HUMAN PASSIONS AND SMALLPOX
AT the beginning of the season, the director's family was still in the country, where they remained until the opera had been running for some time. We met his wife and daughter for the first time at a luncheon given by him at the hotel where we had arranged to take our two o'clock dinner, after trying all sorts of unsuccessful ways of dining in private. The stage manager of the drama, the first and second Kapellmeister, the "Bureau Chef," the Heldentenor, Heldenbariton, High Dramatic, Coloratura, my sister and myself were all invited. Just as we were seating ourselves, the Schauspiel Regisseur, Herr S——, noticed that there were thirteen at table. He turned as white as a sheet, jumped up, and scarcely stopping to apologize, hurriedly left the room, nor could he be prevailed upon to return, although the director followed him into the hall to remonstrate. He protested that one of our number was certain to die within the year as it was, and he wished to insure its not being himself by refusing to sit down at all. Curiously enough, his prophecy came true, for the Director's young step-daughter died very suddenly soon after.
Herr S—— was a most unpleasant person, as I discovered later, and I was always thankful that my identification with the Opern-Personal kept me out of his way. He had a sort of spurious veneer and ingratiating manner, which was at variance with his hard, square, passion-scarred countenance. He pretended an enormous admiration for the American woman, and that very day before luncheon, he showed me with great pride a small American-made patent-leather shoe, which he took out of the tail pocket of his frock-coat, telling me with a leer that it belonged to a girl of my country, where the women had the most beautiful feet in the world, and that it was his talisman and never left him! He bore a bad name among the women players in the company. One of the little actresses, a girl of good family, in her first season, used to tell me unpleasant tales of him in her rapid, ungrammatical French, whenever I met her; and she always referred to him as "That beast!"
Our Heldentenor of that season was an uninteresting personage, a quite elderly man of enormous routine and mediocre equipment, who had sung in all sorts of opera houses and was on the last lap of a long career. He was said to be nearly sixty, and was quite bald, but he managed to make a surprisingly youthful appearance on the stage. He had been at it so long that he could make an attempt at acting almost anything—even youth. His sprightly legs in "Fra Diavolo" were quite adolescent. He kept himself discreetly to himself, and was never seen in the cafés, nor on the streets with his colleagues.
His greatest joy was a tiny dog, whose tricks he delighted to show off to every one. The little thing would whine for a soprano, growl for a bass, howl for a tenor, bark when told "The Direktor's coming," and sit up and beg at the word Gage (salary,) in a very amusing way, and his master was intensely proud of his accomplishments.
The lyric tenor of the first season was a peasant from Swabia, with a droll accent and a lovely voice which he forced in a most agonizing manner. He would shake all over when he sang a high note, and yet his natural voice ranged easily to high D sharp—I have even heard him sing an E. His dialect and his ignorance made him the butt of the company, but he was very goodnatured and took it all in good part. He used to say: "Yes, I know—my wife is a French woman and she tells me to say Mignon, but I'm a peasant—I say Mischnong." She was years older than he and of better class. She had helped him to the little study that he had had, and out of gratitude he had married her, but they were said to disagree very consistently.
The Heldenbariton was quite a nice fellow, big and burly with a good voice; he was a great favourite with the public, whom he had pleased by marrying, out of the chorus, a townswoman who adored him.
The second Kapellmeister was a vague, weak creature, henpecked by his vain little wife who was never happy unless she was the centre of some one's admiration. She was inordinately proud of her small feet, and our little friend the lyric baritone used to make her furious, by insisting that mine were smaller! Her dream was to go on the stage too, if only to sing pages in "Lohengrin" and "Tannhäuser," and later her hope was realized, I heard, when several of them went off together in April to a "Monatsoper" on the Russische Grenze (Russian Frontier). The coloratura soprano was a Dutch woman, speaking German with more accent than I did. She was very fair, very fat, and very lazy, and she had a capacity for food that I have seen equalled but never surpassed. She dined with us daily, and woe to the person who had to serve himself from a dish that had been passed to her! Eat until you could hold no more was a part of the creed of all my colleagues. Anything short of absolute repletion, and the meal was considered a failure. "Sind Sie satt?" They would ask each other gravely—"Ich bin nicht satt!" Meaning literally, "Are you full?" "I am not full." And this was a grave cause of resentment against the hotel management. I must say that most of them reached this desirable consummation long before the coloratura soprano, for she continued placidly as long as there was any food in sight. She would even finish anything left on another's plate, and our table always looked as if a horde of locusts had visited it.
Those colleagues of my first engagement are stamped upon my memory—representing as they did so much that was new to me,—a new nationality, a new profession, and in many cases a new social class. Take them all together they were a pretty decent lot considering their antecedents and surroundings. As a general rule, I think the actors are apt to be of a somewhat higher social class than the singers, as a remarkable voice occurs when and where it will, while a vocation for the acting stage presupposes a certain amount of education and refinement of surroundings, although there have been, of course, some notable exceptions.
They wanted us to meet the officers of the different smart regiments. The Red Dragoons in particular were supposed to be all-powerful in deciding the success or failure of a singer, and the colleagues kindly thought we ought all to have the advantage of this. One or two of the women of course had affairs with them, and as Marjorie and I did not care to meet the officers in just that society, we were sometimes hard put to it to find a good excuse. Once my sister went to bed, though perfectly well, for several days, to avoid a particularly pressing invitation. Later we met these officers through letters from our relatives, and liked some of them tremendously. Even their affairs were the outcome of the system, and did no particular harm to any one.