Confessions of an Opera Singer Part 2

CHAPTER V

OPERATIC FRANCE VERSUS OPERATIC GERMANY

After a few months of strenuous endeavour on my part, I began to be a little dissatisfied and restless. I saw clearly that in a year's time, working at such pressure, I should have a sufficient repertoire to begin my apprenticeship on the stage; but I did not see my way to a _debut_ quite so clearly. I talked with the other pupils, to get their ideas of progression. They all said, "When I make my _debut_ at the Opera," or "the Comique." They were all sure of an opening at the top and apparently would consider nothing less than leading roles in a world capital. That was not my idea at all. I did not care about a _debut_. I wanted to learn to act, to do my big parts over and over again before an audience, to sing them into my voice, to learn to make voice, face, and my whole body an articulate expression of all that the role had to say.

I tried to find out how the singers of the two operas had made their careers. Some, I learned, though doing leading work, still paid for their performances by taking so and so many francs worth of seats every time they sang. Some had gained a hearing by the influence of their teachers. Some were there by "protection." The Russian girl's sister was very beautiful, but she was not very gifted either vocally or histrionically, and I wondered at her engagement, until I heard that she was the _protegee_ of a certain rich man. The winners of the first prize at the Conservatoire had a chance given them, and one or two had made good to a certain extent, and still sang occasionally. But, I thought, if the debutantes of the Conservatoire must be given an opportunity, there can be very little room for other inexperienced singers, and certainly none for foreigners. The "France for the French" spirit had impressed me tremendously, as it must all foreigners in Paris. Generous as the city is to them, she rightly gives her rewards to those of her own race first.

The opera cla.s.s was another source of annoyance to me. The one idea was "copy what I show you"--make a faithful imitation whether it expresses what you feel or not; it doesn't matter what you feel so long as you pour everything into the same moulds and turn out neat little shapes, labelled "love," "hate," "despair," all ready for use, and all "true to the traditions of the French school." The first lessons of all were in standing and walking, and there began my sadness. The traditions demanded that one's feet be set eternally at "ten minutes to two." Mine would deviate from this rule, and I aided and abetted them in their mutiny. My instinct was to sit down occasionally with my knees together, instead of always draping one leg at the side of the chair. I often felt like singing quite a long phrase with no gestures at all, instead of keeping up a succession of undulating arm-movements.

Our dramatic coach, a fiery individual, who chewed coffee-berries persistently, struggled in vain to teach me to lay one hand on my heart in the traditional manner, two middle fingers together, little one crooked, thumb in. Sometimes mine looked like a starfish, and sometimes like a fist, and both were taboo. Gestures had to melt into each other; there were different ones for different emotions, and woe betide you if you mixed them! There was a sort of test speech beginning, "_Moi, qui vous parle._" The hand at "_moi_" had to be laid upon the chest in the approved manner. I have forgotten the middle, but the end was, "_Et vous jure, que je le ferai jamais!_" At _jure_ one elevated the right hand, the first two fingers raised, and at _jamais_ the right arm described a figure eight across the upper half of the body, with the gesture of tearing away a long beard. We did this all winter and never reached perfection, that is, an exact copy of Valdejo, our instructor.

We had to practice the cla.s.sic walk--slowly advancing, foot dragging, stomach out, very lordly to see, one arm bent from the elbow with the forearm and hand resting against the body--a most difficult thing. The different versions were very comic, but the idea was excellent and I used it later in "Orfeo." Certainly a pulled back tummy would not be in character in a Greek tunic.

Later, we had to act scenes from our operas, and there I got on better.

I used to get absorbed in the character to the extent of becoming perfectly oblivious of my surroundings. I remember once, as _Dalila_, throwing myself so hard upon the supposed couch of _Dalila_, that I thumped my head on the marble mantel behind me. My watching cla.s.s mates burst into a snicker, and I into real tears of anger, not of pain. I had entirely forgotten them when their giggles wrenched me back into the present; but their great pride was never to forget themselves and always to be ready to imitate the coach in cold blood. He, however, appreciated that I had something in me, and used to thump me on the back, and call me "Canaille!" when I did anything that pleased him--a curious expression of approval.

I am not denouncing the ordinary "opera cla.s.s." This method of slavish imitation doubtless has its usefulness for some people. The old order of opera singer was often trained by such schooling. But Mary Garden had opened my eyes to the new order of singing actors, and the old method was no help to me. I longed for a real stage on which to try out my own ideas, and find by experience whether they were right or wrong. I wanted to gain that subtle quality, "authority," which is nearly as important as voice itself, that routine which makes one forget the four long bones of the body, and blends all its members into an instrument of expression, h.o.m.ogeneous and harmonious.

In my researches into the life-stories of French singers, I heard much of "the French provinces" as a training school, and turned my attention to acc.u.mulating all the information on that subject that I could gather.

I heard tales of southern audiences who cheered their singers to the echo, waited in a mob to tear the horses from their carriages after a performance, pelted them with flowers and expressed their approval in other picturesque fashions. The reverse side of these tales is of directly opposite character, when benches are torn up and flung over the gallery by the "G.o.ds," disappointed at not hearing a favourite singer, and the head of the unlucky subst.i.tute is the target for their missiles till he makes good with a high note loud enough to pierce the din of their protestation. If a wretched singer clears his throat loud enough to be heard, he will be greeted at each entrance by a chorus of throat-clearing from the gallery. If his acting of a part strikes them as being pretentious or over-solemn, groans and cries of "Shakespear-r-r-e" reward his efforts. To crack on a high note is the certain signal for a riot of yelling and jeers, but the unhappy singer must stick it out at any cost, for if he leaves the stage, they wait for him outside and set upon him bodily.

"If you've made the round of the Provinces," as Harry Weldon, who has done so, once said to me, "you can sing in h.e.l.l!"

Of course, not all provincial audiences are so "temperamental" as the southerners, but, as far as I could learn, paid performances and protection seemed to exist everywhere in greater or less degree. The repertoire was limited and old-fashioned--the standard French operas, "Faust," "Mignon," "Carmen," "Hamlet," were performed, with "Traviata,"

"Trovatore," "Aida," "The Barber," some Meyerbeer, and many of the lighter works, like "La Fille du Regiment." Among the more modern works were "Werther" and "Manon" of Ma.s.senet, with "Boheme" and "b.u.t.terfly"

and perhaps "Louise." "Lohengrin" and "Tannhauser" were sometimes given, but the big Wagner dramas, the cla.s.sics of Mozart, Weber and Gluck, and the moderns like Debussy, Dukas, Strauss, Humperdinck, seemed neglected. Over all there hung a general lack of method, musical thoroughness and discipline. I must confess that I judge largely by hear-say, as the only provincial French opera house of which I have any personal knowledge is that of Nancy. So it may be that I do "The Provinces" an injustice. Of course, both Monte Carlo and Nice offer many novelties. But then Monte Carlo is not a provincial French opera at all.

On the other hand, the stories I heard of the great operatic machinery of Germany began to attract me irresistibly. The organized system of opera, the great chain of opera houses, the discipline of their rigid schooling, the concentration and deep musical sincerity of their musicians, the simplicity of German life, all seemed to offer what I was looking for. The dramatic quality of my voice would have more scope in their more varied repertoire, while surely in their hundred-odd opera houses I might find a place to work out my ideas in peace.

Every one thought me crazy. My teachers tried their hardest to dissuade me, promising me a great career in France. But I felt a call to Germany where I hoped to find the right conditions for my own development which seemed lacking in France. The great barrier was the language--the difficulty of singing in it, to say nothing of learning it, for I did not know one word. Jean de Reszke said to me later, speaking of German as a language for singing: "_Avec cette langue, vous n'arriverez jamais._" (With that language, you will never succeed.) However, I have said that I had a good deal of courage in those days, and I determined to go to Berlin to try my luck.

Not that I was tired of Paris. It is still my favourite city offering a wonderful opportunity for broadening culture to those who can get into touch with its art life. I owe it a great debt for deepening my artistic perception, and developing that sense of true proportion which keeps one from exaggeration on the one hand and pedantry on the other. But I should not recommend Paris as the best school for the ordinary American student of singing, who has no opportunity to penetrate into real French life. There is no lack of sincerity in the real French inst.i.tutions, the Conservatoire, the schools of art, the Sorbonne--there are found concentration, compet.i.tion, and keenness enough. But the foreign student of singing does not ordinarily come into contact with these inst.i.tutions. In the Paris vocal studios, as I know them, there is a dissipation instead of a conservation of energy. The students expect to win the crown without running the race, and money and influence play too great a role. They (vocal students, I mean) tend to exaggerate their little emotions into _grandes pa.s.sions_, and hold the most disproportionate views of their own importance. I do not mean to say that I agree with a certain singer who brought back harrowing tales of immorality among American students in Europe. Amongst all the hundreds of vocal students I have known, I never met one case of flagrant misbehaviour. In general the girls live quietly and strive according to their lights, though there is not one in twenty with resolution enough to concentrate on the hard work necessary for a great career. The temptation is to fritter away both time and money on the things that don't matter.

CHAPTER VI

PREPARING RoLES IN BERLIN

The first of September, without a word of German, I set out for Berlin.

My mother had come over during the preceding Spring, to make her home in Paris with my sculptor brother Cecil and my sister. From this time on I went to them for the summers, and my sister joined me when I went to Metz, and has never left me since. It made it harder to leave both family and Paris behind and go into an unknown land, but I felt it to be the best way.

Lilli Lehmann's studio was my objective point. I found her address in a musical journal, and armed with that, and the address of an inexpensive _pension_, I took the train. Arrived in Berlin, I took a _Droschke_, directing the driver to my pension by showing him the street and number on a piece of paper. Somewhere between that _Droschke_ and my room, my travelling clock got lost, and what a time I had to recover it! The apple-cheeked maid knew of the existence of no other language beside her own. In vain I made a pendulum of my finger and tirelessly repeated "tick, tick"--no gleam of intelligence dawned in her Prussian blue eyes.

The first few days brought a series of disappointments. The Lehmann idea had to be abandoned. She was out of town and recommended me by letter to a certain Herr----, to whom she was sending every one who applied to her. I found him a dear old man indeed, but one who had nothing to say to me on the subject of voice production which I had not heard already.

However, I decided to begin the study of German repertoire with him, painstakingly re-learning the operas I already knew in French, and adding the new ones required for a German engagement. Later I found a good _repet.i.teur_, who knew the operas thoroughly, quite sufficient and much cheaper, as he charged only four marks ($1.00) an hour. I studied the words of my roles with Herr----'s wife, who had been an actress and a good one, and who laid the foundation of what I am proud to say is now a perfect German accent. These lessons were five marks an hour and were quite worth it. I would learn a role by heart, sentence by sentence, looking up every word in the dictionary and writing in the translation over the German, spending hours in fruitless search for a past participle which did not look as if it belonged to its infinitive, the only part of the verb, of course, to be given in the dictionary! Then, sentence by sentence, I would go over it with Frau----, repeating each word after her, sometimes twenty times! We also used those splendid books, known I found afterwards to every German actor, in which paragraphs of words with the same vowel sound or combination of vowel and consonants are given to be repeated over and over again. Besides this drudgery, I had German lessons for four months (at three marks or seventy-five cents) for which I had to translate and write exercises.

All the labyrinths of the declension of articles, nouns and adjectives in three genders and plurals, lay before me to be explored. The datives and accusatives haunted my dreams by night, and by day I was reduced to the sign language.

I had left my first pension, and crushing down the temptation to live in one of the big, gay German-American pensions, where justice is tempered with mercy, so to speak, I moved myself and my piano into a real German one, where I was the only alien. It was one floor of a large house in a quiet side street--the top floor, and no elevator! I climbed eighty-seven steps by actual count every time I came home from a lesson.

I had a huge room, heated by steam, with board for four marks a day. The meals were _echt Deutsch_. Breakfast was set ready on the dining-room table at some unearthly hour, and the guests went in and helped themselves when they chose. The coffee and hot milk were kept warm over little alcohol flames, and there were delicious Berlin rolls and the best of unsalted b.u.t.ter. Dinner was at two, and was good in its plain way. We had some North German dishes which one had to learn to enjoy, like olives. Hot chocolate soup I grew quite fond of, but beer soup, sorrel soup, and cabbage soup with cherries in it were never exactly intimates of mine. One dish of baked ham with dumplings and hot plum jam sounds strange, but improves on acquaintance; _Pumpernickel_, and _Schmierkaese_ are better than their names, and _Kartoffelpuffen mit Preisselbeeren_ (potato cakes with cranberries) are delicious. We had good plain puddings and black coffee for dessert every day, and quite wonderful roast Pomeranian goose and _Eistorte_ with whipped cream on Sundays. Supper was at eight, and the menu was certainly a model for the simple life. Bread and b.u.t.ter with slices of sausage and cold ham, sometimes big dishes of roast chestnuts instead of cold meat, or potatoes in their jackets, or some of the endless variety of North-German cheeses--to drink, tea or beer, and that was all.

My fellow pensionnaires were nearly all teachers, or students preparing to be teachers. They all spoke German and nothing but German, and, at first, I used to think my mind would drown in the overwhelming floods of it that a.s.sailed my ears. Gradually it came to sound like individual words and phrases, and soon I dared occasionally to launch a small conversational barque upon it, avoiding the disastrous rocks of gender as skilfully as possible, though often at first, by the time that my genders and cases were all arranged for a sentence, the subject had changed, and I could not use it. We had a Fraulein Lanz, Fraulein Franz, and Fraulein Kranz, four or five other Frauleins and no males at all.

Another American student of singing came to live there, and in the evening we used to go to the opera or to concerts together. Everything begins early in Berlin, and those who had tickets for some entertainment missed the eight o'clock supper. So plates of _belegte Broedchen_ (rolls with cold meat) would be set out for them on the dining-table, and all the others would be sitting there with their needle-work, and would demand "_Nun, wie war es?_" when we came in. On Sat.u.r.days the evening paper announced the program at the opera for the week, and we could hardly wait to look at it. The cheaper seats are in great demand.

Students wait for hours, sometimes from earliest dawn, outside the box office on Sunday mornings when the sale for the week begins. We had an arrangement with the keeper of a little fruit and vegetable shop, to save ourselves the wait. We would decide what we wished to see and go over to his shop on Sat.u.r.day evening to order the seats from him. He then went down early enough to secure the front row in the top gallery for us at two marks fifty, and we paid him twelve cents for his trouble.

Sixty-two cents is quite a high price in comparison to those of the rest of the Opera House, for the orchestra chairs cost only eight marks. The top gallery is vast, and the back rows are much cheaper, but the authorities show their sense in keeping up the price of the front rows and I don't think there is ever an empty seat there. To concerts we were often admitted free, on saying that we were students, unless the artist was a great favourite, and in that case we could buy standing room, or seats in the gallery for one mark. We always went and came home in the street cars, paying the two cent fare with a one cent tip to the conductor, and dressing in our ordinary street clothes, with scarves over our hair. I used to go alone sometimes, and was never spoken to or molested in any way. No one looked at you twice, unless you looked at him three times.

On Sundays I would take a day off, and, in true German fashion, make an expedition; in bad weather to some museum or picture gallery, in Autumn or Spring to some out-of-door restaurant. Sometimes I was too tired to go further than the _Tiergarten_. Then I would stroll gently across it and have coffee and cakes at the _Zelt_, or big open-air refreshment gardens where the band plays. They are the resort of _hoi polloi_ of Berlin in countless family groups: the father rather fat with hirsute adornments, the mother also rather ma.s.sive, and their plump children, all drinking beer out of tall gla.s.ses and mugs, or coffee in inch-thick white cups, and eating wedges of highly decorated _Torte_, with or without the addition of heaped-up whipped cream.

If I felt more strenuous, I would take a car out to the Grunewald, a villa-colony suburb, with roads winding through pine woods. I would sit under the trees and invite my soul. As I sat there, some girl or boy's school would come trooping by, singing a _Volkslied_ of interminable verses, in four parts, having tramped all day for the pure joy of motion in the open air. Then I would have coffee and a triangle of cherry pie, and what cherry pie! at the _Hundekehle_, an immense restaurant on the border of a small lake, accommodating I don't know how many fat Prussians at once with refreshments. Every German town has some such resort, where inexpensive creature comforts are the reward of a long walk. Such an expedition of the whole family is their greatest treat, and one in which they have the sense to indulge as often as possible.

Even on week day afternoons the housewives find time for a stroll, a reviving cup of coffee, and a little gossip, though of course that is not the same thing as going _en ma.s.se_ with Hans and the Kinder. Of course, this was long before the war.

CHAPTER VII

MY FIRST OPERATIC CONTRACT SIGNED

By the first of December I had broken the back of the German declensions, understood a good part of an ordinary conversation, and had painfully acquired three or four roles in German. The gadfly of my ambition began to torment me again, and I determined to look for a "job."

Students often ask me "How did you get your first engagement?" This is how. I went to see the best agent in Berlin, Herr Harder, a man of the highest reputation for fair dealing, who was the recognized head of his profession. Opinion as to the agent's powers of usefulness is divided among singers. Some maintain that they have made all their good engagements independently, others tell you that you are safe only in the hands of a reputable agent. I have closed contracts in both ways. The agent is not omnipotent. It is his business to watch the operatic field and notify you when there is a vacancy that he thinks would suit you. He is apt to know first where such vacancies are likely to occur. Directors who are looking for singers sometimes go straight to their favourite agent. Then he, the agent, sends you word that Herr Direktor So and So will be at his Bureau on such a day to hear singers. When you respond, you may find yourself the only contralto among many other voices, or you may find yourself one of six or seven all wanting the same engagement.

The agent keeps contract blanks in his office, and when he hears of a vacancy in an opera house, he fills in a blank with your name, the name of the theatre, and tentatively the salary he thinks they will pay, and sends it to you. You sign it if it suits you, and return it to the agent. This is really nothing more than a notification that there is, or will be, such a vacancy, and is not worth the paper it is written on.

American girls, who do not understand this, will tell you that they have "been offered Berlin, or Vienna, or Munich," when they have merely received one of these _Agenten-Vertrage_. A contract is worth nothing as such, until it is countersigned by the director of the opera house, and yourself as singer. Even then, it is not valid until you have sung as many "trial performances" at the opera house as the contract calls for, and for which you may have to wait six months.

I told Herr Harder what I wanted--a chance to do big roles somewhere, salary no particular object, as I should look upon the experience as the completion of my training. I sang for him, left with him my repertoire and photographs, and he promised to let me know of the first opportunity that presented itself. In a short time, he sent for me to come and see the Director of the Theater des Westens, a Berlin theatre which at that time was the home of a sort of popular opera. I sang for the manager, and he was very complimentary. He offered to engage me at once, but he added, curiously enough, that I was too good for him! They gave only the older operas like "Trovatore," on which the copyright had expired, and of these only the ones which the Hofoper did not give, so that I should have no chance to sing my big parts. At the same time, he said he would very much like to have me. The offer did not suit my plans, and I decided to refuse it. I went on with my work until just before Christmas, when Herr Harder made me a second proposal. This was the position of first contralto in the garrison town of Metz in Alsace-Lorraine. The opera was a munic.i.p.al one, that is it was subsidized by the town, they played a season of seven months, and gave a large repertoire including some of the Ring dramas. I was to go down there, sing for the management, and if they liked me, begin my engagement the following September, giving me time to make additions to my German repertoire. As I was a beginner of course I could not give the usual guest performances.

_Vorsingen_ is a trying ordeal. The great theatres have regular days for hearing aspirants, but this was a small theatre. The appointment is usually made on the stage, sometimes during, sometimes just after a rehearsal. Groups of the singers regularly engaged in the opera house stand in the wings, and you feel a nameless hostility emanating from all of them, especially from the one whom you are going to try to supplant.

The theatre is like a cavern, and the acoustic is of course totally unknown to you. Two or three pale spots down in the orchestra chairs indicate the whereabouts of the director and perhaps the stage manager and first Kapellmeister who have come to hear you. The overhead "rehearsal lights" are very unbecoming and you are quite conscious of it. If you are to sing with orchestra, the conductor presents you to the players, "_Meine Herren, Fraulein----._" You bow, and your insides slip a few inches lower. My first _Vorsingen_ was with the piano. It stood at one side of the stage, and a whipper-snapper of a third Kapellmeister dashed more or less accurately into the prelude of the second aria from "Samson et Dalila."

Then came a momentous interview in the Director's office. I had sung such good German, thanks to Frau----, that he had no idea that I understood only about three words in five of what he said. For form's sake he kept saying, "_Sie verstehen mich, Fraulein?_" and when I answered "_Ja_," he was satisfied. His wife, who thought she spoke English, was present, and tried to say a great deal, but my German proved the more serviceable of the two. I gathered that I was offered a two season contract, to sing the leading contralto parts, at the princely salary of 150 marks a month! (about $35). There was no _Spielgelt_. Salaries are usually divided into so much per month down, and so much per performance, the number of performances per month guaranteed; that is, one is paid for a certain number whether one sings them or not, and any performances over and above this number are paid extra. If a performance is lost by one's own fault, through illness for example, the _Spielgelt_ for that performance is forfeited. Three days absence from the cast through illness, even though one may be scheduled to sing only once during those days, is counted as one _Spielgelt_.

Illness is, in fact, almost a crime. In addition to losing your money, you have to have witnesses to prove that you are really ill, for theatre directors in Germany are a suspicious lot and take nothing for granted.

If you wake on the morning of a performance with laryngitis, that dread enemy of the voice, or if you fall downstairs on your way to the theatre and sprain your ankle, you must notify the theatre before a certain hour in the day, perhaps ten or twelve, or four o'clock, that you cannot sing that night. Your word for it alone won't do. Every theatre has special doctors on its list, and you must call in one of these, whether he is your regular physician or not. He makes an examination and gives you a signed statement that you are unable to appear, adding, if the disorder be serious, how many days it will be in his opinion, before you can return to work. It often happens that the man most experienced in treating your illness, the best throat specialist in town, for example, is not on the books as "Theater-Arzt," and then if you wish to be treated by him, you sometimes have trouble with the theatre doctor. In the theatre in which I was first engaged, I had a disagreeable experience of this kind. I was ill with bronchitis, and sent word to the theatre the day before, that I should not be able to sing _Marta_, in "Faust," on the night scheduled for it. I had already committed the deadly crime of illness once before that season, and this time my defection was particularly annoying to the management because they had to get a guest for "Faust" anyway, and they would be forced to send posthaste for another to sing the _Nurse_. Their irritation with me was equalled, if not surpa.s.sed, by that of the regular theatre doctor, whose professional honour had been outraged the last time by my insistence upon the services of a very clever throat specialist who lived in the town, and whose aid I had had the bad taste to prefer to his own.

Between them, I was the corn between the upper and nether millstone.

Next day the theatre sent word that they would accept nothing but a certificate from their own doctor, and the doctor shortly after appeared at my bedside. I could hardly speak out loud, but managed to whisper a request that he would write me an "_Attest_" for three days. To my surprise he began to hem and haw, and finally stammered out: "There is really no reason in my opinion, why you shouldn't sing this evening!" I was so furious I saw red. I sat up in bed, and whispered savagely:

"You say I can sing tonight! Very well, get out of my room, and I'll go to the theatre and sing this evening, with my voice in this condition, and _you_ will be responsible for the consequences!" He got up, twisting his hat in his hands, and stammering something. I simply fixed my eyes on him, and fairly glared him out of the room. Then I dressed like a hurricane and rushed to the director's office.

"I have come to sing _Marta_," I announced hoa.r.s.ely.

"Oh! _liebes Fraulein_----" began the director, positively scared by my pale face and furious eyes, "_Of course_ we don't want you to sing when you are so hoa.r.s.e. Doctor---- was quite mistaken; please go home and take care of yourself. We'll get a guest for the _Nurse_ at once!"

"Very well," I said, "I will go home if you say so; but remember Doctor---- says I can sing, and I am ready to do so on his responsibility."