The season had only one more week to run, but my father had made arrangements for a short tour comprising Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia.
On February 15 he died and left me numb and overwhelmed by the terrible responsibilities which began to press in upon me. Even at this late date I cannot bear to write of my loss. Our relations had become so close and intimate, and during the last years he had so often leaned on me with such sweet confidence. I had always looked up to him as my ideal of a man and musician, and it seemed to me that I could never smile again.
The last performances at the Metropolitan immediately after his death were conducted by John Lund, a highly talented chorus master who has since made his home in America, but there were so many immediate necessities crowding in upon me that I had no opportunity for indulging in quiet grief. Events moved with incredible and terrible swiftness. The contracts for the tour had to be met. My father’s estate was technically liable, although he left literally no money. There was no one to assume the responsibility of taking the company on tour except poor me, and I accordingly set forth, together with the entire company of about a hundred and fifty members, on a special train of the West Shore Railroad for Chicago on Saturday afternoon of February 21. We were to open with “Tannhäuser” at the Columbia Theatre on the following Monday evening. During this trip the worst blizzard of the year struck our train. We were completely snowed in and the road, which was at that time a rather lame rival of the New York Central, was so ill-equipped with means to shovel us out that instead of arriving on Sunday evening, we did not get into Chicago until Monday at eight P. M., the hour at which the performance was to have begun. My dear brother Frank, who had come on from Denver to meet me in Chicago and to discuss future plans, boarded our train a little while out of Chicago and told me that not only was the house sold out, but all had determined to wait until we arrived and chivalrously to “see us through.” The mayor of the city had made an excited speech from the proscenium box in which he was sitting and said that Chicago must help a young man like myself who had so courageously undertaken to carry on the great work of his father.
When we arrived at the station the company were quickly bundled into cabs and omnibuses. Luckily the scenery had been sent on ahead, but the costume and property trunks were on our train, and the work of transferring them and getting out the “Tannhäuser” costumes and properties was agonizing.
Materna and I were the first to arrive at the theatre, and we were marched through the auditorium from the front entrance by the local manager who wished to give this ocular demonstration of our presence. The audience cheered.
Behind the scenes the confusion was incredible. The trunks with the wigs could not be found, nor the trunks with the footwear, and Tannhäuser and the other singers of the Wartburg, together with the noble lords and ladies, appeared on the stage in a most remarkable combination of costumes, mediæval and modern. But it made no difference. I began the overture after ten o’clock. The audience cheered themselves hoarse.
The trunk containing Materna’s costume as Elizabeth was not hurled on the stage until just before the beginning of the second act. It made no difference. When she appeared in all her smiling radiance and sang “Dich Theure Halle” the audience again went mad with delight, and so on until the curtain finally fell at one-thirty in the morning.
Ever since that terrible but wonderful evening I have had a soft spot in my heart for Chicago, and during the many years I have never lost the friendship of that remarkable city. Even to-day, every now and then, an old gray-headed or bald-headed citizen of Chicago comes to me and says: “Do you remember that first performance of ‘Tannhäuser’ at the Columbia Theatre in February, 1885?”
The success was so great that we extended our season an extra week, during which I produced for the first time “La Dame Blanche” by Boieldieu.
We finished our tour with a week in Boston, where we had a similarly enthusiastic reception, and especially “Walküre” and “Lohengrin” made a profound impression. There I produced (for the first time in America, I think) Gluck’s “Orpheus,” in which Marianne Brandt gave a glorious and touching impersonation of the title-rôle. It is characteristic of the audacity of youth that I should have given two new performances of operas which were rehearsed and produced while we were on tour, “La Dame Blanche” and “Orpheus.” But as the principal rôles had been sung by most of our artists in Germany, these two operas being in the regular repertoire of every German opera-house, the feat was not so extraordinary. The performances were good in ensemble and gave great pleasure to the audience.