Confessions of an Opera Singer

by Kathleen Howard

I should have immediately followed up that concert with two or three more, but I was obliged to return to my duties, and so lost the opportunity of reaping the reward of an unusual beginning.

They wanted me to sign on in Darmstadt, but I felt that I had sung the repertoire faithfully for three years, and that I wanted more worlds to conquer, and a bigger town to criticize my work.

I went to Munich to sing for Baron S——, who liked me and offered me a contract, depending on the outcome of two Gastspiele, or guest performances, to be absolved the following October, my contract then to go into effect.

My farewell in Darmstadt was "Carmen" and the people were good to me. After the last curtain I left the stage for a minute, and when I came back to take my calls the stage was filled from side to side with flowers; they were banked and grouped all round me. The curtain then went up and down innumerable times, till I felt like weeping at leaving all these kind friends. For some reason my cab did not come for me and when I left the theatre the crowd waiting at the stage door followed me home, calling out "Come back soon," "Auf Wiedersehen," and many kind things. These are not perhaps great triumphs, but they make an artist's life very happy, and the life I led for those three years, comes very near being the ideal one for an opera singer.

I think it was two years before this, on returning to Paris, that I took part in Strauss' "Salome." We gave six performances at the Châtelet. I took the page's small part, just for the fun of it, and so as to study the opera. The stage manager was a German of course, and spoke very little French. The singers were all Germans, and the "figurants," supers, all French. Things did not go well at rehearsals. Burrian, as the King would cry for wine or grapes, and no one moved to get what he wished, as no one understood what he was saying, and so could not get the musical cue. I was the only person able to speak the two languages fluently, and finally the stage manager asked me to take charge of all the business on my side of the stage. "Suivez Madame!" he would yell. So I said "Remove throne." "Bring golden vessels." "Clear stage," etc., to the intelligent crowd of supers, many of whom were young actors, who wanted as I did to study the opera. I remember one hideous little girl, who had an unattractive sore lip. Some one told her that it did not matter much, trying to comfort her, as she seemed so depressed about it, but she was inconsolable, and replied darkly, "it was always seven days lost." This brave effort to create the impression of an otherwise lurid existence deceived no one however, though they were too polite to show their doubt.

Destinn's voice rose thrillingly in the love phrases that Salome pours at John; and though she wore a costume that my young French friends considered consisted chiefly of chats enragés,—mad cats,—as it had two huge animal heads of gold, where such types of stage villainesses are always heavily protected, the tense quality of her voice, and the simple strength of her acting suited the character as Strauss had painted it with his music, and she achieved results that no other singer I know of could have done.

I had gone back as usual to de Reszke to have my voice put in order, and was having, at the same time, my taste put in order by my sculptor brother Cecil, in our walks and talks about Paris and its museums. My brother's wonderfully clear vision of art and beauty is never clouded, and I owe much to my association with him. We used to go to all the Salons, and I remember vividly the first time we stumbled on a specimen of the modern Spanish school, then quite new to us. We had looked at dreary wastes of raspberry jam Venuses, resting on the crests of most solid waves, dozens of canvases still in the Louis XVI era, and much pastel-coloured mediocrity, when suddenly I called out "Look, Cec, something new!" It was a big square of flaming colour—women and a child in red checked cotton, picking scarlet tomatoes from high-trained vines, in the brilliant sun. It glowed and fairly zizzed with colour, and had that radiating, vibrating quality that things have in the hot sunshine. We had had the "confetti" and "spot" types of work for some years, but this canvas dwarfed anything modern I had seen in Paris. We have never found another one by the same man, and have often wondered what became of his work.

I think that was when I first fell in love with colour per se, though I had flirted with it before. We had loved Monet and the opalescent, shimmering lights in his water-garden series, but never had I been so stirred and thrilled by mere paint on canvas as I was by this Spaniard's work. It seems that a man only rarely can put colours together that will have the living dazzling look that one sees in nature. Matisse was a past master of it, and even though one might not agree with him otherwise, his colour was a joy.

Later the Cubists and Futurists invaded Paris. When I am with Cecil and he talks to me of their work, I see their aims quite clearly, and understand what they are trying to express, for their "line of talk" is much more lucid than their work: but when I am not with my brother I must confess my understanding is dimmed, and I forget the arguments he used.

We lived very simply in Paris, having our meals sometimes at the quartier restaurants, and sometimes getting filets of fresh mushrooms, peas, and delicious Paris potatoes, with big strawberries shaped like little whisk-brooms, and crême d' Isigny in its stubby little earthen pots, and preparing them at home. I had a small apartment in the same house as my mother, and my brother had his studio some blocks from us.