Confessions of an Opera Singer Part 1

Confessions of an Opera Singer.

by Kathleen Howard.

FOREWORD

So many fantastic tales have come to us of students' life abroad, of their temptations, trials, finances, successes and failures, that I have attempted to give here the true story of the preparation for an operatic career, and its fruition. My road leads from New York to Paris, to Germany and thence to London, and back to the Metropolitan Opera House.

My operatic experiences in Germany are inalienably a.s.sociated with the lives of the people, particularly with the German officer cla.s.s, viewed publicly and privately; in fact in the town where I was first engaged, Metz, I found they were as vital a part of the Opera house life as the singers themselves. Their arrogance tainted the town life as well, and here I first became acquainted with the pitiful attempt at swagger and brilliancy which often covered a state of grinding poverty, or the thwarted natural domestic instincts which were ruthlessly sacrificed to the "uniform"--the all-desirable entree to society, for which no price was too high to pay. I hope this book will be of interest not only to those whose goal is the operatic or concert stage, but to those to whom "human doc.u.ments" appeal. It is a story of real people, real obstacles overcome, and contains much intimate talk of back-stage life in opera houses.

CHAPTER I

THE WAY IT ALL HAPPENED

I was very young and I was engaged to be married. We had just lost our money in rather dramatic fashion, and we were all doing what we could to supply the sudden deficit. My sister began to prepare herself to be a teacher, my brother left his boarding school and came home to go into a friend's office, and I--well, I accepted the hand and heart of the young man in our set with whom I had had most pleasure in dancing in winter and sailing in summer.

My heart didn't lose a beat and turn over when I saw him coming as did those of the heroines in Marion Crawford's novels, but we were the best friends in the world, and I thought that anything else must be a literary exaggeration, put in to make the story more exciting; just as the heroine's eyelashes were usually exaggerated to the abnormal length of an inch to make her more beautiful, though none of the girls I knew had them like that.

He was a young business man, just starting as a.s.sistant to his father whose business was an old established, comfortable sort of family affair, big enough to supply, in time, an extra income for an unambitious young couple like ourselves. Every one congratulated us heartily, and I began to embroider towels and hem table napkins and to dream about patterns of flat silver.

The whole arrangement was satisfactory to the point of ba.n.a.lity, and I might be quite an old married woman by this time, but--I had a voice.

Nine-tenths of me, at this age, were the normal, rational characteristics of a well-brought up, bright, good looking girl. But the last tenth was an unknown quant.i.ty, a great big powerful something which I vaguely felt, even then, to be the master of all the other tenths, a force which was capable of having its own way with the rest of me if I should ever give it a chance. My voice, the agent of this vague power, had developed rather late. It is true that our whole childhood had been coloured by music, that we read notes before we could read letters, and that music was our earliest and most natural mode of expression.

My father's greatest joy in life was music, and he always played imaginative musical games with us in the evenings. The earliest one I remember was when we were tiny tots. He used to improvise on the small organ we had and ask us questions which we had to answer, singing to his accompaniment. I was Admiral Seymour and Marjorie was General Wolsey.

I remember his singing,

"And how would you get your ships along, Admiral, If your sails and oars were shot overboard?"

I sang solemnly,

"I'd shubble them along with shubbles."

Afterwards when I began to sing from printed music with him I remember saying one evening as he was playing hymns and unfamiliar English ballads for me to sing,

"Papa, please let me look at the music and follow the notes up and down."

I really began reading music at four years old. We played and sang all our childhood. When Marjorie was seven and I was six we sang Even-song at the village church, as the members of the regular choir were ill or absent. Marjorie had a heavenly childish soprano and I a heavy nondescript voice. But I always pleased my father by singing real "second voice" and not just following the soprano in thirds.

He used to give us a note, and we then had to run round our rather large house humming it. It was the deepest disgrace we ever knew if we had sharped or flatted when we got back to the starting point. He taught us musical terms by making us dance to different rhythms he played, and would call out "Allegro," "Vivace," "Adagio," "Molto allegro," "Legato,"

and so forth, to which we had to change instantly. Whenever any one came to the house, we played and sang for them, and though it might have been rather awful for the visitors it was very good for us to get used to an audience.

He used to arrange fairy tales like "Bluebeard" in doggerel verses and write accompaniments to them, and we then learned them by heart and rehea.r.s.ed them, and some grand night played them for all the neighbours.

I remember the way we showed Bluebeard's chamber where the heads of his wives were kept. We hung a sheet on the wall and Marjorie and I stood in front of it, with pale faces, closed eyes and open mouths, and our long hair pinned up high above our heads on the sheet. Another sheet was then stretched across us, just below our chins, and the effect was rather ghastly in a dim light. I remember we sang at the last:

"Oh, Bluebeard, oh, Bluebeard, Frustrated, checkmated, Dissipated, agitated, Castigated, lacerated, Bluebeard!"

When school was over we always gave a dramatic performance; if the weather was fine enough we held them in the big garden that was our childhood's playground. We dressed behind a huge flowering-currant bush, and I can remember a performance of an act of "Twelfth Night," in which I, aged about seven, was _Malvolio_, Lal, my brother, _Maria_, and Marjorie, _Olivia_.

I had always been able to sing, but the sudden growth of my voice was a surprise. One day, in school, we were asked to write a composition on our favourite wish. All the other girls said they wished for curly hair, for pretty dresses, for as much candy as they could eat, for any other frivolous thing that came into their heads. But I took it seriously and told my dearest wish in all the world--a great voice, a voice with which I could make audiences cry or laugh at my will. And, strangely enough, from that time my girlish voice began to grow stronger and stronger, until I could proudly make more noise with it than any other girl in school. Then it grew louder and higher, until it was impossible to ignore such a big possession any longer, and the family decreed that I must have singing lessons.

I took lessons accordingly from an excellent local teacher, practised scales and exercises and later studied the cla.s.sic songs and arias as seriously as I could, but it was so fatally easy to be interrupted. We were all out of school for the first time and enjoying our freedom. It was so much more chic to go down to Huyler's in the mornings, when the girls only a year younger were hard at their lessons, than in the afternoon when the whole girl world was at liberty. I would just begin a morning's work when some one would call me on the telephone to go to the dressmaker's with her, or help arrange the flowers for a dinner party. I loved both flowers and dresses, and it was easy to think, "Oh! I'll practise this afternoon!" and fly off to be gone all day. In the evening there was my fiance who had to tell me all the absorbing details of his office, or there was a dance, or a theatre party, and I took everything that came my way and enjoyed it all equally. But all the time my voice was really first in my thoughts, and I longed to study seriously and intensely, to arrange my whole life for it and its proper development.

The family, it seemed to me, was more interested in my trousseau than in anything else. They had sc.r.a.ped together five hundred dollars, and I was to have it all, incredible as it sounded, to buy clothes with.

Subconsciously all day, and compellingly in bed at night, the thought of what I could do for my voice with that five hundred dollars was with me.

I saw myself only as a singer, and knew that I could never be happy unless I were allowed first to get my instrument in thorough working order and then to use it. The phrases, "working out your own salvation,"

"fulfilling your own destiny," "the necessity of self-development," and all those other nicely turned expressions which most students have at their tongues' end, were unknown to me. I just _felt_, inarticulately.

But my feeling was strong enough to carry me into action, the step which phrasemakers, who find complete satisfaction in their phrases, often omit.

New York was my Mecca. I talked it all over with my fiance, told him what a year there would do for me, making it clear that I expected to sing professionally after our marriage. He agreed to everything and promised that I should do as I wished. His possible objection disposed of, only the financial difficulty remained, looming large before me.

Deeply and more deeply I was convinced in my own mind that I might marry in old clothes, but not with my voice untrained. I finally summoned courage to propose to my family that I should use the precious five hundred for a year's study in New York instead of a trousseau.

Miraculous to relate they agreed, and I was boundlessly happy and saw my path golden ahead of me.

We all spoke and thought of my future as that of a concert singer. My intention of marrying seemed to make anything else out of the question.

Indeed, at that time, the Metropolitan in New York formed the only oasis in the operatic desert of America. There were spasmodic attempts at travelling companies in English, but no other sign of a permanent inst.i.tution throughout the length and breadth of the country. I must confess, however, that the operatic bee buzzed considerably at times in the less conspicuous portions of my bonnet. One or two musicians of standing, who heard me sing, p.r.o.nounced mine "an operatic voice," and strange longings stirred inside me when I saw the Metropolitan singers on the boards.

CHAPTER II

A STRUGGLE AND A SOLUTION

That winter in New York was a revealing experience to me in many ways.

Numbers of things a.s.sumed different values in my estimation. One of the first new things I learned was the comparative insignificance of $500 as a provision for a year's expenses. I lived at one of those boarding houses which are called both "reasonable" and respectable, but are vastly inferior in both comfort and society to the European pension which costs a good deal less. I had lessons in singing, diction and French, all of which counted up to a great many dollars a week. My five hundred began to shrink at an alarming rate, and I don't know what I should have done if a friend had not advised me to try for a "church position," that invaluable means of adding to the resources of a student, which is possible only in America. Besides offering a splendid chance of financial a.s.sistance, the church position system is an infallible test of the money value of one's voice. How many girls have I known in Europe embarking upon the expensive and dreadfully laborious preparation for an operatic career, without possessing a single one of the qualifications necessary to success, without even an adequate, to say nothing of an unusual, voice! Their singing of "Because I love you!"

has been the admiration of their local circle, even less musical than themselves, and this little success has been enough to start them on a career, doomed to certain failure. If they had only tried for church positions in a large city in America, had competed in the open market of their own country, they would have been saved a heartbreak and much good money besides.

I won a $1000 position almost at once, over the heads of many older and more experienced compet.i.tors, on the merits of my voice alone. The salary was my financial salvation, but, besides this, my general musicianship was much improved by the practice in sight-reading and _ensemble_ singing. I grew used to facing an audience, and found a chance to put into use what I learned in my singing lessons. Blessed be the quartet choir of America, say I; an invaluable inst.i.tution for the musical sons and daughters of our country.

The church in which I sang had many wealthy members, and the dress-parade on Sundays used to be quite a sight. Our place, as choir, was directly facing the congregation, in a little gallery, so that our hats and dresses were subjected to very searching scrutiny. The furnishing of suitable garments for such an exalted position became quite a problem. The soprano was a well-known singer, who, in addition to a good salary, had many concert and oratorio engagements; and her furs and ostrich feathers were my despair. I would sit up half the night to cover a last-year's straw hat with velvet. I made an endless succession of smart blouses which, as we were hidden below the waist by the railing, I wore with the same "utility" black broadcloth skirt. I constructed the most original collars and jabots for them out of odds and ends.

I remember one was made of a packet of silver spangles sewn in rows overlapping each other like fish scales. One of my engagement presents had been a silver mesh bag, and when I wore it at my belt, and the collar round my neck, the choir used to call me "Mrs. Lohengrin." As we took off our outdoor wraps to sing, my smartness in the gallery was a.s.sured, but the cleverest manager can't contrive at home a subst.i.tute for furs, and the soprano had chinchilla! I was years younger than the others and they were very sweet to me.

Living at my boarding house was a young doctor, who also would have liked to be nice to me. But my exaggerated conscientiousness would not allow me to have anything to do with one man while I was engaged to another, and I refused all his invitations to the theatre and to Sat.u.r.day afternoon excursions. My one indulgence was in standing-room tickets for the Metropolitan. What a boon to girls in my situation would be the inexpensive munic.i.p.al opera and endowed theatres of Germany with their system of _Schule Vorstellungen_ (students' performances) of standard plays and operas at prices that put a comfortable seat within the means of even the most humble purse! This was the lack the Century Opera would have supplied.

My church engagement was to come to an end May first. The thought of turning my back on the start I had made depressed me fearfully. I had given my word to marry and did not think of wavering. But the letters of my fiance and his rare visits to New York had not helped us to understand each other better. Many hours I walked the floor longing for advice, and wrestling with myself. I said to my sister, "I have my foot on the first rung of the ladder and now I must take it off." It all seems so simple now. Almost any other girl would have broken her engagement without much thought. But I had not been brought up that way, and so I had hours and days of misery.

The one thought that comforted me was that I could go on at any rate as well as it was possible in my own town, and though it would be much harder to make a career from there, it _could_ be done with the co-operation of my husband. It was hard for me to talk in those days, but one day driving down Fifth Avenue in a hansom, a rare treat, I remember my feelings were too much for me, and I burst through my repression and told him how I _must_ develop that side of me, and he said, "And I'll help you, little girl; you can count on me." I believed him of course. But while I was dreadfully serious, he, as I learned later, ranked my singing with the china-painting and fancy-work of his relations, as a sort of harmless pastime, to occupy my leisure moments.

The truth was, of course, that, as often happens, he had entirely mistaken my character, had made his ideal woman out of his head, given her my outward appearance, and fallen in love with her. The real "me"

was a disconcerting stranger, of whom he caught only occasional glimpses.

About the first of May, I returned home. They were all at the station to meet me; my fiance had even broken into his office hours to be there too. We had seen each other seldom during my absence from home, for New York was a long way off, and he was saving his pennies religiously for the great event. When we married, our income would be a tight fit in any case, and I could not help rejoicing that my singing might add considerably to it. There were no $1000 church positions in our town, but one or two of the churches paid respectable salaries to their quartets, and I hoped soon to begin to make a concert career.

For a little while after my return I was very happy. Every one was so nice to me and seemed to think I had done remarkable things already. Our church asked me to sing a solo the Sunday when the bishop was expected, and I held a sort of reception afterwards and heard many pleasant things about my progress. After my hard work and self-denial, the rest, the gentle flattery, and the comfort of home surroundings were very welcome.