The prospectus for the season of 1888-89 announced sixteen weeks of opera between November 28th and March 16th, the subscription to be for forty-seven nights and sixteen matinées. The last two weeks were set apart for two consecutive representations of the dramas constituting "The Ring of the Nibelung." The difficulties involved in an effort to compass the tetralogy in a week combined with other circumstances to compel an extension of the season for a week, much to the advantage of the enterprise. The final record showed that fifty evening and eighteen afternoon performances had taken place between the opening night and March 23, 1889. Sixteen works were performed, the relative popularity of which is indicated in the following list: "Götterdämmerung," "Tannhäuser," "Das Rheingold," "La Juive," "Il Trovatore," "Lohengrin," "Aïda," "Siegfried," "L'Africaine," "Die Meistersinger," "Les Huguenots," "Die Walküre," "Faust," "Le Prophète," "Fidelio," and "William Tell." The most significant new production—indeed the only significant one—was "Das Rheingold," which completed the acquaintance of the New York public with the current works of Wagner, "Parsifal" being still under the Bayreuth embargo, although it had several times been given in concert form. The total cost of the representations, not including scenery, costumes, properties, and music, was $333,731.31, or an average of $4,907.78 a representation. The total receipts from the opera were $213,630.99, divided as follows: Box office sales, $149,973.50; subscriptions, $59,607.50; privileges, $4,049.99. The average receipts a representation were $3,141.63. The loss to the stockholders on the operatic account was $1,766.15 a representation, which was covered by the receipt of $201,180.00 from the stockholders for the maintenance of the establishment, the fixed charges on the building, and the cost of scenery, music, etc., amounting to $144,455.81.
"Das Rheingold" was produced for the first time on January 4, 1889, under the direction of Mr. Seidl, and was performed nine times in the ten weeks of the season which remained. The artists concerned in the production were Emil Fischer as Wotan, Max Alvary as Loge, Alois Grienauer as Donner, Albert Mittelhauser as Froh, Joseph Beck as Alberich, Wilhelm Sedlmayer as Mime, Eugen Weiss as Fafner, Ludwig Mödlinger as Fasolt, Fanny Moran-Olden as Fricka, Katti Bettaque as Freia, Sophie Traubmann as Woglinde, Felice Kaschowska as Wellgunde, Hedwig Reil as Flosshilde, and again, Hedwig Reil as Erda.
The sixth season of opera in German began on November 27, 1889, and ended on March 22, 1890. Within this period fifty evening and seventeen afternoon subscription performances were given and there was an extra performance on February 27th for the benefit of Lilli Lehmann, who had stipulated for it in her contract in lieu of an increase in her honorarium, demanded and refused. The sixty-seven subscription performances were devoted to nineteen operas and dramas which are here named in the order of popularity as indicated by attendance and receipts: "Siegfried," "Don Giovanni," "Die Meistersinger," "Tristan und Isolde," "Lohengrin," "Das Rheingold," "Der Barbier von Bagdad," "Tannhäuser," "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Götterdämmerung," "Die Königin von Saba," "William Tell," "Aïda," "Die Walküre," "Rienzi," "Il Trovatore," "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," "Un Ballo in Maschera," and "La Juive." The ballet "Die Puppenfee" was performed in connection with the opera "Der Barbier von Bagdad." The last three weeks of the season were devoted to representations in chronological order (barring an exchange between "Tristan" and "Meistersinger") of all the operas and lyric dramas of Wagner from "Rienzi" to "Götterdämmerung," inclusive. The total receipts from subscriptions, box office sales, and privileges were $209,866.35; average, $3,132.34. The total cost of producing the operas (not including scenery, costumes, properties, and music) was $352,990.32, or an average of $5,268.52 per representation. On this showing the loss to the stockholders on operatic account was $2,136.18 a representation, which was met by an assessment of $3,000 a box; of this sum $1,200 went to the fixed charges on the opera house.
The one novelty of the season was Peter Cornelius's "Barbier von Bagdad," which had its first performance on January 4, 1890. The production was embarrassed by mishaps and misfortunes. It had been announced for December 25th, but Mr. Paul Kalisch, the tenor, fell ill with the prevailing epidemic and a postponement became necessary. It was set down for January 4th, but when that day came Mr. Seidl was ill. He had prepared the opera with great care and loving devotion, but at the eleventh hour had to hand his baton to his youthful assistant, Walter Damrosch. The beautiful work had only four representations. The original cast was as follows: Caliph, Josef Beck; Mustapha, Wilhelm Sedlmayer; Margiana, Sophie Traubmann; Bostana, Charlotte Huhn; the Barber, Emil Fischer. "Die Puppenfee," ballet by J. Hassreiter and F. Gaul, music by Joseph Bayer, followed the opera and was conducted by Frank Damrosch. The most important addition to the forces in this season was Theodor Reichmann, who effected his entrance on the American stage on the first evening in Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." Herr Reichmann was known to American pilgrims to the Wagnerian Mecca as the admired representative of Amfortas in "Parsifal," but his impersonation of the Dutchman was equally famous in Vienna and the German capitals. On this occasion Mr. Seidl restored the architect's original design with reference to the band. Mr. Cady's device had never had a fair trial. Signor Vianesi condemned it in the first season. When Dr. Damrosch took the helm he tried it, but abandoned it and resorted to the compromise suggested by Vianesi, which raised the musicians nearly to the level of the first row of stalls in the audience room. The growth of the band sent the drummers outside the railing, but no one was brave enough to restore the original arrangement till the opening of the sixth German season.
I come to the operatic activities of the period beyond the walls of the Metropolitan. They scarcely amounted to opposition at any time, though at the end of the third year there came a brief season of Italian opera in the home of the German institution which whetted the appetites of the boxholders and, no doubt, had much to do with the revolution which took place two years later. In 1887, beginning on October 17th and ending in December, there was a series of performances at the Thalia Theater which served again to indicate that German opera had a following among the people who could not afford to patronize the aristocratic establishment. This season was arranged to exploit Heinrich Bötel, a coachman-tenor of the Wachtel stripe, who came from the Stadttheater, in Hamburg. The prima donna was Frau Herbert-Förster, the wife of Victor Herbert, who had been a member of the Metropolitan company while her husband, afterward the most successful of writers for the American operetta stage, sat in Mr. Seidl's orchestra. The operas given were "Trovatore," "Martha," "The Postilion of Lonjumeau," Flotow's "Stradella," "La Dame Blanche," and "Les Huguenots." At other theaters, too, there were performances of operas and operettas by the Boston Ideal Opera Company and other troupes, but with them these annals have no concern. The National Opera Company, stripped of the prestige with which it had started out, abandoned by Mr. Thomas and reorganized on a co-operative basis, made its last struggle for existence at the Academy of Music between April 2 and April 6, 1888. The decay of the institution seemed to fill it with the enterprise and energy of despair. It produced (but in anything but a commendable fashion) English versions of Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba," Rubinstein's "Nero," "Tannhäuser" (first performance of the opera in English in New York on April 4th), and "Lohengrin." In the company, besides some of the singers who had belonged to it in the previous two years, were Eloi Sylva, Bertha Pierson, Amanda Fabbris, Charles Bassett, and Barton McGuckin, the last a tenor who had made a notable career in Great Britain with Mr. Carl Rosa's companies.
This season also saw the introduction of Verdi's "Otello" by a company especially organized for the purpose by Italo Campanini, who, his singing days being practically over, turned impresario. He had been in Milan when Verdi's opera was produced, on February 5, 1887, and made haste to procure the American rights of performance. It was a laudable ambition, but the enterprise was overwhelmed with disaster. Campanini brought from Italy a tenor named Marconi for the titular rôle; his sister-in-law, Eva Tetrazzini, to sing the part of Desdemona, and his brother, Cleofonte (who was maestro di cembalo at the Metropolitan Opera House during its first season), as conductor. With these he associated Signora Scalchi and Signor Galassi (Emilia and Iago). The first performance took place on April 16, 1888, in the Academy of Music, and four representations were given on the established opera nights and Saturday afternoons. The public's attitude was apathetic. The tenor did not please, the fashionable season was over, the music was not of the kind that had been expected from Verdi, and the prices of admission were too high for a popular audience. Signor Campanini essayed a second week and now threw his own popularity into the scale. Signor Marconi was dismissed and returned at once to Europe, never to be heard again in New York; Campanini, who had been the most popular tenor with New Yorkers since the palmy days of Brignoli, took his part; the prices of admission were reduced. All to no avail; ruin had overtaken the manager, and the eighth performance was the last. It was truly pitiable. Signor Campanini deserved better for his bold embarkation in a noble enterprise; but reasons for the failure were easily found. It was unwise to give opera on an ambitious scale after the amusement season had worn itself out; it was nothing less than foolish to do so with an ill-equipped company, in a house that had lost its fashionable prestige and at prices so large that a fatal blunder had to be confessed by their reduction at the end of a week. Two seasons later, the opera was announced by the Metropolitan director, Mr. Stanton, but was not given, for reasons already mentioned. How it entered the fashionable home of opera we shall see presently.
After the lapse of twenty years it is still impossible to say that "Otello" has really been habilitated in New York. Its fate has not been quite so pitiful as that of "Falstaff," because it has been more frequently performed, and performed, moreover, in better style; but it has not won the popular heart. It is admired by the knowing, but not loved by the masses, as the earlier operas, especially "Aïda," is loved. The reason? I am still inclined to look for it where I thought I found it a score of years ago. At that time it seemed to me that the public, if it concerned itself with the matter at all (which I doubt), was at a loss for a point of view from which to consider it. Was it an Italian opera? Certainly not, if that type was represented by any of the works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, or of Verdi himself when he was the popular idol. Was it a French opera? A German opera? A lyric drama in the Wagnerian manner? To the connoisseur, if not to the idle prattler about music, each of these designations suggests a distinct idea—a form, a style, a manner. Which of them might with most propriety be applied to this work? The circumstance that the book was in the Italian language had little to do with the question, no matter how loudly an excitable individual (as on this occasion) might shout "Viva l'Italiano!" to testify his admiration for Verdi's music. "The style—it is the man." "Otello" was composed and first brought forward under anomalous conditions, and though it first saw the stage lamps at Milan, its style is not distinctively Italian. Neither is it distinctively French or German. It is of its own kind, Verdian; characteristic of the composer of "Rigoletto," "Trovatore," and "Traviata" in its essence, though widely different from them in expression. The composer himself indicated that he desired it to be looked upon as outside of the old operatic conventions. According to its title page it is "Dramma lirico in quattro Atti." "Aïda" was still an "Opera in quattro Atti." The distinction was not undesigned. There are many other indications that he desired his work to be looked upon as something as far from old-fashioned opera as were Wagner's later dramas; that he aimed in the first instance at a presentation of its dramatic contents, and considered the music as a means, and not entirely as an end. In this he followed a Wagnerian precept. His score is filled with instrumental interludes designed to accompany actions or to depict emotions. He leaves no question in our minds on this point, but as fully as Wagner in his "Lohengrin" period he indicates the bodily movements that are to go hand in hand with the music. In the picture of a storm which opens the opera the manipulator of the artificial lightning is not left to his discretion as to the proper moment for discharging his brutum fulmen; in the love duet, at the close of the first act, the appearance of the moon and stars is sought to be intensified by descriptive effects in the music; and when, in the last scene, Otello kisses the sleeping Desdemona, and the one typical phrase of the opera (drawn from the love scene) is repeated, the composer indicates on what beat of each measure he wants each kiss to fall. These are only a few instances of Verdi's appreciation of the necessity of suiting the action to the music, the music to the action; and they sink into insignificance when compared with his treatment of the murder in the last act. Then Otello's entrance and actions up to the waking of Desdemona are accompanied by a solo on double basses, interrupted at intervals by energetic passages from the other strings. It is not difficult to recall other melodramas written since "Fidelio" in which similar dramatic effects are sought, but the audacity of Verdi's procedure is unexampled in Italian opera. I make no doubt that had this scene been written twenty years earlier it would have been received by his countrymen with hisses and catcalls. Yet we were told that at the opera's first performance in Milan the audience redemanded it uproariously and the Italian critics could not sufficiently express their admiration for it. The fact is that "Otello" disclosed an honest, consistent, and in many respects successful effort to realize the higher purposes which we associate in the conception of a lyric drama as distinguished from the opera. With this conception nationalism had nothing to do; Verdi's superb artistic nature, everything.
In the season of 1888-89 there was but a single performance of Italian opera in New York, a circumstance singular enough to deserve special mention. On April 24th Signor Campanini appeared with Clementine De Vere in "Lucia di Lammermoor," the performance being for the once-popular favorite's benefit. Memories of a period in which Italian singers were tremendously active were called up in the minds of opera-goers of the older generation by an entertainment given in the Metropolitan Opera House on February 12th, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Max Maretzek's entrance in the American field as a conductor of operas. The affair was generously patronized and participated in on its professional side by Theodore Thomas, Anton Seidl, Frank van der Stucken, Adolf Neuendorff, and Walter Damrosch as conductors; Mme. Fursch-Madi, Miss Emily Winant, Miss Maud Powell, Rafael Joseffy, Max Alvary, Signor Del Puente, Julius Perotti, Wilhelm Sedlmayer, and Mrs. Herbert-Foerster. Scenes from "Siegfried," "Il Trovatore," and "Carmen" were performed.
There were some performances of operas in English in the early part of the next season (1889-90) by the Emma Juch English Opera Company (Nessler's "Trumpeter of Säkkingen" being brought forward as a novelty), at the Harlem Opera House, owned and managed by Oscar Hammerstein. This house also, for a week after the close of the regular season at the Metropolitan, was the scene of an unsuccessful effort to prolong the German performances, or rather to provide German opera at popular prices to the residents of Harlem. The company, headed by Miss Lehmann and conducted by Walter Damrosch, was made up of singers from the Metropolitan company. The operas given were "Norma," "Les Huguenots," and "Il Trovatore."
The Italian company which took possession of the Metropolitan Opera House immediately on its vacation by the German singers was under the management of Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau. During the fall and winter months it had been giving representations in some of the larger cities of the United States and Mexico City. Arditi and Sapio were the conductors, and most of the singers were familiar to the public—Patti, Albani, Nordica, Fabbri, Ravelli, Vicini, Perugini, Del Puente, Castelmary, Novara, Migliara; newcomers were Hortense Synnerberg, mezzo-soprano; Signora Pettigiani, soprano leggiero; Zardo, barytone, and Francesco Tamagno, tenor. The presence of this singer in the troupe served to indicate that its purpose, outside the exploitation of Madame Patti, was the production of Verdi's "Otello," with which the season was opened on March 24th, Madame Albani being the Desdemona. Tamagno had created the title rôle in Milan two years before.
The subscription was for sixteen evenings and four matinées, which were to be encompassed in a period of four weeks; but the illness of Madame Patti compelled a postponement of one of the performances until the fifth week after the opening, and then to the twenty subscription representations was added, a twenty-first as a "farewell" to Madame Patti. The operas in which this artist appeared were "La Sonnambula," "Semiramide," "Lakmé," "Martha," "Lucia di Lammermoor," "Roméo et Juliette," "Il Barbiere," "Linda di Chamouni," and "La Traviata." The other operas were "Otello," "Il Trovatore," "Tell," "Aïda," "Faust," "L'Africaine," "Rigoletto," and "Les Huguenots."
There was no novelty in the list, unless the fact that "Lakmé" was transformed into a novelty by the Italian version; it had been heard before in English, and the performance was so desperately slipshod, notwithstanding that Mme. Patti impersonated the heroine, that it awakened only pity for Delibes's work. It would be extremely interesting and doubtless instructive also were I able to give such a detailed financial statement of the outcome of this season as Mr. Stanton's courtesy enabled me at the time to give of the German seasons. But here I am thrown on conjecture. On the evenings and afternoons when Patti sang the audiences unquestionably represented vast receipts to the management. An estimate made at the time from a study of the character and size of the audiences placed the receipts in round numbers at $100,000. It was significant as bearing on the artistic problem suggested by the succession of German and Italian opera—a problem that was destined to become of paramount interest soon—that on scarcely a single Patti performance were all the orchestra stalls sold, and that there were always unsold boxes in the tier not occupied by the stockholders. The bulk of the money came from the occupants of the balconies and gallery. The musical and fashionable elements in the city's population had comparatively small representation. The audiences, in fact, were largely composed of curiosity seekers, impelled by the desire to be able in the future to say that they, too, had heard the greatest songstress of the last generation of the nineteenth century. The "Patti's Farewell" trick was still effective; a few years later it was found that it would work no longer, and the great singer disappeared in a black cloud of failure, followed by the grief of all who had been her admirers.
The season of 1890-91 was full of incidents, some exciting, some amusing, but they were all dwarfed by the announcement which came in the middle of January that the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House had concluded a contract of lease with Henry E. Abbey (or Abbey and Grau) under which opera was to be given in the next season in Italian and French. The alleged reason was that Mr. Abbey was willing to assume all risk of failure for the same subvention which the stockholders as individuals were paying themselves in their capacity as entrepreneurs; the real reason was that the stockholders, or a majority of them, were weary of German opera, and especially of the dramas of Wagner. This reason spoke out of the action which had been taken looking to the eighth season of opera (seventh in German) before an agreement had been reached with Mr. Abbey. Wagner had supplied the financial backbone to all the seasons since German opera had been introduced, as will appear presently; but the directors were unwilling to admit that fact until, as a result of their change of policy, disaster stared them in the face. Then they made haste to reverse their action as far as possible and did other works of repentance which enabled them to save a modicum of prestige and some money; but the hands of the clock had been set back, and the goal of a national opera, toward which the German movement was leading, was forgotten. It has never been seen since.
When Mr. Stanton went to Germany in the spring of 1890 to engage singers and select a repertory he carried with him a definite policy, formulated by the directors, which was the fruit of a sentimental passion for the amiable Italian muse and a spirit of thrift. Italian opera under their own management seeming still impracticable because of its expensiveness, the directors conceived what they thought would prove to be a happy compromise; they would continue to give German opera, but would make a radical change in the character of the repertory. Wagner was to be shelved as to all but his earlier operas, such as "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin," and the season enriched with new works by Italian and French composers. With this purpose in view, Mr. Stanton completed his arrangements, and the season of 1890-91 was opened on November 26th in a manner that looked like a bold and successful stroke in favor of the new policy. "Asrael," an opera by an Italian composer, which had stirred up some favorable comment in Germany and Italy, was given with a great deal of sumptuousness in stage attire and with a company which critics and amateurs agreed in recognizing as, on the whole, stronger than any of recent years. Mme. Lehmann-Kalisch was not at its head, it is true, but instead there was a singer of excellent ability and considerable personal and artistic charm in the person of Antonia Mielke. Emil Fischer was retained, and also Theodor Reichmann and some of the lesser members of the old company, and to them were added Heinrich Gudehus, Jennie Broch (soprano leggiero), Marie Ritter-Goetze (mezzo-soprano), Andreas Dippel, Marie Jahn (soprano), and others. Mme. Minnie Hauk joined the forces later in the season.
"Asrael" was in every respect a surprise—as strange to the audience as if it had been composed for the occasion. The name of the composer, Alberto Franchetti, had never appeared in any local list save once, in April, 1887, when a symphony in E minor, bearing it, had been performed at a concert of the Philharmonic Society under the direction of Theodore Thomas. The Tribune newspaper contributed all that the public learned about him then and since. This was to the effect that he was a young Italian (or, rather, Italianized Hebrew), a member of one of the branches of the Rothschilds, who had studied in Munich and lived much of his time in Dresden, where Kapellmeister Schuch sometimes gave him opportunities to hear his orchestral music. Also that he was very wealthy, having a purse as large as his artistic ambition, and was not disinclined, when a work of his composition was accepted for performance, to care for its sumptuous production by paying for the stage decorations out of his own pocket. He resembled Meyerbeer in being a Jew, and also in that it was possible for his mother to say of him: "My son is a musical composer, but not of necessity." The book of the opera proved to be a most bewildering conglomeration of scenes and personages from familiar operas, and though the pictures were magnificent and much of the music was pleasing, "Asrael" had only five performances, and when the record of the season was made up it was found to stand thirteenth in a list of seventeen operas.
At the bottom of this list stood the two other novelties of the season, and if the public were bewildered by "Asrael" they were thrown into consternation by "Der Vasall von Szigeth," and into contemptuous merriment by "Diana von Solange." Both of these operas were sung in German, of course, but "Der Vasall," not only had an Italian (Anton Smareglia) for its composer, like "Asrael," but had originally been composed in Italian and borne an Italian name—"Il Vassallo di Szigeth." Here plainly was a concession to the Italian predilections of the stockholders. But the composer of "Der Vasall," or "Il Vassallo"—as you like it—was a Dalmatian, like Von Suppé, the operetta composer. His native tongue was Italian, but the influence of Austrian domination and Austrian art had deeply affected his nationalism, and enabled him to infuse an Hungarian subject (the story of "Der Vasall" was Hungarian) with Hungarian musical color. It therefore chanced that in this instance, when the stockholders seemed to have bargained for Italian sweets, they got a strong dose of Magyar paprika. As for the libretto, it offered such a sup of horrors as had never been seen on an operatic stage before, and has never been seen since. "Der Vasall von Szigeth," which was brought forward on December 12th, had four performances in the season and took in $7,805.50, which was probably not much more than the cost of staging the opera.
The amused gossip touching the potency of new influences which had begun with "Asrael" was given fresh fuel by the production of "Diana von Solange." Why an opera which had lain "so lange" (to make an obvious German pun) in the limbo of forgotten things, which, indeed, had never enjoyed a popularity of any kind, though it was thirty or forty years old, should have been resurrected for production in New York was a question well calculated to irritate curiosity and provoke many an ill-natured sally of wit. "Diana von Solange" was the work of Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The family to which the duke belonged had long dallied with music; that the public knew. His ducal highness's brother, the British Prince Consort, affected the art in his time, and left evidences of good, sound taste in the story of English music, and it was known that the Duke of Edinburgh (son of the Prince Consort and Queen Victoria) was an amateur fiddler, quite capable of leading the band at a London smoking concert. A complacent German lexicographer had even admitted Ernest II into the fellowship of Beethoven, but that fact was not widely known, and after "Diana von Solange" had been produced the most cogent argument in explanation of its production among the theatrical wits was based on familiar German stories of the lavishness of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the distribution of orders, especially among musicians. No anecdote was more popular for the rest of the season in the corridors than that which told of how a concert party driving away from the ducal palace discovered that the chamberlain had handed over one more decoration than the artists who had entertained the duke. "Never mind," quoth the chamberlain; "give it to the coachman!" The production of an opera composed by the duke without the obbligato distribution of orders was inconceivable, even in democratic America, but the tongues of waggish gossips wagged so furiously that it was said only the stage manager was willing to accept his bauble. Brahms's bon mot touching the danger of criticizing the music of royalty, "because no one could tell who composed it," not being current at the time, the music of "Diana von Solange" was mercilessly faulted, as was also the libretto. It was certainly right royal poetry set to right royal music—an infusion of immature Verdi and Meyerbeer plentifully watered. Archaic research discovered that the opera had been written some thirty-five years before, and that the composer, possessing, quite naturally, some influence with the management of the ducal theaters at Coburg and Gotha, had succeeded in having it performed in those cities in December, 1858, and May, 1859, and that Dresden had also honored it with a performance in January, 1859. Why New York blew the dust of generations off its score was never learned by the inquisitive newspaper scribes.
The story of the opera concerned itself with the succession to the throne of Portugal on the death of Enrique, with whom the old Burgundian line became extinct in 1580. A wicked man plotted to give the crown to Philip II of Spain (who really got it), and employed a Provençal adventuress to help keep it from the nephew of the dying king. But the adventuress, who lent her name to the opera, lost heart in the enterprise because she fell in love with the nephew and was stabbed to death for her pains. The wicked man was shot by the nephew, and there was thus a proper amount of bloodshed to justify the historical character of the work, the grewsomeness of which was modified by much edifying declamation on the part of the dying king, expressive of the lofty sentiments which, the world knows, always fill the breasts of monarchs. The opera was performed on January 9, 1891, and received two representations. A third was announced for a Saturday afternoon, but called forth so emphatic a popular request for "Fidelio" that the representative of the stockholders adjudged it to be the course of wisdom to set aside Ernest II in favor of Beethoven.
For six weeks Mr. Stanton followed the line of policy laid down by his directors, and within that time brought forward the three novelties which I have described, besides "Tannhäuser," "Lohengrin," "The Flying Dutchman," "Les Huguenots," "Le Prophète," and "Fidelio." Already in the third week of the season, however, it became manifest that the policy of the directors did not meet with the approbation of the public. One result of the German representations in the preceding six years had been to develop a class of opera patrons with intelligent tastes and warm affections. A large fraction of this public had become season subscribers, and among these dissatisfaction with the current repertory was growing daily. It may be that the panicky feeling in financial circles had something to do with a falling off in general attendance in the early part of the season, but this is scarcely borne out by the fact that the advance subscription amounted to $72,000, representing about one thousand persons, and that, though the novelties would not draw, the three Wagnerian works proved to be as attractive as ever they had been. The significance of the popular attitude, indeed, was obvious enough, although the directors chose to close their eyes and ears to it. It was, in fact, so obvious that The Tribune newspaper did not hesitate to predict a tremendous success for "Fidelio" when it was announced "for one performance only" on December 26th, and to assert in advance of the performance that it would have to be repeated to satisfy the demand for good dramatic music which had grown up because of the Wagner cult and been whetted by Mr. Stanton's neglect to put on the stage a few works imbued with the modern dramatic spirit. Two repetitions of "Fidelio" and the lifting of that opera to fourth place in the list attested the soundness of The Tribune's diagnosis of the situation.
By a coincidence, on the night of the first representation for the season of one of the latter-day works of Wagner, which, had the directors chosen to read the signs of the times aright and be guided by them, might have ushered in the era of prosperity which they were sighing for but repelling by their course, the decision was reached to turn over the opera house to Mr. Abbey for performances in Italian and French. This date was January 14th. So far as the subscribers to the opera and the majority of its patrons were concerned, this action of the directors seemed like nothing else than the culmination of a conspiracy to set back the clock of musical progress in New York a quarter of a century at least. The news came upon the public like a bolt from the blue. The plan had been laid early in the summer (was, in fact, the fruition of the postprandial Patti season of 1889-90), but all concerned had been pledged to secrecy. Mr. Abbey seized the right moment to strike, and when he had bagged his game he exhibited it forthwith, and it was received with a loud chorus of cheers from the enemies of the German institution. The directors gleefully continued their course for a little while longer, though the handwriting on the wall had begun to blaze forth when all the canons of art and the fruit of years of serious effort were insulted by the production of the amorphous creation of one whose sole claim on popular attention as a composer was that he was a royal duke and the brother-in-law of the Queen of England.
At the first performance, after the announcement of the projected change had been made, the public took it upon themselves to show their disapproval of the action of the directors. There seemed to be but one way to do this effectually without injury to the form of art which the public had learned to love, and that way was adopted: After January 14th not a single representation was conducted by Mr. Seidl at which the conductor was not compelled to appear upon the stage and accept a tribute of popular admiration. Mr. Seidl had come to be the representative in an especial manner of the new spirit as opposed to the directors, who, by their action, had shown that they stood for the old. And so the directors were rebuked in the honors showered upon the conductor. It needed as little prophetic gift to predict what course Mr. Stanton would pursue in view of the new developments as it had required to predict the success of "Fidelio" after the experiences of 1888-89 had seemed to indicate that the opera had lost all charm for the public. On January 20th, only six days after Mr. Abbey had captured the directors, The Tribune, commenting editorially on the "Operatic Revolution," remarked:
Financially Wagner must save this season or it will suffer shipwreck. Mr. Stanton knows that, and it is not a rash prediction to say that the whole unperformed list will be sacrificed from this time forth to the production of Wagner's works. The policy will be voted wise by the directors because it will go further than anything else to save the season; it will be welcomed by the public because of their disappointment with the novelties which a shortsighted policy attempted to foist upon them.
The prediction was fulfilled to the letter; after January 20th thirty-five representations took place, and all but ten of them were devoted to Wagner's works, notwithstanding that within this period Mme. Minnie Hauk was added to the company and that the two operas in which she appeared ("L'Africaine" and "Carmen") proved more popular than any works of the non-Wagnerian list, with the single exception of "Fidelio." An amusing evidence of the enforced change of heart in the directors was a promulgation of an order requesting the occupants of the boxes to discontinue the conversation during performances which had grown to be a public scandal. The resolution to publish the order was adopted, either at the meeting of the directors at which the agreement was reached with Mr. Abbey, or the day after; the order bore date January 15; the contract with Mr. Abbey was made on January 14th.
It is proper that I devote some attention to the story of the growth of the spirit which eventually overthrew German opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, or, rather, not German opera, but opera exclusively in the German tongue; for it was not long in developing that the new régime stood no show of success unless to Italian and French German opera was also added. The vicissitudes which brought with them this demonstration must be reserved for a subsequent chapter, but before I tell the story of the institution's retrogression I owe to the student of history an outline of the doings of the season 1890-91. The season began on November 26th and lasted till March 21st. There were sixty-seven subscription performances, an extra performance of "Fidelio" for the benefit of the chorus, which yielded $1,849, giving each chorister $18.20, and a Sunday night performance of excerpts from "Parsifal," which brought in $1,872. I have enumerated the operas which had been given up to the production of "Diana von Solange"; after this date came "Die Meistersinger," "L'Africaine," "Siegfried," "Der Barbier von Bagdad," "Die Walküre," "Götterdämmerung," "Carmen," and "Tristan und Isolde." Arranged in the order of their popularity as indicated by attendance and receipts, the entire list was as follows: "Siegfried," four times; "Tannhäuser," seven times; "Götterdämmerung," four times; "Fidelio," three times; "Die Meistersinger," six times; "Die Walküre," four times; "Lohengrin," seven times; "Carmen," three times; "The Flying Dutchman," four times; "L'Africaine," three times; "Le Prophète," once; "Tristan und Isolde," three times; "Asrael," five times; "Barber of Bagdad," four times; "Les Huguenots," three times; "Der Vasall von Szigeth," four times; "Diana von Solange," twice. The total receipts for the season (box office sales and subscriptions) were $198,119.25; the average, $2,957.
The last performance of the season was given to "Die Meistersinger" on a Saturday afternoon. The house was crowded from floor to ceiling and there were signs from the beginning that there was to be a large expression of public opinion. After the first and second acts there were calls and recalls for the singers and for Mr. Seidl. But this was but a preparation. After the fall of the curtain on the last act the multitude remained in the audience room for over half an hour (remained, indeed, till laborers appeared on the stage to get it ready for a concert in the evening), and called for one after another of the persons who were in one way or another representative of the system that was passing away. The greatest bursts of enthusiasm were those which greeted Mr. Stanton (whose sympathies were with the German movement), Mr. Seidl and Mr. Fischer, though Mr. Walter Damrosch, Mr. Habelmann, Mr. Dippel, Fräulein Jahn, and other singers were not neglected. Mr. Stanton's unwillingness to receive the distinction which the audience plainly wished to shower upon him caused disappointment; but Mr. Stanton stood in an awkward position between the stockholders and the public. Finally, after an unusual outburst of plaudits for Mr. Fischer, that singer came forward carrying a gigantic wreath and half a dozen bouquets and said:
Ladies and Gentlemen: It is impossible for me to express what I feel for your kindness and love; and I hope it is not the last time (here a tremendous uproar interrupted the speaker for a space) that I shall sing for you here, on this stage, in German.
Had one been able to explode a ton of dynamite when Mr. Fischer ended it would have been accepted by the audience as not more than a fitting amount of approbative noise. Twenty minutes later, the audience still clamoring for a speech, Mr. Seidl came forward, for perhaps the twentieth time, and spoke as follows:
Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, I understand the meaning of this great demonstration. For myself, the orchestra, and the other members of the company, I thank you.
To understand the story of the overthrow of German opera managed by the owners of the opera house, and the reversion to the system which had proved disastrous at the beginning and was fated to prove disastrous again, it is well to bear the fact in mind that instability was, is, and always will be an element in the cultivation of opera so long as it remains an exotic; that is, until it becomes a national expression in art, using the vernacular and giving utterance to national ideals. The fickleness of the public taste, the popular craving for sensation, the egotism and rapacity of the artists, the lack of high purpose in the promoters, the domination of fashion instead of love for art, the lack of real artistic culture—all these things have stood from the beginning, as they still stand, in the way of a permanent foundation of opera in New York. The boxes of the Metropolitan Opera House have a high market value to-day, but they are a coveted asset only because they are visible symbols of social distinction. There were genuine notes of rejoicing in the stockholders' voices at the measure of financial success achieved in the first three seasons of German opera, but the lesson had not yet been learned that an institution like the Metropolitan Opera House can only be maintained by a subvention in perpetuity; that in democratic America the persons who crave and create the luxury must contribute from their pockets the equivalent of the money which in Europe comes from national exchequers and the privy purses of monarchs. This fact did eventually impress itself upon the consciousness of the stockholders of the Metropolitan Opera House, but when it found lodgment there it created a notion—a natural one, and easily understood—that their predilections, and theirs alone, ought to be humored in the character of the entertainment. I have displayed a disposition to quarrel with the artistic attitude of the directors, but I would not be an honest chronicler of the operatic occurrences of the last twenty-five years if I did not do so. The facts in the case were flagrant, the situation anomalous. The stockholders created an art spirit which was big with promise while rich in fulfilment, and then killed it because its manifestation bored them. An institution which seemed about to become permanent and a fit and adequate national expression in an admired form of art, was set afloat again upon the sea of impermanency and speculation. About the middle of the fourth German season the directors formally resolved to continue the German representations. Not long afterward it developed that the receipts for the season would be considerably less than had been counted on, and immediately a clamor arose against the management. The champions of Italian opera joyfully proclaimed that the knell of German opera had rung, and attributed the falling off in popular support to the predominance of Wagner's operas and dramas in the repertory. The disaffection threatened mischief to the enterprise and had to be met; the directors met it by formally asking for an expression of opinion from the stockholders as to the future conduct of the institution. On January 21, 1888, they sent out a circular letter to the stockholders, in which they submitted two propositions, on which they asked for a vote. One was "To go on with German opera with an assessment of $3,200 a box"; the other, "To give no opera the next season, with an assessment of $1,000 a box, and to resume, if possible, the following season." The letter, which was signed by James A. Roosevelt, president, stated that the giving of Italian opera was not suggested because the directors "were convinced that to do so in a satisfactory manner will require a much larger assessment upon the stockholders than to give German opera." It was also set forth that the directors had estimated that the opera could be maintained for the assessment ($2,500 on each box), provided the receipts from the public amounted to $3,000 a performance. The subscription was 50 per cent. larger than the previous year (about $80,000, against $52,000), and larger receipts had been expected than in 1886-87, when the average was about $3,300. Instead, the receipts had fallen off and indicated an average of only $2,500. Rentals, however, had increased $14,000.
The answer of the stockholders was a vote of over four to one in favor of continuing German opera under the first proposition of the circular letter. Then, while the Italinissimi were still proclaiming that the Metropolitan opera had been killed by Wagnerism, there came the announcement of two weeks of consecutive representations of the three dramas of "The Ring of the Nibelung" (all but the prologue), which were in the repertory of the company. The two weeks, and a third in which "Götterdämmerung" was performed three times, brought more money into the exchequer of the opera than any preceding five weeks of the season. The average of $2,500 apprehended by the directors was raised to over $3,177.
During the next season the average receipts were practically the same, nor was there anything to change the situation from a financial point of view. The stockholders had voted themselves into a mood of temporary quiescence, and the opera pursued its serious course unhampered by more than the ordinary fault-finding on the part of the representations of careless amusement seekers in the public press, and the grumbling in the boxes because the musical director and stage manager persisted in darkening the audience room in order to heighten the effect of the stage pictures.
The aristocratic prejudice against gloom extended to the operas which contained dark scenes, and when Mr. Stanton once exercised his authority as director and had the stage lights going at almost full tilt in the dungeon scene of "Fidelio," the effect of Florestan's exclamation, "Gott! welch' Dunkel hier!" upon an audience fully three-fourths of which was composed of Germans or descendants of Germans the ludicrous effect may be imagined. Many stories were current among the artists of the blithe indifference of the occupants of the boxes to artistic proprieties when they interfered with the display of gowns and jewels. One of them was that the chairman of the amusement committee of the directors had requested that the last act of "Die Meistersinger" be sung first, as it was "the only act of the opera that had music in it," and the boxholders did not want to wait till the end. The conduct of the occupants of the boxes now grew to be so intolerable that there were frequent demonstrations of disapproval and rebuke from the listeners who sat in the parquet and balconies. The matter became a subject for newspaper discussion; in fact, it had been such a subject ever since the loud laugh of a woman at the climacteric moment of "Fidelio" had caused Fräulein Brandt to break down in tears in the opening measures of the frenetically joyous duet, "O namenlose Freude!" In the course of this extraordinary discussion one of the directors boldly asserted the right of the stockholders in the boxes to disturb the enjoyment of listeners in the stalls. Not only did he repeal the old rule of "noblesse oblige," but he also intimated that the payment of $3,000 acquitted the box owner and his guests of one of the simplest and most obvious obligations imposed by good breeding. At length the directors were forced to rebuke their own behavior. On the night of January 21, 1891, the following notice was found hung against the wall in each of the boxes:
January 15, 1891. Many complaints having been made to the directors of the Opera House of the annoyance produced by the talking in the boxes during the performances, the board requests that it be discontinued. By Order of the Board of Directors.
This was the first sop to Cerberus after the directors had concluded a contract with Mr. Abbey, leasing the house to him a second time and substituting opera in Italian and French for opera in German. The public had begun to speak its mind, not only by making a mighty demonstration in honor of Mr. Seidl and the singers when a German opera was given, but in remaining away when the weak-kneed novelties were given; in requesting by petition a performance of "Fidelio" on a Saturday afternoon for which the opera by the royal composer had been set down, and in crowding the house and giving an ovation to the singers when their petition was granted. The next sop was to set aside all the works which it had been projected should take the place of the later dramas of Wagner, which the stockholders (or the majority of them) did not like, and to devote the remainder of the season almost exclusively to Wagner. The operas thus sacrificed were Marschner's "Templer und Jüdin," Massenet's "Esclarmonde," Lalo's "Le Roi d'Ys," Goetz's "Taming of the Shrew," and Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor." Not love of Wagner but fear of financial consequences dictated the step, which was successful in extricating the institution from the slough into which it had fallen. How much the Wagner operas and dramas did to keep the Metropolitan Opera House alive can be shown by the statistics of the last five German seasons, which I compiled at the close of the season of 1890-91, and printed in The Tribune of March 25th of the latter year. Here is the table:
Season Season Season Season Season 1886-1887 1887-1888 1888-1889 1889-1890 1890-1891 Total representations ………. 61 64 68 67 67 Wagnerian representations ………. 31 36 35 37 39 Non-Wagnerian representations ………. 30 28 33 30 28 Total receipts …….. $202,751.00 $185,258.50 $209,581.00 $204,644.70 $198,119.25 Average receipts ……….. 3,323.78 2,894.66 3,141.63 3,054.39 2,957.00 Wagnerian receipts ……… 111,049.50 116,449.75 115,784.50 121,568.70 125,169.25 Non-wagnerian receipts ………. 91,701.50 68,808.75 93,796.50 83,076.00 72,950.00 Wagnerian average ………… 3,582.21 3,234.72 3,308.13 3,285.65 3,209.46 Non-Wagnerian average ………… 3,056.71 2,457.45 2,842.32 2,769.20 2.605.37 Average difference in favor of Wagner … 525.50 777.27 465.81 516.45 604.09
The figures which I have printed showing a loss to the stockholders of the Metropolitan Opera House on opera account year after year during the German period, do not tell the whole story of the financial condition into which the Metropolitan Opera House Company (Limited) had fallen. This condition had much to do with creating a desire on the part of the stockholders for a change of policy. The first German season cost the stockholders only about $42,000 above the amount realized from the box assessment, which was, I believe, $2,000—two-thirds of the sum that has ruled ever since. There were seventy stockholders, and in view of the loss made by Mr. Abbey the year previous this deficit was a trifle scarcely worth considering. The growth in popular interest as indicated by the support of the subscriptions for the season of 1890-91 was promising; but the stockholders themselves were not all prompt in meeting their obligations to their own organization. By 1890 there was an account of unpaid assessments amounting to $46,328. Of this, $21,112 was canceled by the acquisition of two boxes by the company, but the balance sheet at the end of the last German season still showed $25,216 due from stockholders on assessment account. The floating debt at this time amounted to $84,044.48. The prices of admission had been greatly reduced in the German years, and the capacity of the house, represented in money, was not more than fifty per centum of what it is to-day. The demands of singers were growing greater year after year, and were not lessened, as may easily be imagined, by the thrifty complacency of those German managers who granted furloughs to their singers in consideration of a share of their American earnings. Under the circumstances it is not to be wondered at that Mr. Abbey's agreement to give Italian and French opera at his own risk was alluring, especially to those who had never sympathized with the serious tendency of German opera.
The contract of the directors for opera in the season of 1891-92 was made with Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau, who figured in all the announcements as the managers. With them was associated as silent partner Mr. John B. Schoeffel, of Boston, who had shared in all of Mr. Abbey's daring theatrical ventures since 1876, and, consequently, also in the unfortunate season of 1883-84, when Maurice Grau acted as manager at a salary of $15,000. Mr. Abbey's mind was not closed to the lessons of the German seasons. A few days after he had signed the contract he told me that he had had a project in contemplation to bring Materna, Winkelmann, Scaria, and others to America for Wagnerian opera before Mr. Thomas had brought them for concert work; that he looked upon German opera as more advantageous to the manager, not only on account of its smaller costliness, but, also, because it enabled a manager to adjust his singers to a repertory instead of the repertory to the singers. But he had speculated successfully with Patti under the "farewell" device, the managerial virus was again in his veins, and he cherished a foolish belief that, as one of the results of the German régime, he would be able to exact different service from the artists of Italian and French opera than they had been wont to give. On this point he was soon painfully disillusionized. Had it not been for the presence in his company of Mme. Lehmann, M. Lassalle, and the brothers Jean and Édouard de Reszke, whose instincts and training kept them out of the old Italian rut, his performances would never have gotten away from the old hurdy-gurdy list. As it was, when he wanted to give "L'Africaine," in order to present M. Lassalle in one of his most effective rôles, though he had Emma Eames, Marie Van Zandt, Albani, the sisters Giulia and Sophia Ravogli, Pettigiani, and Lillian Nordica in his company (the last hired specially for the purpose), he was obliged to ask Mme. Lehmann to learn the part of Selika. She did so, but the strain, combined with other things, broke down her health, and she was useless to her manager for the second half of the season. She had been engaged as a lure for the German element among the city's opera patrons, and to it also were offered propitiatory sacrifices in the shape of performances in Italian of "Fidelio," "The Flying Dutchman," and "Die Meistersinger" under the direction of Mr. Seidl. After the lesson had been still more thoroughly learned a German contingent was added to the Italian and French, and German opera was added to the list, making it as completely polyglot as it has ever been since. But before then many financial afflictions were in store for the enterprise.
Mr. Abbey began his season December 14, 1891, after having given opera for five weeks in Chicago. In his company, besides the sopranos just named, were Mme. Scalchi and Jane de Vigne, contraltos; Jean de Reszke, Paul Kalisch, M. Montariol, and a younger brother of Giannini, tenors; Martapoura, Magini-Coletti, Lassalle, and Camera, barytones; Édouard de Reszke, Vinche, and Serbolini, basses, and Carbone, buffo. As conductor, Vianesi, known from the season of 1883-84, returned. The subscription season came to a close on March 12th, and presented thirty-nine subscription evening performances, thirteen matinées, three extra evenings, and one extra afternoon—in all, fifty-six representations. The list of operas contained not a single novelty, unless Gluck's "Orfeo," which had been heard in New York in 1866, and Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," which had been performed by two companies in English earlier in the season, were changed into novelties by use of the Italian text. But under such a classification Wagner's comic opera would also have to be set down as a novelty. The list included ten operas not in the repertories of the German companies, which had occupied the opera house between the two administrations of Mr. Abbey. Inasmuch as a new departure was signalized by this season, I present herewith a table of performances in the subscription season, with the extra representations mentioned:
Opera First performance
"Roméo et Juliette" ………………………. December 14"Il Trovatore" …………………………… December 16"Les Huguenots" ………………………….. December 18"Norma" …………………………………. December 19"La Sonnambula" ………………………….. December 21"Rigoletto" ……………………………… December 23"Faust" …………………………………. December 25"Aïda" ………………………………….. December 28"Orfeo" and "Cavalleria Rusticana" …………. December 30"Le Prophéte" ……………………………. January 1"Martha" ………………………………… January 2"Lohengrin" ……………………………… January 4"Mignon" ………………………………… January 8"Otello" ………………………………… January 11"L'Africaine" ……………………………. January 15"Don Giovanni" …………………………… January 18"Dinorah" ……………………………….. January 29"Hamlet" ………………………………… February 10"Lakmé" …………………………………. February 22"I Maestri Cantoni" ………………………. March 2"Carmen" ………………………………… March 4
The first and most obvious lesson of the season, so far as it was an index of popular taste, may be seen by a critical glance at the list of performances. A beginning was made on the old lines. The familiar operas of the Italian list were brought forward with great rapidity, but not one of them drew a paying house. The turning point came with the arrival of M. Lassalle on January 15th. Messrs. Abbey and Grau then recognized that salvation for their undertaking lay in one course only, which was to give operas of large dimensions, and in each case employ the three popular men who had taken the place in the admiration of the public usually monopolized by the prima donna—the brothers de Reszke, and M. Lassalle. How consistently they acted on that conviction is shown by the circumstance that, though seventeen operas had been brought out between December 14th and January 15th, only six were added to them in the remaining two months.
It was not a "star" season in the old sense. The most popular artists were the three men already mentioned, but it required that they should all be enlisted together with Miss Eames and Mme. Scaichi to make the one "sensation" of the season—Gounod's "Faust," which had six regular performances, and two extra. Of the women singers the greatest popularity was won by Miss Eames, whose youthfulness, freshness of voice, and statuesque beauty, compelled general admiration. The smallness of her repertory, however, prevented her from helping the season to the triumphant close which it might have had if the company had been enlisted to carry out the policy adopted when the season was half over. Miss Eames's début was made on the opening night in Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette." In many ways she was fortunate in her introduction to the operatic stage of her people—her people, though she was born in China. She was only twenty-four years old, and there was much to laud in her art, and nothing to condone except its immaturity. Her endowments of voice and person were opulent. She appeared in the opera in which she had effected her entrance on the stage at the Grand Opéra in Paris less than three years before, and for which her gifts and graces admirably fitted her. She appeared, moreover, in the company of Jean de Reszke, who was then, and who remained till his retirement, in all things except mere sensuous charm of voice, the ideal Romeo. She came fresh from her first successes at Covent Garden, which had been made in the spring of the year, and disclosed at once the lovely qualities which, when they became riper, gave promise of the highest order of things in the way of dramatic expression. At the end of the period whose history I am trying to set down she was still one of the bright ornaments of the Metropolitan stage, though she had not realized all the promises which she held out at the close of the first decade of her career.
Curiosity was piqued, and a kindly spirit of patriotism enlisted by the début of Miss Marie Van Zandt on December 21st. She, too, was an American, but she had been before the European public ten years, and had won as much favor as any American artist ever enjoyed in Paris. Mr. Abbey had pointed to her engagement (and that of Mme. Melba, whose star was just rising above the horizon) as a persuasive argument with the directors. Everything about the little lady, not excepting some unfortunate experiences which put an end to her Parisian career, invited to kindliness of utterance touching her début. Those of her hearers who had followed the history of opera in America for a score of years remembered her mother with admiration. Long before the days when every effort to produce opera in the vernacular was heralded as a great patriotic undertaking, Mme. Jenny Van Zandt headed companies which exploited as varied and dignified repertories as those of the German companies at the Metropolitan Opera House, barring the Wagnerian list. Miss Van Zandt, diminutive, but winsome in voice as well as figure, and ingratiating in manner, recalled an old observation about precious things being done up in small parcels. Her coming seemed to betoken the return of the day of small things. She appeared in "La Sonnambula," and it was not until two months had passed that the patrons of the opera were privileged to hear her in "Lakmé," the opera with which her name was chiefly associated in Paris. Meanwhile she appeared in "Martha," "Mignon," "Don Giovanni," and "Dinorah," without rousing the public out of the apathy which it felt toward operas of their character. And when her battle-horse was led into the ring the task of sustaining interest in the season had fallen upon the shoulders of the masculine contingent in the company.
Curious questionings were raised by the production of "Fidelio" and "Die Meistersinger" in Italian. It was generally recognized that Mr. Abbey offered them as sops to Cerberus; but the German element in the population, which they were designed to appease, plainly were lacking in that peculiar bent of mind necessary to understand why Beethoven's opera done in Italian with a cast one-half good was supposed by the management to be worth two-thirds more than the same opera done in a language which it could understand with a cast all good (two of the principals, Mme. Lehmann and Mr. Kalisch, being the same), during the preceding seven years. Was the Italian language sixty-seven per cent. more valuable than the German in an opera conceived in German, written in German, and composed in the German spirit by a German? The public thought not, and "Fidelio" had only two performances. A more kindly view was taken of the Italian "Meistersinger," Which enabled the Germans to give expression to their feelings by making demonstrations over Mr. Seidl. There was much to admire, moreover, in the singing and acting of Jean de Reszke as Walther, and M. Lassalle as Hans Sachs. There was nothing of the conventional operatic marionette in these men. One night while they and Édouard de Reszke were on the stage at the same time I expressed my admiration at the sight of three such fine specimens of physical manhood to Mme. Lehmann, who sat near my elbow in a baignoir.
"Inspiring, isn't it?"
"Yes," was the reply, "and they might be as fine artists as they are men if they would but study."
We all know that their American experience was as little lost on the brothers de Reszke as it was on Mme. Lehmann herself, who stepped into the foremost rank of tragic singers so soon as America offered her the opportunity to shuffle off the obligation of "singing princesses," as she called it.
Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," the hot-blooded little opera which was destined to make so great a commotion in the world (had already begun to make it, indeed), had its first production at the Metropolitan Opera House on December 30th. The opera was no novelty, having already made an exciting career before the Metropolitan opera season opened; but there were two features of the performances calculated to live in the memory of serious observers as characteristic of the change in spirit which had come over the institution since the departure of the German artists: Miss Eames wore a perfectly exquisite accordion-pleated skirt as the distraught Sicilian peasant, and Signor Valero sang the siciliano on the open stage, the overture being stopped and the curtain raised so that he might sing his serenade to Lola with greater effect. He sang behind Lola's house, and winning a call in spite of his stridulous voice and singular phrasing, he stepped out from cover, bowed his acknowledgments, and, returning to his hiding place, serenaded his love over again. After he had come forward a second time Signor Vianesi found his place in the score and resumed the overture.
"Cavalleria Rusticana" precipitated an amusing but extremely lively managerial battle when it reached New York. Those who watched the operatic doings of Europe were aware of the fact that the opera spread like wildfire from town to town immediately after its first success at Rome. Fast as it traveled, however, the intermezzo traveled faster. Seidl had seized upon it in the summer of 1891, and made it a feature of his concerts at Brighton Beach. Then came simultaneous announcements of the production of the opera by Rudolph Aronson and Oscar Hammerstein in the fall. Mr. Aronson wanted to open the season at the Casino with it, and let it introduce a change in the character of the entertainments given at that playhouse. Mr. Hammerstein had also announced the work, but he had no theater at his ready disposal. He thought Aronson was poaching on his preserves, and there began a diverting struggle for priority of performance, from which nobody profited and the opera suffered. Amid threats of crimination Aronson precipitated what he called a dress rehearsal of the work at the Casino in the afternoon of October 1, 1891. Like the king in the parable, he sent out into the highways, and bade all he could find in to the feast. Especially did his servants labor on the Rialto, and the affair had all the appearance of a professional matinée. Nothing was quite in readiness, but Mr. Hammerstein had announced his first performance for the evening of that day, and must be anticipated at all hazards. Yet there were singers and scenes and musicians in the orchestra, and Mr. Gustav Kerker to steer the little operatic ship through the breakers. On the whole, the performance was fair. Laura Bellini was the Santuzza of the occasion, Grace Golden the Lola, Helen von Doenhoff the Lucia, Charles Bassett the Turiddu, and William Pruette the Alfio. Heinrich Conried staged the production. In the evening Oscar Hammerstein pitchforked the opera on to the stage of the Lenox Lyceum—an open concert room, and a poor one at that. There was a canvas proscenium, no scenery to speak of, costumes copied from no particular country and no particular period, and a general effect of improvisation. But the musical forces were superior to Mr. Aronson's, and had there been a better theater the Casino performance would have been greatly surpassed. There was a really fine orchestra under the direction of Mr. Adolph Neuendorff, but it sat out on the floor of the hall, which reverberated like a drum. Mme. Janouschoffsky, an exceedingly capable artist, was the Santuzza, Mrs. Pemberton Hincks the Lola, Mrs. Jennie Bohner the Lucia, Payne Clarke the Turiddu, and Herman Gerold the Alfio. While all this pother was making, "Cavalleria Rusticana" was already three weeks old in Philadelphia, where Mr. Gustav Hinrichs had brought it forward with his American company at the Grand Opera House; Minnie Hauk, with a company of her own, had given it in Chicago the night before the New York struggle, and Emma Juch and her company were rushing forward the preparations for a production in Boston.
"Cavalleria Rusticana" came upon the world like the bursting of a bomb, and its effect was so startling that it bewildered and confounded the radical leaders of musical thought. There were few, indeed, who retained calmness of vision enough to perceive that it was less a change of manner than of subject-matter, which had whirled the world off its critical feet. Outside of Italy there was no means of seeing the work of preparation which had preceded it. The annual output of hundreds of operas made no impression beyond the Alpine barrier, and it was easy to believe that the entire product was formed after the old and humdrum manner. No sooner had "Cavalleria Rusticana" broken down the old confines, however, than it was discovered that a whole brood of young musicians had been brought up on the same blood-heating food, and a dozen composers were ready to use the same formulas. Most of them, indeed, got the virus from the same apothecary who uttered the mortal drug to Mascagni—that is to say, from Amilcare Ponchielli. Had we but listened twenty-five years ago to "La Gioconda" as we are able to listen to "Cavalleria Rusticana," and its swift and multitudinous offspring now, we might have recognized the beginnings of what has been termed "Mascagnitis," not in an essentially new manner of musical composition, but in the appeal to the primitive passion for violence and blood which found expression in the operatic paraphrase of Victor Hugo's story, and the invitation which that passion extended to the modern musician suddenly emancipated from a lot of cumbersome formularies, and endowed with a mass of new harmonic and instrumental pigments with which to produce the startling contrasts and swift contradictions for which the new field of subjects clamors.
Seventeen years ago "Cavalleria Rusticana" had no perspective. Now, though but a small portion of its progeny has been brought to our notice, we, nevertheless, look at it through a vista which looks like a valley of moral and physical death through which there flows a sluggish stream thick with filth, and red with blood. Strangely enough, in spite of the consequences which have followed it, the fierce little drama retains its old potency. It still speaks with a voice which sounds like the voice of truth. Its music still makes the nerves tingle, and carries our feelings unresistingly on its turbulent current. But the stage picture is less sanguinary than it looked in the beginning. It seems to have receded a millennium in time. It has the terrible fierceness of an Attic tragedy, but it also has the decorum which the Attic tragedy never violated. There is no slaughter in the presence of the audience, despite the humbleness of its personages. It does not keep us perpetually in sight of the shambles. It is, indeed, an exposition of chivalry, rustic, but chivalry, nevertheless. It was thus Clytemnestra slew her husband, and Orestes his mother. Note the contrast which the duel between Alfio and Turiddu presents with the double murder to the piquant accompaniment of comedy in "Pagliacci," the opera which followed so hard upon its heels. Since then piquancy has been the cry; the piquant contemplation of adultery, seduction, and murder amid the reek and stench of the Italian barnyard. Think of Cilèa's "Tilda," Giordano's "Mala Vita," Spinelli's "A Basso Porto," and Tasca's "A Santa Lucia!"
The stories chosen for operatic treatment by the champions of verismo are all alike. It is their filth and blood which fructifies the music, which rasps the nerves even as the plays revolt the moral stomach. I repeat: looking back over the time during which this so-called veritism has held its orgy, "Cavalleria Rusticana" seems almost classic. Its music is highly spiced and tastes "hot i' th' mouth," but its eloquence is, after all, in its eager, pulsating, passionate melody—like the music which Verdi wrote more than half a century ago for the last act of "Il Trovatore." If neither Mascagni himself, nor his imitators, have succeeded in equaling it since, it is because they have thought too much of the external devices of abrupt and uncouth change of modes and tonalities, of exotic scales and garish orchestration, and too little of the fundamental element of melody, which once was the be-all and end-all of Italian music. Another fountain of gushing melody must be opened before "Cavalleria Rusticana" finds a successor in all things worthy of the succession. Ingenious artifice, reflection, and technical cleverness will not suffice even with the blood and mud of the Neapolitan slums as a fertilizer.
Messrs. Abbey and Grau had no rival opera organizations to contend with at any time after they opened their doors, so they created a bit of competition themselves. In January they brought Mme. Patti and her operatic concert company into the house for a pair of concerts in which scenes from operas were sung in costume, the famous singer's companions being Mlle. Fabbri, M. Guille (tenor), Signor Novara (bass), and Signor Del Puente. The occasion offered an opportunity to study the impulses which underlie popular patronage. The entertainments being concerts, not operas, the stockholders were not entitled to their boxes under the terms of their contract with Abbey & Grau, and were conspicuous by their absence. Nevertheless, at the second concert, which took place on an afternoon, I estimated the audience at four thousand—nine-tenths women. Mme. Patti also appeared in performances of "Lucia di Lammermoor" and "Il Barbiere" in a supplementary season, one feature of which, on March 31, 1892, was the production of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" in Italian, with M. Lassalle in the titular part, which he sang for the first time in his life. "A marvelous artist indeed is this Frenchman," was my comment in The Tribune, "and if he and the brothers de Reszke are in next year's company, the lovers of the lyric drama as distinguished from the old sing-song opera will look into the future without trepidation." Unhappily there was no "next year's company."
In August, 1892, the Metropolitan Opera House had a visitation of fire, which brought operatic matters to a crisis, caused a postponement of the performance for a season, a reorganization of the corporation which owned the building, and a remodeling of the stage and portions of the interior of the theater. For a considerable space before the building of the Metropolitan the public mind was greatly exercised over the awful loss of life at recent theater fires, especially the destruction of the Ringtheater in Vienna. When Mr. Cady planned the New York house, he set about making it as absolutely fireproof as such a structure can be. It was to be non-combustible from the bottom up. There was not a stud partition in it. The floors were all of iron beams and brick arches, the masonry being exposed in the corridors, passages and vestibules, but for comfort having a covering of wood in the audience room. The roof was of iron and masonry, the outer covering of slate being secured to masonry blocks. The iron roof beams of over one hundred feet span, were mounted on rollers to allow for contraction and expansion. The ceiling of the audience room was of iron. The ornamental work of the proscenium, the tier balustrades, and the frames of the partitions between the boxes were all of metal. The stage was supported by a complex iron system of about four thousand light pieces so adjusted as to be removable in sections when it was desired to open the stage floor. Theater fires almost invariably originate on the stage, and, as an additional safeguard, Mr. Cady contrived an apparatus for flooding the stage in the case of a threatened conflagration. A large skylight was weighted to fall open in case of fire, and a great water tank placed over the rigging loft and connected with a network of pipes with apertures stopped with extremely fusible solder, so that the heat of even a small fire would open the holes and release a drenching shower.
One after another these precautions were rendered inutile. The iron support of the stage troubled the stage mechanics, who wanted something that could be more easily handled, so wooden pieces were substituted for the iron. The location of the tank was such that the water was in danger of freezing in winter, and steam pipes were arranged to keep the water warm. Mr. Abbey did not like the expense of warming the water, and therefore emptied the tank. There was a fireproof curtain, which was cumbrous to handle, and Mr. Abbey's men chained it up. The commodious stage made a superb paint shop in summer, and Mr. Abbey used it for painting scenery for his other theaters. It was being thus used on August 27, 1892, when a workman carelessly threw a lighted match among the "green" scenery. It caught fire, the stage was burned out, and the auditorium sadly disfigured. When, eventually, the building was repaired, the interior of the theater, all that had suffered harm, was thoroughly remodeled, the stockholders' boxes were reduced to a single row, the proscenium was given its present shape, the apron of the stage was removed, and the stage itself was made more practicable in many ways. This did not happen, however, until the question whether or not the opera house should be restored to its original uses had occupied the minds of the stockholders and public for nearly a year. In the middle of the season Messrs. Abbey and Grau, while protesting that they were satisfied with the financial outcome of their venture, announced that they did not intend to give opera the next year. They were shaken in this determination, if they ever seriously harbored it, by the success of "Faust" and one or two other operas, which enlisted what in the next season of opera came to be called the "ideal cast." But there was a division of opinion as to the proper course for the future among the stockholders, especially after Mr. Abbey, late in September, sent word from London that his firm would not undertake opera in the United States without a subvention from the Metropolitan Opera Company. Also that he had already canceled his contracts with singers for the American season of 1892-93. There was some vague talk before this on the part of Mr. Schoeffel of a season of opera in Mexico City, and a longer season than usual in Chicago, the intimation plainly being that grand opera might be emancipated from dependence on the metropolis. One effect of this indecision was to bring forth a discussion of the feasibility of endowed opera in New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and one or two other of the large cities of the country. Another was to call into new life an agitation in favor of the establishment of another German company. The first project died of inanition; the second developed in another year into an actuality, which created more stir than the close of the opera house had done. The Metropolitan Opera Company reached a decision some time in January, 1893. The directors had neglected to insure the building against fire, and provision had to be made for funds to rebuild, as well as to pay off existing liabilities. The opera lovers among the stockholders reorganized the company under the style of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, and purchased the building under foreclosure proceeding for $1,425,000, then raised $1,000,000 by a bond issue, and the summer of 1893 was devoted to a restoration of the theater, an agreement having also been reached for a new lease to Mr. Abbey and his associates.