If Miss Garden spared no details in making us acquainted with Fanny's vulgarity, she was equally fair to her in other respects. She seemed to be continually guiding the spectator with comment something like this: "See how this woman can suffer, and she is a woman, like any other woman." How small the means, the effect considered, by which she produced the pathos of the last scene. At the one performance I saw half the people in the audience were in tears. There was a dismaying display of handkerchiefs. Sapho sat in the window, smoking a cigarette, surveying the room in which she had been happy with Jean, and preparing to say good-by. In the earlier scenes her cigarette had aided her in making vulgar gestures. Now she relied on it to tell the pitiful tale of the woman's loneliness. How she clung to that cigarette, how she sipped comfort from it, and how tiny it was! Mary Garden's Sapho, which may never be seen on the stage again (Massenet's music is perhaps his weakest effort), was an extraordinary piece of stage art. That alone would have proclaimed her an interpreter of genius.
George Moore, somewhere, evolves a fantastic theory that a writer's name may have determined his talent: "Dickens—a mean name, a name without atmosphere, a black out-of-elbows, back-stairs name, a name good enough for loud comedy and louder pathos. John Milton—a splendid name for a Puritan poet. Algernon Charles Swinburne—only a name for a reed through which every wind blows music.... Now it is a fact that we find no fine names among novelists. We find only colourless names, dry-as-dust names, or vulgar names, round names like pot-hats, those names like mackintoshes, names that are squashy as goloshes. We have charged Scott with a lack of personal passion, but could personal passion dwell in such a jog-trot name—a round-faced name, a snub-nosed, spectacled, pot-bellied name, a placid, beneficent, worthy old bachelor name, a name that evokes all conventional ideas and formulas, a Grub Street name, a nerveless name, an arm-chair name, an old oak and Abbotsford name? And Thackeray's name is a poor one—the syllables clatter like plates. 'We shall want the carriage at half-past two, Thackeray.' Dickens is surely a name for a page boy. George Eliot's real name, Marian Evans, is a chaw-bacon, thick-loined name." So far as I know Mr. Moore has not expanded his theory to include a discussion of acrobats, revivalists, necromancers, free versifiers, camel drivers, paying tellers, painters, pugilists, architects, and opera singers. Many of the latter have taken no chances with their own names. Both Pauline and Maria Garcia adopted the names of their husbands. Garcia possibly suggests a warrior, but do Malibran and Viardot make us think of music? Nellie Melba's name evokes an image of a cold marble slab but if she had retained her original name of Mitchell it would have been no better ... Marcella Sembrich, a name made famous by the genius and indefatigable labour of its bearer, surely not a good name for an operatic soprano. Her own name, Kochanska, sounds Polish and patriotic ... Luisa Tetrazzini, a silly, fussy name ... Emma Calvé.... Since Madame Bovary the name Emma suggests a solid bourgeois foundation, a country family.... Emma Eames, a chilly name ... a wind from the East! Was it Philip Hale who remarked that she sang Who is Sylvia? as if the woman were not on her calling list?... Lillian Nordica, an evasion. Lillian Norton is a sturdy work-a-day name, suggesting a premonition of a thousand piano rehearsals for Isolde ... Johanna Gadski, a coughing raucous name ... Geraldine Farrar, tomboyish and impertinent, Melrose with a French sauce ... Edyth Walker, a militant suffragette name.... Surely Lucrezia Bori and Maria Barrientos are ill-made names for singers ... Adelina Patti—a patty-cake, patty-cake, baker's man, sort of a name ... Alboni, strong-hearted ... Scalchi ... ugh! Further evidence could be brought forward to prove that singers succeed in spite of their names rather than because of them ... until we reach the name of Mary Garden.... The subtle fragrance of this name has found its way into many hearts. Since Nell Gwyn no such scented cognomen, redolent of cuckoo's boots, London pride, blood-red poppies, purple fox-gloves, lemon stocks, and vermillion zinnias, has blown its delicate odour across our scene.... Delightful and adorable Mary Garden, the fragile Thais, pathetic Jean ... unforgettable Mélisande....
Feodor Chaliapine
| "Do I contradict myself? |
| Very well, then, I contradict myself;" |
| Walt Whitman. |
FEODOR CHALIAPINE, the Russian bass singer, appeared in New York at the Metropolitan Opera House, then under the direction of Heinrich Conried, during the season of 1907-08. He made his American début on Wednesday evening, November 20, 1907, when he impersonated the title part of Boito's opera, Mefistofele. He was heard here altogether seven times in this rôle; six times as Basilio in Il Barbiere di Siviglia; three times as Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust; three times as Leporello in Don Giovanni; and at several Sunday night concerts. He also appeared with the Metropolitan Opera Company in Philadelphia, and possibly elsewhere.
I first met this remarkable artist in the dining-room of the Hotel Savoy on a rainy Sunday afternoon, soon after his arrival in America. His personality made a profound impression on me, as may be gathered from some lines from an article I wrote which appeared the next morning in the "New York Times": "The newest operatic acquisition to arrive in New York is neither a prima donna soprano, nor an Italian tenor with a high C, but a big, broad-shouldered boy, with a kindly smile and a deep bass voice, ... thirty-four years old.... 'I spik English,' were his first words. 'How do you do? et puis good-by, et puis I drrrink, you drrink, he drrrrinks, et puis I love you!' ... Mr. Chaliapine looked like a great big boy, a sophomore in college, who played football." (Pitts Sanborn soon afterwards felicitously referred to him as ce doux géant, a name often applied to Turgeniev.)