Chapters of Opera Part 14

was brought forward for Mme. Calve on December 11, 1895; the two acts of "Les Pecheurs de Perles" at a matinee on January 11, 1896.

Colonel Mapleson provided a prelude to the Metropolitan season of 1896-97 with a short season of Italian opera of the archaic sort at the Academy of Music. The doughty manager could no longer fly his old London colors, so he appeared as the sole director of "The New Imperial Opera Company." With two or three exceptions all his singers were strangers to the opera-goers of New York. Mme. Scalchi was again with him, and Signor de Anna; but the rest were newcomers. Among them were Mme.

Hariclee-Darclee, Mme. Bonaplata-Bau, Susan Strong, and Mme. Giuseppina Huguet, sopranos; Mme. Parsi, Mlle. Ponzano, and Mme. Meysenheim, contraltos; Signori de Marchi, Randacio, Betti, Olivieri, and Durot, tenors; Signori Ughetto and Alberti, barytones, and Pinto, Terzi, Giordano, Borelli, and Dado, ba.s.ses. The conductors, capable men both of them, were Signori Bimboni and Tango. Within a fortnight "Ada,"

"Trovatore," "Traviata," "Les Huguenots," "Sonnambula," and "Faust"

had been sung and a new work brought out. This was "Andrea Chenier,"

by Illica and Giordano, which had its first performance in America on November 13, 1896, the cast being as follows:

Andrea Chenier ................................... Durot Carlo Gerard ................................... Ughetto Maddalena di Coigny ...................... Bonaplata-Bau La Mulatta Bersi ............................ Meysenheim La Contessa di Coigny .......................... Scalchi Madelon .......................................... Parsi Roucher ........................................... Dado Il Romanziero .................................. Alberti Fouquier Tinville ............................... ------ Mathieu ........................................ Borelli Un Incredibile | L'Abate, poeta |............................... Giordano Schmidt, Carceriere a San Lazzaro ................ Terzi Il Maestro di Casa ............................ Olivieri Dumas ............................................ Pinto

Tango conducted and the performance had a rude forcefulness quite in keeping with the character of the opera. Under better conditions "Andrea Chenier" would doubtless have held its own for a respectable s.p.a.ce in the local repertory. But the seeds of dissolution were germinating in the company even before the performances began, and Colonel Mapleson did not dare to appear long in rivalry with the Metropolitan when it opened its doors on November 16th. In a week or so he went to Boston, where after one or two performances the orchestra went on strike and the Imperial Opera Company went to pieces. With it the last effort of the veteran manager. Mapleson had held out a promise of the likelihood that Giordano would come to New York to give personal superintendence to the production of his opera and carried his fiction to the extreme of telling a reporter of The Sun newspaper that the composer was in the city. Meeting the reporter in the Academy of Music, I expressed my doubt touching the correctness of his information, whereupon he pointed out the gentleman whom Colonel Mapleson had introduced to him as the composer. It was Giordano, the barytone! After its introduction to America "Andrea Chenier" disappeared for nearly a dozen years, when, on March 27, 1908, it had a single performance at the Manhattan Opera House, so that Mme. Eva Tetrazzini, the wife of Cleofonte Campanini, who had retired from the stage, might help at a gala representation in honor of her husband.

No season since the Metropolitan Opera House was opened was so full of vicissitudes as that of 1896-97. First came the death of Mme. Klafsky, who, under the reciprocal arrangement between Mr. Damrosch and Abbey & Grau, was to sing the chief Wagner roles with Jean de Reszke. This happened in September, and was followed by the death of Mr. Abbey (nominally the leader of the managing directors, though from the beginning it was Mr. Grau who did the practical work of management), and of Mr. William Steinway, who had formulated and carried through the plan of reorganization which relieved the firm of Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau of its burden of indebtedness and transferred it to the shoulders of the Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau Company (Ltd.). Just before the season began Mme. Nordica, who had won her way to a high place in the favor of the public, and whose absence from the company's roster was widely and sincerely deplored, came forward with a story charging her failure to secure a re-engagement to the intrigues of Mme. Melba and M. Jean de Reszke. So far as the gentleman was concerned the story seemed improbable on its face, and long before the season was over Mme. Nordica was willing to admit publicly that she had been misinformed as to the facts in the case. It remained, however, that Mme. Melba had reserved the exclusive right to herself to sing the role of Brunnhilde in Wagner's "Siegfried." It soon turned out that the failure to secure Mme.

Nordica was to cost the management dear. Mme. Melba sang the part once, and so injured her voice that she had to retire for the season and cede the role to Mme. Litvinne (the Mlle. Litvinoff of Colonel Mapleson's company in 1885-86), who up to that time had not succeeded in convincing the public that she was equal to so great a responsibility, although she had been engaged to sing the part of Isolde after Mme. Klafsky's death and the failure of negotiations between Mr. Grau and Mme. Nordica. The manager's judgment was never at fault in these negotiations; he wanted to secure the services of Mme. Nordica, for he well knew their value, but the unhappy contract with Melba stood in his way, and Mme. Nordica was beyond his reach when the failure of Melba's voice and her departure for France on January 23d left the company crippled. Happily the popularity which Mme. Calve's impersonation of Marguerite in Gounod's "Faust" had found restored that perennial work to its old position as one of the princ.i.p.al magnets of the season. Mme. De Vere-Sapio was engaged to make possible the production of such operas as "Hamlet,"

"Le Nozze di Figaro," and Ma.s.senet's "Le Cid." Then there fell a double blow: Mme. Eames went into a surgeon's hands and Mozart's scintillant comedy had to be withdrawn. It was to have been given on February 10th.

Flotow's "Martha" was subst.i.tuted for it, and in the midst of the performance the representative of Tristan, M. Castelmary, fell on the stage, fatally stricken with heart disease.

It would be pleasant to say that the facts thus detailed exhaust the story of the inst.i.tution's misfortunes; but they do not. I have already told of its financial outcome. Throughout the season a determined and wicked effort was made to injure the opera, and was helped along by columns of idle speculation and gossip in three or four newspapers.

Without ground, so far as anybody could see, the notion was given publicity that there was grave doubt that opera would be given in the following year. The talk seemed wholly gratuitous, for if there were any signs of falling off in popular interest so far as the opera was concerned or in the confidence and satisfaction of the stockholders of the opera house company so far as Mr. Grau's administration was concerned, it escaped the notice of experienced and interested observers. The total attendance was larger than in the preceding season, and the interest displayed in the representations was fully as keen. But the newspaper gossips would have their way, and in the end turned out to be prophets, for there was no opera in 1897-98, for reasons which will have to be discussed in the next chapter.

The season began on November 16th. The regular subscription was for thirteen weeks, three nights a week and Sat.u.r.day afternoons. Extra subscription performances were thirteen Sat.u.r.day nights and three Wednesday afternoon representations at popular prices and an extra week--three nights and a matinee--at subscription prices. There were, therefore, in all, seventy-two performances, at which twenty-four different operas were brought forward, as shown in the table which is to follow. There was a less elaborate organization than in the preceding season, but the average merit of the performances was higher, there being no ill-equipped German contingent to spoil the record. There were, however, quite as many German performances without the special singers and the extra subscription. In place of the latter, an attempt was made to give extra Wednesday matinees, but the experiment was abandoned after three weeks.

The most sensational incident of the season was the collapse of Mme.

Melba after her ill-advised effort to sing the music of Brunnhilde. To the loveliness of her devotion and the loftiness of her ambition honest tribute must be paid, but it must also be said that nature did not design her to be an interpreter of Wagner's tragic heroines. Her vocal and temperamental peculiarities put a bar to her singing the Brunnhilde music. It did not lie well in her voice, and she was not then, and is not now, of the heroic mould, and her experience should have taught her that her voice would not admit of the expansion necessary to fit her for that mould. That the music wearied her was painfully evident long before the end of the one scene in which Brunnhilde takes part in "Siegfried." Never did her voice have the lovely quality which had always characterized it in the music of Donizetti and Gounod. It lost in euphony in the broadly sustained and sweeping phrases of Wagner, and the difference in power and expressiveness between its higher and lower registers was made pitifully obvious. The music, moreover, exhausted her. She plunged into her apostrophe with most self-sacrificing vigor at the beginning of the scene, and was prodigal in the use of her voice in its early moments; but when the culmination of its pa.s.sion was reached, in what would be called the stretto of the piece in the old nomenclature, she could not respond to its increased demands. It was an anti-climax. Wagner's music is like jealousy; it makes the meat it feeds on if one be but filled with its dramatic fervor. Recall what I have related of Mme. Lehmann's statement of how she was sustained by the emotional excitement which Wagner's dramas created in her, and how it made it easier for her to sing the music of Brunnhilde than that of Norma. But Mme. Lehmann was a woman of intense emotionality, and her voice was colored for tragedy and equal to its strain. It would be a happiness to say the same of Mme. Melba, but no judicious person would dream of saying it. "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory." Mme. Melba should have been content with her own particular glory.

Ma.s.senet's "Le Cid" was the only novelty of the season It was given on February 12, 1897, with the following distribution of parts:

Rodrigue (his original character) ............... Jean de Reszke Don Diegue (his original character) .......... edouard de Reszke Le Roi ........................................... Jean La.s.salle Le Conte de Gormas (his original character) ........ Pol Plancon St. Jacques | L'Envoye Maure | .................................. Jacques Bars Don Arras ......................................... Signor Corsi Don Alonzo ................................. Signor de Vaschetti L'Infante ................................... Clementine de Vere Chimene ......................................... Felia Litvinne

Conductor--Signor Mancinelli

The table of performances from 1893 to 1897 follows here:

PERFORMANCES IN REGULAR SUBSCRIPTION SEASONS

Operas 1893-94 1894-95 1895-96 1896-97

"Faust" ..................... 8 7 8 10 "Philemon et Baucis" ........ 4 0 2 1 "Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... 7 3 7 4 "Lohengrin" ................. 5 5 6 6 "Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 2 3 3 2 "Hamlet" .................... 1 0 2 1 "Romeo et Juliette" ......... 5 4 4 5 "Orfeo" ..................... 1 0 1 0 "Pagliacci" ................. 3 2 2 0 "Les Huguenots" ............. 2 6 5 2 "Carmen" ................... 12 7 11 7 "Don Giovanni" .............. 1 3 0 3 "Rigoletto" ................. 2 4 1 1 "Die Meistersinger" ......... 3 0 1 3 "L'Amico Fritz" ............. 2 0 0 0 "Semiramide" ................ 3 1 0 0 "Tannhauser" ................ 2 0 3 3 "Le Nozze di Figaro" ........ 3 0 0 0 "La Traviata" ............... 1 1 2 3 "Guillaume Tell" ............ 0 3 0 0 "Ada" ...................... 0 3 4 3 "Il Trovatore" .............. 0 3 2 2 "Otello" .................... 0 4 0 0 "Mignon" .................... 0 1 0 0 "Elaine" (Bemberg) .......... 0 2 0 0 "Manon" (Ma.s.senet) .......... 0 4 0 0 "Falstaff" .................. 0 3 3 0 "Samson et Dalila" .......... 0 1 0 0 "Tristan und Isolde" ........ 0 0 6 2 "L'Africaine" ............... 0 1 0 1 "La Favorita" ............... 0 0 2 2 "La Navarraise" ............. 0 0 4 0 "Fidelio" .................. 0 1 0 0 "Die Walkure" ............... 0 0 2 0 "Les Pecheurs de Perles" .... 0 0 1 0 "Mefistofele" ............... 0 0 2 4 "Martha" .................... 0 0 0 2 "Siegfried" ................. 0 0 0 6 * "Werther" ................. 0 0 0 1 "Le Cid" .................... 0 0 0 2

* "Werther" had a single performance in the supplemental season of 1893-94.

CHAPTER XIX

BEGINNING OF THE GRAU PERIOD

From 1896 to the end of the season 1902-03 Maurice Grau was in name as well as in fact the monarch of the operatic world of America. For a brief s.p.a.ce he also extended his reign to Covent Garden, but the time was not ripe for that union of interests between London and New York which has so long seemed inevitable, and his foreign reign was short. So was his American dictators.h.i.+p; but while it lasted it was probably the most brilliant operatic government that the world has ever known from a financial point of view, and its high lights artistically were luminous in the extreme. At the end of the period Mr. Grau had retired from operatic management forever, for though his desire to remain in active employment was intense, his mental powers unweakened, and his will strong, his health was hopelessly shattered, and before another l.u.s.trum had pa.s.sed he had gone down to his death, his last thoughts longingly fixed on the inst.i.tution which had brought him fame and fortune in abundant measure. For several years he had maintained a beautiful summer home at Croissy-Chatou, on the Seine, about ten miles from Paris. He died in the French capital on March 14, 1907, of a disease of the heart which had compelled his abandonment of active managerial life.

Mr. Grau was an Austrian by birth, his birthplace being Brunn; but he was brought to New York by his parents in 1854, when he was five years old, and all his education and business training was American. He pa.s.sed through the cla.s.ses of the city's public schools and was graduated from the Free Academy, now the College of the City of New York, in 1867. He then entered the Law School of Columbia College, and read law in the office of Morrison, Lauterbach & Spitgarn. His uncle, Jacob Grau, was an operatic and theatrical manager, and for him, as a boy, he sold librettos in his opera house. This opened the way into theatrical life, which proved to have such fascinations and hold such promises that he abandoned the law without having sought admission to the bar, and in 1872 also abandoned the service of his uncle and embarked on his career as manager. In a.s.sociation with Charles A. Chizzola, the joint capital amounting to $1,500, he engaged Aimee, a French opera bouffe singer, who had made a hit two years before at the Grand Opera House, for a season of seven weeks. His first week, in Bridgeport, Conn., paid the expenses of the entire engagement. Aimee came to America again and again, and always under Mr. Grau's management. The same year he managed the American tours of Rubinstein and Henri Wieniawski, both of whom came to America with the financial backing of Messrs. Steinway & Sons. It was before the days of phenomenal honoraria. Rubinstein was content with $200 a concert, and in eight months his energetic young manager had cleared $60,000 on his engagement alone. The next year he organized the Clara Louise Kellogg Opera Company, continued his management of Mlle.

Aimee, and brought to America the Italian tragedian, Tommaso Salvini.

In 1874 he managed three opera bouffe and operetta companies, besides Adelaide Ristori, and became lessee of the Lyceum Theater, in Fourteenth Street. There was a season of financial stress, and in 1875 he severed his connection with Chizzola, after another period of bad luck. In 1876 he gave concerts, directed by Offenbach, in the Madison Square Garden, which were a failure, but he recouped his losses from a forfeit of $20,000, which the Italian Rossi paid to him rather than give up a successful season in Paris. A highly successful tour of seventeen months in South America, Cuba, and Mexico with an opera bouffe troupe, headed by the tenor Capoul, and Paola Marie continued his successes. In 1883 began his a.s.sociation with Messrs. Abbey and Schoeffel, whose experiences, together with his own, at the Metropolitan Opera House have repeatedly formed the subject of discussion in these chapters of operatic history.

The story of the management of the Metropolitan Opera House ended in Chapter XVII with an account of the disasters which overtook Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau in 1897. Before the end of that season Mr. Grau announced, what had frequently been hinted at in the newspapers, that though he should obtain a lease of the opera house he would not give opera in 1897-98. The announcement had been received with incredulity, for though misfortune had overtaken the managers in Chicago and some of their other enterprises had been unfortunate, the New York season had turned out in all things successful. Besides, though, "Perjuria ridet amantum Jupiter," the public had long before learned to laugh at the oaths of managers. It turned out, however, that Mmes. Melba and Eames, who had become favorites of the stockholders, were not available for the next season, and the directors, who had learned to have confidence in Mr. Grau, were willing to let him make the experiment of a year of famine. As it turned out it cost them nothing except the performances, and Mr. Grau and the friends who had rallied around him very little money. The annual rental of $52,000 was made up to them by sub-rentals of the building to other managers, chiefly to Messrs. Ellis and Damrosch. Meanwhile the year of quiescence was put to a good purpose in strengthening the hold which Mr. Grau had resolved to obtain on opera in London as well as New York. Mr. Grau and his friends organized the Maurice Grau Opera Company and easily obtained a lease of the Metropolitan for three years and a release from the bankrupt corporation, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Ltd.). On May 4th the old company accepted a report which recited the story of the season 1896-97, recommended that it go out of business, and released Messrs. Schoeffel and Grau from an obligation which they had entered into with the company not to engage in opera management. All that remained for it to do was to realize on the only valuable a.s.set which it owned--the Tremont Theater, in Boston. This it soon did by selling the property to Mr. Schoeffel, who has managed it ever since.

The way now being open, Mr. Grau organized his new company, composed wholly of his friends. These were Edward Lauterbach, Charles Frazier, Robert Dunlap, Roland F. Knoedler, Henry Dazian, B. Franklin de Frece, F. W. Sanger, John W. Mackay, Sr., and Frederick Rullman. The capital stock, paid up, was $150,000, of which the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company subscribed to $25,000. Mr. Grau was elected president and general director, Mr. Lauterbach vice-president, and Mr. Frazier treasurer. Mr. Sanger was made a.s.sociate manager, with the specific duty of looking after the affairs of the house itself, and Mr. Ernest Goerlitz was appointed secretary.

There was no regular subscription at the opera house in the season of 1897-98, but the public were not without comfort. From January 17 to February 19, 1898, the Damrosch and Ellis company gave a series of performances which provided an excellent subst.i.tute. Opera-lovers were not even called on to forego the pleasure of hearing some of the singers whom they had come to consider essential to their happiness under the regime of Damrosch and Ellis's rivals. Mme. Melba was "not available"

for Mr. Grau, but she was for Mr. Ellis, who was managing all her American business, and she headed the company. With her were Mme.

Nordica and Mme. Gadski, and among old popular favorites were Emil Fischer and David Bispham. Other members of the company were Gisela Staudigl, who had been heard in the first German seasons; Mlle. Seygard, Mme. Brazzi, an American contralto with good presence, real warmth of feeling, and correct instincts; Miss Mattfeld, an extremely serviceable "juvenile," who remained such for years; Salignac and Rothmuhl, tenors respectively for the Italian and German operas; Campanari, barytone; Ibos, a tenor, and Boudouresque, a ba.s.s whose name was picturesque.

Melba added "Traviata" to her repertory at the opening performance, and later essayed "Ada," only to prove, as she had done in the case of "Siegfried," that there are things in music which are unlike the kingdom of heaven in that they cannot be taken by violence. The repertory consisted of "La Traviata," "Tannhauser" "Die Meistersinger," "Ada,"

"Lohengrin," "Il Barbiere," "Faust," "Der Fliegende Hollander," "Die Walkure," "Siegfried," "Gotterdammerung," and "Les Huguenots."

Before the next regular season began under the new Grau administration Mr. Seidl, who would doubtless have continued in a.s.sociation with the inst.i.tution with which he had long and efficiently been connected, died. The temporary suspension of the Metropolitan subscription season had forced him more actively than ever into the concert field. He had succeeded Mr. Theodore Thomas as conductor of the Philharmonic Society, and continued the popular triumphs of that organization. He had also organized a series of subscription orchestral concerts at the Hotel Astoria, and his friends were developing plans for a new endowed orchestra when he died, after an illness of only a few hours' duration, supposed to have been caused by ptomaine poisoning. This was on the night of March 28, 1898. His body was cremated after an imposing public funeral at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 31st, partic.i.p.ated in by the Musical Mutual Protective Union, Mannergesangverein Arion, the Philharmonic Society, German Liederkranz, the Rev. Merle St. Croix Wright, who delivered the memorial address, and Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, chairman of the committee of arrangements, who read a despatch received from Robert G. Ingersoll, who was absent from the city on a lecture trip. The pall-bearers were A. Schueler (who had been a cla.s.smate of the dead man at the Leipsic Conservatory); Oscar B. Weber, E. Francis Hyde (president of the Philharmonic Society); Henry Schmitt, Albert Stettheimer, Henry T. Finck (musical critic of The New York Evening Post); Walton H. Brown, Louis Josephtal, H. E. Krehbiel (chairman of the committee of arrangements and musical critic of The New York Tribune); Xavier Scharwenka, August Spanuth (musical critic of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung); Albert Steinberg (sometime musical critic of The New York Herald); the Hon. Carl Schurz, Charles T. Barney, Rafael Joseffy, Julian Rix, James Speyer, Edgar J. Levey (musical, critic of The New York Commercial Advertiser); Dr. William H. Draper, Richard Watson Gilder, Paul Goepel, E. M. Burghard, Eugene Ysaye, Victor Herbert, George G. Haven, Zoltan Doeme, Edward A. MacDowell, and Carlos Ha.s.selbrink.

Concerning Mr. Seidl's career I have already spoken at some length in these chapters; it will be long before those who knew him intimately will cease to talk about his personal characteristics, and to tell anecdotes which ill.u.s.trate those characteristics. He was one of those strong personalities that give an interest to all manner of incidents, even the commonplace. Like Moltke, he could hold his tongue in seven languages; but it is a fact that all his friends must have observed that his taciturnity never made his company any the less entertaining.

Moreover, when the mood was on him, he could talk by the hour, and then his reminiscences of the years spent in the household of Wagner or the story of his experiences while carrying the gospel of Wagner through Europe were full of fascination. But the talkative mood seldom came when a crowd was about him. He was indifferent to the many and fond of the few; so his circle of intimate friends never grew large in spite of the mult.i.tudes who sought his acquaintance, and though no combination of circ.u.mstances could disturb his self-possession he seemed to be most contented and comfortable when seated quietly with a single friend. Even under such circ.u.mstances he could sometimes sit for minutes at a time without speaking himself or expecting a word from his companion, yet never show a sign of weariness or ennui. In this particular he was something like Schumann, of whom it is related that once he spent an hour with a bright young woman to whom he was fondly attached without speaking a word. Knowing his peculiarities, she too remained silent, and was rewarded for her self-restraint when he departed by hearing him say that the hour had been one in which they had perfectly understood each other. Seidl's hero, Wagner, was the very opposite of Schumann in this particular, and there is a story which indicates that he must frequently have been amused at his pupil's reticence. Coming to a rehearsal once he found that Seidl had taken a cold which had robbed him completely of his voice, so that he could give no instructions to the musicians. Wagner laughed immoderately, and with mock seriousness upbraided him for his bad habit of talking too much, which had now brought him to the pa.s.s where he could not talk at all.

Seidl's epistolary habits were like his conversational--he wrote as little as he talked; but as the talking fit sometimes seized him, so did the writing fit. Then he could devote hours to a letter which had the proportions and sometimes the style of a formal essay. On such occasions he was so p.r.o.ne to drop into a pulpit manner that I once taxed him with it and asked an explanation. He paused for a moment and then smilingly made a sort of half-confession that he had once been destined for the priesthood. His Scriptural ill.u.s.trations and "preachy" manner were relics which had clung to him from that early day. They were the only academic traces about him, however. It is doubtful if any of his friends ever heard him discuss a question in the theory or history of music. How far his exact knowledge in the art went may not be said; but one thing is certain--his practical knowledge embraced every measure of Wagner's works.

He seldom spoke of his conservatory days at Leipsic, and then generally in a spirit of amus.e.m.e.nt. Complimented once by me on the excellence of his pianoforte playing, he said: "Oh, I made quite a stir at a conservatory examination once with Mendelssohn's 'Rondo Capriccioso.'

I was to be a pianist." That he could have been trained into a virtuoso of merit I can easily believe, for without paying much regard to the graces of pianoforte playing he yet had a remarkable command of those tone qualities which are so helpful in expressive playing. He was always eloquent at the pianoforte, especially when playing excerpts from the dramas of Wagner. Then his performances were peculiarly full and orchestral, a fact largely due to the circ.u.mstance that he never confined himself to pianoforte arrangements, but preferred to play from the orchestral score. That he appreciated the importance of giving consideration to the peculiarities of instrumental media he ill.u.s.trated once when at a private rehearsal of music for one of my Wagnerian lectures, at which he had intended to play, but had been prevented by a sudden duty-call at the opera, he quickened the tempo considerably for the pianist beyond that heard at his own readings of the opera, and added in explanation: "Nie langweilig werden am Clavier!" ("One must never be tedious at the pianoforte!")

A few first representations of operas in this period outside of the Metropolitan Opera House call for brief mention, if not for the sake of the excellence of the productions, at least for the sake of completeness in the record. Thus on May 16, 1898, a company of Italian singers, some of whom had been singing in Mexico, some in South America, some in San Francisco--the sort of a gathering that, I think, I have described in these pages as New York's ordinary summer operatic flotsam and jetsam--gave in Wallack's Theater the first representation of Puccini's "La Boheme" which New Yorkers heard in their own city. The company was first announced as the Baggetto Grand Italian Opera Company, which was probably its official style in Mexico. In New York a h.o.a.ry device of juggling with the name of Italy's chief opera house was resorted to, and it was called the Milan Royal Opera Company, of La Scala. Under either t.i.tle the company proved itself capable of a deal of stressful and distressful singing, though a good impression was made by Giuseppe Agostini, a youthful tenor, and Luigi Francesconi, a barytone. "La Boheme" was performed on the opening night of the company's brief season (it made s.h.i.+pwreck according to rule within four or five days), with the following distribution of parts:

Mimi ........................... Linda Montanari Musetta ...................... Cleopatra Vincini Rodolfo ...................... Giuseppe Agostini Marcello ..................... Luigi Francesconi Schaunard ..................... Giovanni Scolari Alcidero | Benoit |.................... Antonio Fumagalli Parpignol .................... Algernon Asplandi

Needless to say that scant justice was done to the play and score of "La Boheme" by the vagrant singers, and that the good opinion which the opera won later was shared by few among critics, lay and professional.

After ten years of familiar acquaintance with the work, I like it better than I did at first, but it has not yet taken a deep and abiding place in my affections. I see in it, however, an earnest and ingenious effort to knit music, text, and action closer together than it was the wont of Italian composers to do before the advent of Wagner set Young Italy in a ferment. Music plays a very different role in it than it does in the operas of Donizetti, Bellini, and the earlier Verdi. It does not content itself with occasionally proclaiming the mood of a situation or the feelings of a conventional stage person. It attempts to supply life-blood for the entire drama; to flow through its veins without ceasing; to bear along on its surface all the whims, emotions, follies, and incidents of the story as fast as they appear; to body them forth as vividly as words and pantomime can; to color them, vitalize them, arouse echoes and reflections of them in the hearts of the hearers. But this it can do only in a.s.sociation with other elements of the drama, and when these are presented only in part, and then crudely and clumsily, it must fail of its purpose. And so it happens that Puccini's music discloses little of that brightness, vivacity, and piquancy which we are naturally led to expect from it by knowledge of Murger's story, on which the opera is based, and acquaintance with the composer's earlier opera, "Manon Lescaut." One element the two works have in common: absence of the light touch of humor demanded by the early scenes in both dramas.

However, this is a characteristic not of Puccini alone, but all the composers in the Young Italian School. They know no way to kill a gnat dancing in the sunlight except to blow it up with a broadside of trombones. Puccini's music in "La Boheme" also seems lacking in the element of characterization, an element which is much more essential in comedy music than in tragic. Whether they are celebrating the careless pleasures of a Bohemian carouse or proclaiming the agonies of a consuming pa.s.sion, it is all one to his singers. So soon as they drop the intervallic palaver which points the way of the new style toward bald melodrama they soar off in a shrieking cantalena, buoyed up by the unison strings and imperiled by strident bra.s.s until there is no relief except exhaustion. Happy, careless music, such as Mozart or Rossini might have written for the comedy scenes in "La Boheme," there is next to none in Puccini's score, and seldom, indeed, does he let his measures play that palliative part which, as we know from Wagner's "Tristan" and Verdi's "Traviata,"--to cite extremes,--it is the function of music to perform when enlisted in the service of the drama of vice and phthisis.

On October 10, 1898, another band of strolling singers, which endured for a week at the Casino, also performed "La Boheme," and the Castle Square Opera Company of Henry W. Savage gave it in English at the American Theater on November 28th of the same year. It did not reach the Metropolitan Opera House until the season 1900-01.

Stockholders and subscribers of the Metropolitan Opera House having endured their year of privation, which, as we have seen, was not without its moments of refreshment, Mr. Grau opened the regular subscription season 1898-99 on November 29th. Its incidents of special interest were not many. One was the return of Mme. Sembrich, who made what Mr.

Sutherland Edwards called Rosina's "double entry" in Rossini's "Barber"

on the second night of the season--November 31st. On the third night Mme. Melba, who sang by the courtesy of Mr. Ellis, appeared in "Romeo et Juliette." There were first appearances of several artists whose names became fixed in the prospectuses for some years to come: Mme.

Ernestine Schumann-Heink as Ortrud in "Lohengrin" on January 9, 1899; Ernest Van Dyck as Tannhauser on the opening night; Albert Saleza as Romeo on December 2, 1898; Suzanne Adams as Juliet on January 4, 1899; Anton Van Rooy as Wotan in "Die Walkure" on December 14, 1898. Mr.

Franz Schalk, the conductor engaged for the German operas in place of Mr. Seidl, who had taken part with Mr. Grau in the summer season at Covent Garden and been engaged for the New York season that was to follow, introduced himself to New York on the same occasion.

Of acquaintances, more or less old, there were in the company besides Mmes. Sembrich, Eames, Lehmann, Nordica, and Mantelli, Miss Meisslinger, Miss Pevny, Frances Saville, Mr. Bispham, Mr. Dippel (who had been a member of the last German company in 1890-91), Pol Plancon, and Adolph Muhlmann. Newcomers besides those mentioned were Matilde Brugiere, Herman Devries (son of Mme. Rosa Devries, a dramatic singer of renown half a century before), Henri Albers, barytone, and Lempriere Pringle, an English singer, who had worked himself up in the ranks of the Carl Rosa Opera Company. The two brothers, Jean and edouard de Reszke, whom New York had come to look upon as indispensable to perfect enjoyment, were also members of the company. There were two cyclical performances of "The Ring of the Nibelung" to keep good Wagnerites in countenance, but Mr. Grau made his popular hit by a repet.i.tion of the device which had been successful before with "Faust"--he gave "Les Huguenots" with an "ideal cast." The device was simple, but it served.

Meyerbeer's opera had been given three times, when on February 20th he announced it with Mme. Sembrich in the cast, and an all-'round advance on prices on the basis of $7, instead of $5, for orchestra chairs.