Several attempts had been made to habilitate Oscar Wilde's drama on the New York stage, and had failed. If the opera succeeds it will be because a larger public has discovered that the music which has been consorted with the old pictures, actions, and words has added to them an element either of charm or expressive potentiality hitherto felt to be lacking. Is that true? Has a rock of offense been removed? Has a mephitic odor been changed to a sweet savor by the subtle alchemy of the musical composer? Has a drama abhorrent, bestial, repellent, and loathsome been changed into a thing of delectability by the potent agency of music? It used to be said that things too silly to be spoken might be sung; is it also true that things too vile, too foul, too nauseating for contemplation may be seen, so they be insidiously and wickedly glorified by the musician's art? As a rule, plays have not been improved by being turned into operas. Always their dramatic movement has been interrupted, their emotional current clogged, their poetry emasculated by the transformation. Things are better now than they were in the long ago, when music took no part at all in dramatic action, but waited for a mood which it had power to publish and celebrate; but music has acquired its new power only by an abnegation of its better part, by assuming new functions, and asking a revaluation of its elements on a new esthetic basis. In "Salome" music is largely a decorative element, like the scene,—like the costumes. It creates atmosphere, like the affected stylism of much of Oscar Wilde's text, with its Oriental imagery borrowed from "The Song of Solomon," diluted and sophisticated; it gives emotional significance to situations, helping the facial play of Salome and her gestures to proclaim the workings of her mind, when speech has deserted her; it is at its best as the adjunct and inspiration of the lascivious dance. In the last two instances, however, it reverts to the purpose and also the manner (with a difference) which have always obtained, and becomes music in the purer sense. Then the would-be dramatist is swallowed up in the symphonist, and Strauss is again the master magician who can juggle with our senses and our reason and make his instrumental voices body forth "the forms of things unknown."
It would be wholly justifiable to characterize "Salome" as a symphonic poem for which the play supplies the program. The parallelism of which we hear between Strauss and Wagner exists only in part—only in the application of the principle of characterization by means of musical symbols or typical phrases. Otherwise the men's work on diametrically opposite lines. With all his musical affluence, Wagner aimed, at least, to make his orchestra only the bearer and servant of the dramatic word. Nothing can be plainer (it did not need that he should himself have confessed it) than that Strauss looks upon the words as necessary evils. His vocal parts are not song, except for brief, intensified spaces at long intervals. They are declamation. The song-voice is used, one is prone to think, only because by means of it the words can be made to be heard above the orchestra. Song, in the old acceptance of the word, implies beauty of tone and justness of intonation. It is amazing how indifferent the listener is to both vocal quality and intervallic accuracy in "Salome." Wilde's stylistic efforts are lost in the flood of instrumental sound; only the mood which they were designed to produce remains. Jochanaan sings phrases, which are frequently tuneful, and when they are not denunciatory are set in harmonies agreeable to the ear. But by reason of that fact Jochanaan comes perilously near being an old-fashioned operatic figure—an ascetic Marcel, with little else to differentiate him from his Meyerbeerian prototype than his "raiment of camel's hair and a leather's girdle about his loins," and an inflated phrase which must serve for the tunes sung by the rugged Huguenot soldier. Strauss characterizes by his vocal manner as well as by his themes and their instrumental treatment; but for his success he relies at least as much upon the performer as upon the musical text. A voice and style like Mr. Van Rooy's give an uplift, a prophetic breadth, dignity, and impressiveness to the utterances of Jochanaan which are paralleled only by the imposing instrumental apparatus employed in proclaiming the phrase invented to clothe his pronouncements. Six horns, used as Strauss knows how to use them, are a good substratum for the arch-colorist. The nervous staccato chatter of Herod is certainly characteristic of this neurasthenic. This specimen from the pathological museum of Messrs. Wilde and Strauss appears in a state which causes alarm lest his internal mechanism fly asunder and scatter his corporeal parts about the scene. The crepitating volubility with which Strauss endows him is a marvelously ingenious conceit; but it leans heavily for its effect, we fear, on the amazing skill of Mr. Burrian, not only in cackling out the words synchronously with the orchestral part, but in emotionally coloring them and blending them in a unity with his facial expression and his perturbed bodily movements. Salome sings, often in the explosive style of Wagner's Kundry, sometimes with something like fluent continuity, but from her song has been withheld all the symmetrical and graceful contours comprehended in the concept of melody. Hers are the superheated phrases invented to give expression to her passion, and out of them she must construct the vocal accompaniment to the instrumental song, which reaches its culmination in the scene which, instead of receiving a tonal beatification, as it does, ought to be relegated to the silence and darkness of the deepest dungeon of a madhouse or a hospital.
Here is a matter, of the profoundest esthetical and ethical significance, which might as well be disposed of now, so far as this discussion is concerned, regardless of the symmetrical continuity of the argument. There is a vast deal of ugly music in "Salome,"—music that offends the ear and rasps the nerves like fiddlestrings played on by a coarse file. In a criticism of Strauss's "Symphonia Domestica" I took occasion to point out that a large latitude must be allowed to the dramatic composer which must be denied to the symphonist. Consort a dramatic or even a lyric text with music and all manner of tonal devices may derive explanation, if not justification, from the words. But in purely instrumental music the arbitrary purposes of a composer cannot replace the significance which must lie in the music itself—that is in its emotional and esthetic content. It does not lie in intellectual content, for thought to become articulate demands speech. The champions of Richard Strauss have defended ugliness in his last symphony, the work which immediately preceded "Salome," and his symphonic poems on the score that music must be an expression of truth, and truth is not always beautiful. In a happier day than this it was believed that the true and the beautiful were bound together in angelic wedlock and that all art found its highest mission in giving them expression. But the drama has been led through devious paths into the charnel house, and in "Salome" we must needs listen to the echoes of its dazed and drunken footfalls. The maxim "Truth before convention" asserts its validity and demands recognition under the guise of "characteristic beauty." We may refuse to admit that ugliness is entitled to be raised to a valid principle in music dissociated from words or stage pictures, on the ground that thereby it contravenes and contradicts its own nature; but we may no longer do so when it surrenders its function as an expression of the beautiful and becomes merely an illustrative element, an aid to dramatic expression. What shall be said, then, when music adorns itself with its loveliest attributes and lends them to the apotheosis of that which is indescribably, yes, inconceivably, gross and abominable? Music cannot lie. Not even the genius of Richard Strauss can make it discriminate in its soaring ecstasy between a vile object and a good. There are three supremely beautiful musical moments in "Salome." Two of them are purely instrumental, though they illustrate dramatic incidents; the third is predominantly instrumental, though it has an accompaniment of word and action. The first is an intermezzo in which all action ceases except that which plays in the bestially perverted heart and mind of Salome. A baffled amorous hunger changes to a desire for revenge. The second is the music of the dance. The third is the marvelous finale in which an impulse which can only be conceived as rising from the uttermost pit of degradation is beatified. Crouching over the dissevered head of the prophet, Salome addresses it in terms of reproach, of grief, of endearment and longing, and finally kisses the bloody lips and presses her teeth into the gelid flesh. It is incredible that an artist should ever have conceived such a scene for public presentation. In all the centuries in which the story of the dance before Herod has fascinated sculptors, painters, and poets, in spite of the accretions of lustful incident upon the simple Biblical story, it remained for a poet of our day to conceive this horror and a musician of our day to put forth his highest powers in its celebration. There was a scene before the mental eye of Strauss as he wrote. It was that of Isolde singing out her life over the dead body of Tristan. In the music of that scene, I do not hesitate to say again, as I have said before, there lies the most powerful plea ever made for the guilty lovers. It is the choicest flower of Wagner's creative faculty, the culmination of his powers as a composer, and never before or since has the purifying and ennobling capacity of music been so convincingly demonstrated. Strauss has striven to outdo it, and there are those who think that in this episode he actually raised music to a higher power. He has not only gone with the dramatist and outraged every sacred instinct of humanity by calling the lust for flesh, alive or dead, love, but he has celebrated her ghoulish passion as if he would perforce make of her an object of that "redemption" of which, again following Wagner but along oblique paths, he prates so strangely in his opera of "Guntram."
It is obvious on a moment's reflection that, had Strauss desired, the play might easily have been modified so as to avoid this gruesome episode. A woman scorned, vengeful, and penitent would have furnished forth material enough for his finale and dismissed his audience with less disturbance of their moral and physical stomachs. But Strauss, to put it mildly, is a sensationalist despite his genius, and his business sense is large, as New Yorkers know ever since he wound up an artistic tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen should sup to their full of delights and horrors.
To think back, under the impressions of the final scene, to the dance which precipitated the catastrophe is to bring up recollections of little else than the striking originality of its music, its piquancies of rhythm and orchestration, its artfully simulated Orientalism, and the thrilling effect produced by a recurrence to the "love music" ("Let me kiss thy mouth, Jochanaan,") at a moment before the frenetic close, when the representation of Salome (a professional dancer, Miss Froehlich, was deftly substituted for Miss Fremstad at the Metropolitan performance) approaches the cistern in which the white flesh, black hair, and red lips of her idolatry are immured, and casts wistful glances into its depths. Since the outcome was to be what it became it would have been folly in Mr. Conried's performance to attempt to disguise the true character of the "Dance of the Seven Veils." Miss Froeblich gave us quite unconcernedly a danse du ventre; not quite so pronounced as it has been seen in the Oriental quarters at our world's fairs, not quite so free of bodily covering as tradition would have justified. Yet it served to emphasize its purpose in the play. This dance in its original estate is a dramatic dance; it is, indeed, the frankest example of terpsichorean symbolism within the whole range of the pantomimic dance. The conditions under which Wilde and Strauss introduce it in their drama spare one all need of thought; there is sufficient commentary in the. doddering debility of the pleading Herod and the lustful attitude of his protruding eyes. There are fantastical persons who like to talk about religious symbolism in connection with this dance, and of forms of worship of vast antiquity. The dance is old. It was probably danced in Egypt before the Exodus; in Greece probably before Orpheus sang and
"Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers."
But it is not to be seriously thought that from those days to this there was ever any doubt as to its significance and its purpose, which is to pander to prurient appetites and arouse libidinous passions. Always, too, from those days to this, its performers have been the most abandoned of the courtesan class.
There is not a whiff of fresh and healthy air blowing through "Salome" except that which exhales from the cistern, the prison house of Jochanaan. Even the love of Narraboth, the young Syrian captain, for the princess is tainted by the jealous outbursts of Herodias's page. Salome is the unspeakable; Herodias, though divested of her most pronounced historical attributes (she adjures her daughter not to dance, though she gloats over the revenge which it brings to her), is a human hyena; Herod, a neurasthenic voluptuary. A group of Jews who are shown disputing in the manner of Baxter Street, though conveyed by Wilde from Flaubert's pages, are used by Strauss to provide a comic interlude. Years ago a musical humorist in Vienna caused much amusement by writing the words of a quarrel of Jewish pedlers under the voices of the fugue in Mozart's overture to "The Magic Flute." Three hundred years ago Orazio Vecchi composed a burlesque madrigal in the severe style of that day, in which he tried to depict the babel of sounds in a synagogue. Obviously the musical Jew is supposed to be allied to the stage Jew and to be fit food for the humorist. Strauss's music gives a new reading to Wilde; it is a caricature in which cacophony reigns supreme under the guise of polyphony. There are five of the Jews, and each is pregnantly set forth in the theme with which he maintains his contention.
This is but one of many instances of marvelous astuteness in the delineation and characteristic portions of the music. The quality which will he most promptly recognized by the public is its decorative and illustrative element. The orchestra paints incessantly; moods that are prevalent for a moment do not suffice the eager illustrator. The passing word seizes his fancy. Herod describes the jewels which he promises to give to Salome so she relieve him of his oath, and the music of the orchestra glints and glistens with a hundred prismatic tints. Salome wheedles the young Syrian to bring forth the prophet, and her cry, "Thou wilt do this thing for me," is carried to his love-mad brain by a voluptuous glissando of the harp which is as irresistible as her glance and smile. But the voluptuous music is no more striking than the tragic. Strauss strikes off the head of Jochanaan with more thunderous noise upon the kettle-drums than Wagner uses when Fafner pounds the life out of Fasolt with his gigantic stave; but there is nothing in all of Wagner's tragic pages to compare in tenseness of feeling with the moment of suspense while Salome is peering into the cistern and marveling that she hears no sound of a death struggle. At this moment there comes an uncanny sound from the orchestra that is positively blood-curdling. The multitude of instruments are silent—all but the string basses. Some of them maintain a tremolo on the deep E flat. Suddenly there comes a short, high B flat. Again and again with more rapid iteration. Such a voice was never heard in the orchestra before. What Strauss designed it to express does not matter. It accomplishes a fearful accentuation of the awful situation. Strauss got the hint from Berlioz, who never used the device (which he heard from a Piedmontese double-bass player), but recommended it to composers who wished to imitate in the orchestra "a loud female cry." Strauss in his score describes how the effect is to be produced and wants it to sound like a stertorous groan. It is produced by pinching the highest string of the double-bass at the proper node between the finger-board and the bridge and sounding it by a quick jerk of the bow. This is but one of a hundred new and strange devices with which the score of "Salome" has enriched instrumental music. The dance employs a vast apparatus, but the Oriental color impressed upon it at the outset by oboe and tambour remains as persistent as its rhythmical figure, which seems to have been invented to mark the sinuous flexure of the spine and the swaying of the hips of the dancer. Devices made familiar by the symphonic poems are introduced with increased effect, such as the muting of the entire army of brass instruments. Startling effects are obtained by a confusion of keys, confusion of rhythms, sudden contrasts from an overpowering tutti to the stridulous whirring of empty fifths on the violins, a trill on the flutes, or a dissonant mutter of the basses. The celesta, an instrument with keyboard and bell tone, contributes fascinating effects, and the xylophone is used;—utterances that are lascivious as well as others that are macabre. Dissonance runs riot and frequently carries the imagination away completely captive. The score is unquestionably the greatest triumph of reflection and ingenuity of contrivance that the literature of music can show. The invention that has been expended on the themes seems less admirable. Only the pompous proclamation of the theme which is dominant in Jochanaan's music saves it from being called commonplace. A flippant hunter of reminiscences might find its prototype in the "Lady Moon" chorus of Balfe's "Bohemian Girl." There is no greater originality in the theme which publishes Salome's amorousness for the white flesh of Jochanaan, which time and again shows its kinship to the andante melody in the first movement of Tschaikowsky's "Pathétique" symphony, but becomes more and more transfigured in its passionate loveliness when it aids the beatification of the more than ghoulish princess. There is no escape from the power of the music when it soars to grandiose heights in the duet between Salome 'and the prophet, the subsequent intermezzo and the wicked apotheosis. It overwhelms the senses and reduces the nervous system of the listeners to exhaustion.
The subscription season of 1906-07 at the Metropolitan Opera House began on November 26th and lasted seventeen weeks, compassing sixty-eight subscription performances of twenty-three operas and twenty-nine extra performances. Mr. Conried announced at the close of the supplementary season that his receipts had aggregated $1,005,770.20; but this sum doubtless included the receipts from the Boston season. The season 1907-08 began on November 18th and lasted twenty weeks. There were one hundred subscription performances (Thursday having been added to the subscription nights), twenty Saturday popular representations, and three special. Twenty-seven operas were in the list, but only one of them was new. This was Francesco Cilèa's "Adriana Lecouvreur," which was brought forward on the opening night of the season, and had one repetition afterward, notwithstanding that it had been incorporated in the repertory to give Signor Caruso an opportunity to appear in a new work together with Mme. Cavalieri. The cast was as follows:
Adriana Lecouvreur …………………… Lina CavalieriLa Principessa …………………….. Josephine JacobyMlle. Jouvenot ………………………. Marie MattfeldMlle. Dangeville ……………………….. Mme. GirerdMaurizio …………………………….. Enrico CarusoL'Abate ……………………………… Georges LucasMichonnet …………………………… Antonio ScottiIl Principe …………………………. Marcel JournetQuinault ……………………………… Mr. BarocchiPoisson ………………………………. Mr. RaimondiMaggiordomo …………………………… Mr. NavariniConductor, Rudolfo Ferrari
Cilèa has in this work attempted to put the familiar play of Scribe and Legouvé into music. Formerly, as we all know, composers used to try to make operas out of plays. The result is for the greater part a sort of spectacle recalling familiar things to the eye, accompanied by an undercurrent of music occasionally breaking into melody and buoying up long stretches of disjointed and fragmentary conversation, out of which, under the best of circumstances, it would be difficult to construct a drama and from which it is not possible to extract the pleasure which one can still find in the old-time style of entertainment derisively called a concert in costume. The manner of "Adriana Lecouvreur" is more or less that of Puccini, Giordano, and Spinelli—to mention the names that immediately preceded Cilèa's across the ocean—but it is only in the manner, not in the matter, except, as some disagreeable seekers after reminiscences will say, when that matter is borrowed. There is some graceful music in the score and some strains which simulate. passion; but to find in any of its parts the kind of music which vitalizes the word or heightens the dramatic situation is a hopeless task. It is melodramatic music, which becomes most fluent when there is least occasion for it, and which makes its best appeal when the heroine declaims above it in the speaking voice (as she does in the climax of the third act, when Adrienne recites a speech from Racine's "Phèdre" in order to accuse the Princess of adultery), when it inspires the heroine carefully and particularly to blow out every light in a large drawing-room, or when it accompanies a ballet which is neither a part of the play nor an incidental divertissement, but only a much-needed device to give the composer an opportunity for a few symmetrical pieces of music. Even here, however, this music must serve as a foil for the everlasting chit-chat of the people of the drama. A pitiful work it was with which to open a season. Mascagni's "Iris" was brought out on December 6th, and after it was all too late there was a carefully studied performance of "Don Giovanni" and a sumptuously, too sumptuously, mounted production of "Fidelio." These two works practically summed up the labors accomplished by Gustav Mahler, though he produced excellent representations (except scenically) of "Tristan" and "Die Walküre." Mr. Mahler, having laid down the directorship of the Court Opera at Vienna, was brought to New York by Mr. Conried, and his coming had raised high the expectations of the lovers of German opera. The record must also include the enlistment in the Metropolitan forces of Madame Berta Morena and Madame Leffler-Burckhardt, whose influence upon the season would have been much more marked had not Mr. Conried's policy of catering principally to the Italianissimi prevented them from becoming as large factors as they deserved to be.
When Mr. Conried issued his prospectus for his fifth season it had already long been an open secret that some of the men whom he had invited to share the glories and the profits of his administration had decreed his downfall. During the fourth season he had been ill with sciatic neuritis, and there was no improvement in his physical condition when he entered upon his duties in 1907-08. His ability to attend to the arduous labors of the managing directorate was questioned. Worse than this, the air for months had been full of whispers of scandalous doings in the business department, and the chorus of dissatisfaction with the artistic results of his directorate, which had begun in the first season, had been swelling steadily. Two seasons before he had put forth a disingenuous apology for his administration, comparing the cost and difficulties of producing opera in the preceding season with the cost and difficulties under Mr. Grau. The matter was one which affected the stockholders of his company only so far as the finances were concerned; as to the difficulties, it was not easy to see how they could have been less formerly than now, when there was so much more money to spend, and so much more had been spent in improving the facilities for opera giving. The patrons of the establishment found large ground for complaint in contrasting the artistic achievements with the flamboyant promises which had been made when the new administration came in. Mr. Conried had told them that his first aim was to raise the standard of performance, and to this end he had banished all thought of profit from his mind. He was going to continue to employ the most refulgent "stars" in the world, but to abolish the "star" system. The season in Philadelphia was to be abandoned so that there might be more time for rehearsals, and less exhaustion of his artistic forces. Opera in English was to be added to opera in Italian, French, and German. As for the French and Italian works they were to be given as they had been under Mr. Grau, but the German was to be raised to a higher plane. Not one of these promises was redeemed. Italian operas were given great prominence over French, and the additions to the Italian list, which were really new, were of the poorest sort. Perfunctoriness, apathy, and ignorant stage management marked the German performances, which were all but eliminated from the subscription list. There were evidences of high striving at the outset in the engagement of Messrs. Mottl, Lautenschläger, and Fuchs, as I have already said, but the results were negligible because the men were unable to employ their capacities. There were sensational features, like the production of "Parsifal" and "Salome," but there were humiliating ones, like the prostitution of a great establishment for the performance of "Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" to deck out the Herr Direktor's benefits. The blight of commercialism had fallen on the institution. On February 11, 1908, Mr. Conried resigned, and announcement was officially made of a reorganization of his company, and the engagement of Giulio Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel as managers of the opera for the season 1908-09.
Following is a table of performances during the subscription seasons of Mr. Conried's administration:
Operas 1903-4 1904-5 1905-6 1906-7 1907-8
"Rigoletto" …………….. 5 2 5 2 4"Die Walküre" …………… 4 4 3 2 3"La Bohème" …………….. 3 3 5 7 7"Aïda" …………………. 6 5 4 6 5"Tosca" ………………… 4 4 3 6 7"Tannhäuser" ……………. 5 9 4 5 4"Cavalleria Rusticana" …… 8 3 0 1 0"Pagliacci" …………….. 5 3 3 4 4"Lohengrin" …………….. 5 6 5 5 2"La Traviata" …………… 3 4 2 3 6"Il Barbiere" …………… 4 2 2 0 6"Lucia di Lammermoor" ……. 3 3 5 4 1"Tristan und Isolde" …….. 4 2 3 4 6"The Magic Flute" ……….. 4 0 0 0 0"Siegfried" …………….. 2 2 3 4 3"L'Elisir d'Amore" ………. 4 1 2 0 0"Carmen" ……………….. 4 4 2 1 0"Coppélia" (ballet)………. 4 1 0 0 0"La Dame Blanche" (Ger.) …. 1 0 0 0 0"Faust" ………………… 4 4 5 4 6"Mefistofele" ………….. *2 0 0 0 7"Roméo et Juliette" ……… 2 4 0 5 0"Nozze di Figaro" ……….. 1 2 0 0 0+ "Parsifal" …………… 11 8 4 2 0"Fidelio" ………………. 1 1 0 0 3"Das Rheingold" …………. 1 2 2 1 0"Götterdämmerung" ……….. 1 2 3 1 0"La Gioconda" …………… 0 4 4 0 0"Die Meistersinger" ……… 0 7 4 0 4"Lucrezia Borgia" ……….. 0 1 0 0 0"Don Pasquale" ………….. 0 2 2 1 0"Die Puppenfee" (ballet) …. 0 1 0 0 0"Les Huguenots" …………. 0 4 0 0 0"Un Ballo in Maschera" …… 0 2 0 0 0+ "Die Fledermaus" ………. 0 4 1 0 0"Die Königin von Saba" …… 0 0 5 0 0"Hänsel und Gretel" ……… 0 0 11 8 5"La Favorita" …………… 0 0 4 0 0"La Sonnambula" …………. 0 0 2 0 0"Il Trovatore" ………….. 0 0 4 0 6"Don Giovanni" ………….. 0 0 2 0 4"Martha" ……………….. 0 0 4 3 3"Der Zigeunerbaron" ……… 0 0 1 0 0+ "Fedora" ……………… 0 0 0 4 3+ "La Damnation de Faust" … 0 0 0 5 0"Lakmé" ………………… 0 0 0 3 0"L'Africaine" …………… 0 0 0 2 0"Manon Lescaut" …………. 0 0 0 3 5"Madama Butterfly" ………. 0 0 0 5 6+ "Salome" ……………… 0 0 0 1 0+ "Adriana Lecouvreur" …… 0 0 0 0 2"Der Fliegende Holländer" … 0 0 0 0 4"Iris" …………………. 0 0 0 0 5"Mignon" ……………….. 0 0 0 0 5
* One scene only. + Novelties.
Before the close of the season 1905-06 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, who was building a large theater in Thirty-fourth Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues, announced that the building would be called the Manhattan Opera House, that it would be exclusively his property and under his management, and that it was to be devoted to grand opera.
It is no reflection on Mr. Hammerstein to say that many who have been prompt and generous in their recognition of his achievements since, looked upon his enterprise as quixotic, down to the very day of the opening of his house. True, he was known to be a manager of extraordinary resource and indomitable energy, but he had dallied more or less with the operatic bauble without disclosing any ambition to have his name written among the managerial wrecks which have been cast upon the shores of Italian Opera, from Handel's day to ours, It was easy to recall that the new opera house was not his first, but that he had built one in the same street, given it the same name thirteen years before, and begun a season of grand opera with an ambitious novelty, only to abandon the enterprise after a fortnight. He had even tried German opera with no less popular an artist than Mme. Lehmann in his earlier opera house in Harlem, and entered into rivalry with an established institution in 1891 for the production of "Cavalleria Rusticana," then the reigning sensation of the hour in Europe.
When the old Manhattan Opera House, so soon abandoned to the uses of vaudeville, opened its doors with Moszkowski's "Boabdil," on January 23, 1893, there was no rival operatic establishment in the city, for the interior of the Metropolitan had been destroyed by fire, and Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau were resting on their oars for a season while the question whether or not the home of the costly and fashionable entertainment should be restored was under discussion by its owners. Yet Mr. Hammerstein was discouraged by two weeks of failure. It was not strange that many observers refused to believe that he was of the stuff out of which opera managers are made. He did not seem illogical enough, though he showed some symptoms of having been bitten by the opera habit.
Neither was there much to encourage belief in his announcements in the manner in which he put them forth. He began early in the spring by saying that he had engaged Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and kept their names before the people almost up to the time of the opening. He went abroad to engage artists, and even after his return it looked as if it would be a physical impossibility to complete his theater in time for the date set for opening. In fact it was not completed, but when the season arrived he was ready to attempt all that he had said he would do, except keep some wild promises about singers; and when the season closed the fact that loomed largest in the retrospect was the undaunted manner in which he had carried on a difficult and dangerous enterprise, compelling a large element of the public to respect and admire him, and making it possible for him to lay out a second season on lines of real pith and moment, and carry an admirable enterprise to an admirable conclusion.
Mr. Hammerstein began his first season on December 3, 1906, and closed it on April 20, 1907. There were a few admirable artists in his company, but the majority were either inexperienced or of the conventional Italian type. His principal soprano leggiero was Mlle. Pinkert, a Polish singer of good routine and fine skill; his dramatic soprano, Mlle. Russ, whose knowledge of the conventions of the stage was complete, and expressive powers excellent, though they exerted little charm. He had a serviceable mezzo in Mme. De Cisneros (formerly a junior member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, under her maiden name, Broadfoot). Miss Donalda, a Canadian soprano of no little charm, helped to make the lyric operas agreeable. But the strength of the company lay in the male contingent—Bonci, the most famous of living tenors, after Caruso, whom Mr. Conried thought it wise to carry over to the Metropolitan Opera House, thus precipitating a controversy, which, as such things go, was of real assistance to the manager whom the rival sought to injure; Maurice Renaud, the most finished and versatile of French operatic artists, whom the foresight of Maurice Grau had retained for the Metropolitan, but whose contract Mr. Conried canceled at the cost of a penalty; M. Charles Dalmorès, a sterling dramatic tenor; M. Gilibert, a French baritone of refined qualities; Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, who, coming some years before in a peripatetic French company to the Casino, had stirred the enthusiasm of the critics with her truthful, powerful, and unconventional performance of Carmen; Ancona, a barytone who had been an admired member of the Metropolitan company, and a serviceable bass named Arimondi. Melba and Calvé came later in the season.
Exaggerated stories of Mr. Hammerstein's success followed the close of his season, and if all that Mr. Hammerstein himself said could have been accepted in its literalness the lesson of the season would have been that the people who live in New York and come to New York in the winter season were willing to spend, let me say, one and three-quarter millions of dollars every year for this one form of entertainment. It would appear, also, that fad and fashion were not the controlling impulse in this vast expenditure; for the chief things which fad and fashion had to offer at the Metropolitan Opera House were noticeably absent from the Manhattan. On a score of occasions there were large gatherings representative of wealth and what is called society at the house in Thirty-fourth Street, but generally the audiences were distinct in their composition. It almost seemed as if Mr. Hammerstein had been correct in his deduction, that there were enough people in New York who wanted to go to the opera, but were excluded from the Metropolitan by the extent of the subscription, to support a second house. If this was so it marked a marvelous change from the time of the last operatic rivalry, which ruined both Mapleson and Abbey, and destroyed the prestige of the Academy of Music forever. Perhaps the city's growth in population and wealth furnished the explanation; I can scarcely believe from a study of the doings at the two houses that a growth in musical taste and culture was the determining factor. Twenty years ago such a list of operas as that presented by Mr. Hammerstein in his first season would have spelled ruin to any manager. Not even the prestige of Adelina Patti would have saved it. There was not a novelty in the list.
Many things contributed to the measure of success which Mr. Hammerstein won. There was a large fascination in the audacity of the undertaking, and its freedom from art-cant and affectation. Curiosity was irritated by the manager's daring, and admiration challenged by the manner in which he kept faith with the public. He seemed to be attempting the impossible, but he accomplished all that he said he would do. It is no secret—in fact, Mr. Hammerstein himself proclaimed it—that his artistic achievements were due in an overwhelming degree to the efficiency of Signor Cleofonte Campanini, his artistic director. But not to his efficiency alone—to his devotion and zeal also. Signor Campanini was not only the artistic director—he was also almost exclusively the conductor of the performances. His zeal fired all the forces employed at the opera house. A company gathered together from the ends of the earth succeeded in giving one hundred and thirteen performances of twenty-two operas, and making many of the performances of really remarkable excellence. The reason was obvious at nearly every presentation; from the principals down to the last person in the chorus and orchestra, every one had his heart in his work. Not only the desire to do their duty, but the pardonable ambition to do better than the rival establishment, inspired singers and players alike. It so happened that on one Saturday evening the same opera—Verdi's "Aïda"—was performed at both houses. A newspaper reporter carried the intelligence to the Manhattan Opera House that half the seats were empty at the Metropolitan, while the new house was crowded. The curtain was down at the time, and a score of the performers on the stage, headed by the conductor himself, at once formed a ring and danced a dance of triumph.
For musical effects, as well as some dramatic, there were distinct advantages with the new house. The disposition of the seats and stage brought the listeners and performers nearer together. The acoustical conditions at the Manhattan Opera House were admirable; there could be no such feeling of intimacy at the Metropolitan Opera House as existed here. The quality appealed to the music lover pure and simple, and him only, however, for in the things which make the opera a fashionable social diversion the new building was deficient and woefully inferior to the old.
The lovers of good singing were surprised by the excellence of Mr. Hammerstein's singers, especially the male contingent—a surprise which was heightened by the protestations, to which they had long been habituated, that there was no talent left in Europe comparable with that engaged at the Metropolitan. When in the face of such assertions the voices and the art of tenors like Bonci and Dalmores, and of barytones like Renaud and Ancona, were brought into notice their actual merit seemed doubled. The women singers of the first rank, save Mmes. Melba and Calvé, who appeared in what would have been called "star" engagements under the old theatrical stock régime, were in no way comparable with those of the Metropolitan Opera House, but those of the second rank were superior—a circumstance which was emphasized by the better ensemble performances, for which a discriminating public soon learned to thank Signor Campanini and the esprit de corps with which he inflamed the establishment's forces.
The opening of the season, on December 3 1906, had been proclaimed a week earlier, so as to make it synchronous with that of the Metropolitan Opera House; but Mr. Hammerstein's house was not ready, nor were his singers or stage fixtures. The fact looked ominous, and the enterprise took a lugubrious beginning a week later, when "I Puritani," which had been chosen as the opening opera because it was looked upon in Europe as affording to Signor Bonci his finest artistic opportunity, failed to arouse any public interest. It was an experience which Mr. Hammerstein was destined to have again and again with operas like "Dinorah," "Mignon," "Fra Diavolo," "Il Barbiere," and "Un Ballo in Maschera," for which the public seemed suddenly to have lost all liking, while still clinging to works of equal antiquatedness.
From the opening night to the closing the operas of the list were produced on the dates and in the succession indicated in the following table, which tells also the number of times each opera was performed. It must be stated, however, that there were a number of occasions in the course of the season when two operas or portions of several operas were performed on a single evening. This accounts for the large number of times that Mascagni's "Cavalleria" and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" were given, the latter being also helped in the record by the fact that it was twice bracketed with Massenet's "Navarraise."
Opera First performance Times
"I Puritani" …………….. December 3 …………. 2"Rigoletto" ……………… December 5 ………… 11"Faust" …………………. December 7 …………. 7"Don Giovanni" …………… December 12 ………… 4"Carmen" ………………… December 14 ……….. 19"Aïda" ………………….. December 19 ……….. 12"Lucia di Lammermoor" …….. December 21 ………… 6"Il Trovatore" …………… January 1 ………….. 6"La Traviata" ……………. January 2 ………….. 3"L'Elisir d'Amore" ……….. January 5 ………….. 3"Gil Ugonotti" …………… January 18 …………. 5"Il Barbiere di Siviglia" …. January 21 …………. 2"La Sonnambula" ………….. January 25 …………. 3"Pagliacci" ……………… February 1 ………… 10"Cavalleria Rusticana" ……. February 1 …………. 8"Mignon" ………………… February 7 …………. 3"Dinorah" ……………….. February 20 ………… 1"Un Ballo in Maschera" ……. February 27 ………… 2"La Bohème" ……………… March 1 ……………. 4"Fra Diavolo" ……………. March 8 ……………. 4"Marta" …………………. March 23 …………… 4Manzoni Requiem (Good Fri.) .. March 29 …………… 1"La Navarraise" ………….. April 10 …………… 2
On three occasions the regular procedure was interrupted for the sake of matters of temporary and special interest. Thus, on March 2d, there was a miscellaneous bill, made up of an act of "Dinorah," one of "Faust," and all of "Cavalleria Rusticana"; on April 19th, the performance was little else than a concert, at which fragments of six operas, some of which were not in the repertory, were sung; while on Good Friday, Verdi's Requiem Mass, composed in honor of Manzoni, took the place of an opera, and was sung to popular prices, though it was on a regular opera night.
The subscription was so small that it seemed unnecessary to differentiate in the table between regular and extra performances. Of the latter there were twenty on Saturday nights, at popular prices, besides others given on holidays and for benefits. Though it is to be noted as a matter of history that the competition of the Manhattan Opera House did not appreciably affect the subscription of the Metropolitan, it is also to be noted that as a rule the attendance on the Saturday night popular performances was larger at the new house.
A few of the incidents of the season deserve to be passed in review. Of the singers whose presence in Mr. Hammerstein's company lent distinction to it, Signor Bonci appeared on the opening night in "I Puritani." The opera failed to awaken interest, but Bonci caught the popular fancy and held it to the end. Toward the close of February, however, it was announced that he had made a contract with Mr. Conried to sing at the Metropolitan Opera House the next season. Mr. Hammerstein first met the move of his rival by announcing the engagement of Signor Zenatello, but afterward began legal proceedings to prevent Signor Bonci from fulfilling his contract with the manager of the house in upper Broadway. M. Renaud, the great French barytone, effected his entrance in "Rigoletto," but he was not in his best voice and condition, and only later conquered recognition for his fine talents. The opera, however, took its place on the popular list, since it employed, at different times, the finest talent at the command of the management. The first large and complete triumph by an opera was won on December 14th, by "Carmen," in which Mme. Bressler-Gianoli appeared as the heroine. She enacted the part fifteen times before Mme. Calvé came to take back the territory which had so long belonged to her.
A second success followed hard on the heels of "Carmen." This was "Aïda," the triumph of which was one of ensemble, in which the chorus, under Signor Campanini, played no small part. Mme. Melba's coming, on January 2d, was the signal for the awakening of society's interest in Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise. She remained until March 25th, when she said farewell in a performance of Puccini's "Bohème," the production of which by Mr. Hammerstein in defiance of the rights of Mr. Conried (according to the allegations of the publishers, Ricordi) and the legal proceedings ending with the granting of an injunction against Mr. Hammerstein at the end of his season, was one of the diverting incidents of the merry operatic war. Mme. Melba sang three times in "La Traviata," five times in "Rigoletto," twice in "Lucia di Lammermoor," once in "Faust," and four times in "La Bohème."
The Bonci incident and the interest created in Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise by Mme. Melba's popularity stimulated interest in the offerings for a second season, which the manager answered by announcing the engagement, besides Zenatello and Sammarco, of Nordica and Schumann-Heink, and the re-engagement of Renaud, Bressler-Gianoli, Gilibert, and Dalmores. He also opened his subscription for the next season on March 19th, and announced the day after that he had received subscriptions amounting to $200,000, of which $110,000 had come from the four principal ticket speculators in the city. Mme. Calvé, who was engaged to give éclat to the conclusion of the season, effected her entrance on March 27th, and sang nine times—four in "Carmen," three in "Cavalleria Rusticana," and two in "La Navarraise."
The prospectus which Mr. Hammerstein published for his second season was magnificently grandiloquent in its promises, but the season itself marvelous in its achievements. Eight operas "never produced in this city or country," "masterpieces of the most celebrated composers," which were his "sole property," were to be brought forward, in addition to many familiar works. He announced the engagement of "the greatest sopranos, mezzo sopranos, contraltos, barytones, and bassos of the operatic world." The eight new operas were to be Massenet's "Thaïs," Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande," Charpentier's "Louise," Breton's "Dolores," Massenet's "Jongleur de Notre Dame," Saint-Saëns's "Hélène," Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," and "an opera by our American composer, Victor Herbert." Offenbach's charming opera had been heard in New York before, from a French company managed by Maurice Grau, but it required a memory that compassed twenty-five years to recall that fact; so in respect of it Mr. Hammerstein's slip was venial at the worst. His list of the greatest singers in the world read as follows: Sopranos: Nellie Melba, Lillian Nordica, Mary Garden, Gianinna Russ, Camille Borello, Ludmilla Sigrist, Giuseppina Giaconia, Helen Koelling, Fanny Francisca, Mauricia Morichina, Jeanne Jomelli, Emma Trentini, and Alice Zeppilli; mezzo sopranos and contraltos: Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Bressler-Gianoli, Eleanore de Cisneros, J. Gerville-Reache, Emma Zaccaria, Gina Severina; tenors: Giovanni Zenatello, Amadeo Bassi, Charles Dalmorès, Jean Perier, Leone Cazauran, Carlo Albani, Emilio Venturini, Francesco Daddi; barytones: Maurice Renaud, Charles Gilibert, Mario Sammarco, Vincenzo Reschiglian, Mario Ancona, Hector Dufranne, Nicolo Fossetta; bassos: Adamo Didur, Victorio Arimondi, Luigi Mugnoz; basso buffo: Fernando Galetti-Gianoli. Cleofonte Campanini was again musical director.
These the magnificent promises. Had half of them been kept the fact would have amazed a public whom long experience had taught to put no more faith in the promises of impresarios than in those of princes. As a matter of fact, barring the extravagant attributes alleged to be due to the singers, the majority of whom were worse than mediocre, more than half were kept, and the deficiency more than counterbalanced by new elements which were introduced from time to time, as happy emergencies called for them. Chief of these was the engagement of Luisa Tetrazzini; of which more in its proper place. The official announcement was of subscription performances on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings, and Saturday afternoons, for twenty weeks. Also there were to be twenty Saturday evenings at popular prices. Just before the opening of the season there was semi-official talk of popular performances also on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, which, had it been realized, would have kept the opera company as busy with a large repertory as the ordinary theatrical company with its single play running through a season. A beginning was made with the Thursday performances, but Mr. Hammerstein concluded after a short trial of the experiment, that the game was not worth the candle, and so abandoned it. Before the close of the season Mr. Hammerstein announced an extra week of five performances, which he invited his subscribers to enjoy without money and without price, on the ground that the exigencies of the season had compelled him to repeat operas on subscription nights. The season of twenty-one weeks, which began on November 4, 1907, and ended on March 28, 1908, was thus made to embrace 116 representations in all; that is to say, eighty subscription nights and matinées, twenty popular Saturday nights, five performances in the extra week, and eleven special afternoons and evenings. The discrepancy between these figures and the total of the last column in the appended table, showing the dates of first productions in the season, and the number of performances given to each opera, is accounted for by the fact that nine times in the course of the season the entertainment consisted of two operas, and once there was a bill of shreds and patches from various operas.
To complete the statistical record of the company's activity, it must be added that two performances were given in Philadelphia, and that there were eighteen concerts on Sunday nights, at the last few of which operas were given in concert form. Twice the opera house was kept closed on Sunday nights because of the enforcement of a rigid interpretation of the law prohibiting theatrical entertainments on Sunday.
A study of the list of performances shows that the 116 performances were distributed among twenty-three operas. Of these four had never been given in New York before (they were "Thaïs," "Louise," "Siberia," and "Pelléas et Mélisande"), three had been given in New York, but so long ago that they were to all intents and purposes novelties ("Les Contes d'Hoffmann," "Crispino e la Comare," and "Andrea Chenier"), and three, though familiar to the public, were new to the house ("La Gioconda," "La Damnation de Faust," and "Ernani"); the other thirteen were in the Manhattan repertory for the season of 1906-07.
Opera Composer First performance Times given
"La Gioconda," Ponchielli ……………. Nov. 4 4"Carmen," Bizet …………………….. Nov. 5 11"La Damnation de Faust," Berlioz ……… Nov. 6 3"Trovatore," Verdi ………………….. Nov. 9 5"Aïda," Verdi ………………………. Nov. 11 9"Les Contes d'Hoffmann," Offenbach ……. Nov. 15 11"Thaïs," Massenet …………………… Nov. 24 7"Faust," Gounod …………………….. Nov. 28 4* "La Navarraise," Massenet ………….. Dec. 9 5* "Pagliacci," Leoncavallo …………… Dec. 9 9"Ernani," Verdi …………………….. Dec. 11 1"Rigoletto," Verdi ………………….. Dec. 20 5"Un Ballo in Maschera," Verdi ………… Dec. 27 4"Don Giovanni," Mozart ………………. Dec. 28 3* "Cavalleria Rusticana," Mascagni ……. Dec. 31 4"Louise," Charpentier ……………….. Jan. 3 11"La Traviata," Verdi ………………… Jan. 15 5"Lucia di Lammermoor," Donizetti ……… Jan. 20 8"Siberia," Giordano …………………. Feb. 5 3"Pelléas et Mélisande," Debussy ………. Feb. 19 7"Dinorah," Meyerbeer ………………… Feb. 26 1"Crispino e la Comare," Ricci brothers … Mar. 6 3"Andrea Chenier," Giordano …………… Mar. 27 1—-124* Parts of double bills.
When Mr. Hammerstein issued his prospectus in the early autumn he promised to produce no less than eight operas which had never been performed in America. Managerial promises of this kind are generally made and accepted in a Pickwickian sense, but Mr. Hammerstein came nearer than is the custom to keeping his, though the season closed with his subscribers waiting for "Dolores," by Breton; "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame," by Massenet, and "Hélène," by Saint-Saëns. He also promised performances of three German operas ("Lohengrin," "Tannhäuser," and "Tristan und Isolde"), a new American opera in English, to be composed by Victor Herbert, and the following operas from the standard list, viz., "Le Prophète," Massenet's "Manon," "Roméo et Juliette," "Mefistofele," and "La Bohème." He had fought in the courts for the privilege of performing the last opera in the preceding season, but abandoned it without contention this season in the face of Mr. Conried's assertion that he had purchased the exclusive rights to all Italian performances of Puccini's operas in the United States. It is not likely that the statement about Mr. Herbert's opera was taken very seriously in any quarter; he is a prolific and marvelously ready writer of comic operetta scores, but it is not likely that he will ever attempt to find a suitable grand opera book and set it to music within six or eight months, while occupied, as he is, with a multitude of other enterprises. Mr. Hammerstein had promised in his prospectus that there would also be performances in German of "Lohengrin," "Tannhäuser," and "Tristan und Isolde." This part of the manager's scheme went by the board early in the season. It was contingent upon the presence in the company of singers familiar with the three works of Wagner. Of such there was only one when the season began, and she, Mme. Nordica, remained a member of Mr. Hammerstein's forces only six weeks, during much of which time she was idle. Mme. Schumann-Heink, though announced as a member of the company, interrupted her concert activity only long enough to sing once, and then she sang in an Italian opera ("Il Trovatore"), albeit she did her part in German.
Up to the coming of Signorina Tetrazzini Mr. Hammerstein pinned his faith on the interest which might be aroused in his French novelties. On the second subscription night he came forward with Berlioz's "Damnation de Faust," with which he had contemplated adorning his first season, and for which he had prepared the scenic outfit. The undramatic character of the transformed cantata had caused its failure at the Metropolitan Opera House in the season of 1906-07, and not even the fine performance of M. Renaud, whose impersonation of Mephistopheles is one of the noblest memories left by the season, the excellent singing of M. Dalmorès, and the beautiful pictures could save it. There was a long wait between the first and second representations, and after one more trial the work was abandoned. Meanwhile, however, Offenbach's "Contes d'Hoffmann," which had had a few performances at the Fifth Avenue Theater twenty-five years before, was brought forward. Again Messrs. Renaud and Dalmorès were admirably fitted with parts and scant justice done to the opera in the distribution of the women's rôles; but the charm of Offenbach's music overcame the defects of performance, and the opera achieved so pronounced a success that it could be given with profit eleven times before M. Renaud's departure from New York after the performance of February 4th.
The libretto of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" proclaims a phase of French literary taste which made heroes two generations ago out of two foreign romancers,—the German E. T. A. Hoffmann and the American Edgar Allan Poe. Very much alike were these two men in some of their strongest characteristics. Both were possessed of genius of a high order; both led lives of dissipation, which wrecked them physically; both found their fantastic creations in the world of supernaturalism which imagination, stimulated by alcoholic indulgence, presented to them as realities. This is literally true, at least, of Hoffmann, who, coming home from his nightly carouses with the boon companions, whom he has celebrated in his "Serapion's Brüder" (the coterie somewhat vulgarly parodied in the beginning and end of Offenbach's opera), was wont to call for his wife to sit beside him through the remainder of the night to ward off the ghostly, ghastly, grisly creatures which his own perfervid imagination had conjured up. Sixty years ago France was full of admiration for the weird tales of Hoffmann, and in view of the singular vicissitudes of the fantastic romancer's life, some of them quite as startling as the adventures which he ascribed to his imaginary creatures, it was not at all strange that Barbier and Carré should have conceived the idea of making him the hero of a play dealing with incidents of his own invention. In 1851 they brought out their play in five acts at the Odéon. It did not endure long, but it made so deep an impression on the mind of Offenbach that when he was seized with the ambition to write a serious work, which he might leave to the world as a legacy, to prove that his ambitions went beyond the things with which he amused the careless folk of the Second Empire, he turned to the old play for his libretto.
In a way it was a happy choice. If an author was to be blended with his creations and utilized for operatic purposes, history might be searched in vain for a better subject than Hoffmann. He was jurist, court councillor, romancer, caricaturist, scene painter, theatrical manager, and musical composer. In several ways he is living in the musical annals to-day. His opera, "Undine," is forgotten, though it was highly praised by Carl Maria von Weber, who had not feared soundly to abuse Beethoven; but his literary creation, the Chapelmaster Kreissler, lives in Schumann's "Kreissleriana," and other conceits of his filtered through Jean Paul, in other compositions by the same master. His criticisms, though cast in fantastic form, opened the eyes of many to the beauties of Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven. His admiration for Mozart went to such an extreme that he cast aside part of his baptismal name in order to substitute for it one of the given names of his hero—Amadeus. Of this admiration neither Offenbach nor his librettists were unaware, for when Hoffmann and Nicklausse come into the tavern where the roystering students greet them, in the prologue, they are still so full of the opera "Don Giovanni," to which they had just been listening, that Nicklausse quotes the words of Leporello's first song, and Offenbach reverently quotes the music.
Let no one think that the production of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" was in any way analogous with the operetta performances with which Mr. Conried lowered the status of the Metropolitan Opera House when he performed "Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" at his benefits. No serious reader of mine will expect to see in this place dispraise of the genius of Johann Strauss; but the works mentioned are operettas in form and in spirit, while "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" was conceived in an entirely different vein, and shows the musician who composed it in a character that no one would dream was his who knew him only as the composer of the Bouffes Parisiens. It is a pathetic, but also lovely, document in proof of the fact that with all his frivolity he wanted to die at least in the odor of artistic sanctity. The piquant rhythms and prettily superficial melodies of his musical farces were a perfect reflex of the careless art-feeling of his day, just as the farces themselves were admirably adjusted to the taste of the boulevardiers who basked in the sunshine of Napoleon the Little, and laughed uproariously while their Emperor and their social institutions were being castigated by the cynical German Jew and his librettists. "He was the Beethoven of the sneer," said Émil Bergerat, when Offenbach died, and then with a fantastic pencil worthy of the caricaturist Hoffmann himself, he drew a dreadful picture of Offenbach and his times; of the mighty fiddler beating time upon the well-filled goatskin and sawing away across the strings, his mouth widened with a grin "like some drunken conception of Edgar Poe's, or some fantasy of Hoffmann, while the startled birds flew back to heaven, the moon split herself back to her ears, and the stars giggled behind their cloud-fans." The planetary system only revolved to frisky rhythms, and the earth herself, like a mad top, hummed comically about the horrified sun. En avant la musique! and the old edifice crumbled in dust around the musician. To Bergerat Offenbach was the great disillusioner of the age, the incarnation of what he conceived to be the spirit of the nineteenth century, a spirit that hated and contemned the past, mocked at the things which the simplicity of preceding centuries held sacred, threw ridicule upon social sentiments, rank, caste, ceremonialism, learning, and religion.
The composer of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" is nothing of this. The opera was the child of his old age. He loved it, and labored over its score for years. It is full of lovely melody (the barcarolle of the second act will always exert a potent and lovely influence) fluent from beginning to end, and rich in dramatic characterization. No one is likely to listen to the trio at the culmination of the third act (that dealing with the fate of a singer's daughter) without realizing what a really admirable power of expression was that which Offenbach, for reasons explained by the spirit of the times and his own moral nature, chose to squander so many years on his opéras bouffes. Frequently the melodic line in the opera rises to admirable heights; always melody, harmony, and orchestration are refined, unless a burlesque effect is aimed at, as in the ballad of "Kleinzack," and Nicklausse's song of the doll. Offenbach's opera had its first performance on November 14, 1907, the cast being as follows:
Olympia ……………………………….. ZepilliGiulietta ……………………………… JomelliAntonia ……………………………….. BorelloNicklausse …………………………. De CisnerosA Voice ………………………………. GiaconiaHoffman ………………………………. DalmorèsCornelius |Dappertutto |Dr. Miracle | …………………………… RenaudSpalanzni |Grespel | …………………………… GilibertLindorff |Schlemihl | ……………………………. CrabbeCochenille |Pitichinaccio | ………………………….. DaddiFrantz …………………………. Gianoli-GalettiHermann ……………………………. ReschiglianNathaniel ……………………………. VenturiniLuther ……………………………….. FossettaConductor, Cleofonte Campanini
On November 25, 1907, Mr. Hammerstein brought forward Massenet's"Thaïs," to signalize the first appearance in America of Miss MaryGarden. The opera was produced with the following cast:
Thaïs ………………………………… Mary GardenCrobyle …………………………………. TrentiniMyrtale …………………………………. GiaconiaAlbine ……………………………. Gerville-ReacheAthanaël ………………………………….. RenaudNicias ………………………………….. CazouranPalemon …………………………………… MugnozUn Serviteur ………………………….. ReschiglianConductor, Campanini
With this work French opera won its second triumph. The charm of Miss Garden's personality was felt, but her singing compelled less tribute, and though the opera had seven representations before the departure of M. Renaud compelled its withdrawal, its success was due much more to him than to his fair companion. The Thaïs of MM. Gallet and Massenet is not the Thaïs of classical story, who induced Alexander to burn the palace of the Persian kings at Persepolis—"who like another Helen, fired another Troy"—but she is of her tribe. Also of the tribe of Phryne, Laïs, and Messalina, who live in history and in art because of their beauty and their pruriency, their loveliness and licentiousness. The operatic Thaïs is the invention of Anatole France, who borrowed her name for a courtesan of Alexandria some centuries after the historic woman lived. With the help of suggestions borrowed from the stories of innumerable saints who fled from the vicious world into the desert, and industriously cultivated sanctity and bodily filth, of converted trollops and holy Anthonys, he constructed a tale of how one of these desert saints, filled with ardor to save the soul of a cyprian who had the gay world of Alexandria at her feet, went to her, persuaded her to put her sinful life behind her, enter the retreat of a saintly sisterhood and die in grace, while he, falling at the last into the clutches of carnal lust, repented of his good deed and wrought his own damnation. Changing the name of the unfortunate zealot from Paphnuce to Athanaël, M. Louis Gallet made an opera-book out of France's story, and Massenet set it to music. It is a delectable story, but it fell into the hands of master craftsmen, and the admirers of "art for art's sake" and at any cost, have cause to rejoice at the treatment which it received. Glimpses into the life of the frowsy fraternity of cenobites, and fragments of their doleful canticles are not engaging in themselves, but they are fine foils to pictures of antique vice and the songs and dances of classic voluptuaries. There are splendid dramatic potentialities for those who like such things and those who find profit in exploiting in the juxtaposition cheek by jowl of saintliness and sin; of Christian hymning and harlotry; of virtue in a physical wrestle with vice, and coming out triumphant, but handing the palm over to the real victor at the end; in the picture of a monk sprinkling the couch of Venus with holy water, and decking his cowl with roses.
Also there was a large personal note in the original creation of "Thaïs," and there was a large personal note in its reproduction. It is not altogether a pleasant one for the lover of real art to listen to. Had there been no Sybil Sanderson, it is doubtful if Massenet would ever have been directed to the subject. True, he had shown a predilection for frail women as his heroines before, as witness Marie Magdalen, Eve, Herodias, and Manon Lescaut; but in the works which exploited these women the personal equation did not enter so far as the world knows or the printed page discloses. But when he wrote "Thaïs" it was neither histrionic nor musical art that be aimed primarily to exploit, but the physical charms of an individual. Something was needed for the jaded boulevardiers of Paris to leer at while they feebly clapped their hands and piped "Ah, charmante! Ravissante!" It may be that the fine command of Oriental color which is supposed to have affinity in the idioms of music with voluptuousness in all its forms, had something to do with the case, but the whole structure of the piece, superb as it is in its contrasting elements, and theatrically ingenious and effective, points nevertheless to the unfortunate Sanderson. And in the same way its Parisian revival points to Madame Cavalieri and Miss Garden, and its American production to the latter. For the sake of gifted singers and accomplished actors merely, the opera was not created, and will not be kept alive. It rests for its success on the kind of argument which Phryne, of classic story, presented to her austere judges.
The brilliancy of the play, its masterly handling of contrasts equally gratifying to the scenic artist, the actor, and the composer, challenged admiration and won it in large measure at the Manhattan performances. From the ordinary theatrical point of view it would not be easy to pick a quarrel with the drama. It would be almost churlish when there is so much to be grateful for, to pick flaws in M. Massenet's score. In the first place, compared with the vast volume of stuff poured forth by his younger colleagues of Italy, and even by some of his confrères of France, it makes appeal for approval by its evidences of consummate technical mastery. It never trickles; it never grows stagnant; it never gropes; it never fails for want of matter and manner in utterance. Its current is smooth and self-reliant. It carries action and scene buoyantly and unceasingly, even if it does not always expound them deeply or give them adequate external adornment. When it has no real warmth it simulates it admirably. Its texture is well-knit. There is purpose, not deep, not long-sustained, but, so far as it goes, logical, in the composer's application of the system of typical or representative phrases. There is, too, a measure of appositeness in the structure and character of his themes—the themes of asceticism, of Athanaël, of Thaïs. There is mastery of local color which makes the composer's use of Oriental tints as dramatically appropriate as it is engaging in all the scenes of ancient profligacy which fill the center of the artist's canvas.
M. Massenet's orchestra is an active agent in the development of the drama, and the episodes in which it becomes dominant are not pauses in the action created because of a felt need for something besides an undercurrent for the inane chatter of dialogue; instead they carry on the psychological action, the concealed drama which is playing on the stage of the hearts of the people concerned in the story. There is fitness in the interlude, in which Thaïs disposes herself to reproduce the pantomime of the loves of Aphrodite and Adonis, and a pretty touch of significance in the reminiscence of the music which had disturbed Athanaël's dream in the first act. There is more than mere musical charm in the intermezzo which follows the scene in which the monk wakes into life the conscience of the courtesan. She has defied him to the last, but the struggle in her soul has begun, and while he sleeps on the steps of her house the progress and outcome of the struggle are portrayed in the instrumental number which Massenet has called a "Religious Meditation." In itself it is not unlike scores of pieces similarly intituled, but it is made significant by its introduction of the theme of Thaïs in a chastened mood, in the garb of solemn gravity; and the melody of the violin solo, borne up by almost indefinable harmonies, and floated by harp arpeggios, recurs again before the death scene of Thaïs to delineate her ecstasy and Athanaël's despair. Though the intermezzo, thus admirably motived, marks the highest flight of Massenet's genius in this opera, there are many other pages in the score which might be chosen for praise. Enough that while the admirers of "Manon" and "Werther" are not likely to find the music of those operas equaled, they will yet find much to fascinate them in "Thaïs."
I have said, in effect, that the chief triumph in the performance of Massenet's opera was won by M. Renaud. Miss Garden had, indeed, established herself as a popular favorite, but it was not until the production of Charpentier's "Louise," on January 3, 1908, an opera with which her name was more intimately associated in popular report, that it could be said without qualification that French opera had won its battle. The principal parts in this opera were distributed amongst Mr. Hammerstein's singers thus:
Louise ………………………………. Miss Mary GardenJulien ……………………………. M. Charles DalmorèsMother of Louise …………………. Mme. Bressler-GianoliFather of Louise …………………… M. Charles GilibertIrma …………………………….. Mlle. Alice ZeppilliCamille ………………………………. Mlle. MorichiniGertrude ………………………………. Mlle. GiaconiaSuzanne …………………………. Mlle. Helene KoellingKing of the Fools ………………………… M. VenturiniA Ragpicker ……………………………. M. ReschiglianA Junkman ………………………………….. M. MugnozElise |A Street Sweeper | ……………………… Mlle. SeverinaA Street Arab ………………………….. Mlle. TrentiniAn Apprentice …………………………… Mlle. SigristConductor, Campanini
"Louise" had made a great noise, both in a literal and figurative sense, during the greater part of the preceding eight years. It had made the rounds of the principal opera houses on the European continent, but most of the noise came from Paris, and among those who sat in Mr. Hammerstein's boxes and stalls on the occasion of its American production there were many who had already made the acquaintance of the work at the Opéra Comique, in the French capital. It is likely that their interest in the performance was mingled more or less with curious questionings touching the attitude which local opera-lovers would assume toward it. There is a vast difference in the mood in which Americans go to public entertainments in Paris and at home. In a sense, though not a large or dignified one, the tragic element in the story of Charpentier's opera is universal; but its representation is in every particular the most local and circumscribed of any opera ever written. I am not disposed to waste much time or space in a discussion of things to which the patrons of our playhouses have often exhibited a callous indifference. It is only to justify a hurried analysis of the artistic nature of the work that attention is called to some of its essential characteristics. "Louise" is not a French opera, though its score is French, its people speak French, and its music echoes French measures when it is original, and also when borrowed or imitated. "Louise" is Parisian in its gaiety, its passions, its vulgarity, and its artistic viciousness. If music could in itself give expression to ethical ideas, it would also be proper to say that this score is Parisian in its immorality. Coupled with its story, which glorifies the licentiousness of Paris and makes mock of virtue, the sanctity of the family tie, and the institutions upon which social stability and human welfare have ever rested and must forever rest, the music may also be set down as immoral. Certain it is that there is nothing in it that is spiritually uplifting, and as little that makes for gentleness and refinement of artistic taste. It is not French in the historic sense, because it rudely tramples upon all the esthetic principles for which the French composers, from Lully to the best of Charpentier's contemporaries have stood—elegance, grace, and beauty of expression.