The performance did not differ materially from many which had taken place in the Academy of Music when the same artists took part. All the principal artists, indeed, had been heard in the opera many times when their powers were greater. Mme. Nilsson had been thirteen years before the American public, and though in this period her art had grown in dignity and nobility, her voice had lost the fresh bloom of its youth, and her figure had begun to take on matronly contours. Still, she was a great favorite, and hers was an extraordinary triumph, the outburst of popular approbation coming, as was to have been expected, in the garden scene of the opera. Referring to my review of the performance which appeared in The Tribune of the next day, I note that till that moment there had been little enthusiasm. After she had sung the scintillant waltz, however, "the last film of ice that had held the public in decorous check was melted," and an avalanche of plaudits overwhelmed the fair singer. Bouquets rained from the boxes, and baskets of flowers were piled over the footlights till it seemed as if there was to be no end. In the midst of the floral gifts there was also handed up a magnificent velvet casket inclosing a wreath of gold bay leaves and berries, ingeniously contrived to be extended into a girdle to be worn in the classic style, and two gold brooch medallions, bearing the profiles of Tragedy and Comedy, with which the girdle was to be fastened. The donor was not mentioned, but an inscription told that the gift was in "commemoration of the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House." Signor Campanini had spent the year before the opening in retirement, hoping to repair the ravages made in his voice by the previous seasons at the Academy of Music, and, I regret to say, possibly his careless mode of life. His faults had been conspicuous for several seasons, and the hoped-for amendment did not discover itself. "Occasionally the old-time sweetness, and again occasionally the old-time manly ring was apparent in his notes, but they were always weighted down by the evidences of labor, and the brilliancy of the upper tones with which he used to fire an audience into uncontrollable enthusiasm was gone."

The regular subscription nights at the Metropolitan in the first season, and for all the seasons that followed down to that of 1907-08, were Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with afternoon performances on Saturdays. On the second night of the season, October 24, 1883, Mr. Abbey brought forward two of his new singers. The opera was "Lucia di Lammermoor," the first performance of which in the new house was made memorable by the introduction of Mme. Marcella Sembrich. She had been engaged by Mr. Abbey on the strength of the success achieved by her in the London season of 1883. She was almost at the beginning of her career, being little known outside of Athens, where she made her dbut, Dresden, where she had sung in German, and London. She had dazzled the British metropolis by her vocalization, especially in "Lucia," and it was for this reason that it was selected for her introduction to New York. Before the season came to an end she sang in "I Puritani," "Don Giovanni," "La Traviata," and "Hamlet." All the good qualities which have since then been extolled hundreds of times by the critics of the New York newspapers were noticeable in her first representation. I turn back to the files of The Tribune to see what I wrote while under the spell of her witching art, and find the following:

Mme. Sembrich is a lovely singer,—lovely of person, of address, of voice; and her artistic acquirements, in the limited field in which Donizetti's opera called them into activity, at least, are of the highest rank. Her style is exquisite, and plainly the outgrowth of a thoroughly musical nature. It unites some of the highest elements of art. Such reposefulness of manner, such smoothness and facility in execution, such perfect balance of tone and refinement of expression can be found only in one richly endowed with deep musical feeling and ripe artistic intelligence. She carries her voice wondrously well throughout a wide register, and from her lowest note to her highest there is the same quality of tone. It is a voice of fine texture, too; it has a velvety softness, yet is brilliant; and though not magnetic in the same degree as the voices of other singers still before the public, it has a fine, sympathetic vein. It wakens echoes of Mme. Patti's organ, but has warmer life-blood in it.

Of the musicianly qualities of this charming singer, recognized on this first acquaintance, we were to have a demonstration before her departure which was in the highest degree surprising. Sympathy for Mr. Abbey in his great losses, and admiration for the self-sacrificing manner in which he adhered to all his obligations to them as well as to the public, led the directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company to offer him a benefit concert. At this entertainment, which was successful beyond anything that local records had to show up to that time, the profits amounting to $16,000, Mme. Sembrich sang an aria; then came upon the stage and played a violin obbligato to Mme. Nilsson's performance of the familiar Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria"; again she appeared and this time played a Chopin Mazourka on the pianoforte. In every instance she was the complete artist, and the public, who had been charmed by her witcheries as Mozart's Zerlina and melted by the pathos of her singing in the last act of "La Traviata," were at a loss to say if she had shown herself a greater artist in song or in instrumental music, as a pianist or violinist. It was not until many years after she had returned to Europe to continue her operatic triumphs in St. Petersburg, Madrid, Vienna, Paris, and Berlin that I learned the story of her life, and with it the secret of her musical versatility; how she had started life as a player of the pianoforte and violin with her father at dances in the houses of the wealthy folk in her native town in Poland, gone to the conservatory in Lemberg to study the pianoforte, been taken to the Conservatory at Vienna by Professor Stengel (then her teacher, now her husband), because there was nothing left in his system of instruction from which she could profit, and there been advised to study singing instead of the pianoforte with Liszt, as her proud teacher had fondly hoped. It was Professor Epstein who gave the world one of the greatest singers of our generation, but in doing so he robbed it of a pianist of doubtless equal caliber. So far as I know, the story of Mme. Sembrich is without a parallel.

Signor Kaschmann was the barytone of the "Lucia" performance. He had a handsome face and figure, a good bearing, and disclosed familiarity with the stage, and considerable talent as an actor, but he was afflicted with that distressful vocal defect which singers of his school often call vibrato in order to affect to find a virtue in it. There is, indeed, artistic merit in a true vibrato which lends vitality to a voice, but when it degenerates into a tremolo, or wabble, it is a vice of the most unpardonable kind.

Another of the newcomers made his bow to the Metropolitan public on the third night of the season, October 26th, when "Il Trovatore" was brought forward. This was the tenor Signor Stagno, a stockily built, heavy, self-conscious man, of good stage features and bad stage manners. When his voice was first heard from behind the scenes, it sounded throaty, a squeezed-out, constrained tone, but later, when Manrico's display pieces came it rang out full and vibrant as a trumpet. It developed at once that he was a singer of the sideshow kind, with whom the be-all and end-all of his part and art lay in the high tones. So little of a musician was he that, being enthusiastically recalled after the "Di quella pira," he was unable to keep the key of C major in his head in spite of his stentorian proclamation of its tonic a few seconds before, and could not begin the repetition till the concert-master had plucked the first note of the air on his violin. A short time before I heard Mme. Patti perform the feat of beginning the trill which accompanies the melody by the orchestra in the middle of the dance song in "Dinorah" without a suggestive tone or chord after a hubbub and gladsome tumult that seemed, to have lasted several minutes. A new bass, Signor Mirabella, appeared in "I Puritani" on October 29th—a musical singer with a voice of large volume and ample range, and a self-possessed, easy, and effective stage presence.

On her second appearance Mme. Nilsson was seen in a part with which she was more intimately associated in the popular mind than any other singer in New York or London. The opera was "Mignon," the date October 31st. Ambroise Thomas's opera had its first American performance at the Academy of Music under the management of Maurice Strakosch, on November 22, 1871. With Mme. Nilsson, on that occasion as on this, was associated M. Capoul, the most ardent and fascinating lover known to opera in America, who not long before had risen from the ranks of French opra bouffe. Mme. Trebelli, who had created the part of Frederick in London, where, as in New York, Mme. Nilsson was the original Mignon, and for whom the composer had written the rondo-gavotte, "In veder l'amata stanza" (taking its melody from the entr'acte music preceding the second act), was also a member of Mr. Abbey's company, but Mme. Scalchi, who could wear man's attire and walk in tights more gracefully than any woman who ever appeared on the American operatic stage within my memory, was too popular in the part to be set aside for the sake of a newcomer, and Mme. Trebelli had to wait until October 27th before getting a hearing in opera. Meanwhile she sang industriously in concerts. The changes which had taken place in Mme. Nilsson's person and voice during the dozen years between her first appearance as Mignon and the one under consideration might naturally have been expected to affect her performance of the part. Many were ready to perceive the loss of some of the charms of youthful freshness and grace, which are indissolubly connected with any conception of this most poetical of Goethe's creatures. The result fulfilled their anticipations in a measure, for Mme. Nilsson's impersonation was more remarkable for its deep feeling in the dramatic portions than for lightness and gracefulness in the lyric. This loss brought with it a compensation, however. Many protests have been felt, when not expressed, against the tendency of singers to make Mignon a mere wilful, pettish, silly young woman. The poet's ideal was sufficiently despoiled by the unconscionable French librettist without this further desecration which effectually dispelled the last glimmer of the poetical light that ought always to shine about this strange child of the South. Too much of tropical passion, too much of undefined longing, too much of tenderness the part could hardly be invested with, but it is easily made silly by over-acting in the very place where the tendency to do so is strongest. The whole opera is one that must either be represented with extreme care in avoiding extravagant expression, or all effort to approach even distantly the ideals of the poet must be abandoned and the piece be given as if Goethe had never lived, and "Wilhelm Meister" had never been written.

Perhaps the latter plan would be the better one, for it is hard to think of Goethe during the performance of the opera without taking violent offense, and it would only be a relief to have all thought of him studiously kept out of mind. Yet, we would not willingly lose the pleasure which Ambroise Thomas provided in this, his best opera. It is to his credit that he felt the embarrassments which his subject caused. At one time he thought seriously of permitting the heroine to go the way of Goethe's "Mignon," and of offering the opera to the Thtre Lyrique instead of the Opra Comique, for which he had undertaken to write it. He did not carry out the plan, however, but instead thought to silence the carping of the Germans by composing a second conclusion, a dnouement allemand, in which Mignon falls dead, while listening to Philine's polacca in the last scene. A tragic end to a piece treated in the comedy manner throughout was too ridiculous, however, and the Germans would have none of the dnouement allemand. They raised a hue and cry against the opera, then heard it for the sake of its music, and ended by admiring its admirable parts without changing their minds about the desecration of their great poet.

It is no wonder that the opera-book was made. Such scruples as distressed the Germans never trouble French librettists, and the characters which Carr and Barbier found in Goethe's romance are as if born for the stage. What lyric possibilities do not lie in the Harper? Was ever a more perfect musical coquette dreamed of than Philine? Have not Mignon's songs drawn forth music from nearly every composer of eminence since Beethoven? The filling-in parts were on the surface of the story, and the character of their music could not be misconceived. Wilhelm Meister himself, in his character of a strolling player, had only to sacrifice his habit of reflection to be a dashing tenor. The temptation was certainly strong; the sacrilege was committed, and the verbal skeleton constructed out of things which were dearest in German literature, was tricked out with piquant music and ear-tickling roulades by the man who was not awed even by Shakespeare. Think of "Le Songe d'une Nuit d't"! With such characters the play is easily acted, and the music never fails to fascinate.

"La Traviata" was the next opera, produced on November 5th, with Mme. Sembrich as Violetta, and Capoul as Alfredo, and then came "Lohengrin" on November 7th. In Wagner's opera the parts of the heroine and hero were enacted by Nilsson and Campanini, who had sung in its first Italian performance at the Academy a decade before. Excellently sung in the best manner as understood by singers of the Italian school—a manner fully justified, let it be said in passing, by Signor Marchesi's Italian text—and magnificently dressed, the opera attracted the most numerous and brilliant audience since the opening night, and remained one of the most pronounced successes of the season. It served also to introduce Mme. Fursch-Madi, a dramatic singer, who, although not attractive in appearance, was one of the finest singers in her style and most conscientious artists known to her period. She was a French woman, who was graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, married M. Madier, a chef d'orchestre in the French capital, came to America to join the French company in New Orleans in 1874, and sang for three seasons (1879-'81) at Covent Garden. She spent the last years of her life in and about New York, singing in opera and concert, always a noble example to youthful aspirants, and died in poverty after great suffering in September, 1894. "La Sonnambula" followed on November 14th, and "Rigoletto" on November 16th, without noteworthy incident, except the first American appearance of Gaudignini as the Jester, and "Robert le Diable" (in Italian), with Fursch-Madi as Alice, Valleria as Isabella, Stagno and Mirabella. This performance was enlivened by an amusing incident. It will be recalled by people familiar with the history of the opera that Scribe and Meyerbeer first designed "Robert" for the Opra Comique, but remodeled it for the Grand. For a few moments in the incantation scene at this performance the audience seemed inclined to ignore the author's sober second thought, and accept the work as a comic instead of romantic opera. The wicked nuns, called back to life by the sorcery of Bertram, amid the ruins of the cloister, appeared to have been stinted by the undertaker in the matter of shrouds, and the procession of gray-wrapped figures in cutty sarks caused the liveliest merriment until the transformation took place, and serious interest was revived by the lovely face, form, and dancing of Mme. Cavalazzi.

"Il Barbiere," with Sembrich as a delightfully piquant Rosina, nevertheless moved with leaden feet in many of its scenes, because of the ponderous and lugubrious Stagno, who essayed a part far from his province, when he tried to sing the Count. On November 28th "Don Giovanni" was reached with the finest distribution of women's rles, I dare say, that New York has ever seen, and one that ranked well with the famous London one of Tietjens, Nilsson, and Patti. Mme. Fursch-Madi was Donna Anna, Mme. Nilsson Donna Elvira, and Mme. Sembrich Zerlina. For delvers in musical history the performance had curious interest because it partook somewhat of an anniversary character. It fell within a day of exactly fifty-eight years after Italian opera had first been heard in America (November 29, 1825). Save Mme. Patti we have heard no Zerlina comparable with Mme. Sembrich, and Mme. Nilsson's singing of the airs, "Ah, che mi dice mai," and "Mi tradi quell' alma ingrata" lingers in my memory as an impeccable exemplification of the true classic style. The performance suffered shipwreck, however, in the famous first finale, because of the untunefulness of the orchestra, and the incapacity of the enlisted stage bands. In "Mefistofele," on December 5th, Nilsson appeared as Marguerite and Helen of Troy, and Trebelli as Marta and Pantalis. Nilsson had fixed the ideal of Helen in Europe and New York, and it is she, I believe, who started the questionable practice of having one performer impersonate both Marguerite and the classic Queen. Boito has given us so little of Goethe's Gretchen in his delightful, but sketchy, opera that it does not make much difference how the part is acted; but Helen is a character that seemed cut to the very form of Nilsson—regal in beauty and carriage, soul-moving in voice, serene in pose and gesture. She fitted perfectly into the fairest picture that a lover of ancient Greek life could conjure up, and moved through the classic act like a veritable Hellenic queen. The beauty, majesty, the puissant charm of a perfect woman of the antique type—all were hers. Campanini, who, like Nilsson, had been seen in the opera before the Metropolitan Opera House entered the lists, sang on this evening with peculiar enthusiasm; and with reason. Not only had he been instrumental in giving the opera to the people of London and New York, but, on this occasion, he was singing under the baton of his younger brother, Cleofonte, then a modest maestro di cembalo trying his 'prentice hand at conducting; now the redoubtable leader of Mr. Hammerstein's forces at the Manhattan. Four years later Cleofonte Campanini came again to New York as conductor of his brother's company organized for the production of Verdi's "Otello."

On December 20th the one real novelty of Mr. Abbey's list had production. It was Ponchielli's "La Gioconda," with the following distribution of parts: La Gioconda, Mme. Nilsson; Laura Adorno, Mme. Fursch-Madi; La Cieca, Mme. Scalchi; Enzo Grimaldo, Signor Stagno; Barnaba, Signor Del Puente; Alvise Badiero, Signor Novara. Ponchielli's opera had been the principal novelty of the London season in the summer of 1883, where it was brought out by Mr. Gye. On this occasion it was performed with a gorgeousness of stage appointments, and a strength of ensemble which spoke volumes for the earnestness of the effort which Mr. Abbey was making to give grand opera in a style worthy of the American metropolis, and the reception which the public gave to the work afforded convincing proof of the eagerness for a change from the stale list which had so long constituted its operatic pabulum. The house was crowded from floor to ceiling, and the audience, having assembled for the enjoyment of an unusual pleasure, was soon wrought into an extremely impressionable state, which the striking pictures, excited action, and ingenious music intensified with every act.

The score of "La Gioconda" is full of ingeniously applied harmonical and orchestral devices, but they are all such as were learned from Ponchielli's great predecessor and successor, Verdi. As a matter of fact, Ponchielli, though he has been discovered as the father of the young veritist school of Italy, which seems already to have exhausted itself, was less original than Boito, who has distinguished himself above all the rout of Verdi's traducers and followers (for a space the category included the same names) by continence and self-criticism. As I write more than two decades have elapsed since he became known in New York, and in the interim we have seen the rise, and, also, the considerable fall of such imitators as Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and their superior, Puccini. We are now more able to see than we were twenty-five years ago how much Ponchielli, and all his tribe, owe to Verdi; and also how much ruder and less attentive to real beauty they were. Then we could hear besides his voice, that of Verdi in his music; now we can hear also tones which awaken echoes in Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Puccini. Of a sometimes mooted Wagnerian influence, there is only so much in this score as is to be found in all scores, German and French, and Italian, since the shackles of instrumental form were cast off. Ponchielli makes a little use of a recurring melodic phrase from La Cieca's "Voce di donna," but he pursues the device even less consistently than Verdi, and in a manner that is older than Meyerbeer. In melody he is wholly Italian, and of Wagner's use of typical phrases "La Gioconda" is as guiltless as Pergolesi's "Serva padrona."

What is admirable to the popular appreciation of to-day is the hot vigor of the drama, and the quick co-operation of music in its climacteric moments. This co-operation is most obvious in the employment of the device of contrast, which dominates the work and seems to have been the feature which has been most effectively seized upon by Ponchielli's pupils. It marks every climax in the opera, and becomes almost tiresome in its reiteration. In the first act the blind woman's prayer is set against a background composed of a gambling chorus and the wild whirl of the furlano, which ends abruptly with organ peals and a pious canticle—an effect repeated since in "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Tosca." In the second act in the twinkling of an eye, Gioconda is transformed from a murderous devil into a protecting saint; in the third Laura's accents of mortal woe commingle with the sounds of a serenade in the distance, and the disclosure of a supposed murder is made at the climax of a ball; in the fourth the calls of passing gondoliers break in upon Gioconda's soliloquies, which have for their subject suicide, murder, and self-sacrifice. The device is of a coarse tissue, but it is of the opera operatic, and it is now more familiar than it was when first disclosed to the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House, twenty-five years ago.

If it were necessary one might look for the source of this device of contrast in the literature to which Verdi directed attention when he turned his thoughts to Victor Hugo, and composed "Ernani" and "Rigoletto." Hugo was the prince of those novelists and dramatists who utilized glaring contrasts and unnatural contradictions to give piquancy to their creations and compel sympathy for monsters by uniting monumental wickedness with the most amiable of moral qualities. The story of "La Gioconda" is drawn from "Angelo, Tyrane de Padoue." In transforming this tragedy into an opera the librettist removed the scene from Padua to Venice, changed a wealthy actress into a poor street singer, and made the blind mother, who is barely mentioned in the play, into a prominent and moving character. There can be no question but that Boito ("Tobia Gorria" is but an anagramatic nom de plume of Arrigo Boito) was highly successful in remodeling the tragedy for operatic purposes, but he did not palliate its moral grossness or succeed in inviting our compassionate feelings for anyone entitled to them. The only personages who in this opera escape disaster are a pair of lovers, whose sufferings, as depicted or inferred, cannot be said to have refined the guilt out of their passion. We might infer that once the attachment of Enzo and Laura was pure and lovely, but all that we see of it is flauntingly criminal and doubly wicked. The happiness of Enzo, who to elope with another man's wife cruelly breaks faith with a woman whose love for him is so strong that she gives her life to save his, is hardly a consummation that ought to be set down as justifying so many blotches and blains, pimples and pustules, on the face of human nature. Laura's treachery is to Gioconda as well as to her husband, and has no redeeming trait. In fact, the blind woman is the only character in the opera who has moral health, and she seems to have been brought in only that her sufferings might intensify the bloody character of Barnaba, the spy. Even Gioconda, a character that has latent within it many effective elements, is sacrificed by the librettist to the one end—sensational effect through contrast and contradiction. Nowhere does she illustrate the spirit of blitheness which is put forth by her name, and only once does she allude to it. From the moment of her entrance till her death she is filled with torturing passion and conflicting emotions. Not la Gioconda she, but la Dolorosa—except for the bookmaker's desire for dramatic paradox. Against the desire to sympathize with her is thrust the revelation that her rival is never saved from death at her hands because of any repugnance of hers to murder. She would kill in an instant were it not that her vengefulness is overcome by gratitude to the benefactress of her mother. So it comes that the strongest feeling excited by the heroine, who dies a sacrifice to filial affection and passionate love, is one of simple pity—a feeling that is never absent from tender hearts, no matter how depraved the victim of misfortune.

But opera in the estate illustrated by "La Gioconda" scarcely justifies even an elementary moral disquisition. Moreover, what Ponchielli provoked is so much worse than what he himself did that his condemnation can go no further than purgatorial fires. It is in the operas of his pupils and would-be imitators, like Giordano, Tasca, and others, that filth and blood are supposed to fructify the music which rasps the nerves, even as the dramas revolt the moral stomach. In view of the products of the period in which began operatic veritism, so-called, "La Gioconda" seems almost washed in innocency, and if its music is at times highly spiced, it is at least frankly and simply melodious. Naturally he has followed his librettist in aiming at contrast, at higgledy-piggledy finales, at garish orchestration, at strenuous declamation in the dialogue not cast in melodic forms and at abrupt changes. But he has plenty, if not profound melodiousness. La Cieca's air, Enzo's romance, Laura's "Stella del Marinar," Barnaba's barcarole, and the ballet music have lived on in our concert rooms from that day to this.

"La Gioconda" was the last opera brought forward in the winter season, which ended on December 22d, leaving two out of thirty promised subscription performances to be supplied on the return of Mr. Abbey's forces from Boston, whither they went for the holidays. When he came back in a fortnight he gave "Carmen," on January 9th, with Trebelli, Campanini, and Del Puente (who had been in the cast of the original London production); repeated it on January 11th, and "La Gioconda" on January 12th.

On March 10th a spring season began, which lasted till April 12th. It added four operas to the list. Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet" (March 10), Flotow's "Martha" (March 14th), Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" (March 19th), and "Le Prophte" (March 21st). The last, which had first been heard in New York at the Astor Place Opera House four years after its original production in Paris, on April 16, 1849, had been absent from the current operatic list so long that it was to all intents and purposes a novelty to Mr. Abbey's patrons. The last week of the season brought two disappointments: Mmes. Nilsson and Sembrich both fell ill, the indisposition of the latter (or something else) causing the abandonment of Gounod's "Romo et Juliette," an opera that was new to New Yorkers, and was promptly brought out by Colonel Mapleson with Mme. Patti in his spring season at the Academy of Music.

As has already been set forth, Mr. Abbey made a monumental financial fiasco; but his was a heroic effort to galvanize Italian opera, which seemed moribund, into vitality. He showed an honest desire to keep all his promises to the public made when he asked support for his enterprise, and all in all, his administration was signalized by virtues too frequently absent in the doings of operatic managers. His stage sets were uniformly handsome, and some of them showed greater sumptuousness than the people had seen for many years; his orchestra, though faulty in composition as well as execution, did some admirable work under Signor Vianesi; his chorus was prompt, vigorous, and tuneful; his ensembles were carefully and intelligently composed, and his selection of operas was judicious from a managerial point of view. He gave to New York the strongest combination of women singers that the city had ever known; nor has it been equaled in any one season since. The financial failure of the enterprise caused no surprise among intelligent and impartial observers. One needed not to be prophetically gifted to foretell twenty-five years ago that New York could not support two such costly establishments as the Academy of Music and the Metropolitan Opera House. The world of fashion, which in the nature of things is the supporter of Italian opera, and has been ever since the art form was invented, was divided in its allegiance, and divided, moreover, in a manner which made an interchange of courtesies all but impossible. This threw the burden of maintaining the rival houses upon two limited groups of persons, and the loss was mutual.

In Mr. Abbey's prospectus he promised to produce twenty-four operas, which he named; he kept his promise as to all but five, these being "Lucrezia Borgia," "Linda di Chamouni," "Fra Diavolo," "Otello," and "Le Nozze di Figaro." "Romo et Juliette," which he attempted to give, but failed at the last, was not in the original list. Besides these performances, he gave fifty-eight outside of New York in visits to Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Washington, and Baltimore. The local record may be tabulated as follows:

Opera First performance Times given

"Faust" .................... October 22 ............ 6 "Lucia di Lammermoor" ...... October 24 ............ 3 "Il Trovatore" ............. October 26 ............ 3 "I Puritani" ............... October 29 ............ 1 "Mignon" ................... October 31 ............ 4 "La Traviata" .............. November 5 ............ 4 "Lohengrin" ................ November 7 ............ 6 "La Sonnambula" ............ November 14 ........... 2 "Rigoletto" ................ November 16 ........... 2 "Robert le Diable" ......... November 19 ........... 3 "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" .. November 23 ........... 3 "Don Giovanni" ............. November 28 ........... 5 "Mefistofele" .............. December 5 ............ 2 "La Gioconda" .............. December 20 ........... 4 "Carmen" ................... January 9 ............. 5 "Hamlet" ................... March 10 .............. 1 "Martha" ................... March 14 .............. 3 "Les Huguenots" ............ March 19 .............. 2 "Le Prophte" .............. March 21 .............. 1

There was one performance with a mixed program.



CHAPTER X

OPERATIC REVOLUTIONS

Colonel Mapleson and the stockholders of the Academy of Music and their friends were little disposed to yield to the new order of things without a struggle. The Academy was refurnished and a season of Italian opera begun on the same night on which Mr. Abbey opened his doors. Colonel Mapleson's company comprised Mmes. Patti, Gerster, Pappenheim, Pattini, and Josephine Yorke, and Signori Falletti, Nicolini, Perugini, Cherubini, Vicini, Lombardini, and Caracciolo. The performances were like those that had been the rule for years, except for the brilliancy which Mme. Patti lent to those in which she took part. But not even she could hold the fickle public. On the nights when she sang the house was two-thirds full; Mme. Gerster had established herself as a prime favorite, but when she sang on the "off nights" the house was two-thirds empty. The season was financially disastrous, though Colonel Mapleson's losses were not comparable to Mr. Abbey's, and he was not only brave enough to prepare for the next season's campaign, but adroit enough to persuade Mme. Patti to place herself under his guidance again. But, while he held out against Mr. Abbey and the new house, he was compelled to yield to the Metropolitan and German opera as established by Dr. Damrosch. Of the singers who helped Colonel Mapleson make his fight, one is still in enjoyment of popular favor. This is Mme. Nordica, who, though not a regular member of the company, effected her American operatic dbut at the Academy on November 26, 1883, in Gounod's "Faust." She was announced as Mme. Norton-Gower, and of her performance I wrote at the time in The Tribune:

Of Mrs. Norton-Gower the first statement must be that she gives abundant evidence of having been admirably trained in the spirit of Gounod's music and the tragedy. Nearly every number in the score which falls to the part of Margherita she sang with commendable intelligence and taste. The most obvious criticism was that the spirit so excellently conceived by her put a severe strain upon the matter in her control. It cost her a manifest effort to do what she well knew how to do, for she is not a phenomenal vocalist. She has a voice of fine texture, and her tones are generally sympathetic. She sings with feeling, but acts with more. Her performance was meritorious beyond the performances of any of Mr. Mapleson's women singers, Mmes. Patti and Gerster excepted.

That Mr. Abbey had made losses which were so great as to make him unwilling to remain at the head of the operatic forces at the Metropolitan Opera House was known long before the close of the first season. Before the spring representations began he made answer to the proposal of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera Company by saying that he would act as their manager without compensation for the next year, provided they would pay the losses which the first season would entail upon him. The directors had agreed in their original contract to save him whole to the extent of $60,000—a pitiful tenth part of what, according to Mr. Schoeffel, the losses finally aggregated; I am inclined to think, however, that Mr. Schoeffel has included the losses made in the other cities visited by the company. There were only sixty-one representations at the Metropolitan Opera House, and it is inconceivable that they averaged a deficit of over $9,000 each. They could not have cost that sum in fact, and many of the performances drew houses which at the prevailing prices (orchestra $6) must have yielded handsome returns. Whatever the sum which loomed up as a prospective loss, however, it was great enough to dissuade the directors from adopting Mr. Abbey's suggestion. Instead, they made up their minds cheerfully to pay their own loss, and at the beginning of the spring season, all negotiations having come to an end, sent Mr. Abbey a letter which read as follows:

Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Secretary's Office, March 14, 1884.

My Dear Sir: It gives me much pleasure to say that I am instructed by the president to tender you the use of the Opera House on April 21, 1884, for a benefit performance to yourself. I beg also to express my hope that the results of the benefit may in some measure be commensurate with the manner you have presented Italian opera and to say that it will give me great pleasure to do anything I can to aid in making the benefit a great success. Most sincerely yours,

Edmund C. Stanton, Secretary. To Henry E. Abbey.

In the meantime negotiations had already begun looking to the transfer of the house for the next season to Mr. Ernest Gye, who was manager at the time of Covent Garden, London. These negotiations were continued till deep in the summer and came to naught at the end. Of the reasons for the failure several became known to the public. One was the unwillingness of the directors to give Mr. Gye a free hand in the engagement of artists. The directors, who were active in determining the policy of the opera, were all devoted admirers of Mme. Nilsson; they were, in fact, the donors of the laurel wreath of gold which she received on the first night of the season. They were desirous that she should be re-engaged, though the weight of her contract had done much to break Mr. Abbey's financial back, and they were also a little fearful that Mr. Gye, the husband of Mme. Albani, would, not unnaturally, seek to put that singer in Mme. Nilsson's place. Meanwhile, the opera season at Covent Garden came to a close, and though Mr. Gye had not had Colonel Mapleson at Her Majesty's Theater to cope with, as in former seasons, but only English opera at Drury Lane, under the direction of Carl Rosa, the financial outcome was such as to suggest that Mr. Gye's attitude toward opera at the Metropolitan was something like that which the Germans describe as a cat walking about a dish of hot porridge.

At intervals bits of gossip reached New York by cable, but none of them was of a comforting character. One week it was said to be the exorbitance of Mme. Nilsson's demands which gave Mr. Gye pause, and the next the difficulty of finding a tenor worthy of succeeding Signor Campanini and capable of satisfying the captious, critical, and fastidious people of New York. There were suspicions, too, that some of the embarrassments which confronted Mr. Gye and the Metropolitan directors were due to the machinations of that sly and persuasive old dog, Colonel Mapleson. Nilsson had but one rival, and she was Mme. Patti. Her Colonel Mapleson had secured; not only her, but, report said, Scalchi, Tremelli, and Tamagno also. Mme. Scalchi had been a strong prop of the first Metropolitan season, and Tremelli and Tamagno, though they had not been heard in America, had names to conjure with. Tremelli never came, and it was not until 1890, when Mr. Abbey was again in the traces of an Italian opera manager, and was exploiting both Mme. Patti and Mme. Albani, that Tamagno was heard in New York.

Failures of such magnitude as those of Mr. Gye in London, Colonel Mapleson at the Academy of Music, and Mr. Abbey at the Metropolitan Opera House, naturally set the beards of the wiseacres a-wagging. Clearly the world of opera was out of joint and a prophet with a new evangel seemed to be needed to set it right. In New York the efforts had been made along old lines, but Mr. Gye had ventured on an experiment which suggested the polyglot scheme which became the fixed policy of the Metropolitan Opera House some ten years later. Along with the old Italian list Mr. Gye gave some of Wagner's lyric dramas in German, and even ventured an English opera done into German—C. Villiers Stanford's "Savonarola." Was Italian opera dead? So it almost seemed; but the incidents attending its demise were familiar to operatic history and as old as Italian opera in London and New York. When the art form was making its first struggles for habilitation in the British metropolis Addison thought the spectacle so amusing that he wrote an essay in which he pictured the amazement of the next generation on learning that in the days of its predecessors English men and women had sat out entire evenings listening to an entertainment in a foreign tongue. And he said in that essay many other excellent things, the truth and force of which are just as deserving of appreciation (and just as needful) now as they were in the time of the writer.

The consciousness of the absurdity of Italian opera transported in the "original package" (to speak commercially) to England and America seems to have been constant with the Anglo-Saxon peoples. Of this the legion of managerial wrecks which strew the operatic shores or float as derelicts bear witness. Bankers, manufacturers, and noblemen have come to the rescue of ambitious managers, or become ambitious managers themselves, only to go down in the common disaster. Mr. Delafield wrote his name high among his fellows across the water by losing half a million of dollars in a single season—a feat which no man equaled till Mr. Abbey came. Taylor got himself into the King's Bench Prison by his venturesomeness, and, once there, found consolation in a philosophy which taught him that of all places in the world the properest one for an opera manager was a prison. But I have mentioned this before.

Time was when the popular taste found complete satisfaction in the melodies of the Italian composers. Time was when the desire for novelty in the operatic field could be satisfied only by importations from Italy. Time was when Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen went to Italy to study operatic composition and wrote in the Italian manner to Italian texts. All this had changed at the period of which I am writing—Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen had operas in their own languages and schools of composition of their own. But still New York and London clung to Italian sweets.

And Italy had become sterile. Verdi seemed to have ceased writing. There were whisperings of an "Iago" written in collaboration with Boito, but it was awaiting ultimate criticism and final polish while the wonderful old master was engaged in revamping some of his early works. Boito was writing essays and librettos for others, with the unfinished "Nerone" lying in his desk, where it is still hidden. Ponchielli had not succeeded in getting a hearing for anything since "La Gioconda." Expectations had been raised touching an opera entitled "Dejanice," by Catalani, but I cannot recall that it ever crossed the Italian border. The hot-blooded young veritists who were soon to flood Italy with their creations had not yet been heard of. The champions of a change from Italian to German ideals seemed to have the argument all in their favor. The spectacle presented by the lyric stage in Germany and France seemed to show indubitably what course opera as an art form must needs take if it was to live. Gluck, Weber, and Wagner, all Germans, had pointed the way. In 1883 five new operas by English composers reached the dignity of performance, and it was significant that two of them—Mr. Mackenzie's "Colomba" and Mr. Stanford's "Savonarola"—were performed in German, the former in Hamburg, the latter in London. There were many lovers of opera in New York besides the musical reviewer for The Tribune who believed that if America was ever to have a musical art of its own the way could best be paved by supplanting Italian performances by German at the principal home of opera in the United States. We should, it is true, still have foreign artists singing foreign works in a foreign tongue, but the change in repertory would promote an appreciation and an understanding of truthful, dramatic expression in a form which claimed close relationship with the drama.

This was the state of affairs when, negotiations having failed with both Mr. Abbey and Mr. Gye, the summer days of 1884 being nearly gone and the prospect of a closed theater confronting the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House, Dr. Leopold Damrosch submitted to them a proposition to give opera in German under his management, but on their account. Either the forcefulness and plausibility of his arguments or the direfulness of their need led the directors to make the venture. Dr. Damrosch went to Germany toward the end of August; toward the end of September he was back in New York, ready to announce a season of opera in German, with a completely organized company and a promising list of operas. Few persons knew what was coming, and the information brought with it a shock of surprise. Dr. Damrosch had been a vigorous factor in the musical life of New York for twelve years, but he had never been identified with opera in the public mind, and, in fact, his practical familiarity with it was little. He had come to New York from Breslau, where he was conductor of the Orchesterverein (a symphonic organization) in 1871. He had had some practical experience with the theater at Weimar, where he played with the orchestra of the Court Theater under the direction of Liszt, had been musical director at the Municipal Theater in Posen and Breslau, but for short periods only. He had not gone through the career of the typical German conductor for the reason that he was not a musician "vom Hause aus"—as the Germans express it. He was a physician turned musician—a member of one of the scientific professions who had abandoned science for art.

Dr. Damrosch was a remarkable man. He was born in Posen, Prussia, on October 22, 1832. He studied music in the home circle, like the generality of German lads, but his parents had chosen the profession of medicine for him, and he had acquiesced in the choice, matriculating in the medical department of the University of Berlin after he had completed the usual gymnasial course of studies. He had not abandoned his love for music, though he so devoted himself to medicine that in due course he was graduated with honors and received his degree. Incidentally, like Schumann at Heidelberg, he continued to study music, Hubert Ries being his teacher in violin playing, and the venerable Professor Dehn in counterpoint and composition. After graduation he returned to his native Posen to practise medicine, and remained there thus occupied till 1854.

In 1855 the physician's earlier and stronger love for music achieved the mastery over his adopted profession, and he started out into the world as a concert violinist. He played at Magdeburg and at Berlin, where his talents were so much admired that on the recommendation of friends in the Prussian capital he went to Weimar, where he won the friendship of Liszt and joined the body of enthusiastic young musicians—Peter Cornelius and others—who had rallied around the great musician and were fighting the battles of the new German school. His musical creed was formed here, as he himself confessed in a series of articles written for the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik. His first official appointment was as director of the music at the Stadttheater in Posen, and in 1866 he was called to fill the same post at Breslau. After he had resigned this position he remained in Breslau as director of the Orchesterverein, which he called into existence until he accepted the call of the Mnnergesangverein Arion in New York in 1871. Though Dr. Damrosch had achieved a European reputation before he came to New York, his best and most enduring work was accomplished here, where he organized the Oratorio Society, which has had a continuous existence since 1873, and the Symphony Society, which, amid many vicissitudes and with several reincarnations, has lived since 1877. The establishment of German opera, though it did not endure, was yet his crowning achievement, and at the culmination of the glory which it brought him he died. But of that presently and in its proper place.

The artistic basis of the scheme which Dr. Damrosch put into effect was essentially German. It dispensed with the star system (except so far as the engagement of Mme. Materna was a deference to it) and substituted instead a good ensemble, unusual attention to the mounting of operas, and the bringing out of dramatic effects through other stage accessories. The change of base brought with it of necessity a change of repertory, and the Italian operas which had formed the staple of New York lists for years were put aside for the masterpieces of German and French composers. One or two efforts to include works of a lighter lyrical character sufficed to demonstrate the wisdom of a strict adherence to the list of tragic works of large dimensions and spectacular nature, and the sagacity of Dr. Damrosch was shown in nothing more clearly than in his choice of operas for representation.

There were few familiar names in the list of singers printed in the prospectus. The most familiar, and the greatest, was that which has already been announced as the one concession made to the star system—Mme. Amalia Materna. Twenty-five years ago the story of Bayreuth was a household word throughout the civilized world, and Mme. Materna had been associated with the Wagner festivals since the first held, in 1876. In May, 1882, she was brought to New York by Theodore Thomas for the Music Festival, held in the Seventh Regiment Armory, and with her Bayreuth colleagues—Winkelmann, tenor, and Scaria, bass—she took part in concerts and festivals which Mr. Thomas gave in 1884 in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Chicago. After returning to Europe after the American engagement of 1882, she had gone straight to Bayreuth, where she "created" the part of Kundry in the original production of "Parsifal," alternating afterward in the character with Frulein Brandt, who was associated with her in Dr. Damrosch's Metropolitan company. When she came to the Metropolitan (she made her first appearance after the season was well under headway, in January, 1885) Mme. Materna was thirty-eight years old and her splendid powers were at their zenith. She had sung in public since her thirteenth year, at first in church, then in comic opera in Graz and Vienna. While singing at a small theater in the Austrian capital she became a member of the Court Opera, attracted wide attention by her dramatic abilities in the grand operas of its repertories, and at once leaped into fame by her impersonation of Brnnhilde at the first Bayreuth festival, in 1876.

Next in significance in the first Metropolitan German Company was Marianne Brandt, whose influence in creating new ideals and developing new tastes among the opera-goers of New York was even greater than that of Mme. Materna, because her powers were no less and her labors of longer duration. She came here after having won praise from the critics of London, where she had sung at the first performance in England of "Tristan und Isolde" at Drury Lane in 1882. That was ten years after she had effected her London dbut. The principal Coloratursngerin of the company was Frau Marie Schroeder-Hanfstngl, then a member of the Frankfort Opera, who was a native of Breslau and a friend of the Damrosch family while they were there. As Mlle. Schroeder she had already established a reputation at that time in Paris, where she had sung at the Thtre Lyrique through the mediation of her teacher, Mme. Viardot-Garcia. The jugendlich Dramatische was Frau Auguste Seidl-Krauss, who was announced throughout the season by her maiden name, but had been married for about a year to Anton Seidl, then conductor at the Stadttheater in Bremen, who was soon to become a most puissant factor in the sum of New York's musical activities. The principal tenor was Anton Schott, who had made a considerable reputation as a Wagnerian singer in the opera houses of Munich, Berlin, Schwerin, Hanover, and London, and had made the Italian tour with Angelo Neumann's Wagner company which Seidl conducted in 1882. Earlier in life he had been an artillery officer in the German army, which fact coupled with his explosive manner of singing prompted one of Dr. von Blow's witticisms. The doctor had been conductor of the opera in Hanover when Schott was there and had conceived a violent dislike for him. Some years after the latter's New York season, conversing socially with von Blow, I chanced to mention Schott's name.

"Ah! do you know Schott?" asked the irascible little doctor; "ein eigenthmlicher Snger, nicht war? Eigentlich ist er ein Militrtenor—ein Artillerist. Sie wissen er singt manchmal zu hoch—da distonirt er; gewhnlich singt er zu tief—da destonirt er; und wenn er gelegentlich rein singt—da detonirt er!" The ingenious play on words is quite untranslatable, but my readers who understand German but are unfamiliar with musical terms will be helped to an appreciation of the fun by being told that "dis," "des," and "de" are the German names applied respectively to D sharp, D flat, and D natural. No doubt Dr. von Blow had perpetrated his little joke before he shot it off for my benefit. It was a habit of his to have such brilliant impromptus ready and ingeniously to invite an occasion for their introduction. But they always had the effect of brilliant spontaneity. It was on another occasion, when he was praising the performance of another German tenor, and I had interposed the suggestion that to me he seemed to lack virility, that he burst out with:

"But, my dear fellow, a tenor isn't a man; it's a disease!"

I supplied the quotation marks in my mind, for though the remark was his, it had served him on at least one other occasion, as I chanced to know.

Other members of the company were Anna Slach, Anna Stern, Hermine Bely, Adolf Robinson, barytone (another of Dr. Damrosch's professional friends from Breslau); Josef Staudigl (bass, son of the great Staudigl); Josef Koegel, bass; Emil Tiffero, Herr Udvardi, Otto Kemlitz, Ludwig Wolf, Josef Miller, and Herr Schneller. John Lund, who came from Kroll's, in Berlin, and Walter Damrosch, were chorus masters and assistant conductors. The first season began on November 17, 1884, with a performance of "Tannhuser."



CHAPTER XI

GERMAN OPERA AT THE METROPOLITAN

After German opera began at the Metropolitan Opera House it endured seven years. It was only at the outset that it had the opposition of what had been the established rgime of Italian opera at the Academy of Music, but it was pursued throughout its career by desultory enterprises and hampered greatly by the fact that the stockholders were never unitedly and enthusiastically in favor of it or the principles of art which it represented. Throughout the period there was a hankering for the fleshpots of Egypt in the region of the Metropolitan boxes. It seems desirable, therefore, that, though it is my purpose more specifically in the next few chapters to tell the story of the seven years of German opera, I should turn the light occasionally on the doings at rival institutions. The first of the seven years at the Metropolitan Opera House was the seventh year of Colonel Mapleson's tenancy of the Academy of Music. He opened his season on November 10, 1884, but before then James Barton Key and Horace McVicker experimented with Italian opera for three weeks at the Star Theater. The organization was composed of operatic flotsam and jetsam, such as is always to be found plentifully in New York after operatic storms in South America or Mexico, and was neither better nor worse than scores of other companies heard here before and since. Like most of these, too, it had a mouth-filling name—the Milan Grand Opera Company—but, like few of them, it had a capital tenor, Signor Giannini, who at a somewhat later period we shall find in Colonel Mapleson's forces. Other members of the company whose names are worthy of preservation were Maria Peri (soprano leggiero), Signora Damerini (dramatic soprano), Signora Mestress (contralto), and Signor Serbolini (bass). The experiment resulted in financial failure, but it introduced to New York the South American opera, "Il Guarany," by Seor Gomez. In Colonel Mapleson's company were Mme. Patti, Signora Ricetti, Mme. Emma Nevada, Signor Nicolini, Signor Vicini, and Signor Cardinali (tenors), Mme. Scalchi, Mme. Fursch-Madi, Signori de Pasqualis, Cherubini, Caracciolo (bassos), Signor de Anna (barytone), and Signor Bassetti (tenor), otherwise Mr. Charles Bassett, like Mme. Nevada, an American singer. The subscription ended on December 27th, and in the following week he gave four extra performances, at two of which he reduced the prices, though they were of a higher artistic order than the others. The relations between Mapleson and the stockholders of the Academy were becoming strained, and in a speech which he made at his annual benefit he remarked upon their absence sarcastically. It was plain that their patience had given out and that they were weary of extending to him the financial support which had helped him through the season. In my review of the season I find this remark, which is indicative of their indifference to the fate of their lessee: "The condition of the house gives evidence of an unwillingness to sink money in an unlucrative enterprise. It is somewhat discouraging to the patrons of the house to sit in ramshackle chairs which threaten to deposit them incontinently on the floor at any moment, and the collapse of a stall has frequently accentuated a musical or dramatic climax in the season just ended."

The season ended with many promises unfulfilled, for which the impresario placed the blame upon the directors, who, he said, had not given him sufficient use of the Academy stage. His explanations were not always wholly ingenuous, however. Thus he had announced that "Lakm" would be given, with the composer, M. Delibes, in the conductor's chair. Now, in the season before, Mme. Gerster had been so desirous to create the part of the heroine in America (it being one which afforded fine scope for her lovely powers, and which she had studied with the composer) that she had bought the performing rights. But nothing came of her ambition, and it was an open secret that Heugel, the publisher, had quarreled with Mapleson because of unwarranted practices with his scores in London. In the midst of his troubles Colonel Mapleson announced that he had engaged Mme. Nilsson for the season of 1885-86. There was as little foundation for this announcement as for the promise of "Lakm."

With ruin staring him in the face, Mapleson concluded the season. He bettered his fortunes a trifle in Boston and Philadelphia, but failed again in New Orleans and St. Louis. Then he went to San Francisco, where the fact that Mme. Nevada was a native of the Pacific Slope was a helpful factor. After the close of the season at the Metropolitan Opera House he gave a "spring season" of six performances in one week, beginning on April 20th. He repeated the performance in Boston and then sailed for Europe, stopping in New York only long enough to institute two suits at law—one against Signor Nicolini to recover $10,000 for failing to sing, and one against Mme. Nevada for $3,000, alleged to have been overpaid her. The suits, in all likelihood, were merely moves in the managerial game which he was playing in London and New York. In the seventh of these "Chapters of Opera" I described as the crowning achievement of Colonel Mapleson in the season full of noteworthy incidents the circumstance that he had succeeded in owing Mme. Patti some $5,000 or $6,000. Nicolini was Patti's husband.

More than ever it looked in the spring of 1885 as if Italian opera had received its quietus. The demoralization of the Academy of Music was complete. In London there prevailed a state of affairs so anomalous and startling that the newspaper critics were cudgeling their brains in a vain effort to find an explanation. For the first time in one hundred and fifty-eight years the British metropolis was without opera; for the first time in thirty-nine years (except in 1856, when fire made it impossible) the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden had failed to open its doors on Easter Tuesday. Mr. Gye and his backers refused to venture their fortunes again, and the lease of Her Majesty's was also going begging. In New York Colonel Mapleson had held one good card which he did not seem to know how to play: the season compassed the twenty-fifth anniversary of the operatic dbut of Mme. Patti. There ought, for excellent and obvious reasons, to have been a fitting celebration of the event; but there was not. On November 26th, two days after the date, Colonel Mapleson gave a performance of "Martha," with Mmes. Patti and Scalchi in the principal women's parts. After the opera a rout of supernumeraries, choristers, and other boys and men engaged for the purpose, carrying torches, followed the diva's carriage to the Windsor Hotel, where she was serenaded. That was all. It was so undignified and inadequate that it provoked some of Mme. Patti's friends to arrange the banquet in her honor which I have described in Chapter VI. Had Signor Brignoli, who was the Edgardo to Adelina Patti's Lucia at the Academy on November 24, 1859, been spared in life and health a few weeks longer (Signor Brignoli died in October, 1884), his friends would probably have urged an association of the two artists in a gala performance of Donizetti's opera. This would have provided an appropriate and delightful celebration, and it would not have been difficult to marshal a number of interesting relics of the period which saw the operatic advent of Mme. Patti, though all of them would have appeared much worse for the wear of a quarter-century than she. Of the valiant champions who were leading the contending operatic armies of the time, Arditi, Maretzek, and Strakosch were still with us. The first was filling, as of yore, the leader's chair at the Academy and doing yeoman's service in the unobtrusive and modest manner which always characterized him; the second, withdrawn from all connection with operatic management, was watching the boiling and bubbling of the caldron with amused interest and spicing his comments with capitally told reminiscences of opera a generation before; the third was still chasing the fickle goddess with fugitive essays as impresario. There were even remains of the critics of those days still active in the world of letters—Richard Grant White, for instance, and George William Curtis, one of my predecessors on The Tribune—and they would undoubtedly have grown young again and been warmed into enthusiastic utterance by eager memories of the dainty dbutante and the singers who had preceded her—Grisi, Bosio, Piccolomini, and the rest.

A vast amount of reminiscences would have been justified by such a celebration, for it would have thrown a bright sidelight on the marvelous career of Mme. Patti, a career without parallel in the history of the last half-century. Within three years after she made her first essay "our little Patti," as she was then fondly spoken of, had achieved the queenship of the lyric stage; and, now, twenty-two years later, her title had not suffered the slightest impairment. Within the time singers who had won the world's admiration had been born, educated, and lifted to the niches prepared for them by popular appreciation, but all far below the place where Patti sat enthroned. Stars of great brilliancy had flashed across the firmament and gone out in darkness, but the refulgence of Patti's art remained undimmed, having only grown mellower and deeper and richer with time. Truth is, Mme. Patti was then, and is still, twenty-five years later, a musical miracle; and the fact that she was in New York to sing in the very spot in which she began her career twenty-five years before should have been celebrated as one of the proudest incidents in the city's musical annals. For the generation of opera-goers who grew up in the period which ought to be referred to for all time in the annals of music as The Reign of Patti, she set a standard by which all aspirants for public favor were judged except those whose activities were in a widely divergent field. Not only did she show them what the old art of singing was, but she demonstrated the possibility of its revival. And she did this while admiring enthusiastically the best results of the dramatic spirit which pervades musical composition to-day. Her talent was so many-sided and so astonishing, no matter from which side it was viewed, that rhapsody seems to be the only language left one who attempts analysis or description of it. Her voice, of unequaled beauty, was no more a gift of nature than the ability to assimilate without effort the things which cost ordinary mortals years of labor and vexation of soul. It was perpetually amazing how her singing made the best efforts of the best of her contemporaries pale, especially those who depended on vocal agility for their triumphs. Each performance of hers made it plainer than it had been before that her genius penetrated the mere outward glitter of the music and looked upon the ornament as so much means to the attainment of an end; that end, a beautiful interpretation of the composer's thought. No artist of her time was so perfect an exponent as she of the quality of repose. So far as appearances went it was as easy for her to burden the air with trills and roulades as it was to talk. She sang as the lark sings; the outpouring of an ecstasy of tones of almost infinite number and beauty seemed in her to be a natural means of expression. Her ideas of art were the highest, and it was a singular testimony of her earnestness that, while educated in the old Italian school of vocalization and holding her most exalted supremacy as a singer of Rossini's music, her warmest love, by her own confession, was given, not to its glittering confections, but to the serious efforts of the most dramatic writers. This must be remembered in the list of her astonishing merits now when her voice can no longer call up more than "the tender grace of a day that is dead"; mine was the proud privilege and great happiness of having heard her often in her prime. But I must get down to the real business of this chapter.

The first German performance at the Metropolitan took place on November 17, 1884. The opera was "Tannhuser" and the distribution of parts as follows: Elizabeth, Mme. Krauss; Venus, Frulein Slach; a Young Shepherd, Frulein Stern; the Landgrave, Josef Koegel; Tannhuser, Anton Schott; Wolfram, Adolf Robinson; Walther von der Vogelweide, Emil Tiffero; Biterolf, Josef Miller; Heinrich der Schreiber, Otto Kemlitz; Reinmar, Ludwig Wolf. The performance made no claim upon special analysis or description. Its highest significance consisted in the publication which it made with reference to the new ideals in operatic representation which came in with the new movement. No doubt to a large portion of the audience, still judging by the old standards, much of it must have been inexplicable, much of it (especially the singing of Herr Schott) little short of monstrous. To a smaller portion, familiar with the opera, the language of its book and the spirit of the play, as well as the music, it came as a vivid realization of the purposes of the poet-composer. To all but the German element in the audience the opera itself was practically a novelty. "Tannhuser" had not been incorporated in the Italian repertory as "Lohengrin" had, and only those knew it who had attended the sporadic German performances of earlier decades conducted by such men as Bergmann, Anschtz, and Neuendorff. The first New York performance took place on August 27, 1859, at which the Mnnergesangverein Arion supplied the choruses.

Wagner once described his Tannhuser as "a German from head to foot," and it was doubtless because Dr. Damrosch saw in it a representative quality that he chose it for his opening. There was patriotism as well as lovely artistic devotion, too, in the choice of "Fidelio" for the second performance, on November 19th. Beethoven's opera had almost as little association with Italian opera as "Tannhuser," and it was noteworthy that the only portion of the audience room which was not filled was that occupied by the stockholders' boxes. It was an English company that, in September, 1839, had introduced "Fidelio" to New York, and with it made such successful competition with the Italian company of the day that it was performed fourteen times in succession. Mr. Mapleson made a pitiful essay with it in March, 1882, at the Academy, but to recall as vivid and vital a performance as that under discussion one had to go back to the days of Mme. Johannsen and her associates, who gave German opera in 1856. In Dr. Damrosch's performance Marianne Brandt effected her entrance on the American stage, and the memory of her impersonation of the heroine is still one of the liveliest and most fragrant memories of those memorable days. The dramatic framework of "Fidelio" is weak, its construction faulty. Only one ethical idea is presented in it with real vividness, but it is an idea which is peculiarly dear to the German heart—the saving power of woman's love. "Fidelio" is a tale of wifely devotion, and Beethoven bent all his energies to a glorification of his heroine's love and fidelity. To represent the character faithfully has been the highest ambition of German singers for a century. In that time not many more than a dozen have achieved high distinction in it; and Marianne Brandt is among the number. On its musical side her performance was thrillingly effective, but on its histrionic it rose to grandeur. Every word of her few speeches, every note of her songs, every look of her eyes and expression of her face was an exposition of that world of tenderness which filled the heart of Leonore. Nine-tenths of the action which falls to the part of Leonore is by-play, and by-play of the kind which is made particularly difficult by the time consumed by the music, which is not wisely adjusted with reference to the promotion of the action. Yet all these waits while Leonore is in view were filled by Frulein Brandt with little actions which tended to develop the character so sadly left in the background by the playwright, but so lovingly treated by the composer. It was down to its smallest detail a picture of a woman impelled by one idea, in which her whole soul had been resolved, and which had grown out of a lofty conception of love and duty. There was nothing of the petty theatrical in Frulein Brandt, and it was only an evidence of the sincerity of her devotion to the art work which made her bend over and stroke the wrist which she had freed from manacles while the powerful personages of the play were bowing before her as a pattern of conjugal love and the mimic populace were shouting their jubilations over salvation accomplished.

At the third representation, on November 21st, Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" was brought forward to introduce Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstngl; and at the fourth tribute to the characteristic German spirit was paid by the production of Weber's "Der Freischtz." From the day of its birth this has been the opera in which the romantic spirit of the German race has found its most vivid reflection. The sombre lights and mysterious murmurings of the German forests pervade it; the spectres of that paganism from which the sturdy Northerners could be weaned only by compromise and artifice flit through it. The Wild Huntsman overshadows it and, though he says not a word, he powerfully asserts his claim upon the trembling admiration of those who keep open hearts for some of his old companions of pre-Christian days—especially for the burly fellow who under a new name is welcomed joyfully every Christmastide. In another sense, too, "Der Freischtz" is a national opera; the spirit of its music is drawn from the art-form which the people created. Instead of resting on the highly artificial product of the Italian renaissance, it rests upon popular song—folk-song, the song of the folk. Its melodies echo the cadences of the Volkslieder in which the German heart voices its dearest loves. Instead of shining with the light of the Florentine courts it glows with the rays of the setting sun filtered through the foliage of the Black Forest. Yet "Der Freischtz" failed on this its revival—failed so dismally that Dr. Damrosch did not venture upon a single repetition. The lesson which it taught had already been suggested by "Fidelio," but now it was made plain and Dr. Damrosch paid heed to it at once. The dimensions of the Metropolitan Opera House forbade the intimacy which operas founded on the German Singspiel demand for appreciation, and spoken dialogue, especially in a foreign tongue, was painfully destructive of artistic illusion. The operas which followed were more to the purpose: "William Tell," on November 28th, with Robinson as the hero, Schroeder-Hanfstngl as Mathilde, Slach as Gemmy, Staudigl as Gessler, Koegel as Walter, Udvardi as Arnold, and Brandt exemplifying a new spirit in opera by her assumption of the unimportant part of Tell's wife; "Lohengrin," on December 3d, with Krauss, Brandt, Schott, and Staudigl in the principal parts; "Don Giovanni," on December 10th, with Schroeder-Hanfstngl as Donna Anna, Hermine Bely as Zerlina, Brandt as Elvira, Robinson as the Don, Koegel as the Commander, and Udvardi as Ottavio; "Le Prophte," on December 17th, with Brandt as Fids (one of her greatest rles), Schroeder-Hanfstngl as Bertha, and Schott as John of Leyden; "La Muette de Portici" (otherwise "Masaniello") on December 29th, with Schott as the hero and Isolina Torri as Fenella. There was an interruption of this spectacular list on January 2, 1885, when "Rigoletto" was given to gratify the ambition of Herr Robinson to be seen and heard as the Jester, and of Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstngl to sing the music of Gilda. In this opera Frulein Brandt played the part of Maddelena and interpolated a Spanish song sung in German. Then, on January 5th, came Mme. Materna's first operatic appearance in America, in a repetition of "Tannhuser."

Before continuing the record a few notes on some of these operas and their performance may not be amiss. There was little that was noteworthy about the representation of "Don Giovanni" except Dr. Damrosch's effort to do justice to the famous finale, the full effectiveness of which failed nevertheless because of the arrangement of the stage, which was that of the preceding season. "Les Huguenots" was a distinct disappointment. "La Muette de Portici," which was as good as new to the majority of the audience, acquired historical interest from close association with "William Tell." It was something of an anomaly that, though Rossini's opera had made its appearance during the many years of Italian domination whenever a tenor came who could be counted on to make a sensation with his high notes in the familiar trio of men, Auber's opera, its inspiration as a type, had had so few representations that it had passed out of memory except for its overture. But the history of "La Muette" is full of anomalies. Its story is Neapolitan and there is Neapolitan color in its music; but it is nothing if not French. It inspired Rossini to write "William Tell" and Meyerbeer to write "Les Huguenots" for the French stage, and is the masterpiece of its author; but Auber is the only Frenchman among the great composers for the Acadmie in the first half of the nineteenth century. Wagner defended it against the taste of the Parisians, who preferred Rossini and Donizetti, and was snubbed for his pains by the editor of the Gazette Musicale, who was an officer of the French government. Von Weber condemned as coarse the instrumentation which Wagner praised for its fire and truthfulness. Its heroine is dumb; yet to her is assigned the loveliest music in the score.

"Lohengrin" better than "Tannhuser" gave the public an opportunity to study the change in matter and spirit which had been introduced into local opera by the coming of the Germans to the Metropolitan.

Mme. Materna's first appearance on January 5th was followed by a second on January 7th as Valentine in "Les Huguenots," and a third on January 16th in Halvy's "La Juive." By this time Dr. Damrosch was ready with the first of the large Wagnerian productions which were a part of the dream which it was fated should be realized, not by him, but by his successor, whose name was thereby made illustrious in the operatic annals of New York. On January 30th "Die Walkre" was performed, with the following cast: Brnnhilde, Amalia Materna; Fricka, Marianne Brandt; Sieglinde, Auguste Krauss; Siegmund, Anton Schott; Wotan, Josef Staudigl; Hunding, Josef Koegel; Gerhilde, Marianne Brandt; Ortlinde, Frulein Stern; Waltraute, Frulein Gutjar; Schwertleite, Frulein Morse; Helmwige, Frau Robinson; Siegrune, Frulein Slach; Grimgerde, Frau Kemlitz; Rossweise, Frulein Brandl.

"Die Walkre" had been presented before in New York at a so-called Wagner festival at the Academy of Music on April 2, 1877, under the direction of Adolf Neuendorff; but the memories of that production were painful when they were not amusing, and, though much of the music of the Nibelung trilogy had been heard in the concert room, this was practically the first opportunity the people of New York had to learn from personal experience what it was that Wagner meant by a union of arts in the lyric drama. Dr. Damrosch had made an earnest effort to meet the standard set by the Bayreuth festivals. The original scenery and costumes were faithfully copied, except that for the sake of increased picturesqueness Herr Hock, the stage manager, had draperies replace the door in Hunding's hut, which, shaking loose from their fastenings, fell just before Siegmund began his love song, and disclosed an expanse of moonlit background. In the third act, too, there was a greater variety of colors in the costumes of the Valkyrior. Frulein Brandt again disclosed her artistic devotion by enacting the part of Fricka and also leading the chorus of Valkyrior; but Mme. Materna was the inspiration of the performance. It was a surprise to those who had already learned to admire her to see how in the character of Brnnhilde she towered above herself in other rles. Both of the strong sides of the character had perfect exemplification in her singing and acting—the wild, impetuous, exultant freedom of voice which proclaimed the Valkyria's joy in living and doing until the catastrophe was reached, and the deep, unselfish, tender nature disclosed in her sympathy with the ill-starred lovers and her immeasurable love for Wotan. Her complete absorption in the part fitted her out with a new gamut of expression. "If anything can establish a sympathy between us and the mythological creatures of Wagner's dramas," I wrote at the time, "that thing is the acting and singing of Materna." The drama made a tremendous impression, and in the three weeks which remained of the season (including some supplementary performances) "Die Walkre" had seven representations.

The remaining incidents of the season may now be hurried over to make room for a record of the catastrophe which marked its close. By the middle of January it was reported that the receipts were double those of the corresponding period in the previous year, notwithstanding that the price of admission had been reduced nearly one-half. By this time, too, the board of directors had decided to continue the policy adopted at the suggestion of Dr. Damrosch and engage him as director for the next year. This decision had not been reached, however, without consideration of other projects. Charles Mapleson, a son of the director of the Academy of Music, and doubtless only his go-between, submitted a proposition for the directorship, and so did Adolf Neuendorff, a man of indefatigable energy and enterprise, who had given New York its first hearing of "Lohengrin" at the Stadt Theater, in the Bowery, in April, 1871. In January there was also a strike of the chorus, which was quickly settled, and all but the ringleaders in the disturbance taken back into favor on signing an apology.

Rejoicings over the success of the enterprise gave way to general grief and consternation with the unexpected death of Dr. Damrosch on February 15th. On Tuesday, February 10th, he contracted a cold from having thrown himself upon a bed in a cold room for a nap before dinner on returning from a rehearsal at the opera house. He had neglected to open the furnace register or cover himself, and he awoke thoroughly chilled. After dinner he went to a rehearsal of the Oratorio Society, which was preparing Verdi's Manzoni Requiem for performance the following week. Before the conclusion of the rehearsal he was so ill that he was forced to hurry home in a carriage. The next morning it was found that pneumonia had set in, complicated by pleurisy, and a consultation of physicians was held. Only one of the subscription performances at the Metropolitan Opera House remained to be given, but there were still before the director in the way of operatic work five supplementary performances and seasons at Boston, Chicago, and Cincinnati. This naturally caused the sick man a great deal of concern. He deferred to the wishes of his physicians and sent his son Walter, in whose talent and skill he felt great confidence and pride, to conduct the remaining subscription performance in the evening, hoping in the meantime to secure such good care as to enable him to be in his chair on Thursday evening when "Die Walkre" was to be repeated. In this hope, too, he was disappointed and had to send his son a second time to conduct a performance of the drama which had put the capstone to the astonishingly successful season which his zeal, learning, skill, enterprise, and perseverance had brought about. As on the previous day he went through the score with his son and called his attention to some of the details of the responsible and difficult task before him. The young man's knowledge of the score and aptitude in grasping the suggestions made to him comforted and quieted the father, and the representations at the opera house went off in a manner which caused complimentary comments on Thursday evening and Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, February 15th, at 3 o'clock A.M., a change in the sick man's condition set in, and the physicians, realizing that the case was hopeless, so informed the family early in the day. Dr. Damrosch was not disturbed by the prospect of death. He retained consciousness until one o'clock in the afternoon, and within an hour before that time called Walter to his bedside and asked that an opera score be brought that he might give a few more suggestions for the concluding representations in New York. He was assured that all would go well. His last thoughts and words were with his family and work. In disjointed phrases he repeatedly asked that nothing be permitted to suffer because of his sickness; that the preparations for the operas and concerts of the societies of which he was conductor should go on. With his mind thus occupied he sank into unconsciousness and died at a quarter after two o'clock in the afternoon of Sunday, February 15, 1885. His funeral took place at the opera house on February 18th, amidst impressive ceremonies, addresses being made by the Rev. Horatio Potter (Assistant Bishop of New York), the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and Professor Felix Adler. The remaining performances of the supplementary season were conducted by Mr. Lund, after which the company went on tour, Mr. Lund and Walter Damrosch sharing the work of conducting. The season had begun on November 17th, one week after Colonel Mapleson opened his seventh season at the Academy of Music. It lasted until February 21st, but the last subscription performance was that on the evening of the day after Dr. Damrosch had fallen ill. The subscription was for thirty-eight nights and twelve Saturday matines. There was no Christmas interregnum. The list of operas produced, the date of first representation, and the number of times each opera was given can be read in the following table:

Opera First performance Times given

"Tannhuser" .............. November 17 ........... 9 "Fidelio" ................. November 19 ........... 3 "Les Huguenots" ........... November 21 ........... 5 "Der Freischtz" .......... November 24 ........... 1 "William Tell" ............ November 28 ........... 3 "Lohengrin" ............... December 3 ............ 9 "Don Giovanni" ............ December 10 ........... 2 "Le Prophte" ............. December 17 ........... 9 "La Muette de Portici" .... December 29 ........... 3 "Rigoletto" ............... January 2 ............. 1 "La Juive" ................ January 16 ............ 5 "Die Walkre" ............. January 30 ............ 7 — Total number of representations ................. 57

Twelve out of twenty-two works promised in the prospectus were given, the unperformed operas being "Rienzi," "Der Fliegende Hollnder," "Le Nozze di Figaro," "Die Zauberflte," "Il Barbiere di Siviglia," Gounod's "Faust," "Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," "La Dame Blanche," "Hans Heiling," and Kreutzer's "Nachtlager von Granada." The failure to produce all the operas promised was largely due to the teachings of the first month of the season. In the list were a number of peculiarly German works, in which the musical numbers alternated with spoken dialogue. The experience made with "Fidelio" and "Der Freischtz" showed that works of this character were unedifying to the persons of native birth in the audience, and this was one reason why it was decided to omit several of them. Another reason was that it was found that the large dimensions of the opera house detracted from even good performances of light works; and still another was that the style of the singers was adapted to vigorous and declamatory music, rather than to that which depends for effect upon purity and beauty of voice and excellence of vocalization. A comparison of the last performances with those which were given when the company was continually engaged in studying new works suggests another reason: "Der Freischtz" was poorly performed; the first representations of "William Tell" and "Les Huguenots" threatened the loss of all the prestige won by the performances of "Tannhuser"; and "Fidelio" and "Don Giovanni" called for a vigorous exercise of good nature. Whatever disappointment came, therefore, from the failure to produce such interesting works as "Hans Heiling," one of the finest products, if not the finest, of the epigonoi of Weber, and "Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," unquestionably the best Shakespearian opera extant (Verdi's "Otello" and "Falstaff" excepted), was compensated for by the excellence which marked the performances of "Tannhuser," "Lohengrin," "Le Prophte," and "Die Walkre." The production of this great work was a fitting end to Dr. Damrosch's artistic career. It marked the beginning of a new era in New York's operatic affairs, and led to the execution in the years which followed of his large plan to produce the entire Nibelung tragedy, "Tristan und Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger"—a plan carried out by his successor. For "Tannhuser," "Fidelio," "William Tell," "La Muette de Portici," "La Juive," and "Die Walkre" new stage decorations had to be provided, and this was done on a scale of great liberality, in comparison with what New York had been accustomed to. The largest expenditure on a single representation was $4,000, and the average cost was $3,400. These sums were much smaller than those expended in the previous season on the hurdy-gurdy Italian list, and the stage pictures were all much finer. The saving was in the salaries of the artists, no two of which cost together as much as Mme. Nilsson alone.



CHAPTER XII

END OF ITALIAN OPERA AT THE ACADEMY

The season 1885-86 witnessed the collapse of the Italian opposition at the Academy of Music, but also the rise of an institution in its place, which, had it commanded a higher order of talent and been more intelligently administered, might have served the lofty purposes set for the German opera. This was the American Opera Company, which, after an extremely ambitious beginning, made a miserable end a season later, leaving an odor of scandal, commercial and artistic, which infected the atmosphere for years afterward. German opera was also given throughout a large part of the season at the Thalia Theater, the manager being Mr. Gustav Amberg, and the conductor John Lund, who had come into notice at the Metropolitan Opera House by reason of the death of Dr. Damrosch. These performances were unpretentious, and divided between operetta and the type of opera which grew out of the Singspiel. Their significance, so far as this history is concerned, lay in the evidence which they bore of a considerable degree of interest on the part of the public outside of the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House in German opera. There were also commendable features in the repertory. Thus, the performances began on October 13, 1885, with "Der Freischtz," in which appeared Ferdinand Wachtel, a son of the famous "coachman tenor," Theodore Wachtel, whose sensational career in Europe and America had come to an end a decade before, though he did not die till 1893. The father's battle horse, "Le Postillon de Lonjumeau," was brought out for the son, but the public were not long in discovering that the latter had all the faults and none of the merits of the former, and he failed to become even a nine days' wonder. Among the operas brought forward by Mr. Amberg was Nicolai's "Lustigen Weiber von Windsor," and Emil Kaiser's "Trompeter von Skkingen," a production obviously prompted by the sensational success in Europe of Nessler's opera of the same name. Nicolai's opera, which has never lost its popularity with the Germans, was probably given on its merits alone, but the fact that Dr. Damrosch had abandoned it after putting it in his prospectus, may have had something to do with its performance by Mr. Amberg's modest troupe, as well as by the proud American Opera Company, which brought it out in a specially prepared English version. Mr. Amberg's company also brought forward a German version of Maillart's "Les Dragons de Villars," under the title, "Das Glckchen des Eremiten."

Colonel Mapleson, having spent the summer bickering and negotiating with the directors of the Academy, after having failed to get into the Metropolitan Opera House under the cloak of his son Charles, began his eighth season in the Academy of Music, which had been furbished up for the occasion, on November 2, 1885. Mme. Patti had deserted him, and if he ever had made overtures to Mme. Nilsson, whose engagement he had announced, they came to naught. He now made a virtue out of necessity and proclaimed the merits of "good all 'round" opera, and the iniquity of the star system. His company, however, was the old one, with Alma Fohstrm and Minnie Hauk in place of Mme. Patti, Gerster, and Nevada. Among the familiar names in the prospectus were those of Mme. Lablache, Ravelli, de Anna, Del Puente, Cherubini, and Carraciolo; among the newcomers were Signor Giannini, an extremely serviceable tenor, who had sung in the previous season in the "Milan Grand Opera Company," compiled by James Barton Key and Horace McVicker, as related in the preceding chapter; also a Mlle. Felia Litvinoff, whom we shall meet again as Mme. Litvinne, sister-in-law of M. douard de Reszke, and member of a company singing at the Metropolitan Opera House. Mapleson opened with "Carmen," the heroine represented by Mme. Hauk. She had created the character in London and New York, and set a standard which prevailed in England and America until the coming of Mme. Calv; but time had dealt harshly with Mme. Hauk during the nineteen years which had elapsed since she, a lissome creature, had first sung at the Academy of Music (she had effected her operatic dbut in Brooklyn a few weeks before), and much of the old charm was gone from her singing, and nearly all from her acting. The opening was distinctly disappointing, and the season came to an end on November 28th, after twelve evening and four afternoon performances. There could scarcely have been a more convincing demonstration of how completely the fashionable world had abandoned the Academy of Music than the giving of a subscription season of only four weeks' duration. Within this period, moreover, there was no sign of effort to get out of the old rut into which Colonel Mapleson's repertory had sunk. "Carmen" was given three times, "Il Trovatore" twice, "Lucia di Lammermoor" twice, "L'Africaine" twice, "La Sonnambula" once, "La Favorita" once, "Fra Diavolo" twice, "Don Giovanni" twice, and "Faust" once. Mlle. Fohstrm effected her American dbut in a performance of "Lucia" on November 9th. She had been announced for the second night of the season in "Il Trovatore," but was taken ill. She had been little heard of previous to her coming, though diligent observers of musical doings knew that she had sung for several seasons in Europe, and, I believe, South America, and had figured in Colonel Mapleson's spring season in London in 1885. She was a small creature, with features of a markedly Scandinavian type—she was a native of Finland—and had evidently studied the traditions of the Italian operatic stage to as much purpose as was necessary to present, acceptably, the stereotyped round of characters. But her gifts and attainments were not great enough to take her impersonations out of the rut of conventionality, nor to save her singing from the charge of nervelessness and monotony of color. Three seasons later (1888-89) she was a member of the German company at the Metropolitan Opera House, and sang such rles as Marguerite de Valois ("Les Huguenots"), Mathilde ("William Tell"), Marguerite ("Faust"), Bertha ("Le Prophte"), and Eudora ("La Juive"), giving place at the beginning of February to Mme. Schroeder-Hanfstngl, who had returned, to the delight of her admirers. In the interim she increased her artistic stature very considerably, her voice proving more effective in the new house than in the Academy of Music, which was incomparably better acoustically. Mapleson's singers came back to the Academy on December 20th to sing Wallace's "Maritana" in Italian (with Tito Mattei's recitatives in place of the spoken dialogue), and at the manager's benefit on December 23d Massenet's opera "Manon" was performed for the first time in America. Under the circumstances the cast deserves to be set forth: The Chevalier des Grieux, Signor Giannini; Lescaut, Signor del Puente; Monfontaine, Signor Rinaldini; the Count des Grieux, Signor Cherubini; du Bretigny, Signor Foscani, (Mr. Fox, an American); an innkeeper, Signor de Vaschetti; attendant of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, Signor Bieletto; Poussette, Mlle. Bauermeister; Javotte, Mme. Lablache; Rovette, Mlle. de Vigne; Manon, Mme. Hauk.

From January 4th to April 17th the Academy of Music was occupied by the American Opera Company, the artistic director of which was Theodore Thomas, who had long stood at the head of orchestral music in America. As I have already intimated, rightly managed this institution might have become of the same significance to the future of opera in the United States as the German company, which had just established a domicile at the Metropolitan Opera House. Indeed, it might have become of greater significance, for the best friends of the German enterprise looked upon it as merely a necessary intermediary between the Italian exotic and a national form of art, with use of the vernacular, which every patriotic lover of music hoped to see installed some day in the foremost operatic establishment in the land. Unfortunately, its claims to excellence were put forward with impudent exaggeration, and there was no substantial or moral health in its business administration. It could not expect to cope with foreign organizations or local aggregations of foreign artists in respect of its principal artists, but it could, and did, in respect of scenic investiture, and in its choral and instrumental ensemble. Unhappily, even in these elements it was unwisely directed, though with a daring and a degree of confidence in popular support which may be said to have given it a characteristically American trait. In three respects the season was unique in the American history of English opera (or opera in English, as it would better he called, since there was not an English opera in its repertory), viz.: in the brilliancy of the orchestra, the excellence of the chorus (numerous and fresh of voice), and the sumptuousness of the stage attire.