drama--a perversion of Anatole France's psychological tale--Massenet
has overlaid as banal a coverlet of music as could well be devised by
an eminent composer. "The bad fairies have given him [Massenet] only one
gift," writes Pierre Lalo, "...the desire to please." It cannot be said
that Miss Garden allows the music to affect her interpretation. She
sings some of it, particularly her part in the duet in the desert, with
considerable charm and warmth of tone. I have never cared very much for
her singing of the mirror air, although she is dramatically admirable at
this point; on the other hand, I have found her rendering of the
farewell to Eros most pathetic in its tenderness. At times she has
attacked the high notes, which fall in unison with the exposure of her
attractions, with brilliancy; at other times she has avoided them
altogether (it must be remembered that Miss Sanderson, for whom this
opera was written, had a voice like the Tour Eiffel; she sang to G above
the staff). But the general tone of her interpretation has not been
weakened by the weakness of the music or by her inability to sing a good
deal of it. Quite the contrary. I am sure she sings the part with more
steadiness of tone than Milka Ternina ever commanded for Tosca, and her
performance is equally unforgettable.
After the production of _Louise_, Miss Garden's name became almost
legendary in Paris, and many are the histories of her subsequent career
there. Parisians and foreign visitors alike flocked to the Opera-Comique
to see her in the series of delightful roles which she assumed--Orlanda,
Manon, Chrysis, Violetta ... and Melisande. It was during the summer of
1907 that I first heard her there in two of the parts most closely
identified with her name, Chrysis and Melisande.
Camille Erlanger's _Aphrodite_, considered as a work of art, is fairly
meretricious. As a theatrical entertainment it offers many elements of
enjoyment. Based on the very popular novel of Pierre Louys--at one time
forbidden circulation in America by Anthony Comstock--it winds its
pernicious way through a tale of prostitution, murder, theft, sexual
inversion, drunkenness, sacrilege, and crucifixion, and concludes, quite
simply, in a cemetery. The music is appallingly banal, and has never
succeeded in doing anything else but annoy me when I have thought of it
at all. It never assists in creating an atmosphere; it bears no relation
to stage picture, characters, or situation. Both gesture and colour are
more important factors in the consideration of the pleasurable elements
of this piece than the weak trickle of its sickly melodic flow.
[Illustration: MARY GARDEN AS CHRYSIS (1906)]
For the most part, at a performance, one does not listen to the music.
Nevertheless, _Aphrodite_ calls one again and again. Its success in
Paris was simply phenomenal, and the opera is still in the repertoire of
the Opera-Comique. This success was due in a measure to the undoubted
"punch" of the story, in a measure to the orgy which M. Carre had
contrived to embellish the third act, culminating in the really
imaginative dancing of the beautiful Regina Badet and the horrible scene
of the crucifixion of the negro slave; but, more than anything else, it
was due to the rarely compelling performance of Mary Garden as the
courtesan who consented to exchange her body for the privilege of seeing
her lover commit theft, sacrilege, and murder. In her bold entrance,
flaunting her long lemon scarf, wound round her body like a Nautch
girl's saeri, which illy concealed her fine movements, she at once gave
the picture, not alone of the _cocotte_ of the period but of a whole
life, a whole atmosphere, and this she maintained throughout the
disclosure of the tableaux. In the prison scene she attained heights of
tragic acting which I do not think even she has surpassed elsewhere. The
pathos of her farewell to her two little Lesbian friends, and the
gesture with which she drained the poison cup, linger in the memory,
refusing to give up their places to less potent details.
I first heard Debussy's lyric drama, _Pelleas et Melisande_, at the
Opera-Comique, with Miss Garden as the principal interpreter. It is
generally considered the greatest achievement of her mimic art. Somehow
by those means at the command of a fine artist, she subdued her very
definite personality and moulded it into the vague and subtle personage
created by Maurice Maeterlinck. Even great artists grasp at straws for
assistance, and it is interesting to know that to Miss Garden a wig is
the all important thing. "Once I have donned the wig of a character, I
am that character," she told me once. "It would be difficult for me to
go on the stage in my own hair." Nevertheless, I believe she has
occasionally inconsistently done so as Louise.
In Miss Garden's score of _Pelleas_ Debussy has written, "In the future,
others may sing Melisande, but you alone will remain the woman and the
artist I had hardly dared hope for." It must be remembered, however,
that composers are notoriously fickle; that they prefer having their
operas given in any form rather than not at all; that ink is cheap and
musicians prolific in sentiments. In how many _Manon_ scores did
Massenet write his tender eternal finalities? Perhaps little Maggie
Teyte, who imitated Mary Garden's Melisande as Elsie Janis imitates
Sarah Bernhardt, cherishes a dedicated score now. Memory tells me I have
seen such a score, but memory is sometimes a false jade.
In her faded mediaeval gowns, with her long plaits of golden hair,--in
the first scene she wore it loose,--Mary Garden became at once in the
spectator's mind the princess of enchanted castles, the cymophanous
heroine of a _feerie_, the dream of a poet's tale. In gesture and in
musical speech, in tone-colour, she was faithful to the first wonderful
impression of the eye. There has been in our day no more perfect example
of characterization offered on the lyric stage than Mary Garden's lovely
Melisande.... _Ne me touchez pas!_ became the cry of a terrified child,
a real protestation of innocence. _Je ne suis pas heureuse ici_, was
uttered with a pathos of expression which drove its helplessness into
our hearts. The scene at the fountain with Pelleas, in which Melisande
loses her ring, was played with such delicate shading, such poetic
imagination, that one could almost crown the interpreter as the creator,
and the death scene was permeated with a fragile, simple beauty as
compelling as that which Carpaccio put into his picture of _Santa
Ursula_, a picture indeed which Miss Garden's performance brought to
mind more than once. If she sought inspiration from the art of the
painter for her delineation, it was not to Rossetti and Burne-Jones that
she went. Rather did she gather some of the soft bloom from the
paintings of Bellini, Carpaccio, Giotto, Cimabue ... especially
Botticelli; had not the spirit and the mood of the two frescos from the
Villa Lemmi in the Louvre come to life in this gentle representation?
Before she appeared as Melisande in New York, Miss Garden was a little
doubtful of the probable reception of the play here. She was surprised
and delighted with the result, for the drama was presented in the late
season of 1907-08 at the Manhattan Opera House no less than seven times
to very large audiences. The singer talked to me before the event: "It
took us four years to establish _Pelleas et Melisande_ in the repertoire
of the Opera-Comique. At first the public listened with disfavour or
indecision, and performances could only be given once in two weeks. As a
contrast I might mention the immediate success of _Aphrodite_, which I
sang three or four times a week until fifty representations had been
achieved, without appearing in another role. _Pelleas_ was a different
matter. The mystic beauty of the poet's mood and the revolutionary
procedures of the musician were not calculated to touch the great public
at once. Indeed, we had to teach our audiences to enjoy it. Americans
who, I am told, are fond of Maeterlinck, may appreciate its very
manifest beauty at first hearing, but they didn't in Paris. At the early
representations, individuals whistled and made cat-calls. One night
three young men in the first row of the orchestra whistled through an
entire scene. I don't believe those young men will ever forget the way I
looked at them.... But after each performance it was the same: the
applause drowned out the hisses. The balconies and galleries were the
first to catch the spirit of the piece, and gradually it grew in public
favour, and became a success, that is, comparatively speaking. _Pelleas
et Melisande_, like many another work of true beauty, appeals to a
special public and, consequently, the number of performances has always
been limited, and perhaps always will be. I do not anticipate that it
will crowd from popular favour such operas as _Werther_, _La Vie de
Boheme_ and _Carmen_, each of which is included in practically every
week's repertoire at the Opera-Comique.
[Illustration: MARY GARDEN AS MELISANDE
_from a photograph by Davis and Eickemeyer (1908)_]
"We interpreters of Debussy's lyric drama were naturally very proud,
because we felt that we were assisting in the making of musical
history. Maeterlinck, by the way, has never seen the opera. He wished
his wife, Georgette Leblanc, to 'create' the role of Melisande, but
Debussy and Carre had chosen me, and the poet did not have his way. He
wrote an open letter to the newspapers of Paris in which he frankly
expressed his hope that the work would fail. Later, when composers
approached him in regard to setting his dramas to music, he made it a
condition that his wife should sing them. She did appear as Ariane, you
will remember, but Lucienne Breval first sang Monna Vanna, and
Maeterlinck's wrath again vented itself in pronunciamentos."
Miss Garden spoke of the settings. "The _decor_ should be dark and
sombre. Mrs. Campbell set the play in the Renaissance period, an epoch
flooded with light and charm. I think she was wrong. Absolute latitude
is permitted the stage director, as Maeterlinck has made no restrictions
in the book. The director of the Opera at Brussels followed Mrs.
Campbell's example, and when I appeared in the work there I felt that I
was singing a different drama."
One afternoon in the autumn of 1908, when I was Paris correspondent of
the "New York Times," I received the following telegram from Miss
Garden: "Venez ce soir a 5-1/2 chez Mlle. Chasles 112 Boulevard
Malesherbes me voir en Salome." It was late in the day when the message
came to me, and I had made other plans, but you may be sure I put them
all aside. A _petit-bleu_ or two disposed of my engagements, and I took
a fiacre in the blue twilight of the Paris afternoon for the _salle de
danse_ of Mlle. Chasles. On my way I recollected how some time
previously Miss Garden had informed me of her intention of interpreting
the Dance of the Seven Veils herself, and how she had attempted to gain
the co-operation of Maraquita, the ballet mistress of the Opera-Comique,
a plan which she was forced to abandon, owing to some rapidly revolving
wheels of operatic intrigue. So the new Salome went to Mlle. Chasles,
who sixteen years ago was delighting the patrons of the Opera-Comique
with her charming dancing. She it was who, materially assisted by Miss
Garden herself, arranged the dance, dramatically significant in gesture
and step, which the singer performed at the climax of Richard Strauss's
music drama.
Mlle. Chasles's _salle de danse_ I discovered to be a large square room;
the floor had a rake like that of the Opera stage in Paris. There were
footlights, and seats in front of them for spectators. The walls were
hung with curious old prints and engravings of famous dancers, Mlle.
Salle, La Camargo, Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, and Cerito.
This final rehearsal--before the rehearsals in New York which preceded
her first appearance in the part anywhere at the Manhattan Opera
House--was witnessed by Andre Messager, who intended to mount _Salome_
at the Paris Opera the following season, Mlle. Chasles, an accompanist,
a maid, a hair-dresser, and myself. I noted that Miss Garden's costume
differed in a marked degree from those her predecessors had worn. For
the entrance of Salome she had provided a mantle of bright orange
shimmering stuff, embroidered with startling azure and emerald flowers
and sparkling with spangles. Under this she wore a close-fitting garment
of netted gold, with designs in rubies and rhinestones, which fell from
somewhere above the waistline to her ankles. This garment was also
removed for the dance, and Miss Garden emerged in a narrow strip of
flesh-coloured tulle. Her arms, shoulders, and legs were bare. She wore
a red wig, the hair falling nearly to her waist (later she changed this
detail and wore the cropped wig which became identified with her
impersonation of the part). Two jewels, an emerald on one little finger,
a ruby on the other, completed her decoration. The seven veils were of
soft, clinging tulle.
Swathed in these veils, she began the dance at the back of the small
stage. Only her eyes were visible. Terrible, slow ... she undulated
forward, swaying gracefully, and dropped the first veil. What followed
was supposed to be the undoing of the jaded Herod. I was moved by this
spectacle at the time, and subsequently this pantomimic dance was
generally referred to as the culminating moment in her impersonation of
Salome. On this occasion, I remember, she proved to us that the exertion
had not fatigued her, by singing the final scene of the music drama,
while Andre Messager played the accompaniment on the piano.
I did not see Mary Garden's impetuous and highly curious interpretation
of the strange eastern princess until a full year later, as I remained
in Paris during the extent of the New York opera season. The following
autumn, however, I heard _Salome_ in its second season at the Manhattan
Opera House--and I was disappointed. Nervous curiosity seemed to be the
consistent note of this hectic interpretation. The singer was never
still; her use of gesture was untiring. To any one who had not seen her
in other parts, the actress must have seemed utterly lacking in repose.
This was simply her means, however, of suggesting the intense nervous
perversity of Salome. Mary Garden could not have seen Nijinsky in
_Scheherazade_ at this period, and yet the performances were
astonishingly similar in intention. But the Strauss music and the Wilde
drama demand a more voluptuous and sensual treatment, it would seem to
me, than the suggestion of monkey-love which absolutely suited
Nijinsky's part. However, the general opinion (as often happens) ran
counter to mine, and, aside from the reservation that Miss Garden's
voice was unable to cope with the music, the critics, on the whole, gave
her credit for an interesting performance. Indeed, in this music drama
she made one of the great popular successes of her career, a career
which has been singularly full of appreciated achievements.
Chicago saw Mary Garden in _Salome_ a year later, and Chicago gasped, as
New York had gasped when the drama was performed at the Metropolitan
Opera House. The police--no less an authority--put a ban on future
performances at the Auditorium. Miss Garden was not pleased, and she
expressed her displeasure in the frankest terms. I received at that time
a series of characteristic telegrams. One of them read: "My art is
going through the torture of slow death. Oh Paris, splendeur de mes
desirs!"
It was with the (then) Philadelphia-Chicago Opera Company that Miss
Garden made her first experiment with opera in English, earning thereby
the everlasting gratitude and admiration--which she already possessed in
no small measure--of Charles Henry Meltzer. She was not sanguine before
the event. In January, 1911, she said to me: "No, malgre Tito Ricordi,
NO! I don't believe in opera in English, I never have believed in it,
and I don't think I ever shall believe in it. Of course I'm willing to
be convinced. You see, in the first place, I think all music dramas
should be sung in the languages in which they are written; well, that
makes it impossible to sing anything in the current repertoire in
English, doesn't it? The only hope for opera in English, so far as I can
see it, lies in America or England producing a race of composers, and
they haven't it in them. It isn't in the blood. Composition needs Latin
blood, or something akin to it; the Anglo-Saxon or the American can't
write music, great music, at least not yet.... I doubt if any of us
alive to-day will live to hear a great work written to a libretto in our
own language.
"Now I am going to sing Victor Herbert's _Natoma_, in spite of what I
have just told you, because I don't want to have it said that I have
done anything to hinder what is now generally known as 'the cause.' For
the first time a work by a composer who may be regarded as American is
to be given a chance with the best singers, with a great orchestra, and
a great conductor, in the leading opera house in America--perhaps the
leading opera house anywhere. It seems to me that every one who can
should put his shoulder to this kind of wheel and set it moving. I shall
be better pleased than anybody else if _Natoma_ proves a success and
paves the way for the successful production of other American lyric
dramas. Of course _Natoma_ cannot be regarded as 'grand opera.' It is
not music, like _Tristan_, for instance. It is more in the style of the
lighter operas which are given in Paris, but it possesses much melodic
charm and it may please the public. I shall sing it and I shall try to
do it just as well as I have tried to do Salome and Thais and
Melisande."
She kept her word, and out of the hodge-podge of an opera book which
stands unrivalled for its stiltedness of speech, she succeeded in
creating one of her most notable characters. She threw vanity aside in
making up for the role, painting her face and body a dark brown; she
wore two long straight braids of hair, depending on either side from the
part in the middle of her forehead. Her garment was of buckskin, and
moccasins covered her feet. She crept rather than walked. The story, as
might be imagined, was one of love and self-sacrifice, touching here and
there on the preserves of _L'Africaine_ and _Lakme_, the whole
concluding with the voluntary immersion of Natoma in a convent.
Fortunately, the writer of the book remembered that Miss Garden had
danced in _Salome_ and he introduced a similar pantomimic episode in
_Natoma_, a dagger dance, which was one of the interesting points in the
action. The music suited her voice; she delivered a good deal of it
almost _parlando_, and the vapid speeches of Mr. Redding tripped so
audibly off her tongue that their banality became painfully apparent.
The story has often been related how Massenet, piqued by the frequently
repeated assertion that his muse was only at his command when he
depicted female frailty, determined to write an opera in which only one
woman was to appear, and she was to be both mute and a virgin! _Le
Jongleur de Notre Dame_, perhaps the most poetically conceived of
Massenet's lyric dramas, was the result of this decision. Until Mr.
Hammerstein made up his mind to produce the opera, the role of Jean had
invariably been sung by a man. Mr. Hammerstein thought that Americans
would prefer a woman in the part. He easily enlisted the interest of
Miss Garden in this scheme, and Massenet, it is said, consented to make
certain changes in the score. The taste of the experiment was doubtful,
but it was one for which there had been much precedent. Nor is it
necessary to linger on Sarah Bernhardt's assumption of the roles of
Hamlet, Shylock, and the Duc de Reichstadt. In the "golden period of
song," Orfeo was not the only man's part sung by a woman. Mme. Pasta
frequently appeared as Romeo in Zingarelli's opera and as Tancredi, and
she also sang Otello on one occasion when Henrietta Sontag was the
Desdemona. The role of Orfeo, I believe, was written originally for a
_castrato_, and later, when the work was refurbished for production at
what was then the Paris Opera, Gluck allotted the role to a tenor. Now
it is sung by a woman as invariably as are Stephano in _Romeo et
Juliette_ and Siebel in _Faust_. There is really more excuse for the
masquerade of sex in Massenet's opera. The timid, pathetic little
juggler, ridiculous in his inefficiency, is a part for which tenors, as
they exist to-day, seem manifestly unsuited. And certainly no tenor
could hope to make the appeal in the part that Mary Garden did. In the
second act she found it difficult to entirely conceal the suggestion of
her sex under the monk's robe, but the sad little figure of the first
act and the adorable juggler of the last, performing his imbecile tricks
before Our Lady's altar, were triumphant details of an artistic
impersonation; on the whole, one of Miss Garden's most moving
performances.
Miss Garden has sung _Faust_ many times. Are there many sopranos who
have not, whatever the general nature of their repertoires? She is very
lovely in the role of Marguerite. I have indicated elsewhere her skill
in endowing the part with poetry and imaginative force without making
ducks and drakes of the traditions. In the garden scene she gave an
exhibition of her power to paint a fanciful fresco on a wall already
surcharged with colour, a charming, wistful picture. I have never seen
any one else so effective in the church and prison scenes; no one else,
it seems to me, has so tenderly conceived the plight of the simple
German girl. The opera of _Romeo et Juliette_ does not admit of such
serious dramatic treatment, and Thomas's _Hamlet_, as a play, is
absolutely ridiculous. After the mad scene, for example, the stage
directions read that the ballet "waltzes sadly away." I saw Mary Garden
play Ophelie once at the Paris Opera, and I must admit that I was
amused; I think she was amused too! I was equally amused some years
later when I heard Titta Ruffo sing the opera. I am afraid I cannot take
_Hamlet_ as a lyric drama seriously.
In Paris, Violetta is one of Miss Garden's popular roles. When she came
to America she fancied she might sing the part here. "Did you ever see a
thin Violetta?" she asked the reporters. But so far she has not appeared
in _La Traviata_ on this side of the Atlantic, although Robert Hichens
wrote me that he had recently heard her in this opera at the Paris
Opera-Comique. He added that her impersonation was most interesting.
To me one of the most truly fascinating of Miss Garden's
characterizations was her Fanny Legrand in Daudet's play, made into an
opera by Massenet. _Sapho_, as a lyric drama, did not have a success in
New York. I think only three performances were given at the Manhattan
Opera House. The professional writers, with one exception, found nothing
to praise in Miss Garden's remarkable impersonation of Fanny. And yet,
as I have said, it seemed to me one of the most moving of her
interpretations. In the opening scenes she was the trollop, no less,
that Fanny was. The pregnant line of the first act: _Artiste?....
Non.... Tant mieux. J'ai contre tout artiste une haine implacable!_ was
spoken in a manner which bared the woman's heart to the sophisticated.
The scene in which she sang the song of the _Magali_ (the Provencal
melody which Mistral immortalized in a poem, which Gounod introduced
into _Mireille_, and which found its way, inexplicably, into the ballet
of Berlioz's _Les Troyens a Carthage_), playing her own accompaniment,
to Jean, was really too wonderful a caricature of the harlot. Abel
Faivre and Paul Guillaume have done no better. The scene in which Fanny
reviles her former associates for telling Jean the truth about her past
life was revolting in its realism.
If Miss Garden spared no details in making us acquainted with Fanny's
vulgarity, she was equally fair to her in other respects. She seemed to
be continually guiding the spectator with comment something like this:
"See how this woman can suffer, and she is a woman, like any other
woman." How small the means, the effect considered, by which she
produced the pathos of the last scene. At the one performance I saw half
the people in the audience were in tears. There was a dismaying display
of handkerchiefs. Sapho sat in the window, smoking a cigarette,
surveying the room in which she had been happy with Jean, and preparing
to say good-by. In the earlier scenes her cigarette had aided her in
making vulgar gestures. Now she relied on it to tell the pitiful tale of
the woman's loneliness. How she clung to that cigarette, how she sipped
comfort from it, and how tiny it was! Mary Garden's Sapho, which may
never be seen on the stage again (Massenet's music is perhaps his
weakest effort), was an extraordinary piece of stage art. That alone
would have proclaimed her an interpreter of genius.
[Illustration: MARY GARDEN AS FANNY LEGRAND
_from a photograph by Mishkin (1909)_]