IF you make a hit with the audience your residence in the town is made very pleasant. Even the conductors and motormen of the street cars used to greet me as they passed and all the policemen were my friends. I had letters to some of the people in the town through relations, and took as much part as I had time for in the really charming, if slightly narrow, social life of the place. The centre of everything was, of course, the Court. The Grand Duke took a great interest in the theatre, and used to watch the productions notebook in hand. Any detail which did not please him was immediately noted and sent then and there to the stage manager to be changed. We had some special privileges as we were classed as Beamten or official servants of the government. One was the right to wine from the ducal cellars at cost price, or duty free. Another was a 10 per cent. discount at all the shops.
Extra money is often to be picked up by a Gastspiel aushilfsweise, that is, an emergency call from a neighbouring theatre. Our opera soubrette once received a hurry call to another Hofoper one hour's journey away. The train would have made her too late, so she took an automobile and her costume with her, and drove at breakneck speed through the woods to the town. She was to sing Cherubino in "Figaro" and, as she dressed in the auto to save time, the surprise of the chauffeur may be imagined when, instead of a brunette girl, a blond boy emerged from his car!
I made my first appearance as a regular member of the company as Dalila. The only comment afterwards of the first Kapellmeister, who directed the performance, was, "Why did you make the eighth note in such and such a phrase a sixteenth?" I repeat this, in order to give an idea of the standard of thoroughness with which the musical part of the opera was prepared. When we were rehearsing Dalila on the stage, I, having studied the rôle in Paris and being imbued with the spirit of the French performers, occasionally gave that swing from the hips on a particularly luscious phrase, using as faithfully as I could remember it de Reszke's masterly interpretation and flow of line. The Hofrat rapped on his desk, and half patronizingly, half contemptuously, with a pitying smile, bade me not indulge in franzoesische Manniere—French mannerisms. As many room rehearsals were held as were necessary before the singers could sing their parts, giving every note its exact value. A singer might make mistakes during the performance, but the Hofrat always mentioned it afterwards. My Samson was, of course, the Heldentenor, and he was a character; a tall, good-looking man, with an immense, ill-used voice, but a wonderful actor. He had a great success with the ladies, and his adventures, matrimonial and otherwise, were the principal source of gossip of the town. His lady-love at this time was a certain Baroness, whom he afterwards married. Their great amusement was rushing about the country together in a white automobile filled with flowers. She used to hang fascinated over the edge of her box, high above the stage, watching his every look and gesture, her large bust on the edge of the box. When he left the stage she would sink back in her chair, really exhausted, and rub her eyes with her hand. He was the only person who was allowed to disturb the orderly rehearsals. Every one was afraid of him when he lost his temper and raged up and down the stage, shouting what he would do to his enemy when he caught him. One day, I remember, he was furious with the Intendant because birthday honours had been distributed by the Grand Duke, in the form of decorations, and he had received none. He made sure that it was the Intendant's spite against him, but it was in reality, of course, his notorious way of living that prevented his being decorated. He shouted that he would "buy himself two cents' worth of soft soap and grease his back with it and make the Intendant climb up it!" Then that he would get him in the woods and run his auto over him, and run it back and forth, and back and forth, until there was nothing left but apple sauce! Finally the Direction could stand him no longer, great actor as he was, and his contract was broken on the pretext of his having been absent from the town without leave. You are supposed not to go further than a certain stated distance from the theatre without due notification and permission. He left the place with his Baroness, and his return to it was characteristic. The first time that Zeppelin's airship passed over the town, he was in it, hanging out of the car, shouting and throwing down postcards!
As Siegfried in "Goetterdaemmerung," he left an ineffaceable impression on me. I have never seen it equalled by any tenor. When he gazes at Brünnhilde's ring, and his memory fails to recall just what it means to him, his puzzled look of baffled memory, the ray of understanding that almost pierced his forgetfulness, all were suggested in so tremendous a way that one saw inside his brain,—and all this utterly without exaggerated mannerisms.
I seemed to find favour in his sight, and during the Dalila rehearsals he made hot love to me. In the performance, when Dalila sinks into his arms on the couch, he nearly upset me by saying fervently out loud: "Ach! endlich weiss man was est ist ein schoenes Weib im Arm zu haben?" ("Ah! at last one knows what it is to have a beautiful woman in one's arms.") I considered this a distinct reflection on his adoring Baroness, and withheld the signs of delight he no doubt expected. He told me once, one only wish he had,—just to see my Spinne, or lingerie closet. One day, as we were all in the greenroom, during a rehearsal, waiting our turn to be called to the stage, I saw S——'s eyes transfixed with horror. Looking in the direction he pointed I saw the opera soubrette Z——, putting on her rubbers and crossing her legs in doing so. This action revealed to our delighted gaze trouserettes of red striped canton flannel, shirred into a band half way between calf and ankle, and there adorned with a blanket-stitched frill of the same material. S—— was too sickened by the sight to do more than helplessly gasp, "Typical!" to me. A curious person; fastidious, sensual, unquestionably endowed with genius, he just couldn't behave.
He was asked to sing Siegfried once, at a neighbouring opera house, on very short notice. He had to dress in the train in order to be there on time when the curtain went up. Fellow travellers, who saw him enter the train dressed in the ordinary way, were rather horrified to see a half-naked savage emerge at the journey's end; but S—— was quite impervious to the sensation he created. He never wore the hideous tights most Siegfrieds try to make you think are skin, but his splendid shoulders rose naked from his bearskin, and his bare legs were bound with furry thongs.
The Heldenbariton was of another type. He had been twenty-five years on the stage, and twenty in this theatre. Opera singing for him was like going to his office. He had his house with a charming garden, his family, and a circle of friends and acquaintances, which included nearly the whole population. There are many cases like his in this class of theatre, and a pleasant life they lead. After eight years in the same Hoftheater they are eligible for a pension, a certain proportion of their salary, which increases with their years of service, up to a fixed point. Only certain Hoftheaters have this pension fund; it is very nice for some singers, but a great hardship for others. If you leave that theatre before your eight years are up, you lose all that you have paid during your engagement. Contribution to the pension fund is compulsory for all singers and actors in that theatre. One singer whom I knew had spent sixteen years in different theatres, always paying a pension tax, and never receiving the benefit of one penny from the money, as her engagement in each place came to an end before the stipulated eight years. Unscrupulous directors take advantage of this to fail to renew a singer's contract when it gets near the eighth year. The invaluable Genossenschaft is also trying to remedy this abuse.
Some of the regular members of a Hoftheater have enviable concert reputations as well, though in Germany the two professions are quite separate, and concert singing is generally looked upon as the higher branch of art. The critics are suspicious of the opera singer in concert, to such an extent that I was advised, at my first Berlin recital, to keep my real standing in the profession dark and present myself without my title of Hofopernsängerin. I suggested to my agent that, as I was quite unknown in Berlin, it might be well to spend a little money in extra advertising. "Advertising?" said he, "they will think you are a soap!" So I sang unheralded except by the usual half-inch in the daily papers. In contrast to the publicity campaigns and press-agents of this country, let me give another instance of how they did things in Germany before the war. On being engaged at this Hoftheater, I thought I ought to let the public know it. I wrote my agent, Herr Harder, asking him to spend 1000 marks ($250) for me in judicious advertising of my engagement. He answered that there was no way in which he could place the money to further my interests, and returned it! The first contract which was offered me for a concert tour in America, provided for $2,000 to be paid down for advertising before the tour began.