By this time Brandt was in a state of high indignation. “You will not give me the letter? I will prove to you that I am Marianne Brandt!” And then she proceeded with full voice to sing the great cadenza from her principal aria in “Le Prophète.” Her glorious voice echoed and re-echoed through the vaulted corridors of the post-office. Men came running from all sides to find out what had happened and finally the agitated official handed her the letter, saying: “Here is your letter, but for God’s sake be quiet!”
She finally retired from the stage to her old home in Vienna and gave of her art with both hands to a group of devoted pupils. During the war I heard from one of them that, owing to the destitute condition existing in Vienna, she was in real want, but she promptly returned the check we sent her and in a very sweet letter addressed as usual to “Mein Sohn” assured me that she did not need any money, that she did not expect to live much longer, and that she thought she could hold out without receiving any alms from her friends. We did succeed, however, in sending her food which she shared with others.
One of the singers whom I engaged for the Metropolitan Opera House during my first visit to Germany and who afterward achieved great fame was Max Alvary, a young lyric tenor at the Weimar Ducal Opera House. He was the son of the well-known German painter, Andreas Achenbach, of good education, gentlemanly bearing, and a refined artistic taste. He was also exceedingly good looking. As a singer he was very uneven, although he had studied with the Italian master, Lamperti. At first we paid him only a hundred dollars a night, but after he had sung minor rôles for a few months Anton Seidl chose him to create the part of Siegfried, and in that rôle he made a success so instantaneous as to place him immediately in the front rank of German opera-singers. No one else has given Siegfried such an atmosphere of boyish innocence and picturesque beauty. The women, bless them, simply worshipped him, from the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl to the matron of mature and more than mature age, and this success repeated itself when he appeared as Siegfried in Germany, Austria, and England. He made a great deal of money and spent it lavishly. His armor and helmet in “Lohengrin” were specially made for him out of silver after a design which he had drawn himself. The stuffs for his costumes were often specially woven for him. He reached the climax of his career when he was chosen by Cosima Wagner to sing Tannhäuser and Tristan at Bayreuth. At that time this shrine for the Wagnerite had already become, under the guiding and autocratic hand of the widow of Wagner, a highly artificial product. I saw several of these performances and was frankly amazed at the apparent degeneration since the days of Wagner. Alvary, who had a great sense of humor, gave most entertaining descriptions of the rehearsals, and how, for instance, in slavish imitation of certain rhythms in the orchestra, Tannhäuser and Wolfram had to execute a kind of minuet opposite each other in order to fill in the instrumental introduction before Wolfram begins his famous plea to Tannhäuser: “Als du im kühnen Sange uns bestrittest.”
In the spring of 1891 Carnegie Hall, which had been built by Andrew Carnegie as a home for the higher musical activities of New York, was inaugurated with a music festival in which the New York Symphony and Oratorio Societies took part. In order to give this festival a special significance, I invited Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky, the great Russian composer, to come to America and to conduct some of his own works. In all my many years of experience I have never met a great composer so gentle, so modest—almost diffident—as he. We all loved him from the first moment—my wife and I, the chorus, the orchestra, the employees of the hotel where he lived, and of course the public. He was not a conductor by profession and in consequence the technic of it, the rehearsals and concerts, fatigued him excessively; but he knew what he wanted and the atmosphere which emanated from him was so sympathetic and love-compelling that all executants strove with double eagerness to divine his intentions and to carry them out. The performance which he conducted of his Third Suite, for instance, was admirable, although it is in parts very difficult; and as he was virtually the first of great living composers to visit America, the public received him with jubilance.
He came often to our house, and, I think, liked to come. He was always gentle in his intercourse with others, but a feeling of sadness seemed never to leave him, although his reception in America was more than enthusiastic and the visit so successful in every way that he made plans to come back the following year. Yet he was often swept by uncontrollable waves of melancholia and despondency.
The following year in May I went to England with my wife, and received an invitation from Charles Villiers Stanford, then professor of music at Cambridge, to visit the old university during the interesting commencement exercises at which honorary degrees of Doctor of Music were to be given to five composers of five different countries—Saint-Saëns of France, Boito of Italy, Grieg of Norway, Bruch of Germany, and Tschaikowsky of Russia.
The proceedings proved highly interesting and enjoyable. As each recipient of the honor stepped forward in his doctor’s robe, the orator addressed him in a discourse of orotund Latin phrases, praising his many virtues and accomplishments, and these phrases were constantly interrupted by the clatter of facetious remarks and requests from the undergraduates in the balcony, all this according to old-established custom. Sometimes the uproar became so great that the presiding officer had to arise and demand “Silentium.”
Among the other recipients of degrees on that occasion was Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, Baron of Kandahar, who, in his scarlet uniform beneath his doctor’s robe, received of course the most uproarious welcome. At that time no one dreamed that twenty-three years later he would go around England uttering solemn warning against the inevitability of war with Germany and bidding England gird on her sword and prepare, only to be laughed at as an alarmist and publicly reprimanded by politicians for seeking to arouse such feeling against a “friendly power.”
In the evening a great banquet was given in the refectory of the college, and by good luck I was placed next to Tschaikowsky. He told me during the dinner that he had just finished a new symphony which was different in form from any he had ever written. I asked him in what the difference consisted and he answered: “The last movement is an adagio and the whole work has a programme.”
“Do tell me the programme,” I demanded eagerly.