Part 9

I have been asked occasionally why I devote so much attention in my writing to interpreters. The answer is, of course, that I devote very little attention to them, not enough, I sometimes think. This book, indeed, says nearly all that I have said up to date on the subject. But I am not at all in sympathy with those critics of music and the drama who lay stress on the relative unimportance of interpreters. Sometimes I am inclined to believe that interpreters, who mould their own personalities rather than clay or words, are greater than creators. I think we might have a more ideal theatre if interpreters could be their own creators, like the mediaeval troubadours or the gipsies of Spain. For there are many disadvantages about creative art. One of them is its persistence. Beethoven and Dante wrote notes and letters down on paper and there they remain, apparently forever. It is very annoying. Legends hover round the names of these artists, and for centuries after their deaths all the stupid creators in the world try to do something similar to the work these men have done, and all the really inspired artists have to pass a period of probation during which they strive to forget the work these men have done. "You will find," remarks sagaciously one Henry C. Lunn, "that people will often praise a bad fugue because Bach has produced so many good ones." It would be much better for everybody if a law were passed consigning all creative work to the flames ten years after it saw the light. Then we would have novelty. If Beethoven recurred again, at least nobody would know it. Any knowledge about books or pictures or music of the past would have to be carried in the memory and in a few decades all memory of anything that was not essential would have disappeared. It must have been a thrilling experience to have lived in Alexandria at the time the library was burned. Just think, twenty years after that event, philosophers and professors probably could be found in Alexandria who did not go round with long faces telling you what had been done and what should be done. No references to the early Assyrians and the Greeks until the papyruses were replaced. The Renaissance and the Revival of Learning, on the other hand, doubtless pleasant enough at the time, smeared a terrible blot on the future of art.

Now interpretative art is different. It depends upon the contemporary individual, and some of its most thrilling effects may be entirely accidental. Any traditions which persist in interpretative art must be carried in the memory. In exceptional cases, of course, a singer, a dancer, or an actor is able to so stamp his or her personal achievement into the flowing rhythm of artistic space that a _style_ does persist. We have a very good example before us in the case of Isadora Duncan, who has been followed by a long train of animated Grecian urns. The deleterious effect of this persistence of an interpretative tradition must be apparent to any one. For the imitator of an interpreter is a thousand times more futile than the imitator of a creator. Fortunately, on the whole, styles in acting, in singing, and in dancing frequently change. The Catalani-Jenny Lind-Patti tradition, which God knows has hung on long enough, is nearly exhausted. We live in the age of the Mary Garden tradition.

There is another and even better reason why I find it pleasant to write about interpreters. In looking over the books on music written in the past I find that the books about singers are infinitely more fascinating than the books about composers. I am enthralled by what H. F. Chorley has to say about Pauline Viardot and Henrietta Sontag; I am delighted with the Goncourt's books about Guimard, Clairon, and Sophie Arnould. Auguste Ehrhard's "Fanny Elssler" is an extraordinary document and one cannot afford to miss P. T. Barnum on Jenny Lind and Mapleson on Patti. But I find that the old scribes on Mozart and Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Schubert, quite bore me, and it is impossible to say anything new about these men. Books about Beethoven are still appearing but I advise nobody to read them. The authors have arrived at that fine point where they can only compare authorities and quibble about details. Was Beethoven in a cold sweat when he composed the _Ninth Symphony_ or was he merely angry? The ink on the manuscript of such and such a work being blotted on a certain page, interest naturally arises as to whether the fifth note in the sixteenth bar is F sharp or G flat. Did Haydn or Prince H---- conduct the first performance of the _Symphony in X major_? Did Weber arrive in England on Thursday or Friday? And so on. It is all very tiresome.

Sometimes I believe that it is the whole duty of a critic to write about interpreters, about the interpretative arts. Less is understood about acting, singing, and dancing than about anything else in the field of aesthetic discussion, the more that is written about them, therefore, the better. Besides creative artists speak for themselves. Anybody can read a book; anybody can see a picture, or a reproduction of it. As for posterity it rejects all contemporary criticism of creative work; it has no use for it. It goes back to the work itself. So the critic of creative work entirely disappears in the course of a few years. After his short day nobody will read him any more.

Now an actor, a singer, or a dancer, can appear in comparatively few places for a comparatively short time. The number of people who can see or hear these interpreters is relatively small; consequently they like to read about them. As for posterity it is absolutely dependent upon books for its knowledge of the interpreters of a bygone day. That is the only way it can see the actors of the past. For that reason I am perfectly sure in my own mind that of such of my books as are devoted to criticism this is the one most likely to please posterity.

All criticism may not be creative writing, but certainly all good criticism is. For all good writing should be self-expression and the subject treated and the form into which it is cast are mere matters of convenience. There is no essential difference between poetry, fiction, drama, and essay. An essay may be as creative as a work of fiction, often it is more so. You will find criticism elsewhere than in the work of acknowledged critics. Dostoevsky's "The House of the Dead" is certainly a critical work, but the author chooses to criticize the conditions under which human beings are compelled to live rather than the works of Pushkin. Turgeniev once wrote to Flaubert, "There is no longer any artist of the present time who is not also a critic." He might have added that while all artists are assuredly critics, all critics are not artists. On the other hand Walter Pater's famous passage about the _Monna Lisa_ is certainly creative; it might almost be held responsible for the vogue of the picture. Before the war, nearly any day you might find frail American ladies from the Middle West standing in front of Leonardo's canvas and repeating the lines like so much doggerel. All artists express themselves as they may but they are not artists unless they express _themselves_. Only thus may they establish a current between themselves and their readers; only thus may they arouse emotion. And if they succeed in arousing emotion we may disregard the form in which their work is cast and bathe in the essence of spirit and idea.

Whether you agree with this theory or not you must be compelled to admit that criticism of interpreters, if it is anything at all, is bound to be creative. For the art of the interpreter exists in time and space only for the moment in an arbitrary place. Therefore he who writes about an interpreter is using him to express certain ideas as a painter uses his model.

It is a well-established fact that singers and actors in general only approve of the critics who praise them, but it will readily be apparent that there is a good instinctive reason back of this peculiarity. Their work only lives as it exists in criticism and people who dwell in places where these actors are not to be seen or in times after they are dead must perforce depend upon the critic for their impressions of these interpreters. The case of creative work is entirely different. The creator of genius should never be disturbed by a bad criticism. If his work is good it will far outlast the criticism. Indeed a bad notice helps a fine book to find its public sooner than a good notice, because it attracts attention and stimulates discussion. I think it is likely, for instance, that the striking collection of bad notices of his previous books, which James Branch Cabell inserted in the end pages of "The Cream of the Jest," did as much to advertise that author as the subsequent publication of "Jurgen."

II

Somewhere in Agnes G. Murphy's vivid but somewhat hysterical account of the life and adventures of Madame Melba, the diva's Boswell declares that the singer never permitted herself the pleasure of meeting newspaper critics lest, it is to be assumed, they should be prejudiced in her favour through the acquaintanceship. I can assure Madame Melba that this decision, if strictly adhered to, has cost her many pleasant hours, for I number certain music critics among my most diverting friends. I can further assure these colleagues of mine that they have missed knowing a very amusing woman, for once, not being considered at the time anything so formidable as a critic, I was permitted to sit next to the Australian canary while she toyed with her grapefruit and tasted her _oeuf benedictine_.

Madame Melba's point of view is not held exclusively by her. There are many singers who believe that a series of dinner invitations will buy a critic's pen; a few do not hesitate to offer emerald stick-pins and even substantial cheques. These methods are often entirely successful. On the other hand there are critics who will rush across the street, though the mud be ankle deep, to avoid an introduction to an artist. I have been frequently asked where I stood in the matter, as if it were necessary to take a stand and defend it.

I may say that if my profession kept me from knowing anybody I really wanted to know I should relinquish that profession without hesitation. It is absurd to feel that you cannot dine with a singer without praising her performances. Many days in each month I dine with authors whose works I abhor. I find their companionship delightful. Should I be deprived of their society because I happen to be a critic? I suppose I have a price--almost everybody has--but I should like to state right here and now that it is not a dinner, or a series of dinners, or even an emerald scarf-pin. I should be inclined, however, I admit frankly, to say at least gentle things about a lady who made me a present of a blooded silver cat.

But the crux of the matter lies deeper than this. No mere music critic can hope to write about singing, violin playing, or piano playing without knowing singers, violinists, and pianists. He can learn much from books, from the reviews of other critics, from hearing performances, but the great critics are those who study from the lips of the interpreters themselves. The valuable hints, suggestions, and inspiration that a critic with an open mind can gather from an interpreter are priceless, and not to be found elsewhere. Not that an interpreter will always tell the truth, not that he always knows what the truth is in his particular case. Nevertheless any _virtuoso_ will always have something of interest to say. It stands to reason that any man or woman who has devoted his life to his profession will know more about its difficulties, limitations, and tricks, than a mere critic can hope to learn in any way except through social intercourse with the interpreter. A young critic may learn much through reading Chorley, Burney, Schumann, Ernest Newman, and James Huneker. He can further prepare himself for his trade by listening with open ears to concerts and operas (although, in passing, it may be stated categorically that no critic learns immediately the value of opening his ears, so steeped is he in the false tradition of his craft), by burying his nose in the scores of the masters, and by reading all that the composers themselves may have said about the performances of their works. But he can learn more in a five-minute conversation with a great orchestral conductor, a great singer, or a great instrumentalist than he can in all the other ways combined.

Arturo Toscanini, Mary Garden, Ysaye, Marcella Sembrich, Yvette Guilbert, Pablo Casals, Fritz Kreisler, Waslav Nijinsky, Marguerite d'Alvarez, or Leo Ornstein can give any reviewer, young or old, invaluable lessons. Such as these are their own severest critics and they teach the writer-critic to be severe--and just. One piece of advice, however, I would give to prospective critics. Become acquainted with artist-interpreters by all means, but other things being equal, it is perhaps better to meet good artists than bad ones!

III

Chaliapine, Nijinsky, Mazarin, and Fremstad[A] have not appeared on the New York stage since I painted their portraits; nor have I seen them elsewhere. Consequently any revision I might make in these pictures would be revision of what I felt then in terms of what I feel now. Nothing could be more ridiculous. So I let them stand as they are.

With Yvette Guilbert the case is somewhat different. She has been before the American public almost consistently since the original publication of this book. Her work at her own recitals is still the fine thing it was and probably will remain so for a great many years to come. Madame Guilbert, however, has seen fit to appear in a play at the Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York, a fourteenth century French miracle play called _Guibour_.

It is often said of an actress that she is too great to fail even when a part does not suit her. But this is an utterly fallacious theory. Only _great_ actresses _can_ fail. A really bad actress always fails and consequently cannot be considered at all. A mediocre or conventional actress is neither very good nor very bad in any role, but a great actress, when she fails, fails magnificently, because she plays with such precision and authority that she is worse than a lesser person possibly could be.

Certainly Yvette Guilbert failed magnificently in _Guibour_. I have been told that her infrequent performances in comedy in Paris have been equally unsuccessful. When Guilbert sings a song she is forced by the very nature of her method to make much of little; without setting, frequently without costume, without the aid of other actors, she is obliged in a period of three or four minutes to give her public an atmosphere, several characters, and a miniature drama. Now, taking into consideration the average low rate of intelligence and the almost entire lack of imagination of the ordinary theatre audience, she is compelled to chuck in as much detail as the thing will hold. The result is generally admirable. In a play, however, this method becomes monotonous, tiresome, picayune, fussy, overelaborate. One does not want the lift of an eyelash, a gesture with every line; one does not want emphasis on every word. The great actors employ broader methods. It was here that Madame Guilbert failed, by applying the extremely efficacious technique of her own perfect craft to another craft which calls for another technique.

Geraldine Farrar has been seen and heard in a number of impersonations at the Metropolitan Opera House (she has also enlarged her cinema repertoire), since I wrote my paper about her, Orlanda in _La Reine Fiamette_, Lodoletta, Thais, Suor Angelica, and Zaza, but I can add very little to what I have said. Orlanda, Lodoletta, and, naturally enough, Thais, she has permanently dropped, I think, after a short period of experimentation. In Zaza, however, it seems possible, although it is too early to predict with certainty, as I am writing these lines a month after her assumption of the part, that she has found a role in which she will meet popular satisfaction for some years to come. On the whole, however, I must leave the case as I pleaded it originally, withal it is probably a trifle rosier than I would plead it now. Nevertheless I must state in fairness that Madame Farrar has probably never sung so well before as she is singing this winter (1919-20) and that she retains the admiration of opera-goers in general. It seems apparent to me now that in exploiting herself as a "character" actress she has perhaps made a mistake. Her best work has not been done in operas like _Thais_, _Carmen_, and _Zaza_, but as Elisabeth in _Tannhaeuser_, as the Goosegirl in _Koenigskinder_, and as Rosaura in _Le Donne Curiose_. Usually, indeed, she is charming in what are called "ingenue" roles. It may therefore be considered unfortunate that these are the roles in her repertoire to which she is most indifferent. However it must be admitted that it seems impertinent and even stupid to storm and fret about a career which has been so evenly successful. The public must admire Madame Farrar or it would not go to see her, and at the Metropolitan Opera House it is a recognized fact that she is one of two singers in the company who is always sure of drawing a full house.

IV

We come to Mary Garden. I never can resist the temptation to write about Mary Garden. I never even try to. Other subjects intrigue me for a time, but I usually pass them by in the end and go on to something new, new to me, at least. But I always feel that I have left something unsaid about this singing actress. It is probable that I always will feel this way for Miss Garden in her performances constantly suggests some new idea or awakens some dormant emotion. As a result, although I may write about coleoptera, the influence of cobalt on the human mind, or a history of Persian miniatures, I shall probably always find occasion to insert a few remarks about this incomparable artist.

The paper devoted to her in this book seems to me at present pitifully weak, absurdly inadequate. I have gone farther in "The New Art of the Singer," which you will find in "The Merry-Go-Round" (1918), and in my study of _Carmen_ in "The Music of Spain" (1918). This seems a good place to state, however, that Miss Garden's Carmen was only seen to its best advantage when she appeared with Muratore. The nature of her interpretation of this role is such that it depends to a great extent on satisfactory assistance from her fellow singers. Her Carmen is a study of a cold, brutal, mysterious gipsy, who does not seek lovers, they come to her. When, as at some recent performances, the tenors and baritones do not come (it is obvious that some of them might take lessons to advantage in crossing the stage) her interpretation loses a good deal of its intention. I offer this explanation to any one who feels that my enthusiasm for her in this role is exaggerated. To fully understand the greatness of Miss Garden's Carmen one must have observed it in fitting surroundings. I hope this environment may soon be provided again.

On the whole I feel that the most enthusiastic of Miss Garden's admirers have so far done the woman scant justice. Most of us are beginning to realize that she is the greatest of living lyric artists, that she has done more to revive the original intention of the Florentines in inventing the opera to recapture the theatre of the Greeks, than any one else. She has made opera, indeed, sublimated speech. And she is certainly the contemporary queen of lyric sigaldry.

It is said by some who do not stop to think, or who do not know what singing is, that Mary Garden is a great actress but that she cannot sing.[B] These misguided bigots, who try to make it their business to misunderstand anything that approaches perfection, remind me of the incident of Lady Astor and the American sailor. She met the youth just outside the Houses of Parliament and asked him if he would like to go in. "I _would_ not," were the words he flung into her astonished face. "My mother told me to avoid women like you." Some day a few of the most intelligent of these sacculi may realize that Mary Garden is probably the greatest living singer. It is, indeed, with her voice, and with her _singing_ voice that she does her most consummate acting. Indeed her capacity for colouring her voice to suit the emergencies not only of a phrase but of an entire role, might give a hint to future interpreters, were there any capable of taking advantage of such a valuable hint. But, good God, in such matters as phrasing, _portamento_, _messa di voce_, and other paraphernalia of the singing teacher's laboratory, she is past-mistress, and if any one has any complaints to make about the quality and quantity of tone she used in the second act of _l'Amore dei Tre Re_ I feel that he did not listen with unprejudiced ears.

There is, perhaps, nothing that need be added at present to what I have already said of her Sapho, Marguerite, Melisande,[C] Chrysis, Jean, Louise, and Thais, except that such of these impersonations as still remain in her repertoire are as clean-cut, as finely chiselled as ever; probably each is a little improved on each subsequent occasion on which it is performed. Some day I shall have more to say about her marvellous Monna Vanna. I am sure I would understand her Salome better now. When I first saw her in Richard Strauss's music drama I was still under the spell of Olive Fremstad's impersonation, and was astonished, and perhaps a little indignant at Miss Garden's divagations. But now I know what I did not know so well then, that an interpreter must mould a part to suit his own personality. It is probable that if Mary Garden should vouchsafe us another view of her nervous, unleashed tiger-woman I would be completely bowled over.

It seems necessary to speak of the portraits she has added to her gallery since the fall of 1917. Since then she has been seen in Fevrier's _Gismonda_, Massenet's _Cleopatre_, and Montemezzi's _l'Amore dei Tre Re_. The first of these is a very bad opera; it is not even one of Sardou's best plays. The part afforded Miss Garden an opportunity for the display of pride, dignity, and authority. Her gowns were very beautiful--I remember particularly the lovely Grecian drapery of the convent scene, which she has since developed into a first-act costume for Fiora; she made a handsome figure of the woman, but the thing itself was pasteboard and will soon be forgotten. The posthumous _Cleopatre_ was nearly as bad, but in the scene in which the queen, disguised as a boy, visits an Egyptian brothel and makes love to another boy, Mary was very startling, and the death scene, in which, after burying the asp in her bosom, she tosses it away with a shudder, sinks to the ground, then crawls to Antony's side and expires below his couch, one arm waving futilely in the air in an attempt to touch her lover, was one of her most touching and finest bits of acting. Her pale face, her green eyelids combined to create a sinister make-up. But, on the whole, a dull opera, and not likely to be heard again.