Chapters of Opera Part 6

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

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

Patti's organ, but has warmer life-blood in it.

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

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

Another of the newcomers made his bow to the Metropolitan public on the third night of the season, October 26th, when "Il Trovatore" was brought forward. This was the tenor Signor Stagno, a stockily built, heavy, self-conscious man, of good stage features and bad stage manners. When his voice was first heard from behind the scenes, it sounded throaty, a squeezed-out, constrained tone, but later, when Manrico's display pieces came it rang out full and vibrant as a trumpet. It developed at once that he was a singer of the sideshow kind, with whom the be-all and end-all of his part and art lay in the high tones. So little of a musician was he that, being enthusiastically recalled after the "Di quella pira," he was unable to keep the key of C major in his head in spite of his stentorian proclamation of its tonic a few seconds before, and could not begin the repet.i.tion till the concert-master had plucked the first note of the air on his violin. A short time before I heard Mme. Patti perform the feat of beginning the trill which accompanies the melody by the orchestra in the middle of the dance song in "Dinorah"

without a suggestive tone or chord after a hubbub and gladsome tumult that seemed, to have lasted several minutes. A new ba.s.s, Signor Mirabella, appeared in "I Puritani" on October 29th--a musical singer with a voice of large volume and ample range, and a self-possessed, easy, and effective stage presence.

On her second appearance Mme. Nilsson was seen in a part with which she was more intimately a.s.sociated in the popular mind than any other singer in New York or London. The opera was "Mignon," the date October 31st.

Ambroise Thomas's opera had its first American performance at the Academy of Music under the management of Maurice Strakosch, on November 22, 1871. With Mme. Nilsson, on that occasion as on this, was a.s.sociated M. Capoul, the most ardent and fascinating lover known to opera in America, who not long before had risen from the ranks of French opera bouffe. Mme. Trebelli, who had created the part of Frederick in London, where, as in New York, Mme. Nilsson was the original Mignon, and for whom the composer had written the rondo-gavotte, "In veder l'amata stanza" (taking its melody from the entr'acte music preceding the second act), was also a member of Mr. Abbey's company, but Mme. Scalchi, who could wear man's attire and walk in tights more gracefully than any woman who ever appeared on the American operatic stage within my memory, was too popular in the part to be set aside for the sake of a newcomer, and Mme. Trebelli had to wait until October 27th before getting a hearing in opera. Meanwhile she sang industriously in concerts. The changes which had taken place in Mme. Nilsson's person and voice during the dozen years between her first appearance as Mignon and the one under consideration might naturally have been expected to affect her performance of the part. Many were ready to perceive the loss of some of the charms of youthful freshness and grace, which are indissolubly connected with any conception of this most poetical of Goethe's creatures. The result fulfilled their antic.i.p.ations in a measure, for Mme. Nilsson's impersonation was more remarkable for its deep feeling in the dramatic portions than for lightness and gracefulness in the lyric.

This loss brought with it a compensation, however. Many protests have been felt, when not expressed, against the tendency of singers to make Mignon a mere wilful, pettish, silly young woman. The poet's ideal was sufficiently despoiled by the unconscionable French librettist without this further desecration which effectually dispelled the last glimmer of the poetical light that ought always to shine about this strange child of the South. Too much of tropical pa.s.sion, too much of undefined longing, too much of tenderness the part could hardly be invested with, but it is easily made silly by over-acting in the very place where the tendency to do so is strongest. The whole opera is one that must either be represented with extreme care in avoiding extravagant expression, or all effort to approach even distantly the ideals of the poet must be abandoned and the piece be given as if Goethe had never lived, and "Wilhelm Meister" had never been written.

Perhaps the latter plan would be the better one, for it is hard to think of Goethe during the performance of the opera without taking violent offense, and it would only be a relief to have all thought of him studiously kept out of mind. Yet, we would not willingly lose the pleasure which Ambroise Thomas provided in this, his best opera. It is to his credit that he felt the embarra.s.sments which his subject caused.

At one time he thought seriously of permitting the heroine to go the way of Goethe's "Mignon," and of offering the opera to the Theatre Lyrique instead of the Opera Comique, for which he had undertaken to write it.

He did not carry out the plan, however, but instead thought to silence the carping of the Germans by composing a second conclusion, a denouement allemand, in which Mignon falls dead, while listening to Philine's polacca in the last scene. A tragic end to a piece treated in the comedy manner throughout was too ridiculous, however, and the Germans would have none of the denouement allemand. They raised a hue and cry against the opera, then heard it for the sake of its music, and ended by admiring its admirable parts without changing their minds about the desecration of their great poet.

It is no wonder that the opera-book was made. Such scruples as distressed the Germans never trouble French librettists, and the characters which Carre and Barbier found in Goethe's romance are as if born for the stage. What lyric possibilities do not lie in the Harper?

Was ever a more perfect musical coquette dreamed of than Philine? Have not Mignon's songs drawn forth music from nearly every composer of eminence since Beethoven? The filling-in parts were on the surface of the story, and the character of their music could not be misconceived.

Wilhelm Meister himself, in his character of a strolling player, had only to sacrifice his habit of reflection to be a dashing tenor. The temptation was certainly strong; the sacrilege was committed, and the verbal skeleton constructed out of things which were dearest in German literature, was tricked out with piquant music and ear-tickling roulades by the man who was not awed even by Shakespeare. Think of "Le Songe d'une Nuit d'ete"! With such characters the play is easily acted, and the music never fails to fascinate.

"La Traviata" was the next opera, produced on November 5th, with Mme.

Sembrich as Violetta, and Capoul as Alfredo, and then came "Lohengrin"

on November 7th. In Wagner's opera the parts of the heroine and hero were enacted by Nilsson and Campanini, who had sung in its first Italian performance at the Academy a decade before. Excellently sung in the best manner as understood by singers of the Italian school--a manner fully justified, let it be said in pa.s.sing, by Signor Marchesi's Italian text--and magnificently dressed, the opera attracted the most numerous and brilliant audience since the opening night, and remained one of the most p.r.o.nounced successes of the season. It served also to introduce Mme. Fursch-Madi, a dramatic singer, who, although not attractive in appearance, was one of the finest singers in her style and most conscientious artists known to her period. She was a French woman, who was graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, married M. Madier, a chef d'orchestre in the French capital, came to America to join the French company in New Orleans in 1874, and sang for three seasons (1879-'81) at Covent Garden. She spent the last years of her life in and about New York, singing in opera and concert, always a n.o.ble example to youthful aspirants, and died in poverty after great suffering in September, 1894.

"La Sonnambula" followed on November 14th, and "Rigoletto" on November 16th, without noteworthy incident, except the first American appearance of Gaudignini as the Jester, and "Robert le Diable" (in Italian), with Fursch-Madi as Alice, Valleria as Isabella, Stagno and Mirabella. This performance was enlivened by an amusing incident. It will be recalled by people familiar with the history of the opera that Scribe and Meyerbeer first designed "Robert" for the Opera Comique, but remodeled it for the Grand. For a few moments in the incantation scene at this performance the audience seemed inclined to ignore the author's sober second thought, and accept the work as a comic instead of romantic opera. The wicked nuns, called back to life by the sorcery of Bertram, amid the ruins of the cloister, appeared to have been stinted by the undertaker in the matter of shrouds, and the procession of gray-wrapped figures in cutty sarks caused the liveliest merriment until the transformation took place, and serious interest was revived by the lovely face, form, and dancing of Mme. Cavalazzi.

"Il Barbiere," with Sembrich as a delightfully piquant Rosina, nevertheless moved with leaden feet in many of its scenes, because of the ponderous and lugubrious Stagno, who essayed a part far from his province, when he tried to sing the Count. On November 28th "Don Giovanni" was reached with the finest distribution of women's roles, I dare say, that New York has ever seen, and one that ranked well with the famous London one of Tietjens, Nilsson, and Patti. Mme. Fursch-Madi was Donna Anna, Mme. Nilsson Donna Elvira, and Mme. Sembrich Zerlina. For delvers in musical history the performance had curious interest because it partook somewhat of an anniversary character. It fell within a day of exactly fifty-eight years after Italian opera had first been heard in America (November 29, 1825). Save Mme. Patti we have heard no Zerlina comparable with Mme. Sembrich, and Mme. Nilsson's singing of the airs, "Ah, che mi dice mai," and "Mi tradi quell' alma ingrata" lingers in my memory as an impeccable exemplification of the true cla.s.sic style.

The performance suffered shipwreck, however, in the famous first finale, because of the untunefulness of the orchestra, and the incapacity of the enlisted stage bands. In "Mefistofele," on December 5th, Nilsson appeared as Marguerite and Helen of Troy, and Trebelli as Marta and Pantalis. Nilsson had fixed the ideal of Helen in Europe and New York, and it is she, I believe, who started the questionable practice of having one performer impersonate both Marguerite and the cla.s.sic Queen.

Boito has given us so little of Goethe's Gretchen in his delightful, but sketchy, opera that it does not make much difference how the part is acted; but Helen is a character that seemed cut to the very form of Nilsson--regal in beauty and carriage, soul-moving in voice, serene in pose and gesture. She fitted perfectly into the fairest picture that a lover of ancient Greek life could conjure up, and moved through the cla.s.sic act like a veritable h.e.l.lenic queen. The beauty, majesty, the puissant charm of a perfect woman of the antique type--all were hers.

Campanini, who, like Nilsson, had been seen in the opera before the Metropolitan Opera House entered the lists, sang on this evening with peculiar enthusiasm; and with reason. Not only had he been instrumental in giving the opera to the people of London and New York, but, on this occasion, he was singing under the baton of his younger brother, Cleofonte, then a modest maestro di cembalo trying his 'prentice hand at conducting; now the redoubtable leader of Mr. Hammerstein's forces at the Manhattan. Four years later Cleofonte Campanini came again to New York as conductor of his brother's company organized for the production of Verdi's "Otello."

On December 20th the one real novelty of Mr. Abbey's list had production. It was Ponchielli's "La Gioconda," with the following distribution of parts: La Gioconda, Mme. Nilsson; Laura Adorno, Mme.

Fursch-Madi; La Cieca, Mme. Scalchi; Enzo Grimaldo, Signor Stagno; Barnaba, Signor Del Puente; Alvise Badiero, Signor Novara. Ponchielli's opera had been the princ.i.p.al novelty of the London season in the summer of 1883, where it was brought out by Mr. Gye. On this occasion it was performed with a gorgeousness of stage appointments, and a strength of ensemble which spoke volumes for the earnestness of the effort which Mr.

Abbey was making to give grand opera in a style worthy of the American metropolis, and the reception which the public gave to the work afforded convincing proof of the eagerness for a change from the stale list which had so long const.i.tuted its operatic pabulum. The house was crowded from floor to ceiling, and the audience, having a.s.sembled for the enjoyment of an unusual pleasure, was soon wrought into an extremely impressionable state, which the striking pictures, excited action, and ingenious music intensified with every act.

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

Ponchielli makes a little use of a recurring melodic phrase from La Cieca's "Voce di donna," but he pursues the device even less consistently than Verdi, and in a manner that is older than Meyerbeer.

In melody he is wholly Italian, and of Wagner's use of typical phrases "La Gioconda" is as guiltless as Pergolesi's "Serva padrona."

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

If it were necessary one might look for the source of this device of contrast in the literature to which Verdi directed attention when he turned his thoughts to Victor Hugo, and composed "Ernani" and "Rigoletto." Hugo was the prince of those novelists and dramatists who utilized glaring contrasts and unnatural contradictions to give piquancy to their creations and compel sympathy for monsters by uniting monumental wickedness with the most amiable of moral qualities. The story of "La Gioconda" is drawn from "Angelo, Tyrane de Padoue." In transforming this tragedy into an opera the librettist removed the scene from Padua to Venice, changed a wealthy actress into a poor street singer, and made the blind mother, who is barely mentioned in the play, into a prominent and moving character. There can be no question but that Boito ("Tobia Gorria" is but an anagramatic nom de plume of Arrigo Boito) was highly successful in remodeling the tragedy for operatic purposes, but he did not palliate its moral grossness or succeed in inviting our compa.s.sionate feelings for anyone ent.i.tled to them. The only personages who in this opera escape disaster are a pair of lovers, whose sufferings, as depicted or inferred, cannot be said to have refined the guilt out of their pa.s.sion. We might infer that once the attachment of Enzo and Laura was pure and lovely, but all that we see of it is flauntingly criminal and doubly wicked. The happiness of Enzo, who to elope with another man's wife cruelly breaks faith with a woman whose love for him is so strong that she gives her life to save his, is hardly a consummation that ought to be set down as justifying so many blotches and blains, pimples and pustules, on the face of human nature. Laura's treachery is to Gioconda as well as to her husband, and has no redeeming trait. In fact, the blind woman is the only character in the opera who has moral health, and she seems to have been brought in only that her sufferings might intensify the b.l.o.o.d.y character of Barnaba, the spy.

Even Gioconda, a character that has latent within it many effective elements, is sacrificed by the librettist to the one end--sensational effect through contrast and contradiction. Nowhere does she ill.u.s.trate the spirit of blitheness which is put forth by her name, and only once does she allude to it. From the moment of her entrance till her death she is filled with torturing pa.s.sion and conflicting emotions. Not la Gioconda she, but la Dolorosa--except for the bookmaker's desire for dramatic paradox. Against the desire to sympathize with her is thrust the revelation that her rival is never saved from death at her hands because of any repugnance of hers to murder. She would kill in an instant were it not that her vengefulness is overcome by grat.i.tude to the benefactress of her mother. So it comes that the strongest feeling excited by the heroine, who dies a sacrifice to filial affection and pa.s.sionate love, is one of simple pity--a feeling that is never absent from tender hearts, no matter how depraved the victim of misfortune.

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

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

on January 12th.

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

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

The world of fashion, which in the nature of things is the supporter of Italian opera, and has been ever since the art form was invented, was divided in its allegiance, and divided, moreover, in a manner which made an interchange of courtesies all but impossible. This threw the burden of maintaining the rival houses upon two limited groups of persons, and the loss was mutual.

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

Opera First performance Times given

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

There was one performance with a mixed program.

CHAPTER X

OPERATIC REVOLUTIONS

Colonel Mapleson and the stockholders of the Academy of Music and their friends were little disposed to yield to the new order of things without a struggle. The Academy was refurnished and a season of Italian opera begun on the same night on which Mr. Abbey opened his doors. Colonel Mapleson's company comprised Mmes. Patti, Gerster, Pappenheim, Pattini, and Josephine Yorke, and Signori Falletti, Nicolini, Perugini, Cherubini, Vicini, Lombardini, and Caracciolo. The performances were like those that had been the rule for years, except for the brilliancy which Mme. Patti lent to those in which she took part. But not even she could hold the fickle public. On the nights when she sang the house was two-thirds full; Mme. Gerster had established herself as a prime favorite, but when she sang on the "off nights" the house was two-thirds empty. The season was financially disastrous, though Colonel Mapleson's losses were not comparable to Mr. Abbey's, and he was not only brave enough to prepare for the next season's campaign, but adroit enough to persuade Mme. Patti to place herself under his guidance again. But, while he held out against Mr. Abbey and the new house, he was compelled to yield to the Metropolitan and German opera as established by Dr.

Damrosch. Of the singers who helped Colonel Mapleson make his fight, one is still in enjoyment of popular favor. This is Mme. Nordica, who, though not a regular member of the company, effected her American operatic debut at the Academy on November 26, 1883, in Gounod's "Faust."

She was announced as Mme. Norton-Gower, and of her performance I wrote at the time in The Tribune:

Of Mrs. Norton-Gower the first statement must be that she gives abundant evidence of having been admirably trained in the spirit of Gounod's music and the tragedy. Nearly every number in the score which falls to the part of Margherita she sang with commendable intelligence and taste.

The most obvious criticism was that the spirit so excellently conceived by her put a severe strain upon the matter in her control. It cost her a manifest effort to do what she well knew how to do, for she is not a phenomenal vocalist. She has a voice of fine texture, and her tones are generally sympathetic. She sings with feeling, but acts with more.

Her performance was meritorious beyond the performances of any of Mr.

Mapleson's women singers, Mmes. Patti and Gerster excepted.

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

Whatever the sum which loomed up as a prospective loss, however, it was great enough to dissuade the directors from adopting Mr. Abbey's suggestion. Instead, they made up their minds cheerfully to pay their own loss, and at the beginning of the spring season, all negotiations having come to an end, sent Mr. Abbey a letter which read as follows:

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

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

Edmund C. Stanton, Secretary.

To Henry E. Abbey.

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