"Manon Lescaut" was not wholly new to the opera-goers of New York, for it had had one or two performances by a vagrant Italian company at Wallack's Theater in May, 1898; but to all intents and purposes it was a novelty, for the musical itinerants of nine years before were not equal to the task set by Puccini, and gave a perversion rather than a performance of the opera. Why it should have waited so long and for the stimulus of the coming of the composer before reaching the Metropolitan Opera House was not easily explained by those admirers of the composer who knew or felt that in spite of the high opinion in which. "La Bohème," "Tosca," and "Madama Butterfly" were held, "Manon Lescaut" is fresher, more spontaneous, more unaffected and passionate in its dramatic climaxes, as well as more ingratiatingly charming in its comedy element, than any of its successors from Puccini's pen. The voice of the composer rings unmistakably through its measures, but it is freer from the formularies which have since become stereotyped, and there are a greater number of echoes of the tunefulness which belongs to the older period between which and the present the opera marks a transition. Abbé Prévost's story, familiar to all readers of French romance, had served at least four opera composers before Signor Puccini. In 1830 Halévy brought forward a three-act ballet dealing with the story; Balfe wrote a French opera with the title in 1836, Auber another in 1856, and Massenet still another in 1884. Scribe was Auber's collaborator, and their opera, which like Puccini's ended with the scene of Manon's death in America, received a touch of local color from the employment of Negro dances and Créole songs. It would be interesting to see the old score now that the artistic value of the folk-songs of the Southern States as an incentive to a distinctive school of music has challenged critical attention and aroused controversy. Massenet's opera, which through the influence of Minnie Hauk was produced at the Academy of Music on December 23, 1885, dropped out of the local repertory until the restoration of the Italian régime as has been related elsewhere in this book. The opening and closing incidents in Massenet's opera are the same as are used by Puccini, though MM. Meilhac and Gille, the French librettists, did not think it necessary to carry the story across the ocean for the sake of Manon's death scene. In their book she succumbs to nothing that is obvious and dies in her lover's arms on the way to the ship at Havre which was to transport her to the penal colony at New Orleans. The third act of Puccini's opera plays at Havre, its contents being an effort to free Manon, the deportation of a shipload of female convicts, including Manon, and the embarkation of des Grieux in a menial capacity on the convict ship. Here the composer makes one of his most ambitious attempts at dramatic characterization: there is a roll-call and the woman go to the gang-plank in various moods, while the by-standers comment on their appearance and manner. The whole of the last act, which plays on a plateau near New Orleans, is given up to the lovers. Manon dies; des Grieux shrieks his despair and falls lifeless upon her body. Puccini has followed his confrères of the concentrated agony school in introducing an orchestral intermezzo. He does this between the second and third acts and gives a clue to its purposed emotional contents by providing it with a descriptive title, "Imprisonment. Journey to Havre," and quoting a passage from the Abbé Prévost's book in which des Grieux confesses the overpowering strength of his passion and determines to follow Manon wherever she may go, "even to the ends of the world." Here, at least, we recognize a sincere effort to make the interlude something more than a stop-gap or a device to make up for the paucity of sustained music in the course of the dramatic action.

"Madama Butterfly" in the original Italian had been anticipated by a long series of English performances by Mr. Savage's company at the Garden Theater, beginning on November 12th. This production is deserving of record. Walter Rothwell was the conductor, and the principal singers in the cast were Elza Szamosy, a Hungarian, as Cio-Cio-San; Harriet Behne as Suzuki, Joseph F. Sheehan as Pinkerton, and Winifred Goff as Sharpless. The opera reached the Metropolitan Opera House on February 11, 1907, when it was sung in the presence of the composer by the following cast:

Cio-Cio-San ……………………… Geraldine Farrar
Suzuki ……………………………… Louise Homer
Pinkerton ………………………………… Caruso
Sharpless ………………………………… Scotti
Goro ……………………………………… Reiss
Conductor, Arturo Vigna

A great deal of the sympathetic interest which "Madama Butterfly" evoked on its first production and has held in steady augmentation ever since was due to the New York public's familiarity with the subject of the opera created by John Luther Long's story and Mr. Belasco's wonderfully pathetic drama upon which this much more pretentious edifice of Messrs. Illica, Giacosa, and Puccini is reared. To the popular interest in story and play Japan lent color in more respects than one, having at the time a powerful hold upon the popular imagination. We have had the Mikado's kingdom with its sunshine and flowers, its romantic chivalry, its geishas and continent and incontinent morals upon the stage before,—in the spoken drama, in comic operetta, in musical farce, and in serious musical drama. Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan used its external motives for one of their finest satirical skits, an incomparable model in its way; but the parallel in serious opera was that created by Signor Illica, one of the librettists of "Madama Butterfly," and Signor Mascagni. The opera was "Iris," the production of which at the Metropolitan Opera House helped to emphasize the failure of the composer's American visit. "Iris" is a singular blending of allegory which had a merit quite admirable though ill-applied, and tragedy of the kind to which I have already several times referred in this book. In "Iris" as in "Madama Butterfly" we have Japanese music,—the twanging of samisens and the tinkling of gongs; but it was more coarsely applied, with more apparent and merely outward purpose, and it was only an accompaniment of a vision stained all over with purulence and grossness. "Madama Butterfly" tells a tale of wickedness contrasted with lovely devotion. Its carnality has an offset in a picture of love conjugal and love maternal, and its final appeal is one to infinite pity. And in this it is beautiful. Opera-goers are familiar with Signor Puccini's manner. "Tosca" and "La Bohème" speak out of many measures of his latest opera, but there is introduced in it a mixture of local color. Genuine Japanese tunes come to the surface of the instrumental flood at intervals and tunes which copy their characteristics of rhythm, melody, and color. As a rule this is a dangerous proceeding except in comedy which aims to chastise the foibles and follies of a people and a period. Nothing is more admirable, however, than Signor Puccini's use of it to heighten the dramatic climaxes; the merry tune with which Cio-Cio-San diverts her child in the second act and the use of a bald native tune thundered out fortissimo in naked unison with periodic punctuations of harmony at the close are striking cases in point. Nor should the local color in the delineation of the break of day in the beginning of the third act, and the charmingly felicitous use of mellifluous gongs in the marriage scene be overlooked. Always the effect is musical and dramatically helpful. As for the rest there are many moments of a strange charm in the score, music filled with a haunting tenderness and poetic loveliness, music in which there is a beautiful meeting of the external picture and the spiritual content of the scene. Notable among these moments is the scene in which Butterfly and her attendant scatter flowers throughout the room in expectation of Pinkerton's return. Here melodies and harmonies are exhaled like the odors of the flowers.

Giordano's "Fedora," first performed on December 5, 1906, was given with this distribution of parts:

Fedora ………………………….. Lina Cavalieri
(Her first appearance.)
Olga ………………………………. Bella Alten
Dimitri …………………………. Marie Mattfeld
Un piccolo Savojardo ……………. Josephine Jacoby
Loris Ipanow ……………………… Enrico Caruso
De Siriex ……………………….. Antonio Scotti
Il Barone Rouvel |
Desiré | …………………… Mr. Paroli
Cirillo ……………………………… Mr. Bégué
Borow …………………………….. Mr. Mühlmann
Grech …………………………….. Mr. Dufriche
Boleslaw Lazinski …………………… Mr. Voghere
Lorek …………………………….. Mr. Navarini
Conductor, Arturo Vigna

The opera is an attempt to put music to the familiar play by Sardou; an utterly futile attempt. A more sluggish and intolerable first act than the legal inquest it would be difficult to imagine. Fragments of inconsequential tunes float along on a turgid stream, above which the people of the play chatter and scream, becoming intelligible and interesting only when they lapse into ordinary speech. Ordinary speech, however, is the only kind of speech that an expeditious drama can tolerate, and it is not raised to a higher power by the blowing of brass or the beating of drums. The frankest confession of the futility of Giordano's effort to make a lyric drama out of "Fedora" is contained in the fact that only those moments in his score are musical in the accepted sense when the play stops, as in the case of the intermezzo which cuts the second act in two, or when the old operatic principles wake into life again, as in Loris's confession of love. Here, in the first instance, a mood receives musical delineation, and in the second a passion whose expression is naturally lyrical receives utterance. One device new to the operatic stage, in its externals at least, is ingeniously employed by the composer: the conversation in which Fedora extorts a confession from Loris is carried on while a pianist entertains a princess' guests with a solo upon his instrument. But the fact that singing tones, not spoken, are used adds nothing to the value of the scene.

On returning from Europe late in the summer of 1906 Mr. Conried announced his intention to produce Richard Strauss's "Salome," and his forces had no sooner been gathered together than Mr. Hertz began the laborious task of preparing the opera—if opera it can be called—for performance. There can scarcely be a doubt that Mr. Conried hoped for a sensational flurry like that which had accompanied the production of "Parsifal"; but, with an eye to the main chance, he confined his first official proclamation to a single performance, which, in connection with a concert by all his chief singers not concerned in the opera, was to be given for his annual benefit. Evidently he felt less sure about the outcome of this production than he had about that of "Parsifal," and was bound to reap all the benefits that could come from a powerful appeal to popular curiosity touching so notorious a work as Strauss's setting of Oscar Wilde's drama. The performance took place with many preliminary flourishes beyond the ordinary on January 22d. Two days before there was held a public rehearsal, which was attended by about a thousand persons who had received invitations, most of them being stockholders of the opera house, old subscribers, stockholders of Mr. Conried's company, writers for the newspapers, and friends of the artists and the management. The opera was given with the following cast:

Salome …………………………… Miss Fremstad
Herodias …………………………….. Miss Weed
Herodias's Page ………………… Josephine Jacoby
Herod's Page …………………….. Marie Mattfeld
Herod …………………………….. Carl Burrian
Jochanaan ……………………….. Anton Van Rooy
Narraboth ……………………….. Andreas Dippel
First Jew ……………………………. Mr. Reiss
Second Jew …………………………… Mr. Bayer
Third Jew …………………………… Mr. Paroli
Fourth Jew ……………………………. Mr. Bars
Fifth Jew …………………………. Mr. Dufriche
First Nazarene ……………………… Mr. Journet
Second Nazarene ……………………… Mr. Stiner
First Soldier ……………………… Mr. Mühlmann
Second Soldier ……………………….. Mr. Blass
A Cappadocian ………………………… Mr. Lange
Conductor, Alfred Hertz

Concerning the effect produced upon the public by the performance of the work I shall permit Mr. W. P. Eaton, then a reporter for The Tribune, to speak for me.