ALTHOUGH an operatic impresario cannot reasonably count on making his own fortune, it is often a source of satisfaction to him to reflect that he in his lavish expenditure makes the fortune of singers, officials, and various people in his service. At the time when I was in my greatest trouble through the disappointments I had to put up with from some of my leading singers, I heard that an enterprising Italian who had been employed by me for many years had taken the New York Academy of Music for a brief season, and that he was actually performing the duties of manager.
Angelo was, or rather is, a very remarkable man. I engaged him many years ago as my servant at 10s. a week, and he is now said to be in possession of some thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds, which he gained while in my service by turning his opportunities and his talents to ingenious account. Angelo is well known in the United States, chiefly by the unwashed condition of his linen. Reversing the custom by which, in England and America, gentlemen who cannot trust their memory to keep appointments write with a black pencil the time and place on one of their wrist-bands, Angelo used to write on his wrist-band, as nearly as possible black, with a piece of white chalk which, primarily with a view to billiards, he used to carry in his pocket. I mention this as an example of his proneness to imitation, and also of his economical habits.
How, it will be asked, did he amass a fortune in my service when I was paying him only at the rate of 10s. a week?
He began by starting a claque of which he constituted himself chief, and which was at the service of any of my singers who chose to pay for it. He was always ready, moreover, to act as interpreter. There was no language which he did not speak in courier fashion more or less well; and as in a modern operatic Company artists from such outlandish countries as Spain and Russia as well as from Italy, France, and Germany are to be found, Angelo's talents were often called into requisition by singers who did not understand one another and who were altogether ignorant of English.
Angelo knew where to buy cheap cigars, and he used to make the members of my Company buy them as dear ones. He speculated, moreover, largely and advantageously in vermuth, which he sold in the United States for at least a dollar a bottle more than he had paid for it in Italy. Campanini acted as his friend and accomplice in these vermuth sales. Entering a bar, in no matter what American city, the great tenor would call for a glass of vermuth. "Pah!" he would exclaim when he had tasted what the bar-keeper had offered him. Then, after making many wry faces, he spat out the liquor which had so grievously offended him.
"Where did you get this horrible stuff?" he would then inquire. "Vermuth? It is not vermuth at all. What did the rascal who sold it to you charge for it?"
"Three dollars a bottle."
"And here is a gentleman," pointing to Angelo, "who has genuine vermuth of the finest quality and will sell you as much as you like for two dollars a bottle."
The bar-keeper thought, with reason, that an eminent Italian tenor like Campanini must know good vermuth from bad, and at once bought from Angelo a case or two of the true vermuth di Torino.
Angelo, in addition to his other talents, is a first-rate cook, and in the preparation of certain Italian dishes, dear to those born in the "land of song," has scarcely an equal. He was too important a personage to act as cook to any one singer; but on the Atlantic passage he would take a pound a-head from some thirty different vocalists in order to see that each of them was provided with Italian cookery during the voyage.