Interpreters

by Carl Van Vechten

IV

We come to Mary Garden. I never can resist the temptation to write about Mary Garden. I never even try to. Other subjects intrigue me for a time, but I usually pass them by in the end and go on to something new, new to me, at least. But I always feel that I have left something unsaid about this singing actress. It is probable that I always will feel this way for Miss Garden in her performances constantly suggests some new idea or awakens some dormant emotion. As a result, although I may write about coleoptera, the influence of cobalt on the human mind, or a history of Persian miniatures, I shall probably always find occasion to insert a few remarks about this incomparable artist.

The paper devoted to her in this book seems to me at present pitifully weak, absurdly inadequate. I have gone farther in "The New Art of the Singer," which you will find in "The Merry-Go-Round" (1918), and in my study of Carmen in "The Music of Spain" (1918). This seems a good place to state, however, that Miss Garden's Carmen was only seen to its best advantage when she appeared with Muratore. The nature of her interpretation of this rôle is such that it depends to a great extent on satisfactory assistance from her fellow singers. Her Carmen is a study of a cold, brutal, mysterious gipsy, who does not seek lovers, they come to her. When, as at some recent performances, the tenors and baritones do not come (it is obvious that some of them might take lessons to advantage in crossing the stage) her interpretation loses a good deal of its intention. I offer this explanation to any one who feels that my enthusiasm for her in this rôle is exaggerated. To fully understand the greatness of Miss Garden's Carmen one must have observed it in fitting surroundings. I hope this environment may soon be provided again.

On the whole I feel that the most enthusiastic of Miss Garden's admirers have so far done the woman scant justice. Most of us are beginning to realize that she is the greatest of living lyric artists, that she has done more to revive the original intention of the Florentines in inventing the opera to recapture the theatre of the Greeks, than any one else. She has made opera, indeed, sublimated speech. And she is certainly the contemporary queen of lyric sigaldry.

It is said by some who do not stop to think, or who do not know what singing is, that Mary Garden is a great actress but that she cannot sing.[B] These misguided bigots, who try to make it their business to misunderstand anything that approaches perfection, remind me of the incident of Lady Astor and the American sailor. She met the youth just outside the Houses of Parliament and asked him if he would like to go in. "I would not," were the words he flung into her astonished face. "My mother told me to avoid women like you." Some day a few of the most intelligent of these sacculi may realize that Mary Garden is probably the greatest living singer. It is, indeed, with her voice, and with her singing voice that she does her most consummate acting. Indeed her capacity for colouring her voice to suit the emergencies not only of a phrase but of an entire rôle, might give a hint to future interpreters, were there any capable of taking advantage of such a valuable hint. But, good God, in such matters as phrasing, portamento, messa di voce, and other paraphernalia of the singing teacher's laboratory, she is past-mistress, and if any one has any complaints to make about the quality and quantity of tone she used in the second act of l'Amore dei Tre Re I feel that he did not listen with unprejudiced ears.

There is, perhaps, nothing that need be added at present to what I have already said of her Sapho, Marguerite, Mélisande,[C] Chrysis, Jean, Louise, and Thais, except that such of these impersonations as still remain in her répertoire are as clean-cut, as finely chiselled as ever; probably each is a little improved on each subsequent occasion on which it is performed. Some day I shall have more to say about her marvellous Monna Vanna. I am sure I would understand her Salome better now. When I first saw her in Richard Strauss's music drama I was still under the spell of Olive Fremstad's impersonation, and was astonished, and perhaps a little indignant at Miss Garden's divagations. But now I know what I did not know so well then, that an interpreter must mould a part to suit his own personality. It is probable that if Mary Garden should vouchsafe us another view of her nervous, unleashed tiger-woman I would be completely bowled over.

It seems necessary to speak of the portraits she has added to her gallery since the fall of 1917. Since then she has been seen in Février's Gismonda, Massenet's Cléopâtre, and Montemezzi's l'Amore dei Tre Re. The first of these is a very bad opera; it is not even one of Sardou's best plays. The part afforded Miss Garden an opportunity for the display of pride, dignity, and authority. Her gowns were very beautiful—I remember particularly the lovely Grecian drapery of the convent scene, which she has since developed into a first-act costume for Fiora; she made a handsome figure of the woman, but the thing itself was pasteboard and will soon be forgotten. The posthumous Cléopâtre was nearly as bad, but in the scene in which the queen, disguised as a boy, visits an Egyptian brothel and makes love to another boy, Mary was very startling, and the death scene, in which, after burying the asp in her bosom, she tosses it away with a shudder, sinks to the ground, then crawls to Antony's side and expires below his couch, one arm waving futilely in the air in an attempt to touch her lover, was one of her most touching and finest bits of acting. Her pale face, her green eyelids combined to create a sinister make-up. But, on the whole, a dull opera, and not likely to be heard again.

But Fiora! What a triumph! What a volcano! I have never been able to find any pleasure in listening to the music of Montemezzi's l'Amore dei Tre Re, although it has a certain pulse, a rhythmic beat, especially in the second act, which gives it a factitious air of being better than it really is. The play, however, is interesting, and subtle enough to furnish material for quibble and discussion not only among critics, but among interpreters themselves. Miss Bori, who originally sang Fiora in New York, was a pathetic flower, torn and twisted by the winds of fate, blown hither and thither without effort or resistance on her part. It was probably a possible interpretation, and it found admirers. Miss Muzio, the next local incumbent of the rôle, fortified with a letter from Sem Benelli, or at least his spoken wishes, found it convenient to alter this impersonation in most particulars, but she was not, is not, very convincing. Her intentions are undoubtedly good but she is no instrument for the mystic gods to play upon.

But Miss Garden's Fiora burned through the play like a flame. She visualized a strong-minded mediæval woman, torn by the conflicting emotions of pity and love, but once she had abandoned herself to her passion she became a living altar consecrated to the worship of Aphrodite and Eros. Such a hurricane of fiery, tempestuous love has seldom if ever before swept the stage. Miss Garden herself has never equalled this performance, save in Mélisande and Monna Vanna, which would lead one to the conclusion that she is at her best in parts of the middle ages, until one reflects that in early Greek courtesans, in French cocottes of several periods, in American Indians, and Spanish gipsies she is equally atmospheric. Other Fioras have been content to allow the hand of death to smite them without a struggle. Not this one. When Archibaldo attempts to strangle her she tries to escape; her efforts are horrible and pathetic because they are fruitless. And the final clutch of the fingers behind his back leave the most horrible blood-stains of tragic beauty in the memory.