Although Mary Garden brought to America three of the best parts in her répertoire, Mélisande, Thais, and Louise, six rôles, at least, she has sung for the first time in this country, Sapho, Natoma, Dulcinée in Don Quichotte, Prince Charmant in Cendrillon, Salome, and Carmen. She first identified herself with the Spanish gipsy at the Philadelphia Opera House on November 3, 1911. On February 13, 1912, with the Philadelphia Company, she was heard in Bizet's opera in New York. I attended both of these performances and found much to admire in each of them. Something, however, was lacking; something was wrong; nobody seemed to know exactly what. The general impression was that Mary Garden had failed at last and it was generally bruited about that she would never sing Carmen again. However, Miss Garden is not one of those who permits herself to fail; it may be that she remembers Schumann's saying, "He who sets limits to himself will always be expected to remain within them."... In any case I was not surprised to learn that Miss Garden was singing Carmen at the Opéra-Comique in Paris during the season of 1916-17. In the fall of 1917 she sang the part in Chicago and on February 8, 1918, with the Chicago Opera Company, she reappeared in the part in New York. This occasion may be regarded as one of the greatest triumphs a singer has ever achieved. For Mary Garden had so entirely reconceived the rôle, so stepped into its atmosphere, that she had now made it not merely one of her great parts (it ranks with her Mélisande, her Monna Vanna, and her Thais) but also she had made it her part. There is indeed no Carmen of the moment who can be compared with her.
A feral gipsy from Triana, this apparition; a cigarrera in the Fábrica de Tobacos for the sake of the "affairs of Egypt"; a true gitana in her saya "with many rows of flounces." Any day in the streets of Seville could you have seen her like, peering through the gratings into the patios, ready to tell bahi. "Eyes of a gipsy, eyes of a wolf" is a Spanish proverb, according to Mérimée, and Borrow tells us that a gitano can always be detected by his eye: "Its peculiarity consists chiefly in a strange staring expression, which to be understood must be seen, and in a thin glaze which steals over it when in repose, and seems to emit phospheric light."... So, did it seem to me, had become the eyes of Mary Garden. This discinct creature, instinctively paradoxical, would be equally at home in the spinnies of the arid Spanish plains, on the dirty stage of a maison de danses at Triana, or, gaily bedecked and spangled, like a "bedizened butterfly of commerce" in a box of the Plaza de Toros. Sensuous and caline, as in the Seguidilla, rubbing her velvet back against the canari; proud and magnetic (she must have carried a piece of the bar lachi about with her), she drew her lovers to her side; she did not advance to meet them. White hot in anger: other Carmens have hurled the helmet after the departing José; Mary Garden shot it at him like a bursting hand grenade. Fatalist: cabalistic signs smouldering in purple flame on her breast, in the end published this motto in Roman letters: "Je ne crains rien!" When she danced she scarcely lifted her feet from the floor, tapping her heels rhythmically and sensuously into the hidden chambers of our brains; so the inquisitors maddened their victims with the endless drop, drop, drop of water. Her manipulation of her fan, a monstrous Spanish fan, coral on one side and with tauromachian decorations on the other, was in itself a lesson in diabolic grace. She made the fan a part of herself, a part of her movement, as a Spanish woman would.... The climax was fitting enough; her answer to José in the last act, "Non, je ne t'aime plus," sung not with force, not in anger, but with a sort of amused contempt.... So does the gipsy regard the busno ... with a sort of amused contempt. Fatalist, humourist, enchantress, panther, savage, gamine, in turn, this Carmen suggested the virgin brutality of Spain, the austere portentous passion of Persephone, the frivolous devilments of Hell itself.
June 20, 1918.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It must be remembered that Mérimée and Borrow were writing nearly a century ago; what was true then may not be true today. Borrow, himself, says (in "The Zincali"): "It is, of course, by inter-marriage alone that the two races will ever commingle, and before that event is brought about, much modification must take place amongst the Gitanos, in their manners, in their habits, in their affections, and their dislikes, and, perhaps, even in their physical peculiarities; much must be forgotten on both sides, and everything is forgotten in the course of time."
[2] Nevertheless Carmen is frequently sung in Spain, even in Seville, although probably more often in Italian than in French or Spanish.
[3] There is a picturesque account of this Fábrica de Tobacos in Baron Ch. Davillier's "l'Espagne" (Hachette; Paris; 1874).
[4] According to W. J. Henderson (in his introduction to Carmen; Dodd, Mead and Co., 1911), who is usually as accurate as anybody can be about such matters, "Carmen was first performed in New York (in Italian) at the Academy of Music, October 23, 1878, under the management of Col. J. H. Mapleson. The principal singers were Minnie Hauk as Carmen, Italo Campanini as Don José, and Giuseppe del Puente as Escamillo." However it should be noted that Mme. Kellogg does not say that she was the first New York Carmen.
[5] Mr. Henderson gives an interesting and probably authentic reason for the disappearance of Carmen from the répertoire of the Metropolitan Opera House: "It has not been performed as much in America in recent seasons as it has in Europe because American audiences have learned to expect a very striking impersonation of the heroine and do not eagerly go to hear the opera when such an impersonation is not offered." And again: "Mme. Calvé's bold, picturesque and capricious impersonation of the gipsy became the idol of the American imagination, and thereby much harm was wrought, for whereas the gifted performer began the season with a consistent and well-executed characterization, she speedily permitted success to turn her head and lead her to abandon genuine dramatic art for catch-penny devices directed at the unthinking. The result has been that opera-goers have found correct impersonations of Carmen uninteresting."