Chapters of Opera / Being historical and critical observations and records concerning the lyric drama in New York from its earliest days down to the present time

by Henry Edward Krehbiel

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 space 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 dictatorship; 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 lustrum had passed he had gone down to his death, his last thoughts longingly fixed on the institution 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 Brünn; 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 passed through the classes 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 association with Charles A. Chizzola, the joint capital amounting to $1,500, he engaged Aimée, a French opéra 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. Aimée 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. Aimée, and brought to America the Italian tragedian, Tommaso Salvini. In 1874 he managed three opéra 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 opéra bouffe troupe, headed by the tenor Capoul, and Paola Marié continued his successes. In 1883 began his association 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 asset 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 associate 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 substitute. 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 régime 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 Rothmühl, tenors respectively for the Italian and German operas; Campanari, barytone; Ibos, a tenor, and Boudouresque, a bass whose name was picturesque. Melba added "Traviata" to her repertory at the opening performance, and later essayed "Aïda," 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," "Tannhäuser" "Die Meistersinger," "Aïda," "Lohengrin," "Il Barbiere," "Faust," "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Die Walküre," "Siegfried," "Götterdämmerung," and "Les Huguenots."

Before the next regular season began under the new Grau administration Mr. Seidl, who would doubtless have continued in association with the institution 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, participated in by the Musical Mutual Protective Union, Männergesangverein 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 classmate 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 Hasselbrink.

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 illustrate 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 multitudes who sought his acquaintance, and though no combination of circumstances could disturb his self-possession he seemed to be most contented and comfortable when seated quietly with a single friend. Even under such circumstances 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 pass 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 prone 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 illustrations 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 amusement. 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 circumstance 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 illustrated 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 Bohème" 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 hoary 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 title 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 Bohème" was performed on the opening night of the company's brief season (it made shipwreck 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 Bohème" 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 rôle 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 association 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 Mürger'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 Bohème" 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 passion, 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 brass until there is no relief except exhaustion. Happy, careless music, such as Mozart or Rossini might have written for the comedy scenes in "La Bohème," 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 Bohème," 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 "Roméo 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 Tannhäuser on the opening night; Albert Saléza as Romeo on December 2, 1898; Suzanne Adams as Juliet on January 4, 1899; Anton Van Rooy as Wotan in "Die Walküre" 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 Plançon, and Adolph Mühlmann. Newcomers besides those mentioned were Matilde Brugière, Herman Devries (son of Mme. Rosa Devries, a dramatic singer of renown half a century before), Henri Albers, barytone, and Lemprière Pringle, an English singer, who had worked himself up in the ranks of the Carl Rosa Opera Company. The two brothers, Jean and Édouard 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 repetition 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.

Only one novelty was produced in the season. This was Signor Mancinelli's "Ero e Leandro," which had its first American performance on March 10, 1899, with the composer in the conductor's chair. The principal singers were Mme. Eames (Hero), Saléza (Leander), and Plançon (Ariofarno). Mme. Schumann-Heink was set down to sing the prologue, but illness prevented at the first representation, and the music was sung by Mme. Mantelli. The opera had a pretty success and back of it was an interesting history. Boito wrote the libretto for himself, but put it aside when the subject of "Mefistofele" took possession of his mind. Two of the numbers, which he had already composed, found their way into the score of the later opera, one of them being the beautiful duet, "Lontano, lontano, lontano," in the classical scene. Boito turned the book over to Bottesini, who composed it, but failed to make a success of it. Signor Mancinelli then took the libretto in hand and, having a commission from the Norwich (England) festival of 1896 for a choral work, he composed it and handed it in to be sung as a cantata. It was sung at the festival. The next year it received its first stage performance at Madrid and by way of Turin and Venice reached Covent Garden, London, where it was produced on July 15, 1898.

What a simple tale it is that has so twined itself around the hearts of mankind that it has lived in classic story for ages and gotten into the folk-tales of more than one European people! Hero is a priestess of Aphrodite, who lives at Sestos, on the Thracian coast; Leander, a youth, whose home is at Abydos, on the Asiatic shore, beyond the Hellespont. The pair meet at a festival of Venus and Adonis and fall in love with each other at sight. The maiden's parents are unwilling that she shall cease her sacred functions to become a wife, and Leander swims the strait every night, while Hero holds a torch at the window to direct him to her side. One night there arises a tempest and Leander is drowned, and his body cast up at the foot of the tower. Then Hero throws herself upon the jagged rocks beside him, and the lovers are united in death.

"That tale is old, but love anew
May nerve young hearts to prove as true,"

sang Byron after he had put discrediting doubts to shame by swimming the Hellespont himself and catching an ague for his pains. A simple tale, yet I have included more than is ordinarily found in the recital in order to show how Boito utilized and added to it. A simple tale, but with what lovely fervor have the poets sung it over and over again! Byron could smile at his own Quixotic feat in the lines which he wrote six days after its accomplishment, but in "The Bride of Abydos" he did not attempt to conceal the affection which he felt for the tale, or his pride in the fact that Helle's buoyant wave had borne his limbs as well as Leander's; and who can without emotion call up Keats's picture of

"Young Leander, toiling to his death,"

pursing his weary lips for Hero's cheek and smiling against her smiles until he sinks, and

"Up bubbles all his amorous breath"?

Right nobly, too, did Schiller hymn the lovers and two centuries of opera-writers—Italian, French, German, English, and Polish—have sought to weave their pitiful story into lyric dramas.

Boito, as I have said, wrote the book of "Ero e Leandro" for himself, but eventually gave it to others. I can only speculate as to the cause of Boito's abandonment of his intellectual child. Probably he concluded that it lacked the dramatic elements which the composers of the last few decades, paying tribute, willingly or unwillingly, to Wagner's genius, have felt to be necessary to the success of a lyric drama. But dramatic action need not always be summed up in movement. Wagner's greatest tragedy has scarcely more external incident than "Ero e Leandro," and, indeed, is like this opera, in that the interest in each of its three acts centers in a meeting of the lovers and their publication of the play enacting on the stage of their hearts. But it takes music like Wagner's, music surcharged with passion, to body forth the growth of the dramatic personages and make us blind to paucity of incident. When that cannot be had, then pictures and functions of all kinds, solemn and festive, must be relied on to hold the interest. Boito built up such pictures and grouped such functions about his simple tale with a great deal of ingenuity. The eye is charmed at once with his classic landscapes in the first act—the cypresses, myrtles, and blooming oleanders, the temple portico, the statues and altar with its votive offerings, the kneeling chorus of priestesses and sailors, Hero with her ravishing robes (think of Mme. Eames in the part), the gallant Leander and the stately archon Ariofarno. It is the scene of the lovers' meeting at the festival, and to heighten its interest and provide something else than hymns and rites, Boito has turned Leander into a victor in the Aphrodisian games, both as swordsman and cytharist. Hero crowns him with laurel, and he sings two odes, which Boito cleverly borrows from Anacreon, the first without, the second with implied, but not expressed credit. The odes are the most familiar of Anacreon's odes, however, and no one could think of moral obliquity in connection with Boito's use of them. They are the address to the lyre which the poet wishes to attune to heroic measures, but which answers only in accents of love; and the tale of how the poet took Eros, shivering, out of the cold night and received a heart wound in return. Charmingly, indeed, do the odes fit into the dramatic scheme and offer two set pieces as a contrast to the solemn pronouncements of the archon and the excessive hymning of the chorus.

The development of the plot is now begun. Boito has created Ariofarno to fill the place of the wicked nun of the German folk-tales. He is obsessed with guilty love for Hero and seeks to divert her service from the celestial Venus to the earthly. She scorns his offers of love, and he leaves her with threats of vengeance. Filled with forebodings, she seeks an omen in the voice of a sea shell which had been placed on the altar of Aphrodite, the Sea-born. The words are charming, and the occasion prettily prepared for a vocal show piece. She invokes the shell as the cradle of Aphrodite, hears in its murmurs the song of the sea nymphs, the humming of bees amid the oleander's aeolian whispers, and the soft confessions of a mermaid. Then the sounds grow wild, and stimulate her fancy to a picture of rushing waters, flying foam, and wrathful surge—the vision which is realized in the last act. Here the suggestion for musical delineation is obvious, and Signor Mancinelli has utilized it in such a manner as to make his song (which, for reasons that I shall not pursue, awakened memories of the ballatella in "Pagliacci") the first really triumphant thing in the opera. The rest of the act is chiefly devoted to a love duet, at the close of which Hero, kneeling before the statue of the god, invokes Apollo to admonish her of her fate. Ariofarno, in concealment, answers for the god: "Death!"

In the second act, which plays in the part of the temple of Aphrodite devoted to the mysteries, Ariofarno carries out his plan of vengeance against Hero. Professing to have received an oracular command to that effect, he restores a service in an ancient town by the sea and to it consecrates Hero, who is powerless to resist his will. The duty of the priestess is to give warning of approaching storms, so that by priestly rites the angry waters may be placated. While pronouncing her sentence he, in an aside, offers to save her if she will accept his love. Again he is spurned, and when he utters the words which condemn her to the vigil Leander seeks to attack him. For this he is seized and banished to the Asian shore. Hero takes the oath, the dancers rush in and begin a bacchanalian, or Aphrodisian, orgy, while the chorus sings the "Io paean." Here Signor Mancinelli has really written with a pen of fire. The music is tumultuously exciting, though built on the learned forms, and there is the happiest union of purpose and achievement. In the last act, somewhat clumsily set and unnecessarily ambitious in its strivings for spectacular realism, the dénoument is reached. Songs of sailors come up from the sea; Hero sings her love and longing and lights her lover to his fate. Their love duet is interrupted by the bursting of the tempest, which had come upon them without being observed. The warning trumpet which she should have sounded is heard from the vaults below, and the chant of the approaching priests. Leander throws himself into the sea; the archon upbraids Hero for neglect of duty and discovers its cause. Her punishment, death, will be his vengeance, but the lifeless body of Leander is hurled upon the rocks, and comes into view when a thunderbolt tears away a portion of the tower wall. Hero sinks dead to the ground; the archon rages at the escape of his victim, and an invisible choir sings of a reunion of the lovers in death.

As a composer Signor Mancinelli is an eclectic. It would not be easy to specify any particular master as a model. He admires Wagner and has proper appreciation of the dramatic values, the continuity of idea, and the effect of development which flow from the recurrent use of significant phrases; but his manner is not at all that of the later Wagner whose influence, if found at all, must be sought in a few harmonic progressions and in a belief in the potency of orchestral color. Nearer to him than the master poet-musician are Verdi, Ponchielli, Boito, and the eager spirits of Young Italy. His music is as free as the later Verdi's from the shackles of set forms, but he is, nevertheless, at his best when the book permits an extended piece of lyric writing. This being so, it is disappointing that he has done so little that is good in the opening scene where the book invited him to consult the wants of the Norwich festival and to write in the cantata style. In the first act, however, there is little to praise outside of the settings of the two Anacreonic odes and the song to the shell. There is much striving, but a paucity of plastic ideas. What might have been an unconstrained lyrical outpouring, the prologue, mere thundering in the index, because of the composer's mistaken impression that it ought to be tragic, and in the "Ercles vein." When the rites begin and a swelling paean is expected, there is much making of musical faces, but no real beginning. Matters improve in the second act, where the part of Ariofarno becomes dramatically puissant. Here there are noble passages and the duet has moments of passionate intensity; but all these things pale their ineffectual fires before the "Io paean," which is as thrilling and well applied as anything that I can recall in the operas of the decade which preceded "Ero e Leandro."