All this experience is invaluable for the beginner, his self-consciousness melts like snow in July, and it gives him, as nothing else can, that poise and authority on the stage which are almost as important as the voice itself. But the work, especially for a foreigner, is killing. It is not so much the performances themselves, great as the strain of these actually is, but the constant, never-ceasing learning by heart, and the drag of continuous rehearsing. The "room rehearsals" of the music alone, take place, in a theatre of this kind, in one of the dressing rooms where there is a piano. The room is almost always small and very close, and there are eight or ten people packed into it, all singing hard and exhausting the little air there is. The stage rehearsals with the almost invariable and inevitable shouting and excitement are very trying to the nerves, especially when one is making two or three débuts a week, that is, singing a new part for the first time almost every other night as I did, at the beginning of my career. The better the theatre, of course, the greater the smoothness and lack of confusion at stage rehearsals. The singers and orchestra men are more experienced, and more competent, and the manners of the Kapellmeister improve in ratio to the importance of the opera house. A little extra excitement is permissible when a new production is being put on, but at the rehearsals of repetitions undue exhibitions of "temperament" on either side are discouraged, and the powers that be have to mind their manners and stick to the conventional forms of address. The Heldentenor may sometimes have to allow his artistic nature to get the better of him for a moment, but no one else may claim such license.
The stage during rehearsals is like a workshop—a certain amount of noise and confusion is necessitated by the labour going on in it, but no one has time to spare from his share of the job in hand, and the discipline in a good theatre is remarkable. The native German is trained, of course, both to give and take orders well, the result of the whole system of government, both of the family and of the nation. Stage etiquette and the relationship between principals and chorus, erste und zweite Kräfte (principals of first and second rank) singers and the management, grows more conventional and regulated according to the class of the theatre. Those in authority may exact perfect obedience, but they must ask for it properly; and while an individual is entitled to proper consideration, he must never forget that he is but a unit of the whole.
The dressing-room arrangements in Metz were rather primitive. The theatre was 100 years old, for one thing, and no one had ever had the money to install new conveniences. In a good German theatre, the dressing rooms are rarely used for rehearsing, and the principals dress alone, at least when they have a big rôle to sing. In Metz I shared my room with several other women and had only a corner of it which I could call my own. Long shelves with lockers under them ran down two sides of the room, with lights over them at intervals, and under every light a singer "made up." There was a long glass at one end of the room, but we had to provide individual mirrors for ourselves. There was no running water, only a couple of jugs and basins stood in one corner of the shelf. Good routined dressers were provided by the theatre. Mine was an Alsatian who loved to speak French with me, but whom I discouraged as I wanted all the practise I could get in German. She used to call me "Fräulein Miss"—pronouncing the latter like the German word miess which means mediocre, but she meant to be particularly respectful. I have always found that it pays a hundred fold to make friends of the dressers, stage-doorkeeper, property-man, carpenter, head scene-shifter, fireman and all the other workers whose co-operation is necessary for a good ensemble. It is usually quite easy to be on good terms with them, and they have unlimited opportunities for making things go smoothly for you, or the reverse.
Women's costumes are not kept in the theatre; as they are the personal property of the singer they must be kept at home, and be sent over to the theatre on the morning of a performance. A Korbträger (basket carrier) is usually provided to whom you give from 75 cents to $1.00 a month, and who performs this service for you—but many singers send their maids. With the usual discrimination against our sex, men's costumes are provided in opera houses of all grades. In the largest theatres the women's are furnished also, and you even have to have special permission to wear your own.
The scenery and costumes in Metz were often surprisingly good when one considered that so few "sets" must do such varied things. Our property man was an inventive genius at making something out of nothing. He prided himself upon certain realistic details. If the piece called for coffee, the real article, though of some dreadful variety unknown to contemporary culinary science, was provided, and really poured into the cups. If a meal were to be served on the stage, some sort of real food was there for the actors to eat, even if it were only slices of bread served elaborately as the most recherché French supper, though usually it was ladyfingers. Eating scenes are usually confined to the drama, though there are some operas in which a meal "comes before" as the Germans say. In the "Merry Wives of Windsor" for example, the scene containing Anna's letter aria opens with the company at supper in Frau Reich's home. The wives are explaining their tricks and plotting Falstaff's final discomfiture in spoken dialogue. One night when I was singing Frau Reich in Metz there was a particularly attractive dish of real apples on the stage supper table. The Herr Reich was the serious bass, a thrifty individual who couldn't bear to let a penny's worth of anything escape him. As his guests rose to go he picked up the dish of apples and pressed it upon them.
"Here," he improvised, "take these home to the children. Oh! You have no children—well, take them anyway—the children will come later."
His hospitable wishes were received with bewilderment by the audience, but as he made his exit with his guests and immediately began to eat the apples, he bore his scolding from the régisseur very philosophically. On some stages where the provisions are more elaborate, the actors in certain plays make a regular practise of eating their suppers on the stage. In "Divorçons" for example or in the "Anatol Cyclus" of Schnitzler.
Our property man in Metz, with the historic Shakespearean name of Mondenschein, (Moonshine) was an ardent lover of drapery. An artistocratic interior, to his mind, must be entirely filled with as many different materials as possible, all hanging in folds. He had three pairs of near-silk portières, bright pink, dull green, and pale yellow, and the combinations that he made with those six curtains were endless. Garlands of roses, too, were a great resource of his—draped round a couch with a fur rug upon it, and a red light over all, they transformed the scene into the bower of a Messalina. In a white light festooned upon a mantel-piece, or above a doorway, they could be depended upon to supply the appropriate setting of the Erste Naive's most appealing scene. The young lovehaveress and first salon lady, had to receive them, wired together into a bunch, with the same delightful surprise, and put them into the same Japanese jar without any water in it, in play after play. But the property man always squandered a perfectly new, uncreased piece of paper for every performance with which to make a cornucopia for them, in the approved German style. He was quite a specialist in such matters as the colour of telegrams in different countries, and in the manner of folding newspapers, points which are sometimes neglected in many better theatres. Of course his talents in this direction had a better chance in the dramatic than in the operatic productions.
It is a curious thing to note in this connection, how archaic the arrangement of such details remains in operatic performances even on the best stages. How in "Carmen" for example, the singers must pretend to drink to Escamillo out of perfectly dry tin cups, instead of using real wine and glasses, as a quite second-rate dramatic company would do. How Butterfly and Suzuki are never given real tea to serve to the Consul or Yamadori. Or how the girls in "Thais" bring up their water-jars out of the well with the outsides quite dry.
Of course in theatres of the Metz class matters of costuming are simplified, and historical accuracy is not one of the aims. For example, everything before Christ is done in fur rugs and winged helmets for the men, and flannel nightgowns and long hair for the women. Any period up to the thirteenth century is costumed in mantles and gowns of furniture brocade, after that it is Alt-deutsch (old German), or Spanisch (Shakespearean—mostly black velvet and jet or white satin and silver), until it turns safely into Rococo, which means white wigs. After that it is all Modern, and even the chorus has to supply its own modern clothes. The men principals have their historical costumes, with the exception of wigs, tights, and shoes, supplied to them, but the women must have their own. The collection of men's clothes in an old theatre is sometimes quite remarkable, some of the suits of a hundred years ago being actually of the period.