Martha was a light and pleasing part to play. Vocally it taught me very little—little, that is to say, that I can now recognise, although I am loath to make such a statement of any rôle. There are so many slight and obscure ways in which a part can help one, almost unconsciously. The point that stands out most strikingly in my recollection of Martha is the rather rueful triumph I had in it with regard to realistic acting. Everyone who knows the story of Flotow's opera will recall that the heroine is horribly bored in the first act. She is utterly uninterested, utterly blasée, utterly listless. Accordingly, so I played the first act. Later in the opera, when she is in the midst of interesting happenings and no longer bored, she becomes animated and eager, quite a different person from the languid great lady in the beginning. So, also, I played that part. Here came my triumph, although it was a left-handed compliment aimed with the intention only to criticise and to criticise severely. One reviewer said, the morning after I had first given my careful and logical interpretation, that "it was a pity Miss Kellogg had taken so little pains with the first act. She had played it dully, stupidly, without interest or animation. Later, however, she brightened up a little and somewhat redeemed our impression of her work as we had seen it in the early part of the evening." I felt angry and hurt about this at the time, yet it pleased me too, for it was a huge tribute even if the critic did not intend it to be so.
Although I did sing in Don Giovanni under Grau that year in Boston, I never really considered it as belonging to that period. I did so much with this opera in after years—singing both Donna Anna and Zerlina at various times and winning some of the most notable praise of my career—that I always instinctively think of it as one of my later and more mature achievements. I always loved the opera and feel that it is an invaluable part of every singer's education to have appeared in it. The Magic Flute never seemed to me to be half so genuinely big or so inspired. In Don Giovanni Mozart gave us his richest and most complete flower of operatic work. In our cast were Amodio, whom I had heard with Piccolomini, and Mme. Medori, my old rival in Linda, who had recently joined the Grau Company.
All this time the war was going on and our opera ventures, even at their best, were nothing to what they had been in the days of peace. It seemed quite clear for a while that the old favourites would not draw audiences from among the anxious and sorrowing people. For a big success we needed something novel, sensational, exceptional.
On the other side of the world people were all talking of Gounod's new opera—the one he had sold for only twelve hundred dollars, but which had made a wonderful hit both in Paris and London. It was said to be startlingly new; and Max Maretzek, in despair over the many lukewarm successes we had all had, decided to have a look at the score. The opera was Faust.
With all my pride, I was terrified and appalled when "the Magnificent" came to me and abruptly told me that I was to create the part of Marguerite in America. This was a "large order" for a girl of twenty; but I took my courage in both hands and resolved to make America proud of me. I was a pioneer when I undertook Gounod's music and I had no notion of what to do with it, but my will and my ambition arose to meet the situation.
Just here, because of its general bearing on the point, I feel that it is desirable to quote a paragraph which was written by my old friend—or was he enemy?—many years later when I had won my measure of success, "Nym Crinkle" (A. C. Wheeler), and which I have always highly valued:
There isn't a bit of snobbishness about Kellogg's opinions [he wrote]. For a woman who has sung everywhere, she retains a very wholesome opinion of her own country. She always seems to me to be trying to win two imperishable chaplets, one of which is for her country. So you see we have got to take our little flags and wave them whether it is the correct thing or not. And, so far as I am concerned, I think it is the correct thing.... She has this tremendous advantage that, when she declares in print that America can produce its own singers, she is quite capable of going afterwards upon the stage and proving it!