WAGNERIAN HIGH TIDE

In this chapter I purpose to tell the story of a period of three years, from 1887 to 1890, and in order to cover the ground I shall leave out what appertains to the repetition of works incorporated in the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera House during the preceding three seasons.

The period was an eventful one and marked the high-water of achievement and also of popularity of the German régime, but also the beginning of the dissatisfaction of the boxholders, which resulted two years later in a return to the Italian form. It witnessed the introduction of the "Ring of the Nibelung" in its integrity and illustrated in a surprising manner the superior attractiveness of Wagner's dramas to the rest of the operatic list. Outside of the Nibelung dramas it brought two absolute novelties to the knowledge of the public and revived several old operas of large historical and artistic significance, which had either never been heard at all in New York, or heard so long ago that all memory of them had faded from the public mind. It saw the light of competition flicker out completely at the Academy of Music, and after a year of darkness it beheld the dawn of Italian rivalry in what had become the home of German art.

Twenty operas were brought forward in the first three years of the German régime. They were "Tannhäuser," "Fidelio," "Les Huguenots," "Der Freischütz," "William Tell," "Lohengrin," "Don Giovanni," "The Prophet," "Masaniello," "Rigoletto," "La Juive," "Die Walküre," "Carmen," "The Queen of Sheba," "Die Meistersinger," "Rienzi," "Aïda," "Das Goldene Kreutz," "Tristan und Isolde," and "Merlin." (In this list I have set down the titles in the language in which they live in the popular mouth in order to avoid what might seem like an affectation were I to use the German form always in the story simply because the Italian and French works were sung in German.) Additions to the list in the season of 1887-88 were "Siegfried," "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," "Euryanthe," "Ferdinand Cortez," and "Götterdämmerung"; in the season of 1888-89, "L'Africaine," "Das Rheingold," and "Il Trovatore"; in 1889-90, "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Un Ballo in Maschera," "Norma," and "Der Barbier von Bagdad."

The record of the last two years indicated a falling off in energy, but though it caused disaffection at the time, it seems notable enough compared with the activities of the establishment twenty years later under much more favorable circumstances. For the last of the three seasons under discussion seven additions to what was called by courtesy the established list had been promised; but counting in "Norma," (a special performance for the benefit of Lilli Lehmann) and "The Flying Dutchman," which had been promised only by implication in the plan of a serial representation of Wagner's works, only four additions were made. Two causes operated toward the disappointing outcome. One was an epidemic of influenza which prevailed during the greater part of the winter and caused much embarrassment to the singers; the other was the inefficiency of the chorus—a defect which has not yet been remedied, but was greater in the season 1907-08 than a decade earlier. "Otello" was in readiness so far as the principals were concerned, but the chorus consumed so much time restudying old works that it had to be abandoned; also Lalo's "Le Roy d'Ys." Though the stockholders were giving opera themselves for themselves, they took no steps toward making it a permanent institution. Their decision to give German opera was made from year to year, and the end of every season brought with it practically a complete disruption of the company. There had to be a reorganization each fall. The directors were unwilling to give their own manager the degree of permanence which they bestowed without hesitation upon a lessee, and the policy of the house was thus kept continually in controversy. The fact is that the activities of the Germans were not to the taste of the stockholders, who were getting serious art where they were looking for fashionable diversion. This became painfully obvious when the conduct of the occupants of the boxes scandalized the institution to such a degree that the directors were compelled to administer a public rebuke to themselves and their associates, and a stigma was placed upon the institution from which it has suffered, very unjustly, ever since. But a discussion of these incidents can be more intelligently and profitably introduced later in this narrative.

The fourth German season began on November 2, 1887, and ended on February 18, 1888, and consisted of forty-seven subscription nights, sixteen subscription matinées, and one extra matinée. In all fourteen operas were produced. The two Wagnerian novelties, "Götterdämmerung" and "Siegfried," were the most popular features of the season, the former being given seven times, though it was the last of the season's productions. It brought into the treasury a total of $30,324, or an average of $4,332, and was heard by audiences averaging 2,871. "Siegfried" was a good second. It had nine weeks' advantage of "Götterdämmerung" and was performed eleven times, with total receipts amounting to $37,124.50, or an average of $3,374.95. Pursued by its old fatality, "Fidelio" dropped to the foot of the list with four performances, which yielded only $8,997. The receipts for the season were $411,860.24, of which $190,087.24 came from the box office sales and subscriptions, $170,180 from the stockholders' assessment of $2,500 on each box, and $51,593 from rentals. This assessment was only $24,000 more than the cost of maintaining the opera-house, which was about $146,000. The staging of new operas cost $19,727.27, more than half of which was expended on Spontini's "Ferdinand Cortez." The scenery for "Siegfried" had been purchased the year before and also the costumes for that drama and "Götterdämmerung." The principal members of the company were Lilli Lehmann, Marianne Brandt, Auguste Seidl-Krauss, Biro di Marion, Louise Meisslinger, Albert Niemann, Max Alvary, Emil Fischer, Adolf Robinson, Rudolph von Milde, Johannes Elmblad, Herr Ferenczy, and Herr Alexi.

The first American representation of Wagner's "Siegfried" took place on November 9, 1887. Anton Seidl conducted and the parts were distributed as follows: Siegfried, Max Alvary; Mime, Herr Ferenczy; der Wanderer, Emil Fischer; Alberich, Rudolph von Milde; Fafner, Johannes Elmblad; Erda, Marianne Brandt; Brünnhilde, Lilli Lehmann; Stimme des Waldvogels, Auguste Seidl-Krauss. The production of this drama was an invitation to the people of New York to take the longest and most decisive step away from the ordinary conventions of the lyric theater that had yet been asked of them. At the time it seemed foolishly presumptive to attempt a prediction of what the response would be. A season before "Tristan und Isolde" had been received with great favor and under conditions which did not admit a question of the honesty and intelligence of the appreciation. This was encouraging to the lovers of Wagner's dramas, but the difference between opera of the ordinary type and "Tristan und Isolde" is not so great as between "Tristan und Isolde" and "Siegfried," notwithstanding that in the love tragedy Wagner took as uncompromising a stand as ever did a Greek poet, and hewed to the lines of his theoretical scheme with unswerving fidelity. In the subject-matter of the drama lies the distinction. Despite the absence of the ethical element which places "Tannhäuser" immeasurably higher than "Tristan" as a dramatic poem, the latter drama contains an expression of the universal passion which is so vehement, so truthful, and so sublime that it seems strange that anybody susceptible to music and gifted with emotions could ever have been deaf to its beauties or callous to its appeals. Besides this, the sympathies are stirred in behalf of the personages of the play who stand as representatives of human nature, and, though the co-operation of a chorus, which has always been considered an essential element of the lyric drama, is restricted to a single act, the dramatic necessity of the restriction is so obvious that an audience, once engrossed in the tragedy, must needs resent such a violation of propriety as the introduction of a chorus in any scene except that of the first act would be. In "Siegfried," however, the case is not so plain. Here there is not only no chorus, but scarcely more than five minutes during which even two solo voices are blended in a duet. Except Siegfried and Brünnhilde, the personages of the play have no claim upon human sympathy, and their actions can scarcely arouse a loftier feeling than curiosity. Through two acts and a portion of the third, save in a dozen measures or so, the music of woman's voice and the charm of woman's presence are absent from the stage, and, instead, we are asked to accept a bear, a dragon, and a bird, a sublimely solemn peripatetic god who asks riddles and laughs once, and two dwarfs, repulsive of mind and hideous of body.

These are the drawbacks concerning which there can be no controversy. To them are to be added the difficulties which result from a desire to employ in a serious drama mechanical devices of a kind that custom associates only with children's pantomimes and idle spectacles. A bear is brought in to frighten a dwarf; a dragon sings, vomits forth steam from its cavernous jaws, fights and dies with a kindly and prophetic warning to its slayer; a bird becomes endowed with the gift of human speech through a miraculous process which takes place in one of the people of the play. Surely these are grounds on which "Siegfried" might be stoutly criticized from the conventional as well as a universal point of view; but I have not enumerated them for the purpose of disparaging Wagner's drama, but rather to show the intellectual and esthetic attitude of the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House twenty years ago, who, through all these defects, saw in "Siegfried" a strangely beautiful and impressive creation, which, under trying circumstances, challenged their plaudits at the outset and soon won their enthusiastic admiration.

More direct and emphatic was the appreciation of "Götterdämmerung," the last of the season's novelties, as "Siegfried" was the first. It was produced on January 25, 1888, only three weeks before the close of the season, yet it was given six times in the subscription performances and once outside the subscription, with the financial results already mentioned. The cast was as follows: Siegfried, Albert Niemann; Gunther, Adolf Robinson; Hagen, Emil Fischer; Alberich, Rudolph von Milde; Brünnhilde, Lilli Lehmann; Gutrune, Auguste Seidl-Krauss; Woglinde, Sophie Traubmann; Wellgunde, Marianne Brandt; Flosshilde, Louise Meisslinger. Mr. Seidl conducted. It was but natural that the concluding drama of the tetralogy should have excited warmer sympathy than its immediate predecessor. In it the human element becomes really active for the first time. This circumstance Mr. Seidl accentuated by two bold excisions. One of the things for which Wagner has been faulted is that in his treatment of the Siegfried legend he has sacrificed historical elements in order to bring it into closer relationship with Norse mythology; has, in fact, made the fate of the gods and goddesses of our ancestors the chief concern of the prologue and succeeding dramas. Except for those who prefer to see only ethical symbols in the characters there is some force in the objection. Like Homer in his "Iliad," Wagner has a celestial as well as a terrestrial plot in his "Ring of the Nibelung," and the men and women, or semi-divine creatures, in it are but the unconscious agents of the good and evil powers typified in the gods and dwarfs.

The criticism, however, is weaker here than in Germany, where ten or a dozen dramas (chief of which is Geibel's "Brünnhild"), as well as the medieval epics, have accustomed the people to think of their national hero with something like historical surroundings. In these writings the death of Siegfried is brought about by his alliance with the Burgundians, whose seat was at Worms; and the Gunther of the legend is easily identified with King Gundikar, who was overcome by Attila and died A.D. 450. Wagner's original draft of "Götterdämmerung" (an independent drama which he called "Siegfried's Death") followed the accepted lines, and it was not until the tetralogy was planned that the mythological elements from the Eddas were drawn into the scheme, the theater of the play changed, its time pushed back into a prehistoric age, and the death of the hero made to bring about the destruction of the old gods—the Ragnarök of the Icelandic tales. The connection between the death of Siegfried and the fate of the gods is set forth in the two scenes which were eliminated at this production of "Götterdämmerung." The first is the prologue in which the Nornir (the Fates of Northern mythology), while twisting the golden-stranded rope of the world's destiny, tell of the signs which presage the Twilight of the Gods. The second is the interview between Brünnhilde and Waltraute, one of the Valkyrior, who comes to urge her sister to avert the doom which threatens the gods by restoring the baneful ring to the Rhine daughters. Both scenes are highly significant in the plan of the tragedy as a whole, but a public largely unfamiliar with German and unconcerned about Wagner's philosophical purposes can much more easily spare than endure them. In later years they were restored at the Metropolitan performances, but I make no doubt that Mr. Seidl's wise abbreviation had much to do with the unparalleled success of the drama in its first season. Persons familiar with the German tongue and the tetralogy, either from study of the book and music or from attendance on performances in Germany, were justified in being disappointed at the loss of two scenes highly important from a dramatic point of view and profoundly beautiful from a musical; but it was better to achieve success for the representations by adapting the drama to the capacity of the public than to sacrifice it bodily on the altar of integrity.