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 …………………………….. DurotCarlo Gerard …………………………….. UghettoMaddalena di Coigny …………………. Bonaplata-BauLa Mulatta Bersi ………………………. MeysenheimLa Contessa di Coigny …………………….. ScalchiMadelon …………………………………… ParsiRoucher ……………………………………. DadoIl Romanziero ……………………………. AlbertiFouquier Tinville …………………………. ———Mathieu …………………………………. BorelliUn Incredibile |L'Abate, poeta |…………………………. GiordanoSchmidt, Carceriere a San Lazzaro ……………. TerziIl Maestro di Casa ………………………. OlivieriDumas …………………………………….. 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 onFebruary 12, 1897, with the following distribution of parts:
Rodrigue (his original character) …………… Jean de ReszkeDon Diégue (his original character) ………. Édouard de ReszkeLe Roi ……………………………………. Jean LassalleLe Conte de Gormas (his original character) …….. Pol PlançonSt. Jacques |L'Envoye Maure | ……………………………. Jacques BarsDon Arras ………………………………….. Signor CorsiDon Alonzo …………………………… Signor de VaschettiL'Infante …………………………….. Clementine de VereChimène ………………………………….. Felia Litvinne
Conductor—Signor Mancinelli
The table of performances from 1893 to 1897 follows here:
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.
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 MontanariMusetta …………………. Cleopatra VinciniRodolfo …………………. Giuseppe AgostiniMarcello ………………… Luigi FrancesconiSchaunard ………………… Giovanni ScolariAlcidero |Benoit |……………….. Antonio FumagalliParpignol ……………….. 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 anewMay 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."
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.