Experience is always purchased at large cost in the operatic field. Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau refused Mr. Damrosch the use of the Metropolitan Opera House for his second New York season, and he was driven to the old, socially discredited Academy of Music. They did not look with favoring eyes upon an enterprise which had achieved so tremendous a triumph at its very start, and they provided a large percentage of the wormwood which filled the cup which Mr. Damrosch drank in 1896; but they embittered their own goblet by the procedure, and when the time came for laying out the campaign of 1896-97 they were quite as ready as Mr. Damrosch to sign a treaty of peace whose provisions promised to make for the good of both sides instead of the injury of either. The rivals agreed to keep out of each other's way as much as possible and even to help each other by an occasional exchange of singers. By this means it was purposed to widen the repertories of both companies, Mr. Damrosch providing the Metropolitan establishment with a Brünnhilde and an Isolde for Jean de Reszke's Siegmund, Siegfried, and Tristan, and the Metropolitan company lending him in return Melba, Eames, and Calvé, or others, to enable him to perform some of the Italian and French operas which he had included in his list. Mr. Damrosch yielded Chicago to his rivals and took Philadelphia in exchange. It was a wise compromise. Mr. Damrosch lost $40,000 in 1896; he made $14,000 in 1897. The next year, the Metropolitan Opera House being closed during the regular subscription period, as will appear later in this record, Mr. Damrosch entered into partnership with Charles A. Ellis, manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who had undertaken the management also of Mme. Melba's American affairs, and Italian and French operas were added to the German repertory. The regular season showed a good profit, most of which, however, was frittered away in a spring tour made by Melba with a portion of the company. By this time Mr. Damrosch had concluded that he was too good a man and musician to surrender himself to the hateful business of managing a traveling opera company, and he withdrew from the partnership with Ellis, to whom he sold all his theatrical properties, and returned to concert work and composition, though for two weeks in the next season he was conductor of Mr. Ellis's company.

And now to some of the details of the artistic work of these Damroschian enterprises. The year 1896 was signalized by the appearance in America of two singers who rapidly achieved first-class importance. These were Katherina Klafsky and Milka Ternina. Mme. Klafsky was the wife of Herr Lohse, whom Mr. Damrosch also engaged as assistant conductor. She came here under a cloud, so far as the managerial ethics of Germany were concerned. How much respect those ethics were entitled to may be judged from the story. I have already said, in discussing the case of Mme. Lehmann and her violation of contract with the Opera at Berlin, that a speedy result of the success of German opera under Mr. Stanton was a change of attitude on the part of the Intendanten of German theaters toward the New York institution so soon as it was found that a handsome proportion of the American earnings might be diverted into the pockets of those Intendanten or the managers of municipal theaters. When Mr. Damrosch engaged his second company Mme. Klafsky was a member of the Municipal Theater in Hamburg, of which Pollini was director. When the offer of an American engagement came to her she consulted with Herr Pollini, who graciously gave his consent to her acceptance of it on condition that she pay him one-half of her earnings. She refused to agree to do this, and, fearing that Pollini would invoke the aid of the courts to restrain her from coming to New York, she took French leave of Germany more than two months before she was needed here. Her success in America was emphatic, and after she had effected a reconciliation with Pollini she was re-engaged by Mr. Damrosch to alternate with Mme. Lehmann in the season of 1896-97. Within a fortnight of the re-engagement she died in Hamburg from a trephining operation undertaken to relieve her from the results of an injury to her skull, received while in America.

Mme. Klafsky and Mr. Alvary had sung in "Tristan und Isolde," with which Mr. Damrosch began his campaign in Philadelphia on February 20th. Her success was instantaneous, and her tremendous dramatic forcefulness, the natural expression of an exuberant temperament, placed her higher in public favor during the season than Mme. Ternina, whose refined and ingratiating art did not receive full appreciation till later. Other members of the Damrosch troupe of 1896 were Wilhelm Grüning, tenor, and Demeter Popovici, bass, beside Gadski, Fischer, Alvary, and other persons already known, but of smaller importance. The New York season began at the Academy of Music on March 2d and ended on March 28th. The operas were "Fidelio," "Lohengrin," "Siegfried," "Tannhäuser," "Die Meistersinger," "Die Walküre," "Der Freischütz," and (in the original English) Mr. Damrosch's "The Scarlet Letter." This opera had its first performance in New York on March 6. Its libretto was written by George Parsons Lathrop, a son-in-law of Hawthorne, who wrote the romance on which it was based. The cast included Johanna Gadski as Hester Prynne, Barron Berthald as Arthur Dimmesdale, Conrad Behrens as Governor Bellingham, Gerhard Stehmann as the Rev. John Wilson, and William Mertens as Roger Chillingworth. The greater part of the music had been performed at concerts of the Oratorio Society on January 4 and 5, 1895. The book of the opera proved to be undramatic in the extreme, a defect which was emphasized by the execrable pronunciation of nearly all the singers at the performance on the stage at the Academy. In the music Mr. Damrosch essayed the style of Wagner, and did it so well, indeed, as to deserve hearty admiration. He was helped, it is true, by factors frankly and copiously copied from the pages of his great model. The nixies of the Rhine peeped out of the sun-flecked coverts in the forest around Hester Prynne's hut, as if they had become dryads for her sake; ever and anon the sinister Hunding was heard muttering in the ear of Chillingworth, and Hester wore the badge of her shame on the robes of Elsa, washed in innocency. But such things are venial in a first work. In frankly confessing his model (for it cannot be thought for a moment that Mr. Damrosch expected his imitations to be overlooked) he illustrated a rule which applies to all composers at the outset of their careers. The fact must be noted, but it is much more to the purpose that the young composer blended the elements of his composition with a freedom and daring quite astonishing in their exhibition of mastery. There is no sign of doubt or timorousness anywhere in the work, though the moments are not infrequent when the utterance is more fluent than significant. The typical phrases which he chose to symbolize the persons and passions of the play are most of them deficient in plasticity, and nearly all of them lack that expressiveness which Wagner knew so well how to impress upon his melodic elements; the greater, therefore, was the surprise that Mr. Damrosch was able to weave them together in a fabric which moved steadily forward for more than an hour, and reflected more or less truthfully and vividly the feeling of the dramatic situations. Unfortunately there is little variety in this feeling, so that in spite of Mr. Damrosch's effort, or, perhaps, because of it, there is a deal of monotony in the music of the first act. There is a fine ingenuity of orchestration throughout, however, and an amount of daring in harmonization which sometimes oversteps the limits of discretion. In an agonizing scene between Chillingworth and Hester at the close of the first act the orchestra and the two chief personages are wholly engrossed with an exposition of the dramatic feeling of the moment, while the chorus (supposed to be worshiping in the neighboring meeting-house) sing the "Old Hundredth" in unison and without instrumental support. It is an admirable historical touch, and the device is the approved one of using a psalm tune as a cantus firmus to the remainder of the music; but Mr. Damrosch's harmonization of the ensemble is such that we seem to hear two distinct and unsympathetic keys. There was, after the second act, a scene upon the stage in honor of Mr. Damrosch, in which, after several large wreaths had been bestowed upon him, a representative of the Wagner Society came forward, and on behalf of that body presented him with a handsome copy of Hawthorne's story and the incorrect statement that the honor was paid to him as the first American who had composed a grand opera on an American theme which had been publicly produced. In this there were as many errors of statement as in the famous French Academician's description of a lobster. George F. Bristow's "Rip Van Winkle" was composed by a native American and was brought out at Niblo's Garden long before Mr. Damrosch was born in Breslau; while Signor Arditi, who hailed from Europe, like Mr. Damrosch, brought out under his own direction and with considerable success an opera entitled "La Spia," based on Cooper's novel. This merely in the interest of the verities of history.

The German season of 1907, a part of whose story I have already told, began at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 8th and lasted four weeks. It added no novelty to the local list, but had some interesting features, among them a serial performance of the dramas of Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung," the first appearance of Mme. Nordica in the Brünnhilde of "Siegfried" on March 24th, and the joint appearance of Mmes. Lehmann and Nordica in "Lohengrin," the German singer, true to her dramatic instincts, choosing the part of Ortrud. On April 1st Xavier Scharwenka, who had taken a residence with his brother Philip in New York, borrowed the company from Mr. Damrosch and on his own responsibility gave a performance of his opera, entitled "Mataswintha." The opera was produced under difficulties. It had withstood its baptism of fire in Weimar seven months before, and Mr. Scharwenka had performed portions of it at a concert for the purpose of introducing himself to the people of New York. But the singers had to learn their parts from the beginning, there was a great deal of pageantry which had to be supplied from the stock furniture of the Metropolitan stage, the tenor Ernst Kraus took ill and caused a postponement, and even thus the chapter of accidents was not exhausted. When the performance finally took place Herr Stehmann, a barytone, had to sing Herr Kraus's part, which he had learned in two days. Under the circumstances it may be the course of wisdom to avoid an estimation of the opera's merits and defects and to record merely that it proved to be an extremely interesting work and well worth the trouble spent upon its production. Under different circumstances it might have lived the allotted time upon the stage, which, as the knowing know, is a very brief one in the majority of cases. The story of the opera was drawn from Felix Dahn's historical novel "Ein Kampf um Rom."

It is high time to get back again to the story of opera at the Metropolitan Opera House under the direction of the lessees; but before then chronological orderliness requires that attention be paid to an incident outside the category of prime importance. This was the first production in New York of Humperdinck's delightful fairy opera "Hänsel und Gretel" at Daly's Theater on October 8, 1895. The production was in English. The venture looked promising, and great interest was felt in it. Mr. Seidl was charged with the musical direction. A company of singers was brought together, partly from London, partly enlisted here. Sir Augustus Harris, director of the opera at Covent Garden, was the financial backer of the enterprise. As numerous an orchestra as the score calls for could not be accommodated in the theater, but Mr. Seidl did the best he could, and the band was commendable. Three of the singers, Miss Jeanne Douste, Miss Louise Meisslinger, and Mr. Jacques Bars, disclosed ample abilities; but the English manager had no knowledge either of the needs of the opera or the demands of the New York public; Sir Augustus's speech on the opening night, indeed, disclosed ignorance also of the name of the composer and the history of the work which he had clothed with considerable sumptuousness. It was long remembered with amusement that to him Herr Humperdinck was "Mr. Humperdinckel" and the opera some "beautiful music composed for this occasion." And so great expectations were disappointed, and, after worrying along from October 8th to November 15th, the opera was withdrawn with a record of failure, not deserved by the work and only partly deserved by the performance. We shall meet the opera again in the story of opera at the Metropolitan Opera House a decade later, when it came into its rights, and the public were able to testify their admiration in the presence of the composer.

The prospectus of Henry E. Abbey and Maurice Grau (which continued to be the official style of the managers) for the season 1895-96, contained this announcement: "The management has also decided to add a number of celebrated German artists and to present Wagner operas in the German language, all of which operas will be given with superior singers, equal to any who have ever been heard in the German language. The orchestra will be increased. . . . The chorus will be strengthened by a number of young, fresh voices, to which will be added an extra German chorus." Signor Mancinelli was not re-engaged as conductor, but Anton Seidl was. After what I have told thus far in this chapter the causes which led to this change of policy will be readily understood. The augmented company was a formidable host, though its strength remained in the French and Italian contingent. Had the German singers been equally capable, the story of Mr. Damrosch's enterprise might have read differently. Mme. Calvé returned and revived the furor over "Carmen"; Mesdames Melba, Nordica, Scaichi, Mantelli, and Messrs. Jean and Édouard de Reszke, Pol Plançon, Victor Maurel, and Castelmary remained; newcomers were Lola Beeth, Frances Saville, Marie Brema (who had been brought from Europe by Mr. Damrosch), Giuseppe Cremonini, Adolph Wallnöfer, Giuseppe Kaschmann (who had been a member of Mr. Abbey's first company twelve years before), and Mario Ancona. The regular subscription season consisted of thirteen weeks (fifty-two performances), beginning on November 18th, and there was a special subscription, at the same scale of prices, for a season of ten performances of German operas, beginning on December 5th. There were also performances at popular prices on Saturday evenings, and the entire season, excluding the spring season, which developed but little interest, compassed seventy-four representations. For these and thirteen Sunday night concerts the public paid about $575,000.

"Oh! how far are we from Covent Garden!" cried Jean de Reszke on the night of November 27th, and he clipped in his arms the friend who had come to offer his congratulations to the thunderous plaudits of the audience. M. de Reszke was in a fine glow of enthusiasm. He had sung and played Tristan and opened a new era in the style of Wagnerian performances in New York. A few days later, while the drinking horn was going from hand to hand at a medieval dinner given in honor of the principal interpreters of Wagner's love drama (Mme. Nordica, Miss Brema, the brothers de Reszke, and Mr. Seidl), he responded to a toast, and in four languages, English, German, French, and Italian, celebrated the advent of what he called "international opera." Why he neglected to throw in a few Polish phrases for the benefit of his countryman Paderewski, who sat opposite him at table, his hosts could not make out, unless it was because he wanted his expressions of delight at the achievement and prospect to be understood by all his hearers. High hopes filled the hearts of all local lovers of the lyric drama at the period. The promises of Abbey and Grau had stimulated the kindliest, heartiest, cheeriest feeling on all hands. All bickerings between the adherents of the various schools were silenced by the promulgation of a policy which seemed as generous and public-spirited as it was liberal. Whenever it was practicable New York was to have performances which should respect not only the tongue, but also the spirit of the works chosen for representation. That M. de Reszke had been an active agent in the inauguration of the new régime was an open secret to his acquaintances, and he bore public testimony when he supplemented his impersonation of Tristan with a German Lohengrin. The significance of such an act, coupled with Mme. Nordica's support of him in both performances, seemed extraordinary even in the minds of those who were not inclined to attach much importance to the language used in performance, so long as the performance was imbued with a becoming spirit of sincerity and a desire to make artistic purpose replace idle diversion. It looked as if through the example of these two artists, seconded by the liberality of the management, the people of New York were to take a long step forward in musical culture—a step toward the foundation of an institution which should endure and exemplify the esthetic, moral, and physical character of the people of America.

The expectations aroused by the announcement were woefully disappointed. There were nights of wondrous brilliancy and of extraordinary splendor in nearly every department. Some of the refulgence came from the new ambitions with which M. de Reszke and Mr. Seidl inspired the organization. The season had no prouder moments than those filled with the performances of "Tristan" and "Lohengrin" vouchsafed the subscribers to the regular subscription; but it had no deeper gloom than that which settled upon the subscribers to the special German season on most of the occasions set apart for them. The fate of "Fidelio" was utterly grievous; two representations of "Tristan" filled their souls with indignation instead of gratitude; there is no saintly intercession which could have won redemption for "Tannhäuser." The performances of "Tristan" and of the Italian "Lohengrin" at which Nordica, Brema, and the brothers de Reszke sang were brilliantly successful, but in each case the regular performance was made to precede that set apart for the German subscription. The circumstance would alone have sufficed to arouse suspicion that the management was at least willing to discriminate against the special Thursday nights, and the suspicion was wrought into conviction by the disparity between the performances of the two subscriptions. If it was the purpose of Abbey & Grau to put German opera on trial their method looked very unfair. "The drama for its own sake as an art work, and not for the sake of the singer" is a fundamental principle of German art, but it can only maintain its validity with the help of adequate performances. Saving the four singers who sang in Italian and French as well as German (Mme. Nordica, Miss Brema, and the brothers de Reszke), the German singers of 1895-96 were woefully inefficient, and the German season was an indubitable failure.

I shall append a list of performances of the operas presented in the seasons covered by this chapter and its predecessor, and its perusal will, I think, enforce even upon a careless reader the fact that, in spite of the shortcomings to which I have called attention, the administration of Abbey & Grau yet marked a gigantic step in the direction of dramatic sanity and sense over the lists which prevailed in the period when this story began. In the consulship of Mapleson the repertory might have been turned into verse quite as dramatic as most of that of the opera books. Thus:

"Favorita," "Puritani,"
"Lucia di Lammermoor,"
"Marta," "Linda di Chamouni,"
"La Traviata," "Trovatore";
"Il Barbiere di Siviglia,"
"Roberto il Diavolo,"
"Don Pasquale," "Rigoletto,"
"Faust," "Gli Ugonotti," "Un Ballo,"