V
For the season of 1891-92 the Metropolitan was leased to Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau. The lessees brought together a brilliant company, including Lilli Lehmann, Emma Eames, Marie Van Zandt, Giula and Sophia Ravogli, Lillian Nordica, Emma Albani, Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and Jean Lassalle. Vianesi was conductor. Meyerbeer, Gounod, Bizet, Verdi, and the older Italians supplied the list of operas for the season, while Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger, Der fliegende Holländer, and Fidelio were given (in Italian) as a sop to the 'German element.' The only novelties were Gluck's Orfeo and Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, the latter having been given previously by two companies in English. A supplementary season in 1892 featured Patti in Lucia and Il Barbiere. In the same year the Metropolitan was partially destroyed by fire.
The Metropolitan Opera House Company was reorganized in 1893 as the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company and made a new lease with Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau, which, through various vicissitudes, lasted until Heinrich Conried took over the reins in 1902. Abbey died in 1896 and Grau remained at the head of affairs until Conried's advent. The season of 1893-4 presented nothing new except Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz, which did not make a sensation. There was, however, a sensation in the fascinating shape of Emma Calvé, whose Carmen is an imperishably piquant memory with New York opera-goers. With Nellie Melba and Pol Plançon she was the chief newcomer of the season. A supplemental season presented Massenet's Werther. Otherwise there is only to note the Carmen craze provoked by Calvé and a Faust craze induced by the coincidence of Emma Eames, Jean de Reszke, and Plançon. The latter was so pronounced as to lend point to Mr. W. J. Henderson's witty characterization of the Metropolitan as the Faustspielhaus.
Calvé did not return for the season of 1894-5 and in her place came Zélie de Lussan, whom New Yorkers refused to accept as a suitable embodiment of Mérimée's heroine. Francesco Tamagno and Victor Maurel were the other noteworthy newcomers, while Luigi Mancinelli was the principal conductor. The important event of the season was the first performance of Verdi's Falstaff, and there was a new opera, Elaine, by the Argentine composer Herman Bemberg, a distinct anti-climax.
In the meantime, there were signs that a new order of things at the Metropolitan was much desired of a large section of the New York music-loving public. The Metropolitan had practically a monopoly of opera in the city and a few serious attempts had recently been made to break that monopoly. Oscar Hammerstein and Rudolph Aronson had rushed to the front with immature performances of Cavalleria rusticana in 1891. The former, apparently, had already been inoculated with the managerial virus and in 1893 he opened his Manhattan Opera House on Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street. Moszkowski's Boabdil and Beethoven's Fidelio were the features of a season of two weeks which saw the beginning and end of that particular enterprise. Some performances in English were given at the Grand Opera House, beginning in May, 1893, and in the same year the Duff Opera Company presented an English version of Gounod's Philémon et Baucis.
There was, however, a demand of which these flimsy ventures took no account, and the credit for realizing it sufficiently to take chances on it goes to Walter Damrosch and Anton Seidl. The former took advantage of the presence in New York of Amalia Materna, Anton Schott, Emil Fischer, and Conrad Behrens to give representations of Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung at the Carnegie Music Hall and the Metropolitan Opera House, respectively. Further evidence of the strong Wagnerian tendency in New York was the success of an improvised performance of Tannhäuser by the German Press Club. The next symptom of the movement was the organization of a Wagner Society to support a season of Wagner operas at the Metropolitan. Unfortunately Seidl and Damrosch were rivals and could not agree on a plan by which they might give German opera together. Damrosch was able to secure subscriptions enough to insure him against loss, and, after the close of the Metropolitan season of 1894-95, he gave seventeen performances of opera with a middling company which included Johanna Gadski, then a novice, Marie Brema, Max Alvary, and Emil Fischer. The enterprise was devoted altogether to Wagner and was an immense success. Denied the use of the Metropolitan for another season, in 1896 Damrosch established himself at the Academy of Music with a strong company which numbered among its members Milka Ternina, Katherina Klafsky, Johanna Gadski, Max Alvary, and Emil Fischer. Besides the Wagner repertory he presented Fidelio, Der Freischütz, and his own opera, 'The Scarlet Letter,' based on Hawthorne's romance of that name. The second Damrosch season was a failure.
Before returning to the Metropolitan season of 1895-6 it may be mentioned that, on October 8, 1895, Sir Augustus Harris, of Covent Garden, presented at Daly's Theatre some 'beautiful music composed for the occasion' by 'Mr. Humperdinckel.' Sir Augustus was referring to Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel.[51] The Metropolitan season of 1895-96 was distinguished by an announcement that 'the management [had] decided to add a number of celebrated German artists and to present Wagner operas in the German language, all of which operas will be given with superior singers, equal to any who have ever been heard in the German language.' The 'number of celebrated German artists,' however, materialized into three, of whom only Marie Brema could even by poetic license be characterized as 'superior.' Calvé returned to glad the hearts of Carmen lovers, and, except for the addition of Mario Ancona, a sterling bass, the other principals remained the same as in the preceding season. Anton Seidl was conductor. Unquestionably the event of the season was Jean de Reszke's presentation of Tristan in the soft-toned vesture of bel canto. De Reszke, of course, was too great an artist to turn the character into an Italian stage lover, but he did present a vocally mellifluous Tristan and his methods have influenced all subsequent interpreters of the rôle. Two acts of Bizet's Pêcheur de Perles, Massenet's Navarraise (with Calvé), and Boïto's Mefistofele were other interesting features of the season.
In the fall of 1896 Colonel Mapleson made a short reappearance at the Academy of Music. He still retained his bad taste in choosing a répertoire, but he provided one novelty in the shape of Giordano's Andrea Chénier. After the opening of the Metropolitan season he moved to Boston, where his orchestra went on strike and his American career ended forever. The loss of Mme. Nordica by disagreement and of Mme. Klafsky and Mr. Alvary by death was a handicap to the Metropolitan in the beginning of its season of 1896-97. Before the season had closed Melba injured her voice singing Brünnhilde and had to retire; Eames was compelled to undergo an operation, and Castelmary fell stricken with heart disease during a performance of Tristan und Isolde. In spite of which the season managed to run its allotted span. The only novelty was Massenet's Le Cid.
There was no Metropolitan season in 1897-98, but Walter Damrosch and Charles A. Ellis gave a series of German and Italian operas at that house in January and February, 1898, with an excellent company, which included Melba, Nordica, Gadski, Marie Mattfeld, Emil Fischer, David Bispham, and Giuseppe Campanari. In May of the same year the Milan Royal Opera Company, of La Scala, recruited chiefly from Mexico and South America, introduced New York to Puccini's La Bohème. The opera was again produced later in the year at the Casino by another Italian company and in English at the American Theatre by Henry W. Savage's Castle Square Opera Company.
Melba and Sembrich came back to the Metropolitan for the season of 1898-99 and among the newcomers were Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Suzanne Adams, Ernest Van Dyck, Albert Saleza, and Anton Van Rooy. Nordica, Eames, Lehmann, Mantelli, the brothers de Reszke, Pol Plançon, David Bispham, and Andreas Dippel were also in the company—altogether a very brilliant assemblage. The only novelty was Mancinelli's Ero e Leandro. Antonio Scotti was a newcomer in the season of 1899-1900, which was also distinguished by a visit from Ernst von Schuch, director of the opera at Dresden, who conducted two performances of Lohengrin. Before the opening of the following season the Metropolitan English Grand Opera Company, promoted by Henry W. Savage and Maurice Grau, gave a series of operas in English with a tolerably good repertory and a very good list of singers. Savage's Castle Square Company had already brought forward earlier in the year a novelty in the shape of Spinelli's A basso Porto, and at the Metropolitan he produced for the first time Goring-Thomas's 'Esmeralda.'
For the season of 1900-01 Milka Ternina came to the Metropolitan and New York was introduced to Louise Homer, Lucienne Bréval, Fritzi Scheff, the inimitable and much-lamented Charles Gilibert, Imbart de la Tour, Robert Blass, and Marcel Journet. Mancinelli was still conductor. The novelties were Puccini's La Tosca and Ernest Reyer's Salammbo. Of the newcomers for 1901-02 the only one that calls for mention is Albert Reiss, whose Mime and David still delight New York Wagner lovers. Isidore de Lara's Messaline and Paderewski's Manru were the novelties, and there was also a gala performance in honor of Prince Henry of Prussia, which was one of the most elaborate displays of snobbery ever staged in America. Walter Damrosch, Signor Sepilli, and M. Flon were the conductors. Alfred Hertz came over as conductor of German opera for the season of 1902-03, and has remained a distinctly reliable asset to the Metropolitan ever since. The only novelty of that season was Ethel Smyth's Der Wald, though Verdi's Ernani and Un Ballo in Maschera had been strangers for so long that they were novelties in effect. Before the opening of the season Mascagni favored New York with a visit and produced at the Metropolitan his own operas Zanetto, Cavalleria rusticana, and Iris. His enterprise was not successful.