COVENT GARDEN AND—AMERICA
IN due time we set out for London. One of our cousins had found us delightful diggings in M—— Street, which I was able to enjoy, as dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones sent me an extra cheque to impress London with. We were waited upon by an old butler, and his wife did the cooking. Such legs of lamb, and deep plum tarts, with lashings of clotted cream! Such snowy napery, and silver polished as only English butlers can polish it.
It was not by any means my first visit to London, professionally. I had sung in private drawingrooms in previous seasons, and had also given a recital. Her Royal Highness Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, and her daughter, Princess Victoria, graciously consented to be my patronesses at this concert. I had not the slightest idea how to arrange for them, after they had kindly consented to be present, but I gathered that a special pair of comfortable chairs must be put directly below the stage, with a little table. Then I thought "Flowers or no flowers?" I should have loved to send them, but English Royalties are so simple and natural I instinctively felt that any ostentation would be distasteful. Somehow one hates to do the wrong thing in the presence of Personages; it is an un-American feeling, but a human one.
They applauded me a great deal, and after a bow of acknowledgment to the nice audience I gave the Princesses each time an English, straight-up-and-down curtsey, and I hope that was right. In Germany a back-swaying, one-toe-pointed-in-front curtsey was demanded. These things are at once trivial and vastly important.
The decent getting Their Royal Highnesses in and out of the hall I left to the capable manager, to whom Princess Christian said as she passed, "She ought to be singing in Covent Garden." I very soon was.
I was rather nervous at the beginning at Covent Garden. Most of the others were so famous, and all of them so much older than I. However, I soon got recognition and they were all very nice to me. I enjoyed especially talking to Van Rooy. He told me all about the wonderful armour he wore in the "Ring." Never have I seen his equal as the Wanderer. As he himself said, the old line of singers, the giants, the de Reszkes, Terninas, Lehmanns and Brandts, seemed to have died out. I often look for the grand line, the dignity, the flowing, noble breadth of gesture one saw in the older Wagnerian singers, but how often does one see it now? Of course, my memories of them are those of a very young girl, but I saw the same thing in Van Rooy, though his voice showed wear, and the bigness of their impersonations is stamped indelibly on my memory, dwarfing the lesser ones.
Nikisch came for the last few rehearsals. He took that raw, English-sounding orchestra, with its unrelated sounds of blaring brass, and rough strings, and unified and dignified it by his personality, his work and his brain power till it produced what he would have—Wagner in his glory. His gestures were like a sculptor's. My brother, who came to stay with us, also noticed this. Nikisch seemed to sculpt the phrases out of the air, and brought home again to us both the close relation between the lines of music and the lines of noble sculpture. The Parthenon freeze—is it not music? My brother says the Air of Bach is absolutely one with the outlines of this masterpiece, just as pure, noble and majestically simple, moving in slow, stately rhythm.
We gave the "Ring" three times and I sang the Erdas and Fricka and Waltrautes. The latter in "Goetterdaemmerung" I enjoyed doing so much with Nikisch. We only rehearsed it at the piano, and he said as he sat down: "Jetzt bin ich neugierig. Entweder kann die Waltraute wunderschoen sein, oder sehr langweilig." ("Now I am curious. Waltraute can either be very beautiful or very uninteresting.") He did not find it langweilig however.
I had one of my fits of depression I so often get after singing, (when I feel I must leave the stage, I am so hopelessly bad, and nothing any one can do or say cheers me inwardly), and it was particularly abysmal, the day after Waltraute. One never sings just as one would like to, and in my head I hear the phrase so much more beautifully done than any one but Caruso can do it. That day I sat at lunch with my faithful Marjorie, who always puts up with me. We were lunching in a little place near us, and I was deep in the blues. Marjorie's eye fell on the Daily Telegraph and we saw a wonderful criticism by Robin Legge; just a few words, but so sincere and appreciative. It helped such a lot. Criticism can mean so much to one for good or evil. The thought of a cruelly amusing phrase the critic has coined, unable to resist the very human temptation, will come winging to you the next time you step out on the stage to sing the same rôle, and you feel that sardonic wave striking you afresh and jangling your already quivering nerves. It takes courage after that to go on. On the contrary, a few words of appreciation of what you have tried so hard, through such long years to do, will tide you over many black hours of discouragement, and you think: "I can't be so absolutely rotten, didn't X—— write that about me? and he's supposed to know something about it." An intelligent constructive criticism is the most helpful thing possible, and stimulates one to work to correct one's faults. Personal remarks wound one's feelings deeply, and one is obliged to swallow hard and go bravely on, but the policeman's life is not a happy one.
The Royal Opera is in the middle of the vegetable market, and on the days when produce arrives, the streets are full of cockney porters. It was rather amusing one day, going to rehearsal. I was dressed in my new black satin suit from Paris, and a smart little white hat. A porter caught sight of me, pushed back the other men on both sides of me, and said, "Get out of the loidy's wy, cahn't yer, Bill? That's roight, Miss, I always loikes to see the lydies wen Ahm workin', that's right, Miss, very neat, too." The next day it was raining and I was not so smart, and the same man saw me and said with an air of disappointment, "Ah don't like it 'aaf so well as yisterdy, Miss."
I have often heard of American singers who could "bluff" or "hypnotize" directors into giving them chances which they thought they were entitled to, and from which they always emerged with flying colours. This is the tale of how I once, and only once, tried to "bluff," and how I nearly got caught at it.
When the list of rôles for Convent Garden was submitted to me in Berlin I had actually sung on the stage all of them but one, Brangaene. I always found this lady so weak, compared to Isolde, that she had never interested me especially, and I had never studied her. I decided, however, that having sung ninety-nine per cent. of the rôles they wanted I could risk the one per cent., Brangaene, hoping that Kirkby-Lunn would not relinquish her. I learned the rôle, though, in record time between concert dates, and trusted to "luck." The season was drawing to a close, and all the operas had passed off well, when, just as we were going to dinner one evening, I was called to the 'phone and told Madame Kirkby-Lunn had been taken suddenly ill at the beginning of the first act of "Tristan," would probably not be able to go on in the second, and would I please come right down and make up.
In a nervous tremor, for Brangaene is not easy without orchestra rehearsal, and I was not quite sure of all the business cues, I went down, hunted out something to wear, put on my trusty "beauty" wig, hurriedly went over the second act with an assistant conductor, finding my memory was standing the strain, and then stood trembling in the wings. I thought to myself "Nemesis!" and shivered. What I hoped was—that if Madame really was going to have to give up it might be just before the lovely "Warnung" behind the scenes, because I had always wanted to sing that.
There I stood and the rouge soaked into my face as it always mysteriously does, when one is not at one's best, leaving me pale and anxious—a real Brangaene. Poor Madame Kirkby-Lunn sang just as beautifully as ever though, but fainted after the second act. I went into her dressing room and offered to do the last bit and let her go home after her plucky fight. She, however, said she realized it was a thankless task for a singer to finish another singer's performance, and that she would not think of asking me to do it. She rested awhile, I still hovering, as requested by the management, till all was over; and I then went home, more exhausted than if I had sung a performance, but resolved to sin no more, and thanking my gods that I had not had to face that critical assemblage without adequate preparation.
The Italian season was to come directly after ours, and they all came drifting in during our last days, to report for rehearsal. One day as I was up in my dressing room, preparing for a matinée, I heard a golden droning below me, rising and falling on half breath—Caruso at a room rehearsal. Words cannot describe the beauty of it, but it gave me exquisite pleasure. A day or two later I was at the Opera House on some errand and chanced to hear the rehearsal of "Pagliacci." Caruso was strolling about the stage, beautifully dressed as usual, with a pale grey Derby hat, gloves of wash-leather and light-coloured cane. The time came for his famous solo. He stood near the footlights with his eyes on the conductor, as we usually do when running over a familiar rôle with an unfamiliar conductor. He began softly with his wonderful effortless stream of tone, so characteristic, and so impossible of imitation. As the music worked on his emotions, always just below the surface with this great artist, his voice thrilled stronger and stronger in spite of him, till suddenly in full flood it poured out its luscious stream—and one thanked God anew for such a voice.
Covent Garden on the night of a Court ball holds the most brilliant audience I have ever seen. The English woman is at her best in evening dress, the jewels are fabulous and the whole affair most dazzling. I remember one evening seeing King Manoel of Portugal in a box. It was shortly after his hasty flight from his own country, and by an odd chance his box was just under a very large "Exit" sign, the pertinence of which was striking.
Destinn was our Senta in "Holländer." She was just back from America, and at rehearsal she had to cut out several portamenti which, she said, she had contracted from the Italians, but which infuriated the German conductor. At the stage rehearsals she directed everything in accordance with Bayreuth tradition, which attaches the utmost importance to every slightest stage position; and the other singers followed her directions with an almost reverent devotion. At the performance she was wonderful, as usual. She wore a real Norwegian bridal headdress, a sort of basket of flowers. A Cockney super, on his way out, remarked in passing me, "I s'y, wot price Destinn's hat?"
It was strange, coming from Germany, where every word almost is understood by the audience, to sing to people whose facial expression did not respond to the text; one feels that the inner meaning of the words is lost, is going for nothing, and this leads to a vague sense of irritation, if one allows the impression to dominate.
There were several young Americans with us with glorious voices, straight from Jean de Reszke's studio. They were to sing the Rheintöchter, and some of the Walküren in the "Ring." One or two were full of ambition and thankful for the experience they were receiving, while being paid. Some of them, however, showed a quite extraordinary attitude, not rare among students of the moneyed class. The air was filled with their complaints at the length of rehearsals, at the discomfort of the swings for the Rhinemaidens, at anything and everything. I was present one day when one of them called Mr. Percy Pitt aside and gravely took him to task for not having the swings adjusted to her comfort—thereby incidentally killing her chances with the management, for a beginner is before anything a beginner in a great Opera House, and is supposed to find her level and make no fuss about it. These girls constantly spoke loftily of their displeasure at the way things were run. When they were offered an extension of their contracts, owing to the repetitions of the "Ring," they could hardly be brought to consider signing on. I said to them, knowing the game, "Girls, some day you will be on your knees to get such engagements as you now hold. You have the chance of singing difficult parts with a great Master in a great Opera House, and you don't seem in the least to realize what that means."
I regret to say my prophecy was nearly correct, for I think only one, a really serious girl, has prospered in her career. The attitude one assumes to one's operatic work in early years is surely reflected later, and the best advice a student can follow is that given me by Schumann-Heink, "Sing everything, no matter what they ask you to do."
It was very amusing to hear the discussions as to what the audience should wear. We gave the performances more or less on the Bayreuth plan, beginning early and with one unusually long pause. As it was broad daylight at the hour set for the curtain to go up, and as the perfect Londoner loathes to be about after dark in anything but evening dress, the problem bothered many. Besides, evening dress is de rigueur at Covent Garden. Some rushed home in the longest pause to dress and dine; some frankly omitted the first acts and came late, splendidly be-jewelled; some wore evening dresses and kept on their evening coats till the sun was decently down; and then bared their suitably naked shoulders. Others were just dubby and high-necked, and brought sandwiches in their pockets, feeling the holier and more Germanly reverent in consequence.
It is a great help to be able to afford to have some one with you in opera life. Home surroundings are the most conducive to good work, and it is hard to make a home alone; but you do not absolutely need any one, if this is not possible. My "morals" were never in danger—no "infamous proposals" were made to me by agent, conductor or director. In my first engagement, one or two of the giddier members of the company had affairs with young officers—in no case a flagrant scandal, as with a married man. Their relations to each other in the theatre were all that could be demanded. The most exaggeratedly correct behaviour was exacted from me. One day in Metz, for example, we went for a walk in the country with the lyric baritone, a nice little chap, who was a great friend of ours. It was a lovely, frosty day in autumn, and we were walking fast through a forest road, when we passed a carriage with the very prim wife of an officer sitting in it. The next day, an acquaintance of ours told us, as a joke, that the same woman had said that afternoon to her, "I thought you told me that Fräulein Howard was a lady?" "So she is," said our friend. "Oh, no," said the other, "she can't be. I saw her and her sister walking with one of the singers from the theatre, and they were behaving very badly." "What were they doing?" asked our friend. "They were all three holding on to his stick!" said she, in a horrified tone!
I went abroad to learn my business and I learned it. There is much talk about it not being necessary to go abroad to prepare oneself for an operatic career, but the time has not yet come in America when the student can find the same opportunity to practice, or work out on the stage her beginner's faults. In Europe you can do this in blissful semi-obscurity. I hope and believe the time will come when a girl will not have to go through all I went through in order to develop her talent, but may do it in her own country. But the wonderfulness of Europe for those whose eyes are open cannot yet be replaced by America, and a real artist will surely flower more perfectly on that side of the water.
To those who go I can only say that I hope they may have the tremendous advantage of fairy god-parents, as I had, and perhaps a sister Marjorie.
After the season closed at Covent Garden I met the manager of the new Century Opera, soon to be opened in New York. He offered me a long contract, and I finally decided to return to America. I saw a photograph of Edward Kellogg Baird in a musical paper at this time, and read of his connection with the enterprise. I said to myself, "That is the type of man I shall marry—if I ever do marry."
I came to the Century, met my husband, E. K. B., and worked with him for the success of the opera, which lay very near our hearts; but the war and other unfortunate circumstances proved too much to overcome, and we were forced to suspend. I finally attained the Metropolitan Opera, which I find the most absorbingly interesting house with which I have ever been connected, and which is the greatest school of all.
REPERTOIRE
THE END