The depression of the first year culminated in a smallpox epidemic, which broke out shortly before the theatre closed. Marjorie dreamed of it just before it happened, and that I died of it, which, of course, haunted her all through the outbreak. It was frightfully mismanaged by the authorities. The suspects were called for by policemen and carried from the houses to an open wagon, (this in February and March,) and driven to the hospitals. The Kaserne or barracks where cases occurred, were isolated; but in our daily walks we passed them with shudders. We were both so tired and had had so many shocks and eye-openers as to what life really is, that this last nightmare completely obsessed and unnerved us. Our policeman neighbour carried suspects, and of course his uniform was never even fumigated and we knew it.
The dear little daughter of the director's wife was taken away from home one night, in spite of her parents' remonstrances. She was ill of rheumatic fever, and the authorities heard of it, pronounced it smallpox, and took her away in the open carriage. She died in a few days, and no one ever knew whether it was smallpox or not. Her mother never quite got over it; the child was so sweet and young.
The wagon used to stand in the street before a suspect house, with children playing around it. The police seemed to run the whole thing, and would carry bedding out of the houses and leave it to be burned in the street. We were told that the very poor used to steal this bedding at night. Of course we were vaccinated, but it did not take. The last performances of the season were abandoned, as every one was afraid of crowded places, and I left for Berlin on business. While there my throat became frightfully sore, and of course I thought, "Aha! I have it!" And of course I didn't have it. I returned worn out to Paris and rested there.
About this time I went first to Jean de Reszke. His beautiful house, near the Bois, with its little theatre, was the scene of much nervousness and struggles to become prime donne. The master opened my eyes to the beauties of style. His Wagner, better than the best Wagnerian singer I have ever heard, his French style, the wonderfully Italian and yet manly interpretations he gave the Puccini and Verdi rôles, were all a marvellous inspiration to me. With a pupil he considered intelligent he would take no end of trouble, and a "Bien" from him was a jewel above price. The tales de Reszke pupils sometimes tell me of the wonderful things he told them and predicted for them have always amused me, because in all the time I have been in his studio I have never heard anything like it.
I was so infatuated by my work with him, and so humbled at the vista of endless effort it opened before me, before his ideas could be carried out in every tone one sang, that I asked him one day if I should not spend the next winter in his studio, and leave the stage for a year. He thought it over seriously, and advised me to go on with the stage work, for the routine I was getting was as valuable a teacher as he was. It would have been a great privilege to have spent an entire year with him, and if I could have afforded it, I should have done so.
CHAPTER XIV
DISCOURAGEMENTS THAT LEAD TO A COURT THEATRE
THE second year of my first engagement was drawing to a close, and I was much exercised over the next step. I wanted to try for one of the Hoftheaters, not the very largest and most famous, but a place with a good orchestra and carefully prepared productions. There seemed to be no vacancy in just such a theatre, and my agent offered me a contract for a great Stadttheater, probably the first municipal opera house in Germany. Their contralto, who was a great favourite, had a contract for a big Royal Opera, and they felt sure she would be engaged. With some misgivings, I signed the Vertrag, and then began the long dickering to arrange the guest performances which should decide my fate. They finally asked me to sing Azucena at an afternoon performance. It had taken so long to find a date which suited us both, that a good deal of time had elapsed between the signing of the contract and their letter. I, of course, refused to sing an afternoon performance, and it was finally arranged that I should sing Carmen on a certain date. There is a sort of unwritten law that they shall choose one part, and you another, but it is not always observed. This difficulty over the rôle should have warned me that there was something wrong. Such a disagreement is a pretty good indication that your contract will not be made perfekt.
I travelled all night, and arrived to find a rehearsal on the same day as the performance. It was what is called an Arrangier Probe fuer den Gast, rehearsal without orchestra, of the scenes in which the "Guest" takes part. All the colleagues were nice to me, but I saw the contralto watching from the wings, and she gave me a dagger glare; so I thought that there was "something rotten in the state of Denmark," as she was supposed to be leaving voluntarily. I sang well that night, and had a real success with the audience, and with my colleagues. They all said to me, "Oh, you are certainly engaged after a hit like that." But I felt a premonition which increased to a certainty when I heard that the Director had not troubled to watch my performance, but had left the theatre in the middle of the first act.
I left the next morning, and in a day I received a letter from the Director saying that I had not had quite enough experience to sing their repertoire. I learned some time afterwards that their contralto had sung one of her guest-performances before I went there, had failed to make a sufficient impression, and had decided to remain where she was. This had been settled between her and the Direction before I sang at all; still they had let me sing with no prospect of an engagement, and allowed it to appear to be my fault that I was not engaged. Legally, of course, they were quite within their rights, as I could have sued them if they had not given me a chance to sing the Gastspiel called for in my contract. But any singer, in such circumstances, would infinitely prefer to be told the facts. Later, I once begged a director to tell me if it were really worth while to gastieren in his opera house. He said, certainly, they were not considering any one else and really wanted to hear me. I sang there with one of the biggest personal successes I have ever made, the Bürgermeister and all the Committee (it was a municipal theatre managed by a Committee with the Mayor at the head) came on the stage to congratulate me, and I had to take nine curtain calls alone after the last act. I was not engaged, however, and found out that they had already decided to engage a contralto who had sung one Gastspiel before me and the other directly afterwards. This sort of thing happens even to the most experienced native-born singer. One tenor in D. sang a guest performance auf Engagement, and learned that he was the seventh who had tried for that position in the same part, and they kept on their original one after all! Of course, these performances are paid, but the fact that one has sung without being engaged becomes known everywhere through the weekly theatrical paper, which gives the repertoire and singers in each opera, of all the reputable opera houses in Germany. But the fact that the management never intended to engage you is not generally known. If you have bad luck like this three or four times, it injures your standing as an artist. The Genossenschaft or stage society is trying to make each theatre confine itself to issuing only one contract at a time to fill any vacancy they may have, which will largely prevent this evil.