CHAPTER XXIV

A BRILLIANT SEASON AT THE MANHATTAN

Hammerstein's Second Season

Amazing Promises but More Amazing Achievements

Mary Garden and Maurice Renaud

Massenet's "Thaïs," Charpentier's "Louise"

Giordano's "Siberia" and Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande" Performed for

the First Time in America

Revival of Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," "Crispino e la Comare"

of the Ricci Brothers, and Giordano's "Andrea Chenier"

The Tetrazzini Craze

Repertory of the Season

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION OF OPERA IN NEW YORK

Considering the present state of Italian opera in New York City (I am

writing in the year of our Lord 1908), it seems more than a little

strange that its entire history should come within the memories of

persons still living. It was only two years ago that an ancient factotum

at the Metropolitan Opera House died who, for a score of years before he

began service at that establishment, had been in various posts at the

Academy of Music. Of Mr. Arment a kindly necrologist said that he had

seen the Crowd gather in front of the Park Theater in 1825, when the new

form of entertainment effected an entrance in the New World. I knew the

little old gentleman for a quarter of a century or more, but though he

was familiar with my interest in matters historical touching the opera

in New York, he never volunteered information of things further back

than the consulship of Mapleson at the Academy. Moreover, I was unable

to reconcile the story of his recollection of the episode of 1825 with

the circumstances of his early life. Yet the tale may have been true, or

the opera company that had attracted his boyish attention been one that

came within the first decade after Italian opera had its introduction.

Concerning another's recollections, I have not the slightest doubt.

Within the last year Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, entertaining some of her

relatives and friends with an account of social doings in New York in

her childhood, recalled the fact that she had been taken as a tiny miss

to hear some of the performances of the Garcia Troupe, and, if I mistake

not, had had Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist of Mozart's "Nozze di

Figaro" and "Don Giovanni" pointed out to her by her brother. This

brother was Samuel Ward, who enjoyed the friendship of the old poet,

and published recollections of him not long after his death, in The

New York Mirror. For a score of years I have enjoyed the gentle

companionship at the opera of two sisters whose mother was an Italian

pupil of Da Ponte's, and when, a few years ago, Professor Marchesan, of

the University of Treviso, Italy, appealed to me for material to be used

in the biography of Da Ponte, which he was writing, I was able, through

my gracious and gentle operatic neighbors, to provide him with a number

of occasional poems written, in the manner of a century ago, to their

mother, in whom Da Ponte had awakened a love for the Italian language

and literature. This, together with some of my own labors in uncovering

the American history of Mozart's collaborator, has made me feel

sometimes as if I, too, had dwelt for a brief space in that Arcadia of

which I purpose to gossip in this chapter, and a few others which are

to follow it.

There may be other memories going back as far as Mrs. Howe's, but I

very much doubt if there is another as lively as hers on any question

connected with social life in New York fourscore years ago. Italian

opera was quite as aristocratic when it made its American bow as it

is now, and decidedly more exclusive. It is natural that memories of

it should linger in Mrs. Howe's mind for the reason that the family

to which she belonged moved in the circles to which the new form of

entertainment made appeal. A memory of the incident which must have been

even livelier than that of Mrs. Howe's, however, perished in 1906, when

Manuel Garcia died in London, in his one hundred and first year, for he

could say of the first American season of Italian opera what Æneas said

of the siege of Troy, "All of which I saw, and some of which I was."

Manuel Garcia was a son of the Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia, who

brought the institution to our shores; he was a brother of our first

prima donna, she who then was only the Signorina Garcia, but within

a lustrum afterward was the great Malibran; and he sang in the first

performance, on November 29, 1825, and probably in all the performances

given between that date and August of the next year, when the elder

Garcia departed, leaving the Signorina, as Mme. Malibran, aged but

eighteen, to develop her powers in local theaters and as a chorister

in Grace Church. Of this and other related things presently.

In the sometimes faulty and incomplete records of the American stage to

which writers on musical history have hitherto been forced to repair,

1750 is set down as the natal year for English ballad opera in America.

It is thought that it was in that year that "The Beggar's Opera" found

its way to New York, after having, in all probability, been given by

the same company of comedians in Philadelphia in the middle of the

year preceding. But it is as little likely that these were the first

performances of ballad operas on this side of the Atlantic as that the

people of New York were oblivious of the nature of operatic music of

the Italian type until Garcia's troupe came with Rossini's "Barber of

Seville," in 1825. There are traces of ballad operas in America in the

early decades of the eighteenth century, and there can exist no doubt at

all that French and Italian operas were given in some form, perhaps, as

a rule, in the adapted form which prevailed in the London theaters until

far into the nineteenth century, before the year 1800, in the towns and

cities of the Eastern seaboard, which were in most active communication

with Great Britain, I quote from an article on the history of opera in

the United States, written by me for the second edition of "Grove's

Dictionary of Music and Musicians":

Among French works Rousseau's "Pygmalion" and "Devin du Village,"

Dalayrac's "Nina" and "L'Amant Statue," Monsigny's "Déserteur," Grétry's

"Zémire et Azor," "Fausse Magie" and "Richard Coeur de Lion" and others,

were known in Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York in

the last decade of the eighteenth century. There were traces, too, of

Pergolese's "Serva padrona," and it seems more than likely that an

"opera in three acts," the text adapted by Colman, entitled "The Spanish

Barber; or, The Futile Precaution," played in Baltimore, Philadelphia,

and New York, in 1794, was Paisiello's "Barbiere di Siviglia." From

1820 to about 1845 more than a score of the Italian, French, and German

operas, which made up the staple of foreign repertories, were frequently

performed by English singers. The earliest of these singers were members

of the dramatic companies who introduced theatrical plays in the

colonies. They went from London to Philadelphia, New York, Williamsburg

(Va.), and Charleston (S. C.), but eventually established their

strongest and most enduring foothold in New York.

Accepting the 1750 date as the earliest of unmistakable records for a

performance of "The Beggar's Opera" in New York, the original home of

opera here was the Nassau Street Theater--the first of two known by that

name. It was a two-storied house, with high gables. Six wax lights were

in front of the stage, and from the ceiling dangled a "barrel hoop,"

pierced by half a dozen nails on which were spiked as many candles. It

is not necessary to take the descriptions of these early playhouses

as baldly literal, nor as indicative of something like barbarism.

The "barrel hoop" chandelier of the old theater in Nassau street was

doubtless only a primitive form of the chandeliers which kept their

vogue for nearly a century after the first comedians sang and acted at

the Nassau Street Theater. Illuminating gas did not reach New York till

1823, and "a thousand candles" was put forth as an attractive feature

at a concert in the American metropolis as late as 1845. "The Beggar's

Opera" was only twenty years old when the comedians sent to the colonies

by William Hallam, under the management of his brother, Lewis, produced

it, yet the historic Covent Garden Theater, in which it first saw the

stage lights (candles they were, too), would scarcely stand comparison

with the most modest of the metropolitan theaters nowadays. Its

audience-room was only fifty-four or fifty-five feet deep; there were

no footlights, the stage being illuminated by four hoops of candles,

over which a crown hung from the borders. The orchestra held only

fifteen or twenty musicians, though it was in this house that Handel

produced his operas and oratorios; the boxes "were flat in front and

had twisted double branches for candles fastened to the plaster. There

were pedestals on each side of the boards, with elaborately-painted

figures of Tragedy and Comedy thereon." Hallam's actors went first to

Williamsburg, Va., but were persuaded to change their home to New York

in the summer of 1753, among other things by the promise that they would

find a "very fine 'Playhouse Building'" here. Nevertheless, when Lewis

Hallam came he found the fine playhouse unsatisfactory, and may be said

to have inaugurated the habit or custom, or whatever it may be called,

followed by so many managers since, of beginning his enterprise by

erecting a new theater. The old one in Nassau Street was torn down,

and a new one built on its site. It was promised that it should be

"very fine, large, and commodious," and it was built between June and

September, 1753; how fine, large, and commodious it was may, therefore,

be imagined. A year later, the German Calvinists, wanting a place of

worship, bought the theater, and New York was without a playhouse until

a new one on Cruger's Wharf was built by David Douglass, who had married

Lewis Hallam's widow, Hallam having died in Jamaica, in 1755. This was

abandoned in turn, and Mr. Douglass built a second theater, this time

in Chapel Street. It cost $1,625, and can scarcely have been either very

roomy or very ornate. Such as it was, however, it was the home of the

drama in all its forms, save possibly the ballad opera, until about

1765, and was the center around which a storm raged which culminated

in a riot that wrecked it.

The successor of this unhappy institution was the John Street Theater,

which was opened toward the close of the year 1767. There seems to have

been a period of about fifteen years during which the musical drama

was absent from the amusement lists, but this house echoed, like its

earliest predecessors, to the strains of the ballad opera which "made

Gay rich and Rich gay." "The Beggar's Opera" was preceded, however, by

"Love in a Village," for which Dr. Arne wrote and compiled the music;

and Bickerstaff's "Maid of the Mill" was also in the repertory. In 1774

it was officially recommended that all places of amusement be closed.

Then followed the troublous times of the Revolution, and it was not

until twelve years afterward--that is, till 1786--that English Opera

resumed its sway. "Love in a Village" was revived, and it was followed

by "Inkle and Yarico," an arrangement of Shakespeare's "Tempest," with

Purcell's music, "No Song, No Supper," "Macbeth," with Locke's music,

McNally's comic opera "Robin Hood," and other works of the same

character; in fact, it may safely be said that few, if any, English

operas, either with original music or music adapted from the ballad

tunes of England, were heard in London without being speedily brought to

New York and performed here. In the John Street Theater, too, they were

listened to by George Washington, and the leader of the orchestra, a

German named Pfeil, whose name was variously spelled Fyle, File, Files,

and so on, produced that "President's March," the tune of which was

destined to become associated with "Hail Columbia," to the words of

which it was adapted by Joseph Hopkinson, of Philadelphia. On January

29, 1798, a new playhouse was opened. This was the Park Theater. A

musical piece entitled "The Purse, or American Tar," was on the program

of the opening performance, and for more than a score of years the Park

Theater played an important rôle in local operatic history. For a long

term English operas of both types held the stage, along with the drama

in all its forms, but in 1819 an English adaptation of Rossini's "Barber

of Seville"--the opera which opened the Italian régime six years

later--was heard on its stage, and two years after that Henry Rowley

Bishop's arrangement of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro." At the close of

the season of 1820 the Park Theater was destroyed by fire, to the great

loss of its owners, one of whom was John Jacob Astor. On its site was

erected the new Park Theater, which was the original home of Italian

opera, performed in its original tongue, and in the Italian manner,

though only a small minority of the performers were Italians by birth.

Garcia was a Spaniard, born in Seville. Richard Grant White, writing in

The Century Magazine for March, 1882, calls him a "Spanish Hebrew," on

what authority I am unable to guess. Not only was Manuel Garcia, the

elder, a chorister in the Cathedral of Seville at the age of six, but

it seems as likely as not that he came of a family of Spanish church

musicians who had made their mark for more than fifty years before the

father of Malibran was born. But it is a habit with some writers to find

Hebrew blood in nearly all persons of genius.

The new Park Theater was looked upon as a magnificent playhouse in its

day, and it is a pity that Mr. White, writing about it when it was a

quarter of a century old, should have helped to spread the erroneous

notion that it was quite unworthy of so elegant a form of entertainment

as Garcia brought into it. It remained a fashionable house through all

its career or at least for a long time after it gave refuge to the

Italian muse, though it may not have been able to hold one of its

candles to the first house built especially to house that muse eight

years later. The barrel hoop of the first New York theater gave way

to "three chandeliers and patent oil lamps, the chandeliers having

thirty-five lights each." Mr. White's description of this house after it

had seen about a quarter of a century's service is certainly uninviting.

Its boxes were like pens for beasts. "Across them were stretched benches

consisting of a mere board covered with faded red moreen, a narrower

board, shoulder high, being stretched behind to serve for a back. But

one seat on each of the three or four benches was without even this

luxury, in order that the seat itself might be raised upon its hinges

for people to pass in. These sybaritic inclosures were kept under lock

and key by a fee-expecting creature, who was always half drunk, except

when he was wholly drunk. The pit, which has in our modern theater

become the parterre (or, as it is often strangely called, the parquet),

the most desirable part of the house, was in the Park Theater hardly

superior to that in which the Jacquerie of old stood upon the bare

ground (par terre), and thus gave the place its French name. The floor

was dirty and broken into holes; the seats were bare, backless benches.

Women were never seen in the pit, and, although the excellence of the

position (the best in the house) and the cheapness of admission (half a

dollar) took gentlemen there, few went there who could afford to study

comfort and luxury in their amusements. The place was pervaded with evil

smells; and, not uncommonly, in the midst of a performance, rats ran out

of the holes in the floor and across into the orchestra. This delectable

place was approached by a long, underground passage, with bare,

whitewashed walls, dimly lighted, except at a sort of booth, at which

vile fluids and viler solids were sold. As to the house itself, it was

the dingy abode of dreariness. The gallery was occupied by howling

roughs, who might have taken lessons in behavior from the negroes who

occupied a part of this tier, which was railed off for their particular

use."

This was the first home of Italian opera, strictly speaking. It had long

housed opera in the vernacular, and remained to serve as the fortress

of the English forces when the first battles were fought between the

champions of the foreign exotic and the entertainment which had been so

long established as to call itself native. Its career came to an end in

1848, when, like its predecessor and successor, it went up in flames and

smoke.

Presently I shall tell about the houses which have been built in New

York especially for operatic uses, but before then some attention ought

to be given to several other old theaters which had connection with

opera in one or another of its phases. One of these was the New York

Theater, afterward called the Bowery, and known by that name till a

comparatively recent date. The walls of this theater echoed first to the

voice of Malibran, when put forth in the vernacular of the country of

which fate seemed, for a time, to have decreed that she should remain a

resident. This was immediately after the first season of Italian opera

at the Park Theater. The New York Theater was then new, having been

built in 1826. Malibran had begun the study of English in London before

coming to New York with her father; and she continued her studies with

a new energy and a new purpose after the departure of her father to

Mexico had left her apparently stranded in New York with a bankrupt and

good-for-nothing husband to support. She made her first essay in English

opera with "The Devil's Bridge," and followed it up with "Love in a

Village." English operas, whether of the ballad order or with original

music, were constructed in principle on the lines of the German

Singspiel and French opéra comique, all the dialogue being spoken; and

Malibran's experience at the theater and Grace Church, coupled with her

great social popularity, must have made a pretty good Englishwoman of

her. "It is rather startling," says Mr. White, in the article already

alluded to, "to think of the greatest prima donna, not only of her day,

but of modern times--the most fascinating woman upon the stage in the

first half of the nineteenth century--as singing the soprano parts of

psalm tunes and chants in a small town then less known to the people of

London and Paris and Vienna than Jeddo is now. Grace Church may well be

pardoned for pride in a musical service upon the early years of which

fell such a crown of glory, and which has since then been guided by

taste not always unworthy of such a beginning." Malibran's performances

at the New York Theater were successful and a source of profit, both

to the manager and M. Malibran, to whom, it is said, a portion of the

receipts were sent every night.

Three other theaters which were identified with opera more or less

came into the field later, and by their names, at least, testified to

the continued popularity which a famous English institution had won a

century before, and which endured until that name could be applied to

the places that bore it only on the "lucus a non lucendo" principle.

These were the theaters of Richmond Hill, Niblo's, and Castle Garden.

The Ranelagh Gardens, which John Jones opened in New York, in June,

1765, and the Vauxhall Gardens, opened by Mr. Samuel Francis, in

June, 1769, were planned more or less after their English prototypes.

Out-of-doors concerts were their chief musical features, fireworks their

spectacular, while the serving of refreshments was relied on as the

principal source of profit. Richmond Hill had in its palmy days been the

villa home of Aaron Burr, and its fortunes followed the descending scale

like those of its once illustrious master. Its site was the neighborhood

of what is now the intersection of Varick and Charlton streets. After

passing out of Burr's hands, but before his death, the park had become

Richmond Hill Gardens, and the mansion the Richmond Hill Theater, both

of somewhat shady reputation, which was temporarily rehabilitated by the

response which the fashionable elements of the city's population made to

an appeal made by a season of Italian opera, given in 1832. The relics

of Niblo's Garden have disappeared as completely as those of Richmond

Hill, but its site is still fresh in the memory of those whose

theatrical experiences go back a quarter of a century. They must be old,

however, who can recall enough verdure in the vicinity of Broadway and

Prince Street to justify the name maintained by the theater to which for

many years entrance was gained through a corridor of the Metropolitan

Hotel. Three-quarters of a century ago Niblo's Garden was a reality.

William Niblo, who built it and managed it with consummate cleverness,

had been a successful coffee-house keeper downtown. Its theater opened

refreshingly on one side into the garden (as the Terrace Garden Theater,

at Third Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street does to-day), where one could

eat a dish of ice cream or sip a sherry cobbler in luxurious shade, if

such were his prompting, while play or pantomime went merrily on within.

Writing of it in 1855 Max Maretzek, who, as manager of the Astor Place

Opera House, had suffered from the rivalry of Niblo and his theater,

said:

The Metropolitan Hotel, Niblo's Theater, stores and other buildings

occupy the locality. Of the former garden nothing remains save the

ice cream and drinking saloons attached to the theater. These take up

literally as much room in the building as its stage does, and prove

that its proprietor has not altogether overlooked the earlier vocation

which laid the foundation of his fortune. The name by which he calls it

has never changed. It was Niblo's Garden when loving couples ate their

creams or drank their cobblers under the shadow of the trees. It is

Niblo's Garden now, when it is turned into a simple theater and hedged

in with houses. Nay, in the very bills which are circulated in the

interior of the building during the performances you may find, or

might shortly since have found, such an announcement as the following,

appearing in large letters:

"Between the second and third acts"--or, possibly, it may run thus

when opera is not in the ascendant--"after the conclusion of the

first piece an intermission of twenty minutes takes place, for a

promenade in the garden."

You will, I feel certain, admit that this is a marvelously delicate

way of intimating to a gentleman who may feel "dry" (it is the right

word, is it not?) that he will find the time to slake his thirst.

When he returns and his lady inquires where he has been he may reply,

if he wills it:

"Promenading in the garden."

It is not plain from Mr. White's account whether or not his memory

reached back to the veritable garden of Mr. Niblo, but his recollections

of the theater were not jaundiced like those of Mr. Maretzek, but

altogether amiable. Speaking of the performances of the Shireff, Seguin,

and Wilson company of English opera singers, who came to New York in

1838, he says:

Miss Shireff afterward appeared at Niblo's Garden, which was on the

corner of Broadway and Prince Street, where the Metropolitan Hotel now

stands. Here she performed in Auber's "Masked Ball" and other light

operas (all, of course, in English), singing in a theater that was

open on one side to the air; for Niblo's was a great place of summer

entertainment. It was a great New York "institution" in its day--perhaps

the greatest and most beneficent one of its sort that New York has ever

known. It may be safely said that most of the elder generation of New

Yorkers now living [this was written in 1881] have had at Niblo's Garden

the greatest pleasure they have ever enjoyed in public. There were

careless fun and easy jollity; there whole families would go at a

moment's warning to hear this or that singer, but most of all, year

after year, to see the Ravels--a family of pantomimists and dancers

upon earth and air, who have given innocent, thoughtless, side-shaking,

brain-clearing pleasure to more Americans than ever relaxed their sad,

silent faces for any other performers. The price of admission here was

fifty cents, no seats reserved; "first come, first served."

Last of all there was Castle Garden. Children of to-day can remember

when it was still the immigrants' depot, which it had been for half a

century. Tradition says that it was built to protect New York City from

foreign invasion, not to harbor it; but as a fortress it must have

suffered disarmament quite early in the nineteenth century. It is now

an aquarium, and as such has returned to its secondary use, which was

that of a place of entertainment. In 1830 and about that day it was a

restaurant, but for the sale only of ice cream, lemonade, and cakes.

You paid a shilling to go in--this to restrict the patronage to people

of the right sort--and your ticket was redeemable on the inside in

the innocent fluids and harmless solids aforementioned. A wooden

bridge, flanked by floating bathhouses, connected the castle with the

garden--i.e., Battery Park. North and east, in lower Broadway and

Greenwich Street, were fashionable residences, whose occupants enjoyed

the promenade under the trees, which was the proper enjoyment of the

day, as much as their more numerous, but less fortunate fellow citizens.

There balloons went up by day, and rockets and bombs by night, and

there, too, the brave militia went on parade. To Mr. White we owe the

preservation of a poetical description written by Frederick Cozzens in

an imitation of Spenser's "Sir Clod His Undoinge":

With placket lined, with joyous heart he hies

To where the Battery's Alleys, cool and greene,

Amid disparted Rivers daintie lies

With Fortresse brown and spacious Bridge betweene

Two Baths, which there like panniers huge are seen:

In shadie paths fair Dames and Maides there be

With stalking Lovers basking in their eene,

And solitary ones who scan the sea,

Or list to vesper chimes of slumberous Trinity.

The operas performed in the first season of Italian opera in America

by the Garcia troupe in the Park Theater 1825-1826, were "Il Barbiere

di Siviglia," "Tancredi," "Il Turco in Italia," "La Cenerentola," and

"Semiramide" by Rossini; "Don Giovanni" by Mozart; "L'Amante astuto"

and "La Figlia del Aria" by Garcia.

CHAPTER II

EARLY THEATERS, MANAGERS, AND SINGERS

The first opera house built in New York City opened its doors on

November 18, 1833, and was the home of Italian Opera for two seasons;

the second, built eleven years later, endured in the service for which

it was designed four years; the third, which marked as big an advance

on its immediate predecessor in comfort and elegance as the first had

marked on the ramshackle Park Theater described by Richard Grant White,

was the Astor Place Opera House, built in 1847, and the nominal home of

the precious exotic five years.

The Astor Place Opera House in its external appearance is familiar

enough to the memory of even young New Yorkers, though, unlike its

successor, the Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place,

it did not long permit its tarnished glories to form the surroundings

of the spoken drama after the opera's departure. The Academy of Music

weathered the operatic tempests of almost an entire generation, counting

from its opening night, in 1854, to the last night on which Colonel J.

H. Mapleson was its lessee, in 1886, and omitting the expiring gasps

which the Italian entertainment made under Signor Angelo, in October,

1886, under Italo Campanini, in April, 1888, and the final short spasm

under the doughty Colonel in 1896. The first Italian Opera House (that

was its name) became the National Theater; the second, which was known

as Palmo's Opera House, when turned over to the spoken drama, became

Burton's Theater; the Astor Place Opera House became the Mercantile

Library. The Academy of Music is still known by that name, though it

is given over chiefly to melodrama, and the educational purpose which

existed in the minds of its creators was only a passing dream. The

Metropolitan Opera House has housed twenty-three regular seasons of

opera, though it has been in existence for twenty-five seasons. Once

the sequence of subscription seasons was interrupted by the damage done

to the theater by fire; once by the policy of its lessees, Abbey & Grau,

who thought that the public appetite for opera might be whetted by

enforced abstention. The Manhattan Opera House is too young to enter

into this study of opera houses, their genesis, growth, and decay, and

the houses which Mr. Oscar Hammerstein built before it in Harlem and in

West Thirty-Fourth Street, near Sixth Avenue, lived too brief a time in

operatic service to deserve more than mention.

I am at a loss for data from which to evolve a rule, as I should like to

do, governing the length of an opera house's existence in its original

estate as the home of grand opera.

The conditions which produce the need are too variable and also too

vague to be brought under the operation of any kind of law. At present

the growth of wealth, the increase in population, and with that

increase the rapid multiplication of persons desirous and able to enjoy

the privileges of social display would seem to be determining factors,

with the mounting costliness of the luxury as a deterrent. The last

illustration of the operation of the creative impulse based on the

growth of wealth and social ambition is found in the building of

the Metropolitan Opera House, Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise being

purely individual and speculative. The movement which produced the

Metropolitan Opera House marked the decay of the old Knickerbocker

régime, and its amalgamation with the newer order of society of a

quarter of a century ago. This social decay, if so it can be called

without offense, began--if Abram C. Dayton ("Last Days of Knickerbocker

Life in New York") is correct--about 1840, and culminated with the

Vanderbilt ball, in 1882, to which nearly all the leaders of the old

Knickerbocker aristocracy accepted invitations. "During the third

quarter of the nineteenth century," said The Sun's reviewer of Mr.

Dayton's book, "sagacious and far-sighted Knickerbockers began to

realize that as a caste they no longer possessed sufficient money to

sustain social ascendency, and that it behooved them to effect an

intimate alliance with the nouveaux riches." To this may be added that

when there were but two decades of the century left it was made plain

that the Academy of Music could by no possibility accommodate the two

classes of society, old and new, which had for a number of years been

steadily approaching each other.

There was an insufficiency of desirable boxes, and holders of seats

of fashion were unwilling to surrender them to the newcomers. So the

Metropolitan Opera House was built in 1883, and the vigor of the social

opposition, coupled with popular appreciation of the new spirit, which

came in with the German régime, gave the deathblow to the Academy, whose

loss to fashion was long deplored by the admirers of its fine acoustic

qualities and its effective architectural arrangements for the purposes

of display.

The period is not so remote that we cannot trace the influences of

fashion and society in the rise of the first Italian Opera House, if not

in its fall. The Park Theater was still a fashionable playhouse when

Garcia gave his season of Italian opera in it in 1825-26, but within a

decade thereafter the conditions so graphically described by Mr. White,

combined with new ambitions, which seem to have been inspired to a

large extent by Lorenzo Da Ponte, prompted a wish for a new theater:

one specially adapted to opera. The new entertainment was recognized

as a luxury, and it was no more than fitting that it be luxuriously

and elegantly housed. It will be necessary to account for the potent

influence of Da Ponte, who was only a superannuated poet and teacher of

Italian language and literature, and this I hope to do presently; for

the time being it is sufficient to say that it was he who persuaded the

rich and cultured citizens of New York to build the Italian Opera House,

which stood at the intersection of Church and Leonard streets. The

coming of Garcia had filled Da Ponte, then already seventy-six years

old, with dreams of a recrudescence of such activities as had been his

in connection with Italian Opera in Vienna and London. He made haste to

identify himself in an advisory capacity with the enterprise, persuaded

Garcia to include "Don Giovanni" in his list of operas, although this

necessitated the engagement of a singer not a member of the company, and

had already brought his niece, who was a singer, from Italy, and the

Italian composer Filippo Trajetta, from Philadelphia, when his dream

of a permanent opera, for which he should write librettos, his friend

compose music, and his niece sing, was dispelled by Garcia's departure

for Mexico, and his subsequent return to Europe. For the next five years

Da Ponte seems to have kept the waters of the operatic pool stirred, for

there is general recognition in the records of the fact that to him was

due the conception of the second experiment, although its execution

was left to another, who was neither an American nor an Italian, but a

Frenchman named Montressor. Like Garcia, he was his own tenor, which

fact must have eased him of some of the vexations of management, though

it added to its labors. We are told that Montressor succeeded in making

himself personally popular. He had an agreeable voice, a tolerable

style, and was favorably compared with Garcia, though this goes for

little, inasmuch as Garcia was past his prime when he came here. Among

his singers were Signorina Pedrotti, who created a great stir (though,

I fancy, this was largely because of her beauty and the fact that the

public, remembering the Signorina Garcia, wanted somebody to worship)

and a basso named Fornasari.

Signorina Pedrotti effected her entrance on October 17, in a new opera,

Mercadante's "Elisa e Claudio," which made the hit of the season,

largely because of the infatuation of the public for the new singer.

Mr. White gives us a description of her (from hearsay and the records)

in his article published in The Century Magazine, of March, 1882:

Not much has been said of her, for she had sung only in Lisbon and in

Bologna, and had little reputation. But she took musical New York off

its feet again. She had a fine mezzo-soprano voice, of sympathetic

quality; and although she was far from being a perfectly finished

vocalist, she had an impressive dramatic style and a presence and a

manner that enabled her to take possession of the stage. She was a

handsome woman--tall, nobly formed, with brilliant eyes and a face

full of expression. She carried the town by storm.

Like Malibran, and many another singer since, Fornasari made a fine

reputation here, and was afterward "discovered" in Europe, where he rose

to fame. He seems to have been of the tribe of lady-killers, of whom

every opera company has boasted at least one ever since opera became a

fashion--which is only another way of saying ever since it was invented.

But Fornasari had a noble voice, besides his mere physical attractions.

Mr. White, who saw him long years afterward, when he chanced to be

passing through New York on his way to Europe, describes him: He was

very tall; his head looked like that of a youthful Jove; dark hair in

flaky curls, an open, blazing eye; a nose just heroically curved; lips

strong, yet beautifully bowed; sweet and persuasive (one would think

that White got his description from some woman--what man ever before or

since was praised by a man for having a Cupid's bow mouth?), and withal

a large and easy grace of manner.

Montressor's season opened on October 6, 1832, at the Richmond Hill

Theater, which became respectable for the nonce, and collapsed

after thirty-five representations. The receipts for the season were

$25,603--let us say about half as much as a week's receipts at the

Metropolitan Opera House to-day. The operas given were Rossini's

"Cenerentola," "L'Italiana in Algeri"; Bellini's "Il Pirata," and

Mercadante's "Elisa e Claudio," the last winning the largest measure of

popularity. The chief good accomplished was the bringing to New York

from Europe of several excellent orchestral players, who, after the

failure of the enterprise, settled here, to the good of instrumental

music and the next undertaking.

Why men embark in operatic management, or, rather, why they continue in

it after they have failed, has always been an enigma. Once, pointing my

argument with excerpts from the story of all the managers in London,

from Handel's day down to the present, I tried to prove that the desire

to manage an opera company was a form of disease, finding admirable

support for my contention in the confession and conduct of that English

manager who got himself into Fleet Prison, and thence philosophically

urged not only that it served him right (since no man insane enough to

want to be an operatic impresario ought to be allowed at large), but

also that a jail was the only proper headquarters for a manager, since

there, at least, he was secure from the importunities of singers

and dancers. Lorenzo Da Ponte was, obviously, of the stuff of which

impresarios are made. Montressor's failure, for which he was in a degree

responsible (and which he discussed in two pamphlets which I found

twenty years ago in the library of the New York Historical Society),

persuaded him that the city's greatest need was an Italian opera house.

His powers of persuasion must have been great, for he succeeded in

bringing a body of citizens together who set the example which has been

followed several times since, and built the Italian Opera House at

Church and Leonard streets, on very much the same social and economic

lines as prevail at the Metropolitan Opera House to-day. European models

and European taste prevailed in the structure and its adornments. It was

the first theater in the United States which boasted a tier composed

exclusively of boxes. This was the second balcony. The parterre was

entered from the first balcony, a circumstance which redeemed it from

its old plebeian association as "the pit," in which it would have been

indecorous for ladies to sit. The seats in the parterre were mahogany

chairs upholstered in blue damask. The seats in the first balcony were

mahogany sofas similarly upholstered. The box fronts had a white ground,

with emblematic medallions, and octagonal panels of crimson, blue, and

gold. Blue silk curtains were caught up with gilt cord and tassels.

There was a chandelier of great splendor, which threw its light into a

dome enriched with pictures of the Muses, painted, like all the rest of

the interior, as well as the scenery, by artists specially brought over

for the purpose from Europe. The floors were carpeted. The price of

the boxes was $6,000 each, and subscribers might own them for a single

performance (evidently by arrangement with the owners) or the season.

Apropos of this, Mr. White tells a characteristic story:

It was told of a man who had suddenly risen to what was then great

wealth, that, having taken a lady to the opera, he was met by the

disappointing assurance that there were no seats to be had.

"What, nowhere?"

"Nowhere, sir; every seat in the house is taken, except, indeed, one of

the private boxes that was not subscribed for."

"I'll have that."

"Impossible, sir. The boxes can only be occupied by subscribers and

owners."

"What is the price of your box?"

"Six thousand dollars, sir."

"I'll take it."

And drawing out his pocketbook he filled up a check for six thousand

dollars and escorted his lady to her seat to the surprise and, indeed,

to the consternation of the elegant circle, which saw itself completed

in this unexpected manner.

The new house, which, with the ground, had cost $150,000, was opened

on November 18, 1833, under the joint management of the Chevalier

Rivafinoli and Da Ponte, with Rossini's "La Gazza ladra," but two months

before that date there was a drawing for boxes, concerning which and

some of the details of the opening performance an extract from the diary

of Mr. Philip Hone, once mayor of the city, presents a much livelier

picture than I could draw:

(From the diary of Philip Hone, Esq.)

September 15, 1833. The drawing for boxes at the Italian Opera

House took place this morning. My associates, Mr. Schermerhorn and

General Jones, are out of town, and I attended and drew No. 8, with

which I am well satisfied. The other boxes will be occupied by the

following gentlemen: Gerard H. Coster, G. C. Howland, Rufus Prime,

Mr. Panon, Robert Ray, J. F. Moulton, James J. Jones, D. Lynch, E.

Townsend, John C. Cruger, O. Mauran, Charles H. Hall, J. G. Pierson

and S. B. Ruggles.

November 18, 1833. The long expected opening of the opera house took

place this evening with the opera "La Gazza ladra"; all new performers

except Signor Marozzi, who belonged to the old company. The prima donna

soprano is Signorina Fanti. The opera, they say, went off well for a

first performance; but to me it was tiresome, and the audience was

not excited to any degree of applause. The performance occupied four

hours--much too long, according to my notion, to listen to a language

which one does not understand; but the house is superb, and the

decorations of the proprietors' boxes (which occupy the whole of the

second tier) are in a style of magnificence which even the extravagance

of Europe has not yet equaled. I have one-third of box No. 8; Peter

Schermerhorn one-third; James J. Jones one-sixth; William Moore

one-sixth. Our box is fitted up with great taste with light blue

hangings, gilded panels and cornice, armchairs, and a sofa. Some of

the others have rich silk ornaments, some are painted in fresco, and

each proprietor seems to have tried to outdo the rest in comfort and

magnificence. The scenery is beautiful. The dome and the fronts of the

boxes are painted in the most superb classical designs, and the sofa

seats are exceedingly commodious. Will this splendid and refined

amusement be supported in New York? I am doubtful.

The outcome justified Mr. Hone in his doubts. The season was advertised,

to last forty nights. When they were at an end a supplementary season of

twenty-eight nights was added, which extended the time to July 21, 1834.

Besides "La Gazza ladra," the operas given were "Il Barbiere di

Siviglia," "La Donna del Lago," "Il Turco in Italia," "Cenerentola," and

"Matilda di Shabran"--all by Rossini; Pacini's "Gli Arabi nelli Gallie,"

Cimarosa's "II Matrimonio segreto," and "La Casa do Pendere," by the

conductor, one Salvioni. The season had been socially and artistically

brilliant, but the financial showing at the end was one of disaster. The

prices of admission were from $2 down to fifty cents, and when the house

was completely sold out the receipts were not more than $1,400. The

managers took their patrons into their confidence, Rivafinoli publishing

the fact that the receipts for the entire season--including fifteen

nights in Philadelphia, for that city's dependence on New York for

Italian opera began thus early--were but $51,780.89, which were exceeded

by the expenses $29,275.09. For the next season the house was leased by

the owners to Signor Sacchi, who had been the treasurer of Rivafinoli

and Da Ponte, and Signor Porto, one of the singers. These managers had

an experience similar to that which Maretzek declaimed against twenty

years later when troubles gathered about the new Academy of Music.

Notwithstanding that there had been a startling deficit, though the

audiences had been as large as could be accommodated, these underlings

of Rivafinoli and Da Ponte, who were at least men of experience in

operatic management, took the house, giving the stockholders the free

use of their boxes and 116 free admissions every night besides. The

second season started brilliantly, but just as financial disaster was

preparing to engulf it the performances were abruptly brought to an

end by the prima donna, Signora, or Signorina, Fanti, who took French

leave--an incident which remains unique in New York's operatic annals,

at least in its consequences, I think.

It is evident to a close student of the times that the reasons given

were not the only ones to contribute to the downfall of the enterprise.

Italian opera had found a vigorous rival in English, or rather in

opera in the vernacular, for the old ballad operas were disappearing

and German, French, and Italian opera sung in the vernacular, not by

actresses who had tolerable voices, but by trained vocalists, was taking

its place. The people of New York were not quite so sophisticated as

they are to-day, and possibly were dowered with a larger degree of

sincerity. Many of them were willing to admit the incongruity of

behavior at which Addison made merry when he predicted that the time

would come when the descendants of the English people of his day would

be curious to know "why their forefathers used to sit together like an

audience of foreigners in their own country and to hear whole plays

acted before them in a tongue which they did not understand." We know

that Addison was a poor prophet, for the people of Great Britain and

America are still sitting in the same attitude as their ancestors so far

as opera is concerned; but it is plain that arguments like his did reach

the consciences of even the stockholders of the Italian Opera House, or

at least the one of them who has taken posterity into his confidence.

The season under Sacchi and Porto had scarcely begun when Mr. Hone

wrote in his diary:

I went to the opera, where I saw the second act of "La Straniera," by

Bellini. The house is as pretty as ever, and the same faces were seen in

the boxes as formerly; but it is not a popular entertainment, and will

not be in our day, I fear. The opera did not please me. There was too

much reiteration, and I shall never discipline my taste to like common

colloquial expressions of life: "How do you do, madame?" or "Pretty

well, I thank you, sir," the better for being given with orchestral

accompaniment.

I shrewdly suspect that Mr. Hone had been reading his Spectator.

There were three years of opera in London, in Addison's day, when the

English and Italian languages were mixed in the operas as German and

Italian were in Hamburg when Handel started out on his career. "The king

or hero of the play generally spoke in Italian and his slaves answered

him in English; the lover frequently made his court and gained the heart

of his princess in a language which she did not understand." At length,

says Addison, the audience got tired of understanding half the opera,

"and to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of thinking, so ordered

it that the whole opera was performed in an unknown tongue." Now listen

to our diarist:

The Italian language is among us very little understood, and the genius

of it certainly never entered into with spirit. To entertain an audience

without reducing it to the necessity of thinking is doubtless a

first-rate merit, and it is easier to produce music without sense than

with it; but the real charm of the opera is this--it is an exclusive and

extravagant recreation, and, above all, it is the fashion.

Italian music's sweet because 'tis dear,

Their vanity is tickled, not their ear;

Their taste would lessen if the prices fell,

And Shakespeare's wretched stuff do quite as well.

The recitative is an affront to common sense, and if there be any

spectacle more than another opposed to the genius of the English

character and unsuited to its taste it is the ballet of the opera house.

Its eternal dumbshow, with its fantastic appeals to sense and to sense

only, may be Italian perfection, but here it is in English a tame

absurdity. What but fashion could tempt reasonable creatures to sit and

applaud--what was really perpetrated--Deshayes dancing "The Death of

Nelson"?

After the season of Sacchi and Porto Italian opera went into exile for

ten years. Da Ponte pleaded for "the most splendid ornament" of the city

in vain. English opera conquered, aided, no doubt, by the fact that the

section of the city in which the Italian Opera House was situated was

fatally unfashionable, and after standing vacant for a year the house

was leased to James W. Wallack, father of John Lester Wallack, who

turned it into a home for the spoken drama. In another year it went

up in flames.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST ITALIAN COMPANY

The beginnings of Italian opera in America are intimately associated

with two men who form an interesting link connecting the music of the

Old World with that of the New. These men were Manuel del Popolo Vicente

Garcia and Lorenzo Da Ponte. The opera performed in the Park Theater on

November 29, 1825, when the precious exotic first unfolded its petals

in the United States, was Rossini's "Il Barbiere di Siviglia." In this

opera Garcia, then in his prime, had created, as the French say, the

rôle of Almaviva in Rome a little less than ten years before. The

performance was one of the most monumental fiascos in Rossini's career,

and the story goes that Garcia, hoping to redeem it, introduced a

Spanish song to which he himself supplied a guitar accompaniment. The

fiasco of the first performance was largely, if not wholly, due to the

jealous ill will of the friends of Paisiello, who had written music for

an opera on the same story, which was much admired all over Europe, and

which in an adapted form had reached America, as had Rossini's, before

Garcia came with the original version. But Rossini's music was too

fascinating to be kept under a bushel, and in it Garcia won some of his

finest triumphs in London and Paris. In the first New York season it

was performed twenty-three times. Garcia was also a composer, and had

made his mark in this field before he became famous as a singer, having

produced at least seventeen Spanish operas, nineteen Italian, and Seven

French, most, if not all of them, before he came to America.

Exactly what it was that persuaded Garcia to embark on the career of

impresario in a new land does not appear in the story of his enterprise.

There are intimations that he had long had the New York project in mind;

also it used to be thought that Da Ponte had inspired him with the idea;

the more general story is that Dominick Lynch, a New York importer of

French wines, was at the bottom of the enterprise, but whether on his

own account or as a sort of agent for the manager of the Park Theater,

I have not been able to learn. Garcia's singing days were coming to an

end, though his popularity was not yet on the wane if there is evidence

in the circumstances that from 1823 to 1825 his salary in London had

increased from 260 pounds to 1,250 pounds. But it was as a teacher and

composer that he now commanded the greater respect. He had founded

a school of singing of which it may truthfully be said that it was

continued without loss of glory until the end of the nineteenth

century by his son Manuel, who died in 1906, a few months after he had

celebrated the hundredth anniversary of his birth. But, though we may

not know all the reasons which prevailed with him to seek fortune as a

manager after he had himself passed the half-century mark, it is easy

to fancy that the fact that he had half the artists necessary for the

undertaking in his own family had much to do with it. His daughter,

Maria Felicita, had studied singing with him from childhood and at

sixteen years of age had sung with him in Italy. His wife was an

opera singer and his son Manuel had made a beginning in the career which

he speedily abandoned in favor of that which gave him far greater fame

than the stage promised. The future Malibran was singing in the chorus

in London only a year before she disclosed her peerless talents in New

York. In June, 1825, Pasta, who was Mr. Ebers's prima donna at the

King's Theater, took ill. Garcia was a member of the company and came

forward with an offer of his daughter as substitute. The offer was

accepted, the girl effected her début as Rosina in "The Barber," and

made so complete a hit that she was engaged for the remaining six weeks

of the season at a salary of 500 pounds. This is the story as told by

Fétis, which does not differ essentially from that told by Ebers in

his account of his seven years of tenancy of the King's Theater, or

by Lord Mount-Edgecumbe in his "Musical Reminiscences," except that

these make no direct reference to Pasta's illness as the cause which

gave Maria her opportunity. Lord Mount-Edgecumbe's account says that

Ebers found it necessary, about the time of the arrival of Pasta, "to

engage a young singer, the daughter of the tenor Garcia, who had sung

here for several seasons. She was as yet a mere girl, and had never

appeared on any public stage; but from the first moment of her

appearance she showed evident talents for it, both as singer and

actress. Her extreme youth, her prettiness, her pleasing voice and

sprightly, easy action as Rosina in 'Il Barbiere di Siviglia,' in which

part she made her début, gained her general favor; but she was too

highly extolled and injudiciously put forward as a prima donna when she

was only a promising débutante, who in time, by study and practice,

would, in all probability, under the tuition of her father, a good

musician, but (to my ears at least) a most disagreeable singer, rise

to eminence in her profession."

I am not more than half persuaded that this view of the future

Malibran's talents and prospects did not tally with that of her father,

though her tremendous success in New York ought to have persuaded him

that a future of the most dazzling description lay before his daughter.

There is something of a puzzle in the fact that in the midst of her

first triumph the girl should have married M. Malibran, who was only

apparently wealthy, and was surely forty-three years her senior, and of

a nature which was bound to develop lack of sympathy and congeniality

between the pair. The popular version of the story of her marriage is

that she was forced into it by her father, and it is more than intimated

that he was induced to act as he did by the promise of 100,000 francs

made by Malibran as a compensation for the loss of his daughter's

services. Did Garcia oppose his daughter's marriage, and did she

wilfully have her own way in a matter in which she was scarcely a proper

judge? Or was the marriage repugnant to her, and was she sacrificed to

her father's selfishness? I cannot tell, but it has been hinted that

there was danger of her marrying a member of the orchestra in London

before she came to New York, and it is as like as not that the affair

Malibran was of her wishing. Who can know the ways of a maid fourscore

years after? The marriage was as unfortunate as could be. In a few

months Malibran was a bankrupt, his youthful wife's father was gone to

distant Mexico, there to make money, only to be robbed of it at Vera

Cruz on his home journey to England, and Maria Felicita, instead of

living in affluence as the wife of a wealthy New York merchant, was

supporting an unworthy husband, as well as herself, by singing in

English at the theater in the Bowery and in Grace Church on Sundays. The

legal claims bound the ill-assorted pair for ten years, but did not gall

the artist after she returned to Europe in 1827, little more than a year

later. In Paris the marriage was annulled in 1836, and the singer, now

the greatest prima donna on the stage, married Charles de Bériot, the

violinist, with whom she had been living happily for six years, and by

whom she had a son, born in February, 1833. The world's Book of Opera

must supply the other chapters which tell of the great Malibran, her

marvelous triumphs and her early death; but it is a matter of pride for

every American to reflect that this adorable artist began her career

with the admiring applause of our people.

Manuel Garcia, the son, the senior of his sister by three years,

survived her the whole span of life allotted to man by the Psalmist.

Malibran died in 1836; Garcia in 1906. He achieved nothing on the stage,

which he abandoned in 1829. Thereafter his history belongs to that of

pedagogy. Till 1848 his field of operations was Paris; afterward, till

his death, London. Jenny Lind was one of his pupils; Mme. Marchesi

another.

The story that Da Ponte had anything to do with inspiring Garcia's New

York enterprise is practically disposed of by the fact that Da Ponte,

though intimately associated with the opera in London during his sojourn

in that city, had already been a resident of New York three years when

Garcia made his début as a singer and never returned thither. Personally

Garcia was a stranger to him and he to Garcia when the latter came to

New York in the fall of 1825. This gives color of verity to a familiar

story of their meeting. As might easily be imagined, the man who had

written the librettos of "Le Nozze di Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "Cosi

Fan Tutte" for Mozart, was not long in visiting Garcia after his arrival

here. He introduced himself as the author of "Don Giovanni," and Garcia,

clipping the old man in his arm, danced around the room like a child in

glee, singing "Fin ch'han dal vino" the while. After that the inclusion

of Mozart's masterpiece in Garcia's repertory was a matter of course,

with only this embarrassment that there was no singer in the company

capable of singing the music of Don Ottavio. This was overcome by Da

Ponte going to his pupils for money enough to pay an extra singer for

the part. Many a tenor, before and since, who has been cast for that

divinely musical milksop has looked longingly at the rôle of Don

Giovanni which Mozart gave to a barytone, and some have appropriated it.

Garcia was one of these (he had been a tenor de forza in his day),

and it fell to him to introduce the character in New York. Outside of

himself, his daughter, and the basso Angrisani, the company was a poor

affair, the orchestra not much better than that employed at the ordinary

theater then (and now, for that matter), and the chorus composed of

mechanics drilled to sing words they did not understand. It is scarcely

to be wondered at, therefore, that at one of the performances of

Mozart's opera, of which there were ten, singers and players got at

sixes and sevens in the superb finale of the first act, whereupon

Garcia, losing his temper, rushed to the footlights sword in hand,

stopped the orchestra, and commanded a new beginning.

It has already been told how that Da Ponte was active in the promotion

of the first Italian opera enterprise, that he inspired Montressor's

experiment at the Richmond Hill Theater and was the moving spirit in the

ambitious, beautiful but unhappy Italian Opera House undertaking. To do

all these things it was necessary that he should be a man of influence

among the cultured and wealthy classes of the community. As a matter of

fact he was this, and that in spite of the fact that his career had been

checkered in Europe and was not wholly free from financial scandal, at

least in New York. The fact is that the poet's artistic temperament was

paired with an insatiable commercial instinct. This instinct, at least,

may be set down as a racial inheritance. Until seven or eight years

ago nobody seems to have taken the trouble to look into the family

antecedents of him whom the world will always know as Lorenzo Da Ponte.

That was not his name originally. Of this fact something only a little

better than a suspicion had been in the minds of those who knew him and

wrote about him during his lifetime and shortly after his death. Michael

Kelly, the Irish tenor, who knew him in Vienna, speaks of him as "my

friend, the abbé," and tells of his dandyish style of dressing, his

character as a "consummate coxcomb," his strong lisp and broad Venetian

dialect; if he knew that he was a converted Jew, he never mentioned the

fact. Later writers hinted at the fact that he had been born a Jew, but

had been educated by the Bishop of Ceneda and had adopted his name.

When I investigated his American history, a matter of twenty years ago,

my statement in The Tribune newspaper that he was the son of a Hebrew

leather dealer provoked an almost intemperate denial by a German

musical historian, who quoted from his memoirs a story of his religious

observances to confound me. My statement, however, was based, not only

on an old rumor, but also on the evidence of a pamphlet published in

Lisbon in the course of what seems to have been a peculiarly acrimonious

controversy between Da Ponte and a theatrical person unnamed, but

probably one Francesco. In this pamphlet, which is not only indecorous

but indecent, he is referred to as "the celebrated Lorenzo Daponte, who

after having been Jew, Christian, priest, and poet in Italy and Germany

found himself to be a layman, husband, and ass in London." It remained

for Professor Marchesan, his successor in the chair of rhetoric in the

University of Treviso, to give the world the facts concerning his origin

and early family history. From Marchesan's book ("Della Vita e delle

Opere di Lorenzo da Ponte") published in Treviso in 1900 we learn that

the poet's father was in truth a Hebrew leather dealer, and also that

the father's name was Jeremiah Conegliano, his mother's Rachel

Pincherle, and his own Emanuele Conegliano. He was fourteen years old

when not he alone, but the whole family, embraced Christianity. They

were baptized in the cathedral of Ceneda on August 20, 1763, and the

bishop gave the lad, whose talents he seems to have observed, his own

name. The rest of his story up to his departure for America may be

outlined in the words of the sketch in Grove's "Dictionary of Music

and Musicians" (second edition, Vol. III, p. 789).

After five years of study in the seminary at Ceneda (probably with the

priesthood as an object) he went to Venice, where he indulged in amorous

escapades which compelled his departure from that city. He went to

Treviso and taught rhetoric in the university, incidentally took part in

political movements, lampooned an opponent in a sonnet, and was ordered

out of the republic. In Dresden, whither he turned his steps, he found

no occupation for his talents, and journeyed on to Vienna. There,

helped by Salieri, he received from Joseph II the appointment of poet

to the imperial theater and Latin secretary. Good fortune brought

him in contact with Mozart, who asked him to make an opera book of

Beaumarchais's "Mariage de Figaro." The great success of Mozart's opera

on this theme led to further co-operation, and it was on Da Ponte's

suggestion that "Don Giovanni" was undertaken, the promptings coming

largely from the favor enjoyed at the time by Gazzaniga's opera on the

same subject, from which Da Ponte made generous drafts--as a comparison

of the libretti will show. Having incurred the ill will of Leopold, Da

Ponte was compelled to leave Vienna on the death of Joseph II. He went

to Trieste, where Leopold was sojourning, in the hope of effecting a

reconciliation, but failed; but there he met and married an Englishwoman

who was thenceforth fated to share his checkered fortunes. He obtained a

letter recommending him to the interest of Marie Antoinette, but while

journeying toward Paris learned of the imprisonment of the Queen, and

went to London instead. A year was spent in the British metropolis in

idleness, and some time in Holland in a futile effort to establish an

Italian theater there. Again he turned his face toward London, and this

time secured employment as poet to the Italian opera and assistant to

the manager, Taylor. He took a part of Domenico Corri's shop to sell

Italian books, but soon ended in difficulties, and to escape his

creditors fled to America, arriving in New York on June 4, 1805.

Da Ponte lives in the respect and admiration of Dante scholars as the

first of American teachers and commentators on "The Divine Comedy." He

gave himself the title, and in this case adhered to the truth, which

cannot be said of all of his statements about himself. For instance, in

a letter to the public to be set forth presently, he calls himself "poet

of the Emperor Joseph II." He was in the habit of thus designating

himself and it was small wonder that his biographers almost unanimously

interpreted these words to mean that he was poet laureate, or Caesarian

poet. After the mischief, small enough, except perhaps in an ethical

sense, had been done, he tried to correct it in a foot note on one of

the pages of his "Memorie," in which he says that he was not "Poeta

Cesario," but "poet to the Imperial theaters." In his capacity as a

teacher his record seems to have been above reproach; and it was in

this capacity that he first presented himself favorably to New Yorkers.

Within two years after his arrival he gave a pamphlet to the public

entitled "Compendium of the Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, written by

Himself, to which is added the first Literary Conversatione held at his

home in New York on the 10th day of March, 1807, consisting of several

Italian compositions in verse and prose translated into English by his

scholars." That this little brochure was designed as an advertisement

is obvious enough; it was issued on his fifty-eighth birthday and its

contents, besides the sketch of his life, which, so it began, he

had promised to give his pupils, were specimens of their literary

handicraft. In the biographical recital are echoes of the contentions in

which he had been engaged in London a few years before. Although only

two years had elapsed since his arrival in America, what may be called

the first of his commercial periods was already over. He had sent his

wife to New York ahead of him with some of the money which his English

creditors were looking for. With this he promptly embarked in business,

trafficking in tobacco, liquors, drugs, etc.--goods which promised

large profits. In three months fear of yellow fever drove him to

Elizabethtown, N. J., where he remained a year, by which time he was

ruined. He came back to New York and began to teach the Italian

language and literature, and the little "Compendium" recorded his first

successes. He taught till 1811, by which time he had laid aside $4,000,

with which he again went into business, this time as a distiller in

Sunbury, Pa. After several years of commercial life he returned again to

New York and resumed the profession which brought him into contact with

people of refinement and social standing, who seem to have remained his

friends, despite his complaints and importunities, till his death in

1838. Among those who were sincerely attached to him were Clement Clark

Moore, Hebrew lexicographer, trustee of Columbia College, and (best of

all) author of "'Twas the Night before Christmas." Through Moore he

secured the privilege of calling himself Professor of Italian Literature

at Columbia, though without salary, managed to sell the college a large

number of Italian books, and was engaged to make a catalogue of the

college library. Another friend was Henry James Anderson, who became

Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy in the college in 1825, the year

in which Garcia came to New York with his operatic enterprise. Professor

Anderson married his daughter and became the father of Edward Henry and

Elbert Ellery Anderson. Other friends were Giulian C. Verplanck, Dr.

Macneven, Maroncelli, the Italian patriot, (whose wife was one of the

members of the opera company which Da Ponte organized with Rivafinoli),

Samuel Ward, Dr. John W. Francis, the Cottenet family, and H. T.

Tuckerman, who wrote a sketch of him after his death in Putnam's

Magazine. At the time of his operatic venture, 1833-34, he lived at No.

342 Broadway, and kept a bookstore at No. 336, which may then have been

an adjoining house. The site is near the present Catherine Lane. Before

then he had lived in dozens of different houses, moving, apparently,

nearly every year. He died at No. 91 Spring Street, on August 17, 1838,

and was buried in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Eleventh Street,

between First Avenue and Avenue A. When the centenary of the first

performance of "Don Giovanni" was celebrated in many European cities, in

1887, I conceived the idea of sending a choir of trombones to the grave

of the poet who had written the text to pay a musical tribute to his

memory, and thus made the discovery that the place of his burial was

as completely lost as the last resting place of the mortal remains of

Mozart. Weeks of research were necessary to determine the fact that it

was the old cemetery that had received his body, and that the location

of the grave was no longer to be determined by the records. It was never

marked.

Da Ponte's ambition to see Italian opera permanently established in New

York seems to have received a crushing blow with the failure of the

pretentious Italian Opera House enterprise. His dream I have referred

to; he was again to be a "poet to the opera," to write works for season

after season which his countryman Trajetta was to set to music. His

niece was to be a prima donna. He did write one libretto; it was for an

opera entitled, "L'Ape Musicale," for the musical setting of which he

despoiled Rossini. His niece, Giulia Da Ponte, did sing, but her talents

were not of the kind to win distinction. He persuaded Montressor to give

his season, and, rushing into print, as was his custom--the period of

the pamphleteer was to his liking--he discussed the failure of that

undertaking in two booklets. After the successive failures of himself

with Rivafinoli and his underlings, who attempted to succeed where he

had come to grief, he appended a letter to his old supporters (who had

plainly fallen away from him) to a pamphlet devoted to setting forth the

miseries of his existence after the great things which, in his opinion,

he had done for the people of New York. The letter has never seen the

light of day from the time when it was printed in 1835 till now; but it

deserves preservation. I found it twenty years ago in the library of the

Historical Society of New York in a bound volume of miscellaneous

pamphlets. It is as follows:

TO THOSE AMERICANS who love the fine arts I address myself. Hitherto I

have vainly spoken and written. Never was more really verified the Latin

proverb: Abyssus abyssum invocat.

Let the verses that I now present you rouse you from your lethargy; yet

should they not, I will not cease to cry aloud. I cannot now remain in

silence while my fellow countrymen are sacrificed, the citizens of two

noble cities deceived, and an enterprise for which I have so long and

ardently labored, so calculated to shed luster on the nation, and so

honorable in its commencement, ruined by those who have no means, nor

knowledge, nor experience. Answer at least these questions: Did you not

request from me an Italian company? It will be readily understood with

whom I speak. Why did you ask this of me? I was offered a handsome

premium if I would introduce a troupe of select Italian artists in

America. Did not I, and I alone procure them? Were they not excellent?

Have I been compensated for my labor, reimbursed my actual expenses,

or even honored by those most benefited by my losses and labors?

Had not I a right to expect thus much, or at least justice? And if you

thought me competent to do what I have done, why should you not be

guided by my counsels? Did I not tell you and reiterate in my writing

and verbally that Rivafinoli was not to be trusted? That he was a

daring, but imprudently daring, adventurer, whose failures in London,

and in Mecico and Carolina were the sure forerunners of his failure in

New York? And when deceived by him, whom did you take in place of him?

PORTO! SACCHI! With what means? What talents? What judgment? What

experience? What chances of a happy issue? Would you know why they

wished it? I will tell you, with Juvenal--'Greculus esuriens si in

coelum jusseris ibit.' But ignorant pretenders mostly have more

influence than modest truth. You, gentlemen of the committee, gave the

theater to them because, not having anything to lose, they could yield

to everything, even to the promising of what they knew themselves

unable to perform.

One of them it is said still has some hopes from you. Before another

disgrace occurs I beg you to look at the effects. Nemo dat quod non

habet. I brought a company from Italy by the mere force of my word. And

why was this? Because they knew me for an honorable man, who would not

promise what he could not perform, who had been eleven years the poet of

the Emperor Joseph 2d, who for another equal space of time had been the

poet to the theater in London, who had written thirty-six operas for

Salieri, for Martini, for Storace and Mozzart (sic).

That these dramas still survive, you yourself have seen and thought its

author not worthy of your esteem. For God's sake let the past become a

beacon light to save you from the perils of the future. Do not destroy

the most splendid ornament of your city. Rocco is obliged to visit

Italy. Lease to him the theater, he will have for his advisers the

talented and estimable Bagioli and myself. For me I wish for nothing,

but it pains me to see spoiled by ignorance and imposture, and vanity

that which cost me so much, or to speak more correctly, which cost me

everything, and you so much, and it will cost you more in fame as well

as in money.

What will they say, the Trollops and the Halls and Hamiltons who

nodum in scripto quoerunt with the microscope of national aversion?

Rocco and he only can redeem the fortunes of your disorganized,

betrayed, dishonored establishment by giving you a new and meritorious

company. Listen then to him and assist him--you will lose nothing by

it; I pledge you the word of an old man whose lips have never uttered

an untruth. Your servant and fellow citizen,

Lorenzo Da Ponte

The theater was not leased to Rocco. It never echoed to

opera after the second season.

CHAPTER IV

HOUSES BUILT FOR OPERA

"His wit was not so sharp as his chin, and so his career was not so long

as his nose," says Richard Grant White of the impresario who, ten years

after the failure of the Italian Opera House, made the third effort to

establish Italian opera in New York of which there is a record. The man

with a sharp chin and long nose was Ferdinand Palmo. He was the owner of

a popular restaurant which went by the rather tropical name "Café des

Milles Colonnes," and was situated in Broadway, just above Duane Street.

Palmo knew how to cook and how to cater, and his restaurant made him

fairly rich. What he did not know about managing an opera house he was

made conscious of soon after the ambition to be an impresario took hold

of him. His was an individual enterprise, like Mr. Hammerstein's, with

no clogs or entangling alliances in the shape of stockholders, or

managing directors, or amusement committees. He seems to have been

strongly impressed with the idea that after the public had been total

abstainers for ten years they would love opera for its own sake, and

that it would not be necessary to give hostages to fortune in the shape

of a beautiful house, with a large portion set apart for the exclusive

use of wealth and fashion. Except in name, says Mr. White, there were no

boxes. Palmo did not even build a new theater. He found one that could

be modeled to his purposes in Stoppani's Arcade Baths, in Chambers

Street, between Broadway and Center Street. The site is now occupied

by the building of the American News Company. The acoustics of the new

opera house are said to have been good, but the inconvenience of the

location and unenviable character of the neighborhood are indicated

quite as much as Signor Palmo's enterprising and considerate nature

by his announcement that after the performances a large car would be

run uptown as far as Forty-Second Street for the accommodation of

his patrons; and also that the patrons aforesaid should have police

protection. The house seated about eight hundred persons, the seats

being hard benches, with slats across the back shoulder high. Opera

lovers given to luxury were permitted to upholster their benches. The

orchestra numbered "thirty-two professors," but their devotion to the

art which they professed was not so great as to make them willing to

starve for its sake or to refuse to resort to the methods of the more

modern workingmen's unions to compel payment for their services, as

we shall see presently. The first performance under Signor Palmo took

place on February 3, 1844, the opera being the same one with which

Mr. Hammerstein began his latest venture sixty-two years later--"I

Puritani." The prima donna soprano was Borghese, who was attractive in

appearance, though not beautiful; who dressed well, sang with passionate

intensity, and won a popularity that found vent in praise which may

have been extravagant. One critic, "balancing her beauties against her

defects," pronounced her the best operatic singer that the writer had

yet heard on this side of the Atlantic. This remark leads Mr. White

to surmise that the critic had not been five years in America, for,

says he, Signora Borghese was not worthy to tie the shoes of Malibran,

Pedrotti, Fanti, Garadori, or Mrs. Wood, the last two of whom had sung

in English opera. Her chief defect seems to have been the tremolo--that

vice toward which the American critics of to-day are more intolerant

than those of any other people, as they are toward the sister vice of

a faulty intonation. Mr. White talks sensibly on the subject in his

estimate of Borghese.

She had a fine voice, although not a great one; her vocalization,

regarded from a merely musical point of view, was of the corresponding

grade, but as stage vocalization it had great power and deserved

higher commendation. Her musical declamation was always effective and

musico-rhetorically in good taste. She had a fine person, an expressive

face, and much grace of manner. One might be content never to hear a

better prima donna if one were secured against never hearing a worse.

In her was first remarked here, among vocalists of distinction, that

trembling of the voice when it is pressed in a crescendo, which has

since become so common as greatly to mar our enjoyment of vocal music.

This great fault, unknown before the appearance of Verdi, is attributed

by some musical critics to the influence of his vociferous and strident

style. It may be so; but that which follows is not always a consequence

of that after which it comes. Certain it is, however, that from this

time forward very few of the principal singers who have been heard in

New York--only the very greatest and those whose style was formed

before Verdi domineered the Italian lyric stage--were without this

tremble. Grisi, Mario, Sontag, Jenny Lind, Alboni, and Salvi were

entirely without it; their voices came from the chest pure, free and

firm.

I can scarcely believe that the distressful vocal wabble either came in

with Verdi's music or was greatly promoted by it. In the lofty quality

of style Mme. Sembrich is the most perfect exemplar whom it is the

privilege of New Yorkers to hear to-day; and she is the best singer

we have of Verdi's music. Did anyone ever hear a tone come out of her

throat that was not pure, free, and firm? Frequently the tremolo is

an affectation like the excessive vibrato of a sentimental fiddler;

sometimes it is the product of weakness due to abuse of the vocal organ.

In all cases it is the sign of bad taste or vicious training, or both,

and is an abomination. On the opera stage to-day Italian prima donnas

are most afflicted with it. In turn Verdi, Meyerbeer, and Wagner

have been accused of having caused it, but anyone who has listened

intelligently to the opera singers of the last forty years will testify

with me that the truly great singers of their music have been as free

from the vicious habit as have been those whose artistic horizons have

been confined by the music of Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti.

The tenor of the Palmo company was Antognini, who effected his entrance

on the American stage five weeks after the opening of the season. In the

opinion of Mr. White, he was the greatest tenor ever heard here, not

excepting Mario and Salvi, and Mr. White's opinion is so judiciously

expressed that one is fain to give it credence. Whether or not it can be

extended over the period which he has covered, which is that reaching

from the last days of the Academy of Music, when Campanini was still in

his vocal prime but had not developed the dramatic powers which he put

into play with the decay of his voice, I shall not undertake to say;

taste in tenor voices has changed within the last generation in favor

of the robust quality so magnificently exemplified in Signor Caruso. To

judge from Mr. White's description Antognini, as a singer merely, was

a Bonci of a manlier mould. His fame seems to have died with those who

heard him, and perhaps this is a good reason for reprinting what Mr.

White said about him in full:

He (Antognini) was an artist of the first class, both by natural gifts

and by culture. His voice, although not of notable compass, was an

absolute tenor of a delicious quality and great power. His vocalization

was unexceptionably pure, and his style was manly and noble. As a

dramatic singer I never heard his equal except Ronconi; as an actor,

I never saw his equal, except Ronconi, Rachel, and Salvini. He had in

perfection that power which Hamlet speaks of in his soliloquy, after

he dismisses the players, when the speech about Pyrrhus is ended:

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wann'd;

Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit!

I have seen the blood fade not only from Antognini's cheeks, but from

his very lips, as he strode slowly forward to interrupt the nuptials

in "Lucia di Lammermoor," and then flame back again as he broke into

defiance of his foes. The inflections of his voice in passages of

tenderness were ravishing, and his utterance of anger and despair was

terrible. Nor was any tenor that has been heard here, not even Mario

in his prime, his superior in that great test of fine vocalization, a

sustained cantabile passage. He was one of those blond Italians who

are found on the northern border of the peninsula. Being all this he

nevertheless soon disappeared, and was forgotten except by a few of the

most exacting and cultivated among his hearers; the reason of which was

that his voice could not be depended upon for two nights together--not,

indeed, for one alone. On Monday he would thrill the house; on Wednesday

he would go about the stage depressed, almost silent, huskily making

mouths at his fellow actors and the audience. His voice would even

desert him in the middle of an evening, thus producing an impression

that he was trifling with his audience. No judgment could have been

more unjust, for he was a conscientious artist, but the effect of this

defect, as Polonius might say, was therefore no less disastrous, and

he soon gave place to artists less admirable but more to be relied

upon.

In this season there appeared a prima donna of the French school in

the person of Laura Cinthe Montalant, known in the annals of opera

as Cinti-Damoreau, who had come to America to sing in concerts with

Artôt, the violinist. In the eyes of Fétis she was one of the greatest

singers the world had known. Damoreau was the name of her husband, an

unsuccessful French actor. When she came to America she had made her

career in Paris and London, a great triumph coming to her in the French

capital, where Rossini composed the principal female rôles in "Le Siège

de Corinth" and "Moïse," and Auber those in "Domino Noir,"

"L'Ambassadrice," and "Zanetta."

[Repertory of the first season at Palmo's Opera House: "I Puritani"

(Bellini), "Belisario" (Donizetti), "Beatrice di Tenda" (Bellini), "Il

Barbiere di Siviglia" (Rossini), "La Sonnambula" (Bellini), "L'Elisir

d'Amore" (Donizetti), "L'Italiana in Algeri" (Rossini). Repertory of

the second season, 1844-1845: "Lucia di Lammermoor" (Donizetti), "II

Pirata" (Bellini), "Chiara de Rosemberg" (Luigi Ricci), "Lucrezia

Borgia" (Donizetti), "Belisario" (Donizetti), "La Cenerentola"

(Rossini), "Semiramide" (Rossini).]

It is not surprising that ill fortune became the companion of Palmo at

the outset of his enterprise and dragged him down to the lowest depths

before the end of his second season (according to the calendar).

The first season ran its course and a second one began in November,

1844. Amidst the usual vicissitudes it continued until January 25,

1845. On this momentous date Borghese was before the footlights and

about to open her mouth in song when suddenly the orchestra ceased

playing. Not a soft complaining note from the flute, not a whimper from

the fiddles. Borghese raved and Palmo came upon the stage to learn the

cause of the direful silence. A colloquy with the musicians, if not

exactly in these words, was to this effect:

"What's the meaning of this? Is it a strike? Why?"

"No pay."

"I'll pay you to-morrow."

"To-night's the time"--the musicians packing up their instruments.

Palmo rushed to the box office to get the night's receipts. Alas! they

were already in the hands of the deputy sheriff. Another opera manager

had gone down into the vortex which had swallowed up Ebers, and Taylor,

and Delafield, and others of their tribe in London, and Montressor and

Rivafinoli in New York. Palmo, it is said, had literally to return to

his pots and kettles; after serving as cook and barkeeper in the hotels

of others the once enterprising manager of the Café of a Thousand

Columns became a dependent upon the charity of his friends. There was

another season of opera at Palmo's, among the managers of which were

Sanquirico, a buffo singer, Salvatore Patti, and an Italian named

Pogliagno. In the company were Catarina Barili and her two children,

Clotilde and Antonio. Patti was a tenor singer. He was the husband

of the prima donna, Catarina Barili, who was looked upon as a fine

representative of the old school of singing, and from the pair sprang

Carlotta and Adelina, who gave a luster to the name of Patti which the

father would never have given it by his exertions as singer and manager.

Both were born before their parents came to New York; Carlotta in

Florence, in 1840, and Adelina in Madrid, in 1843. The childhood and

youth of both were spent in New York, and here both received their

musical training. Their artistic history belongs to the world, and since

I am, with difficulty, trying just now to talk more about opera houses

and those who built them to their own ruin, than about those who sang in

them, I will not pursue it. The summer of 1847 saw Palmo's little opera

house deserted. In 1848 it became Burton's Theater, where, as Mr. White

observes, that most humorous of comedians made for himself in a few

years a handsome fortune.

Who shall deny that Signor Palmo, though his fortunes went down in

disaster, made a valuable contribution to that movement--which must

still be looked upon as in an experimental stage--which has for its aim

the permanent establishment of opera in the United States? Experimental

in its nature the movement must remain until the vernacular becomes the

language of the performances and native talent provides both works and

interpreters. The day is still far distant, but it will come. The opera

of Germany was still Italian more than a century and a half after the

invention of the art form, though in the meanwhile the country had

produced a Bach and a Handel. The Palmo venture (at the bottom of which

there seems to have been a desire to popularize or democratize a form of

entertainment which has ever been the possession of wealth and fashion)

revived the social sentiment upon which Da Ponte had built his hopes.

In the opinion of the upper classes's it was not Italian opera that

had succumbed, but only the building which housed it. This certainly

presented an aspect of incongruity. Fine talent came from England for

the English companies, whose career continued without interruption,

and the moment which saw the downfall of Palmo's enterprise saw also

the influx of a company of Italian artists under the management of Don

Francesco Marty y Torrens, of Havana, who deserves to be kept in the

minds of opera lovers which go back to the days of the Academy of

Music, if for no other reason than that he brought Signor Arditi to

New York--the hawk-billed conductor whose shining pate used to

glisten like a stage lamp from the conductor's seat in the fine old

house at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place.

And so, in order that Italian opera might not perish from the earth, but

live on, surrounded by the architectural splendor appropriate to it, one

hundred and fifty men of social prominence got together and guaranteed

to support it for five years, and Messrs. Foster, Morgan, and Colles

built the Astor Place Opera House. Instead of the eight hundred seatings

of Palmo's institution, this held 1,800. The theater had "a fine open

front and an excellent ventilation." That it was an elegant playhouse

and admirably adapted to the purpose for which it had been designed

there are many people still alive in New York to testify. Mr. White says

enthusiastically that it was "one of the most attractive theaters ever

erected." Even Max Maretzek, who began his American career there, first

as conductor, afterward as impresario, while throwing ridicule upon its

management (his own administration excepted, of course) and its artistic

forces, praises the architectural arrangement of the house. "Most

agreeably surprised was I," he writes in his "Crotchets and Quavers,"

published in 1855, "on entering this small but comfortably arranged

bonbonnière. It contained somewhere about 1,100 excellent seats in

parquet (the Parisian parterre), dress circle and first tier, with some

seven hundred in the gallery. Its principal feature was that everybody

could see, and, what is of infinitely greater consequence, could be

seen. Never, perhaps, was any theater built that afforded a better

opportunity for a display of dress. Believe me" (he is indulging in the

literary fiction of a letter to a journalistic friend in Paris), "that

were the Funambules built as ably for this grand desideratum, despite

the locality and the grade of performance at this theater, my conviction

is that it would be the principal and most fashionable one in Paris."

Maretzek is, of course, here aiming chiefly to cast discredit upon one

of the vanities and affectations of society--the love of display; but if

Mr. White is to be believed, the patrons of the Astor Place Opera House,

on its opening (which means the fashionable element of New York society)

were temperate and tasteful in the matter of dress. Speaking of the

first performance at the new house, he says: "Rarely has there been

an assembly, at any time or in any country, so elegant, with such a

generally suffused air of good breeding; and yet it could not be called

splendid in any one of its circles. At the Astor Place Opera House that

form of opera toilet for ladies which is now peculiar to New York and

a few other American cities came into vogue--a demi-toilet of marked

elegance and richness, and yet without that display either of apparel

and trimmings or of the wearer's personal charms which is implied by

full evening dress in fashionable parlance. This toilet is very pleasing

in itself, and it is happily adapted to the social conditions of a

country in which any public exhibition of superior wealth in places set

apart for common enjoyment of refined pleasure is not in good taste."

Mr. White wrote in 1881; would he have been able to be so complimentary

to the opera audiences of 1908? What relation does the present

extravagance of dress, the vulgar ostentation which Mr. White would

have us believe was foreign to the taste of New York's cultured society

in 1847, bear toward the support which opera has received since the

Metropolitan Opera House was opened? The factors which are to determine

the question seem to be marshaling themselves since Mr. Hammerstein

opened the Manhattan Opera House, but they are not yet fairly opposed

to each other. There are features in which the new opera house recalls

memories of the old Academy which met its downfall when the amalgamation

between the old Knickerbockers and the newer New Yorkers was effected;

but there are also other features which make a repetition of that

occurrence under present circumstances very improbable, and the chiefest

of these is that inculcated by the failure of the Palmo enterprise;

opera must have an elegant environment if it is to succeed. But it had

this in the Astor Place Opera House; why, then, did it live its little

span only?

The question is easily answered--the Astor Place Opera House was killed

by competition; not the competition of English opera with Italian, which

had been in existence for twenty-five years, but of Italian opera with

Italian opera. The first lessees of the new institution were Messrs.

Sanquirico and Patti, who had first tried their luck in Palmo's Opera

House. They endured a season. [At the Astor Place Opera House in its

first season Sanquirico and Patti produced Verdi's "Ernani," Bellini's

"Beatrice di Tenda," Donizetti's "Lucrezia Borgia," Mencadante's "Il

Giuramento," and Verdi's "Nabucco." Mr. Fry's season in 1848 when Mr.

Maretzek was the conductor, brought forward Donizetti's "Linda di

Chamouni," "Lucrezia Borgia," "L'Elisir d'Amore," "Roberto Devereux,"

and "Lucia di Lammermoor" and Verdi's "Ernani."] Then the first American

manager appeared on the field--I mean the first American manager whose

thoughts were directed to opera exclusively as distinguished from the

managers of theaters who took hold of opera at intervals, as they did

any other sort of entertainment which offered employment for their

houses. The manager in question was Mr. E. R. Fry, who came from the

counting house to a position of which he can have known nothing more

than what he could acquire from attendance upon opera, of which he was

fond, and association with his brother, W. H. Fry, who was a journalist

by profession (long the musical critic of The Tribune) and an amateur

composer of more than respectable attainments. Mr. Maretzek, in his

"Crotchets and Quavers"--a book generally marked by characteristic good

humor, but not free from malevolence--tries to make it appear that Mr.

Edward Fry went into operatic management for the express purpose of

performing his brother's operas; but while the animus of the statement

is enough to cause it to be looked upon with suspicion, the fact

that none of William Henry Fry's operas was performed at the Astor

Place Opera House during the incumbency of Edward Fry is a complete

refutation. "Leonora," the only grand opera by a professional critic

ever performed in New York, so far as I know, was brought forward at

the Academy of Music a good nine years later. Apropos of this admirable

and respected predecessor of mine, a good story was disclosed by Charles

A. Dana some fifteen or twenty years ago in his reminiscences of Horace

Greeley. Mr. Dana published a large number of letters sent to him at

various times while he was managing editor of The Tribune and Mr.

Greeley editor-in-chief. It was in the days just before the War of

the Rebellion. A political question of large importance had arisen

in Congress, and Mr. Greeley was so concerned in it that he went to

Washington to look after it in person and act as a special correspondent

of his own newspaper. Thence one day he sent two letters to The Tribune

on the subject, but in the issue of the day in which he expected them to

appear in The Tribune he sought in vain for his communication. Thereupon

he indited an epistle to Mr. Dana in these wingèd words:

Friend Dana: What would it cost to burn the Opera House? If the price

is reasonable have it done and send me the bill. . . . I wrote my two

letters under the presumption (there being no paper on Wednesday) that

the solid work of exposing their (Pierce and Gushing) perversion of

history had of course been done by Hildreth. I should have dwelt with it

even more gravely but for that. And now I see (the Saturday paper only

got through last night) that you crowded out what little I did say to

make room for Fry's eleven columns of arguments as to the feasibility of

sustaining the opera in N. Y. if they would only play his compositions.

I don't believe three hundred people who take the Tribune care one chew

of Tobacco for the matter.

The "eleven columns" was an amiable exaggeration quite in consonance

with the remainder of the letter; but I can testify from a consultation

of the files of the newspaper which I have served as one of Mr. Fry's

successors for more than a quarter of a century that on the date in

question The Tribune's critic did occupy three and a half columns

with a discussion of the Lagrange season just ended at the Academy

of Music and a most strenuous plea for the permanent substitution of

English for Italian opera! Also, that most of what Mr. Fry said would

sound just as apposite to-day as it did then, and be backed by just as

much reason. But a taste for the elegant exotic and reason do not seem

to go hand in hand, and managers are still strangely averse to placing

themselves for guidance into the hands of The Tribune's critics. How

different might not musical history in New York have shaped itself had

William Henry Fry, George William Curtis, John R. G. Hassard, and H. E.

K. had their way during the last sixty years! The thought is quite

overpowering.

The opposition which the Astor Place Opera House met was indeed

formidable. It came from the company organized by Don Francesco Marty y

Torrens for performances in Havana. This enterprising gentleman did not

come to New York to make money, but mischief--as Messrs. Sanquirico,

Patti, Fry, and Maretzek must have thought--and incidentally to keep

his singers employed during the hot and unhealthy season in Havana. His

aiders and abettors were James H. Hackett and William Niblo. The former,

in his day an actor, was particularly famous for his impersonation of

Falstaff. His interest in opera may have been excited more or less by

the fact that his wife had been Catherine Leesugg, an English opera

singer, who had sung the part of Rosina in an English version of

Rossini's "Barber of Seville" as early as 1819. At Niblo's history

I have already taken a glance. In the present chapter he is chiefly

interesting, according to a story which has long had currency, as

the manager who succeeded in putting an end to the Astor Place Opera

House by a trick which took the bloom of caste off that aristocratic

institution. I shall let Maretzek tell the story presently, pausing now

to interject an anecdote which fell under my notice some years ago while

I was turning over the records of the Grand Ducal Theater at Weimar.

This always comes to my mind when the downfall of the Astor Place Opera

House is mentioned, and also when, as has frequently been the case

within the last sixteen years, I met a grandson of one of the principal

actors in the incident in the streets of New York.

In April, 1817, there came to Weimar from Vienna a gifted dog, who

assisted his master in the presentation of a play of the melodramatic

order, entitled "The Dog of Aubri de Mont-Didier." The director of the

Grand Ducal Theater at the time was one Wolfgang von Goethe. To him the

dog's manager applied for the privilege of producing his edifying piece.

Goethe refused permission, and there was danger that the patrons of the

playhouse which had echoed to the first sounds of the plays of Schiller

and Goethe were to be deprived of the inestimable privilege of seeing

a dog dash out of the door of a tavern in which a murder had been

committed, pull a bell rope to alarm the village, carry a lantern into

the forest, discover the murderer just at the psychological moment,

pursue him from rock to rock, capture him at the last, and thus bring

about the triumph of justice. But the dog's manager was not thus to be

put down. He went with a petition to Fräulein Jagemann (whose portrait

in the character of Sappho my readers may still find hanging on a wall

of the library at Weimar), and solicited her intervention with the Grand

Duke, whose reign Schiller and Goethe made glorious. Fräulein Jagemann

was a prima donna and the Grand Duke's mistress. ("The companion of

my leisure moments," he called her with quite a pretty euphemism.) In

the former capacity she had given Goethe, the director, a great deal

of trouble, and in the latter her influence had caused him many an

annoyance. It was the dog that broke the camel's back of his patience.

Fräulein Jagemann saw an opportunity to get in a blow against her

artistic tyrant, and she wheedled Charles Augustus into commanding the

production of "The Dog of Aubri de Mont-Didier." The play was given

twice, on April 12 and 14, 1817, with uproarious success, of course,

and on April 17th Goethe resigned the artistic direction of the Weimar

Court Theater. As for Fräulein Jagemann, she eventually got a title

and estates as Frau von Heygendorf.

And now for the story of "The Dogs of Donetti: or, the Downfall of the

Astor Place Opera House," by Max Maretzek; it must be prefaced by the

statement that after Edward Fry had made a lamentable failure of his

opera season at which he had the services of Maretzek as conductor,

Maretzek became lessee of the house and thus remained for the years

1849 and 1850.

Bled to the last drop in my veins (I, of course, allude to my purse and

my pocket), the doors of the Astor Place Opera House were closed upon

the public. It was my determination to woo the fickle goddess Fortune

elsewhere. Possibly her blinded eyes might not recognize her old adorer,

and she might even yet bestow upon me a few of her faithless smiles.

Again, however, after my departure, was the opera house leased. But to

whom do you imagine it was now abandoned by the exemplary wisdom of its

proprietors?

To the identical William Niblo who had fostered and encouraged the

opposition--the same William Niblo who had a theater (or let me give

it his name, and call it--a garden) within the length of some three

stone-throws from their own house. It must be granted they did not

foresee that which was about to happen. But this will scarcely palliate

the folly of taking the head of a rival establishment for their tenant.

This gentleman engaged the troupe of dogs and monkeys, then in this

country, under the charge of a certain Signor Donetti.

Their dramatic performances were offered to the refined and intelligent

proprietors and patrons of this classic and exclusive place of

amusement. Naturally they protested. It was in vain. Then they sued out

an injunction against this exhibition on the ground that in Niblo's

lease of the premises only respectable performances were permitted to

be given in the opera house. On the "hearing to show cause" for this

injunction Mr. Niblo called up Donetti or some of his friends, who

testified that his aforesaid dogs and monkeys had, in their younger

days, appeared before princes and princesses and kings and queens.

Moreover, witnesses were called who declared under oath that the

previously mentioned dogs and monkeys behaved behind the scenes more

quietly and respectably than many Italian singers. This fact I feel that

I am not called on to dispute. . . . As might be supposed the injunction

was dissolved.

As a matter of course, the house lost all its prestige in the eyes of

the community. Shortly afterward its contents were sold, and the shell

of the opera was turned into a library. Its deathblow had been given it

as a place for theatrical amusement by the astute Mr. William

Niblo.

Furthermore, Mr. Maretzek would have us believe that some year or

two later, the Academy of Music having been projected meanwhile, he

met Niblo and asked him what he thought of the prospects of the new

enterprise.

"Why," answered the manager, in his nasal voice, "I suppose I shall

have again to engage Donetti's dogs and monkeys."

CHAPTER V

MARETZEK, HIS RIVALS AND SINGERS

Of the operatic managers of fifty years ago Max Maretzek was the only

one with whom I was personally acquainted, and it was not until near the

close of his career that he swam into the circle of my activities or I

into his. He died on September 17, 1897. His last years were spent in a

home on Staten Island, and the public heard nothing about him after the

memorable concert given for his benefit at the Metropolitan Opera House

on February 12, 1889, the occasion being set down as the fiftieth

anniversary of the beginning of his career as a conductor in America.

All the notable conductors then living in New York took part in the

concert--Theodore Thomas, Anton Seidl, Frank van der Stucken, Walter

Damrosch, and Adolf Neuendorff. Maretzek was seventy-six years of age

at the time of his death, and he had grown old, if not gracefully, at

least good-naturedly. He did not quarrel with his fate, but even when

he spoke of its buffetings it was in a tone of pleasant banter and with

a twinkle in his eyes. His manner of accepting what the world brought

him was illustrated at a meeting which I had with him in the season of

1883-84--the first of the Metropolitan Opera House. It was on a Saturday

afternoon that I found him standing in front of the new establishment

after the first act of the opera was over. Not having seen him in the

house, I asked him if he was attending the performance. He said he was,

but that, the house being sold out, he had no seat. Thereupon I offered

him mine, saying that it might be a pleasure to occupy it since several

of his professional acquaintances were seated in the neighborhood who

would be glad to greet him. "Annie Louise Cary is right back of me," I

said, "and Clara Louise Kellogg near by." But he did not care to accept

my offer, and I fancied I saw a rather more serious and contemplative

look come over his grizzled face. Naturally, I asked him what he thought

of the new house and the new enterprise, adding that I regretted that he

was not the manager. He began with apparent solemnity:

"Well, when I heard the house was to be built, I did think--I did think

that some of the stockholders would remember what I had done for opera.

Some of the old-timers, who used to go to the Academy of Music and Astor

Place Opera House when I was manager there, I thought, would recollect

what companies I gave them--Parodi, and Steffanone, and Marini, and

Lorini, and Bettini, and Bertucca"--(how often I had heard him chant the

list, counting off the singers on his chubby fingers!)--"and Truffi,

and Benedetti, and Salvi. I thought somebody might remember this and the

old man, and come to me and say, 'Max, you did a good deal for us once,

let us do something for you now.' I didn't expect them to come and offer

me the house, but I thought they might say this and add, 'Come, we'll

make you head usher,' or, 'You may have the bar.' But nobody came, and

I'm out of it completely."

Maretzek's managerial career continued at least until 1874; after that

he conducted operas for others and did something toward the last in the

way of teaching. It was seldom that one could get into a conversation

with him but he could grow reminiscent, and, reverting to the olden

time, begin tolling off the members of the companies which he had led

to artistic victories and who had helped plunge him into financial

defeat--"Parodi, and Steffanone, and Marini, and Bettini, and Lorini,

and Bertucca," and so on. Poor Bertucca! Few of those who in later

years saw Mme. Maretzek, portly and sedate, enter the orchestra at the

Academy of Music and Metropolitan Opera House, and tune her harp while

the audience was gathering in the gilded horseshoes above, recalled

that she had been the sprightly and bewitching Bertucca of thirty

years before.

I cannot recall that Maretzek ever grew bitter in discoursing on what

once was and what might have been. He could be satirical and cutting,

but his words were generally accompanied with a smile. His dominant mood

and something of his style of expression are illustrated in his book,

"Crotchets and Quavers, or Revelations of an Opera Manager in America,"

which he published in 1855, most obviously with the help of some

literary hack who, I imagine, got the thoughts from Maretzek, but

supplied the literary dress for them. A good many old scores are paid

off in the book, and a good many grudges fed fat; but there are not many

instances of bad humor. There is a sugar coating even to his malice.

Shortly before I left Cincinnati, the College of Music of that city,

having suffered a serious loss of prestige because of the resignation

of Theodore Thomas, made a pretentious announcement of an operatic

department, a practical school for opera, which was to be conducted by

Maretzek. I think it was in the fall of 1880. At any rate, it was on the

very eve of my departure from Cincinnati for New York. Maretzek came to

the city somewhat late in the evening, and though I called upon him at

the Burnet House as soon as I heard of his coming, he was already in

bed when my card reached him. Nevertheless, I was asked up to his room.

A tea tray still stood upon the table by the side of the bed when I

entered. He held out his hand cordially and apologized for receiving

me in bed. I told him that my newspaper, The Gazette, wanted to know,

for the information of its readers, what he purposed doing at the

college. The squabble between Mr. Thomas and the college authorities had

kept the town in a ferment for months, all of which Maretzek seemed to

know. It was no concern of his, but he could not help having artistic

sympathies or predispositions, and these were obviously on the side of

the musician Thomas, who had split with the business management of the

college because of charlatanry in its methods. There was a merry twinkle

in Maretzek's eyes as in reply to my question he answered: "I don't

know what I am going to do, or what I'm here for. They made me an offer,

and I came. I'm told that I am to run an opera school." Again he held

out his hand at parting, and his last words were:

"Don't give me away!"

Not many months had passed before he, too, had followed Theodore Thomas

back to New York, I met him in the lobby of the Academy of Music between

the acts of the opera. It was in the consulship of Mapleson. "Hello!"

I greeted him. "Back to New York so soon? What's the matter in

Cincinnati?"

The quizzical smile with which he had greeted me grew wider as he

replied sententiously:

"I'm not a hog. I know when I've got enough!"

Maretzek was a Hebrew, born in Brünn, Moravia, and educated in Vienna,

where first he studied medicine, but, according to his own story,

becoming disgusted with the sights of the dissecting room, he changed

his purposes and devoted himself to music. He wrote an opera entitled

"Hamlet" when he was twenty-two years old, and a year later, in 1844,

found himself in London, employed under Balfe at Her Majesty's Theater.

Thence he was brought to New York to conduct the opera for Mr. E. P.

Fry, as has already been mentioned, in 1848. After one season as

conductor he started in on his career as manager, which lasted

twenty-five years, the first five of which are amusingly described

in his book "Crotchets and Quavers." More than twenty years later he

attempted to continue the story in a musical journal, and gathering the

disconnected chapters together, issued them in an unattractive form

under the title "Flats and Sharps." The first book is, to some extent,

a contribution to musical history, though its strong personal equation

and its effort to be entertaining mar its value and influence. The

impression to which I have given utterance, that he was helped in its

preparations by some penny-a-liner, is based upon the difference between

its pages and the personal letters which I received from Maretzek in

his later years, especially a brief autobiographical sketch which he

prepared for me. To judge by the evidence of book and sketch, the

latter in his own handwriting and delivered in person, one was forced

to the conclusion either that he knew more about the English language

six years after his first coming to New York than he did twenty years

later or that he had hired somebody fluent but malignant of pen to put

his thoughts into shape. It had long been the fashion for theatrical

managers and opera impresarios to give the history of their

administrations to the world, and Maretzek was but following it, though

why he should have done so before he had finally and definitely retired

from the field it is not easy to see.

It was an unwise, even a dangerous, thing to do, for it involved the

necessity of criticizing the acts of professional people and music

patrons with whom a manager was more or less likely to come into contact

if he expected to continue his enterprises. The style adopted in the

book was the epistolary, the chapters being in the form of letters to

European friends: Hector Berlioz (with whom Maretzek had been brought

into connection in London), Fiorentino (an Italian, who had been musical

critic of the Corsaire, of Paris), Luigi Lablache (the famous basso),

Professor Joseph Fischof (of Vienna), Michael W. Balfe (of London,

composer of "The Bohemian Girl" and other English operas), Frederick Gye

(manager of the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden, London), and Carl

Eckert (conductor of the Court Opera, Vienna). A final chapter is

addressed to the public and is devoted to a recital of the troubles

through which the Academy of Music passed in the earliest stages of its

career. Eckert had been in America as conductor of the company headed by

Henrietta Sontag, and the chapter over which his name is written tells

of the career of that artist in the United States and her death in

Mexico. Incidentally, also, Maretzek pays off a score owing to Bernard

Ullmann, a manager with whom Maretzek was much in conflict and against

whom he tried to turn the public by calling the attention of Americans

to the sneers in which the delectable gentleman had indulged at their

expense while he was trying to win the good graces of the Havanese.

Nevertheless, within four years he was Ullmann's partner, for together

they opened the season of 1859 at the Academy of Music. The quarrels of

opera managers are very like those of lawyers inside the courtroom.