I daresay this harmless ebullition of youthful daintiness would have proved the last straw to some of my Psalm-singing New England relatives. There was one uncle of mine who vastly disapproved of my going on the stage at all, saying that it would have been much better if I had been a good, honest milliner. He used to sing:
in a minor key, with the true, God-fearing, nasal twang in it.
How I detested that old man! And I had to bury him, too, at the last. I wonder whether I should have been able to do so if I had gone into the millinery business!
CHAPTER IV
A YOUTHFUL REALIST
AS I have said, I studied Gilda for nine months. At the end of that time I was so imbued with the part as to be thoroughly at ease. Present-day actors call this condition "getting inside the skin" of a rôle. I simply could not make a mistake, and could do everything connected with the characterisation with entire unconsciousness. Yet I want to add that I had little idea of what the opera really meant.
My début was in New York at the old Academy of Music, and Rigoletto was the famous Ferri. He was blind in one eye and I had always to be on his seeing side,—else he couldn't act. Stigelli was the tenor. Stiegel was his real name. He was a German and a really fine artist. But I had then had no experience with stage heroes and thought they were all going to be exactly as they appeared in my romantic dreams, and—poor man, he is dead now, so I can say this!—it was a dreadful blow to me to be obliged to sing a love duet with a man smelling of lager beer and cheese!
Charlotte Cushman—who was a great friend of Miss Emma Stebbins, the sister of Colonel Stebbins—had always been interested in me; so when she knew that I was to make my début on February 26 (1861), she put on Meg Merrilies for that night because she could get through with it early enough for her to see part of my first performance. She reached the Academy in time for the last act of Rigoletto; and I felt that I had been highly praised when, as I came out and began to sing, she cried:
"The girl doesn't seem to know that she has any arms!"
My freedom of gesture and action came from nothing but the most complete familiarity with the part and with the detail of everything I had to do. In opera one cannot be too temperamental in one's acting. One cannot make pauses when one thinks it effective, nor alter the stage business to fit one's mood, nor work oneself up to an emotional crescendo one night and not do it the next. Everything has to be timed to a second and a fraction of a second. One cannot wait for unusual effects. The orchestra does not consider one's temperament, and this fact cannot be lost sight of for a moment. This is why I believe in rehearsing and studying and working over a rôle so exhaustively—and exhaustingly. For it is only in that most rigidly studied accuracy of action that any freedom can be attained. When one becomes so trained that one cannot conceivably retard a bar, and cannot undertime a stage cross nor fail to come in promptly in an ensemble, then, and only then, can one reach some emotional liberty and inspiration.