Kundry .................................... Milka Ternina Parsifal .............................. Alois Burgstaller Amfortas ................................. Anton Van Rooy Gurnemanz .................................. Robert Blass Klingsor ................................... Otto Grlitz Titurel .................................. Marcel Journet First Esquire ................................ Miss Moran Second Esquire ............................ Miss Braendle Third Esquire .............................. Albert Reiss Fourth Esquire ............................... Mr. Harden First Knight .................................. Mr. Bayer Second Knight .............................. Mr. Mhlmann A Voice .................................... Louise Homer

Anton Fuchs and Carl Lautenschlger were in charge of the stage; Mr. Hertz conducted. The first half of the season had been sacrificed to the production. As such things are done at Bayreuth and in the best theaters of Germany the preparations were inadequate, but the results achieved set many old visitors to the Wagnerian Mecca in amaze. So far as the mere spectacle was concerned Mr. Conried's production was an improvement on that of Bayreuth in most things except the light effects. All of Wagner's dramas show that the poet frequently dreamed of things which were beyond the capacity of the stage in his day—even the splendidly equipped stage of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. Later improvements in theatrical mechanics made their realization in more or less degree possible. The greatest advance disclosed by New York over Bayreuth was in the design and manipulation of the magical scenes of the second act. Such scenes as that between Parsifal and the Flower Maidens were doubtless in the imagination of Wagner, but he never saw their realization. Up to the time of which I am writing the Bayreuth pictures were exaggerated and garish. In New York every feature of the scene was beautiful in conception, harmonious in color, graceful in action, seductive as the composer intended it to be—as alluring to the eye as the music was fascinating to the ear. At a later performance Weingartner, conductor and composer, now director of the Royal Imperial Court Opera of Vienna, sat beside me. After the first act he spoke in terms generally complimentary about the performance, but criticized its spirit and execution in parts. When the scene of the magical garden was discovered and the floral maidens came rushing in he leaned forward in his chair, and when the pretty bustle reached its height he could wait no longer to give voice to his admiration. "Ah!" he exclaimed in a whisper, "there's atmosphere! There's fragrance and grace!" The music of the drama was familiar to New Yorkers from many concert performances. Once, indeed, there was a "Parsifal" festival in Brooklyn, under the direction of Mr. Seidl, in which all the music was sung by the best singers of the Metropolitan Opera House on a stage set to suggest the Temple of the Grail. Only the action and the pictures were new to the city's music lovers. Nevertheless the interest on the part of the public was stupendous. The first five representations were over on January 21st, but before then Mr. Conried had already announced five more, besides a special day performance on Washington's Birthday, February 22d. After the eleventh performance, on February 25th, Mr. Conried gave out the statement to the public press that the receipts had been $186,308; that is, an average of $16,937.17. But this was not the end. Under Mr. Grau the custom had grown up in the Metropolitan Opera House of a special performance, the proceeds of which were the personal perquisites of the director. In all the contracts between the director and his artists there was a clause which bound the latter to sing for nothing at one performance. Before his retirement Mr. Grau grew ashamed of appearing in the light of an eleemosynary beneficiary under such circumstances, and explained to the newspapers that the arrangement between himself and the singers was purely a business one. Nevertheless he continued to avail himself of the rich advantage which the arrangement brought him, and in the spring closed the supplementary season with a performance of an olla podrida character, in which all of the artists took part. Mr. Conried continued the custom throughout his administration, but varied the programme in his first year by giving a representation of "Parsifal" instead of the customary mixed pickles. The act was wholly commercial. That was made plain, even if anyone had been inclined to think otherwise, when subsequently he substituted an operetta, Strauss's "Fledermaus," for the religious play, and called on all of his artists who did not sing in it to sit at tables in the ball scene, give a concert, and participate in the dancing. A year later he gratified an equally lofty ambition by arranging a sumptuous performance of another operetta by the same composer, "Der Zigeunerbaron," and following it with a miscellaneous concert. That operetta was never repeated.

In the seasons 1904-05 and 1905-06 "Parsifal" was again reserved for special performance at double the ordinary prices of admission, and it was not until a year later that the patrons of the Metropolitan were permitted to hear it at the ordinary subscription rates. By that time it had taken its place with the Nibelung tragedy, having, in fact, a little less drawing power than the more popular dramas in the tetralogy. The reason was not far to seek. The craze created by the first year had led to all manner of shows, dramas, lectures with stereopticon pictures which were a degradation of the subject. Only one of the results possessed artistic dignity or virtue, and this justified the apprehension of the poet-composer touching what would happen if his unique work ever became a repertory piece. Mr. Savage in 1904-05 carried "Parsifal" throughout the length and breadth of the land in an English version, starting in Boston and giving representations night after night just before the Metropolitan season opened in the New York Theater. Nevertheless there were eight performances at the Metropolitan in that season and four in the season that followed. At regular rates in 1906-07 only two performances were possible. All of Mr. Conried's artistic energies in his second season were expended on the production of "Die Fledermaus," which he gave for his own benefit under the circumstances already referred to, on February 16th. The season lasted fifteen weeks, and consisted of ninety-five performances of thirty operas and two ballets, outside of the supplementary season, which, let me repeat, are not included in the statistics which I am giving. An incident of the second season was the collapse of the bridge which is part of the first scene of "Carmen," and the consequent injury of ten choristers. The accident happened on the night of January 7, 1905, while the performance was in progress. Fortunately nobody was killed.



CHAPTER XXII

END OF CONRIED'S ADMINISTRATION

A visit from Engelbert Humperdinck to attend the first German performance of his "Hnsel und Gretel" on November 25th, a strike of the chorus which lasted three days, a revival of Goldmark's "Knigin von Saba" which had been the chief glory of the second German season twenty years before, and the squandering of thousands of dollars and so much time that nearly all of the operas in the repertory suffered for lack of rehearsals on a single production of Strauss's operetta "Der Zigeunerbaron," were the chief incidents of the season of 1905-06. That is to say, the chief local incidents. Out in San Francisco the company was overwhelmed by the catastrophe of the earthquake, which sent it back a physical and financial wreck. The calamity tested the fortitude and philosophy of Mr. Conried as well as the artists, but through the gloom there shone a cheering ray when Mme. Sembrich, herself one of the chief sufferers from the earthquake, postponed her return to her European home long enough to give a concert for the benefit of the minor members of the company, and distributed $7,691 to musicians who had lost their instruments and $2,435 to the chorus and technical staff.

The season of 1906-07 marked highwater in the artistic activities of Mr. Conried's institution. It was the year of "Salome" and the coming of Signor Puccini to give clat to the production of his operas. Outside of "Salome" there was only one real novelty in the season's repertory, and that, "Fedora," might easily have been spared; but the current list of the house was augmented by no less than seven works, namely, "Fedora," "La Damnation de Faust," "Lakm" (which had been absent from the list for many years), "L'Africaine," "Manon Lescaut," "Madama Butterfly," and "Salome." Berlioz's dramatic legend, "La Damnation," had been a popular concert piece ever since its first production by Dr. Leopold Damrosch at a concert of the Symphony Society more than twenty-five years before, and its novel features were those which grew out of the abortive efforts of Raoul Gunsbourg to turn it into a stage play.

In the presence of the composer, who was received with great acclaim by a gathering notable in numbers and appearance, and amid scenes of glad excitement which grew from act to act, Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" was performed for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera House on the evening of January 18, 1907. Signor Puccini reached the theater in the middle of the third act and, unnoticed by the audience, took a seat in the directors' box in the grand tier. After the first act the orchestra saluted him with a fanfare and the audience broke into applause which lasted so long that, finding it impossible to quiet it by rising and bowing his acknowledgments, he withdrew into the rear of the box out of sight so that the performance might go an. After the second act he sent the following statement in French to the representatives of the newspapers:

"I have always thought that an artist has something to learn at any age. It was with delight, therefore, that I accepted the invitation of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House to come to this new world of which I saw a corner on my visit to Buenos Ayres and with which I was anxious to get better acquainted. What I have seen to-night has already proved to me that I did well to come here, and I consider myself happy to be able to say that I am among my friends, to whom I can speak in music with a certainty of being understood."

"Manon Lescaut" was not wholly new to the opera-goers of New York, for it had had one or two performances by a vagrant Italian company at Wallack's Theater in May, 1898; but to all intents and purposes it was a novelty, for the musical itinerants of nine years before were not equal to the task set by Puccini, and gave a perversion rather than a performance of the opera. Why it should have waited so long and for the stimulus of the coming of the composer before reaching the Metropolitan Opera House was not easily explained by those admirers of the composer who knew or felt that in spite of the high opinion in which. "La Bohme," "Tosca," and "Madama Butterfly" were held, "Manon Lescaut" is fresher, more spontaneous, more unaffected and passionate in its dramatic climaxes, as well as more ingratiatingly charming in its comedy element, than any of its successors from Puccini's pen. The voice of the composer rings unmistakably through its measures, but it is freer from the formularies which have since become stereotyped, and there are a greater number of echoes of the tunefulness which belongs to the older period between which and the present the opera marks a transition. Abb Prvost's story, familiar to all readers of French romance, had served at least four opera composers before Signor Puccini. In 1830 Halvy brought forward a three-act ballet dealing with the story; Balfe wrote a French opera with the title in 1836, Auber another in 1856, and Massenet still another in 1884. Scribe was Auber's collaborator, and their opera, which like Puccini's ended with the scene of Manon's death in America, received a touch of local color from the employment of Negro dances and Crole songs. It would be interesting to see the old score now that the artistic value of the folk-songs of the Southern States as an incentive to a distinctive school of music has challenged critical attention and aroused controversy. Massenet's opera, which through the influence of Minnie Hauk was produced at the Academy of Music on December 23, 1885, dropped out of the local repertory until the restoration of the Italian rgime as has been related elsewhere in this book. The opening and closing incidents in Massenet's opera are the same as are used by Puccini, though MM. Meilhac and Gille, the French librettists, did not think it necessary to carry the story across the ocean for the sake of Manon's death scene. In their book she succumbs to nothing that is obvious and dies in her lover's arms on the way to the ship at Havre which was to transport her to the penal colony at New Orleans. The third act of Puccini's opera plays at Havre, its contents being an effort to free Manon, the deportation of a shipload of female convicts, including Manon, and the embarkation of des Grieux in a menial capacity on the convict ship. Here the composer makes one of his most ambitious attempts at dramatic characterization: there is a roll-call and the woman go to the gang-plank in various moods, while the by-standers comment on their appearance and manner. The whole of the last act, which plays on a plateau near New Orleans, is given up to the lovers. Manon dies; des Grieux shrieks his despair and falls lifeless upon her body. Puccini has followed his confrres of the concentrated agony school in introducing an orchestral intermezzo. He does this between the second and third acts and gives a clue to its purposed emotional contents by providing it with a descriptive title, "Imprisonment. Journey to Havre," and quoting a passage from the Abb Prvost's book in which des Grieux confesses the overpowering strength of his passion and determines to follow Manon wherever she may go, "even to the ends of the world." Here, at least, we recognize a sincere effort to make the interlude something more than a stop-gap or a device to make up for the paucity of sustained music in the course of the dramatic action.

"Madama Butterfly" in the original Italian had been anticipated by a long series of English performances by Mr. Savage's company at the Garden Theater, beginning on November 12th. This production is deserving of record. Walter Rothwell was the conductor, and the principal singers in the cast were Elza Szamosy, a Hungarian, as Cio-Cio-San; Harriet Behne as Suzuki, Joseph F. Sheehan as Pinkerton, and Winifred Goff as Sharpless. The opera reached the Metropolitan Opera House on February 11, 1907, when it was sung in the presence of the composer by the following cast:

Cio-Cio-San ........................... Geraldine Farrar Suzuki .................................... Louise Homer Pinkerton ....................................... Caruso Sharpless ....................................... Scotti Goro ............................................. Reiss Conductor, Arturo Vigna

A great deal of the sympathetic interest which "Madama Butterfly" evoked on its first production and has held in steady augmentation ever since was due to the New York public's familiarity with the subject of the opera created by John Luther Long's story and Mr. Belasco's wonderfully pathetic drama upon which this much more pretentious edifice of Messrs. Illica, Giacosa, and Puccini is reared. To the popular interest in story and play Japan lent color in more respects than one, having at the time a powerful hold upon the popular imagination. We have had the Mikado's kingdom with its sunshine and flowers, its romantic chivalry, its geishas and continent and incontinent morals upon the stage before,—in the spoken drama, in comic operetta, in musical farce, and in serious musical drama. Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan used its external motives for one of their finest satirical skits, an incomparable model in its way; but the parallel in serious opera was that created by Signor Illica, one of the librettists of "Madama Butterfly," and Signor Mascagni. The opera was "Iris," the production of which at the Metropolitan Opera House helped to emphasize the failure of the composer's American visit. "Iris" is a singular blending of allegory which had a merit quite admirable though ill-applied, and tragedy of the kind to which I have already several times referred in this book. In "Iris" as in "Madama Butterfly" we have Japanese music,—the twanging of samisens and the tinkling of gongs; but it was more coarsely applied, with more apparent and merely outward purpose, and it was only an accompaniment of a vision stained all over with purulence and grossness. "Madama Butterfly" tells a tale of wickedness contrasted with lovely devotion. Its carnality has an offset in a picture of love conjugal and love maternal, and its final appeal is one to infinite pity. And in this it is beautiful. Opera-goers are familiar with Signor Puccini's manner. "Tosca" and "La Bohme" speak out of many measures of his latest opera, but there is introduced in it a mixture of local color. Genuine Japanese tunes come to the surface of the instrumental flood at intervals and tunes which copy their characteristics of rhythm, melody, and color. As a rule this is a dangerous proceeding except in comedy which aims to chastise the foibles and follies of a people and a period. Nothing is more admirable, however, than Signor Puccini's use of it to heighten the dramatic climaxes; the merry tune with which Cio-Cio-San diverts her child in the second act and the use of a bald native tune thundered out fortissimo in naked unison with periodic punctuations of harmony at the close are striking cases in point. Nor should the local color in the delineation of the break of day in the beginning of the third act, and the charmingly felicitous use of mellifluous gongs in the marriage scene be overlooked. Always the effect is musical and dramatically helpful. As for the rest there are many moments of a strange charm in the score, music filled with a haunting tenderness and poetic loveliness, music in which there is a beautiful meeting of the external picture and the spiritual content of the scene. Notable among these moments is the scene in which Butterfly and her attendant scatter flowers throughout the room in expectation of Pinkerton's return. Here melodies and harmonies are exhaled like the odors of the flowers.

Giordano's "Fedora," first performed on December 5, 1906, was given with this distribution of parts:

Fedora ................................ Lina Cavalieri (Her first appearance.) Olga ..................................... Bella Alten Dimitri ............................... Marie Mattfeld Un piccolo Savojardo ................ Josephine Jacoby Loris Ipanow ........................... Enrico Caruso De Siriex ............................. Antonio Scotti Il Barone Rouvel Desir ........................ Mr. Paroli Cirillo .................................... Mr. Bgu Borow ................................... Mr. Mhlmann Grech ................................... Mr. Dufriche Boleslaw Lazinski ........................ Mr. Voghere Lorek ................................... Mr. Navarini Conductor, Arturo Vigna

The opera is an attempt to put music to the familiar play by Sardou; an utterly futile attempt. A more sluggish and intolerable first act than the legal inquest it would be difficult to imagine. Fragments of inconsequential tunes float along on a turgid stream, above which the people of the play chatter and scream, becoming intelligible and interesting only when they lapse into ordinary speech. Ordinary speech, however, is the only kind of speech that an expeditious drama can tolerate, and it is not raised to a higher power by the blowing of brass or the beating of drums. The frankest confession of the futility of Giordano's effort to make a lyric drama out of "Fedora" is contained in the fact that only those moments in his score are musical in the accepted sense when the play stops, as in the case of the intermezzo which cuts the second act in two, or when the old operatic principles wake into life again, as in Loris's confession of love. Here, in the first instance, a mood receives musical delineation, and in the second a passion whose expression is naturally lyrical receives utterance. One device new to the operatic stage, in its externals at least, is ingeniously employed by the composer: the conversation in which Fedora extorts a confession from Loris is carried on while a pianist entertains a princess' guests with a solo upon his instrument. But the fact that singing tones, not spoken, are used adds nothing to the value of the scene.

On returning from Europe late in the summer of 1906 Mr. Conried announced his intention to produce Richard Strauss's "Salome," and his forces had no sooner been gathered together than Mr. Hertz began the laborious task of preparing the opera—if opera it can be called—for performance. There can scarcely be a doubt that Mr. Conried hoped for a sensational flurry like that which had accompanied the production of "Parsifal"; but, with an eye to the main chance, he confined his first official proclamation to a single performance, which, in connection with a concert by all his chief singers not concerned in the opera, was to be given for his annual benefit. Evidently he felt less sure about the outcome of this production than he had about that of "Parsifal," and was bound to reap all the benefits that could come from a powerful appeal to popular curiosity touching so notorious a work as Strauss's setting of Oscar Wilde's drama. The performance took place with many preliminary flourishes beyond the ordinary on January 22d. Two days before there was held a public rehearsal, which was attended by about a thousand persons who had received invitations, most of them being stockholders of the opera house, old subscribers, stockholders of Mr. Conried's company, writers for the newspapers, and friends of the artists and the management. The opera was given with the following cast:

Salome ................................. Miss Fremstad Herodias ................................... Miss Weed Herodias's Page ..................... Josephine Jacoby Herod's Page .......................... Marie Mattfeld Herod ................................... Carl Burrian Jochanaan ............................. Anton Van Rooy Narraboth ............................. Andreas Dippel First Jew .................................. Mr. Reiss Second Jew ................................. Mr. Bayer Third Jew ................................. Mr. Paroli Fourth Jew .................................. Mr. Bars Fifth Jew ............................... Mr. Dufriche First Nazarene ........................... Mr. Journet Second Nazarene ........................... Mr. Stiner First Soldier ........................... Mr. Mhlmann Second Soldier ............................. Mr. Blass A Cappadocian .............................. Mr. Lange Conductor, Alfred Hertz

Concerning the effect produced upon the public by the performance of the work I shall permit Mr. W. P. Eaton, then a reporter for The Tribune, to speak for me.

The concert was over a little after nine, and the real business of the evening began at a quarter to ten, when the lights went out, there was a sound from the orchestra pit, and the curtains parted on "Salome." The setting for "Salome" is an imaginative creation of the scene painter's art. The high steps to the palace door to the right, the cover of the cistern, backed by ironic roses in the center, and beyond the deep night sky and the moonlight on the distant roofs. Two cedars cut the sky, black and mournful. Against this background "Salome" moves like a tigress, the costumes of the court glow with a dun, barbaric splendor, and the red fire from the tripods streams silently up into the night till you fancy you can almost smell it. Here was atmosphere like Belasco's, and saturated with it the opera moved to its appointed end, sinister, compelling, disgusting.

What the opera is is told elsewhere. It remains to record that in the audience at this performance, as at the dress rehearsals on Sunday, the effect of horror was pronounced. Many voices were hushed as the crowd passed out into the night, many faces were white almost as those at the rail of a ship. Many women were silent, and men spoke as if a bad dream were on them. The preceding concert was forgotten; ordinary emotions following an opera were banished. The grip of a strange horror or disgust, was on the majority. It was significant that the usual applause was lacking. It was scattered and brief.

In this there is no hyperbole; it fails of a complete description only in neglecting to chronicle the fact that a large proportion of the audience left the audience-room at the beginning of the bestial apostrophe to the head of the Baptist. It was because of this pronounced rejection of the work by an audience which might have been considered elected to it in a peculiar manner that it was a sincere cause of regret that the action of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company caused a prohibition of further performances. It would have been better and conduced more to artistic righteousness if the public had been permitted to kill the work by refusing to witness it. In my opinion there is no doubt but that this would have been the result had Mr. Conried attempted to give performances either at extraordinary or ordinary prices. Immediately after his benefit performance he announced three representations outside of the subscription, the first of which was to take place on February 1st. Two days after the first performance, the directors of the opera house company held a meeting and adopted the following resolution, which was promptly communicated to Mr. Conried:

The directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company consider that the performance of "Salome" is objectionable and detrimental to the best interests of the Metropolitan Opera House. They therefore protest against any repetition of this opera.

Under the terms of the contract between the directors and Mr. Conried, such a protest was the equivalent of a command, disobedience of which would have worked a forfeiture of the lease. Mr. Conried parleyed, pleading his cause voluminously in the public prints, as well as before the directors, meanwhile keeping his announcement of the three performances before the people. But the sale of tickets amounted to next to nothing, and Mr. Conried yielded with as much grace as possible, when on January 30th the directors refused to modify their action, though they expressed a willingness to recoup Mr. Conried for some of his expenses in mounting the opera. The directors who took this action were J. P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt, G. G. Haven, Charles Lanier, George F. Baker, D. O. Mills, George Bowdoin, A. D. Juilliard, August Belmont, and H. McK. Twombly. Representatives of Mr. Conried's company who argued the case before the directors were Otto H. Kahn, Robert Goelet, James Speyer, H. R. Winthrop, and R. H. Cottenet. For some time Mr. Conried talked about performing the opera in another theater, and the directors of his company formally agreed that he might do so on his own responsibility; but nothing came of it. Mr. Conried had probably seen the handwriting on the wall of his box office. The next year there were more solemn proclamations to the effect that it would be performed outside of New York. Boston sent in a protest, and the flurry was over, except as it was kept up in silly and mendacious reports sent to the newspapers of Germany touching the influences that had worked for the prohibition. There never was a case which asked for less speculation. Decent men did not want to have their house polluted with the stench with which Oscar Wilde's play had filled the nostrils of humanity. Having the power to prevent the pollution they exercised it.

A reviewer ought to be equipped with a dual nature, both intellectually and morally, in order to pronounce fully and fairly upon the qualities of this drama by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss. He should be an embodied conscience stung into righteous fury by the moral stench exhaled by the decadent and pestiferous work, but, though it make him retch, he should be sufficiently judicial in his temperament calmly to look at the drama in all its aspects and determine whether or not as a whole it is an instructive note on the life and culture of the times and whether or not this exudation from the diseased and polluted will and imagination of the authors marks a real advance in artistic expression, irrespective of its contents or their fitness for dramatic representation. This is asking much of the harassed commentator on the things which the multitude of his readers receive as contributions to their diversion merely and permit to be crowded out of their minds by the next pleasant or unpleasant shock to their sensibilities. He has not the time, nor have his readers the patience, to enter upon a discussion of the questions of moral and esthetic principle which ought to pave the way for the investigation. If he can tell what the play is, what its musical investiture is like, wherein the combined elements have worked harmoniously and efficiently to an end which to their authors seemed artistic, and therefore justifiable, he will have done much. In the case before us even this much cannot be done until some notions which have long had validity are put aside. We are only concerned with "Salome" in its newest form,—that given it by the musical composer. If it shall ever win approbation here, as it seems to have done in several German cities, it will be because of the shape into which Richard Strauss has moulded it.

Several attempts had been made to habilitate Oscar Wilde's drama on the New York stage, and had failed. If the opera succeeds it will be because a larger public has discovered that the music which has been consorted with the old pictures, actions, and words has added to them an element either of charm or expressive potentiality hitherto felt to be lacking. Is that true? Has a rock of offense been removed? Has a mephitic odor been changed to a sweet savor by the subtle alchemy of the musical composer? Has a drama abhorrent, bestial, repellent, and loathsome been changed into a thing of delectability by the potent agency of music? It used to be said that things too silly to be spoken might be sung; is it also true that things too vile, too foul, too nauseating for contemplation may be seen, so they be insidiously and wickedly glorified by the musician's art? As a rule, plays have not been improved by being turned into operas. Always their dramatic movement has been interrupted, their emotional current clogged, their poetry emasculated by the transformation. Things are better now than they were in the long ago, when music took no part at all in dramatic action, but waited for a mood which it had power to publish and celebrate; but music has acquired its new power only by an abnegation of its better part, by assuming new functions, and asking a revaluation of its elements on a new esthetic basis. In "Salome" music is largely a decorative element, like the scene,—like the costumes. It creates atmosphere, like the affected stylism of much of Oscar Wilde's text, with its Oriental imagery borrowed from "The Song of Solomon," diluted and sophisticated; it gives emotional significance to situations, helping the facial play of Salome and her gestures to proclaim the workings of her mind, when speech has deserted her; it is at its best as the adjunct and inspiration of the lascivious dance. In the last two instances, however, it reverts to the purpose and also the manner (with a difference) which have always obtained, and becomes music in the purer sense. Then the would-be dramatist is swallowed up in the symphonist, and Strauss is again the master magician who can juggle with our senses and our reason and make his instrumental voices body forth "the forms of things unknown."

It would be wholly justifiable to characterize "Salome" as a symphonic poem for which the play supplies the program. The parallelism of which we hear between Strauss and Wagner exists only in part—only in the application of the principle of characterization by means of musical symbols or typical phrases. Otherwise the men's work on diametrically opposite lines. With all his musical affluence, Wagner aimed, at least, to make his orchestra only the bearer and servant of the dramatic word. Nothing can be plainer (it did not need that he should himself have confessed it) than that Strauss looks upon the words as necessary evils. His vocal parts are not song, except for brief, intensified spaces at long intervals. They are declamation. The song-voice is used, one is prone to think, only because by means of it the words can be made to be heard above the orchestra. Song, in the old acceptance of the word, implies beauty of tone and justness of intonation. It is amazing how indifferent the listener is to both vocal quality and intervallic accuracy in "Salome." Wilde's stylistic efforts are lost in the flood of instrumental sound; only the mood which they were designed to produce remains. Jochanaan sings phrases, which are frequently tuneful, and when they are not denunciatory are set in harmonies agreeable to the ear. But by reason of that fact Jochanaan comes perilously near being an old-fashioned operatic figure—an ascetic Marcel, with little else to differentiate him from his Meyerbeerian prototype than his "raiment of camel's hair and a leather's girdle about his loins," and an inflated phrase which must serve for the tunes sung by the rugged Huguenot soldier. Strauss characterizes by his vocal manner as well as by his themes and their instrumental treatment; but for his success he relies at least as much upon the performer as upon the musical text. A voice and style like Mr. Van Rooy's give an uplift, a prophetic breadth, dignity, and impressiveness to the utterances of Jochanaan which are paralleled only by the imposing instrumental apparatus employed in proclaiming the phrase invented to clothe his pronouncements. Six horns, used as Strauss knows how to use them, are a good substratum for the arch-colorist. The nervous staccato chatter of Herod is certainly characteristic of this neurasthenic. This specimen from the pathological museum of Messrs. Wilde and Strauss appears in a state which causes alarm lest his internal mechanism fly asunder and scatter his corporeal parts about the scene. The crepitating volubility with which Strauss endows him is a marvelously ingenious conceit; but it leans heavily for its effect, we fear, on the amazing skill of Mr. Burrian, not only in cackling out the words synchronously with the orchestral part, but in emotionally coloring them and blending them in a unity with his facial expression and his perturbed bodily movements. Salome sings, often in the explosive style of Wagner's Kundry, sometimes with something like fluent continuity, but from her song has been withheld all the symmetrical and graceful contours comprehended in the concept of melody. Hers are the superheated phrases invented to give expression to her passion, and out of them she must construct the vocal accompaniment to the instrumental song, which reaches its culmination in the scene which, instead of receiving a tonal beatification, as it does, ought to be relegated to the silence and darkness of the deepest dungeon of a madhouse or a hospital.

Here is a matter, of the profoundest esthetical and ethical significance, which might as well be disposed of now, so far as this discussion is concerned, regardless of the symmetrical continuity of the argument. There is a vast deal of ugly music in "Salome,"—music that offends the ear and rasps the nerves like fiddlestrings played on by a coarse file. In a criticism of Strauss's "Symphonia Domestica" I took occasion to point out that a large latitude must be allowed to the dramatic composer which must be denied to the symphonist. Consort a dramatic or even a lyric text with music and all manner of tonal devices may derive explanation, if not justification, from the words. But in purely instrumental music the arbitrary purposes of a composer cannot replace the significance which must lie in the music itself—that is in its emotional and esthetic content. It does not lie in intellectual content, for thought to become articulate demands speech. The champions of Richard Strauss have defended ugliness in his last symphony, the work which immediately preceded "Salome," and his symphonic poems on the score that music must be an expression of truth, and truth is not always beautiful. In a happier day than this it was believed that the true and the beautiful were bound together in angelic wedlock and that all art found its highest mission in giving them expression. But the drama has been led through devious paths into the charnel house, and in "Salome" we must needs listen to the echoes of its dazed and drunken footfalls. The maxim "Truth before convention" asserts its validity and demands recognition under the guise of "characteristic beauty." We may refuse to admit that ugliness is entitled to be raised to a valid principle in music dissociated from words or stage pictures, on the ground that thereby it contravenes and contradicts its own nature; but we may no longer do so when it surrenders its function as an expression of the beautiful and becomes merely an illustrative element, an aid to dramatic expression. What shall be said, then, when music adorns itself with its loveliest attributes and lends them to the apotheosis of that which is indescribably, yes, inconceivably, gross and abominable? Music cannot lie. Not even the genius of Richard Strauss can make it discriminate in its soaring ecstasy between a vile object and a good. There are three supremely beautiful musical moments in "Salome." Two of them are purely instrumental, though they illustrate dramatic incidents; the third is predominantly instrumental, though it has an accompaniment of word and action. The first is an intermezzo in which all action ceases except that which plays in the bestially perverted heart and mind of Salome. A baffled amorous hunger changes to a desire for revenge. The second is the music of the dance. The third is the marvelous finale in which an impulse which can only be conceived as rising from the uttermost pit of degradation is beatified. Crouching over the dissevered head of the prophet, Salome addresses it in terms of reproach, of grief, of endearment and longing, and finally kisses the bloody lips and presses her teeth into the gelid flesh. It is incredible that an artist should ever have conceived such a scene for public presentation. In all the centuries in which the story of the dance before Herod has fascinated sculptors, painters, and poets, in spite of the accretions of lustful incident upon the simple Biblical story, it remained for a poet of our day to conceive this horror and a musician of our day to put forth his highest powers in its celebration. There was a scene before the mental eye of Strauss as he wrote. It was that of Isolde singing out her life over the dead body of Tristan. In the music of that scene, I do not hesitate to say again, as I have said before, there lies the most powerful plea ever made for the guilty lovers. It is the choicest flower of Wagner's creative faculty, the culmination of his powers as a composer, and never before or since has the purifying and ennobling capacity of music been so convincingly demonstrated. Strauss has striven to outdo it, and there are those who think that in this episode he actually raised music to a higher power. He has not only gone with the dramatist and outraged every sacred instinct of humanity by calling the lust for flesh, alive or dead, love, but he has celebrated her ghoulish passion as if he would perforce make of her an object of that "redemption" of which, again following Wagner but along oblique paths, he prates so strangely in his opera of "Guntram."

It is obvious on a moment's reflection that, had Strauss desired, the play might easily have been modified so as to avoid this gruesome episode. A woman scorned, vengeful, and penitent would have furnished forth material enough for his finale and dismissed his audience with less disturbance of their moral and physical stomachs. But Strauss, to put it mildly, is a sensationalist despite his genius, and his business sense is large, as New Yorkers know ever since he wound up an artistic tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde's play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen should sup to their full of delights and horrors.

To think back, under the impressions of the final scene, to the dance which precipitated the catastrophe is to bring up recollections of little else than the striking originality of its music, its piquancies of rhythm and orchestration, its artfully simulated Orientalism, and the thrilling effect produced by a recurrence to the "love music" ("Let me kiss thy mouth, Jochanaan,") at a moment before the frenetic close, when the representation of Salome (a professional dancer, Miss Froehlich, was deftly substituted for Miss Fremstad at the Metropolitan performance) approaches the cistern in which the white flesh, black hair, and red lips of her idolatry are immured, and casts wistful glances into its depths. Since the outcome was to be what it became it would have been folly in Mr. Conried's performance to attempt to disguise the true character of the "Dance of the Seven Veils." Miss Froeblich gave us quite unconcernedly a danse du ventre; not quite so pronounced as it has been seen in the Oriental quarters at our world's fairs, not quite so free of bodily covering as tradition would have justified. Yet it served to emphasize its purpose in the play. This dance in its original estate is a dramatic dance; it is, indeed, the frankest example of terpsichorean symbolism within the whole range of the pantomimic dance. The conditions under which Wilde and Strauss introduce it in their drama spare one all need of thought; there is sufficient commentary in the. doddering debility of the pleading Herod and the lustful attitude of his protruding eyes. There are fantastical persons who like to talk about religious symbolism in connection with this dance, and of forms of worship of vast antiquity. The dance is old. It was probably danced in Egypt before the Exodus; in Greece probably before Orpheus sang and

"Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers."

But it is not to be seriously thought that from those days to this there was ever any doubt as to its significance and its purpose, which is to pander to prurient appetites and arouse libidinous passions. Always, too, from those days to this, its performers have been the most abandoned of the courtesan class.

There is not a whiff of fresh and healthy air blowing through "Salome" except that which exhales from the cistern, the prison house of Jochanaan. Even the love of Narraboth, the young Syrian captain, for the princess is tainted by the jealous outbursts of Herodias's page. Salome is the unspeakable; Herodias, though divested of her most pronounced historical attributes (she adjures her daughter not to dance, though she gloats over the revenge which it brings to her), is a human hyena; Herod, a neurasthenic voluptuary. A group of Jews who are shown disputing in the manner of Baxter Street, though conveyed by Wilde from Flaubert's pages, are used by Strauss to provide a comic interlude. Years ago a musical humorist in Vienna caused much amusement by writing the words of a quarrel of Jewish pedlers under the voices of the fugue in Mozart's overture to "The Magic Flute." Three hundred years ago Orazio Vecchi composed a burlesque madrigal in the severe style of that day, in which he tried to depict the babel of sounds in a synagogue. Obviously the musical Jew is supposed to be allied to the stage Jew and to be fit food for the humorist. Strauss's music gives a new reading to Wilde; it is a caricature in which cacophony reigns supreme under the guise of polyphony. There are five of the Jews, and each is pregnantly set forth in the theme with which he maintains his contention.

This is but one of many instances of marvelous astuteness in the delineation and characteristic portions of the music. The quality which will he most promptly recognized by the public is its decorative and illustrative element. The orchestra paints incessantly; moods that are prevalent for a moment do not suffice the eager illustrator. The passing word seizes his fancy. Herod describes the jewels which he promises to give to Salome so she relieve him of his oath, and the music of the orchestra glints and glistens with a hundred prismatic tints. Salome wheedles the young Syrian to bring forth the prophet, and her cry, "Thou wilt do this thing for me," is carried to his love-mad brain by a voluptuous glissando of the harp which is as irresistible as her glance and smile. But the voluptuous music is no more striking than the tragic. Strauss strikes off the head of Jochanaan with more thunderous noise upon the kettle-drums than Wagner uses when Fafner pounds the life out of Fasolt with his gigantic stave; but there is nothing in all of Wagner's tragic pages to compare in tenseness of feeling with the moment of suspense while Salome is peering into the cistern and marveling that she hears no sound of a death struggle. At this moment there comes an uncanny sound from the orchestra that is positively blood-curdling. The multitude of instruments are silent—all but the string basses. Some of them maintain a tremolo on the deep E flat. Suddenly there comes a short, high B flat. Again and again with more rapid iteration. Such a voice was never heard in the orchestra before. What Strauss designed it to express does not matter. It accomplishes a fearful accentuation of the awful situation. Strauss got the hint from Berlioz, who never used the device (which he heard from a Piedmontese double-bass player), but recommended it to composers who wished to imitate in the orchestra "a loud female cry." Strauss in his score describes how the effect is to be produced and wants it to sound like a stertorous groan. It is produced by pinching the highest string of the double-bass at the proper node between the finger-board and the bridge and sounding it by a quick jerk of the bow. This is but one of a hundred new and strange devices with which the score of "Salome" has enriched instrumental music. The dance employs a vast apparatus, but the Oriental color impressed upon it at the outset by oboe and tambour remains as persistent as its rhythmical figure, which seems to have been invented to mark the sinuous flexure of the spine and the swaying of the hips of the dancer. Devices made familiar by the symphonic poems are introduced with increased effect, such as the muting of the entire army of brass instruments. Startling effects are obtained by a confusion of keys, confusion of rhythms, sudden contrasts from an overpowering tutti to the stridulous whirring of empty fifths on the violins, a trill on the flutes, or a dissonant mutter of the basses. The celesta, an instrument with keyboard and bell tone, contributes fascinating effects, and the xylophone is used;—utterances that are lascivious as well as others that are macabre. Dissonance runs riot and frequently carries the imagination away completely captive. The score is unquestionably the greatest triumph of reflection and ingenuity of contrivance that the literature of music can show. The invention that has been expended on the themes seems less admirable. Only the pompous proclamation of the theme which is dominant in Jochanaan's music saves it from being called commonplace. A flippant hunter of reminiscences might find its prototype in the "Lady Moon" chorus of Balfe's "Bohemian Girl." There is no greater originality in the theme which publishes Salome's amorousness for the white flesh of Jochanaan, which time and again shows its kinship to the andante melody in the first movement of Tschaikowsky's "Pathtique" symphony, but becomes more and more transfigured in its passionate loveliness when it aids the beatification of the more than ghoulish princess. There is no escape from the power of the music when it soars to grandiose heights in the duet between Salome 'and the prophet, the subsequent intermezzo and the wicked apotheosis. It overwhelms the senses and reduces the nervous system of the listeners to exhaustion.

The subscription season of 1906-07 at the Metropolitan Opera House began on November 26th and lasted seventeen weeks, compassing sixty-eight subscription performances of twenty-three operas and twenty-nine extra performances. Mr. Conried announced at the close of the supplementary season that his receipts had aggregated $1,005,770.20; but this sum doubtless included the receipts from the Boston season. The season 1907-08 began on November 18th and lasted twenty weeks. There were one hundred subscription performances (Thursday having been added to the subscription nights), twenty Saturday popular representations, and three special. Twenty-seven operas were in the list, but only one of them was new. This was Francesco Cila's "Adriana Lecouvreur," which was brought forward on the opening night of the season, and had one repetition afterward, notwithstanding that it had been incorporated in the repertory to give Signor Caruso an opportunity to appear in a new work together with Mme. Cavalieri. The cast was as follows:

Adriana Lecouvreur ........................ Lina Cavalieri La Principessa .......................... Josephine Jacoby Mlle. Jouvenot ............................ Marie Mattfeld Mlle. Dangeville ............................. Mme. Girerd Maurizio ................................... Enrico Caruso L'Abate .................................... Georges Lucas Michonnet ................................. Antonio Scotti Il Principe ............................... Marcel Journet Quinault .................................... Mr. Barocchi Poisson ..................................... Mr. Raimondi Maggiordomo ................................. Mr. Navarini Conductor, Rudolfo Ferrari

Cila has in this work attempted to put the familiar play of Scribe and Legouv into music. Formerly, as we all know, composers used to try to make operas out of plays. The result is for the greater part a sort of spectacle recalling familiar things to the eye, accompanied by an undercurrent of music occasionally breaking into melody and buoying up long stretches of disjointed and fragmentary conversation, out of which, under the best of circumstances, it would be difficult to construct a drama and from which it is not possible to extract the pleasure which one can still find in the old-time style of entertainment derisively called a concert in costume. The manner of "Adriana Lecouvreur" is more or less that of Puccini, Giordano, and Spinelli—to mention the names that immediately preceded Cila's across the ocean—but it is only in the manner, not in the matter, except, as some disagreeable seekers after reminiscences will say, when that matter is borrowed. There is some graceful music in the score and some strains which simulate. passion; but to find in any of its parts the kind of music which vitalizes the word or heightens the dramatic situation is a hopeless task. It is melodramatic music, which becomes most fluent when there is least occasion for it, and which makes its best appeal when the heroine declaims above it in the speaking voice (as she does in the climax of the third act, when Adrienne recites a speech from Racine's "Phdre" in order to accuse the Princess of adultery), when it inspires the heroine carefully and particularly to blow out every light in a large drawing-room, or when it accompanies a ballet which is neither a part of the play nor an incidental divertissement, but only a much-needed device to give the composer an opportunity for a few symmetrical pieces of music. Even here, however, this music must serve as a foil for the everlasting chit-chat of the people of the drama. A pitiful work it was with which to open a season. Mascagni's "Iris" was brought out on December 6th, and after it was all too late there was a carefully studied performance of "Don Giovanni" and a sumptuously, too sumptuously, mounted production of "Fidelio." These two works practically summed up the labors accomplished by Gustav Mahler, though he produced excellent representations (except scenically) of "Tristan" and "Die Walkre." Mr. Mahler, having laid down the directorship of the Court Opera at Vienna, was brought to New York by Mr. Conried, and his coming had raised high the expectations of the lovers of German opera. The record must also include the enlistment in the Metropolitan forces of Madame Berta Morena and Madame Leffler-Burckhardt, whose influence upon the season would have been much more marked had not Mr. Conried's policy of catering principally to the Italianissimi prevented them from becoming as large factors as they deserved to be.

When Mr. Conried issued his prospectus for his fifth season it had already long been an open secret that some of the men whom he had invited to share the glories and the profits of his administration had decreed his downfall. During the fourth season he had been ill with sciatic neuritis, and there was no improvement in his physical condition when he entered upon his duties in 1907-08. His ability to attend to the arduous labors of the managing directorate was questioned. Worse than this, the air for months had been full of whispers of scandalous doings in the business department, and the chorus of dissatisfaction with the artistic results of his directorate, which had begun in the first season, had been swelling steadily. Two seasons before he had put forth a disingenuous apology for his administration, comparing the cost and difficulties of producing opera in the preceding season with the cost and difficulties under Mr. Grau. The matter was one which affected the stockholders of his company only so far as the finances were concerned; as to the difficulties, it was not easy to see how they could have been less formerly than now, when there was so much more money to spend, and so much more had been spent in improving the facilities for opera giving. The patrons of the establishment found large ground for complaint in contrasting the artistic achievements with the flamboyant promises which had been made when the new administration came in. Mr. Conried had told them that his first aim was to raise the standard of performance, and to this end he had banished all thought of profit from his mind. He was going to continue to employ the most refulgent "stars" in the world, but to abolish the "star" system. The season in Philadelphia was to be abandoned so that there might be more time for rehearsals, and less exhaustion of his artistic forces. Opera in English was to be added to opera in Italian, French, and German. As for the French and Italian works they were to be given as they had been under Mr. Grau, but the German was to be raised to a higher plane. Not one of these promises was redeemed. Italian operas were given great prominence over French, and the additions to the Italian list, which were really new, were of the poorest sort. Perfunctoriness, apathy, and ignorant stage management marked the German performances, which were all but eliminated from the subscription list. There were evidences of high striving at the outset in the engagement of Messrs. Mottl, Lautenschlger, and Fuchs, as I have already said, but the results were negligible because the men were unable to employ their capacities. There were sensational features, like the production of "Parsifal" and "Salome," but there were humiliating ones, like the prostitution of a great establishment for the performance of "Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" to deck out the Herr Direktor's benefits. The blight of commercialism had fallen on the institution. On February 11, 1908, Mr. Conried resigned, and announcement was officially made of a reorganization of his company, and the engagement of Giulio Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel as managers of the opera for the season 1908-09.

Following is a table of performances during the subscription seasons of Mr. Conried's administration:

THE CONRIED PERIOD: 1902-'08

Operas 1903-4 1904-5 1905-6 1906-7 1907-8

"Rigoletto" ................. 5 2 5 2 4 "Die Walkre" ............... 4 4 3 2 3 "La Bohme" ................. 3 3 5 7 7 "Ada" ...................... 6 5 4 6 5 "Tosca" ..................... 4 4 3 6 7 "Tannhuser" ................ 5 9 4 5 4 "Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... 8 3 0 1 0 "Pagliacci" ................. 5 3 3 4 4 "Lohengrin" ................. 5 6 5 5 2 "La Traviata" ............... 3 4 2 3 6 "Il Barbiere" ............... 4 2 2 0 6 "Lucia di Lammermoor" ....... 3 3 5 4 1 "Tristan und Isolde" ........ 4 2 3 4 6 "The Magic Flute" ........... 4 0 0 0 0 "Siegfried" ................. 2 2 3 4 3 "L'Elisir d'Amore" .......... 4 1 2 0 0 "Carmen" .................... 4 4 2 1 0 "Copplia" (ballet).......... 4 1 0 0 0 "La Dame Blanche" (Ger.) .... 1 0 0 0 0 "Faust" ..................... 4 4 5 4 6 "Mefistofele" .............. *2 0 0 0 7 "Romo et Juliette" ......... 2 4 0 5 0 "Nozze di Figaro" ........... 1 2 0 0 0 + "Parsifal" ............... 11 8 4 2 0 "Fidelio" ................... 1 1 0 0 3 "Das Rheingold" ............. 1 2 2 1 0 "Gtterdmmerung" ........... 1 2 3 1 0 "La Gioconda" ............... 0 4 4 0 0 "Die Meistersinger" ......... 0 7 4 0 4 "Lucrezia Borgia" ........... 0 1 0 0 0 "Don Pasquale" .............. 0 2 2 1 0 "Die Puppenfee" (ballet) .... 0 1 0 0 0 "Les Huguenots" ............. 0 4 0 0 0 "Un Ballo in Maschera" ...... 0 2 0 0 0 + "Die Fledermaus" .......... 0 4 1 0 0 "Die Knigin von Saba" ...... 0 0 5 0 0 "Hnsel und Gretel" ......... 0 0 11 8 5 "La Favorita" ............... 0 0 4 0 0 "La Sonnambula" ............. 0 0 2 0 0 "Il Trovatore" .............. 0 0 4 0 6 "Don Giovanni" .............. 0 0 2 0 4 "Martha" .................... 0 0 4 3 3 "Der Zigeunerbaron" ......... 0 0 1 0 0 + "Fedora" .................. 0 0 0 4 3 + "La Damnation de Faust" ... 0 0 0 5 0 "Lakm" ..................... 0 0 0 3 0 "L'Africaine" ............... 0 0 0 2 0 "Manon Lescaut" ............. 0 0 0 3 5 "Madama Butterfly" .......... 0 0 0 5 6 + "Salome" .................. 0 0 0 1 0 + "Adriana Lecouvreur" ...... 0 0 0 0 2 "Der Fliegende Hollnder" ... 0 0 0 0 4 "Iris" ...................... 0 0 0 0 5 "Mignon" .................... 0 0 0 0 5

* One scene only. + Novelties.



CHAPTER XXIII

HAMMERSTEIN AND HIS OPERA HOUSE

Before the close of the season 1905-06 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, who was building a large theater in Thirty-fourth Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues, announced that the building would be called the Manhattan Opera House, that it would be exclusively his property and under his management, and that it was to be devoted to grand opera.

It is no reflection on Mr. Hammerstein to say that many who have been prompt and generous in their recognition of his achievements since, looked upon his enterprise as quixotic, down to the very day of the opening of his house. True, he was known to be a manager of extraordinary resource and indomitable energy, but he had dallied more or less with the operatic bauble without disclosing any ambition to have his name written among the managerial wrecks which have been cast upon the shores of Italian Opera, from Handel's day to ours, It was easy to recall that the new opera house was not his first, but that he had built one in the same street, given it the same name thirteen years before, and begun a season of grand opera with an ambitious novelty, only to abandon the enterprise after a fortnight. He had even tried German opera with no less popular an artist than Mme. Lehmann in his earlier opera house in Harlem, and entered into rivalry with an established institution in 1891 for the production of "Cavalleria Rusticana," then the reigning sensation of the hour in Europe.

When the old Manhattan Opera House, so soon abandoned to the uses of vaudeville, opened its doors with Moszkowski's "Boabdil," on January 23, 1893, there was no rival operatic establishment in the city, for the interior of the Metropolitan had been destroyed by fire, and Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau were resting on their oars for a season while the question whether or not the home of the costly and fashionable entertainment should be restored was under discussion by its owners. Yet Mr. Hammerstein was discouraged by two weeks of failure. It was not strange that many observers refused to believe that he was of the stuff out of which opera managers are made. He did not seem illogical enough, though he showed some symptoms of having been bitten by the opera habit.

Neither was there much to encourage belief in his announcements in the manner in which he put them forth. He began early in the spring by saying that he had engaged Jean and douard de Reszke, and kept their names before the people almost up to the time of the opening. He went abroad to engage artists, and even after his return it looked as if it would be a physical impossibility to complete his theater in time for the date set for opening. In fact it was not completed, but when the season arrived he was ready to attempt all that he had said he would do, except keep some wild promises about singers; and when the season closed the fact that loomed largest in the retrospect was the undaunted manner in which he had carried on a difficult and dangerous enterprise, compelling a large element of the public to respect and admire him, and making it possible for him to lay out a second season on lines of real pith and moment, and carry an admirable enterprise to an admirable conclusion.

Mr. Hammerstein began his first season on December 3, 1906, and closed it on April 20, 1907. There were a few admirable artists in his company, but the majority were either inexperienced or of the conventional Italian type. His principal soprano leggiero was Mlle. Pinkert, a Polish singer of good routine and fine skill; his dramatic soprano, Mlle. Russ, whose knowledge of the conventions of the stage was complete, and expressive powers excellent, though they exerted little charm. He had a serviceable mezzo in Mme. De Cisneros (formerly a junior member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, under her maiden name, Broadfoot). Miss Donalda, a Canadian soprano of no little charm, helped to make the lyric operas agreeable. But the strength of the company lay in the male contingent—Bonci, the most famous of living tenors, after Caruso, whom Mr. Conried thought it wise to carry over to the Metropolitan Opera House, thus precipitating a controversy, which, as such things go, was of real assistance to the manager whom the rival sought to injure; Maurice Renaud, the most finished and versatile of French operatic artists, whom the foresight of Maurice Grau had retained for the Metropolitan, but whose contract Mr. Conried canceled at the cost of a penalty; M. Charles Dalmors, a sterling dramatic tenor; M. Gilibert, a French baritone of refined qualities; Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, who, coming some years before in a peripatetic French company to the Casino, had stirred the enthusiasm of the critics with her truthful, powerful, and unconventional performance of Carmen; Ancona, a barytone who had been an admired member of the Metropolitan company, and a serviceable bass named Arimondi. Melba and Calv came later in the season.

Exaggerated stories of Mr. Hammerstein's success followed the close of his season, and if all that Mr. Hammerstein himself said could have been accepted in its literalness the lesson of the season would have been that the people who live in New York and come to New York in the winter season were willing to spend, let me say, one and three-quarter millions of dollars every year for this one form of entertainment. It would appear, also, that fad and fashion were not the controlling impulse in this vast expenditure; for the chief things which fad and fashion had to offer at the Metropolitan Opera House were noticeably absent from the Manhattan. On a score of occasions there were large gatherings representative of wealth and what is called society at the house in Thirty-fourth Street, but generally the audiences were distinct in their composition. It almost seemed as if Mr. Hammerstein had been correct in his deduction, that there were enough people in New York who wanted to go to the opera, but were excluded from the Metropolitan by the extent of the subscription, to support a second house. If this was so it marked a marvelous change from the time of the last operatic rivalry, which ruined both Mapleson and Abbey, and destroyed the prestige of the Academy of Music forever. Perhaps the city's growth in population and wealth furnished the explanation; I can scarcely believe from a study of the doings at the two houses that a growth in musical taste and culture was the determining factor. Twenty years ago such a list of operas as that presented by Mr. Hammerstein in his first season would have spelled ruin to any manager. Not even the prestige of Adelina Patti would have saved it. There was not a novelty in the list.

Many things contributed to the measure of success which Mr. Hammerstein won. There was a large fascination in the audacity of the undertaking, and its freedom from art-cant and affectation. Curiosity was irritated by the manager's daring, and admiration challenged by the manner in which he kept faith with the public. He seemed to be attempting the impossible, but he accomplished all that he said he would do. It is no secret—in fact, Mr. Hammerstein himself proclaimed it—that his artistic achievements were due in an overwhelming degree to the efficiency of Signor Cleofonte Campanini, his artistic director. But not to his efficiency alone—to his devotion and zeal also. Signor Campanini was not only the artistic director—he was also almost exclusively the conductor of the performances. His zeal fired all the forces employed at the opera house. A company gathered together from the ends of the earth succeeded in giving one hundred and thirteen performances of twenty-two operas, and making many of the performances of really remarkable excellence. The reason was obvious at nearly every presentation; from the principals down to the last person in the chorus and orchestra, every one had his heart in his work. Not only the desire to do their duty, but the pardonable ambition to do better than the rival establishment, inspired singers and players alike. It so happened that on one Saturday evening the same opera—Verdi's "Ada"—was performed at both houses. A newspaper reporter carried the intelligence to the Manhattan Opera House that half the seats were empty at the Metropolitan, while the new house was crowded. The curtain was down at the time, and a score of the performers on the stage, headed by the conductor himself, at once formed a ring and danced a dance of triumph.

For musical effects, as well as some dramatic, there were distinct advantages with the new house. The disposition of the seats and stage brought the listeners and performers nearer together. The acoustical conditions at the Manhattan Opera House were admirable; there could be no such feeling of intimacy at the Metropolitan Opera House as existed here. The quality appealed to the music lover pure and simple, and him only, however, for in the things which make the opera a fashionable social diversion the new building was deficient and woefully inferior to the old.

The lovers of good singing were surprised by the excellence of Mr. Hammerstein's singers, especially the male contingent—a surprise which was heightened by the protestations, to which they had long been habituated, that there was no talent left in Europe comparable with that engaged at the Metropolitan. When in the face of such assertions the voices and the art of tenors like Bonci and Dalmores, and of barytones like Renaud and Ancona, were brought into notice their actual merit seemed doubled. The women singers of the first rank, save Mmes. Melba and Calv, who appeared in what would have been called "star" engagements under the old theatrical stock rgime, were in no way comparable with those of the Metropolitan Opera House, but those of the second rank were superior—a circumstance which was emphasized by the better ensemble performances, for which a discriminating public soon learned to thank Signor Campanini and the esprit de corps with which he inflamed the establishment's forces.

The opening of the season, on December 3 1906, had been proclaimed a week earlier, so as to make it synchronous with that of the Metropolitan Opera House; but Mr. Hammerstein's house was not ready, nor were his singers or stage fixtures. The fact looked ominous, and the enterprise took a lugubrious beginning a week later, when "I Puritani," which had been chosen as the opening opera because it was looked upon in Europe as affording to Signor Bonci his finest artistic opportunity, failed to arouse any public interest. It was an experience which Mr. Hammerstein was destined to have again and again with operas like "Dinorah," "Mignon," "Fra Diavolo," "Il Barbiere," and "Un Ballo in Maschera," for which the public seemed suddenly to have lost all liking, while still clinging to works of equal antiquatedness.

From the opening night to the closing the operas of the list were produced on the dates and in the succession indicated in the following table, which tells also the number of times each opera was performed. It must be stated, however, that there were a number of occasions in the course of the season when two operas or portions of several operas were performed on a single evening. This accounts for the large number of times that Mascagni's "Cavalleria" and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" were given, the latter being also helped in the record by the fact that it was twice bracketed with Massenet's "Navarraise."

Opera First performance Times

"I Puritani" ................. December 3 ............. 2 "Rigoletto" .................. December 5 ............ 11 "Faust" ...................... December 7 ............. 7 "Don Giovanni" ............... December 12 ............ 4 "Carmen" ..................... December 14 ........... 19 "Ada" ....................... December 19 ........... 12 "Lucia di Lammermoor" ........ December 21 ............ 6 "Il Trovatore" ............... January 1 .............. 6 "La Traviata" ................ January 2 .............. 3 "L'Elisir d'Amore" ........... January 5 .............. 3 "Gil Ugonotti" ............... January 18 ............. 5 "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" .... January 21 ............. 2 "La Sonnambula" .............. January 25 ............. 3 "Pagliacci" .................. February 1 ............ 10 "Cavalleria Rusticana" ....... February 1 ............. 8 "Mignon" ..................... February 7 ............. 3 "Dinorah" .................... February 20 ............ 1 "Un Ballo in Maschera" ....... February 27 ............ 2 "La Bohme" .................. March 1 ................ 4 "Fra Diavolo" ................ March 8 ................ 4 "Marta" ...................... March 23 ............... 4 Manzoni Requiem (Good Fri.) .. March 29 ............... 1 "La Navarraise" .............. April 10 ............... 2

On three occasions the regular procedure was interrupted for the sake of matters of temporary and special interest. Thus, on March 2d, there was a miscellaneous bill, made up of an act of "Dinorah," one of "Faust," and all of "Cavalleria Rusticana"; on April 19th, the performance was little else than a concert, at which fragments of six operas, some of which were not in the repertory, were sung; while on Good Friday, Verdi's Requiem Mass, composed in honor of Manzoni, took the place of an opera, and was sung to popular prices, though it was on a regular opera night.

The subscription was so small that it seemed unnecessary to differentiate in the table between regular and extra performances. Of the latter there were twenty on Saturday nights, at popular prices, besides others given on holidays and for benefits. Though it is to be noted as a matter of history that the competition of the Manhattan Opera House did not appreciably affect the subscription of the Metropolitan, it is also to be noted that as a rule the attendance on the Saturday night popular performances was larger at the new house.

A few of the incidents of the season deserve to be passed in review. Of the singers whose presence in Mr. Hammerstein's company lent distinction to it, Signor Bonci appeared on the opening night in "I Puritani." The opera failed to awaken interest, but Bonci caught the popular fancy and held it to the end. Toward the close of February, however, it was announced that he had made a contract with Mr. Conried to sing at the Metropolitan Opera House the next season. Mr. Hammerstein first met the move of his rival by announcing the engagement of Signor Zenatello, but afterward began legal proceedings to prevent Signor Bonci from fulfilling his contract with the manager of the house in upper Broadway. M. Renaud, the great French barytone, effected his entrance in "Rigoletto," but he was not in his best voice and condition, and only later conquered recognition for his fine talents. The opera, however, took its place on the popular list, since it employed, at different times, the finest talent at the command of the management. The first large and complete triumph by an opera was won on December 14th, by "Carmen," in which Mme. Bressler-Gianoli appeared as the heroine. She enacted the part fifteen times before Mme. Calv came to take back the territory which had so long belonged to her.

A second success followed hard on the heels of "Carmen." This was "Ada," the triumph of which was one of ensemble, in which the chorus, under Signor Campanini, played no small part. Mme. Melba's coming, on January 2d, was the signal for the awakening of society's interest in Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise. She remained until March 25th, when she said farewell in a performance of Puccini's "Bohme," the production of which by Mr. Hammerstein in defiance of the rights of Mr. Conried (according to the allegations of the publishers, Ricordi) and the legal proceedings ending with the granting of an injunction against Mr. Hammerstein at the end of his season, was one of the diverting incidents of the merry operatic war. Mme. Melba sang three times in "La Traviata," five times in "Rigoletto," twice in "Lucia di Lammermoor," once in "Faust," and four times in "La Bohme."

The Bonci incident and the interest created in Mr. Hammerstein's enterprise by Mme. Melba's popularity stimulated interest in the offerings for a second season, which the manager answered by announcing the engagement, besides Zenatello and Sammarco, of Nordica and Schumann-Heink, and the re-engagement of Renaud, Bressler-Gianoli, Gilibert, and Dalmores. He also opened his subscription for the next season on March 19th, and announced the day after that he had received subscriptions amounting to $200,000, of which $110,000 had come from the four principal ticket speculators in the city. Mme. Calv, who was engaged to give clat to the conclusion of the season, effected her entrance on March 27th, and sang nine times—four in "Carmen," three in "Cavalleria Rusticana," and two in "La Navarraise."



CHAPTER XXIV

A BRILLIANT SEASON AT THE MANHATTAN

The prospectus which Mr. Hammerstein published for his second season was magnificently grandiloquent in its promises, but the season itself marvelous in its achievements. Eight operas "never produced in this city or country," "masterpieces of the most celebrated composers," which were his "sole property," were to be brought forward, in addition to many familiar works. He announced the engagement of "the greatest sopranos, mezzo sopranos, contraltos, barytones, and bassos of the operatic world." The eight new operas were to be Massenet's "Thas," Debussy's "Pellas et Mlisande," Charpentier's "Louise," Breton's "Dolores," Massenet's "Jongleur de Notre Dame," Saint-Sans's "Hlne," Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," and "an opera by our American composer, Victor Herbert." Offenbach's charming opera had been heard in New York before, from a French company managed by Maurice Grau, but it required a memory that compassed twenty-five years to recall that fact; so in respect of it Mr. Hammerstein's slip was venial at the worst. His list of the greatest singers in the world read as follows: Sopranos: Nellie Melba, Lillian Nordica, Mary Garden, Gianinna Russ, Camille Borello, Ludmilla Sigrist, Giuseppina Giaconia, Helen Koelling, Fanny Francisca, Mauricia Morichina, Jeanne Jomelli, Emma Trentini, and Alice Zeppilli; mezzo sopranos and contraltos: Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Bressler-Gianoli, Eleanore de Cisneros, J. Gerville-Reache, Emma Zaccaria, Gina Severina; tenors: Giovanni Zenatello, Amadeo Bassi, Charles Dalmors, Jean Perier, Leone Cazauran, Carlo Albani, Emilio Venturini, Francesco Daddi; barytones: Maurice Renaud, Charles Gilibert, Mario Sammarco, Vincenzo Reschiglian, Mario Ancona, Hector Dufranne, Nicolo Fossetta; bassos: Adamo Didur, Victorio Arimondi, Luigi Mugnoz; basso buffo: Fernando Galetti-Gianoli. Cleofonte Campanini was again musical director.

These the magnificent promises. Had half of them been kept the fact would have amazed a public whom long experience had taught to put no more faith in the promises of impresarios than in those of princes. As a matter of fact, barring the extravagant attributes alleged to be due to the singers, the majority of whom were worse than mediocre, more than half were kept, and the deficiency more than counterbalanced by new elements which were introduced from time to time, as happy emergencies called for them. Chief of these was the engagement of Luisa Tetrazzini; of which more in its proper place. The official announcement was of subscription performances on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings, and Saturday afternoons, for twenty weeks. Also there were to be twenty Saturday evenings at popular prices. Just before the opening of the season there was semi-official talk of popular performances also on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, which, had it been realized, would have kept the opera company as busy with a large repertory as the ordinary theatrical company with its single play running through a season. A beginning was made with the Thursday performances, but Mr. Hammerstein concluded after a short trial of the experiment, that the game was not worth the candle, and so abandoned it. Before the close of the season Mr. Hammerstein announced an extra week of five performances, which he invited his subscribers to enjoy without money and without price, on the ground that the exigencies of the season had compelled him to repeat operas on subscription nights. The season of twenty-one weeks, which began on November 4, 1907, and ended on March 28, 1908, was thus made to embrace 116 representations in all; that is to say, eighty subscription nights and matines, twenty popular Saturday nights, five performances in the extra week, and eleven special afternoons and evenings. The discrepancy between these figures and the total of the last column in the appended table, showing the dates of first productions in the season, and the number of performances given to each opera, is accounted for by the fact that nine times in the course of the season the entertainment consisted of two operas, and once there was a bill of shreds and patches from various operas.

To complete the statistical record of the company's activity, it must be added that two performances were given in Philadelphia, and that there were eighteen concerts on Sunday nights, at the last few of which operas were given in concert form. Twice the opera house was kept closed on Sunday nights because of the enforcement of a rigid interpretation of the law prohibiting theatrical entertainments on Sunday.

A study of the list of performances shows that the 116 performances were distributed among twenty-three operas. Of these four had never been given in New York before (they were "Thas," "Louise," "Siberia," and "Pellas et Mlisande"), three had been given in New York, but so long ago that they were to all intents and purposes novelties ("Les Contes d'Hoffmann," "Crispino e la Comare," and "Andrea Chenier"), and three, though familiar to the public, were new to the house ("La Gioconda," "La Damnation de Faust," and "Ernani"); the other thirteen were in the Manhattan repertory for the season of 1906-07.

Opera Composer First performance Times given

"La Gioconda," Ponchielli ................ Nov. 4 4 "Carmen," Bizet .......................... Nov. 5 11 "La Damnation de Faust," Berlioz ......... Nov. 6 3 "Trovatore," Verdi ....................... Nov. 9 5 "Ada," Verdi ............................ Nov. 11 9 "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," Offenbach ....... Nov. 15 11 "Thas," Massenet ........................ Nov. 24 7 "Faust," Gounod .......................... Nov. 28 4 * "La Navarraise," Massenet .............. Dec. 9 5 * "Pagliacci," Leoncavallo ............... Dec. 9 9 "Ernani," Verdi .......................... Dec. 11 1 "Rigoletto," Verdi ....................... Dec. 20 5 "Un Ballo in Maschera," Verdi ............ Dec. 27 4 "Don Giovanni," Mozart ................... Dec. 28 3 * "Cavalleria Rusticana," Mascagni ....... Dec. 31 4 "Louise," Charpentier .................... Jan. 3 11 "La Traviata," Verdi ..................... Jan. 15 5 "Lucia di Lammermoor," Donizetti ......... Jan. 20 8 "Siberia," Giordano ...................... Feb. 5 3 "Pellas et Mlisande," Debussy .......... Feb. 19 7 "Dinorah," Meyerbeer ..................... Feb. 26 1 "Crispino e la Comare," Ricci brothers ... Mar. 6 3 "Andrea Chenier," Giordano ............... Mar. 27 1 —- 124 * Parts of double bills.

When Mr. Hammerstein issued his prospectus in the early autumn he promised to produce no less than eight operas which had never been performed in America. Managerial promises of this kind are generally made and accepted in a Pickwickian sense, but Mr. Hammerstein came nearer than is the custom to keeping his, though the season closed with his subscribers waiting for "Dolores," by Breton; "Le Jongleur de Notre Dame," by Massenet, and "Hlne," by Saint-Sans. He also promised performances of three German operas ("Lohengrin," "Tannhuser," and "Tristan und Isolde"), a new American opera in English, to be composed by Victor Herbert, and the following operas from the standard list, viz., "Le Prophte," Massenet's "Manon," "Romo et Juliette," "Mefistofele," and "La Bohme." He had fought in the courts for the privilege of performing the last opera in the preceding season, but abandoned it without contention this season in the face of Mr. Conried's assertion that he had purchased the exclusive rights to all Italian performances of Puccini's operas in the United States. It is not likely that the statement about Mr. Herbert's opera was taken very seriously in any quarter; he is a prolific and marvelously ready writer of comic operetta scores, but it is not likely that he will ever attempt to find a suitable grand opera book and set it to music within six or eight months, while occupied, as he is, with a multitude of other enterprises. Mr. Hammerstein had promised in his prospectus that there would also be performances in German of "Lohengrin," "Tannhuser," and "Tristan und Isolde." This part of the manager's scheme went by the board early in the season. It was contingent upon the presence in the company of singers familiar with the three works of Wagner. Of such there was only one when the season began, and she, Mme. Nordica, remained a member of Mr. Hammerstein's forces only six weeks, during much of which time she was idle. Mme. Schumann-Heink, though announced as a member of the company, interrupted her concert activity only long enough to sing once, and then she sang in an Italian opera ("Il Trovatore"), albeit she did her part in German.