Colonel Stebbins, who was anxious, said to Maretzek:
"Don't you think she had better have a German coach in the part?"
Maretzek, who had been watching me closely all along, shook his head.
"Let her alone," he said. "Let her do it her own way."
So the great night came around.
There was no public excitement before the production. People knew nothing about the new opera. On the first night of Faust there was a good house because, frankly, the public liked me! Nevertheless, in spite of "me," the house was a little inanimate. The audience felt doubtful. It was one thing to warm up an old and popular piece; but something untried was very different! The public had none of the present-day chivalry toward the first "try-out" of an opera.
Mazzoleni of the cheese addiction was Faust, and on that first night he had eaten even more than usual. In fact, he was still eating cheese when the curtain went up and munched cheese at intervals all through the laboratory scene. He was a big Italian with a voice as big as himself and was, in a measure, one of Max Maretzek's "finds." "The Magnificent" had taken an opera company to Havana when first the war slump came in operatic affairs, and had made with it a huge success and a wide reputation. Mazzoleni was one of the leading tenors of that company. He sang Faust admirably, but dressed it in an atrocious fashion, looking like a cross between a Jewish rabbi and a Prussian gene d'arme. Of course, he gave no idea of the true age of Faust—the experienced, mature point of view showing through the outward bloom of his artificial youth. Very few Fausts do give this; and Mazzoleni suggested it rather less than most of them. But the public was not enlightened enough to realise the lack.
Biachi was Mephistopheles. He was very good and sang the Calf of Gold splendidly. Yet that solo, oddly enough, never "caught on" with our houses. Biachi was one of the few artists of my day who gave real thought and attention to the question of costuming. He took his general scheme of dress from Robert le Diable and improved on it, and looked very well indeed. The woman he afterwards married was our contralto, a Miss Sulzer, an American, who made an excellent Siebel and considered her work seriously.
At first everyone was stunned by the new treatment. In ordinary, accepted operatic form there were certain things to be expected;—recitatives, andantes, arias, choruses—all neatly laid out according to rule. In this everything was new, startling, overthrowing all traditions. About the middle of the evening some of my friends came behind the scenes to my dressing-room with blank faces.
"Heavens, Louise," they exclaimed, "what do you do in this opera anyway? Everyone in the front of the house is asking 'where's the prima donna?'"