The Metropolitan Opera

“ In every opera house in the world, from Palermo to Colon, there are more than a hundred maestros. Even the piccolo player goes by that name. Any doorkeeper will slip you gratis into the house if you salaam him with the magic title. But they never permit you to forget that there is only one maestrissimo, one impresario, one chief unimpeachable, incomparable. Behold him here in Signor Gatti-Casazza of the Metropolitan Opera Company. ”

“ After the tragedy, at a meeting in the Metropolitan Opera House called together by horrified men and women of the city, this young capmaker stood at the edge of the great opera-house stage and in a voice hardly raised, though it reached every person in that vast audience, arraigned society for regarding human life so cheaply. ”

“ There is also a considerable number of amateurs, editors, and correspondents who are eagerly waiting for some signs showing that German opera is losing ground, so that they may raise a war-whoop in behalf of Italian opera. But the powers that rule the destinies of the Metropolitan Opera House are too wise to heed the arguments of these prophets. They know that Italian opera can never again be successfully revived in New York, and that the only alternative for the present lies between German opera and no opera at all. ”

“ I believe that in coming years by my own work and that of Dickson, Muybridge, Marié and others who will doubtless enter the field, that grand opera can be given at the Metropolitan Opera House at New York without any material change from the original, and with artists and musicians long since dead. ”

“ The general history of the Metropolitan Opera has already been outlined. Opera in other cities has gone through much the same train of events, slowly changing indifference to interest, and having now arrived at the stage of independence made possible by a demand that grows steadily in volume and intelligence. The number of performances in each city shows a consistent annual growth. ”

“ The best way of approaching the question is to consider the basis on which our operatic institutions grew. We started with the institutions because, as always in the United States, there were people in those days who did not wish to be deprived in the New World of all they had been able to enjoy in the Old. The ever-present snobs gradually joined their ranks, and at the time the Metropolitan Opera was founded, twenty years after the Civil War, their influence was at its height. ”

“ Concert life was already flourishing. Those organizations which, along with the New York orchestra, still dominate our music life, the Boston and the Philadelphia orchestras, were established, [Pg 39] as was the Metropolitan Opera Company. They were, needless to say, initiated by groups of private individuals, of whom an appreciable number belonged to a public well provided with experience and curiosity, a public which loved music, possessed some knowledge of it, and demanded it in abundance. ”

“ It has not, however, the brilliancy or fascination of the Metropolitan audience in New York, nor of Covent Garden. The Teatro Real is a mediocre building, in the first place; and neither the toilettes and jewels of the women nor the distinction of the men can compare with the splendid ensemble of an English or American opera audience. While the music, after Vienna, is execrable, and merits the indifference the Madrileños show it. ”

“ Eighty per cent of the music heard there is trivial in comparison with either good jazz or good symphonic music; ninety per cent of the acting is preposterous; and the settings, costumes, and properties are so far below popular musical comedy standards that in the end Urban and Norman-Bel Geddes have had to be called in to save them, and haven’t been given scope or freedom enough to succeed. The Metropolitan is, I am told, the finest opera house in the world and loses money because it is still several leaps ahead of its clientèle which insists on more Puccini and no Coq d’Or. ”

“ There was no professional opera claque at the Metropolitan in those days such as is now maintained by some of the singers and conductors who, in rivalry with each other, foolishly spend their money in the hiring of twenty to fifty husky men, under a well-trained leader, who stand at the side of the balconies and family circle and clap with the machine-like regularity of a steel hammer in an iron foundry in order to produce so and so many recalls after an act. ”

“ It would be a great gratification for all who are interested in opera to see more fine opera houses erected in America with more opportunities for the people. The performances at the Metropolitan are exceedingly fine, but only a comparatively few people can possibly hear them and there is little opportunity for the performance of a wide variety of operas. The opera singer naturally gets tired of singing a few rôles over and over again. The American people should develop a taste for more and more different operas. ”

“ If you intend to go into the grand opera it is advisable to go abroad, as it gives you the prestige which is necessary at present, in order to secure these positions of which we have a fair illustration in the case of a beautiful mezzo soprano who had been singing with the English Grand Opera Company, and though in every way qualified to sing with the Metropolitan Grand Opera Company, was unable to secure an engagement with them. ”

“ The rehearsals with these amateur singers, however, demand from the conductor ten times the energy, patience, and vitality that are necessary with an orchestra composed of trained professionals. And yet there is a charm in working with devoted amateurs. My father loved it, and even during the harassing labors of founding and maintaining the German opera at the Metropolitan, he always turned to the regular Thursday-evening chorus rehearsals of the Oratorio Society as a change and rest. ”

“ It was now announced by the Royal Italian Opera Company, Limited, that on the completion of the new Metropolitan Opera-house, which Gye felt so sure of obtaining, the Academy would be closed, so that a monopoly of Italian Opera would thus be established in New York. ”

“ Whatever the reason, it is a fact that most of our popular plays end merrily in a church, while most of our popular operas end sadly in a churchyard. The calculation has been made that out of twoscore operas sung in New York at the two opera-houses a season or so ago, only half a dozen ended happily; the large majority of them culminated in the death of the hero or of the heroine or of both together. Music is a sister of poetry, and we need not wonder that the musicians are likely to prefer the opera-book which has a tragic catastrophe. ”

“ This in itself is not much to boast of, for the entertainment of the ballet is independent of language to a still greater extent; and La Gitana or Esmeralda can be as well understood by an Englishman at the Opera House of Berlin or of Moscow as at Her Majesty's Theatre in London; while perhaps the most universally intelligible drama ever performed is that of Punch, even when the brief dialogue which adorns its pantomime is inaudible.
Opera is music in a dramatic form; and people go to the theatre and listen to it as if it were so much prose. ”

“ Both of these were filled, exclusively, with the highest classes of society; all, without exception, in full dress, then universally worn. The audiences thus assembled were considered as indisputably presenting a finer spectacle than any other theatre in Europe, and absolutely astonished the foreign performers, to whom such a sight was entirely new. At the end of the performance, the company of the pit and boxes repaired to the coffee-room, which was then the best assembly in London; private ones being rarely given on opera nights; and all the first society was regularly to be seen there. ”

“ Dingy scenery, shabby and anachronistic costumes, an inefficient chorus, and a scanty orchestra had aided a small constellation of eminent singers to maintain Italian Opera at the King’s Theatre for the entertainment of a clique, not for the pleasure of a public. This was to be changed. The new undertaking promised perfection in every thing. Art was to be considered as well as the artist—the composer as well as the singer. ”

“ It was not alone the official title of the French institution, popularly spoken of as the Grand Opéra, which was in the minds of the promoters of the New York enterprise—the new opera house was to be a veritable academy of music, an educational institution. Not only was fashionable society to have a place in which to display and disport itself, but popular taste and popular knowledge were to be cultivated. ”

“ Up to this time the Opera had been constituted as it alone could be; for what better use, at the theatre, could be made of a kind of music which could paint nothing than by employing it in the representation of things which could not exist? But as soon as music learnt to paint and to speak the charms of sentiment, it brought into contempt those of the Wand; the theatre was purged of its garden of mythology, interest was substituted for astonishment; the machines of poets and of carpenters were destroyed; and the lyric drama assumed a more noble and less gigantic character. ”

“ Hence the origin of airs, choruses, symphonies, and of that enchanting melody which often embellishes modern music at the expense of its poetic accompaniment.
"At the birth of the Opera, its inventors, to elude that which seemed unnatural, as an imitation of human life, in the union of music with speech, transferred their scenes from earth to heaven, and to hell. Not knowing how to make men speak, they made gods and devils, instead of heroes and shepherds, sing. Thus magic and marvels became speedily the stock in trade of the lyrical theatre. ”

“ Indeed, some of the wretched, slipshod performances that have been given under the name of grand opera in America, would be hissed from the stage in London, Paris, or Italy. In operatic performances in America, we have the parts of two or three principals well done, but all else slipshod and imperfect, and the effect of the opera itself too frequently marred by the outrageous cuttings, transpositions, and alterations made by managers to adapt it to their resources. ”

“ All of the swell clubs have boxes and the society folk who can afford it subscribe, yet the opera is not so important an item of the social year in Paris as in New York, and one will usually see more elaborate toilettes and more fashionable women in any one of the popular theatres than at the Opera. ”

“ But in Italy, even at the time when such wonders were being effected in the way of stage decorations, the music of an opera was still its prime attraction; indeed, there were theatres for operas and theatres for spectacular dramas, and it is a mistake to attempt the union of the two in any great excellence, inasmuch as the one naturally interferes with and diverts attention from the other. ”

“ She performs regularly with the New York City Opera even though the State Theatre-based company is able to pay only a tiny fraction of what singers receive at other great opera houses around the world. ”

“ There are many theatres where plays are given that are not only pure in tone, but exert a refining and educating influence on all who hear them. And as for operas, there is hardly one in the modern repertory that is open to censure on moral grounds. Mr. Carl Rosa refers to the curious fact that, when circumstances compel him to give an operatic performance in a hall instead of a theatre, the audiences are of quite a distinct character, including many who like opera, but do not wish to go to a theatre. ”

“ For my own part, I cannot think it would be any loss to real lovers of music, if all those false friends who have made pretensions to it only in compliance with the fashion, would separate themselves from them; provided our Italian Opera could be brought under such regulations as to go on without them. We might then be able to sit and enjoy an entertainment of this sort, free from those disturbances which are frequent in English theatres, without any regard, not only to performers, but even to the presence of Majesty itself. ”

“ Thus it happens, that if the musician has more art than the poet, he effaces him; and the actor, seeing the spectator sacrifice the words to the music, sacrifices in his turn theatrical gesture and action to song and brilliancy of voice, which transforms a dramatic entertainment into a mere concert....
"Such are the defects which the absolute perfection of music, and its defective application to language, may introduce into the Opera. ”