seven years. It was only at the outset that it had the opposition of
what had been the established régime of Italian opera at the Academy of
Music, but it was pursued throughout its career by desultory enterprises
and hampered greatly by the fact that the stockholders were never
unitedly and enthusiastically in favor of it or the principles of art
which it represented. Throughout the period there was a hankering for
the fleshpots of Egypt in the region of the Metropolitan boxes. It seems
desirable, therefore, that, though it is my purpose more specifically
in the next few chapters to tell the story of the seven years of German
opera, I should turn the light occasionally on the doings at rival
institutions. The first of the seven years at the Metropolitan Opera
House was the seventh year of Colonel Mapleson's tenancy of the Academy
of Music. He opened his season on November 10, 1884, but before then
James Barton Key and Horace McVicker experimented with Italian opera
for three weeks at the Star Theater. The organization was composed of
operatic flotsam and jetsam, such as is always to be found plentifully
in New York after operatic storms in South America or Mexico, and was
neither better nor worse than scores of other companies heard here
before and since. Like most of these, too, it had a mouth-filling
name--the Milan Grand Opera Company--but, like few of them, it had a
capital tenor, Signor Giannini, who at a somewhat later period we shall
find in Colonel Mapleson's forces. Other members of the company whose
names are worthy of preservation were Maria Peri (soprano leggiero),
Signora Damerini (dramatic soprano), Signora Mestress (contralto), and
Signor Serbolini (bass). The experiment resulted in financial failure,
but it introduced to New York the South American opera, "Il Guarany,"
by Señor Gomez. In Colonel Mapleson's company were Mme. Patti,
Signora Ricetti, Mme. Emma Nevada, Signor Nicolini, Signor Vicini, and
Signor Cardinali (tenors), Mme. Scalchi, Mme. Fursch-Madi, Signori de
Pasqualis, Cherubini, Caracciolo (bassos), Signor de Anna (barytone),
and Signor Bassetti (tenor), otherwise Mr. Charles Bassett, like Mme.
Nevada, an American singer. The subscription ended on December 27th, and
in the following week he gave four extra performances, at two of which
he reduced the prices, though they were of a higher artistic order than
the others. The relations between Mapleson and the stockholders of the
Academy were becoming strained, and in a speech which he made at his
annual benefit he remarked upon their absence sarcastically. It was
plain that their patience had given out and that they were weary of
extending to him the financial support which had helped him through
the season. In my review of the season I find this remark, which is
indicative of their indifference to the fate of their lessee: "The
condition of the house gives evidence of an unwillingness to sink money
in an unlucrative enterprise. It is somewhat discouraging to the patrons
of the house to sit in ramshackle chairs which threaten to deposit them
incontinently on the floor at any moment, and the collapse of a stall
has frequently accentuated a musical or dramatic climax in the season
just ended."
The season ended with many promises unfulfilled, for which the
impresario placed the blame upon the directors, who, he said, had not
given him sufficient use of the Academy stage. His explanations were not
always wholly ingenuous, however. Thus he had announced that "Lakmé"
would be given, with the composer, M. Delibes, in the conductor's
chair. Now, in the season before, Mme. Gerster had been so desirous to
create the part of the heroine in America (it being one which afforded
fine scope for her lovely powers, and which she had studied with the
composer) that she had bought the performing rights. But nothing came of
her ambition, and it was an open secret that Heugel, the publisher, had
quarreled with Mapleson because of unwarranted practices with his scores
in London. In the midst of his troubles Colonel Mapleson announced that
he had engaged Mme. Nilsson for the season of 1885-86. There was as
little foundation for this announcement as for the promise of "Lakmé."
With ruin staring him in the face, Mapleson concluded the season. He
bettered his fortunes a trifle in Boston and Philadelphia, but failed
again in New Orleans and St. Louis. Then he went to San Francisco,
where the fact that Mme. Nevada was a native of the Pacific Slope was
a helpful factor. After the close of the season at the Metropolitan
Opera House he gave a "spring season" of six performances in one week,
beginning on April 20th. He repeated the performance in Boston and then
sailed for Europe, stopping in New York only long enough to institute
two suits at law--one against Signor Nicolini to recover $10,000 for
failing to sing, and one against Mme. Nevada for $3,000, alleged to
have been overpaid her. The suits, in all likelihood, were merely moves
in the managerial game which he was playing in London and New York. In
the seventh of these "Chapters of Opera" I described as the crowning
achievement of Colonel Mapleson in the season full of noteworthy
incidents the circumstance that he had succeeded in owing Mme. Patti
some $5,000 or $6,000. Nicolini was Patti's husband.
More than ever it looked in the spring of 1885 as if Italian opera had
received its quietus. The demoralization of the Academy of Music was
complete. In London there prevailed a state of affairs so anomalous and
startling that the newspaper critics were cudgeling their brains in a
vain effort to find an explanation. For the first time in one hundred
and fifty-eight years the British metropolis was without opera; for
the first time in thirty-nine years (except in 1856, when fire made it
impossible) the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden had failed to open
its doors on Easter Tuesday. Mr. Gye and his backers refused to venture
their fortunes again, and the lease of Her Majesty's was also going
begging. In New York Colonel Mapleson had held one good card which he
did not seem to know how to play: the season compassed the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the operatic début of Mme. Patti. There ought, for
excellent and obvious reasons, to have been a fitting celebration of
the event; but there was not. On November 26th, two days after the date,
Colonel Mapleson gave a performance of "Martha," with Mmes. Patti
and Scalchi in the principal women's parts. After the opera a rout of
supernumeraries, choristers, and other boys and men engaged for the
purpose, carrying torches, followed the diva's carriage to the Windsor
Hotel, where she was serenaded. That was all. It was so undignified and
inadequate that it provoked some of Mme. Patti's friends to arrange the
banquet in her honor which I have described in Chapter VI. Had Signor
Brignoli, who was the Edgardo to Adelina Patti's Lucia at the Academy on
November 24, 1859, been spared in life and health a few weeks longer
(Signor Brignoli died in October, 1884), his friends would probably
have urged an association of the two artists in a gala performance
of Donizetti's opera. This would have provided an appropriate and
delightful celebration, and it would not have been difficult to marshal
a number of interesting relics of the period which saw the operatic
advent of Mme. Patti, though all of them would have appeared much worse
for the wear of a quarter-century than she. Of the valiant champions
who were leading the contending operatic armies of the time, Arditi,
Maretzek, and Strakosch were still with us. The first was filling, as
of yore, the leader's chair at the Academy and doing yeoman's service
in the unobtrusive and modest manner which always characterized him;
the second, withdrawn from all connection with operatic management, was
watching the boiling and bubbling of the caldron with amused interest
and spicing his comments with capitally told reminiscences of opera a
generation before; the third was still chasing the fickle goddess with
fugitive essays as impresario. There were even remains of the critics of
those days still active in the world of letters--Richard Grant White,
for instance, and George William Curtis, one of my predecessors on The
Tribune--and they would undoubtedly have grown young again and been
warmed into enthusiastic utterance by eager memories of the dainty
débutante and the singers who had preceded her--Grisi, Bosio,
Piccolomini, and the rest.
A vast amount of reminiscences would have been justified by such
a celebration, for it would have thrown a bright sidelight on the
marvelous career of Mme. Patti, a career without parallel in the history
of the last half-century. Within three years after she made her first
essay "our little Patti," as she was then fondly spoken of, had achieved
the queenship of the lyric stage; and, now, twenty-two years later, her
title had not suffered the slightest impairment. Within the time singers
who had won the world's admiration had been born, educated, and lifted
to the niches prepared for them by popular appreciation, but all far
below the place where Patti sat enthroned. Stars of great brilliancy
had flashed across the firmament and gone out in darkness, but the
refulgence of Patti's art remained undimmed, having only grown mellower
and deeper and richer with time. Truth is, Mme. Patti was then, and is
still, twenty-five years later, a musical miracle; and the fact that she
was in New York to sing in the very spot in which she began her career
twenty-five years before should have been celebrated as one of the
proudest incidents in the city's musical annals. For the generation of
opera-goers who grew up in the period which ought to be referred to
for all time in the annals of music as The Reign of Patti, she set a
standard by which all aspirants for public favor were judged except
those whose activities were in a widely divergent field. Not only did
she show them what the old art of singing was, but she demonstrated
the possibility of its revival. And she did this while admiring
enthusiastically the best results of the dramatic spirit which pervades
musical composition to-day. Her talent was so many-sided and so
astonishing, no matter from which side it was viewed, that rhapsody
seems to be the only language left one who attempts analysis or
description of it. Her voice, of unequaled beauty, was no more a gift
of nature than the ability to assimilate without effort the things
which cost ordinary mortals years of labor and vexation of soul. It was
perpetually amazing how her singing made the best efforts of the best of
her contemporaries pale, especially those who depended on vocal agility
for their triumphs. Each performance of hers made it plainer than it had
been before that her genius penetrated the mere outward glitter of the
music and looked upon the ornament as so much means to the attainment of
an end; that end, a beautiful interpretation of the composer's thought.
No artist of her time was so perfect an exponent as she of the quality
of repose. So far as appearances went it was as easy for her to burden
the air with trills and roulades as it was to talk. She sang as the
lark sings; the outpouring of an ecstasy of tones of almost infinite
number and beauty seemed in her to be a natural means of expression.
Her ideas of art were the highest, and it was a singular testimony
of her earnestness that, while educated in the old Italian school of
vocalization and holding her most exalted supremacy as a singer of
Rossini's music, her warmest love, by her own confession, was given, not
to its glittering confections, but to the serious efforts of the most
dramatic writers. This must be remembered in the list of her astonishing
merits now when her voice can no longer call up more than "the tender
grace of a day that is dead"; mine was the proud privilege and great
happiness of having heard her often in her prime. But I must get down
to the real business of this chapter.
The first German performance at the Metropolitan took place on November
17, 1884. The opera was "Tannhäuser" and the distribution of parts
as follows: Elizabeth, Mme. Krauss; Venus, Fräulein Slach; a Young
Shepherd, Fräulein Stern; the Landgrave, Josef Koegel; Tannhäuser, Anton
Schott; Wolfram, Adolf Robinson; Walther von der Vogelweide, Emil
Tiffero; Biterolf, Josef Miller; Heinrich der Schreiber, Otto Kemlitz;
Reinmar, Ludwig Wolf. The performance made no claim upon special
analysis or description. Its highest significance consisted in the
publication which it made with reference to the new ideals in operatic
representation which came in with the new movement. No doubt to a large
portion of the audience, still judging by the old standards, much of it
must have been inexplicable, much of it (especially the singing of Herr
Schott) little short of monstrous. To a smaller portion, familiar with
the opera, the language of its book and the spirit of the play, as well
as the music, it came as a vivid realization of the purposes of the
poet-composer. To all but the German element in the audience the opera
itself was practically a novelty. "Tannhäuser" had not been incorporated
in the Italian repertory as "Lohengrin" had, and only those knew it
who had attended the sporadic German performances of earlier decades
conducted by such men as Bergmann, Anschütz, and Neuendorff. The
first New York performance took place on August 27, 1859, at which the
Männergesangverein Arion supplied the choruses.
Wagner once described his Tannhäuser as "a German from head to foot,"
and it was doubtless because Dr. Damrosch saw in it a representative
quality that he chose it for his opening. There was patriotism as well
as lovely artistic devotion, too, in the choice of "Fidelio" for the
second performance, on November 19th. Beethoven's opera had almost
as little association with Italian opera as "Tannhäuser," and it was
noteworthy that the only portion of the audience room which was not
filled was that occupied by the stockholders' boxes. It was an English
company that, in September, 1839, had introduced "Fidelio" to New York,
and with it made such successful competition with the Italian company of
the day that it was performed fourteen times in succession. Mr. Mapleson
made a pitiful essay with it in March, 1882, at the Academy, but to
recall as vivid and vital a performance as that under discussion one had
to go back to the days of Mme. Johannsen and her associates, who gave
German opera in 1856. In Dr. Damrosch's performance Marianne Brandt
effected her entrance on the American stage, and the memory of her
impersonation of the heroine is still one of the liveliest and most
fragrant memories of those memorable days. The dramatic framework of
"Fidelio" is weak, its construction faulty. Only one ethical idea
is presented in it with real vividness, but it is an idea which is
peculiarly dear to the German heart--the saving power of woman's love.
"Fidelio" is a tale of wifely devotion, and Beethoven bent all his
energies to a glorification of his heroine's love and fidelity. To
represent the character faithfully has been the highest ambition of
German singers for a century. In that time not many more than a dozen
have achieved high distinction in it; and Marianne Brandt is among the
number. On its musical side her performance was thrillingly effective,
but on its histrionic it rose to grandeur. Every word of her few
speeches, every note of her songs, every look of her eyes and expression
of her face was an exposition of that world of tenderness which filled
the heart of Leonore. Nine-tenths of the action which falls to the
part of Leonore is by-play, and by-play of the kind which is made
particularly difficult by the time consumed by the music, which is not
wisely adjusted with reference to the promotion of the action. Yet all
these waits while Leonore is in view were filled by Fräulein Brandt
with little actions which tended to develop the character so sadly
left in the background by the playwright, but so lovingly treated by
the composer. It was down to its smallest detail a picture of a woman
impelled by one idea, in which her whole soul had been resolved, and
which had grown out of a lofty conception of love and duty. There was
nothing of the petty theatrical in Fräulein Brandt, and it was only an
evidence of the sincerity of her devotion to the art work which made her
bend over and stroke the wrist which she had freed from manacles while
the powerful personages of the play were bowing before her as a pattern
of conjugal love and the mimic populace were shouting their jubilations
over salvation accomplished.
At the third representation, on November 21st, Meyerbeer's "Huguenots"
was brought forward to introduce Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl; and at the
fourth tribute to the characteristic German spirit was paid by the
production of Weber's "Der Freischütz." From the day of its birth this
has been the opera in which the romantic spirit of the German race
has found its most vivid reflection. The sombre lights and mysterious
murmurings of the German forests pervade it; the spectres of that
paganism from which the sturdy Northerners could be weaned only by
compromise and artifice flit through it. The Wild Huntsman overshadows
it and, though he says not a word, he powerfully asserts his claim upon
the trembling admiration of those who keep open hearts for some of his
old companions of pre-Christian days--especially for the burly fellow
who under a new name is welcomed joyfully every Christmastide. In
another sense, too, "Der Freischütz" is a national opera; the spirit of
its music is drawn from the art-form which the people created. Instead
of resting on the highly artificial product of the Italian renaissance,
it rests upon popular song--folk-song, the song of the folk. Its
melodies echo the cadences of the Volkslieder in which the German heart
voices its dearest loves. Instead of shining with the light of the
Florentine courts it glows with the rays of the setting sun filtered
through the foliage of the Black Forest. Yet "Der Freischütz" failed on
this its revival--failed so dismally that Dr. Damrosch did not venture
upon a single repetition. The lesson which it taught had already been
suggested by "Fidelio," but now it was made plain and Dr. Damrosch paid
heed to it at once. The dimensions of the Metropolitan Opera House
forbade the intimacy which operas founded on the German Singspiel
demand for appreciation, and spoken dialogue, especially in a foreign
tongue, was painfully destructive of artistic illusion. The operas which
followed were more to the purpose: "William Tell," on November 28th,
with Robinson as the hero, Schroeder-Hanfstängl as Mathilde, Slach as
Gemmy, Staudigl as Gessler, Koegel as Walter, Udvardi as Arnold, and
Brandt exemplifying a new spirit in opera by her assumption of the
unimportant part of Tell's wife; "Lohengrin," on December 3d, with
Krauss, Brandt, Schott, and Staudigl in the principal parts; "Don
Giovanni," on December 10th, with Schroeder-Hanfstängl as Donna Anna,
Hermine Bely as Zerlina, Brandt as Elvira, Robinson as the Don,
Koegel as the Commander, and Udvardi as Ottavio; "Le Prophète," on
December 17th, with Brandt as Fidès (one of her greatest rôles),
Schroeder-Hanfstängl as Bertha, and Schott as John of Leyden; "La Muette
de Portici" (otherwise "Masaniello") on December 29th, with Schott as
the hero and Isolina Torri as Fenella. There was an interruption of
this spectacular list on January 2, 1885, when "Rigoletto" was given
to gratify the ambition of Herr Robinson to be seen and heard as the
Jester, and of Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl to sing the music of Gilda. In
this opera Fräulein Brandt played the part of Maddelena and interpolated
a Spanish song sung in German. Then, on January 5th, came Mme. Materna's
first operatic appearance in America, in a repetition of "Tannhäuser."
Before continuing the record a few notes on some of these operas and
their performance may not be amiss. There was little that was noteworthy
about the representation of "Don Giovanni" except Dr. Damrosch's effort
to do justice to the famous finale, the full effectiveness of which
failed nevertheless because of the arrangement of the stage, which
was that of the preceding season. "Les Huguenots" was a distinct
disappointment. "La Muette de Portici," which was as good as new to
the majority of the audience, acquired historical interest from close
association with "William Tell." It was something of an anomaly that,
though Rossini's opera had made its appearance during the many years of
Italian domination whenever a tenor came who could be counted on to make
a sensation with his high notes in the familiar trio of men, Auber's
opera, its inspiration as a type, had had so few representations that
it had passed out of memory except for its overture. But the history
of "La Muette" is full of anomalies. Its story is Neapolitan and there
is Neapolitan color in its music; but it is nothing if not French. It
inspired Rossini to write "William Tell" and Meyerbeer to write "Les
Huguenots" for the French stage, and is the masterpiece of its author;
but Auber is the only Frenchman among the great composers for the
Académie in the first half of the nineteenth century. Wagner defended it
against the taste of the Parisians, who preferred Rossini and Donizetti,
and was snubbed for his pains by the editor of the Gazette Musicale,
who was an officer of the French government. Von Weber condemned as
coarse the instrumentation which Wagner praised for its fire and
truthfulness. Its heroine is dumb; yet to her is assigned the loveliest
music in the score.
"Lohengrin" better than "Tannhäuser" gave the public an opportunity to
study the change in matter and spirit which had been introduced into
local opera by the coming of the Germans to the Metropolitan.
Mme. Materna's first appearance on January 5th was followed by a second
on January 7th as Valentine in "Les Huguenots," and a third on January
16th in Halévy's "La Juive." By this time Dr. Damrosch was ready with
the first of the large Wagnerian productions which were a part of the
dream which it was fated should be realized, not by him, but by his
successor, whose name was thereby made illustrious in the operatic
annals of New York. On January 30th "Die Walküre" was performed, with
the following cast: Brünnhilde, Amalia Materna; Fricka, Marianne
Brandt; Sieglinde, Auguste Krauss; Siegmund, Anton Schott; Wotan, Josef
Staudigl; Hunding, Josef Koegel; Gerhilde, Marianne Brandt; Ortlinde,
Fräulein Stern; Waltraute, Fräulein Gutjar; Schwertleite, Fräulein
Morse; Helmwige, Frau Robinson; Siegrune, Fräulein Slach; Grimgerde,
Frau Kemlitz; Rossweise, Fräulein Brandl.
"Die Walküre" had been presented before in New York at a so-called
Wagner festival at the Academy of Music on April 2, 1877, under the
direction of Adolf Neuendorff; but the memories of that production
were painful when they were not amusing, and, though much of the music
of the Nibelung trilogy had been heard in the concert room, this was
practically the first opportunity the people of New York had to learn
from personal experience what it was that Wagner meant by a union of
arts in the lyric drama. Dr. Damrosch had made an earnest effort to meet
the standard set by the Bayreuth festivals. The original scenery and
costumes were faithfully copied, except that for the sake of increased
picturesqueness Herr Hock, the stage manager, had draperies replace the
door in Hunding's hut, which, shaking loose from their fastenings, fell
just before Siegmund began his love song, and disclosed an expanse of
moonlit background. In the third act, too, there was a greater variety
of colors in the costumes of the Valkyrior. Fräulein Brandt again
disclosed her artistic devotion by enacting the part of Fricka and also
leading the chorus of Valkyrior; but Mme. Materna was the inspiration of
the performance. It was a surprise to those who had already learned to
admire her to see how in the character of Brünnhilde she towered above
herself in other rôles. Both of the strong sides of the character had
perfect exemplification in her singing and acting--the wild, impetuous,
exultant freedom of voice which proclaimed the Valkyria's joy in living
and doing until the catastrophe was reached, and the deep, unselfish,
tender nature disclosed in her sympathy with the ill-starred lovers
and her immeasurable love for Wotan. Her complete absorption in the
part fitted her out with a new gamut of expression. "If anything can
establish a sympathy between us and the mythological creatures of
Wagner's dramas," I wrote at the time, "that thing is the acting and
singing of Materna." The drama made a tremendous impression, and in the
three weeks which remained of the season (including some supplementary
performances) "Die Walküre" had seven representations.
The remaining incidents of the season may now be hurried over to make
room for a record of the catastrophe which marked its close. By the
middle of January it was reported that the receipts were double those of
the corresponding period in the previous year, notwithstanding that the
price of admission had been reduced nearly one-half. By this time, too,
the board of directors had decided to continue the policy adopted at the
suggestion of Dr. Damrosch and engage him as director for the next year.
This decision had not been reached, however, without consideration of
other projects. Charles Mapleson, a son of the director of the Academy
of Music, and doubtless only his go-between, submitted a proposition for
the directorship, and so did Adolf Neuendorff, a man of indefatigable
energy and enterprise, who had given New York its first hearing of
"Lohengrin" at the Stadt Theater, in the Bowery, in April, 1871. In
January there was also a strike of the chorus, which was quickly
settled, and all but the ringleaders in the disturbance taken back
into favor on signing an apology.
Rejoicings over the success of the enterprise gave way to general grief
and consternation with the unexpected death of Dr. Damrosch on February
15th. On Tuesday, February 10th, he contracted a cold from having thrown
himself upon a bed in a cold room for a nap before dinner on returning
from a rehearsal at the opera house. He had neglected to open the
furnace register or cover himself, and he awoke thoroughly chilled.
After dinner he went to a rehearsal of the Oratorio Society, which was
preparing Verdi's Manzoni Requiem for performance the following week.
Before the conclusion of the rehearsal he was so ill that he was
forced to hurry home in a carriage. The next morning it was found that
pneumonia had set in, complicated by pleurisy, and a consultation of
physicians was held. Only one of the subscription performances at the
Metropolitan Opera House remained to be given, but there were still
before the director in the way of operatic work five supplementary
performances and seasons at Boston, Chicago, and Cincinnati. This
naturally caused the sick man a great deal of concern. He deferred to
the wishes of his physicians and sent his son Walter, in whose talent
and skill he felt great confidence and pride, to conduct the remaining
subscription performance in the evening, hoping in the meantime to
secure such good care as to enable him to be in his chair on Thursday
evening when "Die Walküre" was to be repeated. In this hope, too, he
was disappointed and had to send his son a second time to conduct a
performance of the drama which had put the capstone to the astonishingly
successful season which his zeal, learning, skill, enterprise, and
perseverance had brought about. As on the previous day he went through
the score with his son and called his attention to some of the details
of the responsible and difficult task before him. The young man's
knowledge of the score and aptitude in grasping the suggestions made to
him comforted and quieted the father, and the representations at the
opera house went off in a manner which caused complimentary comments on
Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, February 15th, at
3 o'clock A.M., a change in the sick man's condition set in, and the
physicians, realizing that the case was hopeless, so informed the family
early in the day. Dr. Damrosch was not disturbed by the prospect of
death. He retained consciousness until one o'clock in the afternoon, and
within an hour before that time called Walter to his bedside and asked
that an opera score be brought that he might give a few more suggestions
for the concluding representations in New York. He was assured that
all would go well. His last thoughts and words were with his family
and work. In disjointed phrases he repeatedly asked that nothing be
permitted to suffer because of his sickness; that the preparations for
the operas and concerts of the societies of which he was conductor
should go on. With his mind thus occupied he sank into unconsciousness
and died at a quarter after two o'clock in the afternoon of Sunday,
February 15, 1885. His funeral took place at the opera house on
February 18th, amidst impressive ceremonies, addresses being made by
the Rev. Horatio Potter (Assistant Bishop of New York), the Rev. Henry
Ward Beecher, and Professor Felix Adler. The remaining performances of
the supplementary season were conducted by Mr. Lund, after which the
company went on tour, Mr. Lund and Walter Damrosch sharing the work
of conducting. The season had begun on November 17th, one week after
Colonel Mapleson opened his seventh season at the Academy of Music. It
lasted until February 21st, but the last subscription performance was
that on the evening of the day after Dr. Damrosch had fallen ill. The
subscription was for thirty-eight nights and twelve Saturday matinées.
There was no Christmas interregnum. The list of operas produced, the
date of first representation, and the number of times each opera was
given can be read in the following table:
Opera First performance Times given
"Tannhäuser" .............. November 17 ........... 9
"Fidelio" ................. November 19 ........... 3
"Les Huguenots" ........... November 21 ........... 5
"Der Freischütz" .......... November 24 ........... 1
"William Tell" ............ November 28 ........... 3
"Lohengrin" ............... December 3 ............ 9
"Don Giovanni" ............ December 10 ........... 2
"Le Prophète" ............. December 17 ........... 9
"La Muette de Portici" .... December 29 ........... 3
"Rigoletto" ............... January 2 ............. 1
"La Juive" ................ January 16 ............ 5
"Die Walküre" ............. January 30 ............ 7
--
Total number of representations ................. 57
Twelve out of twenty-two works promised in the prospectus were given,
the unperformed operas being "Rienzi," "Der Fliegende Holländer,"
"Le Nozze di Figaro," "Die Zauberflöte," "Il Barbiere di Siviglia,"
Gounod's "Faust," "Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," "La Dame Blanche,"
"Hans Heiling," and Kreutzer's "Nachtlager von Granada." The failure
to produce all the operas promised was largely due to the teachings of
the first month of the season. In the list were a number of peculiarly
German works, in which the musical numbers alternated with spoken
dialogue. The experience made with "Fidelio" and "Der Freischütz" showed
that works of this character were unedifying to the persons of native
birth in the audience, and this was one reason why it was decided
to omit several of them. Another reason was that it was found that
the large dimensions of the opera house detracted from even good
performances of light works; and still another was that the style of
the singers was adapted to vigorous and declamatory music, rather than
to that which depends for effect upon purity and beauty of voice and
excellence of vocalization. A comparison of the last performances
with those which were given when the company was continually engaged
in studying new works suggests another reason: "Der Freischütz" was
poorly performed; the first representations of "William Tell" and
"Les Huguenots" threatened the loss of all the prestige won by the
performances of "Tannhäuser"; and "Fidelio" and "Don Giovanni" called
for a vigorous exercise of good nature. Whatever disappointment came,
therefore, from the failure to produce such interesting works as "Hans
Heiling," one of the finest products, if not the finest, of the epigonoi
of Weber, and "Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," unquestionably the best
Shakespearian opera extant (Verdi's "Otello" and "Falstaff" excepted),
was compensated for by the excellence which marked the performances
of "Tannhäuser," "Lohengrin," "Le Prophète," and "Die Walküre." The
production of this great work was a fitting end to Dr. Damrosch's
artistic career. It marked the beginning of a new era in New York's
operatic affairs, and led to the execution in the years which followed
of his large plan to produce the entire Nibelung tragedy, "Tristan und
Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger"--a plan carried out by his successor.
For "Tannhäuser," "Fidelio," "William Tell," "La Muette de Portici," "La
Juive," and "Die Walküre" new stage decorations had to be provided, and
this was done on a scale of great liberality, in comparison with what
New York had been accustomed to. The largest expenditure on a single
representation was $4,000, and the average cost was $3,400. These sums
were much smaller than those expended in the previous season on the
hurdy-gurdy Italian list, and the stage pictures were all much finer.
The saving was in the salaries of the artists, no two of which cost
together as much as Mme. Nilsson alone.
CHAPTER XII
END OF ITALIAN OPERA AT THE ACADEMY
The season 1885-86 witnessed the collapse of the Italian opposition at
the Academy of Music, but also the rise of an institution in its
place, which, had it commanded a higher order of talent and been more
intelligently administered, might have served the lofty purposes set for
the German opera. This was the American Opera Company, which, after an
extremely ambitious beginning, made a miserable end a season later,
leaving an odor of scandal, commercial and artistic, which infected the
atmosphere for years afterward. German opera was also given throughout
a large part of the season at the Thalia Theater, the manager being Mr.
Gustav Amberg, and the conductor John Lund, who had come into notice at
the Metropolitan Opera House by reason of the death of Dr. Damrosch.
These performances were unpretentious, and divided between operetta and
the type of opera which grew out of the Singspiel. Their significance,
so far as this history is concerned, lay in the evidence which they bore
of a considerable degree of interest on the part of the public outside
of the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House in German opera. There
were also commendable features in the repertory. Thus, the performances
began on October 13, 1885, with "Der Freischütz," in which appeared
Ferdinand Wachtel, a son of the famous "coachman tenor," Theodore
Wachtel, whose sensational career in Europe and America had come to an
end a decade before, though he did not die till 1893. The father's
battle horse, "Le Postillon de Lonjumeau," was brought out for the son,
but the public were not long in discovering that the latter had all the
faults and none of the merits of the former, and he failed to become
even a nine days' wonder. Among the operas brought forward by Mr.
Amberg was Nicolai's "Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," and Emil Kaiser's
"Trompeter von Säkkingen," a production obviously prompted by the
sensational success in Europe of Nessler's opera of the same name.
Nicolai's opera, which has never lost its popularity with the Germans,
was probably given on its merits alone, but the fact that Dr. Damrosch
had abandoned it after putting it in his prospectus, may have had
something to do with its performance by Mr. Amberg's modest troupe, as
well as by the proud American Opera Company, which brought it out in a
specially prepared English version. Mr. Amberg's company also brought
forward a German version of Maillart's "Les Dragons de Villars," under
the title, "Das Glöckchen des Eremiten."
Colonel Mapleson, having spent the summer bickering and negotiating
with the directors of the Academy, after having failed to get into the
Metropolitan Opera House under the cloak of his son Charles, began his
eighth season in the Academy of Music, which had been furbished up for
the occasion, on November 2, 1885. Mme. Patti had deserted him, and
if he ever had made overtures to Mme. Nilsson, whose engagement he had
announced, they came to naught. He now made a virtue out of necessity
and proclaimed the merits of "good all 'round" opera, and the iniquity
of the star system. His company, however, was the old one, with Alma
Fohström and Minnie Hauk in place of Mme. Patti, Gerster, and Nevada.
Among the familiar names in the prospectus were those of Mme. Lablache,
Ravelli, de Anna, Del Puente, Cherubini, and Carraciolo; among the
newcomers were Signor Giannini, an extremely serviceable tenor, who had
sung in the previous season in the "Milan Grand Opera Company," compiled
by James Barton Key and Horace McVicker, as related in the preceding
chapter; also a Mlle. Felia Litvinoff, whom we shall meet again as Mme.
Litvinne, sister-in-law of M. Édouard de Reszke, and member of a company
singing at the Metropolitan Opera House. Mapleson opened with "Carmen,"
the heroine represented by Mme. Hauk. She had created the character in
London and New York, and set a standard which prevailed in England and
America until the coming of Mme. Calvé; but time had dealt harshly
with Mme. Hauk during the nineteen years which had elapsed since she,
a lissome creature, had first sung at the Academy of Music (she had
effected her operatic début in Brooklyn a few weeks before), and much of
the old charm was gone from her singing, and nearly all from her acting.
The opening was distinctly disappointing, and the season came to an end
on November 28th, after twelve evening and four afternoon performances.
There could scarcely have been a more convincing demonstration of how
completely the fashionable world had abandoned the Academy of Music than
the giving of a subscription season of only four weeks' duration. Within
this period, moreover, there was no sign of effort to get out of the old
rut into which Colonel Mapleson's repertory had sunk. "Carmen" was
given three times, "Il Trovatore" twice, "Lucia di Lammermoor" twice,
"L'Africaine" twice, "La Sonnambula" once, "La Favorita" once, "Fra
Diavolo" twice, "Don Giovanni" twice, and "Faust" once. Mlle. Fohström
effected her American début in a performance of "Lucia" on November
9th. She had been announced for the second night of the season in "Il
Trovatore," but was taken ill. She had been little heard of previous to
her coming, though diligent observers of musical doings knew that she
had sung for several seasons in Europe, and, I believe, South America,
and had figured in Colonel Mapleson's spring season in London in 1885.
She was a small creature, with features of a markedly Scandinavian
type--she was a native of Finland--and had evidently studied the
traditions of the Italian operatic stage to as much purpose as was
necessary to present, acceptably, the stereotyped round of characters.
But her gifts and attainments were not great enough to take her
impersonations out of the rut of conventionality, nor to save her
singing from the charge of nervelessness and monotony of color. Three
seasons later (1888-89) she was a member of the German company at the
Metropolitan Opera House, and sang such rôles as Marguerite de Valois
("Les Huguenots"), Mathilde ("William Tell"), Marguerite ("Faust"),
Bertha ("Le Prophète"), and Eudora ("La Juive"), giving place at the
beginning of February to Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl, who had returned,
to the delight of her admirers. In the interim she increased her
artistic stature very considerably, her voice proving more effective
in the new house than in the Academy of Music, which was incomparably
better acoustically. Mapleson's singers came back to the Academy on
December 20th to sing Wallace's "Maritana" in Italian (with Tito
Mattei's recitatives in place of the spoken dialogue), and at the
manager's benefit on December 23d Massenet's opera "Manon" was performed
for the first time in America. Under the circumstances the cast deserves
to be set forth: The Chevalier des Grieux, Signor Giannini; Lescaut,
Signor del Puente; Monfontaine, Signor Rinaldini; the Count des Grieux,
Signor Cherubini; du Bretigny, Signor Foscani, (Mr. Fox, an American);
an innkeeper, Signor de Vaschetti; attendant of the Seminary of St.
Sulpice, Signor Bieletto; Poussette, Mlle. Bauermeister; Javotte, Mme.
Lablache; Rovette, Mlle. de Vigne; Manon, Mme. Hauk.
From January 4th to April 17th the Academy of Music was occupied by the
American Opera Company, the artistic director of which was Theodore
Thomas, who had long stood at the head of orchestral music in America.
As I have already intimated, rightly managed this institution might have
become of the same significance to the future of opera in the United
States as the German company, which had just established a domicile at
the Metropolitan Opera House. Indeed, it might have become of greater
significance, for the best friends of the German enterprise looked upon
it as merely a necessary intermediary between the Italian exotic and a
national form of art, with use of the vernacular, which every patriotic
lover of music hoped to see installed some day in the foremost operatic
establishment in the land. Unfortunately, its claims to excellence were
put forward with impudent exaggeration, and there was no substantial
or moral health in its business administration. It could not expect to
cope with foreign organizations or local aggregations of foreign artists
in respect of its principal artists, but it could, and did, in respect
of scenic investiture, and in its choral and instrumental ensemble.
Unhappily, even in these elements it was unwisely directed, though with
a daring and a degree of confidence in popular support which may be said
to have given it a characteristically American trait. In three respects
the season was unique in the American history of English opera (or opera
in English, as it would better he called, since there was not an English
opera in its repertory), viz.: in the brilliancy of the orchestra, the
excellence of the chorus (numerous and fresh of voice), and the
sumptuousness of the stage attire.
There were sixty-six performances in the season of light operas, and one
ballet, the latter Delibes's "Sylvia." The operas were Goetz's "Taming
of the Shrew" (five times), Gluck's "Orpheus" (thirteen times), Wagner's
"Lohengrin" (ten times), Mozart's "Magic Flute" (six times), Nicolai's
"Merry Wives of Windsor" (nine times), Delibes's "Lakmé" (eleven times),
Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" (seven times), and Massé's "Marriage of
Jeannette" (in conjunction with the ballet, five times). "The Taming of
the Shrew" received its first performance in America on January 4, 1886;
"Lakmé" on March 1st; "The Marriage of Jeannette," on March 24th, and
"Lohengrin" (in English), on January 20th.
Immediately on the death of Dr. Damrosch, trouble broke out in the
Metropolitan company. There had been some jealousy among the women
singers because of the large honorarium paid to Mme. Materna. It was her
third visit to America, and she had learned to say dollars when at home
she was accustomed to think of florins. Moreover, in the spring of the
year she had made an extensive concert tour with Mme. Nilsson, under
the direction of Mr. Thomas, and knew something about the liberality of
Americans in the matter of artists' fees. Herr Schott (Dr. von Bülow's
dis-, des-, and detonating tenor), developing a large and noisy
managerial ambition, scarcely waited for the burial of Dr. Damrosch
before beginning an agitation looking toward his installation in the
dead director's place. All this might have been done in a seemly manner,
and if it had been so done might have been carried through successfully
and with popular approbation, for Herr Schott's project, in the main,
was the one acted on by the directors. But Herr Schott, in an effort
to promote his scheme, made an ungallant attack upon the artistic
character of Mme. Materna, and this the public found to be "most
tolerable and not to be endured." The occasion soon presented itself
for Schott to show that he had an overweening sense of his own
importance and popularity. At the end of the fourth of the five
supplementary performances there was a demonstration of applause. Herr
Schott interpreted it as a curtain call for himself, and promptly showed
himself, and bowed his thanks. The applause was renewed, and he repeated
this performance. Then came a third call, and again the tenor stepped
out before the footlights. Now the applause of his friends was mingled
with cries of "Materna!" but on a fourth call, and a fourth appearance
of Schott, the popular feeling exploded in hisses and calls for the
soprano. He retired unabashed, but Mme. Materna, answering the next
call, was tumultuously greeted. So far as the overwhelming majority
of the patrons of the house was concerned, Herr Schott's cake was now
dough. Foolishly he, or his friends for him, proceeded to anger the
directors from whom they were expecting favors. It was given out that
he had submitted a proposition concerning the management of the opera
house at the request of the directors. This met with prompt denial at
the hands of Mr. Stanton, the secretary of the board, and by some of
the directors themselves.
Herr Schott had submitted a proposition, however, and had coupled it
with a hint, which sounded like a threat, that in case it was not
promptly accepted it would go to the directors of the Academy of Music.
This vexed some of the stockholders of the older institution, who
made public denial that they were considering German opera, even as a
remote possibility. Herr Schott's proposition was dismissed with little
ceremony by the Metropolitan directors, who, however, sent Mr. Stanton
and Mr. Walter Damrosch to Europe to organize a company to carry out the
lines already established during the coming season. In doing so they
adopted several valuable suggestions contained in Herr Schott's plan.
In this plan Schott was to be the musical director of the company, of
course, but not the conductor. For this post he contemplated engaging
Anton Seidl, then conductor of the Municipal Theater of Bremen and
husband of the jugendlich Dramatische, who had successfully gone
through the ordeal of one season--Auguste Krauss. Walter Damrosch was
to be assistant conductor, Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstängl, Frau Krauss,
Fräulein Brandt, and Herren Staudigl and Blum, of the old company, were
to be kept, and the new singers were to be a Fräulein Gilbert, Fräulein
Koppmeyer, Ferdinand Wachtel (son of Theodore, already referred to), and
Carl Hill, bass.
The organization, as finally effected, placed Mr. Stanton at its head
as director, acting for the stockholders; Walter Damrosch, as assistant
director, and also conductor; Lilli Lehmann, of Berlin, was the
principal soprano; Marianne Brandt, principal contralto; Albert Stritt,
principal tenor; Emil Fischer, of Dresden, principal bass, and Adolf
Robinson, principal barytone. Other singers were Auguste Krauss (who now
became Seidl-Krauss), Max Alvary, tenor; Fräulein Slach, mezzo-soprano;
Eloi Sylva, tenor; Kemlitz, tenor; Lehmler, bass; Frau Krämer-Wiedl,
dramatic soprano; Herr Alexi, barytone, and Fräulein Klein, soprano.
With this company the second season of German opera was opened on
November 23, 1885, the opera being "Lohengrin." I shall not take up
the features of the season seriatim, nor make detailed record of
the consecutive productions of the operas on its list. Only special
incidents shall be recorded; but before this is done something may
be said touching the newcomers:
Anton Seidl was a young man when he came to New York, but he had filled
the position of secretary to Richard Wagner, and been a member of his
household for six years. Before then he had studied at the Leipsic
Conservatory (which he entered in October, 1870), and been a chorus
master or accompanist at the Vienna Opera. There he came under the eyes
of Hans Richter, who sent him to Wagner when the latter asked for a
young man who could give him such help on "The Ring of the Nibelung" as
Richter had given him on "Die Meistersinger"--that is, to write out the
clean score from the composer's hurried autograph. The period which he
spent with Wagner was from 1872 to 1879. During all the preparations for
the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876 he was one of the poet-composer's
executive officers. He was one of the assistant conductors on the stage
during the festival, and afterward conducted the preliminary rehearsals
for the concerts which Wagner gave in London and elsewhere to recoup
himself for the losses made at the festival. Then, on Wagner's
recommendation, he was appointed conductor at the Municipal Theater
at Leipsic (his associates being Victor Nessler and Arthur Nikisch),
later on of Angelo Neumann's "Richard Wagner Theater," which gave
representations of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" in many cities of Germany,
Holland, England, and Italy, and still later of the Municipal Theater in
Bremen--the post which he held when the death of Dr. Damrosch created
the vacancy which brought him to New York. All this he had accomplished
before his thirty-fifth year (he was born in Pesth on May 7, 1850), and
he was not yet thirty when Wagner, in a speech delivered in Berlin,
alluded to him as "the young artist whom I have brought up, and who is
now accomplishing astounding things." Naturally, when he came to New
York, he was looked upon as a prophet, priest, and paladin of Wagner's
art. For twelve years he filled a large place in the music of New York,
in concert room as well as opera house, and when he died it was like
his predecessor, in the fulness of his powers, and in the midst of his
activities. But this belongs to a later chapter of this story.
Lilli Lehmann brought to New York chiefly the fame which she had won in
Bayreuth at the first Wagner festival, of 1876, at which she was one of
the Rhine daughters (Woglinde), and one of the Valkyrior (Helmwige), and
where she also sang the music of the Forest Bird in "Siegfried." At that
period in her career she was still classed among the light sopranos, and
so she continued to be classed until she broke violently away from the
clogs which tradition puts upon artists in the theaters of Germany. She
felt the charm of freedom from the old theatrical conventions when she
sang Isolde at Covent Garden on July 2, 1884, and her growth to a lofty
tragic stature was rapid. She was filled with fervor for the large rôles
of Wagner when she came to New York, and her success in them was so
gratifying to her ambition that it led her at the expiration of her
leave of absence from the Court Opera at Berlin (where she had been
fifteen years as erste Coloratursängerin) to extend her stay in America
beyond the period of her furlough, and involved her in difficulties with
the Berlin Intendant, and the federation of German theatrical managers,
called the Cartellverband. Having carried to her an offer from the
president of the Cincinnati Festival Association to sing at the festival
of May, 1886, which was the ultimate reason for her action, I am in
a position to give the details of the story of what became a cause
célèbre, and led to a wide discussion of the relations between the
German managers and their singers. A short time before Miss Lehmann had
declined an offer from the committee of the North American Sängerbund to
take part in the Sängerfest, which was to be held in Milwaukee in June,
1886. She had also been asked by the artistic manager of the house of
Steinway & Sons to go on a concert tour with Franz Rummel and Ovide
Musin. When I came to her with the dispatch from Cincinnati she spoke of
her unwillingness to break her contract with Berlin, and of the loss of
the lifelong pension to which her period of service at the Court Opera
would eventually entitle her. I declined to advise her in the premises,
but made a calculation of her prospective net earnings from the three
engagements which were offering, and suggested that she compare the
income from their investment with the pension which she would forfeit.
I also agreed, if she wished it, to reopen the negotiations with the
Sängerfest officials at Milwaukee. She took the matter under advisement,
and in a few days, having concluded the engagement with a representative
of the Cincinnati association, she told me she had determined to stay in
America during June. In July, against the advice of some of her American
friends, she paid a fine imposed upon her by the Intendant of the Court
Opera. The amount of the fine was 13,000 marks ($3,250), and this amount
she had received from the Milwaukee engagement. I had written to Mr.
Catenhusen, the director of the Sängerfest, as promised, and he had
reopened negotiations with more than willingness. Asked for her terms,
she replied: "Three thousand three hundred dollars," and turning to a
friend said: "I'll let the festival pay my Berlin fine." After she had
paid the money into the royal exchequer, the manager of Kroll's Theater
engaged her for a series of representations, but met an unexpected
obstacle in the form of a refusal of the Intendant of the Court Theater
to restore her to the privileges which she had forfeited by breaking
her contract. It was long before she succeeded in making peace with
the Governmental administration of the Court Opera, and in the public
discussion which accompanied her efforts she took part in an eminently
characteristic way. The newspapers were open to her, and in the Berlin
Tageblatt (I think it was) she defended her course on the ground that
America had enabled her to exercise her talent in a field which the
hidebound traditions of the German theaters would have kept closed to
her. Once a florid singer, always a florid singer, was her complaint,
and she added: "One grows weary after singing nothing but princesses
for fifteen years." Though she began in "Carmen," and followed with
"Faust," Miss Lehmann soon got into the Wagnerian waters, in which she
was longing to adventure, and in them set some channel buoys which the
New York public still asks Brünnhildes and Isoldes to observe. It was
then, however, and still is, characteristic of her broad ideals in art,
that, while winning the highest favor in tragic parts, she preserved not
only her old skill, but her old love for good singing in the old sense.
When, at the height of her Wagnerian career, she sang at a performance
for her own benefit, she chose "Norma."
From 1885 till the time when her operatic experiences had become the
exception to her rule of concert work, the greater part of her career
was spent in New York; and during the whole of the period she was in all
things artistic an inspiration, and an exemplar to her fellow artists.
For industry, zeal, and unselfish devotion in preparing an opera I have
never met an artist who could be even remotely compared with her. When
"Siegfried" was in rehearsal for its first American production, she took
a hand in setting the stage. Though she had nothing to do in the second
act, she went into the scenic lumber room and selected bits of woodland
scenery, and with her own hands rearranged the set so as to make
Siegfried's posture and surroundings more effective. When the final
dress rehearsal of "Götterdämmerung" was reached a number of the
principal singers were still uncertain of their music. Miss Lehmann was
letter perfect, as usual, but without a demur repeated the ensembles
over and over again, singing always, as was her wont, with full voice
and intense dramatic expression. This had been going on literally for
hours when the end of the second act was reached. When she came into the
audience room for the intermission I ventured to expostulate with her:
"My dear Miss Lehmann, pray have a care. You are not effecting your
début in New York, nor is this a public performance. Think of to-morrow.
You will weary your voice. Why do you work so? Markiren Sie doch!"
"Markiren thu Ich nie!" ("Markiren," it may be explained, is the
technical term for singing in half-voice, or just enough to mark the
cues.) "As for the rest, rehearsals are necessary, if not for one's
self, then at least for the others. Don't be alarmed about my voice.
It is easier to sing all three Brünnhildes than one Norma. You are so
carried away by the dramatic emotion, the action, and the scene that
you do not have to think how to sing the words. That comes of itself.
But in Bellini you must always have a care for beauty of tone and
correct emission. But I love 'Norma,' and Mozart's 'Entführung.'"
Very different this from the conduct of Max Alvary after he had begun to
grow into public favor. He was a son of the Düsseldorf painter, Andreas
Achenbach, and came to New York without reputation, and engaged to
sing second rôles. Early in the season Stritt, the first tenor, after
creating the part of Assad in Goldmark's "Königin von Saba" yielded it
up to Alvary, finding the range of the music a little too trying for
his voice. Alvary's handsome face and figure, especially the latter,
his gallant bearing, and his impeccable taste in dress, made a deep
impression, and it was not long before he developed into a veritable
matinée girl's idol. He developed also an enormous conceit, which near
the end of his New York career led him to think that he was the opera,
and that he might dictate policies to the manager and the directors back
of him. So in the eyes of the judicious there were ragged holes in his
shining veneer long before his career in New York came to a close. The
preparation of "Siegfried" for performance led to an encounter between
him and Mr. Seidl, in which the unamiable side of his disposition, and
the shallowness of his artistic nature were disclosed. At the dress
rehearsal, when alone on the stage, he started in to go through his
part in dumbshow. Seidl requested him to sing.
"It is not necessary; I know my part," was the ungracious reply.
"But this is a rehearsal. It is not enough that you know your part
or that you know that you know your part. I must know that you know
it. Others must sing with you, and they must hear you."
He started the orchestra again. Not a sound from the puffed up little
tenor in his picturesque bearskin and pretty legs. Seidl rapped for
silence, and put down his baton.
"Call Mr. Stanton!" he commanded.
Mr. Stanton was brought from his office, and Mr. Seidl briefly explained
the situation. He would not go on with the rehearsal unless Mr. Alvary
sang, and without a rehearsal there would be no first performance of
"Siegfried" to-morrow. Mr. Alvary explained that to sing would weary
him.
"I shall not sing to-day and to-morrow. Choose; I'll sing either to-day
or to-morrow."
"Sing to-day!" said Stanton curtly, and turned away from the stage. Like
a schoolboy Alvary now began to sing with all his might, as if bound to
incapacitate himself for the next day. But he would have sacrificed a
finger rather than his opportunity on the morrow, and the little misses
and susceptible matrons got the hero whom they adored for years
afterward.
Next to Miss Lehmann, the most popular singer in the company in this
second year of German opera at the Metropolitan was Emil Fischer, the
bass. Except for a short period spent abroad in an effort to be an opera
manager in Holland, Fischer has remained a New Yorker ever since he came
in 1885. This has not been wholly of his own volition, however. He came
from Dresden, where he was an admired member of the Court Opera. His
coming, or his staying, involved him in difficulty with the Royal
Intendant, and though the singer began legal proceedings against his
liege lord, the King of Saxony, for rehabilitation, he never regained
the privileges which he had forfeited in order to win the fame and
money which came to him here. The fame was abiding; the money was
not. Twenty-one year after his coming his old admirers were still so
numerous, and their admiration so steadfast, that a benefit performance
at the Metropolitan Opera House, in which he took part in an act of
"Die Meistersinger," yielded nearly $10,000.
The season of 1885-86 at the Metropolitan Opera House began on November
23d, and lasted till March 6th, with an interregnum of two weeks from
December 19th to January 4th, during which the company gave performances
in Philadelphia, with woeful financial results, the loss to the
stockholders being $15,000. The excellence of the management and the
wisdom and honesty of the artists were attested by the circumstance that
not once was an opera changed after it was announced. Nine operas were
performed, and of these three were wholly new to the Metropolitan
stage, two were absolutely new to America, and two were provided with
considerable new scenery. The table of performances was as follows:
Opera First performance Times given
"Lohengrin" .............. November 23 ............ 4
"Carmen" ................. November 25 ............ 2
"Der Prophet" ............ November 27 ............ 3
"Die Walküre" ............ November 30 ............ 4
"Die Königin von Saba" ... December 2 ............ 15
"Tannhäuser" ............. December 11 ............ 4
"Die Meistersinger" ...... January 4 .............. 8
"Faust" .................. January 20 ............. 5
"Rienzi" ................. February 5 ............. 7
--
Total representations ............................ 52
The attractive charm of a new work was shown in the success achieved
by Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba," which was given with great pomp in its
externals, but also finely from a musical point of view. It brought into
the box office an average of $4,000 for fifteen performances, and was
set down as the popular triumph of the season, though, considering that
"Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" had a month less to run, its record
was also remarkable. The average difference in attendance on the two
works which led the list was about one hundred and fifty. The directors
had fixed the assessment on the stockholders in October at $2,000 a box,
and their receipts from this source were $136,700; from the general
public, $171,463.13; total, $308,163.13. The cost of producing the
operas, omitting the charges for new scenery and properties, but
including the expenses of the Philadelphia season, was $244,981.96. The
fixed charges on the building (taxes, interest, and rental account) were
about $85,000 in the preceding year, and the financial outcome was so
satisfactory to the stockholders that the directors promptly re-engaged
Mr. Seidl, and adopted a resolution empowering the managing director,
Edmund C. Stanton, to make contracts with artists for three years. It
was interesting to note the effect upon the opera houses and artists
of Germany. I cannot recall that there were any more difficulties like
those which attended the disruption of their contracts by Fräulein
Lehmann and Herr Fischer. Instead, the managers of the municipal
theaters of Germany especially (and, I doubt not, court theaters also)
found that they, too, could come in for a share of the American dollars
by granting leaves of absence for the New York season, and taking a
percentage of the liberal fees received by their stars.
CHAPTER XIII
WAGNER HOLDS THE METROPOLITAN
The incidents of the early history of the Metropolitan Opera House come
to me in such multitude that I find it difficult to apportion seasons
and chapters in this record. Later, it may be, when the new order of
things shall have been established, and again given place to the old,
the relation may make more rapid progress. I have already devoted much
space to the second German season, but there are a few details which
deserve special consideration. The first of these (if the reader will
accept the instantaneous popularity of Mr. Seidl as a conclusion from
the remarks made in his introduction in these annals) was the first
appearance of Lilli Lehmann. Circumstances would have it that she should
show herself first, not as the singer of old-fashioned florid rôles,
with which (except for her Bayreuth experience) she was associated, nor
yet as the Wagnerian tragedienne which she became later, but in a
transitional character--that of Carmen in Bizet's opera of that name.
Lehmann as the gipsy cigarette maker, with her Habanera and Seguidilla,
with her errant fancy wandering from a sentimental brigadier to a
dashing bull fighter, is a conception which will not come easy to the
admirers of the later Brünnhilde and Isolde; and, indeed, she was a
puzzling phenomenon to the experienced observers of that time. Carmen
was already a familiar apparition to New Yorkers, who had imagined that
Minnie Hauk had spoken the last word in the interpretation of that
character. When Fräulein Lehmann came her tall stature and erect, almost
military, bearing were calculated to produce an effect of surprise of
such a nature that it had to be overcome before it was possible to enter
into the feeling with which she informed the part. To the eye, moreover,
she was a somewhat more matronly Carmen than the fancy, stimulated by
earlier performances of the opera or the reading of Mérimée's novel,
was prepared to accept; but it was in harmony with the new picture that
she stripped the character of the flippancy and playfulness popularly
associated with it, and intensified its sinister side. In this, Fräulein
Lehmann deviated from Mme. Hauk's impersonation and approached that
of Mme. Trebelli, which had been brought to public notice at the
first Italian season at the Metropolitan Opera House. In her musical
performance she surpassed both of those admired and experienced artists.
Her voice proved to be true, flexible, and ringing, and, also, of a most
particularly telling quality. She disclosed ability to fill the part
with the passionate expression and warmth of color which it called for,
and utilized that ability judiciously and tastefully. M. Eloi Sylva, the
new tenor, effected his American introduction in Meyerbeer's "Prophet"
on November 27th. He was an exceedingly robust singer, with an imposing
stage presence, a powerful voice, which, in its upper register,
especially, was vibrant, virile, and musical. Two seasons later he
essayed English opera, with about the same results, so far as his
pronunciation was concerned, as he achieved in German. Fräulein Lehmann
was first seen and heard as Brünnhilde in "Die Walküre" on November
30th. She was statuesquely beautiful, and her voice glorified the music.
In the first scene she brought into beautiful relief the joyful nature
of the Wishmaiden; her cries were fairly brimming with eager, happy
vitality. While proclaiming his fate to Siegmund, she was first inspired
by a noble dignity, then transformed instantaneously into a sympathetic
woman by the hero's devotion to the helpless and hapless woman who lay
exhausted on his knees.
The first of the two novelties of the season was Goldmark's opera
"Die Königin von Saba," which had its first performance in America on
December 2d. The cast was as follows: Sulamith, Fräulein Lebmaun;
Königin, Frau Krämer-Wiedl; Astaroth, Fräulein Brandt; Solomon, Herr
Robinson; Assad, Herr Stritt; Hohepriester, Herr Fischer; Baal Hanan,
Herr Alexi. Mr. Seidl conducted. The opera (which had had its first
production in Vienna ten years before, and had achieved almost as much
success in Germany as Nessler's "Trompeter von Säkkingen") was produced
with great sumptuousness, and being also admirably sung and acted, it
made a record that provided opera-goers in New York with a sensation of
a kind that they had not known before, and to which they did not grow
accustomed until the later dramas of Wagner began their triumphal career
at the Metropolitan. Twenty years afterward (season 1905-06) Mr. Conried
revived the opera at the Metropolitan, but it was found that in the
interim its fires had paled. In 1885 there were reasons why the public
should not only have been charmed, but even impressed by the opera. In
spite of its weaknesses it was then, and still is, an effective opera.
Thoughtfully considered, the libretto is not one of any poetical worth,
but in its handling of the things which give pleasure to the superficial
observer it is admirable. It presents a story which is fairly rational,
which enlists the interest, if not the sympathy, of the observers, which
is new as a spectacle, and which is full of pomp and circumstance.
Looked at from its ethical side and considered with reference to the
sources of its poetical elements, it falls under condemnation. The title
of the opera would seem to indicate that the Bible story of the visit of
the Queen of Sheba to Solomon had been drawn on for the plot. That is
true. The Queen of Sheba comes to Jerusalem to see Solomon in his glory,
and that is the end of the draft on the Biblical story; the rest is the
modern poet's invention. But that is the way of operas with Biblical
subjects--a few names, an incident, and the rest of invention. In
Gounod's "Reine de Saba" the magnificently storied queen tries to elope
with the architect of Solomon's temple like any wilful millionaire's
daughter. Salome is a favorite subject just now that the danse du
ventre is working its way into polite society, but save for the dance
and the names of the tetrarch and his wife, the Bible contributes
nothing to the Salome dramas and pantomimes. Sulamith, who figures like
an abandoned Dido, in the opera of Mosenthal and Goldmark, owes her
name, but not her nature or any of her experiences, to the pastoral
play which Solomon is credited with having written. The Song of Songs
contributes, also, a few lines of poetry to the book, and a ritualistic
service celebrated in the Temple finds its prototype in some verses from
Psalms lxvii and cxvii, but with this I have enumerated all that "Die
Königin von Saba" owes to the sacred Scriptures. Solomon's magnificent
reign and marvelous wisdom, which contribute factors to the production,
belong to profane as well as to sacred history, and persons with deeply
rooted prejudices touching the people of Biblical story will be happiest
if they can think of some other than the Scriptural Solomon as the
prototype of Mosenthal and Goldmark, for in truth they make of him a
sorry sentimentalist at best. The local color of the old story has been
borrowed from the old story; the dramatic motive comes plainly from
"Tannhäuser"; Sulamith is Elizabeth, the Queen Venus, Assad Tannhäuser,
and Solomon Wolfram. Goldmark's music is highly spiced. At times it
rushes along like a lava stream, every measure throbbing with eager,
excited, and exciting life. He revels in instrumental color; the
language of his orchestra is as glowing as the poetry attributed to the
veritable King whom the operatic story celebrates. Many composers before
him made use of Oriental cadences and rhythms, but to none did they seem
so like a native language. It has not been every Jew who could thus
handle a Jewish subject. Compare Halévy, Meyerbeer, and Rubinstein with
Goldmark.
The first performance of Wagner's "Meistersinger" fell on the same
night as the production for the first time in America of Goetz's
"Widerspänstigen Zähmung" in English by the National Opera Company.
We thus had in juxtaposition an admirable operatic adaptation of a
Shakespearian comedy and a modern comedy, of which I thought at the
time I could not speak in higher praise than to say that it was truly
Shakespearian in its delineation of character. In my book, "Studies in
the Wagnerian Drama," I have analyzed Wagner's comedy from many points
of view, and printed besides the results of investigations of the old
Nuremberg mastersingers made on the spot. The significance of this
record is that it tells of the introduction in America of a comedy
which, though foreign in matter and manner to the thoughts, habits, and
feelings of the American people, has, nevertheless, held a high place
in their admiration. Later we shall see that this admiration was based
on the sound understanding of the play which the original, performers
inculcated. Let their names therefore be preserved. They were: Hans
Sachs, Emil Fischer; Veit Pogner, Josef Staudigl; Kunz Vogelsang,
Herr Dworsky; Konrad Nachtigal, Emil Sänger; Sixtus Beckmesser, Otto
Kemlitz; Fritz Kothner, Herr Lehmler; Balthasar Zorn, Herr Hoppe; Ulrich
Eisslinger, Herr Klaus; Augustin Moser, Herr Langer; Hermaun Ortel,
Herr Doerfer; Hans Schwartz, Herr Eiserbeck; Hans Foltz, Herr Anlauf;
Walther von Stolzing, Albert Stritt; David, Herr Kramer; Eva, Auguste
Seidl-Krauss; Magdalena, Marianne Brandt; Nachtwächter, Carl Kaufmann.
Mr. Seidl conductor.
I modulate to the Metropolitan season 1886-87 through the performances
of the opposition, which began at the Academy of Music, but ended in
the house which was now definitely acknowledged to be the home, and
only home, of fashionable opera. Mme. Patti provided the last bit of
evidence. In the two preceding seasons she had led Colonel Mapleson's
forces at the Academy; yet the public would have none of his opera. Now,
after a year's absence, she returned to America under the management of
Mr. Abbey, who had opposed Nilsson to her when the rivalry of the houses
began. She gave operatic concerts, one, two, three, and four, at the
Academy of Music, with old favorites of the New York public--Scalchi,
Novara, and a French tenor named Guille--in her company, besides Signor
Arditi; and she gave fragments of opera ("Semiramide" and "Martha"),
besides a miscellaneous concert. The experiences of Mme. Patti on her
return to her old home in 1881 were measurably repeated. The great
singer was admired, of course, and half an operatic loaf was accepted as
better than no bread. This was in November, 1886, and in April, 1887,
Mr. Abbey decided to offer the operatic loaf, such as it was, but to
cut it, not at the house with which Patti's name had been intimately
associated, but at the Metropolitan Opera House. He was conjuring
with the legend (then new, but afterward worn threadbare), "Patti's
Farewell." I am writing in July, 1908, and have just been reading the
same legend again in the London newspapers--twenty-one years after
it served Mr. Abbey a turn. In April, then, Mr. Abbey came to the
Metropolitan Opera House with Mme. Patti to give six "farewell"
operatic performances. The company consisted of Scalchi, Vicini,
Galassi, Valerga, Del Puente, Novara, Abramoff, Corsi, and Migliara,
some of them recruited from an earlier company that had come and
departed like a shadow in the fall season. Also Miss Gertrude Griswold,
whom I mention because she was an American singer who had given promise
of good things in Europe, and who helped Mme. Patti with the one and
doubly singular performance of "Carmen," in which she was seen and
(occasionally) heard in the United States. Mr. Abbey gave six
performances, in all of which Mme. Patti appeared, the operas being
"La Traviata," "Semiramide," "Faust," "Carmen," "Lucia," and "Marta."
The financial results were phenomenal. The public paid nearly $70,000
for the six operas! Had Colonel Mapleson been able to do fifty per cent.
of such business the Academy of Music might have been saved. But Mr.
Abbey, to use the slang of the stage, was playing Patti as a sensation.
Prices of admission were abnormal, and so was the audience. Fashion
heard Patti at the Metropolitan, and so did suburban folk, who came to
$10 opera in business coats, bonnets, and shawls. Such audiences were
never seen in the theater before or since.
This was a little Italian opera season, but a successful one, and one
housed at the Metropolitan. In the fall there had been another at the
Academy of Music, which was not a success, and which ended in a quarrel
between prima donna and manager that contributed a significant item to
the popular knowledge of the status of Italian opera. On October 18th an
Italian named Angelo began a season of Italian opera at the Academy. The
name of the company was the Angelo Grand Italian Opera Company, and its
manager's experience had been made, as an underling of Mapleson in the
luggage department. The season, as projected, was to last five weeks,
and a virtue proclaimed in the list was to be a departure from the
hurdy-gurdy list which had been doing service so long. There were smiles
among the knowing that a trunk despatcher should appear as the successor
of his former employer, and that employer so polished a man of the world
as James H. Mapleson; but opera makes strange bedfellows, and there have
been stranger things than this in its history. A Hebrew boy named Pohl
was little more than a bootblack when he entered the service of Maurice
Strakosch, but as Herr Pollini a couple of decades later he was a
partner of that elegant gentleman and experienced impresario, and one of
the operatic dictators of Germany. Eventually, in the case of the Angelo
Grand Italian Opera Company, it turned out that the Deus ex machina was
the prima donna, Giulia Valda (Miss Julia Wheelock), an American singer,
who had chosen this means of getting a hearing in her native land. The
list of operas sounded like an echo of half a century before. Five
operas were given, and four of them were by Verdi: "Luisa Miller,"
"I Lombardi," "Un Ballo in Maschera," and "I due Foscari;" the remaining
opera was Petrella's "Ione." Here was an escape from the threadbare
with a vengeance. It made the critics rub their eyes and wonder if Mme.
Valda had not been in the company of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. Five
weeks were projected, but trouble came at the end of a fortnight--that
is to say, it came to public notice at the end of a fortnight; it began
probably with the season. On November 3d the persons who came to hear
a promised performance of "La Juive" found the doors of the Academy
closed. A few spasmodic efforts to galvanize the corpse into the
semblance of life were made, but in vain; the Angelo Grand Italian Opera
Company was dead. Some of its members had been heard before in other
organizations; some were heard later. They were Giulia Valda, Mlle.
Prandi, Mme. Valerga, Mlle. Corre, Mathilde Ricci, Mme. Mestress,
Mme. Bianchi-Montaldo, Signor Vicini, Lalloni, Bologna, Greco,
Giannini, Pinto, Corsi, Migliara, and Conti. The conductors were
Logheder and Bimboni, the latter of whom was discovered as a young
conductor of surprising merit twenty years later by Boston.
One season of the American Opera Company sufficed to involve it in
such financial difficulties that its managers deemed a reorganization
necessary. It appeared, therefore, in the season of 1886-87 under the
title, National Opera Company. Mr. Theodore Thomas was still its musical
director, and Mr. Gustav Hinrichs and Arthur Mees assistant conductors;
Charles E. Locke was the business manager. The company spent the
greater part of the season in other cities, but gave two series of
representations in Brooklyn, at the Academy of Music, and one series at
the Metropolitan Opera House. The first Brooklyn season was of one week,
from December 27th to January 1st, when the German company was idle; the
second embraced the Thursday evenings from February 28th to March 26th,
during which period the company gave a regular series of representations
in New York. Among the singers were Pauline L'Allemand, Emma Juch,
Laura Moore, Mathilde Phillips (sister of Adelaide Phillips, one of
the singers of first rank sent out into the world by America), Jessie
Bartlett Davis, Mme. Bertha Pierson, William Candidus, Charles Bassett
(The Signor Bassetti of Colonel Mapleson's company in the previous
season), William Fessenden, William Ludwig, Myron W. Whitney, Alonzo E.
Stoddard, and William Hamilton. The notable feature of the repertory was
the first production in America of Rubinstein's opera "Nero," on March
14, 1887. The book had been translated for the production by Mr. John
P. Jackson. Mr. Thomas conducted, and the cast was as follows: Nero
Claudius, William Candidus; Julius Vindex, William Ludwig; Tigellinus,
A. E. Stoddard; Balbillus, Myron W. Whitney; Saccus, William Fessenden;
Sevirus and a Centurion, William Hamilton; Terpander, William H. Lee;
Poppaea, Bertha Pierson; Epicharis, Cornelia van Santen; Chrysa, Emma
Juch; Agrippina, Emily Sterling; Lupus, Pauline L'Allemand. So far as I
can recall, "Nero" is the only opera of Rubinstein's that has been given
in the United States. Its performance by the National Opera Company did
greater justice to its spectacular than its musical features, but in
this there was not a large measure of artistic obliquity. The opera
seems to have been constructed with the idea that mimic reproductions
of scenes from Rome in its most extravagant, debauched, and luxuriant
period would prove more fascinating to the public than an effort to
present the moral and intellectual life of the same place and period
through the medium of an eloquent, truthful, compact, well-built, and
logically developed drama with its essentials further vitalized by
music. From whatever side he is viewed, Nero is an excellent operatic
character, and the wonder is that the opera of Barbier and Rubinstein
did not have sixty instead of only six predecessors. Not only is it
a simple matter to group around him historical pictures of unique
interest, brilliancy, variety, and suggestiveness, but, as the
historians present him to us, he is as made for the stage. His cruelty,
profligacy, effeminacy, cowardice, and artistic vanity are traits which
invite dramatic illustration, and for each one of them the pages of
Suetonius afford incidents which accept a dramatic dress none the less
willingly because they are facts of historical record. Besides all this,
there is something like poetical justice in the conceit of making a
stage character out of the emperor who hired himself to a theatrical
manager for 1,000,000 sesterces (say $40,000--a pretty fair honorarium
for the time, I should say), and who employed a claque of 5,000 young
men. To throw a sequence of the characteristic incidents in the life
of Nero into the form of a dramatic poem, logical in its development,
and theatrically effective, ought not to be a difficult thing to do.
And yet, in the case of this opera, Barbier did not do it, and by a
singularly persistent and consistent fatality Rubinstein apparently
found every weak spot in the poet's fabric, and loosened and tangled his
threads right there. The operas and ballets performed by the National
Opera Company in this season besides "Nero" were "The Flying Dutchman,"
"The Huguenots," "Faust," "Aïda," "Lakmé," "The Marriage of Jeannette,"
Massé's "Galatea," "Martha," "Coppélia," and Rubinstein's "Bal Costumé,"
an adaptation.
"Galatea" had its first New York performance at the Academy of Music
in Brooklyn, on December 30, 1886, under the direction of Arthur Mees;
Delibes's ballet "Coppélia" at the Metropolitan on March 11, 1887,
under the direction of Gustav Hinrichs. It is likely that both works
were previously given by the National Opera Company on tour.
The fourth regular subscription season of opera at the Metropolitan
Opera House (third season of opera in German) began on November 8, 1886,
under the management of the board of directors, the direction of Edmund
C. Stanton, with Anton Seidl and Walter Damrosch, conductors. It
extended over fifteen weeks, the closing date being February 26, 1887,
and comprised forty-five subscription nights, and fifteen matinées,
no opera having been given from December 5th to January 3d. In the
prospectus the directors had promised to produce fourteen operas, and
the promise was kept as to number, though two operas, "Tristan und
Isolde" and "Fidelio," were substituted for "Siegfried" (which had been
completely staged) and "Les Huguenots." The operas thus substituted were
the most successful of the list, "Fidelio" being received with so much
favor on the two occasions for which it had been announced that an
extra performance had to be given to satisfy the popular demand. Of
this incident more presently. This extra performance raised the number
of representations to sixty-one, which were distributed through the list
of operas as follows:
Opera First performance Times given
"Die Königin von Saba" ........... November 8 ....... 4
"Die Walküre" .................... November 10 ...... 3
"Aïda" ........................... November 12 ...... 4
"Der Prophet" .................... November 17 ...... 5
"Das Goldene Kreutz" and ballet .. November 19 ...... 4
"Tannhäuser" ..................... November 28 ...... 6
"Tristan und Isolde" ............. December 1 ....... 8
"Faust" .......................... December 8 ....... 3
"Lohengrin" ...................... December 15 ...... 4
"Merlin" ......................... January 3 ........ 5
"Fidelio" ........................ January 14 ....... 3
"Die Meistersinger" .............. January 21 ....... 5
"Rienzi" ......................... January 31 ....... 5
"La Muette de Portici" ........... February 16 ...... 2
--
Total performances ................................ 61
The cost of representation was $288,400, and of maintaining the opera
house about $154,000; in this total of about $442,000 was included the
cost of the scenery, wardrobe, and properties. The company's receipts
comprised $202,751 from subscriptions and box office sales, about
$33,000 from rentals, and about $175,000 from an assessment of $2,500
from each of the stockholders; in all about $410,751 I am able to be
thus explicit about the financial affairs of the German régime because
of courtesies received at the time from Mr. Stanton, with the sanction
of the stockholders, who were inclined then to look upon their
undertaking as one of public, not merely of private, concern. The
figures will enable the student of this history to view intelligently
some of the happenings at a later period, when the giving of opera
became a business speculation pure and simple. In attendance, the
measure of public patronage was represented by 137,399. The prices of
admission ranged from fifty cents to four dollars, and the average
receipts were $1.47 1/2 per individual.
The incidents of a particularly interesting character in the season were
the first American performances of "Tristan und Isolde," and Goldmark's
opera "Merlin," and the coming and going of Albert Niemann; secondary
in importance were the production of Wagner's "Rienzi," with which was
connected the return of Anton Schott to the ranks of the company, the
surprising triumph of "Fidelio," and the production of Brüll's opera,
"Das goldene Kreutz," and the ballet, "Vienna Waltzes." "Tristan und
Isolde" was brought forward on December 1, 1886, under the direction of
Anton Seidl. The distribution of characters was as follows: Tristan,
Albert Niemann; Isolde, Lilli Lehmann; König Marke, Emil Fischer;
Kurwenal, Adolf Robinson; Melot, Rudolph von Milde; Brangäne, Marianne
Brandt; Ein Hirt, Otto Kemlitz; Steuermann, Emil Sanger; Seemann,
Max Alvary. The interesting character of the occurrence was fully
appreciated by the public, and the drama was seen and heard by a
remarkable assembly. The last seat had been sold four days before, and
the vast audience room was crowded in every portion. The tenseness of
the attention was almost painful, and the effect of Herr Niemann's
acting in the climax of the third act was so vivid that an experienced
actress who sat in a baignoir at my elbow grew faint and almost swooned.
At the request of Mr. Stanton, or Mr. Seidl, he never ventured again
to expose the wound in his breast, though the act is justified, if
not demanded, by the text. The enthusiasm after the first act was
tremendous. The performers came forward three times after the fall of
the curtain, and then Mr. Seidl, who had won the greenest laurels that
had yet crowned him, was called upon to join them, and twice more the
curtain rose to enable the performers to receive the popular tribute.
Five recalls after an act would have meant either nothing or a failure
in an Italian theater; it was of vast meaning here. The reception
accorded Wagner's love drama was not such an one as comes from an
audience easily pleased or attracted by curiosity alone. It told of
keen and lofty enjoyment and undisguised confession of the power of
the drama. The applause came after the last note of the orchestral
postludes. The drama was performed eight times in seven weeks, and
took its place as the most popular work in the repertory, though in
average attendance it fell a trifle short of the three representations
of "Fidelio," which also served to signalize the season.
I shall have something to say presently about Herr Niemann, and a
criticism of his interpretation of the character of the hero of the
tragedy can be spared. From a histrionic point of view it has been
equaled only by his performances of Siegmund and Tannhäuser; nothing
else has shown such stature that has been witnessed on the operatic
stage of New York. Nor has his declamation of the text been equaled,
though the compelling charm of Wagner's melody was potently presented
years later by Jean de Reszke. Herr Niemann was long past the prime of
life when he came to New York, and when he went back to Berlin after
his last visit there was very little left of his public career; but the
youngest artist in the company might have envied him the whole-souled
enthusiasm with which he set about his tasks. How completely he
dedicated himself to the artistic duty was illustrated when, in the
season of 1887-88, he realized what had been the ambition of years,
and gave a first performance of Siegfried in "Götterdämmerung." He had
studied the part a dozen years before in the hope of appearing in it
at the first Bayreuth festival; but Wagner did not want the illusion
spoiled by presenting the actor of Siegmund on one evening as the actor
of Siegfried on another, and Niemann's Siegmund was a masterpiece that
must not be despoiled. In New York, on Niemann's second visit, he asked
for the privilege of enacting the Volsung's part in the last division of
the tetralogy, and studied the part ab initio with Seidl. I chanced one
evening to be a witness of his study hour--the strangest one I ever saw.
It was at the conductor's lodgings in the opera house. There was a
pianoforte in the room, but it was closed. The two men sat at a table
with the open score before them. Seidl beat time to the inaudible
orchestral music, and Niemann sang sans support of any kind. Then
would come discussion of readings, markings of cues, etc., all with
indescribable gravity, while Frau Seidl-Krauss, a charming ingénue
budding into a tragedienne, sat sewing in a corner. After the
performance of the drama, I sat again with Niemann and Seidl over
cigars and beer. I thanked Niemann for having discarded a universal
trick in the scene of Siegfried's murder, and for carrying out Wagner's
stage directions to the letter in raising his shield and advancing a
step to crush Hagen, and then falling exhausted upon it.
"I am glad you noted that," said Niemann in his broad Berlinese. "Years
ago I was angered by the device which all Siegfrieds follow of lifting
the shield high and throwing it behind themselves before they fall.
Das hat doch gar kein Sinn. There's no sense in that; if he has
strength enough to throw the shield over his head, he certainly has
strength enough to hurl it at the man he wants to kill. He lifts the
heavy shield for that purpose, but his strength gives way suddenly, and
he falls upon it with a crash. It's dangerous, of course. A fellow might
easily break a finger or a rib. But if you do a thing, do it right. I
have waited more than ten years to sing Siegfried, and now I've done it;
but, youngster (to Seidl), if we meet again years from now, and I've
fifty marks in my pocket, I'll get an orchestra, and you will conduct
just enough to let me sing 'Ach! dieses Auge, ewig nun offen,' and
then I'll die in peace! That's the climax of Siegfried's part, and it
must sound red, blood red--Siegfried is red; so is Tristan. Vogl sings
Tristan well, but he's all yellow--not red, as he ought to be."
I recall another bit of Niemann's characteristic criticism: Adolf
Robinson, the barytone of the first few German seasons, was an excellent
singer and also actor; but he belonged to the old operatic school,
and was prone to extravagant action and exaggerated pathos. He was,
moreover, fond of the footlights. At one of the last rehearsals for
"Tristan und Isolde," Robinson, the Kurwenal of the occasion, was
perpetually running from the dying hero's couch to the front of the
stage to sing his pathetic phrases with tremendous feeling into the
faces of the audience. Niemann, reclining on the couch, immovable as
a recumbent statue, as was his wont, without a gesture, all evidence
of the seething impatience which is consuming him mirrored in the
expression of his face, and particularly his eyes, watched the
conventional stage antics of his colleague till he could endure them no
longer. He gave a sign to Seidl, who stopped the orchestra to hear the
dying knight addressing his squire in wingèd, but un-Wagnerian, words
to this effect:
"My dear Robinson, this scene is not all yours--Tristan has also
something to say here; but how am I to make my share of the dramatic
effect if you are always going to run down to the audience and sing at
it? After a while there will be nothing left for me to do but to get
up and hurl my boots into the audience room. And I'm a very sick man.
Now, there's a good fellow, come over here to the couch; stay by me
and nurse me, and you'll see there's something in my part, too."
Niemann's first American appearance was on November 10th in "Die
Walküre." From the criticism of his performance, which I wrote for
The Tribune on that occasion, I reprint the following extract as
the best summing up which I am able to make of the great dramatic
singer's art:
The creation of a Wagnerian musical drama created also the need of
Wagnerian singers. Those who go to see and hear Herr Niemann must go to
see and hear him as the representative of the character that he enacts.
It is only thus that they can do justice to themselves, to him, and to
the art-work in which he appears. A drama can only be vitalized through
representation, and the first claim to admiration which Herr Niemann
puts forth is based on the intensely vivid and harmonious picture of
the Volsung which he brings on the stage. There is scarcely one of the
theatrical conventions which the public have been accustomed to accept
that he employs. He takes possession of the stage like an elemental
force. Wagner's dramas have excited the fancy of painters more than any
dramatic works of the century, because Wagner was in a lofty sense a
scenic artist. Niemann's genius, for less it can scarcely be called,
utilizes this picturesque element to the full. His attitudes and
gestures all seem parts of Wagner's creation. They are not only instinct
with life, but instinct with the sublimated life of the hero of the
drama. When he staggers into Hunding's hut and falls upon the bearskin
beside the hearth a thrill passes through the observer. Part of his
story is already told, and it is repeated with electrifying eloquence in
the few words that he utters when his limbs refuse their office. The
voice is as weary as the exhausted body. In the picturesque side of his
impersonation he is aided by the physical gifts with which nature has
generously endowed him. The figure is colossal; the head, like "the
front of Jove himself"; the eyes large and full of luminous light, that
seems to dart through the tangled and matted hair that conceals the
greater portion of his face. The fate for which he has been marked out
has set its seal in the heroic melancholy which is never absent even in
his finest frenzies, but in the glare of those eyes there is something
that speaks unfalteringly of the godlike element within him. This
element asserts itself with magnificent force in the scene where
Siegmund draws the sword from its gigantic sheath, and again when he
calmly listens to the proclamation of his coming death, and declines
the services of the messenger of Wotan who is sent to conduct him to
Walhalla.
There are aspects in which, even from a literary point of view, Wagner's
"Ring of the Nibelung" seems to be the most Teutonic of the several
German versions of the old legend which is its basis. It is a primitive
Teutonism, however, without historical alloy; such a Teutonism as we can
construct by letting the imagination work back from the most forceful
qualities of the historical German to those which representatives of
the same race may have had in a prehistoric age. The period of Wagner's
tetralogy, it must be remembered, is purely mythical. The ruggedness of
the type which we obtain by such a process is the strong characteristic
of Herr Niemann's treatment of Wagner's musical and literary text. It
is, like the drama itself, an exposition of the German esthetic ideal:
strength before beauty. It puts truthful declamation before beautiful
tone production in his singing and lifts dramatic color above what is
generally considered essential musical color. That from this a new
beauty results all those can testify who hear Herr Niemann sing the love
song in the first act of "Die Walküre," which had previously in America
been presented only as a lyrical effusion and given with more or less
sweetness and sentimentality. Herr Niemann was the first representative
of the character who made this passage an eager, vital, and personal
expression of a mood so ecstatic that it resorts to symbolism, as if
there was no other language for it. The charm with which he invests the
poetry of this song (for this is poetry) can only be appreciated by one
who is on intimate terms with the German language, but the dramatic
effect attained by his use of tone color and his marvelous distinctness
of enunciation all can feel.
The defects in Herr Niemann's singing, the result of the long and hard
wear to which his voice has been subjected in a career of thirty-five
years' duration, are so obvious that I need not discuss them. To do
so would be as idle as to attempt to deny their presence. He must be
heard as a singing actor, as a dramatic interpreter, not as a mere
singer.
Niemann said farewell to the New York public at a notable performance
of "Tristan und Isolde," the last of the season, on February 7, 1887.
I doubt if the history of opera in New York discloses anything like
a parallel to the occasion. Out of doors the night was distressingly
dismal. A cold rain fell intermittently; the streets were deep with
slush, and the soft ice made walking on the pavements uncomfortable,
and even dangerous. But these things were not permitted to interfere
with the determination of the lovers of the German lyric drama to bear
testimony to their admiration for the artist who had done so much for
their pleasure. The house was crowded in every part. Every seat had been
sold days before. Many of the tickets had been bought by speculators,
who, in spite of the untoward weather, reaped a rich harvest. During the
day the prices obtained varied from ten dollars to fifteen dollars for
the orchestra stalls (regular price, four dollars), and at night seats
in the topmost gallery fetched as much as three dollars, which was six
times the regular tariff. There were delegations in the audience from
Boston, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. The enthusiasm after each act
was of the kind that recalled familiar stories of popular outbursts in
impressionable Italy. Herr Niemann husbanded his vocal resources in the
first act, but after that both he and Fräulein Lehmann threw themselves
into the work with utter abandon, such abandon, indeed, as made some of
the prima donna's friends tremble for her voice. After two recalls had
followed the second fall of the curtain a third round was swelled by
a fanfare from the orchestra. To acknowledge this round Herr Niemann
came forward alone, and was greeted with cheers, while a laurel wreath,
bearing on one of its ribbons the significant line from "Tannhäuser,"
"O, kehr zurück, du kühner Sänger," was handed up to him. The third act
wrought the enthusiasm to a climax. After the curtain had been raised
over and over again, Herr Niemann came forward and said, in German: "I
regret exceedingly that I am not able to tell you in your own language
how sincerely I appreciate your kindness toward me. I thank you
heartily, and would like to say 'Auf wiedersehn.'" His place for the
rest of the season was filled by Herr Anton Schott.
I have referred to the "Fidelio" incident of the season, which may now
be told, since Herr Niemann also figured in it. To Beethoven "Fidelio"
was a child of sorrow; that fact is known to every student of musical
history. On its first production it failed dismally. With his heart
strings torn, the composer yielded to the arguments and prayers of his
friends and revised the opera. In the new form it was revived, and made
a better impression; but now Beethoven quarreled with his manager, and
withdrew his opera from the Vienna theater. He offered it in Berlin, and
it was rejected. For seven years it slept. Then it was taken in hand
again by the composer, and adapted to a revised text. Some of the music
elided at the first revision was restored. By this time four overtures
had been written for it. Again it was brought forward; and this time the
Viennese awoke to an appreciation of its splendor. Since 1814 its name
has been almost the ineffable word for the serious musician. But sorrow
and disaster have followed upon innumerable efforts to habilitate it
in the opera houses of the world. We have seen that Dr. Damrosch made
haste to produce it at the Metropolitan Opera House, but the financial
results were so direful that two years later it was only upon the urgent
entreaty of a few friends who stood close to him that Mr. Stanton
consented to include it in the repertory for 1886-87.
"But," said the director to his petitioners, "if I give it once I must
give it twice, for I have two Leonores in my company, and there must be
no quarrel."
So he gave the opera on Friday, January 14th, with Fraulein Brandt
as the heroine, and on Wednesday, January 19th, with Fräulein
Lehmann--Niemann being the Florestan on both occasions. The enthusiasm
was boundless, though the silly laugh of a woman in one of the boxes at
the first performance so disconcerted Fräulein Brandt at the beginning
of the duet in the dungeon scene that she broke down in tears, and Mr.
Seidl had to stop the orchestra till she could sufficiently recover her
composure to begin over again. Now, the popular interest was so great
that Mr. Stanton gave an extra performance, with Fräulein Lehmann, and
when the record of the season was made up, lo! Beethoven's opera led
all the rest in average receipts and attendance. In Berlin, Dr. Ehrlich
preached a sermon to the people of Germany with the incident as a text.
As a novelty "Tristan und Isolde" had been preceded on November 19th
by Brüll's pretty little opera, "Das goldene Kreutz," and the ballet,
"Vienna Waltzes." It was succeeded on January 3d by Goldmark's "Merlin,"
conducted by Walter Damrosch, with the parts distributed as follows:
Artus, Robinson; Modrid, Kemlitz; Gawein, Heinrich; Lancelot, Basch;
Merlin, Alvary; Viviane, Lehmann; Bedwyr, Von Milde; Glendower,
Sieglitz; Morgana, Brandt; Dämon, Fischer. Much interest centered in
the opera because of its newness (it had received its first production
in Vienna less than two months before), and the great success achieved
by its predecessor, "The Queen of Sheba;" but it failed of popular
approval, eight operas preceding it in popularity, as evidenced by
the attendance, and but one of them--"Tristan"--a novelty.
CHAPTER XIV
WAGNERIAN HIGH TIDE
In this chapter I purpose to tell the story of a period of three years,
from 1887 to 1890, and in order to cover the ground I shall leave out
what appertains to the repetition of works incorporated in the repertory
of the Metropolitan Opera House during the preceding three seasons.
The period was an eventful one and marked the high-water of achievement
and also of popularity of the German régime, but also the beginning of
the dissatisfaction of the boxholders, which resulted two years later in
a return to the Italian form. It witnessed the introduction of the "Ring
of the Nibelung" in its integrity and illustrated in a surprising manner
the superior attractiveness of Wagner's dramas to the rest of the
operatic list. Outside of the Nibelung dramas it brought two absolute
novelties to the knowledge of the public and revived several old operas
of large historical and artistic significance, which had either never
been heard at all in New York, or heard so long ago that all memory of
them had faded from the public mind. It saw the light of competition
flicker out completely at the Academy of Music, and after a year of
darkness it beheld the dawn of Italian rivalry in what had become the
home of German art.
Twenty operas were brought forward in the first three years of the
German régime. They were "Tannhäuser," "Fidelio," "Les Huguenots,"
"Der Freischütz," "William Tell," "Lohengrin," "Don Giovanni," "The
Prophet," "Masaniello," "Rigoletto," "La Juive," "Die Walküre,"
"Carmen," "The Queen of Sheba," "Die Meistersinger," "Rienzi," "Aïda,"
"Das Goldene Kreutz," "Tristan und Isolde," and "Merlin." (In this list
I have set down the titles in the language in which they live in the
popular mouth in order to avoid what might seem like an affectation were
I to use the German form always in the story simply because the Italian
and French works were sung in German.) Additions to the list in the
season of 1887-88 were "Siegfried," "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen,"
"Euryanthe," "Ferdinand Cortez," and "Götterdämmerung"; in the season of
1888-89, "L'Africaine," "Das Rheingold," and "Il Trovatore"; in 1889-90,
"Der Fliegende Holländer," "Un Ballo in Maschera," "Norma," and "Der
Barbier von Bagdad."
The record of the last two years indicated a falling off in energy,
but though it caused disaffection at the time, it seems notable enough
compared with the activities of the establishment twenty years later
under much more favorable circumstances. For the last of the three
seasons under discussion seven additions to what was called by courtesy
the established list had been promised; but counting in "Norma," (a
special performance for the benefit of Lilli Lehmann) and "The Flying
Dutchman," which had been promised only by implication in the plan of
a serial representation of Wagner's works, only four additions were
made. Two causes operated toward the disappointing outcome. One was an
epidemic of influenza which prevailed during the greater part of the
winter and caused much embarrassment to the singers; the other was the
inefficiency of the chorus--a defect which has not yet been remedied,
but was greater in the season 1907-08 than a decade earlier. "Otello"
was in readiness so far as the principals were concerned, but the chorus
consumed so much time restudying old works that it had to be abandoned;
also Lalo's "Le Roy d'Ys." Though the stockholders were giving opera
themselves for themselves, they took no steps toward making it a
permanent institution. Their decision to give German opera was made from
year to year, and the end of every season brought with it practically
a complete disruption of the company. There had to be a reorganization
each fall. The directors were unwilling to give their own manager
the degree of permanence which they bestowed without hesitation upon
a lessee, and the policy of the house was thus kept continually in
controversy. The fact is that the activities of the Germans were not
to the taste of the stockholders, who were getting serious art where
they were looking for fashionable diversion. This became painfully
obvious when the conduct of the occupants of the boxes scandalized
the institution to such a degree that the directors were compelled to
administer a public rebuke to themselves and their associates, and a
stigma was placed upon the institution from which it has suffered,
very unjustly, ever since. But a discussion of these incidents can be
more intelligently and profitably introduced later in this narrative.
The fourth German season began on November 2, 1887, and ended on
February 18, 1888, and consisted of forty-seven subscription nights,
sixteen subscription matinées, and one extra matinée. In all fourteen
operas were produced. The two Wagnerian novelties, "Götterdämmerung"
and "Siegfried," were the most popular features of the season, the
former being given seven times, though it was the last of the season's
productions. It brought into the treasury a total of $30,324, or
an average of $4,332, and was heard by audiences averaging 2,871.
"Siegfried" was a good second. It had nine weeks' advantage of
"Götterdämmerung" and was performed eleven times, with total receipts
amounting to $37,124.50, or an average of $3,374.95. Pursued by its
old fatality, "Fidelio" dropped to the foot of the list with four
performances, which yielded only $8,997. The receipts for the season
were $411,860.24, of which $190,087.24 came from the box office sales
and subscriptions, $170,180 from the stockholders' assessment of $2,500
on each box, and $51,593 from rentals. This assessment was only $24,000
more than the cost of maintaining the opera-house, which was about
$146,000. The staging of new operas cost $19,727.27, more than half of
which was expended on Spontini's "Ferdinand Cortez." The scenery for
"Siegfried" had been purchased the year before and also the costumes for
that drama and "Götterdämmerung." The principal members of the company
were Lilli Lehmann, Marianne Brandt, Auguste Seidl-Krauss, Biro di
Marion, Louise Meisslinger, Albert Niemann, Max Alvary, Emil Fischer,
Adolf Robinson, Rudolph von Milde, Johannes Elmblad, Herr Ferenczy,
and Herr Alexi.
The first American representation of Wagner's "Siegfried" took place on
November 9, 1887. Anton Seidl conducted and the parts were distributed
as follows: Siegfried, Max Alvary; Mime, Herr Ferenczy; der Wanderer,
Emil Fischer; Alberich, Rudolph von Milde; Fafner, Johannes Elmblad;
Erda, Marianne Brandt; Brünnhilde, Lilli Lehmann; Stimme des
Waldvogels, Auguste Seidl-Krauss. The production of this drama was
an invitation to the people of New York to take the longest and most
decisive step away from the ordinary conventions of the lyric theater
that had yet been asked of them. At the time it seemed foolishly
presumptive to attempt a prediction of what the response would be. A
season before "Tristan und Isolde" had been received with great favor
and under conditions which did not admit a question of the honesty and
intelligence of the appreciation. This was encouraging to the lovers of
Wagner's dramas, but the difference between opera of the ordinary type
and "Tristan und Isolde" is not so great as between "Tristan und Isolde"
and "Siegfried," notwithstanding that in the love tragedy Wagner took
as uncompromising a stand as ever did a Greek poet, and hewed to the
lines of his theoretical scheme with unswerving fidelity. In the
subject-matter of the drama lies the distinction. Despite the absence of
the ethical element which places "Tannhäuser" immeasurably higher than
"Tristan" as a dramatic poem, the latter drama contains an expression of
the universal passion which is so vehement, so truthful, and so sublime
that it seems strange that anybody susceptible to music and gifted with
emotions could ever have been deaf to its beauties or callous to its
appeals. Besides this, the sympathies are stirred in behalf of the
personages of the play who stand as representatives of human nature,
and, though the co-operation of a chorus, which has always been
considered an essential element of the lyric drama, is restricted to
a single act, the dramatic necessity of the restriction is so obvious
that an audience, once engrossed in the tragedy, must needs resent such
a violation of propriety as the introduction of a chorus in any scene
except that of the first act would be. In "Siegfried," however, the case
is not so plain. Here there is not only no chorus, but scarcely more
than five minutes during which even two solo voices are blended in a
duet. Except Siegfried and Brünnhilde, the personages of the play have
no claim upon human sympathy, and their actions can scarcely arouse a
loftier feeling than curiosity. Through two acts and a portion of the
third, save in a dozen measures or so, the music of woman's voice and
the charm of woman's presence are absent from the stage, and, instead,
we are asked to accept a bear, a dragon, and a bird, a sublimely solemn
peripatetic god who asks riddles and laughs once, and two dwarfs,
repulsive of mind and hideous of body.
These are the drawbacks concerning which there can be no controversy.
To them are to be added the difficulties which result from a desire
to employ in a serious drama mechanical devices of a kind that custom
associates only with children's pantomimes and idle spectacles. A bear
is brought in to frighten a dwarf; a dragon sings, vomits forth steam
from its cavernous jaws, fights and dies with a kindly and prophetic
warning to its slayer; a bird becomes endowed with the gift of human
speech through a miraculous process which takes place in one of the
people of the play. Surely these are grounds on which "Siegfried" might
be stoutly criticized from the conventional as well as a universal point
of view; but I have not enumerated them for the purpose of disparaging
Wagner's drama, but rather to show the intellectual and esthetic
attitude of the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House twenty years
ago, who, through all these defects, saw in "Siegfried" a strangely
beautiful and impressive creation, which, under trying circumstances,
challenged their plaudits at the outset and soon won their enthusiastic
admiration.
More direct and emphatic was the appreciation of "Götterdämmerung," the
last of the season's novelties, as "Siegfried" was the first. It was
produced on January 25, 1888, only three weeks before the close of the
season, yet it was given six times in the subscription performances
and once outside the subscription, with the financial results already
mentioned. The cast was as follows: Siegfried, Albert Niemann; Gunther,
Adolf Robinson; Hagen, Emil Fischer; Alberich, Rudolph von Milde;
Brünnhilde, Lilli Lehmann; Gutrune, Auguste Seidl-Krauss; Woglinde,
Sophie Traubmann; Wellgunde, Marianne Brandt; Flosshilde, Louise
Meisslinger. Mr. Seidl conducted. It was but natural that the concluding
drama of the tetralogy should have excited warmer sympathy than its
immediate predecessor. In it the human element becomes really active
for the first time. This circumstance Mr. Seidl accentuated by two bold
excisions. One of the things for which Wagner has been faulted is that
in his treatment of the Siegfried legend he has sacrificed historical
elements in order to bring it into closer relationship with Norse
mythology; has, in fact, made the fate of the gods and goddesses of
our ancestors the chief concern of the prologue and succeeding dramas.
Except for those who prefer to see only ethical symbols in the
characters there is some force in the objection. Like Homer in his
"Iliad," Wagner has a celestial as well as a terrestrial plot in his
"Ring of the Nibelung," and the men and women, or semi-divine creatures,
in it are but the unconscious agents of the good and evil powers
typified in the gods and dwarfs.
The criticism, however, is weaker here than in Germany, where ten or a
dozen dramas (chief of which is Geibel's "Brünnhild"), as well as the
medieval epics, have accustomed the people to think of their national
hero with something like historical surroundings. In these writings
the death of Siegfried is brought about by his alliance with the
Burgundians, whose seat was at Worms; and the Gunther of the legend
is easily identified with King Gundikar, who was overcome by Attila
and died A.D. 450. Wagner's original draft of "Götterdämmerung" (an
independent drama which he called "Siegfried's Death") followed the
accepted lines, and it was not until the tetralogy was planned that the
mythological elements from the Eddas were drawn into the scheme, the
theater of the play changed, its time pushed back into a prehistoric
age, and the death of the hero made to bring about the destruction
of the old gods--the Ragnarök of the Icelandic tales. The connection
between the death of Siegfried and the fate of the gods is set
forth in the two scenes which were eliminated at this production of
"Götterdämmerung." The first is the prologue in which the Nornir (the
Fates of Northern mythology), while twisting the golden-stranded rope of
the world's destiny, tell of the signs which presage the Twilight of the
Gods. The second is the interview between Brünnhilde and Waltraute, one
of the Valkyrior, who comes to urge her sister to avert the doom which
threatens the gods by restoring the baneful ring to the Rhine daughters.
Both scenes are highly significant in the plan of the tragedy as a
whole, but a public largely unfamiliar with German and unconcerned
about Wagner's philosophical purposes can much more easily spare than
endure them. In later years they were restored at the Metropolitan
performances, but I make no doubt that Mr. Seidl's wise abbreviation
had much to do with the unparalleled success of the drama in its first
season. Persons familiar with the German tongue and the tetralogy,
either from study of the book and music or from attendance on
performances in Germany, were justified in being disappointed at the
loss of two scenes highly important from a dramatic point of view and
profoundly beautiful from a musical; but it was better to achieve
success for the representations by adapting the drama to the capacity
of the public than to sacrifice it bodily on the altar of integrity.
Nessler's opera, "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," which had for nearly
five years fairly devastated the German opera houses, receiving more
performances than any three operas in the current lists, won only a
succès d'estime. It was performed for the first time on November 23d,
dressed most sumptuously and effectively cast (Robinson as Werner,
Elmblad as Conradin, Kemlitz as the Major-domo, Sänger as the Baron,
Frau Seidl-Krauss as Marie, Von Milde as Graf von Wildenstein, and
Meisslinger as Gräfin), but it reached only seven performances, was
fourth from the bottom in the list arranged according to popularity,
and in the following year it was not included in the repertory. In
1889-90 it was revived and received four performances, but its rank was
seventeenth in a list of nineteen. Weber's "Euryanthe" fared but little
better, though a work immeasurably greater. It, too, received four
performances, and it was but one remove in advance of "Der Trompeter."
To all intents and purposes it was new to the American stage when it was
produced on December 23, 1887, with Lehmann, Brandt, Alvary, Fischer,
and Elmblad in the parts of Euryanthe, Eglantine, Adolar, Lysiart, and
the King, respectively. Mr. Seidl conducted. Twenty-four years before
there had been some representations of the opera under the direction of
Carl Anschütz in Wallack's Theater, at Broadway and Broome Street, but
of this fact the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House had no memory.
It was a beautiful act of devotion on the part of Herr Anschütz and his
German singers to produce "Euryanthe" at that time, and, had it been
possible to break down the barriers of fashion and reach the heart of
the public, the history of the lyric theater in America during the
quarter of a century which followed would, no doubt, read differently
than it does. "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" were produced under similar
circumstances, and even "Die Walküre"; but "Lohengrin" was popularized
by the subsequent performances in Italian, and "Tannhäuser" and "Die
Walküre" had to wait for appreciation until fortuitous circumstances
caused fashion, fame, and fortune to smile for a space upon the German
establishment at the Metropolitan. It may have been a benignant fate
which preserved "Euryanthe" from representation in the interval. The
work is one which it is impossible for a serious music lover to approach
without affection, but appreciation of all its beauties is conditioned
upon the acceptance of theories touching the purpose, construction,
and representation of the lyric drama which did not obtain validity
in America until the German artists at the Metropolitan had completed
their missionary labors. Indeed, there are aspects of the case in which
Weber's opera, with all its affluence of melody and all its potency
of romantic and chivalric expression, is yet further removed from
popular appreciation than the dramas of Wagner. In these there is
so much orchestral pomp, so much external splendor, so much scenic
embellishment, so much that is attractive to both eye and ear, that
delight in them may exist independently of a recognition of their deeper
values. "Euryanthe" still comes before us with modest consciousness of
grievous dramatic defects and pleading for consideration and pardon
even while demanding with proper dignity recognition of the soundness
and beauty of the principles that underlie its score and the marvelous
tenderness, sincerity, and intensity of its expression of passion.
When it was first brought forward in Vienna in October, 1823, Castelli
observed that it was come fifty years before its time. He spoke with a
voice of prophecy. It was not until the fifty years had expired that
"Euryanthe" really came into its rights, and it was the light reflected
upon it by the works of Weber's great successor at Dresden that
disclosed in what those rights consisted. After that the critical voices
of the world agreed in pronouncing "Euryanthe" to be the starting point
of Wagner, and, as the latter's works grew in appreciation, "Euryanthe"
shone with ever-growing refulgence. No opera was ever prepared at the
Metropolitan with more patience, self-sacrifice, zeal, and affection
than this, and the spontaneous, hearty, sincere approbation to which the
audience gave expression must have been as sweet incense to Mr. Seidl
and the forces that he directed. But "Euryanthe" is a twin sister in
misfortune to "Fidelio"; the public will not take it to its heart. It
disappeared from the Metropolitan list with the end of the season which
witnessed its revival.