Chapters of Opera / Being historical and critical observations and records concerning the lyric drama in New York from its earliest days down to the present time

by Henry Edward Krehbiel

"Inspiring, isn't it?"

"Yes," was the reply, "and they might be as fine artists as they are men if they would but study."

We all know that their American experience was as little lost on the brothers de Reszke as it was on Mme. Lehmann herself, who stepped into the foremost rank of tragic singers so soon as America offered her the opportunity to shuffle off the obligation of "singing princesses," as she called it.

Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," the hot-blooded little opera which was destined to make so great a commotion in the world (had already begun to make it, indeed), had its first production at the Metropolitan Opera House on December 30th. The opera was no novelty, having already made an exciting career before the Metropolitan opera season opened; but there were two features of the performances calculated to live in the memory of serious observers as characteristic of the change in spirit which had come over the institution since the departure of the German artists: Miss Eames wore a perfectly exquisite accordion-pleated skirt as the distraught Sicilian peasant, and Signor Valero sang the siciliano on the open stage, the overture being stopped and the curtain raised so that he might sing his serenade to Lola with greater effect. He sang behind Lola's house, and winning a call in spite of his stridulous voice and singular phrasing, he stepped out from cover, bowed his acknowledgments, and, returning to his hiding place, serenaded his love over again. After he had come forward a second time Signor Vianesi found his place in the score and resumed the overture.

"Cavalleria Rusticana" precipitated an amusing but extremely lively managerial battle when it reached New York. Those who watched the operatic doings of Europe were aware of the fact that the opera spread like wildfire from town to town immediately after its first success at Rome. Fast as it traveled, however, the intermezzo traveled faster. Seidl had seized upon it in the summer of 1891, and made it a feature of his concerts at Brighton Beach. Then came simultaneous announcements of the production of the opera by Rudolph Aronson and Oscar Hammerstein in the fall. Mr. Aronson wanted to open the season at the Casino with it, and let it introduce a change in the character of the entertainments given at that playhouse. Mr. Hammerstein had also announced the work, but he had no theater at his ready disposal. He thought Aronson was poaching on his preserves, and there began a diverting struggle for priority of performance, from which nobody profited and the opera suffered. Amid threats of crimination Aronson precipitated what he called a dress rehearsal of the work at the Casino in the afternoon of October 1, 1891. Like the king in the parable, he sent out into the highways, and bade all he could find in to the feast. Especially did his servants labor on the Rialto, and the affair had all the appearance of a professional matinée. Nothing was quite in readiness, but Mr. Hammerstein had announced his first performance for the evening of that day, and must be anticipated at all hazards. Yet there were singers and scenes and musicians in the orchestra, and Mr. Gustav Kerker to steer the little operatic ship through the breakers. On the whole, the performance was fair. Laura Bellini was the Santuzza of the occasion, Grace Golden the Lola, Helen von Doenhoff the Lucia, Charles Bassett the Turiddu, and William Pruette the Alfio. Heinrich Conried staged the production. In the evening Oscar Hammerstein pitchforked the opera on to the stage of the Lenox Lyceum—an open concert room, and a poor one at that. There was a canvas proscenium, no scenery to speak of, costumes copied from no particular country and no particular period, and a general effect of improvisation. But the musical forces were superior to Mr. Aronson's, and had there been a better theater the Casino performance would have been greatly surpassed. There was a really fine orchestra under the direction of Mr. Adolph Neuendorff, but it sat out on the floor of the hall, which reverberated like a drum. Mme. Janouschoffsky, an exceedingly capable artist, was the Santuzza, Mrs. Pemberton Hincks the Lola, Mrs. Jennie Bohner the Lucia, Payne Clarke the Turiddu, and Herman Gerold the Alfio. While all this pother was making, "Cavalleria Rusticana" was already three weeks old in Philadelphia, where Mr. Gustav Hinrichs had brought it forward with his American company at the Grand Opera House; Minnie Hauk, with a company of her own, had given it in Chicago the night before the New York struggle, and Emma Juch and her company were rushing forward the preparations for a production in Boston.

"Cavalleria Rusticana" came upon the world like the bursting of a bomb, and its effect was so startling that it bewildered and confounded the radical leaders of musical thought. There were few, indeed, who retained calmness of vision enough to perceive that it was less a change of manner than of subject-matter, which had whirled the world off its critical feet. Outside of Italy there was no means of seeing the work of preparation which had preceded it. The annual output of hundreds of operas made no impression beyond the Alpine barrier, and it was easy to believe that the entire product was formed after the old and humdrum manner. No sooner had "Cavalleria Rusticana" broken down the old confines, however, than it was discovered that a whole brood of young musicians had been brought up on the same blood-heating food, and a dozen composers were ready to use the same formulas. Most of them, indeed, got the virus from the same apothecary who uttered the mortal drug to Mascagni—that is to say, from Amilcare Ponchielli. Had we but listened twenty-five years ago to "La Gioconda" as we are able to listen to "Cavalleria Rusticana," and its swift and multitudinous offspring now, we might have recognized the beginnings of what has been termed "Mascagnitis," not in an essentially new manner of musical composition, but in the appeal to the primitive passion for violence and blood which found expression in the operatic paraphrase of Victor Hugo's story, and the invitation which that passion extended to the modern musician suddenly emancipated from a lot of cumbersome formularies, and endowed with a mass of new harmonic and instrumental pigments with which to produce the startling contrasts and swift contradictions for which the new field of subjects clamors.

Seventeen years ago "Cavalleria Rusticana" had no perspective. Now, though but a small portion of its progeny has been brought to our notice, we, nevertheless, look at it through a vista which looks like a valley of moral and physical death through which there flows a sluggish stream thick with filth, and red with blood. Strangely enough, in spite of the consequences which have followed it, the fierce little drama retains its old potency. It still speaks with a voice which sounds like the voice of truth. Its music still makes the nerves tingle, and carries our feelings unresistingly on its turbulent current. But the stage picture is less sanguinary than it looked in the beginning. It seems to have receded a millennium in time. It has the terrible fierceness of an Attic tragedy, but it also has the decorum which the Attic tragedy never violated. There is no slaughter in the presence of the audience, despite the humbleness of its personages. It does not keep us perpetually in sight of the shambles. It is, indeed, an exposition of chivalry, rustic, but chivalry, nevertheless. It was thus Clytemnestra slew her husband, and Orestes his mother. Note the contrast which the duel between Alfio and Turiddu presents with the double murder to the piquant accompaniment of comedy in "Pagliacci," the opera which followed so hard upon its heels. Since then piquancy has been the cry; the piquant contemplation of adultery, seduction, and murder amid the reek and stench of the Italian barnyard. Think of Cilèa's "Tilda," Giordano's "Mala Vita," Spinelli's "A Basso Porto," and Tasca's "A Santa Lucia!"

The stories chosen for operatic treatment by the champions of verismo are all alike. It is their filth and blood which fructifies the music, which rasps the nerves even as the plays revolt the moral stomach. I repeat: looking back over the time during which this so-called veritism has held its orgy, "Cavalleria Rusticana" seems almost classic. Its music is highly spiced and tastes "hot i' th' mouth," but its eloquence is, after all, in its eager, pulsating, passionate melody—like the music which Verdi wrote more than half a century ago for the last act of "Il Trovatore." If neither Mascagni himself, nor his imitators, have succeeded in equaling it since, it is because they have thought too much of the external devices of abrupt and uncouth change of modes and tonalities, of exotic scales and garish orchestration, and too little of the fundamental element of melody, which once was the be-all and end-all of Italian music. Another fountain of gushing melody must be opened before "Cavalleria Rusticana" finds a successor in all things worthy of the succession. Ingenious artifice, reflection, and technical cleverness will not suffice even with the blood and mud of the Neapolitan slums as a fertilizer.

Messrs. Abbey and Grau had no rival opera organizations to contend with at any time after they opened their doors, so they created a bit of competition themselves. In January they brought Mme. Patti and her operatic concert company into the house for a pair of concerts in which scenes from operas were sung in costume, the famous singer's companions being Mlle. Fabbri, M. Guille (tenor), Signor Novara (bass), and Signor Del Puente. The occasion offered an opportunity to study the impulses which underlie popular patronage. The entertainments being concerts, not operas, the stockholders were not entitled to their boxes under the terms of their contract with Abbey & Grau, and were conspicuous by their absence. Nevertheless, at the second concert, which took place on an afternoon, I estimated the audience at four thousand—nine-tenths women. Mme. Patti also appeared in performances of "Lucia di Lammermoor" and "Il Barbiere" in a supplementary season, one feature of which, on March 31, 1892, was the production of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" in Italian, with M. Lassalle in the titular part, which he sang for the first time in his life. "A marvelous artist indeed is this Frenchman," was my comment in The Tribune, "and if he and the brothers de Reszke are in next year's company, the lovers of the lyric drama as distinguished from the old sing-song opera will look into the future without trepidation." Unhappily there was no "next year's company."

In August, 1892, the Metropolitan Opera House had a visitation of fire, which brought operatic matters to a crisis, caused a postponement of the performance for a season, a reorganization of the corporation which owned the building, and a remodeling of the stage and portions of the interior of the theater. For a considerable space before the building of the Metropolitan the public mind was greatly exercised over the awful loss of life at recent theater fires, especially the destruction of the Ringtheater in Vienna. When Mr. Cady planned the New York house, he set about making it as absolutely fireproof as such a structure can be. It was to be non-combustible from the bottom up. There was not a stud partition in it. The floors were all of iron beams and brick arches, the masonry being exposed in the corridors, passages and vestibules, but for comfort having a covering of wood in the audience room. The roof was of iron and masonry, the outer covering of slate being secured to masonry blocks. The iron roof beams of over one hundred feet span, were mounted on rollers to allow for contraction and expansion. The ceiling of the audience room was of iron. The ornamental work of the proscenium, the tier balustrades, and the frames of the partitions between the boxes were all of metal. The stage was supported by a complex iron system of about four thousand light pieces so adjusted as to be removable in sections when it was desired to open the stage floor. Theater fires almost invariably originate on the stage, and, as an additional safeguard, Mr. Cady contrived an apparatus for flooding the stage in the case of a threatened conflagration. A large skylight was weighted to fall open in case of fire, and a great water tank placed over the rigging loft and connected with a network of pipes with apertures stopped with extremely fusible solder, so that the heat of even a small fire would open the holes and release a drenching shower.