"COUNT DI LUNA" INTRODUCED TO "LEONORA"--A PATTI CONTRACT--THE STING OF
THE ENGAGEMENT--A TENOR'S SUITE--A PRESENTATION OF JEWELLERY--"MY DON
GIOVANNI"--A PROFITABLE TOUR.
THE public are under the impression that the closest intimacies are
contracted between vocalists in consequence of their appearing
constantly together in the same works. Under the new system, by which
the prima donna stipulates that she shall not be called upon to appear
at any rehearsal, this possible source of excessive friendship ceases to
exist. It now frequently happens that the prima donna is not even
personally acquainted with the singers who are to take part with her in
the same opera; and on one occasion, when _Il Trovatore_ was being
performed, I remember the baritone soliciting the honour of an
introduction to Mdme. Patti at the very moment when he was singing in
the trio of the first act. The "Manrico" of the evening was exceedingly
polite, and managed without scandalizing the audience to effect the
introduction by singing it as if it were a portion of his _role_.
To show that the stipulation I have just spoken of is made in the most
formal manner, and to give a general idea of the conditions a manager is
expected to accept from a leading prima donna, I here subjoin a copy of
the contract between Mdme. Patti and myself for my season at Covent
Garden in 1885:--
"THE ENGAGEMENT contracted in London Sixth day of June 1885 BETWEEN
JAMES HENRY MAPLESON Operatic Manager, henceforward described as
Mr. Mapleson and ADELINA PATTI, Artiste Lyrique, henceforward
described as Madame Patti.
"Article 1.--Mr. Mapleson engages Madame Patti to sing and Madame
Patti engages to sing at a series of Eight Operatic Representations
in Italian or high class Concerts to be given under his direction
from Sixteenth June and ending the Sixteenth July One thousand
eight hundred and eighty five in London in such manner that two of
such Representations or Concerts (as the case may be) may be given
in each week of such period and so that an interval of at least two
clear days may elapse between each Representation or Concert unless
the contracting parties otherwise agree.
"Article 2.--Mr. Mapleson engages to pay to Madame Patti or her
representative for such series the sum of Four thousand pounds and
for all additional Representations or Concerts the sum of Five
hundred pounds each; such payment to be made in advance in sums of
Five hundred pounds each before 2 o'Clock in the afternoon of the
day on which a Representation or Concert is to be given.
"Article 3.--The repertoire to comprise the Operas of _Martha_,
_Traviata_, _Trovatore_, _Lucia di Lammermoor_, _Il Barbiere di
Seviglia_, _Crispino_, _Rigoletto_, _Linda_, _Carmen_ and _Don
Giovanni_; and thereof 'Il Barbiere,' 'La Traviata,' 'Martha' and
'Zerlina' in _Don Giovanni_ shall be assigned exclusively to Madame
Patti during the entire Operatic Season. The Airs to be sung at the
Concerts (if any) are to be selected by Madame Patti.
"Article 4.--The selection from such Repertoire of the Opera to be
given at her re-entree shall be selected and be fixed exclusively
by Madame Patti; but with that exception the choice therefrom of
the Operas to be given at the several representations shall be
Tuesdays and Saturdays, and the days of the week on which Concerts
(if any) shall be given shall be fixed by the mutual agreement of
the contracting parties; and Mr. Mapleson engages to adhere thereto
except in case of sudden, necessary change through the illness of
other principal Artistes in the cast of the chosen Opera.
"Article 5.--Madame Patti shall be free to attend Rehearsals, but
shall not be required or bound to attend at any.
"Article 6.--Madame Patti will at her own expense provide all
requisite costumes for the Operas selected.
"Article 7.--Mr. Mapleson engages that Madame Patti shall be
announced daily during the series of Representations or Concerts in
a special leaded advertisement among the Theatrical Advertisements
over the Clock as well as in the Operatic Casts or Concert
Programmes in all Journals in which he may advertise his Operas or
Concerts and likewise that her name shall appear in a separate line
of large letters in all Announce Bills of Operas or Concerts in or
at which she is to appear and that such letters shall be at least
one third larger than those employed for the announcement of any
other Artiste in the same Cast or Programme.
"Article 8.--Madame Patti is not to be at liberty to sing elsewhere
during this engagement except at State Concerts.
"Article 9.--In the event of Madame Patti not appearing in Opera or
at Concert on the day for which she may have been announced to sing
owing to her indisposition such intended appearance shall be
treated as postponed if such indisposition be of a temporary
character, and for every such non-appearance a substituted
Representation or Concert shall be given before the Sixteenth July
One thousand eight hundred and eighty five, but if such
indisposition continues during a period longer than two succeeding
Operatic or Concert nights provided by the first Article the
number of non-attendance nights shall be counted off the Eight
agreed for Representations or Concerts as if Madame Patti had
actually appeared thereat. In the case of such postponement the
payment of the Five hundred pounds shall be postponed until the
morning of the day on which the substituted Representation or
Concert shall be given; but in the case of counting off the day as
wholly gone no salary shall be payable by Mr. Mapleson therefor;
but beyond such postponement or deduction from payment, as the case
may be, he shall have no ground of complaint nor claim for
non-attendance or otherwise. And he engages to announce her
indisposition or withdraw her name from all advertisements and
other announcements of performance at the earliest time and with
all due diligence and publicity.
"Article 10.--In the event of an Epidemic of Cholera, Small pox,
Fever or other contagious or deadly disease breaking out within the
range of the London Bills of Mortality Madame Patti shall be at
liberty to cancel this Engagement by notice in writing as provided
in the Twelfth Article, and thereupon she shall be no longer
required nor bound to continue the Representations or Concerts, and
thereupon the Two thousand pounds deposit in the Eleventh Article
mentioned, and no more, shall be repayable to him if he shall have
duly performed his several engagements herein.
"Article 11.--Mr. Mapleson, as a preliminary obligation
performable by him (and on performance of which Madame Patti's
obligations under her engagements herein depend) hereby engages to
deposit the sum of Two thousand pounds Cash with Messrs.
Rothschild, at their Counting-house in New Court, St. Swithin's
Lane, London, on or before the Tenth June One thousand eight
hundred and eighty five to the credit of Madame Patti, as part
guarantee for Mr. Mapleson's fulfilment of this engagement. Such
Two thousand pounds are to be applied by Madame Patti as payment
for the last four actual Representations or Concerts, or (as the
case may be) retained by her as her own property for and on account
of damages sustained by her through the nonperformance of this
engagement by Mr. Mapleson.
"Article 12.--Should Mr. Mapleson fail to make such deposit in full
by the day named Madame Patti shall be at liberty at any time
afterwards, and notwithstanding any negotiation, withdrawal of
notice, waiver, extension of time for depositing, or acceptance of
part payment of such Two thousand pounds to put an end to this
Engagement by lodging with Mr. Mapleson's Solicitors, Messrs. J.
and R. Gole in London, a letter signed by her, announcing her
determination of this Engagement; and thenceforth this Engagement
shall be at an end except so far as regards the Agreement next
following, that is to say, That on such failure and determination
Mr. Mapleson shall, and he hereby agrees to pay to Madame Patti on
demand the sum of Four thousand pounds as and for compensation to
her for expenses incident to this Engagement and for loss of time
in procuring other engagements of an equal character.
"ADELINA PATTI."
About the sum payable per night to Mdme. Patti by the terms of the above
agreement I say nothing. Five hundred pounds a night was only half what
I had paid her in the United States; and soon afterwards at Her
Majesty's Theatre I myself offered to give the famous vocalist six
hundred and fifty per night. The sting of the contract lies for the
manager, pecuniarily speaking, in the clause which empowers the singer
to declare herself ill at the last moment, while guaranteeing her
against all the consequences sure to arise from her too tardy apology.
The manager has suddenly to change the performance, and, worse by far,
to incur the charge of having broken faith with the public; for however
precisely the certificate of indisposition may be made out, there are
sure to be some knowing ones among the disappointed crowd who will
whisper, as a great secret known to them alone, that the prima donna has
not been paid, and that the certificate is all a sham.
What an unfair clause, too, is that by which, if the manager does not
pay in advance to the prima donna at the exact time prescribed the whole
of the sum payable to her for all the performances she binds herself to
give, he will by such failure render himself liable for the entire sum
without the prima donna on her side being called upon to sing at all.
The clause liberating the prima donna from attending rehearsals will be
condemned by all lovers of music. During the three or four years that
Mdme. Patti was with me in America she never once appeared at a
rehearsal. When I was producing _La Gazza Ladra_, an opera which
contains an unusually large number of parts, there were several members
of the cast who did not even know Mdme. Patti by sight. Under such
circumstances all idea of a perfect _ensemble_ was, of course, out of
the question. It was only on the night of performance, and in presence
of the public, that the concerted pieces were tried for the first time
with the soprano voice. The unfortunate contralto, Mdlle. Vianelli, had
never in her life seen Mdme. Patti, with whom, on this occasion, she had
to sing duets full of concerted passages. At such rehearsal as she could
obtain Arditi did his best to replace the absent prima donna, whistling
the soprano part so as at least to give the much-tried contralto some
idea of the effect.
In addition to the clauses in the prima donna's written engagement,
there is always an understanding by which she is to receive so many
stalls, so many boxes, so many places in the pit, and so many in the
gallery. How, it will be asked, can such an illustrious lady have
friends whom she would like to send to the gallery? The answer is that
the distinguished vocalist wishes to be supported from all parts of the
house, and that she is far too practical--high as may be the opinion she
entertains of her own talents--to leave the applause even in the
smallest degree to chance.
There are plenty of great singers--though Mdme. Patti is not one of
them--who carry with them on their foreign tours a _chef de claque_ as a
member of their ordinary suite. Tenors are, at least, as particular on
this score as prime donne; and if one popular tenor travels with a staff
of eight, his rival, following him to the same country, will make a
point, merely that the fact may be recorded in the papers, of taking
with him a staff of nine.
Signor Masini, the modest vocalist who wished Sir Michael Costa to come
round to his hotel and learn from him how the _tempi_ should be taken in
the _Faust_ music, went not long since to South America with a staff
consisting of the following paid officials: A secretary, an
under-secretary, a cook, a valet, a barber, a doctor, a lawyer, a
journalist, an agent, and a treasurer. The ten attendants, apart from
their special duties, form a useful _claque_, and are kept judiciously
distributed about the house according to their various social positions.
The valet and the journalist, the barber and the doctor are said to have
squabbles at times on the subject of precedence.
The functions of the lawyer will not perhaps be apparent to everyone.
His appointed duties, however, are to draw up contracts and to recover
damages in case a clause in any existing contract should seem to have
been broken. The hire of all these attendants causes no perceptible hole
in the immense salary payable to the artist who employs them; and the
travelling expenses of a good number of them have to be defrayed by the
unfortunate manager.
Only an oriental prince or a musical _parvenu_ would dream of
maintaining such a suite; and soon, I believe, the following of a
vocalist with a world-wide reputation will not be considered complete
unless it includes, in addition to the other gentlemen who wait upon the
Masini's and the Tamagno's, an architect and surveyor.
It will perhaps have been observed that by one of the clauses of Mdme.
Patti's engagement the letters of her name are in all printed
announcements to be one-third larger than the letters of anyone else's
name; and during the progress of the Chicago Festival, I saw Signor
Nicolini armed with what appeared to be a theodolite, and accompanied by
a gentleman who I fancy was a great geometrician, looking intently and
with a scientific air at some wall-posters on which the letters
composing Mdme. Patti's name seemed to him not quite one-third larger
than the letters composing the name of Mdlle. Nevada. At last,
abandoning all idea of scientific measurement, he procured a ladder,
and, boldly mounting the steps, ascertained by means of a foot-rule that
the letters which he had previously been observing from afar were indeed
a trifle less tall than by contract they should have been.
I can truly say, "with my hand on my conscience," as the French put it,
that I had not ordered the letters to be made a shade smaller than they
should have been with the slightest intention of wounding the feelings
or damaging the interests either of Mdme. Adelina Patti or of Signor
Nicolini. The printers had not followed my directions so precisely as
they ought to have done.
In order to conciliate the offended prima donna and her irritated
spouse, I caused the printed name of that most charming vocalist, Mdlle.
Nevada, to be operated upon in this way: a thin slice was taken out of
it transversely, so that the middle stroke of the letter E disappeared
altogether. When I pointed out my revised version of the name to Signer
Nicolini in order to demonstrate to him that he was geometrically wrong,
he replied to me with a puzzled look as he pointed to the letters
composing the name of Nevada: "Yes; but there is something very strange
about that E."
To return to my narrative. At the conclusion of the great Chicago
Festival, we left, in the middle of the night, for New York, and reached
it on Monday morning, where we opened with _Semiramide_ to as large an
audience as the Academy had ever known. On the Friday following, on the
occasion of my benefit, the receipts reached nearly L3,000, the house
being crowded from floor to ceiling.
At the close of the opera I was called before the curtain, and on
quitting the stage, with Adelina Patti on my right and Scalchi on my
left, I was met by Chief Justice Shea, who approached me and said--
"Colonel Mapleson, a number of our citizens who represent significant
phases of social life and important business interests in this
metropolis desire to testify in a public and notable manner that they
understand and laud the superb success which has followed your efforts
to establish Italian Opera in this city. It is seldom that public men
are understood. It is very seldom that they are offered an
acknowledgment beyond the few earnest friends that cluster around them.
Those citizens to whom I refer recognize that your career amongst us has
not been a mere chance success, but the result of patience, energy, and
the intelligent courage which comes of ripe experience. They think this
an apt occasion on which publicly to express the sincerity of that
opinion. Sir, allow me on their behalf to offer you this memorial."
I was then handed a magnificent ebony case, fitted with a crystal glass,
containing the following:--A valuable repeater watch set in diamonds, a
gold chain with diamond and ruby slides, diamond and ruby charm in the
shape of a harp, a pair of large solitaire diamond sleeve buttons, a
diamond collar stud, a horse-shoe scarf pin (nine large diamonds), three
diamond shirt studs, a gold pencil-case with a diamond top and a plain
gold pin with a single diamond; the whole being valued at L1,300.
The ebony case and crystal glass I still possess. The contents, together
with everything else, went to keep the Company together during the
disastrous retreat from Frisco of the following year, as to which I will
later on give details.
I thanked the Chief Justice briefly for the gift and the public for
their patronage, and with difficulty left the stage amidst ringing
cheers and waving of pocket-handkerchiefs: I say with difficulty,
because at that critical moment, as I was picking up a bouquet, the
buckle of my pantaloons gave way; and as my tailor had persuaded me, out
of compliment to him, to discard the use of braces, it was only with
great difficulty that I could manage to shuffle off the stage,
entrusting meanwhile some of the jewellery to Patti and some to Scalchi.
At New York, as previously at Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco,
lively complaints were made of the vanity and levity of my tenor,
Cardinali, who was an empty-headed, fatuous creature unable to write his
own name or even to read the love-letters which, in spite, or perhaps in
consequence of his empty-headedness, were frequently addressed to him by
affectionate and doubtless weak-minded young ladies. Cardinali possessed
a certain beauty of countenance; he had also a sloping forehead, and a
high opinion of his powers of fascination.
At San Francisco he got engaged to a young lady of good family, who was
one of the recognized beauties of the city. A date had been fixed for
the marriage, and the coming event was announced and commented upon in
all the papers. The marriage, however, was not to take place forthwith;
and when my handsome tenor got to Chicago he was much taken by one of
the local blondes, to whom he swore undying love.
At Philadelphia he got engaged to another girl, who became furiously
jealous when she found that he was receiving letters from his Frisco
_fiancee_. Not being able to decipher the caligraphy of the former
beloved one, he entrusted her letters for reading purposes to the
chambermaids or waiters of the hotel where he put up.
At New York Cardinali formed an attachment to yet another girl, who
fully responded to his ardour. He used to get tickets from me in order
that he might entertain his young women in an economical manner at
operatic representations; and one day, when he had taken the girl whom
he had met at New York to a morning performance, he asked permission to
leave her for a moment as he had to speak to a friend. This friend
turned out to be a lady with whom he had arranged to elope, and the
happy pair left for Europe by a steamer then on the point of starting.
He did not, as far as I know, change his partner during the voyage, and
I afterwards lost sight of him.
We remained at New York a week, giving six extra performances, and left
the following Sunday for Boston. There, too, we stayed a week,
terminating the season on the 2nd May, on which day Mdme. Patti sailed
for Europe, followed by the Company. These frequent voyages across the
Atlantic were my only rests. They greatly invigorated me, bracing me up,
as it were, to meet the fresh troubles and trials which were sure to
welcome me on my arrival.
It was a most fortunate thing that the Directors of the Royal Italian
Opera Company, Covent Garden, Limited, had thought proper to dispense
with my services the previous year by reason of my having, in
conjunction with their own general manager, engaged Mdme. Patti.
Otherwise I should have been obliged to hand them L15,000, being half
the net profit of this last American tour, to which, by the terms of our
agreement, they would have been entitled.
I ascertained on my return that for want of L2,000 the Company had
collapsed.