Opera Books

CHAPTERS OF OPERA

HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL

1911

CHAPTER XVII
THE ADVENT OF MELBA AND CALVÉ

An Interregnum—Changes in the Management—Rise and Fall of Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau—Death Of Henry E. Abbey—His Career—Season 1892-1894—Nellie Melba—Emma Calvé—The Bourbonism of the Parisians—Massenet’s “Werther”—1894-1898—A Breakdown on the Stage—“Elaine”—Sybil Sanderson And “Manon”—Shakespearian Operas—Verdi’s “Falstaff”

     FOR the reasons set forth at the close of the last chapter there was no opera at the Metropolitan Opera House in the season of 1892-93, but the fall of the latter year witnessed the beginning of a new period, full of vicissitudes. With many brilliant artistic features, it was still experimental to a large extent on its artistic side, the chief results of its empiricism being the restoration of German opera in the repertory on an equal footing with Italian and French. It also brought the largest wave of prosperity to the house that it had experienced since its opening, yet ended in the shipwreck of the lessees, and disaster that was more than financial. The lessees were again Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau, with whom the reorganized Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company (Limited) effected an agreement, the essential elements of which remained unchanged for fifteen years; that is, down to the close of the season of 1907-08. The term was five years. The lessees took the house for an annual rental of $52,000, and pledged themselves to give opera four times a week for thirteen weeks in the winter and spring. The lessors paid back to the lessees the $52,000 for their box privileges, and to insure representations which would be satisfactory to them, reserved the right to nominate six of the singers, two of whom were to take part in every performance in the subscription list.
     The first season under the new lease was enormously successful, Abbey, Schoeffel, and Grau realizing about $150,000, including the visits to other cities, and a supplementary spring season of two weeks. They made great losses on their other enterprises, however, especially on Abbey’s Theater (now the Knickerbocker), and the American tours of Mounet-Sully and Mine. Réjane. Like results attended the seasons of 1894-95, and 1895-96, the drag in the latter instance being the Lillian Russell Opera Company, which, together with other ventures, brought the firm into such a financial slough that it made an assignment for the benefit of its creditors, who were forced to take over its business to protect themselves. Chief of these was William Steinway, who had accommodated Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau with loans to the extent of $50,000. Under his guidance as chairman of the committee of reorganization, the stock company, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Limited), was formed, he becoming president, and Henry E. Abbey, John B. Schoeffel, and Maurice Grau managing directors at a salary of $20,000 a year. Ernest Goerlitz, who had been in the employ of the firm for some time, was made secretary and treasurer. He remained in an executive capacity at the Metropolitan until the expiration of the consulship of Conried in 1908. Mr. Steinway got rid of the debts of the company (or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say, changed their character) by issuing certificates of stock and notes to the creditors. In this manner some of the principal artists of the company became financially interested in opera giving.
     Before the reorganized company began the next series of performances Mr. Abbey died, and the season was only a fortnight old when Mr. Steinway followed him into the grave. A very puissant personage in the managerial field was Mr. Abbey during a full quarter-century of theatrical life in America. He was a purely speculative manager, who never permitted his own likes or dislikes to influence him in his chosen vocation of purveying amusements, so-called, to the public, though his tastes led him generally into the higher regions, and there is little doubt that an inherent love for music for its own sake made him take to opera. As a young man in his native city of Akron, Ohio, where he was born in 1846, he played cornet in the town band. When he revoked his resolution never to embark in an operatic enterprise again after the disastrous season of 1883-84, I met him in Broadway, and asked him about the artists he intended to bring to the Metropolitan Opera House. He gave me the names of those whom he had in view, and I expressed my regret that one, whom I admired very greatly indeed, was missing. His reply was prompt: “There is no woman in the world I would rather engage, and no woman whose singing gives me greater pleasure; but she doesn’t draw. I never made any money with her.” It was an illuminative observation. As a youth he was interested with his father in the jewelry business in Akron, and on the death of his father, in 1873, the business became his ; but by that time he was already a theatrical manager, though on a small scale. In 1869 he had assumed charge of the Akron theater. In 1876 he associated himself with John B. Schoeffel, and with him gradually acquired theatrical properties in several of the principal cities of the East, and entered upon enterprises of a character which were his undoing in the end. The Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau Company carried through the season of 1896-97 with a profit of about $30,000 in New York, despite the fact that the financial affairs of the country were in a bad way. A four weeks’ season in Chicago, however, was ruinous, and Mr. Gran was compelled to fall back on some of the artists of the company and friends to enable him to bring the Chicago season to a close. Jean and Édouard de Reszke and Lassalle were among the subscribers to a guarantee fund of $30,000, which he needed to carry him through. All the guarantors were repaid in full, when, at the end of the season, the affairs of Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau (Limited) were wound up, and Mr. Schoeffel bought the principal asset, the Tremont Theater, in Boston. Thereupon Mr. Grau and his associates formed a new company, which gave opera under the conditions which seemed to have become traditional until the end of the season of 1902-3. Mr. Grau was compelled by ill health to withdraw from active duty before the end of the last season, and the story of his company’s doings falls naturally into another chapter of this history. We must now survey the artistic incidents of the period between the reconstruction of the opera house and the beginning of the new régime. This will be the business of this and the following chapter.
     Simply for the sake of convenience in the record, I shall devote the chief statistical attention in the remaining chapters of this history to the subscription seasons, and discuss the supplementary spring seasons only as they offer features of special interest. The seasons, generally a fortnight long, and given after the return of the singers from visits to Boston and Chicago, are distinguished from the subscription seasons very much as the fall seasons in London are from the summer seasons, though there is not the sharp line of demarcation so far as fashion goes, which the adjournment of Parliament makes on the other side of the Atlantic.
     The tenth regular season of opera then began at the Metropolitan Opera House on November 27, 1893, and ended on February 24, 1894. Officially the languages of the performances were Italian and French, but the operas given were, for the greater part, French and German, and the repre­sentations were dual in language in all cases, except the Italian works. I mention this fact, not because of its singularity, for it is a familiar phenomenon all over the operatic world, except perhaps Italy, but in order to point out hereafter a betterment, which came in with a more serious artistic striving later. The chorus always sang in the “soft bastard Latin,” whether the principals sang in Italian or French ; and the occasions were not a few when two languages were sung also by the principals — when lovers wooed in French, and received their replies in Italian, thus recalling things over which Addison made merry generations ago. The season was planned to embrace thirty-nine subscription nights and thirteen matinées. To these were added two matinées and sixteen evening representations, two of the latter being for the benefit of popular charities. In all, New York had sixty performances of opera within the period covered by the regular subscription, which was a smaller number than had been shown by any season since that of 1886-87. Eighteen operas were brought forward in full (that is to say, without more than the conventional cuts), and parts of three others. Thus of “La Traviata,” though I have included it in the list to be pre­sented soon, only the first and fourth acts were performed. There was not a single opera in the repertory which had not been heard in New York before, though several were new to the house. The nearest approach to a novelty was Mascagni’s “L’Amico Fritz,” which disappeared from the list after two representations, and had been heard at an improvised performance, which scarcely deserves to be considered in a record of this character. In the supplemental season, however, a novelty of real pith and moment was brought forward in the shape of Massenet’s “Werther,” which had been promised to the regular subscribers, and which, while it made no profound impression, was accepted as an earnest of the excellent and honorable intentions of the managers, and a proof of the difficulties which hampered them at times.
     The principal members of the company were Mesdames Melba, Calvé, Eames, Nordica, Arnoldson, Scalchi, and Mantelli, and Messrs. Jean and Édouard de Reszke, de Lucia, Vignas, Ancona, Plançon, Castelmary, and Martapoura. The subscription for the season amounted to $82,000, which was $10,000 more than the largest subscription in the German period. A great ado was made over this fact by the managers and their friends. Not unnaturally the lovers of German opera took up the cudgels against the Italianissimi, and pointed out the indubitable fact that owing to the difference in prices of admission and seats the subscription, instead of showing a large advance in popular interest, indicated a falling off to the extent of an attendance of six thousand in the season. Not money, but attendance, they argued, was the real standard of popularity. The managers also very unwisely, as it proved (since two years later they found themselves obliged to in-dude German performances in their scheme), put f or-ward a public boast that the receipts for the last month of the opera “nearly equaled the average gross receipts for the entire term of any German opera ever given in New York.” Of course, the reference went only to the German seasons at the Metropolitan Opera House, for there was no record that could be consulted touching the many sporadic German enterprises of the earlier periods at the Academy of Music and other theaters. It was not at all unkind, but simply in the interest of historical verity that in The Tribune I called attention to the fact that it was scarcely ingenuous in Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau to choose the last month in the season for the comparison, for in that month there were twenty-two representations, including two for popular charities (at one of which, managed by the opera house directors, the public contributed $22,000), and six representations of “Carmen,” which, with Mine. Calvé in the principal character, was enjoying the most sensational triumph ever achieved by any opera or singer. Moreover, most of ‘these performances were outside the subscription, and the prices, as I have repeatedly said, were nearly double those which prevailed during the German régime.  Besides, it was an easy task to prove from the figures which I had printed from year to year in my “Review of the New York Musical Season,” that, in order to surpass the German record with their last month, Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau would have had to show average nightly receipts of over $9,000, whereas only once had they, in a spirit of boastfulness, claimed that as much as $11,000 had been taken at a single performance, and that at a phenomenal “Carmen” matinée. Without Calvé and “Carmen” the bankruptcy which came two years later might have been precipitated in this season. Thanks to Bizet’s opera, and its heroine, and the popularity of Mine. Eames and the brothers de Reszke in “Faust,” the season was prodigiously successful, the receipts from all sources (in­cluding the Sunday night concerts and opera in Philadelphia and Brooklyn) being in the neighborhood of $550,000, and the profits, as I have already said, $150,000. The twelve performances of “Carmen,” I make no doubt, brought at least $100,000 into the exchequer of the managers in the subscription season, and in the supplemental post-Lenten season of a fortnight there were three performances more. The success of the opera remained without a parallel in the history of opera in New York till the coming of Wagner’s “Parsifal.”
     Mine. Melba effected her entrance on the operatic stage in America on December 4, 1893, in Donizetti’s “Lucia.” Five years before she had made her London début in the same opera, and between that time and her coming to New York she had won fragrant laurels in Paris in company with the brothers de Reszke and M. Lassalle in “Roméo et Juliette” and “Faust,” both of which operas she had prepared with the composer. Her repertory was small when she came, but in it she was unique, both for the quality of her voice and the quality of her art. She did not make all of her operas effective in her first season, partly because a large portion of the public had been weaned away from the purely lyric style of composition and song, in which she excelled, partly because the dramatic methods and fascinating personality of Mine. Calvé had created a fad which soon grew to proportions that scouted at reason ; partly because Miss (not Mine.) Eames had become a great popular favorite, and the people of society, who doted on her, on Jean de Reszke, his brother Édouard, and on Lassalle, found all the artistic bliss of which they were capable in listening to their combined voices in “Faust.” So popular had Gounod’s opera become at this time with the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House, that my witty colleague, Mr. W. J. Henderson, sarcastically dubbed it “das Faustspielhaus,” in parody of the popular title of the theater on the hill in the Wagnerian Mecca.
     When Mme. Melba came she was the finest exemplar of finished vocalization that had been heard at the opera house since its opening, with the single exception of Mine. Sembrich. Though she had been singing in opera only five years, she had reached the zenith of her powers. Her voice was charmingly fresh, and exquisitely beautiful. Her tone-production was more natural, and quite as apparently spontaneous, as that of the wonderful woman who so long upheld the standard of bel canto throughout the world. In the case of Mme. Patti, art had already begun to be largely artifice, a circumstance that needed to cause no wonder inasmuch as her career on the operatic Stage already compassed a full generation; but Mme. Melba neither needed to seek for means nor guard against possible mishap. All that she needed — more than that: all that she wanted to humor her amiable disposition to be prodigal in utterance — lay in her voice ready at hand. Its range was commensurate with all that could be asked of it, and she moved with greatest ease in the regions which most of her rivals carefully avoided. To throw out those scintillant bubbles of sound which used to be looked upon as the highest achievement in singing seemed to be an entirely natural mode of expression with her. With the reasonableness of such a mode of expression I am not concerned now ; it is enough that Mme. Melba came nearer to providing it with justification than any one of her contemporaries of that day, except Mme. Sembrich, or any of her contemporaries of to-day. Added to these gifts and graces, she disclosed most admirable musical instincts, a quality which the people had been taught to admire more than ever while they were learning how to give reverence due to the dramatic elements in the modern lyric drama.
     I have already intimated that Mme. Melba’s operas found little favor with the public compared with “Carmen” and “Faust,” and, perhaps, there was in this more than a mere indication of the educational influence left by the German period. I should have no hesitation whatever in saying so had not the “Carmen” craze reached proportions which precluded the thought that artistic predilections or convic­tions had anything to do with it. So much of a mere fad did Mme. Calvé in “Carmen” become that the public re­mained all but insensible to the merits of her immeasurably finer impersonation of Santuzza in “Cavalleria Rusticana.” It was in Mascagni’s opera that she effected her début on November 29, 1893, in company with Sennor Vignas, a Spanish tenor, squat and ungraceful of figure, homely of features, restricted in intelligence, and strident of voice. New York knew very little of Mme. Calvé when she came, though she had already been twice as long on the stage as Mme. Melba, and even after her first appearance Mr. Abbey met my congratulations on her achievement with a dubious shake of the head, and the remark that, while he hoped my predictions touching her popularity would be fulfilled, he placed a much lower estimation on her powers than I. Not he, but Mr. Grau, was responsible for her engagement, and his hopes were all centered on Mme. Melba. Like most of our singers at the time, Calvé came to New York by way of London. The rôle of Santuzza, which she had created in Paris in January, 1892, and in London in the following May, had been hailed with gladness in both cities, but her Carmen was as inadequately appreciated in Paris as it was overestimated in New York and London, especially in later years, when the capriciousness which led her originally to break away from some of the tradi­tions of the rôle created by Galli-Marié. and thus cost her the understanding of the Parisians, had become a fixed habit, which she pursued regardless of decent moderation, sound principles, and good taste.
     The Parisians attested their artistic Bourbonism not only in declining to recognize the excellence of the good features of Calvé’s Carmen, but, also, in failing to appreciate her touchingly beautiful Ophelia, to the great grief of Ambroise Thomas, who went to Italy to see her in the part, and believed that had she but been given the proper support in Paris “Hamlet” would have ranked with “Faust” in popularity. Of course, this was a fond composer’s too good opinion of his opera, but the trait of the Paris public which is unwilling to find merit in any change from a performance which first won their admiration has frequently stood in the way of first-class talent. To illustrate this I can relate an anecdote which was repeated to me at an artistic dinner table in the French capital in 1 886. It is not for me to vouch for the truth of the story, but give it as it was told to me in explanation of some amused comments which I had made on the stiff conventionality of a performance of “L’Africaine” which I had witnessed at the Grand Opéra. Faure, the original of Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet, had been succeeded in the rôle by Lassalle, whose fine art in newer works had met with full recognition from press and public. To Lassalle’s great surprise, his Hamlet, a remarkably fine performance within the limit set by the pitiable operatic travesty of Shakespeare’s play, was received coldly, and there was wide comment on the circumstance that he had ignored traditions of performance, especially in the scene between the Prince and his mother. In considerable distress he went to Faure, who had set the fashion:
     “What pose, gesture, effect of yours is it that I have failed to copy?” he asked of his con frère.
     And Faure explained :
     At the first performance when he reached the scene in question, he had found his throat suddenly clogged. Only by an act neither pleasant to observe nor polite to describe, could he remove the obstruction, and at a supreme moment he had improvised a movement which carried his face out of sight of the audience, so that he might free his throat unnoticed. Knowing nothing of the cause, the public applauded the effect, and the singular nuance became a part of the “business” of the piece.
     When Mme. Calvé flashed upon New York in “Cavalleria Rusticana,” her impersonation startled me into the declaration that no finer lyrico-dramatic performance had been witnessed in America within a generation. Unhesitatingly I placed it by the side of Materna’s Bruunnhilde, Brandt’s Fidès, Niemann’s Tristan and Siegmund, and Fischer’s Hans Sachs, without, of course, presuming to compare the relative value of the dramatists’ conceits. Even now I cannot recall anything finer in the region of combined action and song. She held her listeners so completely captive and swayed them so powerfully that she compelled even the foolishly and affectedly frantic claquers, who had seats near the stage, to hold their peace. They could only make their boisterous clamor in response to the old-fashioned appeal made by a high tone screeched by the stridulous tenor. There was as little conventionality in her singing as in her acting, though she had not yet adopted that indifference to rhythm which has marked her singing, in more recent years. She Saturated the music with emotion. Much of it she seemed to sing to herself, declaiming it like dramatic speech whose emotional contents had been raised to a higher power by the melody. In moments of extreme excitement one scarcely realized that she was sing­ing at all. Carried along by the torrent of her feelings, her listeners accepted her song as the only proper and efficient expression for her emotional state. The two ex­pressions, song and action, were one ; they were mutually complemental. It was not nature subordinated to art, but art vitalized by nature. It is not possible for me to com­pare her Carmen with Galli-Marié’s, which stood in the way of her appreciation in the part in Paris. I have heard that that was so frank in one of its expressions that it invited the interference of the Prefect of the Seine. To me, at least, in Mme. Calvé’s impersonation, it seemed that I was enjoying my first revelation of some of the elements of the character of the gypsy as it had existed in the imagina­tion of Prosper Mérimée when he wrote his novel. To me she presented a woman thoroughly wanton and diabolic­ally equipped with the wicked witcheries which explained, if they did not palliate, the conduct of Don José. Here we had a woman without conscience, but also without the capacity for even a wicked affection ; a woman who might have been the thief whom the novelist describes, who surely carried a dagger in her corsage, and who in some respects left absolutely nothing to the imagination, to which even a drama like “ Carmen” makes appeal. She came upon the stage as Mérimée’s heroine stepped into his pages : “poising herself on her hips’, like a filly from the Cordovan stud,” and with a fine simulation of unconsciousness, she seemed every moment about to break into Qne of those dances which the satirist castigated in the days of the Roman Empire:

          Nec de Gadibus improbis puellae
          Vibrabunt sine fine prurientes
          Lascivos docili tremore lumbos.

     Alas! Mme. Calvé’s admiration for herself was stronger than her devotion to an artistic ideal, and it was not long before her Carmen became completely merged in her own capricious personality.
     Massenet’s “Werther” (performed in Chicago, March 29) had its first New York performance at the Metropolitan, April 19, 1894, with Mme. Eames, Sigrid Arnoldson, Jean de Reszke, M. Martapoura, and Signor Carbone. Signor Mancinelli conducted. The opera had one performance, and was repeated once in the season of 1896-97. Then it disappeared from the repertory of the Metropolitan, and has since then not been thought of, apparently, although strenuous efforts have been made ever and anon to give interest to the French list. I record the fact as one to be deplored. “Werther” is’ a beautiful opera ; as instinct with throbbing life in every one of its scenes as the more widely admired “Manon” is in its best scene. It has its weak spots as have all of Massenet’s operas, despite his mastery of technique, but its music will always appeal to refined artistic sensibilities for its lyric charm, its delicate workmanship, its splendid dramatic climax in the duo between Werther and Charlotte, beginning : “Ah! pourvu que de voie ces yeux toujours ouverts,” and its fine scoring. It smacks more of the atmosphere of the Parisian salon than of the sweet breezes with which Goethe filled the story, but no Frenchman has yet been able to talk aught but polite French in music for the stage, Berlioz excepted, and the music of “Werther” is of finer texture than that of most of the operas produced by Massenet since.
     The season of 1894-95, consisting again of thirteen weeks, began on November 19th, and closed on February 16th. It was marked by a number of incidents, some of which made a permanent impression on the policy of the Metropolitan Opera House. Chief of these was a remarkable eruption of sentiment in favor of German opera — so vigorous an eruption, indeed, that it led to the incorporation of German performances in the Metropolitan repertory ever after, though the change involved a much greater augmentation of the forces of the establishment than the consorting of French with Italian had involved. To this I shall give the attention which it deserves presently. Other features were the introduction of Saturday night performances of opera at reduced prices (a feature which became permanent), the appearance of several new singers, and the production of two novelties, one of them Verdi’s “Falstaff,” of first-class importance.
     In their prospectus the managers promised a reformation of the chorus, and announced the re-engagement of “nearly all the great favorites of last year.” The improvement of the chorus was not particularly noticeable except in appearance; a number of young and comely American women were enlisted, but their best service was to stand in front of the old stagers who knew the operas, and could sing but who seemed to have come down through the ages from the early days of the old Academy. The phrase “nearly all” was an ominous one, for it betokened the absence from the company of Mme. Calvé. The newcomers were Lucille Hill, Sybil Sanderson, Zélie de Lussan, Mira Hel­ler, and Libia Drog, sopranos ; G. Russitano and Francesco Tamagno, tenors, and Victor Maurel, who had been a popular favorite twenty years before at the Academy of Music. Luigi Mancinelli and E. Bevignani were the conductors, and Mr. Seidi was engaged to give éclat to the Sunday evening concerts. Mme. Melba’s chief financial value to the management in the preceding season had been found to lie in these concerts, which this year were begun earlier than usual, and made a part of Melba’s concert tour. The first opera was “Roméo et Juliette,” with the cast beloved of society, and on the second night the introduction of the newcomers began. But woefully. The opera was “William Tell,” and Signorina Drog sang the part of the heroine in place of Miss Hill, indisposed. Mathilde (or Matilda — the opera was sung in Italian), does not appear in the opera until the second act, and then she has the most familiar air in the opera to sing — “Selva opaca,” an air which then belonged to the concert-room repertory of most florid sopranos. When Signorina Drog came upon the stage, it is safe to say that no one regretted her substitution for the English singer except herself. She was an exceedingly handsome person, who moved about with attractive freedom and grace, and disclosed a voice of good quality, especially in the upper register. She began her aria most tastefully, but scarcely had she begun when her memory played her false. For a few dreadful seconds she tried to pick up the thread of the melody but in vain. Then came the inevitable breakdown. She quit trying, and appealed pitifully to Signor Mancinelli for help. He seemed to have lost his head as completely as the lady had her memory. So had the prompter, who pulled his noddle into his shell like a snail and remained as mute. Signor Tamagno entered in character, and indulged in dumbshow to a few detached phrases from the orchestra. Then the awfulness of the situation overwhelmed him, and he fairly ran off the stage, leaving Matilda alone. That lady made a final appeal to the conductor, switched her dress nervously with her riding whip, went to the wings, got a glass of water, and then disappeared. The audience, which had good-humoredly applauded till now, began to laugh, and the demoralization was complete. It would have been a relief had the curtain fallen, but as this did not happen Signor Tamagno, Signor Ancona, and Édouard de Reszke came upon the stage and began the famous trio, in which Signor Tamagno sang with tremendous intensity and power. It was a remarkable performance of a sensational piece, and had it not been preceded by so frightful a catastrophe, and interrupted by Tamagno himself to bow his acknowledgments, pick up a bunch of violets thrown from a box, and repeat his first melody, its effect would have been dramatically electrifying. There was a long wait after the act to enable Signor Mancinelli to arrange the necessary cuts, and after the stage manager had made an apology on behalf of Signorina Drog, and explained that she had been seized with vertigo, but would finish the opera in an abbreviated form, the representation was resumed. It is due to the lady to add that she had never before attempted to sing the part, and that on the third evening she materially redeemed herself in “Aïda.” Miss de Lussan, a native of New York, who had begun her operatic career a few years before in the Boston Ideal Opera Company, and had won a commendable degree of favor at Covent Garden as Carmen, had been engaged in the hope of continuing the prosperous career of Bizet’s opera, but the hope proved abortive. It was the singer, not the song, which had bewitched the people of New York — Calvé, not Bizet. “Carmen” was excellently given, the charm of Melba’s voice being called on for the music of Micaela’s part ; but the sensation had departed, and was waiting to be revived with the return of Calvé in the succeeding season.
     The first novelty in this season was “Elaine,” an opera in four acts, words by Paul Ferrier, music by Herman Bemberg, brought forward on December 17, 1894. “Elaine” was produced because Mme. Melba and the brothers de Reszke wanted to appear in it out of friendship for the composer, who had dedicated the score to them, and come to New York to witness the production, as he had gone to London when it was given in Covent Garden. In America Bemberg was a small celebrity of the salon and concert room. His parents were citizens of the Argentine Republic, but he was born in Paris, in 1861. His father being a man of wealth, he had ample opportunity to cultivate his talents, and his first teachers in composition were Bizet and Henri Maréchal. Later he continued his studies at the Conservatoire, under Dubois and Massenet. In 1885 he carried off the Rossini prize, and in 1889 brought out a one-act opera at the Opéra Comique, “Le Baiser de Suzon,” for which Pierre Barbier wrote the words. “Elaine” had its first performance at Convent Garden in July, 1892, with Mine. Melba, Jean and Édouard de Reszke, and M. Plançon in the cast. It was then withdrawn for revision, and restored to the stage the next year. If there is anything creditable in such a thing it may be said, to Mr. Bemberg’s credit, that, so far as I know, he was the first musician who wrote music for Oscar Wilde’s “Salome.” The public, especially the people of the boxes, lent a gracious ear to the new opera, partly, no doubt, because of its subject, but more largely because of Mine. Melba, Mine. Mantelli, the brothers de Reszke, Plançon, and M. Castelmary, who were concerned in its production. All of Mr. Bemberg’s music that had previously been heard in New York was of the lyrical order, and it seemed but natural that he was less successful in the developing of a dramatic situation than in hymning the emotions of one when he found it at hand. A ballad in the first act (“ L’amour est pur comine la fiamme”), the scene at the close (“ L’air est léger”), a prayer in the third act (“ Dieu de pitié”), and the duets which followed them are all cases in point. They mark the high tide of M. Bemberg’s graceful melodic fancy, and exemplify his good taste and genuineness of feeling. It is not great music, but it is sincere to the extent of its depth. For the note of chivalry which ought to sound all through an Arthurian opera M. Bemberg has chosen no less a model than “Lohengrin”; but his trumpets are feebler echoes of the original voice than his harmonies on several occasions, as, for instance, the entrance of Lancelot into the castle of Astolat. In general his instrumentation is discreet and effective. He has followed his French teachers in the treatment of the dialogue, which aims to be intensified speech. He has also trodden, though at a distance, in the footsteps of Bizet and Massenet in the device of using typical phrases; but so timidly has this been done that it is doubtful if it was discovered by the audience. The resources of the opera house in reproducing the scenes of chivalric life were commensurate with the music of the opera in its attempt ‘to bring its spirit to the mind through the ear. It is more exciting to read of a tournament in Malory than to see a mimic one on the stage. It is true that there were men on horses who rode together three times, that a spear was broken, and that they afterward fought on foot; but they struck their spears together as if they had been singlesticks, instead of receiving each his opponent’s weapon on his shield, and when the spear broke it was not all “toshivered.” Then, when they had drawn their swords, they did not “lash together like wild boars, thrusting and foining and giving either other many sad strokes, so that it was marvel to see how they might endure,” as the gentle Sir Thomas would doubtless have had them do. Still, the opera was enjoyed and applauded, as it deserved to be for the good things that were in it, and the Lily Maid had more lilies and roses and holly showered about her than she could easily pick up and carry away.
     Miss Sybil Sanderson, who had gone to Paris from the Pacific Slope some years before, and had achieved considerable of a vogue, particularly in Massenet’s operas, made her American début on January 16, 1895, in Massenet’s “Manon,” in which M. Jean de Reszke sang the part of the Chevalier des Grieux for the first time. The opera had been heard at the Academy of Music, in Italian, nine years before, and this was its first performance in the original French, a language which the fair debutante used with admirable distinctness and charmingly modulated cadences, a fact which contributed much to the pretty triumph which she celebrated after the first act. She did not maintain herself on the plane reached in this act. The second had scarcely begun before it became noticeable that she was wanting in passionate expression as well as in voice, and that her histrionic limitations went hand in hand with her vocal. But she was a radiant vision, and had she been able to bring out the ingratiating character of the music she might have held the sympathies of the audience, obviously predisposed in her favor, in the degree contemplated by the composer. This quality of graciousness is the most notable element in Massenet’s music. As much as anything can do so it achieves pardon for the book, which is far less amiable than that of “Traviata,” which deals with the same unlovely theme. Another quasi novelty was Saint-Saëns’s “Samson et Dalila,” which had one performance — and one only — on February 8th to afford Mine. Mantelli an opportunity to exhibit her musical powers, and Signor Tamagno his physical. The music was familiar from performances of the work as an oratorio; as an opera it came as near to making a fiasco as a work containing so much good and sound music could.
     The most interesting event in the whole administration of Mr. Abbey and his associates happened on February 4th, when Verdi’s “Falstaff” was presented. Signor Mancinelli conducted, and the cast was as follows:

     To construct operas out of Shakespeare’s plays has been an ambition of composers for nearly two centuries. Verdi himself yielded to the temptation when he wrote “Macbeth” forty years ago. Probably no one recognized more clearly than he did when he wrote “Falstaff” how the whole system of lyrico-dramatic composition should undergo a transformation before anything like justice could be done to the myriad-minded poet’s creations. Who would listen now to Rossini’s “Otello”? Yet, in its day, it was immensely popular. A careless day it was — the day of pretty singing, and little else; the day when there was so little concern for the dramatic element in opera that the grew-some dénouement of Rossini’s opera is said once to have caused a listener to cry out in astonishment : “Great God! the tenor is murdering the soprano!” Then it might have been possible for a composer, provided he were a Mozart, to find a musical investment for a Shakespearian comedy, but assuredly not for a tragedy. No literary masterpiece was safe from the vandalism of opera writers at that time, however, and Shakespeare simply shared the fate of Goethe and their great fellows. With the dawn of the new era there came greater possibilities, and now it may be said we have a few Shakespearian operas that will endure for several decades at least: let us say Nicolai’s “Merry Wives of Windsor,” Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Verdi’s “Othello” and “Falstaff.” Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet” and Saint-Saëns’s “Henry VIII,, seem already to have outlived their brief day, at least in all countries save France, where the personal equation in favor of a native composer seems strong enough to keep second-class composers afloat while it permits genius to perish. As for Goetz’s “Taming of the Shrew,” it was too much like good Rhine wine, and too little like champagne to pass as a comic opera. When Verdi’s last opera appeared the only Falstaff who had vitality was the fat knight of Nicolai’s work. Yet he had had many predecessors. Balfe composed a “Falstaff” for the King’s Theater in London, which was sung with the capacious-voiced Lablache in the titular part, and Grisi, Persiani, and Ivanoff in the cast. That was in 1838. Forty years earlier Salieri had composed an Italian “Falstaff” for Vienna. In 1856 Adoiphe Adam produced a French “Falstaff” in Paris, and the antics of the greasy knight amused the Parisians eighty-six years earlier in Papavoine’ s “Le Vieux Coquet.” Nicolai’s predecessors in Germany were Peter Ritter, 1794, and Dittersdorf, 1796.
      Verdi’s return to Shakespearian subjects after reaching the fulness of his powers in his old age, and after he had turned from operas to lyric dramas, is in the highest degree significant of the thoroughness of the revolution accom­plished by Wagner. The production of “Otello” and “Falstaff” created as great an excitement in Italy as the first performance of “Parsifal” did in Germany; and it must have seemed like the irony of fate to many that Wagner should have to be filtered through Verdi in order to bear fruit in the original home of the art form. But that is surely the lesson of “Otello,” “Falstaff,” and the fervid works of Leoncavallo, Mascagni, and Puccini.
     Even more strikingly than “Otello” this comic opera of the youthful octogenarian disclosed the importance which Boito had assumed in the development of Verdi. That development is one of the miracles of music. In manner Verdi represents a full century of operatic writing. He began when, in Italy at least, the libretto was a mere stalking horse on which arias might be hung. All that he did besides furnishing vehicles for airs was to provide a motive for the scene painter and the costumer. Later we see the growth of dramatic characterization in his ensembles, and the development of strongly marked and ingeniously differentiated moods in his arias without departure from the old-fashioned forms. In this element lay much of the compelling force of his melodies, even those commonplace ones which were pricked for the barrel organ almost before the palms were cool which first applauded them — like “Di quella pira” and “La donna è mobile.” Then set in the period of reflection. The darling of the public began to think more of his art and less of his popularity. Less impetuous, less fecund, perhaps, in melodic invention, he began to study how to wed dramatic situations and music. This led him to enrich his harmonies, and to refine his instrumentation, which in his earlier works is frequently coarse and vulgar in the extreme. At this stage he gave us “ La Forza del Destino” and “Aïda.” Now the hack writers of opera books would no longer suffice him. He had already shown high appreciation of the virtue which lies in a good book when he chose Ghislanzoni to versify the Egyptian story of “Aïda.” But the final step necessary to complete his wonderfully progressive march was taken when he associated himself with Boito. Here was a man who united in himself in a creditable degree the qualifications which Wagner demanded for his “Artist of the Future”; he was poet, dramatist, and musician. No one who has studied “Otello” can fail to see that Verdi owes much in it to the composer of “ Mefistofele”; but the indebtedness is even greater in “Falstaff,” where the last vestige of the old subserviency of the text to the music has disappeared. From the first to the last the play is now the dominant factor. There are no “numbers” in “Falstaff”; there can be no repetition of a portion of the music without interruption and dislocation of the action. One might as well ask Hamlet to repeat his soliloquy on suicide as to ask one of the characters in “Falstaff” to sing again a single measure once sung. The play moves almost with the rapidity of the spoken comedy. Only once or twice does one feel that there is an unnecessary eddy in the current.
     And how has this play been set to music? It has been plunged into a perfect sea of melodic champagne. All the dialogue, crisp and sparkling, full of humor in itself, is made crisper, more sparkling, more amusing by the music on which, and in which, it floats, we are almost tempted to say more buoyantly than comedy dialogue has floated since Mozart wrote “Le Nozze di Figaro.” The orchestra is bearer of everything, just as completely as it is in the latter-day dramas of Richard Wagner; it supplies phrases for the singers, supports their voices, comments on their utterances, and gives dramatic color to even the most fleeting idea. It is a marvelous delineator of things external as well as internal. It swells the bulk of the fat knight until he sounds as if he weighed a ton, and gives such piquancy to the spirits of the merry women (Mrs. Quickly monopolizing the importance due to Mrs. Page), that one cannot see them come on the stage without a throb of delight. In spite of the tremendous strides which the art of instrumentation has made since Berlioz mixed the modern orchestral colors, Verdi has in “Falstaff” added to the variegated palette. Yet all is done so discreetly, with such utter lack of effect-seeking, that it seems as if the art had always been known. The flood upon which the vocal melody floats is not like that of Wagner; it is not a development of fixed phrases, though Verdi, too, knows the use of leading motives in a sense, but a current which is ever receiving new waters. The declamation is managed with extraordinary skill, and though it frequently grows out of the instrumental part, it has yet independent melodic value as the vocal parts of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger” have. Through this Verdi has acquired a comic potentiality for his voice parts which goes hand in hand with that of his instrumental parts.
     But Verdi is not only dramatically true and melodious in his vocal parts, he is even, when occasion offers, most simple and ingenuous. There is an amazing amount of the Mozartian spirit in “alstaff,” and once we seem even to recognize the simple graciousness of pre-Gluckian days. Thus the dainty fancy and idyllic feeling which opens the scene in Windsor Forest, with its suggestion of fays and fairies and moonlight (a scene, by the way, for which Verdi has found entrancing tones, yet without reaching the lovely grace of Nicolai), owes much of its beauty to a minuet measure quite in the manner of the olden time, but which is, after all, only an accompaniment to the declamation which it sweetens. The finales of “ Falstaff” have been built up with all of Verdi’s oldtime skill, and sometimes sound like Mozart rubbed through the Wagnerian sieve. Finally, to cap the climax, he writes a fugue. A fugue to wind up a comic opera! A fugue — the highest exemplification of oldtime artificiality in music! A difficult fugue to sing, yet it runs out as smoothly as the conventional tag of Shakespeare’s own day, whose place, indeed, it takes. It is a tag suggested by “All the world’s a stage,” and though it is a fugue, it bubbles over with humor.

Last updated October 30, 2006