“Pardon me, Frau Gräfin, and pardon me, Komtesse,[[15]] if I permit myself to make this call; but I consider it my duty—it is perhaps a question of something great and rare—something extraordinary in the Komtesse’s fate, something which—” He struggled to find words.
“Well, what do you mean?” asked my mother, and I too was keyed up to a high pitch. (“Something great and rare”—those who are hungry for life are always looking for that with yearning eyes.)
“I have often heard the Komtesse sing. She has had no training at all, but she has a voice such as comes only once in a hundred years, such as I have not heard since Jenny Lind, and it really quite reminds one of Jenny Lind’s. The same meltingness, the same power, that same something,—in short, the Komtesse has millions in her throat, she has a glorious career before her if she wishes—this I had to say.”
So, then, it might be that glory and fortune were to be mine—I did not at all distrust the artistic judgment of the music teacher and experienced orchestra conductor. My mother was likewise entranced. Her old predilection for the profession of a great singer, the profession which in youth she had so longed to have as her own, caused her now to grasp with delight the hope that her old-time dreams might be fulfilled in her daughter. And the millions which she had had to let dry up in her throat, the confidently expected millions which the abominable trente-et-quarante table had denied her, should come flowing to our house after all! She immediately arranged with the music teacher to give me lessons every day.
Professor Beranek had in fact been a singing-teacher at the conservatory, and had trained several important operatic artists; so the formation of my voice could be intrusted to him. He wanted to instruct me for a year, make me thoroughly musical, give my voice the right position and fluency; after that I should have to study a year or two more with an Italian maestro, and then I might rise above the musical horizon as a star of the first magnitude. I must take up the Italian career, that was settled; my mother herself insisted upon that, for the names of Pasta and Grisi and Malibran still filled her head, and only by traveling from Paris to London, from Milan to Madrid, from St. Petersburg to America, could one win the aforesaid millions and that world-wide reputation which makes artists in song into half-queens.
Ah yes, crowns,—that was what my young ambition craved. Nothing had come of the royal crown of Georgia; that had faded into air together with the dream of love; in its place glory should now crown me, and instead of love should be Art! One can burn as passionately for Art as for a beloved. Whoever loves Art and is loved by Art—that is, whoever loves it with the power of achievement—may find life perfectly satisfying.
Now came for me a time, a whole year, when I lived for only one object,—Song; that had now become the “one important thing.” On the very day after our interview the instruction began. In order that it might make rapid progress, and I might in a year advance as far as others did in a conservatory course of several years, the lessons were fixed at four hours a day,—two hours in the forenoon and two in the afternoon, with the requisite interval of rest between. Scalesinging, vocal exercises, score-reading, the science of harmony: I was to become a thorough musician; as phenomenal in artistic schooling as in vocal talent,—simply the greatest cantatrice of the century. Herr Beranek went into ecstasies every day, and thus kept us fancying that the marvelous had really come to pass, that an enormous prize had fallen to me in the lottery of life. Or rather that a treasure-trove was assuredly within sight, but that it must be dug for. And I dug and dug with a diligence, a perseverance, a joy, that was unique of its kind. From morning till night, through the long months of the autumn, of the winter, of the spring, nothing but notes,—sung, played, read, written notes,—and yet it was a whole world, full of sweetness and beauty, full of inspiration, full of proud satisfaction. I do not know (seeing that I never attained to it) whether a successful career as a prima donna really carries with it as much happiness as is to be experienced in the preparation for it, when the time is occupied with study, and triumph seems sure.
As material for study we ordered a whole little music library: Garcia’s “Method” in two large volumes; the scores of all the operas that were to form my future repertory—all with Italian text. That was by no means a monotonous life. On the contrary, it was full of the tragic, of passion, of ebullient joy, of the tenderest devotion, of the most heroic uplift, of funereal horror, of epithalamial bliss; in short, of all the feelings and fates which belonged to the heroines of my operas. Norma, Amina, La Traviata, Lucia, Linda, I myself was—one after the other, as I sat at the piano and memorized the text and melody in which were expressed all the sadness and the joy, the sweetness and the horror, which I tried with all my might to realize so that I might one day carry it triumphantly into the souls of my listeners. And the Edgardos and Manricos, Gennaros and Alfredos, who were destined to accompany my soprano in harmonious trios and sextets,—these also I saw before me; I simply loved them. Do not take it that I was imagining the singers,—they were to remain a matter of indifference to me,—but the forms created by the dramatist and composer, and all their heroism, all their poetry. In just the same manner the young girl reading her Schiller becomes enraptured by the Don Carloses and Posas, the Ferdinands and Karl Moors,—only in the study of the operas there is added the ineffable something that wells forth from the magic tones of the music. Music says things which are not contained in any language. What can now and then stream forth from a sequence of tones, from a chord, from a rhythmical crescendo, is as little to be repeated in words as is the fragrance of flowers, the taste of a fruit. There are melodies which tell a story, arpeggios which caress, chords which burn; in many measures one feels as if—now I am endeavoring, after all, to find words for that of which I have just said that it lies outside of language; it is in vain. But a hundred times more powerful yet is the enjoyment of the charm of music when one is filled with it not only as a recipient but also as a giver, as a creator; when one is himself the transmitter of this mysterious and ineffable something to the souls of others; when one feels that thousands of auditors are seized by the same waves of passion, of rapture, of exultation, or of pain.
To be sure, I experienced all this not as a reality, but only as the foretaste of a thing to come—but a thing whose coming I did not doubt, which seemed to me like a boundless wealth that was not indeed in my hands in the form of gold, but I had in my possession well-secured drafts for it. Not only did the study of the rôles afford me this enjoyment, but even the mere practice of scales and the composition of roulades, the dry work of the technic of my art, gave me gladdening and enlivening sensations. For the concept “Art” had taken hold of me with all the power that is inherent in it, that results from the worship of art in books on the history of art, and from the worship of artists by the public. When studying for the chosen calling, one feels—at least I felt—intrusted with a mission which carried with it something priestly, something holy.
The question arises, Was not vanity also involved? Was I not gloating rather over the prospect of arousing admiration, of enjoying a world-wide fame (for I was not expecting anything small, thanks to my master’s indefatigable praise and expressions of wonder), or else over the thought that the heroine whom I should represent would be so graciously personified in me, that the brilliant satin train in the first acts would make my tall, slender figure so effective, and that my loosened hair in the tragic final scene would fall down below my knees in billowy natural abundance? Should I not—apart from the might of song—also as a woman set all hearts afire?