may have determined his talent: "Dickens--a mean name, a name without
atmosphere, a black out-of-elbows, back-stairs name, a name good enough
for loud comedy and louder pathos. John Milton--a splendid name for a
Puritan poet. Algernon Charles Swinburne--only a name for a reed through
which every wind blows music.... Now it is a fact that we find no fine
names among novelists. We find only colourless names, dry-as-dust names,
or vulgar names, round names like pot-hats, those names like
mackintoshes, names that are squashy as goloshes. We have charged Scott
with a lack of personal passion, but could personal passion dwell in
such a jog-trot name--a round-faced name, a snub-nosed, spectacled,
pot-bellied name, a placid, beneficent, worthy old bachelor name, a name
that evokes all conventional ideas and formulas, a Grub Street name, a
nerveless name, an arm-chair name, an old oak and Abbotsford name? And
Thackeray's name is a poor one--the syllables clatter like plates. 'We
shall want the carriage at half-past two, Thackeray.' Dickens is surely
a name for a page boy. George Eliot's real name, Marian Evans, is a
chaw-bacon, thick-loined name." So far as I know Mr. Moore has not
expanded his theory to include a discussion of acrobats, revivalists,
necromancers, free versifiers, camel drivers, paying tellers, painters,
pugilists, architects, and opera singers. Many of the latter have taken
no chances with their own names. Both Pauline and Maria Garcia adopted
the names of their husbands. Garcia possibly suggests a warrior, but do
Malibran and Viardot make us think of music? Nellie Melba's name evokes
an image of a cold marble slab but if she had retained her original name
of Mitchell it would have been no better ... Marcella Sembrich, a name
made famous by the genius and indefatigable labour of its bearer, surely
not a good name for an operatic soprano. Her own name, Kochanska,
sounds Polish and patriotic ... Luisa Tetrazzini, a silly, fussy name
... Emma Calve.... Since _Madame Bovary_ the name Emma suggests a solid
_bourgeois_ foundation, a country family.... Emma Eames, a chilly name
... a wind from the East! Was it Philip Hale who remarked that she sang
_Who is Sylvia?_ as if the woman were not on her calling list?...
Lillian Nordica, an evasion. Lillian Norton is a sturdy work-a-day name,
suggesting a premonition of a thousand piano rehearsals for Isolde ...
Johanna Gadski, a coughing raucous name ... Geraldine Farrar, tomboyish
and impertinent, Melrose with a French sauce ... Edyth Walker, a
militant suffragette name.... Surely Lucrezia Bori and Maria Barrientos
are ill-made names for singers ... Adelina Patti--a patty-cake,
patty-cake, baker's man, sort of a name ... Alboni, strong-hearted ...
Scalchi ... ugh! Further evidence could be brought forward to prove that
singers succeed in spite of their names rather than because of them ...
until we reach the name of Mary Garden.... The subtle fragrance of this
name has found its way into many hearts. Since Nell Gwyn no such scented
cognomen, redolent of cuckoo's boots, London pride, blood-red poppies,
purple fox-gloves, lemon stocks, and vermillion zinnias, has blown its
delicate odour across our scene.... Delightful and adorable Mary Garden,
the fragile Thais, pathetic Jean ... unforgettable Melisande....
_October 10, 1916._
Feodor Chaliapine
"_Do I contradict myself?_
_Very well, then, I contradict myself;_"
Walt Whitman.
Feodor Chaliapine, the Russian bass singer, appeared in New York at the
Metropolitan Opera House, then under the direction of Heinrich Conried,
during the season of 1907-08. He made his American debut on Wednesday
evening, November 20, 1907, when he impersonated the title part of
Boito's opera, _Mefistofele_. He was heard here altogether seven times
in this role; six times as Basilio in _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_; three
times as Mephistopheles in Gounod's _Faust_; three times as Leporello in
_Don Giovanni_; and at several Sunday night concerts. He also appeared
with the Metropolitan Opera Company in Philadelphia, and possibly
elsewhere.
I first met this remarkable artist in the dining-room of the Hotel Savoy
on a rainy Sunday afternoon, soon after his arrival in America. His
personality made a profound impression on me, as may be gathered from
some lines from an article I wrote which appeared the next morning in
the "New York Times": "The newest operatic acquisition to arrive in New
York is neither a prima donna soprano, nor an Italian tenor with a high
C, but a big, broad-shouldered boy, with a kindly smile and a deep bass
voice, ... thirty-four years old.... 'I spik English,' were his first
words. 'How do you do? et puis good-by, et puis I drrrink, you drrink,
he drrrrinks, et puis I love you!' ... Mr. Chaliapine looked like a
great big boy, a sophomore in college, who played football." (Pitts
Sanborn soon afterwards felicitously referred to him as _ce doux geant_,
a name often applied to Turgeniev.)
I have given the extent of the Russian's English vocabulary at this
time, and I soon discovered that it was not accident which had caused
him first to learn to conjugate the verb "to drink"; another English
verb he learned very quickly was "to eat." Some time later, after his
New York debut, I sought him out again to urge him to give a synopsis of
his original conception for a performance of Gounod's _Faust_. The
interview which ensued was the longest I have ever had with any one. It
began at eleven o'clock in the morning and lasted until a like hour in
the evening,--it might have lasted much longer,--and during this whole
time we sat at table in Mr. Chaliapine's own chamber at the Brevoort,
whither he had repaired to escape steam heat, while he consumed vast
quantities of food and drink. I remember a detail of six plates of onion
soup. I have never seen any one else eat so much or so continuously, or
with so little lethargic effect. Indeed, intemperance seemed only to
make him more light-hearted, ebullient, and Brobdingnagian. Late in the
afternoon he placed his own record of the _Marseillaise_ in the
victrola, and then amused himself (and me) by singing the song in unison
with the record, in an attempt to drown out the mechanical sound. He
succeeded. The effect in this moderately small hotel room can only be
faintly conceived.
Exuberant is the word which best describes Chaliapine off the stage. I
remember another occasion a year later when I met him, just returned
from South America, on the Boulevard in Paris. He grasped my hand warmly
and begged me to come to see his zoo. He had, in fact, transformed the
_salle de bain_ in his suite at the Grand Hotel into a menagerie. There
were two monkeys, a cockatoo, and many other birds of brilliant plumage,
while two large alligators dozed in the tub.
My second interview with this singer took place a day or so before he
returned to Europe. He had been roughly handled by the New York critics,
treatment, it is said, which met with the approval of Heinrich Conried,
who had no desire to retain in his company a bass who demanded sixteen
hundred dollars a night, a high salary for a soprano or a tenor. Stung
by this defeat--entirely imaginary, by the way, as his audiences here
were as large and enthusiastic as they are anywhere--the only one, in
fact, which he has suffered in his career up to date, Chaliapine was
extremely frank in his attitude. My interview, published on the first
page of the "New York Times," created a small sensation in operatic
circles. The meat of it follows. Chaliapine is speaking:
"Criticism in New York is not profound. It is the most difficult thing
in the world to be a good critical writer. I am a singer, but the critic
has no right to regard me merely as a singer. He must observe my acting,
my make-up, everything. And he must understand and know about these
things.
"Opera is not a fixed art. It is not like music, poetry, sculpture,
painting, or architecture, but a combination of all of these. And the
critic who goes to the opera should have studied all these arts. While a
study of these arts is essential, there is something else that the
critic cannot get by study, and that is the soul to understand. That he
must be born with.
"I am not a professional critic, but I could be. I have associated with
musicians, painters, and writers, and I know something of all these
arts. As a consequence when I read a criticism, I see immediately what
is true and what is false. Very often I think a man's tongue is his
worst enemy. However, sometimes a man keeps quiet to conceal his mental
weakness. We have a Russian proverb which says, 'Keep quiet; don't tease
the geese.' You can't judge of a man's intelligence until he begins to
talk or write.
"I have been sometimes adversely criticized during the course of my
artistic life. The most profound of these criticisms have taught me to
correct my faults. But I have learned nothing from the criticisms I have
received in New York. After searching my inner consciousness, I find
they are not based on a true understanding of my artistic purposes. For
instance, the critics found my Don Basilio a dirty, repulsive creature.
One man even said that I was offensive to another singer on the stage!
Don Basilio is a Spanish priest; it is a type I know well. He is not
like the modern American priest, clean and well-groomed; he is dirty and
unkempt; he is a beast, and that is what I make him, a comic beast, but
the critics would prefer a softer version.... It is unfair, indeed, to
judge me at all on the parts I have sung here, outside of Mefistofele,
for most of my best roles are in Russian operas, which are not in the
repertoire of the Metropolitan Opera House.
"The contemporary direction of this theatre believes in tradition. It is
afraid of anything new. There is no movement. It has not the courage to
produce novelties, and the artists are prevented from giving original
conceptions of old roles.
"New York is a vast seething inferno of business. Nothing but business!
The men are so tired when they get through work that they want
recreation and sleep. They don't want to study. They don't want to be
thrilled or aroused. They are content to listen forever to _Faust_ and
_Lucia_.
"In Europe it is different. There you will find the desire for novelty
in the theatre. There is a keen interest in the production of a new
work. It is all right to enjoy the old things, but one should see life.
The audience at the Metropolitan Opera House reminds me of a family that
lives in the country and won't travel. It is satisfied with the same
view of the same garden forever...."
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapine was born February 13 (February 1, old
style), 1873, in Kazan; he is of peasant descent. It is said that he is
almost entirely self-educated, both musically and intellectually. He
worked for a time in a shoemaker's shop, sang in the archbishop's choir
and, at the age of seventeen, joined a local operetta company. He seems
to have had difficulty in collecting a salary from this latter
organization, and often worked as a railway porter in order to keep
alive. Later he joined a travelling theatrical troupe, which visited the
Caucasus. In 1892, Oussatov, a singer, heard Chaliapine in Tiflis, gave
him some lessons, and got him an engagement.
He made his debut in opera in Glinka's _A Life for the Czar_ (according
to Mrs. Newmarch; my notes tell me that it was Gounod's _Faust_). He
sang at the Summer and Panaevsky theatres in Petrograd in 1894; and the
following year he was engaged at the Maryinsky Theatre, but the
directors did not seem to realize that they had captured one of the
great figures of the contemporary lyric stage, and he was not permitted
to sing very often. In 1896, Mamantov, lawyer and millionaire, paid the
fine which released the bass from the Imperial Opera House, and invited
him to join the Private Opera Company in Moscow, where Chaliapine
immediately proved his worth. He became the idol of the public, and it
was not unusual for those who admired striking impersonations on the
stage to journey from Petrograd to see and hear him. In 1899 he was
engaged to sing at the Imperial Opera in Moscow at sixty thousand
roubles a year. Since then he has appeared in various European capitals,
and in North and South America. He has sung in Milan, Paris, London,
Monte Carlo, and Buenos Aires. During a visit to Milan he married, and
at the time of his New York engagement his family included five
children. The number may have increased.
Chaliapine's repertoire is extensive but, on the whole, it is a strange
repertoire to western Europe and America, consisting, as it does, almost
entirely of Russian operas. In Milan, New York, and Monte Carlo, where
he has appeared with Italian and French companies, his most famous role
is Mefistofele. Leporello he sang for the first time in New York.
Basilio and Mephistopheles in _Faust_ he has probably enacted as often
in Russia as elsewhere. He "created" the title part of Massenet's _Don
Quichotte_ at Monte Carlo (Vanni Marcoux sang the role later in Paris).
With the Russian Opera Company, organized in connection with the Russian
Ballet by Serge de Diaghilew, Chaliapine has sung in London, Paris, and
other European capitals in Moussorgsky's _Boris Godunow_ and
_Khovanchina_, Rimsky-Korsakow's _Ivan the Terrible_ (originally called
_The Maid of Pskov_), and Borodine's _Prince Igor_, in which he appeared
both as Prince Galitzky and as the Tartar Chieftain. His repertoire
further includes Rubinstein's _Demon_, Rimsky-Korsakow's _Mozart and
Salieri_ (the role of Salieri), Glinka's _A Life for the Czar_,
Dargomijsky's _The Roussalka_, Rachmaninow's _Aleko_, and Gretchaninow's
_Dobrynia Nikitich_. This list is by no means complete.
I first saw Chaliapine on the stage in New York, where his original
ideas and tremendously vital personality ran counter to every tradition
of the Metropolitan Opera House. The professional writers about the
opera, as a whole, would have none of him. Even his magnificently
pictorial Mefistofele was condemned, and I think Pitts Sanborn was the
only man in a critic's chair--I was a reporter at this period and had no
opportunity for expressing my opinions in print--who appreciated his
Basilio at its true value, and _Il Barbiere_ is Sanborn's favourite
opera. His account of the proceedings makes good reading at this date. I
quote from the "New York Globe," December 13, 1907:
"The performance that was in open defiance of traditions, that was
glaringly and recklessly unorthodox, that set at naught the accepted
canons of good taste, but which justified itself by its overwhelming and
all-conquering good humour, was the Basilio of Mr. Chaliapine. With his
great natural stature increased by art to Brobdingnagian proportions, a
face that had gazed on the vodka at its blackest, and a cassock that may
be seen but not described, he presented a figure that might have been
imagined by the English Swift or the French Rabelais. It was no voice or
singing that made the audience re-demand the 'Calumny Song.' It was the
compelling drollery of those comedy hands. You may be assured,
persuaded, convinced that you want your Rossini straight or not at all.
But when you see the Chaliapine Basilio you'll do as the rest do--roar.
It is as sensational in its way as the Chaliapine Mephisto."
It was hard to reconcile Chaliapine's conception of Mephistopheles with
the Gounod music, and I do not think the Russian himself had any
illusions about his performance of _Leporello_. It was not his type of
part, and he was as good in it, probably, as Olive Fremstad would be as
Nedda. Even great artists have their limitations, perhaps more of them
than the lesser people. But his Mefistofele, to my way of
thinking,--and the anxious reader who has not seen this impersonation
may be assured that I am far from being alone in it,--was and is a
masterpiece of stage-craft. However, opinions differ. Under the alluring
title, "Devils Polite and Rude," W. J. Henderson, in the "New York Sun,"
Sunday, November 24, 1907, after Chaliapine's first appearance here in
Boito's opera, took his fling at the Russian bass (was it Mr. Henderson
or another who later referred to Chaliapine as "a cossack with a
cold"?): "He makes of the fiend a demoniac personage, a seething
cauldron of rabid passions. He is continually snarling and barking. He
poses in writhing attitudes of agonized impotence. He strides and
gestures, grimaces and roars. All this appears to superficial observers
to be tremendously dramatic. And it is, as noted, not without its
significance. Perhaps it may be only a personal fancy, yet the present
writer much prefers a devil who is a gentleman.... But one thing more
remains to be said about the first display of Mr. Chaliapine's powers.
How long did he study the art of singing? Surely not many years. Such an
uneven and uncertain emission of tone is seldom heard even on the
Metropolitan Opera House stage, where there is a wondrous quantity of
poorly grounded singing. The splendid song, _Son lo Spirito Che Nega_,
was not sung at all in the strict interpretation of the word. It was
delivered, to be sure, but in a rough and barbaric style. Some of the
tones disappeared somewhere in the rear spaces of the basso's capacious
throat, while others were projected into the auditorium like stones from
a catapult. There was much strenuosity and little art in the
performance. And it was much the same with the rest of the singing of
the role."
Chaliapine calls himself "the enemy of tradition." When he was singing
at the Opera in Petrograd in 1896 he found that every detail of every
characterization was prescribed. He was directed to make his entrances
in a certain way; he was ordered to stand in a certain place on the
stage. Whenever he attempted an innovation the stage director said,
"Don't do that." Young singer though he was, he rebelled and asked, "Why
not?" And the reply always came, "You must follow the tradition of the
part. Monsieur Chose and Signor Cosi have always done thus and so, and
you must do likewise." "But I feel differently about the role,"
protested the bass. However, it was not until he went to Moscow that he
was permitted to break with tradition. From that time on he began to
elaborate his characterizations, assisted, he admits, by Russian
painters who gave him his first ideas about costumes and make-up. He
once told me that his interpretation of a part was never twice the same.
He does not study his roles in solitude, poring over a score, as many
artists do. Rather, ideas come to him when he eats or drinks, or even
when he is on the stage. He depends to an unsafe degree--unsafe for
other singers who may be misled by his success--on inspiration to carry
him through, once he begins to sing. "When I sing a character I am that
character; I am no longer Chaliapine. So whatever I do must be in
keeping with what the character would do." This is true to so great an
extent that you may take it for granted, when you see Chaliapine in a
new role, that he will envelop the character with atmosphere from his
first entrance, perhaps even without the aid of a single gesture. His
entrance on horseback in _Ivan the Terrible_ is a case in point. Before
he has sung a note he has projected the personality of the cruel czar
into the auditorium.
"As an actor," writes Mrs. Newmarch in "The Russian Opera," "his
greatest quality appears to me to be his extraordinary gift of
identification with the character he is representing. Shaliapin (so
does Mrs. Newmarch phonetically transpose his name into Roman letters)
does not merely throw himself into the part, to use a phrase commonly
applied to the histrionic art. He seems to disappear, to empty himself
of all personality, that Boris Godunov or Ivan the Terrible may be
reincarnated for us. While working out his own conception of a part,
unmoved by convention or opinion, Shaliapin neglects no accessory study
that can heighten the realism of his interpretation. It is impossible to
see him as Ivan the Terrible, or Boris, without realizing that he is
steeped in the history of those periods, which live again at his will.
In the same way he has studied the masterpieces of Russian art to good
purpose, as all must agree who have compared the scene of Ivan's
frenzied grief over the corpse of Olga, in the last scene of
Rimsky-Korsakow's opera, with Repin's terrible picture of the Tsar,
clasping in his arms the body of the son whom he has just killed in a
fit of insane anger. The agonizing remorse and piteous senile grief have
been transformed from Repin's canvas to Shaliapin's living picture,
without the revolting suggestion of the shambles which mars the
painter's work. Sometimes, too, Shaliapin will take a hint from the
living model. His dignified make-up as the Old Believer Dositheus, in
Moussorgsky's _Khovanstchina_, owes not a little to the personality of
Vladimir Stassov."
Chaliapine, it seems to me, has realized more completely than any other
contemporary singer the opportunities afforded for the presentation of
character on the lyric stage. In costume, make-up, gesture, the
simulation of emotion, he is a consummate and painstaking artist. As I
have suggested, he has limitations. Who, indeed, has not? Grandeur,
nobility, impressiveness, and, by inversion, sordidness, bestiality, and
awkward ugliness fall easily within his ken. The murder-haunted Boris
Godunow is perhaps his most overpowering creation. From first to last it
is a masterpiece of scenic art; those who have seen him in this part
will not be satisfied with substitutes. His Ivan is almost equally
great. His Dositheus, head of the Old Believers in _Khovanchina_, is a
sincere and effective characterization along entirely different lines.
Although this character, in a sense, dominates Moussorgsky's great
opera, there is little opportunity for the display of histrionism which
Boris presents to the singing actor. By almost insignificant details of
make-up and gesture the bass creates before your eyes a living,
breathing man, a man of fire and faith. No one would recognize in this
kind old creature, terrible, to be sure, in his stern piety, the nude
Mefistofele surveying the pranks of the motley rabble in the Brocken
scene of Boito's opera, a flamboyant exposure of personality to be
compared with Mary Garden's Thais, Act I.
As the Tartar chieftain in _Prince Igor_, he has but few lines to sing,
but his gestures during the performance of the ballet, which he has
arranged for his guest, in fact his actions throughout the single act in
which this character appears, are stamped on the memory as definitely as
a figure in a Persian miniature. And the noble scorn with which, as
Prince Galitzky, he bows to the stirrup of Prince Igor at the close of
the prologue to this opera, still remains a fixed picture in my mind.
There is also the pathetic Don Quichotte of Massenet's poorest opera.
All great portraits these, to which I must add the funny, dirty,
expectorating Spanish priest of _Il Barbiere_.
[Illustration: FEODOR CHALIAPINE AS MEFISTOFELE]
Chaliapine is the possessor of a noble voice which sometimes he uses by
main strength. He has never learned to sing, in the conventional meaning
of the phrase. He must have been singing for some time before he studied
at all, and at Tiflis he does not seem to have spent many months on his
voice. In the circumstances it is an extremely tractable organ, at
least always capable of doing his bidding, dramatically speaking.
Indeed, there are many who consider him a great artist in his
manipulation of it. Mrs. Newmarch quotes Herbert Heyner on this point: