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INTERPRETERS
by
CARL
VAN VECHTEN
_BOOKS BY CARL VAN VECHTEN_
INTERPRETERS
IN THE GARRET
THE MUSIC OF SPAIN
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS
THE TIGER IN THE HOUSE
MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR
[Illustration: MARY GARDEN AS CHERUBIN (1905)]
Interpreters
_Carl Van Vechten_
_A new edition, revised, with sixteen illustrations and an epilogue_
[Illustration]
New York Alfred A Knopf
MCMXX
COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1920, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_To
the unforgettable interpreter of Ariel,
Zelima, Louka, Wendla,
and Columbine,
Fania Marinoff, my wife_
CONTENTS
Olive Fremstad 11
Geraldine Farrar 39
Mary Garden 59
Feodor Chaliapine 97
Mariette Mazarin 117
Yvette Guilbert 135
Waslav Nijinsky 149
Epilogue 177
ILLUSTRATIONS
Mary Garden as Cherubin _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
Olive Fremstad as Elsa 18
Olive Fremstad as Sieglinde 20
Olive Fremstad as Kundry 24
Geraldine Farrar as Elisabeth 40
Geraldine Farrar as Violetta 46
Geraldine Farrar as Louise in _Julien_ 52
Mary Garden as Chrysis 72
Mary Garden as Melisande 76
Mary Garden as Fanny Legrand 90
Feodor Chaliapine as Mefistofele 112
Mariette Mazarin as Elektra 128
Yvette Guilbert 140
Waslav Nijinsky in Debussy's _Jeux_ 168
Geraldine Farrar as Zaza 190
Mary Garden as Cleopatre 196
Olive Fremstad
_"C'est que le Beau est la seule chose qui soit immortelle, et qu'aussi
longtemps qu'il reste un vestige de sa manifestation materielle, son
immortalite subsiste. Le Beau est repandu partout, il s'etend meme
jusque sur la mort. Mais il ne rayonne nulle part avec autant
d'intensite que dans l'individualite humaine; c'est la qu'il parle le
plus a l'intelligence, et c'est pour cela que, pour ma part, je
prefererai toujours une grande puissance musicale servie par une voix
defectueuse, a une voix belle et bete, une voix dont la beaute n'est que
materielle._"
Ivan Turgeniev to Mme. Viardot.
The career of Olive Fremstad has entailed continuous struggle: a
struggle in the beginning with poverty, a struggle with a refractory
voice, and a struggle with her own overpowering and dominating
temperament. Ambition has steered her course. After she had made a
notable name for herself through her interpretations of contralto roles,
she determined to sing soprano parts, and did so, largely by an effort
of will. She is always dissatisfied with her characterizations; she is
always studying ways and means of improving them. It is not easy for her
to mould a figure; it is, on the contrary, very difficult. One would
suppose that her magnetism and force would carry her through an opera
without any great amount of preparation. Such is not the case. There is
no other singer before the public so little at her ease in any impromptu
performance. Recently, when she returned to the New York stage with an
itinerant opera company to sing in an ill-rehearsed performance of
_Tosca_, she all but lost her grip. She was not herself and she did not
convince. New costumes, which hindered her movements, and a Scarpia with
whom she was unfamiliar, were responsible in a measure for her failure
to assume her customary authority.
If you have seen and heard Olive Fremstad in the scene of the spear in
_Goetterdaemmerung_, you will find it difficult to believe that what I say
is true, that work and not plenary inspiration is responsible for the
effect. To be sure, the inspiration has its place in the final result.
Once she is certain of her ground, words, music, tone-colour, gesture,
and action, she inflames the whole magnificently with her magnetism.
This magnetism is instinctive, a part of herself; the rest is not. She
brings about the detail with diligent drudgery, and without that her
performances would go for nought. The singer pays for this intense
concentration. In "Tower of Ivory" Mrs. Atherton says that all Wagnerian
singers must pay heavily. Probably all good ones must. Charles Henry
Melzer has related somewhere that he first saw Mme. Fremstad on the
stage at Covent Garden, where between her scenes in some Wagner music
drama, lost in her role, utterly oblivious of stage hands or
fellow-artists, she paced up and down in the wings. At the moment he
decided that she was a great interpretative artist, and he had never
heard her sing. When she is singing a role she will not allow herself to
be interrupted; she holds no receptions between scenes. "Come back
after the opera," she says to her friends, and frequently then she is
too tired to see any one. She often drives home alone, a prey to
quivering nerves which keep her eyeballs rolling in ceaseless
torture--sleepless.
Nothing about the preparation of an opera is easy for Olive Fremstad;
the thought, the idea, does not register immediately in her brain. But
once she has achieved complete understanding of a role and thoroughly
mastered its music, the fire of her personality enables her easily to
set a standard. Is there another singer who can stand on the same
heights with Mme. Fremstad as Isolde, Venus, Elsa, Sieglinde, Kundry,
Armide, Bruennhilde in _Goetterdaemmerung_, or Salome? And are not these
the most difficult and trying roles in the repertoire of the lyric stage
to-day?
In one of her impatient moods--and they occur frequently--the singer
once complained of this fact. "How easy it is," she said, "for those who
make their successes as Marguerite and Mimi.... I should like to sing
those roles...." But the remark was made under a misconception of her
own personality. Mme. Fremstad would find Mimi and Marguerite much more
difficult to compass than Isolde and Kundry. She is by nature Northern
and heroic, and her physique is suited to the goddesses and heroines of
the Norse myths (it is a significant fact that she has never attempted
to sing Eva or Senta). Occasionally, as in Salome, she has been able to
exploit successfully another side of her talent, but in the rendering of
the grand, the noble, and the heroic, she has no equal on our stage. Yet
her Tosca always lacked nobility. There was something in the music which
never brought the quality out.
In such a part as Selika she seemed lost (wasted, too, it may be added),
although the entrance of the proud African girl was made with some
effect, and the death scene was carried through with beauty of purpose.
But has any one ever characterized Selika? Her Santuzza, one of the two
roles which she has sung in Paris, must be considered a failure when
judged by the side of such a performance as that given by Emma
Calve--and who would judge Olive Fremstad by any but the highest
standards? The Swedish singer's Santuzza was as elemental, in its way,
as that of the Frenchwoman, but its implications were too tragic, too
massive in their noble beauty, for the correct interpretation of a
sordid melodrama. It was as though some one had engaged the Victory of
Samothrace to enact the part. Munich adored the Fremstad Carmen (was it
not her characterization of the Bizet heroine which caused Heinrich
Conried to engage her for America?) and Franz von Stuck painted her
twice in the role. Even in New York she was appreciated in the part. The
critics awarded her fervent adulation, but she never stirred the public
pulse. The principal fault of this very Northern Carmen was her lack of
humour, a quality the singer herself is deficient in. For a season or
two in America Mme. Fremstad appeared in the role, singing it, indeed,
in San Francisco the night of the memorable earthquake, and then it
disappeared from her repertoire. Maria Gay was the next Metropolitan
Carmen, but it was Geraldine Farrar who made the opera again as popular
as it had been in Emma Calve's day.
Mme. Fremstad is one of those rare singers on the lyric stage who is
able to suggest the meaning of the dramatic situation through the colour
of her voice. This tone-colour she achieves stroke by stroke, devoting
many days to the study of important phrases. To go over in detail the
instances in which she has developed effects through the use of
tone-colour would make it necessary to review, note by note, the operas
in which she has appeared. I have no such intention. It may be
sufficient to recall to the reader--who, in remembering, may recapture
the thrill--the effect she produces with the poignant lines beginning
_Amour, puissant amour_ at the close of the third act of _Armide_, the
dull, spent quality of the voice emitted over the words _Ich habe deinen
Mund gekuesst_ from the final scene of _Salome_, and the subtle, dreamy
rapture of the _Liebestod_ in _Tristan und Isolde_. Has any one else
achieved this effect? She once told me that Titian's Assumption of the
Virgin was her inspiration for her conception of this scene.
Luscious in quality, Mme. Fremstad's voice is not altogether a tractable
organ, but she has forced it to do her bidding. A critic long ago
pointed out that another singer would not be likely to emerge with
credit through the use of Mme. Fremstad's vocal method. It is full of
expediences. Oftener than most singers, too, she has been in "bad
voice." And her difficulties have been increased by her determination to
become a soprano, difficulties she has surmounted brilliantly. In other
periods we learn that singers did not limit their ranges by the quality
of their voices. In our day singers have specialized in high or low
roles. Many contraltos, however, have chafed under the restrictions
which composers have compelled them to accept. Almost all of them have
attempted now and again to sing soprano roles. Only in the case of Edyth
Walker, however, do we find an analogy to the case of Olive Fremstad.
Both of these singers have attained high artistic ideals in both ranges.
Magnificent as Brangaene, Amneris, and Ortrud, the Swedish singer later
presented unrivalled characterizations of Isolde, Armide, and
Bruennhilde.
The high tessitura of the music allotted to the _Siegfried_ Bruennhilde
is a strain for most singers. Mme. Nordica once declared that this
Bruennhilde was the most difficult of the three. Without having sung a
note in the early evening, she must awake in the third act, about
ten-thirty or eleven, to begin almost immediately the melismatic duet
which concludes the music drama. Mme. Fremstad, by the use of many
expediences, such as pronouncing Siegfried as if it were spelled
Seigfried when the first syllable fell on a high note, was able to get
through with this part without projecting a sense of effort, unless it
was on the high C at the conclusion, a note of which she frequently
allowed the tenor to remain in undisputed possession. But the fierce joy
and spirited abandon she put into the acting of the role, the passion
with which she infused her singing, carried her victoriously past the
dangerous places, often more victoriously than some other singer, who
could produce high notes more easily, but whose stage resources were
more limited.
I do not think Mme. Fremstad has trained her voice to any high degree of
agility. She can sing the drinking song from _Lucrezia Borgia_ and
Delibes's _Les Filles de Cadix_ with irresistible effect, a good part of
which, however, is produced by her personality and manner, qualities
which carry her far on the concert stage, although for some esoteric
reason they have never inveigled the general public into an enthusiastic
surrender to her charm. I have often heard her sing Swedish songs in her
native tongue (sometimes to her own accompaniment) so enchantingly, with
such appeal in her manner, and such velvet tones in her voice, that
those who heard her with me not only burst into applause but also into
exclamations of surprise and delight. Nevertheless, in her concerts, or
in opera, although her admirers are perhaps stronger in their loyalty
than those of any other singer, she has never possessed the greatest
drawing power. This is one of the secrets of the stage; it cannot be
solved. It would seem that the art of Mme. Fremstad was more homely,
more human in song, grander and more noble in opera, than that of Mme.
Tetrazzini, but the public as a whole prefers to hear the latter,
just as it has gone in larger numbers to see the acting of Miss Garden
or Mme. Farrar. Why this is so I cannot pretend to explain.
[Illustration: OLIVE FREMSTAD AS ELSA
_from a photograph by Mishkin (1913)_]
Mme. Fremstad has appeared in pretty nearly all of the important, and
many of the lesser, Wagner roles. She has never sung Senta, and she once
told me that she had no desire to do so, nor has she been heard as Freia
or Eva. But she has sung Ortrud and Elsa, Venus and Elisabeth, Adriano
in _Rienzi_, Kundry, Isolde and Brangaene, Fricka, Erda, Waltraute,
Sieglinde, one of the Rhine maidens (perhaps two), and all three
Bruennhildes. In most of these characterizations she has succeeded in
making a deep impression. I have never seen her Ortrud, but I have been
informed that it was a truly remarkable impersonation. Her Elsa was the
finest I have ever seen. To Ternina's poetic interpretation she added
her own greater grace and charm, and a lovelier quality of voice. If, on
occasion, the music of the second act proved too high for her, who could
sing the music of the dream with such poetic expression?--or the love
music in the last act?--as beautiful an impersonation, and of the same
kind, as Mary Garden's Melisande.
Her Venus was another story. She yearned for years to sing Elisabeth,
and when she had satisfied this ambition, she could be persuaded only
with difficulty to appear as the goddess. She told me once that she
would like to sing both roles in a single evening--a possible feat, as
the two characters never appear together; Rita Fornia, I believe,
accomplished the dual impersonation on one occasion at the behest of
Colonel Savage. She had in mind a heroine with a dual nature, sacred and
profane love so to speak, and Tannhaeuser at the mercy of this
gemini-born wight. She never was permitted to try this experiment at the
Metropolitan, but during her last season there she appeared as
Elisabeth. Montreal, and perhaps Brooklyn, had seen this impersonation
before it was vouchsafed New York. Mme. Fremstad never succeeded in
being very convincing in this role. I do not exactly understand why, as
its possibilities seem to lie within her limitations. Nor did she sing
the music well. On the other hand, her abundantly beautiful and
voluptuous Venus, a splendid, towering, blonde figure, shimmering in
flesh-coloured garments, was one of her astoundingly accurate
characterizations. At the opposite pole to her Sieglinde it was equally
a masterpiece of interpretative art, like Duse's Camille "positively
enthralling as an exhibition of the gymnastics of perfect suppleness
and grace." In both these instances she was inspired perhaps to realize
something a little more wonderful than the composer himself had dreamed
of. The depth and subtlety and refinement of intense passion were in
this Venus--there was no suggestion here of what Sidney Homer once
referred to as Mme. Homer's platonic Venus!
[Illustration: OLIVE FREMSTAD AS SIEGLINDE
_from a photograph by Aime Dupont_]
Her Sieglinde is firmly intrenched in many of our memories, the best
loved of her Wagnerian women and enchantresses. Will there rise another
singing actress in our generation to make us forget it? I do not think
so. Her melting womanliness in the first act, ending with her complete
surrender to Siegmund, her pathetic fatigue in the second act (do you
not still see the harassed, shuddering figure stumbling into view and
falling voiceless to sleep at the knees of her brother-lover?) remain in
the memory like pictures in the great galleries. And how easily in the
last act, in her single phrase, by her passionate suggestion of the
realization of motherhood, did she wrest the scene from her
fellow-artists, no matter who they might be, making such an effect
before she fled into the forest depths, that what followed often seemed
but anticlimax.
Mme. Fremstad never sang the three Bruennhildes in sequence at the
Metropolitan Opera House (of late years no soprano has done so), but she
was called upon at various times to sing them all separately.
Undoubtedly it was as the Bruennhilde in _Goetterdaemmerung_ that she made
the most lasting impression. The scene of the oath on the spear she
carried into the realms of Greek tragedy. Did Rachel touch greater
heights? Was the French Jewess more electric? The whole performance
displayed magnificent proportions, attaining a superb stature in the
immolation scene. In scenes of this nature, scenes hovering between life
and death, the eloquent grandeur of Mme. Fremstad's style might be
observed in its complete flowering. Isolde over the body of Tristan,
Bruennhilde over the body of Siegfried, exhibited no mincing pathos; the
mood established was one of lofty calm. Great artists realize that this
is the true expression of overwhelming emotion. In this connection it
seems pertinent and interesting to recall a notable passage in a letter
from Ivan Turgeniev to Pauline Viardot:--
"You speak to me also about _Romeo_, the third act; you have the
goodness to ask me for some remarks on Romeo. What could I tell you that
you have not already known and felt in advance? The more I reflect on
the scene of the third act the more it seems to me that there is only
one manner of interpreting it--yours. One can imagine nothing more
horrible than finding oneself before the corpse of all that one loves;
but the despair that seizes you then ought to be so terrible that, if it
is not held and _frozen_ by the resolution of suicide, or by another
_grand_ sentiment, art can no longer render it. Broken cries, sobs,
fainting fits, these are nature, but they are not art. The spectator
himself will not be moved by that poignant and profound emotion which
you stir so easily. Whereas by the manner in which you wish to do Romeo
(as I understand what you have written me) you will produce on your
auditor an ineffaceable effect. I remember the fine and just observation
that you once made on the agitated and restrained little gestures that
Rachel made, at the same time maintaining an attitude of calm nobility;
with her, perhaps, that was only technique; but in general it is the
calm _arising from a strong conviction or from a profound emotion_, that
is to say the calm which envelopes the desperate transports of passion
from all sides, which communicates to them that purity of line, that
ideal and real beauty, the true, the only beauty of art. And, what
proves the truth of this remark, is that life itself--on rare
occasions, it is true, at those times when it disengages itself from all
that is accidental or commonplace--raises itself to the same kind of
beauty. The greatest griefs, as you have said in your letter, are the
calmest; and, one could add, the calmest are the most beautiful. But it
is necessary to know how to unite the two extremes, unless one would
appear cold. It is easier not to attain perfection, easier to rest in
the middle of one's journey, the more so because the greater number of
spectators demand nothing else, or rather are not accustomed to anything
else, but you are what you are only because of this noble ambition to do
your best...."
In the complex role of Kundry Mme. Fremstad has had no rival. The wild
witch of the first act, the enchantress of the second, the repentant
Magdalene of the third, all were imaginatively impersonated by this
wonderful woman. Certain actors drop their characterizations as soon as
the dialogue passes on to another; such as these fail in _Parsifal_, for
Kundry, on the stage for the entire third act, has only one word to
sing; in the first act she has but few more. Colossally alluring in the
second act, in which she symbolized the essence of the "eternal
feminine," Mme. Fremstad projected the first and third act Kundry
into the minds and hearts of her audience.
[Illustration: OLIVE FREMSTAD AS KUNDRY, ACT I
_from a photograph by Mishkin (1913)_]
Well-trained in Bayreuth tradition, this singer was no believer in it;
she saw no reason for clinging to outworn ideals simply because they
prevailed at the Master's own theatre. However, she did not see how an
individual could break with tradition in these works without destroying
their effect. The break must come from the stage director.
"If Wagner were alive to-day," she once said to me, "I don't believe
that he would sanction a lot of the silly 'business' that is insisted
upon everywhere because it is the law at Bayreuth. Wagner was constantly
changing everything. When he produced his music dramas they were so
entirely new in conception and in staging that they demanded
experimentation in many directions. Doubtless certain traditions were
founded on the interpretations of certain singers--who probably could
not have followed other lines of action, which Wagner might have
preferred, so successfully.
"The two scenes which I have particularly in mind are those of the first
act of _Tannhaeuser_ and the second act of _Parsifal_. Both of these
scenes, it seems to me, should be arranged with the most undreamed of
beauty in colour and effect. Venus should not pose for a long time in a
stiff attitude on an uncomfortable couch. I don't object to the couch,
but it should be made more alluring.
"The same objection holds in the second act of _Parsifal_, where Kundry
is required to fascinate Parsifal, although she is not given an
opportunity of moving from one position for nearly twenty minutes. When
Klingsor calls Kundry from below in the first scene of that act, she
comes against her will, and I think she should arise gasping and
shuddering. I try to give that effect in my voice when I sing the music,
but, following Bayreuth, I am standing, motionless, with a veil over my
head, so that my face cannot be seen for some time before I sing.
"One singer can do nothing against the mass of tradition. If I changed
and the others did not, the effect would be inartistic. But if some
stage manager would have the daring to break away, to strive for
something better in these matters, how I would love to work with that
man!"
Departing from the Wagnerian repertoire, Mme. Fremstad has made notable
successes in two roles, Salome and Armide. That she should be able to do
justice to the latter is more astonishing than that she should emerge
triumphant from the Wilde-Strauss collaboration. _Armide_, almost the
oldest opera to hold the stage to-day, is still the French classic
model, and it demands in performance adherence to the French grand
style, a style implying devotion to the highest artistic ideals. Mme.
Fremstad's artistic ideals are perhaps on a higher plane than those of
the Paris Conservatoire or the Comedie Francaise, but it does not follow
that she would succeed in moulding them to fit a school of opera with
which, to this point, she had been totally unfamiliar. So far as I know,
the only other opera Mme. Fremstad had ever sung in French was _Carmen_,
an experience which could not be considered as the training for a
suitable delineation of the heroine of Gluck's beautiful lyric drama.
Still Mme. Fremstad compassed the breach. How, I cannot pretend to say.
No less an authority than Victor Maurel pronounced it a triumph of the
French classic style.
The moods of Quinault's heroine, of course, suit this singing actress,
and she brought to them all her most effectual enchantments, including a
series of truly seducing costumes. The imperious unrest of the first
act, the triumph of love over hate in the second, the invocation to La
Haine in the third, and the final scene of despair in the fifth, all
were depicted with poignant and moving power, and always with fidelity
to the style of the piece. She set her own pace in the finale of the
first act. The wounded warrior returns to tell how a single combatant
has delivered all his prisoners. Armide's half-spoken guess, _O ciel!
c'est Renaud!_ which she would like to have denied, was uttered in a
tone which definitely stimulated the spectator to prepare for the
conflict which followed, the conflict in Armide's own breast, between
her love for Renaud as a man, and her hatred of him as an enemy. I do
not remember to have seen anything on the stage more profound in its
implied psychology than her acting of the scene beginning _Enfin il est
en ma puissance_, in which she stays her hand with dagger uplifted to
kill the enemy-hero, and finally completely conquered by the darts of
Love, transports him with her through the air to her own fair gardens.
The singer told me that she went to work on this opera with fear in her
heart. "I don't know how I dared do it. I suppose it is because I had
the simplicity to believe, with the Germans, that Kundry is the top of
everything, and I had sung Kundry. As a matter of fact my leaning toward
the classic school dates very far back. My father was a strange man, of
evangelical tendencies. He wrote a hymn-book, which is still in use in
Scandinavia, and he had a beautiful natural voice. People often came for
miles--simple country people, understand--to hear him sing. My father
knew the classic composers and he taught me their songs.
"This training came back to me when I took up the study of _Armide_. It
was in May that Mr. Gatti-Casazza asked me if I would sing the work,
which, till then, I had never heard. I took the book with me to the
mountains and studied--not a note of the music at first, for music is
very easy for me anyway; I can always learn that in a short time--but
the text. For six weeks I read and re-read the text, always the
difficult part for me in learning a new opera, without looking at the
music. I found the text of _Armide_ particularly difficult because it
was in old French, and because it was in verse.
"I worked over it for six weeks, as I tell you, until I had mastered its
beauties as well as I could, and then I opened the music score. Here I
encountered a dreadful obstacle. Accustomed to Wagner's harmonies, I was
puzzled by the French style. I did not see how the music could be sung
to the text with dramatic effect. I attended several performances of the
work at the Paris Opera, but the interpretation there did not assist me
in solving the problem. I tried every phrase in fifty different ways in
an attempt to arrive at my end, and suddenly, and unexpectedly, I found
myself in complete understanding; the exquisite refinement and nobility
of the music, the repression, the classic line, all suggested to me the
superb, eternal beauty of a Greek temple. Surely this is music that will
outlive Wagner!
"Once I understood, it was easy to put my conception on the stage. There
is no such thing as genius in singing; at least one cannot depend on
genius alone to carry one through an opera. I must know exactly how I am
going to sing each phrase before I go upon the stage. Nothing must be
left to chance. In studying _Armide_ I had sketches sent to me of every
scene, and with these I worked until I knew every movement I should
make, where I should stand, and when I should walk. Look at my score--at
all these minute diagrams and directions...."
_Armide_ was not a popular success in New York, and after one or two
performances in its second season at the Metropolitan Opera House it was
withdrawn. With the reasons for the failure of this opera to interest
the general public Mme. Fremstad, it may well be imagined, had nothing
to do. Her part in it, on the contrary, contributed to what success the
work had. New York opera-goers have never manifested any particular
regard for classic opera in any tongue; _Fidelio_ or _Don Giovanni_ have
never been popular here. Then, although Caruso sang the music of Renaud
with a style and beauty of phrasing unusual even for him, his appearance
in the part was unfortunate. It was impossible to visualize the
chevalier of the romantic story. The second tenor role, which is very
important, was intrusted to an incompetent singer, and the charming role
of the Naiad was very inadequately rendered; but the principal fault of
the interpretation was due to a misconception regarding the relative
importance of the ballet. There are dances in every act of _Armide_;
there is no lovelier music of its kind extant than that which Gluck has
devoted to his dancers in this opera. Appreciating this fact, Mr.
Toscanini refused to part with a note of it, and his delivery of the
delightful tunes would have made up a pleasant half-hour in a
concert-room. Unfortunately the management did not supplement his
efforts by providing a suitable group of dancers. This failure was all
but incomprehensible considering the fact that Anna Pavlowa was a member
of the Metropolitan company that season. Had she appeared in _Armide_,
its fate in New York, where it was performed for the first time one
hundred and thirty-three years after its original production in Paris,
might have been far different. It may have been impossible for Mr.
Gatti-Casazza to obtain the co-operation of the dancer. Times change. In
1833 Taglioni, then at the height of her powers, danced in London the
comparatively insignificant parts of the Swiss peasant in _Guillaume
Tell_ and the ghostly abbess in _Robert le Diable_. This was the season
in which she introduced _La Sylphide_ to English theatre-goers.
The history of Richard Strauss's _Salome_ in New York has been told so
often that it seems quite unnecessary to repeat it here. There must be
few indeed of those who will read these lines who do not know how the
music drama received only one public performance at the Metropolitan
Opera House before it was withdrawn at the request of certain directors.
At that one performance Olive Fremstad sang the role of Salome. She was
also heard at the private dress rehearsal--before an auditorium
completely filled with invited guests--and she has sung the part three
times in Paris. The singer threw herself into its preparation with her
usual energy, and developed an extraordinary characterization. There
was but one flaw, the substitution of a professional dancer for the
Dance of the Seven Veils. At this time it had occurred to nobody that
the singer who impersonated Salome could dance. How could any one sing
the music of the tremendous finale after getting thoroughly out of
breath in the terpsichorean exhibition before Herod? The expedient of a
substitute was resorted to at the original performance in Dresden, and
Olive Fremstad did not disturb this tradition. She allowed Bianca
Froehlich to take off the seven veils, a feat which was accomplished
much more delicately at the performance than it had been at the dress
rehearsal. In Paris a farce resulted from the custom when Mme.
Trouhanova not only insisted on wearing a different costume from the
Salome whose image she was supposed to be, but also took curtain calls.
I think it was Gemma Belincioni, the Italian, who first conceived the
idea of Salome dancing her own dance. She was followed by Mary Garden,
who discovered what every one should have noticed in the beginning, that
the composer has given the singer a long rest after the pantomimic
episode.
Aside from this disturbance to the symmetry of the performance, Olive
Fremstad was magnificent. Her entrance was that of a splendid leopard,
standing poised on velvet paws on the terrace, and then creeping slowly
down the staircase. Her scene with Jochanaan was in truth like the
storming of a fortress, and the scene with the Tetrarch was clearly
realized. But it was in the closing scene of the drama that Mme.
Fremstad, like the poet and the composer, achieved her most effective
results. I cannot yet recall her as she crept from side to side of the
well in which Jochanaan was confined, waiting for the slave to ascend
with the severed head, without that shudder of fascination caused by the
glimmering eyes of a monster serpent, or the sleek terribleness of a
Bengal tiger. And at the end she suggested, as perhaps it has never
before been suggested on the stage, the dregs of love, the refuse of
gorged passion.
Singers who "create" parts in great lyric dramas have a great advantage
over those who succeed them. Mary Shaw once pointed out to me the
probability that Janet Achurch and Elizabeth Robins only won
enthusiastic commendation from Bernard Shaw because they were appearing
in the Ibsen plays which he was seeing for the first time. He attributed
a good part of his pleasure to the interpretations of these ladies.
However, he was never satisfied with their performances in plays with
which he was more familiar and he never again found anyone entirely to
suit him in the Ibsen dramas. Albert Niemann was one of the first tenors
to sing Wagner roles and there are those alive who will tell you that he
was one of the great artists, but it is perhaps because they heard him
_first_ in lyric dramas of such vitality that they confused singer and
role. Beatty-Kingston, who heard him in 1866, said (in "Music and
Manners") that he had torn his voice "to tatters by persistent shoutings
at the top of its upper register, and undermined it by excessive worship
at the shrines of Bacchus and the Paphian goddess.... His 'production'
was characterized by a huskiness and scratchiness infinitely distressing
to listen to...." No allowances of this sort need be made for the deep
impression made by Olive Fremstad. At the Metropolitan Opera House she
followed a line of well-beloved and regal interpreters of the Wagner
roles. Both Lilli Lehmann and Milka Ternina had honoured this stage and
Lillian Nordica preceded Mme. Fremstad as Kundry there. In her career at
the Metropolitan, indeed, Mme. Fremstad sang only three operas at their
first performances there, _Salome_, _Les Contes d'Hoffmann_, and
_Armide_. In her other roles she was forced to stand comparison with a
number of great artists. That she won admiration in them under the
circumstances is the more fine an achievement.
I like to think, sometimes, that Olive Fremstad is the reincarnation of
Guiditta Pasta, that celebrated Italian singer of the early nineteenth
century, who paced triumphantly through the humbler tragedies of _Norma_
and _Semiramide_. She too worked hard to gain her ends, and she gained
them for a time magnificently. Henry Fothergill Chorley celebrates her
art with an enthusiasm that is rare in his pages, and I like to think
that he would write similar lines of eulogy about Olive Fremstad could
he be called from the grave to do so. There is something of the mystic
in all great singers, something incomprehensible, inexplicable, but in
the truly great, the Mme. Pastas and the Mme. Fremstads, this quality
outstrips all others. It is predominant. And just in proportion as this
mysticism triumphs, so too their art becomes triumphant, and flames on
the ramparts, a living witness before mankind to the power of the
unseen.
_August 17, 1916._
Geraldine Farrar
[Illustration: Mme. Farrar's insigne.]
The autobiography of Geraldine Farrar is a most disappointing document;
it explains nothing, it offers the reader no new insights. Given the
brains of the writer and the inexhaustibility of the subject, the result
is unaccountable. Any opera-goer who has followed the career of this
singer with even indifferent attention will find it difficult to
discover any revelation of personality or artistry in the book.
Geraldine Farrar has always been a self-willed young woman with a
plangent ambition and a belief in her own future which has been proved
justifiable by the chronological unfolding of her stage career. These
qualities are displayed over and over again in the book, together with a
certain number of facts about her early life, teachers, and so on. Of
that part of her personal experience which would really interest the
public she gives a singularly glossed account. Very little attention is
paid to composers; none at all to operas, if one may except such meagre
descriptions as that accorded to _Julien_, "a hodge-podge of operatic
efforts that brought little satisfaction to anybody concerned in it."
There are few illuminating anecdotes; no space is devoted to an account
of how Mme. Farrar composes her roles. She likes this one; she is
indifferent to that; she detests a third; but reasons for these
prejudices are rarely given. There is little manifestation of that
analytic mind with which Mme. Farrar credits herself. There are sketchy
references to other singers, usually highly eulogistic, but where did
Mme. Farrar hear that remarkable performance of _Carmen_ in which both
Saleza and Jean de Reszke appeared? For my part, the most interesting
lines in the book are those which close the thirteenth chapter: "I
cannot say that I am much in sympathy with the vague outlines of the
modern French lyric heroines; Melisande and Ariane, I think, can be
better intrusted to artists of a less positive type."
Notwithstanding the fact that she has written a rather dull book,
Geraldine Farrar is one of the few really vivid personalities of the
contemporary lyric stage. To a great slice of the public she is an idol
in the sense that Rachel and Jenny Lind were idols. She has frequently
extracted warm praise even from the cold-water taps of discriminating
and ordinarily unsympathetic critics. Acting in opera she considers of
greater importance than singing. She once told me that she ruthlessly
sacrificed tone whenever it seemed to interfere with dramatic effect.
As an actress she has suffered from an excess of zeal, and an impatience
of discipline. She composes her parts with some care, but frequently
overlays her original conception with extravagant detail, added
spontaneously at a performance, if her feelings so dictate.
[Illustration: GERALDINE FARRAR AS ELISABETH
_from a photograph by Reutlinger_]
This lawlessness sometimes leads her astray. It is an unsafe method to
follow. Actors who feel the most themselves, unless the feeling is
expressed in support of carefully thought-out effects, often leave their
auditors cold. It is interesting to recall that Mme. Malibran, who may
have excelled Mme. Farrar as a singer, had a similar passion for
impromptu stage "business." She refused to give her fellow-artists any
idea of how she would carry a part through, and as she allowed her
feelings full sway in the matter misunderstandings frequently arose. In
acting Desdemona to the Otello of the tenor, Donzelli, for example, she
would not determine beforehand the exact point at which he was to seize
her. Frequently she gave him a long chase and on one occasion in his
pursuit he stumbled and cut himself on his unsheathed dagger. Often it
has seemed that Mme. Farrar deliberately chose certain stage "business"
with an eye to astounding, and not with any particular care for the
general roundness of her operatic performance. It must also be taken
into consideration that no two of Mme. Farrar's impersonations of any
one role are exactly similar, and that he who may have seen her give a
magnificent performance is not too safe in recommending his meticulous
neighbour to go to the next. Sometimes she is "modern" and "American" in
the deprecatory sense of these words; in some of her parts she exudes no
atmospheric suggestion. There are no overtones. The spectator sees
exactly what is before his eyes on these occasions; there is no
stimulation for the imagination to proceed further. At other times, as
in her characterization of the Goosegirl in _Koenigskinder_, it would
seem that she had extracted the last poetic meaning out of the words and
music, and had succeeded in making her audience feel, not merely
everything that the composer and librettist intended, but a great deal
more.
At times she is a very good singer. Curiously enough, it is classic
music that she usually sings best. I have heard her sing Zerlina in _Don
Giovanni_ in a manner almost worthy of her teacher, Lilli Lehmann. There
is no mention of this role in her book; nor of another in which she was
equally successful, Rosaura in _Le Donne Curiose_, beautifully sung
from beginning to end. Mme. Farrar is musical (some singers are not;
Mme. Nordica was not, for example), and I have witnessed two
manifestations of this quality. On one occasion she played for me on the
piano a good portion of the first act of _Ariane et Barbe-Bleue_, and
played it brilliantly, no mean achievement. Another time I stood talking
with her and her good friend, Josephine Jacoby, in the wings during the
last act of a performance of _Madama Butterfly_ at the Brooklyn Academy
of Music. There was no air of preoccupation on her part, no sense on
ours that she was following the orchestra. I became so interested in our
conversation, for Mme. Farrar invariably talks well, that I did not even
hear the orchestra. But her mind was quite capable of taking care of two
things at once. She interrupted a sentence to sing her phrase off stage,
and then smilingly continued the conversation. I shall never forget this
moment. To me it signified in an instant what Mme. Farrar has taken the
pains to explain in pages of her autobiography and which is all summed
up in her own comment, written at the time on the programme of the
concert of her Boston debut, May 26, 1896: "This is what I made my debut
in, very calm and sedate, not the least nervous."
But Mme. Farrar's vocal method is not God-given, although her voice and
her assurance may be, and she sometimes has trouble in producing her
upper tones. Instead of opening like a fan, her high voice is frequently
pinched, and she has difficulty in singing above the staff. I have never
heard her sing Butterfly's entrance with correct intonation, although I
have heard her in the part many times. Her Carmen, on the whole, is a
most successful performance vocally, and so is (or was) her Elisabeth,
especially in the second act. The tessitura of Butterfly is very high,
and the role is a strain for her. She has frequently said that she finds
it easier to sing any two other roles in her repertoire, and refuses to
appear for two days before or after a performance of this Puccini opera.
Mme. Farrar is a fine linguist. She speaks and sings French like a
Frenchwoman (I have expert testimony on this point), German like a
German, and Italian like an Italian; her enunciation of English is also
very clear (she has never sung in opera in English, but has often sung
English songs in concert). Her enunciation of Maeterlinck's text in
_Ariane et Barbe-Bleue_ was a joy, about the only one she contributed to
this performance. And in _Koenigskinder_ and _Le Donne Curiose_ she was
equally distinct. In fact there is never any difficulty about following
the text of an opera when Geraldine Farrar is singing.
The roles in which Mme. Farrar achieves her best results, according to
my taste, are Manon, the Goosegirl, Margherita (in _Mefistofele_),
Elisabeth, Rosaura, Suzanna, and Violetta. Cio-Cio-San, of course, is
her most popular creation, and it deserves to some extent the applause
of the populace, although I do not think it should be put in the above
list. It is certainly not to be considered on the same plane vocally.
Other roles in which she is partially successful are Juliette and
Marguerite (in Gounod's _Faust_). I think her Ariane is commonly
adjudged a failure. In _Madame Sans-Gene_ she is often comic, but she
does not suggest a _bourgeoise_ Frenchwoman; in the court scenes she is
more like a graceful woman trying to be awkward than an awkward woman
trying to be graceful. Her Tosca is lacking in dignity; it is too
petulant a performance, too small in conception. In failing to find
adequate pleasure in her Carmen I am not echoing popular opinion.
I do not think Mme. Farrar has appeared in _La Traviata_ more than two
or three times at the Metropolitan Opera House, although she has
probably sung Violetta often in Berlin. On the occasion of Mme.
Sembrich's farewell to the American opera stage she appeared as Flora
Bervoise as a compliment to the older singer. In her biography she says
that Sarah Bernhardt gave her the inspiration for the composition of the
heroine of Verdi's opera. It would be interesting to have more details
on this point; they are not forthcoming. Of course there have been many
Violettas who have sung the music of the first act more brilliantly than
Mme. Farrar; in the later acts she often sang beautifully, and her
acting was highly expressive and unconventional. She considered the role
from the point of view of make-up. Has any one else done this? Violetta
was a popular _cocotte_; consequently, she must have been beautiful. But
she was a consumptive; consequently, she must have been pale. In the
third act Mme. Farrar achieved a very fine dramatic effect with her
costume and make-up. Her face was painted a ghastly white, a fact
emphasized by her carmined lips and her black hair. She wore pale yellow
and carried an enormous black fan, behind which she pathetically hid her
face to cough. She introduced novelty into the part at the very
beginning of the opera. Unlike most Violettas, she did not make an
entrance, but sat with her back to the audience, receiving her
guests, when the curtain rose.
[Illustration: GERALDINE FARRAR AS VIOLETTA
_from a photograph by Aime Dupont (1907)_]
It has seemed strange to me that the professional reviewers should have
attributed the added notes of realism in Mme. Farrar's second edition of
Carmen to her appearances in the moving-picture drama. The tendencies
displayed in her second year in the part were in no wise, to my mind, a
result of her cinema experiences. In fact, the New York critics should
have remembered that when Mme. Farrar made her debut at the Metropolitan
Opera House in the role of Juliette, they had rebuked her for these very
qualities. She had indulged in a little extra realism in the bedroom and
balcony scenes of Gounod's opera, of the sort with which Miss Nethersole
created ten-minute furores in her performances of Carmen and Sapho.
Again, as Marguerite in _Faust_ (her Margherita in _Mefistofele_ was a
particularly repressed and dreamy representation of the German maiden,
one instinct with the highest dramatic and vocal values in the prison
scene), she devised "business" calculated to startle, dancing the jewel
song, and singing the first stanza of the _Roi de Thule_ air from the
cottage, whither she had repaired to fetch her spindle of flax--this
last detail seemed to me a very good one. In early representations of
_Madama Butterfly_ and _La Boheme_ her death scenes were fraught with an
intense realism which fitted ill with the spirit of the music. I
remember one occasion on which Cio-Cio-San knocked over the
rocking-chair in her death struggles, which often embraced the range of
the Metropolitan stage.
These points have all been urged against her at the proper times, and
there seemed small occasion for attributing her extra activities in the
first act of Bizet's opera, in which the cigarette girl engaged in a
prolonged scuffle with her rival in the factory, or her more recent
whistling of the seguidilla, to her moving-picture experiences. No, Mme.
Farrar is overzealous with her public. She once told me that at every
performance she cut herself open with a knife and gave herself to the
audience. This intensity, taken together with her obviously unusual
talent and her personal attractiveness, is what has made her a more than
ordinary success on our stage. It is at once her greatest virtue and her
greatest fault, artistically speaking. Properly manacled, this quality
would make her one of the finest, instead of merely one of the most
popular, artists now before the public. But I cannot see how the cinema
can be blamed.