that America knew nothing about Spanish music, and that Bizet’s
_Carmen_ was not in any sense Spanish. I hold no brief for _Carmen_
being Spanish but it is effective, and that _Goyescas_ as an opera is
not. In the first place, its muddy and blatant orchestration would
detract from its power to please (this opinion might conceivably be
altered were the opera given under Spanish conditions in Spain).
The manuscript score of _Goyescas_ now reposes in the Museum of the
Hispanic Society, in that interesting quarter of New York where the
apartment houses bear the names of Goya and Velasquez, and it is
interesting to note that it is a _piano_ score. What has become of the
orchestral partition and who was responsible for it I do not know. It
is certain, however, that the miniature charm of the _Goyescas_ becomes
more obvious in the piano version, performed by Ernest Schelling or
the composer himself, than in the opera house. The growth of the work
is interesting. Fragments of it took shape in the composer’s brain
and on paper seventeen years ago, the result of the study of Goya’s
paintings in the Prado. These fragments were moulded into a suite in
1909 and again into an opera in 1914 (or before then). F. Periquet,
the librettist, was asked to fit words to the score, a task which he
accomplished with difficulty. Spanish is not an easy tongue to sing.
To Mme. Barrientos this accounts for the comparatively small number of
Spanish operas. _Goyescas_, like many a zarzuela, lags when the dance
rhythms cease. I find little joy myself in listening to “La Maja y
el Ruiseñor”; in fact, the entire last scene sounds banal to my ears.
In the four volumes of Spanish dances which Granados wrote for piano
(published by the Sociedad Anónima Casa Dotesio in Barcelona) I console
myself for my lack of interest in _Goyescas_. These lovely dances
combine in their artistic form all the elements of the folk-dances as
I have described them. They bespeak a careful study and an intimate
knowledge of the originals. And any pianist, amateur or professional,
will take joy in playing them.
Enrique Granados y Campina was born July 27, 1867, at Lerida,
Catalonia. (He died March 24, 1916; a passenger on the _Sussex_,
torpedoed in the English Channel.) From 1884 to 1887 he studied
piano under Pujol and composition under Felipe Pedrell at the Madrid
Conservatory. That the latter was his master presupposed on his part
a valuable knowledge of the treasures of Spain’s past and that, I
think, we may safely allow him. There is, I am told, an interesting
combination of classicism and folk-lore in his work. At any rate,
Granados was a faithful disciple of Pedrell. In 1898 his zarzuela
_Maria del Carmen_ was produced in Madrid and has since been heard in
Valencia, Barcelona, and other Spanish cities. Five years later some
fragments of another opera, _Foletto_, were produced at Barcelona.
His third opera, _Liliana_, was produced at Barcelona in 1911. He
wrote numerous songs to texts by the poet, Apeles Mestres; Galician
songs, two symphonic poems, _La Nit del Mort_ and _Dante_ (performed
by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time in America at the
concerts of November 5 and 6, 1915); a piano trio, string quartet, and
various books of piano music (_Danzas Españolas_, _Valses Poéticos_,
_Bocetos_, _etc._).
_New York, March 20, 1916._
Shall We Realize Wagner’s Ideals?
Shall We Realize Wagner’s Ideals?
Historians of operatic phenomena have observed that fashions in music
change; the popular Donizetti and Bellini of one century are suffered
to exist during the next only for the sake of the opportunity they
afford to some brilliant songstress. New tastes arise, new styles
in music. Dukas’s generally unrelished (and occasionally highly
appreciated) _Ariane et Barbe-Bleue_ may not be powerful enough
to establish a place for itself in the répertoire, but its direct
influence on composers and its indirect influence on auditors make this
lyric drama highly important as an indication of the future of opera as
a fine art. Moussorgsky’s _Boris Godunow_, first given in this country
some forty years after its production in Russia, is another matter.
That score contains a real thrill in itself, a thrill which, once felt,
makes it difficult to feel the intensity of a Wagner drama again:
because Wagner is becoming just a little bit old-fashioned. _Lohengrin_
and _Tannhäuser_ are becoming a trifle shop-worn. They do not glitter
with the glory of a _Don Giovanni_ or the invincible splendour of an
_Armide_. There are parts of _Die Walküre_ which are growing old. Now
Wagner, in many ways the greatest figure as opera composer which the
world has yet produced, could hold his place in the singing theatres
for many decades to come if some proper effort were made to do justice
to his dramas, the justice which in a large measure has been done to
his music. This effort at present is not being made.
In the Metropolitan Opera House season of 1895-6, when Jean de Reszke
first sang Tristan in German, the opportunity seemed to be opened for
further breaks with what a Munich critic once dubbed “Die Bayreuther
Tradition oder Der missverstandene Wagner.” For up to that time, in
spite of some isolated examples, it had come to be considered, in
utter misunderstanding of Wagner’s own wishes and doctrines, as a
part of the technique of performing a Wagner music-drama to shriek,
howl, or bark the tones, rather than to sing them. There had been, I
have said, isolated examples of German singers, and artists of other
nationalities singing in German, who had _sung_ their phrases in these
lyric plays, but the appearance in the Wagner rôles, in German, of a
tenor whose previous appearances had been made largely in works in
French and Italian which demanded the use of what is called _bel canto_
(it means only _good singing_) brought about a controversy which even
yet is raging in some parts of the world. Should Wagner be sung, in the
manner of Jean de Reszke, or shouted in the traditional manner? Was it
possible to sing the music and make the effect the Master expected? In
answer it may be said that never in their history have _Siegfried_,
_Tristan und Isolde_, and _Lohengrin_ met with such success as when
Jean de Reszke and his famous associates appeared in them, and it may
also be said that since that time there has been a consistent effort on
the part of the management of the Metropolitan Opera House (and other
theatres as well) to provide artists for these dramas who could sing
them, and sing them as Italian operas are sung, an effort to which
opera directors have been spurred by a growing insistence on the part
of the public.
It was the first break with the Bayreuth bugbear, tradition, and it
might have been hoped that this tradition would be stifled in other
directions, with this successful precedent in mind; but such has not
been the case. As a result of this failure to follow up a beneficial
lead, in spite of orchestral performances which bring out the manifold
beauties of the scores and in spite of single impersonations of high
rank by eminent artists, we are beginning to see the Wagner dramas
falling into decline, long before the appointed time, because their
treatment has been held in the hands of Cosima Wagner, who--with the
best of intentions, of course--not only insists (at Bayreuth she is
mistress, and her influence on singers, conductors, stage directors and
scene painters throughout the world is very great) on the carrying out
of Wagner’s theories, as she understands them, and even when they are
only worthy of being ignored, but who also (whether rightly or wrongly)
is credited with a few traditions of her own. Wagner indeed invented
a new form of drama, but he did not have the time or means at his
disposal to develop an adequate technique for its performance.
We are all familiar with the Bayreuth version of Wotan in _Die Walküre_
which makes of that tragic father-figure a boisterous, silly old
scold (so good an artist as Carl Braun, whose Hagen portrait is a
masterpiece, has followed this tradition literally); we all know too
well the waking Brünnhilde who salutes the sun in the last act of
_Siegfried_ with gestures seemingly derived from the exercises of a
Swedish _turnverein_, following the harp arpeggios as best she may;
we remember how Wotan, seizing the sword from the dead Fasolt’s hand,
brandishes it to the tune of the sword _motiv_, indicating the coming
of the hero, Siegfried, as the gods walk over the rainbow bridge to
Walhalla at the end of _Das Rheingold_; we smile over the tame horse
which some chorus man, looking the while like a truck driver who is
not good to animals, holds for Brünnhilde while she sings her final
lament in _Götterdämmerung_; we laugh aloud when he assists her to lead
the unfiery steed, who walks as leisurely as a well-fed horse would
towards oats, into the burning pyre; we can still see the picture of
the three Rhine maidens, bobbing up and down jerkily behind a bit of
gauze, reminiscent of visions of mermaids at the Eden Musée; we all
have seen Tristan and Isolde, drunk with the love potion, swimming
(there is no other word to describe this effect) towards each other;
and no perfect Wagnerite can have forgotten the gods and the giants
standing about in the fourth scene of _Das Rheingold_ for all the world
as if they were the protagonists of a fantastic minstrel show. (At a
performance of _Parsifal_ in Chicago Vernon Stiles discovered while he
was on the stage that his suspenders, which held his tights in place,
had snapped. For a time he pressed his hands against his groin; this
method proving ineffectual, he finished the scene with his hands behind
his back, pressed firmly against his waist-line. As he left the stage,
at the conclusion of the act, breathing a sigh of relief, he met
Loomis Taylor, the stage director. “Did you think my new gesture was
due to nervousness?” he asked. “No,” answered Taylor, “I thought it was
Bayreuth tradition!”)
These are a few of the Bayreuth precepts which are followed. There
are others. There are indeed many others. We all know the tendency
of conductors who have been tried at Bayreuth, or who have come
under the influence of Cosima Wagner, to drag out the _tempi_ to an
exasperating degree. I have heard performances of _Lohengrin_ which
were dragged by the conductor some thirty minutes beyond the ordinary
time. (Again the Master is held responsible for this tradition, but
though all composers like to have their own music last in performance
as long as possible, the tradition, perhaps, is just as authentic as
the story that Richard Strauss, when conducting _Tristan und Isolde_
at the Prinz-Regenten-Theatre in Munich, saved twenty minutes on the
ordinary time it takes to perform the work in order to return as soon
as possible to an interrupted game of Skat.)
But it is not tradition alone that is killing the Wagner dramas. In
many instances and in most singing theatres silly traditions are aided
in their work of destruction by another factor in hasty production.
I am referring to the frequent liberties which have been taken with
the intentions of the author. For, when expediency is concerned, no
account is taken of tradition, and, curiously enough, expediency
breaks with those traditions which can least stand being tampered
with. The changes, in other words, have not been made for the sake of
improvement, but through carelessness, or to save time or money, or
for some other cognate reason. An example of this sort of thing is the
custom of giving the _Ring_ dramas as a cycle in a period extending
over four weeks, one drama a week. It is also customary at the
Metropolitan Opera House in New York to entrust the rôle of Brünnhilde,
or of Siegfried, to a different interpreter in each drama, so that the
Brünnhilde who wakes in _Siegfried_ is not at all the Brünnhilde who
goes to sleep in _Die Walküre_. Then, although Brünnhilde exploits a
horse in _Götterdämmerung_, she possesses none in _Die Walküre_; none
of the other valkyries has a horse; Fricka’s goats have been taken
away from her, and she walks to the mountain-top holding her skirts
from under her feet for all the world as a lady of fashion might
as she ascended from a garden into a ballroom. At the Metropolitan
Opera House, and at other theatres where I have seen the dramas, the
decorations of the scenes of Brünnhilde’s falling asleep and of her
awakening are quite different.
Naturally, ingenious explanations have been devised to fit these cases.
For instance, one is told that animals are _never_ at home on the
stage. This explanation suffices perhaps for the animals which do not
appear, but how about those which do? The vague phrase, “the exigencies
of the répertoire,” is mentioned as the reason for the extension of
the cycle over several weeks, that and the further excuse that the
system permits people from nearby towns to make weekly visits to the
metropolis. Of course, Wagner intended that each of the _Ring_ dramas
should follow its predecessor on succeeding days in a festival week. If
the _Ring_ were so given in New York every season with due preparation,
careful staging, and the best obtainable cast, the occasions would
draw audiences from all over America, as the festivals at Bayreuth and
Munich do indeed draw audiences from all over the world. Ingenuous
is the word which best describes the explanation for the change in
Brünnhildes; one is told that the out-of-town subscribers to the series
prefer to hear as many singers as possible. They wish to “compare”
Brünnhildes, so to speak. Perhaps the real reason for divergence
from common sense is the difficulty the director of the opera house
would have with certain sopranos if one were allowed the full set of
performances. As for the change in the setting of Brünnhilde’s rock it
is pure expediency, nothing else. In _Die Walküre_, in which, between
acts, there is plenty of time to change the scenery, a heavy built
promontory of rocks is required for the valkyrie brood to stand on. In
_Siegfried_ and _Götterdämmerung_, where the scenery must be shifted in
short order, this particular setting is utilized only for duets. The
heavier elements of the setting are no longer needed, and are dispensed
with.
The mechanical devices demanded by Wagner are generally complied
with in a stupidly clumsy manner. The first scene of _Das Rheingold_
is usually managed with some effect now, although the swimming of
the Rhine maidens, who are dressed in absurd long floating green
nightgowns, is carried through very badly and seemingly without an
idea that such things have been done a thousand times better in other
theatres; the changes of scene in _Das Rheingold_ are accomplished in
such a manner that one fears the escaping steam is damaging the gauze
curtains; the worm and the toad are silly contrivances; the effect of
the rainbow is never properly conveyed; the ride of the valkyries is
frankly evaded by most stage managers; the bird in _Siegfried_ flies
like a sickly crow; the final scene in _Götterdämmerung_ would bring a
laugh from a Bowery audience: some flat scenery flaps over, a number
of chorus ladies fall on their knees, there is much bulging about of a
canvas sea, and a few red lights appear in the sky; the transformation
scenes in _Parsifal_ are carried out with as little fidelity to
symbolism, or truth, or beauty; and the throwing of the lance in
_Parsifal_ is always seemingly a wire trick rather than a magical one.
The scenery for the Wagner dramas, in all the theatres where I have
seen and heard them, has been built (and a great deal of it in
recent years from new designs) with a seemingly absolute ignorance
or determined evasion of the fact that there are artists who are now
working in the theatre. In making this statement I can speak personally
of performances I have seen at the Metropolitan Opera House, New
York; the Auditorium, Chicago; Covent Garden Theatre, London; La
Scala, Milan; the Opéra, Paris; and the Prinz-Regenten-Theatre in
Munich. Are there theatres where the Wagner dramas are better given?
I do not think so. Compare the scenery of _Götterdämmerung_ at the
Metropolitan Opera House with that of _Boris Godunow_, and you will
see how little care is being taken of Wagner’s ideals. In the one case
the flimsiest sort of badly painted and badly lighted canvas, mingled
indiscriminately with plastic objects, boughs, branches, etc., placed
next to painted boughs and branches, an effect calculated to throw the
falsity of the whole scene into relief; in the other case, an example
of a scene-painter’s art wrought to give the highest effect to the
drama it decorates. Take the decoration of the hall of the Gibichs
in which long scenes are enacted in both the first and last acts
of _Götterdämmerung_. The Gibichs are a savage, warlike, sinister,
primitive race. Now it is not necessary that the setting in itself be
strong, but it must suggest strength to the spectator. There is no
need to bring stone blocks or wood blocks on the stage; the artist
may work in black velvet if he wishes (it was of this material that
Professor Roller contrived a dungeon cell in _Fidelio_ which seemed to
be built of stone ten feet thick). It will be admitted, I think, by any
one who has seen the setting in question that it is wholly inadequate
to express the meaning of the drama. The scenes could be sung with a
certain effect in a Christian Science temple, but no one will deny,
I should say, that the effect of the music may be greatly heightened
by proper attention to the stage decoration and the movement of
the characters in relation to the lighting and decoration. (I have
used the Metropolitan Opera House, in this instance, as a convenient
illustration; but the scenery there is no worse, on the whole, than it
is in many of the other theatres named.)
The secret at the bottom of the whole matter is that the directors of
the singing theatres wish to save themselves trouble. They will spend
neither money nor energy in righting this wrong. It is easier to trust
to tradition on the one hand and expediency on the other than it would
be to engage an expert (one not concerned with what had been done,
but one concerned with what to do) to produce the works. _Carmen_ was
losing its popularity in this country when Emma Calvé, who had broken
all the rules made for the part by Galli-Marié, enchanted opera-goers
with her fantastic conception of the gipsy girl. Bizet’s work had
dropped out of the répertoire again when Mme. Bressler-Gianoli arrived
and carried it triumphantly through nearly a score of performances
during the first season of Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House.
Geraldine Farrar and Toscanini resuscitated the Spanish jade a third
time. An Olive Fremstad or a Lilli Lehmann or a Milka Ternina can
perform a like office for _Götterdämmerung_ or _Tristan und Isolde_;
but it is to a new producer, an Adolphe Appia or a Gordon Craig, that
the theatre director must look for the final salvation of Wagner,
through the complete realization of his own ideals. It must be obvious
to any one that the more completely the meaning of his plays is exposed
by the decoration, the lighting and the action, the greater the effect.
Adolphe Appia wrote a book called “Die Musik und die Inscenierung,”
which was published in German in 1899. (An earlier work, “La
mise-en-scène du drame Wagnerien,” appeared in Paris in 1893.) Since
then his career has been strangely obscure for one whose effect on
artists working at stage decoration has been greater than that of any
other single man. In the second edition of his book, “On the Art of the
Theatre,” Gordon Craig, in a footnote, speaks thus of Appia: “Appia,
_the foremost stage decorator of Europe_ (the italics are mine) is not
dead. I was told that he was no more with us, so, in the first edition
of this book, I included him among the shades. I first saw three
examples of his work in 1908, and I wrote a friend asking, ‘Where is
Appia and how can we meet?’ My friend replied, ‘Poor Appia died some
years ago.’ This winter (1912) I saw some of Appia’s designs in a
portfolio belonging to Prince Wolkonsky. They were divine; and I was
told that the designer was still living.”
Loomis Taylor, who, during the season of 1914-15, staged the Wagner
operas at the Metropolitan Opera House (and it was not his fault that
the staging was not improved; there is no stage director now working
who has more belief in and knowledge of the artists of the theatre than
Loomis Taylor) has written me, in response to a query, the following
regarding Appia: “Adolphe Appia, I think, is a French-Swiss; he is a
young man. The title of the book which made him famous, in its German
translation, is ‘Die Musik und die Inscenierung.’ It was translated
from the French by Princess Cantacuzène.... Five years ago I was told
by Mrs. Houston Stewart Chamberlain that Appia was slowly but surely
starving to death in some picturesque surroundings in Switzerland. I
then tried to get various people in Germany interested in him, also
proposing him to Hagemann as scenic artist for Mannheim. Two years
later, before his starving process had reached its conclusion, I heard
of him as collaborator with Jaques-Dalcroze at his temple of rhythm
on the banks of the Elbe, outside of Dresden, where, I think, up to
the outbreak of the war, Appia was doing very good work, but what has
become of him since I do not know.
“His book is very valuable; his suggestions go beyond the possibilities
of the average Hof theatre, while in Bayreuth they have a similar
effect to a drop of water upon a stone, sun-burned by the rays of
Cosima’s traditions. By being one of the first--if not _the_ first--to
put in writing the inconsistency of using painted perspective scenery
and painted shadows with human beings on the stage, Appia became the
fighter for plastic scenery. His sketch of the _Walküren_ rock is the
most beautiful scenic conception of Act III, _Die Walküre_, I know of
or could imagine. To my knowledge no theatre has ever produced anything
in conformity with Appia’s sketches.”
In a letter to me Hiram Kelly Moderwell, whose book, “The Theatre of
To-day,” is the best exposition yet published of the aims and results
of the artists who are working in the theatre, writes as follows in
regard to Appia: “Appia is now with Dalcroze at Hellerau and I believe
has designed and perhaps produced all the things that have been done
there in the last year or two. Previous to that I am almost certain he
had done no actual stage work. Nobody else would give him free rein.
But, as you know, he thought everything out carefully as though he
were doing the actual practical stage work.... By this time he has hit
his ‘third manner.’ It’s all cubes and parallelograms. It sounds like
hell on paper but Maurice Browne told me it is very fine stuff. Browne
says it is as much greater than Craig as Craig is greater than anybody
else. All the recent Hellerau plays are in this third manner. They are
lighted by Salzmann, indirect and diffused lighting, but not in the
Fortuny style. I imagine the Hellerau stuff is rather too precious to
go on the ordinary stage.”
Mr. Moderwell’s description of Appia’s book is so completely
illuminating that I feel I cannot do better than to quote the entire
passage from “The Theatre of To-day”: “Before his (Gordon Craig’s)
influence was felt, however, Adolphe Appia, probably the most powerful
theorist of the new movement, had written his remarkable book, ‘Die
Musik und die Inscenierung.’ In this, as an artist, he attempted to
deduce from the content of the Wagner music dramas the proper stage
settings for them. His conclusions anticipated much of the best work of
recent years and his theories have been put into practice in more or
less modified form on a great many stages--not so much (if at all) for
the Wagner dramas themselves, which are under a rigid tradition (the
‘what the Master wished’ myth), but for operas and the more lyric plays
where the producer has artistic ability and a free hand in applying it.