CHAPTER XXII — Section 47

END OF CONRIED'S ADMINISTRATION

A visit from Engelbert Humperdinck to attend the first German performance of his "Hänsel und Gretel" on November 25th, a strike of the chorus which lasted three days, a revival of Goldmark's "Königin von Saba" which had been the chief glory of the second German season twenty years before, and the squandering of thousands of dollars and so much time that nearly all of the operas in the repertory suffered for lack of rehearsals on a single production of Strauss's operetta "Der Zigeunerbaron," were the chief incidents of the season of 1905-06. That is to say, the chief local incidents. Out in San Francisco the company was overwhelmed by the catastrophe of the earthquake, which sent it back a physical and financial wreck. The calamity tested the fortitude and philosophy of Mr. Conried as well as the artists, but through the gloom there shone a cheering ray when Mme. Sembrich, herself one of the chief sufferers from the earthquake, postponed her return to her European home long enough to give a concert for the benefit of the minor members of the company, and distributed $7,691 to musicians who had lost their instruments and $2,435 to the chorus and technical staff.

The season of 1906-07 marked highwater in the artistic activities of Mr. Conried's institution. It was the year of "Salome" and the coming of Signor Puccini to give éclat to the production of his operas. Outside of "Salome" there was only one real novelty in the season's repertory, and that, "Fedora," might easily have been spared; but the current list of the house was augmented by no less than seven works, namely, "Fedora," "La Damnation de Faust," "Lakmé" (which had been absent from the list for many years), "L'Africaine," "Manon Lescaut," "Madama Butterfly," and "Salome." Berlioz's dramatic legend, "La Damnation," had been a popular concert piece ever since its first production by Dr. Leopold Damrosch at a concert of the Symphony Society more than twenty-five years before, and its novel features were those which grew out of the abortive efforts of Raoul Gunsbourg to turn it into a stage play.

In the presence of the composer, who was received with great acclaim by a gathering notable in numbers and appearance, and amid scenes of glad excitement which grew from act to act, Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" was performed for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera House on the evening of January 18, 1907. Signor Puccini reached the theater in the middle of the third act and, unnoticed by the audience, took a seat in the directors' box in the grand tier. After the first act the orchestra saluted him with a fanfare and the audience broke into applause which lasted so long that, finding it impossible to quiet it by rising and bowing his acknowledgments, he withdrew into the rear of the box out of sight so that the performance might go an. After the second act he sent the following statement in French to the representatives of the newspapers:

"I have always thought that an artist has something to learn at any age. It was with delight, therefore, that I accepted the invitation of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House to come to this new world of which I saw a corner on my visit to Buenos Ayres and with which I was anxious to get better acquainted. What I have seen to-night has already proved to me that I did well to come here, and I consider myself happy to be able to say that I am among my friends, to whom I can speak in music with a certainty of being understood."

"Manon Lescaut" was not wholly new to the opera-goers of New York, for it had had one or two performances by a vagrant Italian company at Wallack's Theater in May, 1898; but to all intents and purposes it was a novelty, for the musical itinerants of nine years before were not equal to the task set by Puccini, and gave a perversion rather than a performance of the opera. Why it should have waited so long and for the stimulus of the coming of the composer before reaching the Metropolitan Opera House was not easily explained by those admirers of the composer who knew or felt that in spite of the high opinion in which." La Bohème," "Tosca," and "Madama Butterfly" were held, "Manon Lescaut" is fresher, more spontaneous, more unaffected and passionate in its dramatic climaxes, as well as more ingratiatingly charming in its comedy element, than any of its successors from Puccini's pen. The voice of the composer rings unmistakably through its measures, but it is freer from the formularies which have since become stereotyped, and there are a greater number of echoes of the tunefulness which belongs to the older period between which and the present the opera marks a transition.

Abbé Prévost's story, familiar to all readers of French romance, had served at least four opera composers before Signor Puccini. In 1830 Halévy brought forward a three-act ballet dealing with the story; Balfe wrote a French opera with the title in 1836, Auber another in 1856, and Massenet still another in 1884. Scribe was Auber's collaborator, and their opera, which like Puccini's ended with the scene of Manon's death in America, received a touch of local color from the employment of Negro dances and Créole songs. It would be interesting to see the old score now that the artistic value of the folk-songs of the Southern States as an incentive to a distinctive school of music has challenged critical attention and aroused controversy. Massenet's opera, which through the influence of Minnie Hauk was produced at the Academy of Music on December 23, 1885, dropped out of the local repertory until the restoration of the Italian régime as has been related elsewhere in this book. The opening and closing incidents in Massenet's opera are the same as are used by Puccini, though MM.

Meilhac and Gille, the French librettists, did not think it necessary to carry the story across the ocean for the sake of Manon's death scene. In their book she succumbs to nothing that is obvious and dies in her lover's arms on the way to the ship at Havre which was to transport her to the penal colony at New Orleans. The third act of Puccini's opera plays at Havre, its contents being an effort to free Manon, the deportation of a shipload of female convicts, including Manon, and the embarkation of des Grieux in a menial capacity on the convict ship. Here the composer makes one of his most ambitious attempts at dramatic characterization: there is a roll-call and the woman go to the gang-plank in various moods, while the by-standers comment on their appearance and manner. The whole of the last act, which plays on a plateau near New Orleans, is given up to the lovers. Manon dies; des Grieux shrieks his despair and falls lifeless upon her body. Puccini has followed his confrères of the concentrated agony school in introducing an orchestral intermezzo.

He does this between the second and third acts and gives a clue to its purposed emotional contents by providing it with a descriptive title, "Imprisonment. Journey to Havre," and quoting a passage from the Abbé Prévost's book in which des Grieux confesses the overpowering strength of his passion and determines to follow Manon wherever she may go, "even to the ends of the world." Here, at least, we recognize a sincere effort to make the interlude something more than a stop-gap or a device to make up for the paucity of sustained music in the course of the dramatic action.

"Madama Butterfly" in the original Italian had been anticipated by a long series of English performances by Mr. Savage's company at the Garden Theater, beginning on November 12th. This production is deserving of record. Walter Rothwell was the conductor, and the principal singers in the cast were Elza Szamosy, a Hungarian, as Cio-Cio-San; Harriet Behne as Suzuki, Joseph F. Sheehan as Pinkerton, and Winifred Goff as Sharpless. The opera reached the Metropolitan Opera House on February 11, 1907, when it was sung in the presence of the composer by the following cast:

Cio-Cio-San ……………………… Geraldine Farrar

Suzuki ……………………………… Louise Homer

Pinkerton ………………………………… Caruso

Sharpless ………………………………… Scotti

Goro ……………………………………… Reiss

Conductor, Arturo Vigna

A great deal of the sympathetic interest which "Madama Butterfly" evoked on its first production and has held in steady augmentation ever since was due to the New York public's familiarity with the subject of the opera created by John Luther Long's story and Mr. Belasco's wonderfully pathetic drama upon which this much more pretentious edifice of Messrs. Illica, Giacosa, and Puccini is reared. To the popular interest in story and play Japan lent color in more respects than one, having at the time a powerful hold upon the popular imagination. We have had the Mikado's kingdom with its sunshine and flowers, its romantic chivalry, its geishas and continent and incontinent morals upon the stage before,—in the spoken drama, in comic operetta, in musical farce, and in serious musical drama. Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan used its external motives for one of their finest satirical skits, an incomparable model in its way; but the parallel in serious opera was that created by Signor Illica, one of the librettists of "Madama Butterfly," and Signor Mascagni. The opera was "Iris," the production of which at the Metropolitan Opera House helped to emphasize the failure of the composer's American visit.

"Iris" is a singular blending of allegory which had a merit quite admirable though ill-applied, and tragedy of the kind to which I have already several times referred in this book. In "Iris" as in "Madama Butterfly" we have Japanese music,—the twanging of samisens and the tinkling of gongs; but it was more coarsely applied, with more apparent and merely outward purpose, and it was only an accompaniment of a vision stained all over with purulence and grossness." Madama Butterfly" tells a tale of wickedness contrasted with lovely devotion. Its carnality has an offset in a picture of love conjugal and love maternal, and its final appeal is one to infinite pity. And in this it is beautiful. Opera-goers are familiar with Signor Puccini's manner." Tosca" and "La Bohème" speak out of many measures of his latest opera, but there is introduced in it a mixture of local color. Genuine Japanese tunes come to the surface of the instrumental flood at intervals and tunes which copy their characteristics of rhythm, melody, and color. As a rule this is a dangerous proceeding except in comedy which aims to chastise the foibles and follies of a people and a period.

Nothing is more admirable, however, than Signor Puccini's use of it to heighten the dramatic climaxes; the merry tune with which Cio-Cio-San diverts her child in the second act and the use of a bald native tune thundered out fortissimo in naked unison with periodic punctuations of harmony at the close are striking cases in point. Nor should the local color in the delineation of the break of day in the beginning of the third act, and the charmingly felicitous use of mellifluous gongs in the marriage scene be overlooked. Always the effect is musical and dramatically helpful. As for the rest there are many moments of a strange charm in the score, music filled with a haunting tenderness and poetic loveliness, music in which there is a beautiful meeting of the external picture and the spiritual content of the scene. Notable among these moments is the scene in which Butterfly and her attendant scatter flowers throughout the room in expectation of Pinkerton's return. Here melodies and harmonies are exhaled like the odors of the flowers.

Giordano's "Fedora," first performed on December 5, 1906, was given with this distribution of parts:

Fedora ………………………….. Lina Cavalieri

(Her first appearance.)

Olga ………………………………. Bella Alten

Dimitri …………………………. Marie Mattfeld

Un piccolo Savojardo ……………. Josephine Jacoby

Loris Ipanow ……………………… Enrico Caruso

De Siriex ……………………….. Antonio Scotti

Il Barone Rouvel |

Desiré | …………………… Mr. Paroli

Cirillo ……………………………… Mr. Bégué

Borow …………………………….. Mr. Mühlmann

Grech …………………………….. Mr. Dufriche

Boleslaw Lazinski …………………… Mr. Voghere

Lorek …………………………….. Mr. Navarini

Conductor, Arturo Vigna

The opera is an attempt to put music to the familiar play by Sardou; an utterly futile attempt. A more sluggish and intolerable first act than the legal inquest it would be difficult to imagine. Fragments of inconsequential tunes float along on a turgid stream, above which the people of the play chatter and scream, becoming intelligible and interesting only when they lapse into ordinary speech. Ordinary speech, however, is the only kind of speech that an expeditious drama can tolerate, and it is not raised to a higher power by the blowing of brass or the beating of drums. The frankest confession of the futility of Giordano's effort to make a lyric drama out of "Fedora" is contained in the fact that only those moments in his score are musical in the accepted sense when the play stops, as in the case of the intermezzo which cuts the second act in two, or when the old operatic principles wake into life again, as in Loris's confession of love. Here, in the first instance, a mood receives musical delineation, and in the second a passion whose expression is naturally lyrical receives utterance.

One device new to the operatic stage, in its externals at least, is ingeniously employed by the composer: the conversation in which Fedora extorts a confession from Loris is carried on while a pianist entertains a princess' guests with a solo upon his instrument. But the fact that singing tones, not spoken, are used adds nothing to the value of the scene.

On returning from Europe late in the summer of 1906 Mr. Conried announced his intention to produce Richard Strauss's "Salome," and his forces had no sooner been gathered together than Mr. Hertz began the laborious task of preparing the opera—if opera it can be called—for performance. There can scarcely be a doubt that Mr. Conried hoped for a sensational flurry like that which had accompanied the production of "Parsifal"; but, with an eye to the main chance, he confined his first official proclamation to a single performance, which, in connection with a concert by all his chief singers not concerned in the opera, was to be given for his annual benefit. Evidently he felt less sure about the outcome of this production than he had about that of "Parsifal," and was bound to reap all the benefits that could come from a powerful appeal to popular curiosity touching so notorious a work as Strauss's setting of Oscar Wilde's drama. The performance took place with many preliminary flourishes beyond the ordinary on January 22d.

Two days before there was held a public rehearsal, which was attended by about a thousand persons who had received invitations, most of them being stockholders of the opera house, old subscribers, stockholders of Mr. Conried's company, writers for the newspapers, and friends of the artists and the management. The opera was given with the following cast:

Salome …………………………… Miss Fremstad

Herodias …………………………….. Miss Weed

Herodias's Page ………………… Josephine Jacoby

Herod's Page …………………….. Marie Mattfeld

Herod …………………………….. Carl Burrian

Jochanaan ……………………….. Anton Van Rooy

Narraboth ……………………….. Andreas Dippel

First Jew ……………………………. Mr. Reiss

Second Jew …………………………… Mr. Bayer

Third Jew …………………………… Mr. Paroli

Fourth Jew ……………………………. Mr. Bars

Fifth Jew …………………………. Mr. Dufriche

First Nazarene ……………………… Mr. Journet

Second Nazarene ……………………… Mr. Stiner

First Soldier ……………………… Mr. Mühlmann

Second Soldier ……………………….. Mr. Blass

A Cappadocian ………………………… Mr. Lange

Conductor, Alfred Hertz

Concerning the effect produced upon the public by the performance of the work I shall permit Mr. W. P. Eaton, then a reporter for The Tribune, to speak for me.

The concert was over a little after nine, and the real business of the evening began at a quarter to ten, when the lights went out, there was a sound from the orchestra pit, and the curtains parted on "Salome." The setting for "Salome" is an imaginative creation of the scene painter's art. The high steps to the palace door to the right, the cover of the cistern, backed by ironic roses in the center, and beyond the deep night sky and the moonlight on the distant roofs. Two cedars cut the sky, black and mournful. Against this background "Salome" moves like a tigress, the costumes of the court glow with a dun, barbaric splendor, and the red fire from the tripods streams silently up into the night till you fancy you can almost smell it. Here was atmosphere like Belasco's, and saturated with it the opera moved to its appointed end, sinister, compelling, disgusting.

What the opera is is told elsewhere. It remains to record that in the audience at this performance, as at the dress rehearsals on Sunday, the effect of horror was pronounced. Many voices were hushed as the crowd passed out into the night, many faces were white almost as those at the rail of a ship. Many women were silent, and men spoke as if a bad dream were on them. The preceding concert was forgotten; ordinary emotions following an opera were banished. The grip of a strange horror or disgust, was on the majority. It was significant that the usual applause was lacking. It was scattered and brief.

In this there is no hyperbole; it fails of a complete description only in neglecting to chronicle the fact that a large proportion of the audience left the audience-room at the beginning of the bestial apostrophe to the head of the Baptist. It was because of this pronounced rejection of the work by an audience which might have been considered elected to it in a peculiar manner that it was a sincere cause of regret that the action of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company caused a prohibition of further performances. It would have been better and conduced more to artistic righteousness if the public had been permitted to kill the work by refusing to witness it. In my opinion there is no doubt but that this would have been the result had Mr. Conried attempted to give performances either at extraordinary or ordinary prices. Immediately after his benefit performance he announced three representations outside of the subscription, the first of which was to take place on February 1st. Two days after the first performance, the directors of the opera house company held a meeting and adopted the following resolution, which was promptly communicated to Mr. Conried:

The directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company consider that the performance of "Salome" is objectionable and detrimental to the best interests of the Metropolitan Opera House. They therefore protest against any repetition of this opera.

Under the terms of the contract between the directors and Mr. Conried, such a protest was the equivalent of a command, disobedience of which would have worked a forfeiture of the lease. Mr. Conried parleyed, pleading his cause voluminously in the public prints, as well as before the directors, meanwhile keeping his announcement of the three performances before the people. But the sale of tickets amounted to next to nothing, and Mr. Conried yielded with as much grace as possible, when on January 30th the directors refused to modify their action, though they expressed a willingness to recoup Mr. Conried for some of his expenses in mounting the opera. The directors who took this action were J. P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt, G. G. Haven, Charles Lanier, George F. Baker, D. O. Mills, George Bowdoin, A. D. Juilliard, August Belmont, and H. McK. Twombly. Representatives of Mr. Conried's company who argued the case before the directors were Otto H. Kahn, Robert Goelet, James Speyer, H. R. Winthrop, and R. H. Cottenet. For some time Mr. Conried talked about performing the opera in another theater, and the directors of his company formally agreed that he might do so on his own responsibility; but nothing came of it.

Mr. Conried had probably seen the handwriting on the wall of his box office. The next year there were more solemn proclamations to the effect that it would be performed outside of New York. Boston sent in a protest, and the flurry was over, except as it was kept up in silly and mendacious reports sent to the newspapers of Germany touching the influences that had worked for the prohibition. There never was a case which asked for less speculation. Decent men did not want to have their house polluted with the stench with which Oscar Wilde's play had filled the nostrils of humanity. Having the power to prevent the pollution they exercised it.

A reviewer ought to be equipped with a dual nature, both intellectually and morally, in order to pronounce fully and fairly upon the qualities of this drama by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss. He should be an embodied conscience stung into righteous fury by the moral stench exhaled by the decadent and pestiferous work, but, though it make him retch, he should be sufficiently judicial in his temperament calmly to look at the drama in all its aspects and determine whether or not as a whole it is an instructive note on the life and culture of the times and whether or not this exudation from the diseased and polluted will and imagination of the authors marks a real advance in artistic expression, irrespective of its contents or their fitness for dramatic representation. This is asking much of the harassed commentator on the things which the multitude of his readers receive as contributions to their diversion merely and permit to be crowded out of their minds by the next pleasant or unpleasant shock to their sensibilities.

He has not the time, nor have his readers the patience, to enter upon a discussion of the questions of moral and esthetic principle which ought to pave the way for the investigation. If he can tell what the play is, what its musical investiture is like, wherein the combined elements have worked harmoniously and efficiently to an end which to their authors seemed artistic, and therefore justifiable, he will have done much. In the case before us even this much cannot be done until some notions which have long had validity are put aside. We are only concerned with "Salome" in its newest form,—that given it by the musical composer. If it shall ever win approbation here, as it seems to have done in several German cities, it will be because of the shape into which Richard Strauss has moulded it.