First, then, as to the American débuts. Newcomers of the first rank there were none among the ladies in the season 1899-1900: the tenor, Alvarez, effected his entrance on the Metropolitan stage on the opening night of the season, December 18th, in Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette"; Signor Scotti, barytone, who has remained a prime favorite ever since, in "Don Giovanni," on December 27th; Fritz Friedrichs, whose success in New York was inconsiderable compared with that which he had won in Bayreuth in his famous character of Beckmesser in "Die Meistersinger," on January 24, 1900. The subscription season of fifteen weeks consisted, with all the extra performances, of 104 performances. It was full of disappointments because of the illness of singers, and many performances were slipshod because of evils that have remained with the institution, in spite of many protests on the part of press and public, and promises of reform on the part of the management. Several times the company was divided so that performances might be given simultaneously in New York and Philadelphia. Even when this was not done, the efficiency of the forces was sapped by wearisome midnight journeys to and from the latter city, which prevented adequate rehearsals. Nevertheless, there was a supplemental season of two weeks. Herr Hofrath Ernst von Schuch, director of the opera at Dresden, was a visitor, and conducted two performances of "Lohengrin" and four concerts. No new operas were produced.
Before the regular subscription season, 1900-01, the Metropolitan Opera House was the scene of an ambitious effort to habilitate opera in English, which was made by Henry W. Savage in co-operation with Maurice Grau. Mr. Savage had some years before established his Castle Square Opera Company, organized in Boston, in the American Theater. The repertory of the company was composed largely of operettas at first, but gradually operas of large dimensions and serious import were added. After the season 1899-1900 he entered into an arrangement with Grau to occupy the Metropolitan Opera House from October 1 to December 15, 1900, and under the title Metropolitan English Grand Opera Company the two managers issued a prospectus which contained the names of nearly all the singers then known favorably to the English opera stage in America. Many of them had also sung in the Carl Rosa Opera Company, of England, and there was a better command of routine in the organization than had been known in English performances thitherto. The repertory was quite as pretentious as that of the company of foreign artists regularly domiciled at the Metropolitan, save that it did not include the later dramas of Wagner. Instead, however, it comprised some light operas or operettas, and some specifically English works. The promises of the prospectus were fulfilled to the letter in respect both of singers and operas, and though the enterprise proved to be less successful than had been those of Mr. Savage in previous years (probably because of the air of aristocracy which it wore, without being able to assume the social importance which belonged only to the foreign exotic), it is deserving of extended record. Some of the names of the singers stand as prominently in the English record as in the American, and unexpected laurels have been wound round the brows of some of them in still more foreign fields. In the list were Ingeborg Ballstrom, Grace Van Studdiford, Fanchon Thompson, Rita Elandi, Mae Cressy, Grace Golden, Josephine Ludwig, Zélie de Lussan, Elsa Marny, Louise Meisslinger, Frieda Stender, Phoebe Strakosch, Minnie Tracey, Barron Berthald, F. J. Boyle, Philip Brozel, Forrest Carr, Lloyd d'Aubigne, Harry Davies, Harry Hamlin, Homer Lind, William Mertens, Chauncey Moore, Winifred Goff, William Paull, Lemprière Pringle, William Pruette, Francis Rogers, Joseph F. Sheehan, Leslie Walker, William F. Wegener, and Clarence Whitehill. The conductors were A. Seppilli and Richard Eckhold. The operas performed were "Faust," "Tannhäuser," "Mignon," "Carmen," "Trovatore," "Lohengrin," "The Bohemian Girl," "Traviata," "Romeo and Juliet," "Cavalleria Rusticana," "Pagliacci," "Martha," "The Mikado," and Goring Thomas's "Esmeralda." This last opera, a novelty in America, was brought forward on November 19, 1900, with the following distribution of parts: Esmeralda, Grace Golden; Phoebus, Philip Brozel; Claude Frollo, Lemprière Pringle; Quasimodo, William Paull; Fleur-de-Lys, Grace Van Studdiford; Marquis de Chereuse, Leslie Walker; Gringoire, Harry Davies; Clopin, F. J. Boyle.
Before taking up the history of the Metropolitan Opera House, record may be made of the production of another novelty earlier in the year, also by Mr. Savage's singers, but under the more democratic conditions which prevailed at the American Theater. This was Spinelli's "A basso Porto," which was given for the first time by the Castle Square Company on January 22, 1900.
Mr. Grau began the campaign of 1900-01 on the Pacific Coast, his first performance being in Los Angeles on November 9th. Thence he went to San Francisco, Denver, Kansas City, Lincoln, and Minneapolis, reaching New York in time to open the subscription season on December 18th. The season endured fifteen weeks, within which time eighty-two performances were given. It was an eventful period. No fewer than eight singers who achieved significance in the annals of the house effected their entrances on the New York stage. Mme. Louise Homer made her début in "Aïda" on December 22d; Mlle. Lucienne Bréval, in "Le Cid," on January 16th; Miss Marguarite Macintyre, in "Mefistofele," on January 14th; Fritzi Scheff, in "Fidelio," on December 29th; Charles Gilibert, on the opening night, in "Roméo et Juliette"; Imbart de la Tour, in "Aïda," on December 22d; Robert Blass, in "Tannhäuser," on December 24th; Marcel Journet, in "Aïda," on December 22d. The first of the operas given was "La Bohème," but, as I have already explained, it was no novelty in New York, having been performed by two Italian opera companies and in an English version three years before. Novelties in every sense were Puccini's "Tosca" and Reyer's "Salammbô." The former had its first representation (it was also its first representation in America) on February 4, 1901. Signor Mancinelli conducted, and the parts were distributed as follows: Floria Tosca, Ternina; Cavaradossi, Cremonini; Angelotti, Dufriche; Il Sacristano, Gilibert; Spoletta, Bars; Sciarrone, Viviani; Un Carceriere, Cernusco; Scarpia, Scotti.
The restraining influence of music has prevented the lyric drama from acquiring the variety and scope of subject material adopted by the spoken drama. For nearly two hundred years after its invention classic legend and ancient history provided the stories which the opera composer laid under tribute. Very properly dramatic song occupied itself at the outset with a celebration of that fabled singer at the sound of whose voice "rivers forgot to run and winds to blow." In the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, as told in what is set down in history as the first opera, music and love were mated; and they have not yet been divorced, though both have undergone many and great changes of character. Love—gentle, constant, chivalric, tried, and triumphant—has been hymned amid pictures suggested by a millennium of human happenings, and its expression has passed through all the phases that the development of the most direct vehicle of emotional utterance could place at its service—from the melodramatic strivings of the amateurs who stumbled upon opera in their effort to reanimate the Greek drama to the glowing scores of Richard Wagner, in which high art and profound science are joined in a product as worthy of admiration as any other product of the intellect fired by inspiration. In the progress from Peri to Wagner, however, despite many daring and dubious adventures in new territories, there has yet been an avoidance of material in itself ugly and repulsive. We have been asked to contemplate the libertinism of Don Juan, but at its worst it has served only as a foil to the virtue of his victims, which in the end emerged triumphant. We have seen exposed the monstrous double nature of Rigoletto, but only that the pathos of paternal love should thereby be thrown into brighter relief. We have seen convention sanctified by nature and approved by communal experience set at naught by Wagner's treatment of mythological tales of unspeakable antiquity, but only that the tragedy of human existence in its puissant types might be kept before the world's consciousness.
The relationship occupied by music to the drama, that is to the words, the pantomime, the pictures and the play, in "Tosca" is that which it occupies in melodrama—using the term in its original and correct sense—with the single difference that the dialogue which is illustrated and mildly expounded by the music, and which the instruments seek, more or less vainly, to accentuate, emphasize, and intensify, is not uttered in the speaking, but the singing voice. Even this difference, however, disappears at some of the climacteric moments, and the actors resort to the elocutionary devices which belong to the spoken drama, and, foregoing pitch and rhythm, shout or whisper or hiss out the words which tell of the feelings by which they are swayed. Thus the first principle of music, which is melody, in Wagner as much as it was in Cimarosa or Mozart, is sacrificed. Quite as significant as the degradation of music thus illustrated is the degradation of the drama which has brought it about. There has always been a restrictive and purifying potency in melody. It has that which has turned our souls to sympathy with the apotheosis of vice and pulmonary tuberculosis in Verdi's "Traviata," which has made the music of the second act and the finale of "Tristan und Isolde" the most powerful plea that can be made for Wagner's guilty lovers. Nowhere else is the ennobling and purifying capacity of music demonstrated as in the death song of Isolde. Without such palliation the vileness, the horror, the hideousness of a play like "Tosca" is more unpardonable in an operatic form than in the original. Its lust and cruelty are presented in their nakedness. There is little or no time to reflect upon the workings of perverted minds, to make psychological or physiological studies, to watch the accumulation of causes and their gradual development of effects, except in the moments, so plentiful in Puccini's operas, in which music becomes a hindrance and an impertinence. Dramatic action cannot be promoted by music. The province of the art is to develop and fix a mood or celebrate a deed. Tosca can sing of her love, her jealousy, her hate, her hope; she cannot sing her frantic efforts to escape the lustful arms of Scarpia; she cannot sing his murder (though she might have chanted its gory glory, if so she held it, after the fact); nor can she sing her own destruction. In fact, there is next to nothing in Sardou's drama fit for operatic song, either in the sense that prevailed at the time of Paisiello or prevails in the time of Wagner—which is now. In the opera a really fit incident for the lyric drama borrowed from Sardou is expanded adroitly into a scene which is both musically and dramatically effective. It is the scene in which the cantata is sung in the Queen's apartments while Scarpia is questioning Cavaradossi in his own. Here the set musical composition is a background for the dramatic dialogue. Parallel scenes provide most of the opportunities which Puccini has embraced for writing in what may be called a sustained effort outside of the scenes between Tosca and her lover in the first act. Thus the first finale has a pompous church office as its background, with tolling of bells, the booming of cannon, the pealing of a great organ, through all of which surges a stream of orchestral melody bearing the declamatory shrieks of Scarpia. All of this is purely irrelevant and external, and the device is cheap, but it serves. Similar in musical purpose, but at the opposite end of the color scheme, is the opening of the third act. The stage picture is one of great beauty. The foreground shows the platform of the Castle of St. Angelo. St. Peter's Cathedral and the Vatican are visible in the background. It is urban Rome alone that is visible, but there are sounds from the Campagna—the tinkling of sheep bells, the song of a shepherd lad mingling with a strangely languorous and fragmentary orchestral song. Then there arises from the distance the sound of church bells, large and small, while the orchestral song goes on. It is all mood-music, conceived with no necessary relationship to the drama, but providing an atmosphere which is really refreshing after the sup of horrors provided by the preceding act. Therefore, it must be accepted gratefully like the dance tune over which Scarpia and his associates declaim before the dreadful business of the second act begins, and the piteous appeal to the Virgin which Tosca makes before she conceives the idea of the butchery which she perpetrates a few minutes later.
And the melodramatic music upon which Sardou's play floats,—what is it like? Much of it like shreds and patches of many things with which the operatic stage has long been familiar. There are efforts at characterization by means of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmical symbols, of which the most striking, and least original, is a succession of chords which serves as an introduction to the first scene. This and much else came out of Wagner's workshop, and, like all else of the same origin in the score, is impotent because there is no trace of Wagner's logical mind, either in the choice of material or its development. Phrases of real pith and moment are mixed with phrases of indescribable balderdash, yet these phrases recur with painful reiteration and with all the color tints which Puccini is able to scrape from a marvelously varied and garish orchestral palette. The most remarkable feature, the feature which shows the composer's constructive talent in its brightest aspect, is the fluency of it all. Even when reduced to the extremity of a tremolo of empty fifths on the strings pianissimo, or a single sustained tone, Puccini still manages to cling to a thread of his melodramatic fabric and the mind does not quite let go of his musical intentions.
Reyer's "Salammbô" was brought forward for the first time on March 20, 1901, with the following cast: Salammbô, Lucienne Bréval; Taanach, Miss Carrie Bridewell; Matho, Albert Saléza; Shahabarim, Mr. Salignac; Narr-Havas, Mr. Journet; Spendius, Mr. Sizes; Giscon, Mr. Gilibert; Authorite, Mr. Dufriche; Hamilcar, Mr. Scotti. Signor Mancinelli conducted. The opera received a brilliant representation. Mr. Grau had piled up the stage adornments with a lavish hand, and, though it disappeared from the Metropolitan stage after two performances, material traces remained for years in the settings of other spectacular operas. The scenes were all reproductions of the Paris models and exquisitely painted; the costumes were gorgeous to a degree. Mlle. Bréval's beauty (Semitic, as became the character) shone radiant in the part of the heroine, and she sang and acted with an intensity that in its supreme moments was positively uplifting. Flaubert's brilliant novel supplied the material out of which "Salammbô" was constructed. The romance has a large historical incident for a background, namely, the suppression of a mutiny among the mercenaries of the Carthaginians in the first Punic war. Running through the gorgeous tissue which the French novelist wove about this incident is the thread of story which Camille du Locle drew out for Reyer's use—the story of the rape of the sacred veil of Tanit by the leader of the revolting mercenaries, his love for Salammbô, daughter of the Carthaginian general; her recovery of the veil, with its consequence of disaster to her lover, and the pitiful death of both at their own hands. The authors of the opera were adepts in the field of what might be called musical spectacle. M. du Locle had a hand in both of the operas written for Paris, "Les Vêpres Sicilienne," and "Don Carlos." Under the eyes of Verdi at Sant' Agata he wrote the prose scenario of "Aïda," which Ghislanzoni turned into Italian verse for the composer. If a prodigal and sumptuous heaping up of stage adornments could make the success of an opera, "Salammbô" would have been one of the greatest triumphs of the French lyric stage; but pompous pictures are not the be-all and end-all of opera, even in Paris, and the fortunate co-operation of du Locle and Verdi was not repeated in the collaboration of du Locle and Reyer.
There are, however, merits in "Salammbô" which entitle it to a better fate than befell it in New York. The people in the story have marked dramatic physiognomies; indeed, had M. Reyer's skill in characterization been half so great as M. Flaubert's, and M. du Locle's, there would have been much to praise in the work. The characters are admirably drawn, and show as much individuality in their intellectual and moral traits as they do in their physical—the crafty Greek, the treacherous Numidian, the energetic and manly Carthaginian, the storm-tossed heroine, and the lovelorn Lybian are good dramatic types, even if stamped with stage conventions. A genius in musical characterization, like Mozart, Wagner or Verdi, would have found means for making their utterances as picturesque as their presences; but this was beyond the powers of Reyer. His tastes are modern, his aims far above the frivolity which afflicts some of his colleagues, but his abilities do not keep pace with his ambition. His models are easily found; he clasps hands most warmly with Berlioz, and has some of the Frenchman's peculiarly Gallic reverence for Spontini and Gluck. There are indications in the score that "Les Troyens" occupied much of his attention while he was engaged upon it, and I fancy that that ambitiously planned, but star-crossed work, was also familiar to the librettist. This need not excite special wonder, for the association of ideas was close enough. The second part of Berlioz's tragedy is also Carthaginian, and ends with Dido's prophetic vision of the hero who should avenge her wrongs on Rome. That Reyer also venerates Wagner but shows itself more in the use of the German master's harmonic progressions than in the adoption of his methods. He adopts the device of reiterated phrases, but his purpose in doing so I could not discover. Two short melodies, which are the themes of his brief instrumental introduction, are brought forward again and again, but fail to disclose their relationship to any of the agencies or elements in the story, and without a sign of that organic development which is the distinguishing characteristic of Wagner's creative style. Reyer's orchestration is discreet and free from all taint of that instrumental Volapük which is so marked in the Young Italian school. His subject invites the use of Oriental intervals, and he employs them with the discretion which is noticeable in "Aïda," but not with Verdi's effectiveness. Some of his devices are admirable, others simply bizarre. As a whole the music is monotonous in character and color, but it is dignified and earnest, and for this it deserves praise.
Mme. Sembrich had absented herself from Mr. Grau's company in the season 1900-01 in order to make a tour of the country with a small opera company of her own; she returned to the Metropolitan fold in the next season, however, and has not been errant since. The newcomers in 1901-02 were de Marchi, the tenor, who sang first in "Aïda" on January 17, 1902; Albert Reiss, a German tenor and specialist in Wagner's Mime, and Tavecchia, bass. The last-named made no deep impression, and faded out of view, but Mr. Reiss has been a strong prop of the Wagnerian performances ever since, and has proved himself an exceedingly useful artist in many respects. Mr. Walter Damrosch joined Mr. Grau's forces as conductor of the German operas; with him were associated Signor Sepilli and M. Flon. The record of the subscription season embraced thirty-three subscription evenings, eleven subscription matinées, the same number of popular priced performances on Saturday nights, nine extra performances, including four afternoons devoted to "The Ring of the Nibelung," and a gala performance in honor of Prince Henry of Prussia. The additions to the institution's repertory consisted of "Messaline," by Isidore de Lara, and "Manru," by Ignace Jan Paderewski. Concerning these novelties I shall have a word to say presently; the importance of the German prince's visit, from a social point of view, asks that it receive precedence in the narrative of the season's doings. This right royal incident took place on the evening of February 25, 1902. The opera house never looked so beautiful before, nor has it looked so beautiful since, as when it was garbed to welcome the nation's guest, a brother of the German Emperor. The material most used in adorning the house was Southern smilax, which all but hid all that is ordinarily seen of the auditorium and the corridors. All the box and balcony fronts were covered with it, and strings of it hung at the sides of the proscenium opening from the top of the opening to the stage. These strips of green foliage were thickly studded with white and green electric lights. The same scheme was carried out above the stage opening, where long garlands of smilax, gleaming with tiny white and green lamps, were hung in festoons, while the apex was formed by a standard of American and German flags and shields. On the balcony and box fronts the screens of smilax were relieved with frequent bunches of azaleas and marguerites, and with stars of white lamps shining through the green. The royal box was formed by removing the partitions separating five boxes in the middle of the lower tier. The front was decorated with American beauty roses, in addition to the smilax. The interior was hung with crimson velvet, and across its front was a canopy of crimson velvet and white satin. Behind the royal box the corridor on which it opened was cut off from the other boxes by hangings of tapestry. One of the most beautiful effects of all was made by the ceiling, where the chandeliers shone through a network of strings of smilax and white and green electric lights radiating from the center like the strands of a cobweb. As may be guessed, the brilliancy of the audience was in harmony with that of the audience-room. The price of tickets for the stalls on the main floor was thirty dollars, and the chairs in the other parts of the room cost proportionately. Persons who could pay such sums to witness the function could also afford to dress well, and at no public affair in my time has New York seen such a display of gowns and jewels. The musical program was elaborate, but that was the least important feature of the evening. Mr. Grau had determined to disclose the entire strength of his company, and to that end, settling the order in some diplomatic manner, into the secret of which he let neither reporter nor public, he made a program according to which Mesdames Gadski and Schumann-Heink and Messrs. Dippel, Bispham, Mühlmann, and Édouard de Reszke were to perform the first act of "Lohengrin," Mesdames Calvé, Marilly, and Bridewell and Messrs. Alvarez, Declery, Gilibert, Reiss, and Scotti the second act of "Carmen"; Mesdames Eames and Homer and Messrs. Campanari, Journet, and De Marchi the third act of "Aïda," Mme. Ternina and Messrs. Van Dyck, Blass, Bars, Reiss, Mühlmann, Viviani, and Van Rooy the second act of "Tannhäuser," Mesdames Sembrich and Van Cauteren, and Messrs. Vanni, Bars, Dufriche, Gilibert, and Salignac the first act of "La Traviata," and Mlle. Bréval and Mr. Alvarez the first scene from the fourth act of "Le Cid." It was a generous rather than a dainty dish to set before a king's brother, but it served fully to disclose the wealth of resource in New York's chief operatic institution, and the performances took on a heightened brilliancy from the beautiful appearance of the audience-room, and the spirit of joyous excitement which animated the audience. Up to the last moment no one familiar with the interior workings of Mr. Grau's harmonious, yet unruly empire, felt certain that the program would be carried out as planned; and it was not. It was very late when the curtain of smilax and light fell on the act of "Tannhäuser," and, the prince having left the house long before, followed by a large portion of the audience, who had come to see royalty, not to hear regal singers, Mme. Sembrich put down her little foot and refused to sing. Otherwise everything went off according to program.