Memoirs of an American Prima Donna

by Clara Louise Kellogg

As Gilda I was laying only the groundwork. My performance was, I believe, on the right lines. It rang true. But it was far from what it became in later years when the English critics found me "the most beautiful and convincing of all Gildas!" As Linda I do not think that I showed any great intellectual improvement over Gilda, but I had acquired a certain confidence and authority. I sang and acted with more ease; and for the first time I had gained a sense of personal responsibility toward, and for, an audience. When I beheld only three hundred people in my first-night Boston audience and determined to win them, and did win them, I came into possession of new and important factors in my work. This consciousness and earnest will-power to move one's public by the force of one's art is one of the first steps toward being a true prima donna.

I Puritani never taught me very much, simply as an opera. The part was too heavy as my voice was then, and our production of it was so hurried that I had not time to spend on it the study which I liked to give a new rôle. But in this very fact lay its lesson for me. The necessity for losing timidity and self-consciousness, the power to fling oneself into a new part without time to coddle one's vanity or one's habits of mind, the impersonal courage needed to attack fresh difficulties:—these points are of quite as much importance to a young opera singer as are fine breath control and a gift for phrasing. Sonnambula, too, had to be "jumped into" in the same fashion and was even more of an undertaking, though the rôle suited me better and is, in fact, a rarely grateful one. Yet think of being Amina with only one week's rehearsing! Sonnambula was first given by us as a benefit performance for Brignoli. It was generally understood to be in the nature of a farewell. Indeed, I think he said so himself. But, of course, he never had the slightest idea of really leaving America. He stayed here until he died. But to his credit be it said that he never had any more "farewell" appearances. He did not form the habit.

I have spoken of how hopeless it is for an opera singer to try to work emotionally or purely on impulse; of how futile the merely temperamental artist becomes on the operatic stage. Yet too much stress cannot be laid on the importance of feeling what one does and sings. It is in just this seeming paradox that the truly professional artist's point of view may be found. The amateur acts and sings temperamentally. The trained student gives a finished and correct performance. It is only a genius—or something very near it—who can do both. There is something balanced and restrained in a genuine prima donna's brain that keeps her emotions from running away with her, just as there is at the same time something equally warm and inspired in her heart that animates the most clear-cut of her intellectual work and makes it living and lovely. Sometimes it is difficult for an experienced artist to say just where instinct stops and art begins. When I sang Amina I was greatly complimented on my walk and my intonation, both most characteristic of a somnambulist. I made a point of keeping a strange, rhythmical, dreamy step like that of a sleep-walker and sang as if I were talking in my sleep. I breathed in a hard, laboured way, and walked with the headlong yet dragging gait of someone who neither sees, knows, nor cares where she is going. Now, this effect came not entirely from calculation nor yet from intuition, but from a combination of the two. I was in the mood of somnambulism and acted accordingly. But I deliberately placed myself in that mood. This only partly expresses what I wish to say on the subject; but it is the root of dramatic work as I know it.

The opera of Sonnambula, incidentally, taught me one or two things not generally included in stage essentials. Among others, I had to learn not to be afraid, physically afraid, or at any rate not to mind being afraid. In the sleep-walking scene Amina, carrying her candle and robed in white, glides across the narrow bridge at a perilous height while the watchers below momentarily expect her to be dashed to pieces on the rocks underneath. Our bridge used to be set very high indeed (it was especially lofty in the Philadelphia Opera House where we gave the opera a little later), and I had quite a climb to get up to it at all. There was a wire strung along the side of the bridge, but it was not a bit of good to lean on—merely a moral support. I had to carry the candle in one hand and couldn't even hold the other outstretched to balance myself, for sleep-walkers do not fall! This was the point that I had to keep in mind; I could not walk carefully, but I had to walk with certainty. In a sense it was suggestive of a hypnotic condition and I had to get pretty nearly into one myself before I could do it. At all events, I had to compose myself very summarily first. Just in the middle of the crossing the bridge is supposed to crack. Of course the edges were only broken; but I had to give a sort of "jog" to carry out the illusion and I used to wonder, the while I jogged, if I were going over the side that time! In the wings they used to be quite anxious about me and would draw a general breath of relief when I was safely across. Every night I would be asked if I were sure I wanted to undertake it that night, and every time I would answer:

"I don't know whether I can!"

But, of course, I always did it. Somehow, one always does do one's work on the stage, even if it is trying to the nerves or a bit dangerous. I have heard that when Maud Adams put on her big production of Joan of Arc, her managers objected seriously to having her lead the mounted battle charge herself. A "double" was costumed exactly like her and was ready to mount Miss Adams's horse at the last moment. But did she ever give a double a chance to lead her battle charge? Not she: and no more would any true artist.

Sonnambula also helped fix in my mentality the traditions of Italian opera; those traditions that my teachers—Muzio particularly—had been striving so hard to impress upon and make real to me. The school of the older operas, while the greatest school for singers in the world, is one in which tradition is, and must be, pre-eminent. In the modern growths, springing up among us every year, the singer has a chance to create, to trace new paths, to take venturesome flights. The new operas not only permit this, they require it. But it is a pity to hear a young, imaginative artist try to interpret some old and classic opera by the light of his or her modern perceptions. They do not improve on the material. They only make a combination that is bizarre and inartistic. This struck me forcibly not long ago when I heard a young, talented American sing A non giunge, the lovely old aria from the last act of Sonnambula. The girl had a charming voice and she sang with musical feeling and taste. But she had not one "tradition" as we understood the term, and, in consequence, almost any worn-out, old-school singer could have rendered the aria more acceptably to trained ears. Traditions are as necessary to the Bellini operas as costumes are to Shakespeare's plays. To dispense with them may be original, but it is bad art. And yet, while I became duly impressed with the necessity of the "traditions," during those early performances, I always tried to avoid following them too servilely or too artificially. I tried to interpret for myself, within certain well-defined limits, according to my personal conception of the characters I was personating. The traditions of Italian opera combined with my own ideals of the lyric heroines,—this became my object and ambition.

The summer after my début, I went on a concert tour under Grau's management, but my throat was tired after the strain and nervous effort of my first season, and I finally went up to the country for a long rest. In New Hartford, Connecticut, my mother, father, and I renewed many old friendships, and it was a genuine pleasure to sing again in a small choir, to attend sewing circles, and to live the every-day life from which I had been so far removed during my studies and professional work. People everywhere were charming to me. Though only nineteen, I was an acknowledged prima donna, and so received all sorts of kindly attentions. This was the summer, I believe, (although it may have been a later one) when Herbert Witherspoon, then only a boy, determined to become a professional singer. He has always insisted that it was my presence and the glamour that surrounded the stage because of me that finally decided him.

I did not sing again in New York until the January of 1862. Before that we had a short season on the road, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other places. As there were then but nine opera houses in America our itinerary was necessarily somewhat limited. In November of that year I sang in Les Noces de Jeannette, in Philadelphia, a charming part although not a very important one. It is a simple little operetta in one act by Victor Macci. The libretto was in French and I sang it in that language. Pleasing speeches were made about my French and people wanted to know where I had studied it—I, who had never studied it at all except at home! The opera was not long enough for a full evening's entertainment, so Miss Hinckley was put on in the same bill in Donizetti's Betly. The two went very well together.