Chapters of Opera Part 20

The Florentine inventors of monody told us that, Gluck echoed them, Wagner re-enunciated the principle, and no modern composer has dreamed of denying its validity. The only question is whether or not such admirable results have been attained by M. Debussy; whether his music sweetens or intensifies or vitalizes the play. That question must be answered by the individual hearer. No one should be ashamed to proclaim his pleasure in four hours of uninterrupted, musically inflected speech over a substratum of shifting harmonies, each with its individual tang and instrumental color; but neither should anybody be afraid to say that nine-tenths of the music is a dreary monotony because of the absence of what to him stands for musical thought. Let him admit or deny, as he sees fit, that the principle of symphonic development is a proper concomitant of the musical drama, but let him also say whether or not what to some appears a flocculent, hazy web of dissonant sounds, now acrid, now bitter-sweet, maundering along from scene to scene, unrelieved by a single pregnant melodic phrase, stirs within him the emotions awakened by a union of melody, harmony, and rhythm, either in the old conception or the new. Debussy has had his fling at Wagner and his system of construction in the lyric drama; yet he adopts his system of musical symbols, It is almost a humiliation to say it. There is sea music and forest music in "Pelleas et Melisande." What a flight of gibbering phantoms there would be if the fluttering of Tristan's pennants or the "hunt's up" of King Mark's horns could be heard even for a moment!

It would be difficult accurately and honestly to say what was the verdict of the audience touching the merit of the work; concerning the performance there was never a question. The first three acts were followed by a respectful patter of applause. When Mr. Campanini came into the orchestra to begin the fourth act he received an ovation which was both spontaneous and cordial. The dramatic climax, which is accompanied by superb music of its kind, is reached in the scene of Pelleas's killing at the end of the fourth act. This stirred up hearty enthusiasm, and after all the artists, Mr. Campanini, and the stage manager had shared in the expression of enthusiastic grat.i.tude, Mr.

Hammerstein was brought before the curtain. He made a brief speech, saying that by its appreciation of the opera, with its poetical beauty and musical grandeur, New York had set itself down as the most highly cultivated city in the world, and that for himself the only purpose he had had in producing it was to endear himself to the city's people!

Would that one dared to exclaim: "O sancta simplicitas!"

Mr. Hammerstein did not perform all the novelties which he had promised in his prospectus, but to make good the loss he brought forward two operas, one a complete novelty, which he had not promised. This was Giordano's "Siberia." More surprising was the fact that only one day before the close of the season he produced the same composer's "Andrea Chenier" under circ.u.mstances which made the occasion a gala one for Signor Cleofonte Campanini, the energetic and capable director who more than anyone else had made the marvelous achievements of the Manhattan company possible. The production of "Andrea Chenier" was not contemplated when Mr. Hammerstein came forth in the summer with his official announcement of the season; it had, however, been promised by Mr. Conried, who seems to have found that the production of two novelties of a vastly inferior kind taxed to the limit the resources of the proud establishment in Broadway. There it was permitted to slumber on with "Otello," "Der Freischutz," and "Das Nachtlager von Granada,"

whose t.i.tles graced Mr. Conried's prospectus. That circ.u.mstance may have had something to do with Mr. Hammerstein's resolve at the eleventh hour to add it to the list of five other new productions which he had already placed to his credit. If so, he gave no indication of the fact but permitted the announcement to go out that the performance was a compliment to Signor Campanini and his wife, who, as Signora Tetrazzini, had retired from the operatic stage after singing in the opera three years before. Incidentally the circ.u.mstance appealed to whatever feelings of grat.i.tude the patrons of the Manhattan Opera House felt toward Signor Campanini and also to the popular curiosity to hear a sister of the Tetrazzini whose coming to the opera was the season's chief sensation.

The occasion was well calculated to set the beards of memory mongers to wagging. Those who could recall some of the minor incidents of a quarter-century earlier remembered that the indefatigable director of to-day was a modest maestro di cembalo at the Metropolitan in its first season, and on a few occasions when his famous brother Italo Campanini sang was permitted to try his "prentice hand" at conducting.

Next they recalled that four years later, when that brother made an unlucky venture as impresario and sought to rouse the people of New York to enthusiasm with a production of Verdi's "Otello" it was Cleofonte Campanini who was the conductor of the company and Signorina Eva Tetrazzini who was the prima donna. The original American production of "Andrea Chenier" took place at the Academy of Music on November 13, 1896. At the revival on March 27, 1908, the parts were distributed as follows:

Maddalena de Coigny ................. Mme. Tetrazzini-Campanini Andrea Chenier ..................................... Sig. Ba.s.si Carlo Gerard ................................... Sig. Sainmarco Contessa de Coigny ............................ Sig'ra Giaconia Bersi ......................................... Sig'ra Seppilli Madelon ...................................... Mme. De Cisneros Roucher ........................................... Sig. Crabbe Fouquier-Tinville ............................... Sig. Arimondi A Story Writer | Mathieu, a sansculotte | ................. Sig. Gianoli-Galetti An Incroyable .................................. Sig. Venturini Abbe ............................................... Sig. Daddi Schmidt, a jailor ............................... Sig. Fossetta Major Domo ................................... Sig. Reschiglian Dumas, president of the tribunal .................. Sig. Mugnoz Conductor, Sig. Campanini

"Siberia" was performed on February 5, 1908, with the following cast:

Stephana ................................... Sig'ra Agostinelli La Fanciulla .................................. Sig'ra Trentini Nikona ........................................ Sig'ra Zaccaria Va.s.sili ........................................ Sig. Zenatello Gleby ........................................... Sig. Sammarco Walitzin .......................................... Sig. Crabbe Alexis .......................................... Sig. Casauran Ivan | The Sergeant | ................................. Sig. Venturini The Captain ....................................... Sig. Mugnoz The Invalid .............................. Sig. Gianoli-Galetti Miskinsky .................................... Sig. Reschiglian L'Ispravnik | The Cossack | The Inspector | ................................. Sig. Fossetta Conductor, Sig. Campanini

Giordano's opera is an experiment along the lines faintly suggested by Mascagni in "Iris," but boldly and successfully drawn by Puccini in "Madama b.u.t.terfly" and Charpentier in "Louise." The Italian disciples of verismo are in full cry after nationalism and local color. A generation ago the scenes, the characters, and the subject of an opera were of no concern to the composer. His indifference to anachronism was like that of Shakespeare, whose stage-folk, whether supposed to be ancient Greeks, Romans, or Bretons, were all sixteenth-century Englishmen. When Verdi wrote his Egyptian opera he was content with a little splash of Orientalism which colors the chant of the priestess in the temple of Phtha; the rest of the music is Italian. So the Germans remained German in their music, and the Frenchmen continued to speak their own idioms, saving a few characteristic rhythms for the incidental ballet. Mascagni injected a little tw.a.n.ging of the j.a.panese samiesen into the music of "Iris" but let the effort to obtain local color stop there.

Nevertheless the hint was seized upon by both Giordano and Puccini, and apparently at about the same time. The former made an excursion into Russia, the latter into j.a.pan; Signor Illica acted as guide for both.

The more daring of the two was Puccini, for j.a.pan is musically sterile, while Russia has a wealth of characteristic folk-song unequaled by that of any other country on the face of the earth. Nevertheless there is nothing more admirable in the score of "Madama b.u.t.terfly" than the refined and ingenious skill with which the composer bent the square-toed rhythms and monotonous tunes of j.a.panese music to his purposes.

The dramatic structure of "Siberia" is not strong. Incidents of convict life in Siberia which have formed the staple of Russian fiction for so long are depended on to awaken interest and provide picturesque stage-furniture, while sympathy is asked for the heroine who obtains "redemption" by an honest love and a heroic sacrifice. Of course, that the requisite degree of piquancy may not be wanting, the martyr is a bawd who surrenders the luxuries of St. Petersburg provided by a princely lover, to endure the privations of the Siberian mines with that lover's successful rival. Only in the "redemption motive," so to speak, is there any likeness between the story of the opera and Tolstoi's "Resurrection," or the play based on that book which had been seen in New York five years before, though the two had been a.s.sociated in the gossip of the theaters. There are three acts. The first, in which the young officer Va.s.sili, with whom the heroine Stephana is in love, draws his sword against his superior officer, Prince Alexis, and thereby draws down on himself the sentence of banishment to the mines, plays in a palace in St. Petersburg, which the Prince had given to Stephana, who is his mistress. The second act discloses incidents in the journey of the convicts through Siberia, Va.s.sili being joined at a station by Stephana, who has sacrificed her all to follow him into exile. In the third act phases of convict life and customs belonging to the Russian Easter festival are disclosed, and there is a resumption of the dramatic story which now hurries rapidly to its tragic conclusion. Gleby, the seducer of Stephana, is found among a gang of new arrivals at the mines, and the governor of the province, who had been among her old admirers, renews his protestations of devotion and promises her liberty and a life of pleasure. Him she repulses gently and proclaims the joy which Siberia has brought to her. Gleby also attempts to regain his old influence over her, but is cast aside with contumely. Thereupon he denounces her to the community. She and her lover determine to escape but are betrayed and the heroine is shot in her attempted flight. She dies "redeemed."

"Siberia" has no overture. In place of an instrumental introduction there is a chorus of mujiks, which, Russian in idea as well as in harmonization and manner of performance, introduces at once the most interesting as it is the most effective element in the score. Without this element the opera would be deplorably dull, so far as its music is concerned. Giordano's original melody is for the greater part commonplace and unexpressive. The dramatic scenes between the lovers in each of the acts are pa.s.sionate only to ears accustomed or willing to find pa.s.sion in strenuousness. Throughout Stephana and Va.s.sili sing as the Irishman played the fiddle--by main strength. In the second act there is much more to warm the fancy and delight the ear. Here the lack of an opening overture is made good by an extended instrumental introduction of real beauty and power. In a way the music is both meteorological and psychological; it pictures the dreary waste of country; it seems to speak of the falling snow and biting frost; but it also gives voice to the heavy-heartedness which is the prevailing mood of the act. It introduces, too, as a thematic motive, the opening phrase of the Russian folk-song which the convicts sing as they enter. This melody is one of the gems of Russian folk-song so much admired by the composers of the Czar's empire that there are few of them who have not put it to artistic use. It is "Ay ouchnem," the song originally created for the bargemen of the Volga, who to its sighing and groaning measures, with broad straps across their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, towed heavy vessels against the current of the river. Now it is also used by workmen to a.s.sist them in the lifting and carrying of burdens. Giordano makes excellent use of it at the end as well as at the beginning of the act, though as a direct quotation, not for thematic treatment as Puccini uses the j.a.panese themes in his score. This is one of the characteristics of Giordano's opera and one which ill.u.s.trates his inferiority as a musician to his more successful rival. In the second act a semi-chorus of women quote again from Russian folk-song by singing the melody of the air known to all musical folklorists by its German t.i.tle, "Schone Minka." In the third act there is a Russian Easter canticle which has little of the Russian character but makes an agreeable impression upon the popular ear by reason of its effective use of bell-chimes. There is another folk-melody in the opera which has gained publicity in a manner different from that which made "Ay ouchnem" and "Schone Minka" widely known; it is the melody of the "Glory" song--"Slava"--which Beethoven used in the scherzo of one of his Rasoumowski Quartets.

The season was not without its humorous incidents. A quarrel of Messrs.

Conried and Hammerstein over MM. Dalmores and Gilibert, who were enticed away from their old allegiance by Mr. Conried but would not stay bought, was one of these. Another was a circular letter sent out by Mr.

Hammerstein on December 23d, scolding his subscribers because they were not coming up to his help against the mighty. The letter caused much amused comment amongst the knowing, who asked themselves whether it was the scolding of the innocent or the coming of "Louise," Tetrazzini, and "Pelleas et Melisande" which turned the tables in the favor of the manager. Mr. Hammerstein seemed to believe that the letter had been efficacious.

APPENDIX I

THREE SEASONS AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE

Season 1908-1909

The twenty-fourth regular subscription season of grand opera at the Metropolitan Opera House began on November 16th, 1908, and ended on April 10th, 1909. The subscription was for one hundred regular performances in twenty weeks, on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings, and Sat.u.r.day afternoons. In their prospectus the directors, Messrs. Giulio Gatti-Casazza and Andreas Dippel, announced a change of plan in respect of the Sat.u.r.day night performances which had been given for a number of years. Those at the reduced prices which had hitherto prevailed were to be limited to the first twelve and the last two weeks of the season; the others were to be at regular rates. From the end of February till April a series of special performances on Tuesday and Sat.u.r.day nights was projected. Wagner's "Parsifal" was to be reserved for the customary holiday performances, and there were to be two performances of other works, the proceeds of which were to go into a pension and endowment fund, the establishment of which, it was hoped, would help to give greater permanency to the working forces of the inst.i.tution. There was a promise of a large increase in the orchestra as well as the chorus, not only to give greater brilliancy to the local performances, but also to make possible a division of the company, with less injury than used to ensue, when it became necessary to give two performances on the same day--one in the Metropolitan Opera House and one in Philadelphia or Brooklyn as the case might be.

These plans were carried out practically to the letter, Mr.

Gatti-Casazza reinforcing the Italian side of the house, and Mr. Dippel the German, with artists, scenery, and choristers, as each thought best, under the supervision of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of what became the Metropolitan Opera Company as soon as that style could be legally adopted. The management found it less easy to keep its word in reference to the repertory. Eight novelties were promised, viz.: D'Albert's "Tiefland," and Smetana's "The Bartered Bride" in German; Catalani's "La Wally," Puccini's "Le Villi," and Tschaikowsky's "Pique Dame" in Italian; Laparra's "Habanera" in French; Frederick Converse's "Pipe of Desire," and either Goldmark's "Cricket on the Hearth," or Humperdinck's "Konigskinder" in English. Only the first four of these works was produced. A promise that three operas of first cla.s.s importance--Ma.s.senet's "Manon," Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," and Verdi's "Falstaff"--would be revived was brilliantly redeemed. To the subscription season of twenty weeks one week was added for Wagner's Nibelung drama and extra performances of "Ada" and "Madama b.u.t.terfly,"

and Verdi's "Requiem," composed in honor of Manzoni, having been twice brilliantly performed in the series of Sunday night concerts which extended through the season, was repeated instead of an opera on the night of Good Friday. The extra performances, outside of those of the last week, were the holiday representations of "Parsifal" on Thanksgiving Day, New Year's Day, Lincoln's birthday, and Washington's birthday, and benefit performances for the French Hospital, the German Press Club, the Music School Settlement, and the Pension and Endowment Fund benefit. To the latter one of the Sunday night concerts was also devoted. At the operatic benefit performance, as also at a special representation at which Mme. Sembrich bade farewell to the operatic stage in America (on February 6th, 1909), the program was made up of excerpts from various operas--a fact which must be borne in mind (as must also the double bills at regular performances) when the following tabulated statement of the season's activities is studied. The table which now follows gives the list of all the operas performed in the order of their production and the number of representations given to each in the entire season of twenty-one weeks:

Opera First performance Times

"Ada" ......................... November 16 .......... 8 "Die Walkure" .................. November 18 .......... 5 "Madama b.u.t.terfly" ............. November 19 .......... 8 "La Traviata" .................. November 20 .......... 5 "Tosca" ........................ November 21 .......... 6 "La Boheme" .................... November 21 .......... 7 "Tiefland" ..................... November 23 .......... 4 "Parsifal" ..................... November 26 .......... 5 "Rigoletto" .................... November 28 .......... 3 "Carmen" ....................... December 3 ........... 6 "Faust" ........................ December 5 ........... 7 "Gotterdammerung" .............. December 10 .......... 5 "Le Villi" ..................... December 17 .......... 5 "Cavalleria Rusticana" ......... December 17 .......... 7 "Lucia di Lammermoor" .......... December 19 .......... 2 "Il Trovatore" ................. December 21 .......... 5 "Tristan und Isolde" ........... December 23 .......... 4 "L'Elisir d'Amore" ............. December 25 .......... 2 "Pagliacci" .................... December 26 .......... 5 "La Wally" ..................... January 6 ............ 4 "Le Nozze di Figaro" ........... January 13 ........... 6 "Die Meistersinger" ............ January 22 ........... 5 "Manon" ........................ February 3 ........... 6 "Tannhauser" ................... February 5 ........... 7 "The Bartered Bride" ........... February 19 .......... 6 "Fidelio" ...................... February 20 .......... 1 "Falstaff" ..................... March 20 ............. 3 "Don Pasquale" ................. March 24 ............. 1 "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ...... March 25 ............. 2 "Siegfried" .................... March 27 ............. 2 "Das Rheingold" ................ April 5 .............. 1

SUMMARY

Subscription weeks .......................................... 20 Extra week ................................................... 1 Regular performances (afternoons and evenings) ............. 120 Special representations of the dramas in "Der Ring" .......... 4 Special benefit and holiday performances .................... 10 Italian operas in the repertory ............................. 17 German operas in the repertory .............................. 10 French operas in the repertory ............................... 3 Bohemian opera in the repertory .............................. 1 German representations ...................................... 45 Italian representations ..................................... 79 French representations ...................................... 19 Oratorial performance on opera night ......................... 1 Double bills ................................................ 11 Mixed bills .................................................. 2 Novelties produced ........................................... 4

To arrive at the sum of the company's activities there must be added fifteen performances given in the new Academy of Music in the Borough of Brooklyn; twenty-four performances in the Academy of Music, Philadelphia; and four performances in the Lyric Theater, Baltimore.

Brooklyn and Baltimore were privileged to hear "Hansel und Gretel,"

which was denied to the Borough of Manhattan.

There was an unusual number of artists new to New York in the company.

With Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Italian General Manager, came Arturo Toscanini, who, though an Italian, chose Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" as the opera in which to make a striking demonstration of his extraordinary abilities as a conductor. It was he, too, who prepared the revival of "Falstaff" and the production of the two Italian novelties, "Le Villi"

and "La Wally." His a.s.sistant in the Italian department was Signor Spetrino, to whom was intrusted the Italian and French operas of lighter caliber. Of the two German conductors, Mr. Mahler and Mr. Hertz, neither was a newcomer. The former brought about the revival of "Le Nozze di Figaro" and the production of "The Bartered Bride," two of the most signal successes of the season. Mr. Hertz placed "Tiefland" on the stage and added to his long Wagnerian record the first performance heard in America of an unabridged "Meistersinger." Singers new to the Metropolitan Opera House Company were Miss Emmy Destinn (whose engagement had been effected by Mr. Conried some two years before), Mmes. Alda, Gay, Di Pasquali, L'Huillier, Ranzenberg, and Flahaut; and Messrs. Amato (an admirable barytone), Gra.s.si, Didur (a ba.s.s who had sung in previous seasons in Mr. Hammerstein's company), Hinckley, Feinhals, Schmedes, Jorn, and Quarti.

A painful and pitiful incident of the season was the vocal shipwreck suffered by Signor Caruso. After the first week of March he was unable to sing because of an affection of his vocal organs. At the last matinee of the subscription season and again on the following Wednesday evening, he made ill-advised efforts to resume his duties, but the consequences were distressful to the connoisseurs and seemed so threatening to his physician that it was deemed advisable to relieve him of his obligation to go West with the company.

Season 1909-1910

This, the twenty-fifth subscription season at the Metropolitan Opera House, began on November 15th, 1909, and ended on April 2nd, 1910, and thus endured twenty weeks. But the twenty weeks of the local subscription by no means summed up the activities of the Metropolitan company; there was a subscription series of twenty representations in the Borough of Brooklyn, a subscription series of two representations each week during the continuance of the Metropolitan season at the New Theater in the Borough of Manhattan, many special performances, and subscription representations in Philadelphia and Baltimore which, though they did not belong to the local record must still be mentioned because of the influence which they exerted on the local performances.

The first performance of the company took place in Brooklyn on November 8th, and before the season opened at the official home of the company representations had also been given in the distant cities mentioned which heard twenty performances each. There were also eleven performances in Boston, five in January and six in the last week of March. After all this there still remained before the company a Western tour and a visit to Atlanta, Ga. The season began with a proclamation of harmonious cooperation between the General Manager, Signor Gatti-Casazza, and the Administrative Manager, Mr. Dippel, and ended with what amounted to the dismissal of the latter, who solaced himself by accepting the directorship of the Chicago-Philadelphia Opera Company, which was called into existence after the princ.i.p.al financial backers of the Metropolitan Opera House had retired Mr. Hammerstein from the field by the purchase of the opera house which he had built in Philadelphia and paid him for abandoning grand opera at the Manhattan Opera House in New York, which had been the Metropolitan's rival for four years. The season of operas of a lighter character than those given at the Metropolitan Opera House which was undertaken at the New Theater, a beautiful playhouse built for high purposes by a body of gentlemen most of whom were interested in the larger inst.i.tution, proved to be a disastrous failure for reasons which are not to be discussed here, but which were not wholly disconnected with the causes which, a year later, led to the abandonment of the New Theater to the same uses to which the other playhouses of the city are put.

The local season can be most clearly and succinctly set forth in tabular form, it being premised that apparent discrepancies between the number of meetings and the number of performances are to be explained by the fact that frequently two, and sometimes three, works were brought forward on one evening or afternoon. These double and triple bills came to be very numerous in the last month, when it was found that the Russian dancers, Mme. Pavlowa and M. Mordkin, exerted a greater attractive power than any opera or combination of singers:

SUBSCRIPTION SEASON AT THE METROPOLITAN

Opera First performance Times given

"La Gioconda" ................. November 15 ......... 5 "Otello" ...................... November 17 ......... 6 "La Traviata" ................. November 18 ......... 3 "Madama b.u.t.terfly" ............ November 19 ......... 6 "Lohengrin" ................... November 20 ......... 6 "La Boheme" ................... November 20 ......... 6 "Tosca" ....................... November 22 ......... 6 * "Cavalleria Rusticana" ...... November 24 ......... 7 * "Pagliacci" ................. November 24 ......... 7 "Il Trovatore" ................ November 25 ......... 6 "Tristan und Isolde" .......... November 27 ......... 5 "Ada" ........................ December 3 .......... 6 "Tannhauser" .................. December 4 .......... 4 "Manon" ....................... December 6 .......... 3 "Siegfried" ................... December 16 ......... 2 "Orfeo ed Eurydice" ........... December 23 ......... 5 "The Bartered Bride" .......... December 24 ......... 1 "Faust" ....................... December 25 ......... 5 "Rigoletto" ................... December 25 ......... 2 "Die Walkure" ................. January 8 ........... 3 "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" ..... January 15 .......... 3 "Germania" .................... January 22 .......... 5 "L'Elisir d'Amore" ............ January 27 .......... 1 * "Hansel und Gretel" ......... January 29 .......... 1 "Don Pasquale" ................ February 2 .......... 2 "Stradella" ................... February 3 .......... 2 "Fra Diavolo" ................. February 6 .......... 3 "Falstaff" .................... February 16 ......... 2 "Das Rheingold" ............... February 24 ......... 1 "Werther" ..................... February 28 ......... 2 * "Coppelia" (ballet) ......... February 28 ......... 4 "Gotterdammerung" ............. March 4 ............. 1 "Pique Dame" .................. March 5 ............. 4 "Der Freischutz" .............. March 11 ............ 2 * "The Pipe of Desire" ........ March 18 ............ 2 "Die Meistersinger" ........... March 26 ............ 2 * "Hungary" (ballet) .......... March 31 ............ 2 "La Sonnambula" ............... April 2 ............. 1

* Performed only in double bills.

SUMMARY

Weeks in the season ........................................ 20 Subscription performances ................................. 120 Number of operas produced .................................. 36 German operas .............................................. 11 Bohemian opera .............................................. 1 Russian opera ............................................... 1 English opera ............................................... 1 Italian operas ............................................. 18 French operas ............................................... 4 German performances ........................................ 34 French performances ........................................ 13 Italian performances ....................................... 79 English performances ........................................ 2 Double bills (including ballets and divertiss.e.m.e.nts) ....... 23 Number of ballets ........................................... 2 Performances of complete ballets ............................ 6

EXTRA REPRESENTATIONS AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE

"Parsifal," Thanksgiving matinee, November 25.