Memoirs of an American Prima Donna Part 23

Our stay there was all too short to please me and the day soon came for us to start for home. We crossed on the _Cuba_ of the Cunard Line, and a very poor steamer she was. It was not in the least an interesting trip. There was no social intercourse, because all the pa.s.sengers were too seasick to talk or even to listen. It seemed to them like a personal affront for anyone not to succ.u.mb to _mal de mer_.

"You mean thing," one woman said to me, "why aren't you seasick!"

Our pa.s.senger list was, however, a somewhat striking one. Rubenstein and Wieniawski were on board and Clara Doria; Mark Smith, the actor; Edmund Yeats and Maddox, the editor whom I had known in London, and, of course, Pauline Lucca. She was registered as the Baroness von Raden and had her baby with her--the one generally believed to have a royal father--and, with her baby and her seasickness, was very much occupied. Her father and mother accompanied her. Lucca, as we know, had been a ballerina. Her toes were all twisted and deformed by her early years of dancing. She once showed them to me, a pitiful record of the triumphs of a ballet dancer. There was something of the ballerina in her temperament, also, which she never entirely outgrew. Certainly she was far from being a _prima donna_ type. An irresistible sense of fun made her a most amusing companion; and her charm lay largely in her unexpectedness. One never could guess what she was going to do or say next. I recall an incident that occurred a little later in Chicago that ill.u.s.trates this. A very handsome music critic--I will not mention his name--came behind the scenes one night to see us. He was a grave young man, with a brown beard and beautiful eyes, and his appearance gave a vague sense of familiarity as if we had seen it in some well-known picture. Yet I could not place the resemblance. Lucca stood off at a little distance studying him owlishly for a minute or two as he was chatting to me in the wings.

Presently she whisked up to him with her brown eyes dancing and, looking up at him in the drollest way, said laughingly:

"And how do you do, my Jesus Christ!"

On this voyage home I saw more or less of Edmund Yeats who kept us amused with a steady flow of witty talk and who kept up an equally steady flow of brandy and soda, and of Maddox who was not seasick and was willing to both walk and talk. Maddox was an interesting man, with many strange stories to tell of things and people famous and well-known.

Among other personalities we discussed Adelaide Neilson, whose real name, by the way, was Mary Ann Rogers. I was speaking of her refinement and pretty manners on the stage, her gracious and yet una.s.suming fashion of accepting applause, and her general air of good breeding, when Maddox told me, to my great astonishment, that this was more remarkable than I could possibly imagine since the charming actress had come from the most disadvantageous beginnings. She had, in fact, led a life that is generally characterised as "unfortunate" and it was while she was in this life that Maddox first met her, and, finding the girl full of ambition and aspirations toward something higher, had put her in the way of cultivating herself and her talents. These facts as told me by Maddox have always remained in my mind, not in the least to Neilson's discredit, but quite the reverse, for they only make her charming and artistic achievements all the more admirable. I have always enjoyed watching her. She was always just diffident enough without being self-conscious. It used to be pretty to see her from a box where I could look at her behind the scenes compose herself before taking a curtain call. She would slip into the mood of the part that she had just been playing and that she wished still to suggest to the audience. Which reminds me that Henry Irving once told me that he and Miss Terry did exactly this same thing. "We always try to keep within the picture even after the act is over," he said. "An actor should never take his call in his own character, but always in that which he has been personating."

On the whole the particular trip of which I am now speaking stands out dominantly in my memory because of Rubenstein. I never, never saw anyone so seasick, nor anyone so completely depressed by the fact. Poor creature! He swore, faintly, that he would never cross the ocean again even to get home! Occasionally he would talk feebly, but his spirit was completely broken. I have not the faintest idea what Rubenstein was like when he was not seasick. He may have sparkled consummately in a normal condition; but he did not sparkle on the _Cuba_.

The Lucca-Kellogg season which followed was not a comfortable one, but it netted us large receipts. The work was arduous, the operas heavy, and the management was up to its ears in contentions and jealousies. New York was in a musical fever during the early seventies. We were just finding out how to be musical and it was a great and pleasurable excitement. We were pioneers, and enjoyed it, and were happy in not being hide-bound by traditions as were the older countries, because we had none. One of the season's sensations was Senorita Sanz, a Spanish contralto, whose voice was not unlike that of Adelaide Phillips. She was a beautiful woman and a good actress, and, above all, she had the true Spanish temperament, languid, exotic and yet fiery. Her Azucena was a fine performance; and she created a tremendous _furore_ with La Paloma, which was then a novelty. She used to sing it at Sunday night concerts and set the audiences wild with:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Musical notation; Cuan-do...... sa-li de lo Ha-ba-na Val-ga-me Dios!]

Lucca's operas for the season were _Faust_, _Traviata_, _L'Africaine_, _Fra Diavolo_ and _La Figlia del Regimento_. Mine were _Trovatore_, _Traviata_, _Crispano_, _Linda_ and _Martha_, and _Don Giovanni_. It was to Lucca's _Zerlina_ that I first sang Donna Anna in _Don Giovanni_; and, as in the big concert at the Coliseum my friends had felt some doubts as to the carrying power of my voice, so now many persons expected the _role_ to be too heavy for me. But I believe I succeeded in proving the contrary. When we did _Le Nozze di Figaro_, Lucca was the Cherubino, making the quaintest looking of boys and much resembling one of Raphael's cherubs in his painting of the _Sistine Madonna_.

Personally, the relations between Lucca and myself were always amicable enough; but we had certain professional frictions, brought about, indeed, by Jarrett who, although he was nothing but an agent and an indifferent one at that, was generally regarded as an authority, and gave out critiques to the newspapers. It so happened that, without my knowledge, the monopoly of singing in _Faust_ was in her contract and I was so prevented from singing Marguerite once during our entire engagement. As Marguerite was my _role_ pre-eminently, by right of conquest, in America, I felt very hurt and angry about the matter and, at first, wanted to resign from the company, but, of course, was talked out of that att.i.tude. Jarrett would not, however, consent to my even alternating with Lucca in the part; but possibly he was wise in this as Marguerite was never one of her best personations. She played a very impulsive and un-German Gretchen, in spite of herself, being an Austrian by birth. One of the newspapers said that "she fell in love with Faust at first sight and the Devil was a useless article!" Her characterisation of the part was somewhat devilish in itself; her work was striking, effective, and _piquant_, but not touched by much distinction. The difference between our presentations was said to be that I "convinced by a refined perfection of detail" and Lucca by more vivid qualities. Indeed, our voices and methods were so dissimilar that we never felt any personal rivalry, whatever the critics said to the contrary. As one man justly expressed it: "Neither Lucca nor Kellogg has the talent for quarrelling." There were, of course, rival factions in our public. A man one night sent a note behind the scenes to me containing this message: "Poor Kellogg! you have no chance at all with Lucca!" Two days later Mme. Lucca came to me laughing and said that some one had asked her: "How do you dare to sing on the same bill with Miss Kellogg, the American favourite?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Newspaper Print of the Kellogg-Lucca Season=

Drawn by Jos. Keppler]

So interesting did our supposed rivalry become, however, as to excite considerable newspaper comment. In reply to one of these in _The Chicago Tribune_ a contributor answered:

_To the Editor of The Chicago Tribune_:

SIR: In your issue of this morning, there is an editorial headed "Operatic Failure," which is, in some respects, so unjust and one-sided as to call for an immediate protest against its injustice. Having taken your ideas from _The New York Herald_, and having no other source of information, it is not to be wondered at that you should fall into error. For reasons best known to Mr.

James Gordon Bennett, _The New York Herald_, since the commencement of the Jarrett-Maretzek season, has undertaken to write up Madame Lucca at the expense of every other artist connected with the troupe; and it is because of _The Herald's_ fulsome laudations of Lucca, and its outrageously untruthful criticisms of Kellogg, that much of the trouble has occurred. Of the two ladies, Kellogg is by far the superior singer. Lucca has much dramatic force, but, in musical culture, is not equal to her sister artist, and there is no jealousy on the part of either lady of the other. The facts are these: The management, taking their cue from _The Herald_, and being afraid of the power of Mr. Bennett, tried to shelve Kellogg, and the result has been that the dear public would not permit the injustice, and they, the managers, as well as _The Herald_, are amazed and angered at the result of their dirty work.

OPERA.

Chicago, Oct. 28, 1872.

Lucca and I gave _Mignon_ that season together, she playing the part of Mignon and I that of Felina, the cat. Mignon was always a favourite part of my own, a sympathetic _role_ filled with poetry and sentiment. When I first studied it, I most carefully read _Wilhelm Meister_, upon which it is founded. Regarding the part of Felina, I have often wondered that people have never been more perceptive than they appear to have been of the a.n.a.logy between her name and her qualities, for she has all of the characteristics of the feline species. Our dual star bill in the opera was highly successful and effective in spite of Jarrett's continual attacks upon me through the press and in every way open to him. He did me a particularly cruel turn about Felina. I started off in the _role_, the opening night, in what I still believe to have been the correct interpretation. _Wilhelm Meister_ was set in a finicky period and its characters wore white wigs and minced about in their actions. My part was all comedy and the gestures should have been little and dainty and somewhat constrained. So I played it, until I saw this criticism, written by one of Jarrett's creatures, "Miss Kellogg has no freedom of movement in the _role_ of Felina, etc."

My mother, always anxious for me to profit by criticism that might have value, said that perhaps the man was right. At any rate, between the two, I became so self-conscious that the next time I sang Felina I could not get into the mood of it at all. Not to seem restricted in gesture, I waved my arms as if I were in _Norma_; and the performance was a very poor one in consequence. Yet, in spite of Jarrett's machinations, it was said of me in the press of the day:

" ...Her rendering of Felina was a magnificent success. From the first scene on the balcony until her light-hearted laughter dies away, she is a vision of beauty and grace, appealing to every high aesthetic emotion and charming all hearts with her sweetness."

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Clara Louise Kellogg in _Mignon_=

From a photograph by Mora]

Furthermore, an eminent Shakespearean critic, writing then, said:

As an actress, Miss Kellogg's superiority cannot justly be questioned. Some things are exquisitely represented by the fair Swede, Miss Nilsson, such as the dazed look, the stupefaction caused by a great shock, like that of the death of Valentin, for instance; such as the madness to which the distracting conflict of many selfish feelings and pa.s.sions leads. But she is always circ.u.mscribed by her own consciousness. Her soul never pa.s.ses beyond that limit--never surrounds her--filling the stage and infecting the audience with a magnetic atmosphere which is a part of herself, or herself transfused, if such expressions be allowable. In this respect Miss Kellogg is very different and greatly superior. Her sympathies are large. She conceives well the effects of the warmer and more generous pa.s.sions upon the person who feels them. She can, by the force of her imagination, abandon herself to these influences, and, by her artistic skill, give them apt expression. She can cease to be self-conscious, and feel but the fict.i.tious consciousness of the personage whom she represents, while the force of her own illusion magnetises her auditors till they respond like well-tuned harps to every chord of feeling which she strikes.

Such notices, such critiques, were compensations! Taken as a whole, Felina was a successful part for me; largely on account of that piece of glittering generalities, the Polonaise. In this, according to one critic, "she aroused the admiration of her auditors to a condition that was really a tempestuous _furore_." So, as I say, there were compensations for Jarrett's unkindnesses.

CHAPTER XXIV

ENGLISH OPERA

The idea of giving opera in English has always interested me. I never could understand why there were any more reasons against giving an English version of _Carmen_ in New York than against giving a French version of _Die Freischutz_ in Paris or a German version of _La Belle Helene_ in Berlin. To be sure, it goes without saying, from a purist point of view it is a patent truth, that no libretto is ever so fine after it has been translated. Not only does the quality and spirit of the original evaporate in the process of translating, but, also, the syllables come wrong. Who has not suffered from the translations of foreign songs into which the translator has been obliged to introduce secondary notes to fit the extra syllables of the clumsily adapted English words? These are absolute objections to the performance of any operas or songs in a language other than the one to which the composer first set his music. Wagner in French is a joke; so is Goethe in Italian. A musician of my acquaintance once spoke of Strauss's _Salome_ as a case in point, although it is a queerly inverse one. "Oscar Wilde's French poem or play--whichever you like to call it--" he said, "was translated into German; and it was this translation, or so it is generally understood, that Strauss set to music. When the opera--a French opera in spirit, taken from French text that was most Frenchly treated--was given with Oscar Wilde's original French words, the music often seemed to go haltingly, as though it had been adopted to phrases for which it had not been composed." Several notable singers have recently entered a protest against giving opera in English. Miss Garden--admirable and spontaneous artist though she be--once wrote an article in which she cited _Madame b.u.t.terfly_ as an example of the inartistic effects of English librettos. I do not recall her exact words, but they referred to the scene in which d.i.c.k Pinkerton offers Sharpless a whiskey and soda. Miss Garden said, If I remember correctly, that the very words "whiskey and soda" were inartistic and spoiled the poetry and picturesqueness of the act. Personally, I do not see that it was the words that were inartistic, but, rather, the introduction of whiskey and soda at all into a grand opera. My point is that such objections obtain not more stringently against English translations than against German, French, or Italian translations. Furthermore, after all is said that can be said against translations into whatsoever language, the fact remains that countries and races are not nearly so different as they pretend to be; and a human sentiment, a dramatic situation, or a lovely melody will permeate the consciousness of a Frenchman, an Englishman, or a German in approximately the same manner and in the same length of time. Adaptations and translations are merely different means, poorer or better as the case may be, of facilitating such a.s.similations; and, so soon as the idea reaches the audience, the audience is going to receive it joyfully, no matter what nation it comes from or through what medium:--that is, if it is a good idea to begin with.

Possibly this may be a little beside the point; but, at least, it serves to introduce the subject of English opera--or, rather, foreign grand opera given in English--the giving of which was an undertaking on which I embarked in 1873. I became my own manager and, with C. D. Hess, organised an English Opera Company that, by its success, brought the best music to the comprehension of the intelligent ma.s.ses. I believe that the enterprise did much for the advancement of musical art in this country; and it, besides, gave employment to a large number of young Americans, several of whom began their careers in the chorus of the company and soon advanced to higher places in the musical world. Joseph Maas was one of the singers whom this company did much for; and George Conly was another. The former at first played small parts, but his chance came to him as Lorenzo in _Fra Diavolo_, when he made a big hit, and, eventually, he returned to England and became her greatest oratorio tenor. I myself made the versions of the standard operas used by us during the first season of English opera, translating them newly and directly from the Italian and the French and, in some instances, restoring the text to a better condition than is found in English opera generally. My enterprise met with a great deal of criticism and discussion. Usually, public opinion and the opinion of the press were favourable. One of my staunch supporters was Will Davis, the husband of Jessie Bartlett Davis. In _The Chicago Tribune_ he wrote:

Unless the public can understand what is sung in opera or oratorio recital, song or ballad, no more than a pa.s.sing interest can be awakened in the music-loving public. I do not agree with those who claim that language or thought is a secondary consideration to the enjoyment of vocal music. I believe that a superior writer of lyrics can fit words to the music of foreign operas that will not only be sensible but singable. I agree with _The Tribune_ that opera in the English language has never had a fair show, but I claim that the reason for this is because of the bad translations that have been given to the artists to sing.

After our success had become a.s.sured, one of the press notices read:

Never, in this country, has English opera been so creditably produced and so energetically managed as by the present Kellogg-Hess combination. All the business details being supervised by Mr. Hess, one of the longest-headed and hardest-working men of business to be found in even this age and nation, are thoroughly, systematically and promptly attended to; while all the artistic details, being under the direct personal care of Miss Clara Louise Kellogg, confessedly the best as well as the most popular singer America has produced, are brought to and preserved at the highest attainable musical standard. The performers embraced in the Hess-Kellogg English Opera Company comprise several artists of the first rank. The names of Castle, Maas, Peakes, Mrs. Seguin, Mrs.

Van Zandt, and Miss Montague are familiar as household words to the musical world, while the _repertoire_ embraces not only all the old established favourites of the public, but many of the most recent or _recherche_ novelties, such as _Mignon_, and _The Star of the North_, in addition to such genuine English operas as _The Rose of Castille_.

During the three seasons of our English Opera Company, we put on a great number of operas of all schools, from _The Bohemian Girl_ to _The Flying Dutchman_. The former is pretty poor stuff--cheap and insipid--I never liked to sing it. But--the houses it drew! People loved it. I believe there would be a large and sentimental public ready for it to-day. Its extraneous matter, the two or three popular ballads that had been introduced, formed a part of its attraction, perhaps. Our Devil's Hoof in _The Bohemian Girl_ was Ted Seguin who became quite famous in the part. His wife Zelda Seguin was our contralto and they were among the earliest people to travel with _The Beggar's Opera_ and other primitive performances. George A. Conly was our ba.s.so and a fine one. He was a printer by trade and he had his first chance with us at the Globe Theatre in Boston. He was our Deland, too, in _The Flying Dutchman_.

Eventually, he was drowned; and I gave a benefit for his widow. Maurice Grau and Hess had gone to London to engage singers for my English Opera Company and had selected, among others, Wilfred Morgan for first tenor and Joseph Maas for second tenor. Morgan had been singing secondary _roles_ for some time at Covent Garden. On our opening night of _Faust_ he gave out with a sore throat, and Maas took his place successfully.

William Carlton once told me that when he was just starting out he bought the theatrical wardrobe of Alberto Lawrence, a baritone, and was looking at himself in a mirror, dressed in one of his second costumes, in the green room of the Academy of Music early during our English season, when Morgan came up to him and said:

"Are you going on in those old rags?"

Carlton had to go on in them. The critics next day gave him a couple of columns of praise; but Morgan, whose wardrobe was gorgeous, was a complete failure in his _debut_. Our manager had finally to tell him that he could be second tenor or resign. In six weeks he was drawing seventy dollars less salary than Carlton, who was a baritone and a beginner. Carlton said that about this time Wilfred Morgan came up to him exclaiming,

"Well, Bill, I wish I had your voice and you had my clothes!"

William Carlton was a young Englishman, only twenty-three when he joined us; but he was already married and had two children. When we were rehearsing _The Bohemian Girl_, in the scene where the stolen daughter is recognised and Carlton had to take me in his arms, he said:

"I ought to kiss you here."

"Not lower than _this_!" said I, pointing to my forehead. He was much amused. Indeed, he was always laughing at my mother and me for our prudish ways; and my not marrying was always a joke between us.

"It's a sin," he declared once, when we were talking on a train, "a woman who would make such a perfect wife!"

"Louise," interrupted my mother sternly, "don't talk so much! You'll tire your voice!"

My good mother! She was always ruffling up like an indignant hen about me. In one scene of another opera, I remember, the villain and I had been playing rather more strenuously than usual and he caught my arm with some force. I staggered a little as I came off the stage and my mother flew at him.

"Don't you dare touch my daughter so roughly," she cried, much annoyed.

Mr. Carlton has paid me a nice tribute when writing of those days and of me at that time. He has said:

I have the most grateful memory of the sympathetic a.s.sistance I received from the gifted _prima donna_ when I arrived in this country under the management of Maurice Grau and C. D. Hess, who were conducting the business details of the Kellogg Grand Opera Company. Like many Englishmen, I was quite unprepared for the evidences of perfection which characterised the production of opera in the United States and, as I had not yet attained my twenty-fourth year, I was somewhat awed by the importance of the _roles_ and the position I was imported to fulfil. It was in a great measure due to the gracious help I received from Miss Kellogg that, at my _debut_ at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, as Valentine in _Faust_ to her Marguerite, I achieved a success which led up to my renewing the engagement for four consecutive years.