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. ArimondiPelléas …………………………………. M. PerierGolaud ………………………………… M. DufranneMélisande ……………………………… Miss GardenYniold ………………………………. Mlle. SigristGeneviéve ……………………… Mme. Gerville-ReacheUn Médecin ………………………………. M. CrabbeConductor, 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-CampaniniAndrea Chenier ………………………………. Sig. BassiCarlo Gerard …………………………….. Sig. SainmarcoContessa de Coigny ………………………. Sig'ra GiaconiaBersi ………………………………….. Sig'ra SeppilliMadelon ……………………………….. Mme. De CisnerosRoucher ……………………………………. Sig. CrabbeFouquier-Tinville …………………………. Sig. ArimondiA Story Writer |Mathieu, a sansculotte | …………….. Sig. Gianoli-GalettiAn Incroyable ……………………………. Sig. VenturiniAbbé ……………………………………….. Sig. DaddiSchmidt, a jailor …………………………. Sig. FossettaMajor Domo …………………………….. Sig. ReschiglianDumas, president of the tribunal ……………… Sig. MugnozConductor, Sig. Campanini
"Siberia" was performed on February 5, 1908, with the following cast:
Stephana …………………………….. Sig'ra AgostinelliLa Fanciulla ……………………………. Sig'ra TrentiniNikona …………………………………. Sig'ra ZaccariaVassili …………………………………. Sig. ZenatelloGleby ……………………………………. Sig. SammarcoWalitzin …………………………………… Sig. CrabbeAlexis …………………………………… Sig. CasauranIvan |The Sergeant | …………………………… Sig. VenturiniThe Captain ………………………………… Sig. MugnozThe Invalid ………………………… Sig. Gianoli-GalettiMiskinsky ……………………………… Sig. ReschiglianL'Ispravnik |The Cossack |The Inspector | …………………………… Sig. FossettaConductor, 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.
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
Subscription weeks …………………………………… 20Extra week …………………………………………… 1Regular performances (afternoons and evenings) …………. 120Special representations of the dramas in "Der Ring" ………. 4Special benefit and holiday performances ……………….. 10Italian operas in the repertory ……………………….. 17German operas in the repertory ………………………… 10French operas in the repertory …………………………. 3Bohemian opera in the repertory ………………………… 1German representations ……………………………….. 45Italian representations ………………………………. 79French representations ……………………………….. 19Oratorial performance on opera night ……………………. 1Double bills ………………………………………… 11Mixed bills ………………………………………….. 2Novelties 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:
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.
Weeks in the season …………………………………. 20Subscription performances …………………………… 120Number of operas produced ……………………………. 36German operas ………………………………………. 11Bohemian opera ………………………………………. 1Russian opera ……………………………………….. 1English opera ……………………………………….. 1Italian operas ……………………………………… 18French operas ……………………………………….. 4German performances …………………………………. 34French performances …………………………………. 13Italian performances ………………………………… 79English performances …………………………………. 2Double bills (including ballets and divertissements) ……. 23Number of ballets ……………………………………. 2Performances of complete ballets ………………………. 6
"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.
Total number of extra performances …………………. 16German operas …………………………………….. 7German representations ……………………………. 11French opera ……………………………………… 1French representation ……………………………… 1Italian operas ……………………………………. 3Italian representations ……………………………. 3Miscellaneous program ……………………………… 1Double bills (operas, ballets, and divertissements) …… 5
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.
Number of performances ………………………….. 40Number of operas produced ……………………….. 19German operas …………………………………… 2Bohemian opera ………………………………….. 1English opera …………………………………… 1Italian operas ………………………………….. 9French operas …………………………………… 6German representations …………………………… 7French representations ………………………….. 15Italian representations …………………………. 20English representation …………………………… 1Double bills (including ballets and divertissements) .. 15Pantomime ………………………………………. 1Ballets ………………………………………… 3
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 ……………………………… 160Total performances ……………………………………. 197Operas produced ……………………………………….. 41German operas produced …………………………………. 13Italian operas produced ………………………………… 18French operas produced ………………………………….. 7Bohemian opera produced …………………………………. 1Russian opera produced ………………………………….. 1English opera produced ………………………………….. 1German representations …………………………………. 56Italian representations ……………………………….. 115French representations …………………………………. 23Double bills (including ballets and divertissements) ………. 48Performances 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.
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:
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:
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 ……….. 1Mixed bill ………………………. April 6 ………… 1
Twenty-six representations; sixteen operas.
There was also an extra subscription season by the Chicago OperaCompany, which made a showing as follows:
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.
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 "Arianeet Barbe-Bleue," Herbert's "Natoma," Wolf-Ferrari's "Il Segreto diSusanna," and Nouguet's "Quo Vadis."