost
+all the profits of three or four other managerial enterprises, and some
+years ago I feared that I might be exaggerating when I set down the
+deficit of the Metropolitan Opera House in its first season at $300,000.
+As I write now, however, I have before me a letter from Mr. John B.
+Schoeffel, who was associated with Mr. Abbey as partner, in which he
+says that the losses of the season were "nearly $600,000."
+
+[The operas performed at the Academy of Music in the season 1883-1884
+were: "La Sonnambula," "Rigoletto," "Norma," "Faust," "Linda di
+Chamouni," "La Gazza ladra," "Marta," "La Traviata," "Aïda," "L'Elisir
+d'Amore," "Crispino e la Comare," and "Les Huguenots" (in Italian).]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FIRST SEASON AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+
+Twenty-five years ago there was no opera in the current repertory
+comparable in popularity with "Faust." If I am told that neither is
+there to-day I shall neither gainsay my informant nor permit the fact
+to give me heartburnings in spite of my attitude toward the modern
+lyric drama. To that popularity Mme. Nilsson contributed a factor of
+tremendous puissance. No singer who is still a living memory was so
+intimately associated in the local mind with Gounod's masterpiece as
+she, whose good fortune it had been to recreate the character of
+Marguerite, when, on March 3, 1869, the opera in a remodeled form was
+transferred from the Théâtre Lyrique to the Grand Opéra in Paris. Coming
+to New York soon afterward, it was she who set the standard by which,
+for a long time, all subsequent representatives of the character were
+judged. With her, Mme. Scalchi (who never had more than one rival in the
+part of Siebel so far as New Yorkers are concerned, viz., Annie Louise
+Cary), and Signor Campanini (the most popular Faust who has ever sung
+in New York) in the company, it was no wonder that the opera was chosen
+for performance on the opening night at the Metropolitan Opera House on
+October 22, 1883. The opera was sung in Italian, no manager's fancy
+having yet attained such a conception, as that all operas ought to be
+sung in the language in which they were composed--and might be; for this
+reason the names in the cast, though given in their familiar French
+forms may be transliterated into Italian if so they will better please
+the reader. The cast then was as follows: Marguerite, Mme. Nilsson;
+Siebel, Mme. Scalchi; Martha, Mlle. Lablache (whose mother had
+been expected to appear in the part, but was prevented by judicial
+injunction); Faust, Signor Campanini; Valentine, Signor Del Puente;
+Mephistopheles, Signor Novara.
+
+The performance did not differ materially from many which had taken
+place in the Academy of Music when the same artists took part. All the
+principal artists, indeed, had been heard in the opera many times when
+their powers were greater. Mme. Nilsson had been thirteen years before
+the American public, and though in this period her art had grown in
+dignity and nobility, her voice had lost the fresh bloom of its youth,
+and her figure had begun to take on matronly contours. Still, she was a
+great favorite, and hers was an extraordinary triumph, the outburst of
+popular approbation coming, as was to have been expected, in the garden
+scene of the opera. Referring to my review of the performance which
+appeared in The Tribune of the next day, I note that till that moment
+there had been little enthusiasm. After she had sung the scintillant
+waltz, however, "the last film of ice that had held the public in
+decorous check was melted," and an avalanche of plaudits overwhelmed the
+fair singer. Bouquets rained from the boxes, and baskets of flowers were
+piled over the footlights till it seemed as if there was to be no end.
+In the midst of the floral gifts there was also handed up a magnificent
+velvet casket inclosing a wreath of gold bay leaves and berries,
+ingeniously contrived to be extended into a girdle to be worn in the
+classic style, and two gold brooch medallions, bearing the profiles
+of Tragedy and Comedy, with which the girdle was to be fastened. The
+donor was not mentioned, but an inscription told that the gift was in
+"commemoration of the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House." Signor
+Campanini had spent the year before the opening in retirement, hoping
+to repair the ravages made in his voice by the previous seasons at the
+Academy of Music, and, I regret to say, possibly his careless mode of
+life. His faults had been conspicuous for several seasons, and the
+hoped-for amendment did not discover itself. "Occasionally the old-time
+sweetness, and again occasionally the old-time manly ring was apparent
+in his notes, but they were always weighted down by the evidences of
+labor, and the brilliancy of the upper tones with which he used to fire
+an audience into uncontrollable enthusiasm was gone."
+
+The regular subscription nights at the Metropolitan in the first season,
+and for all the seasons that followed down to that of 1907-08, were
+Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with afternoon performances on
+Saturdays. On the second night of the season, October 24, 1883, Mr.
+Abbey brought forward two of his new singers. The opera was "Lucia di
+Lammermoor," the first performance of which in the new house was made
+memorable by the introduction of Mme. Marcella Sembrich. She had been
+engaged by Mr. Abbey on the strength of the success achieved by her
+in the London season of 1883. She was almost at the beginning of her
+career, being little known outside of Athens, where she made her début,
+Dresden, where she had sung in German, and London. She had dazzled the
+British metropolis by her vocalization, especially in "Lucia," and it
+was for this reason that it was selected for her introduction to New
+York. Before the season came to an end she sang in "I Puritani," "Don
+Giovanni," "La Traviata," and "Hamlet." All the good qualities which
+have since then been extolled hundreds of times by the critics of the
+New York newspapers were noticeable in her first representation. I
+turn back to the files of The Tribune to see what I wrote while under
+the spell of her witching art, and find the following:
+
+
+Mme. Sembrich is a lovely singer,--lovely of person, of address, of
+voice; and her artistic acquirements, in the limited field in which
+Donizetti's opera called them into activity, at least, are of the
+highest rank. Her style is exquisite, and plainly the outgrowth of a
+thoroughly musical nature. It unites some of the highest elements of
+art. Such reposefulness of manner, such smoothness and facility in
+execution, such perfect balance of tone and refinement of expression
+can be found only in one richly endowed with deep musical feeling and
+ripe artistic intelligence. She carries her voice wondrously well
+throughout a wide register, and from her lowest note to her highest
+there is the same quality of tone. It is a voice of fine texture, too;
+it has a velvety softness, yet is brilliant; and though not magnetic
+in the same degree as the voices of other singers still before the
+public, it has a fine, sympathetic vein. It wakens echoes of Mme.
+Patti's organ, but has warmer life-blood in it.
+
+
+Of the musicianly qualities of this charming singer, recognized on this
+first acquaintance, we were to have a demonstration before her departure
+which was in the highest degree surprising. Sympathy for Mr. Abbey in
+his great losses, and admiration for the self-sacrificing manner in
+which he adhered to all his obligations to them as well as to the
+public, led the directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company to offer him
+a benefit concert. At this entertainment, which was successful beyond
+anything that local records had to show up to that time, the profits
+amounting to $16,000, Mme. Sembrich sang an aria; then came upon the
+stage and played a violin obbligato to Mme. Nilsson's performance of
+the familiar Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria"; again she appeared and this time
+played a Chopin Mazourka on the pianoforte. In every instance she
+was the complete artist, and the public, who had been charmed by her
+witcheries as Mozart's Zerlina and melted by the pathos of her singing
+in the last act of "La Traviata," were at a loss to say if she had shown
+herself a greater artist in song or in instrumental music, as a pianist
+or violinist. It was not until many years after she had returned to
+Europe to continue her operatic triumphs in St. Petersburg, Madrid,
+Vienna, Paris, and Berlin that I learned the story of her life, and with
+it the secret of her musical versatility; how she had started life as
+a player of the pianoforte and violin with her father at dances in the
+houses of the wealthy folk in her native town in Poland, gone to the
+conservatory in Lemberg to study the pianoforte, been taken to the
+Conservatory at Vienna by Professor Stengel (then her teacher, now her
+husband), because there was nothing left in his system of instruction
+from which she could profit, and there been advised to study singing
+instead of the pianoforte with Liszt, as her proud teacher had fondly
+hoped. It was Professor Epstein who gave the world one of the greatest
+singers of our generation, but in doing so he robbed it of a pianist of
+doubtless equal caliber. So far as I know, the story of Mme. Sembrich
+is without a parallel.
+
+Signor Kaschmann was the barytone of the "Lucia" performance. He had a
+handsome face and figure, a good bearing, and disclosed familiarity with
+the stage, and considerable talent as an actor, but he was afflicted
+with that distressful vocal defect which singers of his school often
+call vibrato in order to affect to find a virtue in it. There is,
+indeed, artistic merit in a true vibrato which lends vitality to a
+voice, but when it degenerates into a tremolo, or wabble, it is a
+vice of the most unpardonable kind.
+
+Another of the newcomers made his bow to the Metropolitan public on the
+third night of the season, October 26th, when "Il Trovatore" was brought
+forward. This was the tenor Signor Stagno, a stockily built, heavy,
+self-conscious man, of good stage features and bad stage manners. When
+his voice was first heard from behind the scenes, it sounded throaty, a
+squeezed-out, constrained tone, but later, when Manrico's display pieces
+came it rang out full and vibrant as a trumpet. It developed at once
+that he was a singer of the sideshow kind, with whom the be-all and
+end-all of his part and art lay in the high tones. So little of a
+musician was he that, being enthusiastically recalled after the "Di
+quella pira," he was unable to keep the key of C major in his head in
+spite of his stentorian proclamation of its tonic a few seconds before,
+and could not begin the repetition till the concert-master had plucked
+the first note of the air on his violin. A short time before I heard
+Mme. Patti perform the feat of beginning the trill which accompanies the
+melody by the orchestra in the middle of the dance song in "Dinorah"
+without a suggestive tone or chord after a hubbub and gladsome tumult
+that seemed, to have lasted several minutes. A new bass, Signor
+Mirabella, appeared in "I Puritani" on October 29th--a musical singer
+with a voice of large volume and ample range, and a self-possessed,
+easy, and effective stage presence.
+
+On her second appearance Mme. Nilsson was seen in a part with which she
+was more intimately associated in the popular mind than any other singer
+in New York or London. The opera was "Mignon," the date October 31st.
+Ambroise Thomas's opera had its first American performance at the
+Academy of Music under the management of Maurice Strakosch, on November
+22, 1871. With Mme. Nilsson, on that occasion as on this, was associated
+M. Capoul, the most ardent and fascinating lover known to opera in
+America, who not long before had risen from the ranks of French opéra
+bouffe. Mme. Trebelli, who had created the part of Frederick in London,
+where, as in New York, Mme. Nilsson was the original Mignon, and for
+whom the composer had written the rondo-gavotte, "In veder l'amata
+stanza" (taking its melody from the entr'acte music preceding the second
+act), was also a member of Mr. Abbey's company, but Mme. Scalchi, who
+could wear man's attire and walk in tights more gracefully than any
+woman who ever appeared on the American operatic stage within my memory,
+was too popular in the part to be set aside for the sake of a newcomer,
+and Mme. Trebelli had to wait until October 27th before getting a
+hearing in opera. Meanwhile she sang industriously in concerts. The
+changes which had taken place in Mme. Nilsson's person and voice during
+the dozen years between her first appearance as Mignon and the one
+under consideration might naturally have been expected to affect her
+performance of the part. Many were ready to perceive the loss of some
+of the charms of youthful freshness and grace, which are indissolubly
+connected with any conception of this most poetical of Goethe's
+creatures. The result fulfilled their anticipations in a measure, for
+Mme. Nilsson's impersonation was more remarkable for its deep feeling in
+the dramatic portions than for lightness and gracefulness in the lyric.
+This loss brought with it a compensation, however. Many protests have
+been felt, when not expressed, against the tendency of singers to make
+Mignon a mere wilful, pettish, silly young woman. The poet's ideal was
+sufficiently despoiled by the unconscionable French librettist without
+this further desecration which effectually dispelled the last glimmer of
+the poetical light that ought always to shine about this strange child
+of the South. Too much of tropical passion, too much of undefined
+longing, too much of tenderness the part could hardly be invested with,
+but it is easily made silly by over-acting in the very place where the
+tendency to do so is strongest. The whole opera is one that must either
+be represented with extreme care in avoiding extravagant expression,
+or all effort to approach even distantly the ideals of the poet must
+be abandoned and the piece be given as if Goethe had never lived, and
+"Wilhelm Meister" had never been written.
+
+Perhaps the latter plan would be the better one, for it is hard to think
+of Goethe during the performance of the opera without taking violent
+offense, and it would only be a relief to have all thought of him
+studiously kept out of mind. Yet, we would not willingly lose the
+pleasure which Ambroise Thomas provided in this, his best opera. It is
+to his credit that he felt the embarrassments which his subject caused.
+At one time he thought seriously of permitting the heroine to go the way
+of Goethe's "Mignon," and of offering the opera to the Théâtre Lyrique
+instead of the Opéra Comique, for which he had undertaken to write it.
+He did not carry out the plan, however, but instead thought to silence
+the carping of the Germans by composing a second conclusion, a
+dénouement allemand, in which Mignon falls dead, while listening to
+Philine's polacca in the last scene. A tragic end to a piece treated
+in the comedy manner throughout was too ridiculous, however, and the
+Germans would have none of the dénouement allemand. They raised a hue
+and cry against the opera, then heard it for the sake of its music, and
+ended by admiring its admirable parts without changing their minds about
+the desecration of their great poet.
+
+It is no wonder that the opera-book was made. Such scruples as
+distressed the Germans never trouble French librettists, and the
+characters which Carré and Barbier found in Goethe's romance are as if
+born for the stage. What lyric possibilities do not lie in the Harper?
+Was ever a more perfect musical coquette dreamed of than Philine? Have
+not Mignon's songs drawn forth music from nearly every composer of
+eminence since Beethoven? The filling-in parts were on the surface of
+the story, and the character of their music could not be misconceived.
+Wilhelm Meister himself, in his character of a strolling player, had
+only to sacrifice his habit of reflection to be a dashing tenor. The
+temptation was certainly strong; the sacrilege was committed, and the
+verbal skeleton constructed out of things which were dearest in German
+literature, was tricked out with piquant music and ear-tickling roulades
+by the man who was not awed even by Shakespeare. Think of "Le Songe
+d'une Nuit d'Été"! With such characters the play is easily acted, and
+the music never fails to fascinate.
+
+"La Traviata" was the next opera, produced on November 5th, with Mme.
+Sembrich as Violetta, and Capoul as Alfredo, and then came "Lohengrin"
+on November 7th. In Wagner's opera the parts of the heroine and hero
+were enacted by Nilsson and Campanini, who had sung in its first Italian
+performance at the Academy a decade before. Excellently sung in the best
+manner as understood by singers of the Italian school--a manner fully
+justified, let it be said in passing, by Signor Marchesi's Italian
+text--and magnificently dressed, the opera attracted the most numerous
+and brilliant audience since the opening night, and remained one of the
+most pronounced successes of the season. It served also to introduce
+Mme. Fursch-Madi, a dramatic singer, who, although not attractive
+in appearance, was one of the finest singers in her style and most
+conscientious artists known to her period. She was a French woman, who
+was graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, married M. Madier, a chef
+d'orchestre in the French capital, came to America to join the French
+company in New Orleans in 1874, and sang for three seasons (1879-'81)
+at Covent Garden. She spent the last years of her life in and about New
+York, singing in opera and concert, always a noble example to youthful
+aspirants, and died in poverty after great suffering in September, 1894.
+"La Sonnambula" followed on November 14th, and "Rigoletto" on November
+16th, without noteworthy incident, except the first American appearance
+of Gaudignini as the Jester, and "Robert le Diable" (in Italian), with
+Fursch-Madi as Alice, Valleria as Isabella, Stagno and Mirabella. This
+performance was enlivened by an amusing incident. It will be recalled by
+people familiar with the history of the opera that Scribe and Meyerbeer
+first designed "Robert" for the Opéra Comique, but remodeled it for the
+Grand. For a few moments in the incantation scene at this performance
+the audience seemed inclined to ignore the author's sober second
+thought, and accept the work as a comic instead of romantic opera. The
+wicked nuns, called back to life by the sorcery of Bertram, amid the
+ruins of the cloister, appeared to have been stinted by the undertaker
+in the matter of shrouds, and the procession of gray-wrapped figures
+in cutty sarks caused the liveliest merriment until the transformation
+took place, and serious interest was revived by the lovely face, form,
+and dancing of Mme. Cavalazzi.
+
+"Il Barbiere," with Sembrich as a delightfully piquant Rosina,
+nevertheless moved with leaden feet in many of its scenes, because of
+the ponderous and lugubrious Stagno, who essayed a part far from his
+province, when he tried to sing the Count. On November 28th "Don
+Giovanni" was reached with the finest distribution of women's rôles, I
+dare say, that New York has ever seen, and one that ranked well with the
+famous London one of Tietjens, Nilsson, and Patti. Mme. Fursch-Madi was
+Donna Anna, Mme. Nilsson Donna Elvira, and Mme. Sembrich Zerlina. For
+delvers in musical history the performance had curious interest because
+it partook somewhat of an anniversary character. It fell within a day of
+exactly fifty-eight years after Italian opera had first been heard in
+America (November 29, 1825). Save Mme. Patti we have heard no Zerlina
+comparable with Mme. Sembrich, and Mme. Nilsson's singing of the airs,
+"Ah, che mi dice mai," and "Mi tradi quell' alma ingrata" lingers in
+my memory as an impeccable exemplification of the true classic style.
+The performance suffered shipwreck, however, in the famous first finale,
+because of the untunefulness of the orchestra, and the incapacity
+of the enlisted stage bands. In "Mefistofele," on December 5th, Nilsson
+appeared as Marguerite and Helen of Troy, and Trebelli as Marta and
+Pantalis. Nilsson had fixed the ideal of Helen in Europe and New York,
+and it is she, I believe, who started the questionable practice of
+having one performer impersonate both Marguerite and the classic Queen.
+Boito has given us so little of Goethe's Gretchen in his delightful,
+but sketchy, opera that it does not make much difference how the part
+is acted; but Helen is a character that seemed cut to the very form of
+Nilsson--regal in beauty and carriage, soul-moving in voice, serene in
+pose and gesture. She fitted perfectly into the fairest picture that
+a lover of ancient Greek life could conjure up, and moved through the
+classic act like a veritable Hellenic queen. The beauty, majesty, the
+puissant charm of a perfect woman of the antique type--all were hers.
+Campanini, who, like Nilsson, had been seen in the opera before the
+Metropolitan Opera House entered the lists, sang on this evening with
+peculiar enthusiasm; and with reason. Not only had he been instrumental
+in giving the opera to the people of London and New York, but, on
+this occasion, he was singing under the baton of his younger brother,
+Cleofonte, then a modest maestro di cembalo trying his 'prentice hand at
+conducting; now the redoubtable leader of Mr. Hammerstein's forces at
+the Manhattan. Four years later Cleofonte Campanini came again to New
+York as conductor of his brother's company organized for the production
+of Verdi's "Otello."
+
+On December 20th the one real novelty of Mr. Abbey's list had
+production. It was Ponchielli's "La Gioconda," with the following
+distribution of parts: La Gioconda, Mme. Nilsson; Laura Adorno, Mme.
+Fursch-Madi; La Cieca, Mme. Scalchi; Enzo Grimaldo, Signor Stagno;
+Barnaba, Signor Del Puente; Alvise Badiero, Signor Novara. Ponchielli's
+opera had been the principal novelty of the London season in the summer
+of 1883, where it was brought out by Mr. Gye. On this occasion it was
+performed with a gorgeousness of stage appointments, and a strength of
+ensemble which spoke volumes for the earnestness of the effort which Mr.
+Abbey was making to give grand opera in a style worthy of the American
+metropolis, and the reception which the public gave to the work afforded
+convincing proof of the eagerness for a change from the stale list which
+had so long constituted its operatic pabulum. The house was crowded
+from floor to ceiling, and the audience, having assembled for the
+enjoyment of an unusual pleasure, was soon wrought into an extremely
+impressionable state, which the striking pictures, excited action,
+and ingenious music intensified with every act.
+
+The score of "La Gioconda" is full of ingeniously applied harmonical
+and orchestral devices, but they are all such as were learned from
+Ponchielli's great predecessor and successor, Verdi. As a matter of
+fact, Ponchielli, though he has been discovered as the father of the
+young veritist school of Italy, which seems already to have exhausted
+itself, was less original than Boito, who has distinguished himself
+above all the rout of Verdi's traducers and followers (for a space the
+category included the same names) by continence and self-criticism. As
+I write more than two decades have elapsed since he became known in
+New York, and in the interim we have seen the rise, and, also, the
+considerable fall of such imitators as Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and their
+superior, Puccini. We are now more able to see than we were twenty-five
+years ago how much Ponchielli, and all his tribe, owe to Verdi; and
+also how much ruder and less attentive to real beauty they were. Then
+we could hear besides his voice, that of Verdi in his music; now we
+can hear also tones which awaken echoes in Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and
+Puccini. Of a sometimes mooted Wagnerian influence, there is only so
+much in this score as is to be found in all scores, German and French,
+and Italian, since the shackles of instrumental form were cast off.
+Ponchielli makes a little use of a recurring melodic phrase from
+La Cieca's "Voce di donna," but he pursues the device even less
+consistently than Verdi, and in a manner that is older than Meyerbeer.
+In melody he is wholly Italian, and of Wagner's use of typical phrases
+"La Gioconda" is as guiltless as Pergolesi's "Serva padrona."
+
+What is admirable to the popular appreciation of to-day is the hot vigor
+of the drama, and the quick co-operation of music in its climacteric
+moments. This co-operation is most obvious in the employment of the
+device of contrast, which dominates the work and seems to have been the
+feature which has been most effectively seized upon by Ponchielli's
+pupils. It marks every climax in the opera, and becomes almost tiresome
+in its reiteration. In the first act the blind woman's prayer is set
+against a background composed of a gambling chorus and the wild whirl
+of the furlano, which ends abruptly with organ peals and a pious
+canticle--an effect repeated since in "Cavalleria Rusticana" and
+"Tosca." In the second act in the twinkling of an eye, Gioconda is
+transformed from a murderous devil into a protecting saint; in the third
+Laura's accents of mortal woe commingle with the sounds of a serenade
+in the distance, and the disclosure of a supposed murder is made at the
+climax of a ball; in the fourth the calls of passing gondoliers break
+in upon Gioconda's soliloquies, which have for their subject suicide,
+murder, and self-sacrifice. The device is of a coarse tissue, but it
+is of the opera operatic, and it is now more familiar than it was when
+first disclosed to the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House,
+twenty-five years ago.
+
+If it were necessary one might look for the source of this device of
+contrast in the literature to which Verdi directed attention when
+he turned his thoughts to Victor Hugo, and composed "Ernani" and
+"Rigoletto." Hugo was the prince of those novelists and dramatists
+who utilized glaring contrasts and unnatural contradictions to give
+piquancy to their creations and compel sympathy for monsters by uniting
+monumental wickedness with the most amiable of moral qualities. The
+story of "La Gioconda" is drawn from "Angelo, Tyrane de Padoue." In
+transforming this tragedy into an opera the librettist removed the scene
+from Padua to Venice, changed a wealthy actress into a poor street
+singer, and made the blind mother, who is barely mentioned in the play,
+into a prominent and moving character. There can be no question but that
+Boito ("Tobia Gorria" is but an anagramatic nom de plume of Arrigo
+Boito) was highly successful in remodeling the tragedy for operatic
+purposes, but he did not palliate its moral grossness or succeed in
+inviting our compassionate feelings for anyone entitled to them. The
+only personages who in this opera escape disaster are a pair of lovers,
+whose sufferings, as depicted or inferred, cannot be said to have
+refined the guilt out of their passion. We might infer that once the
+attachment of Enzo and Laura was pure and lovely, but all that we see of
+it is flauntingly criminal and doubly wicked. The happiness of Enzo, who
+to elope with another man's wife cruelly breaks faith with a woman whose
+love for him is so strong that she gives her life to save his, is hardly
+a consummation that ought to be set down as justifying so many blotches
+and blains, pimples and pustules, on the face of human nature. Laura's
+treachery is to Gioconda as well as to her husband, and has no redeeming
+trait. In fact, the blind woman is the only character in the opera who
+has moral health, and she seems to have been brought in only that her
+sufferings might intensify the bloody character of Barnaba, the spy.
+Even Gioconda, a character that has latent within it many effective
+elements, is sacrificed by the librettist to the one end--sensational
+effect through contrast and contradiction. Nowhere does she illustrate
+the spirit of blitheness which is put forth by her name, and only once
+does she allude to it. From the moment of her entrance till her death
+she is filled with torturing passion and conflicting emotions. Not la
+Gioconda she, but la Dolorosa--except for the bookmaker's desire for
+dramatic paradox. Against the desire to sympathize with her is thrust
+the revelation that her rival is never saved from death at her hands
+because of any repugnance of hers to murder. She would kill in an
+instant were it not that her vengefulness is overcome by gratitude to
+the benefactress of her mother. So it comes that the strongest feeling
+excited by the heroine, who dies a sacrifice to filial affection and
+passionate love, is one of simple pity--a feeling that is never absent
+from tender hearts, no matter how depraved the victim of misfortune.
+
+But opera in the estate illustrated by "La Gioconda" scarcely justifies
+even an elementary moral disquisition. Moreover, what Ponchielli
+provoked is so much worse than what he himself did that his condemnation
+can go no further than purgatorial fires. It is in the operas of his
+pupils and would-be imitators, like Giordano, Tasca, and others, that
+filth and blood are supposed to fructify the music which rasps the
+nerves, even as the dramas revolt the moral stomach. In view of the
+products of the period in which began operatic veritism, so-called, "La
+Gioconda" seems almost washed in innocency, and if its music is at times
+highly spiced, it is at least frankly and simply melodious. Naturally he
+has followed his librettist in aiming at contrast, at higgledy-piggledy
+finales, at garish orchestration, at strenuous declamation in the
+dialogue not cast in melodic forms and at abrupt changes. But he has
+plenty, if not profound melodiousness. La Cieca's air, Enzo's romance,
+Laura's "Stella del Marinar," Barnaba's barcarole, and the ballet music
+have lived on in our concert rooms from that day to this.
+
+"La Gioconda" was the last opera brought forward in the winter season,
+which ended on December 22d, leaving two out of thirty promised
+subscription performances to be supplied on the return of Mr. Abbey's
+forces from Boston, whither they went for the holidays. When he came
+back in a fortnight he gave "Carmen," on January 9th, with Trebelli,
+Campanini, and Del Puente (who had been in the cast of the original
+London production); repeated it on January 11th, and "La Gioconda"
+on January 12th.
+
+On March 10th a spring season began, which lasted till April 12th. It
+added four operas to the list. Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet" (March 10),
+Flotow's "Martha" (March 14th), Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" (March 19th),
+and "Le Prophète" (March 21st). The last, which had first been heard in
+New York at the Astor Place Opera House four years after its original
+production in Paris, on April 16, 1849, had been absent from the
+current operatic list so long that it was to all intents and purposes
+a novelty to Mr. Abbey's patrons. The last week of the season brought
+two disappointments: Mmes. Nilsson and Sembrich both fell ill, the
+indisposition of the latter (or something else) causing the abandonment
+of Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette," an opera that was new to New Yorkers,
+and was promptly brought out by Colonel Mapleson with Mme. Patti in
+his spring season at the Academy of Music.
+
+As has already been set forth, Mr. Abbey made a monumental financial
+fiasco; but his was a heroic effort to galvanize Italian opera, which
+seemed moribund, into vitality. He showed an honest desire to keep
+all his promises to the public made when he asked support for his
+enterprise, and all in all, his administration was signalized by virtues
+too frequently absent in the doings of operatic managers. His stage sets
+were uniformly handsome, and some of them showed greater sumptuousness
+than the people had seen for many years; his orchestra, though faulty in
+composition as well as execution, did some admirable work under Signor
+Vianesi; his chorus was prompt, vigorous, and tuneful; his ensembles
+were carefully and intelligently composed, and his selection of operas
+was judicious from a managerial point of view. He gave to New York the
+strongest combination of women singers that the city had ever known;
+nor has it been equaled in any one season since. The financial failure
+of the enterprise caused no surprise among intelligent and impartial
+observers. One needed not to be prophetically gifted to foretell
+twenty-five years ago that New York could not support two such costly
+establishments as the Academy of Music and the Metropolitan Opera House.
+The world of fashion, which in the nature of things is the supporter of
+Italian opera, and has been ever since the art form was invented, was
+divided in its allegiance, and divided, moreover, in a manner which made
+an interchange of courtesies all but impossible. This threw the burden
+of maintaining the rival houses upon two limited groups of persons, and
+the loss was mutual.
+
+In Mr. Abbey's prospectus he promised to produce twenty-four operas,
+which he named; he kept his promise as to all but five, these being
+"Lucrezia Borgia," "Linda di Chamouni," "Fra Diavolo," "Otello," and
+"Le Nozze di Figaro." "Roméo et Juliette," which he attempted to give,
+but failed at the last, was not in the original list. Besides these
+performances, he gave fifty-eight outside of New York in visits to
+Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis,
+Washington, and Baltimore. The local record may be tabulated as
+follows:
+
+
+   Opera                    First performance       Times given
+
+  "Faust" .................... October 22 ............ 6
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ...... October 24 ............ 3
+  "Il Trovatore" ............. October 26 ............ 3
+  "I Puritani" ............... October 29 ............ 1
+  "Mignon" ................... October 31 ............ 4
+  "La Traviata" .............. November 5 ............ 4
+  "Lohengrin" ................ November 7 ............ 6
+  "La Sonnambula" ............ November 14 ........... 2
+  "Rigoletto" ................ November 16 ........... 2
+  "Robert le Diable" ......... November 19 ........... 3
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" .. November 23 ........... 3
+  "Don Giovanni" ............. November 28 ........... 5
+  "Mefistofele" .............. December 5 ............ 2
+  "La Gioconda" .............. December 20 ........... 4
+  "Carmen" ................... January 9 ............. 5
+  "Hamlet" ................... March 10 .............. 1
+  "Martha" ................... March 14 .............. 3
+  "Les Huguenots" ............ March 19 .............. 2
+  "Le Prophète" .............. March 21 .............. 1
+
+
+There was one performance with a mixed program.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OPERATIC REVOLUTIONS
+
+
+Colonel Mapleson and the stockholders of the Academy of Music and their
+friends were little disposed to yield to the new order of things without
+a struggle. The Academy was refurnished and a season of Italian opera
+begun on the same night on which Mr. Abbey opened his doors. Colonel
+Mapleson's company comprised Mmes. Patti, Gerster, Pappenheim, Pattini,
+and Josephine Yorke, and Signori Falletti, Nicolini, Perugini,
+Cherubini, Vicini, Lombardini, and Caracciolo. The performances were
+like those that had been the rule for years, except for the brilliancy
+which Mme. Patti lent to those in which she took part. But not even she
+could hold the fickle public. On the nights when she sang the house
+was two-thirds full; Mme. Gerster had established herself as a prime
+favorite, but when she sang on the "off nights" the house was two-thirds
+empty. The season was financially disastrous, though Colonel Mapleson's
+losses were not comparable to Mr. Abbey's, and he was not only brave
+enough to prepare for the next season's campaign, but adroit enough to
+persuade Mme. Patti to place herself under his guidance again. But,
+while he held out against Mr. Abbey and the new house, he was compelled
+to yield to the Metropolitan and German opera as established by Dr.
+Damrosch. Of the singers who helped Colonel Mapleson make his fight,
+one is still in enjoyment of popular favor. This is Mme. Nordica,
+who, though not a regular member of the company, effected her American
+operatic début at the Academy on November 26, 1883, in Gounod's "Faust."
+She was announced as Mme. Norton-Gower, and of her performance I wrote
+at the time in The Tribune:
+
+
+Of Mrs. Norton-Gower the first statement must be that she gives abundant
+evidence of having been admirably trained in the spirit of Gounod's
+music and the tragedy. Nearly every number in the score which falls to
+the part of Margherita she sang with commendable intelligence and taste.
+The most obvious criticism was that the spirit so excellently conceived
+by her put a severe strain upon the matter in her control. It cost her
+a manifest effort to do what she well knew how to do, for she is not
+a phenomenal vocalist. She has a voice of fine texture, and her tones
+are generally sympathetic. She sings with feeling, but acts with more.
+Her performance was meritorious beyond the performances of any of Mr.
+Mapleson's women singers, Mmes. Patti and Gerster excepted.
+
+
+That Mr. Abbey had made losses which were so great as to make him
+unwilling to remain at the head of the operatic forces at the
+Metropolitan Opera House was known long before the close of the first
+season. Before the spring representations began he made answer to the
+proposal of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company by saying
+that he would act as their manager without compensation for the next
+year, provided they would pay the losses which the first season would
+entail upon him. The directors had agreed in their original contract to
+save him whole to the extent of $60,000--a pitiful tenth part of what,
+according to Mr. Schoeffel, the losses finally aggregated; I am inclined
+to think, however, that Mr. Schoeffel has included the losses made in
+the other cities visited by the company. There were only sixty-one
+representations at the Metropolitan Opera House, and it is inconceivable
+that they averaged a deficit of over $9,000 each. They could not have
+cost that sum in fact, and many of the performances drew houses which at
+the prevailing prices (orchestra $6) must have yielded handsome returns.
+Whatever the sum which loomed up as a prospective loss, however, it
+was great enough to dissuade the directors from adopting Mr. Abbey's
+suggestion. Instead, they made up their minds cheerfully to pay their
+own loss, and at the beginning of the spring season, all negotiations
+having come to an end, sent Mr. Abbey a letter which read as follows:
+
+
+                          Metropolitan Opera House, New York,
+                                Secretary's Office, March 14, 1884.
+
+My Dear Sir: It gives me much pleasure to say that I am instructed by
+the president to tender you the use of the Opera House on April 21,
+1884, for a benefit performance to yourself. I beg also to express my
+hope that the results of the benefit may in some measure be commensurate
+with the manner you have presented Italian opera and to say that it will
+give me great pleasure to do anything I can to aid in making the benefit
+a great success. Most sincerely yours,
+
+                                    Edmund C. Stanton, Secretary.
+  To Henry E. Abbey.
+
+
+In the meantime negotiations had already begun looking to the transfer
+of the house for the next season to Mr. Ernest Gye, who was manager at
+the time of Covent Garden, London. These negotiations were continued
+till deep in the summer and came to naught at the end. Of the reasons
+for the failure several became known to the public. One was the
+unwillingness of the directors to give Mr. Gye a free hand in the
+engagement of artists. The directors, who were active in determining
+the policy of the opera, were all devoted admirers of Mme. Nilsson;
+they were, in fact, the donors of the laurel wreath of gold which she
+received on the first night of the season. They were desirous that she
+should be re-engaged, though the weight of her contract had done much to
+break Mr. Abbey's financial back, and they were also a little fearful
+that Mr. Gye, the husband of Mme. Albani, would, not unnaturally, seek
+to put that singer in Mme. Nilsson's place. Meanwhile, the opera season
+at Covent Garden came to a close, and though Mr. Gye had not had Colonel
+Mapleson at Her Majesty's Theater to cope with, as in former seasons,
+but only English opera at Drury Lane, under the direction of Carl Rosa,
+the financial outcome was such as to suggest that Mr. Gye's attitude
+toward opera at the Metropolitan was something like that which the
+Germans describe as a cat walking about a dish of hot porridge.
+
+At intervals bits of gossip reached New York by cable, but none of
+them was of a comforting character. One week it was said to be the
+exorbitance of Mme. Nilsson's demands which gave Mr. Gye pause, and
+the next the difficulty of finding a tenor worthy of succeeding Signor
+Campanini and capable of satisfying the captious, critical, and
+fastidious people of New York. There were suspicions, too, that some
+of the embarrassments which confronted Mr. Gye and the Metropolitan
+directors were due to the machinations of that sly and persuasive old
+dog, Colonel Mapleson. Nilsson had but one rival, and she was Mme.
+Patti. Her Colonel Mapleson had secured; not only her, but, report said,
+Scalchi, Tremelli, and Tamagno also. Mme. Scalchi had been a strong prop
+of the first Metropolitan season, and Tremelli and Tamagno, though they
+had not been heard in America, had names to conjure with. Tremelli never
+came, and it was not until 1890, when Mr. Abbey was again in the traces
+of an Italian opera manager, and was exploiting both Mme. Patti and Mme.
+Albani, that Tamagno was heard in New York.
+
+Failures of such magnitude as those of Mr. Gye in London, Colonel
+Mapleson at the Academy of Music, and Mr. Abbey at the Metropolitan
+Opera House, naturally set the beards of the wiseacres a-wagging.
+Clearly the world of opera was out of joint and a prophet with a new
+evangel seemed to be needed to set it right. In New York the efforts had
+been made along old lines, but Mr. Gye had ventured on an experiment
+which suggested the polyglot scheme which became the fixed policy of
+the Metropolitan Opera House some ten years later. Along with the old
+Italian list Mr. Gye gave some of Wagner's lyric dramas in German, and
+even ventured an English opera done into German--C. Villiers Stanford's
+"Savonarola." Was Italian opera dead? So it almost seemed; but the
+incidents attending its demise were familiar to operatic history and
+as old as Italian opera in London and New York. When the art form was
+making its first struggles for habilitation in the British metropolis
+Addison thought the spectacle so amusing that he wrote an essay in
+which he pictured the amazement of the next generation on learning that
+in the days of its predecessors English men and women had sat out entire
+evenings listening to an entertainment in a foreign tongue. And he said
+in that essay many other excellent things, the truth and force of which
+are just as deserving of appreciation (and just as needful) now as they
+were in the time of the writer.
+
+The consciousness of the absurdity of Italian opera transported in the
+"original package" (to speak commercially) to England and America seems
+to have been constant with the Anglo-Saxon peoples. Of this the legion
+of managerial wrecks which strew the operatic shores or float as
+derelicts bear witness. Bankers, manufacturers, and noblemen have come
+to the rescue of ambitious managers, or become ambitious managers
+themselves, only to go down in the common disaster. Mr. Delafield wrote
+his name high among his fellows across the water by losing half a
+million of dollars in a single season--a feat which no man equaled till
+Mr. Abbey came. Taylor got himself into the King's Bench Prison by his
+venturesomeness, and, once there, found consolation in a philosophy
+which taught him that of all places in the world the properest one for
+an opera manager was a prison. But I have mentioned this before.
+
+Time was when the popular taste found complete satisfaction in the
+melodies of the Italian composers. Time was when the desire for novelty
+in the operatic field could be satisfied only by importations from
+Italy. Time was when Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen went to Italy
+to study operatic composition and wrote in the Italian manner to
+Italian texts. All this had changed at the period of which I am
+writing--Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen had operas in their own
+languages and schools of composition of their own. But still New York
+and London clung to Italian sweets.
+
+And Italy had become sterile. Verdi seemed to have ceased writing. There
+were whisperings of an "Iago" written in collaboration with Boito, but
+it was awaiting ultimate criticism and final polish while the wonderful
+old master was engaged in revamping some of his early works. Boito was
+writing essays and librettos for others, with the unfinished "Nerone"
+lying in his desk, where it is still hidden. Ponchielli had not
+succeeded in getting a hearing for anything since "La Gioconda."
+Expectations had been raised touching an opera entitled "Dejanice," by
+Catalani, but I cannot recall that it ever crossed the Italian border.
+The hot-blooded young veritists who were soon to flood Italy with their
+creations had not yet been heard of. The champions of a change from
+Italian to German ideals seemed to have the argument all in their favor.
+The spectacle presented by the lyric stage in Germany and France seemed
+to show indubitably what course opera as an art form must needs take if
+it was to live. Gluck, Weber, and Wagner, all Germans, had pointed the
+way. In 1883 five new operas by English composers reached the dignity of
+performance, and it was significant that two of them--Mr. Mackenzie's
+"Colomba" and Mr. Stanford's "Savonarola"--were performed in German, the
+former in Hamburg, the latter in London. There were many lovers of opera
+in New York besides the musical reviewer for The Tribune who believed
+that if America was ever to have a musical art of its own the way could
+best be paved by supplanting Italian performances by German at the
+principal home of opera in the United States. We should, it is true,
+still have foreign artists singing foreign works in a foreign tongue,
+but the change in repertory would promote an appreciation and an
+understanding of truthful, dramatic expression in a form which claimed
+close relationship with the drama.
+
+This was the state of affairs when, negotiations having failed with
+both Mr. Abbey and Mr. Gye, the summer days of 1884 being nearly gone
+and the prospect of a closed theater confronting the directors of the
+Metropolitan Opera House, Dr. Leopold Damrosch submitted to them a
+proposition to give opera in German under his management, but on their
+account. Either the forcefulness and plausibility of his arguments or
+the direfulness of their need led the directors to make the venture. Dr.
+Damrosch went to Germany toward the end of August; toward the end of
+September he was back in New York, ready to announce a season of opera
+in German, with a completely organized company and a promising list of
+operas. Few persons knew what was coming, and the information brought
+with it a shock of surprise. Dr. Damrosch had been a vigorous factor in
+the musical life of New York for twelve years, but he had never been
+identified with opera in the public mind, and, in fact, his practical
+familiarity with it was little. He had come to New York from Breslau,
+where he was conductor of the Orchesterverein (a symphonic organization)
+in 1871. He had had some practical experience with the theater at
+Weimar, where he played with the orchestra of the Court Theater under
+the direction of Liszt, had been musical director at the Municipal
+Theater in Posen and Breslau, but for short periods only. He had not
+gone through the career of the typical German conductor for the reason
+that he was not a musician "vom Hause aus"--as the Germans express it.
+He was a physician turned musician--a member of one of the scientific
+professions who had abandoned science for art.
+
+Dr. Damrosch was a remarkable man. He was born in Posen, Prussia,
+on October 22, 1832. He studied music in the home circle, like the
+generality of German lads, but his parents had chosen the profession of
+medicine for him, and he had acquiesced in the choice, matriculating
+in the medical department of the University of Berlin after he had
+completed the usual gymnasial course of studies. He had not abandoned
+his love for music, though he so devoted himself to medicine that in
+due course he was graduated with honors and received his degree.
+Incidentally, like Schumann at Heidelberg, he continued to study music,
+Hubert Ries being his teacher in violin playing, and the venerable
+Professor Dehn in counterpoint and composition. After graduation he
+returned to his native Posen to practise medicine, and remained there
+thus occupied till 1854.
+
+In 1855 the physician's earlier and stronger love for music achieved the
+mastery over his adopted profession, and he started out into the world
+as a concert violinist. He played at Magdeburg and at Berlin, where his
+talents were so much admired that on the recommendation of friends in
+the Prussian capital he went to Weimar, where he won the friendship
+of Liszt and joined the body of enthusiastic young musicians--Peter
+Cornelius and others--who had rallied around the great musician and were
+fighting the battles of the new German school. His musical creed was
+formed here, as he himself confessed in a series of articles written for
+the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. His first official appointment was as
+director of the music at the Stadttheater in Posen, and in 1866 he was
+called to fill the same post at Breslau. After he had resigned this
+position he remained in Breslau as director of the Orchesterverein,
+which he called into existence until he accepted the call of the
+Männergesangverein Arion in New York in 1871. Though Dr. Damrosch had
+achieved a European reputation before he came to New York, his best
+and most enduring work was accomplished here, where he organized the
+Oratorio Society, which has had a continuous existence since 1873, and
+the Symphony Society, which, amid many vicissitudes and with several
+reincarnations, has lived since 1877. The establishment of German opera,
+though it did not endure, was yet his crowning achievement, and at the
+culmination of the glory which it brought him he died. But of that
+presently and in its proper place.
+
+The artistic basis of the scheme which Dr. Damrosch put into effect was
+essentially German. It dispensed with the star system (except so far as
+the engagement of Mme. Materna was a deference to it) and substituted
+instead a good ensemble, unusual attention to the mounting of
+operas, and the bringing out of dramatic effects through other stage
+accessories. The change of base brought with it of necessity a change
+of repertory, and the Italian operas which had formed the staple of
+New York lists for years were put aside for the masterpieces of German
+and French composers. One or two efforts to include works of a lighter
+lyrical character sufficed to demonstrate the wisdom of a strict
+adherence to the list of tragic works of large dimensions and
+spectacular nature, and the sagacity of Dr. Damrosch was shown in
+nothing more clearly than in his choice of operas for representation.
+
+There were few familiar names in the list of singers printed in the
+prospectus. The most familiar, and the greatest, was that which
+has already been announced as the one concession made to the star
+system--Mme. Amalia Materna. Twenty-five years ago the story of Bayreuth
+was a household word throughout the civilized world, and Mme. Materna
+had been associated with the Wagner festivals since the first held, in
+1876. In May, 1882, she was brought to New York by Theodore Thomas for
+the Music Festival, held in the Seventh Regiment Armory, and with her
+Bayreuth colleagues--Winkelmann, tenor, and Scaria, bass--she took part
+in concerts and festivals which Mr. Thomas gave in 1884 in Boston,
+New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Chicago. After returning to
+Europe after the American engagement of 1882, she had gone straight
+to Bayreuth, where she "created" the part of Kundry in the original
+production of "Parsifal," alternating afterward in the character
+with Fräulein Brandt, who was associated with her in Dr. Damrosch's
+Metropolitan company. When she came to the Metropolitan (she made her
+first appearance after the season was well under headway, in January,
+1885) Mme. Materna was thirty-eight years old and her splendid powers
+were at their zenith. She had sung in public since her thirteenth year,
+at first in church, then in comic opera in Graz and Vienna. While
+singing at a small theater in the Austrian capital she became a member
+of the Court Opera, attracted wide attention by her dramatic abilities
+in the grand operas of its repertories, and at once leaped into fame by
+her impersonation of Brünnhilde at the first Bayreuth festival, in 1876.
+
+Next in significance in the first Metropolitan German Company was
+Marianne Brandt, whose influence in creating new ideals and developing
+new tastes among the opera-goers of New York was even greater than that
+of Mme. Materna, because her powers were no less and her labors of
+longer duration. She came here after having won praise from the critics
+of London, where she had sung at the first performance in England of
+"Tristan und Isolde" at Drury Lane in 1882. That was ten years after
+she had effected her London début. The principal Coloratursängerin of
+the company was Frau Marie Schroeder-Hanfstängl, then a member of
+the Frankfort Opera, who was a native of Breslau and a friend of the
+Damrosch family while they were there. As Mlle. Schroeder she had
+already established a reputation at that time in Paris, where she had
+sung at the Théâtre Lyrique through the mediation of her teacher,
+Mme. Viardot-Garcia. The jugendlich Dramatische was Frau Auguste
+Seidl-Krauss, who was announced throughout the season by her maiden
+name, but had been married for about a year to Anton Seidl, then
+conductor at the Stadttheater in Bremen, who was soon to become a
+most puissant factor in the sum of New York's musical activities. The
+principal tenor was Anton Schott, who had made a considerable reputation
+as a Wagnerian singer in the opera houses of Munich, Berlin, Schwerin,
+Hanover, and London, and had made the Italian tour with Angelo Neumann's
+Wagner company which Seidl conducted in 1882. Earlier in life he had
+been an artillery officer in the German army, which fact coupled
+with his explosive manner of singing prompted one of Dr. von Bülow's
+witticisms. The doctor had been conductor of the opera in Hanover when
+Schott was there and had conceived a violent dislike for him. Some years
+after the latter's New York season, conversing socially with von Bülow,
+I chanced to mention Schott's name.
+
+"Ah! do you know Schott?" asked the irascible little doctor;
+"ein eigenthümlicher Sänger, nicht war? Eigentlich ist er ein
+Militärtenor--ein Artillerist. Sie wissen er singt manchmal zu hoch--da
+distonirt er; gewöhnlich singt er zu tief--da destonirt er; und wenn er
+gelegentlich rein singt--da detonirt er!" The ingenious play on words
+is quite untranslatable, but my readers who understand German but are
+unfamiliar with musical terms will be helped to an appreciation of the
+fun by being told that "dis," "des," and "de" are the German names
+applied respectively to D sharp, D flat, and D natural. No doubt Dr.
+von Bülow had perpetrated his little joke before he shot it off for my
+benefit. It was a habit of his to have such brilliant impromptus ready
+and ingeniously to invite an occasion for their introduction. But they
+always had the effect of brilliant spontaneity. It was on another
+occasion, when he was praising the performance of another German tenor,
+and I had interposed the suggestion that to me he seemed to lack
+virility, that he burst out with:
+
+"But, my dear fellow, a tenor isn't a man; it's a disease!"
+
+I supplied the quotation marks in my mind, for though the remark was
+his, it had served him on at least one other occasion, as I chanced
+to know.
+
+Other members of the company were Anna Slach, Anna Stern, Hermine Bely,
+Adolf Robinson, barytone (another of Dr. Damrosch's professional friends
+from Breslau); Josef Staudigl (bass, son of the great Staudigl); Josef
+Koegel, bass; Emil Tiffero, Herr Udvardi, Otto Kemlitz, Ludwig Wolf,
+Josef Miller, and Herr Schneller. John Lund, who came from Kroll's,
+in Berlin, and Walter Damrosch, were chorus masters and assistant
+conductors. The first season began on November 17, 1884, with a
+performance of "Tannhäuser."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GERMAN OPERA AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+
+After German opera began at the Metropolitan Opera House it endured
+seven years. It was only at the outset that it had the opposition of
+what had been the established régime of Italian opera at the Academy of
+Music, but it was pursued throughout its career by desultory enterprises
+and hampered greatly by the fact that the stockholders were never
+unitedly and enthusiastically in favor of it or the principles of art
+which it represented. Throughout the period there was a hankering for
+the fleshpots of Egypt in the region of the Metropolitan boxes. It seems
+desirable, therefore, that, though it is my purpose more specifically
+in the next few chapters to tell the story of the seven years of German
+opera, I should turn the light occasionally on the doings at rival
+institutions. The first of the seven years at the Metropolitan Opera
+House was the seventh year of Colonel Mapleson's tenancy of the Academy
+of Music. He opened his season on November 10, 1884, but before then
+James Barton Key and Horace McVicker experimented with Italian opera
+for three weeks at the Star Theater. The organization was composed of
+operatic flotsam and jetsam, such as is always to be found plentifully
+in New York after operatic storms in South America or Mexico, and was
+neither better nor worse than scores of other companies heard here
+before and since. Like most of these, too, it had a mouth-filling
+name--the Milan Grand Opera Company--but, like few of them, it had a
+capital tenor, Signor Giannini, who at a somewhat later period we shall
+find in Colonel Mapleson's forces. Other members of the company whose
+names are worthy of preservation were Maria Peri (soprano leggiero),
+Signora Damerini (dramatic soprano), Signora Mestress (contralto), and
+Signor Serbolini (bass). The experiment resulted in financial failure,
+but it introduced to New York the South American opera, "Il Guarany,"
+by Señor Gomez. In Colonel Mapleson's company were Mme. Patti,
+Signora Ricetti, Mme. Emma Nevada, Signor Nicolini, Signor Vicini, and
+Signor Cardinali (tenors), Mme. Scalchi, Mme. Fursch-Madi, Signori de
+Pasqualis, Cherubini, Caracciolo (bassos), Signor de Anna (barytone),
+and Signor Bassetti (tenor), otherwise Mr. Charles Bassett, like Mme.
+Nevada, an American singer. The subscription ended on December 27th, and
+in the following week he gave four extra performances, at two of which
+he reduced the prices, though they were of a higher artistic order than
+the others. The relations between Mapleson and the stockholders of the
+Academy were becoming strained, and in a speech which he made at his
+annual benefit he remarked upon their absence satcastically. It was
+plain that their patience had given out and that they were weary of
+extending to him the financial support which had helped him through
+the season. In my review of the season I find this remark, which is
+indicative of their indifference to the fate of their lessee: "The
+condition of the house gives evidence of an unwillingness to sink money
+in an unlucrative enterprise. It is somewhat discouraging to the patrons
+of the house to sit in ramshackle chairs which threaten to deposit them
+incontinently on the floor at any moment, and the collapse of a stall
+has frequently accentuated a musical or dramatic climax in the season
+just ended."
+
+The season ended with many promises unfulfilled, for which the
+impresario placed the blame upon the directors, who, he said, had not
+given him sufficient use of the Academy stage. His explanations were not
+always wholly ingenuous, however. Thus he had announced that "Lakmé"
+would be given, with the composer, M. Delibes, in the conductor's
+chair. Now, in the season before, Mme. Gerster had been so desirous to
+create the part of the heroine in America (it being one which afforded
+fine scope for her lovely powers, and which she had studied with the
+composer) that she had bought the performing rights. But nothing came of
+her ambition, and it was an open secret that Heugel, the publisher, had
+quarreled with Mapleson because of unwarranted practices with his scores
+in London. In the midst of his troubles Colonel Mapleson announced that
+he had engaged Mme. Nilsson for the season of 1885-86. There was as
+little foundation for this announcement as for the promise of "Lakmé."
+
+With ruin staring him in the face, Mapleson concluded the season. He
+bettered his fortunes a trifle in Boston and Philadelphia, but failed
+again in New Orleans and St. Louis. Then he went to San Francisco,
+where the fact that Mme. Nevada was a native of the Pacific Slope was
+a helpful factor. After the close of the season at the Metropolitan
+Opera House he gave a "spring season" of six performances in one week,
+beginning on April 20th. He repeated the performance in Boston and then
+sailed for Europe, stopping in New York only long enough to institute
+two suits at law--one against Signor Nicolini to recover $10,000 for
+failing to sing, and one against Mme. Nevada for $3,000, alleged to
+have been overpaid her. The suits, in all likelihood, were merely moves
+in the managerial game which he was playing in London and New York. In
+the seventh of these "Chapters of Opera" I described as the crowning
+achievement of Colonel Mapleson in the season full of noteworthy
+incidents the circumstance that he had succeeded in owing Mme. Patti
+some $5,000 or $6,000. Nicolini was Patti's husband.
+
+More than ever it looked in the spring of 1885 as if Italian opera had
+received its quietus. The demoralization of the Academy of Music was
+complete. In London there prevailed a state of affairs so anomalous and
+startling that the newspaper critics were cudgeling their brains in a
+vain effort to find an explanation. For the first time in one hundred
+and fifty-eight years the British metropolis was without opera; for
+the first time in thirty-nine years (except in 1856, when fire made it
+impossible) the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden had failed to open
+its doors on Easter Tuesday. Mr. Gye and his backers refused to venture
+their fortunes again, and the lease of Her Majesty's was also going
+begging. In New York Colonel Mapleson had held one good card which he
+did not seem to know how to play: the season compassed the twenty-fifth
+anniversary of the operatic début of Mme. Patti. There ought, for
+excellent and obvious reasons, to have been a fitting celebration of
+the event; but there was not. On November 26th, two days after the date,
+Colonel Mapleson gave a performance of "Martha," with Mmes. Patti
+and Scalchi in the principal women's parts. After the opera a rout of
+supernumeraries, choristers, and other boys and men engaged for the
+purpose, carrying torches, followed the diva's carriage to the Windsor
+Hotel, where she was serenaded. That was all. It was so undignified and
+inadequate that it provoked some of Mme. Patti's friends to arrange the
+banquet in her honor which I have described in Chapter VI. Had Signor
+Brignoli, who was the Edgardo to Adelina Patti's Lucia at the Academy on
+November 24, 1859, been spared in life and health a few weeks longer
+(Signor Brignoli died in October, 1884), his friends would probably
+have urged an association of the two artists in a gala performance
+of Donizetti's opera. This would have provided an appropriate and
+delightful celebration, and it would not have been difficult to marshal
+a number of interesting relics of the period which saw the operatic
+advent of Mme. Patti, though all of them would have appeared much worse
+for the wear of a quarter-century than she. Of the valiant champions
+who were leading the contending operatic armies of the time, Arditi,
+Maretzek, and Strakosch were still with us. The first was filling, as
+of yore, the leader's chair at the Academy and doing yeoman's service
+in the unobtrusive and modest manner which always characterized him;
+the second, withdrawn from all connection with operatic management, was
+watching the boiling and bubbling of the caldron with amused interest
+and spicing his comments with capitally told reminiscences of opera a
+generation before; the third was still chasing the fickle goddess with
+fugitive essays as impresario. There were even remains of the critics of
+those days still active in the world of letters--Richard Grant White,
+for instance, and George William Curtis, one of my predecessors on The
+Tribune--and they would undoubtedly have grown young again and been
+warmed into enthusiastic utterance by eager memories of the dainty
+débutante and the singers who had preceded her--Grisi, Bosio,
+Piccolomini, and the rest.
+
+A vast amount of reminiscences would have been justified by such
+a celebration, for it would have thrown a bright sidelight on the
+marvelous career of Mme. Patti, a career without parallel in the history
+of the last half-century. Within three years after she made her first
+essay "our little Patti," as she was then fondly spoken of, had achieved
+the queenship of the lyric stage; and, now, twenty-two years later, her
+title had not suffered the slightest impairment. Within the time singers
+who had won the world's admiration had been born, educated, and lifted
+to the niches prepared for them by popular appreciation, but all far
+below the place where Patti sat enthroned. Stars of great brilliancy
+had flashed across the firmament and gone out in darkness, but the
+refulgence of Patti's art remained undimmed, having only grown mellower
+and deeper and richer with time. Truth is, Mme. Patti was then, and is
+still, twenty-five years later, a musical miracle; and the fact that she
+was in New York to sing in the very spot in which she began her career
+twenty-five years before should have been celebrated as one of the
+proudest incidents in the city's musical annals. For the generation of
+opera-goers who grew up in the period which ought to be referred to
+for all time in the annals of music as The Reign of Patti, she set a
+standard by which all aspirants for public favor were judged except
+those whose activities were in a widely divergent field. Not only did
+she show them what the old art of singing was, but she demonstrated
+the possibility of its revival. And she did this while admiring
+enthusiastically the best results of the dramatic spirit which pervades
+musical composition to-day. Her talent was so many-sided and so
+astonishing, no matter from which side it was viewed, that rhapsody
+seems to be the only language left one who attempts analysis or
+description of it. Her voice, of unequaled beauty, was no more a gift
+of nature than the ability to assimilate without effort the things
+which cost ordinary mortals years of labor and vexation of soul. It was
+perpetually amazing how her singing made the best efforts of the best of
+her contemporaries pale, especially those who depended on vocal agility
+for their triumphs. Each performance of hers made it plainer than it had
+been before that her genius penetrated the mere outward glitter of the
+music and looked upon the ornament as so much means to the attainment of
+an end; that end, a beautiful interpretation of the composer's thought.
+No artist of her time was so perfect an exponent as she of the quality
+of repose. So far as appearances went it was as easy for her to burden
+the air with trills and roulades as it was to talk. She sang as the
+lark sings; the outpouring of an ecstasy of tones of almost infinite
+number and beauty seemed in her to be a natural means of expression.
+Her ideas of art were the highest, and it was a singular testimony
+of her earnestness that, while educated in the old Italian school of
+vocalization and holding her most exalted supremacy as a singer of
+Rossini's music, her warmest love, by her own confession, was given, not
+to its glittering confections, but to the serious efforts of the most
+dramatic writers. This must be remembered in the list of her astonishing
+merits now when her voice can no longer call up more than "the tender
+grace of a day that is dead"; mine was the proud privilege and great
+happiness of having heard her often in her prime. But I must get down
+to the real business of this chapter.
+
+The first German performance at the Metropolitan took place on November
+17, 1884. The opera was "Tannhäuser" and the distribution of parts
+as follows: Elizabeth, Mme. Krauss; Venus, Fräulein Slach; a Young
+Shepherd, Fräulein Stern; the Landgrave, Josef Koegel; Tannhäuser, Anton
+Schott; Wolfram, Adolf Robinson; Walther von der Vogelweide, Emil
+Tiffero; Biterolf, Josef Miller; Heinrich der Schreiber, Otto Kemlitz;
+Reinmar, Ludwig Wolf. The performance made no claim upon special
+analysis or description. Its highest significance consisted in the
+publication which it made with reference to the new ideals in operatic
+representation which came in with the new movement. No doubt to a large
+portion of the audience, still judging by the old standards, much of it
+must have been inexplicable, much of it (especially the singing of Herr
+Schott) little short of monstrous. To a smaller portion, familiar with
+the opera, the language of its book and the spirit of the play, as well
+as the music, it came as a vivid realization of the purposes of the
+poet-composer. To all but the German element in the audience the opera
+itself was practically a novelty. "Tannhäuser" had not been incorporated
+in the Italian repertory as "Lohengrin" had, and only those knew it
+who had attended the sporadic German performances of earlier decades
+conducted by such men as Bergmann, Anschütz, and Neuendorff. The
+first New York performance took place on August 27, 1859, at which the
+Männergesangverein Arion supplied the choruses.
+
+Wagner once described his Tannhäuser as "a German from head to foot,"
+and it was doubtless because Dr. Damrosch saw in it a representative
+quality that he chose it for his opening. There was patriotism as well
+as lovely artistic devotion, too, in the choice of "Fidelio" for the
+second performance, on November 19th. Beethoven's opera had almost
+as little association with Italian opera as "Tannhäuser," and it was
+noteworthy that the only portion of the audience room which was not
+filled was that occupied by the stockholders' boxes. It was an English
+company that, in September, 1839, had introduced "Fidelio" to New York,
+and with it made such successful competition with the Italian company of
+the day that it was performed fourteen times in succession. Mr. Mapleson
+made a pitiful essay with it in March, 1882, at the Academy, but to
+recall as vivid and vital a performance as that under discussion one had
+to go back to the days of Mme. Johannsen and her associates, who gave
+German opera in 1856. In Dr. Damrosch's performance Marianne Brandt
+effected her entrance on the American stage, and the memory of her
+impersonation of the heroine is still one of the liveliest and most
+fragrant memories of those memorable days. The dramatic framework of
+"Fidelio" is weak, its construction faulty. Only one ethical idea
+is presented in it with real vividness, but it is an idea which is
+peculiarly dear to the German heart--the saving power of woman's love.
+"Fidelio" is a tale of wifely devotion, and Beethoven bent all his
+energies to a glorification of his heroine's love and fidelity. To
+represent the character faithfully has been the highest ambition of
+German singers for a century. In that time not many more than a dozen
+have achieved high distinction in it; and Marianne Brandt is among the
+number. On its musical side her performance was thrillingly effective,
+but on its histrionic it rose to grandeur. Every word of her few
+speeches, every note of her songs, every look of her eyes and expression
+of her face was an exposition of that world of tenderness which filled
+the heart of Leonore. Nine-tenths of the action which falls to the
+part of Leonore is by-play, and by-play of the kind which is made
+particularly difficult by the time consumed by the music, which is not
+wisely adjusted with reference to the promotion of the action. Yet all
+these waits while Leonore is in view were filled by Fräulein Brandt
+with little actions which tended to develop the character so sadly
+left in the background by the playwright, but so lovingly treated by
+the composer. It was down to its smallest detail a picture of a woman
+impelled by one idea, in which her whole soul had been resolved, and
+which had grown out of a lofty conception of love and duty. There was
+nothing of the petty theatrical in Fräulein Brandt, and it was only an
+evidence of the sincerity of her devotion to the art work which made her
+bend over and stroke the wrist which she had freed from manacles while
+the powerful personages of the play were bowing before her as a pattern
+of conjugal love and the mimic populace were shouting their jubilations
+over salvation accomplished.
+
+At the third representation, on November 21st, Meyerbeer's "Huguenots"
+was brought forward to introduce Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl; and at the
+fourth tribute to the characteristic German spirit was paid by the
+production of Weber's "Der Freischütz." From the day of its birth this
+has been the opera in which the romantic spirit of the German race
+has found its most vivid reflection. The sombre lights and mysterious
+murmurings of the German forests pervade it; the spectres of that
+paganism from which the sturdy Northerners could be weaned only by
+compromise and artifice flit through it. The Wild Huntsman overshadows
+it and, though he says not a word, he powerfully asserts his claim upon
+the trembling admiration of those who keep open hearts for some of his
+old companions of pre-Christian days--especially for the burly fellow
+who under a new name is welcomed joyfully every Christmastide. In
+another sense, too, "Der Freischütz" is a national opera; the spirit of
+its music is drawn from the art-form which the people created. Instead
+of resting on the highly artificial product of the Italian renaissance,
+it rests upon popular song--folk-song, the song of the folk. Its
+melodies echo the cadences of the Volkslieder in which the German heart
+voices its dearest loves. Instead of shining with the light of the
+Florentine courts it glows with the rays of the setting sun filtered
+through the foliage of the Black Forest. Yet "Der Freischütz" failed on
+this its revival--failed so dismally that Dr. Damrosch did not venture
+upon a single repetition. The lesson which it taught had already been
+suggested by "Fidelio," but now it was made plain and Dr. Damrosch paid
+heed to it at once. The dimensions of the Metropolitan Opera House
+forbade the intimacy which operas founded on the German Singspiel
+demand for appreciation, and spoken dialogue, especially in a foreign
+tongue, was painfully destructive of artistic illusion. The operas which
+followed were more to the purpose: "William Tell," on November 28th,
+with Robinson as the hero, Schroeder-Hanfstängl as Mathilde, Slach as
+Gemmy, Staudigl as Gessler, Koegel as Walter, Udvardi as Arnold, and
+Brandt exemplifying a new spirit in opera by her assumption of the
+unimportant part of Tell's wife; "Lohengrin," on December 3d, with
+Krauss, Brandt, Schott, and Staudigl in the principal parts; "Don
+Giovanni," on December 10th, with Schroeder-Hanfstängl as Donna Anna,
+Hermine Bely as Zerlina, Brandt as Elvira, Robinson as the Don,
+Koegel as the Commander, and Udvardi as Ottavio; "Le Prophète," on
+December 17th, with Brandt as Fidès (one of her greatest rôles),
+Schroeder-Hanfstängl as Bertha, and Schott as John of Leyden; "La Muette
+de Portici" (otherwise "Masaniello") on December 29th, with Schott as
+the hero and Isolina Torri as Fenella. There was an interruption of
+this spectacular list on January 2, 1885, when "Rigoletto" was given
+to gratify the ambition of Herr Robinson to be seen and heard as the
+Jester, and of Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl to sing the music of Gilda. In
+this opera Fräulein Brandt played the part of Maddelena and interpolated
+a Spanish song sung in German. Then, on January 5th, came Mme. Materna's
+first operatic appearance in America, in a repetition of "Tannhäuser."
+
+Before continuing the record a few notes on some of these operas and
+their performance may not be amiss. There was little that was noteworthy
+about the representation of "Don Giovanni" except Dr. Damrosch's effort
+to do justice to the famous finale, the full effectiveness of which
+failed nevertheless because of the arrangement of the stage, which
+was that of the preceding season. "Les Huguenots" was a distinct
+disappointment. "La Muette de Portici," which was as good as new to
+the majority of the audience, acquired historical interest from close
+association with "William Tell." It was something of an anomaly that,
+though Rossini's opera had made its appearance during the many years of
+Italian domination whenever a tenor came who could be counted on to make
+a sensation with his high notes in the familiar trio of men, Auber's
+opera, its inspiration as a type, had had so few representations that
+it had passed out of memory except for its overture. But the history
+of "La Muette" is full of anomalies. Its story is Neapolitan and there
+is Neapolitan color in its music; but it is nothing if not French. It
+inspired Rossini to write "William Tell" and Meyerbeer to write "Les
+Huguenots" for the French stage, and is the masterpiece of its author;
+but Auber is the only Frenchman among the great composers for the
+Académie in the first half of the nineteenth century. Wagner defended it
+against the taste of the Parisians, who preferred Rossini and Donizetti,
+and was snubbed for his pains by the editor of the Gazette Musicale,
+who was an officer of the French government. Von Weber condemned as
+coarse the instrumentation which Wagner praised for its fire and
+truthfulness. Its heroine is dumb; yet to her is assigned the loveliest
+music in the score.
+
+"Lohengrin" better than "Tannhäuser" gave the public an opportunity to
+study the change in matter and spirit which had been introduced into
+local opera by the coming of the Germans to the Metropolitan.
+
+Mme. Materna's first appearance on January 5th was followed by a second
+on January 7th as Valentine in "Les Huguenots," and a third on January
+16th in Halévy's "La Juive." By this time Dr. Damrosch was ready with
+the first of the large Wagnerian productions which were a part of the
+dream which it was fated should be realized, not by him, but by his
+successor, whose name was thereby made illustrious in the operatic
+annals of New York. On January 30th "Die Walküre" was performed, with
+the following cast: Brünhilde, Amalia Materna; Fricka, Marianne
+Brandt; Sieglinde, Auguste Krauss; Siegmund, Anton Schott; Wotan, Josef
+Staudigl; Hunding, Josef Koegel; Gerhilde, Marianne Brandt; Ortlinde,
+Fräulein Stern; Waltraute, Fräulein Gutjar; Schwertleite, Fräulein
+Morse; Helmwige, Frau Robinson; Siegrune, Fräulein Slach; Grimgerde,
+Frau Kemlitz; Rossweise, Fräulein Brandl.
+
+"Die Walküre" had been presented before in New York at a so-called
+Wagner festival at the Academy of Music on April 2, 1877, under the
+direction of Adolf Neuendorff; but the memories of that production
+were painful when they were not amusing, and, though much of the music
+of the Nibelung trilogy had been heard in the concert room, this was
+practically the first opportunity the people of New York had to learn
+from personal experience what it was that Wagner meant by a union of
+arts in the lyric drama. Dr. Damrosch had made an earnest effort to meet
+the standard set by the Bayreuth festivals. The original scenery and
+costumes were faithfully copied, except that for the sake of increased
+picturesqueness Herr Hock, the stage manager, had draperies replace the
+door in Hunding's hut, which, shaking loose from their fastenings, fell
+just before Siegmund began his love song, and disclosed an expanse of
+moonlit background. In the third act, too, there was a greater variety
+of colors in the costumes of the Valkyrior. Fräulein Brandt again
+disclosed her artistic devotion by enacting the part of Fricka and also
+leading the chorus of Valkyrior; but Mme. Materna was the inspiration of
+the performance. It was a surprise to those who had already learned to
+admire her to see how in the character of Brünnhilde she towered above
+herself in other rôles. Both of the strong sides of the character had
+perfect exemplification in her singing and acting--the wild, impetuous,
+exultant freedom of voice which proclaimed the Valkyria's joy in living
+and doing until the catastrophe was reached, and the deep, unselfish,
+tender nature disclosed in her sympathy with the ill-starred lovers
+and her immeasurable love for Wotan. Her complete absorption in the
+part fitted her out with a new gamut of expression. "If anything can
+establish a sympathy between us and the mythological creatures of
+Wagner's dramas," I wrote at the time, "that thing is the acting and
+singing of Materna." The drama made a tremendous impression, and in the
+three weeks which remained of the season (including some supplementary
+performances) "Die Walküre" had seven representations.
+
+The remaining incidents of the season may now be hurried over to make
+room for a record of the catastrophe which marked its close. By the
+middle of January it was reported that the receipts were double those of
+the corresponding period in the previous year, notwithstanding that the
+price of admission had been reduced nearly one-half. By this time, too,
+the board of directors had decided to continue the policy adopted at the
+suggestion of Dr. Damrosch and engage him as director for the next year.
+This decision had not been reached, however, without consideration of
+other projects. Charles Mapleson, a son of the director of the Academy
+of Music, and doubtless only his go-between, submitted a proposition for
+the directorship, and so did Adolf Neuendorff, a man of indefatigable
+energy and enterprise, who had given New York its first hearing of
+"Lohengrin" at the Stadt Theater, in the Bowery, in April, 1871. In
+January there was also a strike of the chorus, which was quickly
+settled, and all but the ringleaders in the disturbance taken back
+into favor on signing an apology.
+
+Rejoicings over the success of the enterprise gave way to general grief
+and consternation with the unexpected death of Dr. Damrosch on February
+15th. On Tuesday, February 10th, he contracted a cold from having thrown
+himself upon a bed in a cold room for a nap before dinner on returning
+from a rehearsal at the opera house. He had neglected to open the
+furnace register or cover himself, and he awoke thoroughly chilled.
+After dinner he went to a rehearsal of the Oratorio Society, which was
+preparing Verdi's Manzoni Requiem for performance the following week.
+Before the conclusion of the rehearsal he was so ill that he was
+forced to hurry home in a carriage. The next morning it was found that
+pneumonia had set in, complicated by pleurisy, and a consultation of
+physicians was held. Only one of the subscription performances at the
+Metropolitan Opera House remained to be given, but there were still
+before the director in the way of operatic work five supplementary
+performances and seasons at Boston, Chicago, and Cincinnati. This
+naturally caused the sick man a great deal of concern. He deferred to
+the wishes of his physicians and sent his son Walter, in whose talent
+and skill he felt great confidence and pride, to conduct the remaining
+subscription performance in the evening, hoping in the meantime to
+secure such good care as to enable him to be in his chair on Thursday
+evening when "Die Walküre" was to be repeated. In this hope, too, he
+was disappointed and had to send his son a second time to conduct a
+performance of the drama which had put the capstone to the astonishingly
+successful season which his zeal, learning, skill, enterprise, and
+perseverance had brought about. As on the previous day he went through
+the score with his son and called his attention to some of the details
+of the responsible and difficult task before him. The young man's
+knowledge of the score and aptitude in grasping the suggestions made to
+him comforted and quieted the father, and the representations at the
+opera house went off in a manner which caused complimentary comments on
+Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, February 15th, at
+3 o'clock A.M., a change in the sick man's condition set in, and the
+physicians, realizing that the case was hopeless, so informed the family
+early in the day. Dr. Damrosch was not disturbed by the prospect of
+death. He retained consciousness until one o'clock in the afternoon, and
+within an hour before that time called Walter to his bedside and asked
+that an opera score be brought that he might give a few more suggestions
+for the concluding representations in New York. He was assured that
+all would go well. His last thoughts and words were with his family
+and work. In disjointed phrases he repeatedly asked that nothing be
+permitted to suffer because of his sickness; that the preparations for
+the operas and concerts of the societies of which he was conductor
+should go on. With his mind thus occupied he sank into unconsciousness
+and died at a quarter after two o'clock in the afternoon of Sunday,
+February 15, 1885. His funeral took place at the opera house on
+February 18th, amidst impressive ceremonies, addresses being made by
+the Rev. Horatio Potter (Assistant Bishop of New York), the Rev. Henry
+Ward Beecher, and Professor Felix Adler. The remaining performances of
+the supplementary season were conducted by Mr. Lund, after which the
+company went on tour, Mr. Lund and Walter Damrosch sharing the work
+of conducting. The season had begun on November 17th, one week after
+Colonel Mapleson opened his seventh season at the Academy of Music. It
+lasted until February 21st, but the last subscription performance was
+that on the evening of the day after Dr. Damrosch had fallen ill. The
+subscription was for thirty-eight nights and twelve Saturday matinées.
+There was no Christmas interregnum. The list of operas produced, the
+date of first representation, and the number of times each opera was
+given can be read in the following table:
+
+
+   Opera                    First performance     Times given
+
+  "Tannhäuser" .............. November 17 ........... 9
+  "Fidelio" ................. November 19 ........... 3
+  "Les Huguenots" ........... November 21 ........... 5
+  "Der Freischütz" .......... November 24 ........... 1
+  "William Tell" ............ November 28 ........... 3
+  "Lohengrin" ............... December 3 ............ 9
+  "Don Giovanni" ............ December 10 ........... 2
+  "Le Prophète" ............. December 17 ........... 9
+  "La Muette de Portici" .... December 29 ........... 3
+  "Rigoletto" ............... January 2 ............. 1
+  "La Juive" ................ January 16 ............ 5
+  "Die Walküre" ............. January 30 ............ 7
+                                                     --
+   Total number of representations ................. 57
+
+
+Twelve out of twenty-two works promised in the prospectus were given,
+the unperformed operas being "Rienzi," "Der Fliegende Holländer,"
+"Le Nozze di Figaro," "Die Zauberflöte," "Il Barbiere di Siviglia,"
+Gounod's "Faust," "Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," "La Dame Blanche,"
+"Hans Heiling," and Kreutzer's "Nachtlager von Granada." The failure
+to produce all the operas promised was largely due to the teachings of
+the first month of the season. In the list were a number of peculiarly
+German works, in which the musical numbers alternated with spoken
+dialogue. The experience made with "Fidelio" and "Der Freischütz" showed
+that works of this character were unedifying to the persons of native
+birth in the audience, and this was one reason why it was decided
+to omit several of them. Another reason was that it was found that
+the large dimensions of the opera house detracted from even good
+performances of light works; and still another was that the style of
+the singers was adapted to vigorous and declamatory music, rather than
+to that which depends for effect upon purity and beauty of voice and
+excellence of vocalization. A comparison of the last performances
+with those which were given when the company was continually engaged
+in studying new works suggests another reason: "Der Freischütz" was
+poorly performed; the first representations of "William Tell" and
+"Les Huguenots" threatened the loss of all the prestige won by the
+performances of "Tannhäuser"; and "Fidelio" and "Don Giovanni" called
+for a vigorous exercise of good nature. Whatever disappointment came,
+therefore, from the failure to produce such interesting works as "Hans
+Heiling," one of the finest products, if not the finest, of the epigonoi
+of Weber, and "Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," unquestionably the best
+Shakespearian opera extant (Verdi's "Otello" and "Falstaff" excepted),
+was compensated for by the excellence which marked the performances
+of "Tannhäuser," "Lohengrin," "Le Prophète," and "Die Walküre." The
+production of this great work was a fitting end to Dr. Damrosch's
+artistic career. It marked the beginning of a new era in New York's
+operatic affairs, and led to the execution in the years which followed
+of his large plan to produce the entire Nibelung tragedy, "Tristan und
+Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger"--a plan carried out by his successor.
+For "Tannhäuser," "Fidelio," "William Tell," "La Muette de Portici," "La
+Juive," and "Die Walküre" new stage decorations had to be provided, and
+this was done on a scale of great liberality, in comparison with what
+New York had been accustomed to. The largest expenditure on a single
+representation was $4,000, and the average cost was $3,400. These sums
+were much smaller than those expended in the previous season on the
+hurdy-gurdy Italian list, and the stage pictures were all much finer.
+The saving was in the salaries of the artists, no two of which cost
+together as much as Mme. Nilsson alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+END OF ITALIAN OPERA AT THE ACADEMY
+
+
+The season 1885-86 witnessed the collapse of the Italian opposition at
+the Academy of Music, but also the rise of an institution in its
+place, which, had it commanded a higher order of talent and been more
+intelligently administered, might have served the lofty purposes set for
+the German opera. This was the American Opera Company, which, after an
+extremely ambitious beginning, made a miserable end a season later,
+leaving an odor of scandal, commercial and artistic, which infected the
+atmosphere for years afterward. German opera was also given throughout
+a large part of the season at the Thalia Theater, the manager being Mr.
+Gustav Amberg, and the conductor John Lund, who had come into notice at
+the Metropolitan Opera House by reason of the death of Dr. Damrosch.
+These performances were unpretentious, and divided between operetta and
+the type of opera which grew out of the Singspiel. Their significance,
+so far as this history is concerned, lay in the evidence which they bore
+of a considerable degree of interest on the part of the public outside
+of the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House in German opera. There
+were also commendable features in the repertory. Thus, the performances
+began on October 13, 1885, with "Der Freischütz," in which appeared
+Ferdinand Wachtel, a son of the famous "coachman tenor," Theodore
+Wachtel, whose sensational career in Europe and America had come to an
+end a decade before, though he did not die till 1893. The father's
+battle horse, "Le Postillon de Lonjumeau," was brought out for the son,
+but the public were not long in discovering that the latter had all the
+faults and none of the merits of the former, and he failed to become
+even a nine days' wonder. Among the operas brought forward by Mr.
+Amberg was Nicolai's "Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," and Emil Kaiser's
+"Trompeter von Säkkingen," a production obviously prompted by the
+sensational success in Europe of Nessler's opera of the same name.
+Nicolai's opera, which has never lost its popularity with the Germans,
+was probably given on its merits alone, but the fact that Dr. Damrosch
+had abandoned it after putting it in his prospectus, may have had
+something to do with its performance by Mr. Amberg's modest troupe, as
+well as by the proud American Opera Company, which brought it out in a
+specially prepared English version. Mr. Amberg's company also brought
+forward a German version of Maillart's "Les Dragons de Villars," under
+the title, "Das Glöckchen des Eremiten."
+
+Colonel Mapleson, having spent the summer bickering and negotiating
+with the directors of the Academy, after having failed to get into the
+Metropolitan Opera House under the cloak of his son Charles, began his
+eighth season in the Academy of Music, which had been furbished up for
+the occasion, on November 2, 1885. Mme. Patti had deserted him, and
+if he ever had made overtures to Mme. Nilsson, whose engagement he had
+announced, they came to naught. He now made a virtue out of necessity
+and proclaimed the merits of "good all 'round" opera, and the iniquity
+of the star system. His company, however, was the old one, with Alma
+Fohström and Minnie Hauk in place of Mme. Patti, Gerster, and Nevada.
+Among the familiar names in the prospectus were those of Mme. Lablache,
+Ravelli, de Anna, Del Puente, Cherubini, and Carraciolo; among the
+newcomers were Signor Giannini, an extremely serviceable tenor, who had
+sung in the previous season in the "Milan Grand Opera Company," compiled
+by James Barton Key and Horace McVicker, as related in the preceding
+chapter; also a Mlle. Felia Litvinoff, whom we shall meet again as Mme.
+Litvinne, sister-in-law of M. Édouard de Reszke, and member of a company
+singing at the Metropolitan Opera House. Mapleson opened with "Carmen,"
+the heroine represented by Mme. Hauk. She had created the character in
+London and New York, and set a standard which prevailed in England and
+America until the coming of Mme. Calvé; but time had dealt harshly
+with Mme. Hauk during the nineteen years which had elapsed since she,
+a lissome creature, had first sung at the Academy of Music (she had
+effected her operatic début in Brooklyn a few weeks before), and much of
+the old charm was gone from her singing, and nearly all from her acting.
+The opening was distinctly disappointing, and the season came to an end
+on November 28th, after twelve evening and four afternoon performances.
+There could scarcely have been a more convincing demonstration of how
+completely the fashionable world had abandoned the Academy of Music than
+the giving of a subscription season of only four weeks' duration. Within
+this period, moreover, there was no sign of effort to get out of the old
+rut into which Colonel Mapleson's repertory had sunk. "Carmen" was
+given three times, "Il Trovatore" twice, "Lucia di Lammermoor" twice,
+"L'Africaine" twice, "La Sonnambula" once, "La Favorita" once, "Fra
+Diavolo" twice, "Don Giovanni" twice, and "Faust" once. Mlle. Fohström
+effected her American début in a performance of "Lucia" on November
+9th. She had been announced for the second night of the season in "Il
+Trovatore," but was taken ill. She had been little heard of previous to
+her coming, though diligent observers of musical doings knew that she
+had sung for several seasons in Europe, and, I believe, South America,
+and had figured in Colonel Mapleson's spring season in London in 1885.
+She was a small creature, with features of a markedly Scandinavian
+type--she was a native of Finland--and had evidently studied the
+traditions of the Italian operatic stage to as much purpose as was
+necessary to present, acceptably, the stereotyped round of characters.
+But her gifts and attainments were not great enough to take her
+impersonations out of the rut of conventionality, nor to save her
+singing from the charge of nervelessness and monotony of color. Three
+seasons later (1888-89) she was a member of the German company at the
+Metropolitan Opera House, and sang such rôles as Marguerite de Valois
+("Les Huguenots"), Mathilde ("William Tell"), Marguerite ("Faust"),
+Bertha ("Le Prophète"), and Eudora ("La Juive"), giving place at the
+beginning of February to Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl, who had returned,
+to the delight of her admirers. In the interim she increased her
+artistic stature very considerably, her voice proving more effective
+in the new house than in the Academy of Music, which was incomparably
+better acoustically. Mapleson's singers came back to the Academy on
+December 20th to sing Wallace's "Maritana" in Italian (with Tito
+Mattei's recitatives in place of the spoken dialogue), and at the
+manager's benefit on December 23d Massenet's opera "Manon" was performed
+for the first time in America. Under the circumstances the cast deserves
+to be set forth: The Chevalier des Grieux, Signor Giannini; Lescaut,
+Signor del Puente; Monfontaine, Signor Rinaldini; the Count des Grieux,
+Signor Cherubini; du Bretigny, Signor Foscani, (Mr. Fox, an American);
+an innkeeper, Signor de Vaschetti; attendant of the Seminary of St.
+Sulpice, Signor Bieletto; Poussette, Mlle. Bauermeister; Javotte, Mme.
+Lablache; Rovette, Mlle. de Vigne; Manon, Mme. Hauk.
+
+From January 4th to April 17th the Academy of Music was occupied by the
+American Opera Company, the artistic director of which was Theodore
+Thomas, who had long stood at the head of orchestral music in America.
+As I have already intimated, rightly managed this institution might have
+become of the same significance to the future of opera in the United
+States as the German company, which had just established a domicile at
+the Metropolitan Opera House. Indeed, it might have become of greater
+significance, for the best friends of the German enterprise looked upon
+it as merely a necessary intermediary between the Italian exotic and a
+national form of art, with use of the vernacular, which every patriotic
+lover of music hoped to see installed some day in the foremost operatic
+establishment in the land. Unfortunately, its claims to excellence were
+put forward with impudent exaggeration, and there was no substantial
+or moral health in its business administration. It could not expect to
+cope with foreign organizations or local aggregations of foreign artists
+in respect of its principal artists, but it could, and did, in respect
+of scenic investiture, and in its choral and instrumental ensemble.
+Unhappily, even in these elements it was unwisely directed, though with
+a daring and a degree of confidence in popular support which may be said
+to have given it a characteristically American trait. In three respects
+the season was unique in the American history of English opera (or opera
+in English, as it would better he called, since there was not an English
+opera in its repertory), viz.: in the brilliancy of the orchestra, the
+excellence of the chorus (numerous and fresh of voice), and the
+sumptuousness of the stage attire.
+
+There were sixty-six performances in the season of light operas, and one
+ballet, the latter Delibes's "Sylvia." The operas were Goetz's "Taming
+of the Shrew" (five times), Gluck's "Orpheus" (thirteen times), Wagner's
+"Lohengrin" (ten times), Mozart's "Magic Flute" (six times), Nicolai's
+"Merry Wives of Windsor" (nine times), Delibes's "Lakmé" (eleven times),
+Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" (seven times), and Massé's "Marriage of
+Jeannette" (in conjunction with the ballet, five times). "The Taming of
+the Shrew" received its first performance in America on January 4, 1886;
+"Lakmé" on March 1st; "The Marriage of Jeannette," on March 24th, and
+"Lohengrin" (in English), on January 20th.
+
+Immediately on the death of Dr. Damrosch, trouble broke out in the
+Metropolitan company. There had been some jealousy among the women
+singers because of the large honorarium paid to Mme. Materna. It was her
+third visit to America, and she had learned to say dollars when at home
+she was accustomed to think of florins. Moreover, in the spring of the
+year she had made an extensive concert tour with Mme. Nilsson, under
+the direction of Mr. Thomas, and knew something about the liberality of
+Americans in the matter of artists' fees. Herr Schott (Dr. von Bülow's
+dis-, des-, and detonating tenor), developing a large and noisy
+managerial ambition, scarcely waited for the burial of Dr. Damrosch
+before beginning an agitation looking toward his installation in the
+dead director's place. All this might have been done in a seemly manner,
+and if it had been so done might have been carried through successfully
+and with popular approbation, for Herr Schott's project, in the main,
+was the one acted on by the directors. But Herr Schott, in an effort
+to promote his scheme, made an ungallant attack upon the artistic
+character of Mme. Materna, and this the public found to be "most
+tolerable and not to be endured." The occasion soon presented itself
+for Schott to show that he had an overweening sense of his own
+importance and popularity. At the end of the fourth of the five
+supplementary performances there was a demonstration of applause. Herr
+Schott interpreted it as a curtain call for himself, and promptly showed
+himself, and bowed his thanks. The applause was renewed, and he repeated
+this performance. Then came a third call, and again the tenor stepped
+out before the footlights. Now the applause of his friends was mingled
+with cries of "Materna!" but on a fourth call, and a fourth appearance
+of Schott, the popular feeling exploded in hisses and calls for the
+soprano. He retired unabashed, but Mme. Materna, answering the next
+call, was tumultuously greeted. So far as the overwhelming majority
+of the patrons of the house was concerned, Herr Schott's cake was now
+dough. Foolishly he, or his friends for him, proceeded to anger the
+directors from whom they were expecting favors. It was given out that
+he had submitted a proposition concerning the management of the opera
+house at the request of the directors. This met with prompt denial at
+the hands of Mr. Stanton, the secretary of the board, and by some of
+the directors themselves.
+
+Herr Schott had submitted a proposition, however, and had coupled it
+with a hint, which sounded like a threat, that in case it was not
+promptly accepted it would go to the directors of the Academy of Music.
+This vexed some of the stockholders of the older institution, who
+made public denial that they were considering German opera, even as a
+remote possibility. Herr Schott's proposition was dismissed with little
+ceremony by the Metropolitan directors, who, however, sent Mr. Stanton
+and Mr. Walter Damrosch to Europe to organize a company to carry out the
+lines already established during the coming season. In doing so they
+adopted several valuable suggestions contained in Herr Schott's plan.
+In this plan Schott was to be the musical director of the company, of
+course, but not the conductor. For this post he contemplated engaging
+Anton Seidl, then conductor of the Municipal Theater of Bremen and
+husband of the jugendlich Dramatische, who had successfully gone
+through the ordeal of one season--Auguste Krauss. Walter Damrosch was
+to be assistant conductor, Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl, Frau Krauss,
+Fräulein Brandt, and Herren Staudigl and Blum, of the old company, were
+to be kept, and the new singers were to be a Fräulein Gilbert, Fräulein
+Koppmeyer, Ferdinand Wachtel (son of Theodore, already referred to), and
+Carl Hill, bass.
+
+The organization, as finally effected, placed Mr. Stanton at its head
+as director, acting for the stockholders; Walter Damrosch, as assistant
+director, and also conductor; Lilli Lehmann, of Berlin, was the
+principal soprano; Marianne Brandt, principal contralto; Albert Stritt,
+principal tenor; Emil Fischer, of Dresden, principal bass, and Adolf
+Robinson, principal barytone. Other singers were Auguste Krauss (who now
+became Seidl-Krauss), Max Alvary, tenor; Fräulein Slach, mezzo-soprano;
+Eloi Sylva, tenor; Kemlitz, tenor; Lehmler, bass; Frau Krämer-Wiedl,
+dramatic soprano; Herr Alexi, barytone, and Fräulein Klein, soprano.
+With this company the second season of German opera was opened on
+November 23, 1885, the opera being "Lohengrin." I shall not take up
+the features of the season seriatim, nor make detailed record of
+the consecutive productions of the operas on its list. Only special
+incidents shall be recorded; but before this is done something may
+be said touching the newcomers:
+
+Anton Seidl was a young man when he came to New York, but he had filled
+the position of secretary to Richard Wagner, and been a member of his
+household for six years. Before then he had studied at the Leipsic
+Conservatory (which he entered in October, 1870), and been a chorus
+master or accompanist at the Vienna Opera. There he came under the eyes
+of Hans Richter, who sent him to Wagner when the latter asked for a
+young man who could give him such help on "The Ring of the Nibelung" as
+Richter had given him on "Die Meistersinger"--that is, to write out the
+clean score from the composer's hurried autograph. The period which he
+spent with Wagner was from 1872 to 1879. During all the preparations for
+the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876 he was one of the poet-composer's
+executive officers. He was one of the assistant conductors on the stage
+during the festival, and afterward conducted the preliminary rehearsals
+for the concerts which Wagner gave in London and elsewhere to recoup
+himself for the losses made at the festival. Then, on Wagner's
+recommendation, he was appointed conductor at the Municipal Theater
+at Leipsic (his associates being Victor Nessler and Arthur Nikisch),
+later on of Angelo Neumann's "Richard Wagner Theater," which gave
+representations of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" in many cities of Germany,
+Holland, England, and Italy, and still later of the Municipal Theater in
+Bremen--the post which he held when the death of Dr. Damrosch created
+the vacancy which brought him to New York. All this he had accomplished
+before his thirty-fifth year (he was born in Pesth on May 7, 1850), and
+he was not yet thirty when Wagner, in a speech delivered in Berlin,
+alluded to him as "the young artist whom I have brought up, and who is
+now accomplishing astounding things." Naturally, when he came to New
+York, he was looked upon as a prophet, priest, and paladin of Wagner's
+art. For twelve years he filled a large place in the music of New York,
+in concert room as well as opera house, and when he died it was like
+his predecessor, in the fulness of his powers, and in the midst of his
+activities. But this belongs to a later chapter of this story.
+
+Lilli Lehmann brought to New York chiefly the fame which she had won in
+Bayreuth at the first Wagner festival, of 1876, at which she was one of
+the Rhine daughters (Woglinde), and one of the Valkyrior (Helmwige), and
+where she also sang the music of the Forest Bird in "Siegfried." At that
+period in her career she was still classed among the light sopranos, and
+so she continued to be classed until she broke violently away from the
+clogs which tradition puts upon artists in the theaters of Germany. She
+felt the charm of freedom from the old theatrical conventions when she
+sang Isolde at Covent Garden on July 2, 1884, and her growth to a lofty
+tragic stature was rapid. She was filled with fervor for the large rôles
+of Wagner when she came to New York, and her success in them was so
+gratifying to her ambition that it led her at the expiration of her
+leave of absence from the Court Opera at Berlin (where she had been
+fifteen years as erste Coloratursängerin) to extend her stay in America
+beyond the period of her furlough, and involved her in difficulties with
+the Berlin Intendant, and the federation of German theatrical managers,
+called the Cartellverband. Having carried to her an offer from the
+president of the Cincinnati Festival Association to sing at the festival
+of May, 1886, which was the ultimate reason for her action, I am in
+a position to give the details of the story of what became a cause
+célèbre, and led to a wide discussion of the relations between the
+German managers and their singers. A short time before Miss Lehmann had
+declined an offer from the committee of the North American Sängerbund to
+take part in the Sängerfest, which was to be held in Milwaukee in June,
+1886. She had also been asked by the artistic manager of the house of
+Steinway & Sons to go on a concert tour with Franz Rummel and Ovide
+Musin. When I came to her with the dispatch from Cincinnati she spoke of
+her unwillingness to break her contract with Berlin, and of the loss of
+the lifelong pension to which her period of service at the Court Opera
+would eventually entitle her. I declined to advise her in the premises,
+but made a calculation of her prospective net earnings from the three
+engagements which were offering, and suggested that she compare the
+income from their investment with the pension which she would forfeit.
+I also agreed, if she wished it, to reopen the negotiations with the
+Sängerfest officials at Milwaukee. She took the matter under advisement,
+and in a few days, having concluded the engagement with a representative
+of the Cincinnati association, she told me she had determined to stay in
+America during June. In July, against the advice of some of her American
+friends, she paid a fine imposed upon her by the Intendant of the Court
+Opera. The amount of the fine was 13,000 marks ($3,250), and this amount
+she had received from the Milwaukee engagement. I had written to Mr.
+Catenhusen, the director of the Sängerfest, as promised, and he had
+reopened negotiations with more than willingness. Asked for her terms,
+she replied: "Three thousand three hundred dollars," and turning to a
+friend said: "I'll let the festival pay my Berlin fine." After she had
+paid the money into the royal exchequer, the manager of Kroll's Theater
+engaged her for a series of representations, but met an unexpected
+obstacle in the form of a refusal of the Intendant of the Court Theater
+to restore her to the privileges which she had forfeited by breaking
+her contract. It was long before she succeeeded in making peace with
+the Governmental administration of the Court Opera, and in the public
+discussion which accompanied her efforts she took part in an eminently
+characteristic way. The newspapers were open to her, and in the Berlin
+Tageblatt (I think it was) she defended her course on the ground that
+America had enabled her to exercise her talent in a field which the
+hidebound traditions of the German theaters would have kept closed to
+her. Once a florid singer, always a florid singer, was her complaint,
+and she added: "One grows weary after singing nothing but princesses
+for fifteen years." Though she began in "Carmen," and followed with
+"Faust," Miss Lehmann soon got into the Wagnerian waters, in which she
+was longing to adventure, and in them set some channel buoys which the
+New York public still asks Brünnhildes and Isoldes to observe. It was
+then, however, and still is, characteristic of her broad ideals in art,
+that, while winning the highest favor in tragic parts, she preserved not
+only her old skill, but her old love for good singing in the old sense.
+When, at the height of her Wagnerian career, she sang at a performance
+for her own benefit, she chose "Norma."
+
+From 1885 till the time when her operatic experiences had become the
+exception to her rule of concert work, the greater part of her career
+was spent in New York; and during the whole of the period she was in all
+things artistic an inspiration, and an exemplar to her fellow artists.
+For industry, zeal, and unselfish devotion in preparing an opera I have
+never met an artist who could be even remotely compared with her. When
+"Siegfried" was in rehearsal for its first American production, she took
+a hand in setting the stage. Though she had nothing to do in the second
+act, she went into the scenic lumber room and selected bits of woodland
+scenery, and with her own hands rearranged the set so as to make
+Siegfried's posture and surroundings more effective. When the final
+dress rehearsal of "Gotterdämmerung" was reached a number of the
+principal singers were still uncertain of their music. Miss Lehmann was
+letter perfect, as usual, but without a demur repeated the ensembles
+over and over again, singing always, as was her wont, with full voice
+and intense dramatic expression. This had been going on literally for
+hours when the end of the second act was reached. When she came into the
+audience room for the intermission I ventured to expostulate with her:
+
+"My dear Miss Lehmann, pray have a care. You are not effecting your
+début in New York, nor is this a public performance. Think of to-morrow.
+You will weary your voice. Why do you work so? Markiren Sie doch!"
+
+"Markiren thu Ich nie!" ("Markiren," it may be explained, is the
+technical term for singing in half-voice, or just enough to mark the
+cues.) "As for the rest, rehearsals are necessary, if not for one's
+self, then at least for the others. Don't be alarmed about my voice.
+It is easier to sing all three Brünnhildes than one Norma. You are so
+carried away by the dramatic emotion, the action, and the scene that
+you do not have to think how to sing the words. That comes of itself.
+But in Bellini you must always have a care for beauty of tone and
+correct emission. But I love 'Norma,' and Mozart's 'Entführung.'"
+
+Very different this from the conduct of Max Alvary after he had begun to
+grow into public favor. He was a son of the Düsseldorf painter, Andreas
+Achenbach, and came to New York without reputation, and engaged to
+sing second rôles. Early in the season Stritt, the first tenor, after
+creating the part of Assad in Goldmark's "Königin von Saba" yielded it
+up to Alvary, finding the range of the music a little too trying for
+his voice. Alvary's handsome face and figure, especially the latter,
+his gallant bearing, and his impeccable taste in dress, made a deep
+impression, and it was not long before he developed into a veritable
+matinée girl's idol. He developed also an enormous conceit, which near
+the end of his New York career led him to think that he was the opera,
+and that he might dictate policies to the manager and the directors back
+of him. So in the eyes of the judicious there were ragged holes in his
+shining veneer long before his career in New York came to a close. The
+preparation of "Siegfried" for performance led to an encounter between
+him and Mr. Seidl, in which the unamiable side of his disposition, and
+the shallowness of his artistic nature were disclosed. At the dress
+rehearsal, when alone on the stage, he started in to go through his
+part in dumbshow. Seidl requested him to sing.
+
+"It is not necessary; I know my part," was the ungracious reply.
+
+"But this is a rehearsal. It is not enough that you know your part
+or that you know that you know your part. I must know that you know
+it. Others must sing with you, and they must hear you."
+
+He started the orchestra again. Not a sound from the puffed up little
+tenor in his picturesque bearskin and pretty legs. Seidl rapped for
+silence, and put down his baton.
+
+"Call Mr. Stanton!" he commanded.
+
+Mr. Stanton was brought from his office, and Mr. Seidl briefy explained
+the situation. He would not go on with the rehearsal unless Mr. Alvary
+sang, and without a rehearsal there would be no first performance of
+"Siegfried" to-morrow. Mr. Alvary explained that to sing would weary
+him.
+
+"I shall not sing to-day and to-morrow. Choose; I'll sing either to-day
+or to-morrow."
+
+"Sing to-day!" said Stanton curtly, and turned away from the stage. Like
+a schoolboy Alvary now began to sing with all his might, as if bound to
+incapacitate himself for the next day. But he would have sacrificed a
+finger rather than his opportunity on the morrow, and the little misses
+and susceptible matrons got the hero whom they adored for years
+afterward.
+
+Next to Miss Lehmann, the most popular singer in the company in this
+second year of German opera at the Metropolitan was Emil Fischer, the
+bass. Except for a short period spent abroad in an effort to be an opera
+manager in Holland, Fischer has remained a New Yorker ever since he came
+in 1885. This has not been wholly of his own volition, however. He came
+from Dresden, where he was an admired member of the Court Opera. His
+coming, or his staying, involved him in difficulty with the Royal
+Intendant, and though the singer began legal proceedings against his
+liege lord, the King of Saxony, for rehabilitation, he never regained
+the privileges which he had forfeited in order to win the fame and
+money which came to him here. The fame was abiding; the money was
+not. Twenty-one year after his coming his old admirers were still so
+numerous, and their admiration so steadfast, that a benefit performance
+at the Metropolitan Opera House, in which he took part in an act of
+"Die Meistersinger," yielded nearly $10,000.
+
+The season of 1885-86 at the Metropolitan Opera House began on November
+23d, and lasted till March 6th, with an interregnum of two weeks from
+December 19th to January 4th, during which the company gave performances
+in Philadelphia, with woeful financial results, the loss to the
+stockholders being $15,000. The excellence of the management and the
+wisdom and honesty of the artists were attested by the circumstance that
+not once was an opera changed after it was announced. Nine operas were
+performed, and of these three were wholly new to the Metropolitan
+stage, two were absolutely new to America, and two were provided with
+considerable new scenery. The table of performances was as follows:
+
+
+   Opera                    First performance     Times given
+
+  "Lohengrin" .............. November 23 ............ 4
+  "Carmen" ................. November 25 ............ 2
+  "Der Prophet" ............ November 27 ............ 3
+  "Die Walküre" ............ November 30 ............ 4
+  "Die Königin von Saba" ... December 2 ............ 15
+  "Tannhäuser" ............. December 11 ............ 4
+  "Die Meistersinger" ...... January 4 .............. 8
+  "Faust" .................. January 20 ............. 5
+  "Rienzi" ................. February 5 ............. 7
+                                                     --
+  Total representations ............................ 52
+
+
+The attractive charm of a new work was shown in the success achieved
+by Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba," which was given with great pomp in its
+externals, but also finely from a musical point of view. It brought into
+the box office an average of $4,000 for fifteen performances, and was
+set down as the popular triumph of the season, though, considering that
+"Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" had a month less to run, its record
+was also remarkable. The average difference in attendance on the two
+works which led the list was about one hundred and fifty. The directors
+had fixed the assessment on the stockholders in October at $2,000 a box,
+and their receipts from this source were $136,700; from the general
+public, $171,463.13; total, $308,163.13. The cost of producing the
+operas, omitting the charges for new scenery and properties, but
+including the expenses of the Philadelphia season, was $244,981.96. The
+fixed charges on the building (taxes, interest, and rental account) were
+about $85,000 in the preceding year, and the financial outcome was so
+satisfactory to the stockholders that the directors promptly re-engaged
+Mr. Seidl, and adopted a resolution empowering the managing director,
+Edmund C. Stanton, to make contracts with artists for three years. It
+was interesting to note the effect upon the opera houses and artists
+of Germany. I cannot recall that there were any more difficulties like
+those which attended the disruption of their contracts by Fräulein
+Lehmann and Herr Fischer. Instead, the managers of the municipal
+theaters of Germany especially (and, I doubt not, court theaters also)
+found that they, too, could come in for a share of the American dollars
+by granting leaves of absence for the New York season, and taking a
+percentage of the liberal fees received by their stars.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WAGNER HOLDS THE METROPOLITAN
+
+
+The incidents of the early history of the Metropolitan Opera House come
+to me in such multitude that I find it difficult to apportion seasons
+and chapters in this record. Later, it may be, when the new order of
+things shall have been established, and again given place to the old,
+the relation may make more rapid progress. I have already devoted much
+space to the second German season, but there are a few details which
+deserve special consideration. The first of these (if the reader will
+accept the instantaneous popularity of Mr. Seidl as a conclusion from
+the remarks made in his introduction in these annals) was the first
+appearance of Lilli Lehmann. Circumstances would have it that she should
+show herself first, not as the singer of old-fashioned florid rôles,
+with which (except for her Bayreuth experience) she was associated, nor
+yet as the Wagnerian tragedienne which she became later, but in a
+transitional character--that of Carmen in Bizet's opera of that name.
+Lehmann as the gipsy cigarette maker, with her Habanera and Seguidilla,
+with her errant fancy wandering from a sentimental brigadier to a
+dashing bull fighter, is a conception which will not come easy to the
+admirers of the later Brünnhilde and Isolde; and, indeed, she was a
+puzzling phenomenon to the experienced observers of that time. Carmen
+was already a familiar apparition to New Yorkers, who had imagined that
+Minnie Hauk had spoken the last word in the interpretation of that
+character. When Fräulein Lehmann came her tall stature and erect, almost
+military, bearing were calculated to produce an effect of surprise of
+such a nature that it had to be overcome before it was possible to enter
+into the feeling with which she informed the part. To the eye, moreover,
+she was a somewhat more matronly Carmen than the fancy, stimulated by
+earlier performances of the opera or the reading of Mérimée's novel,
+was prepared to accept; but it was in harmony with the new picture that
+she stripped the character of the fippancy and playfulness popularly
+associated with it, and intensified its sinister side. In this, Fräulein
+Lehmann deviated from Mme. Hauk's impersonation and approached that
+of Mme. Trebelli, which had been brought to public notice at the
+first Italian season at the Metropolitan Opera House. In her musical
+performance she surpassed both of those admired and experienced artists.
+Her voice proved to be true, flexible, and ringing, and, also, of a most
+particularly telling quality. She disclosed ability to fill the part
+with the passionate expression and warmth of color which it called for,
+and utilized that ability judiciously and tastefully. M. Eloi Sylva, the
+new tenor, effected his American introduction in Meyerbeer's "Prophet"
+on November 27th. He was an exceedingly robust singer, with an imposing
+stage presence, a powerful voice, which, in its upper register,
+especially, was vibrant, virile, and musical. Two seasons later he
+essayed English opera, with about the same results, so far as his
+pronunciation was concerned, as he achieved in German. Fräulein Lehmann
+was first seen and heard as Brünnhilde in "Die Walküre" on November
+30th. She was statuesquely beautiful, and her voice glorified the music.
+In the first scene she brought into beautiful relief the joyful nature
+of the Wishmaiden; her cries were fairly brimming with eager, happy
+vitality. While proclaiming his fate to Siegmund, she was first inspired
+by a noble dignity, then transformed instantaneously into a sympathetic
+woman by the hero's devotion to the helpless and hapless woman who lay
+exhausted on his knees.
+
+The first of the two novelties of the season was Goldmark's opera
+"Die Königin von Saba," which had its first performance in America on
+December 2d. The cast was as follows: Sulamith, Fräulein Lebmaun;
+Königin, Frau Krämer-Wiedl; Astaroth, Fräulein Brandt; Solomon, Herr
+Robinson; Assad, Herr Stritt; Hohepriester, Herr Fischer; Baal Hanan,
+Herr Alexi. Mr. Seidl conducted. The opera (which had had its first
+production in Vienna ten years before, and had achieved almost as much
+success in Germany as Nessler's "Trompeter von Säkkingen") was produced
+with great sumptuousness, and being also admirably sung and acted, it
+made a record that provided opera-goers in New York with a sensation of
+a kind that they had not known before, and to which they did not grow
+accustomed until the later dramas of Wagner began their triumphal career
+at the Metropolitan. Twenty years afterward (season 1905-06) Mr. Conried
+revived the opera at the Metropolitan, but it was found that in the
+interim its fires had paled. In 1885 there were reasons why the public
+should not only have been charmed, but even impressed by the opera. In
+spite of its weaknesses it was then, and still is, an effective opera.
+Thoughtfully considered, the libretto is not one of any poetical worth,
+but in its handling of the things which give pleasure to the superficial
+observer it is admirable. It presents a story which is fairly rational,
+which enlists the interest, if not the sympathy, of the observers, which
+is new as a spectacle, and which is full of pomp and circumstance.
+Looked at from its ethical side and considered with reference to the
+sources of its poetical elements, it falls under condemnation. The title
+of the opera would seem to indicate that the Bible story of the visit of
+the Queen of Sheba to Solomon had been drawn on for the plot. That is
+true. The Queen of Sheba comes to Jerusalem to see Solomon in his glory,
+and that is the end of the draft on the Biblical story; the rest is the
+modern poet's invention. But that is the way of operas with Biblical
+subjects--a few names, an incident, and the rest of invention. In
+Gounod's "Reine de Saba" the magnificently storied queen tries to elope
+with the architect of Solomon's temple like any wilful millionaire's
+daughter. Salome is a favorite subject just now that the danse du
+ventre is working its way into polite society, but save for the dance
+and the names of the tetrarch and his wife, the Bible contributes
+nothing to the Salome dramas and pantomimes. Sulamith, who figures like
+an abandoned Dido, in the opera of Mosenthal and Goldmark, owes her
+name, but not her nature or any of her experiences, to the pastoral
+play which Solomon is credited with having written. The Song of Songs
+contributes, also, a few lines of poetry to the book, and a ritualistic
+service celebrated in the Temple finds its prototype in some verses from
+Psalms lxvii and cxvii, but with this I have enumerated all that "Die
+Königin von Saba" owes to the sacred Scriptures. Solomon's magnificent
+reign and marvelous wisdom, which contribute factors to the production,
+belong to profane as well as to sacred history, and persons with deeply
+rooted prejudices touching the people of Biblical story will be happiest
+if they can think of some other than the Scriptural Solomon as the
+prototype of Mosenthal and Goldmark, for in truth they make of him a
+sorry sentimentalist at best. The local color of the old story has been
+borrowed from the old story; the dramatic motive comes plainly from
+"Tannhäuser"; Sulamith is Elizabeth, the Queen Venus, Assad Tannhäuser,
+and Solomon Wolfram. Goldmark's music is highly spiced. At times it
+rushes along like a lava stream, every measure throbbing with eager,
+excited, and exciting life. He revels in instrumental color; the
+language of his orchestra is as glowing as the poetry attributed to the
+veritable King whom the operatic story celebrates. Many composers before
+him made use of Oriental cadences and rhythms, but to none did they seem
+so like a native language. It has not been every Jew who could thus
+handle a Jewish subject. Compare Halévy, Meyerbeer, and Rubinstein with
+Goldmark.
+
+The first performance of Wagner's "Meistersinger" fell on the same
+night as the production for the first time in America of Goetz's
+"Widerspänstigen Zähmung" in English by the National Opera Company.
+We thus had in juxtaposition an admirable operatic adaptation of a
+Shakespearian comedy and a modern comedy, of which I thought at the
+time I could not speak in higher praise than to say that it was truly
+Shakespearian in its delineation of character. In my book, "Studies in
+the Wagnerian Drama," I have analyzed Wagner's comedy from many points
+of view, and printed besides the results of investigations of the old
+Nuremberg mastersingers made on the spot. The significance of this
+record is that it tells of the introduction in America of a comedy
+which, though foreign in matter and manner to the thoughts, habits, and
+feelings of the American people, has, nevertheless, held a high place
+in their admiration. Later we shall see that this admiration was based
+on the sound understanding of the play which the original, performers
+inculcated. Let their names therefore be preserved. They were: Hans
+Sachs, Emil Fischer; Veit Pogner, Josef Staudigl; Kunz Vogelsang,
+Herr Dworsky; Konrad Nachtigal, Emil Sänger; Sixtus Beckmesser, Otto
+Kemlitz; Fritz Kothner, Herr Lehmler; Balthasar Zorn, Herr Hoppe; Ulrich
+Eisslinger, Herr Klaus; Augustin Moser, Herr Langer; Hermaun Ortel,
+Herr Doerfer; Hans Schwartz, Herr Eiserbeck; Hans Foltz, Herr Anlauf;
+Walther von Stolzing, Albert Stritt; David, Herr Kramer; Eva, Auguste
+Seidl-Krauss; Magdalena, Marianne Brandt; Nachtwächter, Carl Kaufmann.
+Mr. Seidl conductor.
+
+I modulate to the Metropolitan season 1886-87 through the performances
+of the opposition, which began at the Academy of Music, but ended in
+the house which was now definitely acknowledged to be the home, and
+only home, of fashionable opera. Mme. Patti provided the last bit of
+evidence. In the two preceding seasons she had led Colonel Mapleson's
+forces at the Academy; yet the public would have none of his opera. Now,
+after a year's absence, she returned to America under the management of
+Mr. Abbey, who had opposed Nilsson to her when the rivalry of the houses
+began. She gave operatic concerts, one, two, three, and four, at the
+Academy of Music, with old favorites of the New York public--Scalchi,
+Novara, and a French tenor named Guille--in her company, besides Signor
+Arditi; and she gave fragments of opera ("Semiramide" and "Martha"),
+besides a miscellaneous concert. The experiences of Mme. Patti on her
+return to her old home in 1881 were measurably repeated. The great
+singer was admired, of course, and half an operatic loaf was accepted as
+better than no bread. This was in November, 1886, and in April, 1887,
+Mr. Abbey decided to offer the operatic loaf, such as it was, but to
+cut it, not at the house with which Patti's name had been intimately
+associated, but at the Metropolitan Opera House. He was conjuring
+with the legend (then new, but afterward worn threadbare), "Patti's
+Farewell." I am writing in July, 1908, and have just been reading the
+same legend again in the London newspapers--twenty-one years after
+it served Mr. Abbey a turn. In April, then, Mr. Abbey came to the
+Metropolitan Opera House with Mme. Patti to give six "farewell"
+operatic performances. The company consisted of Scalchi, Vicini,
+Galassi, Valerga, Del Puente, Novara, Abramoff, Corsi, and Migliara,
+some of them recruited from an earlier company that had come and
+departed like a shadow in the fall season. Also Miss Gertrude Griswold,
+whom I mention because she was an American singer who had given promise
+of good things in Europe, and who helped Mme. Patti with the one and
+doubly singular performance of "Carmen," in which she was seen and
+(occasionally) heard in the United States. Mr. Abbey gave six
+performances, in all of which Mme. Patti appeared, the operas being
+"La Traviata," "Semiramide," "Faust," "Carmen," "Lucia," and "Marta."
+The financial results were phenomenal. The public paid nearly $70,000
+for the six operas! Had Colonel Mapleson been able to do fifty per cent.
+of such business the Academy of Music might have been saved. But Mr.
+Abbey, to use the slang of the stage, was playing Patti as a sensation.
+Prices of admission were abnormal, and so was the audience. Fashion
+heard Patti at the Metropolitan, and so did suburban folk, who came to
+$10 opera in business coats, bonnets, and shawls. Such audiences were
+never seen in the theater before or since.
+
+This was a little Italian opera season, but a successful one, and one
+housed at the Metropolitan. In the fall there had been another at the
+Academy of Music, which was not a success, and which ended in a quarrel
+between prima donna and manager that contributed a significant item to
+the popular knowledge of the status of Italian opera. On October 18th an
+Italian named Angelo began a season of Italian opera at the Academy. The
+name of the company was the Angelo Grand Italian Opera Company, and its
+manager's experience had been made, as an underling of Mapleson in the
+luggage department. The season, as projected, was to last five weeks,
+and a virtue proclaimed in the list was to be a departure from the
+hurdy-gurdy list which had been doing service so long. There were smiles
+among the knowing that a trunk despatcher should appear as the successor
+of his former employer, and that employer so polished a man of the world
+as James H. Mapleson; but opera makes strange bedfellows, and there have
+been stranger things than this in its history. A Hebrew boy named Pohl
+was little more than a bootblack when he entered the service of Maurice
+Strakosch, but as Herr Pollini a couple of decades later he was a
+partner of that elegant gentleman and experienced impresario, and one of
+the operatic dictators of Germany. Eventually, in the case of the Angelo
+Grand Italian Opera Company, it turned out that the Deus ex machina was
+the prima donna, Giulia Valda (Miss Julia Wheelock), an American singer,
+who had chosen this means of getting a hearing in her native land. The
+list of operas sounded like an echo of half a century before. Five
+operas were given, and four of them were by Verdi: "Luisa Miller,"
+"I Lombardi," "Un Ballo in Maschera," and "I due Foscari;" the remaining
+opera was Petrella's "Ione." Here was an escape from the threadbare
+with a vengeance. It made the critics rub their eyes and wonder if Mme.
+Valda had not been in the company of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. Five
+weeks were projected, but trouble came at the end of a fortnight--that
+is to say, it came to public notice at the end of a fortnight; it began
+probably with the season. On November 3d the persons who came to hear
+a promised performance of "La Juive" found the doors of the Academy
+closed. A few spasmodic efforts to galvanize the corpse into the
+semblance of life were made, but in vain; the Angelo Grand Italian Opera
+Company was dead. Some of its members had been heard before in other
+organizations; some were heard later. They were Giulia Valda, Mlle.
+Prandi, Mme. Valerga, Mlle. Corre, Mathilde Ricci, Mme. Mestress,
+Mme. Bianchi-Montaldo, Signor Vicini, Lalloni, Bologna, Greco,
+Giannini, Pinto, Corsi, Migliara, and Conti. The conductors were
+Logheder and Bimboni, the latter of whom was discovered as a young
+conductor of surprising merit twenty years later by Boston.
+
+One season of the American Opera Company sufficed to involve it in
+such financial difficulties that its managers deemed a reorganization
+necessary. It appeared, therefore, in the season of 1886-87 under the
+title, National Opera Company. Mr. Theodore Thomas was still its musical
+director, and Mr. Gustav Hinrichs and Arthur Mees assistant conductors;
+Charles E. Locke was the business manager. The company spent the
+greater part of the season in other cities, but gave two series of
+representations in Brooklyn, at the Academy of Music, and one series at
+the Metropolitan Opera House. The first Brooklyn season was of one week,
+from December 27th to January 1st, when the German company was idle; the
+second embraced the Thursday evenings from February 28th to March 26th,
+during which period the company gave a regular series of representations
+in New York. Among the singers were Pauline L'Allemand, Emma Juch,
+Laura Moore, Mathilde Phillips (sister of Adelaide Phillips, one of
+the singers of first rank sent out into the world by America), Jessie
+Bartlett Davis, Mme. Bertha Pierson, William Candidus, Charles Bassett
+(The Signor Bassetti of Colonel Mapleson's company in the previous
+season), William Fessenden, William Ludwig, Myron W. Whitney, Alonzo E.
+Stoddard, and William Hamilton. The notable feature of the repertory was
+the first production in America of Rubinstein's opera "Nero," on March
+14, 1887. The book had been translated for the production by Mr. John
+P. Jackson. Mr. Thomas conducted, and the cast was as follows: Nero
+Claudius, William Candidus; Julius Vindex, William Ludwig; Tigellinus,
+A. E. Stoddard; Balbillus, Myron W. Whitney; Saccus, William Fessenden;
+Sevirus and a Centurion, William Hamilton; Terpander, William H. Lee;
+Poppaea, Bertha Pierson; Epicharis, Cornelia van Santen; Chrysa, Emma
+Juch; Agrippina, Emily Sterling; Lupus, Pauline L'Allemand. So far as I
+can recall, "Nero" is the only opera of Rubinstein's that has been given
+in the United States. Its performance by the National Opera Company did
+greater justice to its spectacular than its musical features, but in
+this there was not a large measure of artistic obliquity. The opera
+seems to have been constructed with the idea that mimic reproductions
+of scenes from Rome in its most extravagant, debauched, and luxuriant
+period would prove more fascinating to the public than an effort to
+present the moral and intellectual life of the same place and period
+through the medium of an eloquent, truthful, compact, well-built, and
+logically developed drama with its essentials further vitalized by
+music. From whatever side he is viewed, Nero is an excellent operatic
+character, and the wonder is that the opera of Barbier and Rubinstein
+did not have sixty instead of only six predecessors. Not only is it
+a simple matter to group around him historical pictures of unique
+interest, brilliancy, variety, and suggestiveness, but, as the
+historians present him to us, he is as made for the stage. His cruelty,
+profligacy, effeminacy, cowardice, and artistic vanity are traits which
+invite dramatic illustration, and for each one of them the pages of
+Suetonius afford incidents which accept a dramatic dress none the less
+willingly because they are facts of historical record. Besides all this,
+there is something like poetical justice in the conceit of making a
+stage character out of the emperor who hired himself to a theatrical
+manager for 1,000,000 sesterces (say $40,000--a pretty fair honorarium
+for the time, I should say), and who employed a claque of 5,000 young
+men. To throw a sequence of the characteristic incidents in the life
+of Nero into the form of a dramatic poem, logical in its development,
+and theatrically effective, ought not to be a difficult thing to do.
+And yet, in the case of this opera, Barbier did not do it, and by a
+singularly persistent and consistent fatality Rubinstein apparently
+found every weak spot in the poet's fabric, and loosened and tangled his
+threads right there. The operas and ballets performed by the National
+Opera Company in this season besides "Nero" were "The Flying Dutchman,"
+"The Huguenots," "Faust," "Aida," "Lakmé," "The Marriage of Jeannette,"
+Massé's "Galatea," "Martha," "Coppelia," and Rubinstein's "Bal Costumé,"
+an adaptation.
+
+"Galatea" had its first New York performance at the Academy of Music
+in Brooklyn, on December 30, 1886, under the direction of Arthur Mees;
+Delibes's ballet "Coppelia" at the Metropolitan on March 11, 1887,
+under the direction of Gustav Hinrichs. It is likely that both works
+were previously given by the National Opera Company on tour.
+
+The fourth regular subscription season of opera at the Metropolitan
+Opera House (third season of opera in German) began on November 8, 1886,
+under the management of the board of directors, the direction of Edmund
+C. Stanton, with Anton Seidl and Walter Damrosch, conductors. It
+extended over fifteen weeks, the closing date being February 26, 1887,
+and comprised forty-five subscription nights, and fifteen matinées,
+no opera having been given from December 5th to January 3d. In the
+prospectus the directors had promised to produce fourteen operas, and
+the promise was kept as to number, though two operas, "Tristan und
+Isolde" and "Fidelio," were substituted for "Siegfried" (which had been
+completely staged) and "Les Huguenots." The operas thus substituted were
+the most successful of the list, "Fidelio" being received with so much
+favor on the two occasions for which it had been announced that an
+extra performance had to be given to satisfy the popular demand. Of
+this incident more presently. This extra performance raised the number
+of representations to sixty-one, which were distributed through the list
+of operas as follows:
+
+   Opera                    First performance       Times given
+
+  "Die Königin von Saba" ........... November 8 ....... 4
+  "Die Walküre" .................... November 10 ...... 3
+  "Aïda" ........................... November 12 ...... 4
+  "Der Prophet" .................... November 17 ...... 5
+  "Das Goldene Kreutz" and ballet .. November 19 ...... 4
+  "Tannhäuser" ..................... November 28 ...... 6
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ............. December 1 ....... 8
+  "Faust" .......................... December 8 ....... 3
+  "Lohengrin" ...................... December 15 ...... 4
+  "Merlin" ......................... January 3 ........ 5
+  "Fidelio" ........................ January 14 ....... 3
+  "Die Meistersinger" .............. January 21 ....... 5
+  "Rienzi" ......................... January 31 ....... 5
+  "La Muette de Portici" ........... February 16 ...... 2
+                                                       --
+   Total performances ................................ 61
+
+
+The cost of representation was $288,400, and of maintaining the opera
+house about $154,000; in this total of about $442,000 was included the
+cost of the scenery, wardrobe, and properties. The company's receipts
+comprised $202,751 from subscriptions and box office sales, about
+$33,000 from rentals, and about $175,000 from an assessment of $2,500
+from each of the stockholders; in all about $410,751 I am able to be
+thus explicit about the financial affairs of the German régime because
+of courtesies received at the time from Mr. Stanton, with the sanction
+of the stockholders, who were inclined then to look upon their
+undertaking as one of public, not merely of private, concern. The
+figures will enable the student of this history to view intelligently
+some of the happenings at a later period, when the giving of opera
+became a business speculation pure and simple. In attendance, the
+measure of public patronage was represented by 137,399. The prices of
+admission ranged from fifty cents to four dollars, and the average
+receipts were $1.47 1/2 per individual.
+
+The incidents of a particularly interesting character in the season were
+the first American performances of "Tristan und Isolde," and Goldmark's
+opera "Merlin," and the coming and going of Albert Niemann; secondary
+in importance were the production of Wagner's "Rienzi," with which was
+connected the return of Anton Schott to the ranks of the company, the
+surprising triumph of "Fidelio," and the production of Brüll's opera,
+"Das goldene Kreutz," and the ballet, "Vienna Waltzes." "Tristan und
+Isolde" was brought forward on December 1, 1886, under the direction of
+Anton Seidl. The distribution of characters was as follows: Tristan,
+Albert Niemann; Isolde, Lilli Lehmann; König Marke, Emil Fischer;
+Kurwenal, Adolf Robinson; Melot, Rudolph von Milde; Brangäne, Marianne
+Brandt; Ein Hirt, Otto Kemlitz; Steuermann, Emil Sanger; Seemann,
+Max Alvary. The interesting character of the occurrence was fully
+appreciated by the public, and the drama was seen and heard by a
+remarkable assembly. The last seat had been sold four days before, and
+the vast audience room was crowded in every portion. The tenseness of
+the attention was almost painful, and the effect of Herr Niemann's
+acting in the climax of the third act was so vivid that an experienced
+actress who sat in a baignoir at my elbow grew faint and almost swooned.
+At the request of Mr. Stanton, or Mr. Seidl, he never ventured again
+to expose the wound in his breast, though the act is justified, if
+not demanded, by the text. The enthusiasm after the first act was
+tremendous. The performers came forward three times after the fall of
+the curtain, and then Mr. Seidl, who had won the greenest laurels that
+had yet crowned him, was called upon to join them, and twice more the
+curtain rose to enable the performers to receive the popular tribute.
+Five recalls after an act would have meant either nothing or a failure
+in an Italian theater; it was of vast meaning here. The reception
+accorded Wagner's love drama was not such an one as comes from an
+audience easily pleased or attracted by curiosity alone. It told of
+keen and lofty enjoyment and undisguised confession of the power of
+the drama. The applause came after the last note of the orchestral
+postludes. The drama was performed eight times in seven weeks, and
+took its place as the most popular work in the repertory, though in
+average attendance it fell a trifle short of the three representations
+of "Fidelio," which also served to signalize the season.
+
+I shall have something to say presently about Herr Niemann, and a
+criticism of his interpretation of the character of the hero of the
+tragedy can be spared. From a histrionic point of view it has been
+equaled only by his performances of Siegmund and Tannhäuser; nothing
+else has shown such stature that has been witnessed on the operatic
+stage of New York. Nor has his declamation of the text been equaled,
+though the compelling charm of Wagner's melody was potently presented
+years later by Jean de Reszke. Herr Niemann was long past the prime of
+life when he came to New York, and when he went back to Berlin after
+his last visit there was very little left of his public career; but the
+youngest artist in the company might have envied him the whole-souled
+enthusiasm with which he set about his tasks. How completely he
+dedicated himself to the artistic duty was illustrated when, in the
+season of 1887-88, he realized what had been the ambition of years,
+and gave a first performance of Siegfried in "Götterdämmerung." He had
+studied the part a dozen years before in the hope of appearing in it
+at the first Bayreuth festival; but Wagner did not want the illusion
+spoiled by presenting the actor of Siegmund on one evening as the actor
+of Siegfried on another, and Niemann's Siegmund was a masterpiece that
+must not be despoiled. In New York, on Niemann's second visit, he asked
+for the privilege of enacting the Volsung's part in the last division of
+the tetralogy, and studied the part ab initio with Seidl. I chanced one
+evening to be a witness of his study hour--the strangest one I ever saw.
+It was at the conductor's lodgings in the opera house. There was a
+pianoforte in the room, but it was closed. The two men sat at a table
+with the open score before them. Seidl beat time to the inaudible
+orchestral music, and Niemann sang sans support of any kind. Then
+would come discussion of readings, markings of cues, etc., all with
+indescribable gravity, while Frau Seidl-Krauss, a charming ingénue
+budding into a tragedienne, sat sewing in a corner. After the
+performance of the drama, I sat again with Niemann and Seidl over
+cigars and beer. I thanked Niemann for having discarded a universal
+trick in the scene of Siegfried's murder, and for carrying out Wagner's
+stage directions to the letter in raising his shield and advancing a
+step to crush Hagen, and then falling exhausted upon it.
+
+"I am glad you noted that," said Niemann in his broad Berlinese. "Years
+ago I was angered by the device which all Siegfrieds follow of lifting
+the shield high and throwing it behind themselves before they fall.
+Das hat doch gar kein Sinn. There's no sense in that; if he has
+strength enough to throw the shield over his head, he certainly has
+strength enough to hurl it at the man he wants to kill. He lifts the
+heavy shield for that purpose, but his strength gives way suddenly, and
+he falls upon it with a crash. It's dangerous, of course. A fellow might
+easily break a finger or a rib. But if you do a thing, do it right. I
+have waited more than ten years to sing Siegfried, and now I've done it;
+but, youngster (to Seidl), if we meet again years from now, and I've
+fifty marks in my pocket, I'll get an orchestra, and you will conduct
+just enough to let me sing 'Ach! dieses Auge, ewig nun offen,' and
+then I'll die in peace! That's the climax of Siegfried's part, and it
+must sound red, blood red--Siegfried is red; so is Tristan. Vogl sings
+Tristan well, but he's all yellow--not red, as he ought to be."
+
+I recall another bit of Niemann's characteristic criticism: Adolf
+Robinson, the barytone of the first few German seasons, was an excellent
+singer and also actor; but he belonged to the old operatic school,
+and was prone to extravagant action and exaggerated pathos. He was,
+moreover, fond of the footlights. At one of the last rehearsals for
+"Tristan und Isolde," Robinson, the Kurwenal of the occasion, was
+perpetually running from the dying hero's couch to the front of the
+stage to sing his pathetic phrases with tremendous feeling into the
+faces of the audience. Niemann, reclining on the couch, immovable as
+a recumbent statue, as was his wont, without a gesture, all evidence
+of the seething impatience which is consuming him mirrored in the
+expression of his face, and particularly his eyes, watched the
+conventional stage antics of his colleague till he could endure them no
+longer. He gave a sign to Seidl, who stopped the orchestra to hear the
+dying knight addressing his squire in wingèd, but un-Wagnerian, words
+to this effect:
+
+"My dear Robinson, this scene is not all yours--Tristan has also
+something to say here; but how am I to make my share of the dramatic
+effect if you are always going to run down to the audience and sing at
+it? After a while there will be nothing left for me to do but to get
+up and hurl my boots into the audience room. And I'm a very sick man.
+Now, there's a good fellow, come over here to the couch; stay by me
+and nurse me, and you'll see there's something in my part, too."
+
+Niemann's first American appearance was on November 10th in "Die
+Walküre." From the criticism of his performance, which I wrote for
+The Tribune on that occasion, I reprint the following extract as
+the best summing up which I am able to make of the great dramatic
+singer's art:
+
+
+The creation of a Wagnerian musical drama created also the need of
+Wagnerian singers. Those who go to see and hear Herr Niemann must go to
+see and hear him as the representative of the character that he enacts.
+It is only thus that they can do justice to themselves, to him, and to
+the art-work in which he appears. A drama can only be vitalized through
+representation, and the first claim to admiration which Herr Niemann
+puts forth is based on the intensely vivid and harmonious picture of
+the Volsung which he brings on the stage. There is scarcely one of the
+theatrical conventions which the public have been accustomed to accept
+that he employs. He takes possession of the stage like an elemental
+force. Wagner's dramas have excited the fancy of painters more than any
+dramatic works of the century, because Wagner was in a lofty sense a
+scenic artist. Niemann's genius, for less it can scarcely be called,
+utilizes this picturesque element to the full. His attitudes and
+gestures all seem parts of Wagner's creation. They are not only instinct
+with life, but instinct with the sublimated life of the hero of the
+drama. When he staggers into Hunding's hut and falls upon the bearskin
+beside the hearth a thrill passes through the observer. Part of his
+story is already told, and it is repeated with electrifying eloquence in
+the few words that he utters when his limbs refuse their office. The
+voice is as weary as the exhausted body. In the picturesque side of his
+impersonation he is aided by the physical gifts with which nature has
+generously endowed him. The figure is colossal; the head, like "the
+front of Jove himself"; the eyes large and full of luminous light, that
+seems to dart through the tangled and matted hair that conceals the
+greater portion of his face. The fate for which he has been marked out
+has set its seal in the heroic melancholy which is never absent even in
+his finest frenzies, but in the glare of those eyes there is something
+that speaks unfalteringly of the godlike element within him. This
+element asserts itself with magnificent force in the scene where
+Siegmund draws the sword from its gigantic sheath, and again when he
+calmly listens to the proclamation of his coming death, and declines
+the services of the messenger of Wotan who is sent to conduct him to
+Walhalla.
+
+There are aspects in which, even from a literary point of view, Wagner's
+"Ring of the Nibelung" seems to be the most Teutonic of the several
+German versions of the old legend which is its basis. It is a primitive
+Teutonism, however, without historical alloy; such a Teutonism as we can
+construct by letting the imagination work back from the most forceful
+qualities of the historical German to those which representatives of
+the same race may have had in a prehistoric age. The period of Wagner's
+tetralogy, it must be remembered, is purely mythical. The ruggedness of
+the type which we obtain by such a process is the strong charactertistic
+of Herr Niemann's treatment of Wagner's musical and literary text. It
+is, like the drama itself, an exposition of the German esthetic ideal:
+strength before beauty. It puts truthful declamation before beautiful
+tone production in his singing and lifts dramatic color above what is
+generally considered essential musical color. That from this a new
+beauty results all those can testify who hear Herr Niemann sing the love
+song in the first act of "Die Walküre," which had previously in America
+been presented only as a lyrical effusion and given with more or less
+sweetness and sentimentality. Herr Niemann was the first representative
+of the character who made this passage an eager, vital, and personal
+expression of a mood so ecstatic that it resorts to symbolism, as if
+there was no other language for it. The charm with which he invests the
+poetry of this song (for this is poetry) can only be appreciated by one
+who is on intimate terms with the German language, but the dramatic
+effect attained by his use of tone color and his marvelous distinctness
+of enunciation all can feel.
+
+The defects in Herr Niemann's singing, the result of the long and hard
+wear to which his voice has been subjected in a career of thirty-five
+years' duration, are so obvious that I need not discuss them. To do
+so would be as idle as to attempt to deny their presence. He must be
+heard as a singing actor, as a dramatic interpreter, not as a mere
+singer.
+
+
+Niemann said farewell to the New York public at a notable performance
+of "Tristan und Isolde," the last of the season, on February 7, 1887.
+I doubt if the history of opera in New York discloses anything like
+a parallel to the occasion. Out of doors the night was distressingly
+dismal. A cold rain fell intermittently; the streets were deep with
+slush, and the soft ice made walking on the pavements uncomfortable,
+and even dangerous. But these things were not permitted to interfere
+with the determination of the lovers of the German lyric drama to bear
+testimony to their admiration for the artist who had done so much for
+their pleasure. The house was crowded in every part. Every seat had been
+sold days before. Many of the tickets had been bought by speculators,
+who, in spite of the untoward weather, reaped a rich harvest. During the
+day the prices obtained varied from ten dollars to fifteen dollars for
+the orchestra stalls (regular price, four dollars), and at night seats
+in the topmost gallery fetched as much as three dollars, which was six
+times the regular tariff. There were delegations in the audience from
+Boston, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. The enthusiasm after each act
+was of the kind that recalled familiar stories of popular outbursts in
+impressionable Italy. Herr Niemann husbanded his vocal resources in the
+first act, but after that both he and Fräulein Lehmann threw themselves
+into the work with utter abandon, such abandon, indeed, as made some of
+the prima donna's friends tremble for her voice. After two recalls had
+followed the second fall of the curtain a third round was swelled by
+a fanfare from the orchestra. To acknowledge this round Herr Niemann
+came forward alone, and was greeted with cheers, while a laurel wreath,
+bearing on one of its ribbons the significant line from "Tannhäuser,"
+"O, kehr zurück, du kühner Sänger," was handed up to him. The third act
+wrought the enthusiasm to a climax. After the curtain had been raised
+over and over again, Herr Niemann came forward and said, in German: "I
+regret exceedingly that I am not able to tell you in your own language
+how sincerely I appreciate your kindness toward me. I thank you
+heartily, and would like to say 'Auf wiedersehn.'" His place for the
+rest of the season was filled by Herr Anton Schott.
+
+I have referred to the "Fidelio" incident of the season, which may now
+be told, since Herr Niemann also figured in it. To Beethoven "Fidelio"
+was a child of sorrow; that fact is known to every student of musical
+history. On its first production it failed dismally. With his heart
+strings torn, the composer yielded to the arguments and prayers of his
+friends and revised the opera. In the new form it was revived, and made
+a better impression; but now Beethoven quarreled with his manager, and
+withdrew his opera from the Vienna theater. He offered it in Berlin, and
+it was rejected. For seven years it slept. Then it was taken in hand
+again by the composer, and adapted to a revised text. Some of the music
+elided at the first revision was restored. By this time four overtures
+had been written for it. Again it was brought forward; and this time the
+Viennese awoke to an appreciation of its splendor. Since 1814 its name
+has been almost the ineffable word for the serious musician. But sorrow
+and disaster have followed upon innumerable efforts to habilitate it
+in the opera houses of the world. We have seen that Dr. Damrosch made
+haste to produce it at the Metropolitan Opera House, but the financial
+results were so direful that two years later it was only upon the urgent
+entreaty of a few friends who stood close to him that Mr. Stanton
+consented to include it in the repertory for 1886-87.
+
+"But," said the director to his petitioners, "if I give it once I must
+give it twice, for I have two Leonores in my company, and there must be
+no quarrel."
+
+So he gave the opera on Friday, January 14th, with Fraulein Brandt
+as the heroine, and on Wednesday, January 19th, with Fräulein
+Lehmann--Niemann being the Florestan on both occasions. The enthusiasm
+was boundless, though the silly laugh of a woman in one of the boxes at
+the first performance so disconcerted Fräulein Brandt at the beginning
+of the duet in the dungeon scene that she broke down in tears, and Mr.
+Seidl had to stop the orchestra till she could sufficiently recover her
+composure to begin over again. Now, the popular interest was so great
+that Mr. Stanton gave an extra performance, with Fräulein Lehmann, and
+when the record of the season was made up, lo! Beethoven's opera led
+all the rest in average receipts and attendance. In Berlin, Dr. Ehrlich
+preached a sermon to the people of Germany with the incident as a text.
+
+As a novelty "Tristan und Isolde" had been preceded on November 19th
+by Brüll's pretty little opera, "Das goldene Kreutz," and the ballet,
+"Vienna Waltzes." It was succeeded on January 3d by Goldmark's "Merlin,"
+conducted by Walter Damrosch, with the parts distributed as follows:
+Artus, Robinson; Modrid, Kemlitz; Gawein, Heinrich; Lancelot, Basch;
+Merlin, Alvary; Viviane, Lehmann; Bedwyr, Von Milde; Glendower,
+Sieglitz; Morgana, Brandt; Dämon, Fischer. Much interest centered in
+the opera because of its newness (it had received its first production
+in Vienna less than two months before), and the great success achieved
+by its predecessor, "The Queen of Sheba;" but it failed of popular
+approval, eight operas preceding it in popularity, as evidenced by
+the attendance, and but one of them--"Tristan"--a novelty.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WAGNERIAN HIGH TIDE
+
+
+In this chapter I purpose to tell the story of a period of three years,
+from 1887 to 1890, and in order to cover the ground I shall leave out
+what appertains to the repetition of works incorporated in the repertory
+of the Metropolitan Opera House during the preceding three seasons.
+
+The period was an eventful one and marked the high-water of achievement
+and also of popularity of the German régime, but also the beginning of
+the dissatisfaction of the boxholders, which resulted two years later in
+a return to the Italian form. It witnessed the introduction of the "Ring
+of the Nibelung" in its integrity and illustrated in a surprising manner
+the superior attractiveness of Wagner's dramas to the rest of the
+operatic list. Outside of the Nibelung dramas it brought two absolute
+novelties to the knowledge of the public and revived several old operas
+of large historical and artistic significance, which had either never
+been heard at all in New York, or heard so long ago that all memory of
+them had faded from the public mind. It saw the light of competition
+flicker out completely at the Academy of Music, and after a year of
+darkness it beheld the dawn of Italian rivalry in what had become the
+home of German art.
+
+Twenty operas were brought forward in the first three years of the
+German régime. They were "Tannhäuser," "Fidelio," "Les Huguenots,"
+"Der Freischütz," "William Tell," "Lohengrin," "Don Giovanni," "The
+Prophet," "Masaniello," "Rigoletto," "La Juive," "Die Walküre,"
+"Carmen," "The Queen of Sheba," "Die Meistersinger," "Rienzi," "Aïda,"
+"Das Goldene Kreutz," "Tristan und Isolde," and "Merlin." (In this list
+I have set down the titles in the language in which they live in the
+popular mouth in order to avoid what might seem like an affectation were
+I to use the German form always in the story simply because the Italian
+and French works were sung in German.) Additions to the list in the
+season of 1887-88 were "Siegfried," "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen,"
+"Euryanthe," "Ferdinand Cortez," and "Götterdämmerung"; in the season of
+1888-89, "L'Africaine," "Das Rheingold," and "Il Trovatore"; in 1889-90,
+"Der Fliegende Holländer," "Un Ballo in Maschera," "Norma," and "Der
+Barbier von Bagdad."
+
+The record of the last two years indicated a falling off in energy,
+but though it caused disaffection at the time, it seems notable enough
+compared with the activities of the establishment twenty years later
+under much more favorable circumstances. For the last of the three
+seasons under discussion seven additions to what was called by courtesy
+the established list had been promised; but counting in "Norma," (a
+special performance for the benefit of Lilli Lehmann) and "The Flying
+Dutchman," which had been promised only by implication in the plan of
+a serial representation of Wagner's works, only four additions were
+made. Two causes operated toward the disappointing outcome. One was an
+epidemic of influenza which prevailed during the greater part of the
+winter and caused much embarrassment to the singers; the other was the
+inefficiency of the chorus--a defect which has not yet been remedied,
+but was greater in the season 1907-08 than a decade earlier. "Otello"
+was in readiness so far as the principals were concerned, but the chorus
+consumed so much time restudying old works that it had to be abandoned;
+also Lalo's "Le Roy d'Ys." Though the stockholders were giving opera
+themselves for themselves, they took no steps toward making it a
+permanent institution. Their decision to give German opera was made from
+year to year, and the end of every season brought with it practically
+a complete disruption of the company. There had to be a reorganization
+each fall. The directors were unwilling to give their own manager
+the degree of permanence which they bestowed without hesitation upon
+a lessee, and the policy of the house was thus kept continually in
+controversy. The fact is that the activities of the Germans were not
+to the taste of the stockholders, who were getting serious art where
+they were looking for fashionable diversion. This became painfully
+obvious when the conduct of the occupants of the boxes scandalized
+the institution to such a degree that the directors were compelled to
+administer a public rebuke to themselves and their associates, and a
+stigma was placed upon the institution from which it has suffered,
+very unjustly, ever since. But a discussion of these incidents can be
+more intelligently and profitably introduced later in this narrative.
+
+The fourth German season began on November 2, 1887, and ended on
+February 18, 1888, and consisted of forty-seven subscription nights,
+sixteen subscription matinées, and one extra matinée. In all fourteen
+operas were produced. The two Wagnerian novelties, "Götterdämmerung"
+and "Siegfried," were the most popular features of the season, the
+former being given seven times, though it was the last of the season's
+productions. It brought into the treasury a total of $30,324, or
+an average of $4,332, and was heard by audiences averaging 2,871.
+"Siegfried" was a good second. It had nine weeks' advantage of
+"Götterdämmerung" and was performed eleven times, with total receipts
+amounting to $37,124.50, or an average of $3,374.95. Pursued by its
+old fatality, "Fidelio" dropped to the foot of the list with four
+performances, which yielded only $8,997. The receipts for the season
+were $411,860.24, of which $190,087.24 came from the box office sales
+and subscriptions, $170,180 from the stockholders' assessment of $2,500
+on each box, and $51,593 from rentals. This assessment was only $24,000
+more than the cost of maintaining the opera-house, which was about
+$146,000. The staging of new operas cost $19,727.27, more than half of
+which was expended on Spontini's "Ferdinand Cortez." The scenery for
+"Siegfried" had been purchased the year before and also the costumes for
+that drama and "Götterdämmerung." The principal members of the company
+were Lilli Lehmann, Marianne Brandt, Auguste Seidl-Krauss, Biro di
+Marion, Louise Meisslinger, Albert Niemann, Max Alvary, Emil Fischer,
+Adolf Robinson, Rudolph von Milde, Johannes Elmblad, Herr Ferenczy,
+and Herr Alexi.
+
+The first American representation of Wagner's "Siegfried" took place on
+November 9, 1887. Anton Seidl conducted and the parts were distributed
+as follows: Siegfried, Max Alvary; Mime, Herr Ferenczy; der Wanderer,
+Emil Fischer; Alberich, Rudolph von Milde; Fafner, Johannes Elmblad;
+Erda, Marianne Brandt; Brünnhilde, Lilli Lehmann; Stimme des
+Waldvogels, Auguste Seidl-Krauss. The production of this drama was
+an invitation to the people of New York to take the longest and most
+decisive step away from the ordinary conventions of the lyric theater
+that had yet been asked of them. At the time it seemed foolishly
+presumptive to attempt a prediction of what the response would be. A
+season before "Tristan und Isolde" had been received with great favor
+and under conditions which did not admit a question of the honesty and
+intelligence of the appreciation. This was encouraging to the lovers of
+Wagner's dramas, but the difference between opera of the ordinary type
+and "Tristan und Isolde" is not so great as between "Tristan und Isolde"
+and "Siegfried," notwithstanding that in the love tragedy Wagner took
+as uncompromising a stand as ever did a Greek poet, and hewed to the
+lines of his theoretical scheme with unswerving fidelity. In the
+subject-matter of the drama lies the distinction. Despite the absence of
+the ethical element which places "Tannhäuser" immeasurably higher than
+"Tristan" as a dramatic poem, the latter drama contains an expression of
+the universal passion which is so vehement, so truthful, and so sublime
+that it seems strange that anybody susceptible to music and gifted with
+emotions could ever have been deaf to its beauties or callous to its
+appeals. Besides this, the sympathies are stirred in behalf of the
+personages of the play who stand as representatives of human nature,
+and, though the co-operation of a chorus, which has always been
+considered an essential element of the lyric drama, is restricted to
+a single act, the dramatic necessity of the restriction is so obvious
+that an audience, once engrossed in the tragedy, must needs resent such
+a violation of propriety as the introduction of a chorus in any scene
+except that of the first act would be. In "Siegfried," however, the case
+is not so plain. Here there is not only no chorus, but scarcely more
+than five minutes during which even two solo voices are blended in a
+duet. Except Siegfried and Brünnhilde, the personages of the play have
+no claim upon human sympathy, and their actions can scarcely arouse a
+loftier feeling than curiosity. Through two acts and a portion of the
+third, save in a dozen measures or so, the music of woman's voice and
+the charm of woman's presence are absent from the stage, and, instead,
+we are asked to accept a bear, a dragon, and a bird, a sublimely solemn
+peripatetic god who asks riddles and laughs once, and two dwarfs,
+repulsive of mind and hideous of body.
+
+These are the drawbacks concerning which there can be no controversy.
+To them are to be added the difficulties which result from a desire
+to employ in a serious drama mechanical devices of a kind that custom
+associates only with children's pantomimes and idle spectacles. A bear
+is brought in to frighten a dwarf; a dragon sings, vomits forth steam
+from its cavernous jaws, fights and dies with a kindly and prophetic
+warning to its slayer; a bird becomes endowed with the gift of human
+speech through a miraculous process which takes place in one of the
+people of the play. Surely these are grounds on which "Siegfried" might
+be stoutly criticized from the conventional as well as a universal point
+of view; but I have not enumerated them for the purpose of disparaging
+Wagner's drama, but rather to show the intellectual and esthetic
+attitude of the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House twenty years
+ago, who, through all these defects, saw in "Siegfried" a strangely
+beautiful and impressive creation, which, under trying circumstances,
+challenged their plaudits at the outset and soon won their enthusiastic
+admiration.
+
+More direct and emphatic was the appreciation of "Götterdämmerung," the
+last of the season's novelties, as "Siegfried" was the first. It was
+produced on January 25, 1888, only three weeks before the close of the
+season, yet it was given six times in the subscription performances
+and once outside the subscription, with the financial results already
+mentioned. The cast was as follows: Siegfried, Albert Niemann; Gunther,
+Adolf Robinson; Hagen, Emil Fischer; Alberich, Rudolph von Milde;
+Brünnhilde, Lilli Lehmann; Gutrune, Auguste Seidl-Krauss; Woglinde,
+Sophie Traubmann; Wellgunde, Marianne Brandt; Flosshilde, Louise
+Meisslinger. Mr. Seidl conducted. It was but natural that the concluding
+drama of the tetralogy should have excited warmer sympathy than its
+immediate predecessor. In it the human element becomes really active
+for the first time. This circumstance Mr. Seidl accentuated by two bold
+excisions. One of the things for which Wagner has been faulted is that
+in his treatment of the Siegfried legend he has sacrificed historical
+elements in order to bring it into closer relationship with Norse
+mythology; has, in fact, made the fate of the gods and goddesses of
+our ancestors the chief concern of the prologue and succeeding dramas.
+Except for those who prefer to see only ethical symbols in the
+characters there is some force in the objection. Like Homer in his
+"Iliad," Wagner has a celestial as well as a terrestrial plot in his
+"Ring of the Nibelung," and the men and women, or semi-divine creatures,
+in it are but the unconscious agents of the good and evil powers
+typified in the gods and dwarfs.
+
+The criticism, however, is weaker here than in Germany, where ten or a
+dozen dramas (chief of which is Geibel's "Brünnhild"), as well as the
+medieval epics, have accustomed the people to think of their national
+hero with something like historical surroundings. In these writings
+the death of Siegfried is brought about by his alliance with the
+Burgundians, whose seat was at Worms; and the Gunther of the legend
+is easily identified with King Gundikar, who was overcome by Attila
+and died A.D. 450. Wagner's original draft of "Götterdämmerung" (an
+independent drama which he called "Siegfried's Death") followed the
+accepted lines, and it was not until the tetralogy was planned that the
+mythological elements from the Eddas were drawn into the scheme, the
+theater of the play changed, its time pushed back into a prehistoric
+age, and the death of the hero made to bring about the destruction
+of the old gods--the Ragnarök of the Icelandic tales. The connection
+between the death of Siegfried and the fate of the gods is set
+forth in the two scenes which were eliminated at this production of
+"Götterdämmerung." The first is the prologue in which the Nornir (the
+Fates of Northern mythology), while twisting the golden-stranded rope of
+the world's destiny, tell of the signs which presage the Twilight of the
+Gods. The second is the interview between Brünnhilde and Waltraute, one
+of the Valkyrior, who comes to urge her sister to avert the doom which
+threatens the gods by restoring the baneful ring to the Rhine daughters.
+Both scenes are highly significant in the plan of the tragedy as a
+whole, but a public largely unfamiliar with German and unconcerned
+about Wagner's philosophical purposes can much more easily spare than
+endure them. In later years they were restored at the Metropolitan
+performances, but I make no doubt that Mr. Seidl's wise abbreviation
+had much to do with the unparalleled success of the drama in its first
+season. Persons familiar with the German tongue and the tetralogy,
+either from study of the book and music or from attendance on
+performances in Germany, were justified in being disappointed at the
+loss of two scenes highly important from a dramatic point of view and
+profoundly beautiful from a musical; but it was better to achieve
+success for the representations by adapting the drama to the capacity
+of the public than to sacrifice it bodily on the altar of integrity.
+
+Nessler's opera, "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," which had for nearly
+five years fairly devastated the German opera houses, receiving more
+performances than any three operas in the current lists, won only a
+succès d'estime. It was performed for the first time on November 23d,
+dressed most sumptuously and effectively cast (Robinson as Werner,
+Elmblad as Conradin, Kemlitz as the Major-domo, Sänger as the Baron,
+Frau Seidl-Krauss as Marie, Von Milde as Graf von Wildenstein, and
+Meisslinger as Gräfin), but it reached only seven performances, was
+fourth from the bottom in the list arranged according to popularity,
+and in the following year it was not included in the repertory. In
+1889-90 it was revived and received four performances, but its rank was
+seventeenth in a list of nineteen. Weber's "Euryanthe" fared but little
+better, though a work immeasurably greater. It, too, received four
+performances, and it was but one remove in advance of "Der Trompeter."
+To all intents and purposes it was new to the American stage when it was
+produced on December 23, 1887, with Lehmann, Brandt, Alvary, Fischer,
+and Elmblad in the parts of Euryanthe, Eglantine, Adolar, Lysiart, and
+the King, respectively. Mr. Seidl conducted. Twenty-four years before
+there had been some representations of the opera under the direction of
+Carl Anschütz in Wallack's Theater, at Broadway and Broome Street, but
+of this fact the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House had no memory.
+It was a beautiful act of devotion on the part of Herr Anschütz and his
+German singers to produce "Euryanthe" at that time, and, had it been
+possible to break down the barriers of fashion and reach the heart of
+the public, the history of the lyric theater in America during the
+quarter of a century which followed would, no doubt, read differently
+than it does. "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" were produced under similar
+circumstances, and even "Die Walküre"; but "Lohengrin" was popularized
+by the subsequent performances in Italian, and "Tannhäuser" and "Die
+Walküre" had to wait for appreciation until fortuitous circumstances
+caused fashion, fame, and fortune to smile for a space upon the German
+establishment at the Metropolitan. It may have been a benignant fate
+which preserved "Euryanthe" from representation in the interval. The
+work is one which it is impossible for a serious music lover to approach
+without affection, but appreciation of all its beauties is conditioned
+upon the acceptance of theories touching the purpose, construction,
+and representation of the lyric drama which did not obtain validity
+in America until the German artists at the Metropolitan had completed
+their missionary labors. Indeed, there are aspects of the case in which
+Weber's opera, with all its affluence of melody and all its potency
+of romantic and chivalric expression, is yet further removed from
+popular appreciation than the dramas of Wagner. In these there is
+so much orchestral pomp, so much external splendor, so much scenic
+embellishment, so much that is attractive to both eye and ear, that
+delight in them may exist independently of a recognition of their deeper
+values. "Euryanthe" still comes before us with modest consciousness of
+grievous dramatic defects and pleading for consideration and pardon
+even while demanding with proper dignity recognition of the soundness
+and beauty of the principles that underlie its score and the marvelous
+tenderness, sincerity, and intensity of its expression of passion.
+When it was first brought forward in Vienna in October, 1823, Castelli
+observed that it was come fifty years before its time. He spoke with a
+voice of prophecy. It was not until the fifty years had expired that
+"Euryanthe" really came into its rights, and it was the light reflected
+upon it by the works of Weber's great successor at Dresden that
+disclosed in what those rights consisted. After that the critical voices
+of the world agreed in pronouncing "Euryanthe" to be the starting point
+of Wagner, and, as the latter's works grew in appreciation, "Euryanthe"
+shone with ever-growing refulgence. No opera was ever prepared at the
+Metropolitan with more patience, self-sacrifice, zeal, and affection
+than this, and the spontaneous, hearty, sincere approbation to which the
+audience gave expression must have been as sweet incense to Mr. Seidl
+and the forces that he directed. But "Euryanthe" is a twin sister in
+misfortune to "Fidelio"; the public will not take it to its heart. It
+disappeared from the Metropolitan list with the end of the season which
+witnessed its revival.
+
+A dozen or more circumstances combined to give the first performance of
+Spontini's "Ferdinand Cortez," which took place on January 6, 1888, a
+unique sort of interest. In one respect it was a good deal like trying
+to resuscitate a mummy, for whatever of interest historical criticism
+found in the opera, a simple hearing of the music was sufficient to
+convince the public that Spontini was the most antiquated composer that
+had been presented to their attention in several years. Compared with
+him Gluck and Mozart had real, dewy freshness, and Weber spoke in
+the language of to-day. Nevertheless, Spontini still stands as the
+representative of a principle, and if it had been possible for Mr.
+Stanton to supplement "Ferdinand Cortez" with "Armida" or "Iphigenia in
+Aulis," the Metropolitan repertory would admirably have exemplified the
+development of the dramatic idea and its struggle with simple lyricism
+in opera composition. The public would have been asked to take the steps
+in the reverse order, it is true--Wagner, Weber, Spontini, Gluck--but
+this circumstance would only have added to the clearness of the
+historical exposition. The light which significant art works throw out
+falls brightest upon the creations which lie behind them in the pathway
+of progress. "Euryanthe" was understood through the mediation of
+"Tristan und Isolde." "Ferdinand Cortez" has an American subject; the
+conqueror of Mexico is the only naturalized American with whom we had
+an acquaintance till Pinkerton came on the stage in Puccini's "Madama
+Butterfly," and Mr. Stanton surpassed all his previous efforts in the
+line of spectacle to celebrate the glories of this archaic American
+opera. The people employed in the representation rivaled in numbers
+those who constituted the veritable Cortez's army, while the horses came
+within three of the number that the Spaniard took into Mexico. This was
+carrying realism pretty close to historical verity. A finer sense of
+dramatic propriety, however, was exhibited in the care with which the
+pictures and paraphernalia of the opera were prepared. The ancient
+architecture of Mexico, the sculptures, the symbols of various kinds
+carried in the processions, the banners of Montezuma and some of the
+costumes of his warriors were copied with painstaking fidelity from the
+remains of the civilization which existed in Mexico at the time of the
+conquest. The cast of the opera was this: Cortez, Niemann; Alvarez,
+Alvary; High Priest, Fischer; Telasko, Robinson; Montezuma, Elmblad;
+Morales, Von Milde; Amazily, Fräulein Meisslinger.
+
+The prospectus for the season of 1888-89 announced sixteen weeks of
+opera between November 28th and March 16th, the subscription to be for
+forty-seven nights and sixteen matinées. The last two weeks were set
+apart for two consecutive representations of the dramas constituting
+"The Ring of the Nibelung." The difficulties involved in an effort to
+compass the tetralogy in a week combined with other circumstances to
+compel an extension of the season for a week, much to the advantage of
+the enterprise. The final record showed that fifty evening and eighteen
+afternoon performances had taken place between the opening night and
+March 23, 1889. Sixteen works were performed, the relative popularity
+of which is indicated in the following list: "Götterdämmerung,"
+"Tannhäuser," "Das Rheingold," "La Juive," "Il Trovatore," "Lohengrin,"
+"Aïda," "Siegfried," "L'Africaine," "Die Meistersinger," "Les
+Huguenots," "Die Walküre," "Faust," "Le Prophète," "Fidelio," and
+"William Tell." The most significant new production--indeed the only
+significant one--was "Das Rheingold," which completed the acquaintance
+of the New York public with the current works of Wagner, "Parsifal"
+being still under the Bayreuth embargo, although it had several times
+been given in concert form. The total cost of the representations, not
+including scenery, costumes, properties, and music, was $333,731.31,
+or an average of $4,907.78 a representation. The total receipts from
+the opera were $213,630.99, divided as follows: Box office sales,
+$149,973.50; subscriptions, $59,607.50; privileges, $4,049.99. The
+average receipts a representation were $3,141.63. The loss to the
+stockholders on the operatic account was $1,766.15 a representation,
+which was covered by the receipt of $201,180.00 from the stockholders
+for the maintenance of the establishment, the fixed charges on
+the building, and the cost of scenery, music, etc., amounting to
+$144,455.81.
+
+"Das Rheingold" was produced for the first time on January 4, 1889,
+under the direction of Mr. Seidl, and was performed nine times in
+the ten weeks of the season which remained. The artists concerned in
+the production were Emil Fischer as Wotan, Max Alvary as Loge, Alois
+Grienauer as Donner, Albert Mittelhauser as Froh, Joseph Beck as
+Alberich, Wilhelm Sedlmayer as Mime, Eugen Weiss as Fafner, Ludwig
+Mödlinger as Fasolt, Fanny Moran-Olden as Fricka, Katti Bettaque as
+Freia, Sophie Traubmann as Woglinde, Felice Kaschowska as Wellgunde,
+Hedwig Reil as Flosshilde, and again, Hedwig Reil as Erda.
+
+The sixth season of opera in German began on November 27, 1889, and
+ended on March 22, 1890. Within this period fifty evening and seventeen
+afternoon subscription performances were given and there was an extra
+performance on February 27th for the benefit of Lilli Lehmann, who
+had stipulated for it in her contract in lieu of an increase in
+her honorarium, demanded and refused. The sixty-seven subscription
+performances were devoted to nineteen operas and dramas which are
+here named in the order of popularity as indicated by attendance and
+receipts: "Siegfried," "Don Giovanni," "Die Meistersinger," "Tristan
+und Isolde," "Lohengrin," "Das Rheingold," "Der Barbier von Bagdad,"
+"Tannhäuser," "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Götterdämmerung," "Die
+Königin von Saba," "William Tell," "Aïda," "Die Walküre," "Rienzi,"
+"Il Trovatore," "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," "Un Ballo in Maschera,"
+and "La Juive." The ballet "Die Puppenfee" was performed in connection
+with the opera "Der Barbier von Bagdad." The last three weeks of the
+season were devoted to representations in chronological order (barring
+an exchange between "Tristan" and "Meistersinger") of all the operas
+and lyric dramas of Wagner from "Rienzi" to "Götterdämmerung,"
+inclusive. The total receipts from subscriptions, box office sales,
+and privileges were $209,866.35; average, $3,132.34. The total cost of
+producing the operas (not including scenery, costumes, properties, and
+music) was $352,990.32, or an average of $5,268.52 per representation.
+On this showing the loss to the stockholders on operatic account was
+$2,136.18 a representation, which was met by an assessment of $3,000 a
+box; of this sum $1,200 went to the fixed charges on the opera house.
+
+The one novelty of the season was Peter Cornelius's "Barbier von
+Bagdad," which had its first performance on January 4, 1890. The
+production was embarrassed by mishaps and misfortunes. It had been
+announced for December 25th, but Mr. Paul Kalisch, the tenor, fell ill
+with the prevailing epidemic and a postponement became necessary. It was
+set down for January 4th, but when that day came Mr. Seidl was ill. He
+had prepared the opera with great care and loving devotion, but at the
+eleventh hour had to hand his baton to his youthful assistant, Walter
+Damrosch. The beautiful work had only four representations. The original
+cast was as follows: Caliph, Josef Beck; Mustapha, Wilhelm Sedlmayer;
+Margiana, Sophie Traubmann; Bostana, Charlotte Huhn; the Barber, Emil
+Fischer. "Die Puppenfee," ballet by J. Hassreiter and F. Gaul, music by
+Joseph Bayer, followed the opera and was conducted by Frank Damrosch.
+The most important addition to the forces in this season was Theodor
+Reichmann, who effected his entrance on the American stage on the first
+evening in Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." Herr Reichmann was known to
+American pilgrims to the Wagnerian Mecca as the admired representative
+of Amfortas in "Parsifal," but his impersonation of the Dutchman was
+equally famous in Vienna and the German capitals. On this occasion Mr.
+Seidl restored the architect's original design with reference to the
+band. Mr. Cady's device had never had a fair trial. Signor Vianesi
+condemned it in the first season. When Dr. Damrosch took the helm he
+tried it, but abandoned it and resorted to the compromise suggested by
+Vianesi, which raised the musicians nearly to the level of the first row
+of stalls in the audience room. The growth of the band sent the drummers
+outside the railing, but no one was brave enough to restore the original
+arrangement till the opening of the sixth German season.
+
+I come to the operatic activities of the period beyond the walls of the
+Metropolitan. They scarcely amounted to opposition at any time, though
+at the end of the third year there came a brief season of Italian opera
+in the home of the German institution which whetted the appetites of the
+boxholders and, no doubt, had much to do with the revolution which took
+place two years later. In 1887, beginning on October 17th and ending in
+December, there was a series of performances at the Thalia Theater which
+served again to indicate that German opera had a following among the
+people who could not afford to patronize the aristocratic establishment.
+This season was arranged to exploit Heinrich Bötel, a coachman-tenor
+of the Wachtel stripe, who came from the Stadttheater, in Hamburg. The
+prima donna was Frau Herbert-Förster, the wife of Victor Herbert,
+who had been a member of the Metropolitan company while her husband,
+afterward the most successful of writers for the American operetta
+stage, sat in Mr. Seidl's orchestra. The operas given were "Trovatore,"
+"Martha," "The Postilion of Lonjumeau," Flotow's "Stradella," "La Dame
+Blanche," and "Les Huguenots." At other theaters, too, there were
+performances of operas and operettas by the Boston Ideal Opera Company
+and other troupes, but with them these annals have no concern. The
+National Opera Company, stripped of the prestige with which it had
+started out, abandoned by Mr. Thomas and reorganized on a co-operative
+basis, made its last struggle for existence at the Academy of Music
+between April 2 and April 6, 1888. The decay of the institution seemed
+to fill it with the enterprise and energy of despair. It produced (but
+in anything but a commendable fashion) English versions of Goldmark's
+"Queen of Sheba," Rubinstein's "Nero," "Tannhäuser" (first performance
+of the opera in English in New York on April 4th), and "Lohengrin." In
+the company, besides some of the singers who had belonged to it in the
+previous two years, were Eloi Sylva, Bertha Pierson, Amanda Fabbris,
+Charles Bassett, and Barton McGuckin, the last a tenor who had made
+a notable career in Great Britain with Mr. Carl Rosa's companies.
+
+This season also saw the introduction of Verdi's "Otello" by a company
+especially organized for the purpose by Italo Campanini, who, his
+singing days being practically over, turned impresario. He had been in
+Milan when Verdi's opera was produced, on February 5, 1887, and made
+haste to procure the American rights of performance. It was a laudable
+ambition, but the enterprise was overwhelmed with disaster. Campanini
+brought from Italy a tenor named Marconi for the titular rôle; his
+sister-in-law, Eva Tetrazzini, to sing the part of Desdemona, and his
+brother, Cleofonte (who was maestro di cembalo at the Metropolitan Opera
+House during its first season), as conductor. With these he associated
+Signora Scalchi and Signor Galassi (Emilia and Iago). The first
+performance took place on April 16, 1888, in the Academy of Music, and
+four representations were given on the established opera nights and
+Saturday afternoons. The public's attitude was apathetic. The tenor did
+not please, the fashionable season was over, the music was not of the
+kind that had been expected from Verdi, and the prices of admission were
+too high for a popular audience. Signor Campanini essayed a second week
+and now threw his own popularity into the scale. Signor Marconi was
+dismissed and returned at once to Europe, never to be heard again in New
+York; Campanini, who had been the most popular tenor with New Yorkers
+since the palmy days of Brignoli, took his part; the prices of admission
+were reduced. All to no avail; ruin had overtaken the manager, and the
+eighth performance was the last. It was truly pitiable. Signor Campanini
+deserved better for his bold embarkation in a noble enterprise; but
+reasons for the failure were easily found. It was unwise to give opera
+on an ambitious scale after the amusement season had worn itself out;
+it was nothing less than foolish to do so with an ill-equipped company,
+in a house that had lost its fashionable prestige and at prices so
+large that a fatal blunder had to be confessed by their reduction at
+the end of a week. Two seasons later, the opera was announced by the
+Metropolitan director, Mr. Stanton, but was not given, for reasons
+already mentioned. How it entered the fashionable home of opera we
+shall see presently.
+
+After the lapse of twenty years it is still impossible to say that
+"Otello" has really been habilitated in New York. Its fate has not
+been quite so pitiful as that of "Falstaff," because it has been more
+frequently performed, and performed, moreover, in better style; but it
+has not won the popular heart. It is admired by the knowing, but not
+loved by the masses, as the earlier operas, especially "Aïda," is loved.
+The reason? I am still inclined to look for it where I thought I found
+it a score of years ago. At that time it seemed to me that the public,
+if it concerned itself with the matter at all (which I doubt), was at a
+loss for a point of view from which to consider it. Was it an Italian
+opera? Certainly not, if that type was represented by any of the works
+of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, or of Verdi himself when he was the
+popular idol. Was it a French opera? A German opera? A lyric drama in
+the Wagnerian manner? To the connoisseur, if not to the idle prattler
+about music, each of these designations suggests a distinct idea--a
+form, a style, a manner. Which of them might with most propriety be
+applied to this work? The circumstance that the book was in the Italian
+language had little to do with the question, no matter how loudly
+an excitable individual (as on this occasion) might shout "Viva
+l'Italiano!" to testify his admiration for Verdi's music. "The
+style--it is the man." "Otello" was composed and first brought forward
+under anomalous conditions, and though it first saw the stage lamps
+at Milan, its style is not distinctively Italian. Neither is it
+distinctively French or German. It is of its own kind, Verdian;
+characteristic of the composer of "Rigoletto," "Trovatore," and
+"Traviata" in its essence, though widely different from them in
+expression. The composer himself indicated that he desired it to be
+looked upon as outside of the old operatic conventions. According to its
+title page it is "Dramma lirico in quattro Atti." "Aïda" was still an
+"Opera in quattro Atti." The distinction was not undesigned. There are
+many other indications that he desired his work to be looked upon as
+something as far from old-fashioned opera as were Wagner's later dramas;
+that he aimed in the first instance at a presentation of its dramatic
+contents, and considered the music as a means, and not entirely as an
+end. In this he followed a Wagnerian precept. His score is filled with
+instrumental interludes designed to accompany actions or to depict
+emotions. He leaves no question in our minds on this point, but as fully
+as Wagner in his "Lohengrin" period he indicates the bodily movements
+that are to go hand in hand with the music. In the picture of a storm
+which opens the opera the manipulator of the artificial lightning is
+not left to his discretion as to the proper moment for discharging
+his brutum fulmen; in the love duet, at the close of the first act,
+the appearance of the moon and stars is sought to be intensified by
+descriptive effects in the music; and when, in the last scene, Otello
+kisses the sleeping Desdemona, and the one typical phrase of the opera
+(drawn from the love scene) is repeated, the composer indicates on what
+beat of each measure he wants each kiss to fall. These are only a few
+instances of Verdi's appreciation of the necessity of suiting the action
+to the music, the music to the action; and they sink into insignificance
+when compared with his treatment of the murder in the last act. Then
+Otello's entrance and actions up to the waking of Desdemona are
+accompanied by a solo on double basses, interrupted at intervals by
+energetic passages from the other strings. It is not difficult to recall
+other melodramas written since "Fidelio" in which similar dramatic
+effects are sought, but the audacity of Verdi's procedure is unexampled
+in Italian opera. I make no doubt that had this scene been written
+twenty years earlier it would have been received by his countrymen
+with hisses and catcalls. Yet we were told that at the opera's first
+performance in Milan the audience redemanded it uproariously and the
+Italian critics could not sufficiently express their admiration for
+it. The fact is that "Otello" disclosed an honest, consistent, and in
+many respects successful effort to realize the higher purposes which
+we associate in the conception of a lyric drama as distinguished from
+the opera. With this conception nationalism had nothing to do; Verdi's
+superb artistic nature, everything.
+
+In the season of 1888-89 there was but a single performance of Italian
+opera in New York, a circumstance singular enough to deserve special
+mention. On April 24th Signor Campanini appeared with Clementine De Vere
+in "Lucia di Lammermoor," the performance being for the once-popular
+favorite's benefit. Memories of a period in which Italian singers were
+tremendously active were called up in the minds of opera-goers of the
+older generation by an entertainment given in the Metropolitan Opera
+House on February 12th, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Max
+Maretzek's entrance in the American field as a conductor of operas. The
+affair was generously patronized and participated in on its professional
+side by Theodore Thomas, Anton Seidl, Frank van der Stucken, Adolf
+Neuendorff, and Walter Damrosch as conductors; Mme. Fursch-Madi, Miss
+Emily Winant, Miss Maud Powell, Rafael Joseffy, Max Alvary, Signor Del
+Puente, Julius Perotti, Wilhelm Sedlmayer, and Mrs. Herbert-Foerster.
+Scenes from "Siegfried," "Il Trovatore," and "Carmen" were performed.
+
+There were some performances of operas in English in the early part
+of the next season (1889-90) by the Emma Juch English Opera Company
+(Nessler's "Trumpeter of Säkkingen" being brought forward as a novelty),
+at the Harlem Opera House, owned and managed by Oscar Hammerstein. This
+house also, for a week after the close of the regular season at the
+Metropolitan, was the scene of an unsuccessful effort to prolong the
+German performances, or rather to provide German opera at popular
+prices to the residents of Harlem. The company, headed by Miss Lehmann
+and conducted by Walter Damrosch, was made up of singers from the
+Metropolitan company. The operas given were "Norma," "Les Huguenots,"
+and "Il Trovatore."
+
+The Italian company which took possession of the Metropolitan Opera
+House immediately on its vacation by the German singers was under the
+management of Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau. During the fall and
+winter months it had been giving representations in some of the larger
+cities of the United States and Mexico City. Arditi and Sapio were the
+conductors, and most of the singers were familiar to the public--Patti,
+Albani, Nordica, Fabbri, Ravelli, Vicini, Perugini, Del Puente,
+Castelmary, Novara, Migliara; newcomers were Hortense Synnerberg,
+mezzo-soprano; Signora Pettigiani, soprano leggiero; Zardo, barytone,
+and Francesco Tamagno, tenor. The presence of this singer in the troupe
+served to indicate that its purpose, outside the exploitation of Madame
+Patti, was the production of Verdi's "Otello," with which the season
+was opened on March 24th, Madame Albani being the Desdemona. Tamagno
+had created the title rôle in Milan two years before.
+
+The subscription was for sixteen evenings and four matinées, which
+were to be encompassed in a period of four weeks; but the illness of
+Madame Patti compelled a postponement of one of the performances until
+the fifth week after the opening, and then to the twenty subscription
+representations was added, a twenty-first as a "farewell" to Madame
+Patti. The operas in which this artist appeared were "La Sonnambula,"
+"Semiramide," "Lakmé," "Martha," "Lucia di Lammermoor," "Roméo et
+Juliette," "Il Barbiere," "Linda di Chamouni," and "La Traviata." The
+other operas were "Otello," "Il Trovatore," "Tell," "Aida," "Faust,"
+"L'Africaine," "Rigoletto," and "Les Huguenots."
+
+There was no novelty in the list, unless the fact that "Lakmé" was
+transformed into a novelty by the Italian version; it had been heard
+before in English, and the performance was so desperately slipshod,
+notwithstanding that Mme. Patti impersonated the heroine, that it
+awakened only pity for Delibes's work. It would be extremely interesting
+and doubtless instructive also were I able to give such a detailed
+financial statement of the outcome of this season as Mr. Stanton's
+courtesy enabled me at the time to give of the German seasons. But here
+I am thrown on conjecture. On the evenings and afternoons when Patti
+sang the audiences unquestionably represented vast receipts to the
+management. An estimate made at the time from a study of the character
+and size of the audiences placed the receipts in round numbers at
+$100,000. It was significant as bearing on the artistic problem
+suggested by the succession of German and Italian opera--a problem that
+was destined to become of paramount interest soon--that on scarcely
+a single Patti performance were all the orchestra stalls sold, and
+that there were always unsold boxes in the tier not occupied by the
+stockholders. The bulk of the money came from the occupants of the
+balconies and gallery. The musical and fashionable elements in the
+city's population had comparatively small representation. The audiences,
+in fact, were largely composed of curiosity seekers, impelled by the
+desire to be able in the future to say that they, too, had heard the
+greatest songstress of the last generation of the nineteenth century.
+The "Patti's Farewell" trick was still effective; a few years later it
+was found that it would work no longer, and the great singer disappeared
+in a black cloud of failure, followed by the grief of all who had been
+her admirers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+END OF THE GERMAN PERIOD
+
+
+The season of 1890-91 was full of incidents, some exciting, some
+amusing, but they were all dwarfed by the announcement which came in the
+middle of January that the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House had
+concluded a contract of lease with Henry E. Abbey (or Abbey and Grau)
+under which opera was to be given in the next season in Italian and
+French. The alleged reason was that Mr. Abbey was willing to assume
+all risk of failure for the same subvention which the stockholders as
+individuals were paying themselves in their capacity as entrepreneurs;
+the real reason was that the stockholders, or a majority of them, were
+weary of German opera, and especially of the dramas of Wagner. This
+reason spoke out of the action which had been taken looking to the
+eighth season of opera (seventh in German) before an agreement had been
+reached with Mr. Abbey. Wagner had supplied the financial backbone to
+all the seasons since German opera had been introduced, as will appear
+presently; but the directors were unwilling to admit that fact until, as
+a result of their change of policy, disaster stared them in the face.
+Then they made haste to reverse their action as far as possible and
+did other works of repentance which enabled them to save a modicum of
+prestige and some money; but the hands of the clock had been set back,
+and the goal of a national opera, toward which the German movement was
+leading, was forgotten. It has never been seen since.
+
+When Mr. Stanton went to Germany in the spring of 1890 to engage singers
+and select a repertory he carried with him a definite policy, formulated
+by the directors, which was the fruit of a sentimental passion for the
+amiable Italian muse and a spirit of thrift. Italian opera under their
+own management seeming still impracticable because of its expensiveness,
+the directors conceived what they thought would prove to be a happy
+compromise; they would continue to give German opera, but would make
+a radical change in the character of the repertory. Wagner was to be
+shelved as to all but his earlier operas, such as "Tannhäuser" and
+"Lohengrin," and the season enriched with new works by Italian and
+French composers. With this purpose in view, Mr. Stanton completed his
+arrangements, and the season of 1890-91 was opened on November 26th in
+a manner that looked like a bold and successful stroke in favor of the
+new policy. "Asrael," an opera by an Italian composer, which had stirred
+up some favorable comment in Germany and Italy, was given with a great
+deal of sumptuousness in stage attire and with a company which critics
+and amateurs agreed in recognizing as, on the whole, stronger than any
+of recent years. Mme. Lehmann-Kalisch was not at its head, it is true,
+but instead there was a singer of excellent ability and considerable
+personal and artistic charm in the person of Antonia Mielke. Emil
+Fischer was retained, and also Theodor Reichmann and some of the lesser
+members of the old company, and to them were added Heinrich Gudehus,
+Jennie Broch (soprano leggiero), Marie Ritter-Goetze (mezzo-soprano),
+Andreas Dippel, Marie Jahn (soprano), and others. Mme. Minnie Hauk
+joined the forces later in the season.
+
+"Asrael" was in every respect a surprise--as strange to the audience
+as if it had been composed for the occasion. The name of the composer,
+Alberto Franchetti, had never appeared in any local list save once, in
+April, 1887, when a symphony in E minor, bearing it, had been performed
+at a concert of the Philharmonic Society under the direction of Theodore
+Thomas. The Tribune newspaper contributed all that the public learned
+about him then and since. This was to the effect that he was a young
+Italian (or, rather, Italianized Hebrew), a member of one of the
+branches of the Rothschilds, who had studied in Munich and lived much
+of his time in Dresden, where Kapellmeister Schuch sometimes gave him
+opportunities to hear his orchestral music. Also that he was very
+wealthy, having a purse as large as his artistic ambition, and was
+not disinclined, when a work of his composition was accepted for
+performance, to care for its sumptuous production by paying for the
+stage decorations out of his own pocket. He resembled Meyerbeer in being
+a Jew, and also in that it was possible for his mother to say of him:
+"My son is a musical composer, but not of necessity." The book of the
+opera proved to be a most bewildering conglomeration of scenes and
+personages from familiar operas, and though the pictures were
+magnificent and much of the music was pleasing, "Asrael" had only five
+performances, and when the record of the season was made up it was
+found to stand thirteenth in a list of seventeen operas.
+
+At the bottom of this list stood the two other novelties of the season,
+and if the public were bewildered by "Asrael" they were thrown into
+consternation by "Der Vasall von Szigeth," and into contemptuous
+merriment by "Diana von Solange." Both of these operas were sung in
+German, of course, but "Der Vasall," not only had an Italian (Anton
+Smareglia) for its composer, like "Asrael," but had originally been
+composed in Italian and borne an Italian name--"Il Vassallo di Szigeth."
+Here plainly was a concession to the Italian predilections of the
+stockholders. But the composer of "Der Vasall," or "Il Vassallo"--as you
+like it--was a Dalmatian, like Von Suppe, the operetta composer. His
+native tongue was Italian, but the influence of Austrian domination and
+Austrian art had deeply affected his nationalism, and enabled him to
+infuse an Hungarian subject (the story of "Der Vasall" was Hungarian)
+with Hungarian musical color. It therefore chanced that in this
+instance, when the stockholders seemed to have bargained for Italian
+sweets, they got a strong dose of Magyar paprika. As for the libretto,
+it offered such a sup of horrors as had never been seen on an operatic
+stage before, and has never been seen since. "Der Vasall von Szigeth,"
+which was brought forward on December 12th, had four performances in the
+season and took in $7,805.50, which was probably not much more than the
+cost of staging the opera.
+
+The amused gossip touching the potency of new influences which had begun
+with "Asrael" was given fresh fuel by the production of "Diana von
+Solange." Why an opera which had lain "so lange" (to make an obvious
+German pun) in the limbo of forgotten things, which, indeed, had never
+enjoyed a popularity of any kind, though it was thirty or forty years
+old, should have been resurrected for production in New York was a
+question well calculated to irritate curiosity and provoke many an
+ill-natured sally of wit. "Diana von Solange" was the work of Ernest II,
+Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The family to which the duke belonged had
+long dallied with music; that the public knew. His ducal highness's
+brother, the British Prince Consort, affected the art in his time, and
+left evidences of good, sound taste in the story of English music, and
+it was known that the Duke of Edinburgh (son of the Prince Consort and
+Queen Victoria) was an amateur fiddler, quite capable of leading the
+band at a London smoking concert. A complacent German lexicographer had
+even admitted Ernest II into the fellowship of Beethoven, but that fact
+was not widely known, and after "Diana von Solange" had been produced
+the most cogent argument in explanation of its production among the
+theatrical wits was based on familiar German stories of the lavishness
+of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the distribution of orders,
+especially among musicians. No anecdote was more popular for the rest of
+the season in the corridors than that which told of how a concert party
+driving away from the ducal palace discovered that the chamberlain had
+handed over one more decoration than the artists who had entertained the
+duke. "Never mind," quoth the chamberlain; "give it to the coachman!"
+The production of an opera composed by the duke without the obbligato
+distribution of orders was inconceivable, even in democratic America,
+but the tongues of waggish gossips wagged so furiously that it was said
+only the stage manager was willing to accept his bauble. Brahms's bon
+mot touching the danger of criticizing the music of royalty, "because
+no one could tell who composed it," not being current at the time,
+the music of "Diana von Solange" was mercilessly faulted, as was also
+the libretto. It was certainly right royal poetry set to right royal
+music--an infusion of immature Verdi and Meyerbeer plentifully watered.
+Archaic research discovered that the opera had been written some
+thirty-five years before, and that the composer, possessing, quite
+naturally, some influence with the management of the ducal theaters at
+Coburg and Gotha, had succeeded in having it performed in those cities
+in December, 1858, and May, 1859, and that Dresden had also honored
+it with a performance in January, 1859. Why New York blew the dust of
+generations off its score was never learned by the inquisitive newspaper
+scribes.
+
+The story of the opera concerned itself with the succession to the
+throne of Portugal on the death of Enrique, with whom the old Burgundian
+line became extinct in 1580. A wicked man plotted to give the crown
+to Philip II of Spain (who really got it), and employed a Provençal
+adventuress to help keep it from the nephew of the dying king. But
+the adventuress, who lent her name to the opera, lost heart in the
+enterprise because she fell in love with the nephew and was stabbed
+to death for her pains. The wicked man was shot by the nephew, and
+there was thus a proper amount of bloodshed to justify the historical
+character of the work, the grewsomeness of which was modified by much
+edifying declamation on the part of the dying king, expressive of the
+lofty sentiments which, the world knows, always fill the breasts of
+monarchs. The opera was performed on January 9, 1891, and received two
+representations. A third was announced for a Saturday afternoon, but
+called forth so emphatic a popular request for "Fidelio" that the
+representative of the stockholders adjudged it to be the course of
+wisdom to set aside Ernest II in favor of Beethoven.
+
+For six weeks Mr. Stanton followed the line of policy laid down by his
+directors, and within that time brought forward the three novelties
+which I have described, besides "Tannhäuser," "Lohengrin," "The Flying
+Dutchman," "Les Huguenots," "Le Prophète," and "Fidelio." Already in the
+third week of the season, however, it became manifest that the policy
+of the directors did not meet with the approbation of the public. One
+result of the German representations in the preceding six years had
+been to develop a class of opera patrons with intelligent tastes and
+warm affections. A large fraction of this public had become season
+subscribers, and among these dissatisfaction with the current repertory
+was growing daily. It may be that the panicky feeling in financial
+circles had something to do with a falling off in general attendance in
+the early part of the season, but this is scarcely borne out by the fact
+that the advance subscription amounted to $72,000, representing about
+one thousand persons, and that, though the novelties would not draw, the
+three Wagnerian works proved to be as attractive as ever they had been.
+The significance of the popular attitude, indeed, was obvious enough,
+although the directors chose to close their eyes and ears to it. It
+was, in fact, so obvious that The Tribune newspaper did not hesitate to
+predict a tremendous success for "Fidelio" when it was announced "for
+one performance only" on December 26th, and to assert in advance of the
+performance that it would have to be repeated to satisfy the demand for
+good dramatic music which had grown up because of the Wagner cult and
+been whetted by Mr. Stanton's neglect to put on the stage a few works
+imbued with the modern dramatic spirit. Two repetitions of "Fidelio"
+and the lifting of that opera to fourth place in the list attested the
+soundness of The Tribune's diagnosis of the situation.
+
+By a coincidence, on the night of the first representation for the
+season of one of the latter-day works of Wagner, which, had the
+directors chosen to read the signs of the times aright and be guided
+by them, might have ushered in the era of prosperity which they were
+sighing for but repelling by their course, the decision was reached to
+turn over the opera house to Mr. Abbey for performances in Italian and
+French. This date was January 14th. So far as the subscribers to the
+opera and the majority of its patrons were concerned, this action of the
+directors seemed like nothing else than the culmination of a conspiracy
+to set back the clock of musical progress in New York a quarter of a
+century at least. The news came upon the public like a bolt from the
+blue. The plan had been laid early in the summer (was, in fact, the
+fruition of the postprandial Patti season of 1889-90), but all concerned
+had been pledged to secrecy. Mr. Abbey seized the right moment to
+strike, and when he had bagged his game he exhibited it forthwith, and
+it was received with a loud chorus of cheers from the enemies of the
+German institution. The directors gleefully continued their course for
+a little while longer, though the handwriting on the wall had begun to
+blaze forth when all the canons of art and the fruit of years of serious
+effort were insulted by the production of the amorphous creation of one
+whose sole claim on popular attention as a composer was that he was a
+royal duke and the brother-in-law of the Queen of England.
+
+At the first performance, after the announcement of the projected
+change had been made, the public took it upon themselves to show their
+disapproval of the action of the directors. There seemed to be but one
+way to do this effectually without injury to the form of art which the
+public had learned to love, and that way was adopted: After January
+14th not a single representation was conducted by Mr. Seidl at which
+the conductor was not compelled to appear upon the stage and accept
+a tribute of popular admiration. Mr. Seidl had come to be the
+representative in an especial manner of the new spirit as opposed to
+the directors, who, by their action, had shown that they stood for the
+old. And so the directors were rebuked in the honors showered upon the
+conductor. It needed as little prophetic gift to predict what course Mr.
+Stanton would pursue in view of the new developments as it had required
+to predict the success of "Fidelio" after the experiences of 1888-89 had
+seemed to indicate that the opera had lost all charm for the public. On
+January 20th, only six days after Mr. Abbey had captured the directors,
+The Tribune, commenting editorially on the "Operatic Revolution,"
+remarked:
+
+
+Financially Wagner must save this season or it will suffer shipwreck.
+Mr. Stanton knows that, and it is not a rash prediction to say that
+the whole unperformed list will be sacrificed from this time forth
+to the production of Wagner's works. The policy will be voted wise
+by the directors because it will go further than anything else to
+save the season; it will be welcomed by the public because of their
+disappointment with the novelties which a shortsighted policy attempted
+to foist upon them.
+
+
+The prediction was fulfilled to the letter; after January 20th
+thirty-five representations took place, and all but ten of them were
+devoted to Wagner's works, notwithstanding that within this period Mme.
+Minnie Hauk was added to the company and that the two operas in which
+she appeared ("L'Africaine" and "Carmen") proved more popular than any
+works of the non-Wagnerian list, with the single exception of "Fidelio."
+An amusing evidence of the enforced change of heart in the directors
+was a promulgation of an order requesting the occupants of the boxes to
+discontinue the conversation during performances which had grown to be a
+public scandal. The resolution to publish the order was adopted, either
+at the meeting of the directors at which the agreement was reached
+with Mr. Abbey, or the day after; the order bore date January 15; the
+contract with Mr. Abbey was made on January 14th.
+
+It is proper that I devote some attention to the story of the growth of
+the spirit which eventually overthrew German opera at the Metropolitan
+Opera House, or, rather, not German opera, but opera exclusively in the
+German tongue; for it was not long in developing that the new régime
+stood no show of success unless to Italian and French German opera was
+also added. The vicissitudes which brought with them this demonstration
+must be reserved for a subsequent chapter, but before I tell the story
+of the institution's retrogression I owe to the student of history
+an outline of the doings of the season 1890-91. The season began on
+November 26th and lasted till March 21st. There were sixty-seven
+subscription performances, an extra performance of "Fidelio" for the
+benefit of the chorus, which yielded $1,849, giving each chorister
+$18.20, and a Sunday night performance of excerpts from "Parsifal,"
+which brought in $1,872. I have enumerated the operas which had been
+given up to the production of "Diana von Solange"; after this date
+came "Die Meistersinger," "L'Africaine," "Siegfried," "Der Barbier von
+Bagdad," "Die Walküre," "Götterdämmerung," "Carmen," and "Tristan und
+Isolde." Arranged in the order of their popularity as indicated by
+attendance and receipts, the entire list was as follows: "Siegfried,"
+four times; "Tannhäuser," seven times; "Götterdämmerung," four times;
+"Fidelio," three times; "Die Meistersinger," six times; "Die Walküre,"
+four times; "Lohengrin," seven times; "Carmen," three times; "The Flying
+Dutchman," four times; "L'Africaine," three times; "Le Prophète," once;
+"Tristan und Isolde," three times; "Asrael," five times; "Barber of
+Bagdad," four times; "Les Huguenots," three times; "Der Vasall von
+Szigeth," four times; "Diana von Solange," twice. The total receipts for
+the season (box office sales and subscriptions) were $198,119.25; the
+average, $2,957.
+
+The last performance of the season was given to "Die Meistersinger"
+on a Saturday afternoon. The house was crowded from floor to ceiling
+and there were signs from the beginning that there was to be a large
+expression of public opinion. After the first and second acts there were
+calls and recalls for the singers and for Mr. Seidl. But this was but a
+preparation. After the fall of the curtain on the last act the multitude
+remained in the audience room for over half an hour (remained, indeed,
+till laborers appeared on the stage to get it ready for a concert in the
+evening), and called for one after another of the persons who were in
+one way or another representative of the system that was passing away.
+The greatest bursts of enthusiasm were those which greeted Mr. Stanton
+(whose sympathies were with the German movement), Mr. Seidl and Mr.
+Fischer, though Mr. Walter Damrosch, Mr. Habelmann, Mr. Dippel, Fräulein
+Jahn, and other singers were not neglected. Mr. Stanton's unwillingness
+to receive the distinction which the audience plainly wished to shower
+upon him caused disappointment; but Mr. Stanton stood in an awkward
+position between the stockholders and the public. Finally, after an
+unusual outburst of plaudits for Mr. Fischer, that singer came forward
+carrying a gigantic wreath and half a dozen bouquets and said:
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen: It is impossible for me to express what I feel
+for your kindness and love; and I hope it is not the last time (here
+a tremendous uproar interrupted the speaker for a space) that I shall
+sing for you here, on this stage, in German.
+
+
+Had one been able to explode a ton of dynamite when Mr. Fischer ended
+it would have been accepted by the audience as not more than a fitting
+amount of approbative noise. Twenty minutes later, the audience still
+clamoring for a speech, Mr. Seidl came forward, for perhaps the
+twentieth time, and spoke as follows:
+
+
+Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, I understand the meaning of this
+great demonstration. For myself, the orchestra, and the other members
+of the company, I thank you.
+
+
+To understand the story of the overthrow of German opera managed by the
+owners of the opera house, and the reversion to the system which had
+proved disastrous at the beginning and was fated to prove disastrous
+again, it is well to bear the fact in mind that instability was, is,
+and always will be an element in the cultivation of opera so long as it
+remains an exotic; that is, until it becomes a national expression in
+art, using the vernacular and giving utterance to national ideals. The
+fickleness of the public taste, the popular craving for sensation, the
+egotism and rapacity of the artists, the lack of high purpose in the
+promoters, the domination of fashion instead of love for art, the
+lack of real artistic culture--all these things have stood from the
+beginning, as they still stand, in the way of a permanent foundation
+of opera in New York. The boxes of the Metropolitan Opera House have
+a high market value to-day, but they are a coveted asset only because
+they are visible symbols of social distinction. There were genuine
+notes of rejoicing in the stockholders' voices at the measure of
+financial success achieved in the first three seasons of German opera,
+but the lesson had not yet been learned that an institution like the
+Metropolitan Opera House can only be maintained by a subvention in
+perpetuity; that in democratic America the persons who crave and create
+the luxury must contribute from their pockets the equivalent of the
+money which in Europe comes from national exchequers and the privy
+purses of monarchs. This fact did eventually impress itself upon the
+consciousness of the stockholders of the Metropolitan Opera House, but
+when it found lodgment there it created a notion--a natural one, and
+easily understood--that their predilections, and theirs alone, ought
+to be humored in the character of the entertainment. I have displayed
+a disposition to quarrel with the artistic attitude of the directors,
+but I would not be an honest chronicier of the operatic occurrences of
+the last twenty-five years if I did not do so. The facts in the case
+were flagrant, the situation anomalous. The stockholders created an
+art spirit which was big with promise while rich in fulfilment, and
+then killed it because its manifestation bored them. An institution
+which seemed about to become permanent and a fit and adequate national
+expression in an admired form of art, was set afloat again upon the
+sea of impermanency and speculation. About the middle of the fourth
+German season the directors formally resolved to continue the German
+representations. Not long afterward it developed that the receipts
+for the season would be considerably less than had been counted on,
+and immediately a clamor arose against the management. The champions
+of Italian opera joyfully proclaimed that the knell of German opera
+had rung, and attributed the falling off in popular support to the
+predominance of Wagner's operas and dramas in the repertory. The
+disaffection threatened mischief to the enterprise and had to be met;
+the directors met it by formally asking for an expression of opinion
+from the stockholders as to the future conduct of the institution. On
+January 21, 1888, they sent out a circular letter to the stockholders,
+in which they submitted two propositions, on which they asked for a
+vote. One was "To go on with German opera with an assessment of $3,200 a
+box"; the other, "To give no opera the next season, with an assessment
+of $1,000 a box, and to resume, if possible, the following season." The
+letter, which was signed by James A. Roosevelt, president, stated that
+the giving of Italian opera was not suggested because the directors
+"were convinced that to do so in a satisfactory manner will require a
+much larger assessment upon the stockholders than to give German opera."
+It was also set forth that the directors had estimated that the opera
+could be maintained for the assessment ($2,500 on each box), provided
+the receipts from the public amounted to $3,000 a performance. The
+subscription was 50 per cent. larger than the previous year (about
+$80,000, against $52,000), and larger receipts had been expected than
+in 1886-87, when the average was about $3,300. Instead, the receipts
+had fallen off and indicated an average of only $2,500. Rentals,
+however, had increased $14,000.
+
+The answer of the stockholders was a vote of over four to one in favor
+of continuing German opera under the first proposition of the circular
+letter. Then, while the Italinissimi were still proclaiming that
+the Metropolitan opera had been killed by Wagnerism, there came the
+announcement of two weeks of consecutive representations of the three
+dramas of "The Ring of the Nibelung" (all but the prologue), which were
+in the repertory of the company. The two weeks, and a third in which
+"Götterdämmerung" was performed three times, brought more money into
+the exchequer of the opera than any preceding five weeks of the season.
+The average of $2,500 apprehended by the directors was raised to over
+$3,177.
+
+During the next season the average receipts were practically the same,
+nor was there anything to change the situation from a financial point
+of view. The stockholders had voted themselves into a mood of temporary
+quiescence, and the opera pursued its serious course unhampered by more
+than the ordinary fault-finding on the part of the representations of
+careless amusement seekers in the public press, and the grumbling in
+the boxes because the musical director and stage manager persisted in
+darkening the audience room in order to heighten the effect of the
+stage pictures.
+
+The aristocratic prejudice against gloom extended to the operas which
+contained dark scenes, and when Mr. Stanton once exercised his authority
+as director and had the stage lights going at almost full tilt in the
+dungeon scene of "Fidelio," the effect of Florestan's exclamation,
+"Gott! welch' Dunkel hier!" upon an audience fully three-fourths of
+which was composed of Germans or descendants of Germans the ludicrous
+effect may be imagined. Many stories were current among the artists
+of the blithe indifference of the occupants of the boxes to artistic
+proprieties when they interfered with the display of gowns and jewels.
+One of them was that the chairman of the amusement committee of the
+directors had requested that the last act of "Die Meistersinger" be sung
+first, as it was "the only act of the opera that had music in it," and
+the boxholders did not want to wait till the end. The conduct of the
+occupants of the boxes now grew to be so intolerable that there were
+frequent demonstrations of disapproval and rebuke from the listeners
+who sat in the parquet and balconies. The matter became a subject for
+newspaper discussion; in fact, it had been such a subject ever since the
+loud laugh of a woman at the climacteric moment of "Fidelio" had caused
+Fräulein Brandt to break down in tears in the opening measures of the
+frenetically joyous duet, "O namenlose Freude!" In the course of this
+extraordinary discussion one of the directors boldly asserted the right
+of the stockholders in the boxes to disturb the enjoyment of listeners
+in the stalls. Not only did he repeal the old rule of "noblesse oblige,"
+but he also intimated that the payment of $3,000 acquitted the box owner
+and his guests of one of the simplest and most obvious obligations
+imposed by good breeding. At length the directors were forced to rebuke
+their own behavior. On the night of January 21, 1891, the following
+notice was found hung against the wall in each of the boxes:
+
+
+                                            January 15, 1891.
+Many complaints having been made to the directors of the Opera House
+of the annoyance produced by the talking in the boxes during the
+performances, the board requests that it be discontinued.
+                                By Order of the Board of Directors.
+
+
+This was the first sop to Cerberus after the directors had concluded a
+contract with Mr. Abbey, leasing the house to him a second time and
+substituting opera in Italian and French for opera in German. The public
+had begun to speak its mind, not only by making a mighty demonstration
+in honor of Mr. Seidl and the singers when a German opera was given,
+but in remaining away when the weak-kneed novelties were given; in
+requesting by petition a performance of "Fidelio" on a Saturday
+afternoon for which the opera by the royal composer had been set down,
+and in crowding the house and giving an ovation to the singers when
+their petition was granted. The next sop was to set aside all the works
+which it had been projected should take the place of the later dramas of
+Wagner, which the stockholders (or the majority of them) did not like,
+and to devote the remainder of the season almost exclusively to Wagner.
+The operas thus sacrified were Marschner's "Templer und Jüdin,"
+Massenet's "Esclarmonde," Lalo's "Le Roi d'Ys," Goetz's "Taming of the
+Shrew," and Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor." Not love of Wagner but
+fear of financial consequences dictated the step, which was successful
+in extricating the institution from the slough into which it had fallen.
+How much the Wagner operas and dramas did to keep the Metropolitan Opera
+House alive can be shown by the statistics of the last five German
+seasons, which I compiled at the close of the season of 1890-91, and
+printed in The Tribune of March 25th of the latter year. Here is the
+table:
+
+
+                      Season      Season      Season      Season      Season
+                     1886-1887   1887-1888   1888-1889   1889-1890   1890-1891
+Total
+representations .......... 61          64          68          67          67
+Wagnerian
+representations .......... 31          36          35          37          39
+Non-Wagnerian
+representations .......... 30          28          33          30          28
+Total
+receipts ........ $202,751.00 $185,258.50 $209,581.00 $204,644.70 $198,119.25
+Average
+receipts ........... 3,323.78    2,894.66    3,141.63    3,054.39    2,957.00
+Wagnerian
+receipts ......... 111,049.50  116,449.75  115,784.50  121,568.70  125,169.25
+Non-wagnerian
+receipts .......... 91,701.50   68,808.75   93,796.50   83,076.00   72,950.00
+Wagnerian
+average ............ 3,582.21    3,234.72    3,308.13    3,285.65    3,209.46
+Non-Wagnerian
+average ............ 3,056.71    2,457.45    2,842.32    2,769.20    2.605.37
+Average difference
+in favor of Wagner ... 525.50      777.27      465.81      516.45      604.09
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ITALIAN OPERA AGAIN AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+
+The figures which I have printed showing a loss to the stockholders of
+the Metropolitan Opera House on opera account year after year during the
+German period, do not tell the whole story of the financial condition
+into which the Metropolitan Opera House Company (Limited) had fallen.
+This condition had much to do with creating a desire on the part of the
+stockholders for a change of policy. The first German season cost the
+stockholders only about $42,000 above the amount realized from the box
+assessment, which was, I believe, $2,000--two-thirds of the sum that
+has ruled ever since. There were seventy stockholders, and in view of
+the loss made by Mr. Abbey the year previous this deficit was a trifle
+scarcely worth considering. The growth in popular interest as indicated
+by the support of the subscriptions for the season of 1890-91 was
+promising; but the stockholders themselves were not all prompt in
+meeting their obligations to their own organization. By 1890 there was
+an account of unpaid assessments amounting to $46,328. Of this, $21,112
+was canceled by the acquisition of two boxes by the company, but the
+balance sheet at the end of the last German season still showed $25,216
+due from stockholders on assessment account. The floating debt at this
+time amounted to $84,044.48. The prices of admission had been greatly
+reduced in the German years, and the capacity of the house, represented
+in money, was not more than fifty per centum of what it is to-day. The
+demands of singers were growing greater year after year, and were not
+lessened, as may easily be imagined, by the thrifty complacency of those
+German managers who granted furloughs to their singers in consideration
+of a share of their American earnings. Under the circumstances it is not
+to be wondered at that Mr. Abbey's agreement to give Italian and French
+opera at his own risk was alluring, especially to those who had never
+sympathized with the serious tendency of German opera.
+
+The contract of the directors for opera in the season of 1891-92 was
+made with Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau, who figured in all the
+announcements as the managers. With them was associated as silent
+partner Mr. John B. Schoeffel, of Boston, who had shared in all of Mr.
+Abbey's daring theatrical ventures since 1876, and, consequently, also
+in the unfortunate season of 1883-84, when Maurice Grau acted as manager
+at a salary of $15,000. Mr. Abbey's mind was not closed to the lessons
+of the German seasons. A few days after he had signed the contract he
+told me that he had had a project in contemplation to bring Materna,
+Winkelmann, Scaria, and others to America for Wagnerian opera before Mr.
+Thomas had brought them for concert work; that he looked upon German
+opera as more advantageous to the manager, not only on account of its
+smaller costliness, but, also, because it enabled a manager to adjust
+his singers to a repertory instead of the repertory to the singers. But
+he had speculated successfully with Patti under the "farewell" device,
+the managerial virus was again in his veins, and he cherished a foolish
+belief that, as one of the results of the German régime, he would
+be able to exact different service from the artists of Italian and
+French opera than they had been wont to give. On this point he was soon
+painfully disillusionized. Had it not been for the presence in his
+company of Mme. Lehmann, M. Lassalle, and the brothers Jean and Édouard
+de Reszke, whose instincts and training kept them out of the old
+Italian rut, his performances would never have gotten away from the old
+hurdy-gurdy list. As it was, when he wanted to give "L'Africaine," in
+order to present M. Lassalle in one of his most effective rôles, though
+he had Emma Eames, Marie Van Zandt, Albani, the sisters Giulia and
+Sophia Ravogli, Pettigiani, and Lillian Nordica in his company (the last
+hired specially for the purpose), he was obliged to ask Mme. Lehmann
+to learn the part of Selika. She did so, but the strain, combined with
+other things, broke down her health, and she was useless to her manager
+for the second half of the season. She had been engaged as a lure for
+the German element among the city's opera patrons, and to it also were
+offered propitiatory sacrifices in the shape of performances in Italian
+of "Fidelio," "The Flying Dutchman," and "Die Meistersinger" under the
+direction of Mr. Seidl. After the lesson had been still more thoroughly
+learned a German contingent was added to the Italian and French, and
+German opera was added to the list, making it as completely polyglot as
+it has ever been since. But before then many financial afflictions were
+in store for the enterprise.
+
+Mr. Abbey began his season December 14, 1891, after having given opera
+for five weeks in Chicago. In his company, besides the sopranos just
+named, were Mme. Scalchi and Jane de Vigne, contraltos; Jean de Reszke,
+Paul Kalisch, M. Montariol, and a younger brother of Giannini, tenors;
+Martapoura, Magini-Coletti, Lassalle, and Camera, barytones; Édouard de
+Reszke, Vinche, and Serbolini, basses, and Carbone, buffo. As conductor,
+Vianesi, known from the season of 1883-84, returned. The subscription
+season came to a close on March 12th, and presented thirty-nine
+subscription evening performances, thirteen matinées, three extra
+evenings, and one extra afternoon--in all, fifty-six representations.
+The list of operas contained not a single novelty, unless Gluck's
+"Orfeo," which had been heard in New York in 1866, and Mascagni's
+"Cavalleria Rusticana," which had been performed by two companies in
+English earlier in the season, were changed into novelties by use of the
+Italian text. But under such a classification Wagner's comic opera would
+also have to be set down as a novelty. The list included ten operas not
+in the repertories of the German companies, which had occupied the opera
+house between the two administrations of Mr. Abbey. Inasmuch as a new
+departure was signalized by this season, I present herewith a table of
+performances in the subscription season, with the extra representations
+mentioned:
+
+
+  Opera                                         First performance
+
+  "Roméo et Juliette" ............................ December 14
+  "Il Trovatore" ................................. December 16
+  "Les Huguenots" ................................ December 18
+  "Norma" ........................................ December 19
+  "La Sonnambula" ................................ December 21
+  "Rigoletto" .................................... December 23
+  "Faust" ........................................ December 25
+  "Aïda" ......................................... December 28
+  "Orfeo" and "Cavalleria Rusticana" ............. December 30
+  "Le Prophéte" .................................. January 1
+  "Martha" ....................................... January 2
+  "Lohengrin" .................................... January 4
+  "Mignon" ....................................... January 8
+  "Otello" ....................................... January 11
+  "L'Africaine" .................................. January 15
+  "Don Giovanni" ................................. January 18
+  "Dinorah" ...................................... January 29
+  "Hamlet" ....................................... February 10
+  "Lakmé" ........................................ February 22
+  "I Maestri Cantoni" ............................ March 2
+  "Carmen" ....................................... March 4
+
+
+The first and most obvious lesson of the season, so far as it was an
+index of popular taste, may be seen by a critical glance at the list of
+performances. A beginning was made on the old lines. The familiar operas
+of the Italian list were brought forward with great rapidity, but not
+one of them drew a paying house. The turning point came with the arrival
+of M. Lassalle on January 15th. Messrs. Abbey and Grau then recognized
+that salvation for their undertaking lay in one course only, which was
+to give operas of large dimensions, and in each case employ the three
+popular men who had taken the place in the admiration of the public
+usually monopolized by the prima donna--the brothers de Reszke, and M.
+Lassalle. How consistently they acted on that conviction is shown by the
+circumstance that, though seventeen operas had been brought out between
+December 14th and January 15th, only six were added to them in the
+remaining two months.
+
+It was not a "star" season in the old sense. The most popular artists
+were the three men already mentioned, but it required that they should
+all be enlisted together with Miss Eames and Mme. Scaichi to make
+the one "sensation" of the season--Gounod's "Faust," which had six
+regular performances, and two extra. Of the women singers the greatest
+popularity was won by Miss Eames, whose youthfulness, freshness of
+voice, and statuesque beauty, compelled general admiration. The
+smallness of her repertory, however, prevented her from helping the
+season to the triumphant close which it might have had if the company
+had been enlisted to carry out the policy adopted when the season was
+half over. Miss Eames's début was made on the opening night in Gounod's
+"Roméo et Juliette." In many ways she was fortunate in her introduction
+to the operatic stage of her people--her people, though she was born in
+China. She was only twenty-four years old, and there was much to laud in
+her art, and nothing to condone except its immaturity. Her endowments of
+voice and person were opulent. She appeared in the opera in which she
+had effected her entrance on the stage at the Grand Opéra in Paris less
+than three years before, and for which her gifts and graces admirably
+fitted her. She appeared, moreover, in the company of Jean de Reszke,
+who was then, and who remained till his retirement, in all things except
+mere sensuous charm of voice, the ideal Romeo. She came fresh from her
+first successes at Covent Garden, which had been made in the spring of
+the year, and disclosed at once the lovely qualities which, when they
+became riper, gave promise of the highest order of things in the way
+of dramatic expression. At the end of the period whose history I am
+trying to set down she was still one of the bright ornaments of the
+Metropolitan stage, though she had not realized all the promises which
+she held out at the close of the first decade of her career.
+
+Curiosity was piqued, and a kindly spirit of patriotism enlisted by
+the début of Miss Marie Van Zandt on December 21st. She, too, was an
+American, but she had been before the European public ten years, and
+had won as much favor as any American artist ever enjoyed in Paris.
+Mr. Abbey had pointed to her engagement (and that of Mme. Melba, whose
+star was just rising above the horizon) as a persuasive argument with
+the directors. Everything about the little lady, not excepting some
+unfortunate experiences which put an end to her Parisian career, invited
+to kindliness of utterance touching her début. Those of her hearers
+who had followed the history of opera in America for a score of years
+remembered her mother with admiration. Long before the days when every
+effort to produce opera in the vernacular was heralded as a great
+patriotic undertaking, Mme. Jenny Van Zandt headed companies which
+exploited as varied and dignified repertories as those of the German
+companies at the Metropolitan Opera House, barring the Wagnerian list.
+Miss Van Zandt, diminutive, but winsome in voice as well as figure,
+and ingratiating in manner, recalled an old observation about precious
+things being done up in small parcels. Her coming seemed to betoken the
+return of the day of small things. She appeared in "La Sonnambula," and
+it was not until two months had passed that the patrons of the opera
+were privileged to hear her in "Lakmé," the opera with which her name
+was chiefly associated in Paris. Meanwhile she appeared in "Martha,"
+"Mignon," "Don Giovanni," and "Dinorah," without rousing the public out
+of the apathy which it felt toward operas of their character. And when
+her battle-horse was led into the ring the task of sustaining interest
+in the season had fallen upon the shoulders of the masculine contingent
+in the company.
+
+Curious questionings were raised by the production of "Fidelio" and
+"Die Meistersinger" in Italian. It was generally recognized that Mr.
+Abbey offered them as sops to Cerberus; but the German element in the
+population, which they were designed to appease, plainly were lacking in
+that peculiar bent of mind necessary to understand why Beethoven's opera
+done in Italian with a cast one-half good was supposed by the management
+to be worth two-thirds more than the same opera done in a language which
+it could understand with a cast all good (two of the principals, Mme.
+Lehmann and Mr. Kalisch, being the same), during the preceding seven
+years. Was the Italian language sixty-seven per cent. more valuable
+than the German in an opera conceived in German, written in German, and
+composed in the German spirit by a German? The public thought not, and
+"Fidelio" had only two performances. A more kindly view was taken of
+the Italian "Meistersinger," Which enabled the Germans to give expression
+to their feelings by making demonstrations over Mr. Seidl. There was
+much to admire, moreover, in the singing and acting of Jean de Reszke
+as Walther, and M. Lassalle as Hans Sachs. There was nothing of the
+conventional operatic marionette in these men. One night while they and
+Édouard de Reszke were on the stage at the same time I expressed my
+admiration at the sight of three such fine specimens of physical manhood
+to Mme. Lehmann, who sat near my elbow in a baignoir.
+
+"Inspiring, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "and they might be as fine artists as they are
+men if they would but study."
+
+We all know that their American experience was as little lost on the
+brothers de Reszke as it was on Mme. Lehmann herself, who stepped into
+the foremost rank of tragic singers so soon as America offered her the
+opportunity to shuffle off the obligation of "singing princesses," as
+she called it.
+
+Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," the hot-blooded little opera which
+was destined to make so great a commotion in the world (had already
+begun to make it, indeed), had its first production at the Metropolitan
+Opera House on December 30th. The opera was no novelty, having already
+made an exciting career before the Metropolitan opera season opened;
+but there were two features of the performances calculated to live in
+the memory of serious observers as characteristic of the change in
+spirit which had come over the institution since the departure of the
+German artists: Miss Eames wore a perfectly exquisite accordion-pleated
+skirt as the distraught Sicilian peasant, and Signor Valero sang the
+siciliano on the open stage, the overture being stopped and the curtain
+raised so that he might sing his serenade to Lola with greater effect.
+He sang behind Lola's house, and winning a call in spite of his
+stridulous voice and singular phrasing, he stepped out from cover, bowed
+his acknowledgments, and, returning to his hiding place, serenaded his
+love over again. After he had come forward a second time Signor Vianesi
+found his place in the score and resumed the overture.
+
+"Cavalleria Rusticana" precipitated an amusing but extremely lively
+managerial battle when it reached New York. Those who watched the
+operatic doings of Europe were aware of the fact that the opera spread
+like wildfire from town to town immediately after its first success at
+Rome. Fast as it traveled, however, the intermezzo traveled faster.
+Seidl had seized upon it in the summer of 1891, and made it a feature of
+his concerts at Brighton Beach. Then came simultaneous announcements of
+the production of the opera by Rudolph Aronson and Oscar Hammerstein in
+the fall. Mr. Aronson wanted to open the season at the Casino with it,
+and let it introduce a change in the character of the entertainments
+given at that playhouse. Mr. Hammerstein had also announced the work,
+but he had no theater at his ready disposal. He thought Aronson was
+poaching on his preserves, and there began a diverting struggle for
+priority of performance, from which nobody profited and the opera
+suffered. Amid threats of crimination Aronson precipitated what he
+called a dress rehearsal of the work at the Casino in the afternoon of
+October 1, 1891. Like the king in the parable, he sent out into the
+highways, and bade all he could find in to the feast. Especially did
+his servants labor on the Rialto, and the affair had all the appearance
+of a professional matinée. Nothing was quite in readiness, but Mr.
+Hammerstein had announced his first performance for the evening of that
+day, and must be anticipated at all hazards. Yet there were singers
+and scenes and musicians in the orchestra, and Mr. Gustav Kerker to
+steer the little operatic ship through the breakers. On the whole, the
+performance was fair. Laura Bellini was the Santuzza of the occasion,
+Grace Golden the Lola, Helen von Doenhoff the Lucia, Charles Bassett the
+Truriddu, and William Pruette the Alfio. Heinrich Conried staged the
+production. In the evening Oscar Hammerstein pitchforked the opera on
+to the stage of the Lenox Lyceum--an open concert room, and a poor one
+at that. There was a canvas proscenium, no scenery to speak of, costumes
+copied from no particular country and no particular period, and a
+general effect of improvisation. But the musical forces were superior
+to Mr. Aronson's, and had there been a better theater the Casino
+performance would have been greatly surpassed. There was a really fine
+orchestra under the direction of Mr. Adolph Neuendorff, but it sat
+out on the floor of the hall, which reverberated like a drum. Mme.
+Janouschoffsky, an exceedingly capable artist, was the Santuzza, Mrs.
+Pemberton Hincks the Lola, Mrs. Jennie Bohner the Lucia, Payne Clarke
+the Turiddu, and Herman Gerold the Alfio. While all this pother
+was making, "Cavalleria Rusticana" was already three weeks old in
+Philadelphia, where Mr. Gustav Hinrichs had brought it forward with his
+American company at the Grand Opera House; Minnie Hauk, with a company
+of her own, had given it in Chicago the night before the New York
+struggle, and Emma Juch and her company were rushing forward the
+preparations for a production in Boston.
+
+"Cavalleria Rusticana" came upon the world like the bursting of a bomb,
+and its effect was so startling that it bewildered and confounded the
+radical leaders of musical thought. There were few, indeed, who retained
+calmness of vision enough to perceive that it was less a change of
+manner than of subject-matter, which had whirled the world off its
+critical feet. Outside of Italy there was no means of seeing the work
+of preparation which had preceded it. The annual output of hundreds of
+operas made no impression beyond the Alpine barrier, and it was easy to
+believe that the entire product was formed after the old and humdrum
+manner. No sooner had "Cavalleria Rusticana" broken down the old
+confines, however, than it was discovered that a whole brood of young
+musicians had been brought up on the same blood-heating food, and a
+dozen composers were ready to use the same formulas. Most of them,
+indeed, got the virus from the same apothecary who uttered the mortal
+drug to Mascagni--that is to say, from Amilcare Ponchielli. Had we but
+listened twenty-five years ago to "La Gioconda" as we are able to listen
+to "Cavalleria Rusticana," and its swift and multitudinous offspring
+now, we might have recognized the beginnings of what has been termed
+"Mascagnitis," not in an essentially new manner of musical composition,
+but in the appeal to the primitive passion for violence and blood which
+found expression in the operatic paraphrase of Victor Hugo's story,
+and the invitation which that passion extended to the modern musician
+suddenly emancipated from a lot of cumbersome formularies, and endowed
+with a mass of new harmonic and instrumental pigments with which to
+produce the startling contrasts and swift contradictions for which
+the new field of subjects clamors.
+
+Seventeen years ago "Cavalleria Rusticana" had no perspective. Now,
+though but a small portion of its progeny has been brought to our
+notice, we, nevertheless, look at it through a vista which looks like a
+valley of moral and physical death through which there flows a sluggish
+stream thick with filth, and red with blood. Strangely enough, in spite
+of the consequences which have followed it, the fierce little drama
+retains its old potency. It still speaks with a voice which sounds like
+the voice of truth. Its music still makes the nerves tingle, and carries
+our feelings unresistingly on its turbulent current. But the stage
+picture is less sanguinary than it looked in the beginning. It seems to
+have receded a millennium in time. It has the terrible fierceness of an
+Attic tragedy, but it also has the decorum which the Attic tragedy never
+violated. There is no slaughter in the presence of the audience, despite
+the humbleness of its personages. It does not keep us perpetually in
+sight of the shambles. It is, indeed, an exposition of chivalry, rustic,
+but chivalry, nevertheless. It was thus Clytemnestra slew her husband,
+and Orestes his mother. Note the contrast which the duel between Alfio
+and Turiddu presents with the double murder to the piquant accompaniment
+of comedy in "Pagliacci," the opera which followed so hard upon its
+heels. Since then piquancy has been the cry; the piquant contemplation
+of adultery, seduction, and murder amid the reek and stench of the
+Italian barnyard. Think of Cilea's "Tilda," Giordano's "Mala Vita,"
+Spinelli's "A Basso Porto," and Tasca's "A Santa Lucia!"
+
+The stories chosen for operatic treatment by the champions of verismo
+are all alike. It is their filth and blood which fructifies the music,
+which rasps the nerves even as the plays revolt the moral stomach. I
+repeat: looking back over the time during which this so-called veritism
+has held its orgy, "Cavalleria Rusticana" seems almost classic. Its
+music is highly spiced and tastes "hot i' th' mouth," but its eloquence
+is, after all, in its eager, pulsating, passionate melody--like the
+music which Verdi wrote more than half a century ago for the last act
+of "Il Trovatore." If neither Mascagni himself, nor his imitators, have
+succeeded in equaling it since, it is because they have thought too
+much of the external devices of abrupt and uncouth change of modes and
+tonalities, of exotic scales and garish orchestration, and too little of
+the fundamental element of melody, which once was the be-all and end-all
+of Italian music. Another fountain of gushing melody must be opened
+before "Cavalleria Rusticana" finds a successor in all things worthy of
+the succession. Ingenious artifice, reflection, and technical cleverness
+will not suffice even with the blood and mud of the Neapolitan slums as
+a fertilizer.
+
+Messrs. Abbey and Grau had no rival opera organizations to contend with
+at any time after they opened their doors, so they created a bit of
+competition themselves. In January they brought Mme. Patti and her
+operatic concert company into the house for a pair of concerts in which
+scenes from operas were sung in costume, the famous singer's companions
+being Mlle. Fabbri, M. Guille (tenor), Signor Novara (bass), and Signor
+Del Puente. The occasion offered an opportunity to study the impulses
+which underlie popular patronage. The entertainments being concerts,
+not operas, the stockholders were not entitled to their boxes under the
+terms of their contract with Abbey & Grau, and were conspicuous by their
+absence. Nevertheless, at the second concert, which took place on an
+afternoon, I estimated the audience at four thousand--nine-tenths women.
+Mme. Patti also appeared in performances of "Lucia di Lammermoor" and
+"Il Barbiere" in a supplementary season, one feature of which, on March
+31, 1892, was the production of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" in Italian,
+with M. Lassalle in the titular part, which he sang for the first time
+in his life. "A marvelous artist indeed is this Frenchman," was my
+comment in The Tribune, "and if he and the brothers de Reszke are in
+next year's company, the lovers of the lyric drama as distinguished from
+the old sing-song opera will look into the future without trepidation."
+Unhappily there was no "next year's company."
+
+In August, 1892, the Metropolitan Opera House had a visitation of fire,
+which brought operatic matters to a crisis, caused a postponement of
+the performance for a season, a reorganization of the corporation which
+owned the building, and a remodeling of the stage and portions of the
+interior of the theater. For a considerable space before the building of
+the Metropolitan the public mind was greatly exercised over the awful
+loss of life at recent theater fires, especially the destruction of the
+Ringtheater in Vienna. When Mr. Cady planned the New York house, he
+set about making it as absolutely fireproof as such a structure can be.
+It was to be non-combustible from the bottom up. There was not a stud
+partition in it. The floors were all of iron beams and brick arches, the
+masonry being exposed in the corridors, passages and vestibules, but for
+comfort having a covering of wood in the audience room. The roof was of
+iron and masonry, the outer covering of slate being secured to masonry
+blocks. The iron roof beams of over one hundred feet span, were mounted
+on rollers to allow for contraction and expansion. The ceiling of the
+audience room was of iron. The ornamental work of the proscenium, the
+tier balustrades, and the frames of the partitions between the boxes
+were all of metal. The stage was supported by a complex iron system
+of about four thousand light pieces so adjusted as to be removable
+in sections when it was desired to open the stage floor. Theater
+fires almost invariably originate on the stage, and, as an additional
+safeguard, Mr. Cady contrived an apparatus for flooding the stage in
+the case of a threatened conflagration. A large skylight was weighted
+to fall open in case of fire, and a great water tank placed over the
+rigging loft and connected with a network of pipes with apertures
+stopped with extremely fusible solder, so that the heat of even a
+small fire would open the holes and release a drenching shower.
+
+One after another these precautions were rendered inutile. The iron
+support of the stage troubled the stage mechanics, who wanted something
+that could be more easily handled, so wooden pieces were substituted for
+the iron. The location of the tank was such that the water was in danger
+of freezing in winter, and steam pipes were arranged to keep the water
+warm. Mr. Abbey did not like the expense of warming the water, and
+therefore emptied the tank. There was a fireproof curtain, which was
+cumbrous to handle, and Mr. Abbey's men chained it up. The commodious
+stage made a superb paint shop in summer, and Mr. Abbey used it for
+painting scenery for his other theaters. It was being thus used on
+August 27, 1892, when a workman carelessly threw a lighted match among
+the "green" scenery. It caught fire, the stage was burned out, and
+the auditorium sadly disfigured. When, eventually, the building was
+repaired, the interior of the theater, all that had suffered harm, was
+thoroughly remodeled, the stockholders' boxes were reduced to a single
+row, the proscenium was given its present shape, the apron of the stage
+was removed, and the stage itself was made more practicable in many
+ways. This did not happen, however, until the question whether or not
+the opera house should be restored to its original uses had occupied the
+minds of the stockholders and public for nearly a year. In the middle
+of the season Messrs. Abbey and Grau, while protesting that they were
+satisfied with the financial outcome of their venture, announced that
+they did not intend to give opera the next year. They were shaken in
+this determination, if they ever seriously harbored it, by the success
+of "Faust" and one or two other operas, which enlisted what in the next
+season of opera came to be called the "ideal cast." But there was a
+division of opinion as to the proper course for the future among the
+stockholders, especially after Mr. Abbey, late in September, sent word
+from London that his firm would not undertake opera in the United States
+without a subvention from the Metropolitan Opera Company. Also that he
+had already canceled his contracts with singers for the American season
+of 1892-93. There was some vague talk before this on the part of Mr.
+Schoeffel of a season of opera in Mexico City, and a longer season than
+usual in Chicago, the intimation plainly being that grand opera might
+be emancipated from dependence on the metropolis. One effect of this
+indecision was to bring forth a discussion of the feasibility of endowed
+opera in New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and one or two other
+of the large cities of the country. Another was to call into new life an
+agitation in favor of the establishment of another German company. The
+first project died of inanition; the second developed in another year
+into an actuality, which created more stir than the close of the opera
+house had done. The Metropolitan Opera Company reached a decision
+some time in January, 1893. The directors had neglected to insure
+the building against fire, and provision had to be made for funds to
+rebuild, as well as to pay off existing liabilities. The opera lovers
+among the stockholders reorganized the company under the style of the
+Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, and purchased the building
+under foreclosure proceeding for $1,425,000, then raised $1,000,000 by a
+bond issue, and the summer of 1893 was devoted to a restoration of the
+theater, an agreement having also been reached for a new lease to Mr.
+Abbey and his associates.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE ADVENT OF MELBA AND CALVÉ
+
+
+For the reasons set forth at the close of the last chapter there was no
+opera at the Metropolitan Opera House in the season of 1892-93, but the
+fall of the latter year witnessed the beginning of a new period, full
+of vicissitudes. With many brilliant artistic features, it was still
+experimental to a large extent on its artistic side, the chief results
+of its empiricism being the restoration of German opera in the repertory
+on an equal footing with Italian and French. It also brought the largest
+wave of prosperity to the house that it had experienced since its
+opening, yet ended in the shipwreck of the lessees, and disaster that
+was more than financial. The lessees were again Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel
+and Grau, with whom the reorganized Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate
+Company (Limited) effected an agreement, the essential elements of which
+remained unchanged for fifteen years; that is, down to the close of the
+season of 1907-08. The term was five years. The lessees took the house
+for an annual rental of $52,000, and pledged themselves to give opera
+four times a week for thirteen weeks in the winter and spring. The
+lessors paid back to the lessees the $52,000 for their box privileges,
+and to insure representations which would be satisfactory to them,
+reserved the right to nominate six of the singers, two of whom were
+to take part in every performance in the subscription list.
+
+The first season under the new lease was enormously successful, Abbey,
+Schoeffel, and Grau realizing about $150,000, including the visits to
+other cities, and a supplementary spring season of two weeks. They made
+great losses on their other enterprises, however, especially on Abbey's
+Theater (now the Knickerbocker), and the American tours of Mounet-Sully
+and Mme. Réjane. Like results attended the seasons of 1894-95, and
+1895-96, the drag in the latter instance being the Lillian Russell Opera
+Company, which, together with other ventures, brought the firm into
+such a financial slough that it made an assignment for the benefit of
+its creditors, who were forced to take over its business to protect
+themselves. Chief of these was William Steinway, who had accommodated
+Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau with loans to the extent of $50,000. Under
+his guidance as chairman of the committee of reorganization, the stock
+company, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Limited), was formed, he becoming
+president, and Henry E. Abbey, John B. Schoeffel, and Maurice Grau
+managing directors at a salary of $20,000 a year. Ernest Goerlitz, who
+had been in the employ of the firm for some time, was made secretary
+and treasurer. He remained in an executive capacity at the Metropolitan
+until the expiration of the consulship of Conried in 1908. Mr. Steinway
+got rid of the debts of the company (or, perhaps, it would be more
+correct to say, changed their character) by issuing certificates of
+stock and notes to the creditors. In this manner some of the principal
+artists of the company became financially interested in opera giving.
+
+Before the reorganized company began the next series of performances Mr.
+Abbey died, and the season was only a fortnight old when Mr. Steinway
+followed him into the grave. A very puissant personage in the managerial
+field was Mr. Abbey during a full quarter-century of theatrical life in
+America. He was a purely speculative manager, who never permitted his
+own likes or dislikes to influence him in his chosen vocation of
+purveying amusements, so-called, to the public, though his tastes led
+him generally into the higher regions, and there is little doubt that an
+inherent love for music for its own sake made him take to opera. As a
+young man in his native city of Akron, Ohio, where he was born in 1846,
+he played cornet in the town band. When he revoked his resolution never
+to embark in an operatic enterprise again after the disastrous season of
+1883-84, I met him in Broadway, and asked him about the artists he
+intended to bring to the Metropolitan Opera House. He gave me the names
+of those whom he had in view, and I expressed my regret that one, whom I
+admired very greatly indeed, was missing. His reply was prompt: "There
+is no woman in the world I would rather engage, and no woman whose
+singing gives me greater pleasure; but she doesn't draw. I never made
+any money with her." It was an illuminative observation. As a youth he
+was interested with his father in the jewelry business in Akron, and on
+the death of his father, in 1873, the business became his; but by that
+time he was already a theatrical manager, though on a small scale. In
+1869 he had assumed charge of the Akron theater. In 1876 he associated
+himself with John B. Schoeffel, and with him gradually acquired
+theatrical properties in several of the principal cities of the East,
+and entered upon enterprises of a character which were his undoing in
+the end. The Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau Company carried through the season
+of 1896-97 with a profit of about $30,000 in New York, despite the fact
+that the financial affairs of the country were in a bad way. A four
+weeks' season in Chicago, however, was ruinous, and Mr. Gran was
+compelled to fall back on some of the artists of the company and friends
+to enable him to bring the Chicago season to a close. Jean and Édouard
+de Reszke and Lassalle were among the subscribers to a guarantee fund of
+$30,000, which he needed to carry him through. All the guarantors were
+repaid in full, when, at the end of the season, the affairs of Abbey,
+Schoeffel & Grau (Limited) were wound up, and Mr. Schoeffel bought the
+principal asset, the Tremont Theater, in Boston. Thereupon Mr. Grau and
+his associates formed a new company, which gave opera under the
+conditions which seemed to have become traditional until the end of the
+season of 1902-3. Mr. Grau was compelled by ill health to withdraw from
+active duty before the end of the last season, and the story of his
+company's doings falls naturally into another chapter of this history.
+We must now survey the artistic incidents of the period between the
+reconstruction of the opera house and the beginning of the new régime.
+This will be the business of this and the following chapter.
+
+Simply for the sake of convenience in the record, I shall devote the
+chief statistical attention in the remaining chapters of this history to
+the subscription seasons, and discuss the supplementary spring seasons
+only as they offer features of special interest. The seasons, generally
+a fortnight long, and given after the return of the singers from visits
+to Boston and Chicago, are distinguished from the subscription seasons
+very much as the fall seasons in London are from the summer seasons,
+though there is not the sharp line of demarcation so far as fashion
+goes, which the adjournment of Parliament makes on the other side of
+the Atlantic.
+
+The tenth regular season of opera then began at the Metropolitan Opera
+House on November 27, 1893, and ended on February 24, 1894. Officially
+the languages of the performances were Italian and French, but the
+operas given were, for the greater part, French and German, and the
+representations were dual in language in all cases, except the Italian
+works. I mention this fact, not because of its singularity, for it is a
+familiar phenomenon all over the operatic world, except perhaps Italy,
+but in order to point out hereafter a betterment, which came in with
+a more serious artistic striving later. The chorus always sang in the
+"soft bastard Latin," whether the principals sang in Italian or French;
+and the occasions were not a few when two languages were sung also
+by the principals--when lovers wooed in French, and received their
+replies in Italian, thus recalling things over which Addison made
+merry generations ago. The season was planned to embrace thirty-nine
+subscription nights and thirteen matinées. To these were added two
+matinées and sixteen evening representations, two of the latter
+being for the benefit of popular charities. In all, New York had
+sixty performances of opera within the period covered by the regular
+subscription, which was a smaller number than had been shown by any
+season since that of 1886-87. Eighteen operas were brought forward in
+full (that is to say, without more than the conventional cuts), and
+parts of three others. Thus of "La Traviata," though I have included it
+in the list to be presented soon, only the first and fourth acts were
+performed. There was not a single opera in the repertory which had not
+been heard in New York before, though several were new to the house.
+The nearest approach to a novelty was Mascagni's "L'Amico Fritz," which
+disappeared from the list after two representations, and had been heard
+at an improvised performance, which scarcely deserves to be considered
+in a record of this character. In the supplemental season, however,
+a novelty of real pith and moment was brought forward in the shape
+of Massenet's "Werther," which had been promised to the regular
+subscribers, and which, while it made no profound impression, was
+accepted as an earnest of the excellent and honorable intentions of the
+managers, and a proof of the difficulties which hampered them at times.
+
+The principal members of the company were Mesdames Melba, Calvé,
+Eames, Nordica, Arnoldson, Scalchi, and Mantelli, and Messrs. Jean and
+Édouard de Reszke, de Lucia, Vignas, Ancona, Plançon, Castelmary, and
+Martapoura. The subscription for the season amounted to $82,000, which
+was $10,000 more than the largest subscription in the German period. A
+great ado was made over this fact by the managers and their friends. Not
+unnaturally the lovers of German opera took up the cudgels against the
+Italianissimi, and pointed out the indubitable fact that owing to the
+difference in prices of admission and seats the subscription, instead of
+showing a large advance in popular interest, indicated a falling off to
+the extent of an attendance of six thousand in the season. Not money,
+but attendance, they argued, was the real standard of popularity. The
+managers also very unwisely, as it proved (since two years later they
+found themselves obliged to include German performances in their
+scheme), put forward a public boast that the receipts for the last
+month of the opera "nearly equaled the average gross receipts for the
+entire term of any German opera ever given in New York." Of course, the
+reference went only to the German seasons at the Metropolitan Opera
+House, for there was no record that could be consulted touching the many
+sporadic German enterprises of the earlier periods at the Academy of
+Music and other theaters. It was not at all unkind, but simply in the
+interest of historical verity that in The Tribune I called attention
+to the fact that it was scarcely ingenuous in Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau
+to choose the last month in the season for the comparison, for in that
+month there were twenty-two representations, including two for popular
+charities (at one of which, managed by the opera house directors, the
+public contributed $22,000), and six representations of "Carmen," which,
+with Mme. Calvé in the principal character, was enjoying the most
+sensational triumph ever achieved by any opera or singer. Moreover, most
+of 'these performances were outside the subscription, and the prices,
+as I have repeatedly said, were nearly double those which prevailed
+during the German régime. Besides, it was an easy task to prove from the
+figures which I had printed from year to year in my "Review of the New
+York Musical Season," that, in order to surpass the German record with
+their last month, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau would have had to show average
+nightly receipts of over $9,000, whereas only once had they, in a spirit
+of boastfulness, claimed that as much as $11,000 had been taken at a
+single performance, and that at a phenomenal "Carmen" matinée. Without
+Calvé and "Carmen" the bankruptcy which came two years later might have
+been precipitated in this season. Thanks to Bizet's opera, and its
+heroine, and the popularity of Mme. Eames and the brothers de Reszke in
+"Faust," the season was prodigiously successful, the receipts from all
+sources (including the Sunday night concerts and opera in Philadelphia
+and Brooklyn) being in the neighborhood of $550,000, and the profits,
+as I have already said, $150,000. The twelve performances of "Carmen,"
+I make no doubt, brought at least $100,000 into the exchequer of the
+managers in the subscription season, and in the supplemental post-Lenten
+season of a fortnight there were three performances more. The success of
+the opera remained without a parallel in the history of opera in New
+York till the coming of Wagner's "Parsifal."
+
+Mme. Melba effected her entrance on the operatic stage in America on
+December 4, 1893, in Donizetti's "Lucia." Five years before she had made
+her London début in the same opera, and between that time and her coming
+to New York she had won fragrant laurels in Paris in company with the
+brothers de Reszke and M. Lassalle in "Roméo et Juliette" and "Faust,"
+both of which operas she had prepared with the composer. Her repertory
+was small when she came, but in it she was unique, both for the quality
+of her voice and the quality of her art. She did not make all of her
+operas effective in her first season, partly because a large portion
+of the public had been weaned away from the purely lyric style of
+composition and song, in which she excelled, partly because the dramatic
+methods and fascinating personality of Mme. Calvé had created a fad
+which soon grew to proportions that scouted at reason; partly because
+Miss (not Mme.) Eames had become a great popular favorite, and the
+people of society, who doted on her, on Jean de Reszke, his brother
+Édouard, and on Lassalle, found all the artistic bliss of which they
+were capable in listening to their combined voices in "Faust." So
+popular had Gounod's opera become at this time with the patrons of the
+Metropolitan Opera House, that my witty colleague, Mr. W. J. Henderson,
+sarcastically dubbed it "das Faustspielhaus," in parody of the popular
+title of the theater on the hill in the Wagnerian Mecca.
+
+When Mme. Melba came she was the finest exemplar of finished
+vocalization that had been heard at the opera house since its opening,
+with the single exception of Mme. Sembrich. Though she had been singing
+in opera only five years, she had reached the zenith of her powers.
+Her voice was charmingly fresh, and exquisitely beautiful. Her
+tone-production was more natural, and quite as apparently spontaneous,
+as that of the wonderful woman who so long upheld the standard of bel
+canto throughout the world. In the case of Mme. Patti, art had already
+begun to be largely artifice, a circumstance that needed to cause no
+wonder inasmuch as her career on the operatic Stage already compassed
+a full generation; but Mme. Melba neither needed to seek for means nor
+guard against possible mishap. All that she needed--more than that:
+all that she wanted to humor her amiable disposition to be prodigal in
+utterance--lay in her voice ready at hand. Its range was commensurate
+with all that could be asked of it, and she moved with greatest ease
+in the regions which most of her rivals carefully avoided. To throw
+out those scintillant bubbles of sound which used to be looked upon as
+the highest achievement in singing seemed to be an entirely natural
+mode of expression with her. With the reasonableness of such a mode
+of expression I am not concerned now; it is enough that Mme. Melba
+came nearer to providing it with justification than any one of her
+contemporaries of that day, except Mme. Sembrich, or any of her
+contemporaries of to-day. Added to these gifts and graces, she disclosed
+most admirable musical instincts, a quality which the people had been
+taught to admire more than ever while they were learning how to give
+reverence due to the dramatic elements in the modern lyric drama.
+
+I have already intimated that Mme. Melba's operas found little favor
+with the public compared with "Carmen" and "Faust," and, perhaps, there
+was in this more than a mere indication of the educational influence
+left by the German period. I should have no hesitation whatever in
+saying so had not the "Carmen" craze reached proportions which precluded
+the thought that artistic predilections or convictions had anything to
+do with it. So much of a mere fad did Mme. Calvé in "Carmen" become that
+the public remained all but insensible to the merits of her immeasurably
+finer impersonation of Santuzza in "Cavalleria Rusticana." It was in
+Mascagni's opera that she effected her début on November 29, 1893, in
+company with Señor Vignas, a Spanish tenor, squat and ungraceful of
+figure, homely of features, restricted in intelligence, and strident of
+voice. New York knew very little of Mme. Calvé when she came, though
+she had already been twice as long on the stage as Mme. Melba, and even
+after her first appearance Mr. Abbey met my congratulations on her
+achievement with a dubious shake of the head, and the remark that, while
+he hoped my predictions touching her popularity would be fulfilled,
+he placed a much lower estimation on her powers than I. Not he, but
+Mr. Grau, was responsible for her engagement, and his hopes were all
+centered on Mme. Melba. Like most of our singers at the time, Calvé
+came to New York by way of London. The rôle of Santuzza, which she had
+created in Paris in January, 1892, and in London in the following May,
+had been hailed with gladness in both cities, but her Carmen was as
+inadequately appreciated in Paris as it was overestimated in New York
+and London, especially in later years, when the capriciousness which
+led her originally to break away from some of the traditions of the
+rôle created by Galli-Marié. and thus cost her the understanding of
+the Parisians, had become a fixed habit, which she pursued regardless
+of decent moderation, sound principles, and good taste.
+
+The Parisians attested their artistic Bourbonism not only in declining
+to recognize the excellence of the good features of Calvé's Carmen, but,
+also, in failing to appreciate her touchingly beautiful Ophelia, to
+the great grief of Ambroise Thomas, who went to Italy to see her in the
+part, and believed that had she but been given the proper support in
+Paris "Hamlet" would have ranked with "Faust" in popularity. Of course,
+this was a fond composer's too good opinion of his opera, but the trait
+of the Paris public which is unwilling to find merit in any change from
+a performance which first won their admiration has frequently stood
+in the way of first-class talent. To illustrate this I can relate an
+anecdote which was repeated to me at an artistic dinner table in the
+French capital in 1886. It is not for me to vouch for the truth of the
+story, but give it as it was told to me in explanation of some amused
+comments which I had made on the stiff conventionality of a performance
+of "L'Africaine" which I had witnessed at the Grand Opéra. Faure, the
+original of Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, had been succeeded in the rôle by
+Lassalle, whose fine art in newer works had met with full recognition
+from press and public. To Lassalle's great surprise, his Hamlet, a
+remarkably fine performance within the limit set by the pitiable
+operatic travesty of Shakespeare's play, was received coldly, and there
+was wide comment on the circumstance that he had ignored traditions of
+performance, especially in the scene between the Prince and his mother.
+In considerable distress he went to Faure, who had set the fashion:
+
+"What pose, gesture, effect of yours is it that I have failed to copy?"
+he asked of his confrère.
+
+And Faure explained:
+
+At the first performance when he reached the scene in question, he had
+found his throat suddenly clogged. Only by an act neither pleasant to
+observe nor polite to describe, could he remove the obstruction, and at
+a supreme moment he had improvised a movement which carried his face out
+of sight of the audience, so that he might free his throat unnoticed.
+Knowing nothing of the cause, the public applauded the effect, and the
+singular nuance became a part of the "business" of the piece.
+
+When Mme. Calvé flashed upon New York in "Cavalleria Rusticana,"
+her impersonation startled me into the declaration that no finer
+lyrico-dramatic performance had been witnessed in America within a
+generation. Unhesitatingly I placed it by the side of Materna's
+Brünnhilde, Brandt's Fidès, Niemann's Tristan and Siegmund, and
+Fischer's Hans Sachs, without, of course, presuming to compare the
+relative value of the dramatists' conceits. Even now I cannot recall
+anything finer in the region of combined action and song. She held her
+listeners so completely captive and swayed them so powerfully that she
+compelled even the foolishly and affectedly frantic claquers, who had
+seats near the stage, to hold their peace. They could only make their
+boisterous clamor in response to the old-fashioned appeal made by
+a high tone screeched by the stridulous tenor. There was as little
+conventionality in her singing as in her acting, though she had not
+yet adopted that indifference to rhythm which has marked her singing
+in more recent years. She saturated the music with emotion. Much of it
+she seemed to sing to herself, declaiming it like dramatic speech whose
+emotional contents had been raised to a higher power by the melody. In
+moments of extreme excitement one scarcely realized that she was singing
+at all. Carried along by the torrent of her feelings, her listeners
+accepted her song as the only proper and efficient expression for her
+emotional state. The two expressions, song and action, were one; they
+were mutually complemental. It was not nature subordinated to art, but
+art vitalized by nature. It is not possible for me to compare her
+Carmen with Galli-Marié's, which stood in the way of her appreciation
+in the part in Paris. I have heard that that was so frank in one of
+its expressions that it invited the interference of the Prefect of the
+Seine. To me, at least, in Mme. Calvé's impersonation, it seemed that
+I was enjoying my first revelation of some of the elements of the
+character of the gypsy as it had existed in the imagination of Prosper
+Mérimée when he wrote his novel. To me she presented a woman thoroughly
+wanton and diabolically equipped with the wicked witcheries which
+explained, if they did not palliate, the conduct of Don José. Here we
+had a woman without conscience, but also without the capacity for even
+a wicked affection; a woman who might have been the thief whom the
+novelist describes, who surely carried a dagger in her corsage, and who
+in some respects left absolutely nothing to the imagination, to which
+even a drama like "Carmen" makes appeal. She came upon the stage as
+Mérimée's heroine stepped into his pages: "poising herself on her
+hips, like a filly from the Cordovan stud," and with a fine simulation
+of unconsciousness, she seemed every moment about to break into one of
+those dances which the satirist castigated in the days of the Roman
+Empire:
+
+  Nec de Gadibus improbis puellae
+  Vibrabunt sine fine prurientes
+  Lascivos docili tremore lumbos.
+
+Alas! Mme. Calvé's admiration for herself was stronger than her devotion
+to an artistic ideal, and it was not long before her Carmen became
+completely merged in her own capricious personality.
+
+Massenet's "Werther" (performed in Chicago, March 29) had its first New
+York performance at the Metropolitan, April 19, 1894, with Mme. Eames,
+Sigrid Arnoldson, Jean de Reszke, M. Martapoura, and Signor Carbone.
+Signor Mancinelli conducted. The opera had one performance, and was
+repeated once in the season of 1896-97. Then it disappeared from the
+repertory of the Metropolitan, and has since then not been thought of,
+apparently, although strenuous efforts have been made ever and anon
+to give interest to the French list. I record the fact as one to be
+deplored. "Werther" is a beautiful opera; as instinct with throbbing
+life in every one of its scenes as the more widely admired "Manon" is in
+its best scene. It has its weak spots as have all of Massenet's operas,
+despite his mastery of technique, but its music will always appeal
+to refined artistic sensibilities for its lyric charm, its delicate
+workmanship, its splendid dramatic climax in the duo between Werther
+and Charlotte, beginning: "Ah! pourvu que de voie ces yeux toujours
+ouverts," and its fine scoring. It smacks more of the atmosphere of
+the Parisian salon than of the sweet breezes with which Goethe filled
+the story, but no Frenchman has yet been able to talk aught but polite
+French in music for the stage, Berlioz excepted, and the music of
+"Werther" is of finer texture than that of most of the operas produced
+by Massenet since.
+
+The season of 1894-95, consisting again of thirteen weeks, began on
+November 19th, and closed on February 16th. It was marked by a number of
+incidents, some of which made a permanent impression on the policy of
+the Metropolitan Opera House. Chief of these was a remarkable eruption
+of sentiment in favor of German opera--so vigorous an eruption,
+indeed, that it led to the incorporation of German performances in
+the Metropolitan repertory ever after, though the change involved a
+much greater augmentation of the forces of the establishment than the
+consorting of French with Italian had involved. To this I shall give
+the attention which it deserves presently. Other features were the
+introduction of Saturday night performances of opera at reduced prices
+(a feature which became permanent), the appearance of several new
+singers, and the production of two novelties, one of them Verdi's
+"Falstaff," of first-class importance.
+
+In their prospectus the managers promised a reformation of the chorus,
+and announced the re-engagement of "nearly all the great favorites
+of last year." The improvement of the chorus was not particularly
+noticeable except in appearance; a number of young and comely American
+women were enlisted, but their best service was to stand in front of the
+old stagers who knew the operas, and could sing but who seemed to have
+come down through the ages from the early days of the old Academy. The
+phrase "nearly all" was an ominous one, for it betokened the absence
+from the company of Mme. Calvé. The newcomers were Lucille Hill, Sybil
+Sanderson, Zélie de Lussan, Mira Heller, and Libia Drog, sopranos; G.
+Russitano and Francesco Tamagno, tenors, and Victor Maurel, who had been
+a popular favorite twenty years before at the Academy of Music. Luigi
+Mancinelli and E. Bevignani were the conductors, and Mr. Seidl was
+engaged to give éclat to the Sunday evening concerts. Mme. Melba's chief
+financial value to the management in the preceding season had been found
+to lie in these concerts, which this year were begun earlier than usual,
+and made a part of Melba's concert tour. The first opera was "Roméo et
+Juliette," with the cast beloved of society, and on the second night
+the introduction of the newcomers began. But woefully. The opera was
+"William Tell," and Signorina Drog sang the part of the heroine in place
+of Miss Hill, indisposed. Mathilde (or Matilda--the opera was sung in
+Italian), does not appear in the opera until the second act, and then
+she has the most familiar air in the opera to sing--"Selva opaca," an
+air which then belonged to the concert-room repertory of most florid
+sopranos. When Signorina Drog came upon the stage, it is safe to say
+that no one regretted her substitution for the English singer except
+herself. She was an exceedingly handsome person, who moved about with
+attractive freedom and grace, and disclosed a voice of good quality,
+especially in the upper register. She began her aria most tastefully,
+but scarcely had she begun when her memory played her false. For a few
+dreadful seconds she tried to pick up the thread of the melody but in
+vain. Then came the inevitable breakdown. She quit trying, and appealed
+pitifully to Signor Mancinelli for help. He seemed to have lost his
+head as completely as the lady had her memory. So had the prompter, who
+pulled his noddle into his shell like a snail and remained as mute.
+Signor Tamagno entered in character, and indulged in dumbshow to a few
+detached phrases from the orchestra. Then the awfulness of the situation
+overwhelmed him, and he fairly ran off the stage, leaving Matilda alone.
+That lady made a final appeal to the conductor, switched her dress
+nervously with her riding whip, went to the wings, got a glass of water,
+and then disappeared. The audience, which had good-humoredly applauded
+till now, began to laugh, and the demoralization was complete. It would
+have been a relief had the curtain fallen, but as this did not happen
+Signor Tamagno, Signor Ancona, and Édouard de Reszke came upon the stage
+and began the famous trio, in which Signor Tamagno sang with tremendous
+intensity and power. It was a remarkable performance of a sensational
+piece, and had it not been preceded by so frightful a catastrophe, and
+interrupted by Tamagno himself to bow his acknowledgments, pick up a
+bunch of violets thrown from a box, and repeat his first melody, its
+effect would have been dramatically electrifying. There was a long wait
+after the act to enable Signor Mancinelli to arrange the necessary cuts,
+and after the stage manager had made an apology on behalf of Signorina
+Drog, and explained that she had been seized with vertigo, but would
+finish the opera in an abbreviated form, the representation was resumed.
+It is due to the lady to add that she had never before attempted to sing
+the part, and that on the third evening she materially redeemed herself
+in "Aïda." Miss de Lussan, a native of New York, who had begun her
+operatic career a few years before in the Boston Ideal Opera Company,
+and had won a commendable degree of favor at Covent Garden as Carmen,
+had been engaged in the hope of continuing the prosperous career of
+Bizet's opera, but the hope proved abortive. It was the singer, not the
+song, which had bewitched the people of New York--Calvé, not Bizet.
+"Carmen" was excellently given, the charm of Melba's voice being called
+on for the music of Micaela's part; but the sensation had departed, and
+was waiting to be revived with the return of Calvé in the succeeding
+season.
+
+The first novelty in this season was "Elaine," an opera in four acts,
+words by Paul Ferrier, music by Herman Bemberg, brought forward on
+December 17, 1894. "Elaine" was produced because Mme. Melba and the
+brothers de Reszke wanted to appear in it out of friendship for the
+composer, who had dedicated the score to them, and come to New York to
+witness the production, as he had gone to London when it was given in
+Covent Garden. In America Bemberg was a small celebrity of the salon and
+concert room. His parents were citizens of the Argentine Republic, but
+he was born in Paris, in 1861. His father being a man of wealth, he
+had ample opportunity to cultivate his talents, and his first teachers
+in composition were Bizet and Henri Maréchal. Later he continued his
+studies at the Conservatoire, under Dubois and Massenet. In 1885 he
+carried off the Rossini prize, and in 1889 brought out a one-act opera
+at the Opéra Comique, "Le Baiser de Suzon," for which Pierre Barbier
+wrote the words. "Elaine" had its first performance at Convent Garden in
+July, 1892, with Mme. Melba, Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and M. Plançon
+in the cast. It was then withdrawn for revision, and restored to the
+stage the next year. If there is anything creditable in such a thing it
+may be said, to Mr. Bemberg's credit, that, so far as I know, he was the
+first musician who wrote music for Oscar Wilde's "Salome." The public,
+especially the people of the boxes, lent a gracious ear to the new
+opera, partly, no doubt, because of its subject, but more largely
+because of Mme. Melba, Mme. Mantelli, the brothers de Reszke, Plançon,
+and M. Castelmary, who were concerned in its production. All of Mr.
+Bemberg's music that had previously been heard in New York was of the
+lyrical order, and it seemed but natural that he was less successful in
+the developing of a dramatic situation than in hymning the emotions of
+one when he found it at hand. A ballad in the first act ("L'amour est
+pur comme la fiamme"), the scene at the close ("L'air est léger"), a
+prayer in the third act ("Dieu de pitié"), and the duets which followed
+them are all cases in point. They mark the high tide of M. Bemberg's
+graceful melodic fancy, and exemplify his good taste and genuineness of
+feeling. It is not great music, but it is sincere to the extent of its
+depth. For the note of chivalry which ought to sound all through an
+Arthurian opera M. Bemberg has chosen no less a model than "Lohengrin";
+but his trumpets are feebler echoes of the original voice than his
+harmonies on several occasions, as, for instance, the entrance of
+Lancelot into the castle of Astolat. In general his instrumentation
+is discreet and effective. He has followed his French teachers in the
+treatment of the dialogue, which aims to be intensified speech. He
+has also trodden, though at a distance, in the footsteps of Bizet and
+Massenet in the device of using typical phrases; but so timidly has this
+been done that it is doubtful if it was discovered by the audience. The
+resources of the opera house in reproducing the scenes of chivalric life
+were commensurate with the music of the opera in its attempt to bring
+its spirit to the mind through the ear. It is more exciting to read of
+a tournament in Malory than to see a mimic one on the stage. It is true
+that there were men on horses who rode together three times, that a
+spear was broken, and that they afterward fought on foot; but they
+struck their spears together as if they had been singlesticks, instead
+of receiving each his opponent's weapon on his shield, and when the
+spear broke it was not all "toshivered." Then, when they had drawn their
+swords, they did not "lash together like wild boars, thrusting and
+foining and giving either other many sad strokes, so that it was marvel
+to see how they might endure," as the gentle Sir Thomas would doubtless
+have had them do. Still, the opera was enjoyed and applauded, as it
+deserved to be for the good things that were in it, and the Lily Maid
+had more lilies and roses and holly showered about her than she could
+easily pick up and carry away.
+
+Miss Sybil Sanderson, who had gone to Paris from the Pacific Slope some
+years before, and had achieved considerable of a vogue, particularly
+in Massenet's operas, made her American début on January 16, 1895, in
+Massenet's "Manon," in which M. Jean de Reszke sang the part of the
+Chevalier des Grieux for the first time. The opera had been heard at the
+Academy of Music, in Italian, nine years before, and this was its first
+performance in the original French, a language which the fair débutante
+used with admirable distinctness and charmingly modulated cadences, a
+fact which contributed much to the pretty triumph which she celebrated
+after the first act. She did not maintain herself on the plane reached
+in this act. The second had scarcely begun before it became noticeable
+that she was wanting in passionate expression as well as in voice,
+and that her histrionic limitations went hand in hand with her vocal.
+But she was a radiant vision, and had she been able to bring out the
+ingratiating character of the music she might have held the sympathies
+of the audience, obviously predisposed in her favor, in the degree
+contemplated by the composer. This quality of graciousness is the most
+notable element in Massenet's music. As much as anything can do so
+it achieves pardon for the book, which is far less amiable than that
+of "Traviata," which deals with the same unlovely theme. Another
+quasi novelty was Saint-Saëns's "Samson et Dalila," which had one
+performance--and one only--on February 8th to afford Mme. Mantelli
+an opportunity to exhibit her musical powers, and Signor Tamagno his
+physical. The music was familiar from performances of the work as an
+oratorio; as an opera it came as near to making a fiasco as a work
+containing so much good and sound music could.
+
+The most interesting event in the whole administration of Mr. Abbey and
+his associates happened on February 4th, when Verdi's "Falstaff" was
+presented. Signor Mancinelli conducted, and the cast was as follows:
+
+
+  Mistress Ford ...................... Mme. Emma Eames
+  Anne ............................... Mlle. de Lussan
+  Mistress Page ...................... Mlle. Jane de Vigne
+  Dame Quickly ....................... Mme. Scalchi
+  Fenton ............................. Sig. Russitano
+  Ford ............................... Sig. Campanari
+  Pistol ............................. Sig. Nicolini
+  Dr. Caius .......................... Sig. Vanni
+  Bardolph ........................... Sig. Rinaldini
+  Sir John Falstaff .................. M. Victor Maurel
+               (His original creation.)
+
+
+To construct operas out of Shakespeare's plays has been an ambition
+of composers for nearly two centuries. Verdi himself yielded to the
+temptation when he wrote "Macbeth" forty years ago. Probably no one
+recognized more clearly than he did when he wrote "Falstaff" how
+the whole system of lyrico-dramatic composition should undergo a
+transformation before anything like justice could be done to the
+myriad-minded poet's creations. Who would listen now to Rossini's
+"Otello"? Yet, in its day, it was immensely popular. A careless day it
+was--the day of pretty singing, and little else; the day when there was
+so little concern for the dramatic element in opera that the grewsome
+dénouement of Rossini's opera is said once to have caused a listener
+to cry out in astonishment: "Great God! the tenor is murdering the
+soprano!" Then it might have been possible for a composer, provided he
+were a Mozart, to find a musical investment for a Shakespearian comedy,
+but assuredly not for a tragedy. No literary masterpiece was safe from
+the vandalism of opera writers at that time, however, and Shakespeare
+simply shared the fate of Goethe and their great fellows. With the dawn
+of the new era there came greater possibilities, and now it may be said
+we have a few Shakespearian operas that will endure for several decades
+at least: let us say Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor," Gounod's
+"Romeo and Juliet," Verdi's "Othello" and "Falstaff." Ambroise Thomas's
+"Hamlet" and Saint-Saëns's "Henry VIII" seem already to have outlived
+their brief day, at least in all countries save France, where the
+personal equation in favor of a native composer seems strong enough to
+keep second-class composers afloat while it permits genius to perish. As
+for Goetz's "Taming of the Shrew," it was too much like good Rhine wine,
+and too little like champagne to pass as a comic opera. When Verdi's
+last opera appeared the only Falstaff who had vitality was the fat
+knight of Nicolai's work. Yet he had had many predecessors. Balfe
+composed a "Falstaff" for the King's Theater in London, which was sung
+with the capacious-voiced Lablache in the titular part, and Grisi,
+Persiani, and Ivanoff in the cast. That was in 1838. Forty years earlier
+Salieri had composed an Italian "Falstaff" for Vienna. In 1856 Adolphe
+Adam produced a French "Falstaff" in Paris, and the antics of the greasy
+knight amused the Parisians eighty-six years earlier in Papavoine's
+"Le Vieux Coquet." Nicolai's predecessors in Germany were Peter Ritter,
+1794, and Dittersdorf, 1796.
+
+Verdi's return to Shakespearian subjects after reaching the fulness
+of his powers in his old age, and after he had turned from operas to
+lyric dramas, is in the highest degree significant of the thoroughness
+of the revolution accomplished by Wagner. The production of "Otello"
+and "Falstaff" created as great an excitement in Italy as the first
+performance of "Parsifal" did in Germany; and it must have seemed like
+the irony of fate to many that Wagner should have to be filtered through
+Verdi in order to bear fruit in the original home of the art form. But
+that is surely the lesson of "Otello," "Falstaff," and the fervid works
+of Leoncavallo, Mascagni, and Puccini.
+
+Even more strikingly than "Otello" this comic opera of the youthful
+octogenarian disclosed the importance which Boito had assumed in the
+development of Verdi. That development is one of the miracles of music.
+In manner Verdi represents a full century of operatic writing. He began
+when, in Italy at least, the libretto was a mere stalking horse on which
+arias might be hung. All that he did besides furnishing vehicles for
+airs was to provide a motive for the scene painter and the costumer.
+Later we see the growth of dramatic characterization in his ensembles,
+and the development of strongly marked and ingeniously differentiated
+moods in his arias without departure from the old-fashioned forms. In
+this element lay much of the compelling force of his melodies, even
+those commonplace ones which were pricked for the barrel organ almost
+before the palms were cool which first applauded them--like "Di quella
+pira" and "La donna è mobile." Then set in the period of reflection. The
+darling of the public began to think more of his art and less of his
+popularity. Less impetuous, less fecund, perhaps, in melodic invention,
+he began to study how to wed dramatic situations and music. This led him
+to enrich his harmonies, and to refine his instrumentation, which in
+his earlier works is frequently coarse and vulgar in the extreme. At
+this stage he gave us "La Forza del Destino" and "Aïda." Now the hack
+writers of opera books would no longer suffice him. He had already shown
+high appreciation of the virtue which lies in a good book when he chose
+Ghislanzoni to versify the Egyptian story of "Aïda." But the final step
+necessary to complete his wonderfully progressive march was taken when
+he associated himself with Boito. Here was a man who united in himself
+in a creditable degree the qualifications which Wagner demanded for his
+"Artist of the Future"; he was poet, dramatist, and musician. No one who
+has studied "Otello" can fail to see that Verdi owes much in it to the
+composer of "Mefistofele"; but the indebtedness is even greater in
+"Falstaff," where the last vestige of the old subserviency of the text
+to the music has disappeared. From the first to the last the play is
+now the dominant factor. There are no "numbers" in "Falstaff"; there
+can be no repetition of a portion of the music without interruption and
+dislocation of the action. One might as well ask Hamlet to repeat his
+soliloquy on suicide as to ask one of the characters in "Falstaff" to
+sing again a single measure once sung. The play moves almost with the
+rapidity of the spoken comedy. Only once or twice does one feel that
+there is an unnecessary eddy in the current.
+
+And how has this play been set to music? It has been plunged into a
+perfect sea of melodic champagne. All the dialogue, crisp and sparkling,
+full of humor in itself, is made crisper, more sparkling, more amusing
+by the music on which, and in which, it floats, we are almost tempted to
+say more buoyantly than comedy dialogue has floated since Mozart wrote
+"Le Nozze di Figaro." The orchestra is bearer of everything, just as
+completely as it is in the latter-day dramas of Richard Wagner; it
+supplies phrases for the singers, supports their voices, comments on
+their utterances, and gives dramatic color to even the most fleeting
+idea. It is a marvelous delineator of things external as well as
+internal. It swells the bulk of the fat knight until he sounds as if he
+weighed a ton, and gives such piquancy to the spirits of the merry women
+(Mrs. Quickly monopolizing the importance due to Mrs. Page), that one
+cannot see them come on the stage without a throb of delight. In spite
+of the tremendous strides which the art of instrumentation has made
+since Berlioz mixed the modern orchestral colors, Verdi has in
+"Falstaff" added to the variegated palette. Yet all is done so
+discreetly, with such utter lack of effect-seeking, that it seems as if
+the art had always been known. The flood upon which the vocal melody
+floats is not like that of Wagner; it is not a development of fixed
+phrases, though Verdi, too, knows the use of leading motives in a sense,
+but a current which is ever receiving new waters. The declamation is
+managed with extraordinary skill, and though it frequently grows out
+of the instrumental part, it has yet independent melodic value as the
+vocal parts of Wagner's "Die Meistersinger" have. Through this Verdi
+has acquired a comic potentiality for his voice parts which goes hand
+in hand with that of his instrumental parts.
+
+But Verdi is not only dramatically true and melodious in his vocal
+parts, he is even, when occasion offers, most simple and ingenuous.
+There is an amazing amount of the Mozartian spirit in "Falstaff," and
+once we seem even to recognize the simple graciousness of pre-Gluckian
+days. Thus the dainty fancy and idyllic feeling which opens the scene in
+Windsor Forest, with its suggestion of fays and fairies and moonlight
+(a scene, by the way, for which Verdi has found entrancing tones, yet
+without reaching the lovely grace of Nicolai), owes much of its beauty
+to a minuet measure quite in the manner of the olden time, but which is,
+after all, only an accompaniment to the declamation which it sweetens.
+The finales of "Falstaff" have been built up with all of Verdi's
+oldtime skill, and sometimes sound like Mozart rubbed through the
+Wagnerian sieve. Finally, to cap the climax, he writes a fugue. A fugue
+to wind up a comic opera! A fugue--the highest exemplification of
+oldtime artificiality in music! A difficult fugue to sing, yet it runs
+out as smoothly as the conventional tag of Shakespeare's own day, whose
+place, indeed, it takes. It is a tag suggested by "All the world's a
+stage," and though it is a fugue, it bubbles over with humor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+UPRISING IN FAVOR OF GERMAN OPERA
+
+
+In marshaling, in the preceding chapter, the chief incidents of the
+period with which I am now concerned I set down the restoration of
+German performances at the Metropolitan Opera House as the most
+significant. There was a strong influence within the company working
+to that end in the person of M. Jean de Reszke, who, though the
+organization was not adapted to such a purpose, nevertheless strove
+energetically to bring about a representation of "Tristan und Isolde"
+in the supplementary spring season of 1895. Through him "Die
+Meistersinger" in an Italian garb had been incorporated into the
+repertory, and he was more than eager not only that it and the popular
+operas "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" should recover their original
+estate as German works, but that he might gratify a noble ambition and
+demonstrate how the tragic style of "Tristan" could be consorted with
+artistic singing. He achieved that purpose in the season of 1895-96,
+and set an example that will long be memorable in the annals of the
+Wagnerian drama in America. But the force which compelled the reform was
+an external one. It came from the public. To the people, as they spoke
+through the box office, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau were always readier to
+give an ear than the stockholders or the self-constituted champions of
+Italian opera in the public press.
+
+There had been talk of a rival German institution when Mr. Abbey
+restored the Italian régime in 1891; but it was wisely discouraged by
+the more astute friends of the German art, who felt that the influence
+of seven years would bear fruit in time, and who placed the principles
+of that art above the language in which they were made manifest. The
+interregnum following the fire had led Mr. Oscar Hammerstein to enter
+the field as an impresario on a more ambitious scale than ordinary,
+and on January 24, 1893, he opened a Manhattan Opera House with a
+representation in English of Moszkowski's "Boabdil." The "season"
+lasted only two weeks, and the opera house has long since been
+forgotten. It stood in the same Street as the present Manhattan Opera
+House, and its site is part of that covered by Macy's gigantic
+mercantile establishment. Though he had no opposition, Mr. Hammerstein
+showed little of that pluck and persistence which have distinguished him
+during the two seasons in which he has conducted a rival establishment
+to the Metropolitan Opera House. After two weeks, within which he
+produced "Boabdil," "Fidelio," and some light-waisted spectacular
+things, he turned his theater over to Koster & Bial, who ran it as a
+vaudeville house until the end of its short career. There were English
+performances of the customary loose-jointed kind in the summer at the
+Grand Opera House, the first series of which, beginning in May, 1893,
+derived some dignity from the fact that it was under the management of
+Mr. Stanton, who had conducted the Metropolitan Opera House for the
+stockholders during the German seasons; and in November the Duff Opera
+Company anticipated Mr. Abbey's forces by bringing out Gounod's
+"Philémon et Baucis" in an English version.
+
+These things, however, contained no portents for the future of opera
+in New York; they were the familiar phenomena which flit by in the
+metropolis's dead seasons. Pregnant incidents came in the midst of
+the regular season. It chanced that Mme. Materna, Anton Schott, Emil
+Fischer, and Conrad Behrens, who had been identified with the earlier
+German seasons, were in New York in February, 1894, and taking
+advantage of that fact Mr. Walter Damrosch arranged two performances
+of "Die Walküre," in the Carnegie Music Hall, for the benefit of local
+charities. They were slipshod affairs, with makeshift scenery and a
+stage not at all adapted for theatrical performances; but the public
+rose at them, as the phrase goes, and Mr. Damrosch felt emboldened to
+give a representation of "Götterdämmerung," with the same principals
+at the Metropolitan Opera House, on March 28th. Again there was an
+extraordinary exhibition of popular interest which the German Press
+Club turned to good account by improvising a performance of "Tannhäuser"
+for its annual benefit on April 9. Soon there was a great stir in the
+German camp, but united action was hindered by the rivalry between Mr.
+Damrosch and Mr. Seidl. The supplementary season at the Metropolitan
+ended on April 27th, and under date of April 28th there appeared a
+circular letter, signed individually by friends of Mr. Seidl, soliciting
+subscriptions for a season of German opera in 1904-05. The plan
+contemplated forty performances between November and May, on dates which
+were not to conflict with the regular performances of Italian and French
+opera. At the same time announcement was made of the organization of a
+Wagner Society, whose purpose it was to support a season of Wagner's
+operas at the Metropolitan Opera House, beginning on November 19, 1894,
+and continuing for four weeks--twelve evening performances and four
+matinées, the company to include "the greatest Wagnerian singers from
+Bayreuth and other German opera houses." Personal friends of the two
+conductors attempted to unite the rival enterprises, and a conference
+was held at the office of William Steinway. The attempt failed because
+Messrs. Seidl and Damrosch could not agree on a division of the artistic
+labors and credits. Mr. Seidl withdrew from the negotiations. In less
+than a week Mr. Damrosch announced that he had secured subscriptions for
+his season amounting to $12,000, and also a guarantee against loss of
+$10,000 more. On May 10th he sailed for Europe to engage his company.
+When he returned in the fall he announced a season of twelve evening and
+four afternoon performances, to be devoted wholly to Wagner's operas
+and dramas, to begin on February 25, 1895. The prices ranged from $4
+for orchestra stalls to $1 for seats in the gallery. In his company were
+Rosa Sucher, Johanna Gadski, Elsa Kutscherra, Marie Brema, Max Alvary,
+Nicolaus Rothmühl, Paul Lange, Franz Schwarz, and Rudolph Oberhauser,
+besides Emil Fischer and Conrad Behrens, who had been identified with
+the earlier German regime. Adolf Baumann, of the Royal opera at Prague,
+was engaged as stage manager, but lost his life in the wreck of the
+North German Lloyd steamship Elbe on the voyage hitherward.
+
+The season began, as advertised, on February 25th and ended on March
+23d, the sixteen performances receiving an additional representation to
+enable Max Alvary to effect his one hundredth performance of Siegfried
+in the drama of that name in the city where he "created" it, as the
+French say. There were also an additional performance of "Lohengrin" and
+three extra performances at reduced prices after the subscription. The
+whole affair was Mr. Damrosch's own venture, he being at once manager,
+artistic director, and conductor, but, as I have intimated, he had the
+backing of an organization called the Wagner Society, which was chiefly
+composed of women. The season came hard on the heels of the Italian
+and French season. Mr. Damrosch's leading singers were familiar with
+Wagner's works, but practically he had to build up his institution from
+the foundation and to do it within an incredibly short time. With such
+rapid work we are familiar in America, but in Germany to have suggested
+such an undertaking as the organization of a company, the preparation of
+a theater, and the mounting, rehearsing, and performing of seven of the
+most difficult and cumbersome works in the repertory of the lyric drama
+within the space of five or six weeks would have been to have invited
+an inquest de lunatico. I do not wish to be understood as mentioning
+these things wholly in the way of praise--the results from an artistic
+point of view disclosed much too often that they were blameworthy--but
+what credit they reflect upon the tremendous energy, enterprise,
+and will power of Mr. Damrosch must be given ungrudgingly and
+enthusiastically. Plainly he was inspired with a strength of conviction
+quite out of the ordinary line of that spirit of theatrical speculation
+upon which we have so often depended for the large undertakings in
+music. It was a belief based on something like religious zeal, and under
+the circumstances what he did was an even more remarkable feat than that
+accomplished by his father in 1884. I sometimes thought at the time that
+he was driven into the enterprise more by impulse than by reason, and
+the fact that he occasionally had the same sort of a notion is evidenced
+by a letter which I received from him in response to one of mine to him
+near the close of the season. "Thanks for your congratulations on the
+financial success so far," wrote the young manager. "I shall breathe
+more freely after the next four weeks are over. The responsibility has
+been a heavy one, and it is curious that no one seemed to share my
+almost fatalistic belief in Wagner opera. Neither Abbey & Grau, nor
+Seidl, nor anyone was willing to touch it, and I was finally driven into
+it myself by an irresistible impulse which, so far, seems to have led
+me right. I am glad now, for many reasons, that events have so shaped
+themselves, and I think that the season will be productive of much good
+for the future. A curious and interesting fact in connection with the
+performances has been that the public came to hear the operas, and not
+the singers."
+
+And such a success! Not only far in advance of what the fondest
+Wagnerites had dared to hope for as a tribute to their master's art,
+but one which compelled them to rub their eyes in amazement and grope
+and stare in a search for causes. Twenty-one times in succession was
+the vast audience room crowded, and when the time was come for striking
+the balance on the subscription season there was talk, only a little
+fantastic if at all, of receipts aggregating $150,000, or nearly $9,000
+a performance. I should like to keep the thought of this unparalleled
+financial success separate from that of the artistic results attained.
+Between the financial and artistic achievements there was a wide
+disparity; but that fact only sufficed to emphasize the obvious lesson
+of the season, namely, the vast desire which the people of New York
+felt again to enjoy Wagner's dramas. Fortunately I can make a record
+of the capaciousness of that hunger without necessarily lauding its
+intelligence and discrimination. Great indeed must have been the hunger
+which could not be perverted by the vast deal of slipshod work in
+the scenic department of the representations, and the vaster deal of
+bungling and makeshift in the stage management. Many an affront was
+given to the taste and intelligence of the audiences, and dreadful was
+the choral cacophony which filled some of the evenings. Yet the people
+came; they came, as Mr. Damrosch observed in his letter, to hear
+the dramas instead of the singers, and though "Lohengrin" had been
+beautifully performed in the Italian season by artists like Nordica,
+Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and Maurel in the cast, the public crowded
+into the German representation as if expecting a special revelation from
+Fräulein Gadski, a novice, and Herr Rothmühl, a second-rate tenor, Of
+all the singers only Miss Marie Brema, a newcomer, and the veteran, Emil
+Fischer, were entirely satisfactory. For the beautiful dramatic art of
+Frau Sucher and for her loveliness of person and pose there was much
+hearty admiration, but this could not close the ears of her listeners
+to the fact that her voice had lost its freshness. The subscription
+repertory, including the Alvary anniversary, was as follows: "Tristan
+und Isolde," three times; "Siegfried," four times; "Lohengrin," twice;
+"Götterdämmerung," twice; "Tannhäuser," twice; "Die Walküre," twice,
+and "Die Meistersinger," twice. In a letter recently received from Mr.
+Damrosch he says: "My first spring season of thirteen weeks in New York,
+Chicago, Boston, and a few Western cities gave a profit of about
+$53,000, leaving me with a large stock of Vienna-made scenery, costumes,
+and properties."
+
+Mr. Damrosch had won the first battle of his campaign and taught a
+lesson of lasting value to his old and experienced rivals. Warned by the
+success of his experiment and stimulated by a petition signed by about
+two thousand persons asking that German representations under Mr. Seidl
+be included in the Metropolitan scheme, Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau
+made German opera a factor in the next season; but they did so in a
+half-hearted way, which defeated its purposes and brought punishment
+instead of reward. Nevertheless, German opera had returned to the
+Metropolitan to stay, and henceforth will call for attention along with
+the Italian and French performances in this history. Meanwhile, since
+I have begun it, let me finish the tale of the impresarioship of Mr.
+Damrosch.
+
+Flushed with victory, the young manager prepared a five months'
+campaign for the year 1896, and sought for new worlds to conquer.
+Philadelphia, in which city he began operations on February 20th,
+treated him shabbily, but he did fairly well in New York and other
+cities in the East and West. Unfortunately for him, he made an
+invasion of the South, which was not ripe for serious opera, either
+financially or artistically. A performance in one city of that section
+which cost him over $3,000 brought him exactly $220. The difference
+between the sums was what Mr. Damrosch paid to learn that knowledge
+and love of Wagner's operas had not penetrated far into Tennessee.
+
+Experience is always purchased at large cost in the operatic field.
+Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau refused Mr. Damrosch the use of the Metropolitan
+Opera House for his second New York season, and he was driven to the
+old, socially discredited Academy of Music. They did not look with
+favoring eyes upon an enterprise which had achieved so tremendous a
+triumph at its very start, and they provided a large percentage of the
+wormwood which filled the cup which Mr. Damrosch drank in 1896; but they
+embittered their own goblet by the procedure, and when the time came
+for laying out the campaign of 1896-97 they were quite as ready as Mr.
+Damrosch to sign a treaty of peace whose provisions promised to make
+for the good of both sides instead of the injury of either. The rivals
+agreed to keep out of each other's way as much as possible and even to
+help each other by an occasional exchange of singers. By this means it
+was purposed to widen the repertories of both companies, Mr. Damrosch
+providing the Metropolitan establishment with a Brünnhilde and an
+Isolde for Jean de Reszke's Siegmund, Siegfried, and Tristan, and the
+Metropolitan company lending him in return Melba, Eames, and Calvé, or
+others, to enable him to perform some of the Italian and French operas
+which he had included in his list. Mr. Damrosch yielded Chicago to his
+rivals and took Philadelphia in exchange. It was a wise compromise.
+Mr. Damrosch lost $40,000 in 1896; he made $14,000 in 1897. The next
+year, the Metropolitan Opera House being closed during the regular
+subscription period, as will appear later in this record, Mr. Damrosch
+entered into partnership with Charles A. Ellis, manager of the Boston
+Symphony Orchestra, who had undertaken the management also of Mme.
+Melba's American affairs, and Italian and French operas were added to
+the German repertory. The regular season showed a good profit, most of
+which, however, was frittered away in a spring tour made by Melba with
+a portion of the company. By this time Mr. Damrosch had concluded that
+he was too good a man and musician to surrender himself to the hateful
+business of managing a traveling opera company, and he withdrew from the
+partnership with Ellis, to whom he sold all his theatrical properties,
+and returned to concert work and composition, though for two weeks in
+the next season he was conductor of Mr. Ellis's company.
+
+And now to some of the details of the artistic work of these Damroschian
+enterprises. The year 1896 was signalized by the appearance in America
+of two singers who rapidly achieved first-class importance. These were
+Katherina Klafsky and Milka Ternina. Mme. Klafsky was the wife of Herr
+Lohse, whom Mr. Damrosch also engaged as assistant conductor. She came
+here under a cloud, so far as the managerial ethics of Germany were
+concerned. How much respect those ethics were entitled to may be judged
+from the story. I have already said, in discussing the case of Mme.
+Lehmann and her violation of contract with the Opera at Berlin, that a
+speedy result of the success of German opera under Mr. Stanton was a
+change of attitude on the part of the Intendanten of German theaters
+toward the New York institution so soon as it was found that a handsome
+proportion of the American earnings might be diverted into the pockets
+of those Intendanten or the managers of municipal theaters. When Mr.
+Damrosch engaged his second company Mme. Klafsky was a member of the
+Municipal Theater in Hamburg, of which Pollini was director. When the
+offer of an American engagement came to her she consulted with Herr
+Pollini, who graciously gave his consent to her acceptance of it on
+condition that she pay him one-half of her earnings. She refused to
+agree to do this, and, fearing that Pollini would invoke the aid of the
+courts to restrain her from coming to New York, she took French leave
+of Germany more than two months before she was needed here. Her success
+in America was emphatic, and after she had effected a reconciliation
+with Pollini she was re-engaged by Mr. Damrosch to alternate with
+Mme. Lehmann in the season of 1896-97. Within a fortnight of the
+re-engagement she died in Hamburg from a trephining operation undertaken
+to relieve her from the results of an injury to her skull, received
+while in America.
+
+Mme. Klafsky and Mr. Alvary had sung in "Tristan und Isolde," with which
+Mr. Damrosch began his campaign in Philadelphia on February 20th. Her
+success was instantaneous, and her tremendous dramatic forcefulness, the
+natural expression of an exuberant temperament, placed her higher in
+public favor during the season than Mme. Ternina, whose refined and
+ingratiating art did not receive full appreciation till later. Other
+members of the Damrosch troupe of 1896 were Wilhelm Grüning, tenor,
+and Demeter Popovici, bass, beside Gadski, Fischer, Alvary, and other
+persons already known, but of smaller importance. The New York season
+began at the Academy of Music on March 2d and ended on March 28th. The
+operas were "Fidelio," "Lohengrin," "Siegfried," "Tannhäuser," "Die
+Meistersinger," "Die Walküre," "Der Freischütz," and (in the original
+English) Mr. Damrosch's "The Scarlet Letter." This opera had its first
+performance in New York on March 6. Its libretto was written by George
+Parsons Lathrop, a son-in-law of Hawthorne, who wrote the romance on
+which it was based. The cast included Johanna Gadski as Hester Prynne,
+Barron Berthald as Arthur Dimmesdale, Conrad Behrens as Governor
+Bellingham, Gerhard Stehmann as the Rev. John Wilson, and William
+Mertens as Roger Chillingworth. The greater part of the music had been
+performed at concerts of the Oratorio Society on January 4 and 5, 1895.
+The book of the opera proved to be undramatic in the extreme, a defect
+which was emphasized by the execrable pronunciation of nearly all the
+singers at the performance on the stage at the Academy. In the music Mr.
+Damrosch essayed the style of Wagner, and did it so well, indeed, as to
+deserve hearty admiration. He was helped, it is true, by factors frankly
+and copiously copied from the pages of his great model. The nixies of
+the Rhine peeped out of the sun-flecked coverts in the forest around
+Hester Prynne's hut, as if they had become dryads for her sake; ever
+and anon the sinister Hunding was heard muttering in the ear of
+Chillingworth, and Hester wore the badge of her shame on the robes of
+Elsa, washed in innocency. But such things are venial in a first work.
+In frankly confessing his model (for it cannot be thought for a
+moment that Mr. Damrosch expected his imitations to be overlooked) he
+illustrated a rule which applies to all composers at the outset of their
+careers. The fact must be noted, but it is much more to the purpose
+that the young composer blended the elements of his composition with a
+freedom and daring quite astonishing in their exhibition of mastery.
+There is no sign of doubt or timorousness anywhere in the work, though
+the moments are not infrequent when the utterance is more fluent than
+significant. The typical phrases which he chose to symbolize the persons
+and passions of the play are most of them deficient in plasticity, and
+nearly all of them lack that expressiveness which Wagner knew so well
+how to impress upon his melodic elements; the greater, therefore, was
+the surprise that Mr. Damrosch was able to weave them together in a
+fabric which moved steadily forward for more than an hour, and reflected
+more or less truthfully and vividly the feeling of the dramatic
+situations. Unfortunately there is little variety in this feeling, so
+that in spite of Mr. Damrosch's effort, or, perhaps, because of it,
+there is a deal of monotony in the music of the first act. There is a
+fine ingenuity of orchestration throughout, however, and an amount
+of daring in harmonization which sometimes oversteps the limits of
+discretion. In an agonizing scene between Chillingworth and Hester at
+the close of the first act the orchestra and the two chief personages
+are wholly engrossed with an exposition of the dramatic feeling of the
+moment, while the chorus (supposed to be worshiping in the neighboring
+meeting-house) sing the "Old Hundredth" in unison and without
+instrumental support. It is an admirable historical touch, and the
+device is the approved one of using a psalm tune as a cantus firmus
+to the remainder of the music; but Mr. Damrosch's harmonization of the
+ensemble is such that we seem to hear two distinct and unsympathetic
+keys. There was, after the second act, a scene upon the stage in honor
+of Mr. Damrosch, in which, after several large wreaths had been bestowed
+upon him, a representative of the Wagner Society came forward, and on
+behalf of that body presented him with a handsome copy of Hawthorne's
+story and the incorrect statement that the honor was paid to him as
+the first American who had composed a grand opera on an American theme
+which had been publicly produced. In this there were as many errors
+of statement as in the famous French Academician's description of a
+lobster. George F. Bristow's "Rip Van Winkle" was composed by a native
+American and was brought out at Niblo's Garden long before Mr. Damrosch
+was born in Breslau; while Signor Arditi, who hailed from Europe, like
+Mr. Damrosch, brought out under his own direction and with considerable
+success an opera entitled "La Spia," based on Cooper's novel. This
+merely in the interest of the verities of history.
+
+The German season of 1907, a part of whose story I have already told,
+began at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 8th and lasted four
+weeks. It added no novelty to the local list, but had some interesting
+features, among them a serial performance of the dramas of Wagner's
+"Ring of the Nibelung," the first appearance of Mme. Nordica in the
+Brünnhilde of "Siegfried" on March 24th, and the joint appearance of
+Mmes. Lehmann and Nordica in "Lohengrin," the German singer, true to
+her dramatic instincts, choosing the part of Ortrud. On April 1st
+Xavier Scharwenka, who had taken a residence with his brother Philip
+in New York, borrowed the company from Mr. Damrosch and on his own
+responsibility gave a performance of his opera, entitled "Mataswintha."
+The opera was produced under difficulties. It had withstood its baptism
+of fire in Weimar seven months before, and Mr. Scharwenka had performed
+portions of it at a concert for the purpose of introducing himself to
+the people of New York. But the singers had to learn their parts from
+the beginning, there was a great deal of pageantry which had to be
+supplied from the stock furniture of the Metropolitan stage, the tenor
+Ernst Kraus took ill and caused a postponement, and even thus the
+chapter of accidents was not exhausted. When the performance finally
+took place Herr Stehmann, a barytone, had to sing Herr Kraus's part,
+which he had learned in two days. Under the circumstances it may be
+the course of wisdom to avoid an estimation of the opera's merits
+and defects and to record merely that it proved to be an extremely
+interesting work and well worth the trouble spent upon its production.
+Under different circumstances it might have lived the allotted time
+upon the stage, which, as the knowing know, is a very brief one in the
+majority of cases. The story of the opera was drawn from Felix Dahn's
+historical novel "Ein Kampf um Rom."
+
+It is high time to get back again to the story of opera at the
+Metropolitan Opera House under the direction of the lessees; but before
+then chronological orderliness requires that attention be paid to an
+incident outside the category of prime importance. This was the first
+production in New York of Humperdinck's delightful fairy opera "Hänsel
+und Gretel" at Daly's Theater on October 8, 1895. The production was
+in English. The venture looked promising, and great interest was felt
+in it. Mr. Seidl was charged with the musical direction. A company of
+singers was brought together, partly from London, partly enlisted here.
+Sir Augustus Harris, director of the opera at Covent Garden, was the
+financial backer of the enterprise. As numerous an orchestra as the
+score calls for could not be accommodated in the theater, but Mr. Seidl
+did the best he could, and the band was commendable. Three of the
+singers, Miss Jeanne Douste, Miss Louise Meisslinger, and Mr. Jacques
+Bars, disclosed ample abilities; but the English manager had no
+knowledge either of the needs of the opera or the demands of the New
+York public; Sir Augustus's speech on the opening night, indeed,
+disclosed ignorance also of the name of the composer and the history of
+the work which he had clothed with considerable sumptuousness. It was
+long remembered with amusement that to him Herr Humperdinck was "Mr.
+Humperdinckel" and the opera some "beautiful music composed for this
+occasion." And so great expectations were disappointed, and, after
+worrying along from October 8th to November 15th, the opera was withdrawn
+with a record of failure, not deserved by the work and only partly
+deserved by the performance. We shall meet the opera again in the story
+of opera at the Metropolitan Opera House a decade later, when it came
+into its rights, and the public were able to testify their admiration
+in the presence of the composer.
+
+The prospectus of Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau (which continued to be
+the official style of the managers) for the season 1895-96, contained
+this announcement: "The management has also decided to add a number of
+celebrated German artists and to present Wagner operas in the German
+language, all of which operas will be given with superior singers, equal
+to any who have ever been heard in the German language. The orchestra
+will be increased. . . . The chorus will be strengthened by a number of
+young, fresh voices, to which will be added an extra German chorus."
+Signor Mancinelli was not re-engaged as conductor, but Anton Seidl was.
+After what I have told thus far in this chapter the causes which led to
+this change of policy will be readily understood. The augmented company
+was a formidable host, though its strength remained in the French and
+Italian contingent. Had the German singers been equally capable, the
+story of Mr. Damrosch's enterprise might have read differently. Mme.
+Calvé returned and revived the furor over "Carmen"; Mesdames Melba,
+Nordica, Scaichi, Mantelli, and Messrs. Jean and Édouard de Reszke, Pol
+Plançon, Victor Maurel, and Castelmary remained; newcomers were Lola
+Beeth, Frances Saville, Marie Brema (who had been brought from Europe by
+Mr. Damrosch), Giuseppe Cremonini, Adolph Wallnöfer, Giuseppe Kaschmann
+(who had been a member of Mr. Abbey's first company twelve years
+before), and Mario Ancona. The regular subscription season consisted of
+thirteen weeks (fifty-two performances), beginning on November 18th, and
+there was a special subscription, at the same scale of prices, for a
+season of ten performances of German operas, beginning on December 5th.
+There were also performances at popular prices on Saturday evenings,
+and the entire season, excluding the spring season, which developed but
+little interest, compassed seventy-four representations. For these and
+thirteen Sunday night concerts the public paid about $575,000.
+
+"Oh! how far are we from Covent Garden!" cried Jean de Reszke on the
+night of November 27th, and he clipped in his arms the friend who had
+come to offer his congratulations to the thunderous plaudits of the
+audience. M. de Reszke was in a fine glow of enthusiasm. He had sung
+and played Tristan and opened a new era in the style of Wagnerian
+performances in New York. A few days later, while the drinking horn
+was going from hand to hand at a medieval dinner given in honor of the
+principal interpreters of Wagner's love drama (Mme. Nordica, Miss
+Brema, the brothers de Reszke, and Mr. Seidl), he responded to a toast,
+and in four languages, English, German, French, and Italian, celebrated
+the advent of what he called "international opera." Why he neglected
+to throw in a few Polish phrases for the benefit of his countryman
+Paderewski, who sat opposite him at table, his hosts could not make
+out, unless it was because he wanted his expressions of delight at the
+achievement and prospect to be understood by all his hearers. High hopes
+filled the hearts of all local lovers of the lyric drama at the period.
+The promises of Abbey and Grau had stimulated the kindliest, heartiest,
+cheeriest feeling on all hands. All bickerings between the adherents of
+the various schools were silenced by the promulgation of a policy which
+seemed as generous and public-spirited as it was liberal. Whenever it
+was practicable New York was to have performances which should respect
+not only the tongue, but also the spirit of the works chosen for
+representation. That M. de Reszke had been an active agent in the
+inauguration of the new régime was an open secret to his acquaintances,
+and he bore public testimony when he supplemented his impersonation
+of Tristan with a German Lohengrin. The significance of such an act,
+coupled with Mme. Nordica's support of him in both performances, seemed
+extraordinary even in the minds of those who were not inclined to attach
+much importance to the language used in performance, so long as the
+performance was imbued with a becoming spirit of sincerity and a desire
+to make artistic purpose replace idle diversion. It looked as if through
+the example of these two artists, seconded by the liberality of the
+management, the people of New York were to take a long step forward in
+musical culture--a step toward the foundation of an institution which
+should endure and exemplify the esthetic, moral, and physical character
+of the people of America.
+
+The expectations aroused by the announcement were woefully disappointed.
+There were nights of wondrous brilliancy and of extraordinary splendor
+in nearly every department. Some of the refulgence came from the
+new ambitions with which M. de Reszke and Mr. Seidl inspired the
+organization. The season had no prouder moments than those filled with
+the performances of "Tristan" and "Lohengrin" vouchsafed the subscribers
+to the regular subscription; but it had no deeper gloom than that which
+settled upon the subscribers to the special German season on most of
+the occasions set apart for them. The fate of "Fidelio" was utterly
+grievous; two representations of "Tristan" filled their souls with
+indignation instead of gratitude; there is no saintly intercession
+which could have won redemption for "Tannhäuser." The performances of
+"Tristan" and of the Italian "Lohengrin" at which Nordica, Brema, and
+the brothers de Reszke sang were brilliantly successful, but in each
+case the regular performance was made to precede that set apart for
+the German subscription. The circumstance would alone have sufficed
+to arouse suspicion that the management was at least willing to
+discriminate against the special Thursday nights, and the suspicion was
+wrought into conviction by the disparity between the performances of the
+two subscriptions. If it was the purpose of Abbey & Grau to put German
+opera on trial their method looked very unfair. "The drama for its
+own sake as an art work, and not for the sake of the singer" is a
+fundamental principle of German art, but it can only maintain its
+validity with the help of adequate performances. Saving the four singers
+who sang in Italian and French as well as German (Mme. Nordica, Miss
+Brema, and the brothers de Reszke), the German singers of 1895-96 were
+woefully inefficient, and the German season was an indubitable failure.
+
+I shall append a list of performances of the operas presented in the
+seasons covered by this chapter and its predecessor, and its perusal
+will, I think, enforce even upon a careless reader the fact that,
+in spite of the shortcomings to which I have called attention, the
+administration of Abbey & Grau yet marked a gigantic step in the
+direction of dramatic sanity and sense over the lists which prevailed
+in the period when this story began. In the consulship of Mapleson
+the repertory might have been turned into verse quite as dramatic as
+most of that of the opera books. Thus:
+
+
+  "Favorita," "Puritani,"
+    "Lucia di Lammermoor,"
+  "Marta," "Linda di Chamouni,"
+    "La Traviata," "Trovatore";
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia,"
+    "Roberto il Diavolo,"
+  "Don Pasquale," "Rigoletto,"
+    "Faust," "Gli Ugonotti," "Un Ballo,"
+
+
+and so on for quantity. Of the old hurdy-gurdy list "Favorita,"
+"Traviata," "Trovatore," "Lucia," and "Rigoletto" were given, but
+unitedly they had only ten representations, and most of them were on
+Saturday nights, when popular prices prevailed. Even though Melba sang
+in "Lucia," it had to be consorted at the last with "Cavalleria,"
+which Mme. Calvé made attractive. Against this fact we have the other
+that "Carmen" alone had a greater number of representations than the
+entire old-fashioned list, and that the operas which were most popular
+after it were "Tristan und Isolde," "Faust," and "Lohengrin."
+
+Of the ten German performances three were devoted to "Tristan," two to
+"Tannhäuser," one to "Fidelio," two to "Lohengrin," and two to "Die
+Walküre." "Tristan," "Tannhäuser," and "Lohengrin" were in the repertory
+of the regular subscription season. Only two unfamiliar works were
+brought forward--Bizet's "Pêcheurs de Perles" (two acts only) and
+Massenet's "La Navarraise"; but there was an interesting revival of
+Boito's "Mefistofele" after a lapse of twelve years, and a more than
+interesting revival of "Tristan und Isolde," with Mmes. Nordica and
+Brema and the brothers de Reszke in the principal parts. Mme. Melba did
+not join the company until December 27th; she added Massenet's "Manon"
+to her repertory. Jean de Reszke increased the list of parts in which
+he was known by adding Tristan to it and the German Lohengrin. Mme.
+Nordica's new rôles were Isolde, Venus in "Tannhäuser," and Elsa in
+German. Miss Brema's operas were "Tristan," "Lohengrin," "Orfeo,"
+"Aïda," and "Die Walküre," and, like Mme. Nordica, Mlle. Lola Beeth and
+Signor Kaschmann, she sang in German as well as Italian. "La Navarraise"
+was brought forward for Mme. Calvé on December 11, 1895; the two acts
+of "Les Pêcheurs de Perles" at a matinée on January 11, 1896.
+
+Colonel Mapleson provided a prelude to the Metropolitan season of
+1896-97 with a short season of Italian opera of the archaic sort at the
+Academy of Music. The doughty manager could no longer fly his old London
+colors, so he appeared as the sole director of "The New Imperial Opera
+Company." With two or three exceptions all his singers were strangers
+to the opera-goers of New York. Mme. Scalchi was again with him, and
+Signor de Anna; but the rest were newcomers. Among them were Mme.
+Hariclée-Darclée, Mme. Bonaplata-Bau, Susan Strong, and Mme. Giuseppina
+Huguet, sopranos; Mme. Parsi, Mlle. Ponzano, and Mme. Meysenheim,
+contraltos; Signori de Marchi, Randacio, Betti, Olivieri, and Durot,
+tenors; Signori Ughetto and Alberti, barytones, and Pinto, Terzi,
+Giordano, Borelli, and Dado, basses. The conductors, capable men both
+of them, were Signori Bimboni and Tango. Within a fortnight "Aïda,"
+"Trovatore," "Traviata," "Les Huguenots," "Sonnambula," and "Faust"
+had been sung and a new work brought out. This was "Andrea Chenier,"
+by Illica and Giordano, which had its first performance in America on
+November 13, 1896, the cast being as follows:
+
+
+  Andrea Chenier ................................... Durot
+  Carlo Gerard ................................... Ughetto
+  Maddalena di Coigny ...................... Bonaplata-Bau
+  La Mulatta Bersi ............................ Meysenheim
+  La Contessa di Coigny .......................... Scalchi
+  Madelon .......................................... Parsi
+  Roucher ........................................... Dado
+  Il Romanziero .................................. Alberti
+  Fouquier Tinville ............................... ------
+  Mathieu ........................................ Borelli
+  Un Incredibile |
+  L'Abate, poeta |............................... Giordano
+  Schmidt, Carceriere a San Lazzaro ................ Terzi
+  Il Maestro di Casa ............................ Olivieri
+  Dumas ............................................ Pinto
+
+
+Tango conducted and the performance had a rude forcefulness quite in
+keeping with the character of the opera. Under better conditions "Andrea
+Chenier" would doubtless have held its own for a respectable space in
+the local repertory. But the seeds of dissolution were germinating in
+the company even before the performances began, and Colonel Mapleson did
+not dare to appear long in rivalry with the Metropolitan when it opened
+its doors on November 16th. In a week or so he went to Boston, where
+after one or two performances the orchestra went on strike and the
+Imperial Opera Company went to pieces. With it the last effort of the
+veteran manager. Mapleson had held out a promise of the likelihood that
+Giordano would come to New York to give personal superintendence to
+the production of his opera and carried his fiction to the extreme of
+telling a reporter of The Sun newspaper that the composer was in the
+city. Meeting the reporter in the Academy of Music, I expressed my
+doubt touching the correctness of his information, whereupon he pointed
+out the gentleman whom Colonel Mapleson had introduced to him as the
+composer. It was Giordano, the barytone! After its introduction to
+America "Andrea Chenier" disappeared for nearly a dozen years, when,
+on March 27, 1908, it had a single performance at the Manhattan Opera
+House, so that Mme. Eva Tetrazzini, the wife of Cleofonte Campanini,
+who had retired from the stage, might help at a gala representation in
+honor of her husband.
+
+No season since the Metropolitan Opera House was opened was so full of
+vicissitudes as that of 1896-97. First came the death of Mme. Klafsky,
+who, under the reciprocal arrangement between Mr. Damrosch and Abbey &
+Grau, was to sing the chief Wagner rôles with Jean de Reszke. This
+happened in September, and was followed by the death of Mr. Abbey
+(nominally the leader of the managing directors, though from the
+beginning it was Mr. Grau who did the practical work of management), and
+of Mr. William Steinway, who had formulated and carried through the plan
+of reorganization which relieved the firm of Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau of
+its burden of indebtedness and transferred it to the shoulders of the
+Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau Company (Ltd.). Just before the season began
+Mme. Nordica, who had won her way to a high place in the favor of the
+public, and whose absence from the company's roster was widely and
+sincerely deplored, came forward with a story charging her failure
+to secure a re-engagement to the intrigues of Mme. Melba and M. Jean
+de Reszke. So far as the gentleman was concerned the story seemed
+improbable on its face, and long before the season was over Mme. Nordica
+was willing to admit publicly that she had been misinformed as to the
+facts in the case. It remained, however, that Mme. Melba had reserved
+the exclusive right to herself to sing the röle of Brünnhilde in
+Wagner's "Siegfried." It soon turned out that the failure to secure Mme.
+Nordica was to cost the management dear. Mme. Melba sang the part once,
+and so injured her voice that she had to retire for the season and cede
+the rôle to Mme. Litvinne (the Mlle. Litvinoff of Colonel Mapleson's
+company in 1885-86), who up to that time had not succeeded in convincing
+the public that she was equal to so great a responsibility, although she
+had been engaged to sing the part of Isolde after Mme. Klafsky's death
+and the failure of negotiations between Mr. Grau and Mme. Nordica. The
+manager's judgment was never at fault in these negotiations; he wanted
+to secure the services of Mme. Nordica, for he well knew their value,
+but the unhappy contract with Melba stood in his way, and Mme. Nordica
+was beyond his reach when the failure of Melba's voice and her departure
+for France on January 23d left the company crippled. Happily the
+popularity which Mme. Calvé's impersonation of Marguerite in Gounod's
+"Faust" had found restored that perennial work to its old position as
+one of the principal magnets of the season. Mme. De Vere-Sapio was
+engaged to make possible the production of such operas as "Hamlet,"
+"Le Nozze di Figaro," and Massenet's "Le Cid." Then there fell a double
+blow: Mme. Eames went into a surgeon's hands and Mozart's scintillant
+comedy had to be withdrawn. It was to have been given on February 10th.
+Flotow's "Martha" was substituted for it, and in the midst of the
+performance the representative of Tristan, M. Castelmary, fell on the
+stage, fatally stricken with heart disease.
+
+It would be pleasant to say that the facts thus detailed exhaust the
+story of the institution's misfortunes; but they do not. I have already
+told of its financial outcome. Throughout the season a determined and
+wicked effort was made to injure the opera, and was helped along by
+columns of idle speculation and gossip in three or four newspapers.
+Without ground, so far as anybody could see, the notion was given
+publicity that there was grave doubt that opera would be given in the
+following year. The talk seemed wholly gratuitous, for if there were
+any signs of falling off in popular interest so far as the opera was
+concerned or in the confidence and satisfaction of the stockholders
+of the opera house company so far as Mr. Grau's administration was
+concerned, it escaped the notice of experienced and interested
+observers. The total attendance was larger than in the preceding season,
+and the interest displayed in the representations was fully as keen. But
+the newspaper gossips would have their way, and in the end turned out to
+be prophets, for there was no opera in 1897-98, for reasons which will
+have to be discussed in the next chapter.
+
+The season began on November 16th. The regular subscription was for
+thirteen weeks, three nights a week and Saturday afternoons. Extra
+subscription performances were thirteen Saturday nights and three
+Wednesday afternoon representations at popular prices and an extra
+week--three nights and a matinee--at subscription prices. There were,
+therefore, in all, seventy-two performances, at which twenty-four
+different operas were brought forward, as shown in the table which is to
+follow. There was a less elaborate organization than in the preceding
+season, but the average merit of the performances was higher, there
+being no ill-equipped German contingent to spoil the record. There were,
+however, quite as many German performances without the special singers
+and the extra subscription. In place of the latter, an attempt was made
+to give extra Wednesday matinées, but the experiment was abandoned after
+three weeks.
+
+The most sensational incident of the season was the collapse of Mme.
+Melba after her ill-advised effort to sing the music of Brünnhilde. To
+the loveliness of her devotion and the loftiness of her ambition honest
+tribute must be paid, but it must also be said that nature did not
+design her to be an interpreter of Wagner's tragic heroines. Her vocal
+and temperamental peculiarities put a bar to her singing the Brünnhilde
+music. It did not lie well in her voice, and she was not then, and is
+not now, of the heroic mould, and her experience should have taught her
+that her voice would not admit of the expansion necessary to fit her
+for that mould. That the music wearied her was painfully evident long
+before the end of the one scene in which Brünnhilde takes part in
+"Siegfried." Never did her voice have the lovely quality which had
+always characterized it in the music of Donizetti and Gounod. It lost
+in euphony in the broadly sustained and sweeping phrases of Wagner, and
+the difference in power and expressiveness between its higher and lower
+registers was made pitifully obvious. The music, moreover, exhausted
+her. She plunged into her apostrophe with most self-sacrificing vigor
+at the beginning of the scene, and was prodigal in the use of her voice
+in its early moments; but when the culmination of its passion was
+reached, in what would be called the stretto of the piece in the old
+nomenclature, she could not respond to its increased demands. It was an
+anti-climax. Wagner's music is like jealousy; it makes the meat it feeds
+on if one be but filled with its dramatic fervor. Recall what I have
+related of Mme. Lehmann's statement of how she was sustained by the
+emotional excitement which Wagner's dramas created in her, and how it
+made it easier for her to sing the music of Brünnhilde than that of
+Norma. But Mme. Lehmann was a woman of intense emotionality, and her
+voice was colored for tragedy and equal to its strain. It would be a
+happiness to say the same of Mme. Melba, but no judicious person would
+dream of saying it. "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory
+of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth
+from another star in glory." Mme. Melba should have been content with
+her own particular glory.
+
+Massenet's "Le Cid" was the only novelty of the season It was given on
+February 12, 1897, with the following distribution of parts:
+
+
+  Rodrigue (his original character) ............... Jean de Reszke
+  Don Diégue (his original character) .......... Édouard de Reszke
+  Le Roi ........................................... Jean Lassalle
+  Le Conte de Gormas (his original character) ........ Pol Plançon
+  St. Jacques    |
+  L'Envoye Maure | .................................. Jacques Bars
+  Don Arras ......................................... Signor Corsi
+  Don Alonzo ................................. Signor de Vaschetti
+  L'Infante ................................... Clementine de Vere
+  Chimène ......................................... Felia Litvinne
+
+  Conductor--Signor Mancinelli
+
+
+The table of performances from 1893 to 1897 follows here:
+
+
+PERFORMANCES IN REGULAR SUBSCRIPTION SEASONS
+
+   Operas                    1893-94  1894-95  1895-96  1896-97
+
+  "Faust" ..................... 8        7        8       10
+  "Philemon et Baucis" ........ 4        0        2        1
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... 7        3        7        4
+  "Lohengrin" ................. 5        5        6        6
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 2        3        3        2
+  "Hamlet" .................... 1        0        2        1
+  "Roméo et Juliette" ......... 5        4        4        5
+  "Orfeo" ..................... 1        0        1        0
+  "Pagliacci" ................. 3        2        2        0
+  "Les Huguenots" ............. 2        6        5        2
+  "Carmen" ................... 12        7       11        7
+  "Don Giovanni" .............. 1        3        0        3
+  "Rigoletto" ................. 2        4        1        1
+  "Die Meistersinger" ......... 3        0        1        3
+  "L'Amico Fritz" ............. 2        0        0        0
+  "Semiramide" ................ 3        1        0        0
+  "Tannhäuser" ................ 2        0        3        3
+  "Le Nozze di Figaro" ........ 3        0        0        0
+  "La Traviata" ............... 1        1        2        3
+  "Guillaume Tell" ............ 0        3        0        0
+  "Aïda" ...................... 0        3        4        3
+  "Il Trovatore" .............. 0        3        2        2
+  "Otello" .................... 0        4        0        0
+  "Mignon" .................... 0        1        0        0
+  "Elaine" (Bemberg) .......... 0        2        0        0
+  "Manon" (Massenet) .......... 0        4        0        0
+  "Falstaff" .................. 0        3        3        0
+  "Samson et Dalila" .......... 0        1        0        0
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ........ 0        0        6        2
+  "L'Africaine" ............... 0        1        0        1
+  "La Favorita" ............... 0        0        2        2
+  "La Navarraise" ............. 0        0        4        0
+  "Fidelio" ..................  0        1        0        0
+  "Die Walküre" ............... 0        0        2        0
+  "Les Pêcheurs de Perles" .... 0        0        1        0
+  "Mefistofele" ............... 0        0        2        4
+  "Martha" .................... 0        0        0        2
+  "Siegfried" ................. 0        0        0        6
+  * "Werther" ................. 0        0        0        1
+  "Le Cid" .................... 0        0        0        2
+
+
+* "Werther" had a single performance in the supplemental season
+of 1893-94.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+BEGINNING OF THE GRAU PERIOD
+
+
+From 1896 to the end of the season 1902-03 Maurice Grau was in name as
+well as in fact the monarch of the operatic world of America. For a
+brief space he also extended his reign to Covent Garden, but the time
+was not ripe for that union of interests between London and New York
+which has so long seemed inevitable, and his foreign reign was short. So
+was his American dictatorship; but while it lasted it was probably the
+most brilliant operatic government that the world has ever known from a
+financial point of view, and its high lights artistically were luminous
+in the extreme. At the end of the period Mr. Grau had retired from
+operatic management forever, for though his desire to remain in active
+employment was intense, his mental powers unweakened, and his will
+strong, his health was hopelessly shattered, and before another lustrum
+had passed he had gone down to his death, his last thoughts longingly
+fixed on the institution which had brought him fame and fortune in
+abundant measure. For several years he had maintained a beautiful summer
+home at Croissy-Chatou, on the Seine, about ten miles from Paris. He
+died in the French capital on March 14, 1907, of a disease of the heart
+which had compelled his abandonment of active managerial life.
+
+Mr. Grau was an Austrian by birth, his birthplace being Brünn; but he
+was brought to New York by his parents in 1854, when he was five years
+old, and all his education and business training was American. He passed
+through the classes of the city's public schools and was graduated from
+the Free Academy, now the College of the City of New York, in 1867. He
+then entered the Law School of Columbia College, and read law in the
+office of Morrison, Lauterbach & Spitgarn. His uncle, Jacob Grau, was
+an operatic and theatrical manager, and for him, as a boy, he sold
+librettos in his opera house. This opened the way into theatrical life,
+which proved to have such fascinations and hold such promises that he
+abandoned the law without having sought admission to the bar, and in
+1872 also abandoned the service of his uncle and embarked on his career
+as manager. In association with Charles A. Chizzola, the joint capital
+amounting to $1,500, he engaged Aimée, a French opéra bouffe singer, who
+had made a hit two years before at the Grand Opera House, for a season
+of seven weeks. His first week, in Bridgeport, Conn., paid the expenses
+of the entire engagement. Aimée came to America again and again, and
+always under Mr. Grau's management. The same year he managed the
+American tours of Rubinstein and Henri Wieniawski, both of whom came to
+America with the financial backing of Messrs. Steinway & Sons. It was
+before the days of phenomenal honoraria. Rubinstein was content with
+$200 a concert, and in eight months his energetic young manager had
+cleared $60,000 on his engagement alone. The next year he organized the
+Clara Louise Kellogg Opera Company, continued his management of Mlle.
+Aimée, and brought to America the Italian tragedian, Tommaso Salvini.
+In 1874 he managed three opéra bouffe and operetta companies, besides
+Adelaide Ristori, and became lessee of the Lyceum Theater, in Fourteenth
+Street. There was a season of financial stress, and in 1875 he severed
+his connection with Chizzola, after another period of bad luck. In 1876
+he gave concerts, directed by Offenbach, in the Madison Square Garden,
+which were a failure, but he recouped his losses from a forfeit of
+$20,000, which the Italian Rossi paid to him rather than give up a
+successful season in Paris. A highly successful tour of seventeen months
+in South America, Cuba, and Mexico with an opéra bouffe troupe, headed
+by the tenor Capoul, and Paola Marié continued his successes. In
+1883 began his association with Messrs. Abbey and Schoeffel, whose
+experiences, together with his own, at the Metropolitan Opera House
+have repeatedly formed the subject of discussion in these chapters of
+operatic history.
+
+The story of the management of the Metropolitan Opera House ended in
+Chapter XVII with an account of the disasters which overtook Abbey,
+Schoeffel, and Grau in 1897. Before the end of that season Mr. Grau
+announced, what had frequently been hinted at in the newspapers, that
+though he should obtain a lease of the opera house he would not give
+opera in 1897-98. The announcement had been received with incredulity,
+for though misfortune had overtaken the managers in Chicago and some of
+their other enterprises had been unfortunate, the New York season had
+turned out in all things successful. Besides, though, "Perjuria ridet
+amantum Jupiter," the public had long before learned to laugh at the
+oaths of managers. It turned out, however, that Mmes. Melba and Eames,
+who had become favorites of the stockholders, were not available for
+the next season, and the directors, who had learned to have confidence
+in Mr. Grau, were willing to let him make the experiment of a year of
+famine. As it turned out it cost them nothing except the performances,
+and Mr. Grau and the friends who had rallied around him very little
+money. The annual rental of $52,000 was made up to them by sub-rentals
+of the building to other managers, chiefly to Messrs. Ellis and
+Damrosch. Meanwhile the year of quiescence was put to a good purpose in
+strengthening the hold which Mr. Grau had resolved to obtain on opera
+in London as well as New York. Mr. Grau and his friends organized
+the Maurice Grau Opera Company and easily obtained a lease of
+the Metropolitan for three years and a release from the bankrupt
+corporation, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Ltd.). On May 4th the old company
+accepted a report which recited the story of the season 1896-97,
+recommended that it go out of business, and released Messrs. Schoeffel
+and Grau from an obligation which they had entered into with the company
+not to engage in opera management. All that remained for it to do was to
+realize on the only valuable asset which it owned--the Tremont Theater,
+in Boston. This it soon did by selling the property to Mr. Schoeffel,
+who has managed it ever since.
+
+The way now being open, Mr. Grau organized his new company, composed
+wholly of his friends. These were Edward Lauterbach, Charles Frazier,
+Robert Dunlap, Roland F. Knoedler, Henry Dazian, B. Franklin de Frece,
+F. W. Sanger, John W. Mackay, Sr., and Frederick Rullman. The capital
+stock, paid up, was $150,000, of which the Metropolitan Opera and Real
+Estate Company subscribed to $25,000. Mr. Grau was elected president
+and general director, Mr. Lauterbach vice-president, and Mr. Frazier
+treasurer. Mr. Sanger was made associate manager, with the specific
+duty of looking after the affairs of the house itself, and Mr. Ernest
+Goerlitz was appointed secretary.
+
+There was no regular subscription at the opera house in the season of
+1897-98, but the public were not without comfort. From January 17 to
+February 19, 1898, the Damrosch and Ellis company gave a series of
+performances which provided an excellent substitute. Opera-lovers were
+not even called on to forego the pleasure of hearing some of the singers
+whom they had come to consider essential to their happiness under the
+régime of Damrosch and Ellis's rivals. Mme. Melba was "not available"
+for Mr. Grau, but she was for Mr. Ellis, who was managing all her
+American business, and she headed the company. With her were Mme.
+Nordica and Mme. Gadski, and among old popular favorites were Emil
+Fischer and David Bispham. Other members of the company were Gisela
+Staudigl, who had been heard in the first German seasons; Mlle. Seygard,
+Mme. Brazzi, an American contralto with good presence, real warmth of
+feeling, and correct instincts; Miss Mattfeld, an extremely serviceable
+"juvenile," who remained such for years; Salignac and Rothmühl, tenors
+respectively for the Italian and German operas; Campanari, barytone;
+Ibos, a tenor, and Boudouresque, a bass whose name was picturesque.
+Melba added "Traviata" to her repertory at the opening performance, and
+later essayed "Aïda," only to prove, as she had done in the case of
+"Siegfried," that there are things in music which are unlike the kingdom
+of heaven in that they cannot be taken by violence. The repertory
+consisted of "La Traviata," "Tannhäuser" "Die Meistersinger," "Aida,"
+"Lohengrin," "Il Barbiere," "Faust," "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Die
+Walküre," "Siegfried," "Götterdämmerung," and "Les Huguenots."
+
+Before the next regular season began under the new Grau administration
+Mr. Seidl, who would doubtless have continued in association with the
+institution with which he had long and efficiently been connected,
+died. The temporary suspension of the Metropolitan subscription season
+had forced him more actively than ever into the concert field. He had
+succeeded Mr. Theodore Thomas as conductor of the Philharmonic Society,
+and continued the popular triumphs of that organization. He had also
+organized a series of subscription orchestral concerts at the Hotel
+Astoria, and his friends were developing plans for a new endowed
+orchestra when he died, after an illness of only a few hours' duration,
+supposed to have been caused by ptomaine poisoning. This was on the
+night of March 28, 1898. His body was cremated after an imposing public
+funeral at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 31st, participated in
+by the Musical Mutual Protective Union, Männergesangverein Arion, the
+Philharmonic Society, German Liederkranz, the Rev. Merle St. Croix
+Wright, who delivered the memorial address, and Mr. H. E. Krehbiel,
+chairman of the committee of arrangements, who read a despatch received
+from Robert G. Ingersoll, who was absent from the city on a lecture
+trip. The pall-bearers were A. Schueler (who had been a classmate of
+the dead man at the Leipsic Conservatory); Oscar B. Weber, E. Francis
+Hyde (president of the Philharmonic Society); Henry Schmitt, Albert
+Stettheimer, Henry T. Finck (musical critic of The New York Evening
+Post); Walton H. Brown, Louis Josephtal, H. E. Krehbiel (chairman of
+the cornmittee of arrangements and musical critic of The New York
+Tribune); Xavier Scharwenka, August Spanuth (musical critic of the New
+Yorker Staats-Zeitung); Albert Steinberg (sometime musical critic of
+The New York Herald); the Hon. Carl Schurz, Charles T. Barney, Rafael
+Joseffy, Julian Rix, James Speyer, Edgar J. Levey (musical, critic of
+The New York Commercial Advertiser); Dr. William H. Draper, Richard
+Watson Gilder, Paul Goepel, E. M. Burghard, Eugene Ysaye, Victor
+Herbert, George G. Haven, Zoltan Doeme, Edward A. MacDowell, and
+Carlos Hasselbrink.
+
+Concerning Mr. Seidl's career I have already spoken at some length in
+these chapters; it will be long before those who knew him intimately
+will cease to talk about his personal characteristics, and to tell
+anecdotes which illustrate those characteristics. He was one of those
+strong personalities that give an interest to all manner of incidents,
+even the commonplace. Like Moltke, he could hold his tongue in seven
+languages; but it is a fact that all his friends must have observed
+that his taciturnity never made his company any the less entertaining.
+Moreover, when the mood was on him, he could talk by the hour, and then
+his reminiscences of the years spent in the household of Wagner or the
+story of his experiences while carrying the gospel of Wagner through
+Europe were full of fascination. But the talkative mood seldom came
+when a crowd was about him. He was indifferent to the many and fond of
+the few; so his circle of intimate friends never grew large in spite of
+the multitudes who sought his acquaintance, and though no combination
+of circumstances could disturb his self-possession he seemed to be most
+contented and comfortable when seated quietly with a single friend. Even
+under such circumstances he could sometimes sit for minutes at a time
+without speaking himself or expecting a word from his companion, yet
+never show a sign of weariness or ennui. In this particular he was
+something like Schumann, of whom it is related that once he spent an
+hour with a bright young woman to whom he was fondly attached without
+speaking a word. Knowing his peculiarities, she too remained silent, and
+was rewarded for her self-restraint when he departed by hearing him say
+that the hour had been one in which they had perfectly understood each
+other. Seidl's hero, Wagner, was the very opposite of Schumann in this
+particular, and there is a story which indicates that he must frequently
+have been amused at his pupil's reticence. Coming to a rehearsal once he
+found that Seidl had taken a cold which had robbed him completely of his
+voice, so that he could give no instructions to the musicians. Wagner
+laughed immoderately, and with mock seriousness upbraided him for his
+bad habit of talking too much, which had now brought him to the pass
+where he could not talk at all.
+
+Seidl's epistolary habits were like his conversational--he wrote as
+little as he talked; but as the talking fit sometimes seized him, so did
+the writing fit. Then he could devote hours to a letter which had the
+proportions and sometimes the style of a formal essay. On such occasions
+he was so prone to drop into a pulpit manner that I once taxed him with
+it and asked an explanation. He paused for a moment and then smilingly
+made a sort of half-confession that he had once been destined for the
+priesthood. His Scriptural illustrations and "preachy" manner were
+relics which had clung to him from that early day. They were the only
+academic traces about him, however. It is doubtful if any of his friends
+ever heard him discuss a question in the theory or history of music. How
+far his exact knowledge in the art went may not be said; but one thing
+is certain--his practical knowledge embraced every measure of Wagner's
+works.
+
+He seldom spoke of his conservatory days at Leipsic, and then generally
+in a spirit of amusement. Complimented once by me on the excellence
+of his pianoforte playing, he said: "Oh, I made quite a stir at a
+conservatory examination once with Mendelssohn's 'Rondo Capriccioso.'
+I was to be a pianist." That he could have been trained into a virtuoso
+of merit I can easily believe, for without paying much regard to the
+graces of pianoforte playing he yet had a remarkable command of those
+tone qualities which are so helpful in expressive playing. He was
+always eloquent at the pianoforte, especially when playing excerpts
+from the dramas of Wagner. Then his performances were peculiarly full
+and orchestral, a fact largely due to the circumstance that he never
+confined himself to pianoforte arrangements, but preferred to play from
+the orchestral score. That he appreciated the importance of giving
+consideration to the peculiarities of instrumental media he illustrated
+once when at a private rehearsal of music for one of my Wagnerian
+lectures, at which he had intended to play, but had been prevented by
+a sudden duty-call at the opera, he quickened the tempo considerably
+for the pianist beyond that heard at his own readings of the opera, and
+added in explanation: "Nie langweilig werden am Clavier!" ("One must
+never be tedious at the pianoforte!")
+
+A few first representations of operas in this period outside of the
+Metropolitan Opera House call for brief mention, if not for the sake of
+the excellence of the productions, at least for the sake of completeness
+in the record. Thus on May 16, 1898, a company of Italian singers, some
+of whom had been singing in Mexico, some in South America, some in San
+Francisco--the sort of a gathering that, I think, I have described
+in these pages as New York's ordinary summer operatic flotsam and
+jetsam--gave in Wallack's Theater the first representation of Puccini's
+"La Bohème" which New Yorkers heard in their own city. The company was
+first announced as the Baggetto Grand Italian Opera Company, which was
+probably its official style in Mexico. In New York a hoary device of
+juggling with the name of Italy's chief opera house was resorted to, and
+it was called the Milan Royal Opera Company, of La Scala. Under either
+title the company proved itself capable of a deal of stressful and
+distressful singing, though a good impression was made by Giuseppe
+Agostini, a youthful tenor, and Luigi Francesconi, a barytone. "La
+Bohème" was performed on the opening night of the company's brief season
+(it made shipwreck according to rule within four or five days), with the
+following distribution of parts:
+
+
+  Mimi ........................... Linda Montanari
+  Musetta ...................... Cleopatra Vincini
+  Rodolfo ...................... Giuseppe Agostini
+  Marcello ..................... Luigi Francesconi
+  Schaunard ..................... Giovanni Scolari
+  Alcidero |
+  Benoit   |.................... Antonio Fumagalli
+  Parpignol .................... Algernon Asplandi
+
+
+Needless to say that scant justice was done to the play and score of
+"La Bohème" by the vagrant singers, and that the good opinion which the
+opera won later was shared by few among critics, lay and professional.
+After ten years of familiar acquaintance with the work, I like it better
+than I did at first, but it has not yet taken a deep and abiding place
+in my affections. I see in it, however, an earnest and ingenious effort
+to knit music, text, and action closer together than it was the wont of
+Italian composers to do before the advent of Wagner set Young Italy in
+a ferment. Music plays a very different rôle in it than it does in the
+operas of Donizetti, Bellini, and the earlier Verdi. It does not
+content itself with occasionally proclaiming the mood of a situation
+or the feelings of a conventional stage person. It attempts to supply
+life-blood for the entire drama; to flow through its veins without
+ceasing; to bear along on its surface all the whims, emotions, follies,
+and incidents of the story as fast as they appear; to body them forth
+as vividly as words and pantomime can; to color them, vitalize them,
+arouse echoes and reflections of them in the hearts of the hearers. But
+this it can do only in association with other elements of the drama, and
+when these are presented only in part, and then crudely and clumsily,
+it must fail of its purpose. And so it happens that Puccini's music
+discloses little of that brightness, vivacity, and piquancy which we are
+naturally led to expect from it by knowledge of Mürger's story, on which
+the opera is based, and acquaintance with the composer's earlier opera,
+"Manon Lescaut." One element the two works have in common: absence of
+the light touch of humor demanded by the early scenes in both dramas.
+However, this is a characteristic not of Puccini alone, but all the
+composers in the Young Italian School. They know no way to kill a
+gnat dancing in the sunlight except to blow it up with a broadside of
+trombones. Puccini's music in "La Bohème" also seems lacking in the
+element of characterization, an element which is much more essential in
+comedy music than in tragic. Whether they are celebrating the careless
+pleasures of a Bohemian carouse or proclaiming the agonies of a
+consuming passion, it is all one to his singers. So soon as they drop
+the intervallic palaver which points the way of the new style toward
+bald melodrama they soar off in a shrieking cantalena, buoyed up by the
+unison strings and imperiled by strident brass until there is no relief
+except exhaustion. Happy, careless music, such as Mozart or Rossini
+might have written for the comedy scenes in "La Bohème," there is next
+to none in Puccini's score, and seldom, indeed, does he let his measures
+play that palliative part which, as we know from Wagner's "Tristan" and
+Verdi's "Traviata,"--to cite extremes,--it is the function of music to
+perform when enlisted in the service of the drama of vice and phthisis.
+
+On October 10, 1898, another band of strolling singers, which endured
+for a week at the Casino, also performed "La Bohème," and the Castle
+Square Opera Company of Henry W. Savage gave it in English at the
+American Theater on November 28th of the same year. It did not reach
+the Metropolitan Opera House until the season 1900-01.
+
+Stockholders and subscribers of the Metropolitan Opera House having
+endured their year of privation, which, as we have seen, was not without
+its moments of refreshment, Mr. Grau opened the regular subscription
+season 1898-99 on November 29th. Its incidents of special interest
+were not many. One was the return of Mme. Sembrich, who made what Mr.
+Sutherland Edwards called Rosina's "double entry" in Rossini's "Barber"
+on the second night of the season--November 31st. On the third night
+Mme. Melba, who sang by the courtesy of Mr. Ellis, appeared in "Roméo
+et Juliette." There were first appearances of several artists whose
+names became fixed in the prospectuses for some years to come: Mme.
+Ernestine Schumann-Heink as Ortrud in "Lohengrin" on January 9, 1899;
+Ernest Van Dyck as Tannhäuser on the opening night; Albert Saléza as
+Romeo on December 2, 1898; Suzanne Adams as Juliet on January 4, 1899;
+Anton Van Rooy as Wotan in "Die Walküre" on December 14, 1898. Mr.
+Franz Schalk, the conductor engaged for the German operas in place
+of Mr. Seidl, who had taken part with Mr. Grau in the summer season
+at Covent Garden and been engaged for the New York season that was
+to follow, introduced himself to New York on the same occasion.
+
+Of acquaintances, more or less old, there were in the company
+besides Mmes. Sembrich, Eames, Lehmann, Nordica, and Mantelli, Miss
+Meisslinger, Miss Pevny, Frances Saville, Mr. Bispham, Mr. Dippel (who
+had been a member of the last German company in 1890-91), Pol Plançon,
+and Adolph Mühlmann. Newcomers besides those mentioned were Matilde
+Brugière, Herman Devries (son of Mme. Rosa Devries, a dramatic singer
+of renown half a century before), Henri Albers, barytone, and Lemprière
+Pringle, an English singer, who had worked himself up in the ranks of
+the Carl Rosa Opera Company. The two brothers, Jean and Édouard de
+Reszke, whom New York had come to look upon as indispensable to perfect
+enjoyment, were also members of the company. There were two cyclical
+performances of "The Ring of the Nibelung" to keep good Wagnerites in
+countenance, but Mr. Grau made his popular hit by a repetition of the
+device which had been successful before with "Faust"--he gave "Les
+Huguenots" with an "ideal cast." The device was simple, but it served.
+Meyerbeer's opera had been given three times, when on February 20th he
+announced it with Mme. Sembrich in the cast, and an all-'round advance
+on prices on the basis of $7, instead of $5, for orchestra chairs.
+
+Only one novelty was produced in the season. This was Signor
+Mancinelli's "Ero e Leandro," which had its first American performance
+on March 10, 1899, with the composer in the conductor's chair. The
+principal singers were Mme. Eames (Hero), Saléza (Leander), and Plançon
+(Ariofarno). Mme. Schumann-Heink was set down to sing the prologue, but
+illness prevented at the first representation, and the music was sung
+by Mme. Mantelli. The opera had a pretty success and back of it was an
+interesting history. Boito wrote the libretto for himself, but put it
+aside when the subject of "Mefistofele" took possession of his mind.
+Two of the numbers, which he had already composed, found their way into
+the score of the later opera, one of them being the beautiful duet,
+"Lontano, lontano, lontano," in the classical scene. Boito turned the
+book over to Bottesini, who composed it, but failed to make a success
+of it. Signor Mancinelli then took the libretto in hand and, having a
+commission from the Norwich (England) festival of 1896 for a choral
+work, he composed it and handed it in to be sung as a cantata. It
+was sung at the festival. The next year it received its first stage
+performance at Madrid and by way of Turin and Venice reached Covent
+Garden, London, where it was produced on July 15, 1898.
+
+What a simple tale it is that has so twined itself around the hearts of
+mankind that it has lived in classic story for ages and gotten into the
+folk-tales of more than one European people! Hero is a priestess of
+Aphrodite, who lives at Sestos, on the Thracian coast; Leander, a youth,
+whose home is at Abydos, on the Asiatic shore, beyond the Hellespont.
+The pair meet at a festival of Venus and Adonis and fall in love with
+each other at sight. The maiden's parents are unwilling that she shall
+cease her sacred functions to become a wife, and Leander swims the
+strait every night, while Hero holds a torch at the window to direct him
+to her side. One night there arises a tempest and Leander is drowned,
+and his body cast up at the foot of the tower. Then Hero throws herself
+upon the jagged rocks beside him, and the lovers are united in death.
+
+  "That tale is old, but love anew
+   May nerve young hearts to prove as true,"
+
+sang Byron after he had put discrediting doubts to shame by swimming the
+Hellespont himself and catching an ague for his pains. A simple tale,
+yet I have included more than is ordinarily found in the recital in
+order to show how Boito utilized and added to it. A simple tale, but
+with what lovely fervor have the poets sung it over and over again!
+Byron could smile at his own Quixotic feat in the lines which he wrote
+six days after its accomplishment, but in "The Bride of Abydos" he did
+not attempt to conceal the affection which he felt for the tale, or his
+pride in the fact that Helle's buoyant wave had borne his limbs as well
+as Leander's; and who can without emotion call up Keats's picture of
+
+  "Young Leander, toiling to his death,"
+
+pursing his weary lips for Hero's cheek and smiling against her smiles
+until he sinks, and
+
+  "Up bubbles all his amorous breath"?
+
+Right nobly, too, did Schiller hymn the lovers and two centuries of
+opera-writers--Italian, French, German, English, and Polish--have
+sought to weave their pitiful story into lyric dramas.
+
+Boito, as I have said, wrote the book of "Ero e Leandro" for himself,
+but eventually gave it to others. I can only speculate as to the cause
+of Boito's abandonment of his intellectual child. Probably he concluded
+that it lacked the dramatic elements which the composers of the last few
+decades, paying tribute, willingly or unwillingly, to Wagner's genius,
+have felt to be necessary to the success of a lyric drama. But dramatic
+action need not always be summed up in movement. Wagner's greatest
+tragedy has scarcely more external incident than "Ero e Leandro," and,
+indeed, is like this opera, in that the interest in each of its three
+acts centers in a meeting of the lovers and their publication of the
+play enacting on the stage of their hearts. But it takes music like
+Wagner's, music surcharged with passion, to body forth the growth of
+the dramatic personages and make us blind to paucity of incident. When
+thatcannot be had, then pictures and functions of all kinds, solemn
+and festive, must be relied on to hold the interest. Boito built up
+such pictures and grouped such functions about his simple tale with a
+great deal of ingenuity. The eye is charmed at once with his classic
+landscapes in the first act--the cypresses, myrtles, and blooming
+oleanders, the temple portico, the statues and altar with its votive
+offerings, the kneeling chorus of priestesses and sailors, Hero with her
+ravishing robes (think of Mme. Eames in the part), the gallant Leander
+and the stately archon Ariofarno. It is the scene of the lovers' meeting
+at the festival, and to heighten its interest and provide something else
+than hymns and rites, Boito has turned Leander into a victor in the
+Aphrodisian games, both as swordsman and cytharist. Hero crowns him
+with laurel, and he sings two odes, which Boito cleverly borrows from
+Anacreon, the first without, the second with implied, but not expressed
+credit. The odes are the most familiar of Anacreon's odes, however, and
+no one could think of moral obliquity in connection with Boito's use of
+them. They are the address to the lyre which the poet wishes to attune
+to heroic measures, but which answers only in accents of love; and the
+tale of how the poet took Eros, shivering, out of the cold night and
+received a heart wound in return. Charmingly, indeed, do the odes fit
+into the dramatic scheme and offer two set pieces as a contrast to the
+solemn pronouncements of the archon and the excessive hymning of the
+chorus.
+
+The development of the plot is now begun. Boito has created Ariofarno
+to fill the place of the wicked nun of the German folk-tales. He is
+obsessed with guilty love for Hero and seeks to divert her service from
+the celestial Venus to the earthly. She scorns his offers of love, and
+he leaves her with threats of vengeance. Filled with forebodings, she
+seeks an omen in the voice of a sea shell which had been placed on
+the altar of Aphrodite, the Sea-born. The words are charming, and the
+occasion prettily prepared for a vocal show piece. She invokes the shell
+as the cradle of Aphrodite, hears in its murmurs the song of the sea
+nymphs, the humming of bees amid the oleander's aeolian whispers, and
+the soft confessions of a mermaid. Then the sounds grow wild, and
+stimulate her fancy to a picture of rushing waters, flying foam, and
+wrathful surge--the vision which is realized in the last act. Here the
+suggestion for musical delineation is obvious, and Signor Mancinelli
+has utilized it in such a manner as to make his song (which, for
+reasons that I shall not pursue, awakened memories of the ballatella
+in "Pagliacci") the first really triumphant thing in the opera. The
+rest of the act is chiefly devoted to a love duet, at the close of
+which Hero, kneeling before the statue of the god, invokes Apollo to
+admonish her of her fate. Ariofarno, in concealment, answers for the
+god: "Death!"
+
+In the second act, which plays in the part of the temple of Aphrodite
+devoted to the mysteries, Ariofarno carries out his plan of vengeance
+against Hero. Professing to have received an oracular command to that
+effect, he restores a service in an ancient town by the sea and to it
+consecrates Hero, who is powerless to resist his will. The duty of the
+priestess is to give warning of approaching storms, so that by priestly
+rites the angry waters may be placated. While pronouncing her sentence
+he, in an aside, offers to save her if she will accept his love. Again
+he is spurned, and when he utters the words which condemn her to the
+vigil Leander seeks to attack him. For this he is seized and banished
+to the Asian shore. Hero takes the oath, the dancers rush in and begin
+a bacchanalian, or Aphrodisian, orgy, while the chorus sings the "Io
+paean." Here Signor Mancinelli has really written with a pen of fire.
+The music is tumultuously exciting, though built on the learned forms,
+and there is the happiest union of purpose and achievement. In the last
+act, somewhat clumsily set and unnecessarily ambitious in its strivings
+for spectacular realism, the dénoument is reached. Songs of sailors come
+up from the sea; Hero sings her love and longing and lights her lover to
+his fate. Their love duet is interrupted by the bursting of the tempest,
+which had come upon them without being observed. The warning trumpet
+which she should have sounded is heard from the vaults below, and the
+chant of the approaching priests. Leander throws himself into the sea;
+the archon upbraids Hero for neglect of duty and discovers its cause.
+Her punishment, death, will be his vengeance, but the lifeless body of
+Leander is hurled upon the rocks, and comes into view when a thunderbolt
+tears away a portion of the tower wall. Hero sinks dead to the ground;
+the archon rages at the escape of his victim, and an invisible choir
+sings of a reunion of the lovers in death.
+
+As a composer Signor Mancinelli is an eclectic. It would not be easy
+to specify any particular master as a model. He admires Wagner and has
+proper appreciation of the dramatic values, the continuity of idea,
+and the effect of development which flow from the recurrent use of
+significant phrases; but his manner is not at all that of the later
+Wagner whose influence, if found at all, must be sought in a few
+harmonic progressions and in a belief in the potency of orchestral
+color. Nearer to him than the master poet-musician are Verdi,
+Ponchielli, Boito, and the eager spirits of Young Italy. His music is
+as free as the later Verdi's from the shackles of set forms, but he is,
+nevertheless, at his best when the book permits an extended piece of
+lyric writing. This being so, it is disappointing that he has done so
+little that is good in the opening scene where the book invited him to
+consult the wants of the Norwich festival and to write in the cantata
+style. In the first act, however, there is little to praise outside of
+the settings of the two Anacreonic odes and the song to the shell. There
+is much striving, but a paucity of plastic ideas. What might have been
+an unconstrained lyrical outpouring, the prologue, mere thundering in
+the index, because of the composer's mistaken impression that it ought
+to be tragic, and in the "Ercles vein." When the rites begin and a
+swelling paean is expected, there is much making of musical faces, but
+no real beginning. Matters improve in the second act, where the part of
+Ariofarno becomes dramatically puissant. Here there are noble passages
+and the duet has moments of passionate intensity; but all these things
+pale their ineffectual fires before the "Io paean," which is as thrilling
+and well applied as anything that I can recall in the operas of the
+decade which preceded "Ero e Leandro."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+NEW SINGERS AND OPERAS
+
+
+There now remained four years of Mr. Grau's administration at the
+Metropolitan Opera House. They were years of great activity, during
+which the fortunes of the manager and the institution rose steadily. Mr.
+Grau was no more of a sentimentalist in art than Mr. Abbey had been. He
+was quiet, undemonstrative, alert, and wholly willing to let the public
+dictate the course of the establishment. Outwardly he was always calm,
+urbane, neither communicative nor secretive. I sat behind him during all
+the years of his divided and undivided directorship, and never failed
+of a pleasant greeting, no matter what the expression of The Tribune
+had been on the morning of the day. He accepted congratulations with a
+"Thank you!" which had cordiality in its timbre, and let the subject
+fall at once. He met expressions of condolence in the same unperturbed
+and uneffusive manner. Only once in all the years during which we sat
+neighbors can I recall that he volunteered a remark indicative of
+either satisfaction or disappointment. It was on the night of the first
+performance of Reyer's "Salammbô," in the season 1900-01. He appeared in
+his place early and extended his gloved hand in his ordinary manner, but
+this time his eyes took a survey of the audience-room the while. Then,
+still half turned, he remarked without a touch of feeling in the tone of
+his voice: "Encouraging, isn't it? Some say the public want novelties."
+He had expended a large sum on the production, and the public had met
+him with half a house.
+
+If the public cared little for new things, it may occasionally have
+disturbed the solitary musings of Mr. Grau, but it only emphasized his
+public exhibitions of willingness to give the people the old things
+which they liked. A strongly popular favorite had a safe hold on a long
+tenure of service under him. Changes there had to be from year to year,
+but so long as the public manifested a desire to listen to a high-class
+singer, and there were no untoward circumstances to interfere, that
+singer was re-engaged. Hence there came to be at the Metropolitan in the
+higher ranks something like the theatrical stock companies of an earlier
+generation. New singers there had to be, from time to time, but year
+after year (the serious interruption is not yet) the subscribers were
+assured before one season was ended that in the next they would still
+be privileged to hear Mmes. Sembrich, Eames, Nordica, Schumann-Heink,
+Ternina, Homer, and (until he retired from his active stage career) Jean
+de Reszke, and Messrs. Édouard de Reszke, Van Dyck, Dippel, Scotti,
+Plançon, Journet, Campanari, Mühlmann, Bispham, and Albert Reiss. The
+presence of these artists of the first rank naturally determined the
+character of the repertory, which was also cut to a pattern, since the
+public always wanted to hear the artists whom they admired in the rôles
+in which they were most admirable. The German Contingent made the
+Wagnerian list inevitable, just as Mme. Sembrich made inevitable the
+operas of the florid Italian school, and Mme. Eames the two favorite
+operas of Gounod. These circumstances simplify the presentation of the
+significant incidents of the remainder of this history. I have only
+to take account of the entrance of a few stars into the Metropolitan
+system, and the first production of a few operas--some of which came
+only speedily to depart, others of which have remained in the
+establishment's repertory.
+
+First, then, as to the American débuts. Newcomers of the first rank
+there were none among the ladies in the season 1899-1900: the tenor,
+Alvarez, effected his entrance on the Metropolitan stage on the opening
+night of the season, December 18th, in Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette";
+Signor Scotti, barytone, who has remained a prime favorite ever since,
+in "Don Giovanni," on December 27th; Fritz Friedrichs, whose success
+in New York was inconsiderable compared with that which he had won in
+Bayreuth in his famous character of Beckmesser in "Die Meistersinger,"
+on January 24, 1900. The subscription season of fifteen weeks consisted,
+with all the extra performances, of 104 performances. It was full of
+disappointments because of the illness of singers, and many performances
+were slipshod because of evils that have remained with the institution,
+in spite of many protests on the part of press and public, and promises
+of reform on the part of the management. Several times the company was
+divided so that performances might be given simultaneously in New York
+and Philadelphia. Even when this was not done, the efficiency of the
+forces was sapped by wearisome midnight journeys to and from the latter
+city, which prevented adequate rehearsals. Nevertheless, there was a
+supplemental season of two weeks. Herr Hofrath Ernst von Schuch,
+director of the opera at Dresden, was a visitor, and conducted two
+performances of "Lohengrin" and four concerts. No new operas were
+produced.
+
+Before the regular subscription season, 1900-01, the Metropolitan Opera
+House was the scene of an ambitious effort to habilitate opera in
+English, which was made by Henry W. Savage in co-operation with Maurice
+Grau. Mr. Savage had some years before established his Castle Square
+Opera Company, organized in Boston, in the American Theater. The
+repertory of the company was composed largely of operettas at first,
+but gradually operas of large dimensions and serious import were added.
+After the season 1899-1900 he entered into an arrangement with Grau to
+occupy the Metropolitan Opera House from October 1 to December 15, 1900,
+and under the title Metropolitan English Grand Opera Company the two
+managers issued a prospectus which contained the names of nearly all the
+singers then known favorably to the English opera stage in America. Many
+of them had also sung in the Carl Rosa Opera Company, of England, and
+there was a better command of routine in the organization than had
+been known in English performances thitherto. The repertory was quite
+as pretentious as that of the company of foreign artists regularly
+domiciled at the Metropolitan, save that it did not include the later
+dramas of Wagner. Instead, however, it comprised some light operas or
+operettas, and some specifically English works. The promises of the
+prospectus were fulfilled to the letter in respect both of singers and
+operas, and though the enterprise proved to be less successful than had
+been those of Mr. Savage in previous years (probably because of the air
+of aristocracy which it wore, without being able to assume the social
+importance which belonged only to the foreign exotic), it is deserving
+of extended record. Some of the names of the singers stand as
+prominently in the English record as in the American, and unexpected
+laurels have been wound round the brows of some of them in still more
+foreign fields. In the list were Ingeborg Ballstrom, Grace Van
+Studdiford, Fanchon Thompson, Rita Elandi, Mae Cressy, Grace Golden,
+Josephine Ludwig, Zélie de Lussan, Elsa Marny, Louise Meisslinger,
+Frieda Stender, Phoebe Strakosch, Minnie Tracey, Barron Berthald, F. J.
+Boyle, Philip Brozel, Forrest Carr, Lloyd d'Aubigne, Harry Davies, Harry
+Hamlin, Homer Lind, William Mertens, Chauncey Moore, Winifred Goff,
+William Paull, Lemprière Pringle, William Pruette, Francis Rogers,
+Joseph F. Sheehan, Leslie Walker, William F. Wegener, and Clarence
+Whitehill. The conductors were A. Seppilli and Richard Eckhold. The
+operas performed were "Faust," "Tannhäuser," "Mignon," "Carmen,"
+"Trovatore," "Lohengrin," "The Bohemian Girl," "Traviata," "Romeo and
+Juliet," "Cavalleria Rusticana," "Pagliacci," "Martha," "The Mikado,"
+and Goring Thomas's "Esmeralda." This last opera, a novelty in
+America, was brought forward on November 19, 1900, with the following
+distribution of parts: Esmeralda, Grace Golden; Phoebus, Philip
+Brozel; Claude Frollo, Lemprière Pringle; Quasimodo, William Paull;
+Fleur-de-Lys, Grace Van Studdiford; Marquis de Chereuse, Leslie Walker;
+Gringoire, Harry Davies; Clopin, F. J. Boyle.
+
+Before taking up the history of the Metropolitan Opera House, record may
+be made of the production of another novelty earlier in the year, also
+by Mr. Savage's singers, but under the more democratic conditions which
+prevailed at the American Theater. This was Spinelli's "A basso Porto,"
+which was given for the first time by the Castle Square Company on
+January 22, 1900.
+
+Mr. Grau began the campaign of 1900-01 on the Pacific Coast, his first
+performance being in Los Angeles on November 9th. Thence he went to
+San Francisco, Denver, Kansas City, Lincoln, and Minneapolis, reaching
+New York in time to open the subscription season on December 18th. The
+season endured fifteen weeks, within which time eighty-two performances
+were given. It was an eventful period. No fewer than eight singers
+who achieved significance in the annals of the house effected their
+entrances on the New York stage. Mme. Louise Homer made her début in
+"Aïda" on December 22d; Mlle. Lucienne Bréval, in "Le Cid," on January
+16th; Miss Marguarite Macintyre, in "Mefistofele," on January 14th;
+Fritzi Scheff, in "Fidelio," on December 29th; Charles Gilibert, on the
+opening night, in "Roméo et Juliette"; Imbart de la Tour, in "Aïda," on
+December 22d; Robert Blass, in "Tannhäuser," on December 24th; Marcel
+Journet, in "Aïda," on December 22d. The first of the operas given was
+"La Bohème," but, as I have already explained, it was no novelty in
+New York, having been performed by two Italian opera companies and in
+an English version three years before. Novelties in every sense were
+Puccini's "Tosca" and Reyer's "Salammbô." The former had its first
+representation (it was also its first representation in America) on
+February 4, 1901. Signor Mancinelli conducted, and the parts were
+distributed as follows: Floria Tosca, Ternina; Cavaradossi, Cremonini;
+Angelotti, Dufriche; Il Sagristano, Gilibert; Spoletta, Bars; Sciarrone,
+Viviani; Un Carceriere, Cernusco; Scarpia, Scotti.
+
+The restraining influence of music has prevented the lyric drama from
+acquiring the variety and scope of subject material adopted by the
+spoken drama. For nearly two hundred years after its invention classic
+legend and ancient history provided the stories which the opera composer
+laid under tribute. Very properly dramatic song occupied itself at the
+outset with a celebration of that fabled singer at the sound of whose
+voice "rivers forgot to run and winds to blow." In the story of Orpheus
+and Eurydice, as told in what is set down in history as the first opera,
+music and love were mated; and they have not yet been divorced, though
+both have undergone many and great changes of character. Love--gentle,
+constant, chivalric, tried, and triumphant--has been hymned amid
+pictures suggested by a millennium of human happenings, and its
+expression has passed through all the phases that the development of
+the most direct vehicle of emotional utterance could place at its
+service--from the melodramatic strivings of the amateurs who stumbled
+upon opera in their effort to reanimate the Greek drama to the glowing
+scores of Richard Wagner, in which high art and profound science are
+joined in a product as worthy of admiration as any other product of the
+intellect fired by inspiration. In the progress from Peri to Wagner,
+however, despite many daring and dubious adventures in new territories,
+there has yet been an avoidance of material in itself ugly and
+repulsive. We have been asked to contemplate the libertinism of Don
+Juan, but at its worst it has served only as a foil to the virtue of
+his victims, which in the end emerged triumphant. We have seen exposed
+the monstrous double nature of Rigoletto, but only that the pathos of
+paternal love should thereby be thrown into brighter relief. We have
+seen convention sanctified by nature and approved by communal experience
+set at naught by Wagner's treatment of mythological tales of unspeakable
+antiquity, but only that the tragedy of human existence in its puissant
+types might be kept before the world's consciousness.
+
+The relationship occupied by music to the drama, that is to the words,
+the pantomime, the pictures and the play, in "Tosca" is that which it
+occupies in melodrama--using the term in its original and correct
+sense--with the single difference that the dialogue which is illustrated
+and mildly expounded by the music, and which the instruments seek, more
+or less vainly, to accentuate, emphasize, and intensify, is not uttered
+in the speaking, but the singing voice. Even this difference, however,
+disappears at some of the climacteric moments, and the actors resort
+to the elocutionary devices which belong to the spoken drama, and,
+foregoing pitch and rhythm, shout or whisper or hiss out the words which
+tell of the feelings by which they are swayed. Thus the first principle
+of music, which is melody, in Wagner as much as it was in Cimarosa or
+Mozart, is sacrificed. Quite as significant as the degradation of music
+thus illustrated is the degradation of the drama which has brought it
+about. There has always been a restrictive and purifying potency in
+melody. It has that which has turned our souls to sympathy with the
+apotheosis of vice and pulmonary tuberculosis in Verdi's "Traviata,"
+which has made the music of the second act and the finale of "Tristan
+und Isolde" the most powerful plea that can be made for Wagner's guilty
+lovers. Nowhere else is the ennobling and purifying capacity of music
+demonstrated as in the death song of Isolde. Without such palliation the
+vileness, the horror, the hideousness of a play like "Tosca" is more
+unpardonable in an operatic form than in the original. Its lust and
+cruelty are presented in their nakedness. There is little or no time to
+reflect upon the workings of perverted minds, to make psychological or
+physiological studies, to watch the accumulation of causes and their
+gradual development of effects, except in the moments, so plentiful
+in Puccini's operas, in which music becomes a hindrance and an
+impertinence. Dramatic action cannot be promoted by music. The province
+of the art is to develop and fix a mood or celebrate a deed. Tosca can
+sing of her love, her jealousy, her hate, her hope; she cannot sing her
+frantic efforts to escape the lustful arms of Scarpia; she cannot sing
+his murder (though she might have chanted its gory glory, if so she held
+it, after the fact); nor can she sing her own destruction. In fact,
+there is next to nothing in Sardou's drama fit for operatic song, either
+in the sense that prevailed at the time of Paisiello or prevails in the
+time of Wagner--which is now. In the opera a really fit incident for
+the lyric drama borrowed from Sardou is expanded adroitly into a scene
+which is both musically and dramatically effective. It is the scene in
+which the cantata is sung in the Queen's apartments while Scarpia is
+questioning Cavaradossi in his own. Here the set musical composition is
+a background for the dramatic dialogue. Parallel scenes provide most of
+the opportunities which Puccini has embraced for writing in what may
+be called a sustained effort outside of the scenes between Tosca and
+her lover in the first act. Thus the first finale has a pompous church
+office as its background, with tolling of bells, the booming of cannon,
+the pealing of a great organ, through all of which surges a stream of
+orchestral melody bearing the declamatory shrieks of Scarpia. All of
+this is purely irrelevant and external, and the device is cheap, but
+it serves. Similar in musical purpose, but at the opposite end of the
+color scheme, is the opening of the third act. The stage picture is
+one of great beauty. The foreground shows the platform of the Castle
+of St. Angelo. St. Peter's Cathedral and the Vatican are visible in the
+background. It is urban Rome alone that is visible, but there are sounds
+from the Campagna--the tinkling of sheep bells, the song of a shepherd
+lad mingling with a strangely languorous and fragmentary orchestral
+song. Then there arises from the distance the sound of church bells,
+large and small, while the orchestral song goes on. It is all
+mood-music, conceived with no necessary relationship to the drama, but
+providing an atmosphere which is really refreshing after the sup of
+horrors provided by the preceding act. Therefore, it must be accepted
+gratefully like the dance tune over which Scarpia and his associates
+declaim before the dreadful business of the second act begins, and the
+piteous appeal to the Virgin which Tosca makes before she conceives
+the idea of the butchery which she perpetrates a few minutes later.
+
+And the melodramatic music upon which Sardou's play floats,--what is
+it like? Much of it like shreds and patches of many things with which
+the operatic stage has long been familiar. There are efforts at
+characterization by means of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmical symbols,
+of which the most striking, and least original, is a succession of
+chords which serves as an introduction to the first scene. This and
+much else came out of Wagner's workshop, and, like all else of the same
+origin in the score, is impotent because there is no trace of Wagner's
+logical mind, either in the choice of material or its development.
+Phrases of real pith and moment are mixed with phrases of indescribable
+balderdash, yet these phrases recur with painful reiteration and with
+all the color tints which Puccini is able to scrape from a marvelously
+varied and garish orchestral palette. The most remarkable feature, the
+feature which shows the composer's constructive talent in its brightest
+aspect, is the fluency of it all. Even when reduced to the extremity
+of a tremolo of empty fifths on the strings pianissimo, or a single
+sustained tone, Puccini still manages to cling to a thread of his
+melodramatic fabric and the mind does not quite let go of his musical
+intentions.
+
+Reyer's "Salammbô" was brought forward for the first time on March 20,
+1901, with the following cast: Salammbô, Lucienne Bréval; Taanach,
+Miss Carrie Bridewell; Matho, Albert Saléza; Shahabarim, Mr. Salignac;
+Narr-Havas, Mr. Journet; Spendius, Mr. Sizes; Giscon, Mr. Gilibert;
+Authorite, Mr. Dufriche; Hamilcar, Mr. Scotti. Signor Mancinelli
+conducted. The opera received a brilliant representation. Mr. Grau
+had piled up the stage adornments with a lavish hand, and, though it
+disappeared from the Metropolitan stage after two performances, material
+traces remained for years in the settings of other spectacular operas.
+The scenes were all reproductions of the Paris models and exquisitely
+painted; the costumes were gorgeous to a degree. Mlle. Bréval's beauty
+(Semitic, as became the character) shone radiant in the part of the
+heroine, and she sang and acted with an intensity that in its supreme
+moments was positively uplifting. Flaubert's brilliant novel supplied
+the material out of which "Salammbô" was constructed. The romance has a
+large historical incident for a background, namely, the suppression of
+a mutiny among the mercenaries of the Carthaginians in the first Punic
+war. Running through the gorgeous tissue which the French novelist wove
+about this incident is the thread of story which Camille du Locle drew
+out for Reyer's use--the story of the rape of the sacred veil of Tanit
+by the leader of the revolting mercenaries, his love for Salammbô,
+daughter of the Carthaginian general; her recovery of the veil, with its
+consequence of disaster to her lover, and the pitiful death of both at
+their own hands. The authors of the opera were adepts in the field of
+what might be called musical spectacle. M. du Locle had a hand in both
+of the operas written for Paris, "Les Vêpres Sicilienne," and "Don
+Carlos." Under the eyes of Verdi at Sant' Agata he wrote the prose
+scenario of "Aïda," which Ghislanzoni turned into Italian verse for the
+composer. If a prodigal and sumptuous heaping up of stage adornments
+could make the success of an opera, "Salammbô" would have been one of
+the greatest triumphs of the French lyric stage; but pompous pictures
+are not the be-all and end-all of opera, even in Paris, and the
+fortunate co-operation of du Locle and Verdi was not repeated in the
+collaboration of du Locle and Reyer.
+
+There are, however, merits in "Salammbô" which entitle it to a better
+fate than befell it in New York. The people in the story have marked
+dramatic physiognomies; indeed, had M. Reyer's skill in characterization
+been half so great as M. Flaubert's, and M. du Locle's, there would have
+been much to praise in the work. The characters are admirably drawn, and
+show as much individuality in their intellectual and moral traits as
+they do in their physical--the crafty Greek, the treacherous Numidian,
+the energetic and manly Carthaginian, the storm-tossed heroine, and the
+lovelorn Lybian are good dramatic types, even if stamped with stage
+conventions. A genius in musical characterization, like Mozart, Wagner
+or Verdi, would have found means for making their utterances as
+picturesque as their presences; but this was beyond the powers of Reyer.
+His tastes are modern, his aims far above the frivolity which afflicts
+some of his colleagues, but his abilities do not keep pace with his
+ambition. His models are easily found; he clasps hands most warmly with
+Berlioz, and has some of the Frenchman's peculiarly Gallic reverence
+for Spontini and Gluck. There are indications in the score that "Les
+Troyens" occupied much of his attention while he was engaged upon it,
+and I fancy that that ambitiously planned, but star-crossed work, was
+also familiar to the librettist. This need not excite special wonder,
+for the association of ideas was close enough. The second part of
+Berlioz's tragedy is also Carthaginian, and ends with Dido's prophetic
+vision of the hero who should avenge her wrongs on Rome. That Reyer also
+venerates Wagner but shows itself more in the use of the German master's
+harmonic progressions than in the adoption of his methods. He adopts
+the device of reiterated phrases, but his purpose in doing so I could
+not discover. Two short melodies, which are the themes of his brief
+instrumental introduction, are brought forward again and again, but fail
+to disclose their relationship to any of the agencies or elements in
+the story, and without a sign of that organic development which is the
+distinguishing characteristic of Wagner's creative style. Reyer's
+orchestration is discreet and free from all taint of that instrumental
+Volapük which is so marked in the Young Italian school. His subject
+invites the use of Oriental intervals, and he employs them with the
+discretion which is noticeable in "Aïda," but not with Verdi's
+effectiveness. Some of his devices are admirable, others simply bizarre.
+As a whole the music is monotonous in character and color, but it is
+dignified and earnest, and for this it deserves praise.
+
+Mme. Sembrich had absented herself from Mr. Grau's company in the season
+1900-01 in order to make a tour of the country with a small opera
+company of her own; she returned to the Metropolitan fold in the next
+season, however, and has not been errant since. The newcomers in 1901-02
+were de Marchi, the tenor, who sang first in "Aïda" on January 17, 1902;
+Albert Reiss, a German tenor and specialist in Wagner's Mime, and
+Tavecchia, bass. The last-named made no deep impression, and faded
+out of view, but Mr. Reiss has been a strong prop of the Wagnerian
+performances ever since, and has proved himself an exceedingly useful
+artist in many respects. Mr. Walter Damrosch joined Mr. Grau's forces as
+conductor of the German operas; with him were associated Signor Sepilli
+and M. Flon. The record of the subscription season embraced thirty-three
+subscription evenings, eleven subscription matinées, the same number of
+popular priced performances on Saturday nights, nine extra performances,
+including four afternoons devoted to "The Ring of the Nibelung," and a
+gala performance in honor of Prince Henry of Prussia. The additions to
+the institution's repertory consisted of "Messaline," by Isidore de
+Lara, and "Manru," by Ignace Jan Paderewski. Concerning these novelties
+I shall have a word to say presently; the importance of the German
+prince's visit, from a social point of view, asks that it receive
+precedence in the narrative of the season's doings. This right royal
+incident took place on the evening of February 25, 1902. The opera house
+never looked so beautiful before, nor has it looked so beautiful since,
+as when it was garbed to welcome the nation's guest, a brother of
+the German Emperor. The material most used in adorning the house was
+Southern smilax, which all but hid all that is ordinarily seen of the
+auditorium and the corridors. All the box and balcony fronts were
+covered with it, and strings of it hung at the sides of the proscenium
+opening from the top of the opening to the stage. These strips of green
+foliage were thickly studded with white and green electric lights. The
+same scheme was carried out above the stage opening, where long garlands
+of smilax, gleaming with tiny white and green lamps, were hung in
+festoons, while the apex was formed by a standard of American and German
+flags and shields. On the balcony and box fronts the screens of smilax
+were relieved with frequent bunches of azaleas and marguerites, and with
+stars of white lamps shining through the green. The royal box was formed
+by removing the partitions separating five boxes in the middle of the
+lower tier. The front was decorated with American beauty roses, in
+addition to the smilax. The interior was hung with crimson velvet, and
+across its front was a canopy of crimson velvet and white satin. Behind
+the royal box the corridor on which it opened was cut off from the other
+boxes by hangings of tapestry. One of the most beautiful effects of all
+was made by the ceiling, where the chandeliers shone through a network
+of strings of smilax and white and green electric lights radiating
+from the center like the strands of a cobweb. As may be guessed,
+the brilliancy of the audience was in harmony with that of the
+audience-room. The price of tickets for the stalls on the main floor
+was thirty dollars, and the chairs in the other parts of the room cost
+proportionately. Persons who could pay such sums to witness the function
+could also afford to dress well, and at no public affair in my time has
+New York seen such a display of gowns and jewels. The musical program
+was elaborate, but that was the least important feature of the evening.
+Mr. Grau had determined to disclose the entire strength of his company,
+and to that end, settling the order in some diplomatic manner, into the
+secret of which he let neither reporter nor public, he made a program
+according to which Mesdames Gadski and Schumann-Heink and Messrs.
+Dippel, Bispham, Mühlmann, and Édouard de Reszke were to perform the
+first act of "Lohengrin," Mesdames Calvé, Marilly, and Bridewell and
+Messrs. Alvarez, Declery, Gilibert, Reiss, and Scotti the second act of
+"Carmen"; Mesdames Eames and Homer and Messrs. Campanari, Journet, and
+De Marchi the third act of "Aïda," Mme. Ternina and Messrs. Van Dyck,
+Blass, Bars, Reiss, Mühlmann, Viviani, and Van Rooy the second act of
+"Tannhäuser," Mesdames Sembrich and Van Cauteren, and Messrs. Vanni,
+Bars, Dufriche, Gilibert, and Salignac the first act of "La Traviata,"
+and Mlle. Bréval and Mr. Alvarez the first scene from the fourth act of
+"Le Cid." It was a generous rather than a dainty dish to set before a
+king's brother, but it served fully to disclose the wealth of resource
+in New York's chief operatic institution, and the performances took
+on a heightened brilliancy from the beautiful appearance of the
+audience-room, and the spirit of joyous excitement which animated the
+audience. Up to the last moment no one familiar with the interior
+workings of Mr. Grau's harmonious, yet unruly empire, felt certain
+that the program would be carried out as planned; and it was not. It
+was very late when the curtain of smilax and light fell on the act
+of "Tannhäuser," and, the prince having left the house long before,
+followed by a large portion of the audience, who had come to see
+royalty, not to hear regal singers, Mme. Sembrich put down her little
+foot and refused to sing. Otherwise everything went off according to
+program.
+
+"Messaline" was produced at the Metropolitan Opera House on January 22,
+1902. The list of those who took part in its performance reads thus:
+
+
+  Messaline ..................................... Mme. Calvé
+  Tyndaris .................................... Miss Marilly
+  La Citharode ........................... Miss Van Cauteran
+  Tsilla .............................. Miss Juliette Roslyn
+  Leoconce ............................. Miss Helen Mapleson
+  Helion ....................................... Mr. Alvarez
+  Myrtille |
+  Olympias | ................................... Mr. Journet
+  Myrrho ...................................... Mr. Gilibert
+  Gallus ....................................... Mr. Declery
+  Un Rameur de Galère .......................... Mr. Dufriche
+  Un Mime Alexandrin ............................ Mr. Viviani
+  Un Poète d'Atellanes ......................... Mr. Giaccone
+  Le Loeno ........................................ Mr. Vanni
+  Un Marchand d'Eau ............................. Mr. Maestri
+  L'Edile ........................................ Mr. Judels
+  Harés .......................................... Mr. Scotti
+                   Conductor, M. Flon
+
+When Mr. Grau produced "Salammbô" it was possible for the writers in the
+newspapers to give a detailed account of the purport and progress of the
+story, and also an account of its panoramic furniture without offending
+decency. This is scarcely possible in the present instance. "Salammbô"
+was written many years ago, before the conviction had dawned upon the
+minds of opera makers that thugs and thieves, punks and paillards, were
+proper persons to present as publishers of operatic themes. Since then
+there has grown up in Italy a notion that the mud of the slums is
+ennobling material for celebration by the most ethereal of the arts,
+and in France that lust and lubricity are lofty inspirations for
+dramatic song. Gautier's delectable account of one of Cleopatra's
+nights has furnished forth an opera book; the mysteries of Astarte
+have been hymned, and Phryne, Thaïs, and Messalina have been held up
+to the admiring views of the Parisians clothed in more or less gorgeous
+sound--and little else. There is no parallel between this movement on
+the part of opera and the contemporary tendency of the spoken drama.
+Those diligent regenerators of society, Ibsen, Pinero & Co., affect
+a moral purpose to conceal an obvious aim from the simpleminded; the
+French makers of opera are franker, for they seek to glorify impudicity
+in the persons of its greatest historical representatives by lavishing
+upon the subject the most gorgeous pictures, the most ingenious
+theatrical contrivances, and the most sensuous music at their command.
+"Messaline" is a case in point. This work has Armand Sylvestre and
+Eugène Morand, two brilliant Frenchmen in their way, for the authors of
+its book, and Isidore de Lara, at the time chief of the drawing-room
+musicians of London, as its composer. The story of the opera is a sort
+of variant of "Carmen" set in an antique key, its heroine being an
+historic Roman empress instead of a gipsy cigarette girl. But any one
+who shall take the trouble to glance at the sixth satire of Juvenal will
+recognize that all its motives were drawn from that source. The likeness
+to "Carmen" is accidental, after all, though Bizet's opera was not
+without influence upon the work of librettists and composer. Like
+Carmen, Messalina, merely to gratify her lust, draws an honest-minded
+and supposedly pure man into her toils, and then throws him over for
+the next man she meets who is handsomer and lustier. In Bizet's opera
+the men are the soldier Don José, and the bullfighter, Escamillo; in
+De Lara's Harés, a singer, and Helion, a gladiator. Both operas end with
+the arena as a background--the Plaza de Toros in Seville, on the one
+hand, the Roman Circus, on the other. But here the resemblances end
+unless we pursue the traces of Bizet's music into De Lara's score, and
+this I shall not do, out of respect for the most brilliant composer that
+France has produced since Berlioz. Echeon, the harper; Glaphyrus or
+Ambrosius, the flute players, who are castigated in Juvenal's diatribe
+against marriage, are the prototypes of Messaline's first victim, as
+also is Pollio, whom a lady of lofty rank so loved that she kept for her
+kisses the plectrum with which he had strummed his lyre. That lyre she
+had incrusted with jewels, and for the sake of him who twanged it she
+had not hesitated to veil her face before the altar of Janus, and speak
+the mystic formula after the officiating priest. ("What more could she
+do were her husband sick?" asks Juvenal; "what if the physicians had
+despaired of her infant son?") As for Helion, his prototype is the
+gladiator Sergius, save that we are permitted to find him comely to look
+upon, and not as one galled by his helmet, having a huge wen between his
+nostrils and "acrid rheum forever trickling from his eye."
+
+So, too, in the exposition of Messalina's character the librettist,
+while constructing an entirely fanciful tale, and omitting all reference
+to the most notorious of her amours (the one which at the last wrung
+the decree of her death from the generally complacent Claudius),
+nevertheless managed to indicate Juvenal's description in the song which
+Harés sings against her, a recital by Myrrho, a scene in the slums,
+which she visits in disguise, and where she is rescued from a gang of
+roisterers by Helion, and in the scene of her wooing of the gladiator.
+(This scene, as it was played by Mme. Calvé, may not be pictured here.)
+A glimmer of palliation might be read out of a few passages in the
+book, and at the end there is an indication of something better than
+the groveling carnality of the woman whose name has been a byword for
+nineteen centuries in her offer of herself to Helion's sword, and her
+opening the door to the lurking assassin when the gladiator refuses to
+strike in obedience to his old vow to avenge the supposed death of his
+brother. But all of the stage Messalina's words and acts up to that time
+give the lie to the thought of her capability of feeling a single throb
+of pure sentiment. She is presented as all beast, and there is not one
+moment of cheer to relieve the horror of a play which shows how her
+lewdness compasses the death of two loving brothers, who, unknown
+to each other, were both her lovers. At the end the hand of Harés,
+stiffened in death, clings to her robe, and brings her face to face with
+that death which the veritable Messalina was too cowardly to give to
+herself when her own mother pleaded with her to do so at the fateful
+meeting in the garden of Lucullus.
+
+But there is often palliation in music. To this fact I have called
+attention before. Music can chasten and ennoble; but not music like Mr.
+De Lara's, which, when it strives for anything, strives to give an added
+atmosphere to the incontinence portrayed by the stage pictures, and
+proclaimed in the text. It is not dangerous music, however, for it is
+impotent, with all its blatant pretense. The composer seeks to fill
+the opening scene with languor and lassitude; he fills it with ennui
+instead. If De Lara's music were a hymning of anything, I should say it
+was a hymning of sensuality in its lowest terms; but there are neither
+eloquent melodies nor moving harmonies in the score. De Lara is a feeble
+distemper painter. The current of his music never really flows; it moves
+sluggishly now and then, and eddies lazily about every petty incident.
+In the scene of debauchery in the second act, it waits for a xylophone
+to rattle an accompaniment to the dice; it holds its breath for a
+muted horn to obtrude its voice with an inane vulgarity which would be
+laughable were it not pitiful to hear it in a work which is admirable
+in its dramatic contrivance and scenic equipment.
+
+Mr. Paderewski's opera, "Manru," had its first performance on February
+14, 1902. Mr. Damrosch conducted. The composer, who had taken a hand
+in the preparations, listened to the representation from a box, and
+the list of performers was this:
+
+
+  Ulana ................................... Mme. Sembrich
+  Hedwig ..................................... Mme. Homer
+  Asa ................................ Miss Fritzi Scheff
+  Manru ........................ Alexander van Bandrowski
+  Oros ..................................... Mr. Mühlmann
+  Jagu ........................................ Mr. Blass
+  Urok ...................................... Mr. Bispham
+
+
+"Manru" had its original performance at the Court Opera in Dresden, on
+May 29, 1901. Before reaching New York it was given in Cracow, Lemberg,
+Zurich, and Cologne, and Mr. Bandrowski, whom Mr. Grau engaged to sing
+the titular part, had already sung it twenty times in Europe. Its
+production at the Metropolitan Opera House brought scenes of gladsome
+excitement. Hero worshipers had an opportunity to gratify their passion
+in connection with a man who had filled a larger place in the public eye
+for a decade than any of his colleagues the world over; students were
+privileged to study a first work by an eminent musician, whose laurels
+had been won in a very different field; curiosity lovers had their
+penchant gratified to the full. The popular interest in the affair was
+disclosed by the fact that never before in the season had the audience
+at the Metropolitan been so numerous or brilliant; naturally the
+presence of the admired composer whetted interest and heightened
+enthusiasm. Long before the evening was over Mr. Paderewski was drawn
+from his secluded place in a parterre box by the plaudits of the
+audience, and compelled to acknowledge hearty appreciation of his
+achievement along with the artists who had made it possible. Despite
+the flaws which were easily found in the work, "Manru," the performance
+showed, is a remarkable first opera. There will scarcely ever be a
+critic who will say of it as one of the composers now set down as a
+classic said of the first opera of a colleague, that first operas, like
+first litters of puppies, ought properly to be drowned. "Manru" has had
+its day, but it was brilliant while it lasted, and it is possible that
+now it is not dead, but only sleeping. The story, badly told in the
+libretto made after a Polish romance by a friend of the composer, Dr.
+Nossig, has the charm of novelty, and beneath it there lies a potent
+dramatic principle. But more than the story, more than the picturesque
+costumes and stage furniture, there is a fascination about the music
+which grew with each hearing. Many of its characteristic details are
+based upon national idioms, but on the whole Mr. Paderewski wrote like
+an eclectic. He paid his tribute to the tendency which Wagner made
+dominant (where is the composer of the last thirty years who has not?)
+and, indeed, has been somewhat too frank in his acknowledgment of his
+indebtedness to that master in falling into his manner, and utilizing
+his devices whenever (as in the second act) there is a parallelism in
+situation; but he has, nevertheless, maintained an individual lyricism
+which proclaims him an ingenuous musician of the kind that the art never
+needed so much as it needs it now. As a national colorist Mr. Paderewski
+put new things upon the operatic palette.
+
+"Manru" is not an opera to be disposed of with a hurried ultimatum on
+either book or music. From several points of view it not only invites,
+it clamors for discussion. The book is awkwardly constructed, and its
+language is at times amazingly silly; yet the fundamental idea is kept
+before the mind persistently and alluringly by the devices of the
+composer. A Gipsy who forsakes his wife and child because he cannot
+resist the seductions of a maid of his own race would ordinarily be a
+contemptible character, and nothing more; but in this case, despite the
+want of dramatic and literary skill in the libretto, Manru is presented
+as a tragic type who goes to merited destruction, indeed, but doing
+so nevertheless creates the impression that he is less the victim of
+individual passion than of a fatality which is racial. I can easily
+fancy that the Polish novelist from whom the story was borrowed
+presented the psychological fact more eloquently than the librettist,
+but it is a question whether or not he did so more convincingly than Dr.
+Nossig plus Mr. Paderewski. Mr. Leland (after Mr. Borrow the closest of
+literary students of the Gipsies) has pictured for us the Romany's love
+for roaming, and our sympathy with his propensity. We look wistfully at
+the ships at sea, and wonder what quaint mysteries of life they hide;
+we watch the flight of birds and long to fly with them anywhere, over
+the world and into adventure. These emotions tell us how near we are
+to be affected or elected unto the Romany, who belong to out-of-doors
+and nature, like birds and bees. Centuries more than we think of have
+fashioned that disposition in the black-blooded people, and made it an
+irresistible impulse. Thus the poetical essence of Manru's character
+is accounted for, and the librettist has given it an expression which
+is not inept:
+
+
+  With longings wild my soul is fill'd,
+    Spring's voices shout within me;
+  Each fiber in my soul is thrill'd
+    With feelings that would win me.
+  In bush and brake
+  The buds awake,
+  Of nature's joy the woods partake,
+  And bear me helpless, spent, along
+  Where freedom lives far from the throng;
+  Thus pours the mountain torrent wild,
+    That stubborn rocks would check;
+  Thus rolls the molten lava stream,
+  Dispersing havoc dire, supreme,
+    Enfolding, whelming all in wreck!
+  Thus flies the pollen on the breeze
+    To meet its floral love;
+  The song, outgushing from the soul,
+    Thus seeks the starry vault above.
+  Is it a curse?
+  There is no other life for me.
+  'Tis written in the book of fate:
+  Thy race must ev'ry pledge abate
+  And wander, rove eternally!
+    But why? and where?
+  I know it not,--
+    I needs must fare!
+
+
+But such a life is lawless, it creates infidelity, nourishes
+incontinence; its seeming freedom is but slavery to passion, and
+this, too, the poet proclaims in Manru's confession that faithfulness
+is impossible to one to whom each new beauty offers irresistible
+allurement, and whose heart must remain unstable as his habitation.
+
+Into the music of Manru's songs, which tell of these things, Mr.
+Paderewski has poured such passionate emotional expression as makes them
+convincing, and he has done more. Music is the language of the emotions,
+and the Gipsies are an emotional folk. The people of Hungary have
+permitted the Gipsies to make their music for them so long, and have
+mixed the Romany and Magyar bloods so persistently, that in music
+Gipsy and Hungarian have become practically identical terms. It was a
+Hungarian gentleman who said: "When I hear the 'Rakoczy' I feel as if
+I must go to war to conquer the whole world. My fingers convulsively
+twitch to seize a pistol, a sword, or bludgeon, or whatever weapon may
+be at hand; I must clutch it, and march forward." It is because of this
+spirit, scarcely overstated in this story, that the Austrian Government,
+fearful of the influence of the "Rakoczy" during periods of political
+excitement, has several times prohibited its performance on public
+occasions, and confiscated the copies found in the music shops. Mr.
+Paderewski makes admirable use of this passion as a dramatic motive.
+When neither the pleadings of his tribal companions nor the seductive
+artifices of Asa suffice to break down Manru's sense of duty to his wife
+and child, the catastrophe is wrought by the music of a gipsy fiddler.
+
+As the subject of the opera has to do with the conflict between
+Christian and Pagan, Galician and Gipsy, so the music takes its color
+now from the folk-song and dance of Mr. Paderewski's own people, and
+anon from the Gipsies who frequent the mountainous scenes in which
+the opera plays. The use of an Oriental interval, beloved of Poles
+and Gipsies, characterizes the melos of the first act; the rhythm of a
+peasant dance inspires the ballet, which is not an idle divetissement,
+but an integral element of the play, and Gipsy fiddle and cimbalom lend
+color and character to the music which tempts Manru to forget his duty.
+The contest in Manru's soul has musical delineation in an extended
+orchestral introduction to the last act, in which Gipsy and Polish music
+are at war, while clouds and moon struggle for the mastery in the stage
+panorama.
+
+The season 1902-03 may be said to have been eventful only in its tragic
+outcome, of which I have already spoken--Mr. Grau's physical collapse.
+There was a painful and most unexpected echo a few weeks after the doors
+of the opera house had been closed for the summer vacation in the death
+of Mr. Frank W. Sanger, who had been acting as associate manager with
+Mr. Grau, and who had been largely instrumental in persuading Mr. Grau
+to abandon work and seek health in France. The season covered seventeen
+weeks, and comprised sixty-eight subscription nights, seventeen
+subscription matinées, seventeen popular Saturday nights, and six extra
+performances--ninety-one performances in all. Promises of a serial
+performance of the chief works of Verdi and Mozart had to be abandoned,
+partly on account of the illness of Mme. Eames. Only one new opera was
+brought forward, and that under circumstances which reflected no credit
+on the institution or its management, the opera (Miss Ethel Smyth's "Der
+Wald") not being worth the labor, except, perhaps, because it was the
+work of a woman, and the circumstances that private influences, and not
+public service, had prompted the production being too obvious to invite
+confidence in the opera. Simply for the sake of the integrity of the
+record mention is made that the production took place on March 11, 1903,
+that Alfred Hertz conducted, and that Mme. Gadski, Mme. Reuss-Belce,
+Georg Anthes, Mr. Bispham, Mr. Blass, and Mr. Mühlmann were concerned
+in the performance. The newcomers in Mr. Grau's forces were Mme.
+Reuss-Belce, Georg Anthes, Emil Gerhäuser, Aloys Burgstaller, and the
+conductor of the German operas, Mr. Hertz, who, like Mr. Burgstaller,
+has remained ever since, and they were all active agents in promoting
+the sensational feature of the first season of the administration which
+succeeded Mr. Grau's. I have tabulated the performances which took place
+in the subscription seasons under Mr. Grau as follows:
+
+
+THE GRAU PERIOD, 1898-1903
+
+   Operas                  1898-1899 *1899-1900 1900-1901 1901-1902 1902-1903
+
+  "Tannhäuser," .............. 6          5         4         2         4
+  "Il Barbiere" .............. 4          4         0         0         3
+  "Roméo et Juliette" ........ 6          5         4         3         2
+  "La Traviata" .............. 2          2         0         1         4
+  "Die Walküre" .............. 4          6         3         3         3
+  "Siegfried" ................ 1          2         1         1         3
+  "Nozze di Figaro" .......... 3          4         0         2         1
+  "Carmen" ................... 2         11         0         7         3
+  "Lohengrin" ................ 7          7         6         4         7
+  "Faust" .................... 7          9         5         5         7
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ....... 5          3         4         3         4
+  "Don Giovanni" ............. 4          1         1         0         1
+  "Aïda" ..................... 3          5         3         5         7
+  "Les Huguenots" ............ 4          2         3         3         3
+  "Das Rheingold" ............ 1          2         1         1         2
+  "Götterdämmerung" .......... 1          2         2         2         2
+  "Martha" ................... 1          0         0         0         0
+  "L'Africane" ............... 1          1         1         0         0
+  "Rigoletto" ................ 1          1         1         0         1
+  "Le Prophète" .............. 2          2         0         0         1
+  + "Ero e Leandro" .......... 2          0         0         0         2
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ...... 1          2         2         0         0
+  "Il Trovatore" ............. 0          3         0         0         1
+  "Der Fliegende Holländer" .. 0          3         1         0         0
+  "Mignon" ................... 0          1         0         0         0
+  "Don Pasquale" ............. 0          3         0         1         1
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ..... 0          6         3         4         1
+  "Pagliacci" ................ 0          1         0         1         6
+  "Die Meistersinger" ........ 0          4         2         1         2
+  "Die Lustigen Weiber" ...... 0          1         0         0         0
+  "Fidelio" .................. 0          1         1         0         0
+  "The Magic Flute" .......... 0          5         0         3         2
+  "La Bohème" ................ 0          0         5         0         3
+  "Mefistofele" .............. 0          0         2         0         0
+  "Le Cid" ................... 0          0         3         2         0
+  + "Tosca" .................. 0          0         3         3         4
+  + "Salammbô" ............... 0          0         2         0         0
+  "Fille du Régiment" ........ 0          0         0         3         6
+  + "Messaline" .............. 0          0         0         3         0
+  "Otello" ................... 0          0         0         3         3
+  + "Manru" .................. 0          0         0         3         0
+  "Ernani" ................... 0          0         0         0         3
+  "Un Ballo in Maschera" ..... 0          0         0         0         1
+  + "Der Wald" ............... 0          0         0         0         2
+
+  * Performances in the supplementary season included.
+  + Novelties.
+
+
+Massenet's "Manon" had two performances with Saville and Van Dyck in the
+season 1898-'99; but both were outside the subscription.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+HEINRICH CONRIED AND "PARSIFAL"
+
+
+A prologue dealing with other things may with propriety accompany this
+chapter, which is concerned with the history of the Metropolitan Opera
+House under the administration of Mr. Heinrich Conried. It is called
+for by the visit which Pietro Mascagni made to the United States in
+the fall of 1902. Signor Mascagni came to America under a contract
+with Mittenthal Brothers, theatrical managers, whose activities had
+never appreciably touched the American metropolis nor the kind of
+entertainment which they sought to purvey. These things are mentioned
+thus early in the story so that light may be had from the beginning on
+the artistic side of the most sensational fiasco ever made by an artist
+of great distinction in the United States. The contract, which was
+negotiated by an agent of the Mittenthals in Italy, was for fifteen
+weeks, during which time Signor Mascagni obligated himself to produce
+and himself conduct not more than eight performances of opera or
+concerts a week. For his personal services he was to receive $60,000, in
+weekly payments of $4,000, with advances before leaving Italy and on
+arriving in New York. The contract called for performances of "Iris,"
+"Cavalleria Rusticana," "Zanetto," and "Ratcliff" by a company of
+singers and instrumentalists to be approved by Signor Mascagni. The
+composer was hailed with gladness on his arrival by his countrymen, and
+his appearance and the three operas which were unknown to the American
+public were awaited with most amiable and eager curiosity. The first
+performance took place in the Metropolitan Opera House on October 8,
+1902, and was devoted to "Zanetto" and "Cavalleria Rusticana," both
+conducted by the composer. There was a large audience and much noisy
+demonstration on the part of the Italian contingent, but the unfamiliar
+work proved disappointing and the performance of "Cavalleria" so rough
+that all the advantages which it derived from Mascagni's admirable
+conducting failed to atone for its crudities. There were three
+representations at the Metropolitan Opera House the first week, all
+devoted to the same works, and one at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn.
+Meanwhile promises of "Iris" and "Ratcliff" were held out, and work
+was done most energetically to prepare the former for performance.
+Rehearsals were held day and night and the Saturday evening performance
+abandoned to that end. "Ratcliff" was never reached, but "Iris" was given
+on October 16th with the following cast, which deserves to go on record
+since it was the first representation of the opera in the United States.
+
+
+  Iris .......................................... Marie Farneti
+  Osaka ..................................... Pietro Schiavazzi
+  Kyoto ..................................... Virgilio Bellatti
+  Il Cieco ................................ Francesco Navarrini
+  Una Guecha ................................. Dora de Fillippe
+  Un Mercianola ............................... Pasquali Blasio
+  Un Cencianola ............................ Bernardino Landino
+
+
+I shall not tell the story of "Iris," which five years after was adopted
+into the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera House, it seemed for
+the purpose of giving Mme. Eames an opportunity to contend with Miss
+Geraldine Farrar in the field of Japanese opera; but the opera calls
+for some comment. Why "Iris"? It might be easier to answer the question
+if it were put in the negative: Why not "Iris"? The name is pretty.
+It suggests roseate skies, bows of promise, flowery fields, messages
+swiftly borne and full of portent. The name invites to music and to
+radiant raiment, and it serves its purpose. Mascagni and his librettist
+do not seem to have been able to find a term with which to define their
+creation. They call it simply "Iris"; not a "dramma per musica," as the
+Florentine inventors of the opera did their art-form; nor a "melodramma"
+nor a "tragedia per musica"; nor an "opera in musica," of which the
+conventional and generic "opera" is the abbreviation; nor even a "dramma
+lirico," which is the term chosen by Verdi for his "Falstaff" and
+Puccini for his "Manon Lescaut." In truth, "Iris" is none of these. It
+begins as an allegory, grows into a play, and ends again in allegory,
+beginning and end, indeed, being the same, poetically and musically.
+Signor Illica went to Sâr Peladan and d'Annunzio for his sources,
+but placed the scene of "Iris" in Japan, the land of flowers, and so
+achieved the privilege of making it a dalliance with pseudo-philosophic
+symbols and gorgeous garments. Now, symbolism is poor dramatic matter,
+but it can furnish forth moody food for music, and "Sky robes spun of
+Iris woof" appear still more radiant to the eye when the ear, too, is
+enlisted. Grossness and purulence stain the dramatic element in the
+piece, but when all is over pictures and music have done their work of
+mitigation, and out of the feculent mire there arises a picture of
+poetic beauty, a vision of suffering and triumphant innocency which
+pleads movingly for a pardoning embrace.
+
+There are many effective bits of expressive writing in the score of
+"Iris," but most of them are fugitive and aim at coloring a word, a
+phrase, or at best a temporary situation. There is little flow of
+natural, fervent melody. What the composer accomplished with tune,
+characteristic but fluent, eloquent yet sustained, in "Cavalleria
+Rusticana," he tries to achieve in "Iris" with violent, disjointed
+shifting of keys and splashes of instrumental color. In this he is
+seldom successful, for he is not a master of orchestral writing, that
+technical facility which nearly all the young musicians have in the same
+degree that all pianists have finger technic. His orchestral stream is
+muddy; his effects generally crass and empty of euphony. He throws the
+din of outlandish instruments of percussion, a battery of gongs, big and
+little, drums and cymbals, into his score without achieving local color.
+Once only does he utilize it so as to catch the ears and stir the fancy
+of the listeners--in the beginning of the second act, where there is a
+murmur of real Japanese melody. As a rule, however, Signor Mascagni
+seems to have been careless in the matter of local color, properly so,
+perhaps, for, strictly speaking, local color in the lyric drama is for
+comedy with its petty limitations, not for tragedy with its appeal to
+large and universal passions. Yet it was in the lighter scenes, the
+scenes of comedy, like the marionette show; the scenes of mild pathos,
+like the monolognes of Iris, in which the music helped Signorina
+Farneti, with her gentle face, mobile, expressive and more than comely,
+and her graceful, intelligent action, to present a really captivating
+figure of sweet innocence walking unscathed through searing fires of
+wickedness and vice, and the scenes of mere accessory decoration, like
+that of the laundresses, the mousmé in the first act, with its purling
+figure borrowed from "Les Huguenots" and its unnecessarily uncanny
+col legno effect conveyed from "L'Africaine," that the music seemed
+most effective. "Zanetto" is nothing more than an operatic sketch in one
+act. In its original shape, as it came from the pen of François Coppée,
+under the title "Le Passant," the story is a gracious and graceful idyl.
+A woman of the world, sated and weary with a life of amours, meets a
+young singer, feels the sensations of a pure love pulsing in her veins
+and sends him out of her presence uncontaminated. Here are poetry and
+beauty; but not matter for three-quarters of an hour of a rambling
+musical dialogue, such as the librettists and composer of "Cavalleria
+Rusticana" have strained and tortured it into. A drawing-room sketch
+of fifteen minutes' duration might have been tolerable. To add to the
+dulness of the piece, Mascagni, actuated by a conceit which would have
+been dainty and efective in the brief sketch hinted at, wrote the
+instrumental parts for strings, harp, and an extremely sparing use of
+the wood-wind choir and horn. Harmonies there are of the strenuous kind,
+but they are desiccated; not one juicy chord is heard from beginning to
+end, and the vitality of the listening ear is exhausted long before the
+long-drawn thing has come to an end.
+
+Signor Mascagni entered upon his second week with disaster staring him
+in the face, and before it was over it was plain to everyone that the
+enterprise was doomed to monumental failure. The public after the first
+night became curiously apathetic. This apathy would have been justified
+had any considerable number of the city's habitual opera-patrons
+attended any of the performances. The welcome came from the Italians
+dwelling within the city's boundaries; the performances themselves
+could arouse no enthusiasm. The singers were on a level with the usual
+summer itinerants; the orchestra, made up partly of inexperienced men
+from Italy and non-union players from other cities, was unpardonably
+wretched. It was foolishly reckless in the composer to think that with
+such material as he had raked together in his native land and recruited
+here he could produce four of his operas within a week of his arrival in
+America. He must have known how incapable, inexperienced, and unripe the
+foreign contingent of his orchestra was. The energy with which he threw
+himself into the task of trying to repair his blunders won the sympathy
+of the members of the critical guild, though it did not wholly atone for
+his conscious or unconscious misconception of American conditions. It
+was not pleasant to think that he had so poor an opinion of American
+knowledge and taste in music that before coming he thought that anything
+would be good enough for this country. His experience in Italy ought
+to have made him something of a student of musical affairs in other
+countries than his own, and he was unquestionably sincere in his hope
+that the American tour would win for him and his music the sympathetic
+appreciation which his countrymen had begun to withhold from him.
+Granting the sincerity of his desire to present himself fairly as a
+candidate for the good-will of the American people, it was inconceivable
+that he should have connived at or suffered such an inadequate
+preparation for the production of his works. Had he come to New York a
+month earlier than he did it would not have been a day too early.
+
+After his New York fiasco Signor Mascagni went to Boston, where troubles
+continued to pile upon him till he was overwhelmed. He fell out with his
+managers, or they with him, and in a fortnight he was under arrest for
+breach of contract in failing to produce the four operas agreed upon.
+He retorted with a countersuit for damages and attached theatrical
+properties in Worcester which the Mittenthals said did not belong to
+them, but to their brother. The scandal grew until it threatened to
+become a subject of international diplomacy, but in the end compromises
+were made and the composer departed to his own country in bodily if not
+spiritual peace. One achievement remained: the Musical Protective Union
+of New York had asked the federal authorities to deport the Italian
+instrumentalists under the Alien Labor Contract Law, and the Treasury
+Department at Washington decided in its wisdom that no matter how poor a
+musician a musician might be, he was not a laboring man, but an artist,
+and not subject to the law. Exit Mascagni.
+
+On February 14, 1903, the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real
+Estate Company by a vote of seven to six adopted a resolution directing
+the executive committee "to negotiate with Mr. Heinrich Conried
+regarding the Metropolitan Opera House, with power to conclude a lease
+in case satisfactory terms can be arranged." This was the outcome of a
+long struggle between Mr. Conried and Mr. Walter Damrosch, a few other
+candidates for the position of director of the institution making feeble
+and hopeless efforts to gain a position which all the world knew had,
+after many vicissitudes, brought fortune to Mr. Grau. The public seemed
+opera-mad and the element of uncertainty eliminated from the enterprise.
+Mr. Conried had been an actor in Austria, had come as such to New York,
+and worked himself up to the position of manager of a small German
+theater in Irving Place. He had also managed comic operetta companies,
+English and German, in the Casino and elsewhere, and acted as stage
+manager for other entrepreneurs. For a year or two his theater had
+enjoyed something of a vogue among native Americans with a knowledge
+of the German tongue, and Mr. Conried had fostered a belief in his
+high artistic purposes by presenting German plays at some of the
+universities. He became known outside the German circle by these means,
+and won a valuable championship in a considerable portion of the press.
+In the management of grand opera he had no experience, and no more
+knowledge than the ordinary theatrical man. But there was no doubt about
+his energy and business skill, though this latter quality was questioned
+in the end by such an administration as left his stockholders without
+returns, though the receipts of the institution were greater than they
+had ever been in history. He had no difficulty in organizing a company,
+which was called the Heinrich Conried Opera Company, on the lines laid
+down by Mr. Grau, and acquiring the property of the Maurice Grau Opera
+Company, which, having made large dividends for five years, sold to its
+successor at an extremely handsome figure. Mr. Conried began his
+administration with many protestations of artistic virtue and made a
+beginning which aroused high expectations. To these promises and their
+fulfillment I shall recur in a résumé of the lustrum during which Mr.
+Conried was operatic consul. Also I shall relate the story of the
+principal incidents of his consulship, but for much of the historical
+detail shall refer the reader to the table of performances covering the
+five years. The new operas produced within the period were but few.
+Some of them are scarcely worth noting even in a bald record of events;
+others have been so extensively discussed within so recent a period that
+they may be passed over without much ado here.
+
+Mr. Conried succeeded to a machine in perfect working order, the
+good-will of the public, agreements with nearly all the artists who were
+popular favorites, an obligation with the directors of the opera-house
+company to remodel the stage, and a contract with Enrico Caruso. Mr.
+Grau had also negotiated with Felix Mottl, had "signed" Miss Fremstad,
+and was holding Miss Farrar, in a sense his protégée, in reserve till
+she should "ripen" for America. The acquisition of Caruso was perhaps
+Mr. Conried's greatest asset financially, though it led to a reactionary
+policy touching the opera itself which, however pleasing to the
+boxholders, nevertheless cost the institution a loss of artistic
+prestige. I emphasize the fact that Mr. Conried acquired the contract
+with Signor Caruso from Mr. Grau because from that day to this careless
+newspaper writers, taking their cues from artful interviews put forth
+by Mr. Conried, have glorified the astuteness of the new manager in
+starting his enterprise with a discovery of the greatest tenor of his
+day. Many were the stories which were told, the most picturesque being
+that Mr. Conried, burdened with the responsibility of recruiting a
+company, had shrewdly gone among the humble Italians of New York and by
+questioning them had learned that the name of the greatest singer alive
+was Caruso. Confirmed in his decision by his bootblack, he had then gone
+to Europe and engaged the wonder. Caruso's reputation was made some
+years before he came to America, and Mr. Grau had negotiated with him at
+least a year before he got his signature on a contract for New York. Let
+the story stand as characteristic of many that enlivened the newspapers
+during the Conried period. A dozen of the singers who were continuously
+employed throughout the Conried period had already established
+themselves in public favor when his régime opened. They were Mme.
+Sembrich, Mme. Eames (who was absent during his first year), Mme.
+Homer, and Messrs. Burgstaller, Dippel, Reiss, Mühlmann, Scotti,
+Van Rooy, Blass, Journet, Plançon, and Rossi. To these Mr. Conried
+associated Caruso, Marion Weed, Olive Fremstad, Edyth Walker, Ernst
+Kraus (the tenor who had been a member of one of Mr. Damrosch's
+companies), Fran Naval, Giuseppe Campanari, Goritz, and a few people of
+minor importance. Miss Weed and Miss Fremstad and Messrs. Caruso and
+Goritz became fixtures in the institution; Miss Walker remained three
+years; Herr Kraus and Herr Naval only one season. The second season
+witnessed the accession of Bella Alten, Mme. Senger-Bettaque (who dated
+back to the German régime), Mme. Eames (returned), Signora De Macchi
+(an Italian singer whose failure was so emphatic that her activity ended
+almost as soon as it began), Mme. Melba (for one season), Mme. Nordica
+(for two seasons), Josephine Jacoby (for the rest of the term), and a
+couple more inconsequential fillers-in. The third year brought Signorina
+Boninsegna (who I believe had a single appearance), Lina Cavalieri (who
+endured to the end), Geraldine Farrar (still with the company and bearer
+of high hopes on the part of opera lovers for the future), Bessie Abott
+(a winsome singer of extremely light caliber), Marie Mattfeld (an
+acquaintance of the Damrosch days), Mme. Schumann-Heink (returned for
+a single season), Marie Rappold, Mme. Kirkby-Lunn, Carl Burrian,
+Soubeyran and Rousselière, tenors; Stracciari, barytone, and Chalmin
+and Navarini, basses. The list of German dramatic sopranos was augmented
+in the last year by Mme. Morena and Mme. Leffler-Burkhardt, the tenors
+by Bonci (who had been brought to America the year before as opposition
+to Caruso by Mr. Hammerstein), Riccardo Martin (an American), George
+Lucas; the basses by Theodore Chaliapine, a Russian, and a buffo,
+Barocchi. Among the engagements of the first season which gave rise to
+high hopes in serious and informed circles was that of Felix Mottl, as
+conductor of the German operas and Sunday night concerts (which it was
+announced were to be given a symphonic character and dignity), Anton
+Fuchs, of Munich, as stage manager, and Carl Lautenschläger, of the
+Prinz Regententheater, Munich, as stage mechanician, or technical
+director. These two men did notable work in "Parsifal," but in
+everything else found themselves so hampered by the prevailing
+conditions that after a year they retired to Germany, oppressed with a
+feeling something akin to humiliation. Likewise Herr Mottl, who made an
+effort in the line of symphony concerts on the first Sunday night of the
+season and then withdrew, to leave the field open to the old-fashioned
+popular operatic concert, which Mr. Conried commanded and the public
+unquestionably desired. His experiences in putting half-prepared operas
+on the stage also discouraged Herr Mottl, and he went through the season
+in a perfunctory manner and departed shaking the Metropolitan dust from
+his feet, and promptly installed his polished boots in the directorship
+of the Royal Court Theater at Munich.
+
+The season opened on November 23, 1903, with "Rigoletto"; Mme. Sembrich
+reappeared as Gilda and Caruso effected his American début as the Duke.
+His success was instantaneous, though there was less enthusiasm
+expressed by far on that occasion than on his last appearance, five
+years later. In the interval admiration for a beautiful voice had grown
+into adoration of a singer--an adoration which even sustained him
+through a scandal which would have sent a man of equal eminence in any
+other profession into disgraceful retirement. The season compassed
+fifteen weeks, from November 23d to March 5th, within which period there
+were ninety-seven performances of twenty-seven works, counting in a
+ballet and a single scene from "Mefistofele," in which Mme. Calvé, who
+joined Mr. Conried's forces after the season was two-thirds over, and
+yet managed to give four performances of "Carmen," helped to improve a
+trifle the pitiful showing made by the French contingent in the list.
+The French element, which had become a brilliant factor in the Grau
+period, began to wane, and subsequently the German was eliminated as far
+as seemed practicable from the subscription seasons. The boxholders were
+exerting a reactionary influence, and Mr. Conried willingly yielded to
+them, since he could thus reserve certain sensational features for the
+extra nights at special prices and put money in his purse. This policy
+had a speedy and striking illustration in the production of Wagner's
+"Parsifal," which made Mr. Conried's first year memorable, or, as some
+thought, notorious. Certainly no theatrical incident before or since
+so set the world ringing as did the act which had been long in the mind
+of the new manager, and which was one of the first things which he
+announced his intention to do after he had secured the lease from the
+owners of the opera house. The announcement was first made unofficially
+in newspaper interviews, and confirmed in the official prospectus, which
+set down Christmas as the date of production. A protest--many protests,
+indeed--followed. Mme. Wagner's was accompanied with a threat of legal
+proceedings. The ground of her appeal to Mr. Conried was that to perform
+the drama which had been specifically reserved for performance in
+Bayreuth by the composer would be irreverent and illegal. To this Mr.
+Conried made answer that inasmuch as "Parsifal" was not protected by
+law in the United States his performance would not be illegal, and that
+it was more irreverent to Wagner to prevent the many Americans who could
+not go to Bayreuth from hearing the work than to make it possible for
+them to hear it in America. Proceedings for an injunction were begun in
+the federal courts, but after hearing the arguments of counsel Judge
+Lacombe decided, on November 24, 1903, that the writ of injunction
+prayed for should not issue. The decision naturally caused a great
+commotion, especially in Germany, where the newspapers and the
+composers, conductors, and others who were strongly affiliated with
+Bayreuth manifested a disposition to hold the American people as a
+whole responsible, not only for a desecration of something more than
+sacrosanct, but of robbery also. The mildest term applied to Mr.
+Conried's act, which I am far from defending, was that it was "legalized
+theft." It was not that, because in civilized lands thievery cannot be
+made lawful. It was simply an appropriation of property for which the
+law, owing to the absence of a convention touching copyright and
+performing rights between Germany and the United States at the time,
+provided neither hindrance nor punishment. Under circumstances not at
+all favorable to success, had success been attainable (there was always
+something more than a suspicion that the proceedings were fomented by
+enemies of Mr. Conried in New York), Mme. Wagner tried by legal process
+to prevent the rape of the work, but the courts were powerless to
+interfere. Having passed triumphantly through this ordeal, Mr. Conried
+found himself in the midst of another. A number of clergymen, some
+eminent in their calling and of unquestioned sincerity, others mere
+seekers after notoriety, attacked the work as sacrilegious. A petition
+was addressed to the Mayor of the city asking that the license of
+the Metropolitan Opera House be revoked so far as the production of
+"Parsifal" was concerned. The petition was not granted, but all the
+commotion, which lasted up to the day of the first performance, was,
+as the Germans say, but water for Conried's mill. He encouraged the
+controversy with all the art of an astute showman and secured for
+"Parsifal" such an advertisement as never opera or drama had in this
+world before.
+
+Mr. Conried had concluded at the outset of his enterprise that
+"Parsifal" was too great a money-maker to be included in the regular
+subscription list of the season. He followed his general prospectus
+with a special one, in which he announced five performances of Wagner's
+festival drama on special dates, under special conditions, and at
+special prices. The first was set down for December 24; the prices for
+the stalls on the main floor, the first balcony, and the boxes which
+were at his disposal were doubled (orchestra stalls, $10), but seats
+in the upper balcony and the topmost gallery were sold at the regular
+price. The first performance took place on December 24th, the cast
+being as follows:
+
+
+  Kundry .................................... Milka Ternina
+  Parsifal .............................. Alois Burgstaller
+  Amfortas ................................. Anton Van Rooy
+  Gurnemanz .................................. Robert Blass
+  Klingsor ................................... Otto Görlitz
+  Titurel .................................. Marcel Journet
+  First Esquire ................................ Miss Moran
+  Second Esquire ............................ Miss Braendle
+  Third Esquire .............................. Albert Reiss
+  Fourth Esquire ............................... Mr. Harden
+  First Knight .................................. Mr. Bayer
+  Second Knight .............................. Mr. Mühlmann
+  A Voice .................................... Louise Homer
+
+
+Anton Fuchs and Carl Lautenschläger were in charge of the stage; Mr.
+Hertz conducted. The first half of the season had been sacrificed to the
+production. As such things are done at Bayreuth and in the best theaters
+of Germany the preparations were inadequate, but the results achieved
+set many old visitors to the Wagnerian Mecca in amaze. So far as the
+mere spectacle was concerned Mr. Conried's production was an improvement
+on that of Bayreuth in most things except the light effects. All of
+Wagner's dramas show that the poet frequently dreamed of things which
+were beyond the capacity of the stage in his day--even the splendidly
+equipped stage of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. Later improvements
+in theatrical mechanics made their realization in more or less degree
+possible. The greatest advance disclosed by New York over Bayreuth was
+in the design and manipulation of the magical scenes of the second
+act. Such scenes as that between Parsifal and the Flower Maidens
+were doubtless in the imagination of Wagner, but he never saw their
+realization. Up to the time of which I am writing the Bayreuth pictures
+were exaggerated and garish. In New York every feature of the scene
+was beautiful in conception, harmonious in color, graceful in action,
+seductive as the composer intended it to be--as alluring to the eye
+as the music was fascinating to the ear. At a later performance
+Weingartner, conductor and composer, now director of the Royal Imperial
+Court Opera of Vienna, sat beside me. After the first act he spoke in
+terms generally complimentary about the performance, but criticized its
+spirit and execution in parts. When the scene of the magical garden was
+discovered and the floral maidens came rushing in he leaned forward in
+his chair, and when the pretty bustle reached its height he could wait
+no longer to give voice to his admiration. "Ah!" he exclaimed in a
+whisper, "there's atmosphere! There's fragrance and grace!" The music of
+the drama was familiar to New Yorkers from many concert performances.
+Once, indeed, there was a "Parsifal" festival in Brooklyn, under the
+direction of Mr. Seidl, in which all the music was sung by the best
+singers of the Metropolitan Opera House on a stage set to suggest the
+Temple of the Grail. Only the action and the pictures were new to the
+city's music lovers. Nevertheless the interest on the part of the public
+was stupendous. The first five representations were over on January
+21st, but before then Mr. Conried had already announced five more,
+besides a special day performance on Washington's Birthday, February
+22d. After the eleventh performance, on February 25th, Mr. Conried
+gave out the statement to the public press that the receipts had been
+$186,308; that is, an average of $16,937.17. But this was not the end.
+Under Mr. Grau the custom had grown up in the Metropolitan Opera House
+of a special performance, the proceeds of which were the personal
+perquisites of the director. In all the contracts between the director
+and his artists there was a clause which bound the latter to sing for
+nothing at one performance. Before his retirement Mr. Grau grew ashamed
+of appearing in the light of an eleemosynary beneficiary under such
+circumstances, and explained to the newspapers that the arrangement
+between himself and the singers was purely a business one. Nevertheless
+he continued to avail himself of the rich advantage which the
+arrangement brought him, and in the spring closed the supplementary
+season with a performance of an olla podrida character, in which all of
+the artists took part. Mr. Conried continued the custom throughout his
+administration, but varied the programme in his first year by giving a
+representation of "Parsifal" instead of the customary mixed pickles.
+The act was wholly commercial. That was made plain, even if anyone had
+been inclined to think otherwise, when subsequently he substituted an
+operetta, Strauss's "Fledermaus," for the religious play, and called on
+all of his artists who did not sing in it to sit at tables in the ball
+scene, give a concert, and participate in the dancing. A year later he
+gratified an equally lofty ambition by arranging a sumptuous performance
+of another operetta by the same composer, "Der Zigeunerbaron," and
+following it with a miscellaneous concert. That operetta was never
+repeated.
+
+In the seasons 1904-05 and 1905-06 "Parsifal" was again reserved for
+special performance at double the ordinary prices of admission, and it
+was not until a year later that the patrons of the Metropolitan were
+permitted to hear it at the ordinary subscription rates. By that time
+it had taken its place with the Nibelung tragedy, having, in fact, a
+little less drawing power than the more popular dramas in the tetralogy.
+The reason was not far to seek. The craze created by the first year
+had led to all manner of shows, dramas, lectures with stereopticon
+pictures which were a degradation of the subject. Only one of the
+results possessed artistic dignity or virtue, and this justified the
+apprehension of the poet-composer touching what would happen if his
+unique work ever became a repertory piece. Mr. Savage in 1904-05 carried
+"Parsifal" throughout the length and breadth of the land in an English
+version, starting in Boston and giving representations night after night
+just before the Metropolitan season opened in the New York Theater.
+Nevertheless there were eight performances at the Metropolitan in that
+season and four in the season that followed. At regular rates in 1906-07
+only two performances were possible. All of Mr. Conried's artistic
+energies in his second season were expended on the production of "Die
+Fledermaus," which he gave for his own benefit under the circumstances
+already referred to, on February 16th. The season lasted fifteen weeks,
+and consisted of ninety-five performances of thirty operas and two
+ballets, outside of the supplementary season, which, let me repeat, are
+not included in the statistics which I am giving. An incident of the
+second season was the collapse of the bridge which is part of the first
+scene of "Carmen," and the consequent injury of ten choristers. The
+accident happened on the night of January 7, 1905, while the performance
+was in progress. Fortunately nobody was killed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+END OF CONRIED'S ADMINISTRATION
+
+
+A visit from Engelbert Humperdinck to attend the first German
+performance of his "Hänsel und Gretel" on November 25th, a strike of the
+chorus which lasted three days, a revival of Goldmark's "Königin von
+Saba" which had been the chief glory of the second German season twenty
+years before, and the squandering of thousands of dollars and so much
+time that nearly all of the operas in the repertory suffered for lack
+of rehearsals on a single production of Strauss's operetta "Der
+Zigeunerbaron," were the chief incidents of the season of 1905-06. That
+is to say, the chief local incidents. Out in San Francisco the company
+was overwhelmed by the catastrophe of the earthquake, which sent it back
+a physical and financial wreck. The calamity tested the fortitude and
+philosophy of Mr. Conried as well as the artists, but through the gloom
+there shone a cheering ray when Mme. Sembrich, herself one of the chief
+sufferers from the earthquake, postponed her return to her European home
+long enough to give a concert for the benefit of the minor members of
+the company, and distributed $7,691 to musicians who had lost their
+instruments and $2,435 to the chorus and technical staff.
+
+The season of 1906-07 marked highwater in the artistic activities of Mr.
+Conried's institution. It was the year of "Salome" and the coming of
+Signor Puccini to give éclat to the production of his operas. Outside of
+"Salome" there was only one real novelty in the season's repertory, and
+that, "Fedora," might easily have been spared; but the current list of
+the house was augmented by no less than seven works, namely, "Fedora,"
+"La Damnation de Faust," "Lakmé" (which had been absent from the list
+for many years), "L'Africaine," "Manon Lescaut," "Madama Butterfly," and
+"Salome." Berlioz's dramatic legend, "La Damnation," had been a popular
+concert piece ever since its first production by Dr. Leopold Damrosch at
+a concert of the Symphony Society more than twenty-five years before,
+and its novel features were those which grew out of the abortive efforts
+of Raoul Gunsbourg to turn it into a stage play.
+
+In the presence of the composer, who was received with great acclaim by
+a gathering notable in numbers and appearance, and amid scenes of glad
+excitement which grew from act to act, Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" was
+performed for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera House on the
+evening of January 18, 1907. Signor Puccini reached the theater in the
+middle of the third act and, unnoticed by the audience, took a seat in
+the directors' box in the grand tier. After the first act the orchestra
+saluted him with a fanfare and the audience broke into applause which
+lasted so long that, finding it impossible to quiet it by rising and
+bowing his acknowledgments, he withdrew into the rear of the box out
+of sight so that the performance might go an. After the second act he
+sent the following statement in French to the representatives of the
+newspapers:
+
+"I have always thought that an artist has something to learn at any age.
+It was with delight, therefore, that I accepted the invitation of the
+directors of the Metropolitan Opera House to come to this new world of
+which I saw a corner on my visit to Buenos Ayres and with which I was
+anxious to get better acquainted. What I have seen to-night has already
+proved to me that I did well to come here, and I consider myself happy
+to be able to say that I am among my friends, to whom I can speak in
+music with a certainty of being understood."
+
+"Manon Lescaut" was not wholly new to the opera-goers of New York, for
+it had had one or two performances by a vagrant Italian company at
+Wallack's Theater in May, 1898; but to all intents and purposes it was
+a novelty, for the musical itinerants of nine years before were not
+equal to the task set by Puccini, and gave a perversion rather than a
+performance of the opera. Why it should have waited so long and for the
+stimulus of the coming of the composer before reaching the Metropolitan
+Opera House was not easily explained by those admirers of the composer
+who knew or felt that in spite of the high opinion in which. "La
+Bohème," "Tosca," and "Madama Butterfly" were held, "Manon Lescaut"
+is fresher, more spontaneous, more unaffected and passionate in its
+dramatic climaxes, as well as more ingratiatingly charming in its comedy
+element, than any of its successors from Puccini's pen. The voice of the
+composer rings unmistakably through its measures, but it is freer from
+the formularies which have since become stereotyped, and there are a
+greater number of echoes of the tunefulness which belongs to the older
+period between which and the present the opera marks a transition. Abbé
+Prévost's story, familiar to all readers of French romance, had served
+at least four opera composers before Signor Puccini. In 1830 Halévy
+brought forward a three-act ballet dealing with the story; Balfe wrote a
+French opera with the title in 1836, Auber another in 1856, and Massenet
+still another in 1884. Scribe was Auber's collaborator, and their opera,
+which like Puccini's ended with the scene of Manon's death in America,
+received a touch of local color from the employment of Negro dances and
+Créole songs. It would be interesting to see the old score now that the
+artistic value of the folk-songs of the Southern States as an incentive
+to a distinctive school of music has challenged critical attention and
+aroused controversy. Massenet's opera, which through the influence of
+Minnie Hauk was produced at the Academy of Music on December 23, 1885,
+dropped out of the local repertory until the restoration of the Italian
+régime as has been related elsewhere in this book. The opening and
+closing incidents in Massenet's opera are the same as are used by
+Puccini, though MM. Meilhac and Gille, the French librettists, did not
+think it necessary to carry the story across the ocean for the sake of
+Manon's death scene. In their book she succumbs to nothing that is
+obvious and dies in her lover's arms on the way to the ship at Havre
+which was to transport her to the penal colony at New Orleans. The third
+act of Puccini's opera plays at Havre, its contents being an effort to
+free Manon, the deportation of a shipload of female convicts, including
+Manon, and the embarkation of des Grieux in a menial capacity on the
+convict ship. Here the composer makes one of his most ambitious attempts
+at dramatic characterization: there is a roll-call and the woman go to
+the gang-plank in various moods, while the by-standers comment on their
+appearance and manner. The whole of the last act, which plays on a
+plateau near New Orleans, is given up to the lovers. Manon dies; des
+Grieux shrieks his despair and falls lifeless upon her body. Puccini has
+followed his confrères of the concentrated agony school in introducing
+an orchestral intermezzo. He does this between the second and third acts
+and gives a clue to its purposed emotional contents by providing it with
+a descriptive title, "Imprisonment. Journey to Havre," and quoting a
+passage from the Abbé Prévost's book in which des Grieux confesses the
+overpowering strength of his passion and determines to follow Manon
+wherever she may go, "even to the ends of the world." Here, at least,
+we recognize a sincere effort to make the interlude something more than
+a stop-gap or a device to make up for the paucity of sustained music
+in the course of the dramatic action.
+
+"Madama Butterfly" in the original Italian had been anticipated by a
+long series of English performances by Mr. Savage's company at the
+Garden Theater, beginning on November 12th. This production is deserving
+of record. Walter Rothwell was the conductor, and the principal singers
+in the cast were Elza Szamosy, a Hungarian, as Cio-Cio-San; Harriet
+Behne as Suzuki, Joseph F. Sheehan as Pinkerton, and Winifred Goff as
+Sharpless. The opera reached the Metropolitan Opera House on February
+11, 1907, when it was sung in the presence of the composer by the
+following cast:
+
+
+  Cio-Cio-San ........................... Geraldine Farrar
+  Suzuki .................................... Louise Homer
+  Pinkerton ....................................... Caruso
+  Sharpless ....................................... Scotti
+  Goro ............................................. Reiss
+             Conductor, Arturo Vigna
+
+
+A great deal of the sympathetic interest which "Madama Butterfly" evoked
+on its first production and has held in steady augmentation ever since
+was due to the New York public's familiarity with the subject of the
+opera created by John Luther Long's story and Mr. Belasco's wonderfully
+pathetic drama upon which this much more pretentious edifice of Messrs.
+Illica, Giacosa, and Puccini is reared. To the popular interest in story
+and play Japan lent color in more respects than one, having at the time
+a powerful hold upon the popular imagination. We have had the Mikado's
+kingdom with its sunshine and flowers, its romantic chivalry, its
+geishas and continent and incontinent morals upon the stage before,--in
+the spoken drama, in comic operetta, in musical farce, and in serious
+musical drama. Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan used its external motives
+for one of their finest satirical skits, an incomparable model in its
+way; but the parallel in serious opera was that created by Signor
+Illica, one of the librettists of "Madama Butterfly," and Signor
+Mascagni. The opera was "Iris," the production of which at the
+Metropolitan Opera House helped to emphasize the failure of the
+composer's American visit. "Iris" is a singular blending of allegory
+which had a merit quite admirable though ill-applied, and tragedy of the
+kind to which I have already several times referred in this book. In
+"Iris" as in "Madama Butterfly" we have Japanese music,--the twanging of
+samisens and the tinkling of gongs; but it was more coarsely applied,
+with more apparent and merely outward purpose, and it was only an
+accompaniment of a vision stained all over with purulence and grossness.
+"Madama Butterfly" tells a tale of wickedness contrasted with lovely
+devotion. Its carnality has an offset in a picture of love conjugal and
+love maternal, and its final appeal is one to infinite pity. And in this
+it is beautiful. Opera-goers are familiar with Signor Puccini's manner.
+"Tosca" and "La Bohème" speak out of many measures of his latest opera,
+but there is introduced in it a mixture of local color. Genuine Japanese
+tunes come to the surface of the instrumental flood at intervals and
+tunes which copy their characteristics of rhythm, melody, and color. As
+a rule this is a dangerous proceeding except in comedy which aims to
+chastise the foibles and follies of a people and a period. Nothing is
+more admirable, however, than Signor Puccini's use of it to heighten the
+dramatic climaxes; the merry tune with which Cio-Cio-San diverts her
+child in the second act and the use of a bald native tune thundered out
+fortissimo in naked unison with periodic punctuations of harmony at the
+close are striking cases in point. Nor should the local color in the
+delineation of the break of day in the beginning of the third act, and
+the charmingly felicitous use of mellifluous gongs in the marriage scene
+be overlooked. Always the effect is musical and dramatically helpful.
+As for the rest there are many moments of a strange charm in the score,
+music filled with a haunting tenderness and poetic loveliness, music
+in which there is a beautiful meeting of the external picture and the
+spiritual content of the scene. Notable among these moments is the scene
+in which Butterfly and her attendant scatter flowers throughout the room
+in expectation of Pinkerton's return. Here melodies and harmonies are
+exhaled like the odors of the flowers.
+
+Giordano's "Fedora," first performed on December 5, 1906, was given with
+this distribution of parts:
+
+
+  Fedora ................................ Lina Cavalieri
+      (Her first appearance.)
+  Olga ..................................... Bella Alten
+  Dimitri ............................... Marie Mattfeld
+  Un piccolo Savojardo ................ Josephine Jacoby
+  Loris Ipanow ........................... Enrico Caruso
+  De Siriex ............................. Antonio Scotti
+  Il Barone Rouvel |
+  Desiré           | ........................ Mr. Paroli
+  Cirillo .................................... Mr. Bégué
+  Borow ................................... Mr. Mühlmann
+  Grech ................................... Mr. Dufriche
+  Boleslaw Lazinski ........................ Mr. Voghere
+  Lorek ................................... Mr. Navarini
+          Conductor, Arturo Vigna
+
+
+The opera is an attempt to put music to the familiar play by Sardou; an
+utterly futile attempt. A more sluggish and intolerable first act than
+the legal inquest it would be difficult to imagine. Fragments of
+inconsequential tunes float along on a turgid stream, above which the
+people of the play chatter and scream, becoming intelligible and
+interesting only when they lapse into ordinary speech. Ordinary speech,
+however, is the only kind of speech that an expeditious drama can
+tolerate, and it is not raised to a higher power by the blowing of brass
+or the beating of drums. The frankest confession of the futility of
+Giordano's effort to make a lyric drama out of "Fedora" is contained in
+the fact that only those moments in his score are musical in the
+accepted sense when the play stops, as in the case of the intermezzo
+which cuts the second act in two, or when the old operatic principles
+wake into life again, as in Loris's confession of love. Here, in the
+first instance, a mood receives musical delineation, and in the second a
+passion whose expression is naturally lyrical receives utterance. One
+device new to the operatic stage, in its externals at least, is
+ingeniously employed by the composer: the conversation in which Fedora
+extorts a confession from Loris is carried on while a pianist entertains
+a princess' guests with a solo upon his instrument. But the fact that
+singing tones, not spoken, are used adds nothing to the value of the
+scene.
+
+On returning from Europe late in the summer of 1906 Mr. Conried
+announced his intention to produce Richard Strauss's "Salome," and his
+forces had no sooner been gathered together than Mr. Hertz began the
+laborious task of preparing the opera--if opera it can be called--for
+performance. There can scarcely be a doubt that Mr. Conried hoped for
+a sensational flurry like that which had accompanied the production of
+"Parsifal"; but, with an eye to the main chance, he confined his first
+official proclamation to a single performance, which, in connection with
+a concert by all his chief singers not concerned in the opera, was to
+be given for his annual benefit. Evidently he felt less sure about the
+outcome of this production than he had about that of "Parsifal," and was
+bound to reap all the benefits that could come from a powerful appeal to
+popular curiosity touching so notorious a work as Strauss's setting of
+Oscar Wilde's drama. The performance took place with many preliminary
+flourishes beyond the ordinary on January 22d. Two days before there was
+held a public rehearsal, which was attended by about a thousand persons
+who had received invitations, most of them being stockholders of the
+opera house, old subscribers, stockholders of Mr. Conried's company,
+writers for the newspapers, and friends of the artists and the
+management. The opera was given with the following cast:
+
+
+  Salome ................................. Miss Fremstad
+  Herodias ................................... Miss Weed
+  Herodias's Page ..................... Josephine Jacoby
+  Herod's Page .......................... Marie Mattfeld
+  Herod ................................... Carl Burrian
+  Jochanaan ............................. Anton Van Rooy
+  Narraboth ............................. Andreas Dippel
+  First Jew .................................. Mr. Reiss
+  Second Jew ................................. Mr. Bayer
+  Third Jew ................................. Mr. Paroli
+  Fourth Jew .................................. Mr. Bars
+  Fifth Jew ............................... Mr. Dufriche
+  First Nazarene ........................... Mr. Journet
+  Second Nazarene ........................... Mr. Stiner
+  First Soldier ........................... Mr. Mühlmann
+  Second Soldier ............................. Mr. Blass
+  A Cappadocian .............................. Mr. Lange
+               Conductor, Alfred Hertz
+
+
+Concerning the effect produced upon the public by the performance of the
+work I shall permit Mr. W. P. Eaton, then a reporter for The Tribune,
+to speak for me.
+
+
+The concert was over a little after nine, and the real business of the
+evening began at a quarter to ten, when the lights went out, there was a
+sound from the orchestra pit, and the curtains parted on "Salome." The
+setting for "Salome" is an imaginative creation of the scene painter's
+art. The high steps to the palace door to the right, the cover of the
+cistern, backed by ironic roses in the center, and beyond the deep night
+sky and the moonlight on the distant roofs. Two cedars cut the sky,
+black and mournful. Against this background "Salome" moves like a
+tigress, the costumes of the court glow with a dun, barbaric splendor,
+and the red fire from the tripods streams silently up into the night
+till you fancy you can almost smell it. Here was atmosphere like
+Belasco's, and saturated with it the opera moved to its appointed end,
+sinister, compelling, disgusting.
+
+What the opera is is told elsewhere. It remains to record that in the
+audience at this performance, as at the dress rehearsals on Sunday, the
+effect of horror was pronounced. Many voices were hushed as the crowd
+passed out into the night, many faces were white almost as those at the
+rail of a ship. Many women were silent, and men spoke as if a bad dream
+were on them. The preceding concert was forgotten; ordinary emotions
+following an opera were banished. The grip of a strange horror or
+disgust, was on the majority. It was significant that the usual applause
+was lacking. It was scattered and brief.
+
+
+In this there is no hyperbole; it fails of a complete description
+only in neglecting to chronicle the fact that a large proportion of
+the audience left the audience-room at the beginning of the bestial
+apostrophe to the head of the Baptist. It was because of this pronounced
+rejection of the work by an audience which might have been considered
+elected to it in a peculiar manner that it was a sincere cause of regret
+that the action of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real
+Estate Company caused a prohibition of further performances. It would
+have been better and conduced more to artistic righteousness if the
+public had been permitted to kill the work by refusing to witness it. In
+my opinion there is no doubt but that this would have been the result
+had Mr. Conried attempted to give performances either at extraordinary
+or ordinary prices. Immediately after his benefit performance he
+announced three representations outside of the subscription, the first
+of which was to take place on February 1st. Two days after the first
+performance, the directors of the opera house company held a meeting and
+adopted the following resolution, which was promptly communicated to Mr.
+Conried:
+
+
+The directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company consider
+that the performance of "Salome" is objectionable and detrimental to the
+best interests of the Metropolitan Opera House. They therefore protest
+against any repetition of this opera.
+
+
+Under the terms of the contract between the directors and Mr. Conried,
+such a protest was the equivalent of a command, disobedience of which
+would have worked a forfeiture of the lease. Mr. Conried parleyed,
+pleading his cause voluminously in the public prints, as well as
+before the directors, meanwhile keeping his announcement of the three
+performances before the people. But the sale of tickets amounted to next
+to nothing, and Mr. Conried yielded with as much grace as possible, when
+on January 30th the directors refused to modify their action, though
+they expressed a willingness to recoup Mr. Conried for some of his
+expenses in mounting the opera. The directors who took this action were
+J. P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt, G. G. Haven, Charles Lanier, George
+F. Baker, D. O. Mills, George Bowdoin, A. D. Juilliard, August Belmont,
+and H. McK. Twombly. Representatives of Mr. Conried's company who argued
+the case before the directors were Otto H. Kahn, Robert Goelet, James
+Speyer, H. R. Winthrop, and R. H. Cottenet. For some time Mr. Conried
+talked about performing the opera in another theater, and the directors
+of his company formally agreed that he might do so on his own
+responsibility; but nothing came of it. Mr. Conried had probably seen
+the handwriting on the wall of his box office. The next year there were
+more solemn proclamations to the effect that it would be performed
+outside of New York. Boston sent in a protest, and the flurry was over,
+except as it was kept up in silly and mendacious reports sent to the
+newspapers of Germany touching the influences that had worked for the
+prohibition. There never was a case which asked for less speculation.
+Decent men did not want to have their house polluted with the stench
+with which Oscar Wilde's play had filled the nostrils of humanity.
+Having the power to prevent the pollution they exercised it.
+
+A reviewer ought to be equipped with a dual nature, both intellectually
+and morally, in order to pronounce fully and fairly upon the qualities
+of this drama by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss. He should be an
+embodied conscience stung into righteous fury by the moral stench
+exhaled by the decadent and pestiferous work, but, though it make him
+retch, he should be sufficiently judicial in his temperament calmly to
+look at the drama in all its aspects and determine whether or not as a
+whole it is an instructive note on the life and culture of the times
+and whether or not this exudation from the diseased and polluted will
+and imagination of the authors marks a real advance in artistic
+expression, irrespective of its contents or their fitness for dramatic
+representation. This is asking much of the harassed commentator on the
+things which the multitude of his readers receive as contributions to
+their diversion merely and permit to be crowded out of their minds by
+the next pleasant or unpleasant shock to their sensibilities. He has not
+the time, nor have his readers the patience, to enter upon a discussion
+of the questions of moral and esthetic principle which ought to pave the
+way for the investigation. If he can tell what the play is, what its
+musical investiture is like, wherein the combined elements have worked
+harmoniously and efficiently to an end which to their authors seemed
+artistic, and therefore justifiable, he will have done much. In the case
+before us even this much cannot be done until some notions which have
+long had validity are put aside. We are only concerned with "Salome" in
+its newest form,--that given it by the musical composer. If it shall
+ever win approbation here, as it seems to have done in several German
+cities, it will be because of the shape into which Richard Strauss has
+moulded it.
+
+Several attempts had been made to habilitate Oscar Wilde's drama on the
+New York stage, and had failed. If the opera succeeds it will be because
+a larger public has discovered that the music which has been consorted
+with the old pictures, actions, and words has added to them an element
+either of charm or expressive potentiality hitherto felt to be lacking.
+Is that true? Has a rock of offense been removed? Has a mephitic odor
+been changed to a sweet savor by the subtle alchemy of the musical
+composer? Has a drama abhorrent, bestial, repellent, and loathsome been
+changed into a thing of delectability by the potent agency of music?
+It used to be said that things too silly to be spoken might be sung;
+is it also true that things too vile, too foul, too nauseating for
+contemplation may be seen, so they be insidiously and wickedly glorified
+by the musician's art? As a rule, plays have not been improved by being
+turned into operas. Always their dramatic movement has been interrupted,
+their emotional current clogged, their poetry emasculated by the
+transformation. Things are better now than they were in the long ago,
+when music took no part at all in dramatic action, but waited for a mood
+which it had power to publish and celebrate; but music has acquired its
+new power only by an abnegation of its better part, by assuming new
+functions, and asking a revaluation of its elements on a new esthetic
+basis. In "Salome" music is largely a decorative element, like the
+scene,--like the costumes. It creates atmosphere, like the affected
+stylism of much of Oscar Wilde's text, with its Oriental imagery
+borrowed from "The Song of Solomon," diluted and sophisticated; it gives
+emotional significance to situations, helping the facial play of Salome
+and her gestures to proclaim the workings of her mind, when speech has
+deserted her; it is at its best as the adjunct and inspiration of the
+lascivious dance. In the last two instances, however, it reverts to
+the purpose and also the manner (with a difference) which have always
+obtained, and becomes music in the purer sense. Then the would-be
+dramatist is swallowed up in the symphonist, and Strauss is again the
+master magician who can juggle with our senses and our reason and make
+his instrumental voices body forth "the forms of things unknown."
+
+It would be wholly justifiable to characterize "Salome" as a symphonic
+poem for which the play supplies the program. The parallelism of which
+we hear between Strauss and Wagner exists only in part--only in the
+application of the principle of characterization by means of musical
+symbols or typical phrases. Otherwise the men's work on diametrically
+opposite lines. With all his musical affluence, Wagner aimed, at least,
+to make his orchestra only the bearer and servant of the dramatic word.
+Nothing can be plainer (it did not need that he should himself have
+confessed it) than that Strauss looks upon the words as necessary evils.
+His vocal parts are not song, except for brief, intensified spaces at
+long intervals. They are declamation. The song-voice is used, one is
+prone to think, only because by means of it the words can be made to
+be heard above the orchestra. Song, in the old acceptance of the word,
+implies beauty of tone and justness of intonation. It is amazing how
+indifferent the listener is to both vocal quality and intervallic
+accuracy in "Salome." Wilde's stylistic efforts are lost in the flood of
+instrumental sound; only the mood which they were designed to produce
+remains. Jochanaan sings phrases, which are frequently tuneful, and when
+they are not denunciatory are set in harmonies agreeable to the ear.
+But by reason of that fact Jochanaan comes perilously near being an
+old-fashioned operatic figure--an ascetic Marcel, with little else to
+differentiate him from his Meyerbeerian prototype than his "raiment of
+camel's hair and a leather's girdle about his loins," and an inflated
+phrase which must serve for the tunes sung by the rugged Huguenot
+soldier. Strauss characterizes by his vocal manner as well as by his
+themes and their instrumental treatment; but for his success he relies
+at least as much upon the performer as upon the musical text. A voice
+and style like Mr. Van Rooy's give an uplift, a prophetic breadth,
+dignity, and impressiveness to the utterances of Jochanaan which are
+paralleled only by the imposing instrumental apparatus employed in
+proclaiming the phrase invented to clothe his pronouncements. Six horns,
+used as Strauss knows how to use them, are a good substratum for the
+arch-colorist. The nervous staccato chatter of Herod is certainly
+characteristic of this neurasthenic. This specimen from the pathological
+museum of Messrs. Wilde and Strauss appears in a state which causes
+alarm lest his internal mechanism fly asunder and scatter his corporeal
+parts about the scene. The crepitating volubility with which Strauss
+endows him is a marvelously ingenious conceit; but it leans heavily for
+its effect, we fear, on the amazing skill of Mr. Burrian, not only in
+cackling out the words synchronously with the orchestral part, but in
+emotionally coloring them and blending them in a unity with his facial
+expression and his perturbed bodily movements. Salome sings, often in
+the explosive style of Wagner's Kundry, sometimes with something like
+fluent continuity, but from her song has been withheld all the
+symmetrical and graceful contours comprehended in the concept of melody.
+Hers are the superheated phrases invented to give expression to her
+passion, and out of them she must construct the vocal accompaniment to
+the instrumental song, which reaches its culmination in the scene which,
+instead of receiving a tonal beatification, as it does, ought to be
+relegated to the silence and darkness of the deepest dungeon of a
+madhouse or a hospital.
+
+Here is a matter, of the profoundest esthetical and ethical
+significance, which might as well be disposed of now, so far as this
+discussion is concerned, regardless of the symmetrical continuity of the
+argument. There is a vast deal of ugly music in "Salome,"--music that
+offends the ear and rasps the nerves like fiddlestrings played on by a
+coarse file. In a criticism of Strauss's "Symphonia Domestica" I took
+occasion to point out that a large latitude must be allowed to the
+dramatic composer which must be denied to the symphonist. Consort a
+dramatic or even a lyric text with music and all manner of tonal devices
+may derive explanation, if not justification, from the words. But in
+purely instrumental music the arbitrary purposes of a composer cannot
+replace the significance which must lie in the music itself--that is
+in its emotional and esthetic content. It does not lie in intellectual
+content, for thought to become articulate demands speech. The champions
+of Richard Strauss have defended ugliness in his last symphony, the work
+which immediately preceded "Salome," and his symphonic poems on the
+score that music must be an expression of truth, and truth is not always
+beautiful. In a happier day than this it was believed that the true and
+the beautiful were bound together in angelic wedlock and that all art
+found its highest mission in giving them expression. But the drama has
+been led through devious paths into the charnel house, and in "Salome"
+we must needs listen to the echoes of its dazed and drunken footfalls.
+The maxim "Truth before convention" asserts its validity and demands
+recognition under the guise of "characteristic beauty." We may refuse
+to admit that ugliness is entitled to be raised to a valid principle
+in music dissociated from words or stage pictures, on the ground that
+thereby it contravenes and contradicts its own nature; but we may no
+longer do so when it surrenders its function as an expression of the
+beautiful and becomes merely an illustrative element, an aid to dramatic
+expression. What shall be said, then, when music adorns itself with its
+loveliest attributes and lends them to the apotheosis of that which is
+indescribably, yes, inconceivably, gross and abominable? Music cannot
+lie. Not even the genius of Richard Strauss can make it discriminate in
+its soaring ecstasy between a vile object and a good. There are three
+supremely beautiful musical moments in "Salome." Two of them are purely
+instrumental, though they illustrate dramatic incidents; the third is
+predominantly instrumental, though it has an accompaniment of word and
+action. The first is an intermezzo in which all action ceases except
+that which plays in the bestially perverted heart and mind of Salome. A
+baffled amorous hunger changes to a desire for revenge. The second is
+the music of the dance. The third is the marvelous finale in which an
+impulse which can only be conceived as rising from the uttermost pit
+of degradation is beatified. Crouching over the dissevered head of
+the prophet, Salome addresses it in terms of reproach, of grief, of
+endearment and longing, and finally kisses the bloody lips and presses
+her teeth into the gelid flesh. It is incredible that an artist should
+ever have conceived such a scene for public presentation. In all the
+centuries in which the story of the dance before Herod has fascinated
+sculptors, painters, and poets, in spite of the accretions of lustful
+incident upon the simple Biblical story, it remained for a poet of our
+day to conceive this horror and a musician of our day to put forth his
+highest powers in its celebration. There was a scene before the mental
+eye of Strauss as he wrote. It was that of Isolde singing out her life
+over the dead body of Tristan. In the music of that scene, I do not
+hesitate to say again, as I have said before, there lies the most
+powerful plea ever made for the guilty lovers. It is the choicest
+flower of Wagner's creative faculty, the culmination of his powers as
+a composer, and never before or since has the purifying and ennobling
+capacity of music been so convincingly demonstrated. Strauss has striven
+to outdo it, and there are those who think that in this episode he
+actually raised music to a higher power. He has not only gone with the
+dramatist and outraged every sacred instinct of humanity by calling
+the lust for flesh, alive or dead, love, but he has celebrated her
+ghoulish passion as if he would perforce make of her an object of that
+"redemption" of which, again following Wagner but along oblique paths,
+he prates so strangely in his opera of "Guntram."
+
+It is obvious on a moment's reflection that, had Strauss desired, the
+play might easily have been modified so as to avoid this gruesome
+episode. A woman scorned, vengeful, and penitent would have furnished
+forth material enough for his finale and dismissed his audience with
+less disturbance of their moral and physical stomachs. But Strauss, to
+put it mildly, is a sensationalist despite his genius, and his business
+sense is large, as New Yorkers know ever since he wound up an artistic
+tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche
+was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's
+play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo
+in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in
+Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious
+and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen
+should sup to their full of delights and horrors.
+
+To think back, under the impressions of the final scene, to the dance
+which precipitated the catastrophe is to bring up recollections of
+little else than the striking originality of its music, its piquancies
+of rhythm and orchestration, its artfully simulated Orientalism, and the
+thrilling effect produced by a recurrence to the "love music" ("Let me
+kiss thy mouth, Jochanaan,") at a moment before the frenetic close, when
+the representation of Salome (a professional dancer, Miss Froehlich, was
+deftly substituted for Miss Fremstad at the Metropolitan performance)
+approaches the cistern in which the white flesh, black hair, and red
+lips of her idolatry are immured, and casts wistful glances into its
+depths. Since the outcome was to be what it became it would have been
+folly in Mr. Conried's performance to attempt to disguise the true
+character of the "Dance of the Seven Veils." Miss Froeblich gave us
+quite unconcernedly a danse du ventre; not quite so pronounced as it
+has been seen in the Oriental quarters at our world's fairs, not quite
+so free of bodily covering as tradition would have justified. Yet it
+served to emphasize its purpose in the play. This dance in its original
+estate is a dramatic dance; it is, indeed, the frankest example of
+terpsichorean symbolism within the whole range of the pantomimic dance.
+The conditions under which Wilde and Strauss introduce it in their drama
+spare one all need of thought; there is sufficient commentary in the.
+doddering debility of the pleading Herod and the lustful attitude of
+his protruding eyes. There are fantastical persons who like to talk
+about religious symbolism in connection with this dance, and of forms
+of wonship of vast antiquity. The dance is old. It was probably danced
+in Egypt before the Exodus; in Greece probably before Orpheus sang and
+
+  "Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers."
+
+But it is not to be seriously thought that from those days to this
+there was ever any doubt as to its significance and its purpose, which
+is to pander to prurient appetites and arouse libidinous passions.
+Always, too, from those days to this, its performers have been the
+most abandoned of the courtesan class.
+
+There is not a whiff of fresh and healthy air blowing through "Salome"
+except that which exhales from the cistern, the prison house of
+Jochanaan. Even the love of Narraboth, the young Syrian captain, for the
+princess is tainted by the jealous outbursts of Herodias's page. Salome
+is the unspeakable; Herodias, though divested of her most pronounced
+historical attributes (she adjures her daughter not to dance, though
+she gloats over the revenge which it brings to her), is a human hyena;
+Herod, a neurasthenic voluptuary. A group of Jews who are shown
+disputing in the manner of Baxter Street, though conveyed by Wilde from
+Flaubert's pages, are used by Strauss to provide a comic interlude.
+Years ago a musical humorist in Vienna caused much amusement by writing
+the words of a quarrel of Jewish pedlers under the voices of the fugue
+in Mozart's overture to "The Magic Flute." Three hundred years ago
+Orazio Vecchi composed a burlesque madrigal in the severe style of that
+day, in which he tried to depict the babel of sounds in a synagogue.
+Obviously the musical Jew is supposed to be allied to the stage Jew and
+to be fit food for the humorist. Strauss's music gives a new reading to
+Wilde; it is a caricature in which cacophony reigns supreme under the
+guise of polyphony. There are five of the Jews, and each is pregnantly
+set forth in the theme with which he maintains his contention.
+
+This is but one of many instances of marvelous astuteness in the
+delineation and characteristic portions of the music. The quality which
+will he most promptly recognized by the public is its decorative and
+illustrative element. The orchestra paints incessantly; moods that are
+prevalent for a moment do not suffice the eager illustrator. The passing
+word seizes his fancy. Herod describes the jewels which he promises to
+give to Salome so she relieve him of his oath, and the music of the
+orchestra glints and glistens with a hundred prismatic tints. Salome
+wheedles the young Syrian to bring forth the prophet, and her cry,
+"Thou wilt do this thing for me," is carried to his love-mad brain by a
+voluptuous glissando of the harp which is as irresistible as her glance
+and smile. But the voluptuous music is no more striking than the tragic.
+Strauss strikes off the head of Jochanaan with more thunderous noise
+upon the kettle-drums than Wagner uses when Fafner pounds the life
+out of Fasolt with his gigantic stave; but there is nothing in all of
+Wagner's tragic pages to compare in tenseness of feeling with the moment
+of suspense while Salome is peering into the cistern and marveling that
+she hears no sound of a death struggle. At this moment there comes an
+uncanny sound from the orchestra that is positively blood-curdling. The
+multitude of instruments are silent--all but the string basses. Some
+of them maintain a tremolo on the deep E flat. Suddenly there comes a
+short, high B flat. Again and again with more rapid iteration. Such a
+voice was never heard in the orchestra before. What Strauss designed it
+to express does not matter. It accomplishes a fearful accentuation of
+the awful situation. Strauss got the hint from Berlioz, who never used
+the device (which he heard from a Piedmontese double-bass player), but
+recommended it to composers who wished to imitate in the orchestra "a
+loud female cry." Strauss in his score describes how the effect is to be
+produced and wants it to sound like a stertorous groan. It is produced
+by pinching the highest string of the double-bass at the proper node
+between the finger-board and the bridge and sounding it by a quick jerk
+of the bow. This is but one of a hundred new and strange devices with
+which the score of "Salome" has enriched instrumental music. The dance
+employs a vast apparatus, but the Oriental color impressed upon it at
+the outset by oboe and tambour remains as persistent as its rhythmical
+figure, which seems to have been invented to mark the sinuous flexure
+of the spine and the swaying of the hips of the dancer. Devices made
+familiar by the symphonic poems are introduced with increased effect,
+such as the muting of the entire army of brass instruments. Startling
+effects are obtained by a confusion of keys, confusion of rhythms,
+sudden contrasts from an overpowering tutti to the stridulous whirring
+of empty fifths on the violins, a trill on the flutes, or a dissonant
+mutter of the basses. The celesta, an instrument with keyboard and
+bell tone, contributes fascinating effects, and the xylophone is
+used;--utterances that are lascivious as well as others that are
+macabre. Dissonance runs riot and frequently carries the imagination
+away completely captive. The score is unquestionably the greatest
+triumph of reflection and ingenuity of contrivance that the literature
+of music can show. The invention that has been expended on the themes
+seems less admirable. Only the pompous proclamation of the theme which
+is dominant in Jochanaan's music saves it from being called commonplace.
+A flippant hunter of reminiscences might find its prototype in the "Lady
+Moon" chorus of Balfe's "Bohemian Girl." There is no greater originality
+in the theme which publishes Salome's amorousness for the white flesh of
+Jochanaan, which time and again shows its kinship to the andante melody
+in the first movement of Tschaikowsky's "Pathétique" symphony, but
+becomes more and more transfigured in its passionate loveliness when it
+aids the beatification of the more than ghoulish princess. There is no
+escape from the power of the music when it soars to grandiose heights in
+the duet between Salome 'and the prophet, the subsequent intermezzo and
+the wicked apotheosis. It overwhelms the senses and reduces the nervous
+system of the listeners to exhaustion.
+
+The subscription season of 1906-07 at the Metropolitan Opera House began
+on November 26th and lasted seventeen weeks, compassing sixty-eight
+subscription performances of twenty-three operas and twenty-nine extra
+performances. Mr. Conried announced at the close of the supplementary
+season that his receipts had aggregated $1,005,770.20; but this sum
+doubtless included the receipts from the Boston season. The season
+1907-08 began on November 18th and lasted twenty weeks. There were one
+hundred subscription performances (Thursday having been added to the
+subscription nights), twenty Saturday popular representations, and
+three special. Twenty-seven operas were in the list, but only one of
+them was new. This was Francesco Cilèa's "Adniana Lecouvreur," which
+was brought forward on the opening night of the season, and had one
+repetition afterward, notwithstanding that it had been incorporated
+in the repertory to give Signor Caruso an opportunity to appear in a
+new work together with Mme. Cavalieri. The cast was as follows:
+
+
+  Adriana Lecouvreur ........................ Lina Cavalieri
+  La Principessa .......................... Josephine Jacoby
+  Mlle. Jouvenot ............................ Marie Mattfeld
+  Mlle. Dangeville ............................. Mme. Girerd
+  Maurizio ................................... Enrico Caruso
+  L'Abate .................................... Georges Lucas
+  Michonnet ................................. Antonio Scotti
+  Il Principe ............................... Marcel Journet
+  Quinault .................................... Mr. Barocchi
+  Poisson ..................................... Mr. Raimondi
+  Maggiordomo ................................. Mr. Navarini
+                Conductor, Rudolfo Ferrari
+
+
+Cilèa has in this work attempted to put the familiar play of Scribe and
+Legouvé into music. Formerly, as we all know, composers used to try to
+make operas out of plays. The result is for the greater part a sort of
+spectacle recalling familiar things to the eye, accompanied by an
+undercurrent of music occasionally breaking into melody and buoying up
+long stretches of disjointed and fragmentary conversation, out of which,
+under the best of circumstances, it would be difficult to construct a
+drama and from which it is not possible to extract the pleasure which
+one can still find in the old-time style of entertainment derisively
+called a concert in costume. The manner of "Adriana Lecouvreu" is more
+or less that of Puccini, Giordano, and Spinell--to mention the names
+that immediately preceded Cilèa's across the ocean--but it is only in
+the manner, not in the matter, except, as some disagreeable seekers
+after reminiscences will say, when that matter is borrowed. There is
+some graceful music in the score and some strains which simulate.
+passion; but to find in any of its parts the kind of music which
+vitalizes the word or heightens the dramatic situation is a hopeless
+task. It is melodramatic music, which becomes most fluent when there is
+least occasion for it, and which makes its best appeal when the heroine
+declaims above it in the speaking voice (as she does in the climax of
+the third act, when Adrienne recites a speech from Racine's "Phèdre"
+in order to accuse the Princess of adultery), when it inspires the
+heroine carefully and particularly to blow out every light in a large
+drawing-room, or when it accompanies a ballet which is neither a part
+of the play nor an incidental divertissement, but only a much-needed
+device to give the composer an opportunity for a few symmetrical pieces
+of music. Even here, however, this music must serve as a foil for the
+everlasting chit-chat of the people of the drama. A pitiful work it
+was with which to open a season. Mascagni's "Iris" was brought out
+on December 6th, and after it was all too late there was a carefully
+studied performance of "Don Giovanni" and a sumptuously, too
+sumptuously, mounted production of "Fidelio." These two works
+practically summed up the labors accomplished by Gustav Mahler, though
+he produced excellent representations (except scenically) of "Tristan"
+and "Die Walküre." Mr. Mahler, having laid down the directorship of the
+Court Opera at Vienna, was brought to New York by Mr. Conried, and his
+coming had raised high the expectations of the lovers of German opera.
+The record must also include the enlistment in the Metropolitan forces
+of Madame Berta Morena and Madame Leffler-Burckhardt, whose influence
+upon the season would have been much more marked had not Mr. Conried's
+policy of catering principally to the Italianissimi prevented them
+from becoming as large factors as they deserved to be.
+
+When Mr. Conried issued his prospectus for his fifth season it had
+already long been an open secret that some of the men whom he had
+invited to share the glories and the profits of his administration had
+decreed his downfall. During the fourth season he had been ill with
+sciatic neuritis, and there was no improvement in his physical condition
+when he entered upon his duties in 1907-08. His ability to attend to the
+arduous labors of the managing directorate was questioned. Worse than
+this, the air for months had been full of whispers of scandalous doings
+in the business department, and the chorus of dissatisfaction with
+the artistic results of his directorate, which had begun in the first
+season, had been swelling steadily. Two seasons before he had put forth
+a disingenuous apology for his administration, comparing the cost and
+difficulties of producing opera in the preceding season with the cost
+and difficulties under Mr. Grau. The matter was one which affected the
+stockholders of his company only so far as the finances were concerned;
+as to the difficulties, it was not easy to see how they could have been
+less formerly than now, when there was so much more money to spend,
+and so much more had been spent in improving the facilities for opera
+giving. The patrons of the establishment found large ground for
+complaint in contrasting the artistic achievements with the flamboyant
+promises which had been made when the new administration came in. Mr.
+Conried had told them that his first aim was to raise the standard of
+performance, and to this end he had banished all thought of profit from
+his mind. He was going to continue to employ the most refulgent
+"stars" in the world, but to abolish the "star" system. The season in
+Philadelphia was to be abandoned so that there might be more time for
+rehearsals, and less exhaustion of his artistic forces. Opera in English
+was to be added to opera in Italian, French, and German. As for the
+French and Italian works they were to be given as they had been under
+Mr. Grau, but the German was to be raised to a higher plane. Not one of
+these promises was redeemed. Italian operas were given great prominence
+over French, and the additions to the Italian list, which were really
+new, were of the poorest sort. Perfunctoriness, apathy, and ignorant
+stage management marked the German performances, which were all
+but eliminated from the subscription list. There were evidences
+of high striving at the outset in the engagement of Messrs. Mottl,
+Lautenschläger, and Fuchs, as I have already said, but the results were
+negligible because the men were unable to employ their capacities.
+There were sensational features, like the production of "Parsifal" and
+"Salome," but there were humiliating ones, like the prostitution of a
+great establishment for the performance of "Die Fledermaus" and "Der
+Zigeunerbaron" to deck out the Herr Direktor's benefits. The blight
+of commercialism had fallen on the institution. On February 11,
+1908, Mr. Conried resigned, and announcement was officially made
+of a reorganization of his company, and the engagement of Giulio
+Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel as managers of the opera for the
+season 1908-09.
+
+Following is a table of performances during the subscription seasons
+of Mr. Conried's administration:
+
+
+THE CONRIED PERIOD: 1902-'08
+
+   Operas                    1903-4  1904-5  1905-6  1906-7  1907-8
+
+  "Rigoletto" ................. 5       2       5       2       4
+  "Die Walküre" ............... 4       4       3       2       3
+  "La Bohème" ................. 3       3       5       7       7
+  "Aïda" ...................... 6       5       4       6       5
+  "Tosca" ..................... 4       4       3       6       7
+  "Tannhäuser" ................ 5       9       4       5       4
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... 8       3       0       1       0
+  "Pagliacci" ................. 5       3       3       4       4
+  "Lohengrin" ................. 5       6       5       5       2
+  "La Traviata" ............... 3       4       2       3       6
+  "Il Barbiere" ............... 4       2       2       0       6
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 3       3       5       4       1
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ........ 4       2       3       4       6
+  "The Magic Flute" ........... 4       0       0       0       0
+  "Siegfried" ................. 2       2       3       4       3
+  "L'Elisir d'Amore" .......... 4       1       2       0       0
+  "Carmen" .................... 4       4       2       1       0
+  "Coppèlia" (ballet).......... 4       1       0       0       0
+  "La Dame Blanche" (Ger.) .... 1       0       0       0       0
+  "Faust" ..................... 4       4       5       4       6
+  "Mefistofele" .............. *2       0       0       0       7
+  "Romèo et Juliette" ......... 2       4       0       5       0
+  "Nozze di Figaro" ........... 1       2       0       0       0
+  + "Parsifal" ............... 11       8       4       2       0
+  "Fidelio" ................... 1       1       0       0       3
+  "Das Rheingold" ............. 1       2       2       1       0
+  "Götterdämmerung" ........... 1       2       3       1       0
+  "La Gioconda" ............... 0       4       4       0       0
+  "Die Meistersinger" ......... 0       7       4       0       4
+  "Lucrezia Borgia" ........... 0       1       0       0       0
+  "Don Pasquale" .............. 0       2       2       1       0
+  "Die Puppenfee" (ballet) .... 0       1       0       0       0
+  "Les Huguenots" ............. 0       4       0       0       0
+  "Un Ballo in Maschera" ...... 0       2       0       0       0
+  + "Die Fledermaus" .......... 0       4       1       0       0
+  "Die Königin von Saba" ...... 0       0       5       0       0
+  "Hänsel und Gretel" ......... 0       0      11       8       5
+  "La Favorita" ............... 0       0       4       0       0
+  "La Sonnambula" ............. 0       0       2       0       0
+  "Il Trovatore" .............. 0       0       4       0       6
+  "Don Giovanni" .............. 0       0       2       0       4
+  "Martha" .................... 0       0       4       3       3
+  "Der Zigeunerbaron" ......... 0       0       1       0       0
+  + "Fedora" .................. 0       0       0       4       3
+  + "La Damnation de Faust" ... 0       0       0       5       0
+  "Lakmé" ..................... 0       0       0       3       0
+  "L'Africaine" ............... 0       0       0       2       0
+  "Manon Lescaut" ............. 0       0       0       3       5
+  "Madama Butterfly" .......... 0       0       0       5       6
+  + "Salome" .................. 0       0       0       1       0
+  + "Adriana Lecouvreur" ...... 0       0       0       0       2
+  "Der Fliegende Holländer" ... 0       0       0       0       4
+  "Iris" ...................... 0       0       0       0       5
+  "Mignon" .................... 0       0       0       0       5
+
+  * One scene only. + Novelties.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+HAMMERSTEIN AND HIS OPERA HOUSE
+
+
+Before the close of the season 1905-06 at the Metropolitan Opera House,
+Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, who was building a large theater in Thirty-fourth
+Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues, announced that the building
+would be called the Manhattan Opera House, that it would be exclusively
+his property and under his management, and that it was to be devoted to
+grand opera.
+
+It is no reflection on Mr. Hammerstein to say that many who have been
+prompt and generous in their recognition of his achievements since,
+looked upon his enterprise as quixotic, down to the very day of
+the opening of his house. True, he was known to be a manager of
+extraordinary resource and indomitable energy, but he had dallied more
+or less with the operatic bauble without disclosing any ambition to have
+his name written among the managerial wrecks which have been cast upon
+the shores of Italian Opera, from Handel's day to ours, It was easy to
+recall that the new opera house was not his first, but that he had built
+one in the same street, given it the same name thirteen years before,
+and begun a season of grand opera with an ambitious novelty, only to
+abandon the enterprise after a fortnight. He had even tried German
+opera with no less popular an artist than Mme. Lehmann in his earlier
+opera house in Harlem, and entered into rivalry with an established
+institution in 1891 for the production of "Cavalleria Rusticana," then
+the reigning sensation of the hour in Europe.
+
+When the old Manhattan Opera House, so soon abandoned to the uses of
+vaudeville, opened its doors with Moszkowski's "Boabdil," on January
+23, 1893, there was no rival operatic establishment in the city, for
+the interior of the Metropolitan had been destroyed by fire, and
+Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau were resting on their oars for a season while
+the question whether or not the home of the costly and fashionable
+entertainment should be restored was under discussion by its owners.
+Yet Mr. Hammerstein was discouraged by two weeks of failure. It was not
+strange that many observers refused to believe that he was of the stuff
+out of which opera managers are made. He did not seem illogical enough,
+though he showed some symptoms of having been bitten by the opera habit.
+
+Neither was there much to encourage belief in his announcements in the
+manner in which he put them forth. He began early in the spring by
+saying that he had engaged Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and kept their
+names before the people almost up to the time of the opening. He went
+abroad to engage artists, and even after his return it looked as if it
+would be a physical impossibility to complete his theater in time for
+the date set for opening. In fact it was not completed, but when the
+season arrived he was ready to attempt all that he had said he would do,
+except keep some wild promises about singers; and when the season closed
+the fact that loomed largest in the restrospect was the undaunted
+manner in which he had carried on a difficult and dangerous enterprise,
+compelling a large element of the public to respect and admire him, and
+making it possible for him to lay out a second season on lines of real
+pith and moment, and carry an admirable enterprise to an admirable
+conclusion.
+
+Mr. Hammerstein began his first season on December 3, 1906, and closed
+it on April 20, 1907. There were a few admirable artists in his company,
+but the majority were either inexperienced or of the conventional
+Italian type. His principal soprano leggiero was Mlle. Pinkert, a Polish
+singer of good routine and fine skill; his dramatic soprano, Mlle. Russ,
+whose knowledge of the conventions of the stage was complete, and
+expressive powers excellent, though they exerted little charm. He had a
+serviceable mezzo in Mme. De Cisneros (formerly a junior member of the
+Metropolitan Opera Company, under her maiden name, Broadfoot). Miss
+Donalda, a Canadian soprano of no little charm, helped to make the
+lyric operas agreeable. But the strength of the company lay in the male
+contingent--Bonci, the most famous of living tenors, after Caruso, whom
+Mr. Conried thought it wise to carry over to the Metropolitan Opera
+House, thus precipitating a controversy, which, as such things go, was
+of real assistance to the manager whom the rival sought to injure;
+Maurice Renaud, the most finished and versatile of French operatic
+artists, whom the foresight of Maurice Grau had retained for the
+Metropolitan, but whose contract Mr. Conried canceled at the cost of a
+penalty; M. Charles Dalmorès, a sterling dramatic tenor; M. Gilibert, a
+French baritone of refined qualities; Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, who, coming
+some years before in a peripatetic French company to the Casino, had
+stirred the enthusiasm of the critics with her truthful, powerful, and
+unconventional performance of Carmen; Ancona, a barytone who had been
+an admired member of the Metropolitan company, and a serviceable bass
+named Arimondi. Melba and Calvé came later in the season.
+
+Exaggerated stories of Mr. Hammerstein's success followed the close of
+his season, and if all that Mr. Hammerstein himself said could have been
+accepted in its literalness the lesson of the season would have been
+that the people who live in New York and come to New York in the winter
+season were willing to spend, let me say, one and three-quarter millions
+of dollars every year for this one form of entertainment. It would
+appear, also, that fad and fashion were not the controlling impulse in
+this vast expenditure; for the chief things which fad and fashion had
+to offer at the Metropolitan Opera House were noticeably absent from
+the Manhattan. On a score of occasions there were large gatherings
+representative of wealth and what is called society at the house in
+Thirty-fourth Street, but generally the audiences were distinct in their
+composition. It almost seemed as if Mr. Hammerstein had been correct in
+his deduction, that there were enough people in New York who wanted to
+go to the opera, but were excluded from the Metropolitan by the extent
+of the subscription, to support a second house. If this was so it
+marked a marvelous change from the time of the last operatic rivalry,
+which ruined both Mapleson and Abbey, and destroyed the prestige of the
+Academy of Music forever. Perhaps the city's growth in population and
+wealth furnished the explanation; I can scarcely believe from a study of
+the doings at the two houses that a growth in musical taste and culture
+was the determining factor. Twenty years ago such a list of operas as
+that presented by Mr. Hammerstein in his first season would have spelled
+ruin to any manager. Not even the prestige of Adelina Patti would have
+saved it. There was not a novelty in the list.
+
+Many things contributed to the measure of success which Mr. Hammerstein
+won. There was a large fascination in the audacity of the undertaking,
+and its freedom from art-cant and affectation. Curiosity was irritated
+by the manager's daring, and admiration challenged by the manner in
+which he kept faith with the public. He seemed to be attempting the
+impossible, but he accomplished all that he said he would do. It is
+no secret--in fact, Mr. Hammerstein himself proclaimed it--that his
+artistic achievements were due in an overwhelming degree to the
+efficiency of Signor Cleofonte Campanini, his artistic director. But not
+to his efficiency alone--to his devotion and zeal also. Signor Campanini
+was not only the artistic director--he was also almost exclusively the
+conductor of the performances. His zeal fired all the forces employed at
+the opera house. A company gathered together from the ends of the earth
+succeeded in giving one hundred and thirteen performances of twenty-two
+operas, and making many of the performances of really remarkable
+excellence. The reason was obvious at nearly every presentation; from
+the principals down to the last person in the chorus and orchestra,
+every one had his heart in his work. Not only the desire to do
+their duty, but the pardonable ambition to do better than the rival
+establishment, inspired singers and players alike. It so happened that
+on one Saturday evening the same opera--Verdi's "Aïda"--was performed
+at both houses. A newspaper reporter carried the intelligence to
+the Manhattan Opera House that half the seats were empty at the
+Metropolitan, while the new house was crowded. The curtain was down at
+the time, and a score of the performers on the stage, headed by the
+conductor himself, at once formed a ring and danced a dance of triumph.
+
+For musical effects, as well as some dramatic, there were distinct
+advantages with the new house. The disposition of the seats and stage
+brought the listeners and performers nearer together. The acoustical
+conditions at the Manhattan Opera House were admirable; there could be
+no such feeling of intimacy at the Metropolitan Opera House as existed
+here. The quality appealed to the music lover pure and simple, and him
+only, however, for in the things which make the opera a fashionable
+social diversion the new building was deficient and woefully inferior
+to the old.
+
+The lovers of good singing were surprised by the excellence of Mr.
+Hammerstein's singers, especially the male contingent--a surprise
+which was heightened by the protestations, to which they had long been
+habituated, that there was no talent left in Europe comparable with that
+engaged at the Metropolitan. When in the face of such assertions the
+voices and the art of tenors like Bonci and Dalmores, and of barytones
+like Renaud and Ancona, were brought into notice their actual merit
+seemed doubled. The women singers of the first rank, save Mmes.
+Melba and Calvé, who appeared in what would have been called "star"
+engagements under the old theatrical stock régime, were in no way
+comparable with those of the Metropolitan Opera House, but those of
+the second rank were superior--a circumstance which was emphasized by
+the better ensemble performances, for which a discriminating public
+soon learned to thank Signor Campanini and the esprit de corps with
+which he inflamed the establishment's forces.
+
+The opening of the season, on December 3 1906, had been proclaimed a
+week earlier, so as to make it synchronous with that of the Metropolitan
+Opera House; but Mr. Hammerstein's house was not ready, nor were his
+singers or stage fixtures. The fact looked ominous, and the enterprise
+took a lugubrious beginning a week later, when "I Puritani," which had
+been chosen as the opening opera because it was looked upon in Europe
+as affording to Signor Bonci his finest artistic opportunity, failed to
+arouse any public interest. It was an experience which Mr. Hammerstein
+was destined to have again and again with operas like "Dinorah,"
+"Mignon," "Fra Diavolo," "Il Barbiere," and "Un Ballo in Maschera,"
+for which the public seemed suddenly to have lost all liking, while
+still clinging to works of equal antiquatedness.
+
+From the opening night to the closing the operas of the list were
+produced on the dates and in the succession indicated in the following
+table, which tells also the number of times each opera was performed.
+It must be stated, however, that there were a number of occasions in
+the course of the season when two operas or portions of several operas
+were performed on a single evening. This accounts for the large number
+of times that Mascagni's "Cavalleria" and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci"
+were given, the latter being also helped in the record by the fact
+that it was twice bracketed with Massenet's "Navarraise."
+
+
+   Opera                      First performance          Times
+
+  "I Puritani" ................. December 3 ............. 2
+  "Rigoletto" .................. December 5 ............ 11
+  "Faust" ...................... December 7 ............. 7
+  "Don Giovanni" ............... December 12 ............ 4
+  "Carmen" ..................... December 14 ........... 19
+  "Aïda" ....................... December 19 ........... 12
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ........ December 21 ............ 6
+  "Il Trovatore" ............... January 1 .............. 6
+  "La Traviata" ................ January 2 .............. 3
+  "L'Elisir d'Amore" ........... January 5 .............. 3
+  "Gil Ugonotti" ............... January 18 ............. 5
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" .... January 21 ............. 2
+  "La Sonnambula" .............. January 25 ............. 3
+  "Pagliacci" .................. February 1 ............ 10
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ....... February 1 ............. 8
+  "Mignon" ..................... February 7 ............. 3
+  "Dinorah" .................... February 20 ............ 1
+  "Un Ballo in Maschera" ....... February 27 ............ 2
+  "La Bohème" .................. March 1 ................ 4
+  "Fra Diavolo" ................ March 8 ................ 4
+  "Marta" ...................... March 23 ............... 4
+  Manzoni Requiem (Good Fri.) .. March 29 ............... 1
+  "La Navarraise" .............. April 10 ............... 2
+
+
+On three occasions the regular procedure was interrupted for the sake
+of matters of temporary and special interest. Thus, on March 2d,
+there was a miscellaneous bill, made up of an act of "Dinorah," one
+of "Faust," and all of "Cavalleria Rusticana"; on April 19th, the
+performance was little else than a concert, at which fragments of six
+operas, some of which were not in the repertory, were sung; while on
+Good Friday, Verdi's Requiem Mass, composed in honor of Manzoni, took
+the place of an opera, and was sung to popular prices, though it was
+on a regular opera night.
+
+The subscription was so small that it seemed unnecessary to
+differentiate in the table between regular and extra performances. Of
+the latter there were twenty on Saturday nights, at popular prices,
+besides others given on holidays and for benefits. Though it is to be
+noted as a matter of history that the competition of the Manhattan Opera
+House did not appreciably affect the subscription of the Metropolitan,
+it is also to be noted that as a rule the attendance on the Saturday
+night popular performances was larger at the new house.
+
+A few of the incidents of the season deserve to be passed in review.
+Of the singers whose presence in Mr. Hammerstein's company lent
+distinction to it, Signor Bonci appeared on the opening night in "I
+Puritani." The opera failed to awaken interest, but Bonci caught the
+popular fancy and held it to the end. Toward the close of February,
+however, it was announced that he had made a contract with Mr. Conried
+to sing at the Metropolitan Opera House the next season. Mr. Hammerstein
+first met the move of his rival by announcing the engagement of Signor
+Zenatello, but afterward began legal proceedings to prevent Signor Bonci
+from fulfilling his contract with the manager of the house in upper
+Broadway. M. Renaud, the great French barytone, effected his entrance
+in "Rigoletto," but he was not in his best voice and condition, and
+only later conquered recognition for his fine talents. The opera,
+however, took its place on the popular list, since it employed, at
+different times, the finest talent at the command of the management.
+The first large and complete triumph by an opera was won on December
+14th, by "Carmen," in which Mme. Bressler-Gianoli appeared as the
+heroine. She enacted the part fifteen times before Mme. Calvé came to
+take back the territory which had so long belonged to her.
+
+A second success followed hard on the heels of "Carmen." This was
+"Aïda," the triumph of which was one of ensemble, in which the chorus,
+under Signor Campanini, played no small part. Mme. Melba's coming, on
+January 2d, was the signal for the awakening of society's interest in
+Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise. She remained until March 25th, when she
+said farewell in a performance of Puccini's "Bohème," the production
+of which by Mr. Hammerstein in defiance of the rights of Mr. Conried
+(according to the allegations of the publishers, Ricordi) and the
+legal proceedings ending with the granting of an injunction against
+Mr. Hammerstein at the end of his season, was one of the diverting
+incidents of the merry operatic war. Mme. Melba sang three times
+in "La Traviata," five times in "Rigoletto," twice in "Lucia di
+Lammermoor," once in "Faust," and four times in "La Bohème."
+
+The Bonci incident and the interest created in Mr. Hammerstein's
+enterprise by Mme. Melba's popularity stimulated interest in the
+offerings for a second season, which the manager answered by announcing
+the engagement, besides Zenatello and Sammarco, of Nordica and
+Schumann-Heink, and the re-engagement of Renaud, Bressler-Gianoli,
+Gilibert, and Dalmores. He also opened his subscription for the next
+season on March 19th, and announced the day after that he had received
+subscriptions amounting to $200,000, of which $110,000 had come from
+the four principal ticket speculators in the city. Mme. Calvé, who was
+engaged to give éclat to the conclusion of the season, effected her
+entrance on March 27th, and sang nine times--four in "Carmen," three
+in "Cavalleria Rusticana," and two in "La Navarraise."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A BRILLIANT SEASON AT THE MANHATTAN
+
+
+The prospectus which Mr. Hammerstein published for his second season
+was magnificently grandiloquent in its promises, but the season itself
+marvelous in its achievements. Eight operas "never produced in this city
+or country," "masterpieces of the most celebrated composers," which were
+his "sole property," were to be brought forward, in addition to many
+familiar works. He announced the engagement of "the greatest sopranos,
+mezzo sopranos, contraltos, barytones, and bassos of the operatic
+world." The eight new operas were to be Massenet's "Thaïs," Debussy's
+"Pelléas et Mélisande," Charpentier's "Louise," Breton's "Dolores,"
+Massenet's "Jongleur de Notre Dame," Saint-Saëns's "Hélène," Offenbach's
+"Les Contes d'Hoffmann," and "an opera by our American composer, Victor
+Herbert." Offenbach's charming opera had been heard in New York before,
+from a French company managed by Maurice Grau, but it required a memory
+that compassed twenty-five years to recall that fact; so in respect
+of it Mr. Hammerstein's slip was venial at the worst. His list of the
+greatest singers in the world read as follows: Sopranos: Nellie Melba,
+Lillian Nordica, Mary Garden, Gianinna Russ, Camille Borello, Ludmilla
+Sigrist, Giuseppina Giaconia, Helen Koelling, Fanny Francisca, Mauricia
+Morichina, Jeanne Jomelli, Emma Trentini, and Alice Zeppilli; mezzo
+sopranos and contraltos: Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Bressler-Gianoli,
+Eleanore de Cisneros, J. Gerville-Reache, Emma Zaccaria, Gina Sevarina;
+tenors: Giovanni Zenatello, Amadeo Bassi, Charles Dalmorès, Jean
+Perier, Leone Cazauran, Carlo Albani, Emilio Venturini, Francesco Daddi;
+barytones: Maurice Renaud, Charles Gilibert, Mario Sammarco, Vincenzo
+Reschiglian, Mario Ancona, Hector Dufranne, Nicolo Fossetta; bassos:
+Adamo Didur, Victorio Arimondi, Luigi Mugnoz; basso buffo: Fernando
+Galetti-Gianoli. Cleofonte Campanini was again musical director.
+
+These the magnificent promises. Had half of them been kept the fact
+would have amazed a public whom long experience had taught to put no
+more faith in the promises of impresarios than in those of princes. As
+a matter of fact, barring the extravagant attributes alleged to be due
+to the singers, the majority of whom were worse than mediocre, more
+than half were kept, and the deficiency more than counterbalanced
+by new elements which were introduced from time to time, as happy
+emergencies called for them. Chief of these was the engagement of Luisa
+Tetrazzini; of which more in its proper place. The official announcement
+was of subscription performances on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
+evenings, and Saturday afternoons, for twenty weeks. Also there were to
+be twenty Saturday evenings at popular prices. Just before the opening
+of the season there was semi-official talk of popular performances also
+on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, which, had it been realized, would
+have kept the opera company as busy with a large repertory as the
+ordinary theatrical company with its single play running through a
+season. A beginning was made with the Thursday performances, but Mr.
+Hammerstein concluded after a short trial of the experiment, that the
+game was not worth the candle, and so abandoned it. Before the close of
+the season Mr. Hammerstein announced an extra week of five performances,
+which he invited his subscribers to enjoy without money and without
+price, on the ground that the exigencies of the season had compelled him
+to repeat operas on subscription nights. The season of twenty-one weeks,
+which began on November 4, 1907, and ended on March 28, 1908, was thus
+made to embrace 116 representations in all; that is to say, eighty
+subscription nights and matinées, twenty popular Saturday nights,
+five performances in the extra week, and eleven special afternoons
+and evenings. The discrepancy between these figures and the total of
+the last column in the appended table, showing the dates of first
+productions in the season, and the number of performances given to each
+opera, is accounted for by the fact that nine times in the course of
+the season the entertainment consisted of two operas, and once there
+was a bill of shreds and patches from various operas.
+
+To complete the statistical record of the company's activity, it must be
+added that two performances were given in Philadelphia, and that there
+were eighteen concerts on Sunday nights, at the last few of which operas
+were given in concert form. Twice the opera house was kept closed on
+Sunday nights because of the enforcement of a rigid interpretation of
+the law prohibiting theatrical entertainments on Sunday.
+
+A study of the list of performances shows that the 116 performances were
+distributed among twenty-three operas. Of these four had never been
+given in New York before (they were "Thaïs," "Louise," "Siberia," and
+"Pelléas et Mélisande"), three had been given in New York, but so long
+ago that they were to all intents and purposes novelties ("Les Contes
+d'Hoffmann," "Crispino e la Comare," and "Andrea Chenier"), and three,
+though familiar to the public, were new to the house ("La Gioconda,"
+"La Damnation de Faust," and "Ernani"); the other thirteen were in the
+Manhattan repertory for the season of 1906-07.
+
+
+   Opera        Composer              First performance   Times given
+
+
+  "La Gioconda," Ponchielli ................ Nov. 4           4
+  "Carmen," Bizet .......................... Nov. 5          11
+  "La Damnation de Faust," Berlioz ......... Nov. 6           3
+  "Trovatore," Verdi ....................... Nov. 9           5
+  "Aïda," Verdi ............................ Nov. 11          9
+  "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," Offenbach ....... Nov. 15         11
+  "Thaïs," Massenet ........................ Nov. 24          7
+  "Faust," Gounod .......................... Nov. 28          4
+  * "La Navarraise," Massenet .............. Dec. 9           5
+  * "Pagliacci," Leoncavallo ............... Dec. 9           9
+  "Ernani," Verdi .......................... Dec. 11          1
+  "Rigoletto," Verdi ....................... Dec. 20          5
+  "Un Ballo in Maschera," Verdi ............ Dec. 27          4
+  "Don Giovanni," Mozart ................... Dec. 28          3
+  * "Cavalleria Rusticana," Mascagni ....... Dec. 31          4
+  "Louise," Charpentier .................... Jan. 3          11
+  "La Traviata," Verdi ..................... Jan. 15          5
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor," Donizetti ......... Jan. 20          8
+  "Siberia," Giordano ...................... Feb. 5           3
+  "Pelléas et Mélisande," Debussy .......... Feb. 19          7
+  "Dinorah," Meyerbeer ..................... Feb. 26          1
+  "Crispino e la Comare," Ricci brothers ... Mar. 6           3
+  "Andrea Chenier," Giordano ............... Mar. 27          1
+                                                            ---
+                                                            124
+  * Parts of double bills.
+
+
+When Mr. Hammerstein issued his prospectus in the early autumn he
+promised to produce no less than eight operas which had never been
+performed in America. Managerial promises of this kind are generally
+made and accepted in a Pickwickian sense, but Mr. Hammerstein came
+nearer than is the custom to keeping his, though the season closed with
+his subscribers waiting for "Dolores," by Breton; "Le Jongleur de Notre
+Dame," by Massenet, and "Hélène," by Saint-Saëns. He also promised
+performances of three German operas ("Lohengrin," "Tannhäuser," and
+"Tristan und Isolde"), a new American opera in English, to be composed
+by Victor Herbert, and the following operas from the standard list,
+viz., "Le Prophète," Massenet's "Manon," "Roméo et Juliette,"
+"Mefistofele," and "La Bohème." He had fought in the courts for the
+privilege of performing the last opera in the preceding season, but
+abandoned it without contention this season in the face of Mr. Conried's
+assertion that he had purchased the exclusive rights to all Italian
+performances of Puccini's operas in the United States. It is not likely
+that the statement about Mr. Herbert's opera was taken very seriously
+in any quarter; he is a prolific and marvelously ready writer of comic
+operetta scores, but it is not likely that he will ever attempt to find
+a suitable grand opera book and set it to music within six or eight
+months, while occupied, as he is, with a multitude of other enterprises.
+Mr. Hammerstein had promised in his prospectus that there would also be
+performances in German of "Lohengrin," "Tannhäuser," and "Tristan und
+Isolde." This part of the manager's scheme went by the board early
+in the season. It was contingent upon the presence in the company of
+singers familiar with the three works of Wagner. Of such there was only
+one when the season began, and she, Mme. Nordica, remained a member
+of Mr. Hammerstein's forces only six weeks, during much of which time
+she was idle. Mme. Schumann-Heink, though announced as a member of the
+company, interrupted her concert activity only long enough to sing once,
+and then she sang in an Italian opera ("Il Trovatore"), albeit she did
+her part in German.
+
+Up to the coming of Signorina Tetrazzini Mr. Hammerstein pinned his
+faith on the interest which might be aroused in his French novelties. On
+the second subscription night he came forward with Berlioz's "Damnation
+de Faust," with which he had contemplated adorning his first season, and
+for which he had prepared the scenic outfit. The undramatic character of
+the transformed cantata had caused its failure at the Metropolitan Opera
+House in the season of 1906-07, and not even the fine performance of M.
+Renaud, whose impersonation of Mephistopheles is one of the noblest
+memories left by the season, the excellent singing of M. Dalmorès, and
+the beautiful pictures could save it. There was a long wait between the
+first and second representations, and after one more trial the work was
+abandoned. Meanwhile, however, Offenbach's "Contes d'Hoffmann," which
+had had a few performances at the Fifth Avenue Theater twenty-five years
+before, was brought forward. Again Messrs. Renaud and Dalmorès were
+admirably fitted with parts and scant justice done to the opera in
+the distribution of the women's rôles; but the charm of Offenbach's
+music overcame the defects of performance, and the opera achieved so
+pronounced a success that it could be given with profit eleven times
+before M. Renaud's departure from New York after the performance of
+February 4th.
+
+The libretto of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" proclaims a phase of French
+literary taste which made heroes two generations ago out of two foreign
+romancers,--the German E. T. A. Hoffmann and the American Edgar Allan
+Poe. Very much alike were these two men in some of their strongest
+characteristics. Both were possessed of genius of a high order; both led
+lives of dissipation, which wrecked them physically; both found their
+fantastic creations in the world of supernaturalism which imagination,
+stimulated by alcoholic indulgence, presented to them as realities. This
+is literally true, at least, of Hoffmann, who, coming home from his
+nightly carouses with the boon companions, whom he has celebrated in
+his "Serapion's Brüder" (the coterie somewhat vulgarly parodied in the
+beginning and end of Offenbach's opera), was wont to call for his wife
+to sit beside him through the remainder of the night to ward off the
+ghostly, ghastly, grisly creatures which his own perfervid imagination
+had conjured up. Sixty years ago France was full of admiration for the
+weird tales of Hoffmann, and in view of the singular vicissitudes of
+the fantastic romancer's life, some of them quite as startling as the
+adventures which he ascribed to his imaginary creatures, it was not
+at all strange that Barbier and Carré should have conceived the idea
+of making him the hero of a play dealing with incidents of his own
+invention. In 1851 they brought out their play in five acts at the
+Odéon. It did not endure long, but it made so deep an impression on
+the mind of Offenbach that when he was seized with the ambition to
+write a serious work, which he might leave to the world as a legacy,
+to prove that his ambitions went beyond the things with which he amused
+the careless folk of the Second Empire, he turned to the old play for
+his libretto.
+
+In a way it was a happy choice. If an author was to be blended with his
+creations and utilized for operatic purposes, history might be searched
+in vain for a better subject than Hoffmann. He was jurist, court
+councillor, romancer, caricaturist, scene painter, theatrical manager,
+and musical composer. In several ways he is living in the musical annals
+to-day. His opera, "Undine," is forgotten, though it was highly praised
+by Carl Maria von Weber, who had not feared soundly to abuse Beethoven;
+but his literary creation, the Chapelmaster Kreissler, lives in
+Schumann's "Kreissleriana," and other conceits of his filtered through
+Jean Paul, in other compositions by the same master. His criticisms,
+though cast in fantastic form, opened the eyes of many to the beauties
+of Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven. His admiration for Mozart went to such
+an extreme that he cast aside part of his baptismal name in order to
+substitute for it one of the given names of his hero--Amadeus. Of this
+admiration neither Offenbach nor his librettists were unaware, for
+when Hoffmann and Nicklausse come into the tavern where the roystering
+students greet them, in the prologue, they are still so full of the
+opera "Don Giovanni," to which they had just been listening, that
+Nicklausse quotes the words of Leporello's first song, and Offenbach
+reverently quotes the music.
+
+Let no one think that the production of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" was in
+any way analogous with the operetta performances with which Mr. Conried
+lowered the status of the Metropolitan Opera House when he performed
+"Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" at his benefits. No serious
+reader of mine will expect to see in this place dispraise of the genius
+of Johann Strauss; but the works mentioned are operettas in form and
+in spirit, while "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" was conceived in an entirely
+different vein, and shows the musician who composed it in a character
+that no one would dream was his who knew him only as the composer of the
+Bouffes Parisiens. It is a pathetic, but also lovely, document in proof
+of the fact that with all his frivolity he wanted to die at least in the
+odor of artistic sanctity. The piquant rhythms and prettily superficial
+melodies of his musical farces were a perfect reflex of the careless
+art-feeling of his day, just as the farces themselves were admirably
+adjusted to the taste of the boulevardiers who basked in the sunshine of
+Napoleon the Little, and laughed uproariously while their Emperor and
+their social institutions were being castigated by the cynical German
+Jew and his librettists. "He was the Beethoven of the sneer," said Émil
+Bergerat, when Offenbach died, and then with a fantastic pencil worthy
+of the caricaturist Hoffmann himself, he drew a dreadful picture of
+Offenbach and his times; of the mighty fiddler beating time upon the
+well-filled goatskin and sawing away across the strings, his mouth
+widened with a grin "like some drunken conception of Edgar Poe's, or
+some fantasy of Hoffmann, while the startled birds flew back to heaven,
+the moon split herself back to her ears, and the stars giggled behind
+their cloud-fans." The planetary system only revolved to frisky rhythms,
+and the earth herself, like a mad top, hummed comically about the
+horrified sun. En avant la musique! and the old edifice crumbled in dust
+around the musician. To Bergerat Offenbach was the great disillusioner
+of the age, the incarnation of what he conceived to be the spirit of the
+nineteenth century, a spirit that hated and contemned the past, mocked
+at the things which the simplicity of preceding centuries held sacred,
+threw ridicule upon social sentiments, rank, caste, ceremonialism,
+learning, and religion.
+
+The composer of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" is nothing of this. The opera
+was the child of his old age. He loved it, and labored over its score
+for years. It is full of lovely melody (the barcarolle of the second act
+will always exert a potent and lovely influence) fluent from beginning
+to end, and rich in dramatic characterization. No one is likely to
+listen to the trio at the culmination of the third act (that dealing
+with the fate of a singer's daughter) without realizing what a really
+admirable power of expression was that which Offenbach, for reasons
+explained by the spirit of the times and his own moral nature, chose
+to squander so many years on his opéas bouffes. Frequently the melodic
+line in the opera rises to admirable heights; always melody, harmony,
+and orchestration are refined, unless a burlesque effect is aimed at,
+as in the ballad of "Kleinzack," and Nicklausse's song of the doll.
+Offenbach's opera had its first performance on November 14, 1907, the
+cast being as follows:
+
+
+  Olympia ...................................... Zepilli
+  Giulietta .................................... Jomelli
+  Antonia ...................................... Borello
+  Nicklausse ............................... De Cisneros
+  A Voice ..................................... Giaconia
+  Hoffman ..................................... Dalmorès
+  Cornelius   |
+  Dappertutto |
+  Dr. Miracle | ................................. Renaud
+  Spalanzni |
+  Grespel   | ................................. Gilibert
+  Lindorff   |
+  Schlemihl  | .................................. Crabbe
+  Cochenille    |
+  Pitichinaccio | ................................ Daddi
+  Frantz ............................... Gianoli-Galetti
+  Hermann .................................. Reschiglian
+  Nathaniel .................................. Venturini
+  Luther ...................................... Fossetta
+            Conductor, Cleofonte Campanini
+
+
+On November 25, 1907, Mr. Hammerstein brought forward Massenet's
+"Thaïs," to signalize the first appearance in America of Miss Mary
+Garden. The opera was produced with the following cast:
+
+
+  Thaïs ....................................... Mary Garden
+  Crobyle ........................................ Trentini
+  Myrtale ........................................ Giaconia
+  Albine .................................. Gerville-Reache
+  Athanaël ......................................... Renaud
+  Nicias ......................................... Cazouran
+  Palemon .......................................... Mugnoz
+  Un Serviteur ................................ Reschiglian
+                       Conductor, Campanini
+
+
+With this work French opera won its second triumph. The charm of Miss
+Garden's personality was felt, but her singing compelled less tribute,
+and though the opera had seven representations before the departure of
+M. Renaud compelled its withdrawal, its success was due much more to him
+than to his fair companion. The Thaïs of MM. Gallet and Massenet is not
+the Thaïs of classical story, who induced Alexander to burn the palace
+of the Persian kings at Persepolis--"who like another Helen, fired
+another Troy"--but she is of her tribe. Also of the tribe of Phryne,
+Laïs, and Messalina, who live in history and in art because of their
+beauty and their pruriency, their loveliness and licentiousness. The
+operatic Thaïs is the invention of Anatole France, who borrowed her
+name for a courtesan of Alexandria some centuries after the historic
+woman lived. With the help of suggestions borrowed from the stories of
+innumerable saints who fled from the vicious world into the desert,
+and industriously cultivated sanctity and bodily filth, of converted
+trollops and holy Anthonys, he constructed a tale of how one of these
+desert saints, filled with ardor to save the soul of a cyprian who
+had the gay world of Alexandria at her feet, went to her, persuaded
+her to put her sinful life behind her, enter the retreat of a saintly
+sisterhood and die in grace, while he, falling at the last into the
+clutches of carnal lust, repented of his good deed and wrought his own
+damnation. Changing the name of the unfortunate zealot from Paphnuce to
+Athanaël, M. Louis Gallet made an opera-book out of France's story, and
+Massenet set it to music. It is a delectable story, but it fell into the
+hands of master craftsmen, and the admirers of "art for art's sake" and
+at any cost, have cause to rejoice at the treatment which it received.
+Glimpses into the life of the frowsy fraternity of cenobites, and
+fragments of their doleful canticles are not engaging in themselves, but
+they are fine foils to pictures of antique vice and the songs and dances
+of classic voluptuaries. There are splendid dramatic potentialities for
+those who like such things and those who find profit in exploiting in
+the juxtaposition cheek by jowl of saintliness and sin; of Christian
+hymning and harlotry; of virtue in a physical wrestle with vice, and
+coming out triumphant, but handing the palm over to the real victor at
+the end; in the picture of a monk sprinkling the couch of Venus with
+holy water, and decking his cowl with roses.
+
+Also there was a large personal note in the original creation of
+"Thaïs," and there was a large personal note in its reproduction. It is
+not altogether a pleasant one for the lover of real art to listen to.
+Had there been no Sybil Sanderson, it is doubtful if Massenet would ever
+have been directed to the subject. True, he had shown a predilection
+for frail women as his heroines before, as witness Marie Magdalen, Eve,
+Herodias, and Manon Lescaut; but in the works which exploited these
+women the personal equation did not enter so far as the world knows or
+the printed page discloses. But when he wrote "Thaïs" it was neither
+histrionic nor musical art that be aimed primarily to exploit, but the
+physical charms of an individual. Something was needed for the jaded
+boulevardiers of Paris to leer at while they feebly clapped their hands
+and piped "Ah, charmante! Ravissante!" It may be that the fine command
+of Oriental color which is supposed to have affinity in the idioms of
+music with voluptuousness in all its forms, had something to do with
+the case, but the whole structure of the piece, superb as it is in its
+contrasting elements, and theatrically ingenious and effective, points
+nevertheless to the unfortunate Sanderson. And in the same way its
+Parisian revival points to Madame Cavalieri and Miss Garden, and its
+American production to the latter. For the sake of gifted singers and
+accomplished actors merely, the opera was not created, and will not
+be kept alive. It rests for its success on the kind of argument which
+Phryne, of classic story, presented to her austere judges.
+
+The brilliancy of the play, its masterly handling of contrasts equally
+gratifying to the scenic artist, the actor, and the composer, challenged
+admiration and won it in large measure at the Manhattan performances.
+From the ordinary theatrical point of view it would not be easy to pick
+a quarrel with the drama. It would be almost churlish when there is so
+much to be grateful for, to pick flaws in M. Massenet's score. In the
+first place, compared with the vast volume of stuff poured forth by
+his younger colleagues of Italy, and even by some of his confrères of
+France, it makes appeal for approval by its evidences of consummate
+technical mastery. It never trickles; it never grows stagnant; it never
+gropes; it never fails for want of matter and manner in utterance.
+Its current is smooth and self-reliant. It carries action and scene
+buoyantly and unceasingly, even if it does not always expound them
+deeply or give them adequate external adornment. When it has no real
+warmth it simulates it admirably. Its texture is well-knit. There is
+purpose, not deep, not long-sustained, but, so far as it goes, logical,
+in the composer's application of the system of typical or representative
+phrases. There is, too, a measure of appositeness in the structure and
+character of his themes--the themes of asceticism, of Athanaël, of
+Thais. There is mastery of local color which makes the composer's use
+of Oriental tints as dramatically appropriate as it is engaging in all
+the scenes of ancient profligacy which fill the center of the artist's
+canvas.
+
+M. Massenet's orchestra is an active agent in the development of the
+drama, and the episodes in which it becomes dominant are not pauses
+in the action created because of a felt need for something besides an
+undercurrent for the inane chatter of dialogue; instead they carry on
+the psychological action, the concealed drama which is playing on the
+stage of the hearts of the people concerned in the story. There is
+fitness in the interlude, in which Thaïs disposes herself to reproduce
+the pantomime of the loves of Aphrodite and Adonis, and a pretty touch
+of significance in the reminiscence of the music which had disturbed
+Athanaël's dream in the first act. There is more than mere musical
+charm in the intermezzo which follows the scene in which the monk wakes
+into life the conscience of the courtesan. She has defied him to the
+last, but the struggle in her soul has begun, and while he sleeps on
+the steps of her house the progress and outcome of the struggle are
+portrayed in the instrumental number which Massenet has called a
+"Religious Meditation." In itself it is not unlike scores of pieces
+similarly intituled, but it is made significant by its introduction of
+the theme of Thaïs in a chastened mood, in the garb of solemn gravity;
+and the melody of the violin solo, borne up by almost indefinable
+harmonies, and floated by harp arpeggios, recurs again before the death
+scene of Thaïs to delineate her ecstasy and Athanaël's despair. Though
+the intermezzo, thus admirably motived, marks the highest flight of
+Massenet's genius in this opera, there are many other pages in the score
+which might be chosen for praise. Enough that while the admirers of
+"Manon" and "Werther" are not likely to find the music of those operas
+equaled, they will yet find much to fascinate them in "Thaïs."
+
+I have said, in effect, that the chief triumph in the performance
+of Massenet's opera was won by M. Renaud. Miss Garden had, indeed,
+established herself as a popular favorite, but it was not until the
+production of Charpentier's "Louise," on January 3, 1908, an opera with
+which her name was more intimately associated in popular report, that
+it could be said without qualification that French opera had won its
+battle. The principal parts in this opera were distributed amongst Mr.
+Hammerstein's singers thus:
+
+
+  Louise ..................................... Miss Mary Garden
+  Julien .................................. M. Charles Dalmorès
+  Mother of Louise ...................... Mme. Bressler-Gianoli
+  Father of Louise ........................ M. Charles Gilibert
+  Irma ................................... Mlle. Alice Zeppilli
+  Camille ..................................... Mlle. Morichini
+  Gertrude ..................................... Mlle. Giaconia
+  Suzanne ............................... Mlle. Helene Koelling
+  King of the Fools .............................. M. Venturini
+  A Ragpicker .................................. M. Reschiglian
+  A Junkman ......................................... M. Mugnoz
+  Elise            |
+  A Street Sweeper | ........................... Mlle. Severina
+  A Street Arab ................................ Mlle. Trentini
+  An Apprentice ................................. Mlle. Sigrist
+              Conductor, Campanini
+
+
+"Louise" had made a great noise, both in a literal and figurative
+sense, during the greater part of the preceding eight years. It had
+made the rounds of the principal opera houses on the European continent,
+but most of the noise came from Paris, and among those who sat in
+Mr. Hammerstein's boxes and stalls on the occasion of its American
+production there were many who had already made the acquaintance of the
+work at the Opéra Comique, in the French capital. It is likely that
+their interest in the performance was mingled more or less with curious
+questionings touching the attitude which local opera-lovers would assume
+toward it. There is a vast difference in the mood in which Americans go
+to public entertainments in Paris and at home. In a sense, though not a
+large or dignified one, the tragic element in the story of Charpentier's
+opera is universal; but its representation is in every particular
+the most local and circumscribed of any opera ever written. I am not
+disposed to waste much time or space in a discussion of things to
+which the patrons of our playhouses have often exhibited a callous
+indifference. It is only to justify a hurried analysis of the artistic
+nature of the work that attention is called to some of its essential
+characteristics. "Louise" is not a French opera, though its score is
+French, its people speak French, and its music echoes French measures
+when it is original, and also when borrowed or imitated. "Louise" is
+Parisian in its gaiety, its passions, its vulgarity, and its artistic
+viciousness. If music could in itself give expression to ethical ideas,
+it would also be proper to say that this score is Parisian in its
+immorality. Coupled with its story, which glorifies the licentiousness
+of Paris and makes mock of virtue, the sanctity of the family tie, and
+the institutions upon which social stability and human welfare have
+ever rested and must forever rest, the music may also be set down as
+immoral. Certain it is that there is nothing in it that is spiritually
+uplifting, and as little that makes for gentleness and refinement of
+artistic taste. It is not French in the historic sense, because it
+rudely tramples upon all the esthetic principles for which the French
+composers, from Lully to the best of Charpentier's contemporaries have
+stood--elegance, grace, and beauty of expression.
+
+It is, however, characteristic of the times--characteristic in subject
+and in utterance. To the intellectual and moral anarchism universally
+prevalent among the peoples of Western culture, which desires to
+have idealism outraged, sacred things ridiculed, high conceptions of
+beauty and duty dragged into the gutter, and ugliness, brutality, and
+bestiality placed upon a pedestal so long as a consuming thirst for
+things hot in the mouth may be slaked, it makes a strong appeal. To
+Mr. Hammerstein its success meant much. It was a reward for another
+exhibition of a bold and adventurous spirit; of his skill in gathering
+together a band of artists splendidly capable of presenting the works
+which he was trying to make the prop of a new lyric theater in the
+American metropolis; of a daringly enterprising purpose to make all
+the elements of his new productions harmonious and alluring--the stage
+pictures, the action, the singing, and the instrumental music. This
+achievement he accomplished when not only the large and striking
+features of the opera--its scenic outfit, its pictures of popular
+carousal on the heights of Montmartre, the roystering realism of the
+scene in a dressmakers' shop, the splendid acting of Miss Garden and
+Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, the fine singing of M. Dalmorès, and the more
+than superb acting and singing of M. Gilibert--found their complement
+in the finish of a hundred little details, insignificant in themselves,
+but singularly potent in helping to create the atmosphere without which
+"Louise" would be little better than Bowery melodrama,--a play that
+would be a hundred times more effective if its hero and heroine were
+represented as living in Williamsburg, swelling at the spectacle of
+the lights spanning the East River, and longing for the fleshpots of
+the so-called "Tenderloin District" in New York.
+
+The story of "Louise," in brief, is that of a sewing-girl who lives with
+her parents on Montmartre, up to which, night after night, blink and
+beckon the lights of the gay city. An artist, who is her neighbor, wooes
+her and offers marriage, but her parents, a harsh, unsympathetic mother
+and a tender-hearted father, are rigid in their objections to him
+because of his insufficient means and loose character. Her lover lures
+her out of her workshop, and, after he has inculcated in her the
+doctrine of free love and free life, she leaves her parents to consort
+with him. The artist's jovial companions make her queen of a Montmartre
+festival for a purpose wholly extraneous to the story, but one that
+serves the composer, who is his own librettist, and in the midst of the
+merrymaking the mother appears and pleads with the girl to return to her
+home to comfort her dying father. Her lover permits her to do so on her
+promise to return to him. At home her father entreats her to give up her
+life of dishonor. She listens to him petulantly. The music of a fète in
+the city below, voices calling her from a distance, and the flashing
+lights in the great city below, throw her into a frantic ecstasy; she
+sings of her love and calls to her lover. The mother thinks her mad,
+but the father drives her out of the house, only to repent and call
+after her a moment later. But she is gone, and the drama ends with the
+father shaking his fist at the city, and shrieking at it his hatred
+and detestation.
+
+The thoughts of opera-goers will naturally revert to "La Bohème"; but
+there are many points of difference between the story which Puccini's
+librettist pieced together out of Mürger's tales of bohemian life more
+than half a century ago, and this one of to-day. The differences are all
+in favor of the earlier opera. It was in a letter written by Lafcadio
+Hearn to me that he called attention to the fact that under the levity
+of Mürger's picturesque bohemianism there was apparent a serious
+philosophy, which had an elevating effect upon the characters of the
+romance. "They followed one principle faithfully,--so faithfully that
+only the strong survived the ordeal,--never to abandon the pursuit of an
+artistic vocation for any other occupation, however lucrative, not even
+when she remained apparently deaf and blind to her worshipers." There is
+very little in Puccini's opera to justify this observation, but the
+significant fact remains that throughout the dramatic development of the
+piece the bohemian artists and their careless companions grow in the
+sympathy of the audience. For one thing, there is no questioning their
+sincerity. For this there is only one parallel in Charpentier's opera.
+There is, in fact, only one really dramatic character in it. It is that
+of the father; in him there is honest, human feeling, a tenderness and
+love which yield only to a moment of passion when he is perplexed in the
+extreme and at a moment when the last drop of sympathy for Louise has
+oozed away. Her tender regard for her father is pathetic in the first
+act, where it is set against the foil of her mother's harshness. In
+the last act, however, she is petulant, irascible, and cold, until the
+moment of frenzy, when she surrenders to the call of Paris and her
+wretched passion. Julien is scantily and unconvincingly sketched. There
+is little indeed even to indicate sincerity in his love for Louise; at
+first, while she sings of the ecstasy of first love, he calmly reads a
+book; and when he responds, it is to invoke her to join him in a paean
+in praise, not of their love, but of Paris. Does she find him, when she
+rushes down the stairs, pursued by her father's broken-hearted calls?
+One can feel no certainty on the point. The last impression is only
+that she has gone to plunge into the flood of wickedness, never to be
+seen again.
+
+It was said some years ago, when "Louise" was celebrating its first
+triumphs, that the opera was the first number of a projected trilogy,
+and that Charpentier would tell us the rest of the story of the
+sewing-girl in other operas. But the years have passed, the composer
+has grown rich and is giving no sign. Instead, there is an organized
+"Louise" propaganda in Paris. Funds are raised to send the working girls
+of the city to the opera in droves, there to hear the alluring call to
+harlotry, under the pretense that the agonies of the father will preach
+a moral lesson.
+
+There are dramatic strength and homogeneity only in the first and last
+acts of the opera. The scenes between are shreds and patches, invented
+to give local color to the story. In the original form the picture
+of low life at dawn on Montmartre, in which charwomen, scavengers,
+ragpickers, street sweepers, milkwomen, policemen, and others figure,
+was enlivened by a mysterious personage called Le Noctambule, who
+proclaimed himself to be the soul of the city--the Pleasure of Paris.
+It was a part of the symbolism which we are asked also to find in the
+flitting visions of low life and the echoes of street cries in the
+music. But it was a note out of key, and Mr. Campanini eliminated it,
+with much else of the local color rubbish. And yet it is in the use of
+this local color that nearly all that is original and individual in the
+score consists. Until we reach the final scene of the father's wild
+anguish there is very little indeed that is striking in the music,
+except that which is built up out of the music of the street. We hear
+echoes of the declamatory style of the young Italian veritists in the
+dialogue, much that is more than suggestive of the mushy sentimentality
+of the worst of Gounod and Massenet in the moments when the music
+attempts the melodic vein, and no end of Wagnerian orchestration in the
+instrumental passages which link the scenes together. Some of this music
+is orchestrated with great beauty and discretion, like the preludes, but
+all that is conceived to accompany violent emotion is only fit to "tear
+a cat in" or to "make all split." The score, in fact, is chiefly a
+triumph of reflection, of ingenious workmanship, and there is scarcely
+a moment in the opera that takes strong hold of the fancy, for which
+the memory does not immediately supply a model, either dramatic or
+musical, or both. Wagner's marvelous close of the second act of "Die
+Meistersinger," with the night watchman walking through the quiet
+streets flooded with moonlight, singing his monotonous chant, is feebly
+mimicked at the close of the first scene of the second act of "Louise,"
+when, all the characters of the play having disappeared, an Old Clothes
+Man comes down a staircase crying his dolorous (all the street cries
+are strangely melancholy) "Marchand d'habits! Avez-vous des habits a
+vendr'?" while from the distance arise the cries of the dealers in
+birdseed and artichokes. The spinning scene in "The Flying Dutchman,"
+which reproduces a custom of vast antiquity, is replaced in "Louise"
+with a scene in the dressmaker's workshop, in which the chatter of the
+girls and the antics of the comédienne are borne up by the music of the
+orchestra, with the click-click of the sewing machines to make up for
+the melodious hum of Wagner's spinning wheels. Puccini's bohemians meet
+in front of the Café Momus, enlivened by the passing incidents of a
+popular fête; Charpentier's bohemians celebrate the crowning of the Muse
+of Montmartre with a carnival gathering and ballet. It is this fête, we
+fancy, which formed the nucleus around which Charpentier built his work.
+Twice before "Louise" was brought forward he had utilized the ideas of
+the popular festival at which a working girl was crowned and made the
+center of a procession of roysterers, and a musical score with themes
+taken from the noises of Paris. His "Couronnement de la Muse," composed
+for a Montmartre festival, was performed at Lille in 1898; from Rome he
+sent to Paris along with his picturesque orchestral piece, "Impressions
+d'Italie," a symphonic drama, "La Vie du Poète," for soli, chorus,
+and orchestra, in which he introduced "all the noises and echoes of a
+Montmartre festival, with its low dancing rooms, its drunken cornets,
+its hideous din of rattles, the wild laughter of bands of revelers, and
+the cries of hysterical women." But even here M. Charpentier is original
+in execution only, not in plan. There is scarcely a public library in
+the large cities of Europe and America which does not contain a copy
+of Georges Kastner's "Les Voix de Paris," with its supplement, "Cris
+de Paris," a "Symphonie humoristique," with its themes drawn from the
+cries of the peripatetic hucksters and street venders of the French
+Capital; and as if that were not enough, historic records and traditions
+trace the use of street cries as musical material back to the sixteenth
+century. There seems even to have been a possibility that a "Ballet des
+Cris de Paris" furnished forth an entertainment in which the Grand
+Monarch himself assisted, for the court of Louis XIV.
+
+French opera had won its battle; but even now, the way was not wholly
+clear and open, for the successful operas were too few and their
+repetition caused some grumbling.
+
+At this critical moment the star of Luisa Tetrazzini rose in London
+and threw its glare over all the operatic world. Two years before
+Mr. Conried had engaged the singer while she was in California, but
+had failed to bind the contract by depositing a guarantee with her
+banker. He failed, it is said, because when he wanted to complete the
+negotiations he could not find her. Mr. Hammerstein also negotiated
+with her for the season of 1906-07, so he said, but she proved elusive.
+Neither of the managers felt any loss at his failure to secure her. The
+London excitement may have set Mr. Conried to thinking; Mr. Hammerstein
+it stirred to action. On December 1st he announced that he had engaged
+her for the season of 1908-09, and hoped to have her for a few
+performances before the end of the season of 1907-08. A fortnight later
+he proclaimed that she would effect her New York entrance on January
+15th, and that he had secured her for fifteen representations in the
+current season, with the privilege of adding to their number. Mr.
+Conried threatened proceedings by injunction, but his threats were
+brutum fulmen; she made her début on the specified date in "La
+Traviata," and when the season closed she had added seven performances
+(one in Philadelphia) to the fifteen originally contemplated. In New
+York she sang five times in "Traviata," eight times in "Lucia," once
+in "Dinorah," three times in "Rigoletto," three times in "Crispino e
+la Comare," and once in a "mixed bill." She was rapturously acclaimed
+by the public and a portion of the press. It is useless to discuss
+the phenomenon. The whims of the populace are as unquestioning and
+as irresponsible as the fury of the elements. That was seen in the
+Tetrazzini craze in New York and in London; it was seen again in the
+reception given to that musically and dramatically amorphous thing,
+"Pelléas et Mélisande." This was as completely bewildering to the
+admirers of the melodrama as to those who are blind and deaf to its
+attractions. It should have been more so, for it is more difficult to
+affect to enjoy "Pelléas et Mélisande" than to yield to the qualities
+which dazzle in the singing of Tetrazzini. Nevertheless, "Pelléas et
+Mélisande" had seven performances within five weeks.
+
+Debussy's opera was performed for the first time on February 19, 1908,
+the parts being distributed as follows:
+
+
+  Arkël ........................................ M. Arimondi
+  Pelléas ........................................ M. Perier
+  Golaud ....................................... M. Dufranne
+  Mélisande .................................... Miss Garden
+  Yniold ..................................... Mlle. Sigrist
+  Geneviéve ........................... Mme. Gerville-Reache
+  Un Médecin ..................................... M. Crabbe
+        Conductor, Sig. Campanini
+
+
+The production of "Pelléas et Mélisande" was the most venturesome
+experiment that Mr. Hammerstein had yet made and the one most difficult
+to explain on any ground save the belief that a French novelty, no
+matter what its character or its merits, would win profitable patronage
+in New York at the moment. There was nothing in the history of the work
+itself to inspire the confidence that it would make a potent appeal to
+the tastes of the opera-lovers of New York. Nowhere outside of Paris
+had it gained a foothold, and its success in Paris was like that which
+any esthetic cult or pose may secure if diligently and ingeniously
+exploited. Mr. Hammerstein knew this and he had seen the work at the
+Opéra Comique. It could not have escaped his discerning mind that only
+a small element in the population of even so cosmopolitan a city as
+New York could by any possibility possess the intellectual and esthetic
+qualifications necessary to enthusiastic appreciation of the qualities,
+not to say merits, of the work. These qualifications are quite as much
+negative as they are positive. It is not enough to the appreciation of
+"Pelléas et Mélisande" that the listener shall understand French. He
+must have a taste--and this must be an acquired one, since it cannot
+be born in him--for the French of M. Maeterlinck's infantile plays,
+"Pelléas et Mélisande" being on the border-line between the marionette
+drama and that designed for the consumption of mature minds. He must,
+moreover, have joined the inner brotherhood of symbol worshipers, and
+be able to discern how it is that the world-old story of the union of
+December and May, of blooming youth and crabbed age with its familiar
+(and, as some poets and romancers would have us believe, inevitable)
+consequences, can be enhanced by much chatter about crowns and rings
+dropped into wells, white-haired beggars lying in a cave, stagnant and
+mephitic pools, fluttering doves, departing ships, kings who lose their
+way while hunting and are dashed against trees at twelve o'clock, maids
+who know not whence they came or why they are weeping, and a whole
+phantasmagoria more, out of all proportion to the simple incidents of
+the tragedy itself.
+
+This so far as the literary side of the matter is concerned. On
+the musical much more is demanded. He must recognize unrhythmical,
+uncadenced, disjointed, and ejaculatory prose dialogue, with scarcely a
+lyrical moment in it, as a fit vehicle for music. He must not only be
+willing to forego vocal melody, but even the semblance of melody also
+in the instrumental music upon which the dialogue floats; for everybody
+knows since the Wagnerian drama came into being that words which are in
+themselves incapable of melodious flow may be the cause of melody in the
+orchestral music which accompanies them. [There is here no allusion to
+tune in the conventional sense, tune made tip of motive, phrase, period
+and section, but to a well modulated succession of musical intervals,
+expressing a feeling or illustrating a mood.] He who would enjoy the
+musical integument of this play must have cultivated a craving for
+dissonance in harmony and find relish in combinations of tones that
+sting and blister and pain and outrage the ear. He must have learned
+to contemn euphony and symmetry, with its benison of restfulness, and
+to delight in monotony of orchestral color, monotony of mood, monotony
+of dynamics, and monotony of harmonic device.
+
+It is not at all likely that Mr. Hammerstein expected to find a
+sufficient number of opera-goers thus strangely constituted among
+the patrons of his establishment to justify him in the astonishing
+exhibition of enterprise or venturesomeness illustrated by the
+production of "Pelléas et Mélisande" with artists brought especially
+from Paris only because they had been concerned in the Parisian
+performances, with new scenery, and at the cost of much money and labor
+spent in the preparation. It is therefore safe to assume that he counted
+on the potent power of public curiosity touching a well-advertised
+thing. He had fared well with Mme. Tetrazzini in presenting operas which
+represent everything that "Pelléas et Mélisande" is not. In this he had
+much encouragement. He played boldly, and won.
+
+"Pelléas et Mélisande" as it came from the hands of M. Maeterlinck, and
+in the only form which the author recognizes, had been presented in
+New York in an English version. What has been said above about the
+qualifications of him who would rise to an enjoyment of the music with
+which Debussy has consorted it ought to serve also to characterize that
+music. Nothing has been exaggerated, nothing set down in a spirit of
+illiberality. No student of music can be ignorant of the fact that the
+art, being a pure projection of the human will, is necessarily always
+in a state of flux, and in its nature, within the limitations that
+bound all the manifestations of beauty, lawless. M. Debussy might have
+proclaimed and illustrated that fact without in his capacity of a
+critical writer having sought to throw odium on dead masters who were
+better than he and living contemporaries who are at least older. The
+little Parisian community who pass the candied stick of mutual praise
+from mouth to mouth would nevertheless have given him their plaudits. In
+his proclamation of the principles of musical composition as applied to
+the drama he has proclaimed principles as old as opera. It needed no man
+who has outlived the diatonic scale to tell us that vocal music should
+be written in accordance with the rhythm and accents of the words, and
+that dramatic music should be an integral element of the drama, or, as
+he puts it, be "the atmosphere through which dramatic emotion radiates."
+The Florentine inventors of monody told us that, Gluck echoed them,
+Wagner re-enunciated the principle, and no modern composer has dreamed
+of denying its validity. The only question is whether or not such
+admirable results have been attained by M. Debussy; whether his music
+sweetens or intensifies or vitalizes the play. That question must be
+answered by the individual hearer. No one should be ashamed to proclaim
+his pleasure in four hours of uninterrupted, musically inflected speech
+over a substratum of shifting harmonies, each with its individual tang
+and instrumental color; but neither should anybody be afraid to say that
+nine-tenths of the music is a dreary monotony because of the absence
+of what to him stands for musical thought. Let him admit or deny, as
+he sees fit, that the principle of symphonic development is a proper
+concomitant of the musical drama, but let him also say whether or
+not what to some appears a flocculent, hazy web of dissonant sounds,
+now acrid, now bitter-sweet, maundering along from scene to scene,
+unrelieved by a single pregnant melodic phrase, stirs within him the
+emotions awakened by a union of melody, harmony, and rhythm, either in
+the old conception or the new. Debussy has had his fling at Wagner and
+his system of construction in the lyric drama; yet he adopts his system
+of musical symbols, It is almost a humiliation to say it. There is
+sea music and forest music in "Pelléas et Mélisande." What a flight
+of gibbering phantoms there would be if the fluttering of Tristan's
+pennants or the "hunt's up" of King Mark's horns could be heard even
+for a moment!
+
+It would be difficult accurately and honestly to say what was the
+verdict of the audience touching the merit of the work; concerning
+the performance there was never a question. The first three acts were
+followed by a respectful patter of applause. When Mr. Campanini came
+into the orchestra to begin the fourth act he received an ovation
+which was both spontaneous and cordial. The dramatic climax, which is
+accompanied by superb music of its kind, is reached in the scene of
+Pelléas's killing at the end of the fourth act. This stirred up hearty
+enthusiasm, and after all the artists, Mr. Campanini, and the stage
+manager had shared in the expression of enthusiastic gratitude, Mr.
+Hammerstein was brought before the curtain. He made a brief speech,
+saying that by its appreciation of the opera, with its poetical beauty
+and musical grandeur, New York had set itself down as the most highly
+cultivated city in the world, and that for himself the only purpose he
+had had in producing it was to endear himself to the city's people!
+Would that one dared to exclaim: "O sancta simplicitas!"
+
+Mr. Hammerstein did not perform all the novelties which he had promised
+in his prospectus, but to make good the loss he brought forward two
+operas, one a complete novelty, which he had not promised. This was
+Giordano's "Siberia." More surprising was the fact that only one day
+before the close of the season he produced the same composer's "Andrea
+Chenier" under circumstances which made the occasion a gala one for
+Signor Cleofonte Campanini, the energetic and capable director who
+more than anyone else had made the marvelous achievements of the
+Manhattan company possible. The production of "Andrea Chenier" was not
+contemplated when Mr. Hammerstein came forth in the summer with his
+official announcement of the season; it had, however, been promised
+by Mr. Conried, who seems to have found that the production of two
+novelties of a vastly inferior kind taxed to the limit the resources of
+the proud establishment in Broadway. There it was permitted to slumber
+on with "Otello," "Der Freischütz," and "Das Nachtlager von Granada,"
+whose titles graced Mr. Conried's prospectus. That circumstance may
+have had something to do with Mr. Hammerstein's resolve at the eleventh
+hour to add it to the list of five other new productions which he had
+already placed to his credit. If so, he gave no indication of the fact
+but permitted the announcement to go out that the performance was a
+compliment to Signor Campanini and his wife, who, as Signora Tetrazzini,
+had retired from the operatic stage after singing in the opera three
+years before. Incidentally the circumstance appealed to whatever
+feelings of gratitude the patrons of the Manhattan Opera House felt
+toward Signor Campanini and also to the popular curiosity to hear a
+sister of the Tetrazzini whose coming to the opera was the season's
+chief sensation.
+
+The occasion was well calculated to set the beards of memory mongers to
+wagging. Those who could recall some of the minor incidents of a
+quarter-century earlier remembered that the indefatigable director of
+to-day was a modest maestro di cembalo at the Metropolitan in its
+first season, and on a few occasions when his famous brother Italo
+Campanini sang was permitted to try his "prentice hand" at conducting.
+Next they recalled that four years later, when that brother made an
+unlucky venture as impresario and sought to rouse the people of New York
+to enthusiasm with a production of Verdi's "Otello" it was Cleofonte
+Campanini who was the conductor of the company and Signorina Eva
+Tetrazzini who was the prima donna. The original American production
+of "Andrea Chenier" took place at the Academy of Music on November 13,
+1896. At the revival on March 27, 1908, the parts were distributed as
+follows:
+
+
+  Maddalena de Coigny ................. Mme. Tetrazzini-Campanini
+  Andrea Chenier ..................................... Sig. Bassi
+  Carlo Gerard ................................... Sig. Sainmarco
+  Contessa de Coigny ............................ Sig'ra Giaconia
+  Bersi ......................................... Sig'ra Seppilli
+  Madelon ...................................... Mme. De Cisneros
+  Roucher ........................................... Sig. Crabbe
+  Fouquier-Tinville ............................... Sig. Arimondi
+  A Story Writer         |
+  Mathieu, a sansculotte | ................. Sig. Gianoli-Galetti
+  An Incroyable .................................. Sig. Venturini
+  Abbé ............................................... Sig. Daddi
+  Schmidt, a jailor ............................... Sig. Fossetta
+  Major Domo ................................... Sig. Reschiglian
+  Dumas, president of the tribunal .................. Sig. Mugnoz
+                      Conductor,  Sig. Campanini
+
+
+"Siberia" was performed on February 5, 1908, with the following cast:
+
+
+  Stephana ................................... Sig'ra Agostinelli
+  La Fanciulla .................................. Sig'ra Trentini
+  Nikona ........................................ Sig'ra Zaccaria
+  Vassili ........................................ Sig. Zenatello
+  Gleby ........................................... Sig. Sammarco
+  Walitzin .......................................... Sig. Crabbe
+  Alexis .......................................... Sig. Casauran
+  Ivan         |
+  The Sergeant | ................................. Sig. Venturini
+  The Captain ....................................... Sig. Mugnoz
+  The Invalid .............................. Sig. Gianoli-Galetti
+  Miskinsky .................................... Sig. Reschiglian
+  L'Ispravnik   |
+  The Cossack   |
+  The Inspector | ................................. Sig. Fossetta
+                    Conductor, Sig. Campanini
+
+
+Giordano's opera is an experiment along the lines faintly suggested by
+Mascagni in "Iris," but boldly and successfully drawn by Puccini in
+"Madama Butterfly" and Charpentier in "Louise." The Italian disciples of
+verismo are in full cry after nationalism and local color. A generation
+ago the scenes, the characters, and the subject of an opera were of no
+concern to the composer. His indifference to anachronism was like that
+of Shakespeare, whose stage-folk, whether supposed to be ancient Greeks,
+Romans, or Bretons, were all sixteenth-century Englishmen. When Verdi
+wrote his Egyptian opera he was content with a little splash of
+Orientalism which colors the chant of the priestess in the temple of
+Phtha; the rest of the music is Italian. So the Germans remained German
+in their music, and the Frenchmen continued to speak their own idioms,
+saving a few characteristic rhythms for the incidental ballet. Mascagni
+injected a little twanging of the Japanese samiesen into the music of
+"Iris" but let the effort to obtain local color stop there.
+
+Nevertheless the hint was seized upon by both Giordano and Puccini, and
+apparently at about the same time. The former made an excursion into
+Russia, the latter into Japan; Signor Illica acted as guide for both.
+The more daring of the two was Puccini, for Japan is musically sterile,
+while Russia has a wealth of characteristic folk-song unequaled by
+that of any other country on the face of the earth. Nevertheless there
+is nothing more admirable in the score of "Madama Butterfly" than the
+refined and ingenious skill with which the composer bent the square-toed
+rhythms and montonous tunes of Japanese music to his purposes.
+
+The dramatic structure of "Siberia" is not strong. Incidents of convict
+life in Siberia which have formed the staple of Russian fiction for
+so long are depended on to awaken interest and provide picturesque
+stage-furniture, while sympathy is asked for the heroine who obtains
+"redemption" by an honest love and a heroic sacrifice. Of course, that
+the requisite degree of piquancy may not be wanting, the martyr is
+a bawd who surrenders the luxuries of St. Petersburg provided by a
+princely lover, to endure the privations of the Siberian mines with that
+lover's successful rival. Only in the "redemption motive," so to speak,
+is there any likeness between the story of the opera and Tolstoi's
+"Resurrection," or the play based on that book which had been seen in
+New York five years before, though the two had been associated in the
+gossip of the theaters. There are three acts. The first, in which the
+young officer Vassili, with whom the heroine Stephana is in love, draws
+his sword against his superior officer, Prince Alexis, and thereby draws
+down on himself the sentence of banishment to the mines, plays in a
+palace in St. Petersburg, which the Prince had given to Stephana, who is
+his mistress. The second act discloses incidents in the journey of the
+convicts through Siberia, Vassili being joined at a station by Stephana,
+who has sacrificed her all to follow him into exile. In the third act
+phases of convict life and customs belonging to the Russian Easter
+festival are disclosed, and there is a resumption of the dramatic story
+which now hurries rapidly to its tragic conclusion. Gleby, the seducer
+of Stephana, is found among a gang of new arrivals at the mines, and the
+governor of the province, who had been among her old admirers, renews
+his protestations of devotion and promises her liberty and a life of
+pleasure. Him she repulses gently and proclaims the joy which Siberia
+has brought to her. Gleby also attempts to regain his old influence over
+her, but is cast aside with contumely. Thereupon he denounces her to the
+community. She and her lover determine to escape but are betrayed and
+the heroine is shot in her attempted flight. She dies "redeemed."
+
+"Siberia" has no overture. In place of an instrumental introduction
+there is a chorus of mujiks, which, Russian in idea as well as in
+harmonization and manner of performance, introduces at once the most
+interesting as it is the most effective element in the score. Without
+this element the opera would be deplorably dull, so far as its music
+is concerned. Giordano's original melody is for the greater part
+commonplace and unexpressive. The dramatic scenes between the lovers in
+each of the acts are passionate only to ears accustomed or willing to
+find passion in strenuousness. Throughout Stephana and Vassili sing as
+the Irishman played the fiddle--by main strength. In the second act
+there is much more to warm the fancy and delight the ear. Here the
+lack of an opening overture is made good by an extended instrumental
+introduction of real beauty and power. In a way the music is both
+meteorological and psychological; it pictures the dreary waste of
+country; it seems to speak of the falling snow and biting frost; but it
+also gives voice to the heavy-heartedness which is the prevailing mood
+of the act. It introduces, too, as a thematic motive, the opening phrase
+of the Russian folk-song which the convicts sing as they enter. This
+melody is one of the gems of Russian folk-song so much admired by the
+composers of the Czar's empire that there are few of them who have not
+put it to artistic use. It is "Ay ouchnem," the song originally created
+for the bargemen of the Volga, who to its sighing and groaning measures,
+with broad straps across their breasts, towed heavy vessels against the
+current of the river. Now it is also used by workmen to assist them in
+the lifting and carrying of burdens. Giordano makes excellent use of it
+at the end as well as at the beginning of the act, though as a direct
+quotation, not for thematic treatment as Puccini uses the Japanese
+themes in his score. This is one of the characteristics of Giordano's
+opera and one which illustrates his inferiority as a musician to his
+more successful rival. In the second act a semi-chorus of women quote
+again from Russian folk-song by singing the melody of the air known to
+all musical folklorists by its German title, "Schöne Minka." In the
+third act there is a Russian Easter canticle which has little of the
+Russian character but makes an agreeable impression upon the popular
+ear by reason of its effective use of bell-chimes. There is another
+folk-melody in the opera which has gained publicity in a manner
+different from that which made "Ay ouchnem" and "Schöne Minka" widely
+known; it is the melody of the "Glory" song--"Slava"--which Beethoven
+used in the scherzo of one of his Rasoumowski Quartets.
+
+The season was not without its humorous incidents. A quarrel of Messrs.
+Conried and Hammerstein over MM. Dalmorès and Gilibert, who were enticed
+away from their old allegiance by Mr. Conried but would not stay
+bought, was one of these. Another was a circular letter sent out by Mr.
+Hammerstein on December 23d, scolding his subscribers because they were
+not coming up to his help against the mighty. The letter caused much
+amused comment amongst the knowing, who asked themselves whether it was
+the scolding of the innocent or the coming of "Louise," Tetrazzini,
+and "Pelléas et Mélisande" which turned the tables in the favor of the
+manager. Mr. Hammerstein seemed to believe that the letter had been
+efficacious.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX I
+
+THREE SEASONS AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE
+
+
+Season 1908-1909
+
+
+The twenty-fourth regular subscription season of grand opera at the
+Metropolitan Opera House began on November 16th, 1908, and ended
+on April 10th, 1909. The subscription was for one hundred regular
+performances in twenty weeks, on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
+evenings, and Saturday afternoons. In their prospectus the directors,
+Messrs. Giulio Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel, announced a change of
+plan in respect of the Saturday night performances which had been given
+for a number of years. Those at the reduced prices which had hitherto
+prevailed were to be limited to the first twelve and the last two weeks
+of the season; the others were to be at regular rates. From the end of
+February till April a series of special performances on Tuesday and
+Saturday nights was projected. Wagner's "Parsifal" was to be reserved
+for the customary holiday performances, and there were to be two
+performances of other works, the proceeds of which were to go into a
+pension and endowment fund, the establishment of which, it was hoped,
+would help to give greater permanency to the working forces of the
+institution. There was a promise of a large increase in the orchestra
+as well as the chorus, not only to give greater brilliancy to the local
+performances, but also to make possible a division of the company, with
+less injury than used to ensue, when it became necessary to give two
+performances on the same day--one in the Metropolitan Opera House and
+one in Philadelphia or Brooklyn as the case might be.
+
+These plans were carried out practically to the letter, Mr.
+Gatti-Casazza reinforcing the Italian side of the house, and Mr. Dippel
+the German, with artists, scenery, and choristers, as each thought
+best, under the supervision of the Executive Committee of the Board of
+Directors of what became the Metropolitan Opera Company as soon as
+that style could be legally adopted. The management found it less easy
+to keep its word in reference to the repertory. Eight novelties were
+promised, viz.: D'Albert's "Tiefland," and Smetana's "The Bartered
+Bride" in German; Catalani's "La Wally," Puccini's "Le Villi," and
+Tschaikowsky's "Pique Dame" in Italian; Laparra's "Habafiera" in French;
+Frederick Converse's "Pipe of Desire," and either Goldmark's "Cricket on
+the Hearth," or Humperdinck's "Königskinder" in English. Only the first
+four of these works was produced. A promise that three operas of first
+class importance--Massenet's "Manon," Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," and
+Verdi's "Falstaff"--would be revived was brilliantly redeemed. To the
+subscription season of twenty weeks one week was added for Wagner's
+Nibelung drama and extra performances of "Aïda" and "Madama Butterfly,"
+and Verdi's "Requiem," composed in honor of Manzoni, having been twice
+brilliantly performed in the series of Sunday night concerts which
+extended through the season, was repeated instead of an opera on the
+night of Good Friday. The extra performances, outside of those of
+the last week, were the holiday representations of "Parsifal" on
+Thanksgiving Day, New Year's Day, Lincoln's birthday, and Washington's
+birthday, and benefit performances for the French Hospital, the German
+Press Club, the Music School Settlement, and the Pension and Endowment
+Fund benefit. To the latter one of the Sunday night concerts was also
+devoted. At the operatic benefit performance, as also at a special
+representation at which Mme. Sembrich bade farewell to the operatic
+stage in America (on February 6th, 1909), the program was made up of
+excerpts from various operas--a fact which must be borne in mind (as
+must also the double bills at regular performances) when the following
+tabulated statement of the season's activities is studied. The table
+which now follows gives the list of all the operas performed in the
+order of their production and the number of representations given to
+each in the entire season of twenty-one weeks:
+
+
+   Opera                        First performance       Times
+
+  "Aïda" ......................... November 16 .......... 8
+  "Die Walküre" .................. November 18 .......... 5
+  "Madama Butterfly" ............. November 19 .......... 8
+  "La Traviata" .................. November 20 .......... 5
+  "Tosca" ........................ November 21 .......... 6
+  "La Bohème" .................... November 21 .......... 7
+  "Tiefland" ..................... November 23 .......... 4
+  "Parsifal" ..................... November 26 .......... 5
+  "Rigoletto" .................... November 28 .......... 3
+  "Carmen" ....................... December 3 ........... 6
+  "Faust" ........................ December 5 ........... 7
+  "Götterdämmerung" .............. December 10 .......... 5
+  "Le Villi" ..................... December 17 .......... 5
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ......... December 17 .......... 7
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" .......... December 19 .......... 2
+  "Il Trovatore" ................. December 21 .......... 5
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ........... December 23 .......... 4
+  "L'Elisir d'Amore" ............. December 25 .......... 2
+  "Pagliacci" .................... December 26 .......... 5
+  "La Wally" ..................... January 6 ............ 4
+  "Le Nozze di Figaro" ........... January 13 ........... 6
+  "Die Meistersinger" ............ January 22 ........... 5
+  "Manon" ........................ February 3 ........... 6
+  "Tannhäuser" ................... February 5 ........... 7
+  "The Bartered Bride" ........... February 19 .......... 6
+  "Fidelio" ...................... February 20 .......... 1
+  "Falstaff" ..................... March 20 ............. 3
+  "Don Pasquale" ................. March 24 ............. 1
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ...... March 25 ............. 2
+  "Siegfried" .................... March 27 ............. 2
+  "Das Rheingold" ................ April 5 .............. 1
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+
+  Subscription weeks .......................................... 20
+  Extra week ................................................... 1
+  Regular performances (afternoons and evenings) ............. 120
+  Special representations of the dramas in "Der Ring" .......... 4
+  Special benefit and holiday performances .................... 10
+  Italian operas in the repertory ............................. 17
+  German operas in the repertory .............................. 10
+  French operas in the repertory ............................... 3
+  Bohemian opera in the repertory .............................. 1
+  German representations ...................................... 45
+  Italian representations ..................................... 79
+  French representations ...................................... 19
+  Oratorial performance on opera night ......................... 1
+  Double bills ................................................ 11
+  Mixed bills .................................................. 2
+  Novelties produced ........................................... 4
+
+
+To arrive at the sum of the company's activities there must be added
+fifteen performances given in the new Academy of Music in the Borough
+of Brooklyn; twenty-four performances in the Academy of Music,
+Philadelphia; and four performances in the Lyric Theater, Baltimore.
+Brooklyn and Baltimore were privileged to hear "Hänsel und Gretel,"
+which was denied to the Borough of Manhattan.
+
+There was an unusual number of artists new to New York in the company.
+With Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Italian General Manager, came Arturo
+Toscanini, who, though an Italian, chose Wagner's "Götterdämmerung" as
+the opera in which to make a striking demonstration of his extraordinary
+abilities as a conductor. It was he, too, who prepared the revival of
+"Falstaff" and the production of the two Italian novelties, "Le Villi"
+and "La Wally." His assistant in the Italian department was Signor
+Spetrino, to whom was intrusted the Italian and French operas of lighter
+caliber. Of the two German conductors, Mr. Mahler and Mr. Hertz, neither
+was a newcomer. The former brought about the revival of "Le Nozze di
+Figaro" and the production of "The Bartered Bride," two of the most
+signal successes of the season. Mr. Hertz placed "Tiefland" on the
+stage and added to his long Wagnerian record the first performance
+heard in America of an unabridged "Meistersinger." Singers new to
+the Metropolitan Opera House Company were Miss Emmy Destinn (whose
+engagement had been effected by Mr. Conried some two years before),
+Mmes. Alda, Gay, Di Pasquali, L'Huillier, Ranzenberg, and Flahaut; and
+Messrs. Amato (an admirable barytone), Grassi, Didur (a bass who had
+sung in previous seasons in Mr. Hammerstein's company), Hinckley,
+Feinhals, Schmedes, Jörn, and Quarti.
+
+A painful and pitiful incident of the season was the vocal shipwreck
+suffered by Signor Caruso. After the first week of March he was unable
+to sing because of an affection of his vocal organs. At the last matinée
+of the subscription season and again on the following Wednesday evening,
+he made ill-advised efforts to resume his duties, but the consequences
+were distressful to the connoisseurs and seemed so threatening to his
+physician that it was deemed advisable to relieve him of his obligation
+to go West with the company.
+
+
+Season 1909-1910
+
+
+This, the twenty-fifth subscription season at the Metropolitan Opera
+House, began on November 15th, 1909, and ended on April 2nd, 1910,
+and thus endured twenty weeks. But the twenty weeks of the local
+subscription by no means summed up the activities of the Metropolitan
+company; there was a subscription series of twenty representations in
+the Borough of Brooklyn, a subscription series of two representations
+each week during the continuance of the Metropolitan season at the New
+Theater in the Borough of Manhattan, many special performances, and
+subscription representations in Philadelphia and Baltimore which,
+though they did not belong to the local record must still be mentioned
+because of the influence which they exerted on the local performances.
+The first performance of the company took place in Brooklyn on
+November 8th, and before the season opened at the official home of
+the company representations had also been given in the distant cities
+mentioned which heard twenty performances each. There were also eleven
+performances in Boston, five in January and six in the last week
+of March. After all this there still remained before the company a
+Western tour and a visit to Atlanta, Ga. The season began with a
+proclamation of harmonious cooperation between the General Manager,
+Signor Gatti-Casazza, and the Administrative Manager, Mr. Dippel, and
+ended with what amounted to the dismissal of the latter, who solaced
+himself by accepting the directorship of the Chicago-Philadelphia Opera
+Company, which was called into existence after the principal financial
+backers of the Metropolitan Opera House had retired Mr. Hammerstein
+from the field by the purchase of the opera house which he had built in
+Philadelphia and paid him for abandoning grand opera at the Manhattan
+Opera House in New York, which had been the Metropolitan's rival for
+four years. The season of operas of a lighter character than those given
+at the Metropolitan Opera House which was undertaken at the New Theater,
+a beautiful playhouse built for high purposes by a body of gentlemen
+most of whom were interested in the larger institution, proved to be a
+disastrous failure for reasons which are not to be discussed here, but
+which were not wholly disconnected with the causes which, a year later,
+led to the abandonment of the New Theater to the same uses to which the
+other playhouses of the city are put.
+
+The local season can be most clearly and succinctly set forth in tabular
+form, it being premised that apparent discrepancies between the number
+of meetings and the number of performances are to be explained by the
+fact that frequently two, and sometimes three, works were brought
+forward on one evening or afternoon. These double and triple bills
+came to be very numerous in the last month, when it was found that
+the Russian dancers, Mme. Pavlowa and M. Mordkin, exerted a greater
+attractive power than any opera or combination of singers:
+
+
+SUBSCRIPTION SEASON AT THE METROPOLITAN
+
+   Opera                       First performance    Times given
+
+  "La Gioconda" ................. November 15 ......... 5
+  "Otello" ...................... November 17 ......... 6
+  "La Traviata" ................. November 18 ......... 3
+  "Madama Butterfly" ............ November 19 ......... 6
+  "Lohengrin" ................... November 20 ......... 6
+  "La Bohème" ................... November 20 ......... 6
+  "Tosca" ....................... November 22 ......... 6
+  * "Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... November 24 ......... 7
+  * "Pagliacci" ................. November 24 ......... 7
+  "Il Trovatore" ................ November 25 ......... 6
+  "Tristan und Isolde" .......... November 27 ......... 5
+  "Aïda" ........................ December 3 .......... 6
+  "Tannhäuser" .................. December 4 .......... 4
+  "Manon" ....................... December 6 .......... 3
+  "Siegfried" ................... December 16 ......... 2
+  "Orfeo ed Eurydice" ........... December 23 ......... 5
+  "The Bartered Bride" .......... December 24 ......... 1
+  "Faust" ....................... December 25 ......... 5
+  "Rigoletto" ................... December 25 ......... 2
+  "Die Walküre" ................. January 8 ........... 3
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ..... January 15 .......... 3
+  "Germania" .................... January 22 .......... 5
+  "L'Elisir d'Amore" ............ January 27 .......... 1
+  * "Hänsel und Gretel" ......... January 29 .......... 1
+  "Don Pasquale" ................ February 2 .......... 2
+  "Stradella" ................... February 3 .......... 2
+  "Fra Diavolo" ................. February 6 .......... 3
+  "Falstaff" .................... February 16 ......... 2
+  "Das Rheingold" ............... February 24 ......... 1
+  "Werther" ..................... February 28 ......... 2
+  * "Coppelia" (ballet) ......... February 28 ......... 4
+  "Götterdämmerung" ............. March 4 ............. 1
+  "Pique Dame" .................. March 5 ............. 4
+  "Der Freischütz" .............. March 11 ............ 2
+  * "The Pipe of Desire" ........ March 18 ............ 2
+  "Die Meistersinger" ........... March 26 ............ 2
+  * "Hungary" (ballet) .......... March 31 ............ 2
+  "La Sonnambula" ............... April 2 ............. 1
+
+  * Performed only in double bills.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+  Weeks in the season ........................................ 20
+  Subscription performances ................................. 120
+  Number of operas produced .................................. 36
+  German operas .............................................. 11
+  Bohemian opera .............................................. 1
+  Russian opera ............................................... 1
+  English opera ............................................... 1
+  Italian operas ............................................. 18
+  French operas ............................................... 4
+  German performances ........................................ 34
+  French performances ........................................ 13
+  Italian performances ....................................... 79
+  English performances ........................................ 2
+  Double bills (including ballets and divertissements) ....... 23
+  Number of ballets ........................................... 2
+  Performances of complete ballets ............................ 6
+
+
+EXTRA REPRESENTATIONS AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE
+
+  "Parsifal," Thanksgiving matinée, November 25.
+  "Hänsel und Gretel," special matinées, December 21 and 28.
+  "La Bohème," benefit of Italian charities, January 4.
+  "Manon," benefit of French charities, January 18.
+  "Das Rheingold," serial matinées of "Der Ring," January 24.
+  "Die Walküre," serial matinées of "Der Ring," January 27.
+  "Siegfried," serial matinées of "Der Ring," January 28.
+  "Götterdämmerung," serial matineés of "Der Ring," February 1.
+  "Stradella," benefit of German Press Club, February 15.
+  "Vienna Waltzes," ballet, benefit of German Press Club, February 15.
+  "Parsifal," special matinée on Washington's birthday, February 22.
+  "La Gioconda," benefit of Italian charities, February 22.
+  Mixed bill, benefit of Opera House Pension Fund, March 1
+  "Aïda" and ballet divertissement, benefit of the Legal Aid Society, March 15.
+  "Hänsel und Gretel" and "Coppelia," ballet, special matinée, March 15.
+  "Parsifal," Good Friday matinée, March 25.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+
+  Total number of extra performances ...................... 16
+  German operas ............................................ 7
+  German representations .................................. 11
+  French opera ............................................. 1
+  French representation .................................... 1
+  Italian operas ........................................... 3
+  Italian representations .................................. 3
+  Miscellaneous program .................................... 1
+  Double bills (operas, ballets, and divertissements) ...... 5
+
+
+PERFORMANCES AT THE NEW THEATER
+
+
+   Opera                                First performance    Times
+
+  "Werther" ................................ November 16 ..... 4
+  "The Bartered Bride" ..................... November 17 ..... 2
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ................ November 25 ..... 3
+  "Czar und Zimmermann" .................... November 30 ..... 4
+  * "Il Maestro di Capella" ................ December 9 ...... 3
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ................... December 9 ...... 3
+  "La Fille de Madame Angot" ............... December 14 ..... 4
+  "Don Pasquale" ........................... December 23 ..... 3
+  * "Le Histoire de Pierrot" (pantomime) ... December 28 ..... 4
+  * "Pagliacci" ............................ January 6 ....... 2
+  "Fra Diavolo" ............................ January 11 ...... 2
+  "Manon" .................................. February 3 ...... 1
+  "L'Elisir d'Amore" ....................... February 4 ...... 1
+  "L'Attaque du Moulin" .................... February 8 ...... 4
+  "La Bohème" .............................. February 17 ..... 2
+  "Stradella" .............................. February 22 ..... 1
+  "Madama Butterfly" ....................... March 4 ......... 1
+  "Tosca" .................................. March 22 ........ 1
+  "La Sonnambula" .......................... March 23 ........ 1
+  * "The Awakening of Woman" (ballet) ...... March 31 ........ 1
+  * "The Pipe of Desire" ................... March 31 ........ 1
+  * "Hungary" (ballet) ..................... March 31 ........ 1
+  * "Coppelia" (ballet) .................... April 1 ......... 1
+
+    * In double bills only.
+
+
+SUMMARY
+
+
+  Number of performances ................................ 40
+  Number of operas produced ............................. 19
+  German operas .......................................... 2
+  Bohemian opera ......................................... 1
+  English opera .......................................... 1
+  Italian operas ......................................... 9
+  French operas .......................................... 6
+  German representations ................................. 7
+  French representations ................................ 15
+  Italian representations ............................... 20
+  English representation ................................. 1
+  Double bills (including ballets and divertissements) .. 15
+  Pantomime .............................................. 1
+  Ballets ................................................ 3
+
+
+THE BROOKLYN SEASON
+
+
+    Opera                                      Date of Performance
+
+  "Manon" ........................................ November 8
+  "Tannhäuser" ................................... November 15
+  "Madama Butterfly" ............................. November 22
+  "Tosca" ........................................ November 29
+  "Lohengrin" .................................... December 6
+  "Martha" ....................................... December 13
+  "Il Trovatore" ................................. December 20
+  "Il Maestro di Capella" and "Pagliacci" ........ January 3
+  "Aïda" ......................................... January 17
+  "Faust" ........................................ January 27
+  "Fra Diavolo" .................................. January 31
+  "Stradella" and divertissement ................. February 7
+  "L'Attaque du Moulin" .......................... February 13
+  "La Bohème" .................................... February 21
+  "Otello" ....................................... February 28
+  "La Gioconda" .................................. March 7
+  "Il Barbiere" and divertissement ............... March 14
+  "Rigoletto" .................................... March 21
+  "Der Freischütz" ............................... March 29
+  "Madama Butterfly" and "Hungary" (ballet) ...... April 4
+
+
+There was an extra performance of "Hänsel und Gretel," and ballet
+divertissement on Christmas day. New York was never before in its
+history so overburdened with opera. The following table offers an
+analytical summary of the entire season:
+
+
+  Subscription performances .................................... 160
+  Total performances ........................................... 197
+  Operas produced ............................................... 41
+  German operas produced ........................................ 13
+  Italian operas produced ....................................... 18
+  French operas produced ......................................... 7
+  Bohemian opera produced ........................................ 1
+  Russian opera produced ......................................... 1
+  English opera produced ......................................... 1
+  German representations ........................................ 56
+  Italian representations ...................................... 115
+  French representations ........................................ 23
+  Double bills (including ballets and divertissements) .......... 48
+  Performances of complete ballets .............................. 12
+
+
+"The Awakening of Woman" and "Hungary" have been treated as ballets in
+this record simply for the sake of convenience. They were, in fact, a
+testimonium paupertatis to the feature which had aroused the greatest
+interest during the dying weeks of the season. The public wanted to see
+the two Russians dance; the management cared so little for artistic
+integrity that it did not trouble itself to keep its promises even as
+to the ballet. "Vienna Waltzes," which had figured in the prospectus,
+was performed but once, and then only because it was demanded by the
+German Press Club for its annual benefit. "Die Puppenfee," "Sylvia,"
+"Les Sylphides," and "Chopin," though on the program, were not given,
+short divertissements after long operas being made to take their
+place. Operatic novelties promised but not given were: Leo Blech's
+"Versiegelt," Goetzl's "Les Précieuses Ridicules," Goldmark's "Cricket
+on the Hearth," Humperdinck's "Königskinder," Laparra's "La Habannera,"
+Lehar's "Amour des Tziganes," Leroux's "Le Chemineau," Maillart's "Les
+Dragons des Villars," Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," Rossini's
+"Il Signor Bruschino," Suppé's "Schöne Galatee," and Wolf-Ferrari's "Le
+Donne Cuiose." The works which had a first production in New York were
+Franchetti's "Germania;" Tschaikowsky's "Pique Dame," Converse's "Pipe
+of Desire," and Bruneau's "L'Attaque du Moulin." In familiar operas the
+public was permitted to see new impersonations of Elsa, Floria Tosca,
+and Santuzza by Mme. Fremstad, and of Floria Tosca by Miss
+Farrar. Notable achievements from an artistic point of view were the
+representations of "Tristan und Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger,"
+under the direction of Signor Toscanini, and "Pique Dame," under
+Herr Mahler.
+
+
+SEASON 1910-1911
+
+
+The twenty-sixth season at the Metropolitan began on November 14th, and
+ended on April 15th, thus embracing twenty-two weeks. When the public
+was invited to subscribe for the season in the summer, performances were
+promised in French, Italian, German, and English. In the preceding two
+years there had been talk of producing Goldmark's "Heimchen am Heerd"
+("The Cricket on the Hearth") and Humperdinck's "Königskinder" in
+English, and so there was again this; but on his return from Europe in
+the fall Signor Gatti put a quietus on it immediately by proclaiming
+that the project was impracticable. Nevertheless, in midseason he
+announced an opera in English by an American composer (Arthur Nevin's
+"Twilight"), and withdrew it, although the public had been told to
+expect it. Meanwhile a somewhat singular combination of circumstances
+led to a partial fulfilment of the promise in the prospectus. Mr.
+Dippel, who had undertaken the management of the Chicago Opera Company
+(renamed the Philadelphia-Chicago Company after the Chicago season was
+over and that in Philadelphia begun), had carried with him from New
+York the purpose to give opera in the vernacular. He was encouraged in
+this by Mr. Clarence Mackay and Mr. Otto Kahn, the chief backers of
+the Chicago institution, but the Chicago season was not long enongh
+to enable him to bring it to fruition. For his second season at the
+Manhattan Opera House, Mr. Hammerstein had promised to produce an
+English opera "by our American composer, Victor Herbert" (see p. 372).
+This opera, entitled "Natoma," had been offered to Signor Gatti-Casazza,
+and an act of it tried with orchestra on the stage of the Metropolitan;
+but the director did not care to produce it. It was then offered to
+Mr. Dippel, who accepted it, and produced it first in Philadelphia
+and then at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, where the
+Philadelphia-Chicago company gave a subscription series of French operas
+on Tuesdays from January to April. To this incident there is a pendant
+of more serious purport. The Directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company
+had met what seemed to them a challenge on the part of Mr. Hammerstein
+by offering a prize of $10,000 for the best opera in English by a
+native-born American composer. The time allowed for the competition was
+two years and the last day for the reception of scores September 15th,
+1910. On May 2nd the jury of award, composed of Alfred Hertz, Walter
+Damrosch, George W. Chadwick, and Charles Martin Loeffler, announced
+that the successful opera was a three-act musical tragedy entitled
+"Mona," of which the words were written by Brian Hooker, the music
+by Professor Horatio Parker of Yale University.
+
+The change of plan occasioned by the abandonment of the representations
+at the New Theater and in Baltimore, the latter city being left to the
+ministrations of Mr. Dippel's organization, brought with it a large
+reduction of the Metropolitan forces, but the smaller company
+nevertheless gave eight performances in Philadelphia and fourteen in
+Brooklyn besides those called for by the subscription and special
+representations in New York. Support on occasions had been promised by
+the affiliated companies in Chicago and Boston, but the little that was
+offered was not very graciously received by the New York public. Mme.
+Melba sang once in "Rigoletto," and once again in "Traviata," one of the
+two performances being in the regular subscription list. Then she was
+announced as ill, and departed for England. Mlle. Lipowska sang a few
+times, as also did Signor Constantino (who had been a member of Mr.
+Hammerstein's company and was now the principal tenor in Boston), but
+the public was indifferent to these performances of the old Verdi
+operas.
+
+Interesting incidents were the visits of Signor Puccini and Herr
+Humperdinck to superintend the rehearsals and witness the first
+performances on any stage of their operas, "La Fanciulla del West" and
+"Königskinder," the latter of which was sung in the original German
+instead of the promised English. For the Italian opera the management
+had arranged two special performances at double prices; these were
+popular failures in spite of the interest excited by Mr. David Belasco's
+play "The Girl of the Golden West," on which the opera was based. The
+presence of the Russian dancers, who had won much favor in the preceding
+season, was particularly fortunate in the closing weeks of the season,
+when another failure of Signor Caruso's voice threatened disaster. Mme.
+Pavlowa and her companion, M. Mordkin, supported by a very mediocre
+troupe of dancers, had discovered themselves to their admirers before
+the opera season opened. They then took part in the Metropolitan
+entertainments until the end of the first week of January. Thereupon
+they departed, but came back very opportunely for the second fortnight
+of March.
+
+The rest of the story may be read out of the following table and
+remarks. There were twenty-two weeks of opera with subscription
+performances on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings, and
+Saturday afternoons. At these performances operas were given as follows:
+
+
+REGULAR METROPOLITAN SUBSCRIPTION PERFORMANCES
+
+
+     Opera                              First Performance    Times
+  "Armide" ............................... November 14 ....... 3
+  "Tannhäuser" ........................... November 16 ....... 5
+  "Aïda" ................................. November 17 ....... 6
+  "Die Walküre" .......................... November 18 ....... 4
+  "Madama Butterfly" ..................... November 19 ....... 5
+  "La Bohème" ............................ November 21 ....... 5
+  "La Gioconda" .......................... November 23 ....... 6
+  "Rigoletto" ............................ November 24 ....... 3
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" (double bill) ... November 25 ....... 5
+  "Pagliacci" (double bill) .............. November 25 ....... 7
+  "Lohengrin" ............................ November 28 ....... 5
+  "Il Trovatore" ......................... December 1 ........ 5
+  "Faust" ................................ December 10 ....... 4
+  "Orfeo ed Eurydice" .................... December 10 ....... 5
+  "La Fanciulla del West" ................ December 26 ....... 7
+  "Königskinder" ......................... December 28 ....... 7
+  "Tristan und Isolde" ................... January 4 ......... 4
+  "Roméo et Juliette" .................... January 13 ........ 2
+  "Siegfried" ............................ January 14 ........ 1
+  "Die Meistersinger" .................... January 20 ........ 4
+  "Germania" ............................. February 1 ........ 2
+  "La Traviata" .......................... February 2 ........ 2
+  "Tosca" ................................ February 8 ........ 5
+  "Die Verkaufte Braut" .................. February 15 ....... 4
+  "Otello" ............................... February 27 ....... 5
+  "Ariane et Barbe-Bleue" ................ March 29 .......... 4
+  "Hänsel und Gretel" (doublebill) ....... April 6 ........... 2
+
+
+There were ten Saturday evening subscriptions at regular prices at
+which the following operas were given, viz.: "Cavalleria Rusticana"
+and "Pagliacci," "Madama Butterfly," "Il Trovatore," "Parsifal,"
+"Lohengrin," "Thaïs" (Chicago Opera Company), "Aïda," "Königskinder,"
+"Tannhäuser," and "Tosca." There were holiday, benefit, and special
+performances as follows:
+
+
+EXTRA PERFORMANCES
+
+     Opera                              First Performance    Times
+
+  "Parsifal" ............................ November 24 ........ 3
+  "La Traviata" ......................... November 29 ........ 1
+  "La Fanciulla del West" ............... December 10 ........ 2
+  "Cavalleria" and ballet ............... December 24 ........ 1
+  "Hänsel und Gretel" ................... December 26 ........ 4
+  "Königskinder" ........................ December 31 ........ 3
+  "Aïda" ................................ January 7 .......... 1
+  "Rigoletto" ........................... January 14 ......... 1
+  "Roméo et Juliette" ................... January 21 ......... 1
+  "Die Meistersinger" ................... January 28 ......... 1
+  "Das Rheingold" ....................... February 2 ......... 1
+  "Madama Butterfly" .................... February 4 ......... 2
+  "Die Walküre" ......................... February 9 ......... 1
+  "Siegfried" ........................... February 13 ........ 1
+  "Götterdämmerung" ..................... February 22 ........ 1
+  "La Bohème" and ballet ................ March 30 ........... 1
+  Mixed bill ............................ April 6 ............ 1
+
+Twenty-six representations; sixteen operas.
+
+
+There was also an extra subscription season by the Chicago Opera
+Company, which made a showing as follows:
+
+
+SUBSCRIPTION SEASON OF THE PHILADELPHIA-CHICAGO COMPANY
+
+
+     Opera                                    First Performance    Times
+
+  "Thaïs" ........................................ January 24 ....... 1
+  "Louise" ....................................... January 31 ....... 2
+  "Pelléas et Mélisande" ......................... February 7 ....... 1
+  "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" ........................ February 14 ...... 1
+  "Carmen" ....................................... February 21 ...... 1
+  "Natoma" (once in double bill) ................. February 28 ...... 3
+  "Il Segreto di Susanna" (in double bill) ....... March 14 ......... 2
+  "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame" (in double bill) ... March 14 ......... 1
+  "Quo Vadis" .................................... April 4 .......... 1
+
+Eleven evenings, one extra, nine operas, three double bills.
+
+
+METROPOLITAN PERFORMANCES IN BROOKLYN
+
+
+     Opera                              First Performance    Times
+
+  "Il Trovatore" ......................... November 19 ....... 1
+  "Orfeo ed Eurydice" .................... November 26 ....... 1
+  "Tannhäuser" ........................... December 3 ........ 1
+  "Cavalleria" (double bill) ............. January 3 ......... 1
+  "Pagliacci" (double bill) .............. January 3 ......... 1
+  "Lohengrin" ............................ January 17 ........ 1
+  "Königskinder" ......................... January 24 ........ 1
+  "La Bohème" ............................ January 31 ........ 1
+  "Rigoletto" ............................ February 7 ........ 1
+  "Madama Butterfly" ..................... February 21 ....... 1
+  "Tosca" ................................ February 28 ....... 1
+  "Aïda" ................................. March 7 ........... 1
+  "Otello" ............................... March 14 .......... 1
+  "La Fanciulla del West" ................ March 18 .......... 1
+  "Parsifal" ............................. March 21 .......... 1
+
+Fourteen representations, fifteen operas, one double bill.
+
+The novelties produced in the season were Gluck's "Armide," Puccini's
+"La Fanciulla del West," Humperdinck's "Königskinder," Dukas's "Ariane
+et Barbe-Bleue," Herbert's "Natoma," Wolf-Ferrari's "Il Segreto di
+Susanna," and Nouguet's "Quo Vadis."
+
+
+
+APPENDIX II
+
+TWO SEASONS AT THE MANHATTAN OPERA HOUSE
+
+
+The third season of opera under the sole direction of Mr. Oscar
+Hammerstein at the Manhattan Opera House, New York, began on November
+9th, 1908, and lasted twenty weeks until March 27th, 1909. During
+this period there were five regular performances each week. Had there
+been no deviation from the rule there would have been one hundred
+representations, but advantage was taken of occasions which seemed
+auspicious to give extra performances, and therefore there were also
+representations on Thanksgiving Day, New Year's Day, Washington's
+birthday, and to signalize by special attention (and, incidentally,
+special prices) the coming of Richard Strauss's delectable "Salome."
+So there were added four performances to the weekly five originally
+set down for Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings, and
+Saturday afternoons.
+
+In his prospectus, issued in the summer, Mr. Hammerstein specifically
+promised to produce "Samson et Dalila," by Saint-Saëns, "Salome," by
+Richard Strauss, "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame" and "Grisélidis," by
+Massenet, and "Princesse d'Auberge," by Jan Blockx. He brought forward
+all of these except "Grisélidis." In the list of operas which he was
+less specifically bound to perform were Massenet's "Manon," Bizet's
+"Les Pécheurs des Perles," Verdi's "Falstaff," Bréton's "Dolores,"
+Giordano's "Andrea Chenier" and "Siberia," Puccini's "Madama Butterfly,"
+Donizetti's "Linda di Chamounix," Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera" and
+"Ernani," all of which fell by the board. The chief features of interest
+in the season were the productions of the novelties, "Salome," "Le
+Jongleur de Notre Dame" (with Mary Garden in the part of the Juggler,
+which was written for a man), and "Princesse d'Auberge," and the series
+of performances headed by Mme. Melba, who opened the sixth week of the
+season on December 14th in "La Bohème," and concluded her engagement on
+January 11th in "Rigoletto." Her performances were confined to these two
+operas and "Otello." For the rest let the following table speak:
+
+
+   Opera                       First performance        Times
+
+  "Tosca" ....................... November 9 ............ 5
+  "Thaïs" ....................... November 11 ........... 7
+  "Samson et Dalila" ............ November 13 ........... 6
+  "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ..... November 14 ........... 3
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ......... November 18 ........... 7
+  "Gli Ugonetti" ................ November 20 ........... 2
+  "Carmen" ...................... November 26 ........... 2
+  "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame" ... November 27 ........... 7
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ........ December 4 ............ 5
+  "Pagliacci" ................... December 4 ............ 5
+  "Rigoletto" ................... December 5 ............ 5
+  "Traviata" .................... December 12 ........... 5
+  "La Bohème" ................... December 14 ........... 5
+  "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" ....... December 16 ........... 7
+  "Otello" ...................... December 25 ........... 6
+  "Pelléas et Mèlisande" ........ January 6 ............. 4
+  "Crispino e la Comare" ........ January 9 ............. 3
+  "Salome" ...................... January 28 ........... 10
+  "Aïda" ........................ February 10 ........... 2
+  "La Sonnambula" ............... February 13 ........... 3
+  "Louise" ...................... February 19 ........... 5
+  "I Puritani" .................. February 26 ........... 2
+  "Il Trovatore" ................ March 1 ............... 1
+  "Princesse d'Auberge" ......... March 10 .............. 3
+  "La Navarraise" ............... March 20 .............. 1
+
+
+Total number of performances, 111; number of representations, 104; total
+number of operas, 25; operas composed in Italian, 14; in French, 9;
+in German, 1; in Flemish, 1; Italian representations, 59; French, 52.
+The difference between the number of representations and the total of
+performances of the different operas is due to the fact that on seven
+occasions two operas were given on the same afternoon or evening.
+
+
+SEASON 1909-1910
+
+Before beginning his fourth season Mr. Hammerstein opened his house for
+a season of "educational" opera, as he called it at first, which began
+on August 30th, 1909, and lasted until October 30th, 1909. In this
+preliminary season Mr. Hammerstein not only made trial of a considerable
+number of singers, some of whom remained with him throughout the regular
+season, but also experimented with operas, some of which went over into
+the subscription repertory with no considerable change either in casts
+or settings, while others, notably "La Juive" and "Le Prophète," might
+well have done so. In them also some singers of notable excellence
+were heard, like Zerola, the tenor; William Beck, the barytone, and
+Marguerite Sylva, but after the regular season got under way they
+were heard from chiefly in the newspapers in connection with the
+disaffections and disagreements which were almost incessant.
+
+In the season proper Mr. Hammerstein tried to give opéra comique, as he
+politely called it, though it was largely opéra bouffe, and when the
+experiment proved a failure he courageously abandoned it. The proceeding
+has its parallel in the so-called "lyric" opera conducted by the
+Metropolitan management of the New Theater. After pondering the matter
+for a space, Mr. Hammerstein substituted opera at popular prices on
+Saturday evenings for the opéra bouffe, with a result of which we are
+not in a position to speak.
+
+The promises of an impresario, whether made positively, like "The
+following operas will be performed," or vaguely, like "The repertory
+will be selected from the following lists"--an old and favorite
+device--are always accepted by the public in a Pickwickian sense. Mr.
+Hammerstein did not disturb the precedents in this respect, but he
+came creditably near to keeping his definite promises. He said that
+"Hérodiade," "Elektra," "Grisélidis," and "Sapho" would be among his
+novelties, and they were. He said that "Cendrillon," "Feuersnoth,"
+"The Violin Maker of Cremona," and Victor Herbert's "Natoma" would
+also be given--and they were not. Of old works the only ones promised
+in the list of grand operas and not given were "Crispino e la Comare,"
+"Siberia," "Lohengrin," "I Puritani," "Meistersinger," and "Le
+Prophète." Most of them were easily spared, especially the two Wagnerian
+operas, the futility of which in French must have been obvious after Mr.
+Hammerstein had admitted the failure of his French singers to grasp the
+spirit of "Tannhäuser."
+
+Here is the tabular record:
+
+
+   Opera                          First performance        Times
+
+  "Hérodiade" ...................... November 8 ........... 6
+  "Traviata" ....................... November 10 .......... 4
+  "Aïda" ........................... November 12 .......... 3
+  "Thaïs" .......................... November 13 .......... 6
+  "Cavalleria Rusticana" ........... November 13 .......... 4
+  "Pagliacci" ...................... November 13 .......... 8
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ............ November 16 .......... 7
+  "La Fille de Madame Angot" ....... November 16 .......... 2
+  "Sapho" .......................... November 17 .......... 3
+  "La Fille du Régiment" ........... November 22 .......... 4
+  "Mascotte" ....................... November 23 .......... 1
+  "Carmen" ......................... November 25 .......... 6
+  "Tosca" .......................... November 26 .......... 3
+  "Les Dragons des Villars" ........ November 27 .......... 2
+  "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame" ...... December 4 ........... 5
+  "Les Cloches de Corneville" ...... December 4 ........... 3
+  "Faust" .......................... December 8 ........... 3
+  "Tannhäuser" ..................... December 10 .......... 3
+  "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" .......... December 25 .......... 8
+  "Trovatore" ...................... January 8 ............ 2
+  "La Bohème" ...................... January 14 ........... 5
+  "Grisélidis" ..................... January 19 ........... 4
+  "Samson et Dalila" ............... January 28 ........... 2
+  "Elektra" ........................ February 1 ........... 7
+  "Rigaletto" ...................... February 11 .......... 4
+  "Louise" ......................... February 23 .......... 2
+  "La Navarraise" .................. February 28 .......... 2
+  "Salome" ......................... March 5 .............. 4
+  "Pelléas et Mélisande" ........... March 11 ............. 3
+  "Lakmé" .......................... March 21 ............. 1
+  Mixed bill ....................... March 25 ............. 1
+
+
+After the conclusion of the season Mr. Hammerstein sold his Philadelphia
+Opera House, which had been opened a week after the performances began
+in New York, to a company of gentlemen largely interested in the
+Metropolitan, and entered into an obligation with them not to give grand
+opera in New York City for ten years. It seems appropriate, therefore,
+to print the following tabular record of his performances during his
+four years' management of the Manhattan Opera House:
+
+
+   Operas                   1906-1907  1907-1908  1908-1909  1909-1910
+
+  "Aïda" ..................... 12          9          2          3
+  "Andrea Chenier" ............ 0          1          0          0
+  "Ballo in Maschera" ......... 2          4          0          0
+  "Barbiere di Siviglia" ...... 2          0          3          0
+  "Bohème" .................... 4          0          5          5
+  "Cavalleria" ................ 8          4          3          4
+  "Carmen" ................... 19         11          2          6
+  "Contes d'Hoffmann" ......... 0         11          7          8
+  "Cloches de Corneville" ..... 0          0          0          3
+  "Crispino e la Comare" ...... 0          3          3          0
+  "Damnation de Faust" ........ 0          3          0          0
+  "Dinorah" ................... 1          1          0          0
+  "Don Giovanni" .............. 4          3          0          0
+  "Dragons des Villars" ....... 0          0          0          2
+  "Elektra" ................... 0          0          0          7
+  "Elisir d'Amore" ............ 3          0          0          0
+  "Ernani" .................... 0          1          0          0
+  "Faust" ..................... 7          4          0          3
+  "Fille de Mme. Angot" ....... 0          0          0          2
+  "Fille du Régiment" ......... 0          0          0          2
+  "Fra Diavolo" ............... 4          0          0          0
+  "Gioconda" .................. 0          4          0          0
+  "Grisélidis" ................ 0          0          0          4
+  "Héodiade" .................. 0          0          0          6
+  "Huguenots" ................. 5          0          2          0
+  "Jongleur de Notre Dame" .... 0          0          7          5
+  "Lakmé" ..................... 0          0          0          1
+  "Louise" .................... 0         11          5          2
+  "Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 6          8          7          7
+  "Martha" .................... 4          0          0          0
+  "Mascotte" .................. 0          0          0          1
+  "Mignon" .................... 3          0          0          0
+  "Navarraise" ................ 2          5          1          2
+  "Otello" .................... 0          0          6          0
+  "Pagliacci" ................ 10          9          5          8
+  "Pelléas et Mélisande" ...... 0          7          4          3
+  "Princesse d'Auberge" ....... 0          0          3          0
+  "Puritani" .................. 2          0          2          0
+  "Rigoletto" ................ 11          5          5          4
+  "Salome" .................... 0          0         10          4
+  "Samson et Dalila" .......... 0          0          6          2
+  "Siberia" ................... 0          3          0          0
+  "Sapho" ..................... 0          0          0          3
+  "Sonnambula" ................ 3          0          3          0
+  "Tannhäuser" ................ 0          0          0          3
+  "Thaïs" ..................... 0          7          7          6
+  "Traviata" .................. 3          5          5          4
+  "Tosca" ..................... 0          0          5          3
+  "Trovatore" ................. 6          5          1          2
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chapters of Opera, by H.E. Krehbiel
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAPTERS OF OPERA ***
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