"Pelléas et Mélisande" as it came from the hands of M. Maeterlinck, and in the only form which the author recognizes, had been presented in New York in an English version. What has been said above about the qualifications of him who would rise to an enjoyment of the music with which Debussy has consorted it ought to serve also to characterize that music. Nothing has been exaggerated, nothing set down in a spirit of illiberality. No student of music can be ignorant of the fact that the art, being a pure projection of the human will, is necessarily always in a state of flux, and in its nature, within the limitations that bound all the manifestations of beauty, lawless. M. Debussy might have proclaimed and illustrated that fact without in his capacity of a critical writer having sought to throw odium on dead masters who were better than he and living contemporaries who are at least older. The little Parisian community who pass the candied stick of mutual praise from mouth to mouth would nevertheless have given him their plaudits. In his proclamation of the principles of musical composition as applied to the drama he has proclaimed principles as old as opera. It needed no man who has outlived the diatonic scale to tell us that vocal music should be written in accordance with the rhythm and accents of the words, and that dramatic music should be an integral element of the drama, or, as he puts it, be "the atmosphere through which dramatic emotion radiates." The Florentine inventors of monody told us that, Gluck echoed them, Wagner re-enunciated the principle, and no modern composer has dreamed of denying its validity. The only question is whether or not such admirable results have been attained by M. Debussy; whether his music sweetens or intensifies or vitalizes the play. That question must be answered by the individual hearer. No one should be ashamed to proclaim his pleasure in four hours of uninterrupted, musically inflected speech over a substratum of shifting harmonies, each with its individual tang and instrumental color; but neither should anybody be afraid to say that nine-tenths of the music is a dreary monotony because of the absence of what to him stands for musical thought. Let him admit or deny, as he sees fit, that the principle of symphonic development is a proper concomitant of the musical drama, but let him also say whether or not what to some appears a flocculent, hazy web of dissonant sounds, now acrid, now bitter-sweet, maundering along from scene to scene, unrelieved by a single pregnant melodic phrase, stirs within him the emotions awakened by a union of melody, harmony, and rhythm, either in the old conception or the new. Debussy has had his fling at Wagner and his system of construction in the lyric drama; yet he adopts his system of musical symbols, It is almost a humiliation to say it. There is sea music and forest music in "Pelléas et Mélisande." What a flight of gibbering phantoms there would be if the fluttering of Tristan's pennants or the "hunt's up" of King Mark's horns could be heard even for a moment!
It would be difficult accurately and honestly to say what was the verdict of the audience touching the merit of the work; concerning the performance there was never a question. The first three acts were followed by a respectful patter of applause. When Mr. Campanini came into the orchestra to begin the fourth act he received an ovation which was both spontaneous and cordial. The dramatic climax, which is accompanied by superb music of its kind, is reached in the scene of Pelléas's killing at the end of the fourth act. This stirred up hearty enthusiasm, and after all the artists, Mr. Campanini, and the stage manager had shared in the expression of enthusiastic gratitude, Mr. Hammerstein was brought before the curtain. He made a brief speech, saying that by its appreciation of the opera, with its poetical beauty and musical grandeur, New York had set itself down as the most highly cultivated city in the world, and that for himself the only purpose he had had in producing it was to endear himself to the city's people! Would that one dared to exclaim: "O sancta simplicitas!"
Mr. Hammerstein did not perform all the novelties which he had promised in his prospectus, but to make good the loss he brought forward two operas, one a complete novelty, which he had not promised. This was Giordano's "Siberia." More surprising was the fact that only one day before the close of the season he produced the same composer's "Andrea Chenier" under circumstances which made the occasion a gala one for Signor Cleofonte Campanini, the energetic and capable director who more than anyone else had made the marvelous achievements of the Manhattan company possible. The production of "Andrea Chenier" was not contemplated when Mr. Hammerstein came forth in the summer with his official announcement of the season; it had, however, been promised by Mr. Conried, who seems to have found that the production of two novelties of a vastly inferior kind taxed to the limit the resources of the proud establishment in Broadway. There it was permitted to slumber on with "Otello," "Der Freischütz," and "Das Nachtlager von Granada," whose titles graced Mr. Conried's prospectus. That circumstance may have had something to do with Mr. Hammerstein's resolve at the eleventh hour to add it to the list of five other new productions which he had already placed to his credit. If so, he gave no indication of the fact but permitted the announcement to go out that the performance was a compliment to Signor Campanini and his wife, who, as Signora Tetrazzini, had retired from the operatic stage after singing in the opera three years before. Incidentally the circumstance appealed to whatever feelings of gratitude the patrons of the Manhattan Opera House felt toward Signor Campanini and also to the popular curiosity to hear a sister of the Tetrazzini whose coming to the opera was the season's chief sensation.
The occasion was well calculated to set the beards of memory mongers to wagging. Those who could recall some of the minor incidents of a quarter-century earlier remembered that the indefatigable director of to-day was a modest maestro di cembalo at the Metropolitan in its first season, and on a few occasions when his famous brother Italo Campanini sang was permitted to try his "prentice hand" at conducting. Next they recalled that four years later, when that brother made an unlucky venture as impresario and sought to rouse the people of New York to enthusiasm with a production of Verdi's "Otello" it was Cleofonte Campanini who was the conductor of the company and Signorina Eva Tetrazzini who was the prima donna. The original American production of "Andrea Chenier" took place at the Academy of Music on November 13, 1896. At the revival on March 27, 1908, the parts were distributed as follows:
Maddalena de Coigny …………….. Mme. Tetrazzini-Campanini
Andrea Chenier ………………………………. Sig. Bassi
Carlo Gerard …………………………….. Sig. Sainmarco
Contessa de Coigny ………………………. Sig'ra Giaconia
Bersi ………………………………….. Sig'ra Seppilli
Madelon ……………………………….. Mme. De Cisneros
Roucher ……………………………………. Sig. Crabbe
Fouquier-Tinville …………………………. Sig. Arimondi
A Story Writer |
Mathieu, a sansculotte | …………….. Sig. Gianoli-Galetti
An Incroyable ……………………………. Sig. Venturini
Abbé ……………………………………….. Sig. Daddi
Schmidt, a jailor …………………………. Sig. Fossetta
Major Domo …………………………….. Sig. Reschiglian
Dumas, president of the tribunal ……………… Sig. Mugnoz
Conductor, Sig. Campanini
"Siberia" was performed on February 5, 1908, with the following cast:
Stephana …………………………….. Sig'ra Agostinelli
La Fanciulla ……………………………. Sig'ra Trentini
Nikona …………………………………. Sig'ra Zaccaria
Vassili …………………………………. Sig. Zenatello
Gleby ……………………………………. Sig. Sammarco
Walitzin …………………………………… Sig. Crabbe
Alexis …………………………………… Sig. Casauran
Ivan |
The Sergeant | …………………………… Sig. Venturini
The Captain ………………………………… Sig. Mugnoz
The Invalid ………………………… Sig. Gianoli-Galetti
Miskinsky ……………………………… Sig. Reschiglian
L'Ispravnik |
The Cossack |
The Inspector | …………………………… Sig. Fossetta
Conductor, Sig. Campanini
Giordano's opera is an experiment along the lines faintly suggested by Mascagni in "Iris," but boldly and successfully drawn by Puccini in "Madama Butterfly" and Charpentier in "Louise." The Italian disciples of verismo are in full cry after nationalism and local color. A generation ago the scenes, the characters, and the subject of an opera were of no concern to the composer. His indifference to anachronism was like that of Shakespeare, whose stage-folk, whether supposed to be ancient Greeks, Romans, or Bretons, were all sixteenth-century Englishmen. When Verdi wrote his Egyptian opera he was content with a little splash of Orientalism which colors the chant of the priestess in the temple of Phtha; the rest of the music is Italian. So the Germans remained German in their music, and the Frenchmen continued to speak their own idioms, saving a few characteristic rhythms for the incidental ballet. Mascagni injected a little twanging of the Japanese samiesen into the music of "Iris" but let the effort to obtain local color stop there.
Nevertheless the hint was seized upon by both Giordano and Puccini, and apparently at about the same time. The former made an excursion into Russia, the latter into Japan; Signor Illica acted as guide for both. The more daring of the two was Puccini, for Japan is musically sterile, while Russia has a wealth of characteristic folk-song unequaled by that of any other country on the face of the earth. Nevertheless there is nothing more admirable in the score of "Madama Butterfly" than the refined and ingenious skill with which the composer bent the square-toed rhythms and monotonous tunes of Japanese music to his purposes.
The dramatic structure of "Siberia" is not strong. Incidents of convict life in Siberia which have formed the staple of Russian fiction for so long are depended on to awaken interest and provide picturesque stage-furniture, while sympathy is asked for the heroine who obtains "redemption" by an honest love and a heroic sacrifice. Of course, that the requisite degree of piquancy may not be wanting, the martyr is a bawd who surrenders the luxuries of St. Petersburg provided by a princely lover, to endure the privations of the Siberian mines with that lover's successful rival. Only in the "redemption motive," so to speak, is there any likeness between the story of the opera and Tolstoi's "Resurrection," or the play based on that book which had been seen in New York five years before, though the two had been associated in the gossip of the theaters. There are three acts. The first, in which the young officer Vassili, with whom the heroine Stephana is in love, draws his sword against his superior officer, Prince Alexis, and thereby draws down on himself the sentence of banishment to the mines, plays in a palace in St. Petersburg, which the Prince had given to Stephana, who is his mistress. The second act discloses incidents in the journey of the convicts through Siberia, Vassili being joined at a station by Stephana, who has sacrificed her all to follow him into exile. In the third act phases of convict life and customs belonging to the Russian Easter festival are disclosed, and there is a resumption of the dramatic story which now hurries rapidly to its tragic conclusion. Gleby, the seducer of Stephana, is found among a gang of new arrivals at the mines, and the governor of the province, who had been among her old admirers, renews his protestations of devotion and promises her liberty and a life of pleasure. Him she repulses gently and proclaims the joy which Siberia has brought to her. Gleby also attempts to regain his old influence over her, but is cast aside with contumely. Thereupon he denounces her to the community. She and her lover determine to escape but are betrayed and the heroine is shot in her attempted flight. She dies "redeemed."