Tickets for the opening night were at a premium; on the final day they were unpurchasable at any price. Again Deems Taylor was making news.
The evening itself measured up fully to the anticipation it had created. It went into the records as one of the most dazzling of operatic premières; the audience actually liked the performance as an opera; it seemed to enjoy itself hugely and there was accordingly wild enthusiasm when the composer and librettist were called to the front.
What was the effect of all this adulation, this frenzied praise upon the man who was responsible for the success of the evening? Again we turn to his intimates for the answer. We find him reading, deeply solicitous, those words of criticism which measured with scientific analysis, in a more discriminating vein, the points of weakness in the score. He was neither professionally “high hat” nor “up-stage.” It was his first grand opera and he knew that he had yet to learn. He felt that he could learn most from those who were prepared to show him how to step higher. He absorbed these comments with none of the petulance of the prima donna who finds in unfavorable criticism only the traces of jealousy and lack of appreciation.
V
But most convincing of all in the testimony relating to the outcome of the eventful evening’s proceedings, was the decision of the Metropolitan Board of Directors, announced a few days after the première, to commission Taylor to write a second opera to be produced within two years from the date of his operatic debut.
Some idea of the public interest aroused through this promise of a second opera from Deems Taylor’s pen was reflected in the large amount of space devoted to the project by the daily papers. For several months after the announcement there was interested speculation both in musical circles and in the newspapers over the choice of his libretto. It was not until late in the Fall that Mr. Taylor, in a column interview, gave out the news that had been awaited with such lively anticipation; his manner of acquainting the world with his selection was thoroughly characteristic.
The opera was to be based on an American novel, the identity of which at that time, remained a mystery. But Mr. Taylor’s practical collaborator—his librettist—was to be none other than himself!
“I have found,” the composer related to a reporter for the Associated Press, “the most charming and compatible, the most accomplished and erudite of collaborators. We get along splendidly together. It is true that I fuss and say crude things to this collaborator, sometimes, but it is all taken in good grace.”
This same interview revealed another phase of the Taylor character, too significant to be overlooked in any discussion that pretends to reveal the man.
He declared that his new opera would be a product of the great city; that he had no tolerance for the widely exploited quiet of the country generally believed to be indispensable to those engaged in creative endeavor.