O my Father, if this cup may not pass awayfrom me, except I drink it, Thy will be done,
O my Father, if this cup may not pass awayfrom me, except I drink it, Thy will be done,
O my Father, if this cup may not pass awayfrom me, except I drink it, Thy will be done,
O my Father, if this cup may not pass away
from me, except I drink it, Thy will be done,
is one of the most moving that I know of in the history of religious music.
In the last part there is an exquisite but simple setting of an ancient Eastern hymn, “O Filii et Filiæ.” Altogether I cannot understand why, in the dearth of religious music written by modern pens, “Christus” does not take its permanent place in the repertoire of choral societies.
Like many other works of the greatest masters, a few good cuts will add to the effectiveness of this oratorio.
VI
The Metropolitan Opera House was built in 1882 by a group of rich New Yorkers who, feeling themselves shut out by the older aristocracy who owned the old Academy of Music and occupied all the boxes at the Italian Opera seasons of Colonel Mapleson, determined to have an opera of their own. They leased their new house for the inaugural season of 1883-84 to Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau, a firm of theatrical speculators and managers who had made a name for themselves by the tours of Mary Anderson and other celebrated “stars” of Europe and America.
The Metropolitan Opera stockholders had appointed as architect a man whose reputation had been made in building churches, but who knew nothing of theatrical or operatic requirements, or of the latest developments in Europe in the construction of the stage and modern stage appliances. As a result, the stage arrangements were of the most clumsy description. Great walls, many feet thick, ran beneath the stage from the front to the rear, thereby precluding the possibility of a “transformation” scene in which one set of scenery could sink into the ground while the other descended from above. The parquet floor was placed so low that the orchestra pit, which was supposed to be an imitation (but was not) of the sunken orchestra at Bayreuth, had to be placed still lower and in consequence the conductor was perched on a kind of pulpit high in the air so that the singers could see him.He had to gesticulate wildly upward toward the singers and downward toward the abyss in which the orchestra fiddled without being able properly to see his gestures. Besides this, the orchestra, being so far from the stage, was almost inaudible to the singers, and this often resulted in the most disastrous dropping of the pitch, especially in the concerted numbers. Years later and at huge expense some of these faults of construction were corrected.
For their season Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau engaged a large number of operatic stars, including Nilsson, Patti, Sembrich, Trebelli, and many others of distinction, but there was absolutely no artistic head of the enterprise nor any one who had had any real managerial experience with grand opera, and in consequence all these stars stepped on each other’s feet and trains and the confusion was incredible. Good performances were an accident, as the principal artists usually deemed it beneath their dignity to attend rehearsals, and the season ended in failure and the bankruptcy of Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau. Colonel Mapleson, the astute manager of the Academy of Music, rubbed his hands with glee at this downfall of what he called “the new yellow brewery on Broadway.” The directors of the Metropolitan were at a loss what to do with their elephant. Their president was James Roosevelt, an uncle of Hilborn Roosevelt who was then president of the New York Symphony Society and who was a stanch and devoted friend of my father’s. He suggested to his uncle that my father be appointed as director and that a season of opera in German be inaugurated, as Italian opera was evidently on the wane and Wagner, especially, on the ascendant.
The directors thought well of this scheme and accordinglymade an arrangement with my father under which he should become director of the opera for the season 1884-85 and that he should engage a company of German singers of which, however, Madame Materna must be one, as she had sung with great success at the Theodore Thomas Festival of the preceding year and they wanted some name already known in America to head the list of singers.
This meant a complete revolution in operatic affairs, as until then Italian opera had been the only fashionable form of musical entertainment. Opera in German was rather looked down upon and Wagner’s genius was as yet too imperfectly known or recognized to exercise much influence on the opera-going folks of that time.
My father was to receive a salary of ten thousand dollars, for which he was to act as manager and also as musical conductor of the season. The salary was certainly not large, even for those days, but my father was glad to get it and at the same time to carry out the dream of his life, the introduction of the Wagner music-dramas to America, and to sweep away forever the artificial and shallow operas of the old Italian school with which Mapleson, Max Strakosh, and others had until then principally fed our public.
He sailed for Europe in May and returned in August with all his contracts made, including Madame Materna, to whom he had to pay a thousand dollars a night, as she had gotten wind of the dictum of the Metropolitan Opera House directors that under all circumstances she must be one of the company.
Among the singers were Marianne Brandt, one of the greatest dramatic mezzo-sopranos and contraltos of our times, and Anton Schott, a typical German “heroictenor,” with whom Bülow had had his famous altercation at Hanover a few years before at a “Lohengrin” performance. Schott had sungLohengrin’s“Farewell to the Swan” out of tune and this had so irritated Bülow, who was conducting, that he turned on the unfortunate tenor and said to him: “You are not a Knight of the Swan, but a Knight of the Swine.” Schott, as an ex-officer in a Hanoverian regiment, deemed his honor as an officer insulted, demanded an apology or a duel, and as the irate von Bülow would grant him neither the one nor the other, Bülow had to resign his post as director of the Royal Opera, while Schott remained triumphant in his position.
For the youthful lyric soprano rôles my father had engaged Madame Seidl-Kraus, the wife of Anton Seidl and possessor of a voice of great purity and simple appeal. The coloratura rôles were sung by Madame Schroeder-Hanfstangel, a truly great artist, with the realbel cantoof the Italian school, whom Gounod had admired so greatly that he invited her to Paris to singMargueritein “Faust” at the Grand Opera.
The other singers possessed both the virtues and the failings of the German Opera School of that time. They were very amenable to ensemble work, carrying out the dramatic side of their rôles with real ability, forming an excellent ensemble, and tireless in rehearsing, but their singing was sometimes faulty and not equal to the naturally beautiful tone emission of the best Italian singers.
The stage-manager, Wilhelm Hock, was one of the best in Germany and his management of the movements of great crowds on the stage, as for instance in “Lohengrin” on the arrival ofLohengrinand theSwan, the building of the barricades in “Massaniello,” the CoronationScene in Meyerbeer’s “Le Prophète,” was a revelation to our public. The orchestra was, of course, that of the New York Symphony Society, and my father infused the entire ensemble with such an ideal of perfection that during many of the performances, especially in “Lohengrin,” “Le Prophète,” “Fidelio,” and “Walküre,” the public seethed with excitement and enthusiasm. There had been an “improvised” performance of “Walküre” at the Academy of Music under the German conductor Neuendorf a few years before. TheBrunhildehad been sung by Madame Pappenheim, possessor of a glorious voice, but the rest of the cast had been woefully deficient. Insufficient rehearsals and ignorance of the music of Wagner on the part of the conductor had also prevented this performance from making any impression or giving any real idea of the beauties of the work.
The performance under my father included Madame Materna asBrunhilde, who had created the rôle in Bayreuth in ’76 and who was then at the very height of her glorious vocal powers; Madame Seidl-Kraus, an exquisite and patheticSieglinde; Anton Schott, a vigorous and highly dramaticSiegmund; and Staudigl asWotan. Staudigl was a son of the famous old Viennese bass with whom he had studied, singing with such good results that he made as fine an impression in concert and oratorio as in opera. The first barytone was Adolf Robinson, who had begun his career with my father in Breslau and whose warm impassionedbel cantowon instant recognition here.
There was no professional opera claque at the Metropolitan in those days such as is now maintained by some of the singers and conductors who, in rivalry with each other, foolishly spend their money in the hiring of twenty to fifty husky men, under a well-trained leader, who standat the side of the balconies and family circle and clap with the machine-like regularity of a steel hammer in an iron foundry in order to produce so and so many recalls after an act. In those days this was not necessary. The public applauded wildly and shouted themselves hoarse of their own free will, and the papers almost unanimously pronounced the performances an artistic revolution, and said that such dramatic truth and ensemble work had but seldom before been presented in such a convincing way on the operatic stage of New York.
During the entire winter I lived in a sea of excitement and of joy at seeing my father’s genius at last so universally recognized. But my anxiety was also very great. I was with him constantly, from morning until night, and could see that the labor of carrying everything entirely on his shoulders, the effort of organizing an artistic whole out of the many different elements, was overwhelming. The rehearsals often lasted all day and I do not think that I missed a rehearsal or a performance during the entire season. Sometimes I would timidly implore my father to put some of the work, especially the managerial part, on other shoulders, but he would not listen, saying that the responsibility was his and that he could not delegate what he conceived to be his solemn duty as one representing German art in a foreign country to any one else.
In the meantime, the directors, after deliberating on their future course, decided that opera in German had come to stay and offered my father a contract for the following year in which, however, with what they conceived to be real business methods, they reduced his salary to eight thousand dollars but offered him a share in any possible profits. Money matters were to my fatheralways so unimportant as far as he was concerned, that I think he would have signed a contract in which he bound himself to pay eight thousand dollars a year to the Metropolitan Opera House for the privilege of maintaining Wagnerian opera there. He accepted their proposition and was happy in the evident security of opera in German for many years to come. During this winter he would not give up his beloved Symphony and Oratorio Societies, and he always insisted that the weekly Thursday-evening rehearsals with the chorus of the Oratorio Society were a rest for him from operatic affairs.
During one of these rehearsals in February 1885 (I think we were preparing the “Requiem” of Verdi) he suddenly complained of feeling ill and I rushed from the piano toward him, and together with some of the singers we carried him to a cab and brought him home.
Pneumonia set in and he was too worn with the gigantic struggles of the winter to withstand it. During this terrible week of illness the opera had to be kept going and I conducted “Walküre” and “Tannhäuser” without much difficulty. They had been so splendidly rehearsed by my father and had been performed several times; I knew them by heart, and artists, chorus, and orchestra gave me the most affectionate and willing assistance. I have therefore never claimed much credit for what many kind friends at that time considered an extraordinary feat.
The season had only one more week to run, but my father had made arrangements for a short tour comprising Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia.
On February 15 he died and left me numb and overwhelmed by the terrible responsibilities which began to press in upon me. Even at this late date I cannot bearto write of my loss. Our relations had become so close and intimate, and during the last years he had so often leaned on me with such sweet confidence. I had always looked up to him as my ideal of a man and musician, and it seemed to me that I could never smile again.
The last performances at the Metropolitan immediately after his death were conducted by John Lund, a highly talented chorus master who has since made his home in America, but there were so many immediate necessities crowding in upon me that I had no opportunity for indulging in quiet grief. Events moved with incredible and terrible swiftness. The contracts for the tour had to be met. My father’s estate was technically liable, although he left literally no money. There was no one to assume the responsibility of taking the company on tour except poor me, and I accordingly set forth, together with the entire company of about a hundred and fifty members, on a special train of the West Shore Railroad for Chicago on Saturday afternoon of February 21. We were to open with “Tannhäuser” at the Columbia Theatre on the following Monday evening. During this trip the worst blizzard of the year struck our train. We were completely snowed in and the road, which was at that time a rather lame rival of the New York Central, was so ill-equipped with means to shovel us out that instead of arriving on Sunday evening, we did not get into Chicago until Monday at eight P. M., the hour at which the performance was to have begun. My dear brother Frank, who had come on from Denver to meet me in Chicago and to discuss future plans, boarded our train a little while out of Chicago and told me that not only was the house sold out, but all had determined to wait until we arrived and chivalrously to “see us through.” Themayor of the city had made an excited speech from the proscenium box in which he was sitting and said that Chicago must help a young man like myself who had so courageously undertaken to carry on the great work of his father.
When we arrived at the station the company were quickly bundled into cabs and omnibuses. Luckily the scenery had been sent on ahead, but the costume and property trunks were on our train, and the work of transferring them and getting out the “Tannhäuser” costumes and properties was agonizing.
Materna and I were the first to arrive at the theatre, and we were marched through the auditorium from the front entrance by the local manager who wished to give this ocular demonstration of our presence. The audience cheered.
Behind the scenes the confusion was incredible. The trunks with the wigs could not be found, nor the trunks with the footwear, andTannhäuserand the other singers of the Wartburg, together with the noble lords and ladies, appeared on the stage in a most remarkable combination of costumes, mediæval and modern. But it made no difference. I began the overture after ten o’clock. The audience cheered themselves hoarse.
The trunk containing Materna’s costume asElizabethwas not hurled on the stage until just before the beginning of the second act. It made no difference. When she appeared in all her smiling radiance and sang “Dich Theure Halle” the audience again went mad with delight, and so on until the curtain finally fell at one-thirty in the morning.
Ever since that terrible but wonderful evening I have had a soft spot in my heart for Chicago, and during themany years I have never lost the friendship of that remarkable city. Even to-day, every now and then, an old gray-headed or bald-headed citizen of Chicago comes to me and says: “Do you remember that first performance of ‘Tannhäuser’ at the Columbia Theatre in February, 1885?”
The success was so great that we extended our season an extra week, during which I produced for the first time “La Dame Blanche” by Boieldieu.
We finished our tour with a week in Boston, where we had a similarly enthusiastic reception, and especially “Walküre” and “Lohengrin” made a profound impression. There I produced (for the first time in America, I think) Gluck’s “Orpheus,” in which Marianne Brandt gave a glorious and touching impersonation of the title-rôle. It is characteristic of the audacity of youth that I should have given two new performances of operas which were rehearsed and produced while we were on tour, “La Dame Blanche” and “Orpheus.” But as the principal rôles had been sung by most of our artists in Germany, these two operas being in the regular repertoire of every German opera-house, the feat was not so extraordinary. The performances were good in ensemble and gave great pleasure to the audience.
My farewell performance in Boston was a Saturday matinée of the “Walküre” with Materna asBrunhilde. In the morning the orchestra struck. We had made arrangements to send the entire company to New York on one of the large Fall River steamers, but they vowed that they would not go by steamer and insisted on being sent by train. I was equally determined to send them by water. The steamers were palatial, the weather excellent spring weather, and there was no valid reason for objecting.When they persisted in their demands I told them that I would consider them as having broken their contracts, that I would not pay them their salaries for the week, and would give the “Walküre” performance accompanied on two pianos, by John Lund and myself. This was, of course, a crazy bluff, but it worked and they decided to accept passage by steamer.
At the close of the third act of “Walküre,” when Materna asBrunhildehad snuggled into the artificially deep hollow of the rocky couch which sustained her bulky form and on which she was to begin her slumber of years until the hero,Siegfried, should awaken her, and when Staudigl (Wotan) had disappeared in the flames, I suddenly noticed, while conducting the beautiful monotony of the last E-major chords of the Fire Charm, that the grass mats just belowBrunhilde’scouch had caught fire, and that just as the curtain was descending slowly on the last bars a Boston fireman with helmet on his head and bucket in his hand quietly came out from the wings and poured a liberal dose of water on the flames. The thing happened so late and so quickly that there was no panic. The people went mad with enthusiasm and Materna, Staudigl, and I had to bow our farewells many, many times. Just after one of these recalls I noted the little fireman standing in the wings and saying: “Be jabbers, I ought to come out too.”
“So you should,” I said, and with that took him by one hand and Materna by the other and thus we dragged him before the footlights where, with true Hibernian sense of humor, he bowed right and left with a delighted grin on his face.
Thus ended my first opera tour.
While I was on tour the directors of the MetropolitanOpera House met to consider their future policy, and, in view of the success of the opera in German inaugurated by my father, they decided to continue on the same lines. Curiously enough they appointed a young man as director of the opera who had never had any managerial or musical experience in his life. His name was Edmund C. Stanton. He was a relative of one of the directors and had acted as recording secretary for the Board of Directors. He was tall, good-looking, with gentle brown eyes, always well groomed, of a kindly disposition and the most perfect and courtly manners which indeed never failed him and which were about all that he had left at the end of his seven years’ incumbency, at which time the German opera crumbled to dust as a natural result of his curious ignorance and incompetency in matters operatic. The directors at the same time very generously appointed me as his assistant and as second conductor, granting me a salary which was large enough to enable me to support my mother and my father’s family decently. This was naturally a great relief to me and I determined to strain every nerve to show myself worthy of such confidence and generosity.
VII
In the spring of 1885 I was to accompany Mr. Stanton as assistant director and musical adviser to engage singers for the following season of German opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, but as Mr. Stanton’s little daughter became ill and subsequently died, I went over alone and have always been quite proud of the four contracts I had ready for Stanton’s signature when he, a month later, arrived in Germany. These were Lilli Lehmann, soprano from the Royal Opera House in Berlin; Emil Fischer, bass from the Royal Opera House in Dresden; Max Alvary, lyric tenor from Weimar, and Anton Seidl, conductor of the Angelo Neumann Wagner Opera Company. These four artists became subsequently the mainstay of the German opera and in America developed to greater and greater power and fame.
Lilli Lehmann, at that time forty years of age, had sung principally the coloratura rôles, and with these had made a great local reputation throughout Germany and Austria. She had sung theFirst Rhine Maidenat Bayreuth in 1876, and an occasionalElsain “Lohengrin,” but it was not until she came to America that she began to sing theBrunhildesandIsoldeswhich made her one of the greatest dramatic sopranos of her time. Curiously enough, she insisted on making her first appearance in America asCarmen, a rôle to which she gave a dramatic, tragic, and rather sombre significance, but in which thelighter, coquettish touches were perhaps not sufficiently emphasized.
She had achieved her pre-eminence as a dramatic soprano only after years of the hardest kind of work, and had only through her indomitable will and energy changed her voice from a light coloratura to a dramatic soprano, and as I was at that period only twenty-three and already occupied a position of considerable responsibility, it took some time before she was ready to concede that I was really a musician of serious purpose who was working day and night to fit myself for the various responsibilities so suddenly thrust upon me.
Conducting is an art with a technic of its own, and good musicianship alone is not sufficient. During a performance the conductor must know how to make his singers and players convey his interpretation, and to do this, a glance of the eye and many different movements of hands and head have to speak a language of their own which his executants must quickly understand and follow. The conductor must also know when and how to follow a soloist with sympathy. This technic cannot be acquired overnight, and I owe to Lilli Lehmann a valuable hint in this connection. As Anton Seidl was the accredited and celebrated Wagner conductor, these operas and any other novelties of importance naturally fell to him, and it remained for me to conduct only such operas as he did not care to assume—Meyerbeer’s “Le Prophète,” Verdi’s “Trovatore,” etc., etc. This caused me great sorrow and anguish of heart, as a great part of my training had been in the modern operas. I almost knew the Wagner music-dramas by heart and had received a very thorough training in the symphonies of the classic composers, but for the operas of Meyerbeer and Verdi,I had a youthful intolerance, and of their traditions of tempi and nuance I knew but little, with the exception, perhaps, of Meyerbeer’s “Le Prophète,” which had been marvellously performed under my father the preceding year and in which Marianne Brandt had sung the part of the mother with incredible pathos and nobility.
One day, while I was rehearsing “La Juive,” of Halévy, Lilli Lehmann turned on me during the intermission and said: “Walter, in those old operas you do not watch the singers enough, you are occupied with the orchestra as if you were conducting a symphony. You give them the cue for their entrances and you look at them instead of at your singers. We need you and you need us. The orchestra have their printed parts before them; we sing by heart and have to rely on the conductor for difficult entrances. Watch my lips when I sing, and you will know when I breathe and you will breathe with me; you will immediately also sense thetempo rubatowhich is such an important part in the proper phrasing of these older operas.”
This advice was a revelation to me, and I found to my delight that by heeding it, not only was I able to follow the singers with the orchestra, but even to influence the singers in regard to tempi. At the performance of “La Juive” I must have stared at Lilli like a Cheshire cat whenever she was singing. The music went with remarkable unanimity and elasticity, and at the close of the performance Lilli, who was never very profuse in praise, turned to me and said: “You see, Walter, how well it goes. What did I tell you?”
In this way, slowly and often painfully, I strengthened my grasp of the technic of my craft, and with increased assurance on my part came an increased compliance on thepart of the singers to follow my artistic desires as regards the interpretation of their rôles.
But the operas that I was permitted to conduct were still only the left-overs from Anton Seidl’s richly laden table, and he was naturally not willing to give up any of his prerogatives to a man so much younger. My first real opportunity came in the year 1890, when Seidl was to conduct an exquisite opera by Peter Cornelius, “The Barber of Baghdad.” Paul Kalisch, Lilli Lehmann’s husband, was to singNureddinand Emil Fischer the loquacious Barber. Cornelius had been a devoted and close friend of my father and mother in the old Weimar days under Liszt. Liszt had produced this opera in Weimar in those days, but the Weimar public had rejected it because of what they considered to be its ultramodern tendencies, and because of this, Liszt had resigned his position of Grand Ducal Kapellmeister. I was naturally much interested in our New York production. I had attended almost every rehearsal and had revelled in the exquisite beauties and humor of the work.
Two days before the performance, Seidl became dangerously ill and I was in a fever of uncertainty whether Stanton would postpone the performance or let me conduct it. I found that Lilli Lehmann protested loudly that it would be impossible for me to conduct this work, that it was too difficult and too intricate, and that it needed a conductor of many years’ experience and plenty of rehearsals at that. But I seemed to have “good friends at court” and it was decided that I should conduct the general rehearsal that morning for which singers, chorus, and orchestra had been hastily called together, and if all went well I was to conduct the performance. As I walked into the orchestra pit I could see Lilli Lehmann seatedall by herself a few rows back, looking at me with what seemed to me baleful and threatening eyes. But as I turned my back on her and gave the signal for the overture, my apprehension left me and I gave myself up completely to the music. The curtain rose and Kalisch beganNureddin’slovely song together with his attendants on awakening from his long illness to renewed health and with renewed longings for his belovedMargiana. Everything went as if on wings and at the end of the act I saw, to my delight, among the singers who were rushing toward me with affectionate congratulations, Lilli, the stately, telling me that she had not believed it possible, but was now convinced that I had a thorough grasp of the music and could conduct it successfully.
The performance the next day went even better than the rehearsal, and I date from this my entry as a full-fledged opera conductor, and my relations with Lilli Lehmann became artistically more and more fraternal and personally more and more friendly.
In 1897-98 I engaged her to singIsoldeand theBrunhildesin my Damrosch Opera Company and paid her a thousand dollars a night and all hotel and travelling expenses for two people (her sister Marie travelled with her), and she also insisted that I must pay her laundry bills. But I found that this remarkable woman, having established her right to these perquisites by contract, refused to abuse them, and when she found that I paid quite a large figure for her “parlor, bedroom, and bath” at the Normandie Hotel near the Metropolitan, she was furious; and, saying that she did not see why these rascally hotel proprietors should be enriched by me, she moved to a much cheaper suite at the top of the hotel and she and her sister did a great deal of their laundry in their ownbathroom, partly because she wished to save me the expense, and also because she insisted that all American laundries ruined delicate lingerie. Incidentally the elevator boys insisted that she never tipped them, and I sent my manager to her hotel to do this, as otherwise she would not have received adequate service.
So much has been written about her marvellous portrayal of the heroic figures in the Wagner music-dramas that it is hardly necessary for me to add anything to the general chorus of admiration, but I wish to emphasize the fact that by far the greater part of the credit belongs to her for her indomitable will and perseverance, as nature had not given her originally a dramatic voice. It was a wonderfully clear and high coloratura soprano, but by persistent practice she developed an ample middle and lower register and made it equal to the emotional demands of anIsoldeor aBrunhilde.
Her acting was majestic, but in the first act of “Tristan” and in the second act of “Götterdämmerung” her anger was like forked flashes of lightning. I suppose that her technic of acting would be called old-fashioned to-day, as those were the days of statuesque poses, often maintained without changes for long stretches at a time.
On the forenoon of the days that she had to singIsoldeshe always sang through the entire rôle in her rooms with full voice, just to make sure that she could do it in the evening. Compare this to those delicate prima donnas who, on the days when they have to sing, often speak only in whispers in order that their precious vocal cords may not be affected.
Having achieved so much through her own energy and triumphed over so many obstacles, she thought that she could similarly transform her husband, Paul Kalisch,from a lyric to a dramatic tenor. How she worked and harassed that poor man! She certainly was the stronger of the two, and while his entire inclination was toward easy and delightful companionship with others of similar inclinations, she forced him to study and to sing for hours at a stretch, but with only partial success as far as his transformation into a real dramatic and “heroic” Wagner tenor was concerned. It simply was not in his nature to become “heroic,” and when, as sometimes happened, he committed some blunder, some false entrance while singingSiegfriedin the “Götterdämmerung,” the glances whichBrunhildecast upon him on the stage were so terrible, so pregnant with punishment to come, that from my conductor’s stand I used to pity the poor man thus compelled to swim around in a pond which was so much larger than he wanted; and often after such a performance I would find him moodily seated all alone at a table in the restaurant of the hotel with a pint bottle of champagne before him and with no desire to go upstairs and face the anger of hisBrunhildespouse.
A tragic but rather amusing occurrence in Pittsburgh should here be recorded. The Damrosch Opera Company was playing a week there at the Alvin Theatre. On the night in question we were to give “Götterdämmerung” with Lilli Lehmann asBrunhilde. All was well. No singers had sent ominous messages of illness during the day, and I had just sat down to a quiet dinner at the Duquesne Club, previous to the performance, when a telephone summoned me. It was my wardrobe mistress, Frau Engelhardt, an excellent woman, devoted to her work, who had been at the Metropolitan in the old German opera days and who had been with me ever since the founding of the Damrosch Opera Company. She imploredme to come to the theatre immediately as something dreadful had happened. I of course left my dinner with but faint hope of eating it later on, arrived at the theatre and found the stage silent as the grave, the scene set for the first act of “Götterdämmerung” and seemingly no one there but Frau Engelhardt, who in greatest agitation begged me to come immediately to Madame Lehmann’s dressing-room, where the “something dreadful had happened.”
I knocked at her door and heard a tragic and hollow voice call “come in,” and as I opened the door a sight indeed terrible met my astonished gaze. There stood Lilli Lehmann, already apparelled in her whiteBrunhildegarb, but covered from head to foot with soot, so black that she seemed more fit for a minstrel show than a Wagner music-drama. Her face was covered with black streaks, especially where her tears had made long and terrible furrows down her cheeks. I could not imagine what had happened, and only gradually and between hysterical bursts of tears, I learned that Lilli, according to her custom, had gone to the theatre hours before the performance and had proceeded to dress herself, only looking into the glass at the last moment to prepare her make-up. She had then discovered the terrible condition of her face and costume. It seemed that the janitor had given the heater in the cellar a special raking which had sent tons of this dreadful Pittsburgh soft-coal soot flying through the registers and into the dressing-rooms where it settled like a pall on everything within reach.
Lilli vowed that it was absolutely impossible for her to sing that night and I was in despair. It suddenly came to me that if I could divert her mind in some waythe tension might be eased, and I therefore turned on poor trembling Frau Engelhardt and told her in as angry tones as I could dramatically summon, that she was discharged, that it was her duty to take care of my artists, and to allow such an outrage to happen to the greatest of all of them was something which I could not understand or forgive.
As soon as I denounced our wardrobe mistress in this manner, Lilli pricked up her ears and remonstrated with me at my injustice. She insisted that it was not Frau Engelhardt’s fault and that it was very wrong of me to discharge her. It showed that I had no heart and she for one would never hold her responsible for such an occurrence. Slowly I allowed myself to be persuaded and at the psychological moment gently left the dressing-room, giving Frau Engelhardt a comprehensive glance which she understood. I knew that the two women together would soon set matters to right.
Outside the dressing-room I found my faithful Hans, son of my prompter, Goettich. I gave him some money and told him to run to a florist and buy a bunch of the whitest flowers that he could find and to bring them to Madame Lehmann with my compliments. I then returned to the club and finished my dinner.
When I got back to the theatre just before the performance, I found Lilli already on the stage, newly attired in clean white robes, but as she turned toward me I could still discern darkish streaks beneath the make-up of her cheeks, and in her sombre, dramatic voice she said: “Walter, I thank you for the lovely white flowers, but they will never, never wash me clean again.” Her singing that night seemed to me more glorious than ever.
From Pittsburgh we went to New York, where I hadarranged with Abbey and Grau to give me the Metropolitan Opera House for a short season of three weeks. As I wanted a special attraction for New York, I engaged Madame Nordica for a few “Lohengrin” performances in which she was to singElsa, and Lilli Lehmann,Ortrude, a part that she had never sung in New York, but whose dramatic possibilities interested her very much and for which she was eminently suited. At first she was furious that I had engaged any other singer for New York. “If I was sufficient to carry on your season out of town, I do not see why you have to engage that —— for New York.” But I explained to her my managerial reasons and somewhat pacified her, and as soon as we arrived in New York I arranged for a little rehearsal on the stage of the Metropolitan for Lehmann, Nordica, and myself, in order that all the scenes, especially of the second act, in which their acting together was of importance, might be properly arranged. At this rehearsal Lehmann treated Nordica with icy disdain, but Nordica acted with such clever tact and deference that Lehmann could find no hook upon which to hang her anger, and the rehearsal passed off with outward calmness, although I could feel the volcano trembling beneath. As we passed out into the street in the late afternoon a terrible rain-storm was raging and Lilli saw Madame Nordica approach a coachman in livery who was waiting with opened umbrella to take her to her coupé. Lilli, clad in a long gray rain-coat and old hat, turned to Nordica: “Ha, you ride? I valk!” she said, as she lifted her dress and showed a pair of great boots.
Incidentally my “showman’s instinct” had proved correct. Our performances of “Lohengrin” with this combination proved artistically very interesting and thepublic flocked to hear them. Nordica’sElsahad been very carefully trained at Bayreuth, and Lehmann’sOrtrudewas truly demoniac, worthy to rank with that of Marianne Brandt’s in its representation of concentrated hatred.
LILLI LEHMANN AS ISOLDE
LILLI LEHMANN AS ISOLDE
VIII
In 1856 my father and Hans von Bülow, pianist, were struggling to gain recognition and a livelihood in Berlin. Both were idealists and enthusiastic followers of the “new school” in music, of which Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner were the great representatives. Bülow’s letters of that period show that they gave many chamber-music concerts together, both in Berlin and elsewhere, and it is interesting to note that at one of them, together with the violoncellist, Kossman, they performed a trio by “César Franck of Liège,” about thirty years before this father of the modern French school of composition became generally known and recognized. It was through Bülow that my father and his achievements as a violin virtuoso and composer became known to Liszt, who invited him, in 1857, to become violinist at the first desk of the Weimar Opera Orchestra, then under Liszt’s direction.
The friendship between Bülow and my father remained intimate and fine during my father’s entire life, and even beyond, as this chapter will show.
My first recollection of Bülow goes back to 1876, when he came to America at the invitation of the Chickering Piano firm to inaugurate their new Chickering Hall on Fifth Avenue and 19th Street, and to give piano recitals all over the country.
When my father and mother went to Berlin in thesixties for a joint concert with Bülow, they stayed with him and his wife, Cosima. Since then much had happened. Cosima had run away with Wagner, Bülow’s most adored friend, and Bülow had nearly died with the shame and misery of it. One evening during dinner at our house my mother asked him about his children, whom she had not seen since those early days, and I can still hear the punctilious courtesy with which he answered: “They are where they should be, and in the best possible hands—with their mother.”
The fine intellectuality of his playing, the quality of his phrasing, especially in Bach and Beethoven, created a deep impression on our public which was not minimized by certain eccentricities in his appearance and behavior. He always appeared on the stage for his afternoon recitals attired in the traditional black double-breasted frock coat and very light-gray trousers, his hands incased in light-brown gloves and holding a high silk hat which was carefully deposited under the piano before he took off his gloves and began to play.
For one of his recitals a young and highly talented soprano, Miss Emma Thursby, had been engaged. She was a protégée of old Maurice Strakosch, an impresario of the old school, shrewd, polished in his manners, who very cleverly advertised the high personal character of the young singer and especially her great “purity,” vowing that acquaintance with her, hardened old sinner that he was, had made him a better man.
At the Bülow recital her singing of some German songs by Schubert and Schumann, I think, was received with such enthusiastic applause that she gave an encore, a rather trivial song by Franz Abt. When Bülow, in his dressing-room, heard this “desecration” of a programmecomposed of works of great masters only, his rage knew no bounds, and when he came out on the stage to continue his own programme, he deliberately took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped the keys of the piano up and down in a noisy glissando scale and then began to improvise on the recitative from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “O friends, not these tones. . . .”
Another time he gave a chamber-music concert with my father and they played, among other things, the “Kreutzer Sonata” of Beethoven. Just before going on the stage he turned to my father and said:
“Let us play it by heart.”
“With pleasure,” answered my father and laid down his music.
“No, no,” said Bülow, “take it on the stage with you.”
After they had taken their places on the stage Bülow ostentatiously rose, took my father’s music from the stand and his own from the piano and laid them both under the piano.
His memory, not only for music, but for all things that interested him, was prodigious and to me uncanny. But it was, after all, human and not infallible, and on this occasion he did lose his place in the last movement of the sonata and my father had to improvise with him for a few bars until, with quick ingenuity, he found the thread again.
I have spoken elsewhere of the terrible responsibilities which were placed upon my shoulders because of the sudden death of my father, and as the years went by I seemed to miss him more and more, not only his wonderful companionship, but the wise counsel with which he used to help me solve my musical riddles. I worked hard and made progress, I think, for my circle of friends and followersgrew larger and larger. But I knew no one in this country to whom I could turn in the same way as to my father, or who would have given me of his wisdom so freely and generously as he. Seidl, my associate at the Metropolitan, was not friendly and was completely wrapped up in himself, and besides, he had, to my thinking, only one specialty, the Wagner music-dramas. As a symphonic conductor he was completely without experience when he first came to America and his interpretation of the classics lacked foundation and real penetration, in spite of the noisy acclaim which a certain part of our public gave him because of his undoubted genius as a Wagner conductor.
A lucky chance brought me a clipping from a German newspaper announcing that Hans von Bülow would spend the summer of 1887 in Frankfort, where he would teach a class of advanced pianists and devote the entire receipts toward building a monument to his old friend, Joachim Raff, who had spent his last years in Frankfort as director of the conservatory.
I immediately determined to go to Germany and ask Bülow if, in view of his old friendship with my father and my need of the help of some great musician, he would be willing to let me study with him the interpretation of the Beethoven Symphonies in especial, and such other works as it would interest him to analyze for me.
Bülow was at that time considered the foremost conductor of Germany. He had taken a little mediocre orchestra of fifty, belonging to the Grand Duke of Meiningen, and through his supreme genius had galvanized it into a marvellous instrument. Under his guidance this little orchestra had created a sensation all over Germany and Austria and a specialtour de forcewas their playingof certain symphonies entirely by heart without any music before them.
When I arrived in Frankfort I found that Bülow was living at the Schwan Hotel, and with much trepidation I told him what I wanted of him. He seemed very much touched and claimed that it was the first time in his experience that a musician who, as he put it, “was already prominent in opera, symphony, and oratorio” thought he could learn anything from him. In the warmest, I may say most affectionate terms, he promised me every possible help and advised me to take rooms in the same hotel. This I did, and I can truthfully say that the entire summer during which I was with him in closest companionship, not only in his rooms and during the lesson hours for the pianists, many of which I also attended, but on long walks to the museums, the parks, and the suburbs of Frankfort, his almost paternal kindliness, his wisdom, and his comments on things artistic, literary, political, and personal were a revelation to me. So many stories were current about his biting comments and brusque behavior toward people who excited his enmity, that I was amazed to find him throughout so companionable and so gentle in all his relations toward me. He had a heart most tender and sensitive, but life had dealt this idealist so many hard knocks that he incased his heart in a shell with which to protect it from further onslaughts.
He went through all Beethoven’s nine symphonies with me, bar by bar, phrase by phrase, and I still have the scores in which he made certain notations of phrasing or illustrated changes in dynamics of certain instruments in order to bring out the undoubted intentions of Beethoven more clearly. He virtually analyzed the symphoniesfor me in the same way as in his edition of the piano sonatas, and at the close of our three months together he gave me a copy of his own score of the Ninth Symphony with all his own annotations, many of which were based on the analysis made by Wagner during his historic performance of that work at the corner-stone laying of the Bayreuth Fest-Spielhaus.
During these three months of intensive study I received so much from him that was new to me, such a wealth of ideas regarding interpretation and the technic of the conductor’s art, that it took me years to digest it properly and to learn how, instead of merely copying slavishly, I could make it my own and accept or reject parts of it, according to the methods of analysis taught me by him.
During our stay in Frankfort a little Prince of Hesse, whose mother, the Landgravine, was a “Royal Highness,” being a niece of the old Emperor William, invited von Bülow to give a Brahms recital at his palace. Bülow immediately insisted that I, too, must be invited, which accordingly I was. When I accompanied him he introduced me to the various exalted personages assembled, and the Landgravine asked me if I were not “the son of the great Doctor Damrosch.” I politely answered: “Yes, your Royal Highness.”
“Was he not a friend of Rubinstein?” she continued.
“Yes.”
“He played the viola, did he not?”
I said: “No, your Royal Highness, the violin.”
“No,” she said, “the viola.”
This taught me that royalty must never be contradicted, even if they know “facts” about your own father of which you are not aware.
The Prince of Hesse was blind and thought he had a gift for music, in fact he “composed” string quartets which, I presume, he more or less “dictated” to the court musician of his little princely household.
Just before the supper the Prince came up to Bülow with a huge laurel wreath, which enraged Bülow very much. He always called them “vegetables of Fame,” and he immediately shouted: “Is there no bust of Brahms here?” but as there was none, he laid the wreath on the piano.
During the very good supper which was served to their Royal Highnesses and von Bülow in one room and to the other guests in another, I found to my amazement that the blind Prince was led to my chair holding a champagne glass in his hand with which to toast me specially, “the American musician and conductor,” and two days later the Prince and his gentleman in waiting formally called on me at my hotel. An hour later the gentleman in waiting returned to inform me that the Prince would like to have me accept the position of musician in his household with “twelve hundred Thalers a year and free board at the palace.” I had to explain to him ever so politely and gratefully that I was then conductor at the Metropolitan Opera House, the New York Symphony Society, and the New York Oratorio Society, and that with high appreciation of this offer, I could not possibly give up these positions and my American career to come to Germany.
Bülow, when I told him of it, burst into loud guffaws of delighted laughter.
Bülow was in wretched health during the entire summer, suffering from headaches, sleeplessness, and general nervous collapse, but with an iron will he went throughthe summer’s programme, accepting no financial recompense for himself, solely to help gather money through his classes toward the completion of the Raff monument.
I remember one night returning to the hotel after the opera, and as I passed the door of his room to get to mine, which was on the same floor, I heard such loud and continued sobbing that I opened his door, after receiving no response to my knocking. I found him in his nightclothes, kneeling before his bed, his head buried in the mattress and sobbing so bitterly that it was heart-breaking. I rushed over to him, thinking that perhaps he was very ill, and it was a long time before I could quiet him. He kept reiterating that life was over for him, that he wanted to die, and it was only by continually telling him how much we all adored him and what his friendship meant for us that I was able gradually to quiet him and to put him to bed, where I sat holding his hands until early morning when he finally went to sleep.
Weak and ill though he was after the summer’s arduous work, he had promised the University of Marburg to give them two of his famous Beethoven recitals, and as his friend Steyl, the music publisher, and I were worried about his condition we decided to accompany him in order to look after him. The arrangements for the concerts which were to be held in the afternoon in the aula of the venerable university were in the hands of the professor of Greek, a typical old absent-minded gentleman who seemed overcome with the honor of having a visit from the great von Bülow and who also was nervously afraid of this brusque little man. I was worried over the whole affair. Bülow had been very weak all morning and Steyl and I wanted him to cancel the recital, but hewould not hear of it and bravely went on the stage to begin his programme.
Unfortunately, owing to the summer heat, the windows of the aula were open wide, and during the music the cries of the children playing below, the rumbling of carts over the rough pavements of the mediæval streets, came up in constant clangor.
Bülow began, faltered, began again and stopped—ran from the stage and returned to begin again. But it was no use. The noise continued and the recital had to be called off, and after a nervous crisis accompanied by great weeping, we got him back to the hotel and to bed, Bülow heaping curses on the little professor on whom he blamed everything, the glaring sunlight, the cries of the playing children, and the noise of the carts. The recital for the following day was, of course, cancelled, and we arranged everything for taking Bülow back to Frankfort.
In the morning when I called at his rooms I found him punctiliously attired in his frock coat, high silk hat, and brown glacé gloves, and in answer to my evidently astonished gaze, he said: “We must not leave without paying our farewell call of ceremony on the Greek professor.” I trembled at the outcome, but a carriage with two horses and a liveried coachman was already waiting in the courtyard of the hotel to take us up the hill to the old mediæval tower of the university in which the professor lived.
We were ushered into a wonderful circular library, the books covering the entire inner wall of the tower, and while we were waiting for the professor, Bülow ran around the room like a dog on the scent, examining the titles of the various books on the shelves. Suddenly he pounced on one, pulled it out and began to turn the leaves quickly until he got to a certain page at which he heldthe book open just as the old professor entered, trembling from head to foot. I was rather apprehensive of the meeting between the two men, but to my astonishment, Bülow advanced, book in hand, and with a low bow handed it silently to the gentle amateur impresario, pointing to a certain place on the opened page. The professor read it, blushed, and looked with a kind of dumb apology at von Bülow, who then took up his hat and, with another low bow, left the room, followed by me, still completely mystified by this silent ceremonial, the meaning of which I could not understand.
During the drive back to the hotel, Bülow chirped up considerably. Now and then he chuckled and finally, as if the joke were too good to keep, he turned toward me and said:
“Do you know what quotation I gave to the Greek professor? It was from one of the Greek philosophers to the effect that ‘it is not wise for a man of learning to mix himself up in the practical affairs of life.’ ”
Perhaps some learned reader of this may be able to tell me who the Greek author was. Bülow never told me.
On our long walks Bülow would often reminisce about the past and would tell me enough stories to fill a book. Two of them I shall tell here.
Bülow was spending a winter in Florence and was invited to conduct a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the local orchestra. In those days Italy had literally no symphonic orchestras, and the players, recruited from the opera-houses, had but little routine for concert music of symphonic importance. The men were willing and eager, but even such a routined conductor as Bülow found it difficult to make them understand certain rhythmic subtleties in this most intricate of allBeethoven’s works. In the scherzo there comes a place where the kettledrum has to enter rudely with a repetition of the first bar of the main theme: