"It is not necessary; I know my part," was the ungracious reply.
"But this is a rehearsal. It is not enough that you know your part or that you know that you know your part. I must know that you know it. Others must sing with you, and they must hear you."
He started the orchestra again. Not a sound from the puffed up little tenor in his picturesque bearskin and pretty legs. Seidl rapped for silence, and put down his baton.
"Call Mr. Stanton!" he commanded.
Mr. Stanton was brought from his office, and Mr. Seidl briefly explained the situation. He would not go on with the rehearsal unless Mr. Alvary sang, and without a rehearsal there would be no first performance of "Siegfried" to-morrow. Mr. Alvary explained that to sing would weary him.
"I shall not sing to-day and to-morrow. Choose; I'll sing either to-day or to-morrow."
"Sing to-day!" said Stanton curtly, and turned away from the stage. Like a schoolboy Alvary now began to sing with all his might, as if bound to incapacitate himself for the next day. But he would have sacrificed a finger rather than his opportunity on the morrow, and the little misses and susceptible matrons got the hero whom they adored for years afterward.
Next to Miss Lehmann, the most popular singer in the company in this second year of German opera at the Metropolitan was Emil Fischer, the bass. Except for a short period spent abroad in an effort to be an opera manager in Holland, Fischer has remained a New Yorker ever since he came in 1885. This has not been wholly of his own volition, however. He came from Dresden, where he was an admired member of the Court Opera. His coming, or his staying, involved him in difficulty with the Royal Intendant, and though the singer began legal proceedings against his liege lord, the King of Saxony, for rehabilitation, he never regained the privileges which he had forfeited in order to win the fame and money which came to him here. The fame was abiding; the money was not. Twenty-one year after his coming his old admirers were still so numerous, and their admiration so steadfast, that a benefit performance at the Metropolitan Opera House, in which he took part in an act of "Die Meistersinger," yielded nearly $10,000.
The season of 1885-86 at the Metropolitan Opera House began on November 23d, and lasted till March 6th, with an interregnum of two weeks from December 19th to January 4th, during which the company gave performances in Philadelphia, with woeful financial results, the loss to the stockholders being $15,000. The excellence of the management and the wisdom and honesty of the artists were attested by the circumstance that not once was an opera changed after it was announced. Nine operas were performed, and of these three were wholly new to the Metropolitan stage, two were absolutely new to America, and two were provided with considerable new scenery. The table of performances was as follows:
Opera First performance Times given