The Oakland steamer was ready to carry us across the bay to the railway station as soon as we should be free to depart. But there were formalities still to go through and positive obstacles to overcome. At last my anxious choristers, looking everywhere for some sign, saw me driving towards them in a buggy with the Sheriff's officer. I bore in my hand a significant bit of blue paper which I waved like a flag as I approached them. They responded with a ringing cheer. They understood me and knew that they were saved.
How, it will be asked, did the Company lose its popularity with the American public to such an extent as to be unable to perform with any profitable result? In the first place several of the singers had fallen ill, and though the various maladies by which they were affected could not by any foresight on my part have been prevented, the public, while recognizing that fact, ended at last by losing faith in a Company whose leading members were invalids.
One of the St. Louis papers had given at the time a detailed account of the illnesses from which so many members of my Company were suffering.
"An astonishing amount of sickness," said the writer, "has seriously interfered with the success of the Italian Opera. Fohström and Dotti sang during the engagement, but both complained of colds and sore-throats, and claimed that their singing was not near as good as it usually is. Minnie Hauk had a cold and stayed all the week in St. Paul. Mdlle. Bauermeister could not sing on account of bronchitis. Signor Belasco was compelled to have several teeth pulled out, and complained of swollen gums. Mdme. Nordica was sick, without going into particulars. Signor Rigo was sick after the same fashion. Signor Sapio was attacked by quinsy at Chicago, and returned to New York. Signor Arditi, the musical conductor, was confined to his bed with pneumonia. Mdme. Lablache had a bad cold and appeared with difficulty. Many of the costumes failed to appear because Signor Belasco, the armourer, was taken sick en route, and held the keys of the trunks."
The illness from which so many of the members of my Company were suffering might, in part at least, be accounted for by their reckless gaiety at St. Paul. The winter festival was in full swing, and the ice-palace and tobogganing had charms for my vocalists, which they were unable to resist. They went sliding down the hill several times every day. The ladies would come home with their clinging garments thoroughly wet. They caught cold as a matter of course, and the sport they had had sliding down hill took several thousand dollars out of my pocket.
Minnie Hauk was nearly crazy on tobogganing; so was Nordica. Signori Sapio and Rigo tried heroically to keep up with the ladies in this sport, and were afterwards threatened with consumption as a reward for their gallant efforts.
But it was above all the conflict between Ravelli and Minnie Hauk in Carmen that did us harm, for the details of the affair soon got known and were at once reproduced in all the papers. It has been seen that Mr. von Wartegg found it necessary to bring Ravelli before the police magistrate and get him bound over on a very heavy penalty to keep the peace towards Mdme. von Wartegg, otherwise Mdme. Minnie Hauk; and the case, as a matter of course, was fully reported.
What could the public think of an Opera Company in which the tenor was always threatening to murder the prima donna, while the prima donna's husband found himself forced to take up a position at one of the wings bearing a revolver with which he proposed to shoot the tenor the moment he showed the slightest intention of approaching the personage for whom he is supposed to entertain an ungovernable passion? "Don José" was, according to the opera, madly in love with "Carmen." But it was an understood thing between the singers impersonating these two characters that they were to keep at a respectful distance one from the other. Ravelli was afraid of Minnie Hauk's throttling him while engaged in the emission of a high B flat; and Minnie Hauk, on her side, dreaded the murderous knife with which Ravelli again and again had threatened her. Love-making looks, under such conditions, a little unreal. "I adore you; but I will not allow you under pretence of embracing me to pinch my throat!"
"If you don't keep at a respectful distance I will stab you!"
Such contradictions between words and gestures, between the music of the singers and their general demeanour towards one another, could not satisfy even the least discriminating of audiences; and the American public, if appreciative, is also critical.