was a pure, silvery soprano, remarkable alike for its penetrating quality and for its charm so fine and delicate that it seemed almost intellectual. But she was not a remarkably dramatic singer, even in light comedy parts, which best suited her; and her style was not at all declamatory. She sang; and in her vocalization she showed the results of intelligent study in the old Italian school. Her phrasing was incomparably fine, and the delicacy of her articulation has been surpassed by no modern prima donna, not even by Alboni. Thus much of her as a vocal artist; but her charm was greatly personal. Although her acting was always appropriate and in good taste, and at times—as, for example, in the saucy widow of "Don Pasquale"—very captivating, she never seemed to throw herself wholly into her part. She was always Angiolina Bosio, and appeared on the stage like a lady performing admirably in private theatricals. Her bearing was a delight to her audience, and seemed to be a performance, whereas it was only herself. She sang the music of all the great operatic composers to the admiration of the public and the critics of the most exacting disposition; but she was greatest in Rossini's operas, and in Bellini's and Donizetti's. Yet her exquisitely charming and finished performance of Zerlina should not be passed over unmentioned.
Tedesco, who came to New York with the first Havana company in April, 1847, presented herself to the always susceptible mind of Mr. White as a great, handsome, ox-eyed creature, the picture of lazy loveliness until she was excited by music; then she poured out floods, or rather gusts, of rich, clear sound. "She was not a great artist, but her voice was so copious and so musical that she could not be heard without pleasure, although it was not of the highest kind." Bettini left nothing here that remained in the memory of New Yorkers except the half of a name which he gave to his wife, the contralto Trebelli-Bettini, who was a member of Mr. Abbey's company on the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House in 1883. Salvi came over with the Havana company in the spring of 1848, and was one of the fish which Maretzek took from Marty's weirs. If we are to believe the testimony of contemporaneous critics he was the greatest tenor of his time, with the exception of Mario. That was the opinion of White, who wrote of him as follows in The Century Magazine for May, 1882:
Although Salvi was past his youth when he first sang in New York, his voice was yet in perfect preservation. It lacked nothing that is to be expected in a tenor voice of the first class; and it had that mingling of manliness and tenderness, of human sympathy and seraphic loftiness which, for lack of any other or better word, we call divine. As a vocalist he was not in the first rank, but he stood foremost in the second. His presence was manly and dignified, and he was a good actor. But it was as a vocalist, pure and simple, that he captivated and moved his audiences. He was heard in America at brief intervals during a few years, and his influence upon the taste of the general music-loving public was very considerable and wholly good. Singing at Niblo's or Castle Garden and other like places at which the price of admission was never more than $1, and was generally 50 cents, he gave to multitudes who would otherwise have had no such opportunity that education in art which is to be had only from the performances of a great artist. In purity of style he was unexceptionable. He lacked only a little higher finish, a little more brilliancy of voice and impressiveness of manner to take a position among tenors of the very first rank. Of these, however, there are never two in the world at the same time, scarcely two in the same generation; and so Salvi prepared the public for the coming Mario. His forte was the cantabile and his finest effects were those in mezza voce, expressive of intense suppressed feeling. More than once when he sang "Spirto gentil," as he rose to the crescendo of the second phrase, and then let his cry pass suddenly away in a dying fall, I have heard a whole house draw suspended breath, as if in pain, so nearly alike in their outward manifestation and fine, keen pleasure.
Such were some of the singers whose names are associated in the musical annals of New York with that of Max Maretzek.
CHAPTER VI
THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MUSIC
Fifty-one years ago the center of operatic activity had shifted to the Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place, and there it remained until the Metropolitan Opera House was built. From the opening of the Academy in 1854 to the opening of the Metropolitan in 1883 the former had no rival as an establishment, though the rivalry between managers and singers was the liveliest that New York has ever seen during the first decade of the time. For twenty years Burton's Theater revived its early traditions, and housed an opera troupe at intervals, and Niblo's Theater and Castle Garden were open to every manager who wished to experiment with the costly enterprise. English companies came and went, and a new competitive element, which soon became more dangerous than that which several times crushed the Italian exotic, entered in the shape of German opera, which, though it first sought a modest home in the lesser theaters of the Bowery and lower Broadway, soon achieved recognition at the fashionable Academy. The eagerness of the rivalry in the Italian field alone is indicated by the fact that the Academy had five different managers in the first three seasons of its history, and that thereafter, until the coming of James H. Mapleson in 1878, it was almost a rule that there should be a change of management every season. Maretzek was alternately manager and competitor over and over again, and the bitterest rivals of one season would be found associated with each other the next. Already in the first season the stockholders had to step in and assume some of the risks of management to save the enterprise from shipwreck, and, despite the attractiveness of the house, the excellence of the performances, the presence of such phenomenal artists as Mme. Grisi and Signor Mario, and generous public patronage, the first season cost the different managers between $50,000 and $60,000—three times as much as Maretzek had lost in the previous six years, if that gentleman's word is to be taken. The figures look modest now, but twenty years later their duplication at the Metropolitan Opera House sufficed to effect a revolution in methods, and eventually tastes, which had a profound influence upon musical life in New York.
The Academy of Music had its birth in the expiring throes of the Astor Place Opera House. The spirit of which it was the material expression seems to have been admirable. To this the name of the establishment bears witness. It was not alone the official title of the French institution, popularly spoken of as the Grand Opéra, which was in the minds of the promoters of the New York enterprise—the new opera house was to be a veritable academy of music, an educational institution. Not only was fashionable society to have a place in which to display and disport itself, but popular taste and popular knowledge were to be cultivated. To this end the auditorium was to be three times as commodious as that of the Astor Place Opera House, and the low prices which had been prevalent only at Niblo's, Burton's, and Castle Garden were to be the rule at the new establishment. In the charter granted by the State, dated April 10, 1852, the purposes of the Academy were set down as the cultivation of taste by entertainments accessible at moderate charges, by furnishing facilities for instruction and by rewards. These purposes were overlooked at the beginning, but before the first season had come to its end Ole Bull, for a few weeks a manager, proclaimed his intention to pursue them by promising to open a conservatory in the fall of 1855, and at once (January, 1855) offering a prize of $1,000 for the "best original grand opera by an American composer, and upon a strictly American subject." The competition ended with Ole Bull's announcement, for his active season endured only two weeks.
It is doubtful if the competition would have produced anything more than a curiosity had it been carried to a conclusion. On the spur of the moment I can think of only two American musicians whose capacity was adequate to such a task—Mr. W. H. Fry, who was then musical critic and an editorial writer for The Tribune, and Mr. George F. Bristow, both of whom had composed operas found worthy of performance. Mr. Fry's "Leonora" was performed at the Academy on March 29, 1858, with Mme. Lagrange in the principal rôle, but the score was already a dozen years old, and it is not likely that the composer's state of health would have permitted him to undertake the writing of a new opera even if he had been so disposed. Mr. Bristow's "Rip Van Winkle," which had a production in New York in the year of Ole Bull's announcement, may, for all that I know to the contrary, have been written for the prize. The scheme of uniting a training school for singers with an opera house was not heard of again, so far as I can recall, until Mr. Conried became director of the Metropolitan Opera House. It has much to commend it, and might be made a power for artistic good with an operatic establishment on a really public-spirited, artistic, and unselfish basis; as it is, its influence is apt to be pernicious morally, as well as artistically. How seriously Mr. Fry took the proposed educational feature of the institution is indicated by an article on the new opera house, which he published in The Tribune, in the course of which he said:
The expense of maintaining an opera house so nurtured at home will be at most not more than one-fourth what it would be if the artists were brought from Europe. American vocalists would be content with some few thousand dollars a year, and, if they were sought for and educated, boarded and lodged gratuitously the meanwhile, their services could be procured for several years in payment of the expenses of apprenticeship. In that way alone can the exorbitant demands of foreign artists be diminished; and the folly and extravagance of paying them from one to ten thousand dollars a night, as has been done in this city, will be forever avoided. In connection with this it may be mentioned that there are some Americans now studying for the operatic stage in Italy, and one lady of Boston has appeared in Naples with success. It may yet come to pass that art, in all its ramifications, may be as much esteemed as politics, commerce or the military profession. The dignity of American artists lies in their hands.