Confessions of an Opera Singer Part 3

I went back after my illness to see the director, who to my surprise began to attack me violently about my absence. He stormed, and thumped the desk, and would listen to nothing I said. I tried to tell him he had no right to speak to me in that way, as I had really been ill, and had always done my duty when well. He raved back that I had _not_ done my duty, and it seemed to me so futile to argue, that I walked out without answering and left him raving. I went home and stayed there for five days, and at the end of that time the director sent his secretary "to explain" and ask me to return to my duty. It was an awkward interview for him, poor man, so I let him off easily, graciously accepted the somewhat disguised apology, and, as I was quite recovered and eager to sing again, signified my willingness to appear the following night.

To return to my first contract.--There was a formidable list of roles which I must agree to have ready, and the director also insisted on my studying with a certain well-known woman teacher in Berlin! I conveyed to him as well as I could, that I would settle all this with my agent, as I had no intention of agreeing to all of it, and was afraid to trust my German to say so diplomatically. He added, "Of course you are too good for us, Fraulein." This was the second time I had been told I was too good for an engagement. Every one seemed to think I ought to aim at a secondary position in one of the big opera houses, rather than a leading one in a smaller place. The prospect of singing pages or confidants in a capital city, with perhaps one good role in a season, did not meet my needs at all; but no one seemed to sympathize with my ideas. I wanted to make a career in Germany, as if I were a German singer, having my own recognized place in the opera house in which I was engaged, singing the big roles by right, without intriguing or fighting for them.

On returning to Berlin, I wrote to Herr Harder that I would learn a certain specified number of roles in addition to those I already knew, making about twelve in all, and ignored the singing-teacher proposition altogether as I had formed the intention of going to coach with Jean de Reszke. On these terms the contract was returned to me signed by the director, and I was engaged.

CHAPTER VIII

MY ONE LONE IMPROPOSITION

"When I make my debut" was the phrase that I had heard so often on the lips of my American fellow students. Each one had chosen her opera house, and decided in which role she would dazzle a clamouring public.

Sometimes one more modest would choose Monte Carlo in preference to Paris, or if she intended to make a career in Germany, she might hesitate between the rival merits of Dresden and Berlin. But that the theatre should be one of the half-dozen leading ones in the world, and the role her favourite, were foregone conclusions before she left America.

In this respect, I quite shattered the tradition of the prima donna, for I sang my first part in a small provincial German opera house, at twenty-four hours' notice, and it was one of those which I have least pleasure in singing. I remember that a well-known American writer, living in Paris, said patronizingly to my mother a propos of my first appearance, "Let us hope that she will make a real debut later, for this can hardly be called one, can it?" "Well, after all," answered my mother, "who knows where most of the great singers of today made their debuts?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: I CARMEN AS I USED TO DRESS IT]

Contemporary fiction is full of opera singing heroines who jump into fame in a single night, like Minerva springing full armed from the head of Jupiter. Well, perhaps some of them do so--but I have never met a singer, even of the highest international reputation, who has not had some dark checkers of disappointment in his career. All his clouds may have had silver linings, but sometimes the silver gets mighty tarnished before he succeeds in struggling through the cloud, and sometimes another singer gets through first and steals the silver outright. I cannot say that I have ever been in great danger morally on the stage, but my courage, my nerve, has been sometimes severely threatened, and I have needed to summon the most dogged determination to keep it from failing altogether. I feel sure that all successful singers share my experience in greater or less degree, especially those who have been trained in foreign countries. Not all of them, by any means, have been through as severe a school as mine; few American singers at any rate, have made a career in a foreign country exactly as if they had been a native of it. Many have been engaged for special roles in one of the larger opera houses, and after several years of experience, have sung but a few parts, all of which have been those most suited to them. I have sung, on the contrary, the entire repertoire of a typical German opera house, where operas are regularly given of which the Metropolitan audience has never even heard.

In my first season, I sang in all fifteen different roles in the first seven months of my career. I have appeared in eighty-five, ranging from the Wagner music dramas to the "Merry Widow" and singing many of the roles in three different languages. It has been "the strenuous life" in its severest form, but I do not regret any of it, nor feel that my effort has been wasted, for I know that I understand my _metier_, comprehensively and in detail, and nothing can take away the satisfaction of that.

The beginning of the season found my sister and myself in the town of Metz, as according to contract we had arrived six days before the opening. The weather was hot and dusty, and the town seemed deserted, for the regiments which gave it life and colour was still away at the Autumn manoeuvres. We felt very forlorn at first, strangers in a strange land with a vengeance, and without the least idea of what the immediate future might hold for us. My German had improved considerably since my interview with the director, but my sister did not know one word. Luckily for her there was almost as much French spoken in the town as German. There were many shops of absolutely French character, where she was treated with great consideration as coming from Paris.

Even the officials of the town, the post office employes, custom officers, and others with whom she came in contact, though rather deaf in their French ear, would make s.h.i.+ft to understand her if necessary, adding an extra touch of rigidity to their already sufficiently severe manner, in order to nip any "French familiarity" in the bud.

We went to the hotel that had been recommended to us, as the princ.i.p.al one in the town was in the process of reconstruction and swarmed with plasterers and carpenters. It was rather a dreadful place, with enormous dark rooms, dingily furnished with heavy old-fas.h.i.+oned furniture; but it was very near the theatre and as we meant to find lodgings later, we tried not to be depressed by its gloominess.

Of course, the first thing we did was to visit the theatre. To reach it one crossed a bridge over the river, picturesquely bordered with old overhanging houses, then a cobblestone "Platz," and there, rather shabby but still quite imposing, it stood. On the way I read my name for the first time on a German poster, with a distinct thrill. I knew my way to the stage-entrance, and through it to the Direktor's Bureau, where several shocks awaited me. I learned that the man who had engaged me had been superseded by a new one, who had not yet arrived. Matters were in charge of the stage manager, a huge, towering creature, with a great ba.s.s voice, who was a rather remarkable actor. He had come down in the world, having begun life as a cavalry officer, and he had strange gleams of the gentleman about him, even then. He was, by the way, the one man in the profession who ever made me a questionable offer. He grew to admire me very much as time went on, and one day, after I had been there some time, he asked me to sign a further contract with the theatre.

"You'll never get anything very much better," he said, "as you are a foreigner. We'll make a good contract with you, and perhaps, later--who knows?--you may have a 'protection salary.'"

He paused to see the effect of his proposal, and was met with absolute non-comprehension on my part, as I really did not understand, at the time, the German words he was using. He dropped his proposal there and then, and the affair had no unpleasant consequences for me, as he never referred to it again. And that is the single instance of that sort which I have encountered. Nevertheless, I might possibly have had further trouble with him, for my appearance really seemed to appeal to him very much, later in the winter. Just before Christmas, however, he died, almost overnight, as we were in the midst of rus.h.i.+ng a production of "Trompeter von Sakkingen." He had informed me on Friday night that I should have to sing the _Countess_ on the following Tuesday. I did not know a word of it, and was on the way on Sat.u.r.day morning to get the score, when I heard that he was dangerously ill--and by Sunday morning he was dead. Poor man! he had some good qualities and real talents, but it turned out that he was a great scoundrel and had been robbing the direction left and right, under the pretence of a.s.sisting the new director.

This new director, who had never even heard my voice, had been a well-known Wagnerian singer in his day and intended to take some of the princ.i.p.al baritone roles in his new position, to the intense disgust of the regular _Heldenbariton_. All the outstanding contracts had been taken over in his name. This sudden change of management, during vacation time, made a little trouble for me as it happened. None of the present staff had heard me sing. They knew only that I was a foreigner without experience, heard that my conversational German was not yet perfect (a much rarer accomplishment than a perfect accent in singing), and therefore doubted my ability to do the work of the first contralto.

So they had engaged a native, which meant that it was "up to me" to prove myself capable at the first opportunity or lose the chance of doing first roles or perhaps be dismissed altogether.

Our hotel was impossible for a long stay, and, of course, after my Berlin experience, my first idea was a good German pension. We went to the _Verkehrsverein_--the Information Bureau which is a feature of all German towns, and asked for a pension address. The man in charge shook his head. There was only one such place, he said, and he feared that it would not suit us, but we might go and see. We went accordingly, and found a nice-enough looking house in the newest quarter, quite the other side of the town from the theatre. The inside of the house, however, told its own story--concrete floors, whitewashed walls with garish religious prints on them, and deal furniture with red and white table covers much in evidence. The bedrooms were cell-like and garnished with mottoes, while a Bible and candlestick by each bedside were the only other decorations.

"What is this inst.i.tution?" we asked.

"It is the German Young Ladies Evangelical Home, for Protestants only,"

we were told.

We thanked the Matron, and decided that we were neither German, Evangelical nor young enough for such a home, even though we might be ladies and Protestants.

Disappointed in our hope of finding a pension, we returned to our friend of the Information Bureau, this time to ask for addresses of furnished rooms with a decent landlady to attend to them for us. He shook his head once more--it was very difficult in a garrison town, he said, to be certain of the character of a house which had furnished rooms to let.

"But where do the artists of the theatres usually live?" we asked.

"Oh! they either take furnished rooms, or bring their own furniture," he answered, "or live in the smaller hotels. But then they are Germans and used to judging in such cases. There is, however, an English lady living here who knows the town thoroughly, and you had better go to her and get her to find rooms for you."

As we felt that we could not possibly ask a totally unknown Englishwoman to find lodgings for us, my sister set out on the hunt alone. As a foreigner speaking no German, and a woman looking for rooms all by herself, she was received in a very curious manner by most of the landladies she visited, and evidently looked upon with strong suspicion.

We were getting desperate, as the time of my debut was coming nearer and nearer and we were still unsettled. Finally we resolved to throw ourselves upon the mercy of the unknown Englishwoman after all, and wrote her a note begging her a.s.sistance in finding two furnished rooms near the theatre, with a _Hausfrau_ who would look after them and serve our breakfast. We had to find a furnished apartment as we were not like some of my colleagues who possess their own furniture and pa.s.s their lives in a sort of singing journey through the country, always surrounded by their own household goods.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARMEN AS I NOW DRESS IT]

CHAPTER IX

THE MAKINGS OF A SMALL MUNIc.i.p.aL OPERA HOUSE

Early the next morning, before we were up, our English friend kindly came to see us, and with her help we soon discovered just what we were looking for, in an eminently respectable house, where the _Hausfrau_ was the wife of a policeman, so that we were under the shadow of the majesty of the law.

A young doctor had the rooms, but she a.s.sured us that he was moving immediately, and that we might send our trunks the following day. We duly arrived the next afternoon with an avalanche of baggage and found that the poor young man had had no intention of leaving before the end of the month and had even invited guests for that very evening! Floods of German ensued between him and the _Hausfrau_, while we sat philosophically on our trunks in the hall and waited. Presently she emerged, rather heated of countenance, to say that it was all arranged, and to begin moving our things into the bedroom. The doctor called us into the sitting-room, waived aside our explanations and thanks for his gallantry, and shutting all the doors mysteriously, proceeded to the only revenge in his power--to defame the character and impugn the honesty of our future hostess.

"Keep things locked, I warn you, keep them locked!" he repeated earnestly, all the while cramming books, bottles and garments promiscuously into a trunk.

We made allowances for his need of reprisal, and took his warning with a grain of salt; and as a matter of fact our landlady never touched anything of ours except what she doubtless considered her proper "commission" levied upon our coal and kerosene. She was quite satisfactory on the whole, except that she _would_ quarrel very noisily with her policeman from time to time, or rather he with her. When we remonstrated and said that we could not stand it and that she shouldn't, she answered that she would be only too glad to get out of her bargain, but that she had put her money into this marriage and therefore had to stay in it!

Her small boy was named Karl, but she always called him "Schweinsche'."

She had a few wisps of greyish drab hair wound round a sort of steering-wheel of celluloid in the back. On Christmas my sister hunted for hours for a present for her, and finally returned with a magnificent set of rhinestone-set haircombs. I have always wondered what the poor woman did with them, as her hair could not have covered an eighth of their p.r.o.ngs.

The reason for the summary dismissal of her former tenant was, of course, the extra money that she made out of our being foreigners who did not know the tariff, and the fact that there were two of us to be served. We paid sixty marks, fifteen dollars, a month for the rooms, service and breakfast of coffee and rolls, and little as this seems, I don't suppose the doctor had paid a penny over forty. Our colleagues thought us spendthrifts and gullible foreigners, as they paid about thirty marks and got their own breakfast.

My sister had two chafing dishes on which she cooked our supper, but the two o'clock dinner was a problem. I was too tired after the strenuous morning rehearsals beginning at ten o'clock, and the strain of trying to follow all the directions I received in German, to go to the Hotels or restaurants for dinner, as most of my colleagues did. Our landlady suggested that she should have it fetched from the officers' mess of the crack cavalry regiment, whose barracks were near by. She said this was a usual arrangement. We bought a sort of tier of enamelled dishes, fitting into each other and carried in a kind of wickerwork handle. One contained soup, the next meat, the third vegetable, while bread or dessert reposed in the top. We can testify that even crack regiments are not unduly pampered in the Fatherland, for anything plainer, or more unappetizing than these dinners, I have never tried to eat. Perhaps they gained something when served hot in the officers' _Casino_, but we found it almost impossible to down them, eaten out of our enamel-ware dishes.

After a time, when the newness of everything in the theatre had worn off a little, and I began "to feel my feet," we arranged to dine at the hotel where many of the colleagues met daily. This was a far better plan, as, in addition to a really hot meal, we had a splendid opportunity to improve our German. I was naturally making rapid progress in it, but my sister still had to confine herself to the shops where they understood French. One day when I came home from rehearsal, she told me that our _Hausfrau_ had repeated to her a long piece of gossip in German. Seeing by my sister's face that she had not understood, the woman said, "Oh, you don't understand, Fraulein. Well, I'll say it all over again in French." Then she proceeded to repeat it again, very loudly and slowly--in German!

Of course it is rather dreadful to be called just "Fraulein" by your landlady in Germany, but the social standing of the singers and players in a provincial theatre is usually not high enough to warrant anything else. A position in an opera house in a capital city, or in a Hoftheater, confers social importance enough upon its holder to ent.i.tle her to the prefix _gnadiges_ (gracious) before the ignominious _Fraulein_, which in society is properly used to designate only a governess, a companion, or a saleswoman in a shop.

t.i.tles and forms of address are a ticklish subject in the Fatherland, at any time. It is hard to comprehend the mazes of male progression from the simple "Rat," through the subsequent variations of Hofrat (court councillor), Geheimer Hofrat (privy court councillor), Geheimrat (privy councillor), Wirklicher Geheimrat (really truly privy councillor), to the lofty dignity of Excellenz.

Old-fas.h.i.+oned ladies used to employ the feminized version of their husband's t.i.tles, and I once knew an old dame who insisted upon being addressed as "_Frau Oberlandgerichtsrathin_." The bourgeoisie used to copy the aristocracy in this respect, and at the afternoon Kaffeeklatsch, Frau Hofcondittor Meyer would inquire about the health of Herr Stra.s.senbahnsinspektor Braun, from his wife the Frau Stra.s.senbahnsinspektorin (street car inspectoress). Modern life is too crowded perhaps for such lengthy addresses, but Frau Meyer and Herr Braun are certainly less picturesque cognomens. Among the artistocracy the proper t.i.tles and forms of address have many pitfalls for the foreigner, though I used to dodge them fairly successfully by addressing every woman older than myself as "_Gnadige Frau_" irrespective of her "handle," and the men by no t.i.tle at all, except in the case of a prince not of royal blood, who has to be called by the mouth-filling courtesy t.i.tle of _Durchlaucht_.

Of course in letter-writing this way round is not always possible, and here the complications are simply terrifying. The salutation of a lady without any t.i.tle at all ranges all the way from "Wertes Fraulein"

(Worthy Miss), almost an insult to a person of any gentility, to the punctilious "Hochvereherte und gnadige Frau" (Highly honoured and gracious lady) of high society. Even the envelope provides a subtle form of insult or of flattery. In Germany one is simply born, well-born, highly well-born, or high born as the case may be. If you are rightly ent.i.tled to the third, how irritating to be publicly branded on the outside of a letter as only well-born. On the other hand, if you really belong among the merely born, what a delicate attention to be acknowledged "_Hochwohlgeborene_" for all the world, including the _Portier's Frau_ to see! Shops in writing to you (as long as your credit is good) love to employ the latter on the envelope, repeat it in the body of the letter which always begins "Highly honoured and gracious Miss" and sign themselves "Mit Vorzuglicher Hochachtung"--"with magnificent respect." Friends, of course, call you just Fraulein So-and-so, as we should say "Miss Brown," except if they are young men, when they usually stick to the "gracious Miss." You must never inquire for the members of a person's family without the Mr., Mrs., or Miss being added: "How is your Frau Mother, Herr Father, or Fraulein Sister?"

There is a curious phrase for parents--"How are your _Herren_ Parents?"

being the strictly correct form of question.

Yes! Etiquette is very complicated in Germany and requires a great deal of study from the "Out-lander."

To return to the theatre--we expected that my sister would have the run of my dressing-room, and that she might be present at the rehearsals. We found on the contrary that the most rigorous rules were enforced to forbid entrance to the theatre to any one not a regular member of the staff. No one else was allowed to pa.s.s the porter's lodge. There were regular dressers provided by the theatre, and my sister was present only once or twice at rehearsals during my two seasons in Metz and then only by special request.

The rehearsals for the next day were posted at the stage door. They were not printed or typed, but written in German script, with chalk on the blackboard. They would be placed there at six o'clock every evening, and my sister used to go over to find out for me what they were. She could not read German script at all, neither could I, very well; so she used to take paper and pencil and laboriously draw everything on the board, chorus calls and all, for fear of missing something. Then, letter by letter, we would puzzle it out, and find out the hours of my rehearsals, as if they had been written in cipher. She was always present at my performances.