Needless to say that scant justice was done to the play and score of "La Bohème" by the vagrant singers, and that the good opinion which the opera won later was shared by few among critics, lay and professional. After ten years of familiar acquaintance with the work, I like it better than I did at first, but it has not yet taken a deep and abiding place in my affections. I see in it, however, an earnest and ingenious effort to knit music, text, and action closer together than it was the wont of Italian composers to do before the advent of Wagner set Young Italy in a ferment. Music plays a very different rôle in it than it does in the operas of Donizetti, Bellini, and the earlier Verdi. It does not content itself with occasionally proclaiming the mood of a situation or the feelings of a conventional stage person. It attempts to supply life-blood for the entire drama; to flow through its veins without ceasing; to bear along on its surface all the whims, emotions, follies, and incidents of the story as fast as they appear; to body them forth as vividly as words and pantomime can; to color them, vitalize them, arouse echoes and reflections of them in the hearts of the hearers. But this it can do only in association with other elements of the drama, and when these are presented only in part, and then crudely and clumsily, it must fail of its purpose. And so it happens that Puccini's music discloses little of that brightness, vivacity, and piquancy which we are naturally led to expect from it by knowledge of Mürger's story, on which the opera is based, and acquaintance with the composer's earlier opera, "Manon Lescaut." One element the two works have in common: absence of the light touch of humor demanded by the early scenes in both dramas. However, this is a characteristic not of Puccini alone, but all the composers in the Young Italian School. They know no way to kill a gnat dancing in the sunlight except to blow it up with a broadside of trombones. Puccini's music in "La Bohème" also seems lacking in the element of characterization, an element which is much more essential in comedy music than in tragic. Whether they are celebrating the careless pleasures of a Bohemian carouse or proclaiming the agonies of a consuming passion, it is all one to his singers. So soon as they drop the intervallic palaver which points the way of the new style toward bald melodrama they soar off in a shrieking cantalena, buoyed up by the unison strings and imperiled by strident brass until there is no relief except exhaustion. Happy, careless music, such as Mozart or Rossini might have written for the comedy scenes in "La Bohème," there is next to none in Puccini's score, and seldom, indeed, does he let his measures play that palliative part which, as we know from Wagner's "Tristan" and Verdi's "Traviata,"—to cite extremes,—it is the function of music to perform when enlisted in the service of the drama of vice and phthisis.
On October 10, 1898, another band of strolling singers, which endured for a week at the Casino, also performed "La Bohème," and the Castle Square Opera Company of Henry W. Savage gave it in English at the American Theater on November 28th of the same year. It did not reach the Metropolitan Opera House until the season 1900-01.
Stockholders and subscribers of the Metropolitan Opera House having endured their year of privation, which, as we have seen, was not without its moments of refreshment, Mr. Grau opened the regular subscription season 1898-99 on November 29th. Its incidents of special interest were not many. One was the return of Mme. Sembrich, who made what Mr. Sutherland Edwards called Rosina's "double entry" in Rossini's "Barber" on the second night of the season—November 31st. On the third night Mme. Melba, who sang by the courtesy of Mr. Ellis, appeared in "Roméo et Juliette." There were first appearances of several artists whose names became fixed in the prospectuses for some years to come: Mme. Ernestine Schumann-Heink as Ortrud in "Lohengrin" on January 9, 1899; Ernest Van Dyck as Tannhäuser on the opening night; Albert Saléza as Romeo on December 2, 1898; Suzanne Adams as Juliet on January 4, 1899; Anton Van Rooy as Wotan in "Die Walküre" on December 14, 1898. Mr. Franz Schalk, the conductor engaged for the German operas in place of Mr. Seidl, who had taken part with Mr. Grau in the summer season at Covent Garden and been engaged for the New York season that was to follow, introduced himself to New York on the same occasion.
Of acquaintances, more or less old, there were in the company besides Mmes. Sembrich, Eames, Lehmann, Nordica, and Mantelli, Miss Meisslinger, Miss Pevny, Frances Saville, Mr. Bispham, Mr. Dippel (who had been a member of the last German company in 1890-91), Pol Plançon, and Adolph Mühlmann. Newcomers besides those mentioned were Matilde Brugière, Herman Devries (son of Mme. Rosa Devries, a dramatic singer of renown half a century before), Henri Albers, barytone, and Lemprière Pringle, an English singer, who had worked himself up in the ranks of the Carl Rosa Opera Company. The two brothers, Jean and Édouard de Reszke, whom New York had come to look upon as indispensable to perfect enjoyment, were also members of the company. There were two cyclical performances of "The Ring of the Nibelung" to keep good Wagnerites in countenance, but Mr. Grau made his popular hit by a repetition of the device which had been successful before with "Faust"—he gave "Les Huguenots" with an "ideal cast." The device was simple, but it served. Meyerbeer's opera had been given three times, when on February 20th he announced it with Mme. Sembrich in the cast, and an all-'round advance on prices on the basis of $7, instead of $5, for orchestra chairs.
Only one novelty was produced in the season. This was Signor Mancinelli's "Ero e Leandro," which had its first American performance on March 10, 1899, with the composer in the conductor's chair. The principal singers were Mme. Eames (Hero), Saléza (Leander), and Plançon (Ariofarno). Mme. Schumann-Heink was set down to sing the prologue, but illness prevented at the first representation, and the music was sung by Mme. Mantelli. The opera had a pretty success and back of it was an interesting history. Boito wrote the libretto for himself, but put it aside when the subject of "Mefistofele" took possession of his mind. Two of the numbers, which he had already composed, found their way into the score of the later opera, one of them being the beautiful duet, "Lontano, lontano, lontano," in the classical scene. Boito turned the book over to Bottesini, who composed it, but failed to make a success of it. Signor Mancinelli then took the libretto in hand and, having a commission from the Norwich (England) festival of 1896 for a choral work, he composed it and handed it in to be sung as a cantata. It was sung at the festival. The next year it received its first stage performance at Madrid and by way of Turin and Venice reached Covent Garden, London, where it was produced on July 15, 1898.
What a simple tale it is that has so twined itself around the hearts of mankind that it has lived in classic story for ages and gotten into the folk-tales of more than one European people! Hero is a priestess of Aphrodite, who lives at Sestos, on the Thracian coast; Leander, a youth, whose home is at Abydos, on the Asiatic shore, beyond the Hellespont. The pair meet at a festival of Venus and Adonis and fall in love with each other at sight. The maiden's parents are unwilling that she shall cease her sacred functions to become a wife, and Leander swims the strait every night, while Hero holds a torch at the window to direct him to her side. One night there arises a tempest and Leander is drowned, and his body cast up at the foot of the tower. Then Hero throws herself upon the jagged rocks beside him, and the lovers are united in death.
"That tale is old, but love anew
May nerve young hearts to prove as true,"
sang Byron after he had put discrediting doubts to shame by swimming the Hellespont himself and catching an ague for his pains. A simple tale, yet I have included more than is ordinarily found in the recital in order to show how Boito utilized and added to it. A simple tale, but with what lovely fervor have the poets sung it over and over again! Byron could smile at his own Quixotic feat in the lines which he wrote six days after its accomplishment, but in "The Bride of Abydos" he did not attempt to conceal the affection which he felt for the tale, or his pride in the fact that Helle's buoyant wave had borne his limbs as well as Leander's; and who can without emotion call up Keats's picture of
"Young Leander, toiling to his death,"
pursing his weary lips for Hero's cheek and smiling against her smiles until he sinks, and