"Where grand opera gets its big boost, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, the
morning after Madame Galli-Curci made her sensational first appearance
in New York, "is that practically everybody with a rating higher than J
to L, credit fair, hates to admit that it don't interest them at all."
"And even if it did interest them, Abe," Morris Perlmutter said, "they
would got to have at least that rating before they could afford it to
buy a decent seat."
"Most of them don't begrudge the money spent this way, Mawruss, because
it comes under the head of advertising and not amusement," Abe said.
"Next to driving a four-horse coach down Fifth Avenue in the afternoon
rush hour with a feller playing a New-Year's-eve horn on the back of the
roof, Mawruss, owning a box at the Metropolitan Opera House is the
highest-grade form of publicity which exists, and the consequence is
that other people which believes in that kind of advertising medium,
but couldn't afford to take so much space per week, sits in the cheaper
ten-and six-dollar seats. And that's how the Metropolitan Opera House
makes its money, Mawruss. It gets a thousand times better rates as any
of the big five-cent weeklies, and it don't have to worry about the
second-class-postage zones."
"But you don't mean to tell me that the people which stands up
down-stairs and buys seats in the gallery is also looking for
publicity?" Morris said.
"Them people is something else, again," Abe replied. "They are as
different from the rest of the audience as magazine-readers is from
magazine-advertisers. Take the box-holders in the Metropolitan Opera
House and they _oser_ give a nickel what happens to Caruso. He could get
burned in 'Trovatore,' stabbed in 'Pagliacci,' go to the devil in
'Faust,' and have his intended die on him in 'Boheme,' and just so long
as their names is spelled right on the programs it don't affect them
millionaires no more than if, instead of being the greatest tenor in the
world, he would be an Interstate Commerce Commissioner. On the other
hand, them top-gallery fellers treats him like a little god,
y'understand, which if Caruso hands them opera fans a high C, Mawruss,
it's the equivalence of Dun or Bradstreet giving one of them box-holders
an A-a."
"Maybe you're right, Abe," Morris said, "but how do you account for
people paying forty dollars for an orchestra seat at the Lexington
Opera House just to hear this singer Galli-Curci in one performance
only, which I admit I ain't no advertising expert, Abe, but it seems to
me that if anybody is going to get benefit from publicity like that he
might just so well circulate a picture of himself drinking champanyer
wine out of a lady's satin slipper and be done with it, for all the good
it is going to do him with the National Association of Credit Men."
"That is another angle of the grand-opera proposition, Mawruss," Abe
said. "Paying forty dollars for an orchestra seat to hear this lady with
the Lloyd-George name is the same like an operation for appendicitis to
some people, Mawruss. It not only makes them feel superior to their
friends which 'ain't had the experience, but it gives 'em a tropic of
conversation which is never going to be barred by the statue of
limitations, and for months to come such a feller is going to go round
saying, 'Well, I heard Galli-Curci the other night,' and it won't make
no difference if it's a pinochle game, a lodge funeral, or a real-estate
transaction, he's going to hold it up for from fifteen minutes to half
an hour while he talks about her upper register, her middle register,
and her lower register to a bunch of people who don't know whether a
coloratura soprano can travel on a sleeper south to Washington, D.C., or
has to use the Jim Crow cars."
"All right, if it's such a crime not to know what a coloratura soprano
is, Abe," Morris commented, "I'm guilty in the first degree. So go
ahead, Abe. I'm willing to take my punishment. Tell me, what _is_ a
coloratura soprano?"
"I suppose you think I don't know," Abe said.
"I don't think you don't know," Morris replied, "but I do think that the
only reason you _do_ know, Abe, is that you 'ain't looked it up long
enough since to have forgotten it."
"Is _that_ so!" Abe exclaimed. "Well, that's where you make a big
mistake. I am already an experienced hand at going on the opera. When I
was by Old Man Baum we had a customer by the name Harris Feinsilver,
which if you only get him started on how he heard Jenny Lind at what is
now the Aquarium in Battery Park somewheres around eighteen hundred and
fifty-two, y'understand, you could sell him every sticker in the place,
and him and me went often on the opera together. In fact I got so that I
didn't mind it at all, and that's how I become acquainted with the
different grades of singers which works by grand opera. Take, for
instance, sopranos, and they come in two classes. There is the soprano
which hollers murder police and they call her a dramatic soprano. And
then again there is the soprano which gargles. That is a coloratura
soprano."
"And people is paying forty dollars an orchestra seat to hear a woman
gargle?" Morris exclaimed.
"Of course I don't say she actually gargles, y'understand," Abe
explained, "anyhow not all the time, Mawruss. Once in a while she sings
a song which has got quite a tune in it pretty near up to the end, and
then she carries on something terrible anywheres from two to eight
minutes till the feller that runs the orchestra couldn't stand it no
longer and he gives them the signal they should drown her out."
[Illustration: "Take, for instance, sopranos, and they come in two
classes. There is the soprano which hollers murder police and they call
her a dramatic soprano. And then again there is the soprano which
gargles. That is a coloratura soprano."]
"I should think he would get to know when it is coming on her and drown
her out before she starts," Morris said.
"What do you mean--drown her out before she starts?" Abe continued.
"That's what she gets paid for--carrying on in such a manner, and them
people up in the top gallery goes crazy over it."
"Then why don't the feller which runs the orchestra let her keep it up?"
Morris asked.
"A question!" Abe said. "There is from forty to fifty men working in the
orchestra, and if the feller which runs it let them top-gallery people
have their way it would cost him a fortune for overtime for them fellers
that plays the fiddles alone."
"He should arrange a wage scale accordingly," Morris said, "because it
don't make no difference if it's the garment business or the grand-opera
business, Abe, the customer should ought to come first."
"_I_ always felt that I got _my_ money's worth, Mawruss," Abe said. "In
particular when it comes to one of them operas with a coloratura soprano
in it, y'understand, it seemed to me they could of cut down on the
working time without hurting the quality of the goods in the slightest.
There's always a good fifteen minutes wasted in such operas where a
feller in the orchestra plays a little something on the flute and the
coloratura soprano sings the same music on the stage, the idee being to
show that you couldn't tell the difference between the feller playing
the flute and the coloratura soprano except the feller playing the flute
has all his clothes on. Then, again, during the death-bed scene in the
last act they kill a whole lot of time also."
"Do you mean to say there's a death-bed scene in every one of them
operas?" Morris inquired.
"Practically," Abe replied. "There ain't many grand operas where both
the tenor and the soprano sticks it out alive till the end of the last
act, Mawruss. Tenors, in particular, is awful risks, Mawruss, which I
bet yer that eighty per cent. of the times I seen Caruso he either
passed away along about quarter past eleven after an awful hard spell of
singing, or give you the impression that he wasn't going to survive the
soprano more than a couple of days at the outside."
"And yet some people couldn't understand why everybody takes in the
Winter Garden or Ziegfeld's Follies," Morris commented.
"Of course I don't say that the audience suffers as much as if it was in
the English language, but even when a lady dies in French or Italian I
couldn't enjoy it, neither," Abe said.
"It seems to me, Abe, that a feller which goes often on grand opera is
lucky if he understands only English," Morris observed.
"That's what you would naturally think, Mawruss," Abe agreed, "and yet
there is people which is so anxious that they shouldn't miss none of
the tenor's last words that they actually go to work and buy for
twenty-five cents in the lobby a translation of the Italian operas,
which I got stung that way only once, because to follow from the English
translation what the singers is saying on the stage in Italian, Mawruss,
a feller could be a combination of a bloodhound and a mind-reader,
y'understand, and even then he would get twisted. For instance, Caruso
comes out with a couple hundred assorted tenors and bassos, and so far
as any human being could tell which don't understand Italian, Mawruss,
he begs them that they shouldn't go out on strike right in the middle of
the busy season, in particular when times is so hard and everything, and
from the way he puts his hand on his heart it looks like he is also
telling them that he is speaking to them as a friend, y'understand, and
to consider their wives and children, understand me. All the effect this
seems to have on them is that they yell, 'Down with the bosses!' and
they insist on a closed shop and that the terms of the protocol should
be lived up to. This gets Caruso crazy. He grabs his vest with both
hands and makes one last big appeal, y'understand, in which he tells
them that the delegates is stalling and that they are being made suckers
of, and that if it would be the last word he would ever speak, the
sensible thing is for them to go right back to work and leave it to
arbitration by a joint board consisting of the president of the
Manufacturers' Association, the chairman of the Garment Workers' Union,
and Jacob H. Schiff, y'understand, but do you think they would listen to
him? _Oser a Stueck!_ They laugh in his face, and it don't make no
difference that he repeats it an octave higher accompanied by the
fiddles, and gives them one last chance, ending on a high C,
y'understand, they refuse to reconsider the matter, and when the curtain
goes down it looks like the strike was on for fair. However, when the
lights are turned on and you look it up in the English translation, what
do you find? The entire thing was a false alarm, Mawruss. It seems that
for twenty minutes Caruso has been singing over and over again, 'Come,
my friends, let us go,' and the whole time them people was acting like
they wanted to tear him to pieces, they have been saying, 'Yes, yes, let
us go' a thousand times over, and that's all there was _to_ it."
"Well, after all, with a grand opera, it ain't so much the words as the
music," Morris commented.
"Even the music they don't take it so particular about nowadays," Abe
continued. "In fact, the up-to-date thing in grand opera is not to have
any music, Mawruss, only samples, which some of them newest grand
operas, Mawruss, if it wouldn't be that the people on the stage is
making such a racket instead of the people in the audience you would
think that the orchestra was continuing to tune up during the entire
evening."
"Seemingly you didn't get a whole lot out of your visits to the opera,
Abe," Morris said.
"Oh yes, I did," Abe replied. "I got some wonderful idees for
dinner-dress designs and evening gowns. I 'ain't got no kick coming
against the opera, Mawruss. A garment-manufacturer can put in a very
profitable evening there any night if he can only stand the music."