Miss P—— laughed at my distressed expression. "Why, nothing but read before the class. Your pronunciation is corrected by Herr Müller. It is just as good as a German lesson," she said. "Oh, by the bye, don't mind if they laugh at you. They always laugh at foreigners."
With this parting shot as my encouragement, I went in. The room, on the upper floor just opposite the hall where we have the chorus rehearsals, is large and barnlike. A grand piano stands in dignified solitude in the centre, and at the end, near the green porcelain stove, is a long table around which the class sits. Herr Müller has his place at the head. He is an interesting type of man, very portly, with snow-white hair and mustache, and a pair of noticeably keen, speculative eyes. The appreciation of the humorous is strongly marked on his broad features.
"Eine Amerikanerin!" he said, smiling, as I came in. It is odd how quickly the people here detect our nationality. He motioned me to a chair, then slowly drew a large watch from his pocket and laid it on the table before him.
"Well, Fräulein, what have you?" he inquired of the first girl on his left, who promptly handed him the "Bride of Messina" and going to the farther end of the room began to recite shrilly a passage by heart. At every line the Herr Regisseur would thunder forth criticisms in his great, vibrant voice. When her turn, which lasted five minutes, was past, he called on the next girl, a soft-voiced, shrinking creature in a low-necked blouse. She murmured haltingly that she had "Das Veilchen" (The Violet). "Ach! Das Veilchen!" lisped he, with his head on one side, in the same tremulous tones. The imitation was such a capital one that we all laughed. In the bare room the effect was that of a hilarious whoop. I began to see what was in store for me. After a few wretched moments I determined to take the whole affair as a joke. There were nine girls to be called on before it came my turn, but in what seemed an incredibly short space of time they had all finished and Herr Müller was calling my name.
"Recite one verse very slowly," said he.
"Meine Ruhe ist hin" (My rest is o'er), I began bravely, feeling how poignantly applicable the line was to my present situation. Throughout my recital I could plainly hear titterings from the girls, but I kept my eyes firmly fixed on the picture of Beethoven over the door. When I had finished, Herr Regisseur laid the book down on the table, leaned back in his chair, and laughed. The whole class joined with him. Not to be outdone, I laughed too, albeit somewhat weakly.
"Now much louder and slower, Fräulein aus Amerika," he said. "Repeat after me, 'Meine Ruhe ist hin.'"
It was the same thing that I had tried with Frau Bianci, only now I enunciated every syllable with painful effort, my voice pitched to fortissimo.
"Not bad," said he, when I had finished, although his eyes twinkled. "Learn another verse for next time."
We all went over to the Gärtner Platz Theatre last week to see "The Geisha." The little opera house is very cosy, but oh! how strange "The Geisha" sounded in its new word-clothes! From a musical standpoint it was delightfully given, but to my mind the Germans have not snap enough to produce light opera well. We have seen two or three things there, among them Strauss' charming Fledermaus, and have invariably remarked the same thing. The chorus sang excellently, but were selected with absolutely no eye for beauty or grace. And how the Amazons did wear their armor! They reminded me more of tired waitresses after a hard day's work than the spirited war-maidens they were supposed to represent. Sparkle, vivacity, delicacy,—all these elements which make light opera what it should be,—were lacking. I am convinced that God created the Germans for grand opera and that in the captivating froth of operettas they are distinctly out of their element. One wishes he might look into the music of the future and see how the school of the versatile American will eventually evolve; whether it will be individually characteristic, or blindly content to follow the path laid down by its forerunners across the sea.