To construct operas out of Shakespeare's plays has been an ambition

of composers for nearly two centuries. Verdi himself yielded to the

temptation when he wrote "Macbeth" forty years ago. Probably no one

recognized more clearly than he did when he wrote "Falstaff" how

the whole system of lyrico-dramatic composition should undergo a

transformation before anything like justice could be done to the

myriad-minded poet's creations. Who would listen now to Rossini's

"Otello"? Yet, in its day, it was immensely popular. A careless day it

was--the day of pretty singing, and little else; the day when there was

so little concern for the dramatic element in opera that the grewsome

dénouement of Rossini's opera is said once to have caused a listener

to cry out in astonishment: "Great God! the tenor is murdering the

soprano!" Then it might have been possible for a composer, provided he

were a Mozart, to find a musical investment for a Shakespearian comedy,

but assuredly not for a tragedy. No literary masterpiece was safe from

the vandalism of opera writers at that time, however, and Shakespeare

simply shared the fate of Goethe and their great fellows. With the dawn

of the new era there came greater possibilities, and now it may be said

we have a few Shakespearian operas that will endure for several decades

at least: let us say Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor," Gounod's

"Romeo and Juliet," Verdi's "Othello" and "Falstaff." Ambroise Thomas's

"Hamlet" and Saint-Saëns's "Henry VIII" seem already to have outlived

their brief day, at least in all countries save France, where the

personal equation in favor of a native composer seems strong enough to

keep second-class composers afloat while it permits genius to perish. As

for Goetz's "Taming of the Shrew," it was too much like good Rhine wine,

and too little like champagne to pass as a comic opera. When Verdi's

last opera appeared the only Falstaff who had vitality was the fat

knight of Nicolai's work. Yet he had had many predecessors. Balfe

composed a "Falstaff" for the King's Theater in London, which was sung

with the capacious-voiced Lablache in the titular part, and Grisi,

Persiani, and Ivanoff in the cast. That was in 1838. Forty years earlier

Salieri had composed an Italian "Falstaff" for Vienna. In 1856 Adolphe

Adam produced a French "Falstaff" in Paris, and the antics of the greasy

knight amused the Parisians eighty-six years earlier in Papavoine's

"Le Vieux Coquet." Nicolai's predecessors in Germany were Peter Ritter,

1794, and Dittersdorf, 1796.

Verdi's return to Shakespearian subjects after reaching the fulness

of his powers in his old age, and after he had turned from operas to

lyric dramas, is in the highest degree significant of the thoroughness

of the revolution accomplished by Wagner. The production of "Otello"

and "Falstaff" created as great an excitement in Italy as the first

performance of "Parsifal" did in Germany; and it must have seemed like

the irony of fate to many that Wagner should have to be filtered through

Verdi in order to bear fruit in the original home of the art form. But

that is surely the lesson of "Otello," "Falstaff," and the fervid works

of Leoncavallo, Mascagni, and Puccini.

Even more strikingly than "Otello" this comic opera of the youthful

octogenarian disclosed the importance which Boito had assumed in the

development of Verdi. That development is one of the miracles of music.

In manner Verdi represents a full century of operatic writing. He began

when, in Italy at least, the libretto was a mere stalking horse on which

arias might be hung. All that he did besides furnishing vehicles for

airs was to provide a motive for the scene painter and the costumer.

Later we see the growth of dramatic characterization in his ensembles,

and the development of strongly marked and ingeniously differentiated

moods in his arias without departure from the old-fashioned forms. In

this element lay much of the compelling force of his melodies, even

those commonplace ones which were pricked for the barrel organ almost

before the palms were cool which first applauded them--like "Di quella

pira" and "La donna è mobile." Then set in the period of reflection. The

darling of the public began to think more of his art and less of his

popularity. Less impetuous, less fecund, perhaps, in melodic invention,

he began to study how to wed dramatic situations and music. This led him

to enrich his harmonies, and to refine his instrumentation, which in

his earlier works is frequently coarse and vulgar in the extreme. At

this stage he gave us "La Forza del Destino" and "Aïda." Now the hack

writers of opera books would no longer suffice him. He had already shown

high appreciation of the virtue which lies in a good book when he chose

Ghislanzoni to versify the Egyptian story of "Aïda." But the final step

necessary to complete his wonderfully progressive march was taken when

he associated himself with Boito. Here was a man who united in himself

in a creditable degree the qualifications which Wagner demanded for his

"Artist of the Future"; he was poet, dramatist, and musician. No one who

has studied "Otello" can fail to see that Verdi owes much in it to the

composer of "Mefistofele"; but the indebtedness is even greater in

"Falstaff," where the last vestige of the old subserviency of the text

to the music has disappeared. From the first to the last the play is

now the dominant factor. There are no "numbers" in "Falstaff"; there

can be no repetition of a portion of the music without interruption and

dislocation of the action. One might as well ask Hamlet to repeat his

soliloquy on suicide as to ask one of the characters in "Falstaff" to

sing again a single measure once sung. The play moves almost with the

rapidity of the spoken comedy. Only once or twice does one feel that

there is an unnecessary eddy in the current.

And how has this play been set to music? It has been plunged into a

perfect sea of melodic champagne. All the dialogue, crisp and sparkling,

full of humor in itself, is made crisper, more sparkling, more amusing

by the music on which, and in which, it floats, we are almost tempted to

say more buoyantly than comedy dialogue has floated since Mozart wrote

"Le Nozze di Figaro." The orchestra is bearer of everything, just as

completely as it is in the latter-day dramas of Richard Wagner; it

supplies phrases for the singers, supports their voices, comments on

their utterances, and gives dramatic color to even the most fleeting

idea. It is a marvelous delineator of things external as well as

internal. It swells the bulk of the fat knight until he sounds as if he

weighed a ton, and gives such piquancy to the spirits of the merry women

(Mrs. Quickly monopolizing the importance due to Mrs. Page), that one

cannot see them come on the stage without a throb of delight. In spite

of the tremendous strides which the art of instrumentation has made

since Berlioz mixed the modern orchestral colors, Verdi has in

"Falstaff" added to the variegated palette. Yet all is done so

discreetly, with such utter lack of effect-seeking, that it seems as if

the art had always been known. The flood upon which the vocal melody

floats is not like that of Wagner; it is not a development of fixed

phrases, though Verdi, too, knows the use of leading motives in a sense,

but a current which is ever receiving new waters. The declamation is

managed with extraordinary skill, and though it frequently grows out

of the instrumental part, it has yet independent melodic value as the

vocal parts of Wagner's "Die Meistersinger" have. Through this Verdi

has acquired a comic potentiality for his voice parts which goes hand

in hand with that of his instrumental parts.

But Verdi is not only dramatically true and melodious in his vocal

parts, he is even, when occasion offers, most simple and ingenuous.

There is an amazing amount of the Mozartian spirit in "Falstaff," and

once we seem even to recognize the simple graciousness of pre-Gluckian

days. Thus the dainty fancy and idyllic feeling which opens the scene in

Windsor Forest, with its suggestion of fays and fairies and moonlight

(a scene, by the way, for which Verdi has found entrancing tones, yet

without reaching the lovely grace of Nicolai), owes much of its beauty

to a minuet measure quite in the manner of the olden time, but which is,

after all, only an accompaniment to the declamation which it sweetens.

The finales of "Falstaff" have been built up with all of Verdi's

oldtime skill, and sometimes sound like Mozart rubbed through the

Wagnerian sieve. Finally, to cap the climax, he writes a fugue. A fugue

to wind up a comic opera! A fugue--the highest exemplification of

oldtime artificiality in music! A difficult fugue to sing, yet it runs

out as smoothly as the conventional tag of Shakespeare's own day, whose

place, indeed, it takes. It is a tag suggested by "All the world's a

stage," and though it is a fugue, it bubbles over with humor.

CHAPTER XVIII

UPRISING IN FAVOR OF GERMAN OPERA

In marshaling, in the preceding chapter, the chief incidents of the

period with which I am now concerned I set down the restoration of

German performances at the Metropolitan Opera House as the most

significant. There was a strong influence within the company working

to that end in the person of M. Jean de Reszke, who, though the

organization was not adapted to such a purpose, nevertheless strove

energetically to bring about a representation of "Tristan und Isolde"

in the supplementary spring season of 1895. Through him "Die

Meistersinger" in an Italian garb had been incorporated into the

repertory, and he was more than eager not only that it and the popular

operas "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" should recover their original

estate as German works, but that he might gratify a noble ambition and

demonstrate how the tragic style of "Tristan" could be consorted with

artistic singing. He achieved that purpose in the season of 1895-96,

and set an example that will long be memorable in the annals of the

Wagnerian drama in America. But the force which compelled the reform was

an external one. It came from the public. To the people, as they spoke

through the box office, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau were always readier to

give an ear than the stockholders or the self-constituted champions of

Italian opera in the public press.

There had been talk of a rival German institution when Mr. Abbey

restored the Italian régime in 1891; but it was wisely discouraged by

the more astute friends of the German art, who felt that the influence

of seven years would bear fruit in time, and who placed the principles

of that art above the language in which they were made manifest. The

interregnum following the fire had led Mr. Oscar Hammerstein to enter

the field as an impresario on a more ambitious scale than ordinary,

and on January 24, 1893, he opened a Manhattan Opera House with a

representation in English of Moszkowski's "Boabdil." The "season"

lasted only two weeks, and the opera house has long since been

forgotten. It stood in the same Street as the present Manhattan Opera

House, and its site is part of that covered by Macy's gigantic

mercantile establishment. Though he had no opposition, Mr. Hammerstein

showed little of that pluck and persistence which have distinguished him

during the two seasons in which he has conducted a rival establishment

to the Metropolitan Opera House. After two weeks, within which he

produced "Boabdil," "Fidelio," and some light-waisted spectacular

things, he turned his theater over to Koster & Bial, who ran it as a

vaudeville house until the end of its short career. There were English

performances of the customary loose-jointed kind in the summer at the

Grand Opera House, the first series of which, beginning in May, 1893,

derived some dignity from the fact that it was under the management of

Mr. Stanton, who had conducted the Metropolitan Opera House for the

stockholders during the German seasons; and in November the Duff Opera

Company anticipated Mr. Abbey's forces by bringing out Gounod's

"Philémon et Baucis" in an English version.

These things, however, contained no portents for the future of opera

in New York; they were the familiar phenomena which flit by in the

metropolis's dead seasons. Pregnant incidents came in the midst of

the regular season. It chanced that Mme. Materna, Anton Schott, Emil

Fischer, and Conrad Behrens, who had been identified with the earlier

German seasons, were in New York in February, 1894, and taking

advantage of that fact Mr. Walter Damrosch arranged two performances

of "Die Walküre," in the Carnegie Music Hall, for the benefit of local

charities. They were slipshod affairs, with makeshift scenery and a

stage not at all adapted for theatrical performances; but the public

rose at them, as the phrase goes, and Mr. Damrosch felt emboldened to

give a representation of "Götterdämmerung," with the same principals

at the Metropolitan Opera House, on March 28th. Again there was an

extraordinary exhibition of popular interest which the German Press

Club turned to good account by improvising a performance of "Tannhäuser"

for its annual benefit on April 9. Soon there was a great stir in the

German camp, but united action was hindered by the rivalry between Mr.

Damrosch and Mr. Seidl. The supplementary season at the Metropolitan

ended on April 27th, and under date of April 28th there appeared a

circular letter, signed individually by friends of Mr. Seidl, soliciting

subscriptions for a season of German opera in 1904-05. The plan

contemplated forty performances between November and May, on dates which

were not to conflict with the regular performances of Italian and French

opera. At the same time announcement was made of the organization of a

Wagner Society, whose purpose it was to support a season of Wagner's

operas at the Metropolitan Opera House, beginning on November 19, 1894,

and continuing for four weeks--twelve evening performances and four

matinées, the company to include "the greatest Wagnerian singers from

Bayreuth and other German opera houses." Personal friends of the two

conductors attempted to unite the rival enterprises, and a conference

was held at the office of William Steinway. The attempt failed because

Messrs. Seidl and Damrosch could not agree on a division of the artistic

labors and credits. Mr. Seidl withdrew from the negotiations. In less

than a week Mr. Damrosch announced that he had secured subscriptions for

his season amounting to $12,000, and also a guarantee against loss of

$10,000 more. On May 10th he sailed for Europe to engage his company.

When he returned in the fall he announced a season of twelve evening and

four afternoon performances, to be devoted wholly to Wagner's operas

and dramas, to begin on February 25, 1895. The prices ranged from $4

for orchestra stalls to $1 for seats in the gallery. In his company were

Rosa Sucher, Johanna Gadski, Elsa Kutscherra, Marie Brema, Max Alvary,

Nicolaus Rothmühl, Paul Lange, Franz Schwarz, and Rudolph Oberhauser,

besides Emil Fischer and Conrad Behrens, who had been identified with

the earlier German regime. Adolf Baumann, of the Royal opera at Prague,

was engaged as stage manager, but lost his life in the wreck of the

North German Lloyd steamship Elbe on the voyage hitherward.

The season began, as advertised, on February 25th and ended on March

23d, the sixteen performances receiving an additional representation to

enable Max Alvary to effect his one hundredth performance of Siegfried

in the drama of that name in the city where he "created" it, as the

French say. There were also an additional performance of "Lohengrin" and

three extra performances at reduced prices after the subscription. The

whole affair was Mr. Damrosch's own venture, he being at once manager,

artistic director, and conductor, but, as I have intimated, he had the

backing of an organization called the Wagner Society, which was chiefly

composed of women. The season came hard on the heels of the Italian

and French season. Mr. Damrosch's leading singers were familiar with

Wagner's works, but practically he had to build up his institution from

the foundation and to do it within an incredibly short time. With such

rapid work we are familiar in America, but in Germany to have suggested

such an undertaking as the organization of a company, the preparation of

a theater, and the mounting, rehearsing, and performing of seven of the

most difficult and cumbersome works in the repertory of the lyric drama

within the space of five or six weeks would have been to have invited

an inquest de lunatico. I do not wish to be understood as mentioning

these things wholly in the way of praise--the results from an artistic

point of view disclosed much too often that they were blameworthy--but

what credit they reflect upon the tremendous energy, enterprise,

and will power of Mr. Damrosch must be given ungrudgingly and

enthusiastically. Plainly he was inspired with a strength of conviction

quite out of the ordinary line of that spirit of theatrical speculation

upon which we have so often depended for the large undertakings in

music. It was a belief based on something like religious zeal, and under

the circumstances what he did was an even more remarkable feat than that

accomplished by his father in 1884. I sometimes thought at the time that

he was driven into the enterprise more by impulse than by reason, and

the fact that he occasionally had the same sort of a notion is evidenced

by a letter which I received from him in response to one of mine to him

near the close of the season. "Thanks for your congratulations on the

financial success so far," wrote the young manager. "I shall breathe

more freely after the next four weeks are over. The responsibility has

been a heavy one, and it is curious that no one seemed to share my

almost fatalistic belief in Wagner opera. Neither Abbey & Grau, nor

Seidl, nor anyone was willing to touch it, and I was finally driven into

it myself by an irresistible impulse which, so far, seems to have led

me right. I am glad now, for many reasons, that events have so shaped

themselves, and I think that the season will be productive of much good

for the future. A curious and interesting fact in connection with the

performances has been that the public came to hear the operas, and not

the singers."

And such a success! Not only far in advance of what the fondest

Wagnerites had dared to hope for as a tribute to their master's art,

but one which compelled them to rub their eyes in amazement and grope

and stare in a search for causes. Twenty-one times in succession was

the vast audience room crowded, and when the time was come for striking

the balance on the subscription season there was talk, only a little

fantastic if at all, of receipts aggregating $150,000, or nearly $9,000

a performance. I should like to keep the thought of this unparalleled

financial success separate from that of the artistic results attained.

Between the financial and artistic achievements there was a wide

disparity; but that fact only sufficed to emphasize the obvious lesson

of the season, namely, the vast desire which the people of New York

felt again to enjoy Wagner's dramas. Fortunately I can make a record

of the capaciousness of that hunger without necessarily lauding its

intelligence and discrimination. Great indeed must have been the hunger

which could not be perverted by the vast deal of slipshod work in

the scenic department of the representations, and the vaster deal of

bungling and makeshift in the stage management. Many an affront was

given to the taste and intelligence of the audiences, and dreadful was

the choral cacophony which filled some of the evenings. Yet the people

came; they came, as Mr. Damrosch observed in his letter, to hear

the dramas instead of the singers, and though "Lohengrin" had been

beautifully performed in the Italian season by artists like Nordica,

Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and Maurel in the cast, the public crowded

into the German representation as if expecting a special revelation from

Fräulein Gadski, a novice, and Herr Rothmühl, a second-rate tenor, Of

all the singers only Miss Marie Brema, a newcomer, and the veteran, Emil

Fischer, were entirely satisfactory. For the beautiful dramatic art of

Frau Sucher and for her loveliness of person and pose there was much

hearty admiration, but this could not close the ears of her listeners

to the fact that her voice had lost its freshness. The subscription

repertory, including the Alvary anniversary, was as follows: "Tristan

und Isolde," three times; "Siegfried," four times; "Lohengrin," twice;

"Götterdämmerung," twice; "Tannhäuser," twice; "Die Walküre," twice,

and "Die Meistersinger," twice. In a letter recently received from Mr.

Damrosch he says: "My first spring season of thirteen weeks in New York,

Chicago, Boston, and a few Western cities gave a profit of about

$53,000, leaving me with a large stock of Vienna-made scenery, costumes,

and properties."

Mr. Damrosch had won the first battle of his campaign and taught a

lesson of lasting value to his old and experienced rivals. Warned by the

success of his experiment and stimulated by a petition signed by about

two thousand persons asking that German representations under Mr. Seidl

be included in the Metropolitan scheme, Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau

made German opera a factor in the next season; but they did so in a

half-hearted way, which defeated its purposes and brought punishment

instead of reward. Nevertheless, German opera had returned to the

Metropolitan to stay, and henceforth will call for attention along with

the Italian and French performances in this history. Meanwhile, since

I have begun it, let me finish the tale of the impresarioship of Mr.

Damrosch.

Flushed with victory, the young manager prepared a five months'

campaign for the year 1896, and sought for new worlds to conquer.

Philadelphia, in which city he began operations on February 20th,

treated him shabbily, but he did fairly well in New York and other

cities in the East and West. Unfortunately for him, he made an

invasion of the South, which was not ripe for serious opera, either

financially or artistically. A performance in one city of that section

which cost him over $3,000 brought him exactly $220. The difference

between the sums was what Mr. Damrosch paid to learn that knowledge

and love of Wagner's operas had not penetrated far into Tennessee.

Experience is always purchased at large cost in the operatic field.

Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau refused Mr. Damrosch the use of the Metropolitan

Opera House for his second New York season, and he was driven to the

old, socially discredited Academy of Music. They did not look with

favoring eyes upon an enterprise which had achieved so tremendous a

triumph at its very start, and they provided a large percentage of the

wormwood which filled the cup which Mr. Damrosch drank in 1896; but they

embittered their own goblet by the procedure, and when the time came

for laying out the campaign of 1896-97 they were quite as ready as Mr.

Damrosch to sign a treaty of peace whose provisions promised to make

for the good of both sides instead of the injury of either. The rivals

agreed to keep out of each other's way as much as possible and even to

help each other by an occasional exchange of singers. By this means it

was purposed to widen the repertories of both companies, Mr. Damrosch

providing the Metropolitan establishment with a Brünnhilde and an

Isolde for Jean de Reszke's Siegmund, Siegfried, and Tristan, and the

Metropolitan company lending him in return Melba, Eames, and Calvé, or

others, to enable him to perform some of the Italian and French operas

which he had included in his list. Mr. Damrosch yielded Chicago to his

rivals and took Philadelphia in exchange. It was a wise compromise.

Mr. Damrosch lost $40,000 in 1896; he made $14,000 in 1897. The next

year, the Metropolitan Opera House being closed during the regular

subscription period, as will appear later in this record, Mr. Damrosch

entered into partnership with Charles A. Ellis, manager of the Boston

Symphony Orchestra, who had undertaken the management also of Mme.

Melba's American affairs, and Italian and French operas were added to

the German repertory. The regular season showed a good profit, most of

which, however, was frittered away in a spring tour made by Melba with

a portion of the company. By this time Mr. Damrosch had concluded that

he was too good a man and musician to surrender himself to the hateful

business of managing a traveling opera company, and he withdrew from the

partnership with Ellis, to whom he sold all his theatrical properties,

and returned to concert work and composition, though for two weeks in

the next season he was conductor of Mr. Ellis's company.

And now to some of the details of the artistic work of these Damroschian

enterprises. The year 1896 was signalized by the appearance in America

of two singers who rapidly achieved first-class importance. These were

Katherina Klafsky and Milka Ternina. Mme. Klafsky was the wife of Herr

Lohse, whom Mr. Damrosch also engaged as assistant conductor. She came

here under a cloud, so far as the managerial ethics of Germany were

concerned. How much respect those ethics were entitled to may be judged

from the story. I have already said, in discussing the case of Mme.

Lehmann and her violation of contract with the Opera at Berlin, that a

speedy result of the success of German opera under Mr. Stanton was a

change of attitude on the part of the Intendanten of German theaters

toward the New York institution so soon as it was found that a handsome

proportion of the American earnings might be diverted into the pockets

of those Intendanten or the managers of municipal theaters. When Mr.

Damrosch engaged his second company Mme. Klafsky was a member of the

Municipal Theater in Hamburg, of which Pollini was director. When the

offer of an American engagement came to her she consulted with Herr

Pollini, who graciously gave his consent to her acceptance of it on

condition that she pay him one-half of her earnings. She refused to

agree to do this, and, fearing that Pollini would invoke the aid of the

courts to restrain her from coming to New York, she took French leave

of Germany more than two months before she was needed here. Her success

in America was emphatic, and after she had effected a reconciliation

with Pollini she was re-engaged by Mr. Damrosch to alternate with

Mme. Lehmann in the season of 1896-97. Within a fortnight of the

re-engagement she died in Hamburg from a trephining operation undertaken

to relieve her from the results of an injury to her skull, received

while in America.

Mme. Klafsky and Mr. Alvary had sung in "Tristan und Isolde," with which

Mr. Damrosch began his campaign in Philadelphia on February 20th. Her

success was instantaneous, and her tremendous dramatic forcefulness, the

natural expression of an exuberant temperament, placed her higher in

public favor during the season than Mme. Ternina, whose refined and

ingratiating art did not receive full appreciation till later. Other

members of the Damrosch troupe of 1896 were Wilhelm Grüning, tenor,

and Demeter Popovici, bass, beside Gadski, Fischer, Alvary, and other

persons already known, but of smaller importance. The New York season

began at the Academy of Music on March 2d and ended on March 28th. The

operas were "Fidelio," "Lohengrin," "Siegfried," "Tannhäuser," "Die

Meistersinger," "Die Walküre," "Der Freischütz," and (in the original

English) Mr. Damrosch's "The Scarlet Letter." This opera had its first

performance in New York on March 6. Its libretto was written by George

Parsons Lathrop, a son-in-law of Hawthorne, who wrote the romance on

which it was based. The cast included Johanna Gadski as Hester Prynne,

Barron Berthald as Arthur Dimmesdale, Conrad Behrens as Governor

Bellingham, Gerhard Stehmann as the Rev. John Wilson, and William

Mertens as Roger Chillingworth. The greater part of the music had been

performed at concerts of the Oratorio Society on January 4 and 5, 1895.

The book of the opera proved to be undramatic in the extreme, a defect

which was emphasized by the execrable pronunciation of nearly all the

singers at the performance on the stage at the Academy. In the music Mr.

Damrosch essayed the style of Wagner, and did it so well, indeed, as to

deserve hearty admiration. He was helped, it is true, by factors frankly

and copiously copied from the pages of his great model. The nixies of

the Rhine peeped out of the sun-flecked coverts in the forest around

Hester Prynne's hut, as if they had become dryads for her sake; ever

and anon the sinister Hunding was heard muttering in the ear of

Chillingworth, and Hester wore the badge of her shame on the robes of

Elsa, washed in innocency. But such things are venial in a first work.

In frankly confessing his model (for it cannot be thought for a

moment that Mr. Damrosch expected his imitations to be overlooked) he

illustrated a rule which applies to all composers at the outset of their

careers. The fact must be noted, but it is much more to the purpose

that the young composer blended the elements of his composition with a

freedom and daring quite astonishing in their exhibition of mastery.

There is no sign of doubt or timorousness anywhere in the work, though

the moments are not infrequent when the utterance is more fluent than

significant. The typical phrases which he chose to symbolize the persons

and passions of the play are most of them deficient in plasticity, and

nearly all of them lack that expressiveness which Wagner knew so well

how to impress upon his melodic elements; the greater, therefore, was

the surprise that Mr. Damrosch was able to weave them together in a

fabric which moved steadily forward for more than an hour, and reflected

more or less truthfully and vividly the feeling of the dramatic

situations. Unfortunately there is little variety in this feeling, so

that in spite of Mr. Damrosch's effort, or, perhaps, because of it,

there is a deal of monotony in the music of the first act. There is a

fine ingenuity of orchestration throughout, however, and an amount

of daring in harmonization which sometimes oversteps the limits of

discretion. In an agonizing scene between Chillingworth and Hester at

the close of the first act the orchestra and the two chief personages

are wholly engrossed with an exposition of the dramatic feeling of the

moment, while the chorus (supposed to be worshiping in the neighboring

meeting-house) sing the "Old Hundredth" in unison and without

instrumental support. It is an admirable historical touch, and the

device is the approved one of using a psalm tune as a cantus firmus

to the remainder of the music; but Mr. Damrosch's harmonization of the

ensemble is such that we seem to hear two distinct and unsympathetic

keys. There was, after the second act, a scene upon the stage in honor

of Mr. Damrosch, in which, after several large wreaths had been bestowed

upon him, a representative of the Wagner Society came forward, and on

behalf of that body presented him with a handsome copy of Hawthorne's

story and the incorrect statement that the honor was paid to him as

the first American who had composed a grand opera on an American theme

which had been publicly produced. In this there were as many errors

of statement as in the famous French Academician's description of a

lobster. George F. Bristow's "Rip Van Winkle" was composed by a native

American and was brought out at Niblo's Garden long before Mr. Damrosch

was born in Breslau; while Signor Arditi, who hailed from Europe, like

Mr. Damrosch, brought out under his own direction and with considerable

success an opera entitled "La Spia," based on Cooper's novel. This

merely in the interest of the verities of history.

The German season of 1907, a part of whose story I have already told,

began at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 8th and lasted four

weeks. It added no novelty to the local list, but had some interesting

features, among them a serial performance of the dramas of Wagner's

"Ring of the Nibelung," the first appearance of Mme. Nordica in the

Brünnhilde of "Siegfried" on March 24th, and the joint appearance of

Mmes. Lehmann and Nordica in "Lohengrin," the German singer, true to

her dramatic instincts, choosing the part of Ortrud. On April 1st

Xavier Scharwenka, who had taken a residence with his brother Philip

in New York, borrowed the company from Mr. Damrosch and on his own

responsibility gave a performance of his opera, entitled "Mataswintha."

The opera was produced under difficulties. It had withstood its baptism

of fire in Weimar seven months before, and Mr. Scharwenka had performed

portions of it at a concert for the purpose of introducing himself to

the people of New York. But the singers had to learn their parts from

the beginning, there was a great deal of pageantry which had to be

supplied from the stock furniture of the Metropolitan stage, the tenor

Ernst Kraus took ill and caused a postponement, and even thus the

chapter of accidents was not exhausted. When the performance finally

took place Herr Stehmann, a barytone, had to sing Herr Kraus's part,

which he had learned in two days. Under the circumstances it may be

the course of wisdom to avoid an estimation of the opera's merits

and defects and to record merely that it proved to be an extremely

interesting work and well worth the trouble spent upon its production.

Under different circumstances it might have lived the allotted time

upon the stage, which, as the knowing know, is a very brief one in the

majority of cases. The story of the opera was drawn from Felix Dahn's

historical novel "Ein Kampf um Rom."

It is high time to get back again to the story of opera at the

Metropolitan Opera House under the direction of the lessees; but before

then chronological orderliness requires that attention be paid to an

incident outside the category of prime importance. This was the first

production in New York of Humperdinck's delightful fairy opera "Hänsel

und Gretel" at Daly's Theater on October 8, 1895. The production was

in English. The venture looked promising, and great interest was felt

in it. Mr. Seidl was charged with the musical direction. A company of

singers was brought together, partly from London, partly enlisted here.

Sir Augustus Harris, director of the opera at Covent Garden, was the

financial backer of the enterprise. As numerous an orchestra as the

score calls for could not be accommodated in the theater, but Mr. Seidl

did the best he could, and the band was commendable. Three of the

singers, Miss Jeanne Douste, Miss Louise Meisslinger, and Mr. Jacques

Bars, disclosed ample abilities; but the English manager had no

knowledge either of the needs of the opera or the demands of the New

York public; Sir Augustus's speech on the opening night, indeed,

disclosed ignorance also of the name of the composer and the history of

the work which he had clothed with considerable sumptuousness. It was

long remembered with amusement that to him Herr Humperdinck was "Mr.

Humperdinckel" and the opera some "beautiful music composed for this

occasion." And so great expectations were disappointed, and, after

worrying along from October 8th to November 15th, the opera was withdrawn

with a record of failure, not deserved by the work and only partly

deserved by the performance. We shall meet the opera again in the story

of opera at the Metropolitan Opera House a decade later, when it came

into its rights, and the public were able to testify their admiration

in the presence of the composer.

The prospectus of Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau (which continued to be

the official style of the managers) for the season 1895-96, contained

this announcement: "The management has also decided to add a number of

celebrated German artists and to present Wagner operas in the German

language, all of which operas will be given with superior singers, equal

to any who have ever been heard in the German language. The orchestra

will be increased. . . . The chorus will be strengthened by a number of

young, fresh voices, to which will be added an extra German chorus."

Signor Mancinelli was not re-engaged as conductor, but Anton Seidl was.

After what I have told thus far in this chapter the causes which led to

this change of policy will be readily understood. The augmented company

was a formidable host, though its strength remained in the French and

Italian contingent. Had the German singers been equally capable, the

story of Mr. Damrosch's enterprise might have read differently. Mme.

Calvé returned and revived the furor over "Carmen"; Mesdames Melba,

Nordica, Scaichi, Mantelli, and Messrs. Jean and Édouard de Reszke, Pol

Plançon, Victor Maurel, and Castelmary remained; newcomers were Lola

Beeth, Frances Saville, Marie Brema (who had been brought from Europe by

Mr. Damrosch), Giuseppe Cremonini, Adolph Wallnöfer, Giuseppe Kaschmann

(who had been a member of Mr. Abbey's first company twelve years

before), and Mario Ancona. The regular subscription season consisted of

thirteen weeks (fifty-two performances), beginning on November 18th, and

there was a special subscription, at the same scale of prices, for a

season of ten performances of German operas, beginning on December 5th.

There were also performances at popular prices on Saturday evenings,

and the entire season, excluding the spring season, which developed but

little interest, compassed seventy-four representations. For these and

thirteen Sunday night concerts the public paid about $575,000.

"Oh! how far are we from Covent Garden!" cried Jean de Reszke on the

night of November 27th, and he clipped in his arms the friend who had

come to offer his congratulations to the thunderous plaudits of the

audience. M. de Reszke was in a fine glow of enthusiasm. He had sung

and played Tristan and opened a new era in the style of Wagnerian

performances in New York. A few days later, while the drinking horn

was going from hand to hand at a medieval dinner given in honor of the

principal interpreters of Wagner's love drama (Mme. Nordica, Miss

Brema, the brothers de Reszke, and Mr. Seidl), he responded to a toast,

and in four languages, English, German, French, and Italian, celebrated

the advent of what he called "international opera." Why he neglected

to throw in a few Polish phrases for the benefit of his countryman

Paderewski, who sat opposite him at table, his hosts could not make

out, unless it was because he wanted his expressions of delight at the

achievement and prospect to be understood by all his hearers. High hopes

filled the hearts of all local lovers of the lyric drama at the period.

The promises of Abbey and Grau had stimulated the kindliest, heartiest,

cheeriest feeling on all hands. All bickerings between the adherents of

the various schools were silenced by the promulgation of a policy which

seemed as generous and public-spirited as it was liberal. Whenever it

was practicable New York was to have performances which should respect

not only the tongue, but also the spirit of the works chosen for

representation. That M. de Reszke had been an active agent in the

inauguration of the new régime was an open secret to his acquaintances,

and he bore public testimony when he supplemented his impersonation

of Tristan with a German Lohengrin. The significance of such an act,

coupled with Mme. Nordica's support of him in both performances, seemed

extraordinary even in the minds of those who were not inclined to attach

much importance to the language used in performance, so long as the

performance was imbued with a becoming spirit of sincerity and a desire

to make artistic purpose replace idle diversion. It looked as if through

the example of these two artists, seconded by the liberality of the

management, the people of New York were to take a long step forward in

musical culture--a step toward the foundation of an institution which

should endure and exemplify the esthetic, moral, and physical character

of the people of America.

The expectations aroused by the announcement were woefully disappointed.

There were nights of wondrous brilliancy and of extraordinary splendor

in nearly every department. Some of the refulgence came from the

new ambitions with which M. de Reszke and Mr. Seidl inspired the

organization. The season had no prouder moments than those filled with

the performances of "Tristan" and "Lohengrin" vouchsafed the subscribers

to the regular subscription; but it had no deeper gloom than that which

settled upon the subscribers to the special German season on most of

the occasions set apart for them. The fate of "Fidelio" was utterly

grievous; two representations of "Tristan" filled their souls with

indignation instead of gratitude; there is no saintly intercession

which could have won redemption for "Tannhäuser." The performances of

"Tristan" and of the Italian "Lohengrin" at which Nordica, Brema, and

the brothers de Reszke sang were brilliantly successful, but in each

case the regular performance was made to precede that set apart for

the German subscription. The circumstance would alone have sufficed

to arouse suspicion that the management was at least willing to

discriminate against the special Thursday nights, and the suspicion was

wrought into conviction by the disparity between the performances of the

two subscriptions. If it was the purpose of Abbey & Grau to put German

opera on trial their method looked very unfair. "The drama for its

own sake as an art work, and not for the sake of the singer" is a

fundamental principle of German art, but it can only maintain its

validity with the help of adequate performances. Saving the four singers

who sang in Italian and French as well as German (Mme. Nordica, Miss

Brema, and the brothers de Reszke), the German singers of 1895-96 were

woefully inefficient, and the German season was an indubitable failure.

I shall append a list of performances of the operas presented in the

seasons covered by this chapter and its predecessor, and its perusal

will, I think, enforce even upon a careless reader the fact that,

in spite of the shortcomings to which I have called attention, the

administration of Abbey & Grau yet marked a gigantic step in the

direction of dramatic sanity and sense over the lists which prevailed

in the period when this story began. In the consulship of Mapleson

the repertory might have been turned into verse quite as dramatic as

most of that of the opera books. Thus:

"Favorita," "Puritani,"

"Lucia di Lammermoor,"

"Marta," "Linda di Chamouni,"

"La Traviata," "Trovatore";

"Il Barbiere di Siviglia,"

"Roberto il Diavolo,"

"Don Pasquale," "Rigoletto,"

"Faust," "Gli Ugonotti," "Un Ballo,"

and so on for quantity. Of the old hurdy-gurdy list "Favorita,"

"Traviata," "Trovatore," "Lucia," and "Rigoletto" were given, but

unitedly they had only ten representations, and most of them were on

Saturday nights, when popular prices prevailed. Even though Melba sang

in "Lucia," it had to be consorted at the last with "Cavalleria,"

which Mme. Calvé made attractive. Against this fact we have the other

that "Carmen" alone had a greater number of representations than the

entire old-fashioned list, and that the operas which were most popular

after it were "Tristan und Isolde," "Faust," and "Lohengrin."

Of the ten German performances three were devoted to "Tristan," two to

"Tannhäuser," one to "Fidelio," two to "Lohengrin," and two to "Die

Walküre." "Tristan," "Tannhäuser," and "Lohengrin" were in the repertory

of the regular subscription season. Only two unfamiliar works were

brought forward--Bizet's "Pêcheurs de Perles" (two acts only) and

Massenet's "La Navarraise"; but there was an interesting revival of

Boito's "Mefistofele" after a lapse of twelve years, and a more than

interesting revival of "Tristan und Isolde," with Mmes. Nordica and

Brema and the brothers de Reszke in the principal parts. Mme. Melba did

not join the company until December 27th; she added Massenet's "Manon"

to her repertory. Jean de Reszke increased the list of parts in which

he was known by adding Tristan to it and the German Lohengrin. Mme.

Nordica's new rôles were Isolde, Venus in "Tannhäuser," and Elsa in

German. Miss Brema's operas were "Tristan," "Lohengrin," "Orfeo,"

"Aïda," and "Die Walküre," and, like Mme. Nordica, Mlle. Lola Beeth and

Signor Kaschmann, she sang in German as well as Italian. "La Navarraise"

was brought forward for Mme. Calvé on December 11, 1895; the two acts

of "Les Pêcheurs de Perles" at a matinée on January 11, 1896.

Colonel Mapleson provided a prelude to the Metropolitan season of

1896-97 with a short season of Italian opera of the archaic sort at the

Academy of Music. The doughty manager could no longer fly his old London

colors, so he appeared as the sole director of "The New Imperial Opera

Company." With two or three exceptions all his singers were strangers

to the opera-goers of New York. Mme. Scalchi was again with him, and

Signor de Anna; but the rest were newcomers. Among them were Mme.

Hariclée-Darclée, Mme. Bonaplata-Bau, Susan Strong, and Mme. Giuseppina

Huguet, sopranos; Mme. Parsi, Mlle. Ponzano, and Mme. Meysenheim,

contraltos; Signori de Marchi, Randacio, Betti, Olivieri, and Durot,

tenors; Signori Ughetto and Alberti, barytones, and Pinto, Terzi,

Giordano, Borelli, and Dado, basses. The conductors, capable men both

of them, were Signori Bimboni and Tango. Within a fortnight "Aïda,"

"Trovatore," "Traviata," "Les Huguenots," "Sonnambula," and "Faust"

had been sung and a new work brought out. This was "Andrea Chenier,"

by Illica and Giordano, which had its first performance in America on

November 13, 1896, the cast being as follows:

Andrea Chenier ................................... Durot

Carlo Gerard ................................... Ughetto

Maddalena di Coigny ...................... Bonaplata-Bau

La Mulatta Bersi ............................ Meysenheim

La Contessa di Coigny .......................... Scalchi

Madelon .......................................... Parsi

Roucher ........................................... Dado

Il Romanziero .................................. Alberti

Fouquier Tinville ............................... ------

Mathieu ........................................ Borelli

Un Incredibile |

L'Abate, poeta |............................... Giordano

Schmidt, Carceriere a San Lazzaro ................ Terzi

Il Maestro di Casa ............................ Olivieri

Dumas ............................................ Pinto

Tango conducted and the performance had a rude forcefulness quite in

keeping with the character of the opera. Under better conditions "Andrea

Chenier" would doubtless have held its own for a respectable space in

the local repertory. But the seeds of dissolution were germinating in

the company even before the performances began, and Colonel Mapleson did

not dare to appear long in rivalry with the Metropolitan when it opened

its doors on November 16th. In a week or so he went to Boston, where

after one or two performances the orchestra went on strike and the

Imperial Opera Company went to pieces. With it the last effort of the

veteran manager. Mapleson had held out a promise of the likelihood that

Giordano would come to New York to give personal superintendence to

the production of his opera and carried his fiction to the extreme of

telling a reporter of The Sun newspaper that the composer was in the

city. Meeting the reporter in the Academy of Music, I expressed my

doubt touching the correctness of his information, whereupon he pointed

out the gentleman whom Colonel Mapleson had introduced to him as the

composer. It was Giordano, the barytone! After its introduction to

America "Andrea Chenier" disappeared for nearly a dozen years, when,

on March 27, 1908, it had a single performance at the Manhattan Opera

House, so that Mme. Eva Tetrazzini, the wife of Cleofonte Campanini,

who had retired from the stage, might help at a gala representation in

honor of her husband.

No season since the Metropolitan Opera House was opened was so full of

vicissitudes as that of 1896-97. First came the death of Mme. Klafsky,

who, under the reciprocal arrangement between Mr. Damrosch and Abbey &

Grau, was to sing the chief Wagner rôles with Jean de Reszke. This

happened in September, and was followed by the death of Mr. Abbey

(nominally the leader of the managing directors, though from the

beginning it was Mr. Grau who did the practical work of management), and

of Mr. William Steinway, who had formulated and carried through the plan

of reorganization which relieved the firm of Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau of

its burden of indebtedness and transferred it to the shoulders of the

Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau Company (Ltd.). Just before the season began

Mme. Nordica, who had won her way to a high place in the favor of the

public, and whose absence from the company's roster was widely and

sincerely deplored, came forward with a story charging her failure

to secure a re-engagement to the intrigues of Mme. Melba and M. Jean

de Reszke. So far as the gentleman was concerned the story seemed

improbable on its face, and long before the season was over Mme. Nordica

was willing to admit publicly that she had been misinformed as to the

facts in the case. It remained, however, that Mme. Melba had reserved

the exclusive right to herself to sing the rôle of Brünnhilde in

Wagner's "Siegfried." It soon turned out that the failure to secure Mme.

Nordica was to cost the management dear. Mme. Melba sang the part once,

and so injured her voice that she had to retire for the season and cede

the rôle to Mme. Litvinne (the Mlle. Litvinoff of Colonel Mapleson's

company in 1885-86), who up to that time had not succeeded in convincing

the public that she was equal to so great a responsibility, although she

had been engaged to sing the part of Isolde after Mme. Klafsky's death

and the failure of negotiations between Mr. Grau and Mme. Nordica. The

manager's judgment was never at fault in these negotiations; he wanted

to secure the services of Mme. Nordica, for he well knew their value,

but the unhappy contract with Melba stood in his way, and Mme. Nordica

was beyond his reach when the failure of Melba's voice and her departure

for France on January 23d left the company crippled. Happily the

popularity which Mme. Calvé's impersonation of Marguerite in Gounod's

"Faust" had found restored that perennial work to its old position as

one of the principal magnets of the season. Mme. De Vere-Sapio was

engaged to make possible the production of such operas as "Hamlet,"

"Le Nozze di Figaro," and Massenet's "Le Cid." Then there fell a double

blow: Mme. Eames went into a surgeon's hands and Mozart's scintillant

comedy had to be withdrawn. It was to have been given on February 10th.

Flotow's "Martha" was substituted for it, and in the midst of the

performance the representative of Tristan, M. Castelmary, fell on the

stage, fatally stricken with heart disease.

It would be pleasant to say that the facts thus detailed exhaust the

story of the institution's misfortunes; but they do not. I have already

told of its financial outcome. Throughout the season a determined and

wicked effort was made to injure the opera, and was helped along by

columns of idle speculation and gossip in three or four newspapers.

Without ground, so far as anybody could see, the notion was given

publicity that there was grave doubt that opera would be given in the

following year. The talk seemed wholly gratuitous, for if there were

any signs of falling off in popular interest so far as the opera was

concerned or in the confidence and satisfaction of the stockholders

of the opera house company so far as Mr. Grau's administration was

concerned, it escaped the notice of experienced and interested

observers. The total attendance was larger than in the preceding season,

and the interest displayed in the representations was fully as keen. But

the newspaper gossips would have their way, and in the end turned out to

be prophets, for there was no opera in 1897-98, for reasons which will

have to be discussed in the next chapter.

The season began on November 16th. The regular subscription was for

thirteen weeks, three nights a week and Saturday afternoons. Extra

subscription performances were thirteen Saturday nights and three

Wednesday afternoon representations at popular prices and an extra

week--three nights and a matinée--at subscription prices. There were,

therefore, in all, seventy-two performances, at which twenty-four

different operas were brought forward, as shown in the table which is to

follow. There was a less elaborate organization than in the preceding

season, but the average merit of the performances was higher, there

being no ill-equipped German contingent to spoil the record. There were,

however, quite as many German performances without the special singers

and the extra subscription. In place of the latter, an attempt was made

to give extra Wednesday matinées, but the experiment was abandoned after

three weeks.

The most sensational incident of the season was the collapse of Mme.

Melba after her ill-advised effort to sing the music of Brünnhilde. To

the loveliness of her devotion and the loftiness of her ambition honest

tribute must be paid, but it must also be said that nature did not

design her to be an interpreter of Wagner's tragic heroines. Her vocal

and temperamental peculiarities put a bar to her singing the Brünnhilde

music. It did not lie well in her voice, and she was not then, and is

not now, of the heroic mould, and her experience should have taught her

that her voice would not admit of the expansion necessary to fit her

for that mould. That the music wearied her was painfully evident long

before the end of the one scene in which Brünnhilde takes part in

"Siegfried." Never did her voice have the lovely quality which had

always characterized it in the music of Donizetti and Gounod. It lost

in euphony in the broadly sustained and sweeping phrases of Wagner, and

the difference in power and expressiveness between its higher and lower

registers was made pitifully obvious. The music, moreover, exhausted

her. She plunged into her apostrophe with most self-sacrificing vigor

at the beginning of the scene, and was prodigal in the use of her voice

in its early moments; but when the culmination of its passion was

reached, in what would be called the stretto of the piece in the old

nomenclature, she could not respond to its increased demands. It was an

anti-climax. Wagner's music is like jealousy; it makes the meat it feeds

on if one be but filled with its dramatic fervor. Recall what I have

related of Mme. Lehmann's statement of how she was sustained by the

emotional excitement which Wagner's dramas created in her, and how it

made it easier for her to sing the music of Brünnhilde than that of

Norma. But Mme. Lehmann was a woman of intense emotionality, and her

voice was colored for tragedy and equal to its strain. It would be a

happiness to say the same of Mme. Melba, but no judicious person would

dream of saying it. "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory

of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth

from another star in glory." Mme. Melba should have been content with

her own particular glory.

Massenet's "Le Cid" was the only novelty of the season It was given on

February 12, 1897, with the following distribution of parts:

Rodrigue (his original character) ............... Jean de Reszke

Don Diégue (his original character) .......... Édouard de Reszke

Le Roi ........................................... Jean Lassalle

Le Conte de Gormas (his original character) ........ Pol Plançon

St. Jacques |

L'Envoye Maure | .................................. Jacques Bars

Don Arras ......................................... Signor Corsi

Don Alonzo ................................. Signor de Vaschetti

L'Infante ................................... Clementine de Vere

Chimène ......................................... Felia Litvinne

Conductor--Signor Mancinelli

The table of performances from 1893 to 1897 follows here:

PERFORMANCES IN REGULAR SUBSCRIPTION SEASONS

Operas 1893-94 1894-95 1895-96 1896-97

"Faust" ..................... 8 7 8 10

"Philémon et Baucis" ........ 4 0 2 1

"Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... 7 3 7 4

"Lohengrin" ................. 5 5 6 6

"Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 2 3 3 2

"Hamlet" .................... 1 0 2 1

"Roméo et Juliette" ......... 5 4 4 5

"Orfeo" ..................... 1 0 1 0

"Pagliacci" ................. 3 2 2 0

"Les Huguenots" ............. 2 6 5 2

"Carmen" ................... 12 7 11 7

"Don Giovanni" .............. 1 3 0 3

"Rigoletto" ................. 2 4 1 1

"Die Meistersinger" ......... 3 0 1 3

"L'Amico Fritz" ............. 2 0 0 0

"Semiramide" ................ 3 1 0 0

"Tannhäuser" ................ 2 0 3 3

"Le Nozze di Figaro" ........ 3 0 0 0

"La Traviata" ............... 1 1 2 3

"Guillaume Tell" ............ 0 3 0 0

"Aïda" ...................... 0 3 4 3

"Il Trovatore" .............. 0 3 2 2

"Otello" .................... 0 4 0 0

"Mignon" .................... 0 1 0 0

"Elaine" (Bemberg) .......... 0 2 0 0

"Manon" (Massenet) .......... 0 4 0 0

"Falstaff" .................. 0 3 3 0

"Samson et Dalila" .......... 0 1 0 0

"Tristan und Isolde" ........ 0 0 6 2

"L'Africaine" ............... 0 1 0 1

"La Favorita" ............... 0 0 2 2

"La Navarraise" ............. 0 0 4 0

"Fidelio" .................. 0 1 0 0

"Die Walküre" ............... 0 0 2 0

"Les Pêcheurs de Perles" .... 0 0 1 0

"Mefistofele" ............... 0 0 2 4

"Martha" .................... 0 0 0 2

"Siegfried" ................. 0 0 0 6

* "Werther" ................. 0 0 0 1

"Le Cid" .................... 0 0 0 2

* "Werther" had a single performance in the supplemental season

of 1893-94.

CHAPTER XIX

BEGINNING OF THE GRAU PERIOD

From 1896 to the end of the season 1902-03 Maurice Grau was in name as

well as in fact the monarch of the operatic world of America. For a

brief space he also extended his reign to Covent Garden, but the time

was not ripe for that union of interests between London and New York

which has so long seemed inevitable, and his foreign reign was short. So

was his American dictatorship; but while it lasted it was probably the

most brilliant operatic government that the world has ever known from a

financial point of view, and its high lights artistically were luminous

in the extreme. At the end of the period Mr. Grau had retired from

operatic management forever, for though his desire to remain in active

employment was intense, his mental powers unweakened, and his will

strong, his health was hopelessly shattered, and before another lustrum

had passed he had gone down to his death, his last thoughts longingly

fixed on the institution which had brought him fame and fortune in

abundant measure. For several years he had maintained a beautiful summer

home at Croissy-Chatou, on the Seine, about ten miles from Paris. He

died in the French capital on March 14, 1907, of a disease of the heart

which had compelled his abandonment of active managerial life.

Mr. Grau was an Austrian by birth, his birthplace being Brünn; but he

was brought to New York by his parents in 1854, when he was five years

old, and all his education and business training was American. He passed

through the classes of the city's public schools and was graduated from

the Free Academy, now the College of the City of New York, in 1867. He

then entered the Law School of Columbia College, and read law in the

office of Morrison, Lauterbach & Spitgarn. His uncle, Jacob Grau, was

an operatic and theatrical manager, and for him, as a boy, he sold

librettos in his opera house. This opened the way into theatrical life,

which proved to have such fascinations and hold such promises that he

abandoned the law without having sought admission to the bar, and in

1872 also abandoned the service of his uncle and embarked on his career

as manager. In association with Charles A. Chizzola, the joint capital

amounting to $1,500, he engaged Aimée, a French opéra bouffe singer, who

had made a hit two years before at the Grand Opera House, for a season

of seven weeks. His first week, in Bridgeport, Conn., paid the expenses

of the entire engagement. Aimée came to America again and again, and

always under Mr. Grau's management. The same year he managed the

American tours of Rubinstein and Henri Wieniawski, both of whom came to

America with the financial backing of Messrs. Steinway & Sons. It was

before the days of phenomenal honoraria. Rubinstein was content with

$200 a concert, and in eight months his energetic young manager had

cleared $60,000 on his engagement alone. The next year he organized the

Clara Louise Kellogg Opera Company, continued his management of Mlle.

Aimée, and brought to America the Italian tragedian, Tommaso Salvini.

In 1874 he managed three opéra bouffe and operetta companies, besides

Adelaide Ristori, and became lessee of the Lyceum Theater, in Fourteenth

Street. There was a season of financial stress, and in 1875 he severed

his connection with Chizzola, after another period of bad luck. In 1876

he gave concerts, directed by Offenbach, in the Madison Square Garden,

which were a failure, but he recouped his losses from a forfeit of

$20,000, which the Italian Rossi paid to him rather than give up a

successful season in Paris. A highly successful tour of seventeen months

in South America, Cuba, and Mexico with an opéra bouffe troupe, headed

by the tenor Capoul, and Paola Marié continued his successes. In

1883 began his association with Messrs. Abbey and Schoeffel, whose

experiences, together with his own, at the Metropolitan Opera House

have repeatedly formed the subject of discussion in these chapters of

operatic history.

The story of the management of the Metropolitan Opera House ended in

Chapter XVII with an account of the disasters which overtook Abbey,

Schoeffel, and Grau in 1897. Before the end of that season Mr. Grau

announced, what had frequently been hinted at in the newspapers, that

though he should obtain a lease of the opera house he would not give

opera in 1897-98. The announcement had been received with incredulity,

for though misfortune had overtaken the managers in Chicago and some of

their other enterprises had been unfortunate, the New York season had

turned out in all things successful. Besides, though, "Perjuria ridet

amantum Jupiter," the public had long before learned to laugh at the

oaths of managers. It turned out, however, that Mmes. Melba and Eames,

who had become favorites of the stockholders, were not available for

the next season, and the directors, who had learned to have confidence

in Mr. Grau, were willing to let him make the experiment of a year of

famine. As it turned out it cost them nothing except the performances,

and Mr. Grau and the friends who had rallied around him very little

money. The annual rental of $52,000 was made up to them by sub-rentals

of the building to other managers, chiefly to Messrs. Ellis and

Damrosch. Meanwhile the year of quiescence was put to a good purpose in

strengthening the hold which Mr. Grau had resolved to obtain on opera

in London as well as New York. Mr. Grau and his friends organized

the Maurice Grau Opera Company and easily obtained a lease of

the Metropolitan for three years and a release from the bankrupt

corporation, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Ltd.). On May 4th the old company

accepted a report which recited the story of the season 1896-97,

recommended that it go out of business, and released Messrs. Schoeffel

and Grau from an obligation which they had entered into with the company

not to engage in opera management. All that remained for it to do was to

realize on the only valuable asset which it owned--the Tremont Theater,

in Boston. This it soon did by selling the property to Mr. Schoeffel,

who has managed it ever since.

The way now being open, Mr. Grau organized his new company, composed

wholly of his friends. These were Edward Lauterbach, Charles Frazier,

Robert Dunlap, Roland F. Knoedler, Henry Dazian, B. Franklin de Frece,

F. W. Sanger, John W. Mackay, Sr., and Frederick Rullman. The capital

stock, paid up, was $150,000, of which the Metropolitan Opera and Real

Estate Company subscribed to $25,000. Mr. Grau was elected president

and general director, Mr. Lauterbach vice-president, and Mr. Frazier

treasurer. Mr. Sanger was made associate manager, with the specific

duty of looking after the affairs of the house itself, and Mr. Ernest

Goerlitz was appointed secretary.

There was no regular subscription at the opera house in the season of

1897-98, but the public were not without comfort. From January 17 to

February 19, 1898, the Damrosch and Ellis company gave a series of

performances which provided an excellent substitute. Opera-lovers were

not even called on to forego the pleasure of hearing some of the singers

whom they had come to consider essential to their happiness under the

régime of Damrosch and Ellis's rivals. Mme. Melba was "not available"

for Mr. Grau, but she was for Mr. Ellis, who was managing all her

American business, and she headed the company. With her were Mme.

Nordica and Mme. Gadski, and among old popular favorites were Emil

Fischer and David Bispham. Other members of the company were Gisela

Staudigl, who had been heard in the first German seasons; Mlle. Seygard,

Mme. Brazzi, an American contralto with good presence, real warmth of

feeling, and correct instincts; Miss Mattfeld, an extremely serviceable

"juvenile," who remained such for years; Salignac and Rothmühl, tenors

respectively for the Italian and German operas; Campanari, barytone;

Ibos, a tenor, and Boudouresque, a bass whose name was picturesque.

Melba added "Traviata" to her repertory at the opening performance, and

later essayed "Aïda," only to prove, as she had done in the case of

"Siegfried," that there are things in music which are unlike the kingdom

of heaven in that they cannot be taken by violence. The repertory

consisted of "La Traviata," "Tannhäuser" "Die Meistersinger," "Aïda,"

"Lohengrin," "Il Barbiere," "Faust," "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Die

Walküre," "Siegfried," "Götterdämmerung," and "Les Huguenots."

Before the next regular season began under the new Grau administration

Mr. Seidl, who would doubtless have continued in association with the

institution with which he had long and efficiently been connected,

died. The temporary suspension of the Metropolitan subscription season

had forced him more actively than ever into the concert field. He had

succeeded Mr. Theodore Thomas as conductor of the Philharmonic Society,

and continued the popular triumphs of that organization. He had also

organized a series of subscription orchestral concerts at the Hotel

Astoria, and his friends were developing plans for a new endowed

orchestra when he died, after an illness of only a few hours' duration,

supposed to have been caused by ptomaine poisoning. This was on the

night of March 28, 1898. His body was cremated after an imposing public

funeral at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 31st, participated in

by the Musical Mutual Protective Union, Männergesangverein Arion, the

Philharmonic Society, German Liederkranz, the Rev. Merle St. Croix

Wright, who delivered the memorial address, and Mr. H. E. Krehbiel,

chairman of the committee of arrangements, who read a despatch received

from Robert G. Ingersoll, who was absent from the city on a lecture

trip. The pall-bearers were A. Schueler (who had been a classmate of

the dead man at the Leipsic Conservatory); Oscar B. Weber, E. Francis

Hyde (president of the Philharmonic Society); Henry Schmitt, Albert

Stettheimer, Henry T. Finck (musical critic of The New York Evening

Post); Walton H. Brown, Louis Josephtal, H. E. Krehbiel (chairman of

the committee of arrangements and musical critic of The New York

Tribune); Xavier Scharwenka, August Spanuth (musical critic of the New

Yorker Staats-Zeitung); Albert Steinberg (sometime musical critic of

The New York Herald); the Hon. Carl Schurz, Charles T. Barney, Rafael

Joseffy, Julian Rix, James Speyer, Edgar J. Levey (musical, critic of

The New York Commercial Advertiser); Dr. William H. Draper, Richard

Watson Gilder, Paul Goepel, E. M. Burghard, Eugene Ysaye, Victor

Herbert, George G. Haven, Zoltan Doeme, Edward A. MacDowell, and

Carlos Hasselbrink.

Concerning Mr. Seidl's career I have already spoken at some length in

these chapters; it will be long before those who knew him intimately

will cease to talk about his personal characteristics, and to tell

anecdotes which illustrate those characteristics. He was one of those

strong personalities that give an interest to all manner of incidents,

even the commonplace. Like Moltke, he could hold his tongue in seven

languages; but it is a fact that all his friends must have observed

that his taciturnity never made his company any the less entertaining.

Moreover, when the mood was on him, he could talk by the hour, and then

his reminiscences of the years spent in the household of Wagner or the

story of his experiences while carrying the gospel of Wagner through

Europe were full of fascination. But the talkative mood seldom came

when a crowd was about him. He was indifferent to the many and fond of

the few; so his circle of intimate friends never grew large in spite of

the multitudes who sought his acquaintance, and though no combination

of circumstances could disturb his self-possession he seemed to be most

contented and comfortable when seated quietly with a single friend. Even

under such circumstances he could sometimes sit for minutes at a time

without speaking himself or expecting a word from his companion, yet

never show a sign of weariness or ennui. In this particular he was

something like Schumann, of whom it is related that once he spent an

hour with a bright young woman to whom he was fondly attached without

speaking a word. Knowing his peculiarities, she too remained silent, and

was rewarded for her self-restraint when he departed by hearing him say

that the hour had been one in which they had perfectly understood each

other. Seidl's hero, Wagner, was the very opposite of Schumann in this

particular, and there is a story which indicates that he must frequently

have been amused at his pupil's reticence. Coming to a rehearsal once he

found that Seidl had taken a cold which had robbed him completely of his

voice, so that he could give no instructions to the musicians. Wagner

laughed immoderately, and with mock seriousness upbraided him for his

bad habit of talking too much, which had now brought him to the pass

where he could not talk at all.

Seidl's epistolary habits were like his conversational--he wrote as

little as he talked; but as the talking fit sometimes seized him, so did

the writing fit. Then he could devote hours to a letter which had the

proportions and sometimes the style of a formal essay. On such occasions

he was so prone to drop into a pulpit manner that I once taxed him with

it and asked an explanation. He paused for a moment and then smilingly

made a sort of half-confession that he had once been destined for the

priesthood. His Scriptural illustrations and "preachy" manner were

relics which had clung to him from that early day. They were the only

academic traces about him, however. It is doubtful if any of his friends

ever heard him discuss a question in the theory or history of music. How

far his exact knowledge in the art went may not be said; but one thing

is certain--his practical knowledge embraced every measure of Wagner's

works.

He seldom spoke of his conservatory days at Leipsic, and then generally

in a spirit of amusement. Complimented once by me on the excellence

of his pianoforte playing, he said: "Oh, I made quite a stir at a

conservatory examination once with Mendelssohn's 'Rondo Capriccioso.'

I was to be a pianist." That he could have been trained into a virtuoso

of merit I can easily believe, for without paying much regard to the

graces of pianoforte playing he yet had a remarkable command of those

tone qualities which are so helpful in expressive playing. He was

always eloquent at the pianoforte, especially when playing excerpts

from the dramas of Wagner. Then his performances were peculiarly full

and orchestral, a fact largely due to the circumstance that he never

confined himself to pianoforte arrangements, but preferred to play from

the orchestral score. That he appreciated the importance of giving

consideration to the peculiarities of instrumental media he illustrated

once when at a private rehearsal of music for one of my Wagnerian

lectures, at which he had intended to play, but had been prevented by

a sudden duty-call at the opera, he quickened the tempo considerably

for the pianist beyond that heard at his own readings of the opera, and

added in explanation: "Nie langweilig werden am Clavier!" ("One must

never be tedious at the pianoforte!")

A few first representations of operas in this period outside of the

Metropolitan Opera House call for brief mention, if not for the sake of

the excellence of the productions, at least for the sake of completeness

in the record. Thus on May 16, 1898, a company of Italian singers, some

of whom had been singing in Mexico, some in South America, some in San

Francisco--the sort of a gathering that, I think, I have described

in these pages as New York's ordinary summer operatic flotsam and

jetsam--gave in Wallack's Theater the first representation of Puccini's

"La Bohème" which New Yorkers heard in their own city. The company was

first announced as the Baggetto Grand Italian Opera Company, which was

probably its official style in Mexico. In New York a hoary device of

juggling with the name of Italy's chief opera house was resorted to, and

it was called the Milan Royal Opera Company, of La Scala. Under either

title the company proved itself capable of a deal of stressful and

distressful singing, though a good impression was made by Giuseppe

Agostini, a youthful tenor, and Luigi Francesconi, a barytone. "La

Bohème" was performed on the opening night of the company's brief season

(it made shipwreck according to rule within four or five days), with the

following distribution of parts:

Mimi ........................... Linda Montanari

Musetta ...................... Cleopatra Vincini

Rodolfo ...................... Giuseppe Agostini

Marcello ..................... Luigi Francesconi

Schaunard ..................... Giovanni Scolari

Alcidero |

Benoit |.................... Antonio Fumagalli

Parpignol .................... Algernon Asplandi

Needless to say that scant justice was done to the play and score of

"La Bohème" by the vagrant singers, and that the good opinion which the

opera won later was shared by few among critics, lay and professional.

After ten years of familiar acquaintance with the work, I like it better

than I did at first, but it has not yet taken a deep and abiding place

in my affections. I see in it, however, an earnest and ingenious effort

to knit music, text, and action closer together than it was the wont of

Italian composers to do before the advent of Wagner set Young Italy in

a ferment. Music plays a very different rôle in it than it does in the

operas of Donizetti, Bellini, and the earlier Verdi. It does not

content itself with occasionally proclaiming the mood of a situation

or the feelings of a conventional stage person. It attempts to supply

life-blood for the entire drama; to flow through its veins without

ceasing; to bear along on its surface all the whims, emotions, follies,

and incidents of the story as fast as they appear; to body them forth

as vividly as words and pantomime can; to color them, vitalize them,

arouse echoes and reflections of them in the hearts of the hearers. But

this it can do only in association with other elements of the drama, and

when these are presented only in part, and then crudely and clumsily,

it must fail of its purpose. And so it happens that Puccini's music

discloses little of that brightness, vivacity, and piquancy which we are

naturally led to expect from it by knowledge of Mürger's story, on which

the opera is based, and acquaintance with the composer's earlier opera,

"Manon Lescaut." One element the two works have in common: absence of

the light touch of humor demanded by the early scenes in both dramas.

However, this is a characteristic not of Puccini alone, but all the

composers in the Young Italian School. They know no way to kill a

gnat dancing in the sunlight except to blow it up with a broadside of

trombones. Puccini's music in "La Bohème" also seems lacking in the

element of characterization, an element which is much more essential in

comedy music than in tragic. Whether they are celebrating the careless

pleasures of a Bohemian carouse or proclaiming the agonies of a

consuming passion, it is all one to his singers. So soon as they drop

the intervallic palaver which points the way of the new style toward

bald melodrama they soar off in a shrieking cantalena, buoyed up by the

unison strings and imperiled by strident brass until there is no relief

except exhaustion. Happy, careless music, such as Mozart or Rossini

might have written for the comedy scenes in "La Bohème," there is next

to none in Puccini's score, and seldom, indeed, does he let his measures

play that palliative part which, as we know from Wagner's "Tristan" and

Verdi's "Traviata,"--to cite extremes,--it is the function of music to

perform when enlisted in the service of the drama of vice and phthisis.

On October 10, 1898, another band of strolling singers, which endured

for a week at the Casino, also performed "La Bohème," and the Castle

Square Opera Company of Henry W. Savage gave it in English at the

American Theater on November 28th of the same year. It did not reach

the Metropolitan Opera House until the season 1900-01.

Stockholders and subscribers of the Metropolitan Opera House having

endured their year of privation, which, as we have seen, was not without

its moments of refreshment, Mr. Grau opened the regular subscription

season 1898-99 on November 29th. Its incidents of special interest

were not many. One was the return of Mme. Sembrich, who made what Mr.

Sutherland Edwards called Rosina's "double entry" in Rossini's "Barber"

on the second night of the season--November 31st. On the third night

Mme. Melba, who sang by the courtesy of Mr. Ellis, appeared in "Roméo

et Juliette." There were first appearances of several artists whose

names became fixed in the prospectuses for some years to come: Mme.

Ernestine Schumann-Heink as Ortrud in "Lohengrin" on January 9, 1899;

Ernest Van Dyck as Tannhäuser on the opening night; Albert Saléza as

Romeo on December 2, 1898; Suzanne Adams as Juliet on January 4, 1899;

Anton Van Rooy as Wotan in "Die Walküre" on December 14, 1898. Mr.

Franz Schalk, the conductor engaged for the German operas in place

of Mr. Seidl, who had taken part with Mr. Grau in the summer season

at Covent Garden and been engaged for the New York season that was

to follow, introduced himself to New York on the same occasion.

Of acquaintances, more or less old, there were in the company

besides Mmes. Sembrich, Eames, Lehmann, Nordica, and Mantelli, Miss

Meisslinger, Miss Pevny, Frances Saville, Mr. Bispham, Mr. Dippel (who

had been a member of the last German company in 1890-91), Pol Plançon,

and Adolph Mühlmann. Newcomers besides those mentioned were Matilde

Brugière, Herman Devries (son of Mme. Rosa Devries, a dramatic singer

of renown half a century before), Henri Albers, barytone, and Lemprière

Pringle, an English singer, who had worked himself up in the ranks of

the Carl Rosa Opera Company. The two brothers, Jean and Édouard de

Reszke, whom New York had come to look upon as indispensable to perfect

enjoyment, were also members of the company. There were two cyclical

performances of "The Ring of the Nibelung" to keep good Wagnerites in

countenance, but Mr. Grau made his popular hit by a repetition of the

device which had been successful before with "Faust"--he gave "Les

Huguenots" with an "ideal cast." The device was simple, but it served.

Meyerbeer's opera had been given three times, when on February 20th he

announced it with Mme. Sembrich in the cast, and an all-'round advance

on prices on the basis of $7, instead of $5, for orchestra chairs.

Only one novelty was produced in the season. This was Signor

Mancinelli's "Ero e Leandro," which had its first American performance

on March 10, 1899, with the composer in the conductor's chair. The

principal singers were Mme. Eames (Hero), Saléza (Leander), and Plançon

(Ariofarno). Mme. Schumann-Heink was set down to sing the prologue, but

illness prevented at the first representation, and the music was sung

by Mme. Mantelli. The opera had a pretty success and back of it was an

interesting history. Boito wrote the libretto for himself, but put it

aside when the subject of "Mefistofele" took possession of his mind.

Two of the numbers, which he had already composed, found their way into

the score of the later opera, one of them being the beautiful duet,

"Lontano, lontano, lontano," in the classical scene. Boito turned the

book over to Bottesini, who composed it, but failed to make a success

of it. Signor Mancinelli then took the libretto in hand and, having a

commission from the Norwich (England) festival of 1896 for a choral

work, he composed it and handed it in to be sung as a cantata. It

was sung at the festival. The next year it received its first stage

performance at Madrid and by way of Turin and Venice reached Covent

Garden, London, where it was produced on July 15, 1898.

What a simple tale it is that has so twined itself around the hearts of

mankind that it has lived in classic story for ages and gotten into the

folk-tales of more than one European people! Hero is a priestess of

Aphrodite, who lives at Sestos, on the Thracian coast; Leander, a youth,

whose home is at Abydos, on the Asiatic shore, beyond the Hellespont.

The pair meet at a festival of Venus and Adonis and fall in love with

each other at sight. The maiden's parents are unwilling that she shall

cease her sacred functions to become a wife, and Leander swims the

strait every night, while Hero holds a torch at the window to direct him

to her side. One night there arises a tempest and Leander is drowned,

and his body cast up at the foot of the tower. Then Hero throws herself

upon the jagged rocks beside him, and the lovers are united in death.

"That tale is old, but love anew

May nerve young hearts to prove as true,"

sang Byron after he had put discrediting doubts to shame by swimming the

Hellespont himself and catching an ague for his pains. A simple tale,

yet I have included more than is ordinarily found in the recital in

order to show how Boito utilized and added to it. A simple tale, but

with what lovely fervor have the poets sung it over and over again!

Byron could smile at his own Quixotic feat in the lines which he wrote

six days after its accomplishment, but in "The Bride of Abydos" he did

not attempt to conceal the affection which he felt for the tale, or his

pride in the fact that Helle's buoyant wave had borne his limbs as well

as Leander's; and who can without emotion call up Keats's picture of

"Young Leander, toiling to his death,"

pursing his weary lips for Hero's cheek and smiling against her smiles

until he sinks, and

"Up bubbles all his amorous breath"?

Right nobly, too, did Schiller hymn the lovers and two centuries of

opera-writers--Italian, French, German, English, and Polish--have

sought to weave their pitiful story into lyric dramas.

Boito, as I have said, wrote the book of "Ero e Leandro" for himself,

but eventually gave it to others. I can only speculate as to the cause

of Boito's abandonment of his intellectual child. Probably he concluded

that it lacked the dramatic elements which the composers of the last few

decades, paying tribute, willingly or unwillingly, to Wagner's genius,

have felt to be necessary to the success of a lyric drama. But dramatic

action need not always be summed up in movement. Wagner's greatest

tragedy has scarcely more external incident than "Ero e Leandro," and,

indeed, is like this opera, in that the interest in each of its three

acts centers in a meeting of the lovers and their publication of the

play enacting on the stage of their hearts. But it takes music like

Wagner's, music surcharged with passion, to body forth the growth of

the dramatic personages and make us blind to paucity of incident. When

that cannot be had, then pictures and functions of all kinds, solemn

and festive, must be relied on to hold the interest. Boito built up

such pictures and grouped such functions about his simple tale with a

great deal of ingenuity. The eye is charmed at once with his classic

landscapes in the first act--the cypresses, myrtles, and blooming

oleanders, the temple portico, the statues and altar with its votive

offerings, the kneeling chorus of priestesses and sailors, Hero with her

ravishing robes (think of Mme. Eames in the part), the gallant Leander

and the stately archon Ariofarno. It is the scene of the lovers' meeting

at the festival, and to heighten its interest and provide something else

than hymns and rites, Boito has turned Leander into a victor in the

Aphrodisian games, both as swordsman and cytharist. Hero crowns him

with laurel, and he sings two odes, which Boito cleverly borrows from

Anacreon, the first without, the second with implied, but not expressed

credit. The odes are the most familiar of Anacreon's odes, however, and

no one could think of moral obliquity in connection with Boito's use of

them. They are the address to the lyre which the poet wishes to attune

to heroic measures, but which answers only in accents of love; and the

tale of how the poet took Eros, shivering, out of the cold night and

received a heart wound in return. Charmingly, indeed, do the odes fit

into the dramatic scheme and offer two set pieces as a contrast to the

solemn pronouncements of the archon and the excessive hymning of the

chorus.

The development of the plot is now begun. Boito has created Ariofarno

to fill the place of the wicked nun of the German folk-tales. He is

obsessed with guilty love for Hero and seeks to divert her service from

the celestial Venus to the earthly. She scorns his offers of love, and

he leaves her with threats of vengeance. Filled with forebodings, she

seeks an omen in the voice of a sea shell which had been placed on

the altar of Aphrodite, the Sea-born. The words are charming, and the

occasion prettily prepared for a vocal show piece. She invokes the shell

as the cradle of Aphrodite, hears in its murmurs the song of the sea

nymphs, the humming of bees amid the oleander's aeolian whispers, and

the soft confessions of a mermaid. Then the sounds grow wild, and

stimulate her fancy to a picture of rushing waters, flying foam, and

wrathful surge--the vision which is realized in the last act. Here the

suggestion for musical delineation is obvious, and Signor Mancinelli

has utilized it in such a manner as to make his song (which, for

reasons that I shall not pursue, awakened memories of the ballatella

in "Pagliacci") the first really triumphant thing in the opera. The

rest of the act is chiefly devoted to a love duet, at the close of

which Hero, kneeling before the statue of the god, invokes Apollo to

admonish her of her fate. Ariofarno, in concealment, answers for the

god: "Death!"

In the second act, which plays in the part of the temple of Aphrodite

devoted to the mysteries, Ariofarno carries out his plan of vengeance

against Hero. Professing to have received an oracular command to that

effect, he restores a service in an ancient town by the sea and to it

consecrates Hero, who is powerless to resist his will. The duty of the

priestess is to give warning of approaching storms, so that by priestly

rites the angry waters may be placated. While pronouncing her sentence

he, in an aside, offers to save her if she will accept his love. Again

he is spurned, and when he utters the words which condemn her to the

vigil Leander seeks to attack him. For this he is seized and banished

to the Asian shore. Hero takes the oath, the dancers rush in and begin

a bacchanalian, or Aphrodisian, orgy, while the chorus sings the "Io

paean." Here Signor Mancinelli has really written with a pen of fire.

The music is tumultuously exciting, though built on the learned forms,

and there is the happiest union of purpose and achievement. In the last

act, somewhat clumsily set and unnecessarily ambitious in its strivings

for spectacular realism, the dénoument is reached. Songs of sailors come

up from the sea; Hero sings her love and longing and lights her lover to

his fate. Their love duet is interrupted by the bursting of the tempest,

which had come upon them without being observed. The warning trumpet

which she should have sounded is heard from the vaults below, and the

chant of the approaching priests. Leander throws himself into the sea;

the archon upbraids Hero for neglect of duty and discovers its cause.

Her punishment, death, will be his vengeance, but the lifeless body of

Leander is hurled upon the rocks, and comes into view when a thunderbolt

tears away a portion of the tower wall. Hero sinks dead to the ground;

the archon rages at the escape of his victim, and an invisible choir

sings of a reunion of the lovers in death.

As a composer Signor Mancinelli is an eclectic. It would not be easy

to specify any particular master as a model. He admires Wagner and has

proper appreciation of the dramatic values, the continuity of idea,

and the effect of development which flow from the recurrent use of

significant phrases; but his manner is not at all that of the later

Wagner whose influence, if found at all, must be sought in a few

harmonic progressions and in a belief in the potency of orchestral

color. Nearer to him than the master poet-musician are Verdi,

Ponchielli, Boito, and the eager spirits of Young Italy. His music is

as free as the later Verdi's from the shackles of set forms, but he is,

nevertheless, at his best when the book permits an extended piece of

lyric writing. This being so, it is disappointing that he has done so

little that is good in the opening scene where the book invited him to

consult the wants of the Norwich festival and to write in the cantata

style. In the first act, however, there is little to praise outside of

the settings of the two Anacreonic odes and the song to the shell. There

is much striving, but a paucity of plastic ideas. What might have been

an unconstrained lyrical outpouring, the prologue, mere thundering in

the index, because of the composer's mistaken impression that it ought

to be tragic, and in the "Ercles vein." When the rites begin and a

swelling paean is expected, there is much making of musical faces, but

no real beginning. Matters improve in the second act, where the part of

Ariofarno becomes dramatically puissant. Here there are noble passages

and the duet has moments of passionate intensity; but all these things

pale their ineffectual fires before the "Io paean," which is as thrilling

and well applied as anything that I can recall in the operas of the

decade which preceded "Ero e Leandro."

CHAPTER XX

NEW SINGERS AND OPERAS

There now remained four years of Mr. Grau's administration at the

Metropolitan Opera House. They were years of great activity, during

which the fortunes of the manager and the institution rose steadily. Mr.

Grau was no more of a sentimentalist in art than Mr. Abbey had been. He

was quiet, undemonstrative, alert, and wholly willing to let the public

dictate the course of the establishment. Outwardly he was always calm,

urbane, neither communicative nor secretive. I sat behind him during all

the years of his divided and undivided directorship, and never failed

of a pleasant greeting, no matter what the expression of The Tribune

had been on the morning of the day. He accepted congratulations with a

"Thank you!" which had cordiality in its timbre, and let the subject

fall at once. He met expressions of condolence in the same unperturbed

and uneffusive manner. Only once in all the years during which we sat

neighbors can I recall that he volunteered a remark indicative of

either satisfaction or disappointment. It was on the night of the first

performance of Reyer's "Salammbô," in the season 1900-01. He appeared in

his place early and extended his gloved hand in his ordinary manner, but

this time his eyes took a survey of the audience-room the while. Then,

still half turned, he remarked without a touch of feeling in the tone of

his voice: "Encouraging, isn't it? Some say the public want novelties."

He had expended a large sum on the production, and the public had met

him with half a house.

If the public cared little for new things, it may occasionally have

disturbed the solitary musings of Mr. Grau, but it only emphasized his

public exhibitions of willingness to give the people the old things

which they liked. A strongly popular favorite had a safe hold on a long

tenure of service under him. Changes there had to be from year to year,

but so long as the public manifested a desire to listen to a high-class

singer, and there were no untoward circumstances to interfere, that

singer was re-engaged. Hence there came to be at the Metropolitan in the

higher ranks something like the theatrical stock companies of an earlier

generation. New singers there had to be, from time to time, but year

after year (the serious interruption is not yet) the subscribers were

assured before one season was ended that in the next they would still

be privileged to hear Mmes. Sembrich, Eames, Nordica, Schumann-Heink,

Ternina, Homer, and (until he retired from his active stage career) Jean

de Reszke, and Messrs. Édouard de Reszke, Van Dyck, Dippel, Scotti,

Plançon, Journet, Campanari, Mühlmann, Bispham, and Albert Reiss. The

presence of these artists of the first rank naturally determined the

character of the repertory, which was also cut to a pattern, since the

public always wanted to hear the artists whom they admired in the rôles

in which they were most admirable. The German Contingent made the

Wagnerian list inevitable, just as Mme. Sembrich made inevitable the

operas of the florid Italian school, and Mme. Eames the two favorite

operas of Gounod. These circumstances simplify the presentation of the

significant incidents of the remainder of this history. I have only

to take account of the entrance of a few stars into the Metropolitan

system, and the first production of a few operas--some of which came

only speedily to depart, others of which have remained in the

establishment's repertory.

First, then, as to the American débuts. Newcomers of the first rank

there were none among the ladies in the season 1899-1900: the tenor,

Alvarez, effected his entrance on the Metropolitan stage on the opening

night of the season, December 18th, in Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette";

Signor Scotti, barytone, who has remained a prime favorite ever since,

in "Don Giovanni," on December 27th; Fritz Friedrichs, whose success

in New York was inconsiderable compared with that which he had won in

Bayreuth in his famous character of Beckmesser in "Die Meistersinger,"

on January 24, 1900. The subscription season of fifteen weeks consisted,

with all the extra performances, of 104 performances. It was full of

disappointments because of the illness of singers, and many performances

were slipshod because of evils that have remained with the institution,

in spite of many protests on the part of press and public, and promises

of reform on the part of the management. Several times the company was

divided so that performances might be given simultaneously in New York

and Philadelphia. Even when this was not done, the efficiency of the

forces was sapped by wearisome midnight journeys to and from the latter

city, which prevented adequate rehearsals. Nevertheless, there was a

supplemental season of two weeks. Herr Hofrath Ernst von Schuch,

director of the opera at Dresden, was a visitor, and conducted two

performances of "Lohengrin" and four concerts. No new operas were

produced.

Before the regular subscription season, 1900-01, the Metropolitan Opera

House was the scene of an ambitious effort to habilitate opera in

English, which was made by Henry W. Savage in co-operation with Maurice

Grau. Mr. Savage had some years before established his Castle Square

Opera Company, organized in Boston, in the American Theater. The

repertory of the company was composed largely of operettas at first,

but gradually operas of large dimensions and serious import were added.

After the season 1899-1900 he entered into an arrangement with Grau to

occupy the Metropolitan Opera House from October 1 to December 15, 1900,

and under the title Metropolitan English Grand Opera Company the two

managers issued a prospectus which contained the names of nearly all the

singers then known favorably to the English opera stage in America. Many

of them had also sung in the Carl Rosa Opera Company, of England, and

there was a better command of routine in the organization than had

been known in English performances thitherto. The repertory was quite

as pretentious as that of the company of foreign artists regularly

domiciled at the Metropolitan, save that it did not include the later

dramas of Wagner. Instead, however, it comprised some light operas or

operettas, and some specifically English works. The promises of the

prospectus were fulfilled to the letter in respect both of singers and

operas, and though the enterprise proved to be less successful than had

been those of Mr. Savage in previous years (probably because of the air

of aristocracy which it wore, without being able to assume the social

importance which belonged only to the foreign exotic), it is deserving

of extended record. Some of the names of the singers stand as

prominently in the English record as in the American, and unexpected

laurels have been wound round the brows of some of them in still more

foreign fields. In the list were Ingeborg Ballstrom, Grace Van

Studdiford, Fanchon Thompson, Rita Elandi, Mae Cressy, Grace Golden,

Josephine Ludwig, Zélie de Lussan, Elsa Marny, Louise Meisslinger,

Frieda Stender, Phoebe Strakosch, Minnie Tracey, Barron Berthald, F. J.

Boyle, Philip Brozel, Forrest Carr, Lloyd d'Aubigne, Harry Davies, Harry

Hamlin, Homer Lind, William Mertens, Chauncey Moore, Winifred Goff,

William Paull, Lemprière Pringle, William Pruette, Francis Rogers,

Joseph F. Sheehan, Leslie Walker, William F. Wegener, and Clarence

Whitehill. The conductors were A. Seppilli and Richard Eckhold. The

operas performed were "Faust," "Tannhäuser," "Mignon," "Carmen,"

"Trovatore," "Lohengrin," "The Bohemian Girl," "Traviata," "Romeo and

Juliet," "Cavalleria Rusticana," "Pagliacci," "Martha," "The Mikado,"

and Goring Thomas's "Esmeralda." This last opera, a novelty in

America, was brought forward on November 19, 1900, with the following

distribution of parts: Esmeralda, Grace Golden; Phoebus, Philip

Brozel; Claude Frollo, Lemprière Pringle; Quasimodo, William Paull;

Fleur-de-Lys, Grace Van Studdiford; Marquis de Chereuse, Leslie Walker;

Gringoire, Harry Davies; Clopin, F. J. Boyle.

Before taking up the history of the Metropolitan Opera House, record may

be made of the production of another novelty earlier in the year, also

by Mr. Savage's singers, but under the more democratic conditions which

prevailed at the American Theater. This was Spinelli's "A basso Porto,"

which was given for the first time by the Castle Square Company on

January 22, 1900.

Mr. Grau began the campaign of 1900-01 on the Pacific Coast, his first

performance being in Los Angeles on November 9th. Thence he went to

San Francisco, Denver, Kansas City, Lincoln, and Minneapolis, reaching

New York in time to open the subscription season on December 18th. The

season endured fifteen weeks, within which time eighty-two performances

were given. It was an eventful period. No fewer than eight singers

who achieved significance in the annals of the house effected their

entrances on the New York stage. Mme. Louise Homer made her début in

"Aïda" on December 22d; Mlle. Lucienne Bréval, in "Le Cid," on January

16th; Miss Marguarite Macintyre, in "Mefistofele," on January 14th;

Fritzi Scheff, in "Fidelio," on December 29th; Charles Gilibert, on the

opening night, in "Roméo et Juliette"; Imbart de la Tour, in "Aïda," on

December 22d; Robert Blass, in "Tannhäuser," on December 24th; Marcel

Journet, in "Aïda," on December 22d. The first of the operas given was

"La Bohème," but, as I have already explained, it was no novelty in

New York, having been performed by two Italian opera companies and in

an English version three years before. Novelties in every sense were

Puccini's "Tosca" and Reyer's "Salammbô." The former had its first

representation (it was also its first representation in America) on

February 4, 1901. Signor Mancinelli conducted, and the parts were

distributed as follows: Floria Tosca, Ternina; Cavaradossi, Cremonini;

Angelotti, Dufriche; Il Sacristano, Gilibert; Spoletta, Bars; Sciarrone,

Viviani; Un Carceriere, Cernusco; Scarpia, Scotti.

The restraining influence of music has prevented the lyric drama from

acquiring the variety and scope of subject material adopted by the

spoken drama. For nearly two hundred years after its invention classic

legend and ancient history provided the stories which the opera composer

laid under tribute. Very properly dramatic song occupied itself at the

outset with a celebration of that fabled singer at the sound of whose

voice "rivers forgot to run and winds to blow." In the story of Orpheus

and Eurydice, as told in what is set down in history as the first opera,

music and love were mated; and they have not yet been divorced, though

both have undergone many and great changes of character. Love--gentle,

constant, chivalric, tried, and triumphant--has been hymned amid

pictures suggested by a millennium of human happenings, and its

expression has passed through all the phases that the development of

the most direct vehicle of emotional utterance could place at its

service--from the melodramatic strivings of the amateurs who stumbled

upon opera in their effort to reanimate the Greek drama to the glowing

scores of Richard Wagner, in which high art and profound science are

joined in a product as worthy of admiration as any other product of the

intellect fired by inspiration. In the progress from Peri to Wagner,

however, despite many daring and dubious adventures in new territories,

there has yet been an avoidance of material in itself ugly and

repulsive. We have been asked to contemplate the libertinism of Don

Juan, but at its worst it has served only as a foil to the virtue of

his victims, which in the end emerged triumphant. We have seen exposed

the monstrous double nature of Rigoletto, but only that the pathos of

paternal love should thereby be thrown into brighter relief. We have

seen convention sanctified by nature and approved by communal experience

set at naught by Wagner's treatment of mythological tales of unspeakable

antiquity, but only that the tragedy of human existence in its puissant

types might be kept before the world's consciousness.

The relationship occupied by music to the drama, that is to the words,

the pantomime, the pictures and the play, in "Tosca" is that which it

occupies in melodrama--using the term in its original and correct

sense--with the single difference that the dialogue which is illustrated

and mildly expounded by the music, and which the instruments seek, more

or less vainly, to accentuate, emphasize, and intensify, is not uttered

in the speaking, but the singing voice. Even this difference, however,

disappears at some of the climacteric moments, and the actors resort

to the elocutionary devices which belong to the spoken drama, and,

foregoing pitch and rhythm, shout or whisper or hiss out the words which

tell of the feelings by which they are swayed. Thus the first principle

of music, which is melody, in Wagner as much as it was in Cimarosa or

Mozart, is sacrificed. Quite as significant as the degradation of music

thus illustrated is the degradation of the drama which has brought it

about. There has always been a restrictive and purifying potency in

melody. It has that which has turned our souls to sympathy with the

apotheosis of vice and pulmonary tuberculosis in Verdi's "Traviata,"

which has made the music of the second act and the finale of "Tristan

und Isolde" the most powerful plea that can be made for Wagner's guilty

lovers. Nowhere else is the ennobling and purifying capacity of music

demonstrated as in the death song of Isolde. Without such palliation the

vileness, the horror, the hideousness of a play like "Tosca" is more

unpardonable in an operatic form than in the original. Its lust and

cruelty are presented in their nakedness. There is little or no time to

reflect upon the workings of perverted minds, to make psychological or

physiological studies, to watch the accumulation of causes and their

gradual development of effects, except in the moments, so plentiful

in Puccini's operas, in which music becomes a hindrance and an

impertinence. Dramatic action cannot be promoted by music. The province

of the art is to develop and fix a mood or celebrate a deed. Tosca can

sing of her love, her jealousy, her hate, her hope; she cannot sing her

frantic efforts to escape the lustful arms of Scarpia; she cannot sing

his murder (though she might have chanted its gory glory, if so she held

it, after the fact); nor can she sing her own destruction. In fact,

there is next to nothing in Sardou's drama fit for operatic song, either

in the sense that prevailed at the time of Paisiello or prevails in the

time of Wagner--which is now. In the opera a really fit incident for

the lyric drama borrowed from Sardou is expanded adroitly into a scene

which is both musically and dramatically effective. It is the scene in

which the cantata is sung in the Queen's apartments while Scarpia is

questioning Cavaradossi in his own. Here the set musical composition is

a background for the dramatic dialogue. Parallel scenes provide most of

the opportunities which Puccini has embraced for writing in what may

be called a sustained effort outside of the scenes between Tosca and

her lover in the first act. Thus the first finale has a pompous church

office as its background, with tolling of bells, the booming of cannon,

the pealing of a great organ, through all of which surges a stream of

orchestral melody bearing the declamatory shrieks of Scarpia. All of

this is purely irrelevant and external, and the device is cheap, but

it serves. Similar in musical purpose, but at the opposite end of the

color scheme, is the opening of the third act. The stage picture is

one of great beauty. The foreground shows the platform of the Castle

of St. Angelo. St. Peter's Cathedral and the Vatican are visible in the

background. It is urban Rome alone that is visible, but there are sounds

from the Campagna--the tinkling of sheep bells, the song of a shepherd

lad mingling with a strangely languorous and fragmentary orchestral

song. Then there arises from the distance the sound of church bells,

large and small, while the orchestral song goes on. It is all

mood-music, conceived with no necessary relationship to the drama, but

providing an atmosphere which is really refreshing after the sup of

horrors provided by the preceding act. Therefore, it must be accepted

gratefully like the dance tune over which Scarpia and his associates

declaim before the dreadful business of the second act begins, and the

piteous appeal to the Virgin which Tosca makes before she conceives

the idea of the butchery which she perpetrates a few minutes later.

And the melodramatic music upon which Sardou's play floats,--what is

it like? Much of it like shreds and patches of many things with which

the operatic stage has long been familiar. There are efforts at

characterization by means of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmical symbols,

of which the most striking, and least original, is a succession of

chords which serves as an introduction to the first scene. This and

much else came out of Wagner's workshop, and, like all else of the same

origin in the score, is impotent because there is no trace of Wagner's

logical mind, either in the choice of material or its development.

Phrases of real pith and moment are mixed with phrases of indescribable

balderdash, yet these phrases recur with painful reiteration and with

all the color tints which Puccini is able to scrape from a marvelously

varied and garish orchestral palette. The most remarkable feature, the

feature which shows the composer's constructive talent in its brightest

aspect, is the fluency of it all. Even when reduced to the extremity

of a tremolo of empty fifths on the strings pianissimo, or a single

sustained tone, Puccini still manages to cling to a thread of his

melodramatic fabric and the mind does not quite let go of his musical

intentions.

Reyer's "Salammbô" was brought forward for the first time on March 20,

1901, with the following cast: Salammbô, Lucienne Bréval; Taanach,

Miss Carrie Bridewell; Matho, Albert Saléza; Shahabarim, Mr. Salignac;

Narr-Havas, Mr. Journet; Spendius, Mr. Sizes; Giscon, Mr. Gilibert;

Authorite, Mr. Dufriche; Hamilcar, Mr. Scotti. Signor Mancinelli

conducted. The opera received a brilliant representation. Mr. Grau

had piled up the stage adornments with a lavish hand, and, though it

disappeared from the Metropolitan stage after two performances, material

traces remained for years in the settings of other spectacular operas.

The scenes were all reproductions of the Paris models and exquisitely

painted; the costumes were gorgeous to a degree. Mlle. Bréval's beauty

(Semitic, as became the character) shone radiant in the part of the

heroine, and she sang and acted with an intensity that in its supreme

moments was positively uplifting. Flaubert's brilliant novel supplied

the material out of which "Salammbô" was constructed. The romance has a

large historical incident for a background, namely, the suppression of

a mutiny among the mercenaries of the Carthaginians in the first Punic

war. Running through the gorgeous tissue which the French novelist wove

about this incident is the thread of story which Camille du Locle drew

out for Reyer's use--the story of the rape of the sacred veil of Tanit

by the leader of the revolting mercenaries, his love for Salammbô,

daughter of the Carthaginian general; her recovery of the veil, with its

consequence of disaster to her lover, and the pitiful death of both at

their own hands. The authors of the opera were adepts in the field of

what might be called musical spectacle. M. du Locle had a hand in both

of the operas written for Paris, "Les Vêpres Sicilienne," and "Don

Carlos." Under the eyes of Verdi at Sant' Agata he wrote the prose

scenario of "Aïda," which Ghislanzoni turned into Italian verse for the

composer. If a prodigal and sumptuous heaping up of stage adornments

could make the success of an opera, "Salammbô" would have been one of

the greatest triumphs of the French lyric stage; but pompous pictures

are not the be-all and end-all of opera, even in Paris, and the

fortunate co-operation of du Locle and Verdi was not repeated in the

collaboration of du Locle and Reyer.

There are, however, merits in "Salammbô" which entitle it to a better

fate than befell it in New York. The people in the story have marked

dramatic physiognomies; indeed, had M. Reyer's skill in characterization

been half so great as M. Flaubert's, and M. du Locle's, there would have

been much to praise in the work. The characters are admirably drawn, and

show as much individuality in their intellectual and moral traits as

they do in their physical--the crafty Greek, the treacherous Numidian,

the energetic and manly Carthaginian, the storm-tossed heroine, and the

lovelorn Lybian are good dramatic types, even if stamped with stage

conventions. A genius in musical characterization, like Mozart, Wagner

or Verdi, would have found means for making their utterances as

picturesque as their presences; but this was beyond the powers of Reyer.

His tastes are modern, his aims far above the frivolity which afflicts

some of his colleagues, but his abilities do not keep pace with his

ambition. His models are easily found; he clasps hands most warmly with

Berlioz, and has some of the Frenchman's peculiarly Gallic reverence

for Spontini and Gluck. There are indications in the score that "Les

Troyens" occupied much of his attention while he was engaged upon it,

and I fancy that that ambitiously planned, but star-crossed work, was

also familiar to the librettist. This need not excite special wonder,

for the association of ideas was close enough. The second part of

Berlioz's tragedy is also Carthaginian, and ends with Dido's prophetic

vision of the hero who should avenge her wrongs on Rome. That Reyer also

venerates Wagner but shows itself more in the use of the German master's

harmonic progressions than in the adoption of his methods. He adopts

the device of reiterated phrases, but his purpose in doing so I could

not discover. Two short melodies, which are the themes of his brief

instrumental introduction, are brought forward again and again, but fail

to disclose their relationship to any of the agencies or elements in

the story, and without a sign of that organic development which is the

distinguishing characteristic of Wagner's creative style. Reyer's

orchestration is discreet and free from all taint of that instrumental

Volapük which is so marked in the Young Italian school. His subject

invites the use of Oriental intervals, and he employs them with the

discretion which is noticeable in "Aïda," but not with Verdi's

effectiveness. Some of his devices are admirable, others simply bizarre.

As a whole the music is monotonous in character and color, but it is

dignified and earnest, and for this it deserves praise.

Mme. Sembrich had absented herself from Mr. Grau's company in the season

1900-01 in order to make a tour of the country with a small opera

company of her own; she returned to the Metropolitan fold in the next

season, however, and has not been errant since. The newcomers in 1901-02

were de Marchi, the tenor, who sang first in "Aïda" on January 17, 1902;

Albert Reiss, a German tenor and specialist in Wagner's Mime, and

Tavecchia, bass. The last-named made no deep impression, and faded

out of view, but Mr. Reiss has been a strong prop of the Wagnerian

performances ever since, and has proved himself an exceedingly useful

artist in many respects. Mr. Walter Damrosch joined Mr. Grau's forces as

conductor of the German operas; with him were associated Signor Sepilli

and M. Flon. The record of the subscription season embraced thirty-three

subscription evenings, eleven subscription matinées, the same number of

popular priced performances on Saturday nights, nine extra performances,

including four afternoons devoted to "The Ring of the Nibelung," and a

gala performance in honor of Prince Henry of Prussia. The additions to

the institution's repertory consisted of "Messaline," by Isidore de

Lara, and "Manru," by Ignace Jan Paderewski. Concerning these novelties

I shall have a word to say presently; the importance of the German

prince's visit, from a social point of view, asks that it receive

precedence in the narrative of the season's doings. This right royal

incident took place on the evening of February 25, 1902. The opera house

never looked so beautiful before, nor has it looked so beautiful since,

as when it was garbed to welcome the nation's guest, a brother of

the German Emperor. The material most used in adorning the house was

Southern smilax, which all but hid all that is ordinarily seen of the

auditorium and the corridors. All the box and balcony fronts were

covered with it, and strings of it hung at the sides of the proscenium

opening from the top of the opening to the stage. These strips of green

foliage were thickly studded with white and green electric lights. The

same scheme was carried out above the stage opening, where long garlands

of smilax, gleaming with tiny white and green lamps, were hung in

festoons, while the apex was formed by a standard of American and German

flags and shields. On the balcony and box fronts the screens of smilax

were relieved with frequent bunches of azaleas and marguerites, and with

stars of white lamps shining through the green. The royal box was formed

by removing the partitions separating five boxes in the middle of the

lower tier. The front was decorated with American beauty roses, in

addition to the smilax. The interior was hung with crimson velvet, and

across its front was a canopy of crimson velvet and white satin. Behind

the royal box the corridor on which it opened was cut off from the other

boxes by hangings of tapestry. One of the most beautiful effects of all

was made by the ceiling, where the chandeliers shone through a network

of strings of smilax and white and green electric lights radiating

from the center like the strands of a cobweb. As may be guessed,

the brilliancy of the audience was in harmony with that of the

audience-room. The price of tickets for the stalls on the main floor

was thirty dollars, and the chairs in the other parts of the room cost

proportionately. Persons who could pay such sums to witness the function

could also afford to dress well, and at no public affair in my time has

New York seen such a display of gowns and jewels. The musical program

was elaborate, but that was the least important feature of the evening.

Mr. Grau had determined to disclose the entire strength of his company,

and to that end, settling the order in some diplomatic manner, into the

secret of which he let neither reporter nor public, he made a program

according to which Mesdames Gadski and Schumann-Heink and Messrs.

Dippel, Bispham, Mühlmann, and Édouard de Reszke were to perform the

first act of "Lohengrin," Mesdames Calvé, Marilly, and Bridewell and

Messrs. Alvarez, Declery, Gilibert, Reiss, and Scotti the second act of

"Carmen"; Mesdames Eames and Homer and Messrs. Campanari, Journet, and

De Marchi the third act of "Aïda," Mme. Ternina and Messrs. Van Dyck,

Blass, Bars, Reiss, Mühlmann, Viviani, and Van Rooy the second act of

"Tannhäuser," Mesdames Sembrich and Van Cauteren, and Messrs. Vanni,

Bars, Dufriche, Gilibert, and Salignac the first act of "La Traviata,"

and Mlle. Bréval and Mr. Alvarez the first scene from the fourth act of

"Le Cid." It was a generous rather than a dainty dish to set before a

king's brother, but it served fully to disclose the wealth of resource

in New York's chief operatic institution, and the performances took

on a heightened brilliancy from the beautiful appearance of the

audience-room, and the spirit of joyous excitement which animated the

audience. Up to the last moment no one familiar with the interior

workings of Mr. Grau's harmonious, yet unruly empire, felt certain

that the program would be carried out as planned; and it was not. It

was very late when the curtain of smilax and light fell on the act

of "Tannhäuser," and, the prince having left the house long before,

followed by a large portion of the audience, who had come to see

royalty, not to hear regal singers, Mme. Sembrich put down her little

foot and refused to sing. Otherwise everything went off according to

program.

"Messaline" was produced at the Metropolitan Opera House on January 22,

1902. The list of those who took part in its performance reads thus:

Messaline ...................................... Mme. Calvé

Tyndaris ..................................... Miss Marilly

La Citharode ............................ Miss Van Cauteren

Tsilla ............................... Miss Juliette Roslyn

Leoconce .............................. Miss Helen Mapleson

Helion ........................................ Mr. Alvarez

Myrtille |

Olympias | .................................... Mr. Journet

Myrrho ....................................... Mr. Gilibert

Gallus ........................................ Mr. Declery

Un Rameur de Galère .......................... Mr. Dufriche

Un Mime Alexandrin ............................ Mr. Viviani

Un Poète d'Atellanes ......................... Mr. Giaccone

Le Loeno ........................................ Mr. Vanni

Un Marchand d'Eau ............................. Mr. Maestri

L'Edile ........................................ Mr. Judels

Harés .......................................... Mr. Scotti

Conductor, M. Flon