Opera Composer First performance Times given
"La Gioconda," Ponchielli ……………. Nov. 4 4
"Carmen," Bizet …………………….. Nov. 5 11
"La Damnation de Faust," Berlioz ……… Nov. 6 3
"Trovatore," Verdi ………………….. Nov. 9 5
"Aïda," Verdi ………………………. Nov. 11 9
"Les Contes d'Hoffmann," Offenbach ……. Nov. 15 11
"Thaïs," Massenet …………………… Nov. 24 7
"Faust," Gounod …………………….. Nov. 28 4
* "La Navarraise," Massenet ………….. Dec. 9 5
* "Pagliacci," Leoncavallo …………… Dec. 9 9
"Ernani," Verdi …………………….. Dec. 11 1
"Rigoletto," Verdi ………………….. Dec. 20 5
"Un Ballo in Maschera," Verdi ………… Dec. 27 4
"Don Giovanni," Mozart ………………. Dec. 28 3
* "Cavalleria Rusticana," Mascagni ……. Dec. 31 4
"Louise," Charpentier ……………….. Jan. 3 11
"La Traviata," Verdi ………………… Jan. 15 5
"Lucia di Lammermoor," Donizetti ……… Jan. 20 8
"Siberia," Giordano …………………. Feb. 5 3
"Pelléas et Mélisande," Debussy ………. Feb. 19 7
"Dinorah," Meyerbeer ………………… Feb. 26 1
"Crispino e la Comare," Ricci brothers … Mar. 6 3
"Andrea Chenier," Giordano …………… Mar. 27 1
—-
124
* Parts of double bills.
When Mr. Hammerstein issued his prospectus in the early autumn he promised to produce no less than eight operas which had never been performed in America. Managerial promises of this kind are generally made and accepted in a Pickwickian sense, but Mr. Hammerstein came nearer than is the custom to keeping his, though the season closed with his subscribers waiting for "Dolores," by Breton; "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame," by Massenet, and "Hélène," by Saint-Saëns. He also promised performances of three German operas ("Lohengrin," "Tannhäuser," and "Tristan und Isolde"), a new American opera in English, to be composed by Victor Herbert, and the following operas from the standard list, viz., "Le Prophète," Massenet's "Manon," "Roméo et Juliette," "Mefistofele," and "La Bohème." He had fought in the courts for the privilege of performing the last opera in the preceding season, but abandoned it without contention this season in the face of Mr. Conried's assertion that he had purchased the exclusive rights to all Italian performances of Puccini's operas in the United States. It is not likely that the statement about Mr. Herbert's opera was taken very seriously in any quarter; he is a prolific and marvelously ready writer of comic operetta scores, but it is not likely that he will ever attempt to find a suitable grand opera book and set it to music within six or eight months, while occupied, as he is, with a multitude of other enterprises. Mr. Hammerstein had promised in his prospectus that there would also be performances in German of "Lohengrin," "Tannhäuser," and "Tristan und Isolde." This part of the manager's scheme went by the board early in the season. It was contingent upon the presence in the company of singers familiar with the three works of Wagner. Of such there was only one when the season began, and she, Mme. Nordica, remained a member of Mr. Hammerstein's forces only six weeks, during much of which time she was idle. Mme. Schumann-Heink, though announced as a member of the company, interrupted her concert activity only long enough to sing once, and then she sang in an Italian opera ("Il Trovatore"), albeit she did her part in German.
Up to the coming of Signorina Tetrazzini Mr. Hammerstein pinned his faith on the interest which might be aroused in his French novelties. On the second subscription night he came forward with Berlioz's "Damnation de Faust," with which he had contemplated adorning his first season, and for which he had prepared the scenic outfit. The undramatic character of the transformed cantata had caused its failure at the Metropolitan Opera House in the season of 1906-07, and not even the fine performance of M. Renaud, whose impersonation of Mephistopheles is one of the noblest memories left by the season, the excellent singing of M. Dalmorès, and the beautiful pictures could save it. There was a long wait between the first and second representations, and after one more trial the work was abandoned. Meanwhile, however, Offenbach's "Contes d'Hoffmann," which had had a few performances at the Fifth Avenue Theater twenty-five years before, was brought forward. Again Messrs. Renaud and Dalmorès were admirably fitted with parts and scant justice done to the opera in the distribution of the women's rôles; but the charm of Offenbach's music overcame the defects of performance, and the opera achieved so pronounced a success that it could be given with profit eleven times before M. Renaud's departure from New York after the performance of February 4th.
The libretto of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" proclaims a phase of French literary taste which made heroes two generations ago out of two foreign romancers,—the German E. T. A. Hoffmann and the American Edgar Allan Poe. Very much alike were these two men in some of their strongest characteristics. Both were possessed of genius of a high order; both led lives of dissipation, which wrecked them physically; both found their fantastic creations in the world of supernaturalism which imagination, stimulated by alcoholic indulgence, presented to them as realities. This is literally true, at least, of Hoffmann, who, coming home from his nightly carouses with the boon companions, whom he has celebrated in his "Serapion's Brüder" (the coterie somewhat vulgarly parodied in the beginning and end of Offenbach's opera), was wont to call for his wife to sit beside him through the remainder of the night to ward off the ghostly, ghastly, grisly creatures which his own perfervid imagination had conjured up. Sixty years ago France was full of admiration for the weird tales of Hoffmann, and in view of the singular vicissitudes of the fantastic romancer's life, some of them quite as startling as the adventures which he ascribed to his imaginary creatures, it was not at all strange that Barbier and Carré should have conceived the idea of making him the hero of a play dealing with incidents of his own invention. In 1851 they brought out their play in five acts at the Odéon. It did not endure long, but it made so deep an impression on the mind of Offenbach that when he was seized with the ambition to write a serious work, which he might leave to the world as a legacy, to prove that his ambitions went beyond the things with which he amused the careless folk of the Second Empire, he turned to the old play for his libretto.
In a way it was a happy choice. If an author was to be blended with his creations and utilized for operatic purposes, history might be searched in vain for a better subject than Hoffmann. He was jurist, court councillor, romancer, caricaturist, scene painter, theatrical manager, and musical composer. In several ways he is living in the musical annals to-day. His opera, "Undine," is forgotten, though it was highly praised by Carl Maria von Weber, who had not feared soundly to abuse Beethoven; but his literary creation, the Chapelmaster Kreissler, lives in Schumann's "Kreissleriana," and other conceits of his filtered through Jean Paul, in other compositions by the same master. His criticisms, though cast in fantastic form, opened the eyes of many to the beauties of Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven. His admiration for Mozart went to such an extreme that he cast aside part of his baptismal name in order to substitute for it one of the given names of his hero—Amadeus. Of this admiration neither Offenbach nor his librettists were unaware, for when Hoffmann and Nicklausse come into the tavern where the roystering students greet them, in the prologue, they are still so full of the opera "Don Giovanni," to which they had just been listening, that Nicklausse quotes the words of Leporello's first song, and Offenbach reverently quotes the music.
Let no one think that the production of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" was in any way analogous with the operetta performances with which Mr. Conried lowered the status of the Metropolitan Opera House when he performed "Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" at his benefits. No serious reader of mine will expect to see in this place dispraise of the genius of Johann Strauss; but the works mentioned are operettas in form and in spirit, while "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" was conceived in an entirely different vein, and shows the musician who composed it in a character that no one would dream was his who knew him only as the composer of the Bouffes Parisiens. It is a pathetic, but also lovely, document in proof of the fact that with all his frivolity he wanted to die at least in the odor of artistic sanctity. The piquant rhythms and prettily superficial melodies of his musical farces were a perfect reflex of the careless art-feeling of his day, just as the farces themselves were admirably adjusted to the taste of the boulevardiers who basked in the sunshine of Napoleon the Little, and laughed uproariously while their Emperor and their social institutions were being castigated by the cynical German Jew and his librettists. "He was the Beethoven of the sneer," said Émil Bergerat, when Offenbach died, and then with a fantastic pencil worthy of the caricaturist Hoffmann himself, he drew a dreadful picture of Offenbach and his times; of the mighty fiddler beating time upon the well-filled goatskin and sawing away across the strings, his mouth widened with a grin "like some drunken conception of Edgar Poe's, or some fantasy of Hoffmann, while the startled birds flew back to heaven, the moon split herself back to her ears, and the stars giggled behind their cloud-fans." The planetary system only revolved to frisky rhythms, and the earth herself, like a mad top, hummed comically about the horrified sun. En avant la musique! and the old edifice crumbled in dust around the musician. To Bergerat Offenbach was the great disillusioner of the age, the incarnation of what he conceived to be the spirit of the nineteenth century, a spirit that hated and contemned the past, mocked at the things which the simplicity of preceding centuries held sacred, threw ridicule upon social sentiments, rank, caste, ceremonialism, learning, and religion.
The composer of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" is nothing of this. The opera was the child of his old age. He loved it, and labored over its score for years. It is full of lovely melody (the barcarolle of the second act will always exert a potent and lovely influence) fluent from beginning to end, and rich in dramatic characterization. No one is likely to listen to the trio at the culmination of the third act (that dealing with the fate of a singer's daughter) without realizing what a really admirable power of expression was that which Offenbach, for reasons explained by the spirit of the times and his own moral nature, chose to squander so many years on his opéras bouffes. Frequently the melodic line in the opera rises to admirable heights; always melody, harmony, and orchestration are refined, unless a burlesque effect is aimed at, as in the ballad of "Kleinzack," and Nicklausse's song of the doll. Offenbach's opera had its first performance on November 14, 1907, the cast being as follows:
Olympia ……………………………….. Zepilli
Giulietta ……………………………… Jomelli
Antonia ……………………………….. Borello
Nicklausse …………………………. De Cisneros
A Voice ………………………………. Giaconia
Hoffman ………………………………. Dalmorès
Cornelius |
Dappertutto |
Dr. Miracle | …………………………… Renaud
Spalanzni |
Grespel | …………………………… Gilibert
Lindorff |
Schlemihl | ……………………………. Crabbe
Cochenille |
Pitichinaccio | ………………………….. Daddi
Frantz …………………………. Gianoli-Galetti
Hermann ……………………………. Reschiglian
Nathaniel ……………………………. Venturini
Luther ……………………………….. Fossetta
Conductor, Cleofonte Campanini
On November 25, 1907, Mr. Hammerstein brought forward Massenet's
"Thaïs," to signalize the first appearance in America of Miss Mary
Garden. The opera was produced with the following cast: