There were few familiar names in the list of singers printed in the prospectus. The most familiar, and the greatest, was that which has already been announced as the one concession made to the star system—Mme. Amalia Materna. Twenty-five years ago the story of Bayreuth was a household word throughout the civilized world, and Mme. Materna had been associated with the Wagner festivals since the first held, in 1876. In May, 1882, she was brought to New York by Theodore Thomas for the Music Festival, held in the Seventh Regiment Armory, and with her Bayreuth colleagues—Winkelmann, tenor, and Scaria, bass—she took part in concerts and festivals which Mr. Thomas gave in 1884 in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Chicago. After returning to Europe after the American engagement of 1882, she had gone straight to Bayreuth, where she "created" the part of Kundry in the original production of "Parsifal," alternating afterward in the character with Fräulein Brandt, who was associated with her in Dr. Damrosch's Metropolitan company. When she came to the Metropolitan (she made her first appearance after the season was well under headway, in January, 1885) Mme. Materna was thirty-eight years old and her splendid powers were at their zenith. She had sung in public since her thirteenth year, at first in church, then in comic opera in Graz and Vienna. While singing at a small theater in the Austrian capital she became a member of the Court Opera, attracted wide attention by her dramatic abilities in the grand operas of its repertories, and at once leaped into fame by her impersonation of Brünnhilde at the first Bayreuth festival, in 1876.
Next in significance in the first Metropolitan German Company was Marianne Brandt, whose influence in creating new ideals and developing new tastes among the opera-goers of New York was even greater than that of Mme. Materna, because her powers were no less and her labors of longer duration. She came here after having won praise from the critics of London, where she had sung at the first performance in England of "Tristan und Isolde" at Drury Lane in 1882. That was ten years after she had effected her London début. The principal Coloratursängerin of the company was Frau Marie Schroeder-Hanfstängl, then a member of the Frankfort Opera, who was a native of Breslau and a friend of the Damrosch family while they were there. As Mlle. Schroeder she had already established a reputation at that time in Paris, where she had sung at the Théâtre Lyrique through the mediation of her teacher, Mme. Viardot-Garcia. The jugendlich Dramatische was Frau Auguste Seidl-Krauss, who was announced throughout the season by her maiden name, but had been married for about a year to Anton Seidl, then conductor at the Stadttheater in Bremen, who was soon to become a most puissant factor in the sum of New York's musical activities. The principal tenor was Anton Schott, who had made a considerable reputation as a Wagnerian singer in the opera houses of Munich, Berlin, Schwerin, Hanover, and London, and had made the Italian tour with Angelo Neumann's Wagner company which Seidl conducted in 1882. Earlier in life he had been an artillery officer in the German army, which fact coupled with his explosive manner of singing prompted one of Dr. von Bülow's witticisms. The doctor had been conductor of the opera in Hanover when Schott was there and had conceived a violent dislike for him. Some years after the latter's New York season, conversing socially with von Bülow, I chanced to mention Schott's name.
"Ah! do you know Schott?" asked the irascible little doctor; "ein eigenthümlicher Sänger, nicht war? Eigentlich ist er ein Militärtenor—ein Artillerist. Sie wissen er singt manchmal zu hoch—da distonirt er; gewöhnlich singt er zu tief—da destonirt er; und wenn er gelegentlich rein singt—da detonirt er!" The ingenious play on words is quite untranslatable, but my readers who understand German but are unfamiliar with musical terms will be helped to an appreciation of the fun by being told that "dis," "des," and "de" are the German names applied respectively to D sharp, D flat, and D natural. No doubt Dr. von Bülow had perpetrated his little joke before he shot it off for my benefit. It was a habit of his to have such brilliant impromptus ready and ingeniously to invite an occasion for their introduction. But they always had the effect of brilliant spontaneity. It was on another occasion, when he was praising the performance of another German tenor, and I had interposed the suggestion that to me he seemed to lack virility, that he burst out with:
"But, my dear fellow, a tenor isn't a man; it's a disease!"
I supplied the quotation marks in my mind, for though the remark was his, it had served him on at least one other occasion, as I chanced to know.
Other members of the company were Anna Slach, Anna Stern, Hermine Bely, Adolf Robinson, barytone (another of Dr. Damrosch's professional friends from Breslau); Josef Staudigl (bass, son of the great Staudigl); Josef Koegel, bass; Emil Tiffero, Herr Udvardi, Otto Kemlitz, Ludwig Wolf, Josef Miller, and Herr Schneller. John Lund, who came from Kroll's, in Berlin, and Walter Damrosch, were chorus masters and assistant conductors. The first season began on November 17, 1884, with a performance of "Tannhäuser."
CHAPTER XI
GERMAN OPERA AT THE METROPOLITAN
After German opera began at the Metropolitan Opera House it endured seven years. It was only at the outset that it had the opposition of what had been the established régime of Italian opera at the Academy of Music, but it was pursued throughout its career by desultory enterprises and hampered greatly by the fact that the stockholders were never unitedly and enthusiastically in favor of it or the principles of art which it represented. Throughout the period there was a hankering for the fleshpots of Egypt in the region of the Metropolitan boxes. It seems desirable, therefore, that, though it is my purpose more specifically in the next few chapters to tell the story of the seven years of German opera, I should turn the light occasionally on the doings at rival institutions. The first of the seven years at the Metropolitan Opera House was the seventh year of Colonel Mapleson's tenancy of the Academy of Music. He opened his season on November 10, 1884, but before then James Barton Key and Horace McVicker experimented with Italian opera for three weeks at the Star Theater. The organization was composed of operatic flotsam and jetsam, such as is always to be found plentifully in New York after operatic storms in South America or Mexico, and was neither better nor worse than scores of other companies heard here before and since. Like most of these, too, it had a mouth-filling name—the Milan Grand Opera Company—but, like few of them, it had a capital tenor, Signor Giannini, who at a somewhat later period we shall find in Colonel Mapleson's forces. Other members of the company whose names are worthy of preservation were Maria Peri (soprano leggiero), Signora Damerini (dramatic soprano), Signora Mestress (contralto), and Signor Serbolini (bass). The experiment resulted in financial failure, but it introduced to New York the South American opera, "Il Guarany," by Señor Gomez. In Colonel Mapleson's company were Mme. Patti, Signora Ricetti, Mme. Emma Nevada, Signor Nicolini, Signor Vicini, and Signor Cardinali (tenors), Mme. Scalchi, Mme. Fursch-Madi, Signori de Pasqualis, Cherubini, Caracciolo (bassos), Signor de Anna (barytone), and Signor Bassetti (tenor), otherwise Mr. Charles Bassett, like Mme. Nevada, an American singer. The subscription ended on December 27th, and in the following week he gave four extra performances, at two of which he reduced the prices, though they were of a higher artistic order than the others. The relations between Mapleson and the stockholders of the Academy were becoming strained, and in a speech which he made at his annual benefit he remarked upon their absence sarcastically. It was plain that their patience had given out and that they were weary of extending to him the financial support which had helped him through the season. In my review of the season I find this remark, which is indicative of their indifference to the fate of their lessee: "The condition of the house gives evidence of an unwillingness to sink money in an unlucrative enterprise. It is somewhat discouraging to the patrons of the house to sit in ramshackle chairs which threaten to deposit them incontinently on the floor at any moment, and the collapse of a stall has frequently accentuated a musical or dramatic climax in the season just ended."
The season ended with many promises unfulfilled, for which the impresario placed the blame upon the directors, who, he said, had not given him sufficient use of the Academy stage. His explanations were not always wholly ingenuous, however. Thus he had announced that "Lakmé" would be given, with the composer, M. Delibes, in the conductor's chair. Now, in the season before, Mme. Gerster had been so desirous to create the part of the heroine in America (it being one which afforded fine scope for her lovely powers, and which she had studied with the composer) that she had bought the performing rights. But nothing came of her ambition, and it was an open secret that Heugel, the publisher, had quarreled with Mapleson because of unwarranted practices with his scores in London. In the midst of his troubles Colonel Mapleson announced that he had engaged Mme. Nilsson for the season of 1885-86. There was as little foundation for this announcement as for the promise of "Lakmé."