Chapters of Opera Part 18

There is not a whiff of fresh and healthy air blowing through "Salome"

except that which exhales from the cistern, the prison house of Jochanaan. Even the love of Narraboth, the young Syrian captain, for the princess is tainted by the jealous outbursts of Herodias's page. Salome is the unspeakable; Herodias, though divested of her most p.r.o.nounced historical attributes (she adjures her daughter not to dance, though she gloats over the revenge which it brings to her), is a human hyena; Herod, a neurasthenic voluptuary. A group of Jews who are shown disputing in the manner of Baxter Street, though conveyed by Wilde from Flaubert's pages, are used by Strauss to provide a comic interlude.

Years ago a musical humorist in Vienna caused much amus.e.m.e.nt by writing the words of a quarrel of Jewish pedlers under the voices of the fugue in Mozart's overture to "The Magic Flute." Three hundred years ago Orazio Vecchi composed a burlesque madrigal in the severe style of that day, in which he tried to depict the babel of sounds in a synagogue.

Obviously the musical Jew is supposed to be allied to the stage Jew and to be fit food for the humorist. Strauss's music gives a new reading to Wilde; it is a caricature in which cacophony reigns supreme under the guise of polyphony. There are five of the Jews, and each is pregnantly set forth in the theme with which he maintains his contention.

This is but one of many instances of marvelous astuteness in the delineation and characteristic portions of the music. The quality which will he most promptly recognized by the public is its decorative and ill.u.s.trative element. The orchestra paints incessantly; moods that are prevalent for a moment do not suffice the eager ill.u.s.trator. The pa.s.sing word seizes his fancy. Herod describes the jewels which he promises to give to Salome so she relieve him of his oath, and the music of the orchestra glints and glistens with a hundred prismatic tints. Salome wheedles the young Syrian to bring forth the prophet, and her cry, "Thou wilt do this thing for me," is carried to his love-mad brain by a voluptuous glissando of the harp which is as irresistible as her glance and smile. But the voluptuous music is no more striking than the tragic.

Strauss strikes off the head of Jochanaan with more thunderous noise upon the kettle-drums than Wagner uses when Fafner pounds the life out of Fasolt with his gigantic stave; but there is nothing in all of Wagner's tragic pages to compare in tenseness of feeling with the moment of suspense while Salome is peering into the cistern and marveling that she hears no sound of a death struggle. At this moment there comes an uncanny sound from the orchestra that is positively blood-curdling. The mult.i.tude of instruments are silent--all but the string ba.s.ses. Some of them maintain a tremolo on the deep E flat. Suddenly there comes a short, high B flat. Again and again with more rapid iteration. Such a voice was never heard in the orchestra before. What Strauss designed it to express does not matter. It accomplishes a fearful accentuation of the awful situation. Strauss got the hint from Berlioz, who never used the device (which he heard from a Piedmontese double-ba.s.s player), but recommended it to composers who wished to imitate in the orchestra "a loud female cry." Strauss in his score describes how the effect is to be produced and wants it to sound like a stertorous groan. It is produced by pinching the highest string of the double-ba.s.s at the proper node between the finger-board and the bridge and sounding it by a quick jerk of the bow. This is but one of a hundred new and strange devices with which the score of "Salome" has enriched instrumental music. The dance employs a vast apparatus, but the Oriental color impressed upon it at the outset by oboe and tambour remains as persistent as its rhythmical figure, which seems to have been invented to mark the sinuous flexure of the spine and the swaying of the hips of the dancer. Devices made familiar by the symphonic poems are introduced with increased effect, such as the muting of the entire army of bra.s.s instruments. Startling effects are obtained by a confusion of keys, confusion of rhythms, sudden contrasts from an overpowering tutti to the stridulous whirring of empty fifths on the violins, a trill on the flutes, or a dissonant mutter of the ba.s.ses. The celesta, an instrument with keyboard and bell tone, contributes fascinating effects, and the xylophone is used;--utterances that are lascivious as well as others that are macabre. Dissonance runs riot and frequently carries the imagination away completely captive. The score is unquestionably the greatest triumph of reflection and ingenuity of contrivance that the literature of music can show. The invention that has been expended on the themes seems less admirable. Only the pompous proclamation of the theme which is dominant in Jochanaan's music saves it from being called commonplace.

A flippant hunter of reminiscences might find its prototype in the "Lady Moon" chorus of Balfe's "Bohemian Girl." There is no greater originality in the theme which publishes Salome's amorousness for the white flesh of Jochanaan, which time and again shows its kins.h.i.+p to the andante melody in the first movement of Tschaikowsky's "Pathetique" symphony, but becomes more and more transfigured in its pa.s.sionate loveliness when it aids the beatification of the more than ghoulish princess. There is no escape from the power of the music when it soars to grandiose heights in the duet between Salome 'and the prophet, the subsequent intermezzo and the wicked apotheosis. It overwhelms the senses and reduces the nervous system of the listeners to exhaustion.

The subscription season of 1906-07 at the Metropolitan Opera House began on November 26th and lasted seventeen weeks, compa.s.sing sixty-eight subscription performances of twenty-three operas and twenty-nine extra performances. Mr. Conried announced at the close of the supplementary season that his receipts had aggregated $1,005,770.20; but this sum doubtless included the receipts from the Boston season. The season 1907-08 began on November 18th and lasted twenty weeks. There were one hundred subscription performances (Thursday having been added to the subscription nights), twenty Sat.u.r.day popular representations, and three special. Twenty-seven operas were in the list, but only one of them was new. This was Francesco Cilea's "Adriana Lecouvreur," which was brought forward on the opening night of the season, and had one repet.i.tion afterward, notwithstanding that it had been incorporated in the repertory to give Signor Caruso an opportunity to appear in a new work together with Mme. Cavalieri. The cast was as follows:

Adriana Lecouvreur ........................ Lina Cavalieri La Principessa .......................... Josephine Jacoby Mlle. Jouvenot ............................ Marie Mattfeld Mlle. Dangeville ............................. Mme. Girerd Maurizio ................................... Enrico Caruso L'Abate .................................... Georges Lucas Michonnet ................................. Antonio Scotti Il Principe ............................... Marcel Journet Quinault .................................... Mr. Barocchi Poisson ..................................... Mr. Raimondi Maggiordomo ................................. Mr. Navarini Conductor, Rudolfo Ferrari

Cilea has in this work attempted to put the familiar play of Scribe and Legouve into music. Formerly, as we all know, composers used to try to make operas out of plays. The result is for the greater part a sort of spectacle recalling familiar things to the eye, accompanied by an undercurrent of music occasionally breaking into melody and buoying up long stretches of disjointed and fragmentary conversation, out of which, under the best of circ.u.mstances, it would be difficult to construct a drama and from which it is not possible to extract the pleasure which one can still find in the old-time style of entertainment derisively called a concert in costume. The manner of "Adriana Lecouvreur" is more or less that of Puccini, Giordano, and Spinelli--to mention the names that immediately preceded Cilea's across the ocean--but it is only in the manner, not in the matter, except, as some disagreeable seekers after reminiscences will say, when that matter is borrowed. There is some graceful music in the score and some strains which simulate.

pa.s.sion; but to find in any of its parts the kind of music which vitalizes the word or heightens the dramatic situation is a hopeless task. It is melodramatic music, which becomes most fluent when there is least occasion for it, and which makes its best appeal when the heroine declaims above it in the speaking voice (as she does in the climax of the third act, when Adrienne recites a speech from Racine's "Phedre"

in order to accuse the Princess of adultery), when it inspires the heroine carefully and particularly to blow out every light in a large drawing-room, or when it accompanies a ballet which is neither a part of the play nor an incidental divertiss.e.m.e.nt, but only a much-needed device to give the composer an opportunity for a few symmetrical pieces of music. Even here, however, this music must serve as a foil for the everlasting chit-chat of the people of the drama. A pitiful work it was with which to open a season. Mascagni's "Iris" was brought out on December 6th, and after it was all too late there was a carefully studied performance of "Don Giovanni" and a sumptuously, too sumptuously, mounted production of "Fidelio." These two works practically summed up the labors accomplished by Gustav Mahler, though he produced excellent representations (except scenically) of "Tristan"

and "Die Walkure." Mr. Mahler, having laid down the directors.h.i.+p of the Court Opera at Vienna, was brought to New York by Mr. Conried, and his coming had raised high the expectations of the lovers of German opera.

The record must also include the enlistment in the Metropolitan forces of Madame Berta Morena and Madame Leffler-Burckhardt, whose influence upon the season would have been much more marked had not Mr. Conried's policy of catering princ.i.p.ally to the Italianissimi prevented them from becoming as large factors as they deserved to be.

When Mr. Conried issued his prospectus for his fifth season it had already long been an open secret that some of the men whom he had invited to share the glories and the profits of his administration had decreed his downfall. During the fourth season he had been ill with sciatic neuritis, and there was no improvement in his physical condition when he entered upon his duties in 1907-08. His ability to attend to the arduous labors of the managing directorate was questioned. Worse than this, the air for months had been full of whispers of scandalous doings in the business department, and the chorus of dissatisfaction with the artistic results of his directorate, which had begun in the first season, had been swelling steadily. Two seasons before he had put forth a disingenuous apology for his administration, comparing the cost and difficulties of producing opera in the preceding season with the cost and difficulties under Mr. Grau. The matter was one which affected the stockholders of his company only so far as the finances were concerned; as to the difficulties, it was not easy to see how they could have been less formerly than now, when there was so much more money to spend, and so much more had been spent in improving the facilities for opera giving. The patrons of the establishment found large ground for complaint in contrasting the artistic achievements with the flamboyant promises which had been made when the new administration came in. Mr.

Conried had told them that his first aim was to raise the standard of performance, and to this end he had banished all thought of profit from his mind. He was going to continue to employ the most refulgent "stars" in the world, but to abolish the "star" system. The season in Philadelphia was to be abandoned so that there might be more time for rehearsals, and less exhaustion of his artistic forces. Opera in English was to be added to opera in Italian, French, and German. As for the French and Italian works they were to be given as they had been under Mr. Grau, but the German was to be raised to a higher plane. Not one of these promises was redeemed. Italian operas were given great prominence over French, and the additions to the Italian list, which were really new, were of the poorest sort. Perfunctoriness, apathy, and ignorant stage management marked the German performances, which were all but eliminated from the subscription list. There were evidences of high striving at the outset in the engagement of Messrs. Mottl, Lautenschlager, and Fuchs, as I have already said, but the results were negligible because the men were unable to employ their capacities.

There were sensational features, like the production of "Parsifal" and "Salome," but there were humiliating ones, like the prost.i.tution of a great establishment for the performance of "Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" to deck out the Herr Direktor's benefits. The blight of commercialism had fallen on the inst.i.tution. On February 11, 1908, Mr. Conried resigned, and announcement was officially made of a reorganization of his company, and the engagement of Giulio Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel as managers of the opera for the season 1908-09.

Following is a table of performances during the subscription seasons of Mr. Conried's administration:

THE CONRIED PERIOD: 1902-'08

Operas 1903-4 1904-5 1905-6 1906-7 1907-8

"Rigoletto" ................. 5 2 5 2 4 "Die Walkure" ............... 4 4 3 2 3 "La Boheme" ................. 3 3 5 7 7 "Ada" ...................... 6 5 4 6 5 "Tosca" ..................... 4 4 3 6 7 "Tannhauser" ................ 5 9 4 5 4 "Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... 8 3 0 1 0 "Pagliacci" ................. 5 3 3 4 4 "Lohengrin" ................. 5 6 5 5 2 "La Traviata" ............... 3 4 2 3 6 "Il Barbiere" ............... 4 2 2 0 6 "Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 3 3 5 4 1 "Tristan und Isolde" ........ 4 2 3 4 6 "The Magic Flute" ........... 4 0 0 0 0 "Siegfried" ................. 2 2 3 4 3 "L'Elisir d'Amore" .......... 4 1 2 0 0 "Carmen" .................... 4 4 2 1 0 "Coppelia" (ballet).......... 4 1 0 0 0 "La Dame Blanche" (Ger.) .... 1 0 0 0 0 "Faust" ..................... 4 4 5 4 6 "Mefistofele" .............. *2 0 0 0 7 "Romeo et Juliette" ......... 2 4 0 5 0 "Nozze di Figaro" ........... 1 2 0 0 0 + "Parsifal" ............... 11 8 4 2 0 "Fidelio" ................... 1 1 0 0 3 "Das Rheingold" ............. 1 2 2 1 0 "Gotterdammerung" ........... 1 2 3 1 0 "La Gioconda" ............... 0 4 4 0 0 "Die Meistersinger" ......... 0 7 4 0 4 "Lucrezia Borgia" ........... 0 1 0 0 0 "Don Pasquale" .............. 0 2 2 1 0 "Die Puppenfee" (ballet) .... 0 1 0 0 0 "Les Huguenots" ............. 0 4 0 0 0 "Un Ballo in Maschera" ...... 0 2 0 0 0 + "Die Fledermaus" .......... 0 4 1 0 0 "Die Konigin von Saba" ...... 0 0 5 0 0 "Hansel und Gretel" ......... 0 0 11 8 5 "La Favorita" ............... 0 0 4 0 0 "La Sonnambula" ............. 0 0 2 0 0 "Il Trovatore" .............. 0 0 4 0 6 "Don Giovanni" .............. 0 0 2 0 4 "Martha" .................... 0 0 4 3 3 "Der Zigeunerbaron" ......... 0 0 1 0 0 + "Fedora" .................. 0 0 0 4 3 + "La d.a.m.nation de Faust" ... 0 0 0 5 0 "Lakme" ..................... 0 0 0 3 0 "L'Africaine" ............... 0 0 0 2 0 "Manon Lescaut" ............. 0 0 0 3 5 "Madama b.u.t.terfly" .......... 0 0 0 5 6 + "Salome" .................. 0 0 0 1 0 + "Adriana Lecouvreur" ...... 0 0 0 0 2 "Der Fliegende Hollander" ... 0 0 0 0 4 "Iris" ...................... 0 0 0 0 5 "Mignon" .................... 0 0 0 0 5

* One scene only. + Novelties.

CHAPTER XXIII

HAMMERSTEIN AND HIS OPERA HOUSE

Before the close of the season 1905-06 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, who was building a large theater in Thirty-fourth Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues, announced that the building would be called the Manhattan Opera House, that it would be exclusively his property and under his management, and that it was to be devoted to grand opera.

It is no reflection on Mr. Hammerstein to say that many who have been prompt and generous in their recognition of his achievements since, looked upon his enterprise as quixotic, down to the very day of the opening of his house. True, he was known to be a manager of extraordinary resource and indomitable energy, but he had dallied more or less with the operatic bauble without disclosing any ambition to have his name written among the managerial wrecks which have been cast upon the sh.o.r.es of Italian Opera, from Handel's day to ours, It was easy to recall that the new opera house was not his first, but that he had built one in the same street, given it the same name thirteen years before, and begun a season of grand opera with an ambitious novelty, only to abandon the enterprise after a fortnight. He had even tried German opera with no less popular an artist than Mme. Lehmann in his earlier opera house in Harlem, and entered into rivalry with an established inst.i.tution in 1891 for the production of "Cavalleria Rusticana," then the reigning sensation of the hour in Europe.

When the old Manhattan Opera House, so soon abandoned to the uses of vaudeville, opened its doors with Moszkowski's "Boabdil," on January 23, 1893, there was no rival operatic establishment in the city, for the interior of the Metropolitan had been destroyed by fire, and Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau were resting on their oars for a season while the question whether or not the home of the costly and fas.h.i.+onable entertainment should be restored was under discussion by its owners.

Yet Mr. Hammerstein was discouraged by two weeks of failure. It was not strange that many observers refused to believe that he was of the stuff out of which opera managers are made. He did not seem illogical enough, though he showed some symptoms of having been bitten by the opera habit.

Neither was there much to encourage belief in his announcements in the manner in which he put them forth. He began early in the spring by saying that he had engaged Jean and edouard de Reszke, and kept their names before the people almost up to the time of the opening. He went abroad to engage artists, and even after his return it looked as if it would be a physical impossibility to complete his theater in time for the date set for opening. In fact it was not completed, but when the season arrived he was ready to attempt all that he had said he would do, except keep some wild promises about singers; and when the season closed the fact that loomed largest in the retrospect was the undaunted manner in which he had carried on a difficult and dangerous enterprise, compelling a large element of the public to respect and admire him, and making it possible for him to lay out a second season on lines of real pith and moment, and carry an admirable enterprise to an admirable conclusion.

Mr. Hammerstein began his first season on December 3, 1906, and closed it on April 20, 1907. There were a few admirable artists in his company, but the majority were either inexperienced or of the conventional Italian type. His princ.i.p.al soprano leggiero was Mlle. Pinkert, a Polish singer of good routine and fine skill; his dramatic soprano, Mlle. Russ, whose knowledge of the conventions of the stage was complete, and expressive powers excellent, though they exerted little charm. He had a serviceable mezzo in Mme. De Cisneros (formerly a junior member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, under her maiden name, Broadfoot). Miss Donalda, a Canadian soprano of no little charm, helped to make the lyric operas agreeable. But the strength of the company lay in the male contingent--Bonci, the most famous of living tenors, after Caruso, whom Mr. Conried thought it wise to carry over to the Metropolitan Opera House, thus precipitating a controversy, which, as such things go, was of real a.s.sistance to the manager whom the rival sought to injure; Maurice Renaud, the most finished and versatile of French operatic artists, whom the foresight of Maurice Grau had retained for the Metropolitan, but whose contract Mr. Conried canceled at the cost of a penalty; M. Charles Dalmores, a sterling dramatic tenor; M. Gilibert, a French baritone of refined qualities; Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, who, coming some years before in a peripatetic French company to the Casino, had stirred the enthusiasm of the critics with her truthful, powerful, and unconventional performance of Carmen; Ancona, a barytone who had been an admired member of the Metropolitan company, and a serviceable ba.s.s named Arimondi. Melba and Calve came later in the season.

Exaggerated stories of Mr. Hammerstein's success followed the close of his season, and if all that Mr. Hammerstein himself said could have been accepted in its literalness the lesson of the season would have been that the people who live in New York and come to New York in the winter season were willing to spend, let me say, one and three-quarter millions of dollars every year for this one form of entertainment. It would appear, also, that fad and fas.h.i.+on were not the controlling impulse in this vast expenditure; for the chief things which fad and fas.h.i.+on had to offer at the Metropolitan Opera House were noticeably absent from the Manhattan. On a score of occasions there were large gatherings representative of wealth and what is called society at the house in Thirty-fourth Street, but generally the audiences were distinct in their composition. It almost seemed as if Mr. Hammerstein had been correct in his deduction, that there were enough people in New York who wanted to go to the opera, but were excluded from the Metropolitan by the extent of the subscription, to support a second house. If this was so it marked a marvelous change from the time of the last operatic rivalry, which ruined both Mapleson and Abbey, and destroyed the prestige of the Academy of Music forever. Perhaps the city's growth in population and wealth furnished the explanation; I can scarcely believe from a study of the doings at the two houses that a growth in musical taste and culture was the determining factor. Twenty years ago such a list of operas as that presented by Mr. Hammerstein in his first season would have spelled ruin to any manager. Not even the prestige of Adelina Patti would have saved it. There was not a novelty in the list.

Many things contributed to the measure of success which Mr. Hammerstein won. There was a large fascination in the audacity of the undertaking, and its freedom from art-cant and affectation. Curiosity was irritated by the manager's daring, and admiration challenged by the manner in which he kept faith with the public. He seemed to be attempting the impossible, but he accomplished all that he said he would do. It is no secret--in fact, Mr. Hammerstein himself proclaimed it--that his artistic achievements were due in an overwhelming degree to the efficiency of Signor Cleofonte Campanini, his artistic director. But not to his efficiency alone--to his devotion and zeal also. Signor Campanini was not only the artistic director--he was also almost exclusively the conductor of the performances. His zeal fired all the forces employed at the opera house. A company gathered together from the ends of the earth succeeded in giving one hundred and thirteen performances of twenty-two operas, and making many of the performances of really remarkable excellence. The reason was obvious at nearly every presentation; from the princ.i.p.als down to the last person in the chorus and orchestra, every one had his heart in his work. Not only the desire to do their duty, but the pardonable ambition to do better than the rival establishment, inspired singers and players alike. It so happened that on one Sat.u.r.day evening the same opera--Verdi's "Ada"--was performed at both houses. A newspaper reporter carried the intelligence to the Manhattan Opera House that half the seats were empty at the Metropolitan, while the new house was crowded. The curtain was down at the time, and a score of the performers on the stage, headed by the conductor himself, at once formed a ring and danced a dance of triumph.

For musical effects, as well as some dramatic, there were distinct advantages with the new house. The disposition of the seats and stage brought the listeners and performers nearer together. The acoustical conditions at the Manhattan Opera House were admirable; there could be no such feeling of intimacy at the Metropolitan Opera House as existed here. The quality appealed to the music lover pure and simple, and him only, however, for in the things which make the opera a fas.h.i.+onable social diversion the new building was deficient and woefully inferior to the old.

The lovers of good singing were surprised by the excellence of Mr.

Hammerstein's singers, especially the male contingent--a surprise which was heightened by the protestations, to which they had long been habituated, that there was no talent left in Europe comparable with that engaged at the Metropolitan. When in the face of such a.s.sertions the voices and the art of tenors like Bonci and Dalmores, and of barytones like Renaud and Ancona, were brought into notice their actual merit seemed doubled. The women singers of the first rank, save Mmes.

Melba and Calve, who appeared in what would have been called "star"

engagements under the old theatrical stock regime, were in no way comparable with those of the Metropolitan Opera House, but those of the second rank were superior--a circ.u.mstance which was emphasized by the better ensemble performances, for which a discriminating public soon learned to thank Signor Campanini and the esprit de corps with which he inflamed the establishment's forces.

The opening of the season, on December 3 1906, had been proclaimed a week earlier, so as to make it synchronous with that of the Metropolitan Opera House; but Mr. Hammerstein's house was not ready, nor were his singers or stage fixtures. The fact looked ominous, and the enterprise took a lugubrious beginning a week later, when "I Puritani," which had been chosen as the opening opera because it was looked upon in Europe as affording to Signor Bonci his finest artistic opportunity, failed to arouse any public interest. It was an experience which Mr. Hammerstein was destined to have again and again with operas like "Dinorah,"

"Mignon," "Fra Diavolo," "Il Barbiere," and "Un Ballo in Maschera,"

for which the public seemed suddenly to have lost all liking, while still clinging to works of equal antiquatedness.

From the opening night to the closing the operas of the list were produced on the dates and in the succession indicated in the following table, which tells also the number of times each opera was performed.

It must be stated, however, that there were a number of occasions in the course of the season when two operas or portions of several operas were performed on a single evening. This accounts for the large number of times that Mascagni's "Cavalleria" and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci"

were given, the latter being also helped in the record by the fact that it was twice bracketed with Ma.s.senet's "Navarraise."

Opera First performance Times

"I Puritani" ................. December 3 ............. 2 "Rigoletto" .................. December 5 ............ 11 "Faust" ...................... December 7 ............. 7 "Don Giovanni" ............... December 12 ............ 4 "Carmen" ..................... December 14 ........... 19 "Ada" ....................... December 19 ........... 12 "Lucia di Lammermoor" ........ December 21 ............ 6 "Il Trovatore" ............... January 1 .............. 6 "La Traviata" ................ January 2 .............. 3 "L'Elisir d'Amore" ........... January 5 .............. 3 "Gil Ugonotti" ............... January 18 ............. 5 "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" .... January 21 ............. 2 "La Sonnambula" .............. January 25 ............. 3 "Pagliacci" .................. February 1 ............ 10 "Cavalleria Rusticana" ....... February 1 ............. 8 "Mignon" ..................... February 7 ............. 3 "Dinorah" .................... February 20 ............ 1 "Un Ballo in Maschera" ....... February 27 ............ 2 "La Boheme" .................. March 1 ................ 4 "Fra Diavolo" ................ March 8 ................ 4 "Marta" ...................... March 23 ............... 4 Manzoni Requiem (Good Fri.) .. March 29 ............... 1 "La Navarraise" .............. April 10 ............... 2

On three occasions the regular procedure was interrupted for the sake of matters of temporary and special interest. Thus, on March 2d, there was a miscellaneous bill, made up of an act of "Dinorah," one of "Faust," and all of "Cavalleria Rusticana"; on April 19th, the performance was little else than a concert, at which fragments of six operas, some of which were not in the repertory, were sung; while on Good Friday, Verdi's Requiem Ma.s.s, composed in honor of Manzoni, took the place of an opera, and was sung to popular prices, though it was on a regular opera night.

The subscription was so small that it seemed unnecessary to differentiate in the table between regular and extra performances. Of the latter there were twenty on Sat.u.r.day nights, at popular prices, besides others given on holidays and for benefits. Though it is to be noted as a matter of history that the compet.i.tion of the Manhattan Opera House did not appreciably affect the subscription of the Metropolitan, it is also to be noted that as a rule the attendance on the Sat.u.r.day night popular performances was larger at the new house.

A few of the incidents of the season deserve to be pa.s.sed in review.

Of the singers whose presence in Mr. Hammerstein's company lent distinction to it, Signor Bonci appeared on the opening night in "I Puritani." The opera failed to awaken interest, but Bonci caught the popular fancy and held it to the end. Toward the close of February, however, it was announced that he had made a contract with Mr. Conried to sing at the Metropolitan Opera House the next season. Mr. Hammerstein first met the move of his rival by announcing the engagement of Signor Zenatello, but afterward began legal proceedings to prevent Signor Bonci from fulfilling his contract with the manager of the house in upper Broadway. M. Renaud, the great French barytone, effected his entrance in "Rigoletto," but he was not in his best voice and condition, and only later conquered recognition for his fine talents. The opera, however, took its place on the popular list, since it employed, at different times, the finest talent at the command of the management.

The first large and complete triumph by an opera was won on December 14th, by "Carmen," in which Mme. Bressler-Gianoli appeared as the heroine. She enacted the part fifteen times before Mme. Calve came to take back the territory which had so long belonged to her.

A second success followed hard on the heels of "Carmen." This was "Ada," the triumph of which was one of ensemble, in which the chorus, under Signor Campanini, played no small part. Mme. Melba's coming, on January 2d, was the signal for the awakening of society's interest in Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise. She remained until March 25th, when she said farewell in a performance of Puccini's "Boheme," the production of which by Mr. Hammerstein in defiance of the rights of Mr. Conried (according to the allegations of the publishers, Ricordi) and the legal proceedings ending with the granting of an injunction against Mr. Hammerstein at the end of his season, was one of the diverting incidents of the merry operatic war. Mme. Melba sang three times in "La Traviata," five times in "Rigoletto," twice in "Lucia di Lammermoor," once in "Faust," and four times in "La Boheme."

The Bonci incident and the interest created in Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise by Mme. Melba's popularity stimulated interest in the offerings for a second season, which the manager answered by announcing the engagement, besides Zenatello and Sammarco, of Nordica and Schumann-Heink, and the re-engagement of Renaud, Bressler-Gianoli, Gilibert, and Dalmores. He also opened his subscription for the next season on March 19th, and announced the day after that he had received subscriptions amounting to $200,000, of which $110,000 had come from the four princ.i.p.al ticket speculators in the city. Mme. Calve, who was engaged to give eclat to the conclusion of the season, effected her entrance on March 27th, and sang nine times--four in "Carmen," three in "Cavalleria Rusticana," and two in "La Navarraise."

CHAPTER XXIV

A BRILLIANT SEASON AT THE MANHATTAN

The prospectus which Mr. Hammerstein published for his second season was magnificently grandiloquent in its promises, but the season itself marvelous in its achievements. Eight operas "never produced in this city or country," "masterpieces of the most celebrated composers," which were his "sole property," were to be brought forward, in addition to many familiar works. He announced the engagement of "the greatest sopranos, mezzo sopranos, contraltos, barytones, and ba.s.sos of the operatic world." The eight new operas were to be Ma.s.senet's "Thas," Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande," Charpentier's "Louise," Breton's "Dolores,"