The next day he called on Steinway at nine o’clock in the morning and told him that he had come to the conclusion that he would not divide the conducting of the Wagner operas with any one and, therefore, preferred not to have anything to do with the venture. Steinway was furious, and when he told me of this he said: “I am now with you heart and soul and here is my check for twenty-five hundred dollars for which I will take subscription seats for your season in different parts of the house.”
I arranged for a season of eight weeks at the Metropolitan and a tour of five weeks which should take us as far west as Kansas City, as this Far Western outpost had immediately put in a generous bid for three performances.
I went abroad that spring to engage my artists and succeeded in gathering a notable company of Wagnerian singers: Rosa Sucher, of the Berlin Royal Opera for the Brunhildes and Isolde; a young singer of twenty-three, Johanna Gadski, who sang for me in Berlin, for Elsa and Elizabeth; Emil Fischer, of the Dresden Royal Opera, for Wotan and Hans Sachs, and Max Alvary, the handsomest and most dramatic of Siegfrieds and a truly knightly Tristan. He had studied the latter rôle at Bayreuth and had sung it there at the first performances. At Bayreuth I also found a highly gifted English singer, Marie Brema, who was then almost unknown but who was the possessor of a rich and expressive mezzo-soprano. Her talent for acting was remarkable and her vocal range so great that I thought I could use her not only for Ortrude and Brangäne, but, if necessary, for the Brunhildes as well.
A great deal of the scenery for “Tristan” and the “Nibelung Trilogy” as well as for “Tannhäuser” I had especially painted in Vienna by the firm of Kautsky and Briosky. They were at that time at the head of their profession, and such beautiful foliage as, for instance, in the forest scene of “Siegfried,” had never before been seen on an American stage. Our New York painters gathered around it in amazement when it had been unpacked and properly mounted and hung.
Such an expert on naval matters as William J. Henderson, the eminent music editor of the New York Sun, deservedly criticised the architecture and rigging of the ship that bore Tristan and Isolde across the Irish seas to Cornwall. Vienna, the home of my scene-painters, is not a seaport, and the gorgeous tent of Isolde’s, and the sails and mast, while very picturesque, completely hid the course of the ship from Tristan at the helm, and if he had not been an operatic sailor, who knew exactly where the ship was going to land at the end of the act, he undoubtedly would have sent it crashing against the white-chalk cliffs of England instead of guiding it safely into the harbor of Cornwall.
In the meanwhile, the subscriptions for seats at our New York office had gone up by such leaps and bounds that the financial success of my “crazy venture” was assured before the box-office opened for the single sale of tickets.
I had chosen “Tristan” for the opening performance. It was in 1895. The general rehearsal had gone well and an immense audience filled every available space of the opera-house and greeted me warmly as I appeared on the conductor’s stand. I was just about to begin the prelude when a whisper reached me that the English horn player was not in his place. It was old Joseph Eller, who had played in the Philharmonic under my father many years before. He had, incredible to relate, forgotten his instrument and, discovering this only on his arrival at the Metropolitan, had rushed home but had not yet returned. Imagine my agitation! Everything was ready, the lights turned down and the audience expectant, and I finally did not dare to wait any longer. I assigned the English horn part to the third French horn player and we began the long-drawn sighs of the violoncellos of the introductory bars of the prelude. To my great relief I saw Eller slip into his place a few minutes later, and the performance moved well and dramatically toward a triumphant close, in which Alvary, especially, distinguished himself by his marvellous acting and impassioned singing in the scene preceding the arrival of the ship bearing Isolde. Sucher invested Isolde with a gentle, womanly dignity, but vocally she was no longer quite in her prime and did not, I think, equal Lilli Lehmann or Klafsky and Ternina, whom I brought to America the following year.
To re-enter the Metropolitan on such a Wagnerian wave after German opera had been so ignominiously snuffed out five years before, was a great triumph and satisfaction for me, more especially because my father had laid the foundation eleven years before.
I produced the other Wagnerian operas in quick succession, and as the houses were sold out for every performance the profit was considerable.
Madame Marie Brema proved herself such a valuable member of the company, both as Ortrude and Brangäne, that I felt it would be wise to give her the opportunity to sing Brunhilde in “Walküre” as well. I, therefore, quietly began to train her in that rôle. Unfortunately, during a rehearsal which I had with her alone on the stage, Madame Sucher happened to saunter in and, hearing the familiar music coming from my piano, she suddenly beheld another woman singing Brunhilde. She gave me one indignant but comprehensive glance and then majestically sailed off the stage. A few hours later I received a letter in which she announced to me that she wished to return to Germany on the next steamer, as she had not been accustomed until then to have “her” rôles sung by another as long as she was in the company.