Chapters of Opera Part 5

Whether or not my friend ever collected his bill I do not know; but this I do know, that when the colonel ended the campaign of 1884-'85 Mme.

Patti's name was on his list of creditors for a considerable sum--$5,000 or $6,000, I believe. The next time I met him he was sauntering about in what pa.s.ses for a foyer in Covent Garden Theater, London. The rose in his b.u.t.tonhole was not more radiant than he.

"What are you up to now, Colonel?" I asked him.

"In what respect?"

"In a business way, of course."

"Well," with a twinkling smile, "just now I am persuading Adelina to sing at my benefit."

"Will she do it?"

"I think she will" And she did.

Mapleson was one of the last of the race of managers who had practical training in the art in which he dealt commercially. He was a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in the violin cla.s.s, and had played in the orchestra at the opera. He had also studied singing, and in his youth tried his luck as an operatic tenor. In this he was like Maurice Strakosch, who played the pianoforte prodigiously as a child, studied singing three years with no less an artist than the great Pasta, and after singing for a s.p.a.ce at Agram turned his attention again to the pianoforte. He came to New York in 1848, and his first engagement was with Maretzek, at the Astor Place Opera House. Afterward he was a member of a traveling concert company, in which he was a.s.sociated with Amalia Patti, whom he married, and it was thus that he became the teacher, and, eventually, the manager of his sister-in-law, Adelina Patti. When Ronconi first appeared in America at Burton's Theater (which had been Palmo's Opera House), in the spring of 1858, Strakosch was the conductor. The last of the old opera managers whom I recall at this moment who were practical musicians as well, was Dr. Leopold Damrosch, who directed the destinies of the Metropolitan Opera House after one year of warfare with the Academy of Music had put Henry E. Abbey hors du combat for a while. Abbey came out of the ranks of theatrical managers, like Heinrich Conried, his only practical experience in music being as a cornet player in a bra.s.s band in Akron, Ohio, whence he came.

Strakosch's a.s.sociates, however, were not musical pract.i.tioners. Ullmann may have had some knowledge of music, but he was all showman. Thalberg, the pianist, was Ullmann's partner when Strakosch and Ullmann joined their forces in January, 1857, to manage the Academy of Music, but the new coalition was the sign of Thalberg's withdrawal from the managerial field.

Like Maretzek, in his Cincinnati experience, the virtuoso knew when he had enough. Strakosch's later a.s.sociates were his brothers, Ferdinand and Max. The former was the European agent for the firm, and the latter what might be termed the acting house man in the United States, especially during the later years of the Strakosch regime.

In Europe Maurice Strakosch was also a.s.sociated with Pollini, who afterward became a large factor in the field of German opera, as manager of the opera in Hamburg. Pollini had been Strakosch's office boy. His real name was Pohl, and he hailed from Cologne; but he, too, was a musician. Strakosch died in Paris in October, 1887. One night in July, 1886, I met him in the theater at Altona, whither I had gone to hear a performance of "Der Trompeter von Sakkingen," then the rage throughout Germany. He asked me to drive back to his hotel in Hamburg with him, for his physician had told him that day that he might drink a gla.s.s of beer, the first in six months, and he wanted a friend to share the pleasure with him. I brought him the latest news from the opera houses of New York, and, also, the intelligence that Pollini had just engaged Mme.

Sembrich for a season at some 5,000 francs a night.

"We quit partners.h.i.+p," said he, "back in the 70's because Pollini thought that money was no longer to be made in Italian opera, and wanted to take up German opera exclusively. I didn't agree with him, and went on with Nilsson and the rest. He got rich and I got poor, and now he's going back into the Italian field. He'll rue it."

Call the roll of some of the best of the singers whose American careers are chiefly bound up with the history of the Academy of Music: Grisi, Mario, Vestvali (a much admired contralto), Badiali, Amodio (barytone), Steffanone, Brignoli, Lagrange, Mirate, D'Angri, Piccolomini, Adelina Patti, Kellogg, Nilsson, Campanini, Lucca, Cary, Parepa, Albani, Hauk, Gerster, Nevada. There are others whom fond recollection will call back, some belonging indubitably to the first rank, like Maurel, some who will live on because they gladdened the hearts of the young people of a generation ago, who were more impressionable than critical. Some men of middle age (as they think) now will not want to forget Mlle. Ambre or Mlle. Marimon, and will continue to forgive the homely features of Mme.

Scalchi for the sake of her perfect physical poise and movement as the page in "Les Huguenots," as others forgave the many registers of her voice because of her joyous volubility of utterance. Doubtless, too, there are matrons of to-day who will remember the singing of Ravelli with as much pleasure as I recall it, and the shapely legs of the young tenor that walked off with the heart (we also had a story of a diamond ring) of a young singer from California, who afterward made a name for herself in Paris, with more enthusiasm than I could possibly feel.

Some of these singers became intimately a.s.sociated with New York life in a social way. Annie Louise Cary, after her marriage to Charles Monson Raymond, lived for years in a cheery apartment at No. 20 Fifth Avenue, sang occasionally with the choir in the West Presbyterian Church, in Forty-second Street, and shed suns.h.i.+ne over a circle of friends who loved her as enthusiastically as a woman as they had admired her as an artist. Now her home is in Norwalk, Conn. Her first operatic engagement was at Copenhagen, and she spent two seasons in the opera houses of the Scandinavian peninsula, and one at Brussels before the Strakosch brothers brought her to the United States, in 1870. The first season she sang in concert with Nilsson, the second (1871-72) in opera, the third with Carlotta Patti and Mario in concert; and thereafter till her retirement in 1882 in both concert and opera, winning and holding an almost unparalleled popularity. In the Strakosch company of 1873-74 she was one of a galaxy of artists that the opera-goers of that period, who are still living, will never cease to think of without a swelling of the heart--Nilsson, Cary, Campanini, Capoul, Maurel, Del Puente, and others.

Campanini remained the tenor of tenors for New Yorkers for a decade longer. Abbey took him away from Mapleson for the first season of the Metropolitan Opera House, and, after the introduction of German opera there, his local career was practically at an end. He died in 1896 in Italy, whither he had returned on retirement. His dramatic style improved as his voice decayed. When he first came he was chiefly a lyrical singer; his Elvino was delicious beyond description. In his last years he had taken on robust stature, and his pa.s.sionate utterances in "Carmen" and "Ada" will live till the end in the memory of those who heard them. He was proud of his skill as a singer pure and simple, though he was more or less of a "naturalist," as the Germans call a singer who owes more to nature than to artistic training. How greatly he admired the perfection of his "attack" is ill.u.s.trated in an incident which twice grieved the soul of Theodore Thomas and some other sticklers for the verities in cla.s.sical music.

At the Cincinnati Music Festival, in May, 1880, Mr. Thomas brought forward Beethoven's Ma.s.s in D, the great "Missa Solemnis." In the first movement, "Kyrie," of this work Beethoven has created an effect of surpa.s.sing beauty in the successive introduction of the solo voices. At the outset there is a cras.h.i.+ng chord from all the forces, including the full organ. The thundering sound ceases abruptly, leaving the solo tenor voice sustaining a tone seemingly in midair. Another loud crash projects the solo contralto voice, and so on. The effect is transporting; but the obvious intention of the composer and the loveliness of his device weighed nothing in Campanini's mind against the fact that it interfered with popular appreciation of the "attack," of which he was proud. So he calmly waited until the colossal D major chord was silenced, then intoned his D softly, and made a beautiful crescendo upon it. After a rehearsal I ventured to call his attention to the beautiful effectiveness of Beethoven's device, but he answered: "It is music for the head, not for the heart. If I sing it so the audience will not hear my beautiful attack."

And at the concert he perverted the text to gratify his vanity. I reminded Mr. Thomas of the incident two years later, when he gave the ma.s.s at the festival held in the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York.

Campanini was to sing in it again. Mr. Thomas said he would set him right, but at the performance we were again cheated of Beethoven's effect in order that the tenor might make his. When Campanini died Philip Hale set down his estimate of him in these words:

No tenor who has blazed here above the opera horizon has fully equaled in brilliancy Campanini at his zenith. De Reszke, in point of personal refinement, is a greater artist, but his voice is inferior, and his dramatic action lacks the elementary force shown by Campanini when aroused. De Lucia is a greater actor of melodramatic parts, but his voice is too shrill. Tamagno in "Otello" is beyond comparison, but that is his one opera. . . . Of all tenors who have visited us since 1873 the greatest, viewed from all points, was Campanini.

The popular idol before Campanini was Brignoli, who held his own from the first days of the Academy until within less than a decade of its collapse. For some years before the Mapleson era, however, he had dropped out of the Italian operatic ranks and sung in English companies, and in concerts. It was in such organizations that I first heard him some twelve or fifteen years after he had become the popular "silver-voiced tenor" of New York. He came to New York in 1855, and his career was American, though it was in Paris that Strakosch heard him and turned his face toward America. He lived in New York, singing and occasionally managing companies in which he sang, till October, 1884, when he died. He was twice married, the first time to Kate Duckworth, an English contralto, known on the platform as Mlle. Morensi, and, after her death, to Isabella McCullough, an American soprano. Richard Grant White's mind was still obsessed by memories of Salvi, Benedetti, and Mario when Brignoli was basking in the suns.h.i.+ne of popular favor, and his estimate of the tenor in The Century Magazine for June, 1882, is scarcely flattering either to the singer or the public that liked him.

It was Mr. White's observation that Brignoli came into the swim at the time that the young woman of New York became the arbiter of art and elegance. Says Mr. White:

Her admiration of Brignoli was not greatly to the credit of her taste.

He had one of those tenor voices that seem like the bleating of a sheep made musical. His method was perfectly good; but be sang in a very commonplace style, and was as awkward as the man that a child makes by sticking two skewers into a long potato; and he walked the stage, hitching forward first one side and then the other, much as the child would make his creature walk. But he was a very "nice" young man, was always ready to sing, and faute de mieux it became the fas.h.i.+on with the very young to like him. But there never was a tenor of any note in New York whose singing was so utterly without character or significance and who was so deficient in histrionic ability. His high and long continued favor is one of those puzzling popular freaks not uncommon in dramatic annals.

Let us hope, in a spirit of Christian charity and something more selfish, that Brignoli never read these severely critical words.

His vanity was that of a child, and they would have grieved him inordinately. There was truly something of the bleat in his voice, and his walk on the stage, whether in concert or opera, was provocative of the risibles, but even his mannerisms were fascinating. Shall we, because a critic did not like him, be ashamed for having thrilled a little when we heard his "Coot boy, sweetheart, c-o-o-o-t boy!" thirty years ago? I trust not. And if he were here again, and his manager were to come with the old request, "Do me a favor, won't you, and if you chance to meet dear old Brig say something pretty to him and help me keep him in a good humor against the concert to-night--admire his teeth and compliment him on his youthful appearance"--we should do it for old sake's sake, and with a heart full of grat.i.tude. No one could know Brignoli and remain in ignorance of his frailties and foibles. He probably ate as no tenor ate before or since--ravenously as a Prussian dragoon after a fast. No contracts did he sign on a Friday or on a thirteenth day, and he lived in perpetual dread of the evil eye. Part of his traveling outfit was a pair of horns, which he relied upon to s.h.i.+eld him in case the possessor of the jettatura should get into his room and he not have his fingers properly posed. I had been four years in the turmoil of New York's musical life when Brignoli died; I cannot recall an unkind word that was ever spoken of him.

CHAPTER VIII

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE

Not the chronicler of musical doings but the historian of society should discuss the genesis of the Metropolitan Opera House, which came twenty-five years ago to displace the Academy of Music as the home of grand opera in New York. In the second of these "Chapters of Opera"

I cited the Metropolitan Opera House as the last ill.u.s.tration of the creative impulse which springs from the growth of wealth and social ambition, and stated that it marked the decay of the old Knickerbocker regime, and its amalgamation with the newer order of society. Before this latter occurrence, however, it had become plain that the Academy of Music could not accommodate all the representatives of the two elements in fas.h.i.+onable society, who, for one reason or another, wished to own or occupy the boxes which were the visible sign of wealth and social position. There was no manifest dissatisfaction, either, with the Academy of Music or with the performances under the direction of Colonel Mapleson, though these were conventional enough and the dress of the operas looked particularly shabby in contrast with the new scenery and costumes at the new theater when once the rivalry had begun. The house being satisfactory, popular taste contented with the representations, and there being no evidences of insufficient room in any part of the audience room except the private boxes, it seems obvious to the merest observer from without that social and not artistic impulses led to the enterprise which produced the new establishment.

The Metropolitan Opera House was built in the summer of 1883. The corporation which built it was called the Metropolitan Opera House Company (Limited), and its leading spirits were James A. Roosevelt, the first president of the board of directors; George Henry Warren, Luther Kountze, George Griswold Haven, who remained the active head of the amus.e.m.e.nt committee from the beginning till he died last spring; William K. Vanderbilt, William H. Tillinghast, Adrian Iselin, Robert Goelet, Joseph W. Drexel, Edward Cooper, Henry G. Marquand, George N. Curtis, and Levi P. Morton. The building is bounded by Broadway, Seventh Avenue, Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets. About one-quarter of the s.p.a.ce is devoted to the audience room, another quarter to the stage and accessories, and the rest to administrative offices, apartments, etc.

Its cost, including the real estate, was $1,732,978.71, and so actively was the work of construction pushed that the portion of the building devoted to the opera was completed when the first performance took place on October 22, 1883. J. Cleaveland Cady, the architect, had had no previous experience in building theaters, to which fact must be ascribed a few impracticable features of the house, most of which have since been eradicated, but he had made a careful study of the plans of the most celebrated opera houses of Europe, and the patrons of the house still have cause to be grateful to him for the care with which he looked after their safety and comfort. Since then the appearance of the interior has been changed very considerably. The two tiers of boxes were where they are now, but their fronts were perpendicular, and there was no bulging curve at the proscenium. Besides the two tiers of boxes, as they exist at present, there were twelve baignoirs, six on a side at the stage ends of the parquet circle, so-called. These were found to be unprofitable, and were abolished when the house was remodeled about ten years after the opening. The decoration of the interior was intrusted to E. P.

Tredwill, an architect of Boston, who followed Mr. Cady's wishes in avoiding all garish display and tawdry effect. The deepest color in the audience room was the dark, rich red of the carpet on the floor. The silk linings of the boxes and the curtains between them and the small salons in the rear were of fabrics specially made for the purpose. They had an old gold ground and large, raised figures of conventional design in a darker shade, with dark red threads. The tier fronts, ceiling, and proscenium were of a light color, the aim having been to obtain a prevailing tint of ivory. Amid the filigree designs of the pilasters, which carried the work above the curtain opening, were pictures of singing and playing cherubs, and back of the bold consoles, which projected from the side walls, were figures called "The Chorus" and "The Ballet," painted by Francis Maynard, while above the middle of the opening, in a segmentary arch, was an allegory, with Apollo as the central figure, by Francis Lathrop. Statues of the Muses filled niches on both sides of the consoles. Over the ceiling, amidst the entwinings of ornamental figures, on a buff ground, were spread a large number of medallions of oxidized metal, which, in the illumination from the lights, shone with a copper l.u.s.ter. The house was lighted by gas, though preparations had been made for the installation of electrical appliances when that form of illumination should be found justified by economy. As originally built, the orchestra was sunk sufficiently below the level of the floor to conceal the performers from all but the occupants of the upper tiers. In the hope of attaining improved acoustic effects the floor of the orchestra was laid upon an egg-shaped sound-chamber of masonry. The innovation did not meet with the approval of Signor Vianesi, the first musical director at the opera house, and, after an experimental rehearsal, the floor was raised so that the old conditions obtained when the performances began. So the orchestra remained, the players spoiling the picture on the stage, until "Lohengrin" came to a performance. Then Signor Vianesi was prevailed upon to try the arrangement from which Mr. Cady had expected fine artistic results.

The effect was good, and the device was adhered to for a s.p.a.ce, and in more or less modified form ever since, though there has been continual experimentation with the disposition of the instrumentalists.

Operatic performances began at the new house on October 22, 1883, and after sixty-one representations, at which nineteen operas were produced, the first season came to an end. I shall tell the story of the season in greater detail in the next chapter, contenting myself for the present with an account of the results of the merry war which ensued between the rival establishments. Colonel Mapleson was intrenched in the Academy of Music, which opened its doors for its regular season on the same evening. The advantage lay with Mr. Henry E. Abbey, who had a new house, the fruit of an old longing, and the realization of long cherished social aspirations. With the Academy of Music there rested the charm of ancient tradition, more potent then than it has ever been since, and the strength of conservatism. There were stars of rare refulgence in both constellations, which met the Biblical description in differing one from another in their glory. With Colonel Mapleson was Mme. Adelina Patti, who, in so far as she was an exponent of the art of beautiful vocalization, was without a peer the whole world over. She served then to keep alive the old traditions of Italian song as Mme. Sembrich does now. At her side stood Mme. Etelka Gerster, with a voice youthful, fresh, limpid, and wondrously flexible, and a style that was ripening in a manner that promised soon to compa.s.s all the requirements of the Italian stage from the sentimental characters in which she won her first successes to the deeper tragic parts which had begun to make appeal to her ambition. With Mr. Abbey was Mme. Christine Nilsson. Mme. Patti, though she had grown to womanhood and effected her entrance on the operatic as well as concert stage in New York, was not so familiar a figure as Mme. Nilsson. Patti had begun her operatic career at the Academy of Music in 1859, and had gone to Europe, where she remained without revisiting her old home until the fall or winter of 1881, when she came on a concert trip. The trip was more or less a failure, the public not yet being prepared to pay ten dollars for a reserved seat to hear anybody sing. After singing at a concert for the benefit of the sufferers from forest fires in Michigan, she announced a reduction of prices to two dollars for general admission, and five dollars for reserved seats. Under these conditions business improved somewhat, but in February, 1882, she found it necessary to organize an opera company in order to awaken interest fairly commensurate with her great merit and fame. It was a sorry company, and the performances, only a few, took place in the Germania Theater, on Broadway, at Thirteenth Street, formerly Wallack's; but they were received with much enthusiasm. So far as London was concerned, she was under engagement at the time to Mr.

Gye, Colonel Mapleson's rival at Covent Garden. Mr. Abbey claimed that he had an option on any American engagement for opera, but she appeared next season at the Academy, and the doughty English manager held her as his trump card in the battle royal which ensued on the opening of the Metropolitan.

In the twenty years of Mme. Patti's absence from New York, Mme. Nilsson, who had come to the metropolis in the heyday of her European fame in 1870, had won her way deep into the hearts of the people. In 1883 she was no longer in her prime, neither her voice nor her art having stood the wear of time as well as those of Mme. Patti, who was six months her senior in age, and five years in stage experience, but she was more than a formidable rival in the admiration of the public. She was no less happy in the companions.h.i.+p of Mme. Sembrich as a junior partner than Patti was with Mme. Gerster. Both of the younger singers were fresh from their first great European successes. Three years later Mme. Gerster went back to Mme. Marchesi, her teacher, with her voice irreparably damaged. "The penalty of motherhood," said her friends; "the result of worry over the failure to hold her place in the face of opposition,"

said more impartial observers. Mme. Sembrich went back to Europe to continue her triumphs after disaster had overtaken her first American manager, and in a decade returned, to remain an ornament of the Metropolitan ever since.

In Mr. Abbey's ranks were also Mme. Fursch-Madi, Mme. Scalchi, Mme.

Trebelli, Mme. Lablache (who gave way to her daughter till a quarrel over her between the impresarios was determined), and Mme. Valleria, who had come to the Academy some time before from London, though she was a Baltimorean by birth--a sterling artist who is remembered by all connoisseurs with grat.i.tude and admiration. Chief among Colonel Mapleson's masculine forces was Signor Gala.s.si, a somewhat rude but otherwise excellent barytone. At the head of the tenors was Signor Nicolini, the husband of Mme. Patti, who sang only when she did, but not always. The circ.u.mstance that Mme. Patti insisted upon his engagement, also, whenever she signed a contract gave rise to a malicious story to the effect that she had two prices, one of, let us say merely for ill.u.s.tration, 6,000 francs for herself alone, one of 4,000 francs for herself and Nicolini. The rest of the male contingent was composed mostly of small fry--Vicini, Perugini, and Falletti, tenors, Cherubini and Lombardini, ba.s.ses, and Caracciolo, buffo. Mr. Abbey had carried off three admired men singers from the Academy--Campanini, Del Puente, and Novara--and brought an excellent barytone, Kaschmann, from Europe, and a redoubtable tenor, Stagno.

There was little to interest a public supposedly weary of the barrel-organ list in the promises made in the rival announcements.

Colonel Mapleson held forth the prospect of Patti in Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette," and "Mireille" (in Italian, of course), as well as in Rossini's "La Gazza ladra," a forgotten opera then and again forgotten now; other old works which were to be revived for her and Mme. Gerster were "Crispino e la Comare," and "L'Elisir d'Amore." Mme. Pappenheim's presence as the dramatic soprano of the company (a less necessary personage in the companies of that day than now) led to the promise of "Norma" and "Oberon." Only the Italian work was given. Mr. Abbey's book of good intentions embraced twenty-four operas, all of them familiar except "La Gioconda," which had been the novelty of the preceding London season.

The outcome of the battle between the opera houses was defeat for both.

The Academy of Music survived for two more campaigns, out of which the new house came triumphant, while the old went down forever. It was different with the men. Mr. Abbey retired after one season, forswearing opera, as he said, for all time; Colonel Mapleson, though defeated, was a smaller loser, and he was not only brave enough to prepare for a second encounter, but also adroit enough to persuade Mme. Patti to place herself under his guidance again. Mr. Abbey's losses have been a matter of speculation ever since. It was known at the time that he had lost all the profits of three or four other managerial enterprises, and some years ago I feared that I might be exaggerating when I set down the deficit of the Metropolitan Opera House in its first season at $300,000.

As I write now, however, I have before me a letter from Mr. John B.

Schoeffel, who was a.s.sociated with Mr. Abbey as partner, in which he says that the losses of the season were "nearly $600,000."

[The operas performed at the Academy of Music in the season 1883-1884 were: "La Sonnambula," "Rigoletto," "Norma," "Faust," "Linda di Chamouni," "La Gazza ladra," "Marta," "La Traviata," "Ada," "L'Elisir d'Amore," "Crispino e la Comare," and "Les Huguenots" (in Italian).]

CHAPTER IX

FIRST SEASON AT THE METROPOLITAN

Twenty-five years ago there was no opera in the current repertory comparable in popularity with "Faust." If I am told that neither is there to-day I shall neither gainsay my informant nor permit the fact to give me heartburnings in spite of my att.i.tude toward the modern lyric drama. To that popularity Mme. Nilsson contributed a factor of tremendous puissance. No singer who is still a living memory was so intimately a.s.sociated in the local mind with Gounod's masterpiece as she, whose good fortune it had been to recreate the character of Marguerite, when, on March 3, 1869, the opera in a remodeled form was transferred from the Theatre Lyrique to the Grand Opera in Paris. Coming to New York soon afterward, it was she who set the standard by which, for a long time, all subsequent representatives of the character were judged. With her, Mme. Scalchi (who never had more than one rival in the part of Siebel so far as New Yorkers are concerned, viz., Annie Louise Cary), and Signor Campanini (the most popular Faust who has ever sung in New York) in the company, it was no wonder that the opera was chosen for performance on the opening night at the Metropolitan Opera House on October 22, 1883. The opera was sung in Italian, no manager's fancy having yet attained such a conception, as that all operas ought to be sung in the language in which they were composed--and might be; for this reason the names in the cast, though given in their familiar French forms may be transliterated into Italian if so they will better please the reader. The cast then was as follows: Marguerite, Mme. Nilsson; Siebel, Mme. Scalchi; Martha, Mlle. Lablache (whose mother had been expected to appear in the part, but was prevented by judicial injunction); Faust, Signor Campanini; Valentine, Signor Del Puente; Mephistopheles, Signor Novara.

The performance did not differ materially from many which had taken place in the Academy of Music when the same artists took part. All the princ.i.p.al artists, indeed, had been heard in the opera many times when their powers were greater. Mme. Nilsson had been thirteen years before the American public, and though in this period her art had grown in dignity and n.o.bility, her voice had lost the fresh bloom of its youth, and her figure had begun to take on matronly contours. Still, she was a great favorite, and hers was an extraordinary triumph, the outburst of popular approbation coming, as was to have been expected, in the garden scene of the opera. Referring to my review of the performance which appeared in The Tribune of the next day, I note that till that moment there had been little enthusiasm. After she had sung the scintillant waltz, however, "the last film of ice that had held the public in decorous check was melted," and an avalanche of plaudits overwhelmed the fair singer. Bouquets rained from the boxes, and baskets of flowers were piled over the footlights till it seemed as if there was to be no end.

In the midst of the floral gifts there was also handed up a magnificent velvet casket inclosing a wreath of gold bay leaves and berries, ingeniously contrived to be extended into a girdle to be worn in the cla.s.sic style, and two gold brooch medallions, bearing the profiles of Tragedy and Comedy, with which the girdle was to be fastened. The donor was not mentioned, but an inscription told that the gift was in "commemoration of the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House." Signor Campanini had spent the year before the opening in retirement, hoping to repair the ravages made in his voice by the previous seasons at the Academy of Music, and, I regret to say, possibly his careless mode of life. His faults had been conspicuous for several seasons, and the hoped-for amendment did not discover itself. "Occasionally the old-time sweetness, and again occasionally the old-time manly ring was apparent in his notes, but they were always weighted down by the evidences of labor, and the brilliancy of the upper tones with which he used to fire an audience into uncontrollable enthusiasm was gone."

The regular subscription nights at the Metropolitan in the first season, and for all the seasons that followed down to that of 1907-08, were Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with afternoon performances on Sat.u.r.days. On the second night of the season, October 24, 1883, Mr.