But when Maretzek was holding up the heinousness of Ullmann in the

chapter entitled "Los Americanos y su gusto por la Musica," Ullmann was

only an agent for Maurice Strakosch, who had entered the managerial

field. It was different with Don Francesco Marty y Torrens, the

impresario who invaded Maretzek's territory from Havana; and he remained

Maretzek's pet aversion to the end of the chapter. In his memoirs

Arditi, who came to New York as conductor of one of Marty's companies,

says that Don Francesco was among impresarios the most generous of

men, Maretzek the cleverest (though he sets down Maurice Grau as the

"cleverest of entrepreneurs"), and Colonel Mapleson the most astute.

It is not unlikely that Arditi's amiable opinion of the Cuban was

influenced not a little by the circumstance that Marty, not caring to

make money in New York, treated his artists with unusual liberality.

That, naturally, would not tend to increase the admiration of a rival

manager for him. He may have been the most generous of men in the eyes

of Arditi, but in those of Maretzek he was worse than Barbaja, the

Neapolitan manager, who owned the gambling monopoly in the kingdom

of Naples, and who, after animating his acquaintances with music and

singing, and diverting their eyes with the silk fleshings and short

muslin jupons of his dancers, fleeced them at his gambling houses and

became richer than the King of Naples himself. Maretzek intimates that

in his youth Don Francesco had been the mate of a pirate vessel which

preyed on the commerce of the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent waters; that

he betrayed his captain to death, and was rewarded with a monopoly of

the fish trade in Cuba; that he became possessed mysteriously of enough

money to fit out a feet of fishing boats to supply the market which he

controlled; that from that source alone his annual income rose to about

$160,000; that then he embarked in the slave trade, bringing negroes

from Africa and Indians from Yucatan, which he bribed the Spanish

officials to permit him to land; was knighted by the Spanish Crown out

of gratitude for pecuniary help extended in a crisis; and built an opera

house in Havana in order to acquire a social position among the proud

people who, despite his badge of nobility, refused to "swallow the fish

and digest the negro," as Maretzek puts it. This was the manager who, in

the summer of 1850, brought to New York what Maretzek characterizes as

"the greatest troupe which had been ever heard in America," and which,

"in point of the integral talent, number, and excellence of the artists

composing it," had "seldom been excelled in any part of the Old World."

"This party consisted of three prime donne. These were the Signore

Steffanone, Bosio, and Tedesco. Its only contralto was the Signora

Vietti. There were three tenors--Salvi, Bettini, and Lorini. Badiali and

Corradi Setti were the two barytones, while the two bassi were Marini

and Coletti. At the head of this extraordinary company was the great

contrabassist Bottesini, assisted by Arditi. It would be useless, my old

friend, to attempt to indicate to you the excellence of this company.

You have long since known their names, or been aware of their standing

as artists in the world of music. The greater portion of them enjoy a

wide and well-deserved European reputation, and their reunion anywhere

would form an almost incomparable operatic troupe."

Some of these names are those of singers whom, in his later days, I have

said Maretzek was in the habit of chanting while telling them off on his

fingers. His was not the credit of having brought them to the country,

but he did, a year after they had made their first appearance in the

Havana company, succeed in enticing them away from their generous

manager and enlisting them under his banner at the Astor Place Opera

House. All but Tedesco.

Of these singers Maretzek has more or less to say in his book, but

the point of view is that of the manager perpetually harassed by the

jealousies, importunities, and recalcitrancy of his singers. Steffanone

was a conscientious artist, but had an infirmity of body and mind which

was exceedingly troublesome to her manager; Bosio was talented and

industrious, but had a husband whose devotion to her interests was an

affliction to her manager; Tedesco was husbandless, but had a father who

was so concerned about her honorarium that he came to the opera house on

payday with a small pair of scales in his pocket, with which he verified

every coin that came out of the exchequer of the unfortunate manager,

"subjecting each separate piece of gold to a peculiarly Jewish

examination touching their Christian perfection;" Salvi was a mountain

of conceit, who believed himself to be the Louis Quatorze of the lyric

drama, and compelled his manager to imagine him exclaiming "L'opéra

c'est moi!" Toward his manager Salvi was a despot, who rewarded favors

bestowed upon himself by compelling the manager to engage persons who

had served the tenor. Maretzek cites a ukase touching a singer named

Sidonia:

Caro Max: Fa di tutto per iscriturare la Sidonia, altrimenti io non

canto ne "Don Giovanni," ne "Norma," ne altri.

A 250 $ il mese, e che la scrittura porti 350 $. Amen, cosi sia.

Il tuo, Salvi.

19. 4. 53.

(In English: "Dear Max: Do everything to engage the Sidonia, otherwise

I shall not sing in 'Don Giovanni,' 'Norma' or other operas. At $250 per

month, but let the writing bear $350. Amen, and so be it.")

"At $250 per month, but let the scrittura bear $350." I wonder how many

of my readers think of this cheap device of singers and managers when

they read about the honoraria received by opera singers to-day!

Bettini drank to excess and spent whole nights in the gambling room,

rendering him unfit for duty ever and anon; Badiali was singularly

conscientious as an artist, and became a favorite with the public, but

not with his colleagues, because of his extraordinary meanness and

avarice and a jealous disposition; Marini was the greatest living

Italian basso, save Lablache, but his voice was occasionally unreliable,

and he frequently ill-humored, capricious, splenetic, and peevish.

In private life Angiolina Bosio was Mme. Panayotis di Xindavelonis, the

wife of a Greek gentleman, whom she had married in 1851. She was in her

prime when she came to New York, though she had not reached the meridian

of her reputation. Her features were irregular, and she was not comely.

Richard Grant White claims credit for having given her the punning

sobriquet "Beaux Yeux," by which she was widely known on account of her

luminous and expressive eyes. "Her voice," says White:

was a pure, silvery soprano, remarkable alike for its penetrating

quality and for its charm so fine and delicate that it seemed almost

intellectual. But she was not a remarkably dramatic singer, even in

light comedy parts, which best suited her; and her style was not at all

declamatory. She _sang_; and in her vocalization she showed the results

of intelligent study in the old Italian school. Her phrasing was

incomparably fine, and the delicacy of her articulation has been

surpassed by no modern prima donna, not even by Alboni. Thus much of

her as a vocal artist; but her charm was greatly personal. Although

her acting was always appropriate and in good taste, and at times--as,

for example, in the saucy widow of "Don Pasquale"--very captivating,

she never seemed to throw herself wholly into her part. She was always

Angiolina Bosio, and appeared on the stage like a lady performing

admirably in private theatricals. Her bearing was a delight to her

audience, and seemed to be a performance, whereas it was only herself.

She sang the music of all the great operatic composers to the admiration

of the public and the critics of the most exacting disposition; but she

was greatest in Rossini's operas, and in Bellini's and Donizetti's. Yet

her exquisitely charming and finished performance of Zerlina should not

be passed over unmentioned.

Tedesco, who came to New York with the first Havana company in April,

1847, presented herself to the always susceptible mind of Mr. White as a

great, handsome, ox-eyed creature, the picture of lazy loveliness until

she was excited by music; then she poured out floods, or rather gusts,

of rich, clear sound. "She was not a great artist, but her voice was

so copious and so musical that she could not be heard without pleasure,

although it was not of the highest kind." Bettini left nothing here that

remained in the memory of New Yorkers except the half of a name which he

gave to his wife, the contralto Trebelli-Bettini, who was a member of

Mr. Abbey's company on the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House in

1883. Salvi came over with the Havana company in the spring of 1848, and

was one of the fish which Maretzek took from Marty's weirs. If we are

to believe the testimony of contemporaneous critics he was the greatest

tenor of his time, with the exception of Mario. That was the opinion of

White, who wrote of him as follows in The Century Magazine for May,

1882:

Although Salvi was past his youth when he first sang in New York, his

voice was yet in perfect preservation. It lacked nothing that is to be

expected in a tenor voice of the first class; and it had that mingling

of manliness and tenderness, of human sympathy and seraphic loftiness

which, for lack of any other or better word, we call divine. As a

vocalist he was not in the first rank, but he stood foremost in the

second. His presence was manly and dignified, and he was a good actor.

But it was as a vocalist, pure and simple, that he captivated and moved

his audiences. He was heard in America at brief intervals during a few

years, and his influence upon the taste of the general music-loving

public was very considerable and wholly good. Singing at Niblo's or

Castle Garden and other like places at which the price of admission was

never more than $1, and was generally 50 cents, he gave to multitudes

who would otherwise have had no such opportunity that education in art

which is to be had only from the performances of a great artist. In

purity of style he was unexceptionable. He lacked only a little higher

finish, a little more brilliancy of voice and impressiveness of manner

to take a position among tenors of the very first rank. Of these,

however, there are never two in the world at the same time, scarcely two

in the same generation; and so Salvi prepared the public for the coming

Mario. His forte was the cantabile and his finest effects were those in

mezza voce, expressive of intense suppressed feeling. More than once

when he sang "Spirto gentil," as he rose to the crescendo of the second

phrase, and then let his cry pass suddenly away in a dying fall, I have

heard a whole house draw suspended breath, as if in pain, so nearly

alike in their outward manifestation and fine, keen pleasure.

Such were some of the singers whose names are associated in the musical

annals of New York with that of Max Maretzek.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MUSIC

Fifty-one years ago the center of operatic activity had shifted to the

Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place, and there it

remained until the Metropolitan Opera House was built. From the opening

of the Academy in 1854 to the opening of the Metropolitan in 1883 the

former had no rival as an establishment, though the rivalry between

managers and singers was the liveliest that New York has ever seen

during the first decade of the time. For twenty years Burton's Theater

revived its early traditions, and housed an opera troupe at intervals,

and Niblo's Theater and Castle Garden were open to every manager who

wished to experiment with the costly enterprise. English companies

came and went, and a new competitive element, which soon became more

dangerous than that which several times crushed the Italian exotic,

entered in the shape of German opera, which, though it first sought a

modest home in the lesser theaters of the Bowery and lower Broadway,

soon achieved recognition at the fashionable Academy. The eagerness of

the rivalry in the Italian field alone is indicated by the fact that the

Academy had five different managers in the first three seasons of its

history, and that thereafter, until the coming of James H. Mapleson in

1878, it was almost a rule that there should be a change of management

every season. Maretzek was alternately manager and competitor over

and over again, and the bitterest rivals of one season would be found

associated with each other the next. Already in the first season the

stockholders had to step in and assume some of the risks of management

to save the enterprise from shipwreck, and, despite the attractiveness

of the house, the excellence of the performances, the presence of such

phenomenal artists as Mme. Grisi and Signor Mario, and generous public

patronage, the first season cost the different managers between $50,000

and $60,000--three times as much as Maretzek had lost in the previous

six years, if that gentleman's word is to be taken. The figures look

modest now, but twenty years later their duplication at the Metropolitan

Opera House sufficed to effect a revolution in methods, and eventually

tastes, which had a profound influence upon musical life in New York.

The Academy of Music had its birth in the expiring throes of the Astor

Place Opera House. The spirit of which it was the material expression

seems to have been admirable. To this the name of the establishment

bears witness. It was not alone the official title of the French

institution, popularly spoken of as the Grand Opéra, which was in the

minds of the promoters of the New York enterprise--the new opera house

was to be a veritable academy of music, an educational institution.

Not only was fashionable society to have a place in which to display

and disport itself, but popular taste and popular knowledge were to

be cultivated. To this end the auditorium was to be three times as

commodious as that of the Astor Place Opera House, and the low prices

which had been prevalent only at Niblo's, Burton's, and Castle Garden

were to be the rule at the new establishment. In the charter granted

by the State, dated April 10, 1852, the purposes of the Academy were

set down as the cultivation of taste by entertainments accessible at

moderate charges, by furnishing facilities for instruction and by

rewards. These purposes were overlooked at the beginning, but before the

first season had come to its end Ole Bull, for a few weeks a manager,

proclaimed his intention to pursue them by promising to open a

conservatory in the fall of 1855, and at once (January, 1855) offering

a prize of $1,000 for the "best original grand opera by an American

composer, and upon a strictly American subject." The competition ended

with Ole Bull's announcement, for his active season endured only two

weeks.

It is doubtful if the competition would have produced anything more

than a curiosity had it been carried to a conclusion. On the spur of

the moment I can think of only two American musicians whose capacity

was adequate to such a task--Mr. W. H. Fry, who was then musical critic

and an editorial writer for The Tribune, and Mr. George F. Bristow,

both of whom had composed operas found worthy of performance. Mr. Fry's

"Leonora" was performed at the Academy on March 29, 1858, with Mme.

Lagrange in the principal rôle, but the score was already a dozen years

old, and it is not likely that the composer's state of health would

have permitted him to undertake the writing of a new opera even if

he had been so disposed. Mr. Bristow's "Rip Van Winkle," which had a

production in New York in the year of Ole Bull's announcement, may, for

all that I know to the contrary, have been written for the prize. The

scheme of uniting a training school for singers with an opera house was

not heard of again, so far as I can recall, until Mr. Conried became

director of the Metropolitan Opera House. It has much to commend it, and

might be made a power for artistic good with an operatic establishment

on a really public-spirited, artistic, and unselfish basis; as it is,

its influence is apt to be pernicious morally, as well as artistically.

How seriously Mr. Fry took the proposed educational feature of the

institution is indicated by an article on the new opera house, which he

published in The Tribune, in the course of which he said:

The expense of maintaining an opera house so nurtured at home will be

at most not more than one-fourth what it would be if the artists were

brought from Europe. American vocalists would be content with some few

thousand dollars a year, and, if they were sought for and educated,

boarded and lodged gratuitously the meanwhile, their services could be

procured for several years in payment of the expenses of apprenticeship.

In that way alone can the exorbitant demands of foreign artists be

diminished; and the folly and extravagance of paying them from one to

ten thousand dollars a night, as has been done in this city, will be

forever avoided. In connection with this it may be mentioned that there

are some Americans now studying for the operatic stage in Italy, and

one lady of Boston has appeared in Naples with success. It may yet come

to pass that art, in all its ramifications, may be as much esteemed as

politics, commerce or the military profession. The dignity of American

artists lies in their hands.

Mr. Fry's hopes, so far as the Academy of Music is concerned, were

never realized, and after half a century his words are echoing wherever

writers indulge in discussion of ways and means for promoting American

music. Yet, without schools connected with opera houses American singers

have made their mark, not only at home, but in the lyric theaters of

Italy, France, Germany, and England. Names like Clara Louise Kellogg,

Annie Louise Cary, Minnie Hauk, Alwina Valleria, Emma Nevada, Lillian

Nordica, Adelaide Phillips, Emma Albani, and Josephine Yorke are

connected more or less intimately with the history of the Academy of

Music, but they do not exhaust the list. To them must be added those

of Charles Adams, Suzanne Adams, David Bispham, Robert Blass, William

Candidus, Emma Eames, Signor Foli, Geraldine Farrar, Julia Gaylord,

Helen Hastreiter, Eliza Hensler (the daughter of a Boston tailor who

became the morganatic wife of Dom Fernando of Portugal), Louise Homer,

Emma Juch, Pauline l'Allemande, Marie Litta, Isabella McCullough,

Frederick C. Packard, Jules Perkins, Signor Perugini, Mathilde Phillips,

Susan Strong, Minnie Tracey, Jennie Van Zandt, Emma Abbott, Bessie

Abott, Julia Wheatley, Virginia Whiting (Signora Lorini), Edyth Walker,

Marion Weed, Zélie de Lussan, Clarence Whitehill, Allen Hinckley, Joseph

F. Sheehan, and half a dozen or more singers now attracting attention in

London and Germany.

Max Maretzek was the first lessee of the Academy of Music, but the

company that opened it on October 2, 1854, was that engaged by J. H.

Hackett to support Grisi and Mario, which had appeared at Castle Garden

two months before. Maretzek sublet to Hackett, who thought that the

brilliancy of his stars, and the new house, justified him in advancing

the price of seats to $2. He had a rude awakening, for the audience on

the first night was neither large nor brilliant. It numbered not more

than 1,500, and on the second night the prices came down to the popular

scale, with $1.50 as the standard. By the middle of December, though

the stockholders had been obliged to come to the rescue of Hackett,

the collapse of the opening enterprise was announced, and Hackett took

Grisi and Mario to Boston for a brief season, and then came back for

three or four performances at the Metropolitan Theater.

The last performance took place on February 20, 1855. Though many

excellent singers had been heard in New York between the coming of

Malibran and that of Grisi and Mario, the three months of their sojourn

in America have ever since remained memorable. For a generation

afterward all tenors were measured by Mario's standard. Grisi created

a less enduring impression, because the audiences that heard her were

within the space of a few years permitted also to hear such singers as

Jenny Lind, Henrietta Sontag, and Marietta Alboni, three names that are

still resplendent in operatic annals. There does not seem to be any

reason for questioning the belief that Mario was the greatest tenor

singer that ever gladdened the ears of American music lovers. Richard

Grant White, who was then writing the musical reviews for The Courier

and Enquirer newspaper, had chosen Benedetti as his ideal of a dramatic

singer, and he found Mario lacking in passion, while confessing that

he had the sweetest tenor voice in all the world. He retired from the

stage in 1867, but came to America in 1872, under Strakosch, and sang

in concert with Carlotta Patti, Annie Louise Gary, Teresa Carreño, and

Sauret. He had always been a somewhat unreliable singer, frequently

disappointing his audiences by not singing at all, or singing listlessly

until he reached the air in which he could produce a sensational effect,

and when he returned to America he had only a superb presence and

bearing, and a magnificent reputation with which to arouse interest. He

was sixty-two years old, and had accepted an engagement for the reason

that frequently brings worn-out artists to the scenes of their earlier

triumphs; he needed money. Eight years later his financial condition so

distressed his old friends and admirers in London that they got up a

benefit concert for him. He was living in Rome when he died in 1883.

Such satisfaction as can come to one from seeing a renowned artist was

mine in 1872; but I can scarcely say that I _heard_ Mario. With Annie

Louise Gary he sang first in a graceful little duet, "Per valli, per

boschi," by Blangini ("Dear old Mario had to warm up in a duet before

he would trust himself in solo," said the admired contralto, many years

afterward), and later attempted Beethoven's "Adelaide." Romances were

Mario's specialty, and Beethoven's divine song ought to have been an

ideal selection for him, but it was quite beyond his powers and I do not

now know whether to be glad or sorry that I heard him attempt it. It

is always unfortunate when great singers who have gone into decay are

tempted again to sing. To the generation who knew them in their prime

they bring a double measure of disappointment--grief for the passing

away of the art which once gave pleasure, and regret that the younger

generation should carry down to posterity a false impression of the

singer's voice and style. Who shall measure the heartburnings left by

Madame Patti's last visit to America when she sold herself to a trumpery

balladist, and, affecting the appearance and manner which had been hers

a quarter of a century before, tried to make a new generation believe

that it was listening to the vocalist whom veterans maintained was the

last one entitled to be called "la Diva." How much lovelier and more

fragrant the memory of Annie Louise Cary, whose American career began

during the Strakosch régime at the Academy of Music, and ended with her

marriage to Charles Mon son Raymond, when she was still in the very

plenitude of her powers. Many a time within the first few years after

her retirement have I seen her surrounded by young women and old, as she

was leaving the Academy of Music or the Metropolitan Opera House, and

heard their pleading voices: "Oh, Miss Cary! aren't you ever going to

sing for us again?" and "Please, Miss Cary, won't you let me kiss you?"

Ole Bull's management of the Academy of Music was but a fleeting

incident, memorable only for the protestations with which it was begun

and for its brevity. For the famous Norwegian violinist it was a

Utopian dream with a speedy and rude awakening. After he had retired

the Lagrange troupe came from downtown and completed the season with

the help of the stockholders, and Maretzek, the erstwhile impresario

and lessee, became the conductor. For four years, 1855, 1856, 1857,

and 1858, the Academy saw Maretzek, Strakosch, and Ullmann alternately

installed as impresarios, and then for a year there was no opera at the

house, the three men at the head of as many different companies seeking

their fortunes outside of the metropolis. With Ullmann Thalberg was

associated for a space, the great pianist having come to America to

make money under the management of Ullmann, and probably having been

persuaded to risk some of his gains by his manager. It was but a brief

interlude, however. Ullmann, whose activities in America extended over

a quarter of century, lived to manage some of the artists who are

still before the public. The beginning of his career, like that of

Maretzek, fell in the period when Barnumism was at its zenith, and

Ullmann was utterly unconscionable in the methods to which he resorted

for the purpose of exploiting his artists. It was under his operatic

consulship that the winsome Piccolomini came to New York--an artist of

insignificant caliber, lovely to look upon and fascinating as an actress

in soubrette parts. "A Columbine," said Chorley about her when she

effected her début in London, "born to 'make eyes' over an apron with

pockets, to trick the Pantaloon of the piece, to outrun the Harlequin,

and to enjoy her own saucy confidence on the occasion of her success--with

those before the footlights and the orchestra." But this was not

all. "Never did any young lady, whose private claims to modest respect

were so great as hers are known to be," said the same critic, "with such

self-denial fling off their protection in her resolution to lay hold of

the public at all risks. Her performances at times approached offense

against maidenly reticence and delicacy. When she played Zerlina,

in 'Don Giovanni,' such virtue as there was between the two seemed

absolutely on the side of the libertine hero--so much invitation was

thrown into the peasant girl's rusticity." Here was a capital subject

for the methods dear to the heart of Ullmann. In London the Piccolomini

had been proclaimed to be of a noble Roman family, the niece of a

cardinal, who had quarreled with her relations because of her theatrical

propensities. There may have been some truth in the statements, but

Ullmann adorned her history still more, and proclaimed from every New

York housetop that the lady was a lineal descendant of Charlemagne, and

the great-grand-daughter of Schiller's tragic hero Max Piccolomini.

It was under the co-consulship of Maretzek and Ullmann that Adelina

Patti made her operatic début at the Academy of Music. The date was

November 24, 1859, the opera "Lucia di Lammermoor." Twenty-five years

later Patti was again the prima donna of the Academy, though Mapleson

was now the manager. It was the second year of the rivalry between the

Academy and the Metropolitan Opera House, and Colonel Mapleson conceived

the idea of profiting by the anniversary. At first it was planned that

"Lucia" should be given, with Brignoli as Edgardo, the part he had sung

in the opera at Patti's début, but two months before the time the tenor

died. Instead, "Martha" was performed, in a manner wholly commonplace

in all respects except as to the titular rôle, in which Mme. Patti

appeared, as a matter of course. There was only a little perfunctory

applause, but Colonel Mapleson had resolved that the scene should be

enacted, of which we have often read, in which the devotees of the prima

donna unhitch the horses from her carriage, and themselves drag it, with

wild rejoicings, through the streets. To make sure of such a spontaneous

ovation in staid New York was a question which Mapleson solved by

hiring fifty or more Italians (choristers, probably) from the familiar

haunts in Third Avenue, and providing them with torches, to follow the

carriage, which was prosaically dragged along to its destination at the

Windsor Hotel. As a demonstration it was the most pitiful affair that I

have ever witnessed. In fact, it seemed to me such a humiliation of the

great artist that on the next opera night I suggested to my colleague

of The Times newspaper that something adequate and appropriate to so

interesting an anniversary be arranged. He agreed and within a fortnight

or so a banquet was given in Mme. Patti's honor at the Hotel Brunswick,

under the auspices of a committee consisting of a number of well-known

gentlemen, including Judge Daly, William Steinway, and Nahum Stetson.

The committee of arrangements, having visited Mme. Patti and gained her

consent, went to work right merrily, but before the invitations were

issued an obstacle was met which threatened shipwreck to the amiable

enterprise; the wives of several gentlemen who had been invited

privately refused pointblank to break bread with the prima donna on

account of the scandal caused by her separation from the Marquis de Caux

and marriage to Nicolini, the tenor. Somewhat perplexed, the two critics

visited her a second time, and put the matter to her as delicately as

possible. Would she, under the circumstances, be the guest of a number

of gentlemen, representative of the legal, artistic, and literary

professions? Again she accepted, and without a moment's hesitation. So,

instead of the gathering that had been planned, there was a stag party

of about seventy gentlemen in the ballroom of the Brunswick, handsomely

decorated and discreetly lighted with wax candles.

The preliminary reception was held in one of the rooms adjoining the

banquet hall, and there a scene was enacted which brought into relief

a trait of character which was extremely useful to the Colonel in the

difficult task of managing his wilful and capricious prima donna. Mme.

Patti received her hosts seated upon a divan. She looked radiant, and

was wholly at ease after having taken a peep into the hall to see that

the light would not be prejudicial to her complexion. One after another

of the seventy gentlemen advanced to her, took the hand which she

extended with a gracious smile, muttered the pretty compliment which he

had rehearsed, and fell back to make room for the next comer. The room

was pretty nearly full, when the Colonel appeared in the glory of that

flawless, speckless dress suit, with the inevitable rose in the lapel

of his coat. Not a glance did he give to right or left, but with the

grace of a practised courtier, he sailed across the room, sank on his

knees before the diva, and raised her hand to his lips. Such a smile as

rewarded him! A score of breasts bulged out with envy and a score of

brains framed the thought: "Confound it! Why didn't I think of doing

that?"

The dinner passed off without a hitch, Mme. Patti managing by a hundred

pretty coquetries to convince nearly every one of her three-score and

ten hosts that he had received at least one smile that was more gracious

than that bestowed upon his fellows. Speeches were made by Judge Daly,

William Steinway, Dr. Leopold Damrosch, William Winter and others, but,

as Colonel Mapleson had carried off the palm by his courtliness at the

reception, Max Maretzek made himself the most envied of men at the

dinner. Quite informally he was asked to say something after the set

programme had been disposed of. Where the other speakers had brought

forward their elegantly turned oratorical tributes the grizzled old

manager told stories about the child life and early career of the guest.

Amongst other things he illustrated how early the divine Adelina had

fallen into the ways of a prima donna by refusing to sing at a concert

in Tripler Hall unless he, who was managing the concert, would first

go out and buy her a pound of candy. He agreed to get the sweetmeats

provided she would give him a kiss in return. In possession of her box

she kept both of the provisions of her contract. When the toastmaster

declared the meeting adjourned Patti bore straight down on her old

manager and said:

"Max, if I gave you a kiss for a box of candy then, I'll give you one

for nothing now!"

And she did.

CHAPTER VII

MAPLESON AND OTHER IMPRESARIOS

Memories are crowding upon me, and I find there is much still to be said

about the Academy of Music, and the operatic folk whom it housed between

1854 and 1886. Just now the incidents which have been narrated about

the banquet given in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Adelina

Patti's début recall other characteristic anecdotes of Colonel Mapleson,

who managed the Academy of Music from 1878 to the end of the disastrous

season of 1885-'86. When Mapleson and Abbey were drawing up their forces

for the battle royal between the Academy of Music and the Metropolitan

Opera House in 1883, one of the New York newspapers reported Mme. Patti

as saying: "Colonel Mapleson comes here when he wants me to sing, and

he calls me 'My dear child,' and he goes down on both knees and kisses

my hands, and he has, you know, quite a supplicating face, and it is not

easy to be firm with a man of such suavity of manners." I have often

thought of this in connection with the outcome of the disastrous rivalry

between the two houses and their managers. When Colonel Mapleson let

himself down so gracefully upon his knee and pressed the prima donna's

hand to his lips, the act was not all unselfish adoration. It used to

be said that there was no manager alive who had succeeded in becoming

debtor to Adelina Patti. It was golden grain alone that persuaded this

bird to sing. The story is old of how her personal agent once hovered

between her dressing room and the manager's office, carrying the message

one way: "Madame Patti will not put on her slippers until she is paid,"

returning the other way with a thousand dollars; coming again to the

manager with: "Madame has one slipper on, but will not put on the other

till she has her fee"--and so on. Doubtless apocryphal and yet only a

bit fanciful and exaggerated. Yet it was known in the inner operatic

circles in 1885 that Colonel Mapleson had succeeded in getting himself

pretty deeply into her debt. How he did it the anecdotes of the

reception and Mme. Patti's interview serve to indicate. In sooth, the

persuasive powers of the doughty colonel were distinctly remarkable, and

it was not only the prima donna who lived in an atmosphere of adulation

who fell a victim to them. I have a story to illustrate which came to

me straight from the lips of the confiding creditor. He was a theatrical

costumer, moreover, and one of the tribe of whom it is said that only to

a Connecticut Yankee will they lower the flag in a horse trade.

My friend was a theatrical costumer with a shop conveniently situated

in Union Square. When the clouds began to lower upon the Academy around

the corner he became curious to know whether or not he was likely to

get a balance of some $1,500 owing him for costumes furnished to the

establishment. He sent his bill many times, and, being on amicable terms

with Colonel Mapleson, called on him at intervals to talk over the

situation. When he left the impresario's office he always carried away

profuse promises of speedy payment, but nothing more. Finally, he put

the bill into the hands of his lawyer, who at once took steps to attach

the property of the foreign debtor, and, to bring about pressure in a

manner that seemed likely to be effective, he instructed the deputy

sheriff, who was to serve the legal papers, to present himself at the

office of Colonel Mapleson an hour or so before the beginning of the

opera. The arrangements perfected, he informed his client of what had

been done. But there remained a kindly spot in the costumer's soul, and

of his own volition he called on the manager in the afternoon of the day

set apart for the coup in order to give him one more opportunity to save

himself from the impending catastrophe.

"I found the Colonel in his office," said he, in relating the incident,

"cutting the corners off of tickets and sending them out to fill his

house for the next performance. While he clipped he talked away at me

in his cheerfullest and blandest style, told me how sorry he was that he

could not pay me out of hand, and deplored the action which I had taken,

but with such absence of all resentment that I began to feel ashamed of

myself for having threatened to shut him up. After half an hour I agreed

to send a messenger post-haste to my lawyer and call off the sheriff.

This done he borrowed $75 cash from me, and I went away happy. I tell

you I know lots of managers, but there's only one Colonel Mapleson in

this world."

Whether or not my friend ever collected his bill I do not know; but this

I do know, that when the colonel ended the campaign of 1884-'85 Mme.

Patti's name was on his list of creditors for a considerable sum--$5,000

or $6,000, I believe. The next time I met him he was sauntering about in

what passes for a foyer in Covent Garden Theater, London. The rose in

his buttonhole was not more radiant than he.

"What are you up to now, Colonel?" I asked him.

"In what respect?"

"In a business way, of course."

"Well," with a twinkling smile, "just now I am persuading Adelina to

sing at my benefit."

"Will she do it?"

"I think she will" And she did.

Mapleson was one of the last of the race of managers who had practical

training in the art in which he dealt commercially. He was a graduate

of the Royal Academy of Music in the violin class, and had played in

the orchestra at the opera. He had also studied singing, and in his

youth tried his luck as an operatic tenor. In this he was like Maurice

Strakosch, who played the pianoforte prodigiously as a child, studied

singing three years with no less an artist than the great Pasta, and

after singing for a space at Agram turned his attention again to the

pianoforte. He came to New York in 1848, and his first engagement was

with Maretzek, at the Astor Place Opera House. Afterward he was a member

of a traveling concert company, in which he was associated with Amalia

Patti, whom he married, and it was thus that he became the teacher,

and, eventually, the manager of his sister-in-law, Adelina Patti. When

Ronconi first appeared in America at Burton's Theater (which had

been Palmo's Opera House), in the spring of 1858, Strakosch was the

conductor. The last of the old opera managers whom I recall at this

moment who were practical musicians as well, was Dr. Leopold Damrosch,

who directed the destinies of the Metropolitan Opera House after one

year of warfare with the Academy of Music had put Henry E. Abbey hors

du combat for a while. Abbey came out of the ranks of theatrical

managers, like Heinrich Conried, his only practical experience in music

being as a cornet player in a brass band in Akron, Ohio, whence he came.

Strakosch's associates, however, were not musical practitioners. Ullmann

may have had some knowledge of music, but he was all showman. Thalberg,

the pianist, was Ullmann's partner when Strakosch and Ullmann joined

their forces in January, 1857, to manage the Academy of Music, but the

new coalition was the sign of Thalberg's withdrawal from the managerial

field.

Like Maretzek, in his Cincinnati experience, the virtuoso knew when he

had enough. Strakosch's later associates were his brothers, Ferdinand

and Max. The former was the European agent for the firm, and the latter

what might be termed the acting house man in the United States,

especially during the later years of the Strakosch régime.

In Europe Maurice Strakosch was also associated with Pollini, who

afterward became a large factor in the field of German opera, as manager

of the opera in Hamburg. Pollini had been Strakosch's office boy. His

real name was Pohl, and he hailed from Cologne; but he, too, was a

musician. Strakosch died in Paris in October, 1887. One night in July,

1886, I met him in the theater at Altona, whither I had gone to hear a

performance of "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," then the rage throughout

Germany. He asked me to drive back to his hotel in Hamburg with him, for

his physician had told him that day that he might drink a glass of beer,

the first in six months, and he wanted a friend to share the pleasure

with him. I brought him the latest news from the opera houses of New

York, and, also, the intelligence that Pollini had just engaged Mme.

Sembrich for a season at some 5,000 francs a night.

"We quit partnership," said he, "back in the 70's because Pollini

thought that money was no longer to be made in Italian opera, and wanted

to take up German opera exclusively. I didn't agree with him, and went

on with Nilsson and the rest. He got rich and I got poor, and now he's

going back into the Italian field. He'll rue it."

Call the roll of some of the best of the singers whose American careers

are chiefly bound up with the history of the Academy of Music: Grisi,

Mario, Vestvali (a much admired contralto), Badiali, Amodio (barytone),

Steffanone, Brignoli, Lagrange, Mirate, D'Angri, Piccolomini, Adelina

Patti, Kellogg, Nilsson, Campanini, Lucca, Cary, Parepa, Albani, Hauk,

Gerster, Nevada. There are others whom fond recollection will call back,

some belonging indubitably to the first rank, like Maurel, some who

will live on because they gladdened the hearts of the young people of a

generation ago, who were more impressionable than critical. Some men of

middle age (as they think) now will not want to forget Mlle. Ambre or

Mlle. Marimon, and will continue to forgive the homely features of Mme.

Scalchi for the sake of her perfect physical poise and movement as the

page in "Les Huguenots," as others forgave the many registers of her

voice because of her joyous volubility of utterance. Doubtless, too,

there are matrons of to-day who will remember the singing of Ravelli

with as much pleasure as I recall it, and the shapely legs of the young

tenor that walked off with the heart (we also had a story of a diamond

ring) of a young singer from California, who afterward made a name for

herself in Paris, with more enthusiasm than I could possibly feel.

Some of these singers became intimately associated with New York life in

a social way. Annie Louise Cary, after her marriage to Charles Monson

Raymond, lived for years in a cheery apartment at No. 20 Fifth Avenue,

sang occasionally with the choir in the West Presbyterian Church, in

Forty-second Street, and shed sunshine over a circle of friends who

loved her as enthusiastically as a woman as they had admired her as an

artist. Now her home is in Norwalk, Conn. Her first operatic engagement

was at Copenhagen, and she spent two seasons in the opera houses of

the Scandinavian peninsula, and one at Brussels before the Strakosch

brothers brought her to the United States, in 1870. The first season she

sang in concert with Nilsson, the second (1871-72) in opera, the third

with Carlotta Patti and Mario in concert; and thereafter till her

retirement in 1882 in both concert and opera, winning and holding an

almost unparalleled popularity. In the Strakosch company of 1873-74 she

was one of a galaxy of artists that the opera-goers of that period, who

are still living, will never cease to think of without a swelling of the

heart--Nilsson, Cary, Campanini, Capoul, Maurel, Del Puente, and others.

Campanini remained the tenor of tenors for New Yorkers for a decade

longer. Abbey took him away from Mapleson for the first season of the

Metropolitan Opera House, and, after the introduction of German opera

there, his local career was practically at an end. He died in 1896

in Italy, whither he had returned on retirement. His dramatic style

improved as his voice decayed. When he first came he was chiefly a

lyrical singer; his Elvino was delicious beyond description. In his last

years he had taken on robust stature, and his passionate utterances in

"Carmen" and "Aïda" will live till the end in the memory of those who

heard them. He was proud of his skill as a singer pure and simple,

though he was more or less of a "naturalist," as the Germans call a

singer who owes more to nature than to artistic training. How greatly

he admired the perfection of his "attack" is illustrated in an incident

which twice grieved the soul of Theodore Thomas and some other sticklers

for the verities in classical music.

At the Cincinnati Music Festival, in May, 1880, Mr. Thomas brought

forward Beethoven's Mass in D, the great "Missa Solemnis." In the first

movement, "Kyrie," of this work Beethoven has created an effect of

surpassing beauty in the successive introduction of the solo voices. At

the outset there is a crashing chord from all the forces, including the

full organ. The thundering sound ceases abruptly, leaving the solo tenor

voice sustaining a tone seemingly in midair. Another loud crash projects

the solo contralto voice, and so on. The effect is transporting; but

the obvious intention of the composer and the loveliness of his device

weighed nothing in Campanini's mind against the fact that it interfered

with popular appreciation of the "attack," of which he was proud. So

he calmly waited until the colossal D major chord was silenced, then

intoned his D softly, and made a beautiful crescendo upon it. After

a rehearsal I ventured to call his attention to the beautiful

effectiveness of Beethoven's device, but he answered: "It is music for

the head, not for the heart. If I sing it so the audience will not hear

my beautiful attack."

And at the concert he perverted the text to gratify his vanity. I

reminded Mr. Thomas of the incident two years later, when he gave the

mass at the festival held in the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York.

Campanini was to sing in it again. Mr. Thomas said he would set him

right, but at the performance we were again cheated of Beethoven's

effect in order that the tenor might make his. When Campanini died

Philip Hale set down his estimate of him in these words:

No tenor who has blazed here above the opera horizon has fully equaled

in brilliancy Campanini at his zenith. De Reszke, in point of personal

refinement, is a greater artist, but his voice is inferior, and his

dramatic action lacks the elementary force shown by Campanini when

aroused. De Lucia is a greater actor of melodramatic parts, but his

voice is too shrill. Tamagno in "Otello" is beyond comparison, but that

is his one opera. . . . Of all tenors who have visited us since 1873

the greatest, viewed from all points, was Campanini.

The popular idol before Campanini was Brignoli, who held his own from

the first days of the Academy until within less than a decade of its

collapse. For some years before the Mapleson era, however, he had

dropped out of the Italian operatic ranks and sung in English companies,

and in concerts. It was in such organizations that I first heard

him some twelve or fifteen years after he had become the popular

"silver-voiced tenor" of New York. He came to New York in 1855, and his

career was American, though it was in Paris that Strakosch heard him

and turned his face toward America. He lived in New York, singing and

occasionally managing companies in which he sang, till October, 1884,

when he died. He was twice married, the first time to Kate Duckworth, an

English contralto, known on the platform as Mlle. Morensi, and, after

her death, to Isabella McCullough, an American soprano. Richard Grant

White's mind was still obsessed by memories of Salvi, Benedetti, and

Mario when Brignoli was basking in the sunshine of popular favor, and

his estimate of the tenor in The Century Magazine for June, 1882, is

scarcely flattering either to the singer or the public that liked him.

It was Mr. White's observation that Brignoli came into the swim at the

time that the young woman of New York became the arbiter of art and

elegance. Says Mr. White:

Her admiration of Brignoli was not greatly to the credit of her taste.

He had one of those tenor voices that seem like the bleating of a sheep

made musical. His method was perfectly good; but be sang in a very

commonplace style, and was as awkward as the man that a child makes

by sticking two skewers into a long potato; and he walked the stage,

hitching forward first one side and then the other, much as the child

would make his creature walk. But he was a very "nice" young man, was

always ready to sing, and faute de mieux it became the fashion with

the very young to like him. But there never was a tenor of any note in

New York whose singing was so utterly without character or significance

and who was so deficient in histrionic ability. His high and long

continued favor is one of those puzzling popular freaks not uncommon

in dramatic annals.

Let us hope, in a spirit of Christian charity and something more

selfish, that Brignoli never read these severely critical words.

His vanity was that of a child, and they would have grieved him

inordinately. There was truly something of the bleat in his voice, and

his walk on the stage, whether in concert or opera, was provocative

of the risibles, but even his mannerisms were fascinating. Shall we,

because a critic did not like him, be ashamed for having thrilled a

little when we heard his "Coot boy, sweetheart, c-o-o-o-t boy!" thirty

years ago? I trust not. And if he were here again, and his manager were

to come with the old request, "Do me a favor, won't you, and if you

chance to meet dear old Brig say something pretty to him and help me

keep him in a good humor against the concert to-night--admire his teeth

and compliment him on his youthful appearance"--we should do it for

old sake's sake, and with a heart full of gratitude. No one could know

Brignoli and remain in ignorance of his frailties and foibles. He

probably ate as no tenor ate before or since--ravenously as a Prussian

dragoon after a fast. No contracts did he sign on a Friday or on a

thirteenth day, and he lived in perpetual dread of the evil eye. Part of

his traveling outfit was a pair of horns, which he relied upon to shield

him in case the possessor of the jettatura should get into his room

and he not have his fingers properly posed. I had been four years in the

turmoil of New York's musical life when Brignoli died; I cannot recall

an unkind word that was ever spoken of him.

CHAPTER VIII

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE

Not the chronicler of musical doings but the historian of society

should discuss the genesis of the Metropolitan Opera House, which came

twenty-five years ago to displace the Academy of Music as the home of

grand opera in New York. In the second of these "Chapters of Opera"

I cited the Metropolitan Opera House as the last illustration of the

creative impulse which springs from the growth of wealth and social

ambition, and stated that it marked the decay of the old Knickerbocker

régime, and its amalgamation with the newer order of society. Before

this latter occurrence, however, it had become plain that the Academy of

Music could not accommodate all the representatives of the two elements

in fashionable society, who, for one reason or another, wished to own

or occupy the boxes which were the visible sign of wealth and social

position. There was no manifest dissatisfaction, either, with the

Academy of Music or with the performances under the direction of Colonel

Mapleson, though these were conventional enough and the dress of the

operas looked particularly shabby in contrast with the new scenery and

costumes at the new theater when once the rivalry had begun. The house

being satisfactory, popular taste contented with the representations,

and there being no evidences of insufficient room in any part of the

audience room except the private boxes, it seems obvious to the merest

observer from without that social and not artistic impulses led to the

enterprise which produced the new establishment.

The Metropolitan Opera House was built in the summer of 1883. The

corporation which built it was called the Metropolitan Opera House

Company (Limited), and its leading spirits were James A. Roosevelt, the

first president of the board of directors; George Henry Warren, Luther

Kountze, George Griswold Haven, who remained the active head of the

amusement committee from the beginning till he died last spring; William

K. Vanderbilt, William H. Tillinghast, Adrian Iselin, Robert Goelet,

Joseph W. Drexel, Edward Cooper, Henry G. Marquand, George N. Curtis,

and Levi P. Morton. The building is bounded by Broadway, Seventh Avenue,

Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets. About one-quarter of the space

is devoted to the audience room, another quarter to the stage and

accessories, and the rest to administrative offices, apartments, etc.

Its cost, including the real estate, was $1,732,978.71, and so actively

was the work of construction pushed that the portion of the building

devoted to the opera was completed when the first performance took place

on October 22, 1883. J. Cleaveland Cady, the architect, had had no

previous experience in building theaters, to which fact must be ascribed

a few impracticable features of the house, most of which have since been

eradicated, but he had made a careful study of the plans of the most

celebrated opera houses of Europe, and the patrons of the house still

have cause to be grateful to him for the care with which he looked after

their safety and comfort. Since then the appearance of the interior has

been changed very considerably. The two tiers of boxes were where they

are now, but their fronts were perpendicular, and there was no bulging

curve at the proscenium. Besides the two tiers of boxes, as they exist

at present, there were twelve baignoirs, six on a side at the stage ends

of the parquet circle, so-called. These were found to be unprofitable,

and were abolished when the house was remodeled about ten years after

the opening. The decoration of the interior was intrusted to E. P.

Tredwill, an architect of Boston, who followed Mr. Cady's wishes in

avoiding all garish display and tawdry effect. The deepest color in the

audience room was the dark, rich red of the carpet on the floor. The

silk linings of the boxes and the curtains between them and the small

salons in the rear were of fabrics specially made for the purpose. They

had an old gold ground and large, raised figures of conventional design

in a darker shade, with dark red threads. The tier fronts, ceiling,

and proscenium were of a light color, the aim having been to obtain a

prevailing tint of ivory. Amid the filigree designs of the pilasters,

which carried the work above the curtain opening, were pictures of

singing and playing cherubs, and back of the bold consoles, which

projected from the side walls, were figures called "The Chorus" and

"The Ballet," painted by Francis Maynard, while above the middle of

the opening, in a segmentary arch, was an allegory, with Apollo as the

central figure, by Francis Lathrop. Statues of the Muses filled niches

on both sides of the consoles. Over the ceiling, amidst the entwinings

of ornamental figures, on a buff ground, were spread a large number

of medallions of oxidized metal, which, in the illumination from the

lights, shone with a copper luster. The house was lighted by gas, though

preparations had been made for the installation of electrical appliances

when that form of illumination should be found justified by economy. As

originally built, the orchestra was sunk sufficiently below the level

of the floor to conceal the performers from all but the occupants of

the upper tiers. In the hope of attaining improved acoustic effects

the floor of the orchestra was laid upon an egg-shaped sound-chamber

of masonry. The innovation did not meet with the approval of Signor

Vianesi, the first musical director at the opera house, and, after an

experimental rehearsal, the floor was raised so that the old conditions

obtained when the performances began. So the orchestra remained, the

players spoiling the picture on the stage, until "Lohengrin" came

to a performance. Then Signor Vianesi was prevailed upon to try the

arrangement from which Mr. Cady had expected fine artistic results.

The effect was good, and the device was adhered to for a space, and in

more or less modified form ever since, though there has been continual

experimentation with the disposition of the instrumentalists.

Operatic performances began at the new house on October 22, 1883, and

after sixty-one representations, at which nineteen operas were produced,

the first season came to an end. I shall tell the story of the season in

greater detail in the next chapter, contenting myself for the present

with an account of the results of the merry war which ensued between

the rival establishments. Colonel Mapleson was intrenched in the Academy

of Music, which opened its doors for its regular season on the same

evening. The advantage lay with Mr. Henry E. Abbey, who had a new house,

the fruit of an old longing, and the realization of long cherished

social aspirations. With the Academy of Music there rested the charm of

ancient tradition, more potent then than it has ever been since, and the

strength of conservatism. There were stars of rare refulgence in both

constellations, which met the Biblical description in differing one

from another in their glory. With Colonel Mapleson was Mme. Adelina

Patti, who, in so far as she was an exponent of the art of beautiful

vocalization, was without a peer the whole world over. She served then

to keep alive the old traditions of Italian song as Mme. Sembrich does

now. At her side stood Mme. Etelka Gerster, with a voice youthful,

fresh, limpid, and wondrously flexible, and a style that was ripening

in a manner that promised soon to compass all the requirements of the

Italian stage from the sentimental characters in which she won her first

successes to the deeper tragic parts which had begun to make appeal to

her ambition. With Mr. Abbey was Mme. Christine Nilsson. Mme. Patti,

though she had grown to womanhood and effected her entrance on the

operatic as well as concert stage in New York, was not so familiar a

figure as Mme. Nilsson. Patti had begun her operatic career at the

Academy of Music in 1859, and had gone to Europe, where she remained

without revisiting her old home until the fall or winter of 1881, when

she came on a concert trip. The trip was more or less a failure, the

public not yet being prepared to pay ten dollars for a reserved seat

to hear anybody sing. After singing at a concert for the benefit of

the sufferers from forest fires in Michigan, she announced a reduction

of prices to two dollars for general admission, and five dollars for

reserved seats. Under these conditions business improved somewhat, but

in February, 1882, she found it necessary to organize an opera company

in order to awaken interest fairly commensurate with her great merit

and fame. It was a sorry company, and the performances, only a few,

took place in the Germania Theater, on Broadway, at Thirteenth Street,

formerly Wallack's; but they were received with much enthusiasm. So far

as London was concerned, she was under engagement at the time to Mr.

Gye, Colonel Mapleson's rival at Covent Garden. Mr. Abbey claimed that

he had an option on any American engagement for opera, but she appeared

next season at the Academy, and the doughty English manager held her as

his trump card in the battle royal which ensued on the opening of the

Metropolitan.

In the twenty years of Mme. Patti's absence from New York, Mme. Nilsson,

who had come to the metropolis in the heyday of her European fame in

1870, had won her way deep into the hearts of the people. In 1883 she

was no longer in her prime, neither her voice nor her art having stood

the wear of time as well as those of Mme. Patti, who was six months her

senior in age, and five years in stage experience, but she was more

than a formidable rival in the admiration of the public. She was no less

happy in the companionship of Mme. Sembrich as a junior partner than

Patti was with Mme. Gerster. Both of the younger singers were fresh from

their first great European successes. Three years later Mme. Gerster

went back to Mme. Marchesi, her teacher, with her voice irreparably

damaged. "The penalty of motherhood," said her friends; "the result of

worry over the failure to hold her place in the face of opposition,"

said more impartial observers. Mme. Sembrich went back to Europe to

continue her triumphs after disaster had overtaken her first American

manager, and in a decade returned, to remain an ornament of the

Metropolitan ever since.

In Mr. Abbey's ranks were also Mme. Fursch-Madi, Mme. Scalchi, Mme.

Trebelli, Mme. Lablache (who gave way to her daughter till a quarrel

over her between the impresarios was determined), and Mme. Valleria,

who had come to the Academy some time before from London, though she

was a Baltimorean by birth--a sterling artist who is remembered by

all connoisseurs with gratitude and admiration. Chief among Colonel

Mapleson's masculine forces was Signor Galassi, a somewhat rude but

otherwise excellent barytone. At the head of the tenors was Signor

Nicolini, the husband of Mme. Patti, who sang only when she did, but not

always. The circumstance that Mme. Patti insisted upon his engagement,

also, whenever she signed a contract gave rise to a malicious story

to the effect that she had two prices, one of, let us say merely for

illustration, 6,000 francs for herself alone, one of 4,000 francs for

herself and Nicolini. The rest of the male contingent was composed

mostly of small fry--Vicini, Perugini, and Falletti, tenors, Cherubini

and Lombardini, basses, and Caracciolo, buffo. Mr. Abbey had carried off

three admired men singers from the Academy--Campanini, Del Puente, and

Novara--and brought an excellent barytone, Kaschmann, from Europe, and

a redoubtable tenor, Stagno.

There was little to interest a public supposedly weary of the

barrel-organ list in the promises made in the rival announcements.

Colonel Mapleson held forth the prospect of Patti in Gounod's "Roméo

et Juliette," and "Mireille" (in Italian, of course), as well as in

Rossini's "La Gazza ladra," a forgotten opera then and again forgotten

now; other old works which were to be revived for her and Mme. Gerster

were "Crispino e la Comare," and "L'Elisir d'Amore." Mme. Pappenheim's

presence as the dramatic soprano of the company (a less necessary

personage in the companies of that day than now) led to the promise of

"Norma" and "Oberon." Only the Italian work was given. Mr. Abbey's book

of good intentions embraced twenty-four operas, all of them familiar

except "La Gioconda," which had been the novelty of the preceding

London season.

The outcome of the battle between the opera houses was defeat for both.

The Academy of Music survived for two more campaigns, out of which the

new house came triumphant, while the old went down forever. It was

different with the men. Mr. Abbey retired after one season, forswearing

opera, as he said, for all time; Colonel Mapleson, though defeated,

was a smaller loser, and he was not only brave enough to prepare for a

second encounter, but also adroit enough to persuade Mme. Patti to place

herself under his guidance again. Mr. Abbey's losses have been a matter

of speculation ever since. It was known at the time that he had lost

all the profits of three or four other managerial enterprises, and some

years ago I feared that I might be exaggerating when I set down the

deficit of the Metropolitan Opera House in its first season at $300,000.

As I write now, however, I have before me a letter from Mr. John B.

Schoeffel, who was associated with Mr. Abbey as partner, in which he

says that the losses of the season were "nearly $600,000."

[The operas performed at the Academy of Music in the season 1883-1884

were: "La Sonnambula," "Rigoletto," "Norma," "Faust," "Linda di

Chamouni," "La Gazza ladra," "Marta," "La Traviata," "Aïda," "L'Elisir

d'Amore," "Crispino e la Comare," and "Les Huguenots" (in Italian).]

CHAPTER IX

FIRST SEASON AT THE METROPOLITAN

Twenty-five years ago there was no opera in the current repertory

comparable in popularity with "Faust." If I am told that neither is

there to-day I shall neither gainsay my informant nor permit the fact

to give me heartburnings in spite of my attitude toward the modern

lyric drama. To that popularity Mme. Nilsson contributed a factor of

tremendous puissance. No singer who is still a living memory was so

intimately associated in the local mind with Gounod's masterpiece as

she, whose good fortune it had been to recreate the character of

Marguerite, when, on March 3, 1869, the opera in a remodeled form was

transferred from the Théâtre Lyrique to the Grand Opéra in Paris. Coming

to New York soon afterward, it was she who set the standard by which,

for a long time, all subsequent representatives of the character were

judged. With her, Mme. Scalchi (who never had more than one rival in the

part of Siebel so far as New Yorkers are concerned, viz., Annie Louise

Cary), and Signor Campanini (the most popular Faust who has ever sung

in New York) in the company, it was no wonder that the opera was chosen

for performance on the opening night at the Metropolitan Opera House on

October 22, 1883. The opera was sung in Italian, no manager's fancy

having yet attained such a conception, as that all operas ought to be

sung in the language in which they were composed--and might be; for this

reason the names in the cast, though given in their familiar French

forms may be transliterated into Italian if so they will better please

the reader. The cast then was as follows: Marguerite, Mme. Nilsson;

Siebel, Mme. Scalchi; Martha, Mlle. Lablache (whose mother had

been expected to appear in the part, but was prevented by judicial

injunction); Faust, Signor Campanini; Valentine, Signor Del Puente;

Mephistopheles, Signor Novara.

The performance did not differ materially from many which had taken

place in the Academy of Music when the same artists took part. All the

principal artists, indeed, had been heard in the opera many times when

their powers were greater. Mme. Nilsson had been thirteen years before

the American public, and though in this period her art had grown in

dignity and nobility, her voice had lost the fresh bloom of its youth,

and her figure had begun to take on matronly contours. Still, she was a

great favorite, and hers was an extraordinary triumph, the outburst of

popular approbation coming, as was to have been expected, in the garden

scene of the opera. Referring to my review of the performance which

appeared in The Tribune of the next day, I note that till that moment

there had been little enthusiasm. After she had sung the scintillant

waltz, however, "the last film of ice that had held the public in

decorous check was melted," and an avalanche of plaudits overwhelmed the

fair singer. Bouquets rained from the boxes, and baskets of flowers were

piled over the footlights till it seemed as if there was to be no end.

In the midst of the floral gifts there was also handed up a magnificent

velvet casket inclosing a wreath of gold bay leaves and berries,

ingeniously contrived to be extended into a girdle to be worn in the

classic style, and two gold brooch medallions, bearing the profiles

of Tragedy and Comedy, with which the girdle was to be fastened. The

donor was not mentioned, but an inscription told that the gift was in

"commemoration of the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House." Signor

Campanini had spent the year before the opening in retirement, hoping

to repair the ravages made in his voice by the previous seasons at the

Academy of Music, and, I regret to say, possibly his careless mode of

life. His faults had been conspicuous for several seasons, and the

hoped-for amendment did not discover itself. "Occasionally the old-time

sweetness, and again occasionally the old-time manly ring was apparent

in his notes, but they were always weighted down by the evidences of

labor, and the brilliancy of the upper tones with which he used to fire

an audience into uncontrollable enthusiasm was gone."

The regular subscription nights at the Metropolitan in the first season,

and for all the seasons that followed down to that of 1907-08, were

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with afternoon performances on

Saturdays. On the second night of the season, October 24, 1883, Mr.

Abbey brought forward two of his new singers. The opera was "Lucia di

Lammermoor," the first performance of which in the new house was made

memorable by the introduction of Mme. Marcella Sembrich. She had been

engaged by Mr. Abbey on the strength of the success achieved by her

in the London season of 1883. She was almost at the beginning of her

career, being little known outside of Athens, where she made her début,

Dresden, where she had sung in German, and London. She had dazzled the

British metropolis by her vocalization, especially in "Lucia," and it

was for this reason that it was selected for her introduction to New

York. Before the season came to an end she sang in "I Puritani," "Don

Giovanni," "La Traviata," and "Hamlet." All the good qualities which

have since then been extolled hundreds of times by the critics of the

New York newspapers were noticeable in her first representation. I

turn back to the files of The Tribune to see what I wrote while under

the spell of her witching art, and find the following:

Mme. Sembrich is a lovely singer,--lovely of person, of address, of

voice; and her artistic acquirements, in the limited field in which

Donizetti's opera called them into activity, at least, are of the

highest rank. Her style is exquisite, and plainly the outgrowth of a

thoroughly musical nature. It unites some of the highest elements of

art. Such reposefulness of manner, such smoothness and facility in

execution, such perfect balance of tone and refinement of expression

can be found only in one richly endowed with deep musical feeling and

ripe artistic intelligence. She carries her voice wondrously well

throughout a wide register, and from her lowest note to her highest

there is the same quality of tone. It is a voice of fine texture, too;

it has a velvety softness, yet is brilliant; and though not magnetic

in the same degree as the voices of other singers still before the

public, it has a fine, sympathetic vein. It wakens echoes of Mme.

Patti's organ, but has warmer life-blood in it.

Of the musicianly qualities of this charming singer, recognized on this

first acquaintance, we were to have a demonstration before her departure

which was in the highest degree surprising. Sympathy for Mr. Abbey in

his great losses, and admiration for the self-sacrificing manner in

which he adhered to all his obligations to them as well as to the

public, led the directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company to offer him

a benefit concert. At this entertainment, which was successful beyond

anything that local records had to show up to that time, the profits

amounting to $16,000, Mme. Sembrich sang an aria; then came upon the

stage and played a violin obbligato to Mme. Nilsson's performance of

the familiar Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria"; again she appeared and this time

played a Chopin Mazourka on the pianoforte. In every instance she

was the complete artist, and the public, who had been charmed by her

witcheries as Mozart's Zerlina and melted by the pathos of her singing

in the last act of "La Traviata," were at a loss to say if she had shown

herself a greater artist in song or in instrumental music, as a pianist

or violinist. It was not until many years after she had returned to

Europe to continue her operatic triumphs in St. Petersburg, Madrid,

Vienna, Paris, and Berlin that I learned the story of her life, and with

it the secret of her musical versatility; how she had started life as

a player of the pianoforte and violin with her father at dances in the

houses of the wealthy folk in her native town in Poland, gone to the

conservatory in Lemberg to study the pianoforte, been taken to the

Conservatory at Vienna by Professor Stengel (then her teacher, now her

husband), because there was nothing left in his system of instruction

from which she could profit, and there been advised to study singing

instead of the pianoforte with Liszt, as her proud teacher had fondly

hoped. It was Professor Epstein who gave the world one of the greatest

singers of our generation, but in doing so he robbed it of a pianist of

doubtless equal caliber. So far as I know, the story of Mme. Sembrich

is without a parallel.

Signor Kaschmann was the barytone of the "Lucia" performance. He had a

handsome face and figure, a good bearing, and disclosed familiarity with

the stage, and considerable talent as an actor, but he was afflicted

with that distressful vocal defect which singers of his school often

call vibrato in order to affect to find a virtue in it. There is,

indeed, artistic merit in a true vibrato which lends vitality to a

voice, but when it degenerates into a tremolo, or wabble, it is a

vice of the most unpardonable kind.

Another of the newcomers made his bow to the Metropolitan public on the

third night of the season, October 26th, when "Il Trovatore" was brought

forward. This was the tenor Signor Stagno, a stockily built, heavy,

self-conscious man, of good stage features and bad stage manners. When

his voice was first heard from behind the scenes, it sounded throaty, a

squeezed-out, constrained tone, but later, when Manrico's display pieces

came it rang out full and vibrant as a trumpet. It developed at once

that he was a singer of the sideshow kind, with whom the be-all and

end-all of his part and art lay in the high tones. So little of a

musician was he that, being enthusiastically recalled after the "Di

quella pira," he was unable to keep the key of C major in his head in

spite of his stentorian proclamation of its tonic a few seconds before,

and could not begin the repetition till the concert-master had plucked

the first note of the air on his violin. A short time before I heard

Mme. Patti perform the feat of beginning the trill which accompanies the

melody by the orchestra in the middle of the dance song in "Dinorah"

without a suggestive tone or chord after a hubbub and gladsome tumult

that seemed, to have lasted several minutes. A new bass, Signor

Mirabella, appeared in "I Puritani" on October 29th--a musical singer

with a voice of large volume and ample range, and a self-possessed,

easy, and effective stage presence.

On her second appearance Mme. Nilsson was seen in a part with which she

was more intimately associated in the popular mind than any other singer

in New York or London. The opera was "Mignon," the date October 31st.

Ambroise Thomas's opera had its first American performance at the

Academy of Music under the management of Maurice Strakosch, on November

22, 1871. With Mme. Nilsson, on that occasion as on this, was associated

M. Capoul, the most ardent and fascinating lover known to opera in

America, who not long before had risen from the ranks of French opéra

bouffe. Mme. Trebelli, who had created the part of Frederick in London,

where, as in New York, Mme. Nilsson was the original Mignon, and for

whom the composer had written the rondo-gavotte, "In veder l'amata

stanza" (taking its melody from the entr'acte music preceding the second

act), was also a member of Mr. Abbey's company, but Mme. Scalchi, who

could wear man's attire and walk in tights more gracefully than any

woman who ever appeared on the American operatic stage within my memory,

was too popular in the part to be set aside for the sake of a newcomer,

and Mme. Trebelli had to wait until October 27th before getting a

hearing in opera. Meanwhile she sang industriously in concerts. The

changes which had taken place in Mme. Nilsson's person and voice during

the dozen years between her first appearance as Mignon and the one

under consideration might naturally have been expected to affect her

performance of the part. Many were ready to perceive the loss of some

of the charms of youthful freshness and grace, which are indissolubly

connected with any conception of this most poetical of Goethe's

creatures. The result fulfilled their anticipations in a measure, for

Mme. Nilsson's impersonation was more remarkable for its deep feeling in

the dramatic portions than for lightness and gracefulness in the lyric.

This loss brought with it a compensation, however. Many protests have

been felt, when not expressed, against the tendency of singers to make

Mignon a mere wilful, pettish, silly young woman. The poet's ideal was

sufficiently despoiled by the unconscionable French librettist without

this further desecration which effectually dispelled the last glimmer of

the poetical light that ought always to shine about this strange child

of the South. Too much of tropical passion, too much of undefined

longing, too much of tenderness the part could hardly be invested with,

but it is easily made silly by over-acting in the very place where the

tendency to do so is strongest. The whole opera is one that must either

be represented with extreme care in avoiding extravagant expression,

or all effort to approach even distantly the ideals of the poet must

be abandoned and the piece be given as if Goethe had never lived, and

"Wilhelm Meister" had never been written.

Perhaps the latter plan would be the better one, for it is hard to think

of Goethe during the performance of the opera without taking violent

offense, and it would only be a relief to have all thought of him

studiously kept out of mind. Yet, we would not willingly lose the

pleasure which Ambroise Thomas provided in this, his best opera. It is

to his credit that he felt the embarrassments which his subject caused.

At one time he thought seriously of permitting the heroine to go the way

of Goethe's "Mignon," and of offering the opera to the Théâtre Lyrique

instead of the Opéra Comique, for which he had undertaken to write it.

He did not carry out the plan, however, but instead thought to silence

the carping of the Germans by composing a second conclusion, a

dénouement allemand, in which Mignon falls dead, while listening to

Philine's polacca in the last scene. A tragic end to a piece treated

in the comedy manner throughout was too ridiculous, however, and the

Germans would have none of the dénouement allemand. They raised a hue

and cry against the opera, then heard it for the sake of its music, and

ended by admiring its admirable parts without changing their minds about

the desecration of their great poet.

It is no wonder that the opera-book was made. Such scruples as

distressed the Germans never trouble French librettists, and the

characters which Carré and Barbier found in Goethe's romance are as if

born for the stage. What lyric possibilities do not lie in the Harper?

Was ever a more perfect musical coquette dreamed of than Philine? Have

not Mignon's songs drawn forth music from nearly every composer of

eminence since Beethoven? The filling-in parts were on the surface of

the story, and the character of their music could not be misconceived.

Wilhelm Meister himself, in his character of a strolling player, had

only to sacrifice his habit of reflection to be a dashing tenor. The

temptation was certainly strong; the sacrilege was committed, and the

verbal skeleton constructed out of things which were dearest in German

literature, was tricked out with piquant music and ear-tickling roulades

by the man who was not awed even by Shakespeare. Think of "Le Songe

d'une Nuit d'Été"! With such characters the play is easily acted, and

the music never fails to fascinate.

"La Traviata" was the next opera, produced on November 5th, with Mme.

Sembrich as Violetta, and Capoul as Alfredo, and then came "Lohengrin"

on November 7th. In Wagner's opera the parts of the heroine and hero

were enacted by Nilsson and Campanini, who had sung in its first Italian

performance at the Academy a decade before. Excellently sung in the best

manner as understood by singers of the Italian school--a manner fully

justified, let it be said in passing, by Signor Marchesi's Italian

text--and magnificently dressed, the opera attracted the most numerous

and brilliant audience since the opening night, and remained one of the

most pronounced successes of the season. It served also to introduce

Mme. Fursch-Madi, a dramatic singer, who, although not attractive

in appearance, was one of the finest singers in her style and most

conscientious artists known to her period. She was a French woman, who

was graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, married M. Madier, a chef

d'orchestre in the French capital, came to America to join the French

company in New Orleans in 1874, and sang for three seasons (1879-'81)

at Covent Garden. She spent the last years of her life in and about New

York, singing in opera and concert, always a noble example to youthful

aspirants, and died in poverty after great suffering in September, 1894.

"La Sonnambula" followed on November 14th, and "Rigoletto" on November

16th, without noteworthy incident, except the first American appearance

of Gaudignini as the Jester, and "Robert le Diable" (in Italian), with

Fursch-Madi as Alice, Valleria as Isabella, Stagno and Mirabella. This

performance was enlivened by an amusing incident. It will be recalled by

people familiar with the history of the opera that Scribe and Meyerbeer

first designed "Robert" for the Opéra Comique, but remodeled it for the

Grand. For a few moments in the incantation scene at this performance

the audience seemed inclined to ignore the author's sober second

thought, and accept the work as a comic instead of romantic opera. The

wicked nuns, called back to life by the sorcery of Bertram, amid the

ruins of the cloister, appeared to have been stinted by the undertaker

in the matter of shrouds, and the procession of gray-wrapped figures

in cutty sarks caused the liveliest merriment until the transformation

took place, and serious interest was revived by the lovely face, form,

and dancing of Mme. Cavalazzi.

"Il Barbiere," with Sembrich as a delightfully piquant Rosina,

nevertheless moved with leaden feet in many of its scenes, because of

the ponderous and lugubrious Stagno, who essayed a part far from his

province, when he tried to sing the Count. On November 28th "Don

Giovanni" was reached with the finest distribution of women's rôles, I

dare say, that New York has ever seen, and one that ranked well with the

famous London one of Tietjens, Nilsson, and Patti. Mme. Fursch-Madi was

Donna Anna, Mme. Nilsson Donna Elvira, and Mme. Sembrich Zerlina. For

delvers in musical history the performance had curious interest because

it partook somewhat of an anniversary character. It fell within a day of

exactly fifty-eight years after Italian opera had first been heard in

America (November 29, 1825). Save Mme. Patti we have heard no Zerlina

comparable with Mme. Sembrich, and Mme. Nilsson's singing of the airs,

"Ah, che mi dice mai," and "Mi tradi quell' alma ingrata" lingers in

my memory as an impeccable exemplification of the true classic style.

The performance suffered shipwreck, however, in the famous first finale,

because of the untunefulness of the orchestra, and the incapacity

of the enlisted stage bands. In "Mefistofele," on December 5th, Nilsson

appeared as Marguerite and Helen of Troy, and Trebelli as Marta and

Pantalis. Nilsson had fixed the ideal of Helen in Europe and New York,

and it is she, I believe, who started the questionable practice of

having one performer impersonate both Marguerite and the classic Queen.

Boito has given us so little of Goethe's Gretchen in his delightful,

but sketchy, opera that it does not make much difference how the part

is acted; but Helen is a character that seemed cut to the very form of

Nilsson--regal in beauty and carriage, soul-moving in voice, serene in

pose and gesture. She fitted perfectly into the fairest picture that

a lover of ancient Greek life could conjure up, and moved through the

classic act like a veritable Hellenic queen. The beauty, majesty, the

puissant charm of a perfect woman of the antique type--all were hers.

Campanini, who, like Nilsson, had been seen in the opera before the

Metropolitan Opera House entered the lists, sang on this evening with

peculiar enthusiasm; and with reason. Not only had he been instrumental

in giving the opera to the people of London and New York, but, on

this occasion, he was singing under the baton of his younger brother,

Cleofonte, then a modest maestro di cembalo trying his 'prentice hand at

conducting; now the redoubtable leader of Mr. Hammerstein's forces at

the Manhattan. Four years later Cleofonte Campanini came again to New

York as conductor of his brother's company organized for the production

of Verdi's "Otello."

On December 20th the one real novelty of Mr. Abbey's list had

production. It was Ponchielli's "La Gioconda," with the following

distribution of parts: La Gioconda, Mme. Nilsson; Laura Adorno, Mme.

Fursch-Madi; La Cieca, Mme. Scalchi; Enzo Grimaldo, Signor Stagno;

Barnaba, Signor Del Puente; Alvise Badiero, Signor Novara. Ponchielli's

opera had been the principal novelty of the London season in the summer

of 1883, where it was brought out by Mr. Gye. On this occasion it was

performed with a gorgeousness of stage appointments, and a strength of

ensemble which spoke volumes for the earnestness of the effort which Mr.

Abbey was making to give grand opera in a style worthy of the American

metropolis, and the reception which the public gave to the work afforded

convincing proof of the eagerness for a change from the stale list which

had so long constituted its operatic pabulum. The house was crowded

from floor to ceiling, and the audience, having assembled for the

enjoyment of an unusual pleasure, was soon wrought into an extremely

impressionable state, which the striking pictures, excited action,

and ingenious music intensified with every act.

The score of "La Gioconda" is full of ingeniously applied harmonical

and orchestral devices, but they are all such as were learned from

Ponchielli's great predecessor and successor, Verdi. As a matter of

fact, Ponchielli, though he has been discovered as the father of the

young veritist school of Italy, which seems already to have exhausted

itself, was less original than Boito, who has distinguished himself

above all the rout of Verdi's traducers and followers (for a space the

category included the same names) by continence and self-criticism. As

I write more than two decades have elapsed since he became known in

New York, and in the interim we have seen the rise, and, also, the

considerable fall of such imitators as Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and their

superior, Puccini. We are now more able to see than we were twenty-five

years ago how much Ponchielli, and all his tribe, owe to Verdi; and

also how much ruder and less attentive to real beauty they were. Then

we could hear besides his voice, that of Verdi in his music; now we

can hear also tones which awaken echoes in Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and

Puccini. Of a sometimes mooted Wagnerian influence, there is only so

much in this score as is to be found in all scores, German and French,

and Italian, since the shackles of instrumental form were cast off.

Ponchielli makes a little use of a recurring melodic phrase from

La Cieca's "Voce di donna," but he pursues the device even less

consistently than Verdi, and in a manner that is older than Meyerbeer.

In melody he is wholly Italian, and of Wagner's use of typical phrases

"La Gioconda" is as guiltless as Pergolesi's "Serva padrona."

What is admirable to the popular appreciation of to-day is the hot vigor

of the drama, and the quick co-operation of music in its climacteric

moments. This co-operation is most obvious in the employment of the

device of contrast, which dominates the work and seems to have been the

feature which has been most effectively seized upon by Ponchielli's

pupils. It marks every climax in the opera, and becomes almost tiresome

in its reiteration. In the first act the blind woman's prayer is set

against a background composed of a gambling chorus and the wild whirl

of the furlano, which ends abruptly with organ peals and a pious

canticle--an effect repeated since in "Cavalleria Rusticana" and

"Tosca." In the second act in the twinkling of an eye, Gioconda is

transformed from a murderous devil into a protecting saint; in the third

Laura's accents of mortal woe commingle with the sounds of a serenade

in the distance, and the disclosure of a supposed murder is made at the

climax of a ball; in the fourth the calls of passing gondoliers break

in upon Gioconda's soliloquies, which have for their subject suicide,

murder, and self-sacrifice. The device is of a coarse tissue, but it

is of the opera operatic, and it is now more familiar than it was when

first disclosed to the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House,

twenty-five years ago.

If it were necessary one might look for the source of this device of

contrast in the literature to which Verdi directed attention when

he turned his thoughts to Victor Hugo, and composed "Ernani" and

"Rigoletto." Hugo was the prince of those novelists and dramatists

who utilized glaring contrasts and unnatural contradictions to give

piquancy to their creations and compel sympathy for monsters by uniting

monumental wickedness with the most amiable of moral qualities. The

story of "La Gioconda" is drawn from "Angelo, Tyrane de Padoue." In

transforming this tragedy into an opera the librettist removed the scene

from Padua to Venice, changed a wealthy actress into a poor street

singer, and made the blind mother, who is barely mentioned in the play,

into a prominent and moving character. There can be no question but that

Boito ("Tobia Gorria" is but an anagramatic nom de plume of Arrigo

Boito) was highly successful in remodeling the tragedy for operatic

purposes, but he did not palliate its moral grossness or succeed in

inviting our compassionate feelings for anyone entitled to them. The

only personages who in this opera escape disaster are a pair of lovers,

whose sufferings, as depicted or inferred, cannot be said to have

refined the guilt out of their passion. We might infer that once the

attachment of Enzo and Laura was pure and lovely, but all that we see of

it is flauntingly criminal and doubly wicked. The happiness of Enzo, who

to elope with another man's wife cruelly breaks faith with a woman whose

love for him is so strong that she gives her life to save his, is hardly

a consummation that ought to be set down as justifying so many blotches

and blains, pimples and pustules, on the face of human nature. Laura's

treachery is to Gioconda as well as to her husband, and has no redeeming

trait. In fact, the blind woman is the only character in the opera who

has moral health, and she seems to have been brought in only that her

sufferings might intensify the bloody character of Barnaba, the spy.

Even Gioconda, a character that has latent within it many effective

elements, is sacrificed by the librettist to the one end--sensational

effect through contrast and contradiction. Nowhere does she illustrate

the spirit of blitheness which is put forth by her name, and only once

does she allude to it. From the moment of her entrance till her death

she is filled with torturing passion and conflicting emotions. Not la

Gioconda she, but la Dolorosa--except for the bookmaker's desire for

dramatic paradox. Against the desire to sympathize with her is thrust

the revelation that her rival is never saved from death at her hands

because of any repugnance of hers to murder. She would kill in an

instant were it not that her vengefulness is overcome by gratitude to

the benefactress of her mother. So it comes that the strongest feeling

excited by the heroine, who dies a sacrifice to filial affection and

passionate love, is one of simple pity--a feeling that is never absent

from tender hearts, no matter how depraved the victim of misfortune.

But opera in the estate illustrated by "La Gioconda" scarcely justifies

even an elementary moral disquisition. Moreover, what Ponchielli

provoked is so much worse than what he himself did that his condemnation

can go no further than purgatorial fires. It is in the operas of his

pupils and would-be imitators, like Giordano, Tasca, and others, that

filth and blood are supposed to fructify the music which rasps the

nerves, even as the dramas revolt the moral stomach. In view of the

products of the period in which began operatic veritism, so-called, "La

Gioconda" seems almost washed in innocency, and if its music is at times

highly spiced, it is at least frankly and simply melodious. Naturally he

has followed his librettist in aiming at contrast, at higgledy-piggledy

finales, at garish orchestration, at strenuous declamation in the

dialogue not cast in melodic forms and at abrupt changes. But he has

plenty, if not profound melodiousness. La Cieca's air, Enzo's romance,

Laura's "Stella del Marinar," Barnaba's barcarole, and the ballet music

have lived on in our concert rooms from that day to this.

"La Gioconda" was the last opera brought forward in the winter season,

which ended on December 22d, leaving two out of thirty promised

subscription performances to be supplied on the return of Mr. Abbey's

forces from Boston, whither they went for the holidays. When he came

back in a fortnight he gave "Carmen," on January 9th, with Trebelli,

Campanini, and Del Puente (who had been in the cast of the original

London production); repeated it on January 11th, and "La Gioconda"

on January 12th.

On March 10th a spring season began, which lasted till April 12th. It

added four operas to the list. Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet" (March 10),

Flotow's "Martha" (March 14th), Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" (March 19th),

and "Le Prophète" (March 21st). The last, which had first been heard in

New York at the Astor Place Opera House four years after its original

production in Paris, on April 16, 1849, had been absent from the

current operatic list so long that it was to all intents and purposes

a novelty to Mr. Abbey's patrons. The last week of the season brought

two disappointments: Mmes. Nilsson and Sembrich both fell ill, the

indisposition of the latter (or something else) causing the abandonment

of Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette," an opera that was new to New Yorkers,

and was promptly brought out by Colonel Mapleson with Mme. Patti in

his spring season at the Academy of Music.

As has already been set forth, Mr. Abbey made a monumental financial

fiasco; but his was a heroic effort to galvanize Italian opera, which

seemed moribund, into vitality. He showed an honest desire to keep

all his promises to the public made when he asked support for his

enterprise, and all in all, his administration was signalized by virtues

too frequently absent in the doings of operatic managers. His stage sets

were uniformly handsome, and some of them showed greater sumptuousness

than the people had seen for many years; his orchestra, though faulty in

composition as well as execution, did some admirable work under Signor

Vianesi; his chorus was prompt, vigorous, and tuneful; his ensembles

were carefully and intelligently composed, and his selection of operas

was judicious from a managerial point of view. He gave to New York the

strongest combination of women singers that the city had ever known;

nor has it been equaled in any one season since. The financial failure

of the enterprise caused no surprise among intelligent and impartial

observers. One needed not to be prophetically gifted to foretell

twenty-five years ago that New York could not support two such costly

establishments as the Academy of Music and the Metropolitan Opera House.

The world of fashion, which in the nature of things is the supporter of

Italian opera, and has been ever since the art form was invented, was

divided in its allegiance, and divided, moreover, in a manner which made

an interchange of courtesies all but impossible. This threw the burden

of maintaining the rival houses upon two limited groups of persons, and

the loss was mutual.

In Mr. Abbey's prospectus he promised to produce twenty-four operas,

which he named; he kept his promise as to all but five, these being

"Lucrezia Borgia," "Linda di Chamouni," "Fra Diavolo," "Otello," and

"Le Nozze di Figaro." "Roméo et Juliette," which he attempted to give,

but failed at the last, was not in the original list. Besides these

performances, he gave fifty-eight outside of New York in visits to

Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis,

Washington, and Baltimore. The local record may be tabulated as

follows:

Opera First performance Times given

"Faust" .................... October 22 ............ 6

"Lucia di Lammermoor" ...... October 24 ............ 3

"Il Trovatore" ............. October 26 ............ 3

"I Puritani" ............... October 29 ............ 1

"Mignon" ................... October 31 ............ 4

"La Traviata" .............. November 5 ............ 4

"Lohengrin" ................ November 7 ............ 6

"La Sonnambula" ............ November 14 ........... 2

"Rigoletto" ................ November 16 ........... 2

"Robert le Diable" ......... November 19 ........... 3

"Il Barbiere di Siviglia" .. November 23 ........... 3

"Don Giovanni" ............. November 28 ........... 5

"Mefistofele" .............. December 5 ............ 2

"La Gioconda" .............. December 20 ........... 4

"Carmen" ................... January 9 ............. 5

"Hamlet" ................... March 10 .............. 1

"Martha" ................... March 14 .............. 3

"Les Huguenots" ............ March 19 .............. 2

"Le Prophète" .............. March 21 .............. 1

There was one performance with a mixed program.

CHAPTER X

OPERATIC REVOLUTIONS

Colonel Mapleson and the stockholders of the Academy of Music and their

friends were little disposed to yield to the new order of things without

a struggle. The Academy was refurnished and a season of Italian opera

begun on the same night on which Mr. Abbey opened his doors. Colonel

Mapleson's company comprised Mmes. Patti, Gerster, Pappenheim, Pattini,

and Josephine Yorke, and Signori Falletti, Nicolini, Perugini,

Cherubini, Vicini, Lombardini, and Caracciolo. The performances were

like those that had been the rule for years, except for the brilliancy

which Mme. Patti lent to those in which she took part. But not even she

could hold the fickle public. On the nights when she sang the house

was two-thirds full; Mme. Gerster had established herself as a prime

favorite, but when she sang on the "off nights" the house was two-thirds

empty. The season was financially disastrous, though Colonel Mapleson's

losses were not comparable to Mr. Abbey's, and he was not only brave

enough to prepare for the next season's campaign, but adroit enough to

persuade Mme. Patti to place herself under his guidance again. But,

while he held out against Mr. Abbey and the new house, he was compelled

to yield to the Metropolitan and German opera as established by Dr.

Damrosch. Of the singers who helped Colonel Mapleson make his fight,

one is still in enjoyment of popular favor. This is Mme. Nordica,

who, though not a regular member of the company, effected her American

operatic début at the Academy on November 26, 1883, in Gounod's "Faust."

She was announced as Mme. Norton-Gower, and of her performance I wrote

at the time in The Tribune:

Of Mrs. Norton-Gower the first statement must be that she gives abundant

evidence of having been admirably trained in the spirit of Gounod's

music and the tragedy. Nearly every number in the score which falls to

the part of Margherita she sang with commendable intelligence and taste.

The most obvious criticism was that the spirit so excellently conceived

by her put a severe strain upon the matter in her control. It cost her

a manifest effort to do what she well knew how to do, for she is not

a phenomenal vocalist. She has a voice of fine texture, and her tones

are generally sympathetic. She sings with feeling, but acts with more.

Her performance was meritorious beyond the performances of any of Mr.

Mapleson's women singers, Mmes. Patti and Gerster excepted.

That Mr. Abbey had made losses which were so great as to make him

unwilling to remain at the head of the operatic forces at the

Metropolitan Opera House was known long before the close of the first

season. Before the spring representations began he made answer to the

proposal of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company by saying

that he would act as their manager without compensation for the next

year, provided they would pay the losses which the first season would

entail upon him. The directors had agreed in their original contract to

save him whole to the extent of $60,000--a pitiful tenth part of what,

according to Mr. Schoeffel, the losses finally aggregated; I am inclined

to think, however, that Mr. Schoeffel has included the losses made in

the other cities visited by the company. There were only sixty-one

representations at the Metropolitan Opera House, and it is inconceivable

that they averaged a deficit of over $9,000 each. They could not have

cost that sum in fact, and many of the performances drew houses which at

the prevailing prices (orchestra $6) must have yielded handsome returns.

Whatever the sum which loomed up as a prospective loss, however, it

was great enough to dissuade the directors from adopting Mr. Abbey's

suggestion. Instead, they made up their minds cheerfully to pay their

own loss, and at the beginning of the spring season, all negotiations

having come to an end, sent Mr. Abbey a letter which read as follows:

Metropolitan Opera House, New York,

Secretary's Office, March 14, 1884.

My Dear Sir: It gives me much pleasure to say that I am instructed by

the president to tender you the use of the Opera House on April 21,

1884, for a benefit performance to yourself. I beg also to express my

hope that the results of the benefit may in some measure be commensurate

with the manner you have presented Italian opera and to say that it will

give me great pleasure to do anything I can to aid in making the benefit

a great success. Most sincerely yours,

Edmund C. Stanton, Secretary.

To Henry E. Abbey.

In the meantime negotiations had already begun looking to the transfer

of the house for the next season to Mr. Ernest Gye, who was manager at

the time of Covent Garden, London. These negotiations were continued

till deep in the summer and came to naught at the end. Of the reasons

for the failure several became known to the public. One was the

unwillingness of the directors to give Mr. Gye a free hand in the

engagement of artists. The directors, who were active in determining

the policy of the opera, were all devoted admirers of Mme. Nilsson;

they were, in fact, the donors of the laurel wreath of gold which she

received on the first night of the season. They were desirous that she

should be re-engaged, though the weight of her contract had done much to

break Mr. Abbey's financial back, and they were also a little fearful

that Mr. Gye, the husband of Mme. Albani, would, not unnaturally, seek

to put that singer in Mme. Nilsson's place. Meanwhile, the opera season

at Covent Garden came to a close, and though Mr. Gye had not had Colonel

Mapleson at Her Majesty's Theater to cope with, as in former seasons,

but only English opera at Drury Lane, under the direction of Carl Rosa,

the financial outcome was such as to suggest that Mr. Gye's attitude

toward opera at the Metropolitan was something like that which the

Germans describe as a cat walking about a dish of hot porridge.

At intervals bits of gossip reached New York by cable, but none of

them was of a comforting character. One week it was said to be the

exorbitance of Mme. Nilsson's demands which gave Mr. Gye pause, and

the next the difficulty of finding a tenor worthy of succeeding Signor

Campanini and capable of satisfying the captious, critical, and

fastidious people of New York. There were suspicions, too, that some

of the embarrassments which confronted Mr. Gye and the Metropolitan

directors were due to the machinations of that sly and persuasive old

dog, Colonel Mapleson. Nilsson had but one rival, and she was Mme.

Patti. Her Colonel Mapleson had secured; not only her, but, report said,

Scalchi, Tremelli, and Tamagno also. Mme. Scalchi had been a strong prop

of the first Metropolitan season, and Tremelli and Tamagno, though they

had not been heard in America, had names to conjure with. Tremelli never

came, and it was not until 1890, when Mr. Abbey was again in the traces

of an Italian opera manager, and was exploiting both Mme. Patti and Mme.

Albani, that Tamagno was heard in New York.

Failures of such magnitude as those of Mr. Gye in London, Colonel

Mapleson at the Academy of Music, and Mr. Abbey at the Metropolitan

Opera House, naturally set the beards of the wiseacres a-wagging.

Clearly the world of opera was out of joint and a prophet with a new

evangel seemed to be needed to set it right. In New York the efforts had

been made along old lines, but Mr. Gye had ventured on an experiment

which suggested the polyglot scheme which became the fixed policy of

the Metropolitan Opera House some ten years later. Along with the old

Italian list Mr. Gye gave some of Wagner's lyric dramas in German, and

even ventured an English opera done into German--C. Villiers Stanford's

"Savonarola." Was Italian opera dead? So it almost seemed; but the

incidents attending its demise were familiar to operatic history and

as old as Italian opera in London and New York. When the art form was

making its first struggles for habilitation in the British metropolis

Addison thought the spectacle so amusing that he wrote an essay in

which he pictured the amazement of the next generation on learning that

in the days of its predecessors English men and women had sat out entire

evenings listening to an entertainment in a foreign tongue. And he said

in that essay many other excellent things, the truth and force of which

are just as deserving of appreciation (and just as needful) now as they

were in the time of the writer.

The consciousness of the absurdity of Italian opera transported in the

"original package" (to speak commercially) to England and America seems

to have been constant with the Anglo-Saxon peoples. Of this the legion

of managerial wrecks which strew the operatic shores or float as

derelicts bear witness. Bankers, manufacturers, and noblemen have come

to the rescue of ambitious managers, or become ambitious managers

themselves, only to go down in the common disaster. Mr. Delafield wrote

his name high among his fellows across the water by losing half a

million of dollars in a single season--a feat which no man equaled till

Mr. Abbey came. Taylor got himself into the King's Bench Prison by his

venturesomeness, and, once there, found consolation in a philosophy

which taught him that of all places in the world the properest one for

an opera manager was a prison. But I have mentioned this before.

Time was when the popular taste found complete satisfaction in the

melodies of the Italian composers. Time was when the desire for novelty

in the operatic field could be satisfied only by importations from

Italy. Time was when Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen went to Italy

to study operatic composition and wrote in the Italian manner to

Italian texts. All this had changed at the period of which I am

writing--Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen had operas in their own

languages and schools of composition of their own. But still New York

and London clung to Italian sweets.

And Italy had become sterile. Verdi seemed to have ceased writing. There

were whisperings of an "Iago" written in collaboration with Boito, but

it was awaiting ultimate criticism and final polish while the wonderful

old master was engaged in revamping some of his early works. Boito was

writing essays and librettos for others, with the unfinished "Nerone"

lying in his desk, where it is still hidden. Ponchielli had not

succeeded in getting a hearing for anything since "La Gioconda."

Expectations had been raised touching an opera entitled "Dejanice," by

Catalani, but I cannot recall that it ever crossed the Italian border.

The hot-blooded young veritists who were soon to flood Italy with their

creations had not yet been heard of. The champions of a change from

Italian to German ideals seemed to have the argument all in their favor.

The spectacle presented by the lyric stage in Germany and France seemed

to show indubitably what course opera as an art form must needs take if

it was to live. Gluck, Weber, and Wagner, all Germans, had pointed the

way. In 1883 five new operas by English composers reached the dignity of

performance, and it was significant that two of them--Mr. Mackenzie's

"Colomba" and Mr. Stanford's "Savonarola"--were performed in German, the

former in Hamburg, the latter in London. There were many lovers of opera

in New York besides the musical reviewer for The Tribune who believed

that if America was ever to have a musical art of its own the way could

best be paved by supplanting Italian performances by German at the

principal home of opera in the United States. We should, it is true,

still have foreign artists singing foreign works in a foreign tongue,

but the change in repertory would promote an appreciation and an

understanding of truthful, dramatic expression in a form which claimed

close relationship with the drama.

This was the state of affairs when, negotiations having failed with

both Mr. Abbey and Mr. Gye, the summer days of 1884 being nearly gone

and the prospect of a closed theater confronting the directors of the

Metropolitan Opera House, Dr. Leopold Damrosch submitted to them a

proposition to give opera in German under his management, but on their

account. Either the forcefulness and plausibility of his arguments or

the direfulness of their need led the directors to make the venture. Dr.

Damrosch went to Germany toward the end of August; toward the end of

September he was back in New York, ready to announce a season of opera

in German, with a completely organized company and a promising list of

operas. Few persons knew what was coming, and the information brought

with it a shock of surprise. Dr. Damrosch had been a vigorous factor in

the musical life of New York for twelve years, but he had never been

identified with opera in the public mind, and, in fact, his practical

familiarity with it was little. He had come to New York from Breslau,

where he was conductor of the Orchesterverein (a symphonic organization)

in 1871. He had had some practical experience with the theater at

Weimar, where he played with the orchestra of the Court Theater under

the direction of Liszt, had been musical director at the Municipal

Theater in Posen and Breslau, but for short periods only. He had not

gone through the career of the typical German conductor for the reason

that he was not a musician "vom Hause aus"--as the Germans express it.

He was a physician turned musician--a member of one of the scientific

professions who had abandoned science for art.

Dr. Damrosch was a remarkable man. He was born in Posen, Prussia,

on October 22, 1832. He studied music in the home circle, like the

generality of German lads, but his parents had chosen the profession of

medicine for him, and he had acquiesced in the choice, matriculating

in the medical department of the University of Berlin after he had

completed the usual gymnasial course of studies. He had not abandoned

his love for music, though he so devoted himself to medicine that in

due course he was graduated with honors and received his degree.

Incidentally, like Schumann at Heidelberg, he continued to study music,

Hubert Ries being his teacher in violin playing, and the venerable

Professor Dehn in counterpoint and composition. After graduation he

returned to his native Posen to practise medicine, and remained there

thus occupied till 1854.

In 1855 the physician's earlier and stronger love for music achieved the

mastery over his adopted profession, and he started out into the world

as a concert violinist. He played at Magdeburg and at Berlin, where his

talents were so much admired that on the recommendation of friends in

the Prussian capital he went to Weimar, where he won the friendship

of Liszt and joined the body of enthusiastic young musicians--Peter

Cornelius and others--who had rallied around the great musician and were

fighting the battles of the new German school. His musical creed was

formed here, as he himself confessed in a series of articles written for

the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. His first official appointment was as

director of the music at the Stadttheater in Posen, and in 1866 he was

called to fill the same post at Breslau. After he had resigned this

position he remained in Breslau as director of the Orchesterverein,

which he called into existence until he accepted the call of the

Männergesangverein Arion in New York in 1871. Though Dr. Damrosch had

achieved a European reputation before he came to New York, his best

and most enduring work was accomplished here, where he organized the

Oratorio Society, which has had a continuous existence since 1873, and

the Symphony Society, which, amid many vicissitudes and with several

reincarnations, has lived since 1877. The establishment of German opera,

though it did not endure, was yet his crowning achievement, and at the

culmination of the glory which it brought him he died. But of that

presently and in its proper place.

The artistic basis of the scheme which Dr. Damrosch put into effect was

essentially German. It dispensed with the star system (except so far as

the engagement of Mme. Materna was a deference to it) and substituted

instead a good ensemble, unusual attention to the mounting of

operas, and the bringing out of dramatic effects through other stage

accessories. The change of base brought with it of necessity a change

of repertory, and the Italian operas which had formed the staple of

New York lists for years were put aside for the masterpieces of German

and French composers. One or two efforts to include works of a lighter

lyrical character sufficed to demonstrate the wisdom of a strict

adherence to the list of tragic works of large dimensions and

spectacular nature, and the sagacity of Dr. Damrosch was shown in

nothing more clearly than in his choice of operas for representation.

There were few familiar names in the list of singers printed in the

prospectus. The most familiar, and the greatest, was that which

has already been announced as the one concession made to the star

system--Mme. Amalia Materna. Twenty-five years ago the story of Bayreuth

was a household word throughout the civilized world, and Mme. Materna

had been associated with the Wagner festivals since the first held, in

1876. In May, 1882, she was brought to New York by Theodore Thomas for

the Music Festival, held in the Seventh Regiment Armory, and with her

Bayreuth colleagues--Winkelmann, tenor, and Scaria, bass--she took part

in concerts and festivals which Mr. Thomas gave in 1884 in Boston,

New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Chicago. After returning to

Europe after the American engagement of 1882, she had gone straight

to Bayreuth, where she "created" the part of Kundry in the original

production of "Parsifal," alternating afterward in the character

with Fräulein Brandt, who was associated with her in Dr. Damrosch's

Metropolitan company. When she came to the Metropolitan (she made her

first appearance after the season was well under headway, in January,

1885) Mme. Materna was thirty-eight years old and her splendid powers

were at their zenith. She had sung in public since her thirteenth year,

at first in church, then in comic opera in Graz and Vienna. While

singing at a small theater in the Austrian capital she became a member

of the Court Opera, attracted wide attention by her dramatic abilities

in the grand operas of its repertories, and at once leaped into fame by

her impersonation of Brünnhilde at the first Bayreuth festival, in 1876.

Next in significance in the first Metropolitan German Company was

Marianne Brandt, whose influence in creating new ideals and developing

new tastes among the opera-goers of New York was even greater than that

of Mme. Materna, because her powers were no less and her labors of

longer duration. She came here after having won praise from the critics

of London, where she had sung at the first performance in England of

"Tristan und Isolde" at Drury Lane in 1882. That was ten years after

she had effected her London début. The principal Coloratursängerin of

the company was Frau Marie Schroeder-Hanfstängl, then a member of

the Frankfort Opera, who was a native of Breslau and a friend of the

Damrosch family while they were there. As Mlle. Schroeder she had

already established a reputation at that time in Paris, where she had

sung at the Théâtre Lyrique through the mediation of her teacher,

Mme. Viardot-Garcia. The jugendlich Dramatische was Frau Auguste

Seidl-Krauss, who was announced throughout the season by her maiden

name, but had been married for about a year to Anton Seidl, then

conductor at the Stadttheater in Bremen, who was soon to become a

most puissant factor in the sum of New York's musical activities. The

principal tenor was Anton Schott, who had made a considerable reputation

as a Wagnerian singer in the opera houses of Munich, Berlin, Schwerin,

Hanover, and London, and had made the Italian tour with Angelo Neumann's

Wagner company which Seidl conducted in 1882. Earlier in life he had

been an artillery officer in the German army, which fact coupled

with his explosive manner of singing prompted one of Dr. von Bülow's

witticisms. The doctor had been conductor of the opera in Hanover when

Schott was there and had conceived a violent dislike for him. Some years

after the latter's New York season, conversing socially with von Bülow,

I chanced to mention Schott's name.

"Ah! do you know Schott?" asked the irascible little doctor;

"ein eigenthümlicher Sänger, nicht war? Eigentlich ist er ein

Militärtenor--ein Artillerist. Sie wissen er singt manchmal zu hoch--da

distonirt er; gewöhnlich singt er zu tief--da destonirt er; und wenn er

gelegentlich rein singt--da detonirt er!" The ingenious play on words

is quite untranslatable, but my readers who understand German but are

unfamiliar with musical terms will be helped to an appreciation of the

fun by being told that "dis," "des," and "de" are the German names

applied respectively to D sharp, D flat, and D natural. No doubt Dr.

von Bülow had perpetrated his little joke before he shot it off for my

benefit. It was a habit of his to have such brilliant impromptus ready

and ingeniously to invite an occasion for their introduction. But they

always had the effect of brilliant spontaneity. It was on another

occasion, when he was praising the performance of another German tenor,

and I had interposed the suggestion that to me he seemed to lack

virility, that he burst out with:

"But, my dear fellow, a tenor isn't a man; it's a disease!"

I supplied the quotation marks in my mind, for though the remark was

his, it had served him on at least one other occasion, as I chanced

to know.

Other members of the company were Anna Slach, Anna Stern, Hermine Bely,

Adolf Robinson, barytone (another of Dr. Damrosch's professional friends

from Breslau); Josef Staudigl (bass, son of the great Staudigl); Josef

Koegel, bass; Emil Tiffero, Herr Udvardi, Otto Kemlitz, Ludwig Wolf,

Josef Miller, and Herr Schneller. John Lund, who came from Kroll's,

in Berlin, and Walter Damrosch, were chorus masters and assistant

conductors. The first season began on November 17, 1884, with a

performance of "Tannhäuser."

CHAPTER XI

GERMAN OPERA AT THE METROPOLITAN