Part 9

The first performance took place February 10, 1896. American audiences are proverbially kind to authors on first nights, and Boston was especially interested in this opera because of Hawthorne’s novel. The scenery presented old Boston in very picturesque fashion, and I had spent a good deal of time with my stage-manager and costumer in the different Boston collections of Colonial belongings in order to give a correct picture of that period. Early portraits were consulted for the “make-up” of Governor Endicott and other old Boston celebrities, and the “company of ancient and honorable artillery” who appeared in the last act carried an exact copy of the banner which still hangs, I think, in Faneuil Hall.

Gadski gave a very touching impersonation of _Hester_, and Bispham fairly revelled in the fiendish machinations of _Roger Chillingworth_. The artists and composer received numberless recalls and the members of my company united in presenting me with several charming mementos of the day.

Mrs. John L. Gardner, who had already in those days become a real and loyal friend and supporter, and who has, according to her wonderful capacity for friendship, continued as such during these many years, sent a huge laurel wreath to the stage for me, the centre of which contained a large scarlet letter “A”! The reader may imagine what jokes were cracked at my expense about that very prominently displayed letter.

The music was, I think, well written and orchestrated, but so much of it had been conceived under the overwhelming influence of Wagner, that I am afraid Anton Seidl was right when, after hearing the work in New York, he confided cynically to his friends that it was a “New England Nibelung Trilogy.”

Reviewing the work critically myself after these many years, I would say that it showed sufficient talent and musicianly grasp to warrant a composer’s career, but life and its exigencies willed otherwise, and all the “might have beens” are but idle speculation.

An evil star seemed to shine over that winter’s opera season from the financial standpoint. The entire country was suffering from a severe financial depression and my company was large and expensive. I had to travel continually, and during the entire five months carried a company of one hundred and seventy people, including an orchestra of seventy men, as I considered so large an aggregation my solemn duty as a Wagner disciple and propagandist.

As Abbey and Grau finally decided to embark on a German opera department of their own, adopting my suggestion when it was too late for me to combine with them, they very naturally shut me out of the Metropolitan Opera House and I was compelled, for my New York season, to lease the old Academy of Music which had become a house for cheap theatrical productions and had lost its high fashionable estate of other years.

My seasons in Chicago and Boston had been profitable, but many cities in the South, with the exception of New Orleans, which gave me a wonderful welcome, could not pay expenses, as the theatres were too small and my company too large and literally too good.

In New Orleans we played an entire week at the old St. Charles Theatre. The dressing-rooms for the chorus were in the cellar and just before the first performance the women of the chorus ran shrieking up on the stage, vowing that they would not return, as rats as large as good-sized rabbits were scampering around the cellar. I could not believe them until I went down and saw those horrible creatures with my own eyes.

Our last performance was to have been on Saturday night, but on that day I received a petition signed by a number of citizens asking whether we could give them a “Fidelio” performance with Madame Klafsky on Sunday morning. As our train was to leave at three P. M. on that day, we had to begin this performance at eleven o’clock in the morning. The announcement that this extra performance was to be given was made only the night before and in the Sunday morning papers. By eleven o’clock the house was sold out.

I took the company as far west as Denver and everywhere virtually introduced for the first time the “Trilogy,” “Tristan,” and “Die Meistersinger” to the public.

I remember a performance in Providence, Rhode Island, where, in default of a theatre, the armory had been adapted for us by an improvised stage which was, however, so low that the orchestra could easily see what was going on. The opera was “Lohengrin,” and just before the scene in the last act, when _Godfrey_, the little brother of _Elsa_, appears in place of the magic swan to rush into the outstretched arms of _Elsa_, the stage-manager suddenly discovered that the little ballet girl who always assumed the rôle was not present. What to do? In the emergency he grabbed Hans, son of my prompter and at that time a kind of assistant to everybody as call-boy, assistant librarian, etc., etc. He was only fourteen and small of stature but with the excessive length of arms and legs characteristic of that age. By some painful process he was forced into the costume of _Godfrey_ and pushed on the stage just in the nick of time. I suddenly noticed a commotion among my orchestra, and as I followed their astonished but delighted gaze I saw the uncanny apparition of Hans as a counterfeit _Godfrey_ standing on the stage evidently frightened out of his wits. Gadski, who sang _Elsa_, with great presence of mind, stretched her arms wide and not only welcomed, but extinguished him beneath the voluminous folds of her cloak and I doubt whether the public realized that the real princely brother had not made his appearance.

When we finally arrived in New York, I had already lost a great deal of the large profits of the year before, and this loss was further increased by my season at the Academy of Music.

During the New York season my wife and I stayed at the stately old house of our dear friends, Sophie and Tina Furniss, on Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street. With characteristic kindness, they not only took a large proscenium box for every performance, but, having heard that affairs had not gone well financially, insisted that we must be their guests for the entire New York season, in order, I suppose, that I should not have to incur the extravagance of an hotel.

These elderly ladies, together with a married sister, Mrs. Zimmermann, were the daughters of an old East India merchant who, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, had amassed a fortune. Their house was full of lovely old furniture and mementos of a bygone age and they dispensed within its walls a very generous and dignified hospitality.

An old colored coachman named Brown had been with them for forty years. He always, together with a young colored footman, sat high up on their carriage in great state and solemnity. The young footman having been sent away in disgrace during our stay, Brown was instructed to procure another boy to take his place. A week elapsed and the new boy had not been found, and when Miss Sophie said to him: “Brown, why haven’t you gotten us a new boy? Are they difficult to find?” he answered:

“No, Miss Sophie, there’s plenty o’ boys, but ah find it so hard to ma’ch mah colah.”

He evidently was a great stickler for unanimity, not only in the color of the livery but of the skin as well.

Miss Sophie, the oldest of these three delightful ladies, had an incredible vitality, and although bodily infirmities and advancing years did their best to curb her, she remained active, cheerful, and undaunted until the end. Almost every night during my opera season of six weeks she would hobble from the carriage to her proscenium box, supported by her cane on one side and the footman on the other, and she listened to the Wagnerian music-dramas with unflagging attention. Not even the length of “Götterdämmerung” or “Meistersinger” would phase her, and after the performance, during supper, she would proudly repeat, while her eyes fairly snapped with laughter, some remark of mine that I had made two years before at their country place in Lenox, during my delivery of a series of explanatory recitals on the “Nibelung Trilogy.”

Another fellow guest was Doctor Sturgis Bigelow, an enthusiastic admirer of Madame Ternina’s art, who had come to New York especially to be present at all of her appearances. She was to have made her farewell to America in the “Götterdämmerung” and Doctor Bigelow had ordered enough flowers from half a dozen of the florists of Broadway and Fifth Avenue to fill the entire Academy, but unfortunately Madame Ternina became ill and her place had to be taken at the last moment by her rival, Madame Klafsky. Doctor Bigelow had no desire to present the floral testimony of his adoration to this rival singer, and therefore proceeded on the difficult task of cancelling his many orders, but as many of the wreaths and lyres had already been prepared, his bill for “damages” was quite large.

Before Ternina sailed for home she told me that she intended to stay away for a few years. I had paid her five hundred dollars an appearance which was a fair honorarium at that time, as she was absolutely unknown and therefore had not yet developed a sufficient “drawing power” to warrant a higher fee, but she said she would not come back to America until she could command a fee of a thousand dollars. This decision she adhered to, and when she did return a few years later, Maurice Grau cheerfully paid her the thousand dollars and she was immediately proclaimed one of the greatest _Isoldes_ of our time.

My New York season opened on March 4, 1896, with Beethoven’s “Fidelio.” The audience was a distinguished one, containing a great many of the old Academy habitués. Grand opera had not been given there since 1888, when the tenor, Italo Campanini, had brought over an Italian opera company.

Of Klafsky I have already spoken, but my new barytone, Dimitri Popovici, also made a sensation. I had found him in Bayreuth, where he had sung _Telramund_ and _Kurvenal_.

I produced my own opera, “The Scarlet Letter,” during the second week, and the reception accorded it was more than cordial. As the Symphony Society of New York wished to present me with an exquisitely bound copy of Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” as a memento, Richard Welling, the secretary and an old friend, suggested to Anton Seidl, who was in the audience, that he be spokesman, but as he refused Welling presented the book to me himself.

While the balance-sheet of the five months’ season showed a “loss of forty-three thousand dollars,” the larger part of my gains of the year before, I cannot say that my wife and I were very much cast down. Youth is optimistic, and the loss of money is, in itself, not such a dreadful calamity if one still has enough to pay one’s debts; and all this time I was adding to my experience and artistic stature.

After a long consultation with my wife we both decided that the conditions under which I had worked that disastrous winter were not normal, and that we could well risk another season. Two factors influenced me greatly in this decision: one, that a group of Philadelphia citizens had come forward and desired me to consider their Academy of Music as my artistic home, and said that they would give every possible assistance to a regular season there, and the other was that Abbey and Grau frankly confessed to me that they had made a mistake in not accepting my offer of a combination. They had not been fortunate in the choice of their German singers and had lost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars on their German operas, which was nearly four times as much as I had lost. Grau suggested for the following season an interchange of certain artists, and if I would occasionally lend him Madame Klafsky, whom he admired greatly, he would in turn give me Madame Calvé for a few performances of “Carmen.” This arrangement seemed admirable to me, as I was beginning to feel that Wagner opera alone was not sufficient to give a well-balanced opera season, and that for a longer season Philadelphia would demand a more varied repertoire.

For the following season of 1897-98 affairs moved much easier for me. The Philadelphia committee gave me a guarantee for a regular opera season at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. This assured me a home and a permanent place for my large store of scenery, costumes, and properties. Rehearsals also were thus made easier and, for my New York season in the spring, Abbey and Grau again rented the Metropolitan Opera House to me.

I had re-engaged Madame Klafsky, but to our great sorrow she died, and the problem of finding a successor was a serious one. Madame Gadski, who had charmed our audiences with _Elsa_, _Elizabeth_, and _Sieglinde_, was rather young for the heavy dramatic rôles, although I had begun to train her in the “Walküre” and “Siegfried” _Brunhildes_. I began negotiations with Lilli Lehmann and was successful in obtaining her wonderful services for the following year—but of this I have written in detail in another chapter.

The financial results of this season were quite satisfactory, but I was beginning to chafe more and more under the unsympathetic task of manager. To rehearse singers and orchestra from morning until night was a pleasure, because there was an artistic ideal to be achieved and because there were all manner of musical difficulties to be overcome. That was part of my work as a musician and conductor, and the fatigues and worries connected with this were easily endured. But the managerial duties annoyed me, and the constant intrigues among the singers, directed sometimes against each other and at other times against the management, often seemed to me unbearable.

In the spring of 1898 Madame Nellie Melba, the golden-voiced, told me that she would like to join my company for the following winter, and suggested that her manager, Mr. Charles Ellis, well known as the manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, form a partnership with me, the company to be called The Damrosch-Ellis Opera Company, half of the repertoire to be devoted, as before, to the Wagner operas and the other half to the performance of French-Italian operas with herself as the principal singer. We were to pay her fifteen hundred dollars a night, ten times a month, guaranteed. The suggestion seemed to me reasonable and advantageous, and arrangements were made accordingly. This combination aroused great indignation on the part of Mr. George Haven, the president of the Metropolitan Opera House. Mme. Melba had been one of the principal singers there for several years and he felt that it was an act of ingratitude on her part to leave the Metropolitan, and on mine to take her into my company, as I had myself been associated with the Metropolitan during so many years while he was president. I did not think that his anger was justified, as a great deal of water had flowed down-stream since those days; and, as Melba, for reasons of her own, had definitely decided to sever all connections with the Metropolitan, I could not see why I should not make her a member of my company. But he could not, or would not, see my side of the controversy, and vowed that as long as he was president of the Metropolitan I should never set foot in it again in a professional capacity. This vow, however, was subsequently not adhered to, as I not only gave performances there later with my own company, but during the seasons of 1900-01 and 1901-02 officiated again as conductor of the Wagner operas for Maurice Grau, who had then become the sole director and lessee of the Metropolitan.

The combination of Wagnerian operas with the operas of the French-Italian school, of which Melba was the glorious star, proved successful from a popular and financial standpoint, and the season showed a handsome profit for Ellis and myself, although a great part of this was dissipated by a spring tour in which Melba, supported by a small company of singers, chorus, and orchestra, toured the Western cities. This tour was managed by my partner, Ellis, and I did not accompany them, as my services as conductor were not needed for the French operas. I had by that time definitely decided to give up all further connection with opera as manager and devote my future life absolutely to purely musical work as a symphonic conductor and, as I hoped, also as composer. The harassing occupation of “managing” singers proved increasingly distasteful to me, and I felt that I was too good a musician and artist to waste my time with such things in which the only advantage could be a possible pecuniary gain.

I found that many singers were like children with no clear conception of right or wrong. Their constant life in close proximity to each other at rehearsals and performances often begets an exaggerated conception of themselves and their importance to the world. They think that as their contact with the public is only over the footlights, where they receive enthusiastic acclaim for their artistic representations, the public literally exists only for the purpose of hearing them sing, and they willingly ignore the fact that the public may have other interests, such as family, finance, politics, or religion to claim its attention. As it is important for a manager not only to maintain a balance in his ledger but to seek the best results that a disciplined ensemble may attain, he cannot always be in harmony with all the individual desires and demands of his artists. He must often cast his opera in opposition to their personal pride, and I have letters to-day from several of the greatest artists of my company insisting that they must leave or break their contracts because I had wounded their deepest sensibilities in putting so and so in the rôle which they claimed for their very own.

I found that some of them even indulged in occasional efforts at petty blackmailing. One of my tenors, who shall be nameless, had a clause in his contract that he should not be called upon to sing _Tristan_ the day after a very long railway journey. We had played in Cleveland, giving a “Lohengrin” performance in which, however, the other tenor had appeared, and took a night train in comfortable sleeping-cars in one of which my tenor occupied a drawing-room to Pittsburgh, which is, as my reader is aware, a distance of only 150 miles or so. As we left Cleveland my friend the tenor appeared in my drawing-room, and, calling attention to the clause in his contract relating to _Tristan_ and a “long” railway trip, insisted that he could not sing _Tristan_ the following day in Pittsburgh without endangering his voice. But if I would pay him five hundred dollars extra he would take the great risk of injuring his voice and would agree to sing. Naturally I was furious and told him politely but firmly what I thought of him, and then sent for my other tenor and told him that his rival was trying to blackmail me and I suggested to him that if he would sing _Tristan_ for me in spite of his having sung _Lohengrin_ the night before, I would consider it as a performance outside of his guarantee. Needless to say he jumped at the opportunity of gaining an extra six hundred dollars and at the same time “putting one over” on his hated rival. I then went to bed and slept soundly on a pillow made downy by a deed well done.

Next morning I received word from tenor No. 1 that he had changed his mind, was feeling very well, and would sing, but I very haughtily told him that it was too late and that I had already made other arrangements.

So far this story seems a wonderful example of virtue triumphant and vice defeated, but, alas, life’s problems do not always work out that way! During the day my dramatic soprano who was to have sung _Isolde_ became hoarse and the opera had to be changed, so that all my carefully reared structure of righteousness and meting out of punishment to the guilty one fell to the ground with a very dull thud.

This is only one of many such instances, some of them childish and others really wicked. But the most unmoral thing about it is that when the culprits were great artists, no matter how much they enraged me by their wickedness, after they had appeared again triumphantly as _Siegfried_ or _Isolde_ I would often become so enthusiastic over their work that their slate would be washed clean and I was ready to forgive them again and to begin anew. Such is the power of art, and a grateful public will always be willing to remember only the artistic uplift which they have received from the artist and forget his personal weaknesses.

Naturally my strictures apply only to certain of the singers. There were many who were always honorable in their relations with me. Among the most devoted of the members of my company I should mention the singers of the chorus. Many of these had been at the Metropolitan in the German opera days. Their salaries were small, but if one of their number fell ill or suffered other misfortune, none so quick as they to help, and they always endured the hardships of travel with great good humor and unfailing courtesy and decency toward me.

Among other reasons that impelled me finally to give up the opera was the realization how comparatively seldom absolute artistic perfection can be obtained at a stage performance. There are so many people concerned in it that it is almost impossible always to obtain a cast which is thoroughly satisfactory, and one “second rater” can spoil an ensemble. Still another problem was the question of stage illusion. I gave this a great deal of attention and study, and spent a great deal of money on scenery and lighting. I examined the best inventions in this direction in the opera-houses of Germany and imported many of them. I was the first to bring over the very clever swimming-machines used in Dresden by the Rhine Maidens in “Rhinegold.” But Wagner’s demands on the stage are so extraordinary that a real illusion is not often possible. His music excites the imagination and is often all sufficient. One can see the glorious flames crackling and burning around the sleeping _Brunhilde_ when one hears an orchestra of a hundred playing the music of the “Fire Charm,” but how seldom does a stage performance enhance this illusion! The _Brunhilde_ may be too big and too fat, or the light of the flames may too clearly show that the scenery is but painted canvas and pasteboard after all, and our sophisticated eyes know only too well how the plumber’s steam-pipes convey the steam that is intended to simulate the smoke of the flames from the boiler in the cellar. It sometimes seemed to me, after striving in vain to carry out Wagner’s ideal of a union of all the arts in order to produce a new and perfect art form (the “music-drama”), as if this great genius had really committed a gigantic mistake, and as if the very artistic illusion and semblance of verity was destroyed by the scenic paraphernalia.

Of course there were performances over which a happy star seemed to shine and which now and then gave us complete satisfaction and happiness. But the static quality of scenery became to me more and more a hindrance to an imagination ready to soar on the wings of the music.

I carried on my opera company for another year in conjunction with Mr. Charles Ellis, and then definitely resolved to cease all managerial activities and to confine myself absolutely to purely musical work. It took me some time to arrive at this decision, as opera work has also a very fascinating side, and I had made real friends with many of my singers.