Part 10
I had found Ellis to be a delightful partner. He had had years of experience as manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and his equable temperament and fairmindedness had made him many friends. I sold to him my share in all our scenery, costumes, and properties as he wished to continue operatic work with Madame Melba as his principal star, and I agreed to conduct a limited number of Wagner performances for him in Philadelphia during the following season.
After the four hectic years I had spent with the Damrosch Opera Company I was glad of such an opportunity to take stock of the past and cogitate on the future.
My wife and I rented the old Butler place in Westchester County, near Hartsdale—a lovely old mansion surrounded by dark pine forests and with the little Bronx River trickling through—and there we spent most of the winter until May. I wrote a violin sonata there and enjoyed the tranquillity of a life freed from operatic worries and excitements.
In 1900 I was once more tempted into the field of opera, but this time it carried with it no managerial or financial responsibility.
Maurice Grau was at that time the lessee of the Metropolitan Opera House. Abbey had died a few years before and the directors, who had gradually realized that it was Grau who had been the real “man behind the gun,” gave him and a small group of financial backers the lease of the Metropolitan Opera House. Grau invited me to return to the Metropolitan as conductor for the Wagner operas. He had at that time a strong group of Wagnerian singers. At the head was the inimitable Jean de Reszke, together with his brother Edouard. Grau had also taken over from my company Madame Ternina, David Bispham, and Madame Gadski. The latter had been a member of the Damrosch Opera Company for the entire four years of its existence. She was only twenty-three when I first engaged her, possessor of a lovely voice, and an indefatigable worker. There were weeks on our Western tours when she would appear on five successive days as _Elsa_, _Elizabeth_, _Sieglinde_, and _Eva_. She was a hard student and her voice developed more and more. During her last year with me she added the “Walküre” and “Siegfried” _Brunhildes_ to her repertoire, studying them with me, partly on the trains while travelling, partly in the hotels and theatres of the various cities we visited. When she went into the Grau Company, she added the “Götterdämmerung” _Brunhilde_ and _Isolde_, thereby completing the entire circle of Wagner soprano parts, except _Kundry_.
Jean de Reszke, like Lilli Lehmann, turned to the Wagnerian rôles in the high noon of his operatic career. He had made his fame in the French-Italian operas, but Wagner attracted him irresistibly.
I remember that during one of the seasons of the Damrosch Opera Company we were playing in Boston at the Boston Theatre while the Abbey and Grau Company were performing in the huge Mechanic’s Hall. Jean and Edouard de Reszke attended one of my “Siegfried” performances with Max Alvary in the title-rôle. They applauded their colleague vociferously, and after the performance Jean lamented to me that he was compelled to sing nothing but _Fausts_ and _Romeos_ and _Werthers_, while it was the ambition of his life to sing Wagner. The memory of his extraordinary impersonations of these rôles later on is too vivid to need comment from me. Illness kept him away from America one year, and when he returned I was again at the Metropolitan as conductor of the Wagner operas. It was a joy to work with this man. Great artist, courteous gentleman, and generous colleague, and (what is most valuable to a conductor) indefatigable at rehearsals. His return was like the triumphant entry of a victorious monarch. He was a marvellous mimic, and used to give us delicious imitations of the various artists of the company coming into his dressing-room to offer their congratulations after his first reappearance.
De Reszke would first depict the French tenor colleague who in polite, reserved, and even patronizing accents would say:
“Vraiment, mon cher, vous-avez chanté très bien ce soir, très bien, je vous assure!”
Then would come the German barytone in a double-breasted frock coat and punctiliously polite manner, saying:
“Erlauben Sie mir, Herr de Reszke, Ihnen meine grosse Hochachtung aus zu drücken für den wirklich ausgezeichneten Genuss den Sie uns heute Abend bereitet haben.”
He was followed by the Italian barytone, who would rush in impulsively and, kissing Jean on both cheeks, would exclaim:
“Caro mio, carissimo!” followed by a flood of Italian words.
Then came the real climax of the scene. Enter the electrician who, thrusting a “horny hand of toil” into that of de Reszke, would exclaim in real “Yankee” accents:
“Jean, you done fine!”
Edouard de Reszke, the huge bass brother with the heart of a child and an imperturbable good nature, was an equally good mimic. But his wonderful stories and impersonations were of a decidedly Rabelaisian character and will not bear repetition here.
With these two well-corseted but un-Corsican brothers, Madame Ternina or Madame Nordica, Madame Schumann-Heink, and David Bispham we gave performances of “Tristan” which came as near perfection as I ever hope to witness.
Madame Nordica had been for years a so-called “utility” singer at the Metropolitan. She had been trained in the French-Italian repertoire, and while her voice was beautiful she had not yet achieved full stardom, perhaps because she was American born and lacked the European cachet, which at that time was more important than it is to-day. She was not by nature musically gifted and was able to learn a rôle only by the hardest and most painful work of endless repetition and rehearsals. But her ambition was boundless—she bided her time and, like Lilli Lehmann, gradually worked herself into the Wagner repertoire. Realizing its advertising value, she offered herself to Madame Cosima Wagner for the “Lohengrin” production at Bayreuth. She meekly accepted every instruction given her there during the months of preparations, no matter how meticulous or artificial some of them seemed to her, and the success which she obtained there launched her successfully on her career as a Wagner singer. I trained her in the _Brunhildes_ as well as _Isolde_ and was amazed at the way in which she achieved through hard work what nature gives to others overnight.
I remember her coming to Philadelphia to sing “Götterdämmerung” with my company. She arrived the previous day and I found her still very uncertain in the second act, which is rhythmically very difficult. I sat down with her at eight o’clock that evening and we went over that second act again and again until about four o’clock in the morning. It was ghastly but wonderful. At ten A. M. I gave her an orchestral rehearsal and in the evening she sang the rôle with perfect assurance and with hardly a mistake.
One performance of “Tristan” which we gave with the Grau Company in Baltimore at the Lyric Theatre, which has perhaps the best acoustics of any auditorium in the country, still stays vividly in my memory. At the close we were so elated that all concerned kissed each other ecstatically after the last curtain fell. Those are the rare moments that make one forget the many times perfection in opera seems impossible to attain.
XI
ARTISTS
I have written elsewhere of my first visit to Europe after my father’s death, when the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House made me assistant to the director, Edmund C. Stanton.
I had gone over to engage German singers for the coming season, and Emil Fischer, bass from the Dresden Royal Opera, was one of those whose contract I had ready for Stanton’s signature when he arrived a month later. Emil Fischer had become discontented with his life in Dresden and in signing with us broke his contract with the Royal Opera, and according to an arrangement which all the directors of the various German opera-houses had with each other, this prevented him from ever again appearing on the stage of a German opera-house. He remained in America and became one of the main props of the Metropolitan Opera House Company, and later on of my Damrosch Opera Company.
His voice was a beautiful _basso cantante_ of great range and vibrancy. His tone production was perfect, and his powers as an impersonator equalled his singing. He will always remain in my memory as the greatest _Hans Sachs_ I have ever heard. He imbued the part with a nobility and at the same time with a delightful humor that no other _Hans Sachs_ has quite equalled.
As a man he was a delicious mixture of childishness, vanity, generosity, and kindliness, but I do not think that any emotions of life touched him very deeply.
In dress he was always extremely fastidious, inclining toward a somewhat flamboyant love of extremes. His neckties were rather vivid, his trousers perhaps a shade lighter in gray than the most harmonious taste would demand. He had a highly developed chest, of which he was so inordinately proud that he never buttoned the upper part of his waistcoat, as if to demonstrate that no waistcoat could be cut large enough to encompass his manly proportions.
Of the value of money, as far as saving it was concerned, he had no idea, and his constant effort was directed toward hiding from his wife the fact that he had money in his pocket. She was a buxom lady somewhat older than himself who, in her youth, had been a _tragedienne_ in one of the smaller German court theatres. She must have played such parts as _Medea_, and continued the rather exaggerated and gloomy articulation of her words into private life and through all the years that followed her final exit from the stage. Whenever she told me: “My Emil is not well to-day. I have made for him a plate of beef soup into which I have boiled four pounds of beef,” it boomed upon my ears like Shakespearian blank verse or like a Greek tragedy of Sophocles. I think that she annoyed Emil excessively, and that he was happiest when he could get away from her no doubt excellent control and find enjoyment among a circle of boon companions.
I recall that when he was a member of my opera company I paid him two hundred and fifty dollars an appearance, with about twelve appearances a month guaranteed, but he insisted that in the written contract I should make it only two hundred dollars an appearance and give him the other fifty in cash. He used this subtle method in order to have about six hundred dollars a month spending money of which his wife should know nothing. It was I who had to endure the complaints from her, which ran something like this: “I do not know why my Emil is so badly paid while all the others get these enormous salaries. My Emil sings better than any of them and he has to be content with only two hundred dollars an appearance!” And I would sit by feeling very guilty, and yet, from that horrid loyalty which one man has for another, not daring to exculpate myself by condemning him.
At one time in Chicago I accompanied him into a haberdasher’s shop as he wished to buy a necktie. He selected one the price of which was two dollars and a half, and then superbly handed the astonished clerk a five-dollar bill, saying grandiloquently: “You may keep the change!”
He was a great gourmet, and every now and then would give a banquet at his house to his fellow artists, with interminable courses and all manner of wines. Needless to say he did not save anything from his earnings and there came years, as he grew older and his voice left him, when he had to turn to teaching. But he never changed his habits and his appearance was just as carefully gotten up as in former years. Finally came the time when he was really in want, and I assisted Mr. Flagler, who was also an old admirer of his, in getting up a benefit for him at the Metropolitan Opera House. The directors very generously gave the use of the house, many of the stockholders bought their boxes, and the climax of the performance was the appearance of dear old Fischer in his greatest rôle of _Hans Sachs_ in the third act of “Die Meistersinger.” A very good sum was realized with which we bought an annuity for him. He was then, I believe, seventy-four (his wife had died several years before), and a ten-year annuity seemed to us the best way of taking care of him without giving him an opportunity to squander his money. He was delighted, and the first thing he did on the strength of his new wealth was to marry a young lady from the chorus, who, however, I believe took excellent care of him until he died.
During the second year of the Damrosch Opera Company, while we were in St. Louis and just the day before Fischer was to sing _Hans Sachs_, a telegram arrived saying that his wife was very ill and was not expected to live more than eight hours. Frau Alvary insisted that I must make him go to New York to see her. He did not want to go. He had not been on particularly pleasant terms with her, he knew he could not arrive in time to see her alive, and besides that he knew also that I had no substitute to sing _Hans Sachs_ for him and that the cancellation of the opera would cost me about five thousand dollars. But Frau Alvary, who seemed quite ready to insist on reasons of sentiment when her own purse was not concerned, so bedevilled us both that I finally, being still young and sentimental, decided that he should go. I was therefore compelled to change the programme at the last moment and to substitute single acts from different operas, which, of course, was a very costly change, as the audience in St. Louis had especially looked forward to the first performance of “Die Meistersinger.”
The news of a possible change of programme had travelled fast, and on that morning I received a visit from a young singer, Gerhardt Stehmann, who a year before had come to St. Louis with a little German opera company which had promptly stranded, leaving him without a job. He had, however, continued to live there, acting in occasional German plays and teaching Latin, as he was a man of excellent education. He asked me if I could not give him a place in my company. I found him to be an excellent singer, but above all a man musically so gifted that he could learn an entire rôle in a few hours. He learned the entire third act of “Die Meistersinger” overnight, so that I was able at least to present that to my St. Louis audience. I immediately engaged him as a permanent member of my company, and he remained with me until its dissolution three years later, when he returned to Germany and was grabbed by Mahler for the Imperial opera at Vienna, where he has been ever since. He literally knew and sang every bass and barytone part in the Wagner operas and music dramas. His _Beckmesser_ in “Die Meistersinger” was a masterpiece of delineation, and no one could depict this nasty, carping, jealous, and vain person in so convincing a fashion as he. But if the exigencies of the moment demanded it, he was just as able to sing _Hans Sachs_, _Pogner_, _Kothner_, or any other of the good old burghers of that opera. In “Tannhäuser” he was equally at home as _Landgrave_ or _Biterolf_, but his most remarkable feat of learning a part quickly was performed in New York one spring. The German composer, Xaver Scharwenka, was at that time living in New York as piano virtuoso and teacher. He had, years before, composed an opera which he was anxious to perform, and William Steinway and others asked me if I would let him have my opera company for this purpose, so that he could conduct it himself at an extra performance. I agreed and a good cast was selected. The tenor part was to have been sung by Ernest Krauss, a rather conceited heroic tenor who, not finding the part to his liking, pleaded hoarseness only the day before the performance. There was, of course, no substitute, and it seemed as if the performance would have to be cancelled, which would have been a cruel experience for the composer. To my astonishment Stehmann appeared and said very simply: “Give me the part and I will learn it for to-morrow night.” When I interposed, “But this is a tenor part and you are a bass barytone,” he answered: “Give it to me. I think I can transpose a few of the high notes and can at least save the performance.” Scharwenka, overjoyed, gave him the part and he sang and acted it the following evening without a mistake—a truly remarkable feat.
I grew very fond of him, not only because of his musicianly qualities but also because as a man he was so simple and honorable, and I was glad to hear later on that he had made an excellent position for himself in Vienna.
This summer of 1922, I visited Vienna again after many, many years. I felt that the war should be completely over for us and that we should seek in every way to re-establish cultural relations with our former enemies.
I found Stehmann still at the Vienna opera, now no longer called Kaiserliche but Staats-Oper. It was a joy to see him again, but the war had brought to him also great misfortune! He told me that from his savings, while a member of my opera company and from subsequent savings in Vienna, he had bought a house with several acres of land in the Austrian Tyrols. With tears in his eyes he showed me photographs of this property. The house was charmingly situated in a picturesque valley with the Tyrolean Alps beyond. After the war this territory was taken over by Italy; and that government, wishing to drive out the Austrians and settle the land with Italians, had compelled Stehmann to “sell” his property for a sum fixed by them. He had no choice and the price which he received amounted to about thirty-seven thousand five hundred kronen, which happened to be the amount I had paid that morning for a pair of shoes—at the present valuation about three dollars and seventy cents! The Poles claim that Bismarck pursued the same policy in Posnia when Prussia endeavored to suppress Polish national aspirations, by forcing them to sell their lands to the Prussian Junkers.
I was sorry on arriving in Vienna not to see once more the venerable old singer, Marianne Brandt, but she had died, aged eighty-four, during the previous winter. In 1884-85 she had been one of the main props of my father’s inaugural German opera season; and her emotional intensity in “Fidelio” and as the mother in “Le Prophète” had made a deep impression on our public. Nature had not endowed her with beauty of face or figure, and she always insisted: “I have been a virtuous woman all my life because I am so ugly that no man would ever look at me.”
Wagner had invited her to Bayreuth to sing the part of _Kundry_ in “Parsifal,” but whether because of her lack of beauty or because, as she thought, of terrible intrigues on the part of Madame Materna, she sang the rôle only once and always remained exceedingly jealous of Madame Materna, whose rather amplitudinous charms, she insisted, had completely hypnotized Wagner.
She simply adored my father and his single-minded idealism, and the spirituality of his character appealed to her to such an extent that she was willing to undergo any amount of work and to sing any rôle which he wanted of her, whether it were a star part or one of the Valkyries in “Walküre.” After his death she was inconsolable, and always went on the anniversary to Woodlawn Cemetery to deposit a wreath on his grave. She also sought to demonstrate her veneration for his memory by helping me in every way possible, both as superb artist and as one well versed in the practical side of operatic life through years of experience in Vienna and at the Royal Opera in Berlin. She always called me “Mein Sohn,” and her encouragement and faith in my future as a musician during many trying times can never be forgotten by me.
She had a delightful sense of humor, but also a very quick temper, and I remember her telling me one day that she had received a notice from the New York Post-Office Department that a registered letter was awaiting her down in the General Post-Office at City Hall. She went there and inquired at the proper window for her letter.
“Yes,” said the official, “we have it here. Have you got some document to prove that you are Marianne Brandt?—a letter, a bank-book, or a passport?”
“I have none of these things, but I am Marianne Brandt and I want that letter.”
“I am sorry, madame, but the rules are strict, and you will have to bring some one to identify you.”
By this time Brandt was in a state of high indignation. “You will not give me the letter? I will prove to you that I am Marianne Brandt!” And then she proceeded with full voice to sing the great cadenza from her principal aria in “Le Prophète.” Her glorious voice echoed and re-echoed through the vaulted corridors of the post-office. Men came running from all sides to find out what had happened and finally the agitated official handed her the letter, saying: “Here is your letter, but for God’s sake be quiet!”
She finally retired from the stage to her old home in Vienna and gave of her art with both hands to a group of devoted pupils. During the war I heard from one of them that, owing to the destitute condition existing in Vienna, she was in real want, but she promptly returned the check we sent her and in a very sweet letter addressed as usual to “Mein Sohn” assured me that she did not need any money, that she did not expect to live much longer, and that she thought she could hold out without receiving any alms from her friends. We did succeed, however, in sending her food which she shared with others.
One of the singers whom I engaged for the Metropolitan Opera House during my first visit to Germany and who afterward achieved great fame was Max Alvary, a young lyric tenor at the Weimar Ducal Opera House. He was the son of the well-known German painter, Andreas Achenbach, of good education, gentlemanly bearing, and a refined artistic taste. He was also exceedingly good looking. As a singer he was very uneven, although he had studied with the Italian master, Lamperti. At first we paid him only a hundred dollars a night, but after he had sung minor rôles for a few months Anton Seidl chose him to create the part of _Siegfried_, and in that rôle he made a success so instantaneous as to place him immediately in the front rank of German opera-singers. No one else has given _Siegfried_ such an atmosphere of boyish innocence and picturesque beauty. The women, bless them, simply worshipped him, from the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl to the matron of mature and more than mature age, and this success repeated itself when he appeared as _Siegfried_ in Germany, Austria, and England. He made a great deal of money and spent it lavishly. His armor and helmet in “Lohengrin” were specially made for him out of silver after a design which he had drawn himself. The stuffs for his costumes were often specially woven for him. He reached the climax of his career when he was chosen by Cosima Wagner to sing _Tannhäuser_ and _Tristan_ at Bayreuth. At that time this shrine for the Wagnerite had already become, under the guiding and autocratic hand of the widow of Wagner, a highly artificial product. I saw several of these performances and was frankly amazed at the apparent degeneration since the days of Wagner. Alvary, who had a great sense of humor, gave most entertaining descriptions of the rehearsals, and how, for instance, in slavish imitation of certain rhythms in the orchestra, _Tannhäuser_ and _Wolfram_ had to execute a kind of minuet opposite each other in order to fill in the instrumental introduction before _Wolfram_ begins his famous plea to _Tannhäuser_: “Als du im kühnen Sange uns bestrittest.”