"Lohengrin" ………….. November 23 ………… 4
"Carmen" …………….. November 25 ………… 2
"Der Prophet" ………… November 27 ………… 3
"Die Walküre" ………… November 30 ………… 4
"Die Königin von Saba" … December 2 ………… 15
"Tannhäuser" …………. December 11 ………… 4
"Die Meistersinger" …… January 4 ………….. 8
"Faust" ……………… January 20 …………. 5
"Rienzi" …………….. February 5 …………. 7
—
Total representations ………………………. 52

The attractive charm of a new work was shown in the success achieved by Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba," which was given with great pomp in its externals, but also finely from a musical point of view. It brought into the box office an average of $4,000 for fifteen performances, and was set down as the popular triumph of the season, though, considering that "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" had a month less to run, its record was also remarkable. The average difference in attendance on the two works which led the list was about one hundred and fifty. The directors had fixed the assessment on the stockholders in October at $2,000 a box, and their receipts from this source were $136,700; from the general public, $171,463.13; total, $308,163.13. The cost of producing the operas, omitting the charges for new scenery and properties, but including the expenses of the Philadelphia season, was $244,981.96. The fixed charges on the building (taxes, interest, and rental account) were about $85,000 in the preceding year, and the financial outcome was so satisfactory to the stockholders that the directors promptly re-engaged Mr. Seidl, and adopted a resolution empowering the managing director, Edmund C. Stanton, to make contracts with artists for three years. It was interesting to note the effect upon the opera houses and artists of Germany. I cannot recall that there were any more difficulties like those which attended the disruption of their contracts by Fräulein Lehmann and Herr Fischer. Instead, the managers of the municipal theaters of Germany especially (and, I doubt not, court theaters also) found that they, too, could come in for a share of the American dollars by granting leaves of absence for the New York season, and taking a percentage of the liberal fees received by their stars.

CHAPTER XIII

WAGNER HOLDS THE METROPOLITAN

The incidents of the early history of the Metropolitan Opera House come to me in such multitude that I find it difficult to apportion seasons and chapters in this record. Later, it may be, when the new order of things shall have been established, and again given place to the old, the relation may make more rapid progress. I have already devoted much space to the second German season, but there are a few details which deserve special consideration. The first of these (if the reader will accept the instantaneous popularity of Mr. Seidl as a conclusion from the remarks made in his introduction in these annals) was the first appearance of Lilli Lehmann. Circumstances would have it that she should show herself first, not as the singer of old-fashioned florid rôles, with which (except for her Bayreuth experience) she was associated, nor yet as the Wagnerian tragedienne which she became later, but in a transitional character—that of Carmen in Bizet's opera of that name. Lehmann as the gipsy cigarette maker, with her Habanera and Seguidilla, with her errant fancy wandering from a sentimental brigadier to a dashing bull fighter, is a conception which will not come easy to the admirers of the later Brünnhilde and Isolde; and, indeed, she was a puzzling phenomenon to the experienced observers of that time. Carmen was already a familiar apparition to New Yorkers, who had imagined that Minnie Hauk had spoken the last word in the interpretation of that character. When Fräulein Lehmann came her tall stature and erect, almost military, bearing were calculated to produce an effect of surprise of such a nature that it had to be overcome before it was possible to enter into the feeling with which she informed the part. To the eye, moreover, she was a somewhat more matronly Carmen than the fancy, stimulated by earlier performances of the opera or the reading of Mérimée's novel, was prepared to accept; but it was in harmony with the new picture that she stripped the character of the flippancy and playfulness popularly associated with it, and intensified its sinister side. In this, Fräulein Lehmann deviated from Mme. Hauk's impersonation and approached that of Mme. Trebelli, which had been brought to public notice at the first Italian season at the Metropolitan Opera House. In her musical performance she surpassed both of those admired and experienced artists. Her voice proved to be true, flexible, and ringing, and, also, of a most particularly telling quality. She disclosed ability to fill the part with the passionate expression and warmth of color which it called for, and utilized that ability judiciously and tastefully. M. Eloi Sylva, the new tenor, effected his American introduction in Meyerbeer's "Prophet" on November 27th. He was an exceedingly robust singer, with an imposing stage presence, a powerful voice, which, in its upper register, especially, was vibrant, virile, and musical. Two seasons later he essayed English opera, with about the same results, so far as his pronunciation was concerned, as he achieved in German. Fräulein Lehmann was first seen and heard as Brünnhilde in "Die Walküre" on November 30th. She was statuesquely beautiful, and her voice glorified the music. In the first scene she brought into beautiful relief the joyful nature of the Wishmaiden; her cries were fairly brimming with eager, happy vitality. While proclaiming his fate to Siegmund, she was first inspired by a noble dignity, then transformed instantaneously into a sympathetic woman by the hero's devotion to the helpless and hapless woman who lay exhausted on his knees.

The first of the two novelties of the season was Goldmark's opera "Die Königin von Saba," which had its first performance in America on December 2d. The cast was as follows: Sulamith, Fräulein Lebmaun; Königin, Frau Krämer-Wiedl; Astaroth, Fräulein Brandt; Solomon, Herr Robinson; Assad, Herr Stritt; Hohepriester, Herr Fischer; Baal Hanan, Herr Alexi. Mr. Seidl conducted. The opera (which had had its first production in Vienna ten years before, and had achieved almost as much success in Germany as Nessler's "Trompeter von Säkkingen") was produced with great sumptuousness, and being also admirably sung and acted, it made a record that provided opera-goers in New York with a sensation of a kind that they had not known before, and to which they did not grow accustomed until the later dramas of Wagner began their triumphal career at the Metropolitan. Twenty years afterward (season 1905-06) Mr. Conried revived the opera at the Metropolitan, but it was found that in the interim its fires had paled. In 1885 there were reasons why the public should not only have been charmed, but even impressed by the opera. In spite of its weaknesses it was then, and still is, an effective opera. Thoughtfully considered, the libretto is not one of any poetical worth, but in its handling of the things which give pleasure to the superficial observer it is admirable. It presents a story which is fairly rational, which enlists the interest, if not the sympathy, of the observers, which is new as a spectacle, and which is full of pomp and circumstance. Looked at from its ethical side and considered with reference to the sources of its poetical elements, it falls under condemnation. The title of the opera would seem to indicate that the Bible story of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon had been drawn on for the plot. That is true. The Queen of Sheba comes to Jerusalem to see Solomon in his glory, and that is the end of the draft on the Biblical story; the rest is the modern poet's invention. But that is the way of operas with Biblical subjects—a few names, an incident, and the rest of invention. In Gounod's "Reine de Saba" the magnificently storied queen tries to elope with the architect of Solomon's temple like any wilful millionaire's daughter. Salome is a favorite subject just now that the danse du ventre is working its way into polite society, but save for the dance and the names of the tetrarch and his wife, the Bible contributes nothing to the Salome dramas and pantomimes. Sulamith, who figures like an abandoned Dido, in the opera of Mosenthal and Goldmark, owes her name, but not her nature or any of her experiences, to the pastoral play which Solomon is credited with having written. The Song of Songs contributes, also, a few lines of poetry to the book, and a ritualistic service celebrated in the Temple finds its prototype in some verses from Psalms lxvii and cxvii, but with this I have enumerated all that "Die Königin von Saba" owes to the sacred Scriptures. Solomon's magnificent reign and marvelous wisdom, which contribute factors to the production, belong to profane as well as to sacred history, and persons with deeply rooted prejudices touching the people of Biblical story will be happiest if they can think of some other than the Scriptural Solomon as the prototype of Mosenthal and Goldmark, for in truth they make of him a sorry sentimentalist at best. The local color of the old story has been borrowed from the old story; the dramatic motive comes plainly from "Tannhäuser"; Sulamith is Elizabeth, the Queen Venus, Assad Tannhäuser, and Solomon Wolfram. Goldmark's music is highly spiced. At times it rushes along like a lava stream, every measure throbbing with eager, excited, and exciting life. He revels in instrumental color; the language of his orchestra is as glowing as the poetry attributed to the veritable King whom the operatic story celebrates. Many composers before him made use of Oriental cadences and rhythms, but to none did they seem so like a native language. It has not been every Jew who could thus handle a Jewish subject. Compare Halévy, Meyerbeer, and Rubinstein with Goldmark.

The first performance of Wagner's "Meistersinger" fell on the same night as the production for the first time in America of Goetz's "Widerspänstigen Zähmung" in English by the National Opera Company. We thus had in juxtaposition an admirable operatic adaptation of a Shakespearian comedy and a modern comedy, of which I thought at the time I could not speak in higher praise than to say that it was truly Shakespearian in its delineation of character. In my book, "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," I have analyzed Wagner's comedy from many points of view, and printed besides the results of investigations of the old Nuremberg mastersingers made on the spot. The significance of this record is that it tells of the introduction in America of a comedy which, though foreign in matter and manner to the thoughts, habits, and feelings of the American people, has, nevertheless, held a high place in their admiration. Later we shall see that this admiration was based on the sound understanding of the play which the original, performers inculcated. Let their names therefore be preserved. They were: Hans Sachs, Emil Fischer; Veit Pogner, Josef Staudigl; Kunz Vogelsang, Herr Dworsky; Konrad Nachtigal, Emil Sänger; Sixtus Beckmesser, Otto Kemlitz; Fritz Kothner, Herr Lehmler; Balthasar Zorn, Herr Hoppe; Ulrich Eisslinger, Herr Klaus; Augustin Moser, Herr Langer; Hermaun Ortel, Herr Doerfer; Hans Schwartz, Herr Eiserbeck; Hans Foltz, Herr Anlauf; Walther von Stolzing, Albert Stritt; David, Herr Kramer; Eva, Auguste Seidl-Krauss; Magdalena, Marianne Brandt; Nachtwächter, Carl Kaufmann. Mr. Seidl conductor.

I modulate to the Metropolitan season 1886-87 through the performances of the opposition, which began at the Academy of Music, but ended in the house which was now definitely acknowledged to be the home, and only home, of fashionable opera. Mme. Patti provided the last bit of evidence. In the two preceding seasons she had led Colonel Mapleson's forces at the Academy; yet the public would have none of his opera. Now, after a year's absence, she returned to America under the management of Mr. Abbey, who had opposed Nilsson to her when the rivalry of the houses began. She gave operatic concerts, one, two, three, and four, at the Academy of Music, with old favorites of the New York public—Scalchi, Novara, and a French tenor named Guille—in her company, besides Signor Arditi; and she gave fragments of opera ("Semiramide" and "Martha"), besides a miscellaneous concert. The experiences of Mme. Patti on her return to her old home in 1881 were measurably repeated. The great singer was admired, of course, and half an operatic loaf was accepted as better than no bread. This was in November, 1886, and in April, 1887, Mr. Abbey decided to offer the operatic loaf, such as it was, but to cut it, not at the house with which Patti's name had been intimately associated, but at the Metropolitan Opera House. He was conjuring with the legend (then new, but afterward worn threadbare), "Patti's Farewell." I am writing in July, 1908, and have just been reading the same legend again in the London newspapers—twenty-one years after it served Mr. Abbey a turn. In April, then, Mr. Abbey came to the Metropolitan Opera House with Mme. Patti to give six "farewell" operatic performances. The company consisted of Scalchi, Vicini, Galassi, Valerga, Del Puente, Novara, Abramoff, Corsi, and Migliara, some of them recruited from an earlier company that had come and departed like a shadow in the fall season. Also Miss Gertrude Griswold, whom I mention because she was an American singer who had given promise of good things in Europe, and who helped Mme. Patti with the one and doubly singular performance of "Carmen," in which she was seen and (occasionally) heard in the United States. Mr. Abbey gave six performances, in all of which Mme. Patti appeared, the operas being "La Traviata," "Semiramide," "Faust," "Carmen," "Lucia," and "Marta." The financial results were phenomenal. The public paid nearly $70,000 for the six operas! Had Colonel Mapleson been able to do fifty per cent. of such business the Academy of Music might have been saved. But Mr. Abbey, to use the slang of the stage, was playing Patti as a sensation. Prices of admission were abnormal, and so was the audience. Fashion heard Patti at the Metropolitan, and so did suburban folk, who came to $10 opera in business coats, bonnets, and shawls. Such audiences were never seen in the theater before or since.

This was a little Italian opera season, but a successful one, and one housed at the Metropolitan. In the fall there had been another at the Academy of Music, which was not a success, and which ended in a quarrel between prima donna and manager that contributed a significant item to the popular knowledge of the status of Italian opera. On October 18th an Italian named Angelo began a season of Italian opera at the Academy. The name of the company was the Angelo Grand Italian Opera Company, and its manager's experience had been made, as an underling of Mapleson in the luggage department. The season, as projected, was to last five weeks, and a virtue proclaimed in the list was to be a departure from the hurdy-gurdy list which had been doing service so long. There were smiles among the knowing that a trunk despatcher should appear as the successor of his former employer, and that employer so polished a man of the world as James H. Mapleson; but opera makes strange bedfellows, and there have been stranger things than this in its history. A Hebrew boy named Pohl was little more than a bootblack when he entered the service of Maurice Strakosch, but as Herr Pollini a couple of decades later he was a partner of that elegant gentleman and experienced impresario, and one of the operatic dictators of Germany. Eventually, in the case of the Angelo Grand Italian Opera Company, it turned out that the Deus ex machina was the prima donna, Giulia Valda (Miss Julia Wheelock), an American singer, who had chosen this means of getting a hearing in her native land. The list of operas sounded like an echo of half a century before. Five operas were given, and four of them were by Verdi: "Luisa Miller," "I Lombardi," "Un Ballo in Maschera," and "I due Foscari;" the remaining opera was Petrella's "Ione." Here was an escape from the threadbare with a vengeance. It made the critics rub their eyes and wonder if Mme. Valda had not been in the company of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. Five weeks were projected, but trouble came at the end of a fortnight—that is to say, it came to public notice at the end of a fortnight; it began probably with the season. On November 3d the persons who came to hear a promised performance of "La Juive" found the doors of the Academy closed. A few spasmodic efforts to galvanize the corpse into the semblance of life were made, but in vain; the Angelo Grand Italian Opera Company was dead. Some of its members had been heard before in other organizations; some were heard later. They were Giulia Valda, Mlle. Prandi, Mme. Valerga, Mlle. Corre, Mathilde Ricci, Mme. Mestress, Mme. Bianchi-Montaldo, Signor Vicini, Lalloni, Bologna, Greco, Giannini, Pinto, Corsi, Migliara, and Conti. The conductors were Logheder and Bimboni, the latter of whom was discovered as a young conductor of surprising merit twenty years later by Boston.

One season of the American Opera Company sufficed to involve it in such financial difficulties that its managers deemed a reorganization necessary. It appeared, therefore, in the season of 1886-87 under the title, National Opera Company. Mr. Theodore Thomas was still its musical director, and Mr. Gustav Hinrichs and Arthur Mees assistant conductors; Charles E. Locke was the business manager. The company spent the greater part of the season in other cities, but gave two series of representations in Brooklyn, at the Academy of Music, and one series at the Metropolitan Opera House. The first Brooklyn season was of one week, from December 27th to January 1st, when the German company was idle; the second embraced the Thursday evenings from February 28th to March 26th, during which period the company gave a regular series of representations in New York. Among the singers were Pauline L'Allemand, Emma Juch, Laura Moore, Mathilde Phillips (sister of Adelaide Phillips, one of the singers of first rank sent out into the world by America), Jessie Bartlett Davis, Mme. Bertha Pierson, William Candidus, Charles Bassett (The Signor Bassetti of Colonel Mapleson's company in the previous season), William Fessenden, William Ludwig, Myron W. Whitney, Alonzo E. Stoddard, and William Hamilton. The notable feature of the repertory was the first production in America of Rubinstein's opera "Nero," on March 14, 1887. The book had been translated for the production by Mr. John P. Jackson. Mr. Thomas conducted, and the cast was as follows: Nero Claudius, William Candidus; Julius Vindex, William Ludwig; Tigellinus, A. E. Stoddard; Balbillus, Myron W. Whitney; Saccus, William Fessenden; Sevirus and a Centurion, William Hamilton; Terpander, William H. Lee; Poppaea, Bertha Pierson; Epicharis, Cornelia van Santen; Chrysa, Emma Juch; Agrippina, Emily Sterling; Lupus, Pauline L'Allemand. So far as I can recall, "Nero" is the only opera of Rubinstein's that has been given in the United States. Its performance by the National Opera Company did greater justice to its spectacular than its musical features, but in this there was not a large measure of artistic obliquity. The opera seems to have been constructed with the idea that mimic reproductions of scenes from Rome in its most extravagant, debauched, and luxuriant period would prove more fascinating to the public than an effort to present the moral and intellectual life of the same place and period through the medium of an eloquent, truthful, compact, well-built, and logically developed drama with its essentials further vitalized by music. From whatever side he is viewed, Nero is an excellent operatic character, and the wonder is that the opera of Barbier and Rubinstein did not have sixty instead of only six predecessors. Not only is it a simple matter to group around him historical pictures of unique interest, brilliancy, variety, and suggestiveness, but, as the historians present him to us, he is as made for the stage. His cruelty, profligacy, effeminacy, cowardice, and artistic vanity are traits which invite dramatic illustration, and for each one of them the pages of Suetonius afford incidents which accept a dramatic dress none the less willingly because they are facts of historical record. Besides all this, there is something like poetical justice in the conceit of making a stage character out of the emperor who hired himself to a theatrical manager for 1,000,000 sesterces (say $40,000—a pretty fair honorarium for the time, I should say), and who employed a claque of 5,000 young men. To throw a sequence of the characteristic incidents in the life of Nero into the form of a dramatic poem, logical in its development, and theatrically effective, ought not to be a difficult thing to do. And yet, in the case of this opera, Barbier did not do it, and by a singularly persistent and consistent fatality Rubinstein apparently found every weak spot in the poet's fabric, and loosened and tangled his threads right there. The operas and ballets performed by the National Opera Company in this season besides "Nero" were "The Flying Dutchman," "The Huguenots," "Faust," "Aïda," "Lakmé," "The Marriage of Jeannette," Massé's "Galatea," "Martha," "Coppélia," and Rubinstein's "Bal Costumé," an adaptation.