CHAPTER XVI
ITALIAN OPERA AGAIN AT THE METROPOLITAN
The figures which I have printed showing a loss to the stockholders of the Metropolitan Opera House on opera account year after year during the German period, do not tell the whole story of the financial condition into which the Metropolitan Opera House Company (Limited) had fallen. This condition had much to do with creating a desire on the part of the stockholders for a change of policy. The first German season cost the stockholders only about $42,000 above the amount realized from the box assessment, which was, I believe, $2,000—two-thirds of the sum that has ruled ever since. There were seventy stockholders, and in view of the loss made by Mr. Abbey the year previous this deficit was a trifle scarcely worth considering. The growth in popular interest as indicated by the support of the subscriptions for the season of 1890-91 was promising; but the stockholders themselves were not all prompt in meeting their obligations to their own organization. By 1890 there was an account of unpaid assessments amounting to $46,328. Of this, $21,112 was canceled by the acquisition of two boxes by the company, but the balance sheet at the end of the last German season still showed $25,216 due from stockholders on assessment account. The floating debt at this time amounted to $84,044.48. The prices of admission had been greatly reduced in the German years, and the capacity of the house, represented in money, was not more than fifty per centum of what it is to-day. The demands of singers were growing greater year after year, and were not lessened, as may easily be imagined, by the thrifty complacency of those German managers who granted furloughs to their singers in consideration of a share of their American earnings. Under the circumstances it is not to be wondered at that Mr. Abbey's agreement to give Italian and French opera at his own risk was alluring, especially to those who had never sympathized with the serious tendency of German opera.
The contract of the directors for opera in the season of 1891-92 was made with Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau, who figured in all the announcements as the managers. With them was associated as silent partner Mr. John B. Schoeffel, of Boston, who had shared in all of Mr. Abbey's daring theatrical ventures since 1876, and, consequently, also in the unfortunate season of 1883-84, when Maurice Grau acted as manager at a salary of $15,000. Mr. Abbey's mind was not closed to the lessons of the German seasons. A few days after he had signed the contract he told me that he had had a project in contemplation to bring Materna, Winkelmann, Scaria, and others to America for Wagnerian opera before Mr. Thomas had brought them for concert work; that he looked upon German opera as more advantageous to the manager, not only on account of its smaller costliness, but, also, because it enabled a manager to adjust his singers to a repertory instead of the repertory to the singers. But he had speculated successfully with Patti under the "farewell" device, the managerial virus was again in his veins, and he cherished a foolish belief that, as one of the results of the German régime, he would be able to exact different service from the artists of Italian and French opera than they had been wont to give. On this point he was soon painfully disillusionized. Had it not been for the presence in his company of Mme. Lehmann, M. Lassalle, and the brothers Jean and Édouard de Reszke, whose instincts and training kept them out of the old Italian rut, his performances would never have gotten away from the old hurdy-gurdy list. As it was, when he wanted to give "L'Africaine," in order to present M. Lassalle in one of his most effective rôles, though he had Emma Eames, Marie Van Zandt, Albani, the sisters Giulia and Sophia Ravogli, Pettigiani, and Lillian Nordica in his company (the last hired specially for the purpose), he was obliged to ask Mme. Lehmann to learn the part of Selika. She did so, but the strain, combined with other things, broke down her health, and she was useless to her manager for the second half of the season. She had been engaged as a lure for the German element among the city's opera patrons, and to it also were offered propitiatory sacrifices in the shape of performances in Italian of "Fidelio," "The Flying Dutchman," and "Die Meistersinger" under the direction of Mr. Seidl. After the lesson had been still more thoroughly learned a German contingent was added to the Italian and French, and German opera was added to the list, making it as completely polyglot as it has ever been since. But before then many financial afflictions were in store for the enterprise.
Mr. Abbey began his season December 14, 1891, after having given opera for five weeks in Chicago. In his company, besides the sopranos just named, were Mme. Scalchi and Jane de Vigne, contraltos; Jean de Reszke, Paul Kalisch, M. Montariol, and a younger brother of Giannini, tenors; Martapoura, Magini-Coletti, Lassalle, and Camera, barytones; Édouard de Reszke, Vinche, and Serbolini, basses, and Carbone, buffo. As conductor, Vianesi, known from the season of 1883-84, returned. The subscription season came to a close on March 12th, and presented thirty-nine subscription evening performances, thirteen matinées, three extra evenings, and one extra afternoon—in all, fifty-six representations. The list of operas contained not a single novelty, unless Gluck's "Orfeo," which had been heard in New York in 1866, and Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," which had been performed by two companies in English earlier in the season, were changed into novelties by use of the Italian text. But under such a classification Wagner's comic opera would also have to be set down as a novelty. The list included ten operas not in the repertories of the German companies, which had occupied the opera house between the two administrations of Mr. Abbey. Inasmuch as a new departure was signalized by this season, I present herewith a table of performances in the subscription season, with the extra representations mentioned:
Opera First performance
"Roméo et Juliette" ………………………. December 14
"Il Trovatore" …………………………… December 16
"Les Huguenots" ………………………….. December 18
"Norma" …………………………………. December 19
"La Sonnambula" ………………………….. December 21
"Rigoletto" ……………………………… December 23
"Faust" …………………………………. December 25
"Aïda" ………………………………….. December 28
"Orfeo" and "Cavalleria Rusticana" …………. December 30
"Le Prophéte" ……………………………. January 1
"Martha" ………………………………… January 2
"Lohengrin" ……………………………… January 4
"Mignon" ………………………………… January 8
"Otello" ………………………………… January 11
"L'Africaine" ……………………………. January 15
"Don Giovanni" …………………………… January 18
"Dinorah" ……………………………….. January 29
"Hamlet" ………………………………… February 10
"Lakmé" …………………………………. February 22
"I Maestri Cantoni" ………………………. March 2
"Carmen" ………………………………… March 4
The first and most obvious lesson of the season, so far as it was an index of popular taste, may be seen by a critical glance at the list of performances. A beginning was made on the old lines. The familiar operas of the Italian list were brought forward with great rapidity, but not one of them drew a paying house. The turning point came with the arrival of M. Lassalle on January 15th. Messrs. Abbey and Grau then recognized that salvation for their undertaking lay in one course only, which was to give operas of large dimensions, and in each case employ the three popular men who had taken the place in the admiration of the public usually monopolized by the prima donna—the brothers de Reszke, and M. Lassalle. How consistently they acted on that conviction is shown by the circumstance that, though seventeen operas had been brought out between December 14th and January 15th, only six were added to them in the remaining two months.
It was not a "star" season in the old sense. The most popular artists were the three men already mentioned, but it required that they should all be enlisted together with Miss Eames and Mme. Scaichi to make the one "sensation" of the season—Gounod's "Faust," which had six regular performances, and two extra. Of the women singers the greatest popularity was won by Miss Eames, whose youthfulness, freshness of voice, and statuesque beauty, compelled general admiration. The smallness of her repertory, however, prevented her from helping the season to the triumphant close which it might have had if the company had been enlisted to carry out the policy adopted when the season was half over. Miss Eames's début was made on the opening night in Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette." In many ways she was fortunate in her introduction to the operatic stage of her people—her people, though she was born in China. She was only twenty-four years old, and there was much to laud in her art, and nothing to condone except its immaturity. Her endowments of voice and person were opulent. She appeared in the opera in which she had effected her entrance on the stage at the Grand Opéra in Paris less than three years before, and for which her gifts and graces admirably fitted her. She appeared, moreover, in the company of Jean de Reszke, who was then, and who remained till his retirement, in all things except mere sensuous charm of voice, the ideal Romeo. She came fresh from her first successes at Covent Garden, which had been made in the spring of the year, and disclosed at once the lovely qualities which, when they became riper, gave promise of the highest order of things in the way of dramatic expression. At the end of the period whose history I am trying to set down she was still one of the bright ornaments of the Metropolitan stage, though she had not realized all the promises which she held out at the close of the first decade of her career.
Curiosity was piqued, and a kindly spirit of patriotism enlisted by the début of Miss Marie Van Zandt on December 21st. She, too, was an American, but she had been before the European public ten years, and had won as much favor as any American artist ever enjoyed in Paris. Mr. Abbey had pointed to her engagement (and that of Mme. Melba, whose star was just rising above the horizon) as a persuasive argument with the directors. Everything about the little lady, not excepting some unfortunate experiences which put an end to her Parisian career, invited to kindliness of utterance touching her début. Those of her hearers who had followed the history of opera in America for a score of years remembered her mother with admiration. Long before the days when every effort to produce opera in the vernacular was heralded as a great patriotic undertaking, Mme. Jenny Van Zandt headed companies which exploited as varied and dignified repertories as those of the German companies at the Metropolitan Opera House, barring the Wagnerian list. Miss Van Zandt, diminutive, but winsome in voice as well as figure, and ingratiating in manner, recalled an old observation about precious things being done up in small parcels. Her coming seemed to betoken the return of the day of small things. She appeared in "La Sonnambula," and it was not until two months had passed that the patrons of the opera were privileged to hear her in "Lakmé," the opera with which her name was chiefly associated in Paris. Meanwhile she appeared in "Martha," "Mignon," "Don Giovanni," and "Dinorah," without rousing the public out of the apathy which it felt toward operas of their character. And when her battle-horse was led into the ring the task of sustaining interest in the season had fallen upon the shoulders of the masculine contingent in the company.
Curious questionings were raised by the production of "Fidelio" and "Die Meistersinger" in Italian. It was generally recognized that Mr. Abbey offered them as sops to Cerberus; but the German element in the population, which they were designed to appease, plainly were lacking in that peculiar bent of mind necessary to understand why Beethoven's opera done in Italian with a cast one-half good was supposed by the management to be worth two-thirds more than the same opera done in a language which it could understand with a cast all good (two of the principals, Mme. Lehmann and Mr. Kalisch, being the same), during the preceding seven years. Was the Italian language sixty-seven per cent. more valuable than the German in an opera conceived in German, written in German, and composed in the German spirit by a German? The public thought not, and "Fidelio" had only two performances. A more kindly view was taken of the Italian "Meistersinger," Which enabled the Germans to give expression to their feelings by making demonstrations over Mr. Seidl. There was much to admire, moreover, in the singing and acting of Jean de Reszke as Walther, and M. Lassalle as Hans Sachs. There was nothing of the conventional operatic marionette in these men. One night while they and Édouard de Reszke were on the stage at the same time I expressed my admiration at the sight of three such fine specimens of physical manhood to Mme. Lehmann, who sat near my elbow in a baignoir.
"Inspiring, isn't it?"
"Yes," was the reply, "and they might be as fine artists as they are men if they would but study."
We all know that their American experience was as little lost on the brothers de Reszke as it was on Mme. Lehmann herself, who stepped into the foremost rank of tragic singers so soon as America offered her the opportunity to shuffle off the obligation of "singing princesses," as she called it.
Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," the hot-blooded little opera which was destined to make so great a commotion in the world (had already begun to make it, indeed), had its first production at the Metropolitan Opera House on December 30th. The opera was no novelty, having already made an exciting career before the Metropolitan opera season opened; but there were two features of the performances calculated to live in the memory of serious observers as characteristic of the change in spirit which had come over the institution since the departure of the German artists: Miss Eames wore a perfectly exquisite accordion-pleated skirt as the distraught Sicilian peasant, and Signor Valero sang the siciliano on the open stage, the overture being stopped and the curtain raised so that he might sing his serenade to Lola with greater effect. He sang behind Lola's house, and winning a call in spite of his stridulous voice and singular phrasing, he stepped out from cover, bowed his acknowledgments, and, returning to his hiding place, serenaded his love over again. After he had come forward a second time Signor Vianesi found his place in the score and resumed the overture.
"Cavalleria Rusticana" precipitated an amusing but extremely lively managerial battle when it reached New York. Those who watched the operatic doings of Europe were aware of the fact that the opera spread like wildfire from town to town immediately after its first success at Rome. Fast as it traveled, however, the intermezzo traveled faster. Seidl had seized upon it in the summer of 1891, and made it a feature of his concerts at Brighton Beach. Then came simultaneous announcements of the production of the opera by Rudolph Aronson and Oscar Hammerstein in the fall. Mr. Aronson wanted to open the season at the Casino with it, and let it introduce a change in the character of the entertainments given at that playhouse. Mr. Hammerstein had also announced the work, but he had no theater at his ready disposal. He thought Aronson was poaching on his preserves, and there began a diverting struggle for priority of performance, from which nobody profited and the opera suffered. Amid threats of crimination Aronson precipitated what he called a dress rehearsal of the work at the Casino in the afternoon of October 1, 1891. Like the king in the parable, he sent out into the highways, and bade all he could find in to the feast. Especially did his servants labor on the Rialto, and the affair had all the appearance of a professional matinée. Nothing was quite in readiness, but Mr. Hammerstein had announced his first performance for the evening of that day, and must be anticipated at all hazards. Yet there were singers and scenes and musicians in the orchestra, and Mr. Gustav Kerker to steer the little operatic ship through the breakers. On the whole, the performance was fair. Laura Bellini was the Santuzza of the occasion, Grace Golden the Lola, Helen von Doenhoff the Lucia, Charles Bassett the Turiddu, and William Pruette the Alfio. Heinrich Conried staged the production. In the evening Oscar Hammerstein pitchforked the opera on to the stage of the Lenox Lyceum—an open concert room, and a poor one at that. There was a canvas proscenium, no scenery to speak of, costumes copied from no particular country and no particular period, and a general effect of improvisation. But the musical forces were superior to Mr. Aronson's, and had there been a better theater the Casino performance would have been greatly surpassed. There was a really fine orchestra under the direction of Mr. Adolph Neuendorff, but it sat out on the floor of the hall, which reverberated like a drum. Mme. Janouschoffsky, an exceedingly capable artist, was the Santuzza, Mrs. Pemberton Hincks the Lola, Mrs. Jennie Bohner the Lucia, Payne Clarke the Turiddu, and Herman Gerold the Alfio. While all this pother was making, "Cavalleria Rusticana" was already three weeks old in Philadelphia, where Mr. Gustav Hinrichs had brought it forward with his American company at the Grand Opera House; Minnie Hauk, with a company of her own, had given it in Chicago the night before the New York struggle, and Emma Juch and her company were rushing forward the preparations for a production in Boston.
"Cavalleria Rusticana" came upon the world like the bursting of a bomb, and its effect was so startling that it bewildered and confounded the radical leaders of musical thought. There were few, indeed, who retained calmness of vision enough to perceive that it was less a change of manner than of subject-matter, which had whirled the world off its critical feet. Outside of Italy there was no means of seeing the work of preparation which had preceded it. The annual output of hundreds of operas made no impression beyond the Alpine barrier, and it was easy to believe that the entire product was formed after the old and humdrum manner. No sooner had "Cavalleria Rusticana" broken down the old confines, however, than it was discovered that a whole brood of young musicians had been brought up on the same blood-heating food, and a dozen composers were ready to use the same formulas. Most of them, indeed, got the virus from the same apothecary who uttered the mortal drug to Mascagni—that is to say, from Amilcare Ponchielli. Had we but listened twenty-five years ago to "La Gioconda" as we are able to listen to "Cavalleria Rusticana," and its swift and multitudinous offspring now, we might have recognized the beginnings of what has been termed "Mascagnitis," not in an essentially new manner of musical composition, but in the appeal to the primitive passion for violence and blood which found expression in the operatic paraphrase of Victor Hugo's story, and the invitation which that passion extended to the modern musician suddenly emancipated from a lot of cumbersome formularies, and endowed with a mass of new harmonic and instrumental pigments with which to produce the startling contrasts and swift contradictions for which the new field of subjects clamors.
Seventeen years ago "Cavalleria Rusticana" had no perspective. Now, though but a small portion of its progeny has been brought to our notice, we, nevertheless, look at it through a vista which looks like a valley of moral and physical death through which there flows a sluggish stream thick with filth, and red with blood. Strangely enough, in spite of the consequences which have followed it, the fierce little drama retains its old potency. It still speaks with a voice which sounds like the voice of truth. Its music still makes the nerves tingle, and carries our feelings unresistingly on its turbulent current. But the stage picture is less sanguinary than it looked in the beginning. It seems to have receded a millennium in time. It has the terrible fierceness of an Attic tragedy, but it also has the decorum which the Attic tragedy never violated. There is no slaughter in the presence of the audience, despite the humbleness of its personages. It does not keep us perpetually in sight of the shambles. It is, indeed, an exposition of chivalry, rustic, but chivalry, nevertheless. It was thus Clytemnestra slew her husband, and Orestes his mother. Note the contrast which the duel between Alfio and Turiddu presents with the double murder to the piquant accompaniment of comedy in "Pagliacci," the opera which followed so hard upon its heels. Since then piquancy has been the cry; the piquant contemplation of adultery, seduction, and murder amid the reek and stench of the Italian barnyard. Think of Cilèa's "Tilda," Giordano's "Mala Vita," Spinelli's "A Basso Porto," and Tasca's "A Santa Lucia!"
The stories chosen for operatic treatment by the champions of verismo are all alike. It is their filth and blood which fructifies the music, which rasps the nerves even as the plays revolt the moral stomach. I repeat: looking back over the time during which this so-called veritism has held its orgy, "Cavalleria Rusticana" seems almost classic. Its music is highly spiced and tastes "hot i' th' mouth," but its eloquence is, after all, in its eager, pulsating, passionate melody—like the music which Verdi wrote more than half a century ago for the last act of "Il Trovatore." If neither Mascagni himself, nor his imitators, have succeeded in equaling it since, it is because they have thought too much of the external devices of abrupt and uncouth change of modes and tonalities, of exotic scales and garish orchestration, and too little of the fundamental element of melody, which once was the be-all and end-all of Italian music. Another fountain of gushing melody must be opened before "Cavalleria Rusticana" finds a successor in all things worthy of the succession. Ingenious artifice, reflection, and technical cleverness will not suffice even with the blood and mud of the Neapolitan slums as a fertilizer.
Messrs. Abbey and Grau had no rival opera organizations to contend with at any time after they opened their doors, so they created a bit of competition themselves. In January they brought Mme. Patti and her operatic concert company into the house for a pair of concerts in which scenes from operas were sung in costume, the famous singer's companions being Mlle. Fabbri, M. Guille (tenor), Signor Novara (bass), and Signor Del Puente. The occasion offered an opportunity to study the impulses which underlie popular patronage. The entertainments being concerts, not operas, the stockholders were not entitled to their boxes under the terms of their contract with Abbey & Grau, and were conspicuous by their absence. Nevertheless, at the second concert, which took place on an afternoon, I estimated the audience at four thousand—nine-tenths women. Mme. Patti also appeared in performances of "Lucia di Lammermoor" and "Il Barbiere" in a supplementary season, one feature of which, on March 31, 1892, was the production of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" in Italian, with M. Lassalle in the titular part, which he sang for the first time in his life. "A marvelous artist indeed is this Frenchman," was my comment in The Tribune, "and if he and the brothers de Reszke are in next year's company, the lovers of the lyric drama as distinguished from the old sing-song opera will look into the future without trepidation." Unhappily there was no "next year's company."
In August, 1892, the Metropolitan Opera House had a visitation of fire, which brought operatic matters to a crisis, caused a postponement of the performance for a season, a reorganization of the corporation which owned the building, and a remodeling of the stage and portions of the interior of the theater. For a considerable space before the building of the Metropolitan the public mind was greatly exercised over the awful loss of life at recent theater fires, especially the destruction of the Ringtheater in Vienna. When Mr. Cady planned the New York house, he set about making it as absolutely fireproof as such a structure can be. It was to be non-combustible from the bottom up. There was not a stud partition in it. The floors were all of iron beams and brick arches, the masonry being exposed in the corridors, passages and vestibules, but for comfort having a covering of wood in the audience room. The roof was of iron and masonry, the outer covering of slate being secured to masonry blocks. The iron roof beams of over one hundred feet span, were mounted on rollers to allow for contraction and expansion. The ceiling of the audience room was of iron. The ornamental work of the proscenium, the tier balustrades, and the frames of the partitions between the boxes were all of metal. The stage was supported by a complex iron system of about four thousand light pieces so adjusted as to be removable in sections when it was desired to open the stage floor. Theater fires almost invariably originate on the stage, and, as an additional safeguard, Mr. Cady contrived an apparatus for flooding the stage in the case of a threatened conflagration. A large skylight was weighted to fall open in case of fire, and a great water tank placed over the rigging loft and connected with a network of pipes with apertures stopped with extremely fusible solder, so that the heat of even a small fire would open the holes and release a drenching shower.
One after another these precautions were rendered inutile. The iron support of the stage troubled the stage mechanics, who wanted something that could be more easily handled, so wooden pieces were substituted for the iron. The location of the tank was such that the water was in danger of freezing in winter, and steam pipes were arranged to keep the water warm. Mr. Abbey did not like the expense of warming the water, and therefore emptied the tank. There was a fireproof curtain, which was cumbrous to handle, and Mr. Abbey's men chained it up. The commodious stage made a superb paint shop in summer, and Mr. Abbey used it for painting scenery for his other theaters. It was being thus used on August 27, 1892, when a workman carelessly threw a lighted match among the "green" scenery. It caught fire, the stage was burned out, and the auditorium sadly disfigured. When, eventually, the building was repaired, the interior of the theater, all that had suffered harm, was thoroughly remodeled, the stockholders' boxes were reduced to a single row, the proscenium was given its present shape, the apron of the stage was removed, and the stage itself was made more practicable in many ways. This did not happen, however, until the question whether or not the opera house should be restored to its original uses had occupied the minds of the stockholders and public for nearly a year. In the middle of the season Messrs. Abbey and Grau, while protesting that they were satisfied with the financial outcome of their venture, announced that they did not intend to give opera the next year. They were shaken in this determination, if they ever seriously harbored it, by the success of "Faust" and one or two other operas, which enlisted what in the next season of opera came to be called the "ideal cast." But there was a division of opinion as to the proper course for the future among the stockholders, especially after Mr. Abbey, late in September, sent word from London that his firm would not undertake opera in the United States without a subvention from the Metropolitan Opera Company. Also that he had already canceled his contracts with singers for the American season of 1892-93. There was some vague talk before this on the part of Mr. Schoeffel of a season of opera in Mexico City, and a longer season than usual in Chicago, the intimation plainly being that grand opera might be emancipated from dependence on the metropolis. One effect of this indecision was to bring forth a discussion of the feasibility of endowed opera in New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and one or two other of the large cities of the country. Another was to call into new life an agitation in favor of the establishment of another German company. The first project died of inanition; the second developed in another year into an actuality, which created more stir than the close of the opera house had done. The Metropolitan Opera Company reached a decision some time in January, 1893. The directors had neglected to insure the building against fire, and provision had to be made for funds to rebuild, as well as to pay off existing liabilities. The opera lovers among the stockholders reorganized the company under the style of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, and purchased the building under foreclosure proceeding for $1,425,000, then raised $1,000,000 by a bond issue, and the summer of 1893 was devoted to a restoration of the theater, an agreement having also been reached for a new lease to Mr. Abbey and his associates.