Indeed, an opera in which the heroine has nothing to do until the third act might well have startled a public accustomed to the old Italian forms. However, I assured everyone:
"Don't worry. You'll get more than enough of me before the end of the evening!"
The house was not much stirred until the love scene. That was breathless. We felt more and more that we were beginning to "get them."
There were no modern effects of lighting; but a calcium was thrown on me as I stood by the window, and I sang my very, very best. As Mazzoleni came up to the window and the curtain went down there was a dead silence.
Not a hand for ten seconds. Ten seconds is a long time when one is waiting on the stage. Time and the clock itself seemed to stop as we stood there motionless and breathless. Maretzek had time to get through the little orchestra door and up on the stage before the applause came. We were standing as though paralysed, waiting. We saw Maretzek's pale, anxious face. The silence held a second longer; then—
The house came down. The thunders echoed and beat about our wondering ears.
"Success!" gasped Maretzek, "success—success—success!"
Yet read what the critics said about it. The musicians picked it to pieces, of course, and so did the critics, much as the German reviewers did Wagner's music dramas. The public came, however, packing the houses to more than their capacity. People paid seven and eight dollars a seat to hear that opera, an unheard-of thing in those days when two and three dollars were considered a very fair price for any entertainment. Furthermore, only the women occupied the seats on the Faust nights. I speak in a general way, for there were exceptions. As a rule, however, this was so, while the men stood up in regiments at the back of the house. We gave twenty-seven performances of Faust in one season; seven performances in Boston in four weeks; and I could not help the welcome knowledge that, in addition to the success of the opera itself, I had scored a big, personal triumph.
As I have mentioned, we took wicked liberties with the operas, such as introducing the Star Spangled Banner and similar patriotic songs into the middle of Italian scores. I have even seen a highly tragic act of Poliuto put in between the light and cheery scenes of Martha; and I have myself sung the Venzano waltz at the end of this same Martha, although the real quartette that is supposed to close the opera is much more beautiful, and the Clara Louise Polka as a finish for Linda di Chamounix! The Clara Louise Polka was written for me by my old master, Muzio, and I never thought much of it. Nothing could give anyone so clear an idea of the universal acceptance of this custom of interpolation as the following criticism, printed during our second season: