CHAPTER XIX

BEGINNING OF THE GRAU PERIOD

From 1896 to the end of the season 1902-03 Maurice Grau was in name as well as in fact the monarch of the operatic world of America. For a brief space he also extended his reign to Covent Garden, but the time was not ripe for that union of interests between London and New York which has so long seemed inevitable, and his foreign reign was short. So was his American dictatorship; but while it lasted it was probably the most brilliant operatic government that the world has ever known from a financial point of view, and its high lights artistically were luminous in the extreme. At the end of the period Mr. Grau had retired from operatic management forever, for though his desire to remain in active employment was intense, his mental powers unweakened, and his will strong, his health was hopelessly shattered, and before another lustrum had passed he had gone down to his death, his last thoughts longingly fixed on the institution which had brought him fame and fortune in abundant measure. For several years he had maintained a beautiful summer home at Croissy-Chatou, on the Seine, about ten miles from Paris. He died in the French capital on March 14, 1907, of a disease of the heart which had compelled his abandonment of active managerial life.

Mr. Grau was an Austrian by birth, his birthplace being Brünn; but he was brought to New York by his parents in 1854, when he was five years old, and all his education and business training was American. He passed through the classes of the city's public schools and was graduated from the Free Academy, now the College of the City of New York, in 1867. He then entered the Law School of Columbia College, and read law in the office of Morrison, Lauterbach & Spitgarn. His uncle, Jacob Grau, was an operatic and theatrical manager, and for him, as a boy, he sold librettos in his opera house. This opened the way into theatrical life, which proved to have such fascinations and hold such promises that he abandoned the law without having sought admission to the bar, and in 1872 also abandoned the service of his uncle and embarked on his career as manager. In association with Charles A. Chizzola, the joint capital amounting to $1,500, he engaged Aimée, a French opéra bouffe singer, who had made a hit two years before at the Grand Opera House, for a season of seven weeks. His first week, in Bridgeport, Conn., paid the expenses of the entire engagement. Aimée came to America again and again, and always under Mr. Grau's management. The same year he managed the American tours of Rubinstein and Henri Wieniawski, both of whom came to America with the financial backing of Messrs. Steinway & Sons. It was before the days of phenomenal honoraria. Rubinstein was content with $200 a concert, and in eight months his energetic young manager had cleared $60,000 on his engagement alone. The next year he organized the Clara Louise Kellogg Opera Company, continued his management of Mlle. Aimée, and brought to America the Italian tragedian, Tommaso Salvini. In 1874 he managed three opéra bouffe and operetta companies, besides Adelaide Ristori, and became lessee of the Lyceum Theater, in Fourteenth Street. There was a season of financial stress, and in 1875 he severed his connection with Chizzola, after another period of bad luck. In 1876 he gave concerts, directed by Offenbach, in the Madison Square Garden, which were a failure, but he recouped his losses from a forfeit of $20,000, which the Italian Rossi paid to him rather than give up a successful season in Paris. A highly successful tour of seventeen months in South America, Cuba, and Mexico with an opéra bouffe troupe, headed by the tenor Capoul, and Paola Marié continued his successes. In 1883 began his association with Messrs. Abbey and Schoeffel, whose experiences, together with his own, at the Metropolitan Opera House have repeatedly formed the subject of discussion in these chapters of operatic history.

The story of the management of the Metropolitan Opera House ended in