When Mr. Grau produced "Salammbô" it was possible for the writers in the

newspapers to give a detailed account of the purport and progress of the

story, and also an account of its panoramic furniture without offending

decency. This is scarcely possible in the present instance. "Salammbô"

was written many years ago, before the conviction had dawned upon the

minds of opera makers that thugs and thieves, punks and paillards, were

proper persons to present as publishers of operatic themes. Since then

there has grown up in Italy a notion that the mud of the slums is

ennobling material for celebration by the most ethereal of the arts,

and in France that lust and lubricity are lofty inspirations for

dramatic song. Gautier's delectable account of one of Cleopatra's

nights has furnished forth an opera book; the mysteries of Astarte

have been hymned, and Phryne, Thaïs, and Messalina have been held up

to the admiring views of the Parisians clothed in more or less gorgeous

sound--and little else. There is no parallel between this movement on

the part of opera and the contemporary tendency of the spoken drama.

Those diligent regenerators of society, Ibsen, Pinero & Co., affect

a moral purpose to conceal an obvious aim from the simpleminded; the

French makers of opera are franker, for they seek to glorify impudicity

in the persons of its greatest historical representatives by lavishing

upon the subject the most gorgeous pictures, the most ingenious

theatrical contrivances, and the most sensuous music at their command.

"Messaline" is a case in point. This work has Armand Sylvestre and

Eugène Morand, two brilliant Frenchmen in their way, for the authors of

its book, and Isidore de Lara, at the time chief of the drawing-room

musicians of London, as its composer. The story of the opera is a sort

of variant of "Carmen" set in an antique key, its heroine being an

historic Roman empress instead of a gipsy cigarette girl. But any one

who shall take the trouble to glance at the sixth satire of Juvenal will

recognize that all its motives were drawn from that source. The likeness

to "Carmen" is accidental, after all, though Bizet's opera was not

without influence upon the work of librettists and composer. Like

Carmen, Messalina, merely to gratify her lust, draws an honest-minded

and supposedly pure man into her toils, and then throws him over for

the next man she meets who is handsomer and lustier. In Bizet's opera

the men are the soldier Don José, and the bullfighter, Escamillo; in

De Lara's Harés, a singer, and Helion, a gladiator. Both operas end with

the arena as a background--the Plaza de Toros in Seville, on the one

hand, the Roman Circus, on the other. But here the resemblances end

unless we pursue the traces of Bizet's music into De Lara's score, and

this I shall not do, out of respect for the most brilliant composer that

France has produced since Berlioz. Echeon, the harper; Glaphyrus or

Ambrosius, the flute players, who are castigated in Juvenal's diatribe

against marriage, are the prototypes of Messaline's first victim, as

also is Pollio, whom a lady of lofty rank so loved that she kept for her

kisses the plectrum with which he had strummed his lyre. That lyre she

had incrusted with jewels, and for the sake of him who twanged it she

had not hesitated to veil her face before the altar of Janus, and speak

the mystic formula after the officiating priest. ("What more could she

do were her husband sick?" asks Juvenal; "what if the physicians had

despaired of her infant son?") As for Helion, his prototype is the

gladiator Sergius, save that we are permitted to find him comely to look

upon, and not as one galled by his helmet, having a huge wen between his

nostrils and "acrid rheum forever trickling from his eye."

So, too, in the exposition of Messalina's character the librettist,

while constructing an entirely fanciful tale, and omitting all reference

to the most notorious of her amours (the one which at the last wrung

the decree of her death from the generally complacent Claudius),

nevertheless managed to indicate Juvenal's description in the song which

Harés sings against her, a recital by Myrrho, a scene in the slums,

which she visits in disguise, and where she is rescued from a gang of

roisterers by Helion, and in the scene of her wooing of the gladiator.

(This scene, as it was played by Mme. Calvé, may not be pictured here.)

A glimmer of palliation might be read out of a few passages in the

book, and at the end there is an indication of something better than

the groveling carnality of the woman whose name has been a byword for

nineteen centuries in her offer of herself to Helion's sword, and her

opening the door to the lurking assassin when the gladiator refuses to

strike in obedience to his old vow to avenge the supposed death of his

brother. But all of the stage Messalina's words and acts up to that time

give the lie to the thought of her capability of feeling a single throb

of pure sentiment. She is presented as all beast, and there is not one

moment of cheer to relieve the horror of a play which shows how her

lewdness compasses the death of two loving brothers, who, unknown

to each other, were both her lovers. At the end the hand of Harés,

stiffened in death, clings to her robe, and brings her face to face with

that death which the veritable Messalina was too cowardly to give to

herself when her own mother pleaded with her to do so at the fateful

meeting in the garden of Lucullus.

But there is often palliation in music. To this fact I have called

attention before. Music can chasten and ennoble; but not music like Mr.

De Lara's, which, when it strives for anything, strives to give an added

atmosphere to the incontinence portrayed by the stage pictures, and

proclaimed in the text. It is not dangerous music, however, for it is

impotent, with all its blatant pretense. The composer seeks to fill

the opening scene with languor and lassitude; he fills it with ennui

instead. If De Lara's music were a hymning of anything, I should say it

was a hymning of sensuality in its lowest terms; but there are neither

eloquent melodies nor moving harmonies in the score. De Lara is a feeble

distemper painter. The current of his music never really flows; it moves

sluggishly now and then, and eddies lazily about every petty incident.

In the scene of debauchery in the second act, it waits for a xylophone

to rattle an accompaniment to the dice; it holds its breath for a

muted horn to obtrude its voice with an inane vulgarity which would be

laughable were it not pitiful to hear it in a work which is admirable

in its dramatic contrivance and scenic equipment.

Mr. Paderewski's opera, "Manru," had its first performance on February

14, 1902. Mr. Damrosch conducted. The composer, who had taken a hand

in the preparations, listened to the representation from a box, and

the list of performers was this:

Ulana ................................... Mme. Sembrich

Hedwig ..................................... Mme. Homer

Asa ................................ Miss Fritzi Scheff

Manru ........................ Alexander van Bandrowski

Oros ..................................... Mr. Mühlmann

Jagu ........................................ Mr. Blass

Urok ...................................... Mr. Bispham

"Manru" had its original performance at the Court Opera in Dresden, on

May 29, 1901. Before reaching New York it was given in Cracow, Lemberg,

Zurich, and Cologne, and Mr. Bandrowski, whom Mr. Grau engaged to sing

the titular part, had already sung it twenty times in Europe. Its

production at the Metropolitan Opera House brought scenes of gladsome

excitement. Hero worshipers had an opportunity to gratify their passion

in connection with a man who had filled a larger place in the public eye

for a decade than any of his colleagues the world over; students were

privileged to study a first work by an eminent musician, whose laurels

had been won in a very different field; curiosity lovers had their

penchant gratified to the full. The popular interest in the affair was

disclosed by the fact that never before in the season had the audience

at the Metropolitan been so numerous or brilliant; naturally the

presence of the admired composer whetted interest and heightened

enthusiasm. Long before the evening was over Mr. Paderewski was drawn

from his secluded place in a parterre box by the plaudits of the

audience, and compelled to acknowledge hearty appreciation of his

achievement along with the artists who had made it possible. Despite

the flaws which were easily found in the work, "Manru," the performance

showed, is a remarkable first opera. There will scarcely ever be a

critic who will say of it as one of the composers now set down as a

classic said of the first opera of a colleague, that first operas, like

first litters of puppies, ought properly to be drowned. "Manru" has had

its day, but it was brilliant while it lasted, and it is possible that

now it is not dead, but only sleeping. The story, badly told in the

libretto made after a Polish romance by a friend of the composer, Dr.

Nossig, has the charm of novelty, and beneath it there lies a potent

dramatic principle. But more than the story, more than the picturesque

costumes and stage furniture, there is a fascination about the music

which grew with each hearing. Many of its characteristic details are

based upon national idioms, but on the whole Mr. Paderewski wrote like

an eclectic. He paid his tribute to the tendency which Wagner made

dominant (where is the composer of the last thirty years who has not?)

and, indeed, has been somewhat too frank in his acknowledgment of his

indebtedness to that master in falling into his manner, and utilizing

his devices whenever (as in the second act) there is a parallelism in

situation; but he has, nevertheless, maintained an individual lyricism

which proclaims him an ingenuous musician of the kind that the art never

needed so much as it needs it now. As a national colorist Mr. Paderewski

put new things upon the operatic palette.

"Manru" is not an opera to be disposed of with a hurried ultimatum on

either book or music. From several points of view it not only invites,

it clamors for discussion. The book is awkwardly constructed, and its

language is at times amazingly silly; yet the fundamental idea is kept

before the mind persistently and alluringly by the devices of the

composer. A Gipsy who forsakes his wife and child because he cannot

resist the seductions of a maid of his own race would ordinarily be a

contemptible character, and nothing more; but in this case, despite the

want of dramatic and literary skill in the libretto, Manru is presented

as a tragic type who goes to merited destruction, indeed, but doing

so nevertheless creates the impression that he is less the victim of

individual passion than of a fatality which is racial. I can easily

fancy that the Polish novelist from whom the story was borrowed

presented the psychological fact more eloquently than the librettist,

but it is a question whether or not he did so more convincingly than Dr.

Nossig plus Mr. Paderewski. Mr. Leland (after Mr. Borrow the closest of

literary students of the Gipsies) has pictured for us the Romany's love

for roaming, and our sympathy with his propensity. We look wistfully at

the ships at sea, and wonder what quaint mysteries of life they hide;

we watch the flight of birds and long to fly with them anywhere, over

the world and into adventure. These emotions tell us how near we are

to be affected or elected unto the Romany, who belong to out-of-doors

and nature, like birds and bees. Centuries more than we think of have

fashioned that disposition in the black-blooded people, and made it an

irresistible impulse. Thus the poetical essence of Manru's character

is accounted for, and the librettist has given it an expression which

is not inept:

With longings wild my soul is fill'd,

Spring's voices shout within me;

Each fiber in my soul is thrill'd

With feelings that would win me.

In bush and brake

The buds awake,

Of nature's joy the woods partake,

And bear me helpless, spent, along

Where freedom lives far from the throng;

Thus pours the mountain torrent wild,

That stubborn rocks would check;

Thus rolls the molten lava stream,

Dispersing havoc dire, supreme,

Enfolding, whelming all in wreck!

Thus flies the pollen on the breeze

To meet its floral love;

The song, outgushing from the soul,

Thus seeks the starry vault above.

Is it a curse?

There is no other life for me.

'Tis written in the book of fate:

Thy race must ev'ry pledge abate

And wander, rove eternally!

But why? and where?

I know it not,--

I needs must fare!

But such a life is lawless, it creates infidelity, nourishes

incontinence; its seeming freedom is but slavery to passion, and

this, too, the poet proclaims in Manru's confession that faithfulness

is impossible to one to whom each new beauty offers irresistible

allurement, and whose heart must remain unstable as his habitation.

Into the music of Manru's songs, which tell of these things, Mr.

Paderewski has poured such passionate emotional expression as makes them

convincing, and he has done more. Music is the language of the emotions,

and the Gipsies are an emotional folk. The people of Hungary have

permitted the Gipsies to make their music for them so long, and have

mixed the Romany and Magyar bloods so persistently, that in music

Gipsy and Hungarian have become practically identical terms. It was a

Hungarian gentleman who said: "When I hear the 'Rakoczy' I feel as if

I must go to war to conquer the whole world. My fingers convulsively

twitch to seize a pistol, a sword, or bludgeon, or whatever weapon may

be at hand; I must clutch it, and march forward." It is because of this

spirit, scarcely overstated in this story, that the Austrian Government,

fearful of the influence of the "Rakoczy" during periods of political

excitement, has several times prohibited its performance on public

occasions, and confiscated the copies found in the music shops. Mr.

Paderewski makes admirable use of this passion as a dramatic motive.

When neither the pleadings of his tribal companions nor the seductive

artifices of Asa suffice to break down Manru's sense of duty to his wife

and child, the catastrophe is wrought by the music of a gipsy fiddler.

As the subject of the opera has to do with the conflict between

Christian and Pagan, Galician and Gipsy, so the music takes its color

now from the folk-song and dance of Mr. Paderewski's own people, and

anon from the Gipsies who frequent the mountainous scenes in which

the opera plays. The use of an Oriental interval, beloved of Poles

and Gipsies, characterizes the melos of the first act; the rhythm of a

peasant dance inspires the ballet, which is not an idle divertissement,

but an integral element of the play, and Gipsy fiddle and cimbalom lend

color and character to the music which tempts Manru to forget his duty.

The contest in Manru's soul has musical delineation in an extended

orchestral introduction to the last act, in which Gipsy and Polish music

are at war, while clouds and moon struggle for the mastery in the stage

panorama.

The season 1902-03 may be said to have been eventful only in its tragic

outcome, of which I have already spoken--Mr. Grau's physical collapse.

There was a painful and most unexpected echo a few weeks after the doors

of the opera house had been closed for the summer vacation in the death

of Mr. Frank W. Sanger, who had been acting as associate manager with

Mr. Grau, and who had been largely instrumental in persuading Mr. Grau

to abandon work and seek health in France. The season covered seventeen

weeks, and comprised sixty-eight subscription nights, seventeen

subscription matinées, seventeen popular Saturday nights, and six extra

performances--ninety-one performances in all. Promises of a serial

performance of the chief works of Verdi and Mozart had to be abandoned,

partly on account of the illness of Mme. Eames. Only one new opera was

brought forward, and that under circumstances which reflected no credit

on the institution or its management, the opera (Miss Ethel Smyth's "Der

Wald") not being worth the labor, except, perhaps, because it was the

work of a woman, and the circumstances that private influences, and not

public service, had prompted the production being too obvious to invite

confidence in the opera. Simply for the sake of the integrity of the

record mention is made that the production took place on March 11, 1903,

that Alfred Hertz conducted, and that Mme. Gadski, Mme. Reuss-Belce,

Georg Anthes, Mr. Bispham, Mr. Blass, and Mr. Mühlmann were concerned

in the performance. The newcomers in Mr. Grau's forces were Mme.

Reuss-Belce, Georg Anthes, Emil Gerhäuser, Aloys Burgstaller, and the

conductor of the German operas, Mr. Hertz, who, like Mr. Burgstaller,

has remained ever since, and they were all active agents in promoting

the sensational feature of the first season of the administration which

succeeded Mr. Grau's. I have tabulated the performances which took place

in the subscription seasons under Mr. Grau as follows:

THE GRAU PERIOD, 1898-1903

Operas 1898-1899 *1899-1900 1900-1901 1901-1902 1902-1903

"Tannhäuser," .............. 6 5 4 2 4

"Il Barbiere" .............. 4 4 0 0 3

"Roméo et Juliette" ........ 6 5 4 3 2

"La Traviata" .............. 2 2 0 1 4

"Die Walküre" .............. 4 6 3 3 3

"Siegfried" ................ 1 2 1 1 3

"Nozze di Figaro" .......... 3 4 0 2 1

"Carmen" ................... 2 11 0 7 3

"Lohengrin" ................ 7 7 6 4 7

"Faust" .................... 7 9 5 5 7

"Tristan und Isolde" ....... 5 3 4 3 4

"Don Giovanni" ............. 4 1 1 0 1

"Aïda" ..................... 3 5 3 5 7

"Les Huguenots" ............ 4 2 3 3 3

"Das Rheingold" ............ 1 2 1 1 2

"Götterdämmerung" .......... 1 2 2 2 2

"Martha" ................... 1 0 0 0 0

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

"Rigoletto" ................ 1 1 1 0 1

"Le Prophète" .............. 2 2 0 0 1

+ "Ero e Leandro" .......... 2 0 0 0 2

"Lucia di Lammermoor" ...... 1 2 2 0 0

"Il Trovatore" ............. 0 3 0 0 1

"Der Fliegende Holländer" .. 0 3 1 0 0

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

"Don Pasquale" ............. 0 3 0 1 1

"Cavalleria Rusticana" ..... 0 6 3 4 1

"Pagliacci" ................ 0 1 0 1 6

"Die Meistersinger" ........ 0 4 2 1 2

"Die Lustigen Weiber" ...... 0 1 0 0 0

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

"The Magic Flute" .......... 0 5 0 3 2

"La Bohème" ................ 0 0 5 0 3

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

"Le Cid" ................... 0 0 3 2 0

+ "Tosca" .................. 0 0 3 3 4

+ "Salammbô" ............... 0 0 2 0 0

"Fille du Régiment" ........ 0 0 0 3 6

+ "Messaline" .............. 0 0 0 3 0

"Otello" ................... 0 0 0 3 3

+ "Manru" .................. 0 0 0 3 0

"Ernani" ................... 0 0 0 0 3

"Un Ballo in Maschera" ..... 0 0 0 0 1

+ "Der Wald" ............... 0 0 0 0 2

* Performances in the supplementary season included.

+ Novelties.

Massenet's "Manon" had two performances with Saville and Van Dyck in the

season 1898-'99; but both were outside the subscription.

CHAPTER XXI

HEINRICH CONRIED AND "PARSIFAL"

A prologue dealing with other things may with propriety accompany this

chapter, which is concerned with the history of the Metropolitan Opera

House under the administration of Mr. Heinrich Conried. It is called

for by the visit which Pietro Mascagni made to the United States in

the fall of 1902. Signor Mascagni came to America under a contract

with Mittenthal Brothers, theatrical managers, whose activities had

never appreciably touched the American metropolis nor the kind of

entertainment which they sought to purvey. These things are mentioned

thus early in the story so that light may be had from the beginning on

the artistic side of the most sensational fiasco ever made by an artist

of great distinction in the United States. The contract, which was

negotiated by an agent of the Mittenthals in Italy, was for fifteen

weeks, during which time Signor Mascagni obligated himself to produce

and himself conduct not more than eight performances of opera or

concerts a week. For his personal services he was to receive $60,000, in

weekly payments of $4,000, with advances before leaving Italy and on

arriving in New York. The contract called for performances of "Iris,"

"Cavalleria Rusticana," "Zanetto," and "Ratcliff" by a company of

singers and instrumentalists to be approved by Signor Mascagni. The

composer was hailed with gladness on his arrival by his countrymen, and

his appearance and the three operas which were unknown to the American

public were awaited with most amiable and eager curiosity. The first

performance took place in the Metropolitan Opera House on October 8,

1902, and was devoted to "Zanetto" and "Cavalleria Rusticana," both

conducted by the composer. There was a large audience and much noisy

demonstration on the part of the Italian contingent, but the unfamiliar

work proved disappointing and the performance of "Cavalleria" so rough

that all the advantages which it derived from Mascagni's admirable

conducting failed to atone for its crudities. There were three

representations at the Metropolitan Opera House the first week, all

devoted to the same works, and one at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile promises of "Iris" and "Ratcliff" were held out, and work

was done most energetically to prepare the former for performance.

Rehearsals were held day and night and the Saturday evening performance

abandoned to that end. "Ratcliff" was never reached, but "Iris" was given

on October 16th with the following cast, which deserves to go on record

since it was the first representation of the opera in the United States.

Iris .......................................... Marie Farneti

Osaka ..................................... Pietro Schiavazzi

Kyoto ..................................... Virgilio Bellatti

Il Cieco ................................ Francesco Navarrini

Una Guecha ................................. Dora de Fillippe

Un Mercianola ............................... Pasquali Blasio

Un Cencianola ............................ Bernardino Landino

I shall not tell the story of "Iris," which five years after was adopted

into the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera House, it seemed for

the purpose of giving Mme. Eames an opportunity to contend with Miss

Geraldine Farrar in the field of Japanese opera; but the opera calls

for some comment. Why "Iris"? It might be easier to answer the question

if it were put in the negative: Why not "Iris"? The name is pretty.

It suggests roseate skies, bows of promise, flowery fields, messages

swiftly borne and full of portent. The name invites to music and to

radiant raiment, and it serves its purpose. Mascagni and his librettist

do not seem to have been able to find a term with which to define their

creation. They call it simply "Iris"; not a "dramma per musica," as the

Florentine inventors of the opera did their art-form; nor a "melodramma"

nor a "tragedia per musica"; nor an "opera in musica," of which the

conventional and generic "opera" is the abbreviation; nor even a "dramma

lirico," which is the term chosen by Verdi for his "Falstaff" and

Puccini for his "Manon Lescaut." In truth, "Iris" is none of these. It

begins as an allegory, grows into a play, and ends again in allegory,

beginning and end, indeed, being the same, poetically and musically.

Signor Illica went to Sâr Peladan and d'Annunzio for his sources,

but placed the scene of "Iris" in Japan, the land of flowers, and so

achieved the privilege of making it a dalliance with pseudo-philosophic

symbols and gorgeous garments. Now, symbolism is poor dramatic matter,

but it can furnish forth moody food for music, and "Sky robes spun of

Iris woof" appear still more radiant to the eye when the ear, too, is

enlisted. Grossness and purulence stain the dramatic element in the

piece, but when all is over pictures and music have done their work of

mitigation, and out of the feculent mire there arises a picture of

poetic beauty, a vision of suffering and triumphant innocency which

pleads movingly for a pardoning embrace.

There are many effective bits of expressive writing in the score of

"Iris," but most of them are fugitive and aim at coloring a word, a

phrase, or at best a temporary situation. There is little flow of

natural, fervent melody. What the composer accomplished with tune,

characteristic but fluent, eloquent yet sustained, in "Cavalleria

Rusticana," he tries to achieve in "Iris" with violent, disjointed

shifting of keys and splashes of instrumental color. In this he is

seldom successful, for he is not a master of orchestral writing, that

technical facility which nearly all the young musicians have in the same

degree that all pianists have finger technic. His orchestral stream is

muddy; his effects generally crass and empty of euphony. He throws the

din of outlandish instruments of percussion, a battery of gongs, big and

little, drums and cymbals, into his score without achieving local color.

Once only does he utilize it so as to catch the ears and stir the fancy

of the listeners--in the beginning of the second act, where there is a

murmur of real Japanese melody. As a rule, however, Signor Mascagni

seems to have been careless in the matter of local color, properly so,

perhaps, for, strictly speaking, local color in the lyric drama is for

comedy with its petty limitations, not for tragedy with its appeal to

large and universal passions. Yet it was in the lighter scenes, the

scenes of comedy, like the marionette show; the scenes of mild pathos,

like the monologues of Iris, in which the music helped Signorina

Farneti, with her gentle face, mobile, expressive and more than comely,

and her graceful, intelligent action, to present a really captivating

figure of sweet innocence walking unscathed through searing fires of

wickedness and vice, and the scenes of mere accessory decoration, like

that of the laundresses, the mousmé in the first act, with its purling

figure borrowed from "Les Huguenots" and its unnecessarily uncanny

col legno effect conveyed from "L'Africaine," that the music seemed

most effective. "Zanetto" is nothing more than an operatic sketch in one

act. In its original shape, as it came from the pen of François Coppée,

under the title "Le Passant," the story is a gracious and graceful idyl.

A woman of the world, sated and weary with a life of amours, meets a

young singer, feels the sensations of a pure love pulsing in her veins

and sends him out of her presence uncontaminated. Here are poetry and

beauty; but not matter for three-quarters of an hour of a rambling

musical dialogue, such as the librettists and composer of "Cavalleria

Rusticana" have strained and tortured it into. A drawing-room sketch

of fifteen minutes' duration might have been tolerable. To add to the

dulness of the piece, Mascagni, actuated by a conceit which would have

been dainty and effective in the brief sketch hinted at, wrote the

instrumental parts for strings, harp, and an extremely sparing use of

the wood-wind choir and horn. Harmonies there are of the strenuous kind,

but they are desiccated; not one juicy chord is heard from beginning to

end, and the vitality of the listening ear is exhausted long before the

long-drawn thing has come to an end.

Signor Mascagni entered upon his second week with disaster staring him

in the face, and before it was over it was plain to everyone that the

enterprise was doomed to monumental failure. The public after the first

night became curiously apathetic. This apathy would have been justified

had any considerable number of the city's habitual opera-patrons

attended any of the performances. The welcome came from the Italians

dwelling within the city's boundaries; the performances themselves

could arouse no enthusiasm. The singers were on a level with the usual

summer itinerants; the orchestra, made up partly of inexperienced men

from Italy and non-union players from other cities, was unpardonably

wretched. It was foolishly reckless in the composer to think that with

such material as he had raked together in his native land and recruited

here he could produce four of his operas within a week of his arrival in

America. He must have known how incapable, inexperienced, and unripe the

foreign contingent of his orchestra was. The energy with which he threw

himself into the task of trying to repair his blunders won the sympathy

of the members of the critical guild, though it did not wholly atone for

his conscious or unconscious misconception of American conditions. It

was not pleasant to think that he had so poor an opinion of American

knowledge and taste in music that before coming he thought that anything

would be good enough for this country. His experience in Italy ought

to have made him something of a student of musical affairs in other

countries than his own, and he was unquestionably sincere in his hope

that the American tour would win for him and his music the sympathetic

appreciation which his countrymen had begun to withhold from him.

Granting the sincerity of his desire to present himself fairly as a

candidate for the good-will of the American people, it was inconceivable

that he should have connived at or suffered such an inadequate

preparation for the production of his works. Had he come to New York a

month earlier than he did it would not have been a day too early.

After his New York fiasco Signor Mascagni went to Boston, where troubles

continued to pile upon him till he was overwhelmed. He fell out with his

managers, or they with him, and in a fortnight he was under arrest for

breach of contract in failing to produce the four operas agreed upon.

He retorted with a countersuit for damages and attached theatrical

properties in Worcester which the Mittenthals said did not belong to

them, but to their brother. The scandal grew until it threatened to

become a subject of international diplomacy, but in the end compromises

were made and the composer departed to his own country in bodily if not

spiritual peace. One achievement remained: the Musical Protective Union

of New York had asked the federal authorities to deport the Italian

instrumentalists under the Alien Labor Contract Law, and the Treasury

Department at Washington decided in its wisdom that no matter how poor a

musician a musician might be, he was not a laboring man, but an artist,

and not subject to the law. Exit Mascagni.

On February 14, 1903, the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real

Estate Company by a vote of seven to six adopted a resolution directing

the executive committee "to negotiate with Mr. Heinrich Conried

regarding the Metropolitan Opera House, with power to conclude a lease

in case satisfactory terms can be arranged." This was the outcome of a

long struggle between Mr. Conried and Mr. Walter Damrosch, a few other

candidates for the position of director of the institution making feeble

and hopeless efforts to gain a position which all the world knew had,

after many vicissitudes, brought fortune to Mr. Grau. The public seemed

opera-mad and the element of uncertainty eliminated from the enterprise.

Mr. Conried had been an actor in Austria, had come as such to New York,

and worked himself up to the position of manager of a small German

theater in Irving Place. He had also managed comic operetta companies,

English and German, in the Casino and elsewhere, and acted as stage

manager for other entrepreneurs. For a year or two his theater had

enjoyed something of a vogue among native Americans with a knowledge

of the German tongue, and Mr. Conried had fostered a belief in his

high artistic purposes by presenting German plays at some of the

universities. He became known outside the German circle by these means,

and won a valuable championship in a considerable portion of the press.

In the management of grand opera he had no experience, and no more

knowledge than the ordinary theatrical man. But there was no doubt about

his energy and business skill, though this latter quality was questioned

in the end by such an administration as left his stockholders without

returns, though the receipts of the institution were greater than they

had ever been in history. He had no difficulty in organizing a company,

which was called the Heinrich Conried Opera Company, on the lines laid

down by Mr. Grau, and acquiring the property of the Maurice Grau Opera

Company, which, having made large dividends for five years, sold to its

successor at an extremely handsome figure. Mr. Conried began his

administration with many protestations of artistic virtue and made a

beginning which aroused high expectations. To these promises and their

fulfillment I shall recur in a résumé of the lustrum during which Mr.

Conried was operatic consul. Also I shall relate the story of the

principal incidents of his consulship, but for much of the historical

detail shall refer the reader to the table of performances covering the

five years. The new operas produced within the period were but few.

Some of them are scarcely worth noting even in a bald record of events;

others have been so extensively discussed within so recent a period that

they may be passed over without much ado here.

Mr. Conried succeeded to a machine in perfect working order, the

good-will of the public, agreements with nearly all the artists who were

popular favorites, an obligation with the directors of the opera-house

company to remodel the stage, and a contract with Enrico Caruso. Mr.

Grau had also negotiated with Felix Mottl, had "signed" Miss Fremstad,

and was holding Miss Farrar, in a sense his protégée, in reserve till

she should "ripen" for America. The acquisition of Caruso was perhaps

Mr. Conried's greatest asset financially, though it led to a reactionary

policy touching the opera itself which, however pleasing to the

boxholders, nevertheless cost the institution a loss of artistic

prestige. I emphasize the fact that Mr. Conried acquired the contract

with Signor Caruso from Mr. Grau because from that day to this careless

newspaper writers, taking their cues from artful interviews put forth

by Mr. Conried, have glorified the astuteness of the new manager in

starting his enterprise with a discovery of the greatest tenor of his

day. Many were the stories which were told, the most picturesque being

that Mr. Conried, burdened with the responsibility of recruiting a

company, had shrewdly gone among the humble Italians of New York and by

questioning them had learned that the name of the greatest singer alive

was Caruso. Confirmed in his decision by his bootblack, he had then gone

to Europe and engaged the wonder. Caruso's reputation was made some

years before he came to America, and Mr. Grau had negotiated with him at

least a year before he got his signature on a contract for New York. Let

the story stand as characteristic of many that enlivened the newspapers

during the Conried period. A dozen of the singers who were continuously

employed throughout the Conried period had already established

themselves in public favor when his régime opened. They were Mme.

Sembrich, Mme. Eames (who was absent during his first year), Mme.

Homer, and Messrs. Burgstaller, Dippel, Reiss, Mühlmann, Scotti,

Van Rooy, Blass, Journet, Plançon, and Rossi. To these Mr. Conried

associated Caruso, Marion Weed, Olive Fremstad, Edyth Walker, Ernst

Kraus (the tenor who had been a member of one of Mr. Damrosch's

companies), Fran Naval, Giuseppe Campanari, Goritz, and a few people of

minor importance. Miss Weed and Miss Fremstad and Messrs. Caruso and

Goritz became fixtures in the institution; Miss Walker remained three

years; Herr Kraus and Herr Naval only one season. The second season

witnessed the accession of Bella Alten, Mme. Senger-Bettaque (who dated

back to the German régime), Mme. Eames (returned), Signora De Macchi

(an Italian singer whose failure was so emphatic that her activity ended

almost as soon as it began), Mme. Melba (for one season), Mme. Nordica

(for two seasons), Josephine Jacoby (for the rest of the term), and a

couple more inconsequential fillers-in. The third year brought Signorina

Boninsegna (who I believe had a single appearance), Lina Cavalieri (who

endured to the end), Geraldine Farrar (still with the company and bearer

of high hopes on the part of opera lovers for the future), Bessie Abott

(a winsome singer of extremely light caliber), Marie Mattfeld (an

acquaintance of the Damrosch days), Mme. Schumann-Heink (returned for

a single season), Marie Rappold, Mme. Kirkby-Lunn, Carl Burrian,

Soubeyran and Rousselière, tenors; Stracciari, barytone, and Chalmin

and Navarini, basses. The list of German dramatic sopranos was augmented

in the last year by Mme. Morena and Mme. Leffler-Burkhardt, the tenors

by Bonci (who had been brought to America the year before as opposition

to Caruso by Mr. Hammerstein), Riccardo Martin (an American), George

Lucas; the basses by Theodore Chaliapine, a Russian, and a buffo,

Barocchi. Among the engagements of the first season which gave rise to

high hopes in serious and informed circles was that of Felix Mottl, as

conductor of the German operas and Sunday night concerts (which it was

announced were to be given a symphonic character and dignity), Anton

Fuchs, of Munich, as stage manager, and Carl Lautenschläger, of the

Prinz Regententheater, Munich, as stage mechanician, or technical

director. These two men did notable work in "Parsifal," but in

everything else found themselves so hampered by the prevailing

conditions that after a year they retired to Germany, oppressed with a

feeling something akin to humiliation. Likewise Herr Mottl, who made an

effort in the line of symphony concerts on the first Sunday night of the

season and then withdrew, to leave the field open to the old-fashioned

popular operatic concert, which Mr. Conried commanded and the public

unquestionably desired. His experiences in putting half-prepared operas

on the stage also discouraged Herr Mottl, and he went through the season

in a perfunctory manner and departed shaking the Metropolitan dust from

his feet, and promptly installed his polished boots in the directorship

of the Royal Court Theater at Munich.

The season opened on November 23, 1903, with "Rigoletto"; Mme. Sembrich

reappeared as Gilda and Caruso effected his American début as the Duke.

His success was instantaneous, though there was less enthusiasm

expressed by far on that occasion than on his last appearance, five

years later. In the interval admiration for a beautiful voice had grown

into adoration of a singer--an adoration which even sustained him

through a scandal which would have sent a man of equal eminence in any

other profession into disgraceful retirement. The season compassed

fifteen weeks, from November 23d to March 5th, within which period there

were ninety-seven performances of twenty-seven works, counting in a

ballet and a single scene from "Mefistofele," in which Mme. Calvé, who

joined Mr. Conried's forces after the season was two-thirds over, and

yet managed to give four performances of "Carmen," helped to improve a

trifle the pitiful showing made by the French contingent in the list.

The French element, which had become a brilliant factor in the Grau

period, began to wane, and subsequently the German was eliminated as far

as seemed practicable from the subscription seasons. The boxholders were

exerting a reactionary influence, and Mr. Conried willingly yielded to

them, since he could thus reserve certain sensational features for the

extra nights at special prices and put money in his purse. This policy

had a speedy and striking illustration in the production of Wagner's

"Parsifal," which made Mr. Conried's first year memorable, or, as some

thought, notorious. Certainly no theatrical incident before or since

so set the world ringing as did the act which had been long in the mind

of the new manager, and which was one of the first things which he

announced his intention to do after he had secured the lease from the

owners of the opera house. The announcement was first made unofficially

in newspaper interviews, and confirmed in the official prospectus, which

set down Christmas as the date of production. A protest--many protests,

indeed--followed. Mme. Wagner's was accompanied with a threat of legal

proceedings. The ground of her appeal to Mr. Conried was that to perform

the drama which had been specifically reserved for performance in

Bayreuth by the composer would be irreverent and illegal. To this Mr.

Conried made answer that inasmuch as "Parsifal" was not protected by

law in the United States his performance would not be illegal, and that

it was more irreverent to Wagner to prevent the many Americans who could

not go to Bayreuth from hearing the work than to make it possible for

them to hear it in America. Proceedings for an injunction were begun in

the federal courts, but after hearing the arguments of counsel Judge

Lacombe decided, on November 24, 1903, that the writ of injunction

prayed for should not issue. The decision naturally caused a great

commotion, especially in Germany, where the newspapers and the

composers, conductors, and others who were strongly affiliated with

Bayreuth manifested a disposition to hold the American people as a

whole responsible, not only for a desecration of something more than

sacrosanct, but of robbery also. The mildest term applied to Mr.

Conried's act, which I am far from defending, was that it was "legalized

theft." It was not that, because in civilized lands thievery cannot be

made lawful. It was simply an appropriation of property for which the

law, owing to the absence of a convention touching copyright and

performing rights between Germany and the United States at the time,

provided neither hindrance nor punishment. Under circumstances not at

all favorable to success, had success been attainable (there was always

something more than a suspicion that the proceedings were fomented by

enemies of Mr. Conried in New York), Mme. Wagner tried by legal process

to prevent the rape of the work, but the courts were powerless to

interfere. Having passed triumphantly through this ordeal, Mr. Conried

found himself in the midst of another. A number of clergymen, some

eminent in their calling and of unquestioned sincerity, others mere

seekers after notoriety, attacked the work as sacrilegious. A petition

was addressed to the Mayor of the city asking that the license of

the Metropolitan Opera House be revoked so far as the production of

"Parsifal" was concerned. The petition was not granted, but all the

commotion, which lasted up to the day of the first performance, was,

as the Germans say, but water for Conried's mill. He encouraged the

controversy with all the art of an astute showman and secured for

"Parsifal" such an advertisement as never opera or drama had in this

world before.

Mr. Conried had concluded at the outset of his enterprise that

"Parsifal" was too great a money-maker to be included in the regular

subscription list of the season. He followed his general prospectus

with a special one, in which he announced five performances of Wagner's

festival drama on special dates, under special conditions, and at

special prices. The first was set down for December 24; the prices for

the stalls on the main floor, the first balcony, and the boxes which

were at his disposal were doubled (orchestra stalls, $10), but seats

in the upper balcony and the topmost gallery were sold at the regular

price. The first performance took place on December 24th, the cast

being as follows:

Kundry .................................... Milka Ternina

Parsifal .............................. Alois Burgstaller

Amfortas ................................. Anton Van Rooy

Gurnemanz .................................. Robert Blass

Klingsor ................................... Otto Görlitz

Titurel .................................. Marcel Journet

First Esquire ................................ Miss Moran

Second Esquire ............................ Miss Braendle

Third Esquire .............................. Albert Reiss

Fourth Esquire ............................... Mr. Harden

First Knight .................................. Mr. Bayer

Second Knight .............................. Mr. Mühlmann

A Voice .................................... Louise Homer

Anton Fuchs and Carl Lautenschläger were in charge of the stage; Mr.

Hertz conducted. The first half of the season had been sacrificed to the

production. As such things are done at Bayreuth and in the best theaters

of Germany the preparations were inadequate, but the results achieved

set many old visitors to the Wagnerian Mecca in amaze. So far as the

mere spectacle was concerned Mr. Conried's production was an improvement

on that of Bayreuth in most things except the light effects. All of

Wagner's dramas show that the poet frequently dreamed of things which

were beyond the capacity of the stage in his day--even the splendidly

equipped stage of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. Later improvements

in theatrical mechanics made their realization in more or less degree

possible. The greatest advance disclosed by New York over Bayreuth was

in the design and manipulation of the magical scenes of the second

act. Such scenes as that between Parsifal and the Flower Maidens

were doubtless in the imagination of Wagner, but he never saw their

realization. Up to the time of which I am writing the Bayreuth pictures

were exaggerated and garish. In New York every feature of the scene

was beautiful in conception, harmonious in color, graceful in action,

seductive as the composer intended it to be--as alluring to the eye

as the music was fascinating to the ear. At a later performance

Weingartner, conductor and composer, now director of the Royal Imperial

Court Opera of Vienna, sat beside me. After the first act he spoke in

terms generally complimentary about the performance, but criticized its

spirit and execution in parts. When the scene of the magical garden was

discovered and the floral maidens came rushing in he leaned forward in

his chair, and when the pretty bustle reached its height he could wait

no longer to give voice to his admiration. "Ah!" he exclaimed in a

whisper, "there's atmosphere! There's fragrance and grace!" The music of

the drama was familiar to New Yorkers from many concert performances.

Once, indeed, there was a "Parsifal" festival in Brooklyn, under the

direction of Mr. Seidl, in which all the music was sung by the best

singers of the Metropolitan Opera House on a stage set to suggest the

Temple of the Grail. Only the action and the pictures were new to the

city's music lovers. Nevertheless the interest on the part of the public

was stupendous. The first five representations were over on January

21st, but before then Mr. Conried had already announced five more,

besides a special day performance on Washington's Birthday, February

22d. After the eleventh performance, on February 25th, Mr. Conried

gave out the statement to the public press that the receipts had been

$186,308; that is, an average of $16,937.17. But this was not the end.

Under Mr. Grau the custom had grown up in the Metropolitan Opera House

of a special performance, the proceeds of which were the personal

perquisites of the director. In all the contracts between the director

and his artists there was a clause which bound the latter to sing for

nothing at one performance. Before his retirement Mr. Grau grew ashamed

of appearing in the light of an eleemosynary beneficiary under such

circumstances, and explained to the newspapers that the arrangement

between himself and the singers was purely a business one. Nevertheless

he continued to avail himself of the rich advantage which the

arrangement brought him, and in the spring closed the supplementary

season with a performance of an olla podrida character, in which all of

the artists took part. Mr. Conried continued the custom throughout his

administration, but varied the programme in his first year by giving a

representation of "Parsifal" instead of the customary mixed pickles.

The act was wholly commercial. That was made plain, even if anyone had

been inclined to think otherwise, when subsequently he substituted an

operetta, Strauss's "Fledermaus," for the religious play, and called on

all of his artists who did not sing in it to sit at tables in the ball

scene, give a concert, and participate in the dancing. A year later he

gratified an equally lofty ambition by arranging a sumptuous performance

of another operetta by the same composer, "Der Zigeunerbaron," and

following it with a miscellaneous concert. That operetta was never

repeated.

In the seasons 1904-05 and 1905-06 "Parsifal" was again reserved for

special performance at double the ordinary prices of admission, and it

was not until a year later that the patrons of the Metropolitan were

permitted to hear it at the ordinary subscription rates. By that time

it had taken its place with the Nibelung tragedy, having, in fact, a

little less drawing power than the more popular dramas in the tetralogy.

The reason was not far to seek. The craze created by the first year

had led to all manner of shows, dramas, lectures with stereopticon

pictures which were a degradation of the subject. Only one of the

results possessed artistic dignity or virtue, and this justified the

apprehension of the poet-composer touching what would happen if his

unique work ever became a repertory piece. Mr. Savage in 1904-05 carried

"Parsifal" throughout the length and breadth of the land in an English

version, starting in Boston and giving representations night after night

just before the Metropolitan season opened in the New York Theater.

Nevertheless there were eight performances at the Metropolitan in that

season and four in the season that followed. At regular rates in 1906-07

only two performances were possible. All of Mr. Conried's artistic

energies in his second season were expended on the production of "Die

Fledermaus," which he gave for his own benefit under the circumstances

already referred to, on February 16th. The season lasted fifteen weeks,

and consisted of ninety-five performances of thirty operas and two

ballets, outside of the supplementary season, which, let me repeat, are

not included in the statistics which I am giving. An incident of the

second season was the collapse of the bridge which is part of the first

scene of "Carmen," and the consequent injury of ten choristers. The

accident happened on the night of January 7, 1905, while the performance

was in progress. Fortunately nobody was killed.

CHAPTER XXII

END OF CONRIED'S ADMINISTRATION

A visit from Engelbert Humperdinck to attend the first German

performance of his "Hänsel und Gretel" on November 25th, a strike of the

chorus which lasted three days, a revival of Goldmark's "Königin von

Saba" which had been the chief glory of the second German season twenty

years before, and the squandering of thousands of dollars and so much

time that nearly all of the operas in the repertory suffered for lack

of rehearsals on a single production of Strauss's operetta "Der

Zigeunerbaron," were the chief incidents of the season of 1905-06. That

is to say, the chief local incidents. Out in San Francisco the company

was overwhelmed by the catastrophe of the earthquake, which sent it back

a physical and financial wreck. The calamity tested the fortitude and

philosophy of Mr. Conried as well as the artists, but through the gloom

there shone a cheering ray when Mme. Sembrich, herself one of the chief

sufferers from the earthquake, postponed her return to her European home

long enough to give a concert for the benefit of the minor members of

the company, and distributed $7,691 to musicians who had lost their

instruments and $2,435 to the chorus and technical staff.

The season of 1906-07 marked highwater in the artistic activities of Mr.

Conried's institution. It was the year of "Salome" and the coming of

Signor Puccini to give éclat to the production of his operas. Outside of

"Salome" there was only one real novelty in the season's repertory, and

that, "Fedora," might easily have been spared; but the current list of

the house was augmented by no less than seven works, namely, "Fedora,"

"La Damnation de Faust," "Lakmé" (which had been absent from the list

for many years), "L'Africaine," "Manon Lescaut," "Madama Butterfly," and

"Salome." Berlioz's dramatic legend, "La Damnation," had been a popular

concert piece ever since its first production by Dr. Leopold Damrosch at

a concert of the Symphony Society more than twenty-five years before,

and its novel features were those which grew out of the abortive efforts

of Raoul Gunsbourg to turn it into a stage play.

In the presence of the composer, who was received with great acclaim by

a gathering notable in numbers and appearance, and amid scenes of glad

excitement which grew from act to act, Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" was

performed for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera House on the

evening of January 18, 1907. Signor Puccini reached the theater in the

middle of the third act and, unnoticed by the audience, took a seat in

the directors' box in the grand tier. After the first act the orchestra

saluted him with a fanfare and the audience broke into applause which

lasted so long that, finding it impossible to quiet it by rising and

bowing his acknowledgments, he withdrew into the rear of the box out

of sight so that the performance might go an. After the second act he

sent the following statement in French to the representatives of the

newspapers:

"I have always thought that an artist has something to learn at any age.

It was with delight, therefore, that I accepted the invitation of the

directors of the Metropolitan Opera House to come to this new world of

which I saw a corner on my visit to Buenos Ayres and with which I was

anxious to get better acquainted. What I have seen to-night has already

proved to me that I did well to come here, and I consider myself happy

to be able to say that I am among my friends, to whom I can speak in

music with a certainty of being understood."

"Manon Lescaut" was not wholly new to the opera-goers of New York, for

it had had one or two performances by a vagrant Italian company at

Wallack's Theater in May, 1898; but to all intents and purposes it was

a novelty, for the musical itinerants of nine years before were not

equal to the task set by Puccini, and gave a perversion rather than a

performance of the opera. Why it should have waited so long and for the

stimulus of the coming of the composer before reaching the Metropolitan

Opera House was not easily explained by those admirers of the composer

who knew or felt that in spite of the high opinion in which. "La

Bohème," "Tosca," and "Madama Butterfly" were held, "Manon Lescaut"

is fresher, more spontaneous, more unaffected and passionate in its

dramatic climaxes, as well as more ingratiatingly charming in its comedy

element, than any of its successors from Puccini's pen. The voice of the

composer rings unmistakably through its measures, but it is freer from

the formularies which have since become stereotyped, and there are a

greater number of echoes of the tunefulness which belongs to the older

period between which and the present the opera marks a transition. Abbé

Prévost's story, familiar to all readers of French romance, had served

at least four opera composers before Signor Puccini. In 1830 Halévy

brought forward a three-act ballet dealing with the story; Balfe wrote a

French opera with the title in 1836, Auber another in 1856, and Massenet

still another in 1884. Scribe was Auber's collaborator, and their opera,

which like Puccini's ended with the scene of Manon's death in America,

received a touch of local color from the employment of Negro dances and

Créole songs. It would be interesting to see the old score now that the

artistic value of the folk-songs of the Southern States as an incentive

to a distinctive school of music has challenged critical attention and

aroused controversy. Massenet's opera, which through the influence of

Minnie Hauk was produced at the Academy of Music on December 23, 1885,

dropped out of the local repertory until the restoration of the Italian

régime as has been related elsewhere in this book. The opening and

closing incidents in Massenet's opera are the same as are used by

Puccini, though MM. Meilhac and Gille, the French librettists, did not

think it necessary to carry the story across the ocean for the sake of

Manon's death scene. In their book she succumbs to nothing that is

obvious and dies in her lover's arms on the way to the ship at Havre

which was to transport her to the penal colony at New Orleans. The third

act of Puccini's opera plays at Havre, its contents being an effort to

free Manon, the deportation of a shipload of female convicts, including

Manon, and the embarkation of des Grieux in a menial capacity on the

convict ship. Here the composer makes one of his most ambitious attempts

at dramatic characterization: there is a roll-call and the woman go to

the gang-plank in various moods, while the by-standers comment on their

appearance and manner. The whole of the last act, which plays on a

plateau near New Orleans, is given up to the lovers. Manon dies; des

Grieux shrieks his despair and falls lifeless upon her body. Puccini has

followed his confrères of the concentrated agony school in introducing

an orchestral intermezzo. He does this between the second and third acts

and gives a clue to its purposed emotional contents by providing it with

a descriptive title, "Imprisonment. Journey to Havre," and quoting a

passage from the Abbé Prévost's book in which des Grieux confesses the

overpowering strength of his passion and determines to follow Manon

wherever she may go, "even to the ends of the world." Here, at least,

we recognize a sincere effort to make the interlude something more than

a stop-gap or a device to make up for the paucity of sustained music

in the course of the dramatic action.

"Madama Butterfly" in the original Italian had been anticipated by a

long series of English performances by Mr. Savage's company at the

Garden Theater, beginning on November 12th. This production is deserving

of record. Walter Rothwell was the conductor, and the principal singers

in the cast were Elza Szamosy, a Hungarian, as Cio-Cio-San; Harriet

Behne as Suzuki, Joseph F. Sheehan as Pinkerton, and Winifred Goff as

Sharpless. The opera reached the Metropolitan Opera House on February

11, 1907, when it was sung in the presence of the composer by the

following cast:

Cio-Cio-San ........................... Geraldine Farrar

Suzuki .................................... Louise Homer

Pinkerton ....................................... Caruso

Sharpless ....................................... Scotti

Goro ............................................. Reiss

Conductor, Arturo Vigna

A great deal of the sympathetic interest which "Madama Butterfly" evoked

on its first production and has held in steady augmentation ever since

was due to the New York public's familiarity with the subject of the

opera created by John Luther Long's story and Mr. Belasco's wonderfully

pathetic drama upon which this much more pretentious edifice of Messrs.

Illica, Giacosa, and Puccini is reared. To the popular interest in story

and play Japan lent color in more respects than one, having at the time

a powerful hold upon the popular imagination. We have had the Mikado's

kingdom with its sunshine and flowers, its romantic chivalry, its

geishas and continent and incontinent morals upon the stage before,--in

the spoken drama, in comic operetta, in musical farce, and in serious

musical drama. Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan used its external motives

for one of their finest satirical skits, an incomparable model in its

way; but the parallel in serious opera was that created by Signor

Illica, one of the librettists of "Madama Butterfly," and Signor

Mascagni. The opera was "Iris," the production of which at the

Metropolitan Opera House helped to emphasize the failure of the

composer's American visit. "Iris" is a singular blending of allegory

which had a merit quite admirable though ill-applied, and tragedy of the

kind to which I have already several times referred in this book. In

"Iris" as in "Madama Butterfly" we have Japanese music,--the twanging of

samisens and the tinkling of gongs; but it was more coarsely applied,

with more apparent and merely outward purpose, and it was only an

accompaniment of a vision stained all over with purulence and grossness.

"Madama Butterfly" tells a tale of wickedness contrasted with lovely

devotion. Its carnality has an offset in a picture of love conjugal and

love maternal, and its final appeal is one to infinite pity. And in this

it is beautiful. Opera-goers are familiar with Signor Puccini's manner.

"Tosca" and "La Bohème" speak out of many measures of his latest opera,

but there is introduced in it a mixture of local color. Genuine Japanese

tunes come to the surface of the instrumental flood at intervals and

tunes which copy their characteristics of rhythm, melody, and color. As

a rule this is a dangerous proceeding except in comedy which aims to

chastise the foibles and follies of a people and a period. Nothing is

more admirable, however, than Signor Puccini's use of it to heighten the

dramatic climaxes; the merry tune with which Cio-Cio-San diverts her

child in the second act and the use of a bald native tune thundered out

fortissimo in naked unison with periodic punctuations of harmony at the

close are striking cases in point. Nor should the local color in the

delineation of the break of day in the beginning of the third act, and

the charmingly felicitous use of mellifluous gongs in the marriage scene

be overlooked. Always the effect is musical and dramatically helpful.

As for the rest there are many moments of a strange charm in the score,

music filled with a haunting tenderness and poetic loveliness, music

in which there is a beautiful meeting of the external picture and the

spiritual content of the scene. Notable among these moments is the scene

in which Butterfly and her attendant scatter flowers throughout the room

in expectation of Pinkerton's return. Here melodies and harmonies are

exhaled like the odors of the flowers.

Giordano's "Fedora," first performed on December 5, 1906, was given with

this distribution of parts:

Fedora ................................ Lina Cavalieri

(Her first appearance.)

Olga ..................................... Bella Alten

Dimitri ............................... Marie Mattfeld

Un piccolo Savojardo ................ Josephine Jacoby

Loris Ipanow ........................... Enrico Caruso

De Siriex ............................. Antonio Scotti

Il Barone Rouvel |

Desiré | ........................ Mr. Paroli

Cirillo .................................... Mr. Bégué

Borow ................................... Mr. Mühlmann

Grech ................................... Mr. Dufriche

Boleslaw Lazinski ........................ Mr. Voghere

Lorek ................................... Mr. Navarini

Conductor, Arturo Vigna

The opera is an attempt to put music to the familiar play by Sardou; an

utterly futile attempt. A more sluggish and intolerable first act than

the legal inquest it would be difficult to imagine. Fragments of

inconsequential tunes float along on a turgid stream, above which the

people of the play chatter and scream, becoming intelligible and

interesting only when they lapse into ordinary speech. Ordinary speech,

however, is the only kind of speech that an expeditious drama can

tolerate, and it is not raised to a higher power by the blowing of brass

or the beating of drums. The frankest confession of the futility of

Giordano's effort to make a lyric drama out of "Fedora" is contained in

the fact that only those moments in his score are musical in the

accepted sense when the play stops, as in the case of the intermezzo

which cuts the second act in two, or when the old operatic principles

wake into life again, as in Loris's confession of love. Here, in the

first instance, a mood receives musical delineation, and in the second a

passion whose expression is naturally lyrical receives utterance. One

device new to the operatic stage, in its externals at least, is

ingeniously employed by the composer: the conversation in which Fedora

extorts a confession from Loris is carried on while a pianist entertains

a princess' guests with a solo upon his instrument. But the fact that

singing tones, not spoken, are used adds nothing to the value of the

scene.

On returning from Europe late in the summer of 1906 Mr. Conried

announced his intention to produce Richard Strauss's "Salome," and his

forces had no sooner been gathered together than Mr. Hertz began the

laborious task of preparing the opera--if opera it can be called--for

performance. There can scarcely be a doubt that Mr. Conried hoped for

a sensational flurry like that which had accompanied the production of

"Parsifal"; but, with an eye to the main chance, he confined his first

official proclamation to a single performance, which, in connection with

a concert by all his chief singers not concerned in the opera, was to

be given for his annual benefit. Evidently he felt less sure about the

outcome of this production than he had about that of "Parsifal," and was

bound to reap all the benefits that could come from a powerful appeal to

popular curiosity touching so notorious a work as Strauss's setting of

Oscar Wilde's drama. The performance took place with many preliminary

flourishes beyond the ordinary on January 22d. Two days before there was

held a public rehearsal, which was attended by about a thousand persons

who had received invitations, most of them being stockholders of the

opera house, old subscribers, stockholders of Mr. Conried's company,

writers for the newspapers, and friends of the artists and the

management. The opera was given with the following cast:

Salome ................................. Miss Fremstad

Herodias ................................... Miss Weed

Herodias's Page ..................... Josephine Jacoby

Herod's Page .......................... Marie Mattfeld

Herod ................................... Carl Burrian

Jochanaan ............................. Anton Van Rooy

Narraboth ............................. Andreas Dippel

First Jew .................................. Mr. Reiss

Second Jew ................................. Mr. Bayer

Third Jew ................................. Mr. Paroli

Fourth Jew .................................. Mr. Bars

Fifth Jew ............................... Mr. Dufriche

First Nazarene ........................... Mr. Journet

Second Nazarene ........................... Mr. Stiner

First Soldier ........................... Mr. Mühlmann

Second Soldier ............................. Mr. Blass

A Cappadocian .............................. Mr. Lange

Conductor, Alfred Hertz

Concerning the effect produced upon the public by the performance of the

work I shall permit Mr. W. P. Eaton, then a reporter for The Tribune,

to speak for me.

The concert was over a little after nine, and the real business of the

evening began at a quarter to ten, when the lights went out, there was a

sound from the orchestra pit, and the curtains parted on "Salome." The

setting for "Salome" is an imaginative creation of the scene painter's

art. The high steps to the palace door to the right, the cover of the

cistern, backed by ironic roses in the center, and beyond the deep night

sky and the moonlight on the distant roofs. Two cedars cut the sky,

black and mournful. Against this background "Salome" moves like a

tigress, the costumes of the court glow with a dun, barbaric splendor,

and the red fire from the tripods streams silently up into the night

till you fancy you can almost smell it. Here was atmosphere like

Belasco's, and saturated with it the opera moved to its appointed end,

sinister, compelling, disgusting.

What the opera is is told elsewhere. It remains to record that in the

audience at this performance, as at the dress rehearsals on Sunday, the

effect of horror was pronounced. Many voices were hushed as the crowd

passed out into the night, many faces were white almost as those at the

rail of a ship. Many women were silent, and men spoke as if a bad dream

were on them. The preceding concert was forgotten; ordinary emotions

following an opera were banished. The grip of a strange horror or

disgust, was on the majority. It was significant that the usual applause

was lacking. It was scattered and brief.

In this there is no hyperbole; it fails of a complete description

only in neglecting to chronicle the fact that a large proportion of

the audience left the audience-room at the beginning of the bestial

apostrophe to the head of the Baptist. It was because of this pronounced

rejection of the work by an audience which might have been considered

elected to it in a peculiar manner that it was a sincere cause of regret

that the action of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real

Estate Company caused a prohibition of further performances. It would

have been better and conduced more to artistic righteousness if the

public had been permitted to kill the work by refusing to witness it. In

my opinion there is no doubt but that this would have been the result

had Mr. Conried attempted to give performances either at extraordinary

or ordinary prices. Immediately after his benefit performance he

announced three representations outside of the subscription, the first

of which was to take place on February 1st. Two days after the first

performance, the directors of the opera house company held a meeting and

adopted the following resolution, which was promptly communicated to Mr.

Conried:

The directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company consider

that the performance of "Salome" is objectionable and detrimental to the

best interests of the Metropolitan Opera House. They therefore protest

against any repetition of this opera.

Under the terms of the contract between the directors and Mr. Conried,

such a protest was the equivalent of a command, disobedience of which

would have worked a forfeiture of the lease. Mr. Conried parleyed,

pleading his cause voluminously in the public prints, as well as

before the directors, meanwhile keeping his announcement of the three

performances before the people. But the sale of tickets amounted to next

to nothing, and Mr. Conried yielded with as much grace as possible, when

on January 30th the directors refused to modify their action, though

they expressed a willingness to recoup Mr. Conried for some of his

expenses in mounting the opera. The directors who took this action were

J. P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt, G. G. Haven, Charles Lanier, George

F. Baker, D. O. Mills, George Bowdoin, A. D. Juilliard, August Belmont,

and H. McK. Twombly. Representatives of Mr. Conried's company who argued

the case before the directors were Otto H. Kahn, Robert Goelet, James

Speyer, H. R. Winthrop, and R. H. Cottenet. For some time Mr. Conried

talked about performing the opera in another theater, and the directors

of his company formally agreed that he might do so on his own

responsibility; but nothing came of it. Mr. Conried had probably seen

the handwriting on the wall of his box office. The next year there were

more solemn proclamations to the effect that it would be performed

outside of New York. Boston sent in a protest, and the flurry was over,

except as it was kept up in silly and mendacious reports sent to the

newspapers of Germany touching the influences that had worked for the

prohibition. There never was a case which asked for less speculation.

Decent men did not want to have their house polluted with the stench

with which Oscar Wilde's play had filled the nostrils of humanity.

Having the power to prevent the pollution they exercised it.

A reviewer ought to be equipped with a dual nature, both intellectually

and morally, in order to pronounce fully and fairly upon the qualities

of this drama by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss. He should be an

embodied conscience stung into righteous fury by the moral stench

exhaled by the decadent and pestiferous work, but, though it make him

retch, he should be sufficiently judicial in his temperament calmly to

look at the drama in all its aspects and determine whether or not as a

whole it is an instructive note on the life and culture of the times

and whether or not this exudation from the diseased and polluted will

and imagination of the authors marks a real advance in artistic

expression, irrespective of its contents or their fitness for dramatic

representation. This is asking much of the harassed commentator on the

things which the multitude of his readers receive as contributions to

their diversion merely and permit to be crowded out of their minds by

the next pleasant or unpleasant shock to their sensibilities. He has not

the time, nor have his readers the patience, to enter upon a discussion

of the questions of moral and esthetic principle which ought to pave the

way for the investigation. If he can tell what the play is, what its

musical investiture is like, wherein the combined elements have worked

harmoniously and efficiently to an end which to their authors seemed

artistic, and therefore justifiable, he will have done much. In the case

before us even this much cannot be done until some notions which have

long had validity are put aside. We are only concerned with "Salome" in

its newest form,--that given it by the musical composer. If it shall

ever win approbation here, as it seems to have done in several German

cities, it will be because of the shape into which Richard Strauss has

moulded it.

Several attempts had been made to habilitate Oscar Wilde's drama on the

New York stage, and had failed. If the opera succeeds it will be because

a larger public has discovered that the music which has been consorted

with the old pictures, actions, and words has added to them an element

either of charm or expressive potentiality hitherto felt to be lacking.

Is that true? Has a rock of offense been removed? Has a mephitic odor

been changed to a sweet savor by the subtle alchemy of the musical

composer? Has a drama abhorrent, bestial, repellent, and loathsome been

changed into a thing of delectability by the potent agency of music?

It used to be said that things too silly to be spoken might be sung;

is it also true that things too vile, too foul, too nauseating for

contemplation may be seen, so they be insidiously and wickedly glorified

by the musician's art? As a rule, plays have not been improved by being

turned into operas. Always their dramatic movement has been interrupted,

their emotional current clogged, their poetry emasculated by the

transformation. Things are better now than they were in the long ago,

when music took no part at all in dramatic action, but waited for a mood

which it had power to publish and celebrate; but music has acquired its

new power only by an abnegation of its better part, by assuming new

functions, and asking a revaluation of its elements on a new esthetic

basis. In "Salome" music is largely a decorative element, like the

scene,--like the costumes. It creates atmosphere, like the affected

stylism of much of Oscar Wilde's text, with its Oriental imagery

borrowed from "The Song of Solomon," diluted and sophisticated; it gives

emotional significance to situations, helping the facial play of Salome

and her gestures to proclaim the workings of her mind, when speech has

deserted her; it is at its best as the adjunct and inspiration of the

lascivious dance. In the last two instances, however, it reverts to

the purpose and also the manner (with a difference) which have always

obtained, and becomes music in the purer sense. Then the would-be

dramatist is swallowed up in the symphonist, and Strauss is again the

master magician who can juggle with our senses and our reason and make

his instrumental voices body forth "the forms of things unknown."

It would be wholly justifiable to characterize "Salome" as a symphonic

poem for which the play supplies the program. The parallelism of which

we hear between Strauss and Wagner exists only in part--only in the

application of the principle of characterization by means of musical

symbols or typical phrases. Otherwise the men's work on diametrically

opposite lines. With all his musical affluence, Wagner aimed, at least,

to make his orchestra only the bearer and servant of the dramatic word.

Nothing can be plainer (it did not need that he should himself have

confessed it) than that Strauss looks upon the words as necessary evils.

His vocal parts are not song, except for brief, intensified spaces at

long intervals. They are declamation. The song-voice is used, one is

prone to think, only because by means of it the words can be made to

be heard above the orchestra. Song, in the old acceptance of the word,

implies beauty of tone and justness of intonation. It is amazing how

indifferent the listener is to both vocal quality and intervallic

accuracy in "Salome." Wilde's stylistic efforts are lost in the flood of

instrumental sound; only the mood which they were designed to produce

remains. Jochanaan sings phrases, which are frequently tuneful, and when

they are not denunciatory are set in harmonies agreeable to the ear.

But by reason of that fact Jochanaan comes perilously near being an

old-fashioned operatic figure--an ascetic Marcel, with little else to

differentiate him from his Meyerbeerian prototype than his "raiment of

camel's hair and a leather's girdle about his loins," and an inflated

phrase which must serve for the tunes sung by the rugged Huguenot

soldier. Strauss characterizes by his vocal manner as well as by his

themes and their instrumental treatment; but for his success he relies

at least as much upon the performer as upon the musical text. A voice

and style like Mr. Van Rooy's give an uplift, a prophetic breadth,

dignity, and impressiveness to the utterances of Jochanaan which are

paralleled only by the imposing instrumental apparatus employed in

proclaiming the phrase invented to clothe his pronouncements. Six horns,

used as Strauss knows how to use them, are a good substratum for the

arch-colorist. The nervous staccato chatter of Herod is certainly

characteristic of this neurasthenic. This specimen from the pathological

museum of Messrs. Wilde and Strauss appears in a state which causes

alarm lest his internal mechanism fly asunder and scatter his corporeal

parts about the scene. The crepitating volubility with which Strauss

endows him is a marvelously ingenious conceit; but it leans heavily for

its effect, we fear, on the amazing skill of Mr. Burrian, not only in

cackling out the words synchronously with the orchestral part, but in

emotionally coloring them and blending them in a unity with his facial

expression and his perturbed bodily movements. Salome sings, often in

the explosive style of Wagner's Kundry, sometimes with something like

fluent continuity, but from her song has been withheld all the

symmetrical and graceful contours comprehended in the concept of melody.

Hers are the superheated phrases invented to give expression to her

passion, and out of them she must construct the vocal accompaniment to

the instrumental song, which reaches its culmination in the scene which,

instead of receiving a tonal beatification, as it does, ought to be

relegated to the silence and darkness of the deepest dungeon of a

madhouse or a hospital.

Here is a matter, of the profoundest esthetical and ethical

significance, which might as well be disposed of now, so far as this

discussion is concerned, regardless of the symmetrical continuity of the

argument. There is a vast deal of ugly music in "Salome,"--music that

offends the ear and rasps the nerves like fiddlestrings played on by a

coarse file. In a criticism of Strauss's "Symphonia Domestica" I took

occasion to point out that a large latitude must be allowed to the

dramatic composer which must be denied to the symphonist. Consort a

dramatic or even a lyric text with music and all manner of tonal devices

may derive explanation, if not justification, from the words. But in

purely instrumental music the arbitrary purposes of a composer cannot

replace the significance which must lie in the music itself--that is

in its emotional and esthetic content. It does not lie in intellectual

content, for thought to become articulate demands speech. The champions

of Richard Strauss have defended ugliness in his last symphony, the work

which immediately preceded "Salome," and his symphonic poems on the

score that music must be an expression of truth, and truth is not always

beautiful. In a happier day than this it was believed that the true and

the beautiful were bound together in angelic wedlock and that all art

found its highest mission in giving them expression. But the drama has

been led through devious paths into the charnel house, and in "Salome"

we must needs listen to the echoes of its dazed and drunken footfalls.

The maxim "Truth before convention" asserts its validity and demands

recognition under the guise of "characteristic beauty." We may refuse

to admit that ugliness is entitled to be raised to a valid principle

in music dissociated from words or stage pictures, on the ground that

thereby it contravenes and contradicts its own nature; but we may no

longer do so when it surrenders its function as an expression of the

beautiful and becomes merely an illustrative element, an aid to dramatic

expression. What shall be said, then, when music adorns itself with its

loveliest attributes and lends them to the apotheosis of that which is

indescribably, yes, inconceivably, gross and abominable? Music cannot

lie. Not even the genius of Richard Strauss can make it discriminate in

its soaring ecstasy between a vile object and a good. There are three

supremely beautiful musical moments in "Salome." Two of them are purely

instrumental, though they illustrate dramatic incidents; the third is

predominantly instrumental, though it has an accompaniment of word and

action. The first is an intermezzo in which all action ceases except

that which plays in the bestially perverted heart and mind of Salome. A

baffled amorous hunger changes to a desire for revenge. The second is

the music of the dance. The third is the marvelous finale in which an

impulse which can only be conceived as rising from the uttermost pit

of degradation is beatified. Crouching over the dissevered head of

the prophet, Salome addresses it in terms of reproach, of grief, of

endearment and longing, and finally kisses the bloody lips and presses

her teeth into the gelid flesh. It is incredible that an artist should

ever have conceived such a scene for public presentation. In all the

centuries in which the story of the dance before Herod has fascinated

sculptors, painters, and poets, in spite of the accretions of lustful

incident upon the simple Biblical story, it remained for a poet of our

day to conceive this horror and a musician of our day to put forth his

highest powers in its celebration. There was a scene before the mental

eye of Strauss as he wrote. It was that of Isolde singing out her life

over the dead body of Tristan. In the music of that scene, I do not

hesitate to say again, as I have said before, there lies the most

powerful plea ever made for the guilty lovers. It is the choicest

flower of Wagner's creative faculty, the culmination of his powers as

a composer, and never before or since has the purifying and ennobling

capacity of music been so convincingly demonstrated. Strauss has striven

to outdo it, and there are those who think that in this episode he

actually raised music to a higher power. He has not only gone with the

dramatist and outraged every sacred instinct of humanity by calling

the lust for flesh, alive or dead, love, but he has celebrated her

ghoulish passion as if he would perforce make of her an object of that

"redemption" of which, again following Wagner but along oblique paths,

he prates so strangely in his opera of "Guntram."

It is obvious on a moment's reflection that, had Strauss desired, the

play might easily have been modified so as to avoid this gruesome

episode. A woman scorned, vengeful, and penitent would have furnished

forth material enough for his finale and dismissed his audience with

less disturbance of their moral and physical stomachs. But Strauss, to

put it mildly, is a sensationalist despite his genius, and his business

sense is large, as New Yorkers know ever since he wound up an artistic

tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche

was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's

play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo

in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in

Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious

and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen

should sup to their full of delights and horrors.

To think back, under the impressions of the final scene, to the dance

which precipitated the catastrophe is to bring up recollections of

little else than the striking originality of its music, its piquancies

of rhythm and orchestration, its artfully simulated Orientalism, and the

thrilling effect produced by a recurrence to the "love music" ("Let me

kiss thy mouth, Jochanaan,") at a moment before the frenetic close, when

the representation of Salome (a professional dancer, Miss Froehlich, was

deftly substituted for Miss Fremstad at the Metropolitan performance)

approaches the cistern in which the white flesh, black hair, and red

lips of her idolatry are immured, and casts wistful glances into its

depths. Since the outcome was to be what it became it would have been

folly in Mr. Conried's performance to attempt to disguise the true

character of the "Dance of the Seven Veils." Miss Froeblich gave us

quite unconcernedly a danse du ventre; not quite so pronounced as it

has been seen in the Oriental quarters at our world's fairs, not quite

so free of bodily covering as tradition would have justified. Yet it

served to emphasize its purpose in the play. This dance in its original

estate is a dramatic dance; it is, indeed, the frankest example of

terpsichorean symbolism within the whole range of the pantomimic dance.

The conditions under which Wilde and Strauss introduce it in their drama

spare one all need of thought; there is sufficient commentary in the.

doddering debility of the pleading Herod and the lustful attitude of

his protruding eyes. There are fantastical persons who like to talk

about religious symbolism in connection with this dance, and of forms

of worship of vast antiquity. The dance is old. It was probably danced

in Egypt before the Exodus; in Greece probably before Orpheus sang and

"Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers."

But it is not to be seriously thought that from those days to this

there was ever any doubt as to its significance and its purpose, which

is to pander to prurient appetites and arouse libidinous passions.

Always, too, from those days to this, its performers have been the

most abandoned of the courtesan class.

There is not a whiff of fresh and healthy air blowing through "Salome"

except that which exhales from the cistern, the prison house of

Jochanaan. Even the love of Narraboth, the young Syrian captain, for the

princess is tainted by the jealous outbursts of Herodias's page. Salome

is the unspeakable; Herodias, though divested of her most pronounced

historical attributes (she adjures her daughter not to dance, though

she gloats over the revenge which it brings to her), is a human hyena;

Herod, a neurasthenic voluptuary. A group of Jews who are shown

disputing in the manner of Baxter Street, though conveyed by Wilde from

Flaubert's pages, are used by Strauss to provide a comic interlude.

Years ago a musical humorist in Vienna caused much amusement by writing

the words of a quarrel of Jewish pedlers under the voices of the fugue

in Mozart's overture to "The Magic Flute." Three hundred years ago

Orazio Vecchi composed a burlesque madrigal in the severe style of that

day, in which he tried to depict the babel of sounds in a synagogue.

Obviously the musical Jew is supposed to be allied to the stage Jew and

to be fit food for the humorist. Strauss's music gives a new reading to

Wilde; it is a caricature in which cacophony reigns supreme under the

guise of polyphony. There are five of the Jews, and each is pregnantly

set forth in the theme with which he maintains his contention.

This is but one of many instances of marvelous astuteness in the

delineation and characteristic portions of the music. The quality which

will he most promptly recognized by the public is its decorative and

illustrative element. The orchestra paints incessantly; moods that are

prevalent for a moment do not suffice the eager illustrator. The passing

word seizes his fancy. Herod describes the jewels which he promises to

give to Salome so she relieve him of his oath, and the music of the

orchestra glints and glistens with a hundred prismatic tints. Salome

wheedles the young Syrian to bring forth the prophet, and her cry,

"Thou wilt do this thing for me," is carried to his love-mad brain by a

voluptuous glissando of the harp which is as irresistible as her glance

and smile. But the voluptuous music is no more striking than the tragic.

Strauss strikes off the head of Jochanaan with more thunderous noise

upon the kettle-drums than Wagner uses when Fafner pounds the life

out of Fasolt with his gigantic stave; but there is nothing in all of

Wagner's tragic pages to compare in tenseness of feeling with the moment

of suspense while Salome is peering into the cistern and marveling that

she hears no sound of a death struggle. At this moment there comes an

uncanny sound from the orchestra that is positively blood-curdling. The

multitude of instruments are silent--all but the string basses. Some

of them maintain a tremolo on the deep E flat. Suddenly there comes a

short, high B flat. Again and again with more rapid iteration. Such a

voice was never heard in the orchestra before. What Strauss designed it

to express does not matter. It accomplishes a fearful accentuation of

the awful situation. Strauss got the hint from Berlioz, who never used

the device (which he heard from a Piedmontese double-bass player), but

recommended it to composers who wished to imitate in the orchestra "a

loud female cry." Strauss in his score describes how the effect is to be

produced and wants it to sound like a stertorous groan. It is produced

by pinching the highest string of the double-bass at the proper node

between the finger-board and the bridge and sounding it by a quick jerk

of the bow. This is but one of a hundred new and strange devices with

which the score of "Salome" has enriched instrumental music. The dance

employs a vast apparatus, but the Oriental color impressed upon it at

the outset by oboe and tambour remains as persistent as its rhythmical

figure, which seems to have been invented to mark the sinuous flexure

of the spine and the swaying of the hips of the dancer. Devices made

familiar by the symphonic poems are introduced with increased effect,

such as the muting of the entire army of brass instruments. Startling

effects are obtained by a confusion of keys, confusion of rhythms,

sudden contrasts from an overpowering tutti to the stridulous whirring

of empty fifths on the violins, a trill on the flutes, or a dissonant

mutter of the basses. The celesta, an instrument with keyboard and

bell tone, contributes fascinating effects, and the xylophone is

used;--utterances that are lascivious as well as others that are

macabre. Dissonance runs riot and frequently carries the imagination

away completely captive. The score is unquestionably the greatest

triumph of reflection and ingenuity of contrivance that the literature

of music can show. The invention that has been expended on the themes

seems less admirable. Only the pompous proclamation of the theme which

is dominant in Jochanaan's music saves it from being called commonplace.

A flippant hunter of reminiscences might find its prototype in the "Lady

Moon" chorus of Balfe's "Bohemian Girl." There is no greater originality

in the theme which publishes Salome's amorousness for the white flesh of

Jochanaan, which time and again shows its kinship to the andante melody

in the first movement of Tschaikowsky's "Pathétique" symphony, but

becomes more and more transfigured in its passionate loveliness when it

aids the beatification of the more than ghoulish princess. There is no

escape from the power of the music when it soars to grandiose heights in

the duet between Salome 'and the prophet, the subsequent intermezzo and

the wicked apotheosis. It overwhelms the senses and reduces the nervous

system of the listeners to exhaustion.

The subscription season of 1906-07 at the Metropolitan Opera House began

on November 26th and lasted seventeen weeks, compassing sixty-eight

subscription performances of twenty-three operas and twenty-nine extra

performances. Mr. Conried announced at the close of the supplementary

season that his receipts had aggregated $1,005,770.20; but this sum

doubtless included the receipts from the Boston season. The season

1907-08 began on November 18th and lasted twenty weeks. There were one

hundred subscription performances (Thursday having been added to the

subscription nights), twenty Saturday popular representations, and

three special. Twenty-seven operas were in the list, but only one of

them was new. This was Francesco Cilèa's "Adriana Lecouvreur," which

was brought forward on the opening night of the season, and had one

repetition afterward, notwithstanding that it had been incorporated

in the repertory to give Signor Caruso an opportunity to appear in a

new work together with Mme. Cavalieri. The cast was as follows:

Adriana Lecouvreur ........................ Lina Cavalieri

La Principessa .......................... Josephine Jacoby

Mlle. Jouvenot ............................ Marie Mattfeld

Mlle. Dangeville ............................. Mme. Girerd

Maurizio ................................... Enrico Caruso

L'Abate .................................... Georges Lucas

Michonnet ................................. Antonio Scotti

Il Principe ............................... Marcel Journet

Quinault .................................... Mr. Barocchi

Poisson ..................................... Mr. Raimondi

Maggiordomo ................................. Mr. Navarini

Conductor, Rudolfo Ferrari

Cilèa has in this work attempted to put the familiar play of Scribe and

Legouvé into music. Formerly, as we all know, composers used to try to

make operas out of plays. The result is for the greater part a sort of

spectacle recalling familiar things to the eye, accompanied by an

undercurrent of music occasionally breaking into melody and buoying up

long stretches of disjointed and fragmentary conversation, out of which,

under the best of circumstances, it would be difficult to construct a

drama and from which it is not possible to extract the pleasure which

one can still find in the old-time style of entertainment derisively

called a concert in costume. The manner of "Adriana Lecouvreur" is more

or less that of Puccini, Giordano, and Spinelli--to mention the names

that immediately preceded Cilèa's across the ocean--but it is only in

the manner, not in the matter, except, as some disagreeable seekers

after reminiscences will say, when that matter is borrowed. There is

some graceful music in the score and some strains which simulate.

passion; but to find in any of its parts the kind of music which

vitalizes the word or heightens the dramatic situation is a hopeless

task. It is melodramatic music, which becomes most fluent when there is

least occasion for it, and which makes its best appeal when the heroine

declaims above it in the speaking voice (as she does in the climax of

the third act, when Adrienne recites a speech from Racine's "Phèdre"

in order to accuse the Princess of adultery), when it inspires the

heroine carefully and particularly to blow out every light in a large

drawing-room, or when it accompanies a ballet which is neither a part

of the play nor an incidental divertissement, but only a much-needed

device to give the composer an opportunity for a few symmetrical pieces

of music. Even here, however, this music must serve as a foil for the

everlasting chit-chat of the people of the drama. A pitiful work it

was with which to open a season. Mascagni's "Iris" was brought out

on December 6th, and after it was all too late there was a carefully

studied performance of "Don Giovanni" and a sumptuously, too

sumptuously, mounted production of "Fidelio." These two works

practically summed up the labors accomplished by Gustav Mahler, though

he produced excellent representations (except scenically) of "Tristan"

and "Die Walküre." Mr. Mahler, having laid down the directorship of the

Court Opera at Vienna, was brought to New York by Mr. Conried, and his

coming had raised high the expectations of the lovers of German opera.

The record must also include the enlistment in the Metropolitan forces

of Madame Berta Morena and Madame Leffler-Burckhardt, whose influence

upon the season would have been much more marked had not Mr. Conried's

policy of catering principally to the Italianissimi prevented them

from becoming as large factors as they deserved to be.

When Mr. Conried issued his prospectus for his fifth season it had

already long been an open secret that some of the men whom he had

invited to share the glories and the profits of his administration had

decreed his downfall. During the fourth season he had been ill with

sciatic neuritis, and there was no improvement in his physical condition

when he entered upon his duties in 1907-08. His ability to attend to the

arduous labors of the managing directorate was questioned. Worse than

this, the air for months had been full of whispers of scandalous doings

in the business department, and the chorus of dissatisfaction with

the artistic results of his directorate, which had begun in the first

season, had been swelling steadily. Two seasons before he had put forth

a disingenuous apology for his administration, comparing the cost and

difficulties of producing opera in the preceding season with the cost

and difficulties under Mr. Grau. The matter was one which affected the

stockholders of his company only so far as the finances were concerned;

as to the difficulties, it was not easy to see how they could have been

less formerly than now, when there was so much more money to spend,

and so much more had been spent in improving the facilities for opera

giving. The patrons of the establishment found large ground for

complaint in contrasting the artistic achievements with the flamboyant

promises which had been made when the new administration came in. Mr.

Conried had told them that his first aim was to raise the standard of

performance, and to this end he had banished all thought of profit from

his mind. He was going to continue to employ the most refulgent

"stars" in the world, but to abolish the "star" system. The season in

Philadelphia was to be abandoned so that there might be more time for

rehearsals, and less exhaustion of his artistic forces. Opera in English

was to be added to opera in Italian, French, and German. As for the

French and Italian works they were to be given as they had been under

Mr. Grau, but the German was to be raised to a higher plane. Not one of

these promises was redeemed. Italian operas were given great prominence

over French, and the additions to the Italian list, which were really

new, were of the poorest sort. Perfunctoriness, apathy, and ignorant

stage management marked the German performances, which were all

but eliminated from the subscription list. There were evidences

of high striving at the outset in the engagement of Messrs. Mottl,

Lautenschläger, and Fuchs, as I have already said, but the results were

negligible because the men were unable to employ their capacities.

There were sensational features, like the production of "Parsifal" and

"Salome," but there were humiliating ones, like the prostitution of a

great establishment for the performance of "Die Fledermaus" and "Der

Zigeunerbaron" to deck out the Herr Direktor's benefits. The blight

of commercialism had fallen on the institution. On February 11,

1908, Mr. Conried resigned, and announcement was officially made

of a reorganization of his company, and the engagement of Giulio

Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel as managers of the opera for the

season 1908-09.

Following is a table of performances during the subscription seasons

of Mr. Conried's administration:

THE CONRIED PERIOD: 1902-'08

Operas 1903-4 1904-5 1905-6 1906-7 1907-8

"Rigoletto" ................. 5 2 5 2 4

"Die Walküre" ............... 4 4 3 2 3

"La Bohème" ................. 3 3 5 7 7

"Aïda" ...................... 6 5 4 6 5

"Tosca" ..................... 4 4 3 6 7

"Tannhäuser" ................ 5 9 4 5 4

"Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... 8 3 0 1 0

"Pagliacci" ................. 5 3 3 4 4

"Lohengrin" ................. 5 6 5 5 2

"La Traviata" ............... 3 4 2 3 6

"Il Barbiere" ............... 4 2 2 0 6

"Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 3 3 5 4 1

"Tristan und Isolde" ........ 4 2 3 4 6

"The Magic Flute" ........... 4 0 0 0 0

"Siegfried" ................. 2 2 3 4 3

"L'Elisir d'Amore" .......... 4 1 2 0 0

"Carmen" .................... 4 4 2 1 0

"Coppélia" (ballet).......... 4 1 0 0 0

"La Dame Blanche" (Ger.) .... 1 0 0 0 0

"Faust" ..................... 4 4 5 4 6

"Mefistofele" .............. *2 0 0 0 7

"Roméo et Juliette" ......... 2 4 0 5 0

"Nozze di Figaro" ........... 1 2 0 0 0

+ "Parsifal" ............... 11 8 4 2 0

"Fidelio" ................... 1 1 0 0 3

"Das Rheingold" ............. 1 2 2 1 0

"Götterdämmerung" ........... 1 2 3 1 0

"La Gioconda" ............... 0 4 4 0 0

"Die Meistersinger" ......... 0 7 4 0 4

"Lucrezia Borgia" ........... 0 1 0 0 0

"Don Pasquale" .............. 0 2 2 1 0

"Die Puppenfee" (ballet) .... 0 1 0 0 0

"Les Huguenots" ............. 0 4 0 0 0

"Un Ballo in Maschera" ...... 0 2 0 0 0

+ "Die Fledermaus" .......... 0 4 1 0 0

"Die Königin von Saba" ...... 0 0 5 0 0

"Hänsel und Gretel" ......... 0 0 11 8 5

"La Favorita" ............... 0 0 4 0 0

"La Sonnambula" ............. 0 0 2 0 0

"Il Trovatore" .............. 0 0 4 0 6

"Don Giovanni" .............. 0 0 2 0 4

"Martha" .................... 0 0 4 3 3

"Der Zigeunerbaron" ......... 0 0 1 0 0

+ "Fedora" .................. 0 0 0 4 3

+ "La Damnation de Faust" ... 0 0 0 5 0

"Lakmé" ..................... 0 0 0 3 0

"L'Africaine" ............... 0 0 0 2 0

"Manon Lescaut" ............. 0 0 0 3 5

"Madama Butterfly" .......... 0 0 0 5 6

+ "Salome" .................. 0 0 0 1 0

+ "Adriana Lecouvreur" ...... 0 0 0 0 2

"Der Fliegende Holländer" ... 0 0 0 0 4

"Iris" ...................... 0 0 0 0 5

"Mignon" .................... 0 0 0 0 5

* One scene only. + Novelties.

CHAPTER XXIII

HAMMERSTEIN AND HIS OPERA HOUSE

Before the close of the season 1905-06 at the Metropolitan Opera House,

Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, who was building a large theater in Thirty-fourth

Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues, announced that the building

would be called the Manhattan Opera House, that it would be exclusively

his property and under his management, and that it was to be devoted to

grand opera.

It is no reflection on Mr. Hammerstein to say that many who have been

prompt and generous in their recognition of his achievements since,

looked upon his enterprise as quixotic, down to the very day of

the opening of his house. True, he was known to be a manager of

extraordinary resource and indomitable energy, but he had dallied more

or less with the operatic bauble without disclosing any ambition to have

his name written among the managerial wrecks which have been cast upon

the shores of Italian Opera, from Handel's day to ours, It was easy to

recall that the new opera house was not his first, but that he had built

one in the same street, given it the same name thirteen years before,

and begun a season of grand opera with an ambitious novelty, only to

abandon the enterprise after a fortnight. He had even tried German

opera with no less popular an artist than Mme. Lehmann in his earlier

opera house in Harlem, and entered into rivalry with an established

institution in 1891 for the production of "Cavalleria Rusticana," then

the reigning sensation of the hour in Europe.

When the old Manhattan Opera House, so soon abandoned to the uses of

vaudeville, opened its doors with Moszkowski's "Boabdil," on January

23, 1893, there was no rival operatic establishment in the city, for

the interior of the Metropolitan had been destroyed by fire, and

Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau were resting on their oars for a season while

the question whether or not the home of the costly and fashionable

entertainment should be restored was under discussion by its owners.

Yet Mr. Hammerstein was discouraged by two weeks of failure. It was not

strange that many observers refused to believe that he was of the stuff

out of which opera managers are made. He did not seem illogical enough,

though he showed some symptoms of having been bitten by the opera habit.

Neither was there much to encourage belief in his announcements in the

manner in which he put them forth. He began early in the spring by

saying that he had engaged Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and kept their

names before the people almost up to the time of the opening. He went

abroad to engage artists, and even after his return it looked as if it

would be a physical impossibility to complete his theater in time for

the date set for opening. In fact it was not completed, but when the

season arrived he was ready to attempt all that he had said he would do,

except keep some wild promises about singers; and when the season closed

the fact that loomed largest in the retrospect was the undaunted

manner in which he had carried on a difficult and dangerous enterprise,

compelling a large element of the public to respect and admire him, and

making it possible for him to lay out a second season on lines of real

pith and moment, and carry an admirable enterprise to an admirable

conclusion.

Mr. Hammerstein began his first season on December 3, 1906, and closed

it on April 20, 1907. There were a few admirable artists in his company,

but the majority were either inexperienced or of the conventional

Italian type. His principal soprano leggiero was Mlle. Pinkert, a Polish

singer of good routine and fine skill; his dramatic soprano, Mlle. Russ,

whose knowledge of the conventions of the stage was complete, and

expressive powers excellent, though they exerted little charm. He had a

serviceable mezzo in Mme. De Cisneros (formerly a junior member of the

Metropolitan Opera Company, under her maiden name, Broadfoot). Miss

Donalda, a Canadian soprano of no little charm, helped to make the

lyric operas agreeable. But the strength of the company lay in the male

contingent--Bonci, the most famous of living tenors, after Caruso, whom

Mr. Conried thought it wise to carry over to the Metropolitan Opera

House, thus precipitating a controversy, which, as such things go, was

of real assistance to the manager whom the rival sought to injure;

Maurice Renaud, the most finished and versatile of French operatic

artists, whom the foresight of Maurice Grau had retained for the

Metropolitan, but whose contract Mr. Conried canceled at the cost of a

penalty; M. Charles Dalmorès, a sterling dramatic tenor; M. Gilibert, a

French baritone of refined qualities; Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, who, coming

some years before in a peripatetic French company to the Casino, had

stirred the enthusiasm of the critics with her truthful, powerful, and

unconventional performance of Carmen; Ancona, a barytone who had been

an admired member of the Metropolitan company, and a serviceable bass

named Arimondi. Melba and Calvé came later in the season.

Exaggerated stories of Mr. Hammerstein's success followed the close of

his season, and if all that Mr. Hammerstein himself said could have been

accepted in its literalness the lesson of the season would have been

that the people who live in New York and come to New York in the winter

season were willing to spend, let me say, one and three-quarter millions

of dollars every year for this one form of entertainment. It would

appear, also, that fad and fashion were not the controlling impulse in

this vast expenditure; for the chief things which fad and fashion had

to offer at the Metropolitan Opera House were noticeably absent from

the Manhattan. On a score of occasions there were large gatherings

representative of wealth and what is called society at the house in

Thirty-fourth Street, but generally the audiences were distinct in their

composition. It almost seemed as if Mr. Hammerstein had been correct in

his deduction, that there were enough people in New York who wanted to

go to the opera, but were excluded from the Metropolitan by the extent

of the subscription, to support a second house. If this was so it

marked a marvelous change from the time of the last operatic rivalry,

which ruined both Mapleson and Abbey, and destroyed the prestige of the

Academy of Music forever. Perhaps the city's growth in population and

wealth furnished the explanation; I can scarcely believe from a study of

the doings at the two houses that a growth in musical taste and culture

was the determining factor. Twenty years ago such a list of operas as

that presented by Mr. Hammerstein in his first season would have spelled

ruin to any manager. Not even the prestige of Adelina Patti would have

saved it. There was not a novelty in the list.

Many things contributed to the measure of success which Mr. Hammerstein

won. There was a large fascination in the audacity of the undertaking,

and its freedom from art-cant and affectation. Curiosity was irritated

by the manager's daring, and admiration challenged by the manner in

which he kept faith with the public. He seemed to be attempting the

impossible, but he accomplished all that he said he would do. It is

no secret--in fact, Mr. Hammerstein himself proclaimed it--that his

artistic achievements were due in an overwhelming degree to the

efficiency of Signor Cleofonte Campanini, his artistic director. But not

to his efficiency alone--to his devotion and zeal also. Signor Campanini

was not only the artistic director--he was also almost exclusively the

conductor of the performances. His zeal fired all the forces employed at

the opera house. A company gathered together from the ends of the earth

succeeded in giving one hundred and thirteen performances of twenty-two

operas, and making many of the performances of really remarkable

excellence. The reason was obvious at nearly every presentation; from

the principals down to the last person in the chorus and orchestra,

every one had his heart in his work. Not only the desire to do

their duty, but the pardonable ambition to do better than the rival

establishment, inspired singers and players alike. It so happened that

on one Saturday evening the same opera--Verdi's "Aïda"--was performed

at both houses. A newspaper reporter carried the intelligence to

the Manhattan Opera House that half the seats were empty at the

Metropolitan, while the new house was crowded. The curtain was down at

the time, and a score of the performers on the stage, headed by the

conductor himself, at once formed a ring and danced a dance of triumph.

For musical effects, as well as some dramatic, there were distinct

advantages with the new house. The disposition of the seats and stage

brought the listeners and performers nearer together. The acoustical

conditions at the Manhattan Opera House were admirable; there could be

no such feeling of intimacy at the Metropolitan Opera House as existed

here. The quality appealed to the music lover pure and simple, and him

only, however, for in the things which make the opera a fashionable

social diversion the new building was deficient and woefully inferior

to the old.

The lovers of good singing were surprised by the excellence of Mr.

Hammerstein's singers, especially the male contingent--a surprise

which was heightened by the protestations, to which they had long been

habituated, that there was no talent left in Europe comparable with that

engaged at the Metropolitan. When in the face of such assertions the

voices and the art of tenors like Bonci and Dalmores, and of barytones

like Renaud and Ancona, were brought into notice their actual merit

seemed doubled. The women singers of the first rank, save Mmes.

Melba and Calvé, who appeared in what would have been called "star"

engagements under the old theatrical stock régime, were in no way

comparable with those of the Metropolitan Opera House, but those of

the second rank were superior--a circumstance which was emphasized by

the better ensemble performances, for which a discriminating public

soon learned to thank Signor Campanini and the esprit de corps with

which he inflamed the establishment's forces.

The opening of the season, on December 3 1906, had been proclaimed a

week earlier, so as to make it synchronous with that of the Metropolitan

Opera House; but Mr. Hammerstein's house was not ready, nor were his

singers or stage fixtures. The fact looked ominous, and the enterprise

took a lugubrious beginning a week later, when "I Puritani," which had

been chosen as the opening opera because it was looked upon in Europe

as affording to Signor Bonci his finest artistic opportunity, failed to

arouse any public interest. It was an experience which Mr. Hammerstein

was destined to have again and again with operas like "Dinorah,"

"Mignon," "Fra Diavolo," "Il Barbiere," and "Un Ballo in Maschera,"

for which the public seemed suddenly to have lost all liking, while

still clinging to works of equal antiquatedness.

From the opening night to the closing the operas of the list were

produced on the dates and in the succession indicated in the following

table, which tells also the number of times each opera was performed.

It must be stated, however, that there were a number of occasions in

the course of the season when two operas or portions of several operas

were performed on a single evening. This accounts for the large number

of times that Mascagni's "Cavalleria" and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci"

were given, the latter being also helped in the record by the fact

that it was twice bracketed with Massenet's "Navarraise."

Opera First performance Times

"I Puritani" ................. December 3 ............. 2

"Rigoletto" .................. December 5 ............ 11

"Faust" ...................... December 7 ............. 7

"Don Giovanni" ............... December 12 ............ 4

"Carmen" ..................... December 14 ........... 19

"Aïda" ....................... December 19 ........... 12

"Lucia di Lammermoor" ........ December 21 ............ 6

"Il Trovatore" ............... January 1 .............. 6

"La Traviata" ................ January 2 .............. 3

"L'Elisir d'Amore" ........... January 5 .............. 3

"Gil Ugonotti" ............... January 18 ............. 5

"Il Barbiere di Siviglia" .... January 21 ............. 2

"La Sonnambula" .............. January 25 ............. 3

"Pagliacci" .................. February 1 ............ 10

"Cavalleria Rusticana" ....... February 1 ............. 8

"Mignon" ..................... February 7 ............. 3

"Dinorah" .................... February 20 ............ 1

"Un Ballo in Maschera" ....... February 27 ............ 2

"La Bohème" .................. March 1 ................ 4

"Fra Diavolo" ................ March 8 ................ 4

"Marta" ...................... March 23 ............... 4

Manzoni Requiem (Good Fri.) .. March 29 ............... 1

"La Navarraise" .............. April 10 ............... 2

On three occasions the regular procedure was interrupted for the sake

of matters of temporary and special interest. Thus, on March 2d,

there was a miscellaneous bill, made up of an act of "Dinorah," one

of "Faust," and all of "Cavalleria Rusticana"; on April 19th, the

performance was little else than a concert, at which fragments of six

operas, some of which were not in the repertory, were sung; while on

Good Friday, Verdi's Requiem Mass, composed in honor of Manzoni, took

the place of an opera, and was sung to popular prices, though it was

on a regular opera night.

The subscription was so small that it seemed unnecessary to

differentiate in the table between regular and extra performances. Of

the latter there were twenty on Saturday nights, at popular prices,

besides others given on holidays and for benefits. Though it is to be

noted as a matter of history that the competition of the Manhattan Opera

House did not appreciably affect the subscription of the Metropolitan,

it is also to be noted that as a rule the attendance on the Saturday

night popular performances was larger at the new house.

A few of the incidents of the season deserve to be passed in review.

Of the singers whose presence in Mr. Hammerstein's company lent

distinction to it, Signor Bonci appeared on the opening night in "I

Puritani." The opera failed to awaken interest, but Bonci caught the

popular fancy and held it to the end. Toward the close of February,

however, it was announced that he had made a contract with Mr. Conried

to sing at the Metropolitan Opera House the next season. Mr. Hammerstein

first met the move of his rival by announcing the engagement of Signor

Zenatello, but afterward began legal proceedings to prevent Signor Bonci

from fulfilling his contract with the manager of the house in upper

Broadway. M. Renaud, the great French barytone, effected his entrance

in "Rigoletto," but he was not in his best voice and condition, and

only later conquered recognition for his fine talents. The opera,

however, took its place on the popular list, since it employed, at

different times, the finest talent at the command of the management.

The first large and complete triumph by an opera was won on December

14th, by "Carmen," in which Mme. Bressler-Gianoli appeared as the

heroine. She enacted the part fifteen times before Mme. Calvé came to

take back the territory which had so long belonged to her.