VI
THE FOUNDING OF GERMAN OPERA AT THE
METROPOLITAN—DEATH OF MY FATHER
The Metropolitan Opera House was built in 1882 by a group of rich New Yorkers who, feeling themselves shut out by the older aristocracy who owned the old Academy of Music and occupied all the boxes at the Italian Opera seasons of Colonel Mapleson, determined to have an opera of their own. They leased their new house for the inaugural season of 1883-84 to Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau, a firm of theatrical speculators and managers who had made a name for themselves by the tours of Mary Anderson and other celebrated “stars” of Europe and America.
The Metropolitan Opera stockholders had appointed as architect a man whose reputation had been made in building churches, but who knew nothing of theatrical or operatic requirements, or of the latest developments in Europe in the construction of the stage and modern stage appliances. As a result, the stage arrangements were of the most clumsy description. Great walls, many feet thick, ran beneath the stage from the front to the rear, thereby precluding the possibility of a “transformation” scene in which one set of scenery could sink into the ground while the other descended from above. The parquet floor was placed so low that the orchestra pit, which was supposed to be an imitation (but was not) of the sunken orchestra at Bayreuth, had to be placed still lower and in consequence the conductor was perched on a kind of pulpit high in the air so that the singers could see him. He had to gesticulate wildly upward toward the singers and downward toward the abyss in which the orchestra fiddled without being able properly to see his gestures. Besides this, the orchestra, being so far from the stage, was almost inaudible to the singers, and this often resulted in the most disastrous dropping of the pitch, especially in the concerted numbers. Years later and at huge expense some of these faults of construction were corrected.
For their season Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau engaged a large number of operatic stars, including Nilsson, Patti, Sembrich, Trebelli, and many others of distinction, but there was absolutely no artistic head of the enterprise nor any one who had had any real managerial experience with grand opera, and in consequence all these stars stepped on each other’s feet and trains and the confusion was incredible. Good performances were an accident, as the principal artists usually deemed it beneath their dignity to attend rehearsals, and the season ended in failure and the bankruptcy of Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau. Colonel Mapleson, the astute manager of the Academy of Music, rubbed his hands with glee at this downfall of what he called “the new yellow brewery on Broadway.” The directors of the Metropolitan were at a loss what to do with their elephant. Their president was James Roosevelt, an uncle of Hilborn Roosevelt who was then president of the New York Symphony Society and who was a stanch and devoted friend of my father’s. He suggested to his uncle that my father be appointed as director and that a season of opera in German be inaugurated, as Italian opera was evidently on the wane and Wagner, especially, on the ascendant.
The directors thought well of this scheme and accordingly made an arrangement with my father under which he should become director of the opera for the season 1884-85 and that he should engage a company of German singers of which, however, Madame Materna must be one, as she had sung with great success at the Theodore Thomas Festival of the preceding year and they wanted some name already known in America to head the list of singers.
This meant a complete revolution in operatic affairs, as until then Italian opera had been the only fashionable form of musical entertainment. Opera in German was rather looked down upon and Wagner’s genius was as yet too imperfectly known or recognized to exercise much influence on the opera-going folks of that time.
My father was to receive a salary of ten thousand dollars, for which he was to act as manager and also as musical conductor of the season. The salary was certainly not large, even for those days, but my father was glad to get it and at the same time to carry out the dream of his life, the introduction of the Wagner music-dramas to America, and to sweep away forever the artificial and shallow operas of the old Italian school with which Mapleson, Max Strakosh, and others had until then principally fed our public.
He sailed for Europe in May and returned in August with all his contracts made, including Madame Materna, to whom he had to pay a thousand dollars a night, as she had gotten wind of the dictum of the Metropolitan Opera House directors that under all circumstances she must be one of the company.
Among the singers were Marianne Brandt, one of the greatest dramatic mezzo-sopranos and contraltos of our times, and Anton Schott, a typical German “heroic tenor,” with whom Bülow had had his famous altercation at Hanover a few years before at a “Lohengrin” performance. Schott had sung Lohengrin’s “Farewell to the Swan” out of tune and this had so irritated Bülow, who was conducting, that he turned on the unfortunate tenor and said to him: “You are not a Knight of the Swan, but a Knight of the Swine.” Schott, as an ex-officer in a Hanoverian regiment, deemed his honor as an officer insulted, demanded an apology or a duel, and as the irate von Bülow would grant him neither the one nor the other, Bülow had to resign his post as director of the Royal Opera, while Schott remained triumphant in his position.
For the youthful lyric soprano rôles my father had engaged Madame Seidl-Kraus, the wife of Anton Seidl and possessor of a voice of great purity and simple appeal. The coloratura rôles were sung by Madame Schroeder-Hanfstangel, a truly great artist, with the real bel canto of the Italian school, whom Gounod had admired so greatly that he invited her to Paris to sing Marguerite in “Faust” at the Grand Opera.
The other singers possessed both the virtues and the failings of the German Opera School of that time. They were very amenable to ensemble work, carrying out the dramatic side of their rôles with real ability, forming an excellent ensemble, and tireless in rehearsing, but their singing was sometimes faulty and not equal to the naturally beautiful tone emission of the best Italian singers.
The stage-manager, Wilhelm Hock, was one of the best in Germany and his management of the movements of great crowds on the stage, as for instance in “Lohengrin” on the arrival of Lohengrin and the Swan, the building of the barricades in “Massaniello,” the Coronation Scene in Meyerbeer’s “Le Prophète,” was a revelation to our public. The orchestra was, of course, that of the New York Symphony Society, and my father infused the entire ensemble with such an ideal of perfection that during many of the performances, especially in “Lohengrin,” “Le Prophète,” “Fidelio,” and “Walküre,” the public seethed with excitement and enthusiasm. There had been an “improvised” performance of “Walküre” at the Academy of Music under the German conductor Neuendorf a few years before. The Brunhilde had been sung by Madame Pappenheim, possessor of a glorious voice, but the rest of the cast had been woefully deficient. Insufficient rehearsals and ignorance of the music of Wagner on the part of the conductor had also prevented this performance from making any impression or giving any real idea of the beauties of the work.
The performance under my father included Madame Materna as Brunhilde, who had created the rôle in Bayreuth in ’76 and who was then at the very height of her glorious vocal powers; Madame Seidl-Kraus, an exquisite and pathetic Sieglinde; Anton Schott, a vigorous and highly dramatic Siegmund; and Staudigl as Wotan. Staudigl was a son of the famous old Viennese bass with whom he had studied, singing with such good results that he made as fine an impression in concert and oratorio as in opera. The first barytone was Adolf Robinson, who had begun his career with my father in Breslau and whose warm impassioned bel canto won instant recognition here.
There was no professional opera claque at the Metropolitan in those days such as is now maintained by some of the singers and conductors who, in rivalry with each other, foolishly spend their money in the hiring of twenty to fifty husky men, under a well-trained leader, who stand at the side of the balconies and family circle and clap with the machine-like regularity of a steel hammer in an iron foundry in order to produce so and so many recalls after an act. In those days this was not necessary. The public applauded wildly and shouted themselves hoarse of their own free will, and the papers almost unanimously pronounced the performances an artistic revolution, and said that such dramatic truth and ensemble work had but seldom before been presented in such a convincing way on the operatic stage of New York.
During the entire winter I lived in a sea of excitement and of joy at seeing my father’s genius at last so universally recognized. But my anxiety was also very great. I was with him constantly, from morning until night, and could see that the labor of carrying everything entirely on his shoulders, the effort of organizing an artistic whole out of the many different elements, was overwhelming. The rehearsals often lasted all day and I do not think that I missed a rehearsal or a performance during the entire season. Sometimes I would timidly implore my father to put some of the work, especially the managerial part, on other shoulders, but he would not listen, saying that the responsibility was his and that he could not delegate what he conceived to be his solemn duty as one representing German art in a foreign country to any one else.
In the meantime, the directors, after deliberating on their future course, decided that opera in German had come to stay and offered my father a contract for the following year in which, however, with what they conceived to be real business methods, they reduced his salary to eight thousand dollars but offered him a share in any possible profits. Money matters were to my father always so unimportant as far as he was concerned, that I think he would have signed a contract in which he bound himself to pay eight thousand dollars a year to the Metropolitan Opera House for the privilege of maintaining Wagnerian opera there. He accepted their proposition and was happy in the evident security of opera in German for many years to come. During this winter he would not give up his beloved Symphony and Oratorio Societies, and he always insisted that the weekly Thursday-evening rehearsals with the chorus of the Oratorio Society were a rest for him from operatic affairs.
During one of these rehearsals in February 1885 (I think we were preparing the “Requiem” of Verdi) he suddenly complained of feeling ill and I rushed from the piano toward him, and together with some of the singers we carried him to a cab and brought him home.
Pneumonia set in and he was too worn with the gigantic struggles of the winter to withstand it. During this terrible week of illness the opera had to be kept going and I conducted “Walküre” and “Tannhäuser” without much difficulty. They had been so splendidly rehearsed by my father and had been performed several times; I knew them by heart, and artists, chorus, and orchestra gave me the most affectionate and willing assistance. I have therefore never claimed much credit for what many kind friends at that time considered an extraordinary feat.
The season had only one more week to run, but my father had made arrangements for a short tour comprising Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia.
On February 15 he died and left me numb and overwhelmed by the terrible responsibilities which began to press in upon me. Even at this late date I cannot bear to write of my loss. Our relations had become so close and intimate, and during the last years he had so often leaned on me with such sweet confidence. I had always looked up to him as my ideal of a man and musician, and it seemed to me that I could never smile again.
The last performances at the Metropolitan immediately after his death were conducted by John Lund, a highly talented chorus master who has since made his home in America, but there were so many immediate necessities crowding in upon me that I had no opportunity for indulging in quiet grief. Events moved with incredible and terrible swiftness. The contracts for the tour had to be met. My father’s estate was technically liable, although he left literally no money. There was no one to assume the responsibility of taking the company on tour except poor me, and I accordingly set forth, together with the entire company of about a hundred and fifty members, on a special train of the West Shore Railroad for Chicago on Saturday afternoon of February 21. We were to open with “Tannhäuser” at the Columbia Theatre on the following Monday evening. During this trip the worst blizzard of the year struck our train. We were completely snowed in and the road, which was at that time a rather lame rival of the New York Central, was so ill-equipped with means to shovel us out that instead of arriving on Sunday evening, we did not get into Chicago until Monday at eight P. M., the hour at which the performance was to have begun. My dear brother Frank, who had come on from Denver to meet me in Chicago and to discuss future plans, boarded our train a little while out of Chicago and told me that not only was the house sold out, but all had determined to wait until we arrived and chivalrously to “see us through.” The mayor of the city had made an excited speech from the proscenium box in which he was sitting and said that Chicago must help a young man like myself who had so courageously undertaken to carry on the great work of his father.
When we arrived at the station the company were quickly bundled into cabs and omnibuses. Luckily the scenery had been sent on ahead, but the costume and property trunks were on our train, and the work of transferring them and getting out the “Tannhäuser” costumes and properties was agonizing.
Materna and I were the first to arrive at the theatre, and we were marched through the auditorium from the front entrance by the local manager who wished to give this ocular demonstration of our presence. The audience cheered.
Behind the scenes the confusion was incredible. The trunks with the wigs could not be found, nor the trunks with the footwear, and Tannhäuser and the other singers of the Wartburg, together with the noble lords and ladies, appeared on the stage in a most remarkable combination of costumes, mediæval and modern. But it made no difference. I began the overture after ten o’clock. The audience cheered themselves hoarse.
The trunk containing Materna’s costume as Elizabeth was not hurled on the stage until just before the beginning of the second act. It made no difference. When she appeared in all her smiling radiance and sang “Dich Theure Halle” the audience again went mad with delight, and so on until the curtain finally fell at one-thirty in the morning.
Ever since that terrible but wonderful evening I have had a soft spot in my heart for Chicago, and during the many years I have never lost the friendship of that remarkable city. Even to-day, every now and then, an old gray-headed or bald-headed citizen of Chicago comes to me and says: “Do you remember that first performance of ‘Tannhäuser’ at the Columbia Theatre in February, 1885?”
The success was so great that we extended our season an extra week, during which I produced for the first time “La Dame Blanche” by Boieldieu.
We finished our tour with a week in Boston, where we had a similarly enthusiastic reception, and especially “Walküre” and “Lohengrin” made a profound impression. There I produced (for the first time in America, I think) Gluck’s “Orpheus,” in which Marianne Brandt gave a glorious and touching impersonation of the title-rôle. It is characteristic of the audacity of youth that I should have given two new performances of operas which were rehearsed and produced while we were on tour, “La Dame Blanche” and “Orpheus.” But as the principal rôles had been sung by most of our artists in Germany, these two operas being in the regular repertoire of every German opera-house, the feat was not so extraordinary. The performances were good in ensemble and gave great pleasure to the audience.
My farewell performance in Boston was a Saturday matinée of the “Walküre” with Materna as Brunhilde. In the morning the orchestra struck. We had made arrangements to send the entire company to New York on one of the large Fall River steamers, but they vowed that they would not go by steamer and insisted on being sent by train. I was equally determined to send them by water. The steamers were palatial, the weather excellent spring weather, and there was no valid reason for objecting. When they persisted in their demands I told them that I would consider them as having broken their contracts, that I would not pay them their salaries for the week, and would give the “Walküre” performance accompanied on two pianos, by John Lund and myself. This was, of course, a crazy bluff, but it worked and they decided to accept passage by steamer.
At the close of the third act of “Walküre,” when Materna as Brunhilde had snuggled into the artificially deep hollow of the rocky couch which sustained her bulky form and on which she was to begin her slumber of years until the hero, Siegfried, should awaken her, and when Staudigl (Wotan) had disappeared in the flames, I suddenly noticed, while conducting the beautiful monotony of the last E-major chords of the Fire Charm, that the grass mats just below Brunhilde’s couch had caught fire, and that just as the curtain was descending slowly on the last bars a Boston fireman with helmet on his head and bucket in his hand quietly came out from the wings and poured a liberal dose of water on the flames. The thing happened so late and so quickly that there was no panic. The people went mad with enthusiasm and Materna, Staudigl, and I had to bow our farewells many, many times. Just after one of these recalls I noted the little fireman standing in the wings and saying: “Be jabbers, I ought to come out too.”
“So you should,” I said, and with that took him by one hand and Materna by the other and thus we dragged him before the footlights where, with true Hibernian sense of humor, he bowed right and left with a delighted grin on his face.
Thus ended my first opera tour.
While I was on tour the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House met to consider their future policy, and, in view of the success of the opera in German inaugurated by my father, they decided to continue on the same lines. Curiously enough they appointed a young man as director of the opera who had never had any managerial or musical experience in his life. His name was Edmund C. Stanton. He was a relative of one of the directors and had acted as recording secretary for the Board of Directors. He was tall, good-looking, with gentle brown eyes, always well groomed, of a kindly disposition and the most perfect and courtly manners which indeed never failed him and which were about all that he had left at the end of his seven years’ incumbency, at which time the German opera crumbled to dust as a natural result of his curious ignorance and incompetency in matters operatic. The directors at the same time very generously appointed me as his assistant and as second conductor, granting me a salary which was large enough to enable me to support my mother and my father’s family decently. This was naturally a great relief to me and I determined to strain every nerve to show myself worthy of such confidence and generosity.