A dozen or more circumstances combined to give the first performance of

Spontini's "Ferdinand Cortez," which took place on January 6, 1888, a

unique sort of interest. In one respect it was a good deal like trying

to resuscitate a mummy, for whatever of interest historical criticism

found in the opera, a simple hearing of the music was sufficient to

convince the public that Spontini was the most antiquated composer that

had been presented to their attention in several years. Compared with

him Gluck and Mozart had real, dewy freshness, and Weber spoke in

the language of to-day. Nevertheless, Spontini still stands as the

representative of a principle, and if it had been possible for Mr.

Stanton to supplement "Ferdinand Cortez" with "Armida" or "Iphigenia in

Aulis," the Metropolitan repertory would admirably have exemplified the

development of the dramatic idea and its struggle with simple lyricism

in opera composition. The public would have been asked to take the steps

in the reverse order, it is true--Wagner, Weber, Spontini, Gluck--but

this circumstance would only have added to the clearness of the

historical exposition. The light which significant art works throw out

falls brightest upon the creations which lie behind them in the pathway

of progress. "Euryanthe" was understood through the mediation of

"Tristan und Isolde." "Ferdinand Cortez" has an American subject; the

conqueror of Mexico is the only naturalized American with whom we had

an acquaintance till Pinkerton came on the stage in Puccini's "Madama

Butterfly," and Mr. Stanton surpassed all his previous efforts in the

line of spectacle to celebrate the glories of this archaic American

opera. The people employed in the representation rivaled in numbers

those who constituted the veritable Cortez's army, while the horses came

within three of the number that the Spaniard took into Mexico. This was

carrying realism pretty close to historical verity. A finer sense of

dramatic propriety, however, was exhibited in the care with which the

pictures and paraphernalia of the opera were prepared. The ancient

architecture of Mexico, the sculptures, the symbols of various kinds

carried in the processions, the banners of Montezuma and some of the

costumes of his warriors were copied with painstaking fidelity from the

remains of the civilization which existed in Mexico at the time of the

conquest. The cast of the opera was this: Cortez, Niemann; Alvarez,

Alvary; High Priest, Fischer; Telasko, Robinson; Montezuma, Elmblad;

Morales, Von Milde; Amazily, Fräulein Meisslinger.

The prospectus for the season of 1888-89 announced sixteen weeks of

opera between November 28th and March 16th, the subscription to be for

forty-seven nights and sixteen matinées. The last two weeks were set

apart for two consecutive representations of the dramas constituting

"The Ring of the Nibelung." The difficulties involved in an effort to

compass the tetralogy in a week combined with other circumstances to

compel an extension of the season for a week, much to the advantage of

the enterprise. The final record showed that fifty evening and eighteen

afternoon performances had taken place between the opening night and

March 23, 1889. Sixteen works were performed, the relative popularity

of which is indicated in the following list: "Götterdämmerung,"

"Tannhäuser," "Das Rheingold," "La Juive," "Il Trovatore," "Lohengrin,"

"Aïda," "Siegfried," "L'Africaine," "Die Meistersinger," "Les

Huguenots," "Die Walküre," "Faust," "Le Prophète," "Fidelio," and

"William Tell." The most significant new production--indeed the only

significant one--was "Das Rheingold," which completed the acquaintance

of the New York public with the current works of Wagner, "Parsifal"

being still under the Bayreuth embargo, although it had several times

been given in concert form. The total cost of the representations, not

including scenery, costumes, properties, and music, was $333,731.31,

or an average of $4,907.78 a representation. The total receipts from

the opera were $213,630.99, divided as follows: Box office sales,

$149,973.50; subscriptions, $59,607.50; privileges, $4,049.99. The

average receipts a representation were $3,141.63. The loss to the

stockholders on the operatic account was $1,766.15 a representation,

which was covered by the receipt of $201,180.00 from the stockholders

for the maintenance of the establishment, the fixed charges on

the building, and the cost of scenery, music, etc., amounting to

$144,455.81.

"Das Rheingold" was produced for the first time on January 4, 1889,

under the direction of Mr. Seidl, and was performed nine times in

the ten weeks of the season which remained. The artists concerned in

the production were Emil Fischer as Wotan, Max Alvary as Loge, Alois

Grienauer as Donner, Albert Mittelhauser as Froh, Joseph Beck as

Alberich, Wilhelm Sedlmayer as Mime, Eugen Weiss as Fafner, Ludwig

Mödlinger as Fasolt, Fanny Moran-Olden as Fricka, Katti Bettaque as

Freia, Sophie Traubmann as Woglinde, Felice Kaschowska as Wellgunde,

Hedwig Reil as Flosshilde, and again, Hedwig Reil as Erda.

The sixth season of opera in German began on November 27, 1889, and

ended on March 22, 1890. Within this period fifty evening and seventeen

afternoon subscription performances were given and there was an extra

performance on February 27th for the benefit of Lilli Lehmann, who

had stipulated for it in her contract in lieu of an increase in

her honorarium, demanded and refused. The sixty-seven subscription

performances were devoted to nineteen operas and dramas which are

here named in the order of popularity as indicated by attendance and

receipts: "Siegfried," "Don Giovanni," "Die Meistersinger," "Tristan

und Isolde," "Lohengrin," "Das Rheingold," "Der Barbier von Bagdad,"

"Tannhäuser," "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Götterdämmerung," "Die

Königin von Saba," "William Tell," "Aïda," "Die Walküre," "Rienzi,"

"Il Trovatore," "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," "Un Ballo in Maschera,"

and "La Juive." The ballet "Die Puppenfee" was performed in connection

with the opera "Der Barbier von Bagdad." The last three weeks of the

season were devoted to representations in chronological order (barring

an exchange between "Tristan" and "Meistersinger") of all the operas

and lyric dramas of Wagner from "Rienzi" to "Götterdämmerung,"

inclusive. The total receipts from subscriptions, box office sales,

and privileges were $209,866.35; average, $3,132.34. The total cost of

producing the operas (not including scenery, costumes, properties, and

music) was $352,990.32, or an average of $5,268.52 per representation.

On this showing the loss to the stockholders on operatic account was

$2,136.18 a representation, which was met by an assessment of $3,000 a

box; of this sum $1,200 went to the fixed charges on the opera house.

The one novelty of the season was Peter Cornelius's "Barbier von

Bagdad," which had its first performance on January 4, 1890. The

production was embarrassed by mishaps and misfortunes. It had been

announced for December 25th, but Mr. Paul Kalisch, the tenor, fell ill

with the prevailing epidemic and a postponement became necessary. It was

set down for January 4th, but when that day came Mr. Seidl was ill. He

had prepared the opera with great care and loving devotion, but at the

eleventh hour had to hand his baton to his youthful assistant, Walter

Damrosch. The beautiful work had only four representations. The original

cast was as follows: Caliph, Josef Beck; Mustapha, Wilhelm Sedlmayer;

Margiana, Sophie Traubmann; Bostana, Charlotte Huhn; the Barber, Emil

Fischer. "Die Puppenfee," ballet by J. Hassreiter and F. Gaul, music by

Joseph Bayer, followed the opera and was conducted by Frank Damrosch.

The most important addition to the forces in this season was Theodor

Reichmann, who effected his entrance on the American stage on the first

evening in Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." Herr Reichmann was known to

American pilgrims to the Wagnerian Mecca as the admired representative

of Amfortas in "Parsifal," but his impersonation of the Dutchman was

equally famous in Vienna and the German capitals. On this occasion Mr.

Seidl restored the architect's original design with reference to the

band. Mr. Cady's device had never had a fair trial. Signor Vianesi

condemned it in the first season. When Dr. Damrosch took the helm he

tried it, but abandoned it and resorted to the compromise suggested by

Vianesi, which raised the musicians nearly to the level of the first row

of stalls in the audience room. The growth of the band sent the drummers

outside the railing, but no one was brave enough to restore the original

arrangement till the opening of the sixth German season.

I come to the operatic activities of the period beyond the walls of the

Metropolitan. They scarcely amounted to opposition at any time, though

at the end of the third year there came a brief season of Italian opera

in the home of the German institution which whetted the appetites of the

boxholders and, no doubt, had much to do with the revolution which took

place two years later. In 1887, beginning on October 17th and ending in

December, there was a series of performances at the Thalia Theater which

served again to indicate that German opera had a following among the

people who could not afford to patronize the aristocratic establishment.

This season was arranged to exploit Heinrich Bötel, a coachman-tenor

of the Wachtel stripe, who came from the Stadttheater, in Hamburg. The

prima donna was Frau Herbert-Förster, the wife of Victor Herbert,

who had been a member of the Metropolitan company while her husband,

afterward the most successful of writers for the American operetta

stage, sat in Mr. Seidl's orchestra. The operas given were "Trovatore,"

"Martha," "The Postilion of Lonjumeau," Flotow's "Stradella," "La Dame

Blanche," and "Les Huguenots." At other theaters, too, there were

performances of operas and operettas by the Boston Ideal Opera Company

and other troupes, but with them these annals have no concern. The

National Opera Company, stripped of the prestige with which it had

started out, abandoned by Mr. Thomas and reorganized on a co-operative

basis, made its last struggle for existence at the Academy of Music

between April 2 and April 6, 1888. The decay of the institution seemed

to fill it with the enterprise and energy of despair. It produced (but

in anything but a commendable fashion) English versions of Goldmark's

"Queen of Sheba," Rubinstein's "Nero," "Tannhäuser" (first performance

of the opera in English in New York on April 4th), and "Lohengrin." In

the company, besides some of the singers who had belonged to it in the

previous two years, were Eloi Sylva, Bertha Pierson, Amanda Fabbris,

Charles Bassett, and Barton McGuckin, the last a tenor who had made

a notable career in Great Britain with Mr. Carl Rosa's companies.

This season also saw the introduction of Verdi's "Otello" by a company

especially organized for the purpose by Italo Campanini, who, his

singing days being practically over, turned impresario. He had been in

Milan when Verdi's opera was produced, on February 5, 1887, and made

haste to procure the American rights of performance. It was a laudable

ambition, but the enterprise was overwhelmed with disaster. Campanini

brought from Italy a tenor named Marconi for the titular rôle; his

sister-in-law, Eva Tetrazzini, to sing the part of Desdemona, and his

brother, Cleofonte (who was maestro di cembalo at the Metropolitan Opera

House during its first season), as conductor. With these he associated

Signora Scalchi and Signor Galassi (Emilia and Iago). The first

performance took place on April 16, 1888, in the Academy of Music, and

four representations were given on the established opera nights and

Saturday afternoons. The public's attitude was apathetic. The tenor did

not please, the fashionable season was over, the music was not of the

kind that had been expected from Verdi, and the prices of admission were

too high for a popular audience. Signor Campanini essayed a second week

and now threw his own popularity into the scale. Signor Marconi was

dismissed and returned at once to Europe, never to be heard again in New

York; Campanini, who had been the most popular tenor with New Yorkers

since the palmy days of Brignoli, took his part; the prices of admission

were reduced. All to no avail; ruin had overtaken the manager, and the

eighth performance was the last. It was truly pitiable. Signor Campanini

deserved better for his bold embarkation in a noble enterprise; but

reasons for the failure were easily found. It was unwise to give opera

on an ambitious scale after the amusement season had worn itself out;

it was nothing less than foolish to do so with an ill-equipped company,

in a house that had lost its fashionable prestige and at prices so

large that a fatal blunder had to be confessed by their reduction at

the end of a week. Two seasons later, the opera was announced by the

Metropolitan director, Mr. Stanton, but was not given, for reasons

already mentioned. How it entered the fashionable home of opera we

shall see presently.

After the lapse of twenty years it is still impossible to say that

"Otello" has really been habilitated in New York. Its fate has not

been quite so pitiful as that of "Falstaff," because it has been more

frequently performed, and performed, moreover, in better style; but it

has not won the popular heart. It is admired by the knowing, but not

loved by the masses, as the earlier operas, especially "Aïda," is loved.

The reason? I am still inclined to look for it where I thought I found

it a score of years ago. At that time it seemed to me that the public,

if it concerned itself with the matter at all (which I doubt), was at a

loss for a point of view from which to consider it. Was it an Italian

opera? Certainly not, if that type was represented by any of the works

of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, or of Verdi himself when he was the

popular idol. Was it a French opera? A German opera? A lyric drama in

the Wagnerian manner? To the connoisseur, if not to the idle prattler

about music, each of these designations suggests a distinct idea--a

form, a style, a manner. Which of them might with most propriety be

applied to this work? The circumstance that the book was in the Italian

language had little to do with the question, no matter how loudly

an excitable individual (as on this occasion) might shout "Viva

l'Italiano!" to testify his admiration for Verdi's music. "The

style--it is the man." "Otello" was composed and first brought forward

under anomalous conditions, and though it first saw the stage lamps

at Milan, its style is not distinctively Italian. Neither is it

distinctively French or German. It is of its own kind, Verdian;

characteristic of the composer of "Rigoletto," "Trovatore," and

"Traviata" in its essence, though widely different from them in

expression. The composer himself indicated that he desired it to be

looked upon as outside of the old operatic conventions. According to its

title page it is "Dramma lirico in quattro Atti." "Aïda" was still an

"Opera in quattro Atti." The distinction was not undesigned. There are

many other indications that he desired his work to be looked upon as

something as far from old-fashioned opera as were Wagner's later dramas;

that he aimed in the first instance at a presentation of its dramatic

contents, and considered the music as a means, and not entirely as an

end. In this he followed a Wagnerian precept. His score is filled with

instrumental interludes designed to accompany actions or to depict

emotions. He leaves no question in our minds on this point, but as fully

as Wagner in his "Lohengrin" period he indicates the bodily movements

that are to go hand in hand with the music. In the picture of a storm

which opens the opera the manipulator of the artificial lightning is

not left to his discretion as to the proper moment for discharging

his brutum fulmen; in the love duet, at the close of the first act,

the appearance of the moon and stars is sought to be intensified by

descriptive effects in the music; and when, in the last scene, Otello

kisses the sleeping Desdemona, and the one typical phrase of the opera

(drawn from the love scene) is repeated, the composer indicates on what

beat of each measure he wants each kiss to fall. These are only a few

instances of Verdi's appreciation of the necessity of suiting the action

to the music, the music to the action; and they sink into insignificance

when compared with his treatment of the murder in the last act. Then

Otello's entrance and actions up to the waking of Desdemona are

accompanied by a solo on double basses, interrupted at intervals by

energetic passages from the other strings. It is not difficult to recall

other melodramas written since "Fidelio" in which similar dramatic

effects are sought, but the audacity of Verdi's procedure is unexampled

in Italian opera. I make no doubt that had this scene been written

twenty years earlier it would have been received by his countrymen

with hisses and catcalls. Yet we were told that at the opera's first

performance in Milan the audience redemanded it uproariously and the

Italian critics could not sufficiently express their admiration for

it. The fact is that "Otello" disclosed an honest, consistent, and in

many respects successful effort to realize the higher purposes which

we associate in the conception of a lyric drama as distinguished from

the opera. With this conception nationalism had nothing to do; Verdi's

superb artistic nature, everything.

In the season of 1888-89 there was but a single performance of Italian

opera in New York, a circumstance singular enough to deserve special

mention. On April 24th Signor Campanini appeared with Clementine De Vere

in "Lucia di Lammermoor," the performance being for the once-popular

favorite's benefit. Memories of a period in which Italian singers were

tremendously active were called up in the minds of opera-goers of the

older generation by an entertainment given in the Metropolitan Opera

House on February 12th, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Max

Maretzek's entrance in the American field as a conductor of operas. The

affair was generously patronized and participated in on its professional

side by Theodore Thomas, Anton Seidl, Frank van der Stucken, Adolf

Neuendorff, and Walter Damrosch as conductors; Mme. Fursch-Madi, Miss

Emily Winant, Miss Maud Powell, Rafael Joseffy, Max Alvary, Signor Del

Puente, Julius Perotti, Wilhelm Sedlmayer, and Mrs. Herbert-Foerster.

Scenes from "Siegfried," "Il Trovatore," and "Carmen" were performed.

There were some performances of operas in English in the early part

of the next season (1889-90) by the Emma Juch English Opera Company

(Nessler's "Trumpeter of Säkkingen" being brought forward as a novelty),

at the Harlem Opera House, owned and managed by Oscar Hammerstein. This

house also, for a week after the close of the regular season at the

Metropolitan, was the scene of an unsuccessful effort to prolong the

German performances, or rather to provide German opera at popular

prices to the residents of Harlem. The company, headed by Miss Lehmann

and conducted by Walter Damrosch, was made up of singers from the

Metropolitan company. The operas given were "Norma," "Les Huguenots,"

and "Il Trovatore."

The Italian company which took possession of the Metropolitan Opera

House immediately on its vacation by the German singers was under the

management of Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau. During the fall and

winter months it had been giving representations in some of the larger

cities of the United States and Mexico City. Arditi and Sapio were the

conductors, and most of the singers were familiar to the public--Patti,

Albani, Nordica, Fabbri, Ravelli, Vicini, Perugini, Del Puente,

Castelmary, Novara, Migliara; newcomers were Hortense Synnerberg,

mezzo-soprano; Signora Pettigiani, soprano leggiero; Zardo, barytone,

and Francesco Tamagno, tenor. The presence of this singer in the troupe

served to indicate that its purpose, outside the exploitation of Madame

Patti, was the production of Verdi's "Otello," with which the season

was opened on March 24th, Madame Albani being the Desdemona. Tamagno

had created the title rôle in Milan two years before.

The subscription was for sixteen evenings and four matinées, which

were to be encompassed in a period of four weeks; but the illness of

Madame Patti compelled a postponement of one of the performances until

the fifth week after the opening, and then to the twenty subscription

representations was added, a twenty-first as a "farewell" to Madame

Patti. The operas in which this artist appeared were "La Sonnambula,"

"Semiramide," "Lakmé," "Martha," "Lucia di Lammermoor," "Roméo et

Juliette," "Il Barbiere," "Linda di Chamouni," and "La Traviata." The

other operas were "Otello," "Il Trovatore," "Tell," "Aïda," "Faust,"

"L'Africaine," "Rigoletto," and "Les Huguenots."

There was no novelty in the list, unless the fact that "Lakmé" was

transformed into a novelty by the Italian version; it had been heard

before in English, and the performance was so desperately slipshod,

notwithstanding that Mme. Patti impersonated the heroine, that it

awakened only pity for Delibes's work. It would be extremely interesting

and doubtless instructive also were I able to give such a detailed

financial statement of the outcome of this season as Mr. Stanton's

courtesy enabled me at the time to give of the German seasons. But here

I am thrown on conjecture. On the evenings and afternoons when Patti

sang the audiences unquestionably represented vast receipts to the

management. An estimate made at the time from a study of the character

and size of the audiences placed the receipts in round numbers at

$100,000. It was significant as bearing on the artistic problem

suggested by the succession of German and Italian opera--a problem that

was destined to become of paramount interest soon--that on scarcely

a single Patti performance were all the orchestra stalls sold, and

that there were always unsold boxes in the tier not occupied by the

stockholders. The bulk of the money came from the occupants of the

balconies and gallery. The musical and fashionable elements in the

city's population had comparatively small representation. The audiences,

in fact, were largely composed of curiosity seekers, impelled by the

desire to be able in the future to say that they, too, had heard the

greatest songstress of the last generation of the nineteenth century.

The "Patti's Farewell" trick was still effective; a few years later it

was found that it would work no longer, and the great singer disappeared

in a black cloud of failure, followed by the grief of all who had been

her admirers.

CHAPTER XV

END OF THE GERMAN PERIOD

The season of 1890-91 was full of incidents, some exciting, some

amusing, but they were all dwarfed by the announcement which came in the

middle of January that the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House had

concluded a contract of lease with Henry E. Abbey (or Abbey and Grau)

under which opera was to be given in the next season in Italian and

French. The alleged reason was that Mr. Abbey was willing to assume

all risk of failure for the same subvention which the stockholders as

individuals were paying themselves in their capacity as entrepreneurs;

the real reason was that the stockholders, or a majority of them, were

weary of German opera, and especially of the dramas of Wagner. This

reason spoke out of the action which had been taken looking to the

eighth season of opera (seventh in German) before an agreement had been

reached with Mr. Abbey. Wagner had supplied the financial backbone to

all the seasons since German opera had been introduced, as will appear

presently; but the directors were unwilling to admit that fact until, as

a result of their change of policy, disaster stared them in the face.

Then they made haste to reverse their action as far as possible and

did other works of repentance which enabled them to save a modicum of

prestige and some money; but the hands of the clock had been set back,

and the goal of a national opera, toward which the German movement was

leading, was forgotten. It has never been seen since.

When Mr. Stanton went to Germany in the spring of 1890 to engage singers

and select a repertory he carried with him a definite policy, formulated

by the directors, which was the fruit of a sentimental passion for the

amiable Italian muse and a spirit of thrift. Italian opera under their

own management seeming still impracticable because of its expensiveness,

the directors conceived what they thought would prove to be a happy

compromise; they would continue to give German opera, but would make

a radical change in the character of the repertory. Wagner was to be

shelved as to all but his earlier operas, such as "Tannhäuser" and

"Lohengrin," and the season enriched with new works by Italian and

French composers. With this purpose in view, Mr. Stanton completed his

arrangements, and the season of 1890-91 was opened on November 26th in

a manner that looked like a bold and successful stroke in favor of the

new policy. "Asrael," an opera by an Italian composer, which had stirred

up some favorable comment in Germany and Italy, was given with a great

deal of sumptuousness in stage attire and with a company which critics

and amateurs agreed in recognizing as, on the whole, stronger than any

of recent years. Mme. Lehmann-Kalisch was not at its head, it is true,

but instead there was a singer of excellent ability and considerable

personal and artistic charm in the person of Antonia Mielke. Emil

Fischer was retained, and also Theodor Reichmann and some of the lesser

members of the old company, and to them were added Heinrich Gudehus,

Jennie Broch (soprano leggiero), Marie Ritter-Goetze (mezzo-soprano),

Andreas Dippel, Marie Jahn (soprano), and others. Mme. Minnie Hauk

joined the forces later in the season.

"Asrael" was in every respect a surprise--as strange to the audience

as if it had been composed for the occasion. The name of the composer,

Alberto Franchetti, had never appeared in any local list save once, in

April, 1887, when a symphony in E minor, bearing it, had been performed

at a concert of the Philharmonic Society under the direction of Theodore

Thomas. The Tribune newspaper contributed all that the public learned

about him then and since. This was to the effect that he was a young

Italian (or, rather, Italianized Hebrew), a member of one of the

branches of the Rothschilds, who had studied in Munich and lived much

of his time in Dresden, where Kapellmeister Schuch sometimes gave him

opportunities to hear his orchestral music. Also that he was very

wealthy, having a purse as large as his artistic ambition, and was

not disinclined, when a work of his composition was accepted for

performance, to care for its sumptuous production by paying for the

stage decorations out of his own pocket. He resembled Meyerbeer in being

a Jew, and also in that it was possible for his mother to say of him:

"My son is a musical composer, but not of necessity." The book of the

opera proved to be a most bewildering conglomeration of scenes and

personages from familiar operas, and though the pictures were

magnificent and much of the music was pleasing, "Asrael" had only five

performances, and when the record of the season was made up it was

found to stand thirteenth in a list of seventeen operas.

At the bottom of this list stood the two other novelties of the season,

and if the public were bewildered by "Asrael" they were thrown into

consternation by "Der Vasall von Szigeth," and into contemptuous

merriment by "Diana von Solange." Both of these operas were sung in

German, of course, but "Der Vasall," not only had an Italian (Anton

Smareglia) for its composer, like "Asrael," but had originally been

composed in Italian and borne an Italian name--"Il Vassallo di Szigeth."

Here plainly was a concession to the Italian predilections of the

stockholders. But the composer of "Der Vasall," or "Il Vassallo"--as you

like it--was a Dalmatian, like Von Suppé, the operetta composer. His

native tongue was Italian, but the influence of Austrian domination and

Austrian art had deeply affected his nationalism, and enabled him to

infuse an Hungarian subject (the story of "Der Vasall" was Hungarian)

with Hungarian musical color. It therefore chanced that in this

instance, when the stockholders seemed to have bargained for Italian

sweets, they got a strong dose of Magyar paprika. As for the libretto,

it offered such a sup of horrors as had never been seen on an operatic

stage before, and has never been seen since. "Der Vasall von Szigeth,"

which was brought forward on December 12th, had four performances in the

season and took in $7,805.50, which was probably not much more than the

cost of staging the opera.

The amused gossip touching the potency of new influences which had begun

with "Asrael" was given fresh fuel by the production of "Diana von

Solange." Why an opera which had lain "so lange" (to make an obvious

German pun) in the limbo of forgotten things, which, indeed, had never

enjoyed a popularity of any kind, though it was thirty or forty years

old, should have been resurrected for production in New York was a

question well calculated to irritate curiosity and provoke many an

ill-natured sally of wit. "Diana von Solange" was the work of Ernest II,

Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The family to which the duke belonged had

long dallied with music; that the public knew. His ducal highness's

brother, the British Prince Consort, affected the art in his time, and

left evidences of good, sound taste in the story of English music, and

it was known that the Duke of Edinburgh (son of the Prince Consort and

Queen Victoria) was an amateur fiddler, quite capable of leading the

band at a London smoking concert. A complacent German lexicographer had

even admitted Ernest II into the fellowship of Beethoven, but that fact

was not widely known, and after "Diana von Solange" had been produced

the most cogent argument in explanation of its production among the

theatrical wits was based on familiar German stories of the lavishness

of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the distribution of orders,

especially among musicians. No anecdote was more popular for the rest of

the season in the corridors than that which told of how a concert party

driving away from the ducal palace discovered that the chamberlain had

handed over one more decoration than the artists who had entertained the

duke. "Never mind," quoth the chamberlain; "give it to the coachman!"

The production of an opera composed by the duke without the obbligato

distribution of orders was inconceivable, even in democratic America,

but the tongues of waggish gossips wagged so furiously that it was said

only the stage manager was willing to accept his bauble. Brahms's bon

mot touching the danger of criticizing the music of royalty, "because

no one could tell who composed it," not being current at the time,

the music of "Diana von Solange" was mercilessly faulted, as was also

the libretto. It was certainly right royal poetry set to right royal

music--an infusion of immature Verdi and Meyerbeer plentifully watered.

Archaic research discovered that the opera had been written some

thirty-five years before, and that the composer, possessing, quite

naturally, some influence with the management of the ducal theaters at

Coburg and Gotha, had succeeded in having it performed in those cities

in December, 1858, and May, 1859, and that Dresden had also honored

it with a performance in January, 1859. Why New York blew the dust of

generations off its score was never learned by the inquisitive newspaper

scribes.

The story of the opera concerned itself with the succession to the

throne of Portugal on the death of Enrique, with whom the old Burgundian

line became extinct in 1580. A wicked man plotted to give the crown

to Philip II of Spain (who really got it), and employed a Provençal

adventuress to help keep it from the nephew of the dying king. But

the adventuress, who lent her name to the opera, lost heart in the

enterprise because she fell in love with the nephew and was stabbed

to death for her pains. The wicked man was shot by the nephew, and

there was thus a proper amount of bloodshed to justify the historical

character of the work, the grewsomeness of which was modified by much

edifying declamation on the part of the dying king, expressive of the

lofty sentiments which, the world knows, always fill the breasts of

monarchs. The opera was performed on January 9, 1891, and received two

representations. A third was announced for a Saturday afternoon, but

called forth so emphatic a popular request for "Fidelio" that the

representative of the stockholders adjudged it to be the course of

wisdom to set aside Ernest II in favor of Beethoven.

For six weeks Mr. Stanton followed the line of policy laid down by his

directors, and within that time brought forward the three novelties

which I have described, besides "Tannhäuser," "Lohengrin," "The Flying

Dutchman," "Les Huguenots," "Le Prophète," and "Fidelio." Already in the

third week of the season, however, it became manifest that the policy

of the directors did not meet with the approbation of the public. One

result of the German representations in the preceding six years had

been to develop a class of opera patrons with intelligent tastes and

warm affections. A large fraction of this public had become season

subscribers, and among these dissatisfaction with the current repertory

was growing daily. It may be that the panicky feeling in financial

circles had something to do with a falling off in general attendance in

the early part of the season, but this is scarcely borne out by the fact

that the advance subscription amounted to $72,000, representing about

one thousand persons, and that, though the novelties would not draw, the

three Wagnerian works proved to be as attractive as ever they had been.

The significance of the popular attitude, indeed, was obvious enough,

although the directors chose to close their eyes and ears to it. It

was, in fact, so obvious that The Tribune newspaper did not hesitate to

predict a tremendous success for "Fidelio" when it was announced "for

one performance only" on December 26th, and to assert in advance of the

performance that it would have to be repeated to satisfy the demand for

good dramatic music which had grown up because of the Wagner cult and

been whetted by Mr. Stanton's neglect to put on the stage a few works

imbued with the modern dramatic spirit. Two repetitions of "Fidelio"

and the lifting of that opera to fourth place in the list attested the

soundness of The Tribune's diagnosis of the situation.

By a coincidence, on the night of the first representation for the

season of one of the latter-day works of Wagner, which, had the

directors chosen to read the signs of the times aright and be guided

by them, might have ushered in the era of prosperity which they were

sighing for but repelling by their course, the decision was reached to

turn over the opera house to Mr. Abbey for performances in Italian and

French. This date was January 14th. So far as the subscribers to the

opera and the majority of its patrons were concerned, this action of the

directors seemed like nothing else than the culmination of a conspiracy

to set back the clock of musical progress in New York a quarter of a

century at least. The news came upon the public like a bolt from the

blue. The plan had been laid early in the summer (was, in fact, the

fruition of the postprandial Patti season of 1889-90), but all concerned

had been pledged to secrecy. Mr. Abbey seized the right moment to

strike, and when he had bagged his game he exhibited it forthwith, and

it was received with a loud chorus of cheers from the enemies of the

German institution. The directors gleefully continued their course for

a little while longer, though the handwriting on the wall had begun to

blaze forth when all the canons of art and the fruit of years of serious

effort were insulted by the production of the amorphous creation of one

whose sole claim on popular attention as a composer was that he was a

royal duke and the brother-in-law of the Queen of England.

At the first performance, after the announcement of the projected

change had been made, the public took it upon themselves to show their

disapproval of the action of the directors. There seemed to be but one

way to do this effectually without injury to the form of art which the

public had learned to love, and that way was adopted: After January

14th not a single representation was conducted by Mr. Seidl at which

the conductor was not compelled to appear upon the stage and accept

a tribute of popular admiration. Mr. Seidl had come to be the

representative in an especial manner of the new spirit as opposed to

the directors, who, by their action, had shown that they stood for the

old. And so the directors were rebuked in the honors showered upon the

conductor. It needed as little prophetic gift to predict what course Mr.

Stanton would pursue in view of the new developments as it had required

to predict the success of "Fidelio" after the experiences of 1888-89 had

seemed to indicate that the opera had lost all charm for the public. On

January 20th, only six days after Mr. Abbey had captured the directors,

The Tribune, commenting editorially on the "Operatic Revolution,"

remarked:

Financially Wagner must save this season or it will suffer shipwreck.

Mr. Stanton knows that, and it is not a rash prediction to say that

the whole unperformed list will be sacrificed from this time forth

to the production of Wagner's works. The policy will be voted wise

by the directors because it will go further than anything else to

save the season; it will be welcomed by the public because of their

disappointment with the novelties which a shortsighted policy attempted

to foist upon them.

The prediction was fulfilled to the letter; after January 20th

thirty-five representations took place, and all but ten of them were

devoted to Wagner's works, notwithstanding that within this period Mme.

Minnie Hauk was added to the company and that the two operas in which

she appeared ("L'Africaine" and "Carmen") proved more popular than any

works of the non-Wagnerian list, with the single exception of "Fidelio."

An amusing evidence of the enforced change of heart in the directors

was a promulgation of an order requesting the occupants of the boxes to

discontinue the conversation during performances which had grown to be a

public scandal. The resolution to publish the order was adopted, either

at the meeting of the directors at which the agreement was reached

with Mr. Abbey, or the day after; the order bore date January 15; the

contract with Mr. Abbey was made on January 14th.

It is proper that I devote some attention to the story of the growth of

the spirit which eventually overthrew German opera at the Metropolitan

Opera House, or, rather, not German opera, but opera exclusively in the

German tongue; for it was not long in developing that the new régime

stood no show of success unless to Italian and French German opera was

also added. The vicissitudes which brought with them this demonstration

must be reserved for a subsequent chapter, but before I tell the story

of the institution's retrogression I owe to the student of history

an outline of the doings of the season 1890-91. The season began on

November 26th and lasted till March 21st. There were sixty-seven

subscription performances, an extra performance of "Fidelio" for the

benefit of the chorus, which yielded $1,849, giving each chorister

$18.20, and a Sunday night performance of excerpts from "Parsifal,"

which brought in $1,872. I have enumerated the operas which had been

given up to the production of "Diana von Solange"; after this date

came "Die Meistersinger," "L'Africaine," "Siegfried," "Der Barbier von

Bagdad," "Die Walküre," "Götterdämmerung," "Carmen," and "Tristan und

Isolde." Arranged in the order of their popularity as indicated by

attendance and receipts, the entire list was as follows: "Siegfried,"

four times; "Tannhäuser," seven times; "Götterdämmerung," four times;

"Fidelio," three times; "Die Meistersinger," six times; "Die Walküre,"

four times; "Lohengrin," seven times; "Carmen," three times; "The Flying

Dutchman," four times; "L'Africaine," three times; "Le Prophète," once;

"Tristan und Isolde," three times; "Asrael," five times; "Barber of

Bagdad," four times; "Les Huguenots," three times; "Der Vasall von

Szigeth," four times; "Diana von Solange," twice. The total receipts for

the season (box office sales and subscriptions) were $198,119.25; the

average, $2,957.

The last performance of the season was given to "Die Meistersinger"

on a Saturday afternoon. The house was crowded from floor to ceiling

and there were signs from the beginning that there was to be a large

expression of public opinion. After the first and second acts there were

calls and recalls for the singers and for Mr. Seidl. But this was but a

preparation. After the fall of the curtain on the last act the multitude

remained in the audience room for over half an hour (remained, indeed,

till laborers appeared on the stage to get it ready for a concert in the

evening), and called for one after another of the persons who were in

one way or another representative of the system that was passing away.

The greatest bursts of enthusiasm were those which greeted Mr. Stanton

(whose sympathies were with the German movement), Mr. Seidl and Mr.

Fischer, though Mr. Walter Damrosch, Mr. Habelmann, Mr. Dippel, Fräulein

Jahn, and other singers were not neglected. Mr. Stanton's unwillingness

to receive the distinction which the audience plainly wished to shower

upon him caused disappointment; but Mr. Stanton stood in an awkward

position between the stockholders and the public. Finally, after an

unusual outburst of plaudits for Mr. Fischer, that singer came forward

carrying a gigantic wreath and half a dozen bouquets and said:

Ladies and Gentlemen: It is impossible for me to express what I feel

for your kindness and love; and I hope it is not the last time (here

a tremendous uproar interrupted the speaker for a space) that I shall

sing for you here, on this stage, in German.

Had one been able to explode a ton of dynamite when Mr. Fischer ended

it would have been accepted by the audience as not more than a fitting

amount of approbative noise. Twenty minutes later, the audience still

clamoring for a speech, Mr. Seidl came forward, for perhaps the

twentieth time, and spoke as follows:

Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, I understand the meaning of this

great demonstration. For myself, the orchestra, and the other members

of the company, I thank you.

To understand the story of the overthrow of German opera managed by the

owners of the opera house, and the reversion to the system which had

proved disastrous at the beginning and was fated to prove disastrous

again, it is well to bear the fact in mind that instability was, is,

and always will be an element in the cultivation of opera so long as it

remains an exotic; that is, until it becomes a national expression in

art, using the vernacular and giving utterance to national ideals. The

fickleness of the public taste, the popular craving for sensation, the

egotism and rapacity of the artists, the lack of high purpose in the

promoters, the domination of fashion instead of love for art, the

lack of real artistic culture--all these things have stood from the

beginning, as they still stand, in the way of a permanent foundation

of opera in New York. The boxes of the Metropolitan Opera House have

a high market value to-day, but they are a coveted asset only because

they are visible symbols of social distinction. There were genuine

notes of rejoicing in the stockholders' voices at the measure of

financial success achieved in the first three seasons of German opera,

but the lesson had not yet been learned that an institution like the

Metropolitan Opera House can only be maintained by a subvention in

perpetuity; that in democratic America the persons who crave and create

the luxury must contribute from their pockets the equivalent of the

money which in Europe comes from national exchequers and the privy

purses of monarchs. This fact did eventually impress itself upon the

consciousness of the stockholders of the Metropolitan Opera House, but

when it found lodgment there it created a notion--a natural one, and

easily understood--that their predilections, and theirs alone, ought

to be humored in the character of the entertainment. I have displayed

a disposition to quarrel with the artistic attitude of the directors,

but I would not be an honest chronicler of the operatic occurrences of

the last twenty-five years if I did not do so. The facts in the case

were flagrant, the situation anomalous. The stockholders created an

art spirit which was big with promise while rich in fulfilment, and

then killed it because its manifestation bored them. An institution

which seemed about to become permanent and a fit and adequate national

expression in an admired form of art, was set afloat again upon the

sea of impermanency and speculation. About the middle of the fourth

German season the directors formally resolved to continue the German

representations. Not long afterward it developed that the receipts

for the season would be considerably less than had been counted on,

and immediately a clamor arose against the management. The champions

of Italian opera joyfully proclaimed that the knell of German opera

had rung, and attributed the falling off in popular support to the

predominance of Wagner's operas and dramas in the repertory. The

disaffection threatened mischief to the enterprise and had to be met;

the directors met it by formally asking for an expression of opinion

from the stockholders as to the future conduct of the institution. On

January 21, 1888, they sent out a circular letter to the stockholders,

in which they submitted two propositions, on which they asked for a

vote. One was "To go on with German opera with an assessment of $3,200 a

box"; the other, "To give no opera the next season, with an assessment

of $1,000 a box, and to resume, if possible, the following season." The

letter, which was signed by James A. Roosevelt, president, stated that

the giving of Italian opera was not suggested because the directors

"were convinced that to do so in a satisfactory manner will require a

much larger assessment upon the stockholders than to give German opera."

It was also set forth that the directors had estimated that the opera

could be maintained for the assessment ($2,500 on each box), provided

the receipts from the public amounted to $3,000 a performance. The

subscription was 50 per cent. larger than the previous year (about

$80,000, against $52,000), and larger receipts had been expected than

in 1886-87, when the average was about $3,300. Instead, the receipts

had fallen off and indicated an average of only $2,500. Rentals,

however, had increased $14,000.

The answer of the stockholders was a vote of over four to one in favor

of continuing German opera under the first proposition of the circular

letter. Then, while the Italinissimi were still proclaiming that

the Metropolitan opera had been killed by Wagnerism, there came the

announcement of two weeks of consecutive representations of the three

dramas of "The Ring of the Nibelung" (all but the prologue), which were

in the repertory of the company. The two weeks, and a third in which

"Götterdämmerung" was performed three times, brought more money into

the exchequer of the opera than any preceding five weeks of the season.

The average of $2,500 apprehended by the directors was raised to over

$3,177.

During the next season the average receipts were practically the same,

nor was there anything to change the situation from a financial point

of view. The stockholders had voted themselves into a mood of temporary

quiescence, and the opera pursued its serious course unhampered by more

than the ordinary fault-finding on the part of the representations of

careless amusement seekers in the public press, and the grumbling in

the boxes because the musical director and stage manager persisted in

darkening the audience room in order to heighten the effect of the

stage pictures.

The aristocratic prejudice against gloom extended to the operas which

contained dark scenes, and when Mr. Stanton once exercised his authority

as director and had the stage lights going at almost full tilt in the

dungeon scene of "Fidelio," the effect of Florestan's exclamation,

"Gott! welch' Dunkel hier!" upon an audience fully three-fourths of

which was composed of Germans or descendants of Germans the ludicrous

effect may be imagined. Many stories were current among the artists

of the blithe indifference of the occupants of the boxes to artistic

proprieties when they interfered with the display of gowns and jewels.

One of them was that the chairman of the amusement committee of the

directors had requested that the last act of "Die Meistersinger" be sung

first, as it was "the only act of the opera that had music in it," and

the boxholders did not want to wait till the end. The conduct of the

occupants of the boxes now grew to be so intolerable that there were

frequent demonstrations of disapproval and rebuke from the listeners

who sat in the parquet and balconies. The matter became a subject for

newspaper discussion; in fact, it had been such a subject ever since the

loud laugh of a woman at the climacteric moment of "Fidelio" had caused

Fräulein Brandt to break down in tears in the opening measures of the

frenetically joyous duet, "O namenlose Freude!" In the course of this

extraordinary discussion one of the directors boldly asserted the right

of the stockholders in the boxes to disturb the enjoyment of listeners

in the stalls. Not only did he repeal the old rule of "noblesse oblige,"

but he also intimated that the payment of $3,000 acquitted the box owner

and his guests of one of the simplest and most obvious obligations

imposed by good breeding. At length the directors were forced to rebuke

their own behavior. On the night of January 21, 1891, the following

notice was found hung against the wall in each of the boxes:

January 15, 1891.

Many complaints having been made to the directors of the Opera House

of the annoyance produced by the talking in the boxes during the

performances, the board requests that it be discontinued.

By Order of the Board of Directors.

This was the first sop to Cerberus after the directors had concluded a

contract with Mr. Abbey, leasing the house to him a second time and

substituting opera in Italian and French for opera in German. The public

had begun to speak its mind, not only by making a mighty demonstration

in honor of Mr. Seidl and the singers when a German opera was given,

but in remaining away when the weak-kneed novelties were given; in

requesting by petition a performance of "Fidelio" on a Saturday

afternoon for which the opera by the royal composer had been set down,

and in crowding the house and giving an ovation to the singers when

their petition was granted. The next sop was to set aside all the works

which it had been projected should take the place of the later dramas of

Wagner, which the stockholders (or the majority of them) did not like,

and to devote the remainder of the season almost exclusively to Wagner.

The operas thus sacrificed were Marschner's "Templer und Jüdin,"

Massenet's "Esclarmonde," Lalo's "Le Roi d'Ys," Goetz's "Taming of the

Shrew," and Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor." Not love of Wagner but

fear of financial consequences dictated the step, which was successful

in extricating the institution from the slough into which it had fallen.

How much the Wagner operas and dramas did to keep the Metropolitan Opera

House alive can be shown by the statistics of the last five German

seasons, which I compiled at the close of the season of 1890-91, and

printed in The Tribune of March 25th of the latter year. Here is the

table:

Season Season Season Season Season

1886-1887 1887-1888 1888-1889 1889-1890 1890-1891

Total

representations .......... 61 64 68 67 67

Wagnerian

representations .......... 31 36 35 37 39

Non-Wagnerian

representations .......... 30 28 33 30 28

Total

receipts ........ $202,751.00 $185,258.50 $209,581.00 $204,644.70 $198,119.25

Average

receipts ........... 3,323.78 2,894.66 3,141.63 3,054.39 2,957.00

Wagnerian

receipts ......... 111,049.50 116,449.75 115,784.50 121,568.70 125,169.25

Non-wagnerian

receipts .......... 91,701.50 68,808.75 93,796.50 83,076.00 72,950.00

Wagnerian

average ............ 3,582.21 3,234.72 3,308.13 3,285.65 3,209.46

Non-Wagnerian

average ............ 3,056.71 2,457.45 2,842.32 2,769.20 2.605.37

Average difference

in favor of Wagner ... 525.50 777.27 465.81 516.45 604.09

CHAPTER XVI

ITALIAN OPERA AGAIN AT THE METROPOLITAN

The figures which I have printed showing a loss to the stockholders of

the Metropolitan Opera House on opera account year after year during the

German period, do not tell the whole story of the financial condition

into which the Metropolitan Opera House Company (Limited) had fallen.

This condition had much to do with creating a desire on the part of the

stockholders for a change of policy. The first German season cost the

stockholders only about $42,000 above the amount realized from the box

assessment, which was, I believe, $2,000--two-thirds of the sum that

has ruled ever since. There were seventy stockholders, and in view of

the loss made by Mr. Abbey the year previous this deficit was a trifle

scarcely worth considering. The growth in popular interest as indicated

by the support of the subscriptions for the season of 1890-91 was

promising; but the stockholders themselves were not all prompt in

meeting their obligations to their own organization. By 1890 there was

an account of unpaid assessments amounting to $46,328. Of this, $21,112

was canceled by the acquisition of two boxes by the company, but the

balance sheet at the end of the last German season still showed $25,216

due from stockholders on assessment account. The floating debt at this

time amounted to $84,044.48. The prices of admission had been greatly

reduced in the German years, and the capacity of the house, represented

in money, was not more than fifty per centum of what it is to-day. The

demands of singers were growing greater year after year, and were not

lessened, as may easily be imagined, by the thrifty complacency of those

German managers who granted furloughs to their singers in consideration

of a share of their American earnings. Under the circumstances it is not

to be wondered at that Mr. Abbey's agreement to give Italian and French

opera at his own risk was alluring, especially to those who had never

sympathized with the serious tendency of German opera.

The contract of the directors for opera in the season of 1891-92 was

made with Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau, who figured in all the

announcements as the managers. With them was associated as silent

partner Mr. John B. Schoeffel, of Boston, who had shared in all of Mr.

Abbey's daring theatrical ventures since 1876, and, consequently, also

in the unfortunate season of 1883-84, when Maurice Grau acted as manager

at a salary of $15,000. Mr. Abbey's mind was not closed to the lessons

of the German seasons. A few days after he had signed the contract he

told me that he had had a project in contemplation to bring Materna,

Winkelmann, Scaria, and others to America for Wagnerian opera before Mr.

Thomas had brought them for concert work; that he looked upon German

opera as more advantageous to the manager, not only on account of its

smaller costliness, but, also, because it enabled a manager to adjust

his singers to a repertory instead of the repertory to the singers. But

he had speculated successfully with Patti under the "farewell" device,

the managerial virus was again in his veins, and he cherished a foolish

belief that, as one of the results of the German régime, he would

be able to exact different service from the artists of Italian and

French opera than they had been wont to give. On this point he was soon

painfully disillusionized. Had it not been for the presence in his

company of Mme. Lehmann, M. Lassalle, and the brothers Jean and Édouard

de Reszke, whose instincts and training kept them out of the old

Italian rut, his performances would never have gotten away from the old

hurdy-gurdy list. As it was, when he wanted to give "L'Africaine," in

order to present M. Lassalle in one of his most effective rôles, though

he had Emma Eames, Marie Van Zandt, Albani, the sisters Giulia and

Sophia Ravogli, Pettigiani, and Lillian Nordica in his company (the last

hired specially for the purpose), he was obliged to ask Mme. Lehmann

to learn the part of Selika. She did so, but the strain, combined with

other things, broke down her health, and she was useless to her manager

for the second half of the season. She had been engaged as a lure for

the German element among the city's opera patrons, and to it also were

offered propitiatory sacrifices in the shape of performances in Italian

of "Fidelio," "The Flying Dutchman," and "Die Meistersinger" under the

direction of Mr. Seidl. After the lesson had been still more thoroughly

learned a German contingent was added to the Italian and French, and

German opera was added to the list, making it as completely polyglot as

it has ever been since. But before then many financial afflictions were

in store for the enterprise.

Mr. Abbey began his season December 14, 1891, after having given opera

for five weeks in Chicago. In his company, besides the sopranos just

named, were Mme. Scalchi and Jane de Vigne, contraltos; Jean de Reszke,

Paul Kalisch, M. Montariol, and a younger brother of Giannini, tenors;

Martapoura, Magini-Coletti, Lassalle, and Camera, barytones; Édouard de

Reszke, Vinche, and Serbolini, basses, and Carbone, buffo. As conductor,

Vianesi, known from the season of 1883-84, returned. The subscription

season came to a close on March 12th, and presented thirty-nine

subscription evening performances, thirteen matinées, three extra

evenings, and one extra afternoon--in all, fifty-six representations.

The list of operas contained not a single novelty, unless Gluck's

"Orfeo," which had been heard in New York in 1866, and Mascagni's

"Cavalleria Rusticana," which had been performed by two companies in

English earlier in the season, were changed into novelties by use of the

Italian text. But under such a classification Wagner's comic opera would

also have to be set down as a novelty. The list included ten operas not

in the repertories of the German companies, which had occupied the opera

house between the two administrations of Mr. Abbey. Inasmuch as a new

departure was signalized by this season, I present herewith a table of

performances in the subscription season, with the extra representations

mentioned:

Opera First performance

"Roméo et Juliette" ............................ December 14

"Il Trovatore" ................................. December 16

"Les Huguenots" ................................ December 18

"Norma" ........................................ December 19

"La Sonnambula" ................................ December 21

"Rigoletto" .................................... December 23

"Faust" ........................................ December 25

"Aïda" ......................................... December 28

"Orfeo" and "Cavalleria Rusticana" ............. December 30

"Le Prophéte" .................................. January 1

"Martha" ....................................... January 2

"Lohengrin" .................................... January 4

"Mignon" ....................................... January 8

"Otello" ....................................... January 11

"L'Africaine" .................................. January 15

"Don Giovanni" ................................. January 18

"Dinorah" ...................................... January 29

"Hamlet" ....................................... February 10

"Lakmé" ........................................ February 22

"I Maestri Cantoni" ............................ March 2

"Carmen" ....................................... March 4

The first and most obvious lesson of the season, so far as it was an

index of popular taste, may be seen by a critical glance at the list of

performances. A beginning was made on the old lines. The familiar operas

of the Italian list were brought forward with great rapidity, but not

one of them drew a paying house. The turning point came with the arrival

of M. Lassalle on January 15th. Messrs. Abbey and Grau then recognized

that salvation for their undertaking lay in one course only, which was

to give operas of large dimensions, and in each case employ the three

popular men who had taken the place in the admiration of the public

usually monopolized by the prima donna--the brothers de Reszke, and M.

Lassalle. How consistently they acted on that conviction is shown by the

circumstance that, though seventeen operas had been brought out between

December 14th and January 15th, only six were added to them in the

remaining two months.

It was not a "star" season in the old sense. The most popular artists

were the three men already mentioned, but it required that they should

all be enlisted together with Miss Eames and Mme. Scaichi to make

the one "sensation" of the season--Gounod's "Faust," which had six

regular performances, and two extra. Of the women singers the greatest

popularity was won by Miss Eames, whose youthfulness, freshness of

voice, and statuesque beauty, compelled general admiration. The

smallness of her repertory, however, prevented her from helping the

season to the triumphant close which it might have had if the company

had been enlisted to carry out the policy adopted when the season was

half over. Miss Eames's début was made on the opening night in Gounod's

"Roméo et Juliette." In many ways she was fortunate in her introduction

to the operatic stage of her people--her people, though she was born in

China. She was only twenty-four years old, and there was much to laud in

her art, and nothing to condone except its immaturity. Her endowments of

voice and person were opulent. She appeared in the opera in which she

had effected her entrance on the stage at the Grand Opéra in Paris less

than three years before, and for which her gifts and graces admirably

fitted her. She appeared, moreover, in the company of Jean de Reszke,

who was then, and who remained till his retirement, in all things except

mere sensuous charm of voice, the ideal Romeo. She came fresh from her

first successes at Covent Garden, which had been made in the spring of

the year, and disclosed at once the lovely qualities which, when they

became riper, gave promise of the highest order of things in the way

of dramatic expression. At the end of the period whose history I am

trying to set down she was still one of the bright ornaments of the

Metropolitan stage, though she had not realized all the promises which

she held out at the close of the first decade of her career.

Curiosity was piqued, and a kindly spirit of patriotism enlisted by

the début of Miss Marie Van Zandt on December 21st. She, too, was an

American, but she had been before the European public ten years, and

had won as much favor as any American artist ever enjoyed in Paris.

Mr. Abbey had pointed to her engagement (and that of Mme. Melba, whose

star was just rising above the horizon) as a persuasive argument with

the directors. Everything about the little lady, not excepting some

unfortunate experiences which put an end to her Parisian career, invited

to kindliness of utterance touching her début. Those of her hearers

who had followed the history of opera in America for a score of years

remembered her mother with admiration. Long before the days when every

effort to produce opera in the vernacular was heralded as a great

patriotic undertaking, Mme. Jenny Van Zandt headed companies which

exploited as varied and dignified repertories as those of the German

companies at the Metropolitan Opera House, barring the Wagnerian list.

Miss Van Zandt, diminutive, but winsome in voice as well as figure,

and ingratiating in manner, recalled an old observation about precious

things being done up in small parcels. Her coming seemed to betoken the

return of the day of small things. She appeared in "La Sonnambula," and

it was not until two months had passed that the patrons of the opera

were privileged to hear her in "Lakmé," the opera with which her name

was chiefly associated in Paris. Meanwhile she appeared in "Martha,"

"Mignon," "Don Giovanni," and "Dinorah," without rousing the public out

of the apathy which it felt toward operas of their character. And when

her battle-horse was led into the ring the task of sustaining interest

in the season had fallen upon the shoulders of the masculine contingent

in the company.

Curious questionings were raised by the production of "Fidelio" and

"Die Meistersinger" in Italian. It was generally recognized that Mr.

Abbey offered them as sops to Cerberus; but the German element in the

population, which they were designed to appease, plainly were lacking in

that peculiar bent of mind necessary to understand why Beethoven's opera

done in Italian with a cast one-half good was supposed by the management

to be worth two-thirds more than the same opera done in a language which

it could understand with a cast all good (two of the principals, Mme.

Lehmann and Mr. Kalisch, being the same), during the preceding seven

years. Was the Italian language sixty-seven per cent. more valuable

than the German in an opera conceived in German, written in German, and

composed in the German spirit by a German? The public thought not, and

"Fidelio" had only two performances. A more kindly view was taken of

the Italian "Meistersinger," Which enabled the Germans to give expression

to their feelings by making demonstrations over Mr. Seidl. There was

much to admire, moreover, in the singing and acting of Jean de Reszke

as Walther, and M. Lassalle as Hans Sachs. There was nothing of the

conventional operatic marionette in these men. One night while they and

Édouard de Reszke were on the stage at the same time I expressed my

admiration at the sight of three such fine specimens of physical manhood

to Mme. Lehmann, who sat near my elbow in a baignoir.

"Inspiring, isn't it?"

"Yes," was the reply, "and they might be as fine artists as they are

men if they would but study."

We all know that their American experience was as little lost on the

brothers de Reszke as it was on Mme. Lehmann herself, who stepped into

the foremost rank of tragic singers so soon as America offered her the

opportunity to shuffle off the obligation of "singing princesses," as

she called it.

Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," the hot-blooded little opera which

was destined to make so great a commotion in the world (had already

begun to make it, indeed), had its first production at the Metropolitan

Opera House on December 30th. The opera was no novelty, having already

made an exciting career before the Metropolitan opera season opened;

but there were two features of the performances calculated to live in

the memory of serious observers as characteristic of the change in

spirit which had come over the institution since the departure of the

German artists: Miss Eames wore a perfectly exquisite accordion-pleated

skirt as the distraught Sicilian peasant, and Signor Valero sang the

siciliano on the open stage, the overture being stopped and the curtain

raised so that he might sing his serenade to Lola with greater effect.

He sang behind Lola's house, and winning a call in spite of his

stridulous voice and singular phrasing, he stepped out from cover, bowed

his acknowledgments, and, returning to his hiding place, serenaded his

love over again. After he had come forward a second time Signor Vianesi

found his place in the score and resumed the overture.

"Cavalleria Rusticana" precipitated an amusing but extremely lively

managerial battle when it reached New York. Those who watched the

operatic doings of Europe were aware of the fact that the opera spread

like wildfire from town to town immediately after its first success at

Rome. Fast as it traveled, however, the intermezzo traveled faster.

Seidl had seized upon it in the summer of 1891, and made it a feature of

his concerts at Brighton Beach. Then came simultaneous announcements of

the production of the opera by Rudolph Aronson and Oscar Hammerstein in

the fall. Mr. Aronson wanted to open the season at the Casino with it,

and let it introduce a change in the character of the entertainments

given at that playhouse. Mr. Hammerstein had also announced the work,

but he had no theater at his ready disposal. He thought Aronson was

poaching on his preserves, and there began a diverting struggle for

priority of performance, from which nobody profited and the opera

suffered. Amid threats of crimination Aronson precipitated what he

called a dress rehearsal of the work at the Casino in the afternoon of

October 1, 1891. Like the king in the parable, he sent out into the

highways, and bade all he could find in to the feast. Especially did

his servants labor on the Rialto, and the affair had all the appearance

of a professional matinée. Nothing was quite in readiness, but Mr.

Hammerstein had announced his first performance for the evening of that

day, and must be anticipated at all hazards. Yet there were singers

and scenes and musicians in the orchestra, and Mr. Gustav Kerker to

steer the little operatic ship through the breakers. On the whole, the

performance was fair. Laura Bellini was the Santuzza of the occasion,

Grace Golden the Lola, Helen von Doenhoff the Lucia, Charles Bassett the

Turiddu, and William Pruette the Alfio. Heinrich Conried staged the

production. In the evening Oscar Hammerstein pitchforked the opera on

to the stage of the Lenox Lyceum--an open concert room, and a poor one

at that. There was a canvas proscenium, no scenery to speak of, costumes

copied from no particular country and no particular period, and a

general effect of improvisation. But the musical forces were superior

to Mr. Aronson's, and had there been a better theater the Casino

performance would have been greatly surpassed. There was a really fine

orchestra under the direction of Mr. Adolph Neuendorff, but it sat

out on the floor of the hall, which reverberated like a drum. Mme.

Janouschoffsky, an exceedingly capable artist, was the Santuzza, Mrs.

Pemberton Hincks the Lola, Mrs. Jennie Bohner the Lucia, Payne Clarke

the Turiddu, and Herman Gerold the Alfio. While all this pother

was making, "Cavalleria Rusticana" was already three weeks old in

Philadelphia, where Mr. Gustav Hinrichs had brought it forward with his

American company at the Grand Opera House; Minnie Hauk, with a company

of her own, had given it in Chicago the night before the New York

struggle, and Emma Juch and her company were rushing forward the

preparations for a production in Boston.

"Cavalleria Rusticana" came upon the world like the bursting of a bomb,

and its effect was so startling that it bewildered and confounded the

radical leaders of musical thought. There were few, indeed, who retained

calmness of vision enough to perceive that it was less a change of

manner than of subject-matter, which had whirled the world off its

critical feet. Outside of Italy there was no means of seeing the work

of preparation which had preceded it. The annual output of hundreds of

operas made no impression beyond the Alpine barrier, and it was easy to

believe that the entire product was formed after the old and humdrum

manner. No sooner had "Cavalleria Rusticana" broken down the old

confines, however, than it was discovered that a whole brood of young

musicians had been brought up on the same blood-heating food, and a

dozen composers were ready to use the same formulas. Most of them,

indeed, got the virus from the same apothecary who uttered the mortal

drug to Mascagni--that is to say, from Amilcare Ponchielli. Had we but

listened twenty-five years ago to "La Gioconda" as we are able to listen

to "Cavalleria Rusticana," and its swift and multitudinous offspring

now, we might have recognized the beginnings of what has been termed

"Mascagnitis," not in an essentially new manner of musical composition,

but in the appeal to the primitive passion for violence and blood which

found expression in the operatic paraphrase of Victor Hugo's story,

and the invitation which that passion extended to the modern musician

suddenly emancipated from a lot of cumbersome formularies, and endowed

with a mass of new harmonic and instrumental pigments with which to

produce the startling contrasts and swift contradictions for which

the new field of subjects clamors.

Seventeen years ago "Cavalleria Rusticana" had no perspective. Now,

though but a small portion of its progeny has been brought to our

notice, we, nevertheless, look at it through a vista which looks like a

valley of moral and physical death through which there flows a sluggish

stream thick with filth, and red with blood. Strangely enough, in spite

of the consequences which have followed it, the fierce little drama

retains its old potency. It still speaks with a voice which sounds like

the voice of truth. Its music still makes the nerves tingle, and carries

our feelings unresistingly on its turbulent current. But the stage

picture is less sanguinary than it looked in the beginning. It seems to

have receded a millennium in time. It has the terrible fierceness of an

Attic tragedy, but it also has the decorum which the Attic tragedy never

violated. There is no slaughter in the presence of the audience, despite

the humbleness of its personages. It does not keep us perpetually in

sight of the shambles. It is, indeed, an exposition of chivalry, rustic,

but chivalry, nevertheless. It was thus Clytemnestra slew her husband,

and Orestes his mother. Note the contrast which the duel between Alfio

and Turiddu presents with the double murder to the piquant accompaniment

of comedy in "Pagliacci," the opera which followed so hard upon its

heels. Since then piquancy has been the cry; the piquant contemplation

of adultery, seduction, and murder amid the reek and stench of the

Italian barnyard. Think of Cilèa's "Tilda," Giordano's "Mala Vita,"

Spinelli's "A Basso Porto," and Tasca's "A Santa Lucia!"

The stories chosen for operatic treatment by the champions of verismo

are all alike. It is their filth and blood which fructifies the music,

which rasps the nerves even as the plays revolt the moral stomach. I

repeat: looking back over the time during which this so-called veritism

has held its orgy, "Cavalleria Rusticana" seems almost classic. Its

music is highly spiced and tastes "hot i' th' mouth," but its eloquence

is, after all, in its eager, pulsating, passionate melody--like the

music which Verdi wrote more than half a century ago for the last act

of "Il Trovatore." If neither Mascagni himself, nor his imitators, have

succeeded in equaling it since, it is because they have thought too

much of the external devices of abrupt and uncouth change of modes and

tonalities, of exotic scales and garish orchestration, and too little of

the fundamental element of melody, which once was the be-all and end-all

of Italian music. Another fountain of gushing melody must be opened

before "Cavalleria Rusticana" finds a successor in all things worthy of

the succession. Ingenious artifice, reflection, and technical cleverness

will not suffice even with the blood and mud of the Neapolitan slums as

a fertilizer.

Messrs. Abbey and Grau had no rival opera organizations to contend with

at any time after they opened their doors, so they created a bit of

competition themselves. In January they brought Mme. Patti and her

operatic concert company into the house for a pair of concerts in which

scenes from operas were sung in costume, the famous singer's companions

being Mlle. Fabbri, M. Guille (tenor), Signor Novara (bass), and Signor

Del Puente. The occasion offered an opportunity to study the impulses

which underlie popular patronage. The entertainments being concerts,

not operas, the stockholders were not entitled to their boxes under the

terms of their contract with Abbey & Grau, and were conspicuous by their

absence. Nevertheless, at the second concert, which took place on an

afternoon, I estimated the audience at four thousand--nine-tenths women.

Mme. Patti also appeared in performances of "Lucia di Lammermoor" and

"Il Barbiere" in a supplementary season, one feature of which, on March

31, 1892, was the production of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" in Italian,

with M. Lassalle in the titular part, which he sang for the first time

in his life. "A marvelous artist indeed is this Frenchman," was my

comment in The Tribune, "and if he and the brothers de Reszke are in

next year's company, the lovers of the lyric drama as distinguished from

the old sing-song opera will look into the future without trepidation."

Unhappily there was no "next year's company."

In August, 1892, the Metropolitan Opera House had a visitation of fire,

which brought operatic matters to a crisis, caused a postponement of

the performance for a season, a reorganization of the corporation which

owned the building, and a remodeling of the stage and portions of the

interior of the theater. For a considerable space before the building of

the Metropolitan the public mind was greatly exercised over the awful

loss of life at recent theater fires, especially the destruction of the

Ringtheater in Vienna. When Mr. Cady planned the New York house, he

set about making it as absolutely fireproof as such a structure can be.

It was to be non-combustible from the bottom up. There was not a stud

partition in it. The floors were all of iron beams and brick arches, the

masonry being exposed in the corridors, passages and vestibules, but for

comfort having a covering of wood in the audience room. The roof was of

iron and masonry, the outer covering of slate being secured to masonry

blocks. The iron roof beams of over one hundred feet span, were mounted

on rollers to allow for contraction and expansion. The ceiling of the

audience room was of iron. The ornamental work of the proscenium, the

tier balustrades, and the frames of the partitions between the boxes

were all of metal. The stage was supported by a complex iron system

of about four thousand light pieces so adjusted as to be removable

in sections when it was desired to open the stage floor. Theater

fires almost invariably originate on the stage, and, as an additional

safeguard, Mr. Cady contrived an apparatus for flooding the stage in

the case of a threatened conflagration. A large skylight was weighted

to fall open in case of fire, and a great water tank placed over the

rigging loft and connected with a network of pipes with apertures

stopped with extremely fusible solder, so that the heat of even a

small fire would open the holes and release a drenching shower.

One after another these precautions were rendered inutile. The iron

support of the stage troubled the stage mechanics, who wanted something

that could be more easily handled, so wooden pieces were substituted for

the iron. The location of the tank was such that the water was in danger

of freezing in winter, and steam pipes were arranged to keep the water

warm. Mr. Abbey did not like the expense of warming the water, and

therefore emptied the tank. There was a fireproof curtain, which was

cumbrous to handle, and Mr. Abbey's men chained it up. The commodious

stage made a superb paint shop in summer, and Mr. Abbey used it for

painting scenery for his other theaters. It was being thus used on

August 27, 1892, when a workman carelessly threw a lighted match among

the "green" scenery. It caught fire, the stage was burned out, and

the auditorium sadly disfigured. When, eventually, the building was

repaired, the interior of the theater, all that had suffered harm, was

thoroughly remodeled, the stockholders' boxes were reduced to a single

row, the proscenium was given its present shape, the apron of the stage

was removed, and the stage itself was made more practicable in many

ways. This did not happen, however, until the question whether or not

the opera house should be restored to its original uses had occupied the

minds of the stockholders and public for nearly a year. In the middle

of the season Messrs. Abbey and Grau, while protesting that they were

satisfied with the financial outcome of their venture, announced that

they did not intend to give opera the next year. They were shaken in

this determination, if they ever seriously harbored it, by the success

of "Faust" and one or two other operas, which enlisted what in the next

season of opera came to be called the "ideal cast." But there was a

division of opinion as to the proper course for the future among the

stockholders, especially after Mr. Abbey, late in September, sent word

from London that his firm would not undertake opera in the United States

without a subvention from the Metropolitan Opera Company. Also that he

had already canceled his contracts with singers for the American season

of 1892-93. There was some vague talk before this on the part of Mr.

Schoeffel of a season of opera in Mexico City, and a longer season than

usual in Chicago, the intimation plainly being that grand opera might

be emancipated from dependence on the metropolis. One effect of this

indecision was to bring forth a discussion of the feasibility of endowed

opera in New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and one or two other

of the large cities of the country. Another was to call into new life an

agitation in favor of the establishment of another German company. The

first project died of inanition; the second developed in another year

into an actuality, which created more stir than the close of the opera

house had done. The Metropolitan Opera Company reached a decision

some time in January, 1893. The directors had neglected to insure

the building against fire, and provision had to be made for funds to

rebuild, as well as to pay off existing liabilities. The opera lovers

among the stockholders reorganized the company under the style of the

Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, and purchased the building

under foreclosure proceeding for $1,425,000, then raised $1,000,000 by a

bond issue, and the summer of 1893 was devoted to a restoration of the

theater, an agreement having also been reached for a new lease to Mr.

Abbey and his associates.

CHAPTER XVII

THE ADVENT OF MELBA AND CALVÉ

For the reasons set forth at the close of the last chapter there was no

opera at the Metropolitan Opera House in the season of 1892-93, but the

fall of the latter year witnessed the beginning of a new period, full

of vicissitudes. With many brilliant artistic features, it was still

experimental to a large extent on its artistic side, the chief results

of its empiricism being the restoration of German opera in the repertory

on an equal footing with Italian and French. It also brought the largest

wave of prosperity to the house that it had experienced since its

opening, yet ended in the shipwreck of the lessees, and disaster that

was more than financial. The lessees were again Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel

and Grau, with whom the reorganized Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate

Company (Limited) effected an agreement, the essential elements of which

remained unchanged for fifteen years; that is, down to the close of the

season of 1907-08. The term was five years. The lessees took the house

for an annual rental of $52,000, and pledged themselves to give opera

four times a week for thirteen weeks in the winter and spring. The

lessors paid back to the lessees the $52,000 for their box privileges,

and to insure representations which would be satisfactory to them,

reserved the right to nominate six of the singers, two of whom were

to take part in every performance in the subscription list.

The first season under the new lease was enormously successful, Abbey,

Schoeffel, and Grau realizing about $150,000, including the visits to

other cities, and a supplementary spring season of two weeks. They made

great losses on their other enterprises, however, especially on Abbey's

Theater (now the Knickerbocker), and the American tours of Mounet-Sully

and Mme. Réjane. Like results attended the seasons of 1894-95, and

1895-96, the drag in the latter instance being the Lillian Russell Opera

Company, which, together with other ventures, brought the firm into

such a financial slough that it made an assignment for the benefit of

its creditors, who were forced to take over its business to protect

themselves. Chief of these was William Steinway, who had accommodated

Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau with loans to the extent of $50,000. Under

his guidance as chairman of the committee of reorganization, the stock

company, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Limited), was formed, he becoming

president, and Henry E. Abbey, John B. Schoeffel, and Maurice Grau

managing directors at a salary of $20,000 a year. Ernest Goerlitz, who

had been in the employ of the firm for some time, was made secretary

and treasurer. He remained in an executive capacity at the Metropolitan

until the expiration of the consulship of Conried in 1908. Mr. Steinway

got rid of the debts of the company (or, perhaps, it would be more

correct to say, changed their character) by issuing certificates of

stock and notes to the creditors. In this manner some of the principal

artists of the company became financially interested in opera giving.

Before the reorganized company began the next series of performances Mr.

Abbey died, and the season was only a fortnight old when Mr. Steinway

followed him into the grave. A very puissant personage in the managerial

field was Mr. Abbey during a full quarter-century of theatrical life in

America. He was a purely speculative manager, who never permitted his

own likes or dislikes to influence him in his chosen vocation of

purveying amusements, so-called, to the public, though his tastes led

him generally into the higher regions, and there is little doubt that an

inherent love for music for its own sake made him take to opera. As a

young man in his native city of Akron, Ohio, where he was born in 1846,

he played cornet in the town band. When he revoked his resolution never

to embark in an operatic enterprise again after the disastrous season of

1883-84, I met him in Broadway, and asked him about the artists he

intended to bring to the Metropolitan Opera House. He gave me the names

of those whom he had in view, and I expressed my regret that one, whom I

admired very greatly indeed, was missing. His reply was prompt: "There

is no woman in the world I would rather engage, and no woman whose

singing gives me greater pleasure; but she doesn't draw. I never made

any money with her." It was an illuminative observation. As a youth he

was interested with his father in the jewelry business in Akron, and on

the death of his father, in 1873, the business became his; but by that

time he was already a theatrical manager, though on a small scale. In

1869 he had assumed charge of the Akron theater. In 1876 he associated

himself with John B. Schoeffel, and with him gradually acquired

theatrical properties in several of the principal cities of the East,

and entered upon enterprises of a character which were his undoing in

the end. The Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau Company carried through the season

of 1896-97 with a profit of about $30,000 in New York, despite the fact

that the financial affairs of the country were in a bad way. A four

weeks' season in Chicago, however, was ruinous, and Mr. Gran was

compelled to fall back on some of the artists of the company and friends

to enable him to bring the Chicago season to a close. Jean and Édouard

de Reszke and Lassalle were among the subscribers to a guarantee fund of

$30,000, which he needed to carry him through. All the guarantors were

repaid in full, when, at the end of the season, the affairs of Abbey,

Schoeffel & Grau (Limited) were wound up, and Mr. Schoeffel bought the

principal asset, the Tremont Theater, in Boston. Thereupon Mr. Grau and

his associates formed a new company, which gave opera under the

conditions which seemed to have become traditional until the end of the

season of 1902-3. Mr. Grau was compelled by ill health to withdraw from

active duty before the end of the last season, and the story of his

company's doings falls naturally into another chapter of this history.

We must now survey the artistic incidents of the period between the

reconstruction of the opera house and the beginning of the new régime.

This will be the business of this and the following chapter.

Simply for the sake of convenience in the record, I shall devote the

chief statistical attention in the remaining chapters of this history to

the subscription seasons, and discuss the supplementary spring seasons

only as they offer features of special interest. The seasons, generally

a fortnight long, and given after the return of the singers from visits

to Boston and Chicago, are distinguished from the subscription seasons

very much as the fall seasons in London are from the summer seasons,

though there is not the sharp line of demarcation so far as fashion

goes, which the adjournment of Parliament makes on the other side of

the Atlantic.

The tenth regular season of opera then began at the Metropolitan Opera

House on November 27, 1893, and ended on February 24, 1894. Officially

the languages of the performances were Italian and French, but the

operas given were, for the greater part, French and German, and the

representations were dual in language in all cases, except the Italian

works. I mention this fact, not because of its singularity, for it is a

familiar phenomenon all over the operatic world, except perhaps Italy,

but in order to point out hereafter a betterment, which came in with

a more serious artistic striving later. The chorus always sang in the

"soft bastard Latin," whether the principals sang in Italian or French;

and the occasions were not a few when two languages were sung also

by the principals--when lovers wooed in French, and received their

replies in Italian, thus recalling things over which Addison made

merry generations ago. The season was planned to embrace thirty-nine

subscription nights and thirteen matinées. To these were added two

matinées and sixteen evening representations, two of the latter

being for the benefit of popular charities. In all, New York had

sixty performances of opera within the period covered by the regular

subscription, which was a smaller number than had been shown by any

season since that of 1886-87. Eighteen operas were brought forward in

full (that is to say, without more than the conventional cuts), and

parts of three others. Thus of "La Traviata," though I have included it

in the list to be presented soon, only the first and fourth acts were

performed. There was not a single opera in the repertory which had not

been heard in New York before, though several were new to the house.

The nearest approach to a novelty was Mascagni's "L'Amico Fritz," which

disappeared from the list after two representations, and had been heard

at an improvised performance, which scarcely deserves to be considered

in a record of this character. In the supplemental season, however,

a novelty of real pith and moment was brought forward in the shape

of Massenet's "Werther," which had been promised to the regular

subscribers, and which, while it made no profound impression, was

accepted as an earnest of the excellent and honorable intentions of the

managers, and a proof of the difficulties which hampered them at times.

The principal members of the company were Mesdames Melba, Calvé,

Eames, Nordica, Arnoldson, Scalchi, and Mantelli, and Messrs. Jean and

Édouard de Reszke, de Lucia, Vignas, Ancona, Plançon, Castelmary, and

Martapoura. The subscription for the season amounted to $82,000, which

was $10,000 more than the largest subscription in the German period. A

great ado was made over this fact by the managers and their friends. Not

unnaturally the lovers of German opera took up the cudgels against the

Italianissimi, and pointed out the indubitable fact that owing to the

difference in prices of admission and seats the subscription, instead of

showing a large advance in popular interest, indicated a falling off to

the extent of an attendance of six thousand in the season. Not money,

but attendance, they argued, was the real standard of popularity. The

managers also very unwisely, as it proved (since two years later they

found themselves obliged to include German performances in their

scheme), put forward a public boast that the receipts for the last

month of the opera "nearly equaled the average gross receipts for the

entire term of any German opera ever given in New York." Of course, the

reference went only to the German seasons at the Metropolitan Opera

House, for there was no record that could be consulted touching the many

sporadic German enterprises of the earlier periods at the Academy of

Music and other theaters. It was not at all unkind, but simply in the

interest of historical verity that in The Tribune I called attention

to the fact that it was scarcely ingenuous in Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau

to choose the last month in the season for the comparison, for in that

month there were twenty-two representations, including two for popular

charities (at one of which, managed by the opera house directors, the

public contributed $22,000), and six representations of "Carmen," which,

with Mme. Calvé in the principal character, was enjoying the most

sensational triumph ever achieved by any opera or singer. Moreover, most

of 'these performances were outside the subscription, and the prices,

as I have repeatedly said, were nearly double those which prevailed

during the German régime. Besides, it was an easy task to prove from the

figures which I had printed from year to year in my "Review of the New

York Musical Season," that, in order to surpass the German record with

their last month, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau would have had to show average

nightly receipts of over $9,000, whereas only once had they, in a spirit

of boastfulness, claimed that as much as $11,000 had been taken at a

single performance, and that at a phenomenal "Carmen" matinée. Without

Calvé and "Carmen" the bankruptcy which came two years later might have

been precipitated in this season. Thanks to Bizet's opera, and its

heroine, and the popularity of Mme. Eames and the brothers de Reszke in

"Faust," the season was prodigiously successful, the receipts from all

sources (including the Sunday night concerts and opera in Philadelphia

and Brooklyn) being in the neighborhood of $550,000, and the profits,

as I have already said, $150,000. The twelve performances of "Carmen,"

I make no doubt, brought at least $100,000 into the exchequer of the

managers in the subscription season, and in the supplemental post-Lenten

season of a fortnight there were three performances more. The success of

the opera remained without a parallel in the history of opera in New

York till the coming of Wagner's "Parsifal."

Mme. Melba effected her entrance on the operatic stage in America on

December 4, 1893, in Donizetti's "Lucia." Five years before she had made

her London début in the same opera, and between that time and her coming

to New York she had won fragrant laurels in Paris in company with the

brothers de Reszke and M. Lassalle in "Roméo et Juliette" and "Faust,"

both of which operas she had prepared with the composer. Her repertory

was small when she came, but in it she was unique, both for the quality

of her voice and the quality of her art. She did not make all of her

operas effective in her first season, partly because a large portion

of the public had been weaned away from the purely lyric style of

composition and song, in which she excelled, partly because the dramatic

methods and fascinating personality of Mme. Calvé had created a fad

which soon grew to proportions that scouted at reason; partly because

Miss (not Mme.) Eames had become a great popular favorite, and the

people of society, who doted on her, on Jean de Reszke, his brother

Édouard, and on Lassalle, found all the artistic bliss of which they

were capable in listening to their combined voices in "Faust." So

popular had Gounod's opera become at this time with the patrons of the

Metropolitan Opera House, that my witty colleague, Mr. W. J. Henderson,

sarcastically dubbed it "das Faustspielhaus," in parody of the popular

title of the theater on the hill in the Wagnerian Mecca.

When Mme. Melba came she was the finest exemplar of finished

vocalization that had been heard at the opera house since its opening,

with the single exception of Mme. Sembrich. Though she had been singing

in opera only five years, she had reached the zenith of her powers.

Her voice was charmingly fresh, and exquisitely beautiful. Her

tone-production was more natural, and quite as apparently spontaneous,

as that of the wonderful woman who so long upheld the standard of bel

canto throughout the world. In the case of Mme. Patti, art had already

begun to be largely artifice, a circumstance that needed to cause no

wonder inasmuch as her career on the operatic Stage already compassed

a full generation; but Mme. Melba neither needed to seek for means nor

guard against possible mishap. All that she needed--more than that:

all that she wanted to humor her amiable disposition to be prodigal in

utterance--lay in her voice ready at hand. Its range was commensurate

with all that could be asked of it, and she moved with greatest ease

in the regions which most of her rivals carefully avoided. To throw

out those scintillant bubbles of sound which used to be looked upon as

the highest achievement in singing seemed to be an entirely natural

mode of expression with her. With the reasonableness of such a mode

of expression I am not concerned now; it is enough that Mme. Melba

came nearer to providing it with justification than any one of her

contemporaries of that day, except Mme. Sembrich, or any of her

contemporaries of to-day. Added to these gifts and graces, she disclosed

most admirable musical instincts, a quality which the people had been

taught to admire more than ever while they were learning how to give

reverence due to the dramatic elements in the modern lyric drama.

I have already intimated that Mme. Melba's operas found little favor

with the public compared with "Carmen" and "Faust," and, perhaps, there

was in this more than a mere indication of the educational influence

left by the German period. I should have no hesitation whatever in

saying so had not the "Carmen" craze reached proportions which precluded

the thought that artistic predilections or convictions had anything to

do with it. So much of a mere fad did Mme. Calvé in "Carmen" become that

the public remained all but insensible to the merits of her immeasurably

finer impersonation of Santuzza in "Cavalleria Rusticana." It was in

Mascagni's opera that she effected her début on November 29, 1893, in

company with Señor Vignas, a Spanish tenor, squat and ungraceful of

figure, homely of features, restricted in intelligence, and strident of

voice. New York knew very little of Mme. Calvé when she came, though

she had already been twice as long on the stage as Mme. Melba, and even

after her first appearance Mr. Abbey met my congratulations on her

achievement with a dubious shake of the head, and the remark that, while

he hoped my predictions touching her popularity would be fulfilled,

he placed a much lower estimation on her powers than I. Not he, but

Mr. Grau, was responsible for her engagement, and his hopes were all

centered on Mme. Melba. Like most of our singers at the time, Calvé

came to New York by way of London. The rôle of Santuzza, which she had

created in Paris in January, 1892, and in London in the following May,

had been hailed with gladness in both cities, but her Carmen was as

inadequately appreciated in Paris as it was overestimated in New York

and London, especially in later years, when the capriciousness which

led her originally to break away from some of the traditions of the

rôle created by Galli-Marié. and thus cost her the understanding of

the Parisians, had become a fixed habit, which she pursued regardless

of decent moderation, sound principles, and good taste.

The Parisians attested their artistic Bourbonism not only in declining

to recognize the excellence of the good features of Calvé's Carmen, but,

also, in failing to appreciate her touchingly beautiful Ophelia, to

the great grief of Ambroise Thomas, who went to Italy to see her in the

part, and believed that had she but been given the proper support in

Paris "Hamlet" would have ranked with "Faust" in popularity. Of course,

this was a fond composer's too good opinion of his opera, but the trait

of the Paris public which is unwilling to find merit in any change from

a performance which first won their admiration has frequently stood

in the way of first-class talent. To illustrate this I can relate an

anecdote which was repeated to me at an artistic dinner table in the

French capital in 1886. It is not for me to vouch for the truth of the

story, but give it as it was told to me in explanation of some amused

comments which I had made on the stiff conventionality of a performance

of "L'Africaine" which I had witnessed at the Grand Opéra. Faure, the

original of Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, had been succeeded in the rôle by

Lassalle, whose fine art in newer works had met with full recognition

from press and public. To Lassalle's great surprise, his Hamlet, a

remarkably fine performance within the limit set by the pitiable

operatic travesty of Shakespeare's play, was received coldly, and there

was wide comment on the circumstance that he had ignored traditions of

performance, especially in the scene between the Prince and his mother.

In considerable distress he went to Faure, who had set the fashion:

"What pose, gesture, effect of yours is it that I have failed to copy?"

he asked of his confrère.

And Faure explained:

At the first performance when he reached the scene in question, he had

found his throat suddenly clogged. Only by an act neither pleasant to

observe nor polite to describe, could he remove the obstruction, and at

a supreme moment he had improvised a movement which carried his face out

of sight of the audience, so that he might free his throat unnoticed.

Knowing nothing of the cause, the public applauded the effect, and the

singular nuance became a part of the "business" of the piece.

When Mme. Calvé flashed upon New York in "Cavalleria Rusticana,"

her impersonation startled me into the declaration that no finer

lyrico-dramatic performance had been witnessed in America within a

generation. Unhesitatingly I placed it by the side of Materna's

Brünnhilde, Brandt's Fidès, Niemann's Tristan and Siegmund, and

Fischer's Hans Sachs, without, of course, presuming to compare the

relative value of the dramatists' conceits. Even now I cannot recall

anything finer in the region of combined action and song. She held her

listeners so completely captive and swayed them so powerfully that she

compelled even the foolishly and affectedly frantic claquers, who had

seats near the stage, to hold their peace. They could only make their

boisterous clamor in response to the old-fashioned appeal made by

a high tone screeched by the stridulous tenor. There was as little

conventionality in her singing as in her acting, though she had not

yet adopted that indifference to rhythm which has marked her singing

in more recent years. She saturated the music with emotion. Much of it

she seemed to sing to herself, declaiming it like dramatic speech whose

emotional contents had been raised to a higher power by the melody. In

moments of extreme excitement one scarcely realized that she was singing

at all. Carried along by the torrent of her feelings, her listeners

accepted her song as the only proper and efficient expression for her

emotional state. The two expressions, song and action, were one; they

were mutually complemental. It was not nature subordinated to art, but

art vitalized by nature. It is not possible for me to compare her

Carmen with Galli-Marié's, which stood in the way of her appreciation

in the part in Paris. I have heard that that was so frank in one of

its expressions that it invited the interference of the Prefect of the

Seine. To me, at least, in Mme. Calvé's impersonation, it seemed that

I was enjoying my first revelation of some of the elements of the

character of the gypsy as it had existed in the imagination of Prosper

Mérimée when he wrote his novel. To me she presented a woman thoroughly

wanton and diabolically equipped with the wicked witcheries which

explained, if they did not palliate, the conduct of Don José. Here we

had a woman without conscience, but also without the capacity for even

a wicked affection; a woman who might have been the thief whom the

novelist describes, who surely carried a dagger in her corsage, and who

in some respects left absolutely nothing to the imagination, to which

even a drama like "Carmen" makes appeal. She came upon the stage as

Mérimée's heroine stepped into his pages: "poising herself on her

hips, like a filly from the Cordovan stud," and with a fine simulation

of unconsciousness, she seemed every moment about to break into one of

those dances which the satirist castigated in the days of the Roman

Empire:

Nec de Gadibus improbis puellae

Vibrabunt sine fine prurientes

Lascivos docili tremore lumbos.

Alas! Mme. Calvé's admiration for herself was stronger than her devotion

to an artistic ideal, and it was not long before her Carmen became

completely merged in her own capricious personality.

Massenet's "Werther" (performed in Chicago, March 29) had its first New

York performance at the Metropolitan, April 19, 1894, with Mme. Eames,

Sigrid Arnoldson, Jean de Reszke, M. Martapoura, and Signor Carbone.

Signor Mancinelli conducted. The opera had one performance, and was

repeated once in the season of 1896-97. Then it disappeared from the

repertory of the Metropolitan, and has since then not been thought of,

apparently, although strenuous efforts have been made ever and anon

to give interest to the French list. I record the fact as one to be

deplored. "Werther" is a beautiful opera; as instinct with throbbing

life in every one of its scenes as the more widely admired "Manon" is in

its best scene. It has its weak spots as have all of Massenet's operas,

despite his mastery of technique, but its music will always appeal

to refined artistic sensibilities for its lyric charm, its delicate

workmanship, its splendid dramatic climax in the duo between Werther

and Charlotte, beginning: "Ah! pourvu que de voie ces yeux toujours

ouverts," and its fine scoring. It smacks more of the atmosphere of

the Parisian salon than of the sweet breezes with which Goethe filled

the story, but no Frenchman has yet been able to talk aught but polite

French in music for the stage, Berlioz excepted, and the music of

"Werther" is of finer texture than that of most of the operas produced

by Massenet since.

The season of 1894-95, consisting again of thirteen weeks, began on

November 19th, and closed on February 16th. It was marked by a number of

incidents, some of which made a permanent impression on the policy of

the Metropolitan Opera House. Chief of these was a remarkable eruption

of sentiment in favor of German opera--so vigorous an eruption,

indeed, that it led to the incorporation of German performances in

the Metropolitan repertory ever after, though the change involved a

much greater augmentation of the forces of the establishment than the

consorting of French with Italian had involved. To this I shall give

the attention which it deserves presently. Other features were the

introduction of Saturday night performances of opera at reduced prices

(a feature which became permanent), the appearance of several new

singers, and the production of two novelties, one of them Verdi's

"Falstaff," of first-class importance.

In their prospectus the managers promised a reformation of the chorus,

and announced the re-engagement of "nearly all the great favorites

of last year." The improvement of the chorus was not particularly

noticeable except in appearance; a number of young and comely American

women were enlisted, but their best service was to stand in front of the

old stagers who knew the operas, and could sing but who seemed to have

come down through the ages from the early days of the old Academy. The

phrase "nearly all" was an ominous one, for it betokened the absence

from the company of Mme. Calvé. The newcomers were Lucille Hill, Sybil

Sanderson, Zélie de Lussan, Mira Heller, and Libia Drog, sopranos; G.

Russitano and Francesco Tamagno, tenors, and Victor Maurel, who had been

a popular favorite twenty years before at the Academy of Music. Luigi

Mancinelli and E. Bevignani were the conductors, and Mr. Seidl was

engaged to give éclat to the Sunday evening concerts. Mme. Melba's chief

financial value to the management in the preceding season had been found

to lie in these concerts, which this year were begun earlier than usual,

and made a part of Melba's concert tour. The first opera was "Roméo et

Juliette," with the cast beloved of society, and on the second night

the introduction of the newcomers began. But woefully. The opera was

"William Tell," and Signorina Drog sang the part of the heroine in place

of Miss Hill, indisposed. Mathilde (or Matilda--the opera was sung in

Italian), does not appear in the opera until the second act, and then

she has the most familiar air in the opera to sing--"Selva opaca," an

air which then belonged to the concert-room repertory of most florid

sopranos. When Signorina Drog came upon the stage, it is safe to say

that no one regretted her substitution for the English singer except

herself. She was an exceedingly handsome person, who moved about with

attractive freedom and grace, and disclosed a voice of good quality,

especially in the upper register. She began her aria most tastefully,

but scarcely had she begun when her memory played her false. For a few

dreadful seconds she tried to pick up the thread of the melody but in

vain. Then came the inevitable breakdown. She quit trying, and appealed

pitifully to Signor Mancinelli for help. He seemed to have lost his

head as completely as the lady had her memory. So had the prompter, who

pulled his noddle into his shell like a snail and remained as mute.

Signor Tamagno entered in character, and indulged in dumbshow to a few

detached phrases from the orchestra. Then the awfulness of the situation

overwhelmed him, and he fairly ran off the stage, leaving Matilda alone.

That lady made a final appeal to the conductor, switched her dress

nervously with her riding whip, went to the wings, got a glass of water,

and then disappeared. The audience, which had good-humoredly applauded

till now, began to laugh, and the demoralization was complete. It would

have been a relief had the curtain fallen, but as this did not happen

Signor Tamagno, Signor Ancona, and Édouard de Reszke came upon the stage

and began the famous trio, in which Signor Tamagno sang with tremendous

intensity and power. It was a remarkable performance of a sensational

piece, and had it not been preceded by so frightful a catastrophe, and

interrupted by Tamagno himself to bow his acknowledgments, pick up a

bunch of violets thrown from a box, and repeat his first melody, its

effect would have been dramatically electrifying. There was a long wait

after the act to enable Signor Mancinelli to arrange the necessary cuts,

and after the stage manager had made an apology on behalf of Signorina

Drog, and explained that she had been seized with vertigo, but would

finish the opera in an abbreviated form, the representation was resumed.

It is due to the lady to add that she had never before attempted to sing

the part, and that on the third evening she materially redeemed herself

in "Aïda." Miss de Lussan, a native of New York, who had begun her

operatic career a few years before in the Boston Ideal Opera Company,

and had won a commendable degree of favor at Covent Garden as Carmen,

had been engaged in the hope of continuing the prosperous career of

Bizet's opera, but the hope proved abortive. It was the singer, not the

song, which had bewitched the people of New York--Calvé, not Bizet.

"Carmen" was excellently given, the charm of Melba's voice being called

on for the music of Micaela's part; but the sensation had departed, and

was waiting to be revived with the return of Calvé in the succeeding

season.

The first novelty in this season was "Elaine," an opera in four acts,

words by Paul Ferrier, music by Herman Bemberg, brought forward on

December 17, 1894. "Elaine" was produced because Mme. Melba and the

brothers de Reszke wanted to appear in it out of friendship for the

composer, who had dedicated the score to them, and come to New York to

witness the production, as he had gone to London when it was given in

Covent Garden. In America Bemberg was a small celebrity of the salon and

concert room. His parents were citizens of the Argentine Republic, but

he was born in Paris, in 1861. His father being a man of wealth, he

had ample opportunity to cultivate his talents, and his first teachers

in composition were Bizet and Henri Maréchal. Later he continued his

studies at the Conservatoire, under Dubois and Massenet. In 1885 he

carried off the Rossini prize, and in 1889 brought out a one-act opera

at the Opéra Comique, "Le Baiser de Suzon," for which Pierre Barbier

wrote the words. "Elaine" had its first performance at Convent Garden in

July, 1892, with Mme. Melba, Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and M. Plançon

in the cast. It was then withdrawn for revision, and restored to the

stage the next year. If there is anything creditable in such a thing it

may be said, to Mr. Bemberg's credit, that, so far as I know, he was the

first musician who wrote music for Oscar Wilde's "Salome." The public,

especially the people of the boxes, lent a gracious ear to the new

opera, partly, no doubt, because of its subject, but more largely

because of Mme. Melba, Mme. Mantelli, the brothers de Reszke, Plançon,

and M. Castelmary, who were concerned in its production. All of Mr.

Bemberg's music that had previously been heard in New York was of the

lyrical order, and it seemed but natural that he was less successful in

the developing of a dramatic situation than in hymning the emotions of

one when he found it at hand. A ballad in the first act ("L'amour est

pur comme la fiamme"), the scene at the close ("L'air est léger"), a

prayer in the third act ("Dieu de pitié"), and the duets which followed

them are all cases in point. They mark the high tide of M. Bemberg's

graceful melodic fancy, and exemplify his good taste and genuineness of

feeling. It is not great music, but it is sincere to the extent of its

depth. For the note of chivalry which ought to sound all through an

Arthurian opera M. Bemberg has chosen no less a model than "Lohengrin";

but his trumpets are feebler echoes of the original voice than his

harmonies on several occasions, as, for instance, the entrance of

Lancelot into the castle of Astolat. In general his instrumentation

is discreet and effective. He has followed his French teachers in the

treatment of the dialogue, which aims to be intensified speech. He

has also trodden, though at a distance, in the footsteps of Bizet and

Massenet in the device of using typical phrases; but so timidly has this

been done that it is doubtful if it was discovered by the audience. The

resources of the opera house in reproducing the scenes of chivalric life

were commensurate with the music of the opera in its attempt to bring

its spirit to the mind through the ear. It is more exciting to read of

a tournament in Malory than to see a mimic one on the stage. It is true

that there were men on horses who rode together three times, that a

spear was broken, and that they afterward fought on foot; but they

struck their spears together as if they had been singlesticks, instead

of receiving each his opponent's weapon on his shield, and when the

spear broke it was not all "toshivered." Then, when they had drawn their

swords, they did not "lash together like wild boars, thrusting and

foining and giving either other many sad strokes, so that it was marvel

to see how they might endure," as the gentle Sir Thomas would doubtless

have had them do. Still, the opera was enjoyed and applauded, as it

deserved to be for the good things that were in it, and the Lily Maid

had more lilies and roses and holly showered about her than she could

easily pick up and carry away.

Miss Sybil Sanderson, who had gone to Paris from the Pacific Slope some

years before, and had achieved considerable of a vogue, particularly

in Massenet's operas, made her American début on January 16, 1895, in

Massenet's "Manon," in which M. Jean de Reszke sang the part of the

Chevalier des Grieux for the first time. The opera had been heard at the

Academy of Music, in Italian, nine years before, and this was its first

performance in the original French, a language which the fair débutante

used with admirable distinctness and charmingly modulated cadences, a

fact which contributed much to the pretty triumph which she celebrated

after the first act. She did not maintain herself on the plane reached

in this act. The second had scarcely begun before it became noticeable

that she was wanting in passionate expression as well as in voice,

and that her histrionic limitations went hand in hand with her vocal.

But she was a radiant vision, and had she been able to bring out the

ingratiating character of the music she might have held the sympathies

of the audience, obviously predisposed in her favor, in the degree

contemplated by the composer. This quality of graciousness is the most

notable element in Massenet's music. As much as anything can do so

it achieves pardon for the book, which is far less amiable than that

of "Traviata," which deals with the same unlovely theme. Another

quasi novelty was Saint-Saëns's "Samson et Dalila," which had one

performance--and one only--on February 8th to afford Mme. Mantelli

an opportunity to exhibit her musical powers, and Signor Tamagno his

physical. The music was familiar from performances of the work as an

oratorio; as an opera it came as near to making a fiasco as a work

containing so much good and sound music could.

The most interesting event in the whole administration of Mr. Abbey and

his associates happened on February 4th, when Verdi's "Falstaff" was

presented. Signor Mancinelli conducted, and the cast was as follows:

Mistress Ford ...................... Mme. Emma Eames

Anne ............................... Mlle. de Lussan

Mistress Page ...................... Mlle. Jane de Vigne

Dame Quickly ....................... Mme. Scalchi

Fenton ............................. Sig. Russitano

Ford ............................... Sig. Campanari

Pistol ............................. Sig. Nicolini

Dr. Caius .......................... Sig. Vanni

Bardolph ........................... Sig. Rinaldini

Sir John Falstaff .................. M. Victor Maurel

(His original creation.)