A terrible tragedy, this cruel war that is tearing and searing
Europe, but joy is sometimes an offspring of sorrow. In this
instance one wonders if anything less strange and stern than
an international earthquake would have delivered the beautiful
Nadina Legat into the arms of Enrico Arensen. True, Arensen is a
great singer and a distinguished musician, but he is a plebeian,
whereas Mlle. Legat (her stage name), also a brilliant artist, is a
member of a noble Russian family, the favorite daughter of General
Schuvatoff, who is at present leading an army on the Roumanian
frontier. Russian aristocrats, even if they have so far descended
from their pedestals as to sing for the public, do not lightly
relinquish their hereditary traditions, or if they listen to the
pleadings of a lowly lover, a haughty parent intervenes and nips
the tender affair in the bud. In this instance, however, it was
Mars, and not Cupid, who broke the bars.
When you sit through a performance of grand opera--almost any one of
those combinations of drama and music which retain their hold upon
the public--you cannot fail to be impressed by the tragic misfortunes
which pursue the hero and heroine. The wise composers of grand opera
see to it that the principal tenor and the prima donna have troubles
calculated to call forth their highest powers of vocal expression. To
find these strange and inspiring situations they have searched the
dramatic writings of the master-poets of all nations and periods.
Real life, however, occasionally moves a living hero and a living
heroine in ways which the master-poets of grand opera could not
foresee. By a strange coincidence that has happened to a principal
tenor and a prima donna who are impersonating together before grand
opera audiences classic heroes and heroines whose history and troubles
were much less thrilling than their own.
Its coloratura soprano, formerly of the Russian Imperial Opera, is Mme.
Nadina Legat, the much beset Gilda in "Rigoletto"--drawn from Victor
Hugo's "Le Roi S'Amuse"; the heroine of "La Traviata," otherwise the
consumptive Magdalene, Camille, created by the younger Dumas; the
tragically unfortunate Lucia, for whom Donizetti went to Walter Scott's
"Bride of Lammermoor."
* * * * *
The beginning of the story is essential because of its bearing on the
"big situation." Legat and Arensen enjoyed their first great opera
triumph together at the famous La Scala, in Milan, she was Gilda and he
the Duke in "Rigoletto." Though both are of Russian birth, this was
their first meeting. As La Scala is recognized throughout Europe as the
final "acid test" of an opera singer's qualities, the status which both
had attained separately in their own country was of comparatively small
consequence. With nerves tense to the breaking point, each concentrated
on the task of winning that cultivated, critical Milan audience.
At rehearsals their quarrels were rather fiercer than is usual between
the principal tenor and the prima donna.
"At that time I could hardly endure him," says Mme. Legat. "We
quarrelled terribly. He seemed so unreasonably insistent on certain
details at the rehearsals that I considered him unbearable,
insupportable."
But Mme. Legat confesses that this feeling did not survive the triumph
which they won together. Shortly afterward, when he departed to fill an
engagement with the Imperial Opera in Berlin and she was summoned back
to Russia, they parted as friends. If they had developed a stronger
feeling for each other, neither was aware of it.
They went about their separate opera affairs. The beginning of the
European war found Arensen still an opera favorite in Berlin and
Vienna. Mme. Legat was spending the Summer at Nice, after two years of
distinguished success in Russia, upon which the Czar himself placed the
imperial stamp. She wished to return at once to Petrograd, but hearing
from her mother that the latter would come to her, she remained at Nice
until the Russian Hospital at Monte Carlo was founded, when both became
nurses there.
And, month after month, while the celebrated opera soprano was nursing
wounded soldiers, not knowing nor caring about anything else, Arensen,
the tenor with whom she had quarrelled so fiercely on the stage of La
Scala, was virtually a prisoner of war in Germany. For ten days after
the beginning of hostilities he continued his successful appearances in
Berlin--and then, without warning, the blow fell.
Some said that rival singers, native Germans, directed suspicion
against him, as though inquiring:
"Russia is our enemy. What is this Russian doing here?"
One night German soldiers arrested him at the opera house and he was
interned as an enemy alien. He appealed to the Government for release,
pointing out that he was above the fighting age--as he then was, which
was before the Russian army age limit was raised--and Germany would
lose nothing by letting him go home. The suggestion fell upon deaf
ears. His subsequent efforts to obtain his release the tenor himself
relates:
"I was a prisoner for twenty-four hours in the Hausvogter Gefangniss,
which is the delightful name the Berlinese give to the institution
where they intern aliens. I sent a letter to the Kaiser himself, before
whom I have many times sung, asking my release.
"It was not long before I received an answer to the letter, granting
my request--a communication from the Kaiser. Of course, there were
conditions. I was to go to America as soon as it was practicable for
me to do so, anyhow, but that was not sufficient guarantee for the
meticulous German war office.
"No, indeed. It was really a very solemn procedure. I had to sign an
oath in German and Russian that I would never take up arms in any way
against Germany or her allies. My word, once given, was sufficient.
The German military commander in charge of the prison camp gave me
my freedom, and I received a passport that permitted me to leave the
country. On my last night in Germany some German officers opened
champagne in my honor.
"I went through Switzerland to Italy, where I remained for some
time--in fact, during the greater part of the long conflict that
finally broke down the barriers of neutrality and led to Italy's
enlistment in the war against her former allies. Eventually I crossed
the Piedmont to the border town of Mentone, where I contemplated
entering France.
"Alas! Here misfortune began anew. I had barely entered the town when I
was halted by a French frontier guard. From that time on I was treated
pretty harshly.
"The French Government put me under strict surveillance. I was forced
to report twice a day at the town police headquarters, and was really
under suspicion at all times. The reason was, of course, that my
associations with so many Berlin people were known--the French were
aware that I had remained in the German capital after war broke out,
and did not purpose to take any chances with me.
"I appealed to the Russian Ambassador in Paris for help, but was turned
down pretty coldly. 'I can't do anything for you,' was the gist of his
reply to my request, 'because I know that you have a lot of German
friends.'
"The outlook was, then, that I should have to remain practically a
prisoner until the war was over. It was a pretty black future. At
almost any time, something might happen, I suppose, that would give the
French reason to think that they had been too lenient in merely keeping
me under surveillance. I might have been interned and placed in a real
prison camp.
"But Providence intervened. One day last Spring, just after the first
Russian troops had come to France, I met a Russian soldier while he
was off duty and had the opportunity I longed for to talk with someone
who used my native tongue. When he learned my identity, he was much
interested, and he gave me some news that proved a godsend.
"'You are Arensen, the tenor!' he said. 'How remarkable! Mme. Legat,
of the Imperial Opera at Petrograd, is only a short distance from this
place--in the Russian hospital at Monte Carlo!'
"Imagine how the news delighted me! Here, at last, was a friend on
whom I could count. I thanked the man profusely for the information
he had given. Then I went to my lodgings and wrote an appeal to my
country-woman."
The exact wording of that appeal has not been submitted for
publication. Its effect upon Mme. Legat was electrical. For the
first time in nearly two years she became oblivious to her immediate
surroundings--shattered and bleeding war heroes and the gruesome
accessories of a military hospital. In all those months she had hardly
thought of the quarrelsome tenor who had shared her triumph at La
Scala. Now, suddenly, he occupied her whole mental vision--the central
innocent victim of an impending tragedy.
So intense was that vision that it overwhelmed her with the vividness
of reality. She saw French soldiers dragging Arensen, her countryman,
from his prison cell. She saw them place him with his back against a
wall. She saw them blindfold him--and she could hear the tramp, tramp
of the firing squad. Those grim human instruments of martial law! They
turn face to face with the doomed prisoner--their musket butts ring
upon the concrete pavement of the prison yard....
Suddenly another figure, that of a woman, rushes upon the scene and
falls upon her knees before the commandant of the firing squad.
Mme. Legat recognized this figure as herself--and with the terrifying
vision constantly before her eyes she rushed off to Paris to make her
personal appeal to the Russian Ambassador.
In the quiet, severe, official atmosphere of the Russian Embassy Mme.
Legat calmed herself, collected her wits and prepared to measure them
with those of M. Isowsky, her country's chief representative at the
French capital. The Russian Ambassador paid to her the homage due to a
celebrated singer--and then resumed his frigid official aspect. At her
mention of Arensen he froze.
"But, Monsieur Arensen is a fellow Russian--our countryman."
"Madame," said the Ambassador, curtly, "I am by no means positive that
Arensen is a loyal Russian. For two years he has lived in Germany and
Austria--our two most powerful enemies. He acquired hosts of German
friends. He comes to France plastered over with German credentials. He
bears the Kaiser's own signed permit to leave Germany. He--"
"Do you believe that I am a loyal Russian?" demanded Mme. Legat.
The Russian Ambassador smiled graciously. Ah, he had no doubt of
Madame's loyalty.
That awful vision still obsessed her. She realized that there was
nothing she would not do to save Arensen. She remembered that she
was the daughter of a general in the Imperial Russian army. She drew
herself up to her full height and looked the Russian Ambassador
straight in the eyes. She said:
"I will vouch for M. Arensen. I will guarantee that he is a loyal
Russian, and will remain so."
"Um----," pondered M. Isowsky. "Well, well--um--how can you be sure?
How can you assure me?"
Right then and there Mme. Legat felt a sudden emotion, and knew what
she was going to do--what she wanted to do--to dispel that tragic
vision.
"I'll give you the assurance of a wife," she said. "I'll marry him!"
The Russian Ambassador was baffled--admitted it. He signed the papers
that gave Arensen his freedom as a loyal Russian. The heroine herself
relates the sequel:
"Like Tosca in the opera, I sped to him bearing freedom. I didn't
have to tell him the whole story--not then. We found that our old
acquaintance, begun at La Scala, had blossomed into love during our
separation. So he did the proposing. We were married just an hour
before the _Lafayette_ sailed, bringing us to the United States."