The Mapleson Memoirs, 1848-1888 Volume Ii Part 16

"LUIGI RAVELLI, Plaintiff, v. J. H. MAPLESON, Defendant.

"Now comes J. H. Mapleson defendant in the above ent.i.tled action by W.

H. L. Barnes his attorney and for answer to the complaint of Luigi Ravelli the plaintiff in the above ent.i.tled action respectfully shows to the Court and alleges as follows:

"The defendant denies that between the 4th day of February A.D. 1886 and the 4th day of April 1886 or between any other dates plaintiff rendered services to the defendant at defendant's special instance or request or otherwise in the capacity of an opera singer or otherwise except as hereinafter stated.

"Defendant denies that for said alleged services or otherwise or at all this defendant promised to pay plaintiff the salary of twenty-four hundred dollars per month or any sum except as is hereinafter stated.

"Defendant admits that he has not paid the said plaintiff for his alleged services since the 4th day of February A.D. 1886; but he denies that the same or any part thereof is due to plaintiff from the defendant.

"And further answering the defendant alleges and shows to the Court as follows:

"That heretofore to wit on or about the 22nd day of July A.D. 1885 at the City of London, England, the plaintiff Luigi Ravelli and this defendant made and entered into a contract in writing in and by which it was agreed substantially as follows:--

"1st: That said Ravelli engaged as primo tenore a.s.soluto for performances in Great Britain, Ireland, and the United States with the defendant, said engagement to begin at the commencement of the season about the 1st of November A.D. 1885 and to close at the end of the American season, the salary of said plaintiff to be twenty-four hundred dollars per month payable monthly. The said Ravelli agreed to sing in Concerts as well as in Operas, but not to sing either in public nor in private houses in the Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland, or the United States during 1885-6 without the written permission of the defendant.

The said plaintiff also agreed in and by said contract to conform himself to the ordinary rules of the Theatre, and to appear for rehearsals, representations, and concerts at the place and at the precise time indicated by the official call, and in case the said plaintiff should violate said undertaking, the defendant had the right to deduct a week's salary from the compensation of the plaintiff, or at his option to entirely cancel the said agreement as by said contract now in the possession of the defendant, and ready to be produced as the Court may direct, reference being thereunto had may fully and at large appear.

"And the defendant further says that after the making of said contract, said plaintiff commenced to render services as an Opera singer under said contract, and so continued down to about the 8th day of February 1886 at which time this defendant was in the City of Chicago, State of Illinois, and was then and there with his Opera Company engaged in giving representations of Operas, and the like at the Columbia Theatre in said City. That on the night of said day, and while the Opera Company of this defendant was engaged in giving a representation of the Opera known as _Carmen_ in which Madame Minnie Hauk a.s.sumed the _role_ of 'Carmen,' and the said Ravelli the _role_ of 'Don Jose,' the said Ravelli while on the stage, and in the presence of the audience violently a.s.saulted said Madame Minnie Hauk and threatened then and there to take her life, and shouted at her the most violently insulting epithets and language; that his conduct caused said Madame Minnie Hauk to become violently ill, and she so continued, and from time to time was unable to perform, thereby compelling this defendant to change the operas he had proposed and advertised to give, causing great public disappointment, and great pecuniary loss to this defendant.

"And the defendant further says that from about the 8th day of February 1885 to and until the 20th of February 1885 plaintiff refused to perform any of the parts set down for him to sing, or to attend rehearsals, or to obey calls as they were sent to him, and generally conducted himself in a brutal and insubordinate manner. That on the 20th of February at said City of Chicago this defendant with great difficulty persuaded him to act and sing in the part of 'Arturo' in the Opera of _I Puritani_, but before said last named day, he had been regularly and formally notified and called to the rehearsals of the Opera of _Mignon_, and to rehea.r.s.e, and sing the part of 'Guglielmo,' and he refused so to do, and tore up the calls, or notices sent to him therefor, and threw them in the face of defendant's messenger. The said Ravelli was announced to the public to sing the _role_ of said 'Guglielmo' in said opera of _Mignon_ in all advertis.e.m.e.nts and notices for the 19th day of February A.D. 1885, but wholly refused and neglected so to do, and also neglected and refused to appear and sing in the _role_ of 'Don Jose' in _Carmen_, announced in bills and advertised for February 20th, 1885.

"That after this defendant had as aforesaid persuaded said Luigi Ravelli to sing in the part of _I Puritani_, he continued to sing until the 13th March, at which time this defendant was with his Company at the City of Denver, in the Territory of Colorado, at which time and place he again without reason or excuse neglected and refused to sing in a public concert advertised and given in said City by this defendant.

"That thereafter and until the 6th of April 1885 said Ravelli was insubordinate, disrespectful, and self-willed in all his relations with this defendant, and falsely pretended to be unable to sing with the exception of two occasions, and on each of such occasions, without permission of this defendant, and without notice, he wilfully omitted the various princ.i.p.al airs and songs in the presence of the public who had paid to hear him sing the same, thereby causing this defendant great annoyance and loss by reason of the disappointment of the public, and the ill-will of the public towards this defendant caused thereby. That during the past four weeks during which this defendant has been with his said Company in the City and County of San Francisco the said Ravelli has repeatedly wilfully broken his contract, disappointed the public and greatly injured this defendant in his enterprise in business. He has sung only twice during all said period, and on his first appearance wilfully and maliciously omitted to sing a princ.i.p.al part of the music set down for him to sing, thereby disappointing the public, interrupting and injuring the representation and inflicting great injury and loss on this defendant.

"That on the 10th of April last the said Luigi Ravelli was duly called to rehearsal, and to sing certain music selected by himself, and which he had requested this defendant to insert in the Concert programme for April 11th, but refused to rehea.r.s.e or sing at said concert although this defendant had caused to be prepared said music and the band parts thereof to be written out, and arranged to suit the pleasure and caprice of said plaintiff.

"That said Ravelli not only refused to sing, but then and there declared he would sing no longer for this defendant, and falsely and maliciously inserted advertis.e.m.e.nts and notices in certain of the public newspapers of San Francisco, which notices and publications were greatly to the injury of this defendant.

"That all of which doings of said plaintiff were in breach of his contract with this defendant, and greatly to this defendant's damage, and to his damage in the sum of five thousand dollars.

"And this defendant further says that he has repeatedly condoned the violations by said plaintiff of said contract with this defendant and his violence and brutality towards persons of the Company other than this defendant in the hope that he will ultimately come to his senses, and behave himself as he should; but that all this defendant's forbearance towards him has been of no effect, and has led only to repeated and further violations of his contract.

"Wherefore this defendant alleges that all and singular the said acts and doings of said Ravelli have const.i.tuted, and are so many breaches of his said contract with this defendant and that the same have been to the damage of this defendant over and above the amount of salary to which the said Ravelli would have been ent.i.tled had he properly conducted himself in the respects aforesaid, the full sum of five thousand dollars.

"Wherefore the defendant demands that the said complaint be dismissed, and that he may have and recover of the plaintiff as damages for the breach of his said contract with this defendant the sum of five thousand dollars, together with the costs of the action and disburs.e.m.e.nts incurred in defending this action.

"W. H. L. BARNES,

"Attorney for Defendant."

"_State of California, City and County of San Francisco_.

"J. H. MAPLESON being duly sworn deposes and says that he is the defendant in the above ent.i.tled action, that he has read the foregoing answer and cross-complaint and knows the contents thereof; that the same is true of his own knowledge except as to those matters which are therein stated on his own information and belief and that as to those matters that he believes it to be true.

"J. H. MAPLESON.

"Subscribed and sworn to before me this 16th day of April A.D. 1886.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEAL.]

"GEO. F. KNOX, "Notary Public."

The suit having been promptly terminated in my favour (General Barnes wins all his cases, even when they are not quite as good as mine was) I had to pay a few dollars for law expenses, and the embargo on the music and baggage was raised. But we could not start on our long journey with something like ten dollars among the whole one hundred and sixty of us, and I had still many difficulties to contend with before I could make a start. In London or Paris I should have begun by parting with my valuable jewellery, but this I could not do in an American city without everyone getting at once to know of it. That jewellery cannot pa.s.s from hand to hand without some reasonable proof of ownership being given is undoubtedly an excellent thing, though it did not suit my particular case. In England we are such lovers of liberty that a low-cla.s.s p.a.w.nbroker or a receiver of stolen goods is free to purchase or to accept as a pledge whatever may be offered to him without asking inconvenient questions, or troubling himself in any way as to how the property came into the hands of the person anxious to dispose of it. In America the vendor or pledger of any article of value must give his real name and address, and at the same time brings as reference some respectable person, whose name and address must also be given. This reminds me (if for a few moments I may be allowed to depart from the thread of my story) that in America spirits cannot legally be sold to anyone under the age of fifteen, nor under any circ.u.mstances to women.

In England we are so wonderfully free that women and children may buy penn'orths of gin at any public-house; and one enterprising publican is said to have made a large fortune by establishing in his drink-den a metal counter low enough to suit the convenience of small children.

I was obliged to leave a fifty-pound ring at one hotel as security for the payment of a singer's bill, and, oddly enough, when this ring was afterwards forwarded me in a registered letter to New York it was seized at the moment of my opening the packet by a creditor, or rather a claimant, who, for a pretended debt, had procured an attachment against my effects; so that it was not until after I had gone through several formalities that I could get it finally into my possession.

I remember a case in which an American manager, whose receipts had been attached, made a point of putting the money, as it was paid at the doors, into his pockets, which in a very short time were laden with coin. To attach the money that a man carries in his pockets a special order known as a "garnishee" is necessary; and the attachment of money carried on the person cannot be obtained unless the bearer admits that he has it about him, or can be proved on sworn evidence to have made such an admission within the hearing of another person.

When an attachment has once been obtained the order of attachment can be sent on by telegraph to be enforced, wherever the person against whom it has been granted possesses property. On the other hand, as a counterbalancing advantage, a manager may pledge his receipts by telegraph, and one man may at any time send money to another by the same means at quite a nominal charge. Deposit the money at a telegraph office, and the clerk telegraphs to the office of the place where your correspondent is staying that a sum equal in amount to the one deposited is to be forthwith paid. Our post-office orders are issued at usurious rates, and within limited hours. One cannot, however, but foresee the day when we shall be reasonable enough in this, as in so many other matters of practical life, to imitate the Americans.

It was absolutely necessary for me at the last moment to part with a certain amount of jewellery, and this I contrived to do without, I hope, attracting too much attention. I was spared the annoyance of seeing the details of each separate sale recorded in the newspapers.

I calculated that the losses caused to me by Ravelli's preposterous conduct amounted to at least 10,000 dollars. At some of the cities along the great line of railway, where I had engaged to give performances, I was unable, having lost the dates that had been fixed, to get others; and at one city, where the manager gave me another date, he stopped the whole of the receipts; which he said were due to him as damages for the injury done to him by not performing on the evening originally appointed.

On the morning of our departure--our escape, I may say--from the city where, a year before, we had been so prosperous, and whence I had borne away not a small, but a very considerable fortune, I was awakened about one o'clock in the morning by a Chinaman, a negro, and several Italian choristers, all crying out for money. But I satisfied every claim before I left; and I was more astonished than delighted to find myself complimented on having done so by one of the San Francisco papers, in which it was pointed out that I could easily have saved myself the trouble and pain in which I had been involved by taking a ticket and travelling eastward on my own account, leaving the Company to take care of themselves in the Californian capital.

I was not in a position to give gratuities to all who, in my opinion, deserved them. But John O'Molloy, the gasman of the Opera-house, had stood by me manfully in all my troubles; and I could not leave without making him a small present. In doing so I rendered the poor fellow a truly tragic service; inasmuch as, for the sake of the twenty-five dollar note which I gave him, he was the same evening robbed and murdered.

On the whole, though in the midst of my difficulties I had been worried a little by interviewers, the San Francisco papers gave me good words at parting. One of them explained my pecuniary failure not by the scandal which Ravelli's conduct had caused, but by my having played to popular prices, instead of the exceptionally high ones which I had charged when the year before Patti was singing for me, and receiving at the time payment at the rate of 1,000 a night.

"Opera," said the journal in question, "is regarded as a luxury, to enjoy which its votaries are willing to pay liberally. High prices are its illusion, and when put down to current rates the romance of the thing is destroyed. Mapleson did not appear to understand this, and his deficiency of the knowledge has caused him to leave us almost a bankrupt by his San Francisco venture. It is admitted on all hands that he had a splendid troupe, but the fact of his performing to what are known as popular prices, and complications arising with certain members of his troupe, seem to deprive him of his usual success."

"By the way," said a writer in the paper called _Truth_, "I notice that Mapleson is said to be indebted to Ravelli for 6,000 dollars, though an artist notoriously never permits an impresario to owe him more than a few performances. [It was proved in Court that I owed him nothing.] At home, as everybody knows, in their own country they receive in about a year as much as they are paid in a month in America, the streets of which the average Italian singer imagines to be paved with gold coins.

As to the success or failure of the venture of the impresario they are supremely indifferent, but pertinaciously continue to demand the utmost farthing, no matter how badly things may be going. Lyric artists are, as a rule, the most grossly ignorant people on all subjects, except their own special art, and money. They are intensely conceited and abominably selfish, and regard an impresario as their natural prey. The sums that Ravelli has received from Mapleson in the last few years are beyond question sufficient to maintain the tenor in comfort and luxury for the rest of his life. Yet the moment he fails to receive his _quid pro quo_ he refuses to render his services, denouncing his manager as a swindler, and abandons him at a moment when by loyalty and a little patience he could have aided in relieving the ill-fortune which must inevitably be antic.i.p.ated in operatic affairs. Of course on general commercial principles the labourer is worthy of his hire; but in operatic matters the hire is, as a rule, so entirely out of proportion to the services rendered, and the conditions of the enterprise so unlike any other venture, that a little lat.i.tude certainly ought to be allowed."

I found on my arrival at Chicago that one of the Chicago papers had, at the beginning of my troubles, published the following telegram from its correspondent at San Francisco:--

"Mapleson is fighting his last week of opera at San Francisco in the teeth of dissensions, his first tenor having published a card to the purport that Mapleson had not fulfilled his obligations with him, and that he would not sing unless he published an announcement over his own name. The _San Francisco Chronicle_, the leading paper, therefore calls on all music lovers to rally in force for Mapleson's benefit on the 16th. The absurd prices Mapleson pays his operatic cut-throats makes the opera business a ruinous one. Covered with trophies and a due proportion of scars from his many campaigns, Mapleson will march his forces into Chicago to-morrow, Sunday, bivouacing for the night at the Chicago Opera-house, where his princ.i.p.al members will be heard in a sacred concert.

"The different performances given, notwithstanding all these operatic troubles, have been of that high standard which Mapleson alone has ever presented to us. Mapleson remains with us another week. Such performances as he has given are in but few places to be found. No Opera Company existing to-day has a better troupe of singers. There appears to exist a general impression among certain of the newspapers that Colonel Mapleson is operatically dead, and entirely out of the hunt. By his advent here, he proves to the public that he is still on deck."

My plan of retreat was well devised, and with a little good luck might have been thoroughly successful. As it was, it at least enabled us, without too much delay, to reach New York, and from New York to take ship for Liverpool.

Unable to command the railroad in a direct way from Frisco to New York, I determined to undertake a series of engagements at certain selected points all along the line. If the first of these proved successful I should be in a better position for my second encounter. It was certain in any case that at each fresh city I should be able to levy contributions; and with the money thus raised I could lay in a new stock of provisions and continue my advance by rail in the direction of New York, ready to stop at the first city whose population and resources might make it worth my while to do so.

Going back a little I must here explain that before leaving San Francisco, in order that Mdme. Minnie Hauk might be fresh for the proposed performance at Omaha, I had sent her on two days in advance--a distance of not more than 1,867 miles; whilst Mdme. Nordica was placed at another strategical point 2,500 miles away, at Minneapolis. She had to attend her sick mother, but was prepared to rejoin us when called upon to do so. Mdlle. Alma Fohstrom, not having sufficiently recovered from her late indisposition, was left behind at San Francisco, 2,400 miles from the scene of my next operations.

From Louisville, Kentucky, I telegraphed Mdme. Minnie Hauk to come on at once to play _Carmen_ for the second night of our season; and she arrived in good time. She sang the same evening.

Mdme. Nordica received orders to join us at Indianapolis, where she was to appear in _La Traviata_, which she duly did the following Friday; whilst Mdlle. Alma Fohstrom, now recovered, was brought on from San Francisco to Cincinnati, a distance of some 2,500 miles, to perform in _Lucia di Lammermoor_. She also arrived punctually, and sang the same night.

I mention this small fact to show what can be accomplished with a little discipline. The reason why Mdme. Minnie Hauk was sent on to Omaha beforehand was in order that, by announcing her arrival in that city, I might give confidence to the public, it having been reported that my Company was broken up. Hence there was no booking; though had we arrived punctually for the opera on the promised date, my receipts, which I had already pledged to the Railway Company to get out of San Francisco, would certainly have been not less than 500 or 600. Mdme.

Minnie Hauk, moreover, would have been saved a detour of some 2,400 miles.

Altogether I lost about 2,000, as I missed Omaha on the Friday, Burlington on the Sat.u.r.day, Chicago on the Sunday, and my first performance in Louisville on the Monday.