For the reasons set forth at the close of the last chapter there was no opera at the Metropolitan Opera House in the season of 1892-93, but the fall of the latter year witnessed the beginning of a new period, full of vicissitudes. With many brilliant artistic features, it was still experimental to a large extent on its artistic side, the chief results of its empiricism being the restoration of German opera in the repertory on an equal footing with Italian and French. It also brought the largest wave of prosperity to the house that it had experienced since its opening, yet ended in the shipwreck of the lessees, and disaster that was more than financial. The lessees were again Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau, with whom the reorganized Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company (Limited) effected an agreement, the essential elements of which remained unchanged for fifteen years; that is, down to the close of the season of 1907-08. The term was five years. The lessees took the house for an annual rental of $52,000, and pledged themselves to give opera four times a week for thirteen weeks in the winter and spring. The lessors paid back to the lessees the $52,000 for their box privileges, and to insure representations which would be satisfactory to them, reserved the right to nominate six of the singers, two of whom were to take part in every performance in the subscription list.
The first season under the new lease was enormously successful, Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau realizing about $150,000, including the visits to other cities, and a supplementary spring season of two weeks. They made great losses on their other enterprises, however, especially on Abbey's Theater (now the Knickerbocker), and the American tours of Mounet-Sully and Mme. Réjane. Like results attended the seasons of 1894-95, and 1895-96, the drag in the latter instance being the Lillian Russell Opera Company, which, together with other ventures, brought the firm into such a financial slough that it made an assignment for the benefit of its creditors, who were forced to take over its business to protect themselves. Chief of these was William Steinway, who had accommodated Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau with loans to the extent of $50,000. Under his guidance as chairman of the committee of reorganization, the stock company, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Limited), was formed, he becoming president, and Henry E. Abbey, John B. Schoeffel, and Maurice Grau managing directors at a salary of $20,000 a year. Ernest Goerlitz, who had been in the employ of the firm for some time, was made secretary and treasurer. He remained in an executive capacity at the Metropolitan until the expiration of the consulship of Conried in 1908. Mr. Steinway got rid of the debts of the company (or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say, changed their character) by issuing certificates of stock and notes to the creditors. In this manner some of the principal artists of the company became financially interested in opera giving.
Before the reorganized company began the next series of performances Mr. Abbey died, and the season was only a fortnight old when Mr. Steinway followed him into the grave. A very puissant personage in the managerial field was Mr. Abbey during a full quarter-century of theatrical life in America. He was a purely speculative manager, who never permitted his own likes or dislikes to influence him in his chosen vocation of purveying amusements, so-called, to the public, though his tastes led him generally into the higher regions, and there is little doubt that an inherent love for music for its own sake made him take to opera. As a young man in his native city of Akron, Ohio, where he was born in 1846, he played cornet in the town band. When he revoked his resolution never to embark in an operatic enterprise again after the disastrous season of 1883-84, I met him in Broadway, and asked him about the artists he intended to bring to the Metropolitan Opera House. He gave me the names of those whom he had in view, and I expressed my regret that one, whom I admired very greatly indeed, was missing. His reply was prompt: "There is no woman in the world I would rather engage, and no woman whose singing gives me greater pleasure; but she doesn't draw. I never made any money with her." It was an illuminative observation. As a youth he was interested with his father in the jewelry business in Akron, and on the death of his father, in 1873, the business became his; but by that time he was already a theatrical manager, though on a small scale. In 1869 he had assumed charge of the Akron theater. In 1876 he associated himself with John B. Schoeffel, and with him gradually acquired theatrical properties in several of the principal cities of the East, and entered upon enterprises of a character which were his undoing in the end. The Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau Company carried through the season of 1896-97 with a profit of about $30,000 in New York, despite the fact that the financial affairs of the country were in a bad way. A four weeks' season in Chicago, however, was ruinous, and Mr. Gran was compelled to fall back on some of the artists of the company and friends to enable him to bring the Chicago season to a close. Jean and Édouard de Reszke and Lassalle were among the subscribers to a guarantee fund of $30,000, which he needed to carry him through. All the guarantors were repaid in full, when, at the end of the season, the affairs of Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Limited) were wound up, and Mr. Schoeffel bought the principal asset, the Tremont Theater, in Boston. Thereupon Mr. Grau and his associates formed a new company, which gave opera under the conditions which seemed to have become traditional until the end of the season of 1902-3. Mr. Grau was compelled by ill health to withdraw from active duty before the end of the last season, and the story of his company's doings falls naturally into another chapter of this history. We must now survey the artistic incidents of the period between the reconstruction of the opera house and the beginning of the new régime. This will be the business of this and the following chapter.
Simply for the sake of convenience in the record, I shall devote the chief statistical attention in the remaining chapters of this history to the subscription seasons, and discuss the supplementary spring seasons only as they offer features of special interest. The seasons, generally a fortnight long, and given after the return of the singers from visits to Boston and Chicago, are distinguished from the subscription seasons very much as the fall seasons in London are from the summer seasons, though there is not the sharp line of demarcation so far as fashion goes, which the adjournment of Parliament makes on the other side of the Atlantic.
The tenth regular season of opera then began at the Metropolitan Opera House on November 27, 1893, and ended on February 24, 1894. Officially the languages of the performances were Italian and French, but the operas given were, for the greater part, French and German, and the representations were dual in language in all cases, except the Italian works. I mention this fact, not because of its singularity, for it is a familiar phenomenon all over the operatic world, except perhaps Italy, but in order to point out hereafter a betterment, which came in with a more serious artistic striving later. The chorus always sang in the "soft bastard Latin," whether the principals sang in Italian or French; and the occasions were not a few when two languages were sung also by the principals—when lovers wooed in French, and received their replies in Italian, thus recalling things over which Addison made merry generations ago. The season was planned to embrace thirty-nine subscription nights and thirteen matinées. To these were added two matinées and sixteen evening representations, two of the latter being for the benefit of popular charities. In all, New York had sixty performances of opera within the period covered by the regular subscription, which was a smaller number than had been shown by any season since that of 1886-87. Eighteen operas were brought forward in full (that is to say, without more than the conventional cuts), and parts of three others. Thus of "La Traviata," though I have included it in the list to be presented soon, only the first and fourth acts were performed. There was not a single opera in the repertory which had not been heard in New York before, though several were new to the house. The nearest approach to a novelty was Mascagni's "L'Amico Fritz," which disappeared from the list after two representations, and had been heard at an improvised performance, which scarcely deserves to be considered in a record of this character. In the supplemental season, however, a novelty of real pith and moment was brought forward in the shape of Massenet's "Werther," which had been promised to the regular subscribers, and which, while it made no profound impression, was accepted as an earnest of the excellent and honorable intentions of the managers, and a proof of the difficulties which hampered them at times.
The principal members of the company were Mesdames Melba, Calvé, Eames, Nordica, Arnoldson, Scalchi, and Mantelli, and Messrs. Jean and Édouard de Reszke, de Lucia, Vignas, Ancona, Plançon, Castelmary, and Martapoura. The subscription for the season amounted to $82,000, which was $10,000 more than the largest subscription in the German period. A great ado was made over this fact by the managers and their friends. Not unnaturally the lovers of German opera took up the cudgels against the Italianissimi, and pointed out the indubitable fact that owing to the difference in prices of admission and seats the subscription, instead of showing a large advance in popular interest, indicated a falling off to the extent of an attendance of six thousand in the season. Not money, but attendance, they argued, was the real standard of popularity. The managers also very unwisely, as it proved (since two years later they found themselves obliged to include German performances in their scheme), put forward a public boast that the receipts for the last month of the opera "nearly equaled the average gross receipts for the entire term of any German opera ever given in New York." Of course, the reference went only to the German seasons at the Metropolitan Opera House, for there was no record that could be consulted touching the many sporadic German enterprises of the earlier periods at the Academy of Music and other theaters. It was not at all unkind, but simply in the interest of historical verity that in The Tribune I called attention to the fact that it was scarcely ingenuous in Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau to choose the last month in the season for the comparison, for in that month there were twenty-two representations, including two for popular charities (at one of which, managed by the opera house directors, the public contributed $22,000), and six representations of "Carmen," which, with Mme. Calvé in the principal character, was enjoying the most sensational triumph ever achieved by any opera or singer. Moreover, most of 'these performances were outside the subscription, and the prices, as I have repeatedly said, were nearly double those which prevailed during the German régime. Besides, it was an easy task to prove from the figures which I had printed from year to year in my "Review of the New York Musical Season," that, in order to surpass the German record with their last month, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau would have had to show average nightly receipts of over $9,000, whereas only once had they, in a spirit of boastfulness, claimed that as much as $11,000 had been taken at a single performance, and that at a phenomenal "Carmen" matinée. Without Calvé and "Carmen" the bankruptcy which came two years later might have been precipitated in this season. Thanks to Bizet's opera, and its heroine, and the popularity of Mme. Eames and the brothers de Reszke in "Faust," the season was prodigiously successful, the receipts from all sources (including the Sunday night concerts and opera in Philadelphia and Brooklyn) being in the neighborhood of $550,000, and the profits, as I have already said, $150,000. The twelve performances of "Carmen," I make no doubt, brought at least $100,000 into the exchequer of the managers in the subscription season, and in the supplemental post-Lenten season of a fortnight there were three performances more. The success of the opera remained without a parallel in the history of opera in New York till the coming of Wagner's "Parsifal."
Mme. Melba effected her entrance on the operatic stage in America on December 4, 1893, in Donizetti's "Lucia." Five years before she had made her London début in the same opera, and between that time and her coming to New York she had won fragrant laurels in Paris in company with the brothers de Reszke and M. Lassalle in "Roméo et Juliette" and "Faust," both of which operas she had prepared with the composer. Her repertory was small when she came, but in it she was unique, both for the quality of her voice and the quality of her art. She did not make all of her operas effective in her first season, partly because a large portion of the public had been weaned away from the purely lyric style of composition and song, in which she excelled, partly because the dramatic methods and fascinating personality of Mme. Calvé had created a fad which soon grew to proportions that scouted at reason; partly because Miss (not Mme.) Eames had become a great popular favorite, and the people of society, who doted on her, on Jean de Reszke, his brother Édouard, and on Lassalle, found all the artistic bliss of which they were capable in listening to their combined voices in "Faust." So popular had Gounod's opera become at this time with the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House, that my witty colleague, Mr. W. J. Henderson, sarcastically dubbed it "das Faustspielhaus," in parody of the popular title of the theater on the hill in the Wagnerian Mecca.
When Mme. Melba came she was the finest exemplar of finished vocalization that had been heard at the opera house since its opening, with the single exception of Mme. Sembrich. Though she had been singing in opera only five years, she had reached the zenith of her powers. Her voice was charmingly fresh, and exquisitely beautiful. Her tone-production was more natural, and quite as apparently spontaneous, as that of the wonderful woman who so long upheld the standard of bel canto throughout the world. In the case of Mme. Patti, art had already begun to be largely artifice, a circumstance that needed to cause no wonder inasmuch as her career on the operatic Stage already compassed a full generation; but Mme. Melba neither needed to seek for means nor guard against possible mishap. All that she needed—more than that: all that she wanted to humor her amiable disposition to be prodigal in utterance—lay in her voice ready at hand. Its range was commensurate with all that could be asked of it, and she moved with greatest ease in the regions which most of her rivals carefully avoided. To throw out those scintillant bubbles of sound which used to be looked upon as the highest achievement in singing seemed to be an entirely natural mode of expression with her. With the reasonableness of such a mode of expression I am not concerned now; it is enough that Mme. Melba came nearer to providing it with justification than any one of her contemporaries of that day, except Mme. Sembrich, or any of her contemporaries of to-day. Added to these gifts and graces, she disclosed most admirable musical instincts, a quality which the people had been taught to admire more than ever while they were learning how to give reverence due to the dramatic elements in the modern lyric drama.
I have already intimated that Mme. Melba's operas found little favor with the public compared with "Carmen" and "Faust," and, perhaps, there was in this more than a mere indication of the educational influence left by the German period. I should have no hesitation whatever in saying so had not the "Carmen" craze reached proportions which precluded the thought that artistic predilections or convictions had anything to do with it. So much of a mere fad did Mme. Calvé in "Carmen" become that the public remained all but insensible to the merits of her immeasurably finer impersonation of Santuzza in "Cavalleria Rusticana." It was in Mascagni's opera that she effected her début on November 29, 1893, in company with Señor Vignas, a Spanish tenor, squat and ungraceful of figure, homely of features, restricted in intelligence, and strident of voice. New York knew very little of Mme. Calvé when she came, though she had already been twice as long on the stage as Mme. Melba, and even after her first appearance Mr. Abbey met my congratulations on her achievement with a dubious shake of the head, and the remark that, while he hoped my predictions touching her popularity would be fulfilled, he placed a much lower estimation on her powers than I. Not he, but Mr. Grau, was responsible for her engagement, and his hopes were all centered on Mme. Melba. Like most of our singers at the time, Calvé came to New York by way of London. The rôle of Santuzza, which she had created in Paris in January, 1892, and in London in the following May, had been hailed with gladness in both cities, but her Carmen was as inadequately appreciated in Paris as it was overestimated in New York and London, especially in later years, when the capriciousness which led her originally to break away from some of the traditions of the rôle created by Galli-Marié. and thus cost her the understanding of the Parisians, had become a fixed habit, which she pursued regardless of decent moderation, sound principles, and good taste.
The Parisians attested their artistic Bourbonism not only in declining to recognize the excellence of the good features of Calvé's Carmen, but, also, in failing to appreciate her touchingly beautiful Ophelia, to the great grief of Ambroise Thomas, who went to Italy to see her in the part, and believed that had she but been given the proper support in Paris "Hamlet" would have ranked with "Faust" in popularity. Of course, this was a fond composer's too good opinion of his opera, but the trait of the Paris public which is unwilling to find merit in any change from a performance which first won their admiration has frequently stood in the way of first-class talent. To illustrate this I can relate an anecdote which was repeated to me at an artistic dinner table in the French capital in 1886. It is not for me to vouch for the truth of the story, but give it as it was told to me in explanation of some amused comments which I had made on the stiff conventionality of a performance of "L'Africaine" which I had witnessed at the Grand Opéra. Faure, the original of Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, had been succeeded in the rôle by Lassalle, whose fine art in newer works had met with full recognition from press and public. To Lassalle's great surprise, his Hamlet, a remarkably fine performance within the limit set by the pitiable operatic travesty of Shakespeare's play, was received coldly, and there was wide comment on the circumstance that he had ignored traditions of performance, especially in the scene between the Prince and his mother. In considerable distress he went to Faure, who had set the fashion:
"What pose, gesture, effect of yours is it that I have failed to copy?" he asked of his confrère.
And Faure explained:
At the first performance when he reached the scene in question, he had found his throat suddenly clogged. Only by an act neither pleasant to observe nor polite to describe, could he remove the obstruction, and at a supreme moment he had improvised a movement which carried his face out of sight of the audience, so that he might free his throat unnoticed. Knowing nothing of the cause, the public applauded the effect, and the singular nuance became a part of the "business" of the piece.
When Mme. Calvé flashed upon New York in "Cavalleria Rusticana," her impersonation startled me into the declaration that no finer lyrico-dramatic performance had been witnessed in America within a generation. Unhesitatingly I placed it by the side of Materna's Brünnhilde, Brandt's Fidès, Niemann's Tristan and Siegmund, and Fischer's Hans Sachs, without, of course, presuming to compare the relative value of the dramatists' conceits. Even now I cannot recall anything finer in the region of combined action and song. She held her listeners so completely captive and swayed them so powerfully that she compelled even the foolishly and affectedly frantic claquers, who had seats near the stage, to hold their peace. They could only make their boisterous clamor in response to the old-fashioned appeal made by a high tone screeched by the stridulous tenor. There was as little conventionality in her singing as in her acting, though she had not yet adopted that indifference to rhythm which has marked her singing in more recent years. She saturated the music with emotion. Much of it she seemed to sing to herself, declaiming it like dramatic speech whose emotional contents had been raised to a higher power by the melody. In moments of extreme excitement one scarcely realized that she was singing at all. Carried along by the torrent of her feelings, her listeners accepted her song as the only proper and efficient expression for her emotional state. The two expressions, song and action, were one; they were mutually complemental. It was not nature subordinated to art, but art vitalized by nature. It is not possible for me to compare her Carmen with Galli-Marié's, which stood in the way of her appreciation in the part in Paris. I have heard that that was so frank in one of its expressions that it invited the interference of the Prefect of the Seine. To me, at least, in Mme. Calvé's impersonation, it seemed that I was enjoying my first revelation of some of the elements of the character of the gypsy as it had existed in the imagination of Prosper Mérimée when he wrote his novel. To me she presented a woman thoroughly wanton and diabolically equipped with the wicked witcheries which explained, if they did not palliate, the conduct of Don José. Here we had a woman without conscience, but also without the capacity for even a wicked affection; a woman who might have been the thief whom the novelist describes, who surely carried a dagger in her corsage, and who in some respects left absolutely nothing to the imagination, to which even a drama like "Carmen" makes appeal. She came upon the stage as Mérimée's heroine stepped into his pages: "poising herself on her hips, like a filly from the Cordovan stud," and with a fine simulation of unconsciousness, she seemed every moment about to break into one of those dances which the satirist castigated in the days of the Roman Empire:
Nec de Gadibus improbis puellaeVibrabunt sine fine prurientesLascivos docili tremore lumbos.
Alas! Mme. Calvé's admiration for herself was stronger than her devotion to an artistic ideal, and it was not long before her Carmen became completely merged in her own capricious personality.
Massenet's "Werther" (performed in Chicago, March 29) had its first New York performance at the Metropolitan, April 19, 1894, with Mme. Eames, Sigrid Arnoldson, Jean de Reszke, M. Martapoura, and Signor Carbone. Signor Mancinelli conducted. The opera had one performance, and was repeated once in the season of 1896-97. Then it disappeared from the repertory of the Metropolitan, and has since then not been thought of, apparently, although strenuous efforts have been made ever and anon to give interest to the French list. I record the fact as one to be deplored. "Werther" is a beautiful opera; as instinct with throbbing life in every one of its scenes as the more widely admired "Manon" is in its best scene. It has its weak spots as have all of Massenet's operas, despite his mastery of technique, but its music will always appeal to refined artistic sensibilities for its lyric charm, its delicate workmanship, its splendid dramatic climax in the duo between Werther and Charlotte, beginning: "Ah! pourvu que de voie ces yeux toujours ouverts," and its fine scoring. It smacks more of the atmosphere of the Parisian salon than of the sweet breezes with which Goethe filled the story, but no Frenchman has yet been able to talk aught but polite French in music for the stage, Berlioz excepted, and the music of "Werther" is of finer texture than that of most of the operas produced by Massenet since.
The season of 1894-95, consisting again of thirteen weeks, began on November 19th, and closed on February 16th. It was marked by a number of incidents, some of which made a permanent impression on the policy of the Metropolitan Opera House. Chief of these was a remarkable eruption of sentiment in favor of German opera—so vigorous an eruption, indeed, that it led to the incorporation of German performances in the Metropolitan repertory ever after, though the change involved a much greater augmentation of the forces of the establishment than the consorting of French with Italian had involved. To this I shall give the attention which it deserves presently. Other features were the introduction of Saturday night performances of opera at reduced prices (a feature which became permanent), the appearance of several new singers, and the production of two novelties, one of them Verdi's "Falstaff," of first-class importance.
In their prospectus the managers promised a reformation of the chorus, and announced the re-engagement of "nearly all the great favorites of last year." The improvement of the chorus was not particularly noticeable except in appearance; a number of young and comely American women were enlisted, but their best service was to stand in front of the old stagers who knew the operas, and could sing but who seemed to have come down through the ages from the early days of the old Academy. The phrase "nearly all" was an ominous one, for it betokened the absence from the company of Mme. Calvé. The newcomers were Lucille Hill, Sybil Sanderson, Zélie de Lussan, Mira Heller, and Libia Drog, sopranos; G. Russitano and Francesco Tamagno, tenors, and Victor Maurel, who had been a popular favorite twenty years before at the Academy of Music. Luigi Mancinelli and E. Bevignani were the conductors, and Mr. Seidl was engaged to give éclat to the Sunday evening concerts. Mme. Melba's chief financial value to the management in the preceding season had been found to lie in these concerts, which this year were begun earlier than usual, and made a part of Melba's concert tour. The first opera was "Roméo et Juliette," with the cast beloved of society, and on the second night the introduction of the newcomers began. But woefully. The opera was "William Tell," and Signorina Drog sang the part of the heroine in place of Miss Hill, indisposed. Mathilde (or Matilda—the opera was sung in Italian), does not appear in the opera until the second act, and then she has the most familiar air in the opera to sing—"Selva opaca," an air which then belonged to the concert-room repertory of most florid sopranos. When Signorina Drog came upon the stage, it is safe to say that no one regretted her substitution for the English singer except herself. She was an exceedingly handsome person, who moved about with attractive freedom and grace, and disclosed a voice of good quality, especially in the upper register. She began her aria most tastefully, but scarcely had she begun when her memory played her false. For a few dreadful seconds she tried to pick up the thread of the melody but in vain. Then came the inevitable breakdown. She quit trying, and appealed pitifully to Signor Mancinelli for help. He seemed to have lost his head as completely as the lady had her memory. So had the prompter, who pulled his noddle into his shell like a snail and remained as mute. Signor Tamagno entered in character, and indulged in dumbshow to a few detached phrases from the orchestra. Then the awfulness of the situation overwhelmed him, and he fairly ran off the stage, leaving Matilda alone. That lady made a final appeal to the conductor, switched her dress nervously with her riding whip, went to the wings, got a glass of water, and then disappeared. The audience, which had good-humoredly applauded till now, began to laugh, and the demoralization was complete. It would have been a relief had the curtain fallen, but as this did not happen Signor Tamagno, Signor Ancona, and Édouard de Reszke came upon the stage and began the famous trio, in which Signor Tamagno sang with tremendous intensity and power. It was a remarkable performance of a sensational piece, and had it not been preceded by so frightful a catastrophe, and interrupted by Tamagno himself to bow his acknowledgments, pick up a bunch of violets thrown from a box, and repeat his first melody, its effect would have been dramatically electrifying. There was a long wait after the act to enable Signor Mancinelli to arrange the necessary cuts, and after the stage manager had made an apology on behalf of Signorina Drog, and explained that she had been seized with vertigo, but would finish the opera in an abbreviated form, the representation was resumed. It is due to the lady to add that she had never before attempted to sing the part, and that on the third evening she materially redeemed herself in "Aïda." Miss de Lussan, a native of New York, who had begun her operatic career a few years before in the Boston Ideal Opera Company, and had won a commendable degree of favor at Covent Garden as Carmen, had been engaged in the hope of continuing the prosperous career of Bizet's opera, but the hope proved abortive. It was the singer, not the song, which had bewitched the people of New York—Calvé, not Bizet. "Carmen" was excellently given, the charm of Melba's voice being called on for the music of Micaela's part; but the sensation had departed, and was waiting to be revived with the return of Calvé in the succeeding season.
The first novelty in this season was "Elaine," an opera in four acts, words by Paul Ferrier, music by Herman Bemberg, brought forward on December 17, 1894. "Elaine" was produced because Mme. Melba and the brothers de Reszke wanted to appear in it out of friendship for the composer, who had dedicated the score to them, and come to New York to witness the production, as he had gone to London when it was given in Covent Garden. In America Bemberg was a small celebrity of the salon and concert room. His parents were citizens of the Argentine Republic, but he was born in Paris, in 1861. His father being a man of wealth, he had ample opportunity to cultivate his talents, and his first teachers in composition were Bizet and Henri Maréchal. Later he continued his studies at the Conservatoire, under Dubois and Massenet. In 1885 he carried off the Rossini prize, and in 1889 brought out a one-act opera at the Opéra Comique, "Le Baiser de Suzon," for which Pierre Barbier wrote the words. "Elaine" had its first performance at Convent Garden in July, 1892, with Mme. Melba, Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and M. Plançon in the cast. It was then withdrawn for revision, and restored to the stage the next year. If there is anything creditable in such a thing it may be said, to Mr. Bemberg's credit, that, so far as I know, he was the first musician who wrote music for Oscar Wilde's "Salome." The public, especially the people of the boxes, lent a gracious ear to the new opera, partly, no doubt, because of its subject, but more largely because of Mme. Melba, Mme. Mantelli, the brothers de Reszke, Plançon, and M. Castelmary, who were concerned in its production. All of Mr. Bemberg's music that had previously been heard in New York was of the lyrical order, and it seemed but natural that he was less successful in the developing of a dramatic situation than in hymning the emotions of one when he found it at hand. A ballad in the first act ("L'amour est pur comme la fiamme"), the scene at the close ("L'air est léger"), a prayer in the third act ("Dieu de pitié"), and the duets which followed them are all cases in point. They mark the high tide of M. Bemberg's graceful melodic fancy, and exemplify his good taste and genuineness of feeling. It is not great music, but it is sincere to the extent of its depth. For the note of chivalry which ought to sound all through an Arthurian opera M. Bemberg has chosen no less a model than "Lohengrin"; but his trumpets are feebler echoes of the original voice than his harmonies on several occasions, as, for instance, the entrance of Lancelot into the castle of Astolat. In general his instrumentation is discreet and effective. He has followed his French teachers in the treatment of the dialogue, which aims to be intensified speech. He has also trodden, though at a distance, in the footsteps of Bizet and Massenet in the device of using typical phrases; but so timidly has this been done that it is doubtful if it was discovered by the audience. The resources of the opera house in reproducing the scenes of chivalric life were commensurate with the music of the opera in its attempt to bring its spirit to the mind through the ear. It is more exciting to read of a tournament in Malory than to see a mimic one on the stage. It is true that there were men on horses who rode together three times, that a spear was broken, and that they afterward fought on foot; but they struck their spears together as if they had been singlesticks, instead of receiving each his opponent's weapon on his shield, and when the spear broke it was not all "toshivered." Then, when they had drawn their swords, they did not "lash together like wild boars, thrusting and foining and giving either other many sad strokes, so that it was marvel to see how they might endure," as the gentle Sir Thomas would doubtless have had them do. Still, the opera was enjoyed and applauded, as it deserved to be for the good things that were in it, and the Lily Maid had more lilies and roses and holly showered about her than she could easily pick up and carry away.
Miss Sybil Sanderson, who had gone to Paris from the Pacific Slope some years before, and had achieved considerable of a vogue, particularly in Massenet's operas, made her American début on January 16, 1895, in Massenet's "Manon," in which M. Jean de Reszke sang the part of the Chevalier des Grieux for the first time. The opera had been heard at the Academy of Music, in Italian, nine years before, and this was its first performance in the original French, a language which the fair débutante used with admirable distinctness and charmingly modulated cadences, a fact which contributed much to the pretty triumph which she celebrated after the first act. She did not maintain herself on the plane reached in this act. The second had scarcely begun before it became noticeable that she was wanting in passionate expression as well as in voice, and that her histrionic limitations went hand in hand with her vocal. But she was a radiant vision, and had she been able to bring out the ingratiating character of the music she might have held the sympathies of the audience, obviously predisposed in her favor, in the degree contemplated by the composer. This quality of graciousness is the most notable element in Massenet's music. As much as anything can do so it achieves pardon for the book, which is far less amiable than that of "Traviata," which deals with the same unlovely theme. Another quasi novelty was Saint-Saëns's "Samson et Dalila," which had one performance—and one only—on February 8th to afford Mme. Mantelli an opportunity to exhibit her musical powers, and Signor Tamagno his physical. The music was familiar from performances of the work as an oratorio; as an opera it came as near to making a fiasco as a work containing so much good and sound music could.
The most interesting event in the whole administration of Mr. Abbey and his associates happened on February 4th, when Verdi's "Falstaff" was presented. Signor Mancinelli conducted, and the cast was as follows:
Mistress Ford …………………. Mme. Emma EamesAnne …………………………. Mlle. de LussanMistress Page …………………. Mlle. Jane de VigneDame Quickly ………………….. Mme. ScalchiFenton ……………………….. Sig. RussitanoFord …………………………. Sig. CampanariPistol ……………………….. Sig. NicoliniDr. Caius …………………….. Sig. VanniBardolph ……………………… Sig. RinaldiniSir John Falstaff ……………… M. Victor Maurel(His original creation.)
To construct operas out of Shakespeare's plays has been an ambition of composers for nearly two centuries. Verdi himself yielded to the temptation when he wrote "Macbeth" forty years ago. Probably no one recognized more clearly than he did when he wrote "Falstaff" how the whole system of lyrico-dramatic composition should undergo a transformation before anything like justice could be done to the myriad-minded poet's creations. Who would listen now to Rossini's "Otello"? Yet, in its day, it was immensely popular. A careless day it was—the day of pretty singing, and little else; the day when there was so little concern for the dramatic element in opera that the grewsome dénouement of Rossini's opera is said once to have caused a listener to cry out in astonishment: "Great God! the tenor is murdering the soprano!" Then it might have been possible for a composer, provided he were a Mozart, to find a musical investment for a Shakespearian comedy, but assuredly not for a tragedy. No literary masterpiece was safe from the vandalism of opera writers at that time, however, and Shakespeare simply shared the fate of Goethe and their great fellows. With the dawn of the new era there came greater possibilities, and now it may be said we have a few Shakespearian operas that will endure for several decades at least: let us say Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor," Gounod's "Romeo and Juliet," Verdi's "Othello" and "Falstaff." Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet" and Saint-Saëns's "Henry VIII" seem already to have outlived their brief day, at least in all countries save France, where the personal equation in favor of a native composer seems strong enough to keep second-class composers afloat while it permits genius to perish. As for Goetz's "Taming of the Shrew," it was too much like good Rhine wine, and too little like champagne to pass as a comic opera. When Verdi's last opera appeared the only Falstaff who had vitality was the fat knight of Nicolai's work. Yet he had had many predecessors. Balfe composed a "Falstaff" for the King's Theater in London, which was sung with the capacious-voiced Lablache in the titular part, and Grisi, Persiani, and Ivanoff in the cast. That was in 1838. Forty years earlier Salieri had composed an Italian "Falstaff" for Vienna. In 1856 Adolphe Adam produced a French "Falstaff" in Paris, and the antics of the greasy knight amused the Parisians eighty-six years earlier in Papavoine's "Le Vieux Coquet." Nicolai's predecessors in Germany were Peter Ritter, 1794, and Dittersdorf, 1796.
Verdi's return to Shakespearian subjects after reaching the fulness of his powers in his old age, and after he had turned from operas to lyric dramas, is in the highest degree significant of the thoroughness of the revolution accomplished by Wagner. The production of "Otello" and "Falstaff" created as great an excitement in Italy as the first performance of "Parsifal" did in Germany; and it must have seemed like the irony of fate to many that Wagner should have to be filtered through Verdi in order to bear fruit in the original home of the art form. But that is surely the lesson of "Otello," "Falstaff," and the fervid works of Leoncavallo, Mascagni, and Puccini.
Even more strikingly than "Otello" this comic opera of the youthful octogenarian disclosed the importance which Boito had assumed in the development of Verdi. That development is one of the miracles of music. In manner Verdi represents a full century of operatic writing. He began when, in Italy at least, the libretto was a mere stalking horse on which arias might be hung. All that he did besides furnishing vehicles for airs was to provide a motive for the scene painter and the costumer. Later we see the growth of dramatic characterization in his ensembles, and the development of strongly marked and ingeniously differentiated moods in his arias without departure from the old-fashioned forms. In this element lay much of the compelling force of his melodies, even those commonplace ones which were pricked for the barrel organ almost before the palms were cool which first applauded them—like "Di quella pira" and "La donna è mobile." Then set in the period of reflection. The darling of the public began to think more of his art and less of his popularity. Less impetuous, less fecund, perhaps, in melodic invention, he began to study how to wed dramatic situations and music. This led him to enrich his harmonies, and to refine his instrumentation, which in his earlier works is frequently coarse and vulgar in the extreme. At this stage he gave us "La Forza del Destino" and "Aïda." Now the hack writers of opera books would no longer suffice him. He had already shown high appreciation of the virtue which lies in a good book when he chose Ghislanzoni to versify the Egyptian story of "Aïda." But the final step necessary to complete his wonderfully progressive march was taken when he associated himself with Boito. Here was a man who united in himself in a creditable degree the qualifications which Wagner demanded for his "Artist of the Future"; he was poet, dramatist, and musician. No one who has studied "Otello" can fail to see that Verdi owes much in it to the composer of "Mefistofele"; but the indebtedness is even greater in "Falstaff," where the last vestige of the old subserviency of the text to the music has disappeared. From the first to the last the play is now the dominant factor. There are no "numbers" in "Falstaff"; there can be no repetition of a portion of the music without interruption and dislocation of the action. One might as well ask Hamlet to repeat his soliloquy on suicide as to ask one of the characters in "Falstaff" to sing again a single measure once sung. The play moves almost with the rapidity of the spoken comedy. Only once or twice does one feel that there is an unnecessary eddy in the current.
And how has this play been set to music? It has been plunged into a perfect sea of melodic champagne. All the dialogue, crisp and sparkling, full of humor in itself, is made crisper, more sparkling, more amusing by the music on which, and in which, it floats, we are almost tempted to say more buoyantly than comedy dialogue has floated since Mozart wrote "Le Nozze di Figaro." The orchestra is bearer of everything, just as completely as it is in the latter-day dramas of Richard Wagner; it supplies phrases for the singers, supports their voices, comments on their utterances, and gives dramatic color to even the most fleeting idea. It is a marvelous delineator of things external as well as internal. It swells the bulk of the fat knight until he sounds as if he weighed a ton, and gives such piquancy to the spirits of the merry women (Mrs. Quickly monopolizing the importance due to Mrs. Page), that one cannot see them come on the stage without a throb of delight. In spite of the tremendous strides which the art of instrumentation has made since Berlioz mixed the modern orchestral colors, Verdi has in "Falstaff" added to the variegated palette. Yet all is done so discreetly, with such utter lack of effect-seeking, that it seems as if the art had always been known. The flood upon which the vocal melody floats is not like that of Wagner; it is not a development of fixed phrases, though Verdi, too, knows the use of leading motives in a sense, but a current which is ever receiving new waters. The declamation is managed with extraordinary skill, and though it frequently grows out of the instrumental part, it has yet independent melodic value as the vocal parts of Wagner's "Die Meistersinger" have. Through this Verdi has acquired a comic potentiality for his voice parts which goes hand in hand with that of his instrumental parts.
But Verdi is not only dramatically true and melodious in his vocal parts, he is even, when occasion offers, most simple and ingenuous. There is an amazing amount of the Mozartian spirit in "Falstaff," and once we seem even to recognize the simple graciousness of pre-Gluckian days. Thus the dainty fancy and idyllic feeling which opens the scene in Windsor Forest, with its suggestion of fays and fairies and moonlight (a scene, by the way, for which Verdi has found entrancing tones, yet without reaching the lovely grace of Nicolai), owes much of its beauty to a minuet measure quite in the manner of the olden time, but which is, after all, only an accompaniment to the declamation which it sweetens. The finales of "Falstaff" have been built up with all of Verdi's oldtime skill, and sometimes sound like Mozart rubbed through the Wagnerian sieve. Finally, to cap the climax, he writes a fugue. A fugue to wind up a comic opera! A fugue—the highest exemplification of oldtime artificiality in music! A difficult fugue to sing, yet it runs out as smoothly as the conventional tag of Shakespeare's own day, whose place, indeed, it takes. It is a tag suggested by "All the world's a stage," and though it is a fugue, it bubbles over with humor.
In marshaling, in the preceding chapter, the chief incidents of the period with which I am now concerned I set down the restoration of German performances at the Metropolitan Opera House as the most significant. There was a strong influence within the company working to that end in the person of M. Jean de Reszke, who, though the organization was not adapted to such a purpose, nevertheless strove energetically to bring about a representation of "Tristan und Isolde" in the supplementary spring season of 1895. Through him "Die Meistersinger" in an Italian garb had been incorporated into the repertory, and he was more than eager not only that it and the popular operas "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" should recover their original estate as German works, but that he might gratify a noble ambition and demonstrate how the tragic style of "Tristan" could be consorted with artistic singing. He achieved that purpose in the season of 1895-96, and set an example that will long be memorable in the annals of the Wagnerian drama in America. But the force which compelled the reform was an external one. It came from the public. To the people, as they spoke through the box office, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau were always readier to give an ear than the stockholders or the self-constituted champions of Italian opera in the public press.
There had been talk of a rival German institution when Mr. Abbey restored the Italian régime in 1891; but it was wisely discouraged by the more astute friends of the German art, who felt that the influence of seven years would bear fruit in time, and who placed the principles of that art above the language in which they were made manifest. The interregnum following the fire had led Mr. Oscar Hammerstein to enter the field as an impresario on a more ambitious scale than ordinary, and on January 24, 1893, he opened a Manhattan Opera House with a representation in English of Moszkowski's "Boabdil." The "season" lasted only two weeks, and the opera house has long since been forgotten. It stood in the same Street as the present Manhattan Opera House, and its site is part of that covered by Macy's gigantic mercantile establishment. Though he had no opposition, Mr. Hammerstein showed little of that pluck and persistence which have distinguished him during the two seasons in which he has conducted a rival establishment to the Metropolitan Opera House. After two weeks, within which he produced "Boabdil," "Fidelio," and some light-waisted spectacular things, he turned his theater over to Koster & Bial, who ran it as a vaudeville house until the end of its short career. There were English performances of the customary loose-jointed kind in the summer at the Grand Opera House, the first series of which, beginning in May, 1893, derived some dignity from the fact that it was under the management of Mr. Stanton, who had conducted the Metropolitan Opera House for the stockholders during the German seasons; and in November the Duff Opera Company anticipated Mr. Abbey's forces by bringing out Gounod's "Philémon et Baucis" in an English version.
These things, however, contained no portents for the future of opera in New York; they were the familiar phenomena which flit by in the metropolis's dead seasons. Pregnant incidents came in the midst of the regular season. It chanced that Mme. Materna, Anton Schott, Emil Fischer, and Conrad Behrens, who had been identified with the earlier German seasons, were in New York in February, 1894, and taking advantage of that fact Mr. Walter Damrosch arranged two performances of "Die Walküre," in the Carnegie Music Hall, for the benefit of local charities. They were slipshod affairs, with makeshift scenery and a stage not at all adapted for theatrical performances; but the public rose at them, as the phrase goes, and Mr. Damrosch felt emboldened to give a representation of "Götterdämmerung," with the same principals at the Metropolitan Opera House, on March 28th. Again there was an extraordinary exhibition of popular interest which the German Press Club turned to good account by improvising a performance of "Tannhäuser" for its annual benefit on April 9. Soon there was a great stir in the German camp, but united action was hindered by the rivalry between Mr. Damrosch and Mr. Seidl. The supplementary season at the Metropolitan ended on April 27th, and under date of April 28th there appeared a circular letter, signed individually by friends of Mr. Seidl, soliciting subscriptions for a season of German opera in 1904-05. The plan contemplated forty performances between November and May, on dates which were not to conflict with the regular performances of Italian and French opera. At the same time announcement was made of the organization of a Wagner Society, whose purpose it was to support a season of Wagner's operas at the Metropolitan Opera House, beginning on November 19, 1894, and continuing for four weeks—twelve evening performances and four matinées, the company to include "the greatest Wagnerian singers from Bayreuth and other German opera houses." Personal friends of the two conductors attempted to unite the rival enterprises, and a conference was held at the office of William Steinway. The attempt failed because Messrs. Seidl and Damrosch could not agree on a division of the artistic labors and credits. Mr. Seidl withdrew from the negotiations. In less than a week Mr. Damrosch announced that he had secured subscriptions for his season amounting to $12,000, and also a guarantee against loss of $10,000 more. On May 10th he sailed for Europe to engage his company. When he returned in the fall he announced a season of twelve evening and four afternoon performances, to be devoted wholly to Wagner's operas and dramas, to begin on February 25, 1895. The prices ranged from $4 for orchestra stalls to $1 for seats in the gallery. In his company were Rosa Sucher, Johanna Gadski, Elsa Kutscherra, Marie Brema, Max Alvary, Nicolaus Rothmühl, Paul Lange, Franz Schwarz, and Rudolph Oberhauser, besides Emil Fischer and Conrad Behrens, who had been identified with the earlier German regime. Adolf Baumann, of the Royal opera at Prague, was engaged as stage manager, but lost his life in the wreck of the North German Lloyd steamship Elbe on the voyage hitherward.
The season began, as advertised, on February 25th and ended on March 23d, the sixteen performances receiving an additional representation to enable Max Alvary to effect his one hundredth performance of Siegfried in the drama of that name in the city where he "created" it, as the French say. There were also an additional performance of "Lohengrin" and three extra performances at reduced prices after the subscription. The whole affair was Mr. Damrosch's own venture, he being at once manager, artistic director, and conductor, but, as I have intimated, he had the backing of an organization called the Wagner Society, which was chiefly composed of women. The season came hard on the heels of the Italian and French season. Mr. Damrosch's leading singers were familiar with Wagner's works, but practically he had to build up his institution from the foundation and to do it within an incredibly short time. With such rapid work we are familiar in America, but in Germany to have suggested such an undertaking as the organization of a company, the preparation of a theater, and the mounting, rehearsing, and performing of seven of the most difficult and cumbersome works in the repertory of the lyric drama within the space of five or six weeks would have been to have invited an inquest de lunatico. I do not wish to be understood as mentioning these things wholly in the way of praise—the results from an artistic point of view disclosed much too often that they were blameworthy—but what credit they reflect upon the tremendous energy, enterprise, and will power of Mr. Damrosch must be given ungrudgingly and enthusiastically. Plainly he was inspired with a strength of conviction quite out of the ordinary line of that spirit of theatrical speculation upon which we have so often depended for the large undertakings in music. It was a belief based on something like religious zeal, and under the circumstances what he did was an even more remarkable feat than that accomplished by his father in 1884. I sometimes thought at the time that he was driven into the enterprise more by impulse than by reason, and the fact that he occasionally had the same sort of a notion is evidenced by a letter which I received from him in response to one of mine to him near the close of the season. "Thanks for your congratulations on the financial success so far," wrote the young manager. "I shall breathe more freely after the next four weeks are over. The responsibility has been a heavy one, and it is curious that no one seemed to share my almost fatalistic belief in Wagner opera. Neither Abbey & Grau, nor Seidl, nor anyone was willing to touch it, and I was finally driven into it myself by an irresistible impulse which, so far, seems to have led me right. I am glad now, for many reasons, that events have so shaped themselves, and I think that the season will be productive of much good for the future. A curious and interesting fact in connection with the performances has been that the public came to hear the operas, and not the singers."
And such a success! Not only far in advance of what the fondest Wagnerites had dared to hope for as a tribute to their master's art, but one which compelled them to rub their eyes in amazement and grope and stare in a search for causes. Twenty-one times in succession was the vast audience room crowded, and when the time was come for striking the balance on the subscription season there was talk, only a little fantastic if at all, of receipts aggregating $150,000, or nearly $9,000 a performance. I should like to keep the thought of this unparalleled financial success separate from that of the artistic results attained. Between the financial and artistic achievements there was a wide disparity; but that fact only sufficed to emphasize the obvious lesson of the season, namely, the vast desire which the people of New York felt again to enjoy Wagner's dramas. Fortunately I can make a record of the capaciousness of that hunger without necessarily lauding its intelligence and discrimination. Great indeed must have been the hunger which could not be perverted by the vast deal of slipshod work in the scenic department of the representations, and the vaster deal of bungling and makeshift in the stage management. Many an affront was given to the taste and intelligence of the audiences, and dreadful was the choral cacophony which filled some of the evenings. Yet the people came; they came, as Mr. Damrosch observed in his letter, to hear the dramas instead of the singers, and though "Lohengrin" had been beautifully performed in the Italian season by artists like Nordica, Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and Maurel in the cast, the public crowded into the German representation as if expecting a special revelation from Fräulein Gadski, a novice, and Herr Rothmühl, a second-rate tenor, Of all the singers only Miss Marie Brema, a newcomer, and the veteran, Emil Fischer, were entirely satisfactory. For the beautiful dramatic art of Frau Sucher and for her loveliness of person and pose there was much hearty admiration, but this could not close the ears of her listeners to the fact that her voice had lost its freshness. The subscription repertory, including the Alvary anniversary, was as follows: "Tristan und Isolde," three times; "Siegfried," four times; "Lohengrin," twice; "Götterdämmerung," twice; "Tannhäuser," twice; "Die Walküre," twice, and "Die Meistersinger," twice. In a letter recently received from Mr. Damrosch he says: "My first spring season of thirteen weeks in New York, Chicago, Boston, and a few Western cities gave a profit of about $53,000, leaving me with a large stock of Vienna-made scenery, costumes, and properties."
Mr. Damrosch had won the first battle of his campaign and taught a lesson of lasting value to his old and experienced rivals. Warned by the success of his experiment and stimulated by a petition signed by about two thousand persons asking that German representations under Mr. Seidl be included in the Metropolitan scheme, Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau made German opera a factor in the next season; but they did so in a half-hearted way, which defeated its purposes and brought punishment instead of reward. Nevertheless, German opera had returned to the Metropolitan to stay, and henceforth will call for attention along with the Italian and French performances in this history. Meanwhile, since I have begun it, let me finish the tale of the impresarioship of Mr. Damrosch.
Flushed with victory, the young manager prepared a five months' campaign for the year 1896, and sought for new worlds to conquer. Philadelphia, in which city he began operations on February 20th, treated him shabbily, but he did fairly well in New York and other cities in the East and West. Unfortunately for him, he made an invasion of the South, which was not ripe for serious opera, either financially or artistically. A performance in one city of that section which cost him over $3,000 brought him exactly $220. The difference between the sums was what Mr. Damrosch paid to learn that knowledge and love of Wagner's operas had not penetrated far into Tennessee.
Experience is always purchased at large cost in the operatic field. Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau refused Mr. Damrosch the use of the Metropolitan Opera House for his second New York season, and he was driven to the old, socially discredited Academy of Music. They did not look with favoring eyes upon an enterprise which had achieved so tremendous a triumph at its very start, and they provided a large percentage of the wormwood which filled the cup which Mr. Damrosch drank in 1896; but they embittered their own goblet by the procedure, and when the time came for laying out the campaign of 1896-97 they were quite as ready as Mr. Damrosch to sign a treaty of peace whose provisions promised to make for the good of both sides instead of the injury of either. The rivals agreed to keep out of each other's way as much as possible and even to help each other by an occasional exchange of singers. By this means it was purposed to widen the repertories of both companies, Mr. Damrosch providing the Metropolitan establishment with a Brünnhilde and an Isolde for Jean de Reszke's Siegmund, Siegfried, and Tristan, and the Metropolitan company lending him in return Melba, Eames, and Calvé, or others, to enable him to perform some of the Italian and French operas which he had included in his list. Mr. Damrosch yielded Chicago to his rivals and took Philadelphia in exchange. It was a wise compromise. Mr. Damrosch lost $40,000 in 1896; he made $14,000 in 1897. The next year, the Metropolitan Opera House being closed during the regular subscription period, as will appear later in this record, Mr. Damrosch entered into partnership with Charles A. Ellis, manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who had undertaken the management also of Mme. Melba's American affairs, and Italian and French operas were added to the German repertory. The regular season showed a good profit, most of which, however, was frittered away in a spring tour made by Melba with a portion of the company. By this time Mr. Damrosch had concluded that he was too good a man and musician to surrender himself to the hateful business of managing a traveling opera company, and he withdrew from the partnership with Ellis, to whom he sold all his theatrical properties, and returned to concert work and composition, though for two weeks in the next season he was conductor of Mr. Ellis's company.
And now to some of the details of the artistic work of these Damroschian enterprises. The year 1896 was signalized by the appearance in America of two singers who rapidly achieved first-class importance. These were Katherina Klafsky and Milka Ternina. Mme. Klafsky was the wife of Herr Lohse, whom Mr. Damrosch also engaged as assistant conductor. She came here under a cloud, so far as the managerial ethics of Germany were concerned. How much respect those ethics were entitled to may be judged from the story. I have already said, in discussing the case of Mme. Lehmann and her violation of contract with the Opera at Berlin, that a speedy result of the success of German opera under Mr. Stanton was a change of attitude on the part of the Intendanten of German theaters toward the New York institution so soon as it was found that a handsome proportion of the American earnings might be diverted into the pockets of those Intendanten or the managers of municipal theaters. When Mr. Damrosch engaged his second company Mme. Klafsky was a member of the Municipal Theater in Hamburg, of which Pollini was director. When the offer of an American engagement came to her she consulted with Herr Pollini, who graciously gave his consent to her acceptance of it on condition that she pay him one-half of her earnings. She refused to agree to do this, and, fearing that Pollini would invoke the aid of the courts to restrain her from coming to New York, she took French leave of Germany more than two months before she was needed here. Her success in America was emphatic, and after she had effected a reconciliation with Pollini she was re-engaged by Mr. Damrosch to alternate with Mme. Lehmann in the season of 1896-97. Within a fortnight of the re-engagement she died in Hamburg from a trephining operation undertaken to relieve her from the results of an injury to her skull, received while in America.
Mme. Klafsky and Mr. Alvary had sung in "Tristan und Isolde," with which Mr. Damrosch began his campaign in Philadelphia on February 20th. Her success was instantaneous, and her tremendous dramatic forcefulness, the natural expression of an exuberant temperament, placed her higher in public favor during the season than Mme. Ternina, whose refined and ingratiating art did not receive full appreciation till later. Other members of the Damrosch troupe of 1896 were Wilhelm Grüning, tenor, and Demeter Popovici, bass, beside Gadski, Fischer, Alvary, and other persons already known, but of smaller importance. The New York season began at the Academy of Music on March 2d and ended on March 28th. The operas were "Fidelio," "Lohengrin," "Siegfried," "Tannhäuser," "Die Meistersinger," "Die Walküre," "Der Freischütz," and (in the original English) Mr. Damrosch's "The Scarlet Letter." This opera had its first performance in New York on March 6. Its libretto was written by George Parsons Lathrop, a son-in-law of Hawthorne, who wrote the romance on which it was based. The cast included Johanna Gadski as Hester Prynne, Barron Berthald as Arthur Dimmesdale, Conrad Behrens as Governor Bellingham, Gerhard Stehmann as the Rev. John Wilson, and William Mertens as Roger Chillingworth. The greater part of the music had been performed at concerts of the Oratorio Society on January 4 and 5, 1895. The book of the opera proved to be undramatic in the extreme, a defect which was emphasized by the execrable pronunciation of nearly all the singers at the performance on the stage at the Academy. In the music Mr. Damrosch essayed the style of Wagner, and did it so well, indeed, as to deserve hearty admiration. He was helped, it is true, by factors frankly and copiously copied from the pages of his great model. The nixies of the Rhine peeped out of the sun-flecked coverts in the forest around Hester Prynne's hut, as if they had become dryads for her sake; ever and anon the sinister Hunding was heard muttering in the ear of Chillingworth, and Hester wore the badge of her shame on the robes of Elsa, washed in innocency. But such things are venial in a first work. In frankly confessing his model (for it cannot be thought for a moment that Mr. Damrosch expected his imitations to be overlooked) he illustrated a rule which applies to all composers at the outset of their careers. The fact must be noted, but it is much more to the purpose that the young composer blended the elements of his composition with a freedom and daring quite astonishing in their exhibition of mastery. There is no sign of doubt or timorousness anywhere in the work, though the moments are not infrequent when the utterance is more fluent than significant. The typical phrases which he chose to symbolize the persons and passions of the play are most of them deficient in plasticity, and nearly all of them lack that expressiveness which Wagner knew so well how to impress upon his melodic elements; the greater, therefore, was the surprise that Mr. Damrosch was able to weave them together in a fabric which moved steadily forward for more than an hour, and reflected more or less truthfully and vividly the feeling of the dramatic situations. Unfortunately there is little variety in this feeling, so that in spite of Mr. Damrosch's effort, or, perhaps, because of it, there is a deal of monotony in the music of the first act. There is a fine ingenuity of orchestration throughout, however, and an amount of daring in harmonization which sometimes oversteps the limits of discretion. In an agonizing scene between Chillingworth and Hester at the close of the first act the orchestra and the two chief personages are wholly engrossed with an exposition of the dramatic feeling of the moment, while the chorus (supposed to be worshiping in the neighboring meeting-house) sing the "Old Hundredth" in unison and without instrumental support. It is an admirable historical touch, and the device is the approved one of using a psalm tune as a cantus firmus to the remainder of the music; but Mr. Damrosch's harmonization of the ensemble is such that we seem to hear two distinct and unsympathetic keys. There was, after the second act, a scene upon the stage in honor of Mr. Damrosch, in which, after several large wreaths had been bestowed upon him, a representative of the Wagner Society came forward, and on behalf of that body presented him with a handsome copy of Hawthorne's story and the incorrect statement that the honor was paid to him as the first American who had composed a grand opera on an American theme which had been publicly produced. In this there were as many errors of statement as in the famous French Academician's description of a lobster. George F. Bristow's "Rip Van Winkle" was composed by a native American and was brought out at Niblo's Garden long before Mr. Damrosch was born in Breslau; while Signor Arditi, who hailed from Europe, like Mr. Damrosch, brought out under his own direction and with considerable success an opera entitled "La Spia," based on Cooper's novel. This merely in the interest of the verities of history.
The German season of 1907, a part of whose story I have already told, began at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 8th and lasted four weeks. It added no novelty to the local list, but had some interesting features, among them a serial performance of the dramas of Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung," the first appearance of Mme. Nordica in the Brünnhilde of "Siegfried" on March 24th, and the joint appearance of Mmes. Lehmann and Nordica in "Lohengrin," the German singer, true to her dramatic instincts, choosing the part of Ortrud. On April 1st Xavier Scharwenka, who had taken a residence with his brother Philip in New York, borrowed the company from Mr. Damrosch and on his own responsibility gave a performance of his opera, entitled "Mataswintha." The opera was produced under difficulties. It had withstood its baptism of fire in Weimar seven months before, and Mr. Scharwenka had performed portions of it at a concert for the purpose of introducing himself to the people of New York. But the singers had to learn their parts from the beginning, there was a great deal of pageantry which had to be supplied from the stock furniture of the Metropolitan stage, the tenor Ernst Kraus took ill and caused a postponement, and even thus the chapter of accidents was not exhausted. When the performance finally took place Herr Stehmann, a barytone, had to sing Herr Kraus's part, which he had learned in two days. Under the circumstances it may be the course of wisdom to avoid an estimation of the opera's merits and defects and to record merely that it proved to be an extremely interesting work and well worth the trouble spent upon its production. Under different circumstances it might have lived the allotted time upon the stage, which, as the knowing know, is a very brief one in the majority of cases. The story of the opera was drawn from Felix Dahn's historical novel "Ein Kampf um Rom."
It is high time to get back again to the story of opera at the Metropolitan Opera House under the direction of the lessees; but before then chronological orderliness requires that attention be paid to an incident outside the category of prime importance. This was the first production in New York of Humperdinck's delightful fairy opera "Hänsel und Gretel" at Daly's Theater on October 8, 1895. The production was in English. The venture looked promising, and great interest was felt in it. Mr. Seidl was charged with the musical direction. A company of singers was brought together, partly from London, partly enlisted here. Sir Augustus Harris, director of the opera at Covent Garden, was the financial backer of the enterprise. As numerous an orchestra as the score calls for could not be accommodated in the theater, but Mr. Seidl did the best he could, and the band was commendable. Three of the singers, Miss Jeanne Douste, Miss Louise Meisslinger, and Mr. Jacques Bars, disclosed ample abilities; but the English manager had no knowledge either of the needs of the opera or the demands of the New York public; Sir Augustus's speech on the opening night, indeed, disclosed ignorance also of the name of the composer and the history of the work which he had clothed with considerable sumptuousness. It was long remembered with amusement that to him Herr Humperdinck was "Mr. Humperdinckel" and the opera some "beautiful music composed for this occasion." And so great expectations were disappointed, and, after worrying along from October 8th to November 15th, the opera was withdrawn with a record of failure, not deserved by the work and only partly deserved by the performance. We shall meet the opera again in the story of opera at the Metropolitan Opera House a decade later, when it came into its rights, and the public were able to testify their admiration in the presence of the composer.
The prospectus of Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau (which continued to be the official style of the managers) for the season 1895-96, contained this announcement: "The management has also decided to add a number of celebrated German artists and to present Wagner operas in the German language, all of which operas will be given with superior singers, equal to any who have ever been heard in the German language. The orchestra will be increased. . . . The chorus will be strengthened by a number of young, fresh voices, to which will be added an extra German chorus." Signor Mancinelli was not re-engaged as conductor, but Anton Seidl was. After what I have told thus far in this chapter the causes which led to this change of policy will be readily understood. The augmented company was a formidable host, though its strength remained in the French and Italian contingent. Had the German singers been equally capable, the story of Mr. Damrosch's enterprise might have read differently. Mme. Calvé returned and revived the furor over "Carmen"; Mesdames Melba, Nordica, Scaichi, Mantelli, and Messrs. Jean and Édouard de Reszke, Pol Plançon, Victor Maurel, and Castelmary remained; newcomers were Lola Beeth, Frances Saville, Marie Brema (who had been brought from Europe by Mr. Damrosch), Giuseppe Cremonini, Adolph Wallnöfer, Giuseppe Kaschmann (who had been a member of Mr. Abbey's first company twelve years before), and Mario Ancona. The regular subscription season consisted of thirteen weeks (fifty-two performances), beginning on November 18th, and there was a special subscription, at the same scale of prices, for a season of ten performances of German operas, beginning on December 5th. There were also performances at popular prices on Saturday evenings, and the entire season, excluding the spring season, which developed but little interest, compassed seventy-four representations. For these and thirteen Sunday night concerts the public paid about $575,000.
"Oh! how far are we from Covent Garden!" cried Jean de Reszke on the night of November 27th, and he clipped in his arms the friend who had come to offer his congratulations to the thunderous plaudits of the audience. M. de Reszke was in a fine glow of enthusiasm. He had sung and played Tristan and opened a new era in the style of Wagnerian performances in New York. A few days later, while the drinking horn was going from hand to hand at a medieval dinner given in honor of the principal interpreters of Wagner's love drama (Mme. Nordica, Miss Brema, the brothers de Reszke, and Mr. Seidl), he responded to a toast, and in four languages, English, German, French, and Italian, celebrated the advent of what he called "international opera." Why he neglected to throw in a few Polish phrases for the benefit of his countryman Paderewski, who sat opposite him at table, his hosts could not make out, unless it was because he wanted his expressions of delight at the achievement and prospect to be understood by all his hearers. High hopes filled the hearts of all local lovers of the lyric drama at the period. The promises of Abbey and Grau had stimulated the kindliest, heartiest, cheeriest feeling on all hands. All bickerings between the adherents of the various schools were silenced by the promulgation of a policy which seemed as generous and public-spirited as it was liberal. Whenever it was practicable New York was to have performances which should respect not only the tongue, but also the spirit of the works chosen for representation. That M. de Reszke had been an active agent in the inauguration of the new régime was an open secret to his acquaintances, and he bore public testimony when he supplemented his impersonation of Tristan with a German Lohengrin. The significance of such an act, coupled with Mme. Nordica's support of him in both performances, seemed extraordinary even in the minds of those who were not inclined to attach much importance to the language used in performance, so long as the performance was imbued with a becoming spirit of sincerity and a desire to make artistic purpose replace idle diversion. It looked as if through the example of these two artists, seconded by the liberality of the management, the people of New York were to take a long step forward in musical culture—a step toward the foundation of an institution which should endure and exemplify the esthetic, moral, and physical character of the people of America.
The expectations aroused by the announcement were woefully disappointed. There were nights of wondrous brilliancy and of extraordinary splendor in nearly every department. Some of the refulgence came from the new ambitions with which M. de Reszke and Mr. Seidl inspired the organization. The season had no prouder moments than those filled with the performances of "Tristan" and "Lohengrin" vouchsafed the subscribers to the regular subscription; but it had no deeper gloom than that which settled upon the subscribers to the special German season on most of the occasions set apart for them. The fate of "Fidelio" was utterly grievous; two representations of "Tristan" filled their souls with indignation instead of gratitude; there is no saintly intercession which could have won redemption for "Tannhäuser." The performances of "Tristan" and of the Italian "Lohengrin" at which Nordica, Brema, and the brothers de Reszke sang were brilliantly successful, but in each case the regular performance was made to precede that set apart for the German subscription. The circumstance would alone have sufficed to arouse suspicion that the management was at least willing to discriminate against the special Thursday nights, and the suspicion was wrought into conviction by the disparity between the performances of the two subscriptions. If it was the purpose of Abbey & Grau to put German opera on trial their method looked very unfair. "The drama for its own sake as an art work, and not for the sake of the singer" is a fundamental principle of German art, but it can only maintain its validity with the help of adequate performances. Saving the four singers who sang in Italian and French as well as German (Mme. Nordica, Miss Brema, and the brothers de Reszke), the German singers of 1895-96 were woefully inefficient, and the German season was an indubitable failure.