Memoirs of an American Prima Donna Part 3

From a photograph by Sarony]

It was almost time for my _debut_, and there was still something I had to do. To my sheltered, puritanically brought up consciousness, there could be no two views among conventional people as to the life I was about to enter upon. I knew all about it. So, a few weeks before I was to make my professional bow to the public, I called my girl friends together, the companions of four years' study, and I said to them:

"Girls, I've made up my mind to go on the stage! I know just how your people feel about it, and I want to tell you now that you needn't know me any more. You needn't speak to me, nor bow to me if you meet me in the street. I shall quite understand, and I shan't feel a bit badly.

_Because I think the day will come when you will be proud to know me!_"

CHAPTER III

"LIKE A PICKED CHICKEN"

Before my _debut_ in opera, Muzio took me out on a concert tour for a few weeks. Colson was the _prima donna_, Brignoli the tenor, Ferri the baritone, and Susini the ba.s.so. Susini had, I believe, distinguished himself in the Italian Revolution. His name means _plums_ in Italian, and his voice as well as his name was rich and luscious.

I was a general utility member of the company, and sang to fill in the c.h.i.n.ks. We sang four times a week, and I received twenty-five dollars each time--that is, one hundred dollars a week--not bad for inexperienced seventeen, although Muzio regarded the tour for me as merely educational and part of my training.

My mother travelled with me, for she never let me out of her sight. Yet, even with her along, the experience was very strange and new and rather terrifying. I had no knowledge of stage life, and that first _tournee_ was comprised of a series of shocks and surprises, most of them disillusioning.

We opened in Pittsburg, and it was there, at the old Monongahela House, that I had my first exhibition of Italian temperament, or, rather, temper!

When we arrived, we found that the dining-room was officially closed. We were tired out after a long hard trip of twenty-four hours, and, of course, almost starved. We got as far as the door, where we could look in hungrily, but it was empty and dark. There were no waiters; there was nothing, indeed, except the rows of neatly set tables for the next meal.

Brignoli demanded food. He was very fond of eating, I recall. And, in those days, he was a sort of little G.o.d in New York, where he lived in much luxury. When affairs went well with him, he was not an unamiable man; but he was a selfish egotist, with the devil's own temper on occasion.

The landlord approached and told us that the dinner hour was past, and that we could not get anything to eat until the next meal, which would be supper. And oh! if you only knew what supper was like in the provincial hotel of that day!

Brignoli was wild with wrath. He would start to storm and shout in his rage, and would then suddenly remember his voice and subside, only to begin again as his anger rose in spite of himself. It was really amusing, though I doubt if anyone appreciated the joke at the moment.

At last, as the landlord remained quite unmoved, Brignoli dashed into the room, grabbed the cloth on one of the tables near the door and pulled it off--dishes, silver, and all! The crash was terrific, and naturally the china was smashed to bits.

"You'll have to pay for that!" cried the landlord, indignantly.

"Pay for it!" gasped Brignoli, waving his arms and fairly dancing with rage, "of course I'll pay for it--just as I'll pay for the dinner, if----"

"What!" exclaimed the landlord, in a new tone, "you will pay _extra_ for the dinner, if we are willing to serve it for you now?"

"_Dio mio_, yes!" cried Brignoli.

The landlord stood and gaped at him.

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?" he asked with a sort of contemptuous pity, and went off to order the dinner.

When will the American and the Italian temperaments begin to understand each other!

Brignoli was not only a fine singer but a really good musician. He told me that he had given piano lessons in Paris before he began to sing at all. But of his absolute origin he would never speak. He was a handsome man, with ears that had been pierced for ear-rings. This led me to infer that he had at some time been a sailor, although he would never let anyone mention the subject. Anyhow, I always thought of Naples when I looked at him.

Most stage people have their pet superst.i.tions. There seems to be something in their make-up that lends itself to an interest in signs.

But Brignoli had a greater number of singular ones than any person I ever met. He had, among other things, a mascot that he carried all over the country. This was a stuffed deer's head, and it was always installed in his dressing-room wherever he might be singing. When he sang well, he would come back to the room and pat the deer's head approvingly. When he was not in voice, he would pound it and swear at it in Italian.

Brignoli lived for his voice. He adored it as if it were some phenomenon for which he was in no sense responsible. And I am not at all sure that this is not the right point of view for a singer. He always took tremendous pains with his voice and the greatest possible care of himself in every way, always eating huge quant.i.ties of raw oysters each night before he sang. The story is told of him that one day he fell off a train. People rushed to pick him up, solicitous lest the great tenor's bones were broken. But Brignoli had only one fear. Without waiting even to rise to his feet, he sat up, on the ground where he had fallen, and solemnly sang a bar or two. Finding his voice uninjured, he burst into heartfelt prayers of thanks-giving, and climbed back into the car.

Brignoli only just missed being very great. But he had the indolence of the Neapolitan sailor, and he was, of course, sadly spoiled. Women were always crazy about him, and he posed as an _elegante_. Years afterward, when I heard of his death, I never felt the loss of any beautiful thing as I did the loss of his voice. The thought came to me:--"and he hasn't been able to leave it to anyone as a legacy--"

But to return to our concert tour.

I remember that the concert room in Pittsburg was over the town market.

That was what we had to contend with in those primitive days! Imagine our little company of devoted and ambitious artists trying to create a musical atmosphere one flight up, while they sold cabbages and fish downstairs!

The first evening was an important event for me, my initial public appearance, and I recall quite distinctly that I sang the Cavatina from _Linda di Chamounix_--which I was soon to sing operatically--and that I wore a green dress. Green was an unusual colour in gowns then. Our young singers generally chose white or blue or pink or something insipid; but I had a very definite taste in clothes, and liked effects that were not only pretty but also individual and becoming.

Speaking of clothes, I learned on that first experimental tour the horrors of travel when it comes to keeping one's gowns fresh. I speedily acquired the habit, practised ever since, of carrying a big crash cloth about with me to spread on stages where I was to sing. This was not entirely to keep my clothes clean, important as that was. It was also for the sake of my voice and its effect. Few people know that the floor-covering on which a singer stands makes a very great difference.

On carpets, for instance, one simply cannot get a good tone.

Just before I went on for that first concert, Madame Colson stopped me to put a rose in my hair, and said to me:

"Smile much, and show your teeth!"

After the concert she supplemented this counsel with the words:

"Always dress your best, and always smile, and always be gracious!"

I never forgot the advice.

The idea of pretty clothes and a pretty smile is not merely a pose nor an artificiality. It is likewise carrying out a spirit of courtesy. Just as a hostess greets a guest cordially and tries to make her feel at ease, so the tactful singer tries to show the people who have come to hear her that she is glad to see them.

Pauline Colson was a charming artist, a French soprano of distinction in her own country and always delightful in her work. She had first come to America to sing in the French Opera in New Orleans where, for many years, there had been a splendid opera season each winter. She had just finished her winter's work there when some northern impresario engaged her for a brief season of opera in New York; and it was at the termination of this that Muzio engaged her for our concert tour. She was one of the few artists who rebelled against the bad costuming then prevalent; and it was said that for more than one of her _roles_ she made her gowns herself, to be sure that they were correct. It was her example that fired me in the revolutionary steps I was to take later with regard to my own costumes.

Our next stop was Cincinnati--_Cincinnata_, as it was called! I had there one of the shocks of my life. The leading newspaper of the city, in commenting on our concert, said of me that "this young girl's parents ought to remove her from public view, do her up in cotton wool, nourish her well, and not allow her to appear again until she looks less like a picked chicken"!

No one said anything about my voice! Indeed, I got almost no encouragement before we reached Detroit, and I recall that I cried a good part of the way between the two cities over my failure in Cincinnati. But in Detroit Colson was taken ill, so I had a chance to do the _prima donna_ work of the occasion. And I profited by the chance, for it was in Detroit that an audience first discovered that I had some nascent ability.

I _must_ have been an odd, young creature--just five feet and four inches tall, and weighing only one hundred and four pounds. I was frail and big-eyed, and wrapped up in music (not cotton wool), and exceedingly childlike for my age. I knew nothing of life, for my puritanical surroundings and the way in which I had been brought up were developing my personality very slowly.

That was a hard tour. Indeed, all tours were hard in those days.

Travelling accommodations were limited and uncomfortable, and most of the hotels were very bad. Trains were slow, and connections uncertain, and of course there was no such thing as a Pullman or, much less, a dining-car. Sometimes we had to sit up all night and were not able to get anything to eat, not infrequently arriving too late for the meal hour of the hotel where we were to stop. The journeys were so long and so difficult that they used to say Pauline Lucca always travelled in her nightgown and a black velvet wrapper.

All through that tour, as during every period of my life, I was working and studying and practising and learning: trying to improve my voice, trying to develop my artistic consciousness, trying to fit myself in a hundred ways for my career. Work never frightened me; there was always in me the desire to express myself--and to express that self as fully and as variously as I might have opportunity for doing.

It sometimes seems to me that one of the strangest things in this world is the realisation that there is never time to perfect everything in us; that we carry seeds in our souls that cannot flower in one short life.

Perhaps Paradise will be a place where we can develop every possibility and become our complete selves.

In one's brain and one's soul lies the power to do almost anything. I believe that the psychological phenomena we hear so much about are nothing but undiscovered forces in ourselves. I am not a spiritualist. I do not care for so-called supernatural manifestations. Many of my friends have been interested in such matters, and I was taken to the celebrated "Stratford Knockings" and other mediumistic demonstrations when I was a mere child; but it has never seemed to me that the marvels I encountered came from an outside spiritual agency. I believe, profoundly, that, one and all, they are the workings of forces in _us_ that we have not yet learned to develop fully nor to use wisely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Clara Louise Kellogg as a Young Lady=

From a photograph by Black & Case]