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Interpreters

BOOKS BY CARL VAN VECHTEN
INTERPRETERS
IN THE GARRET
THE MUSIC OF SPAIN
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS
THE TIGER IN THE HOUSE
MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR

1a
MARY GARDEN AS CHERUBIN (1905)

Interpreters
Carl Van Vechten
.
A new edition, revised, with sixteen
illustrations and an epilogue
N
New York Alfred · A · Knopf
.
MCMXX
Music
COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1920, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INO.
V28
1920
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
the unforgettable interpreter of Ariel,
Zelima, Louka, Wendla,
and Columbine,
Fania Marinoff, my wife
CONTENTS
Olive Fremstad
Geraldine Farrar
Mary Garden
Feodor Chaliapine
Mariette Mazarin
Yvette Guilbert
Waslav Nijinsky
Epilogue
97
117
135
149
Inry
ILLUSTRATIONS
Mary Garden as Chérubin
Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE
18
Olive Fremstad as Elsa
Olive Fremstad as Sieglinde
Olive Fremstad as Kundry
Geraldine Farrar as Elisabeth
Geraldine Farrar as Violetta
Geraldine Farrar as Louise in Julien
Mary Garden as Chrysis
Mary Garden as Mélisande
Mary Garden as Fanny Legrand :
Feodor Chaliapine as Mefistofele
Mariette Mazarin as Elektra
Yvette Guilbert
Waslav Nijinsky in Debussy's Jeux
Geraldine Farrar as Zaza
Mary Garden, as Cléopâtre
112
128
140
168
190
196
Olive Fremstad
C'est que le Beau est la seule chose qui soit im-
mortelle, et qu'aussi longtemps qu'il reste un vestige
de sa manifestation matérielle, son immortalité sub-
siste. Le Beau est répandu partout, il s'étend même
jusque sur la mort. Mais il ne rayonne nulle part
avec autant d'intensité que dans l'individualité hu-
maine; c'est là qu'il parle le plus à l'intelligence, et
c'est pour cela que, pour ma part, je préférerai tou-
jours une grande puissance musicale servie par une
toix défectueuse, à une voix belle et bête, une voix
dont la beauté n'est que matérielle."
Ivan Turgeniev to Mme. Viardot.
Olive Fremstad
-
.
HE career of Olive Fremstad has entailed
continuous struggle: a struggle in the be-
e ginning with poverty, a struggle with a
refractory voice, and a struggle with her own
overpowering and dominating temperament. Am-
bition has steered her course. After she had made
a notable name for herself through her inter-
pretations of contralto rôles, she determined to
sing soprano parts, and did so, largely by an
effort of will. She is always dissatisfied with her
characterizations; she is always studying ways
and means of improving them. It is not easy for
her to mould a figure; it is, on the contrary, very
difficult. One would suppose that her magnetism
and force would carry her through an opera with-
out any great amount of preparation. Such is
not the case. There is no other singer before the
public so little at her ease in any impromptu per-
formance. Recently, when she returned to the
New York stage with an itinerant opera company
to sing in an ill-rehearsed performance of Tosca,
she all but lost her grip. She was not herself and
she did not convince. New costumes, which hin-
dered her movements, and a Scarpia with whom
she was unfamiliar, were responsible in a measure
C
S
[11]
Interpreters
for her failure to assume her customary authority.
If you have seen and heard Olive Fremstad in
the scene of the spear in Götterdämmerung, you
will find it difficult to believe that what I say is
true, that work and not plenary inspiration is re-
sponsible for the effect. To be sure, the inspira-
tion has its place in the final result. Once she is
certain of her ground, words, music, tone-colour,
gesture, and action, she inflames the whole mag-
nificently with her magnetism. This magnetism is
instinctive, a part of herself; the rest is not. She
brings about the detail with diligent drudgery,
and without that her performances would go for
nought. The singer pays for this intense con-
centration. In “ Tower of Ivory" Mrs. Ather-
ton says that all Wagnerian singers must pay
heavily. Probably all good ones must. Charles
Henry Melzer has related somewhere that he first
saw Mme. Fremstad on the stage at Covent Gar-
den, where between her scenes in some Wagner
music drama, lost in her rôle, utterly oblivious
of stage hands or fellow-artists, she paced up and
down in the wings. At the moment he decided
that she was a great interpretative artist, and
he had never heard her sing. When she is sing-
ing a rôle she will not allow herself to be inter-
rupted; she holds no receptions between scenes.
[ 12 ]
Olive Fremstad
6 Come back after the opera," she says to her
friends, and frequently then she is too tired to
see any one. She often drives home alone, a prey
to quivering nerves which keep her eyeballs roll-
ing in ceaseless torture — sleepless.
Nothing about the preparation of an opera is
easy for Olive Fremstad; the thought, the idea,
does not register immediately in her brain. But
once she has achieved complete understanding of
a rôle and thoroughly mastered its music, the
fire of her personality enables her easily to set a
standard. Is there another singer who can stand
on the same heights with Mme. Fremstad as Isolde,
Venus, Elsa, Sieglinde, Kundry, Armide, Brünn-
hilde in Götterdämmerung, or Salome? And are
not these the most difficult and trying rôles in the
répertoire of the lyric stage to-day?
In one of her impatient moods and they oc-
cur frequently - the singer once complained of
this fact. “How easy it is," she said, “ for those
who make their successes as Marguerite and Mimi.
... I should like to sing those rôles. . .." But
the remark was made under a misconception of
her own personality. Mme. Fremstad would find
Mimi and Marguerite much more difficult to com-
pass than Isolde and Kundry. She is by nature
Northern and heroic, and her physique is suited
[ 13 ]
Interpreters
S
to the goddesses and heroines of the Norse myths
(it is a significant fact that she has never at-
tempted to sing Eva or Senta). Occasionally, as
in Salome, she has been able to exploit success-
fully another side of her talent, but in the render-
ing of the grand, the noble, and the heroic, she
has no equal on our stage. Yet her Tosca always
lacked nobility. There was something in the
music which never brought the quality out.
In such a part as Selika she seemed lost
(wasted, too, it may be added), although the en-
trance of the proud African girl was made with
some effect, and the death scene was carried
through with beauty of purpose. But has any
one ever characterized Selika? Her Santuzza,
one of the two rôles which she has sung in Paris,
must be considered a failure when judged by the
side of such a performance as that given by Emma
Calvé -- and who would judge Olive Fremstad
by any but the highest standards? The Swedish
singer's Santuzza was as elemental, in its way, as
that of the Frenchwoman, but its implications
were too tragic, too massive in their noble beauty,
for the correct interpretation of a sordid melo-
drama. It was as though some one had engaged
the Victory of Samothrace to enact the part.
Munich adored the Fremstad Carmen (was it not
[ 14 ]
Olive Fremstad
her characterization of the Bizet heroine which
caused Heinrich Conried to engage her for Amer-
ica?) and Franz von Stuck painted her twice in
the rôle. Even in New York she was appreciated
in the part. The critics awarded her fervent
adulation, but she never stirred the public pulse.
The principal fault of this very Northern Carmen
was her lack of humour, a quality the singer her-
self is deficient in. For a season or two in Amer-
ica Mme. Fremstad appeared in the rôle, singing
it, indeed, in San Francisco the night of the mem-
orable earthquake, and then it disappeared from
her répertoire. Maria Gay was the next Metro-
politan Carmen, but it was Geraldine Farrar who
made the opera again as popular as it had been
in Emma Calvé's day.
Mme. Fremstad is one of those rare singers on
the lyric stage who is able to suggest the meaning
of the dramatic situation through the colour of
her voice. This tone-colour she achieves stroke
by stroke, devoting many days to the study of im-
portant phrases. To go over in detail the in-
stances in which she has developed effects through
the use of tone-colour would make it necessary
to review, note by note, the operas in which she
has appeared. I have no such intention. It
may be sufficient to recall to the reader --- who,
TIYO
[ 15 ]
Interpreters
in remembering, may recapture the thrill -- the
effect she produces with the poignant lines begin-
ning Amour, puissant amour at the close of
the third act of Armide, the dull, spent quality of
the voice emitted over the words Ich habe deinen
Mund geküsst from the final scene of Salome,
and the subtle, dreamy rapture of the Liebestod
in Tristan und Isolde. Has any one else achieved
this effect? She once told me that Titian's As-
sumption of the Virgin was her inspiration for
her conception of this scene.
Luscious in quality, Mme. Fremstad's voice is
not altogether a tractable organ, but she has
forced it to do her bidding. A critic long ago
pointed out that another singer would not be
likely to emerge with credit through the use of
Mme. Fremstad's vocal method. It is full of ex-
pediences. Oftener than most singers, too, she
has been in “bad voice.” And her difficulties
have been increased by her determination to be-
come a soprano, difficulties she has surmounted
brilliantly. In other periods we learn that sing-:
ers did not limit their ranges by the quality of
their voices. In our day singers have specialized
in high or low rôles. Many contraltos, however,
have chafed under the restrictions which com-
posers have compelled them to accept. Almost
[16]
Olive Fremstad
all of them have attempted now and again to sing
soprano rôles. Only in the case of Edyth Walker,
however, do we find an analogy to the case of
Olive Fremstad. Both of these singers have at-
tained high artistic ideals in both ranges. Mag-
nificent as Brangaene, Amneris, and Ortrud, the
Swedish singer later presented unrivalled charac-
terizations of Isolde, Armide, and Brünnhilde.
The high tessitura of the music allotted to the
Siegfried Brünnhilde is a strain for most singers.
Mme. Nordica once declared that this Brünnhilde
was the most difficult of the three. Without hav-
ing sung a note in the early evening, she must
awake in the third act, about ten-thirty or eleven,
to begin almost immediately the melismatic duet
which concludes the music drama. Mme. Frem-
stad, by the use of many expediences, such as pro-
nouncing Siegfried as if it were spelled Seigfried
when the first syllable fell on a high note, was
able to get through with this part without pro-
jecting a sense of effort, unless it was on the high
C at the conclusion, a note of which she frequently
allowed the tenor to remain in undisputed posses-
sion. But the fierce joy and spirited abandon
she put into the acting of the rôle, the passion
with which she infused her singing, carried her
victoriously past the dangerous places, often more
[ 17 ]
. Interpreters
victoriously than some other singer, who could
produce high notes more easily, but whose stage
resources were more limited.
I do not think Mme. Fremstad has trained her
voice to any high degree of agility. She can
· sing the drinking song from Lucrezia Borgia and
Delibes's Les Filles de Cadix with irresistible ef-
fect, a good part of which, however, is produced
by her personality and manner, qualities which
carry her far on the concert stage, although for
some esoteric reason they have never inveigled the
general public into an enthusiastic surrender to
her charm. I have often heard her sing Swedish
songs in her native tongue (sometimes to her own
accompaniment) so enchantingly, with such ap-
peal in her manner, and such velvet tones in her
voice, that those who heard her with me not only
burst into applause but also into exclamations of
surprise and delight. Nevertheless, in her con-
certs, or in opera, although her admirers are per-
haps stronger in their loyalty than those of any
other singer, she has never possessed the greatest
drawing power. This is one of the secrets of the
stage; it cannot be solved. It would seem that
the art of Mme. Fremstad was more homely, more
human in song, grander and more noble in opera,
than that of Mme, Tetrazzini, but the public as a
[ 18 ]

OLIVE FREMSTAD AS ELSA
from a photograph by Mishkin (1913)
Olive Fremstad
whole prefers to hear the latter, just as it has
gone in larger numbers to see the acting of Miss
Garden or Mme. Farrar. Why this is so I can-
not pretend to explain.
Mme. Fremstad has appeared in pretty nearly
all of the important, and many of the lesser, Wag-
ner rôles. She has never sung Senta, and she
once told me that she had no desire to do so, nor
has she been heard as Freia or Eva. But she has
sung Ortrud and Elsa, Venus and Elisabeth,
Adriano in Rienzi, Kundry, Isolde and Brangaene,
Fricka, Erda, Waltraute, Sieglinde, one of the
Rhine maidens (perhaps two), and all three
Brünnhildes. In most of these characterizations
she has succeeded in making a deep impression.
I have never seen her Ortrud, but I have been in-
formed that it was a truly remarkable impersona-
tion. Her Elsa was the finest I have ever seen.
To Ternina's poetic interpretation she added her
own greater grace and charm, and a lovelier qual-
ity of voice. If, on occasion, the music of the
second act proved too high for her, who could
sing the music of the dream with such poetic ex-
pression? — or the love music in the last act? —
as beautiful an impersonation, and of the same
kind, as Mary Garden's Mélisande.
Her Venus was another story. She yearned
7
[ 19 ]
Interpreters
2
for years to sing Elisabeth, and when she had
satisfied this ambition, she could be persuaded
only with difficulty to appear as the goddess. She
told me once that she would like to sing both rôles
in a single evening - a possible feat, as the two
characters never appear together; Rita Fornia,
I believe, accomplished the dual impersonation on
one occasion at the behest of Colonel Savage.
She had in mind a heroine with a dual nature, sa-
cred and profane love so to speak, and Tann-
häuser at the mercy of this gemini-born wight.
She never was permitted to try this experiment
at the Metropolitan, but during her last season
there she appeared as Elisabeth. Montreal, and
perhaps Brooklyn, had seen this impersonation
before it was vouchsafed New York. Mme. Frem-
stad never succeeded in being very convincing in
this rôle. I do not exactly understand why, as its
possibilities seem to lie within her limitations.
Nor did she sing the music well. On the other
hand, her abundantly beautiful and voluptuous
Venus, a splendid, towering, blonde figure, shim-
mering in flesh-coloured garments, was one of her
astoundingly accurate characterizations. At the
opposite pole to her Sieglinde it was equally a
masterpiece of interpretative art, like Duse's Ca-
mille “ positively enthralling as an exhibition of
1
[ 20 ]

OLIVE FREMSTAD AS SIEGLINDE
from a photograph by Aimé Dupont
Olive Fremstad
the gymnastics of perfect suppleness and grace."
In both these instances she was inspired perhaps
to realize something a little more wonderful than
the composer himself had dreamed of. The depth
and subtlety and refinement of intense passion
were in this Venus — there was no suggestion here
of what Sidney Homer once referred to as Mme.
Homer's platonic Venus !
Her Sieglinde is firmly intrenched in many of
our memories, the best loved of her Wagnerian
women and enchantresses. Will there rise an-
other singing actress in our generation to make
us forget it? I do not think so. Her melting
womanliness in the first act, ending with her com-
plete surrender to Siegmund, her pathetic fatigue
in the second act (do you not still see the har-
assed, shuddering figure stumbling into view and
falling voiceless to sleep at the knees of her
brother-lover?) remain in the memory like pic-
tures in the great galleries. And how easily in
the last act, in her single phrase, by her passion-
ate suggestion of the realization of motherhood,
did she wrest the scene from her fellow-artists, no
matter who they might be, making such an effect
before she fled into the forest depths, that what
followed often seemed but anticlimax.
Mme. Fremstad never sang the three Brünn-
[ 21 ]
Interpreters
hildes in sequence at the Metropolitan Opera
House (of late years no soprano has done so),
but she was called upon at various times to sing
them all separately. Undoubtedly it was as the
Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung that she made
the most lasting impression. The scene of the
oath on the spear she carried into the realms
of Greek tragedy. Did Rachel touch greater
heights? Was the French Jewess more electric?
The whole performance displayed magnificent
proportions, attaining a superb stature in the
immolation scene. In scenes of this nature,
scenes hovering between life and death, the elo-
quent grandeur of Mme. Fremstad's style might
be observed in its complete flowering. Isolde
over the body of Tristan, Brünnhilde over the
body of Siegfried, exhibited no mincing pathos; the
mood established was one of lofty calm. Great
artists realize that this is the true expression of
overwhelming emotion. In this connection it
seems pertinent and interesting to recall a notable
passage in a letter from Ivan Turgeniev to Pau-
line Viardot:-
“ You speak to me also about Romeo, the third
act; you have the goodness to ask me for some
remarks on Romeo. What could I tell you
that you have not already known and felt in ad-
[ 22 ]
Olive Fremstad
vance? The more I reflect on the scene of the
third act the more it seems to me that there is
only one manner of interpreting it — yours.
One can imagine nothing more horrible than find-
ing oneself before the corpse of all that one loves ;
but the despair that seizes you then ought to be so
terrible that, if it is not held and frozen by the
resolution of suicide, or by another grand senti-
ment, art can no longer render it. Broken cries,
sobs, fainting fits, these are nature, but they are
not art. The spectator himself will not be moved
by that poignant and profound emotion which you
stir so easily. Whereas by the manner in which
you wish to do Romeo (as I understand what you
have written me) you will produce on your
auditor an ineffaceable effect. I remember the fine
and just observation that you once made on the
agitated and restrained little gestures that Rachel
made, at the same time maintaining an atti-
tude of calm nobility; with her, perhaps, that
was only technique; but in general it is the
calm arising from a strong conviction or from
a profound emotion, that is to say the calm
which envelopes the desperate transports of pas-
sion from all sides, which communicates to them
that purity of line, that ideal and real beauty, the
true, the only beauty of art. And, what proves
[ 23 ]
Interpreters
the truth of this remark, is that life itself on
rare occasions, it is true, at those times when it
disengages itself from all that is accidental or
commonplace — raises itself to the same kind of
beauty. The greatest griefs, as you have said
in your letter, are the calmest; and, one could
add, the calmest are the most beautiful. But it is
necessary to know how to unite the two extremes,
unless one would appear cold. It is easier not to
attain perfection, easier to rest in the middle of
one's journey, the more so because the greater
number of spectators demand nothing else, or
rather are not accustomed to anything else, but
you are what you are only because of this noble
ambition to do your best. ..."
In the complex rôle of Kundry Mme. Fremstad
has had no rival. The wild witch of the first act,
the enchantress of the second, the repentant
Magdalene of the third, all were imaginatively im-
personated by this wonderful woman. Certain
actors drop their characterizations as soon as the
dialogue passes on to another; such as these fail
in Parsifal, for Kundry, on the stage for the en-
tire third act, has only one word to sing; in the
first act she has but few more. Colossally allur-
ing in the second act, in which she symbolized the
essence of the “ eternal feminine," Mme. Fremstad
[ 24 ]

Mishirin
OLIVE FREMSTAD AS KUNDRY, ACT I
from a photograph by Mishkin (1913)
Olive Fremstad
C
projected the first and third act Kundry into the
minds and hearts of her audience.
Well-trained in Bayreuth tradition, this singer
was no believer in it; she saw no reason for cling-
ing to outworn ideals simply because they pre-
vailed at the Master's own theatre. However,
she did not see how an individual could break with
tradition in these works without destroying their
effect. The break must come from the stage
director.
“If Wagner were alive today,” she once said
to me, “ I don't believe that he would sanction a
lot of the silly business' that is insisted upon
everywhere because it is the law at Bayreuth.
Wagner was constantly changing everything.
When he produced his music dramas they were so
entirely new in conception and in staging that
they demanded experimentation in many direc-
tions. Doubtless certain traditions were founded
on the interpretations of certain singers -- who
probably could not have followed other lines of
action, which Wagner might have preferred, so
successfully.
“ The two scenes which I have particularly in
mind are those of the first act of Tannhäuser and
the second act of Parsifal. Both of these scenes,
it seems to me, should be arranged with the most
UU
[ 25 ]
Interpreters
undreamed of beauty in colour and effect. Venus
should not pose for a long time in a stiff attitude
on an uncomfortable couch. I don't object to
the couch, but it should be made more alluring.
“ The same objection holds in the second act of
Parsifal, where Kundry is required to fascinate
Parsifal, although she is not given an opportunity
of moving from one position for nearly twenty
minutes. When Klingsor calls Kundry from be-
low in the first scene of that act, she comes against
her will, and I think she should arise gasping and
shuddering. I try to give that effect in my voice
when I sing the music, but, following Bayreuth, I
am standing, motionless, with a veil over my head, .
so that my face cannot be seen for some time be-
fore I sing.
.6 One singer can do nothing against the mass
of tradition. If I changed and the others did
not, the'effect would be inartistic. But if some
stage manager would have the daring to break
away, to strive for something better in these mat-
ters, how I would love to work with that man!”
Departing from the Wagnerian répertoire,
Mme. Fremstad has made notable successes in two
rôles, Salome and Armide. That she should be
able to do justice to the latter is more astonish-
ing than that she should emerge triumphant from
[ 26 ]
Olive Fremstad
the Wilde-Strauss collaboration. Armide, al-
most the oldest opera to hold the stage today, is
still the French classic model, and it demands in
performance adherence to the French grand style,
a style implying devotion to the highest artistic
ideals. Mme. Fremstad's artistic ideals are per-
haps on a higher plane than those of the Paris
Conservatoire or the Comédie Française, but it
does not follow that she would succeed in moulding
them to fit a school of opera with which, to this
point, she had been totally unfamiliar. So far as
I know, the only other opera Mme. Fremstad had
ever sung in French was Carmen, an experience
which could not be considered as the training for
a suitable delineation of the heroine of Gluck's
beautiful lyric drama. Still Mme. Fremstad
compassed the breach. How, I cannot pretend to
say. No less an authority than Victor Maurel
pronounced it a triumph of the French classic
style.
The moods of Quinault's heroine, of course, suit
this singing actress, and she brought to them all
her most effectual enchantments, including a series
of truly seducing costumes. The imperious un-
rest of the first act, the triumph of love over hate
in the second, the invocation to La Haine in the
third, and the final scene of despair in the fifth, all
[ 27 ]
Interpreters
were depicted with poignant and moving power,
and always with fidelity to the style of the piece.
She set her own pace in the finale of the first
act. The wounded warrior returns to tell how a
single combatant has delivered all his prisoners.
Armide's half-spoken guess, 0 ciel! c'est Renaud!
which she would like to have denied, was uttered in
a tone which definitely stimulated the spectator
to prepare for the conflict which followed, the con-
flict in Armide's own breast, between her love for
Renaud as a man, and her hatred of him as an
enemy. I do not remember to have seen anything
on the stage more profound in its implied psy-
chology than her acting of the scene beginning
Enfin il est en ma puissance, in which she stays
her hand with dagger uplifted to kill the enemy-
hero, and finally completely conquered by the
darts of Love, transports him with her through
the air to her own fair gardens.
The singer told me that she went to work on
this opera with fear in her heart. “I don't know
how I dared do it. I suppose it is because I had
the simplicity to believe, with the Germans, that
Kundry is the top of everything, and I had sung
Kundry. As a matter of fact my leaning toward
the classic school dates very far back. My father
was a strange man, of evangelical tendencies. He
[ 28 ]
Olive Fremstad
D
dinavia, and he had a beautiful natural voice.
People often came for miles — simple country
people, understand — to hear him sing. My
father knew the classic composers and he taught
me their songs.
“ This training came back to me when I took up
the study of Armide. It was in May that Mr.
Gatti-Casazza asked me if I would sing the work,
which, till then, I had never heard. I took the
book with me to the mountains and studied — not
a note of the music at first, for music is very easy
for me anyway; I can always learn that in a short
time - but the text. For six weeks I read and
re-read the text, always the difficult part for me
in learning a new opera, without looking at the
music. I found the text of Armide particularly
difficult because it was in old French, and because
it was in verse.
U
until I had mastered its beauties as well as I could,
and then I opened the music score. Here I encoun-
tered a dreadful obstacle. Accustomed to Wag-
ner's harmonies, I was puzzled by the French
style. I did not see how the music could be sung
to the text with dramatic effect. I attended sev-
eral performances of the work at the Paris Opéra,
Y
S
[ 29 ]
Interpreters
UL
but the interpretation there did not assist me in
solving the problem. I tried every phrase in fifty
different ways in an attempt to arrive at my end,
and suddenly, and unexpectedly, I found myself
in complete understanding; the exquisite refine-
ment and nobility of the music, the repression, the
classic line, all suggested to me the superb, eternal
beauty of a Greek temple. Surely this is music
that will outlive Wagner !
“Once I understood, it was easy to put my
conception on the stage. There is no such thing
as genius in singing; at least one cannot depend
on genius alone to carry one through an opera.
I must know exactly how I am going to sing each
phrase before I go upon the stage. Nothing
must be left to chance. In studying Armide I
had sketches sent to me of every scene, and with
these I worked until I knew every movement I
should make, where I should stand, and when I
should walk. Look at my score -- at all these
minute diagrams and directions. ..."
Armide was not a popular success in New York,
and after one or two performances in its second
season at the Metropolitan Opera House it was
withdrawn. With the reasons for the failure of
this opera to interest the general public Mme.
Fremstad, it may well be imagined, had nothing to
[ 30 ]
.
Olive Fremstad
ni
TUU
do. Her part in it, on the contrary, contributed
to what success the work had. New York opera-
goers have never manifested any particular re-
gard for classic opera in any tongue; Fidelio or
Don Giovanni have never been popular here.
Then, although Caruso sang the music of Renaud
with a style and beauty of phrasing unusual even
for him, his appearance in the part was unfor-
tunate. It was impossible to visualize the chev-
alier of the romantic story. The second tenor
rôle, which is very important, was intrusted to
an incompetent singer, and the charming rôle of
the Naiad was very inadequately rendered; but
the principal fault of the interpretation was due
to a misconception regarding the relative impor-
tance of the ballet. There are dances in every
act of Armide; there is no lovelier music of its kind
extant than that which Gluck has devoted to his
dancers in this opera. Appreciating this fact,
Mr. Toscanini refused to part with a note of it,
and his delivery of the delightful tunes would have
made up a pleasant half-hour in a concert-room.
Unfortunately the management did not supple-
ment his efforts by providing a suitable group
of dancers. This failure was all but incomprehen-
sible considering the fact that Anna Pavlowa was
a member of the Metropolitan company that sea-
[ 31 ]
Interpreters
..
son. Had she appeared in Armide, its fate in
New York, where it was performed for the first
time one hundred and thirty-three years after its
original production in Paris, might have been far
different. It may have been impossible for Mr.
Gatti-Casazza to obtain the co-operation of the
dancer. Times change. In 1833 Taglioni, then
at the height of her powers, danced in London
the comparatively insignificant parts of the Swiss
peasant in Guillaume Tell and the ghostly abbess
in Robert le Diable. This was the season in
which she introduced La Sylphide to English
theatre-goers.
The history of Richard Strauss's Salome in New
York has been told so often that it seems quite
unnecessary to repeat it here. There must be
few indeed of those who will read these lines who
do not know how the music drama received only
one public performance at the Metropolitan
Opera House before it was withdrawn at the
request of certain directors. At that one per-
formance Olive Fremstad sang the rôle of Salome.
She was also heard at the private dress rehearsal
- before an auditorium completely filled with in-
vited guests — and she has sung the part three
times in Paris. The singer threw herself into its
preparation with her usual energy, and developed
2
[ 32 ]
Olive Fremstad
an extraordinary characterization. There was
but one flaw, the substitution of a professional
dancer for the Dance of the Seven Veils. At this
time it had occurred to nobody that the singer
who impersonated Salome could dance. How
could any one sing the music of the tremendous
finale after getting thoroughly out of breath in
the terpsichorean exhibition before Herod? The
expedient of a substitute was resorted to at the
original performance in Dresden, and Olive Frem-
stad did not disturb this tradition. She allowed
Bianca Froehlich to take off the seven veils, a feat
which was accomplished much more delicately at
the performance than it had been at the dress
rehearsal. In Paris a farce resulted from the
custom when Mme. Trouhanova not only insisted
on wearing a different costume from the Salome
whose image she was supposed to be, but also took
curtain calls. I think it was Gemma Belincioni,
the Italian, who first conceived the idea of Salome
dancing her own dance. She was followed by
Mary Garden, who discovered what every one
should have noticed in the beginning, that the
composer has given the singer a long rest after the
pantomimic episode.
Aside from this disturbance to the symmetry of
the performance, Olive Fremstad was magnificent.
[ 33 ]
Interpreters
n
Her entrance was that of a splendid leopard,
standing poised on velvet paws on the terrace, and
then creeping slowly down the staircase. Her
scene with Jochanaan was in truth like the storm-
ing of a fortress, and the scene with the Tetrarch
was clearly realized. But it was in the closing
scene of the drama that Mme. Fremstad, like the
poet and the composer, achieved her most effective
results. I cannot yet recall her as she crept from
side to side of the well in which Jochanaan was
confined, waiting for the slave to ascend with the
severed head, without that shudder of fascination
caused by the glimmering eyes of a monster ser-
pent, or the sleek terribleness of a Bengal tiger.
And at the end she suggested, as perhaps it has
never before been suggested on the stage, the
dregs of love, the refuse of gorged passion.
Singers who “ create” parts in great lyric
dramas have a great advantage over those who
succeed them. Mary Shaw once pointed out to
me the probability that Janet Achurch and Eliza-
beth Robins only won enthusiastic commendation
from Bernard Shaw because they were appearing
in the Ibsen plays which he was seeing for the
first time. He attributed a good part of his
pleasure to the interpretations of these ladies.
However, he was never satisfied with their per-
[ 34 ]
Olive Fremstad
formances in plays with which he was more
familiar and he never again found anyone entirely
to suit him in the Ibsen dramas. Albert Niemann
was one of the first tenors to sing Wagner rôles
and there are those alive who will tell you that
he was one of the great artists, but it is perhaps
because they heard him first in lyric dramas of
such vitality that they confused singer and rôle.
Beatty-Kingston, who heard him in 1866, said (in
“ Music and Manners") that he had torn his
voice “ to tatters by persistent shoutings at the
top of its upper register, and undermined it by
excessive worship at the shrines of Bacchus and
the Paphian goddess. ... His production' was
characterized by a huskiness and scratchiness in-
finitely distressing to listen to...." No allow-
ances of this sort need be made for the deep im-
pression made by Olive Fremstad. At the Metro-
politan Opera House she followed a line of well-
beloved and regal interpreters of the Wagner
rôles. Both Lilli Lehmann and Milka Ternina
had honoured this stage and Lillian Nordica pre-
ceded Mme. Fremstad as Kundry there. In her
career at the Metropolitan, indeed, Mme. Frem-
stad sang only three operas at their first perform-
ances there, Salome, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, and
Armide. In her other rôles she was forced to
[ 35 ]
Interpreters
stand comparison with a number of great artists.
That she won admiration in them under the cir-
cumstances is the more fine an achievement.
I like to think, sometimes, that Olive Fremstad is
the reincarnation of Guiditta Pasta, that cele-
brated Italian singer of the early nineteenth cen-
tury, who paced triumphantly through the humbler
tragedies of Norma and Semiramide. She too
worked hard to gain her ends, and she gained them
for a time magnificently. Henry Fothergill Chor-
ley celebrates her art with an enthusiasm that is
rare in his pages, and I like to think that he would
write similar lines of eulogy about Olive Fremstad
could he be called from the grave to do so. There
is something of the mystic in all great singers,
something incomprehensible, inexplicable, but in
the truly great, the Mme. Pastas and the Mme.
Fremstads, this quality outstrips all others. It
is predominant. And just in proportion as this
mysticism triumphs, so too their art becomes
triumphant, and flames on the ramparts, a living
witness before mankind to the power of the un-.
seen.
August 17, 1916.
[ 36 ]
Geraldine Farrar

GRRA
Mme. Farrar's insigne.
Geraldine Farrar
THE autobiography of Geraldine Farrar is a
most disappointing document; it explains
nothing, it offers the reader no new insights.
Given the brains of the writer and the inex-
haustibility of the subject, the result is unac-
countable. Any opera-goer who has followed the
career of this singer with even indifferent atten-
tion will find it difficult to discover any revelation
of personality or artistry in the book. Geraldine
Farrar has always been a self-willed young woman
with a plangent ambition and a belief in her own
future which has been proved justifiable by the
chronological unfolding of her stage career.
These qualities are displayed over and over again
in the book, together with a certain number of
facts about her early life, teachers, and so on.
Of that part of her personal experience which
would really interest the public she gives a singu-
larly glossed account. Very little attention is
paid to composers; none at all to operas, if one
may except such meagre descriptions as that ac-
corded to Julien, “a hodge-podge of operatic
efforts that brought little satisfaction to anybody
concerned in it.” There are few illuminating
anecdotes; no space is devoted to an account of
[ 39 ]
Interpreters
how Mme. Farrar composes her rôles. She likes
this one; she is indifferent to that; she detests a
third; but reasons for these prejudices are rarely
given. There is little manifestation of that
analytic mind with which Mme. Farrar credits
herself. There are sketchy references to other
singers, usually highly eulogistic, but where did
Mme. Farrar hear that remarkable performance of
Carmen in which both Saleza and Jean de Reszke
appeared? For my part, the most interesting
lines in the book are those which close the thir-
teenth chapter: “I cannot say that I am much
in sympathy with the vague outlines of the modern
French lyric heroines; Mélisande and Ariane, I
think, can be better intrusted to artists of a less
positive type."
Notwithstanding the fact that she has written a
rather dull book, Geraldine Farrar is one of the
few really vivid personalities of the contemporary
lyric stage. To a great slice of the public she is
an idol in the sense that Rachel and Jenny Lind
were idols. She has frequently extracted warm
praise even from the cold-water taps of discrimi-
nating and ordinarily unsympathetic critics.
Acting in opera she considers of greater impor-
tance than singing. She once told me that she
ruthlessly sacrificed tone whenever it seemed to
[ 40 ]
Geraldine Farrar
interfere with dramatic effect. As an actress she
has suffered from an excess of zeal, and an im-
patience of discipline. She composes her parts
with some care, but frequently overlays her origi-
nal conception with extravagant detail, added
spontaneously at a performance, if her feelings
so dictate.
This lawlessness sometimes leads her astray.
It is an unsafe method to follow. Actors who feel
the most themselves, unless the feeling is ex-
pressed in support of carefully thought-out
effects, often leave their auditors cold. It is in-
teresting to recall that Mme. Malibran, who may
have excelled Mme. Farrar as a singer, had a
similar passion for impromptu stage “ business.”
She refused to give her fellow-artists any idea of
how she would carry a part through, and as she
allowed her feelings full sway in the matter mis-
understandings frequently arose. In acting
Desdemona to the Otello of the tenor, Donzelli,
for example, she would not determine beforehand
the exact point at which he was to seize her. Fre-
quently she gave him a long chase and on one oc-
casion in his pursuit he stumbled and cut himself
on his unsheathed dagger. Often it has seemed
that Mme. Farrar deliberately chose certain stage
“ business" with an eye to astounding, and not
[ 41 ]
Interpreters
with any particular care for the general round-
ness of her operatic performance. It must also
be taken into consideration that no two of Mme.
Farrar's impersonations of any one rôle are ex-
actly similar, and that he who may have seen her
give a magnificent performance is not too safe in
recommending his meticulous neighbour to go to
the next. Sometimes she is “modern” and
“ American ” in the deprecatory sense of these
words; in some of her parts she exudes no atmos-
pheric suggestion. There are no overtones. The
spectator sees exactly what is before his eyes on
these occasions; there is no stimulation for the
imagination to proceed further. At other times,
as in her characterization of the Goosegirl in
Königskinder, it would seem that she had ex-
tracted the last poetic meaning out of the words
and music, and had succeeded in making her audi-
ence feel, not merely everything that the composer
and librettist intended, but a great deal more.
At times she is a very good singer. Curiously
enough, it is classic music that she usually sings
best. I have heard her sing Zerlina in
Don Giovanni in a manner almost worthy of her
teacher, Lilli Lehmann. There is no mention of
this rôle in her book; nor of another in which
she was equally successful, Rosaura in Le Donne
[ 42 ]
Geraldine Farrar
Curiose, beautifully sung from beginning to end.
Mme. Farrar is musical (some singers are not;
Mme. Nordica was not, for example), and I have
witnessed two manifestations of this quality. On
one occasion she played for me on the piano a
good portion of the first act of Ariane et Barbe-
Bleue, and played it brilliantly, no mean achieve-
ment. Another time I stood talking with her and
her good friend, Josephine Jacoby, in the wings
during the last act of a performance of Madama
Butterfly at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
There was no air of preoccupation on her part, no
sense on ours that she was following the orchestra.
I became so interested in our conversation, for
Mme. Farrar invariably talks well, that I did not
even hear the orchestra. But her mind was quite
capable of taking care of two things at once.
She interrupted a sentence to sing her phrase off
stage, and then smilingly continued the conver-
sation. I shall never forget this moment. To
me it signified in an instant what Mme. Farrar has
taken the pains to explain in pages of her auto-
biography and which is all summed up in her own
comment, written at the time on the programme of
the concert of her Boston début, May 26, 1896:
“This is what I made my début in, very calm and
sedate, not the least nervous."
[ 43 ]
Interpreters
But Mme. Farrar's vocal method is not God-
given, although her voice and her assurance may
be, and she sometimes has trouble in producing
her upper tones. Instead of opening like a fan,
her high voice is frequently pinched, and she has
difficulty in singing above the staff. I have never
heard her sing Butterfly's entrance with correct
intonation, although I have heard her in the part
many times. Her Carmen, on the whole, is a
most successful performance vocally, and so is (or
was) her Elisabeth, especially in the second act.
The tessitura of Butterfly is very high, and the
rôle is a strain for her. She has frequently said
that she finds it easier to sing any two other rôles
in her répertoire, and refuses to appear for two
days before or after a performance of this Puccini
opera.
Mme. Farrar is a fine linguist. She speaks and
sings French like a Frenchwoman (I have expert
testimony on this point), German like a German,
and Italian like an Italian; her enunciation of
English is also very clear (she has never sung in
opera in English, but has often sung English
songs in concert). Her enunciation of Maeter-
linck's text in Ariane et Barbe-Bleue was a joy,
about the only one she contributed to this per-
formance. And in Königskinder and Le Donne
[ 44 ]
Curiose she was equally distinct. In fact there is
never any difficulty about following the text of
an opera when Geraldine Farrar is singing.
The rôles in which Mme. Farrar achieves her
best results, according to my taste, are Manon, the
Goosegirl, Margherita (in Mefistofele), Elisabeth,
Rosaura, Suzanna, and Violetta. Cio-Cio-San, of
course, is her most popular creation, and it de-
serves to some extent the applause of the
populace, although I do not think it should be
put in the above list. It is certainly not to be
considered on the same plane vocally. Other
rôles in which she is partially successful are
Juliette and Marguerite (in Gounod's Faust). I
think her Ariane is commonly adjudged a failure.
In Madame Sans-Gêne she is often comic, but she
does not suggest a bourgeoise Frenchwoman; in
the court scenes she is more like a graceful woman
trying to be awkward than an awkward woman
trying to be graceful. Her Tosca is lacking in
dignity; it is too petulant a performance, too
small in conception. In failing to find adequate
pleasure in her Carmen I am not echoing popular
opinion.
LU
La Traviata more than two or three times at the
Metropolitan Opera House, although she has
[ 45.]
Interpreters
1
C
probably sung Violetta often in Berlin. On the
occasion of Mme. Sembrich's farewell to the ·
American opera stage she appeared as Flora
Bervoise as a compliment to the older singer. In
her biography she says that Sarah Bernhardt
gave her the inspiration for the composition of
the heroine of Verdi's opera. It would be in-
teresting to have more details on this point; they
are not forthcoming. Of course there have been
many Violettas who have sung the music of the
first act more brilliantly than Mme. Farrar; in
the later acts she often sang beautifully, and her
acting was highly expressive and unconventional.
She considered the rôle from the point of view
of make-up. Has any one else done this? Vio-
letta. was a popular cocotte; consequently, she
must have been beautiful. But she was a con-
sumptive; consequently, she must have been pale.
In the third act Mme. Farrar achieved a very fine
dramatic effect with her costume and make-up.
Her face was painted a ghastly white, a fact
emphasized by her carmined lips and her black
hair. She wore pale yellow and carried an enor-
mous black fan, behind which she pathetically hid
her face to cough. She introduced novelty into
the part at the very beginning of the opera. Un-
like most Violettas, she did not make an entrance,
[ 46 ]

GERALDINE FARRAR AS VIOLETTA
Geraldine Farrar
but sat with her back to the audience, receiving
her guests, when the curtain rose.
It has seemed strange to me that the profes-
sional reviewers should have attributed the added
notes of realism in Mme. Farrar's second edition
of Carmen to her appearances in the moving-
picture drama. The tendencies displayed in her
second year in the part were in no wise, to my
mind, a result of her cinema experiences. In fact,
the New York critics should have remembered that
when Mme. Farrar made her debut at the Metro-
politan Opera House in the role of Juliette, they
had rebuked her for these very qualities. She
had indulged in a little extra realism in the bed-
room and balcony scenes of Gounod's opera, of
the sort with which Miss Nethersole created ten-
minute furores in her performances of Carmen
Margherita in Mefistofele was a particularly re-
pressed and dreamy representation of the Ger-
man maiden, one instinct with the highest dra-
matic and vocal values in the prison scene), she de-
vised “business” calculated to startle, dancing
Roi de Thulé air from the cottage, whither she
had repaired to fetch her spindle of flax — this
last detail seemed to me a very good one. In
[ 47 ]
Interpreters
VI
early representations of Madama Butterfly and
La Boheme her death scenes were fraught with
an intense realism which fitted ill with the spirit of
the music. I remember one occasion on which Cio-
Cio-San knocked over the rocking-chair in her
death struggles, which often embraced the range
of the Metropolitan stage.
These points have all been urged against her at
the proper times, and there seemed small occasion
for attributing her extra activities in the first act
of Bizet's opera, in which the cigarette girl en-
gaged in a prolonged scuffle with her rival in the
factory, or her more recent whistling of the
seguidilla, to her moving-picture experiences.
No, Mme. Farrar is overzealous with her public.
She once told me that at every performance she
cut herself open with a knife and gave herself to
the audience. This intensity, taken together with
her obviously unusual talent and her personal at-
tractiveness, is what has made her a more than
ordinary success on our stage. It is at once her
greatest virtue and her greatest fault, artistically
speaking. Properly manacled, this quality would
make her one of the finest, instead of merely one
of the most popular, artists now before the pub-
lic. But I cannot see how the cinema can be
blamed.
[ 48 ]
Geraldine Farrar
When I first saw the Carmen of Mme. Farrar,
her second or third appearance in the part, I was
perplexed to find an excuse for its almost unani-
mous acclamation, and I sought in my mind for
extraneous reasons. There was, for example, the
conducting of the score by Mr. Toscanini, but
that, like Mme. Farrar's interpretation of the
Spanish gypsy, never found exceptional favour
in my ears. Mr. Caruso's appearance in the
opera could not be taken into consideration, be-
cause he had frequently sung in it before at the
Metropolitan Opera House without awakening
any great amount of enthusiasm. In fact, ex-
cept as Des Grieux, this Italian tenor has never
been popularly accepted in French opera in New
York. But Carmen had long been out of the
répertoire, and Carmen is an opera people like to
hear. The magic of the names of Caruso, Farrar,
and Toscanini may have lured auditors and critics
into imagining they had heard a more effective
performance than was vouchsafed them. Person-
ally I could not compare the revival favourably
with the wonderful Manhattan Opera House
Carmen, which at its best enlisted the services of
Mme. Bressler-Gianoli, the best Carmen save one
that I have ever heard, Charles Dalmores, Maurice
Renaud, Pauline Donalda, Charles Gilibert,
[ 49 ]
Interpreters
77
Emma Trentini, and Daddi; Cleofonte Campanini
conducting.
· At first, to be sure, there was no offensive over-
laying of detail in Mme. Farrar's interpretation.
It was not cautiously traditional, but there was
no evidence that the singer was striving to stray
from the sure paths. The music lies well in Mme.
Farrar's voice, better than that of any other part
I have heard her sing, unless it be Charlotte in
Werther, and the music, all of it, went well, in-
cluding the habanera, the seguidilla, the quintet,
and the marvellous Oui, je t'aime, Èscamillo of the
last act. Her well-planned, lively dance after the
gypsy song at the beginning of the second act
drew a burst of applause for music usually per-
mitted to go unrewarded. Her exit in the first
act was effective, and her scene with José in the
second act was excellently carried through. The
card scene, as she acted it, meant very little. No
strain was put upon the nerves. There was little
suggestion here. The entrance of Escamillo and
Carmen in an old victoria in the last act was a
stroke of genius on somebody's part. I wonder
if this was Mme. Farrar's idea.
But somehow, during this performance, one
didn't feel there. It was no more the banks of
the Guadalquivir than it was the banks of the
NTY
[ 50 ]
Geraldine Farrar
Hudson. Carmen as transcribed by Bizet and
Meilhac and Halévy becomes indisputably French
in certain particulars; to say that the heroine
should be Spanish is not to understand the truth;
Maria Gay’s interpretation has taught us that, if
nothing else has. But atmosphere is demanded,
and that Mme. Farrar did not give us, at least she
did not give it to me. In the beginning the in-
terpretation made on me the effect of routine,
the sort of performance one can see in any first-
rate European opera house, - and later, when
the realistic bits were added, the distortion
offended me, for French opera always demands a
certain elegance of its interpreters; a quality
which Mme. Farrar has exposed to us in two other
French rôles.
Her Manon is really an adorable creature. I
have never seen Mary Garden in this part, but I
Farrar transcends them all. A very beautiful
and moving performance she gives, quite in keep-
to the little table and her farewell to Des Grieux
in the desert always start a lump in my throat.
Her Charlotte (a rôle, I believe, cordially de-
tested by Mme. Farrar, and one which she refuses
to sing) is to me an even more moving conception.
[ 51 ]
Interpreters
This sentimental opera of Massenet's has never
been appreciated in America at its true value, al-
though it is one of the most frequently repre-
sented works at the Paris Opéra-Comique. When
it was first introduced here by Emma Eames and
Jean de Rezske, it found little favour, and later
Mme. Farrar and Edmond Clément were unable to
arouse interest in it (it was in Werther, at the
New Theatre, that Alma Gluck made her operatic
début, in the rôle of Sophie). But Geraldine
Farrar as the hesitating heroine of the tragic and
sentimental romance made the part very real, as
real in its way as Henry James's “Portrait of a
Lady," and as moving. The whole third act she
carried through in an amazingly pathetic key,
and she always sang Les Larmes as if her heart
were really breaking. .
What a charming figure, she was in Wolf-
Ferrari's pretty operas, Le Donne Curiose and
Suzannen's Geheimness! And she sang the lovely
measures with the Mozartean purity which at her
best she had learned from Lilli Lehmann. Her
Zerlina and her Cherubino were delightful imper-
sonations, invested with vast roguery, although
in both parts she was a trifle self-conscious,
especially in her assumption of awkwardness.
Her Elisabeth, sung in New York but seldom,
[ 52 ]

GERALDINE FARRAR AS LOUISE IN JULIEN
from a photograph by White (1914)
Geraldine Farrar
though she has recently appeared in this rôle with
the Chicago Opera Company, was noble in con-
ception and execution, and her Goosegirl one of
the most fascinating pictures in the operatic gal-
lery of our generation. Her Mignon was success-
ful in a measure, perhaps not an entirely credible
figure. Her Nedda was very good.
Her Louise in Julien was so fine dramatically,
especially in the Montmartre episode, as to make
one wish that she could sing the real Louise in
the opera of that name. Once, however, at a per-
formance of Charpentier's earlier work at the
Manhattan Opera House, she told me that she
would never, never do so. She has been known
to change her mind. Her Ariane, I think, was
her most complete failure. It is a part which re-
quires plasticity and nobility of gesture and in-
terpretation of a kind with which her style is
utterly at variance. And yet I doubt if Mme.
Farrar had ever sung a part to which she had
given more consideration. It was for this opera,
in fact, that she worked out a special method of
vocal speech, half-sung, half-spoken, which en-
abled her to deliver the text more clearly.
Whether Mme. Farrar will undergo further
artistic development I very much doubt. She
tells us in her autobiography that she can study
[ 53 ]
Interpreters
nothing in any systematic way, and it is only
through very sincere study and submission to
well-intended restraint that she might develop still
further into the artist who might conceivably
leave a more considerable imprint on the music
drama of her time. It is to be doubted if Mme.
Farrar cares for these supreme laurels; her suc-
cess with her public - which is pretty much all
the public — is so complete in its way that she
may be entirely satisfied with that by no means to
be despised triumph. Once (in 1910) she gave
an indication to me that this might be so, in the
following words:
“Emma Calvé was frequently harshly criti-
cized, but when she sang the opera house was
crowded. It was because she gave her personal-
ity to the public. Very frequently there are sing-
ers who give most excellent interpretations, who
are highly praised, and whom nobody goes to see.
Now in the last analysis there are two things which
I do. I try to be true to myself and my own con-
ception of the dramatic-fitness of things on the
stage, and I try to please my audiences. To do
that you must mercilessly reveal your personality.
There is no other way. In my humble way I am
an actress who happens to be appearing in opera.
I sacrifice tonal beauty to dramatic fitness every
[ 54 ]
Geraldine Farrar
time I think it is necessary for an effect, and I
shall continue to do it. I leave mere singing to
the warblers. I am more interested in acting
myself.”
There is much that is sound sense in these re-
marks, but it is a pity that Mme. Farrar carries
her theories out literally. To me, and to many
another, there is something a little sad in the ac-
ceptance of easily won victory. If she would,
Mme. Farrar might improve her singing and act-
ing in certain rôles in which she has already ap-
peared, and she might enlarge her répertoire to
include more of the rôles which have a deeper sig-
nificance in operatic and musical history. At
hr
S
for much reflection. It would afford me the
greatest pleasure to learn that this singer had
decided to retire for a few months to devote her-
self to study and introspection, so that she might
return to the stage with a new and brighter fire
and a more lasting message.
Farrar fara - forse.
July 14, 1916.
[ 55 ]
Mary Garden
“ Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."
Gertrude Stein.
Mary Garden
.
.
SZ
(
THE influence of Ibsen on our stage has been
most subtle. The dramas of the sly Nor-
wegian are infrequently performed, but al-
most all the plays of the epoch bear his mark.
And he has done away with the actor, for now-
adays emotions are considered rude on the stage.
Our best playwrights have striven for an intellec-
tual monotone. So it happens that for the Henry
Irvings, the Sarah Bernhardts, and the Edwin
Booths of a younger generation we must turn tu
the operatic stage, and there we find them: Mau-
rice Renaud, Olive Fremstad — and Mary Garden.
There is nothing casual about the art of Mary
Garden. Her achievements on the lyric stage are
not the result of happy accident. Each detail of
her impersonations, indeed, is a carefully studied
and selected effect, chosen after a review of pos-
sible alternatives. Occasionally, after a trial,
Miss Garden even rejects the instinctive. This
does not mean that there is no feeling behind her
performances. The deep burning flame of poetic
imagination illuminates and warms into life the
conception wrought in the study chamber. Noth-
ing is left to chance, and it is seldom, and always
for some good reason, that this artist permits
[59]
Interpreters
17
herself to alter particulars of a characterization
during the course of a representation.
I have watched her many times in the same rôle
without detecting any great variance in the ar-
rangement of details, and almost as many times I
have been blinded by the force of her magnetic im-
aginative power, without which no interpreter can
hope to become an artist. This, it seems to me,
is the highest form of stage art; certainly it is
the form which on the whole is the most successful
in exposing the intention of author and composer,
although occasionally a Geraldine Farrar or a
Salvini will make it apparent that the inspiration
of the moment also has its value. However, I can-
not believe that the true artist often experiments
in public. He conceives in seclusion and exposes
his conception, completely realized, breathed into,
so to speak, on the stage. When he first studies
a character it is his duty to feel the emotions of
that character, and later he must project these
across the footlights into the hearts of his audi-
ence; but he cannot be expected to feel these emo-
tions every night. He must remember how he felt
them before. And sometimes even this ideal in-
terpreter makes mistakes. Neither instinct nor
intelligence — not even genius -- can compass
cvery range.
[ 60 ]
Mary Garden
1
S
Miss Garden's career has been closely identified
with the French lyric stage and, in at least two
operas, she has been the principal interpreter -
and a material factor in their success of works
which have left their mark on the epoch, stepping-
stones in the musical brook. The rôles in which
she has most nearly approached the ideal are per-
haps Mélisande, Jean (Le Jongleur de Notre
Dame), Sapho, Thais, Louise, Marguerite (in
Gounod's Faust), Chrysis (in Aphrodite), and
Monna Vanna. I cannot speak personally of her
Tosca, her Orlanda, her Manon, her Vio-
letta, or her Chérubin (in Massenet's opera of the
same name). I do not care for her Carmen as a
whole, and to my mind her interpretation of Sa-
lome lacks the inevitable quality which stamped
Olive Fremstad's performance. In certain re-
1
c
music of Juliet and Ophélie, but this is vieux jeu
for her, and I do not think she has effaced the
Calvé in the other of these rôles. She was some-
what vague and not altogether satisfactory (this
may be ascribed to the paltriness of the parts) as
Prince Charmant in Cendrillon, la belle Dulcinée in
Don Quichotte, and Grisélidis. On the other hand,
in Natoma — her only appearance thus far in
[61]
Interpreters
Thi
opera in English — she made a much more impor-
tant contribution to the lyric stage than either
author or composer.
Mary Garden was born in Scotland, but her fam-
ily came to this country when she was very young,
and she grew up in the vicinity of Chicago. She
may therefore be adjudged at least as much an
American singer as Olive Fremstad. She studied
in France, however, and this fortuitous circum-
stance accounts for the fact that all her great
rôles are French, and for the most part modern
French. Her two Italian rôles, Violetta and
Tosca, she sings in French, although I believe she
has made attempts to sing Puccini's opera in the
original tongue. Her other ventures afield have
included Salome, sung in French, and Natoma,
sung in English. Her pronunciation of French on
the stage has always aroused comment, some of it
jocular. Her accent is strongly American, a mat-
ter which her very clear enunciation does not leave
in doubt. However, it is a question in my mind
if Miss Garden did not weigh well the charm of
this accent and its probable effect on French audi-
tors. You will remember that Helena Modjeska
spoke English with a decided accent, as do Fritzi
Scheff, Alla Nazimova, and Mitzi Hajos in our
own day; you may also realize that to the public,
[ 62 ]
Mary Garden
which includes yourself, this is no inconsiderable
part of their charm. Parisians do not take pleas-
ure in hearing their language spoken by a Ger-
man, but they have never had any objection -
quite the contrary to an English or American
accent on their stage, although I do not believe this
general preference has ever been allowed to affect
performances at the Comédie Française, except
when l'Anglais tel qu'on le parle is on the affiches.
At least it is certain that Miss Garden speaks
French quite as easily as — perhaps more easily
than - she does English, and many of the eccen-
tricities of her stage speech are not noticeable in
private life.
Many of the great artists of the theatre have
owed their first opportunity to an accident; it was
so with Mary Garden. She once told me the story
herself and I may be allowed to repeat it in her
own words, as I put them down shortly after:
“I became friends with Sybil Sanderson, who
was singing in Paris then, and one day when I was
at her house Albert Carré,' the director of the
Opéra-Comique, came to call. I was sitting by
the window as he entered, and he said to Sybil,
“That woman has a profile; she would make a
charming Louise. Charpentier's opera, I should
explain, had not yet been produced. She has a
[63]
Interpreters
voice, too,' Sybil added. Well, M. Carré took me
to the theatre and listened while I sang airs from
Traviata and Manon. Then he gave me the par-
tition of Louise and told me to go home and study
it. I had the rôle in my head in fifteen days.
This was in March, and M. Carré engaged me to
spring day, however, when I was feeling particu-
been run over by an omnibus, M. Carré came to
me in great excitement; Mme. Rioton, the singer
cast for the part, was ill, and he asked me if I
thought I could sing Louise. I said ' Certainly,'
in the same tone with which I would have accepted
an invitation to dinner. It was only bluff; I had
never rehearsed the part with orchestra, but it
was my chance, and I was determined to take ad-
vantage of it. Besides, I had studied the music
so carefully that I could have sung it note for note
if the orchestra had played The Star-Spangled
Banner simultaneously.
“ Evening came and found me in the theatre,
Mme. Rioton had recovered sufficiently to sing; she
appeared during the first two acts, and then suc-
cumbed immediately before the air, Depuis le Jour,
which opens the third act. I was in my dressing-
room when M. Carré sent for me. He told me that
[ 64 ]
Mary Garden
an announcement had been made before the curtain
that I would be substituted for Mme, Rioton. I
learned afterwards that André Messager, who was
directing the orchestra, had strongly advised
against taking this step; he thought the experiment
was too dangerous, and urged that the people in
the house should be given their money back. The
audience, you may be sure, was none too pleased
at the prospect of having to listen to a Mlle. Gar-
den of whom they had never heard. Will you
believe me when I tell you that I was never less
nervous? ... I must have succeeded, for I sang
Louise over two hundred times at the Opéra-
Comique after that. The year was 1900, and I
had made my début on Friday, April 13!”
I have no contemporary criticisms of this event
at hand, but one of my most valued souvenirs is a
photograph of the charming interpreter as she
appeared in the role of Louise at the beginning of
her career. However, in one of Gauthier-Villars's
compilations of his musical criticisms, which he
signed “L'Ouvreuse" (" La Ronde des
Blanches "), I discovered the following, dated Feb-
ruary 21, 1901, a detail of a review of Gabriel
Pierné's opera, La Fille de Tabarin: “Mlle. Gar-
den a une aimable figure, une voix aimable, et un
petit reste d'accent exotique, aimable aussi."
[ 65 ]
Interpreters
_
1
Of the composer of Louise Miss Garden had
many interesting things to say in after years:
“ The opera is an expression of Charpentier's own
life,” she told me one day. “It is the opera of
Montmartre, and he was the King of Montmartre,
a real bohemian, to whom money and fame meant
nothing. He was satisfied if he had enough to
pay consommations for himself and his friends at
the Rat Mort. He had won the Prix de Rome
before Louise was produced, but he remained poor.
He lived in a dirty little garret up on the butte,
and while he was writing this realistic picture of
his own life he was slowly starving to death.
André Messager knew him and tried to give him
money, but he wouldn't accept it. He was very
proud. Messager was obliged to carry up milk
in bottles, with a loaf of bread, and say that he
wanted to lunch with him, in order to get Char-
pentier to take nourishment.
“ Meanwhile, little by little, Louise was being
slowly written. . . . Part of it he wrote in the
Rat Mort, part in his own little room, and part of
it in the Moulin de la Galette, one of the gayest
of the Montmartre dance halls. High up on the
butte the gaunt windmill sign waves its arms;
from the garden you can see all Paris. It is the
view that you get in the third act of Louise. ...
[66]
The production of his opera brought Charpentier
nearly half a million francs, but he spent it all on
the working-girls of Montmartre. He even es-
tablished a conservatory, so that those with talent
whom he adored, had everything she wanted until,
she died. . . . He always wore the artist costume,
corduroy trousers, blouse, and flowing tie, even
when he came to the Opéra-Comique in the evening.
Money did not change his habits. His kingdom
extended over all Paris after the production of
Louise, but he still preferred his old friends in
Montmartre to the new ones his success had made
for him, and he dissipated his strength and talent.
He was an adorable man; he would give his last sou
to any one who asked for it!
66 To celebrate the fiftieth performance of Lou-
ise, M. Carré gave a dinner in July, 1900. Most
appropriately he did not choose the Café Anglais
or the Café de Paris for this occasion, but Char-
pentier's own beloved Moulin de la Galette. It was
at this dinner that the composer gave the first sign
of his physical decline. He had scarcely seated
himself at the table, surrounded by the great men
and women of Paris, before he fainted. ..."
The subsequent history of this composer of the
lower world we all know too well; how he journeyed
[67]
Interpreters
south and lived in obscurity for years, years which
were embellished with sundry rumours relating to
future works, rumours which were finally crowned
by the production of Julien at the Opéra-Comique
--- and subsequently at the Metropolitan Opera
House in New York. The failure of this opera
was abysmal.
Louise is a rôle which Miss Garden has sung
very frequently in America, and, as she may be
said to have contributed to Charpentier's fame
and popularity in Paris, she did as much for him
here. This was the second part in which she ap-
peared in New York. The dynamics of the rôle
are finely wrought out, deeply felt; the characteri-
first act it never touches the heart. The singing-
actress conceives the character of the sewing-girl
as hard and brittle, and she does not play it for
sympathy. She acts the final scene with the fa-
Amsterdam, and with heartless brutality. Stroke
after stroke she devotes to a ruthless exposure of
what she evidently considers to be the nature of
this futile drab. It is the scene in the play which
evidently interests her most, and it is the scene to
which she has given her most careful attention.
In the first act, to be sure, she is gamine and ador-
[68]
Mary Garden
1
able in her scenes with her father, and touchingly
poignant in the despairing cry which closes the act,
Paris! In the next two acts she wisely sub-
merges herself in the general effect. She allows
the sewing-girls to make the most of their scene,
and, after she has sung Depuis le Jour, she gives
the third act wholly into the keeping of the ballet,
and the interpreters of Julien and the mother.
There are other ways of singing and acting this
rôle. Others have sung and acted it, others will
sing and act it, effectively. The abandoned (al-
most aggressive) perversity of Miss Garden's per-
formance has perhaps not been equalled, but this
rôle does not belong to her as completely as do
Thais and Mélisande; no other interpreters will
satisfy any one who has seen her in these two
parts.
Miss Garden made her American début in Mas-
senet's opera, Thais, written, by the way, for Sybil
Sanderson.' The date was November 25, 1907.
Previous to this time Miss Garden had never sung
this opera in Paris, but she had appeared in it
during a summer season at one of the French
watering places. Since that night, nearly ten
years ago, however, it has become the most stable
feature of her répertoire. She has sung it fre-
quently in Paris, and during the long tours under-
0)
[ 69 ]
Interpreters
taken by the Chicago Opera Company this senti-
mental tale of the Alexandrian courtesan and the
hermit of the desert has startled the inhabitants of
hamlets in Iowa and California. It is a very bril-
liant scenic show, and is utterly successful as a
vehicle for the exploitation of the charms of a
fragrant personality. Miss Garden has found the
part grateful; her very lovely figure is particularly
well suited to the allurements of Grecian drapery,
and the unwinding of her charms at the close of
the first act is an event calculated to stir the slug-
gish blood of a hardened theatre-goer, let alone
that of a Nebraska farmer. The play becomes
the more vivid as it is obvious that the retiary
meshes with which she ensnares Athanaël are
strong enough to entangle any of us. Thais-be-
come-nun -- Evelyn Innes should have sung this
character before she became Sister Teresa -- is in
violent contrast to these opening scenes, but the
acts in the desert, as the Alexandrian strumpet
wilts before the aroused passion of the monk, are
carried through with equal skill by this artist who
is an adept in her means of expression and ex-
pressiveness.
The opera is sentimental, theatrical, and over its
falsely constructed drama — a perversion of Ana-
tole France's psychological tale — Massenet has
[70]
Mary Garden
overlaid as banal'a coverlet of music as could well
be devised by an eminent composer. “ The bad
fairies have given him [Massenet] only one gift,"
writes Pierre Lalo, “... the desire to please.”
It cannot be said that Miss Garden allows the
music to affect her interpretation. She sings
some of it, particularly her part in the duet in
the desert, with considerable charm and warmth
of tone. I have never cared very much for her
singing of the mirror air, although she is dra-
matically admirable at this point; on the other
hand, I have found her rendering of the fare-
well to Eros most pathetic in its tenderness. At
times she has attacked the high notes, which fall
in unison with the exposure of her attractions,
with brilliancy; at other times she has avoided
them altogether (it must be remembered that
Miss Sanderson, for whom this opera was written,
had a voice like the Tour Eiffel; she sang to G
above the staff). But the general tone of her in-
terpretation has not been weakened by the weak-
ness of the music or by her inability to sing a good
sings the part with more steadiness of tone than
Milka Ternina ever commanded for Tosca, and
her performance is equally unforgettable.
After the production of Louise, Miss Garden's
[71]
Interpreters
name became almost legendary in Paris, and many
are the histories of her subsequent career there.
Parisians and foreign visitors alike flocked to the
Opéra-Comique to see her in the series of delight-
ful rôles which she assumed - Orlanda, Manon,
Chrysis, Violetta ... and Mélisande. It was
during the summer of 1907 that I first heard her
there in two of the parts most closely identified
with her name, Chrysis and Mélisande.
Camille Erlanger's Aphrodite, considered as a
work of art, is fairly meretricious. As a theatri-
cal entertainment it offers many elements of en-
joyment. Based on the very popular novel of
Pierre Louys — at one time forbidden circulation
in America by Anthony Comstock - it winds its
pernicious way through a tale of prostitution,
murder, theft, sexual inversion, drunkenness, sac-
rilege, and crucifixion, and concludes, quite sim-
ply, in a cemetery. The music is appallingly
banal, and has never succeeded in doing anything
else but annoy me when I have thought of it at
all. It never assists in creating an atmosphere;
it bears no relation to stage picture, characters, or
situation. Both gesture and colour are more im-
portant factors in the consideration of the pleas-
urable elements of this piece than the weak trickle
of its sickly melodic flow.
[72]

MARY GARDEN AS CHRYSIS (1906)
Mary Garden
For the most part, at a performance, one does
not listen to the music. Nevertheless, Aphrodite
calls one again and again. Its success in Paris
was simply phenomenal, and the opera is still in
the répertoire of the Opéra-Comique. This suc-
cess was due in a measure to the undoubted
6 punch” of the story, in a measure to the orgy
which M. Carré had contrived to embellish the third
act, culminating in the really imaginative dancing
0
scene of the crucifixion of the negro slave; but,
more than anything else, it was due to the rarely
compelling performance of Mary Garden as the
courtesan who consented to exchange her body for
the privilege of seeing her lover commit theft, sac-
rilege, and murder. In her bold entrance, flaunt-
ing her long lemon scarf, wound round her body
like a Nautch girl's säri, which illy concealed her
fine movements, she at once gave the picture, not
alone of the cocotte of the period but of a whole
life, a whole atmosphere, and this she maintained
throughout the disclosure of the tableaux. In the
prison scene she attained heights of tragic acting
which I do not think even she has surpassed else.
where. The pathos of her farewell to her two lit-
tle Lesbian friends, and the gesture with which
she drained the poison cup, linger in the memory,
[73]
Interpreters
refusing to give up their places to less potent
details.
I first heard Debussy's lyric drama, Pelléas et
Mélisande, at the Opéra-Comique, with Miss Gar-
den as the principal interpreter. It is generally
considered the greatest achievement of her mimic
art. Somehow by those means at the command
of a fine artist, she subdued her very definite per-
sonality and moulded it into the vague and subtle
personage created by Maurice Maeterlinck. Even
great artists grasp at straws for assistance, and it
is interesting to know that to Miss Garden a wig is
the all important thing. “Once I have donned the
wig of a character, I am that character," she told
me once. “It would be difficult for me to go on the
stage in my own hair.” Nevertheless, I believe she
has occasionally inconsistently done so as Louise.
In Miss Garden's score of Pelléas Debussy has
written, “In the future, others may sing Mélisande,
but you alone will remain the woman and the artist
I had hardly dared hope for." It must be remem-
bered, however, that composers are notoriously
fickle; that they prefer having their operas given
in any form rather than not at all; that ink is
cheap and musicians prolific in sentiments. In
how many Manon scores did Massenet write his
tender eternal finalities? Perhaps little Maggie
[ 74 ]
Mary Garden
Teyte, who imitated Mary Garden's Mélisande as
Elsie Janis imitates Sarah Bernhardt, cherishes a
dedicated score now. Memory tells me I have seen
such a score, but memory is sometimes a false
jade.
plaits of golden hair, in the first scene she wore
it loose, – Mary Garden became at once in the
spectator's mind the princess of enchanted castles,
the cymophanous heroine of a féerie, the dream of
a poet's tale. In gesture and in musical speech,
0
derful impression of the eye. There has been in
our day no more perfect example of characteriza-
tion offered on the lyric stage than Mary Garden's
lovely Mélisande. ... Ne me touchez pas! became
the cry of a terrified child, a real protestation of
innocence. Je ne suis pas heureuse ici, was ut-
tered with a pathos of expression which drove its
helplessness into our hearts. The scene at the
fountain with Pelléas, in which Mélisande loses her
ring, was played with such delicate shading, such
poetic imagination, that one could almost crown
the interpreter as the creator, and the death
scene was permeated with a fragile, simple beauty
as compelling as that which Carpaccio put into
his picture of Santa Ursula, a picture indeed which
[ 75 ]
Interpreters
L
.
I
Miss Garden's performance brought to mind more
than once. If she sought inspiration from the art
of the painter for her delineation, it was not to
Rossetti and Burne-Jones that she went. Rather
did she gather some of the soft bloom from the
paintings of Bellini, Carpaccio, Giotto, Cimabue
... especially Botticelli; had not the spirit and
the mood of the two frescos from the Villa Lemmi in
the Louvre come to life in this gentle representa-
tion?
Before she appeared as Mélisande in New York,
Miss Garden was a little doubtful of the probable
reception of the play here. She was surprised and
delighted with the result, for the drama was pre-
sented in the late season of 1907-08 at the Man-
hattan Opera House no less than seven times to
very large audiences. The singer talked to me be-
fore the event: “ It took us four years to estab-
lish Pelléas et Mélisande in the répertoire of the
Opéra-Comique. At first the public listened with
disfavour or indecision, and performances could
only be given once in two weeks. As a contrast I
might mention the immediate success of Aphrodite,
which I sang three or four times a week until fifty
representations had been achieved, without appear-
ing in another rôle. Pelléas was a different matter.
The mystic beauty of the poet's mood and the rev-
[76]

Copyright /
Cuis
MARY GARDEN AS MELISANDE
from a photograph by Davis and Eickemeyer (1908)
Mary Garden
olutionary procedures of the musician were not
calculated to touch the great public at once. In-
deed, we had to teach our audiences to enjoy it.
Americans who, I am told, are fond of Maeter-
linck, may appreciate its very manifest beauty
at first hearing, but they didn't in Paris.
At the early representations, individuals whistled
and made cat-calls. One night three young men
in the first row of the orchestra whistled through
an entire scene. I don't believe those young
men will ever forget the way I looked at them.
... But after each performance it was the
same: the applause drowned out the hisses. The
balconies and galleries were the first to catch
the spirit of the piece, and gradually it grew
in public favour, and became a success, that
is, comparatively speaking. Pelléas et Mélisande,
like many another work of true beauty, ap-
peals to a special public and, consequently, the
number of performances has always been limited,
and perhaps always will be. I do not anticipate
that it will crowd from popular favour such operas
as Werther, La Vie de Bohème and Carmen, each
of which is included in practically every week's
répertoire at the Opéra-Comique.
“We interpreters of Debussy's lyric drama were
naturally very proud, because we felt that we were
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Interpreters
assisting in the making of musical history. Mae-
terlinck, by the way, has never seen the opera. He
wished his wife, Georgette Leblanc, to create' the
rôle of Mélisande, but Debussy and Carré had
chosen me, and the poet did not have his way. He
wrote an open letter to the newspapers of Paris in
which he frankly expressed his hope that the work
would fail. Later, when composers approached
him in regard to setting his dramas to music, he
made it a condition that his wife should sing them.
She did appear as Ariane, you will remember, but
Lucienne Bréval first sang Monna Vanna, and
Maeterlinck's wrath again vented itself in pronun-
ciamentos.”
Miss Garden spoke of the settings. “The
décor should be dark and sombre. Mrs. Camp-
bell set the play in the Renaissance period, an
epoch flooded with light and charm. I think she
was wrong. Absolute latitude is permitted the
stage director, as Maeterlinck has made no re-
strictions in the book. The director of the
Opéra at Brussels followed Mrs. Campbell's ex-
ample, and when I appeared in the work there
I felt that I was singing a different drama.”
One afternoon in the autumn of 1908, when
I was Paris correspondent of the “ New York
Times," I received the following telegram from
[78]
Mary Garden
Miss Garden: “ Venez ce soir à 51/2 chez Mlle.
Chasles 112 Boulevard Malesherbes me voir en
Salome." It was late in the day when the mes-
sage came to me, and I had made other plans, but
you may be sure I put them all aside. A petit-
bleu or two disposed of my engagements, and I
took a fiacre in the blue twilight of the Paris aft-
ernoon for the salle de danse of Mlle. Chasles.
On my way I recollected how some time previously
Miss Garden had informed me of her intention of
interpreting the Dance of the Seven Veils herself,
and how she had attempted to gain the co-opera-
tion of Maraquita, the ballet mistress of the
abandon, owing to some rapidly revolving wheels
of operatic intrigue. So the new Salome went to
Mlle. Chasles, who sixteen years ago was delight-
ing the patrons of the Opéra-Comique with her
charming dancing. She it was who, materially
assisted by Miss Garden herself, arranged the
dance, dramatically significant in gesture and
step, which the singer performed at the climax of
Richard Strauss's music drama.
Mlle. Chasles's salle de danse I discovered to be
a large square room; the floor had a rake like that
of the Opéra stage in Paris. There were foot-
lights, and seats in front of them for spectators.
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The walls were hung with curious old prints and
engravings of famous dancers, Mlle. Sallé, La Ca-
margo, Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, and Cerito.
This final rehearsal - before the rehearsals in
New York which preceded her first appearance in
the part anywhere at the Manhattan Opera House
my was witnessed by André Messager, who in-
tended to mount Salome at the Paris Opéra the
following season, Mlle. Chasles, an accompanist, a
maid, a hair-dresser, and myself. I noted that
Miss Garden's costume differed in a marked de-
gree from those her predecessors had worn. For
the entrance of Salome she had provided a mantle
of bright orange shimmering stuff, embroidered
with startling azure and emerald flowers and
sparkling with spangles. Under this she wore a
close-fitting garment of netted gold, with de-
signs in rubies and rhinestones, which fell from
somewhere above the waistline to her ankles. This
garment was also removed for the dance, and Miss
Garden emerged in a narrow strip of flesh-coloured
tulle. Her arms, shoulders, and legs were bare.
She wore a red wig, the hair falling nearly to her
waist (later she changed this detail and wore the
cropped wig which became identified with her im-
personation of the part). Two jewels, an emer-
ald on one little finger, a ruby on the other, com-
[80]
Mary Garden
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1
pleted her decoration. The seven veils were of
soft, clinging tulle.
Swathed in these veils, she began the dance at
the back of the small stage. Only her eyes were
visible. Terrible, slow ... she undulated for-
ward, swaying gracefully, and dropped the first
veil. What followed was supposed to be the un-
doing of the jaded Herod. I was moved by this
spectacle at the time, and subsequently this pan-
tomimic dance was generally referred to as the cul-
minating moment in her impersonation of Salome.
On this occasion, I remember, she proved to us
that the exertion had not fatigued her, by singing
the final scene of the music drama, while André
Messager played the accompaniment on the piano.
I did not see Mary Garden's impetuous and
highly curious interpretation of the strange east-
ern princess until a full year later, as I remained
in Paris during the extent of the New York opera
season. The following autumn, however, I heard
Salome in its second season at the Manhattan
Opera House -- and I was disappointed. Ner-
vous curiosity seemed to be the consistent note of
this hectic interpretation. The singer was never
still; her use of gesture was untiring. To any one
who had not seen her in other parts, the actress
must have seemed utterly lacking in repose. This
[81]
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was simply her means, however, of suggesting the
intense nervous perversity of Salome. Mary Gar-
den could not have seen Nijinsky in Scheherazade
at this period, and yet the performances were
astonishingly similar in intention. But the
Strauss music and the Wilde drama demand a
more voluptuous and sensual treatment, it would
seem to me, than the suggestion of monkey-love
which absolutely suited Nijinsky's part. How-
ever, the general opinion (as often happens) ran
counter to mine, and, aside from the reservation
that Miss Garden's voice was unable to cope with
the music, the critics, on the whole, gave her credit
for an interesting performance. Indeed, in this
music drama she made one of the great popular
successes of her career, a career which has
been singularly full of appreciated achieve-
ments.
Chicago saw Mary Garden in Salome a year
later, and Chicago gasped, as New York had
gasped when the drama was performed at the Met-
ropolitan Opera House. The police — no less an
authority — put a ban on future performances
at the Auditorium. Miss Garden was not pleased,
and she expressed her displeasure in the frankest
terms. I received at that time a series of char-
acteristic telegrams. One of them read: “My
BTT
o
[82]
Mary Garden
art is going through the torture of slow death.
Oh Paris, splendeur de mes desirs!”
It was with the (then) Philadelphia-Chicago
Opera Company that Miss Garden made her first
experiment with opera in English, earning thereby
the everlasting gratitude and admiration -
which she already possessed in no small measure
- of Charles Henry Meltzer. She was not san-
guine before the event. In January, 1911, she
said to me: “ No, malgré Tito Ricordi, NO! I
don't believe in opera in English, I never have be-
lieved in it, and I don't think I ever shall believe
in it. Of course I'm willing to be convinced. You
see, in the first place, I think all music dramas
should be sung in the languages in which they are
written; well, that makes it impossible to sing
anything in the current répertoire in English,
doesn't it? The only hope for opera in English,
so far as I can see it, lies in America or England
producing a race of composers, and they haven't
it in them. It isn't in the blood. Composition
needs Latin blood, or something akin to it; the
Anglo-Saxon or the American can't write music,
great music, at least not yet. ... I doubt if any
of us alive to-day will live to hear a great work
written to a libretto in our own language.
“ Now I am going to sing Victor Herbert's
[83]
Interpreters
Natoma, in spite of what I have just told you,
because I don't want to have it said that I have
done anything to hinder what is now generally
known as “the cause. For the first time a work
by a composer who may be regarded as American
is to be given a chance with the best singers, with
a great orchestra, and a great conductor, in the
leading opera house in America - perhaps the
leading opera house anywhere. It seems to me
that every one who can should put his shoulder
to this kind of wheel and set it moving. I shall
be better pleased than anybody else if Natoma
proves a success and paves the way for the suc-
cessful production of other American lyric
dramas. Of course Natoma cannot be regarded
as 'grand opera.' It is not music, like Tristan,
for instance. It is more in the style of the lighter
operas which are given in Paris, but it possesses
much melodic charm and it may please the public.
I shall sing it and I shall try to do it just as well
as I have tried to do Salome and Thais and Méli-
sande.”
She kept her word, and out of the hodge-podge
of an opera book which stands unrivalled for its
stiltedness of speech, she succeeded in creating
one of her most notable characters. She threw
vanity aside in making up for the rôle, painting
[84]
Mary Garden
A
her face and body a dark brown; she wore two
long straight braids of hair, depending on either
side from the part in the middle of her forehead.
Her garment was of buckskin, and moccasins cov-
ered her feet. She crept rather than walked.
The story, as might be imagined, was one of love
and self-sacrifice, touching here and there on the
preserves of L'Africaine and Lakmé, the whole
concluding with the voluntary immersion of Na-
toma in a convent. Fortunately, the writer of the
book remembered that Miss Garden had danced in
Salome and he introduced a similar pantomimic
episode in Natoma, a dagger dance, which was one
of the interesting points in the action. The music
suited her voice; she delivered a good deal of it
almost parlando, and the vapid speeches of Mr.
Redding tripped so audibly off her tongue that
their banality became painfully apparent.
The story has often been related how Massenet,
piqued by the frequently repeated assertion that
his muse was only at his command when he de-
picted female frailty, determined to write an opera
in which only one woman was to appear, and she
was to be both mute and a virgin! Le Jongleur
de Notre Dame, perhaps the most poetically con-
ceived of Massenet's lyric dramas, was the result
of this decision. Until Mr. Hammerstein made
1
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[85]
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up his mind to produce the opera, the rôle of Jean
had invariably been sung by a man. Mr. Ham-
merstein thought that Americans would prefer a
woman in the part. He easily enlisted the inter-
est of Miss Garden in this scheme, and Massenet,
it is said, consented to make certain changes in
the score. The taste of the experiment was
doubtful, but it was one for which there had been
much precedent. Nor is it necessary to linger on
Sarah Bernhardt's assumption of the rôles of
Hamlet, Shylock, and the Duc de Reichstadt. In
the “golden period of song," Orfeo was not the
only man's part sung by a woman. Mme. Pasta
frequently appeared as Romeo in Zingarelli's opera
and as Tancredi, and she also sang Otello on one
occasion when Henrietta Sontag was the Desde-
mona. The rôle of Orfeo, I believe, was written
originally for a castrato, and later, when the work
was refurbished for production at what was then
the Paris Opéra, Gluck allotted the rôle to a tenor.
Now it is sung by a woman as invariably as are
Stephano in Roméo et Juliette and Siebel in Faust.
There is really more excuse for the masquerade of
sex in Massenet's opera. The timid, pathetic
little juggler, ridiculous in his inefficiency, is a
part for which tenors, as they exist to-day, seem
manifestly unsuited. And certainly no tenor
S
7
[86]
Mary Garden
1
could hope to make the appeal in the part that
Mary Garden did. In the second act she found
it difficult to entirely conceal the suggestion of
her sex under the monk's robe, but the sad little
figure of the first act and the adorable juggler of
the last, performing his imbecile tricks before Our
Lady's altar, were triumphant details of an ar-
tistic impersonation; on the whole, one of Miss
Garden's most moving performances.
Miss Garden has sung Faust many times. Are
there many sopranos who have not, whatever the
general nature of their répertoires? She is very
lovely in the rôle of Marguerite. I have indicated
elsewhere her skill in endowing the part with po-
etry and imaginative force without making ducks
and drakes of the traditions. In the garden
scene she gave an exhibition of her power to paint
a fanciful fresco on a wall already surcharged
with colour, a charming, wistful picture. I have
never seen any one else so effective in the church
and prison scenes; no one else, it seems to me, has
so tenderly conceived the plight of the simple
German girl. The opera of Roméo et Juliette
does not admit of such serious dramatic treatment,
and Thomas’s Hamlet, as a play, is absolutely
stage directions read that the ballet “waltzes
[87]
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y
LVL
sadly away." I saw Mary Garden play Ophélie
once at the Paris Opéra, and I must admit that I
was amused; I think she was amused too! I was
equally amused some years later when I heard
Titta Ruffo sing the opera. I am afraid I can-
not take Hamlet as a lyric drama seriously.
In Paris, Violetta is one of Miss Garden's pop-
ular rôles. When she came to America she fan-
cied she might sing the part here. “Did you
ever see a thin Violetta ? " she asked the reporters.
But so far she has not appeared in La Traviata
on this side of the Atlantic, although Robert Hich-
ens wrote me that he had recently heard her in
this opera at the Paris Opéra-Comique. He
added that her impersonation was most interest-
ing.
To me one of the most truly fascinating of
Miss Garden's characterizations was her Fanny
Legrand in Daudet's play, made into an opera
by Massenet. Sapho, as a lyric drama, did not
have a success in New York. I think only three
performances were given at the Manhattan Opera
House. The professional writers, with one excep-
tion, found nothing to praise in Miss Garden's re-
markable impersonation of Fanny. And yet, as I
have said, it seemed to me one of the most moving
of her interpretations. In the opening scenes she
[88]
Mary Garden
1
was the trollop, no less, that Fanny was. The
pregnant line of the first act: Artiste? ...
Non. . . . Tant mieux. J'ai contre tout artiste
une haine implacable! was spoken in a manner
which bared the woman's heart to the sophisti-
cated. The scene in which she sang the song of
the Magali (the Provençal melody which Mistral
immortalized in a poem, which Gounod introduced
into Mireille, and which found its way, inexplic-
ably, into the ballet of Berlioz's Les Troyens à
Carthage), playing her own accompaniment, to
Jean, was really too wonderful a caricature of the
harlot. Abel Faivre and Paul Guillaume have
done no better. The scene in which Fanny re-
viles her former associates for telling Jean the
truth about her past life was revolting in its real-
ism.
If Miss Garden spared no details in making us
acquainted with Fanny's vulgarity, she was
equally fair to her in other respects. She seemed
to be continually guiding the spectator with com-
ment something like this: “ See how this woman
can suffer, and she is a woman, like any other
woman." How small the means, the effect con-
sidered, by which she produced the pathos of the
last scene. At the one performance I saw half the
people in the audience were in tears. There was
[89]
Interpreters
a dismaying display of handkerchiefs. Sapho sat
in the window, smoking a cigarette, surveying the
room in which she had been happy with Jean, and
preparing to say good-by. In the earlier scenes
her cigarette had aided her in making vulgar ges-
tures. Now she relied on it to tell the pitiful tale
of the woman's loneliness. How she clung to that
cigarette, how she sipped comfort from it, and how
tiny it was! Mary Garden's Sapho, which may
never be seen on the stage again (Massenet's music
is perhaps his weakest effort), was an extraordi-
nary piece of stage art. That alone would have
proclaimed her an interpreter of genius.
George Moore, somewhere, evolves a fantastic
theory that a writer's name may have determined
his talent: “ Dickens - a mean name, a name
without atmosphere, a black out-of-elbows, back-
stairs name, a name good enough for loud comedy
and louder pathos. John Milton - a splendid
name for a Puritan poet. Algernon Charles
Swinburne - only a name for a reed through
which every wind blows music. ... Now it is a
fact that we find no fine names among novelists.
We find only colourless names, dry-as-dust names,
or vulgar names, round names like pot-hats, those
names like mackintoshes, names that are squashy
as goloshes. We have charged Scott with a lack
S
[90]

MARY GARDEN AS FANNY LEGRAND
from a photograph by Mishkin (1909)
Mary Garden
of personal passion, but could personal passion
dwell in such a jog-trot name - a round-faced
name, a snub-nosed, spectacled, pot-bellied name,
a placid, beneficent, worthy old bachelor name, a
name that evokes all conventional ideas and form-
ulas, a Grub Street name, a nerveless name, an
arm-chair name, an old oak and Abbotsford name?
And Thackeray's name is a poor one — the sylla-
bles clatter like plates. We shall want the car-
riage at half-past two, Thackeray.' Dickens is
surely a name for a page boy. George Eliot's
real name, Marian Evans, is a chaw-bacon, thick-
loined name.” So far as I know Mr. Moore has
not expanded his theory to include a discussion of
acrobats, revivalists, necromancers, free versifiers,
camel drivers, paying tellers, painters, pugilists,
architects, and opera singers. Many of the lat-
ter have taken no chances with their own names.
Both Pauline and Maria Garcia adopted the
names of their husbands. Garcia possibly sug-
gests a warrior, but do Malibran and Viardot
make us think of music? Nellie Melba's name
evokes an image of a cold marble slab but if she
had retained her original name of Mitchell it
would have been no better ... Marcella Sem-
brich, a name made famous by the genius and in-
defatigable labour of its bearer, surely not a good
[91]
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name for an operatic soprano. Her own name,
Kochanska, sounds Polish and patriotic ... Luisa
Tetrazzini, a silly, fussy name . . . Emma Calvé
... Since Madame Bovary the name Emma sug-
gests a solid bourgeois foundation, a country fam-
ily. . . . Emma Eames, a chilly name ... a
wind from the East! Was it Philip Hale who re-
marked that she sang Who is Sylvia? as if the
woman were not on her calling list? . . . Lillian
Nordica, an evasion. Lillian Norton is a sturdy
work-a-day name, suggesting a premonition of a
thousand piano rehearsals for Isolde . . . Jo-
hanna Gadski, a coughing raucous name ...
Geraldine Farrar, tomboyish and impertinent,
Melrose with a French sauce ... Edyth Walker,
a militant suffragette name . . . Surely Lucrezia
Bori and Maria Barrientos are ill-made names for
singers . . . Adelina Patti - a patty-cake, pat-
ty-cake, baker's man, sort of a name . . . Alboni,
strong-hearted . . . Scalchi . . . ugh! Further
evidence could be brought forward to prove that
singers succeed in spite of their names rather than
because of them , . , until we reach the name of
Mary Garden. ... The subtle fragrance of this
name has found its way into many hearts. Since
Nell Gwyn no such scented cognomen, redolent of
cuckoo's boots, London pride, blood-red poppies,
(D
1
[92]
Mary Garden
LI
purple fox-gloves, lemon stocks, and vermillion
zinnias, has blown its delicate odour across our
scene. ... Delightful and adorable Mary Gar-
den, the fragile Thais, pathetic Jean . . . unfor-
gettable Mélisande. ...
October 10, 1916.
[ 93 ]
Feodor Chalia pine
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself ;”
Walt Whitman.
Feodor Chaliapine
10
NEODOR CHALIAPINE, the Russian bass
m singer, appeared in New York at the
Metropolitan Opera House, then under the
direction of Heinrich Conried, during the season
of 1907-08. He made his American début on
Wednesday evening, November 20, 1907, when he
impersonated the title part of Boito's opera,
Mefistofele. He was heard here altogether seven
times in this rôle; six times as Basilio in Il Bar-
biere di Siviglia; three times as Méphistophélès in
Gounod's Faust; three times as Leporello in Don
Giovanni; and at several Sunday night concerts.
He also appeared with the Metropolitan Opera
Company in Philadelphia, and possibly elsewhere.
I first met this remarkable artist in the dining-
room of the Hotel Savoy on a rainy Sunday after-
noon, soon after his arrival in America. His per-
sonality made a profound impression on me, as
may be gathered from some lines from an article I
wrote which appeared the next morning in the
“New York Times”: “ The newest operatic
acquisition to arrive in New York is neither a
prima donna soprano, nor an Italian tenor with a
high C, but a big, broad-shouldered boy, with a
kindly smile and a deep bass voice, ... thirty-
[971
Interpreters
four years old. ... 'I spik English,' were his
first words. How do you do? et puis good-by,
et puis I drrrink, you drrink, he drrrrinks, et puis
I love you!' ... Mr. Chaliapine looked like a
great big boy, a sophomore in college, who played
football.” (Pitts Sanborn soon afterwards
felicitously referred to him as ce doux géant, a
name often applied to Turgeniev.)
I have given the extent of the Russian's English
to learn to conjugate the verb “ to drink "; an-
other English verb he learned very quickly was
6 to eat.” Some time later, after his New York
début, I sought him out again to urge. him to
give a synopsis of his original conception for a
performance of Gounod's Faust. The interview
which ensued was the longest I have ever had with
any one. It began at eleven o'clock in the morn-
ing and lasted until a like hour in the evening,
it might have lasted much longer,— and during
this whole time we sat at table in Mr. Chalia-
pine's own chamber at the Brevoort, whither he
had repaired to escape steam heat, while he con-
sumed vast quantities of food and drink. I re-
member a detail of six plates of onion soup. I
have never seen any one else eat so much or so
[ 98 ]
· Feodor Chalia pine
continuously, or with so little lethargic effect.
Indeed, intemperance seemed only to make him
more light-hearted, ebullient, and Brobdingna-
gian. Late in the afternoon he placed his own
record of the Marseillaise in the victrola, and
then amused himself (and me) by singing the
song in unison with the record, in an attempt to
drown out the mechanical sound. He succeeded.
The effect in this moderately small hotel room can
only be faintly conceived.
Exuberant is the word which best describes
Chaliapine off the stage. I remember another
occasion a year later when I met him, just re-
turned from South America, on the Boulevard in
Paris. He grasped my hand warmly and begged
me to come to see his zoo. He had, in fact, trans-
formed the salle de bain in his suite at the Grand
Hotel into a menagerie. There were two
monkeys, a cockatoo, and many other birds of
brilliant plumage, while two large alligators dozed
in the tub.
My second interview with this singer took place
a day or so before he returned to Europe. He
had been roughly handled by the New York
critics, treatment, it is said, which met with the
approval of Heinrich Conried, who had no desire
to retain in his company a bass who demanded six-
D
[99]
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=
1
teen hundred dollars a night, a high salary for a
soprano or a tenor. Stung by this defeat -- en-
tirely imaginary, by the way, as his audiences here
were as large and enthusiastic as they are any-
where -- the only one, in fact, which he has suf-
fered in his career up to date, Chaliapine was ex-
tremely frank in his attitude. My interview,
published on the first page of the “New York
Times,” created a small sensation in operatic
circles. The meat of it follows. Chaliapine is
speaking:
“ Criticism in New York is not profound. It
is the most difficult thing in the world to be a good
critical writer. I am a singer, but the critic has
no right to regard me merely as a singer. He
must observe my acting, my make-up, everything.
And he must understand and know about these
things.
“Opera is not a fixed art. It is not like
music, poetry, sculpture, painting, or architec-
ture, but a combination of all of these. And the
critic who goes to the opera should have studied
all these arts. While a study of these arts is
essential, there is something else that the critic
cannot get by study, and that is the soul to under-
stand. That he must be born with.
“ I am not a professional critic, but I could be.
[ 100 ]
Feodor Chalia pine
I have associated with musicians, painters, and
writers, and I know something of all these arts.
As a consequence when I read a criticism, I see
immediately what is true and what is false. Very .
often I think a man's tongue is his worst enemy.
However, sometimes a man keeps quiet to conceal
his mental weakness. We have a Russian proverb
which says, “ Keep quiet; don't tease the geese.'
You can't judge of a man's intelligence until he
begins to talk or write.
“I have been sometimes adversely criticized
during the course of my artistic life. The most
profound of these criticisms have taught me to
correct my faults. But I have learned nothing
from the criticisms I have received in New York.
After searching my inner consciousness, I find
they are not based on a true understanding of my
artistic purposes. For instance, the critics
found my Don Basilio a dirty, repulsive creature.
One man even said that I was offensive to another
singer on the stage! Don Basilio is a Spanish
priest; it is a type I know well. He is not like
the modern American priest, clean and well-
groomed; he is dirty and unkempt; he is a beast,
and that is what I make him, a comic beast, but
the critics would prefer a softer version. ... It
is unfair, indeed, to judge me at all on the parts I
[101]
Interpreters
YYY
have sung here, outside of Mefistofele, for most
of my best rôles are in Russian operas, which are
not in the répertoire of the Metropolitan Opera
House.
“ The contemporary direction of this theatre
believes in tradition. It is afraid of anything
new. There is no movement. It has not the
courage to produce novelties, and the artists are
prevented from giving original conceptions of old
rôles.
56 New York is a vast seething inferno of busi-
ness. Nothing but business! The men are so
tired when they get through work that they want
recreation and sleep. They don't want to study.
They don't want to be thrilled or aroused. They
are content to listen forever to Faust and Lucia.
66 In Europe it is different. There you will find
the desire for novelty in the theatre. There is a
keen interest in the production of a new work. It
is all right to enjoy the old things, but one should
sée life. The audience at the Metropolitan Opera
House reminds me of a family that lives in the
country and won't travel. It is satisfied with the
same view of the same garden forever. ..."
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapine was born Feb-
ruary 13 (February 1, old style), 1873, in Kazan';
he is of peasant descent. It is said that he is al-
[102]
Feodor Chaliapine
most entirely self-educated, both musically and in-
tellectually. He worked for a time in a shoe-
maker's shop, sang in the archbishop's choir and,
at the age of seventeen, joined a local operetta
company. He seems to have had difficulty in col-
lecting a salary from this latter organization, and
often worked as a railway porter in order to keep
alive. Later he joined a travelling theatrical
troupe, which visited the Caucasus. In 1892,
Oussatov, a singer, heard Chaliapine in Tiflis,
gave him some lessons, and got him an engage-
ment.
· He made his debut in opera in Glinka's A Life
for the Czar (according to Mrs. Newmarch; my
notes tell me that it was Gounod's Faust). He
sang at the Summer and Panaevsky theatres in
Petrograd in 1894 ; and the following year he was
engaged at the Maryinsky Theatre, but the
directors did not seem to realize that they had
captured one of the great figures of the contem-
porary lyric stage, and he was not permitted to
sing very often. In 1896, Mamantov, lawyer and
millionaire, paid the fine which released the bass
from the Imperial Opera House, and invited him
to join the Private Opera Company in Moscow,
where Chaliapine immediately proved his worth.
He became the idol of the public, and it was not
n
[ 103]
Interpreters
unusual for those who admired striking imper-
sonations on the stage to journey from Petrograd
to see and hear him. In 1899 he was engaged to
sing at the Imperial Opera in Moscow at sixty
thousand roubles a year. Since then he has ap-
peared in various European capitals, and in
North and South America. He has sung in
Milan, Paris, London, Monte Carlo, and Buenos
Aires. During a visit to Milan he married, and
at the time of his New York engagement his fam-
ily included five children. The number may have
increased.
Chaliapine's répertoire is extensive but, on the
whole, it is a strange répertoire to western Europe
and America, consisting, as it does, almost en-
tirely of Russian operas. In Milan, New York,
and Monte Carlo, where he has appeared with
Italian and French companies, his most famous
rôle is Mefistofele. Leporello he sang for the first
time in New York. Basilio and Méphistophélès
in Faust he has probably enacted as often in Rus-
sia as elsewhere. He “ created” the title part of
Massenets Don Quichotte at Monte Carlo (Vanni
Marcoux sang the rôle later in Paris). With the
Russian Opera Company, organized in connection
with the Russian Ballet by Serge de Diaghilew,
Chaliapine has sung in London, Paris, and other
1
S
[ 104 ]
Feodor Chaliapine
European capitals in Moussorgsky's Boris Godu-
now and Khovanchina, Rimsky-Korsakow's Ivan
the Terrible (originally called The Maid of
Pskov), and Borodine’s Prince Igor, in which he
appeared both as Prince Galitzky and as the Tar-
tar Chieftain. His répertoire further includes
Rubinstein's Demon, Rimsky-Korsakow's Mozart
and Salieri (the rôle of Salieri), Glinka's A Life
for the Czar, Dargomijsky's The Roussalka,
Rachmaninow's Aleko, and Gretchaninow's Dobry-
nia Nikitich. This list is by no means complete.
I first saw Chaliapine on the stage in New York,
where his original ideas and tremendously vital
personality ran counter to every tradition of the
Metropolitan Opera House. The professional
writers about the opera, as a whole, would have
none of him. Even his magnificently pictorial
Mefistofele was condemned, and I think Pitts San-
born was the only man in a critic's chair – I was
a reporter at this period and had no opportunity
for expressing my opinions in print - who ap-
preciated his Basilio at its true value, and Il
Barbiere is Sanborn's favourite opera. His ac-
count of the proceedings makes good reading at
this date. I quote from the “ New York Globe,"
December 13, 1907:
66 The performance that was in open defiance of
[105]
Interpreters
Y
traditions, that was glaringly and recklessly un-
orthodox, that set at naught the accepted canons
of good taste, but which justified itself by its
overwhelming and all-conquering good humour,
was the Basilio of Mr. Chaliapine. With his
great natural stature increased by art to Brob-
dingnagian proportions, a face that had gazed
on the vodka at its blackest, and a cassock that
may be seen but not described, he presented a
figure that might have been imagined by the Eng-
lish Swift or the French Rabelais. It was no
voice or singing that made the audience re-demand
the Calumny Song. It was the compelling
drollery of those comedy hands. You may be
assured, persuaded, convinced that you want your
Rossini straight or not at all. But when you see
the Chaliapine Basilio you'll do as the rest do
roar. It is as sensational in its way as the
Chaliapine Mephisto.".
It was hard to reconcile Chaliapine's concep-
tion of Méphistophélès with the Gounod music,
and I do not think the Russian himself had any
illusions about his performance of Leporello. It
was not his type of part, and he was as good in it,
probably, as Olive Fremstad would be as Nedda.
Even great artists have their limitations, perhaps
more of them than the lesser people. But his
[ 106 ]
Feodor Chaliapine
D
Mefistofele, to my way of thinking, and the
anxious reader who has not seen this impersona-
tion may be assured that I am far from being
alone in it,- was and is a masterpiece of stage-
craft. However, opinions differ. Under the al-
luring title, “ Devils Polite and Rude,” W. J.
Henderson, in the “ New York Sun," Sunday,
November 24, 1907, after Chaliapine's first ap-
pearance here in Boito's opera, took his fling at
the Russian bass (was it Mr. Henderson or an-
other who later referred to Chaliapine as “ a cos-
sack with a cold”?): “He makes of the fiend
a demoniac personage, a seething cauldron of
rabid passions. He is continually snarling and
barking. He poses in writhing attitudes of agon-
ized impotence. He strides and gestures, grim-
aces and roars. All this appears to superficial
observers to be tremendously dramatic. And it
is, as noted, not without its significance. Per-
haps it may be only a personal fancy, yet the
present writer much prefers a devil who is a gen-
tleman. . . . But one thing more remains to be
said about the first display of Mr. Chaliapine's
powers. How long did he study the art of sing-
ing? Surely not many years. Such an uneven
and uncertain emission of tone is seldom heard
even on the Metropolitan Opera House stage,
[ 107 ]
Interpreters
where there is a wondrous quantity of poorly
grounded singing. The splendid song, Son lo
Spirito Che Nega, was not sung at all in the
strict interpretation of the word. It was de-
livered, to be sure, but in a rough and barbaric
style. Some of the tones disappeared somewhere
in the rear spaces of the basso's capacious throat,
while others were projected into the auditorium
like stones from a catapult. There was much
strenuosity and little art in the performance.
And it was much the same with the rest of the
singing of the rôle."
Chaliapine calls himself “ the enemy of tradi-
tion.” When he was singing at the Opera in
Petrograd in 1896 he found that every detail of
every characterization was prescribed. He was
directed to make his entrances in a certain way;
he was ordered to stand in a certain place on the
stage. Whenever he attempted an innovation the
stage director said, “Don't do that." Young
singer though he was, he rebelled and asked,
6 Why not?” And the reply always came, “ You
must follow the tradition of the part. Monsieur
Chose and Signor Cosi have always done thus and
so, and you must do likewise.” “But I feel dif-
ferently about the rôle," protested the bass. How-
ever, it was not until he went to Moscow that he
[108]
Feodor Chalia pine
was permitted to break with tradition. From that
time on he began to elaborate his characterizations,
assisted, he admits, by Russian painters who gave
him his first ideas about costumes and make-up.
He once told me that his interpretation of a part
was never twice the same. He does not study his
rôles in solitude, poring over a score, as many
artists do. Rather, ideas come to him when he
eats or drinks, or even when he is on the stage.
He depends to an unsafe degree -- unsafe for
other singers who may be misled by his success -
on inspiration to carry him through, once he begins
to sing. “When I sing a character I am that
character; I am no longer Chaliapine. So what-
ever I do must be in keeping with what the char-
acter would do." This is true to so great an ex-
tent that you may take it for granted, when you
see Chaliapine in a new rôle, that he will envelop
the character with atmosphere from his first en-
trance, perhaps even without the aid of a single
gesture. His entrance on horseback in Ivan the
Terrible is a case in point. Before he has sung
a note he has projected the personality of the cruel
czar into the auditorium.
“ As an actor," writes Mrs. Newmarch in “ The
Russian Opera," 6 his greatest quality appears to
me to be his extraordinary gift of identification
[ 109 ]
Interpreters
with the character he is representing. Shaliapin
(so does Mrs. Newmarch phonetically transpose
his name into Roman letters) does not merely
throw himself into the part, to use a phrase com-
monly applied to the histrionic art. He seems to
disappear, to empty himself of all personality, that
Boris Godounov or Ivan the Terrible may be re-
incarnated for us. While working out his own
conception of a part, unmoved by convention or
opinion, Shaliapin neglects no accessory study that
can heighten the realism of his interpretation. It
is impossible to see him as Ivan the Terrible, or
Boris, without realizing that he is steeped in the
history of those periods, which live again at his
will. In the same way he has studied the master-
pieces of Russian art to good purpose, as all must
agree who have compared the scene of Ivan's fren-
zied grief over the corpse of Olga, in the last scene
of Rimsky-Korsakow's opera, with Repin's terrible
picture of the Tsar, clasping in his arms the body
of the son whom he has just killed in a fit of insane
anger. The agonizing remorse and piteous senile
grief have been transformed from Repin's canvas
to Shaliapin's living picture, without the revolting
suggestion of the shambles which mars the paint-
er's work. Sometimes, too, Shaliapin will take a
hint from the living model. His dignified make-up
1
[110]
Feodor Chaliapine
as the Old Believer Dositheus, in Moussorgsky's
Khovanstchina, owes not a little to the personality
of Vladimir Stassov.”
Chaliapine, it seems to me, has realized more
completely than any other contemporary singer the
opportunities afforded for the presentation of
character on the lyric stage. In costume,
make-up, gesture, the simulation of emotion, he is
a consummate and painstaking artist. As I have
suggested, he has limitations. Who, indeed, has
not? Grandeur, nobility, impressiveness, and, by
inversion, sordidness, bestiality, and awkward ugli-
ness fall easily within his ken. The murder-
haunted Boris Godunow is perhaps his most over-
powering creation. From first to last it is a
masterpiece of scenic art; those who have seen him
in this part will not be satisfied with substitutes.
His Ivan is almost equally great. His Dositheus,
head of the Old Believers in Khovanchina, is a sin-
cere and effective characterization along entirely
different lines. Although this character, in a
sense, dominates Moussorgsky's great opera, there
is little opportunity for the display of histrionism
which Boris presents to the singing actor. By al-
most insignificant details of make-up and gesture
the bass creates before your eyes a living, breath-
ing man, a man of fire and faith. No one would
.[111]
.
Interpreters
recognize in this kind old creature, terrible, to be
sure, in his stern piety, the nude Mefistofele sur-
veying the pranks of the motley rabble in the
Brocken scene of Boito's opera, a flamboyant ex-
posure of personality to be compared with Mary
Garden's Thais, Act I.
As the Tartar chieftain in Prince Igor, he has
but few lines to sing, but his gestures during the
performance of the ballet, which he has arranged
for his guest, in fact his actions throughout the
single act in which this character appears, are
stamped on the memory as definitely as a figure
in a Persian miniature. And the noble scorn
with which, as Prince Galitzky, he bows to the stir-
rup of Prince Igor at the close of the prologue
to this opera, still remains a fixed picture in my
mind. There is also the pathetic Don Quichotte
of Massenet's poorest opera. All great portraits
these, to which I must add the funny, dirty, expec-
torating Spanish priest of Il Barbiere.
Chaliapine is the possessor of a noble voice
which sometimes he uses by main strength. He has
never learned to sing, in the conventional meaning
of the phrase. He must have been singing for
some time before he studied at all, and at Tiflis
he does not seem to have spent many months on
his voice. In the circumstances it is an extremely
[ 112 ]

FEODOR CHALIAPINE AS MEFISTOFELE
Feodor Chalia pine
tractable organ, at least always capable of doing
his bidding, dramatically speaking. Indeed, there
are many who consider him a great artist in his
manipulation of it. Mrs. Newmarch quotes Her-
bert Heyner on this point:
“ His diction floats on a beautiful cantilena,
particularly in his mezzo-voce singing, which -
though one would hardly expect it from a singer
endowed with such a noble bass voice — is one of
the most telling features of his performance.
There is never any striving after vocal effects, and
his voice is always subservient to the words. ...
The atmosphere and tone-colour which Shalia-
pin imparts to his singing are of such remarkable
quality that one feels his interpretation of Schu-
bert's Doppelgänger must of necessity be a
thing of genius, unapproachable by other contem-
porary singers. ... his method is based upon a
thoroughly sound breath control, which produces
such splendid cantabile results. Every student
should listen to this great singer, and profit by his
art."
My intention in placing before the eyes of my
readers such contradictory accounts as may be
found in this article has not been altogether in-
genuous. The fact of the matter is that opinions
differ on every matter of art, and on no point are
[113]
Interpreters
they so various as on that which refers to inter-
pretation. It may further be urged that the per-
sonality of Chaliapine is so marked and his method
so direct that the variations of opinion are nat-
urally expressed in somewhat violent language.
For those, accustomed to the occidental operatic
répertoire, who find it hard to understand how a
plained that deep voices are both common and
any Greek church, sustaining organ points a full
octave below the notes to which our basses descend
with trepidation. As a consequence, many of the
Russian operas contain bass rôles of the first im-
portance. In both of Moussorgsky's familiar
operas, for example, the leading part is destined
for a bass voice.
July 18, 1916.
Mariette Mazarin
Mariette Mazarin
(
M OMETIMES the cause of an intense impres-
i sion in the theatre apparently disappears,
leaving “not a rack behind,” beyond the
trenchant memory of a few precious moments, in-
clining one to the belief that the whole adventure
has been a dream, a particularly vivid dream, and
that the characters therein have returned to such)
places in space as are assigned to dream person-
ages by the makers of men. This reflection comes
to me as, sitting before my typewriter, I attempt
to recapture the spirit of the performances of
Richard Strauss's music drama Elektra at Oscar
Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera House in New
York. The work remains, if not in the répertoire
of any opera house in my vicinity, at least deeply
imbedded in my eardrum and, if need be, at any
time I can pore again over the score, which is
always near at hand. But of the whereabouts of
Mariette Mazarin, the remarkable artist who con-
tributed her genius to the interpretation of the
crazed Greek princess, I know nothing. As she
came to us unheralded, so she went away, after we
who had seen her had enshrined her, tardily to be
sure, in that small, slow-growing circle of those
who have achieved eminence on the lyric stage.
ULIU
[117]
Interpreters
Before the beginning of the opera season of
1909-10, Mariette Mazarin was not even a name
in New York. Even during a good part of that
season she was recognized only as an able routine
singer. She made her début here in Aida and she
sang Carmen and Louise without creating a fu-
rore, almost, indeed, without arousing attention of
any kind, good or bad criticism. Had there been
no production of Elektra she would have passed
into that long list of forgotten singers who appear
here in leading rôles for a few months or a few
years and who, when their time is up, vanish, never
to be regretted, extolled, or recalled in the memory
again. For the disclosure of Mme. Mazarin's
true powers an unusual vehicle was required.
Elektra gave her her opportunity, and proved her
one of the exceptional artists of the stage.
I do not know many of the facts of Mariette
Mazarin's career. She studied at the Paris Con-
servatoire; Leloir, of the Comédie Française, was
her professor of acting. She made her debut at
the Paris Opéra as Aida; later she sang Louise
and Carmen at the Opéra-Comique. After that
she seems to have been a leading figure at the
Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, where she ap-
peared in Alceste, Armide, Iphigénie en Tauride
and Iphigénie en Aulide, even Orphée, the great
[ 118 ]
Mariette Mazarin .
Gluck répertoire. She has also sung Salome, the
three Brünnhildes, Elsa in Lohengrin, Elisabeth
in Tannhäuser, in Berlioz's Prise de Troie, La
Damnation de Faust, Les Huguenots, Grisélidis,
Thais, Il Trovatore, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, Car-
alleria Rusticana, Hérodiade, Le Cid, and Sal-
ammbô. She has been heard at Nice, and prob-
ably on many another provincial French stage.
At one time she was the wife of Léon Rothier,
the French bass, who has been a member of the
Metropolitan Opera Company for several seasons.
Away from the theatre I remember her as a tall
woman, rather awkward, but quick in gesture.
Her hair was dark, and her eyes were dark and
piercing. Her face was all angles; her features
were sharp, and when conversing with her one
could not but be struck with a certain eerie qual-
ity which seemed to give mystic colour to her ex-
pression. She was badly dressed, both from an
æsthetic and a fashionable point of view. In a
group of women you would pick her out to be a
doctor, a lawyer, an intellectuelle. When I talked
with her, impression followed impression — always
I felt her intelligence, the play of her intellect upon
the surfaces of her art, but always, too, I felt
how narrow a chance had cast her lot upon the
stage, how she easily might have been something
i
S
[119]
Interpreters
else than a singing actress, how magnificently ac-
cidental her career was!
She was, it would seem, an unusually gifted mu-
sician – at least for a singer,— with a physique
and a nervous energy which enabled her to per-
form miracles. For instance, on one occasion she
astonished even Oscar Hammerstein by replacing
Lina Cavalieri as Salomé in Hérodiade, a rôle she
had not previously sung for five years, at an hour's
notice on the evening of an afternoon on which
she had appeared as Elektra. On another occa-
sion, when Mary Garden was ill she sang Louise
with only a short forewarning. She told me that
she had learned the music of Elektra between
January 1, 1910, and the night of the first per-
formance, January 31. She also told me that
without any special effort on her part she had as-
similated the music of the other two important
feminine rôles in the opera, Chrysothemis and Kly-
tæmnestra, and was quite prepared to sing them.
Mme. Mazarin's vocal organ, it must be admitted,
was not of a very pleasant quality at all times, al-
though she employed it with variety and usually
with taste. There was a good deal of subtle
charm in her middle voice, but her upper voice was
shrill and sometimes, when emitted forcefully, be-
came in effect a shriek. Faulty intonation often
[ 120 1
Mariette Mazarin
S
02
played havoc with her musical interpretation, but
do we not read that the great Mme. Pasta seldom
sang an opera through without many similar slips
from the pitch? Aida, of course, displayed the
worst side of her talents. Her Carmen, it seemed
to me, was in some ways a very remarkable per-
formance; she appeared, in this rôle, to be pos-
sessed by a certain diablerie, a power of evil,
which distinguished her from other Carmens, but
this characterization created little comment or in-
terest in New York. In Louise, especially in the
third act, she betrayed an enmity for the pitch,
but in the last act she was magnificent as an ac-
tress. In Santuzza she exploited her capacity for
unreined intensity of expression. I have never
seen her as Salome (in Richard Strauss's opera;
her Massenetic Salomé was disclosed to us in
New York), but I have a photograph of her
in the rôle which might serve as an illustration
for the “Méphistophéla ” of Catulle Mendès. I
can imagine no more sinister and depraved an ex-
pression, combined with such potent sexual at-
traction. It is a remarkable photograph, evok-
ing as it does a succession of lustful ladies, and it
is quite unpublishable. If she carried these quali-
ties into her performance of the work, and there
is every reason to believe that she did, the even-
[ 121 ]
Interpreters
e
ings on which she sang Salome must have been
very terrible for her auditors, hours in which the
Aristotle theory of Katharsis must have been am-
ply proven.
Elektra was well advertised in New York.
Oscar Hammerstein is as able a showman as the
late P. T. Barnum, and he has devoted his talents
to higher aims. Without his co-operation, I think
it is likely that America would now be a trifle
above Australia in its operatic experience. It is
from Oscar Hammerstein that New York learned
that all the great singers of the world were not
singing at the Metropolitan Opera House, a mat-
ter which had been considered axiomatic before
the redoubtable Oscar introduced us to Alessandro
Bonci, Maurice Renaud, Charles Dalmores, Mary
Garden, Luisa Tetrazzini, and others. With his
productions of Pelléas et Mélisande, Louise,
Thais, and other works new to us, he spurred the
rival house to an activity which has been main-
tained ever since to a greater or less degree. New
operas are now the order of the day — even with
the Chicago and the Boston companies — rather
than the exception. And without this impre-
sario’s courage and determination I do not think
New York would have heard Elektra, at least not
before its uncorked essence had quite disappeared.
[ 122 ]
Mariette Mazarin
N
Lover of opera that he indubitably is, Oscar Ham-
merstein is by nature a showman, and he under-
stands the psychology of the mob. Looking
about for a sensation to stir the slow pulse of the
New York opera-goer, he saw nothing on the hori-
zon more likely to effect his purpose than Elektra.
Salome, spurned by the Metropolitan Opera Com-
pany, had been taken to his heart the year before
and, with Mary Garden's valuable assistance, he
had found the biblical jade extremely efficacious
in drawing shekels to his doors. He hoped to
accomplish similar results with Elektra. ...
One of the penalties an inventor of harmonies
pays is that his inventions become shopworn. A
certain terrible atmosphere, a suggestion of vague
dread, of horror, of rank incest, of vile murder, of
sordid shame, was conveyed in Elektra by Richard
Strauss through the adroit use of what we call
discords, for want of a better name. Discord at
one time was defined as a combination of sounds
that would eternally affront the musical ear. We
know better now. Discord is simply the word to
describe a never-before or seldom-used chord.
Such a juxtaposition of notes naturally startles
when it is first heard, but it is a mistake to pre-
sume that the effect is unpleasant, even in the be-
ginning
TA
[ 123 ]
Interpreters
Now it was by the use of sounds cunningly con-
trived to displease the ear that Strauss built up
was first performed, the scenes in which the half-
mad Greek girl stalked the palace courtyard, and
the queen with the blood-stained hands related her
dreams, literally reeked with musical frightfulness.
I have never seen or heard another music drama
which so completely bowled over its first audiences,
sical pedants. These scenes even inspired a fa-
mous passage in “ Jean-Christophe ” (I quote from
the translation of Gilbert Cannon): “ Agamem-
non was neurasthenic and Achilles impotent; they
lamented their condition at length and, naturally,
their outcries produced no change. The energy
of the drama was concentrated in the rôle of Iphi-
genia — a nervous, hysterical, and pedantic Iphi-
genia, who lectured the hero, declaimed furiously,
ism and, glutted with death, cut her throat,
shrieking with laughter."
But will Elektra have the same effect on future
audiences? I do not think so. Its terror has, in
a measure, been dissipated. Schoenberg, Straw-
insky, and Ornstein have employed its discords -
and many newer ones — for pleasanter purposes,
[ 124 ]
Mariette Mazarin
and our ears are becoming accustomed to these
assaults on the casual harmony of our forefathers.
Elektra will retain its place as a forerunner, and
inevitably it will eventually be considered the most
important of Strauss's operatic works, but it can
never be listened to again in that same spirit of
horror and repentance, with that feeling of utter
repugnance, which it found easy to awaken in
1910. Perhaps all of us were a little better for
the experience.
An attendant at the opening ceremonies in New
York can scarcely forget them. Cast under the
spell by the early entrance of Elektra, wild-eyed
and menacing, across the terrace of the courtyard
of Agamemnon's palace, he must have remained
with staring eyes and wide-flung ears, straining
for the remainder of the evening to catch the mes-
sage of this tale of triumphant and utterly holy
revenge. The key of von Hofmannsthal's fine play
was lost to some reviewers, as it was to Romain
Rolland in the passage quoted above, who only
saw in the drama a perversion of the Greek idea of
Nemesis. That there was something very much
finer in the theme, it was left for Bernard Shaw
to discover. To him Elektra expressed the re-
generation of a race, the destruction of vice, ig-
norance, and poverty. The play was replete in
.
[ 125 ]
Interpreters
-
-
his mind with sociological and political implica-
tions, and, as his views in the matter exactly coin-
cide with my own, I cannot do better than to quote
a few lines from them, including, as they do, his
interesting prophecies regarding the possibility
of war between England and Germany, unfortun-
ately unfulfilled. Strauss could not quite prevent
the war with his Elektra. Here is the passage:
“ What Hofmannsthal and Strauss have done is
to take Klytæmnestra and Ægisthus, and by iden-
tifying them with everything evil and cruel, with
all that needs must hate the highest when it sees
it, with hideous domination and coercion of the
higher by the baser, with the murderous rage in
which the lust for a lifetime of orgiastic pleasure
turns on its slaves in the torture of its disap-
pointment, and the sleepless horror and misery of
its neurasthenia, to so rouse in us an overwhelm-
ing flood of wrath against it and a ruthless resolu-
tion to destroy it that Elektra's vengeance be-
comes holy to us, and we come to understand how
even the gentlest of us could wield the ax of Or-
estes or twist our firm fingers in the black hair of
Klytæmnestra to drag back her head and leave her
throat open to the stroke.
- This was a task hardly possible to an ancient
Greek, and not easy even for us, who are face to
[ 126 ]
Mariette Mazarin
face with the America of the Thaw case and the
European plutocracy of which that case was only
a trifling symptom, and that is the task that Hof-
mannsthal and Strauss have achieved Not even
in the third scene of Das Rheingold or in the
Klingsor scene in Parsifal is there such an atmos-
phere of malignant, cancerous evil as we get here
and that the power with which it is done is not
the power of the evil itself, but of the passion that
detests and must and finally can destroy that evil
is what makes the work great and makes us re-
joice in its horror.
“Whoever understands this, however vaguely,
will understand Strauss's music. I have often
said, when asked to state the case against the
fools and the money changers who are trying to
drive us into a war with Germany, that the case
consists of the single word “Beethoven. To-day
I should say with equal confidence “Strauss. In
this music drama Strauss has done for us with
utterly satisfying force what all the noblest pow-
ers of life within us are clamouring to have said
in protest against and defiance of the omnipresent
villainies of our civilization, and this is the highest
achievement of the highest art.”
Mme. Mazarin was the torch-bearer in New
York of this magnificent creation. She is, indeed,
[127]
Interpreters
the only singer who has ever appeared in the rôle
in America, and I have never heard Elektra in
Europe. However, those who have seen other in-
terpreters of the rôle assure me that Mme. Maz-
arin so far outdistanced them as to make compar-
ison impossible. This, in spite of the fact that
Elektra in French necessarily lost something of its
crude force, and through its mild-mannered con-
ductor at the Manhattan Opera House, who
seemed afraid to make a noise, a great deal more.
I did not make any notes about this performance
at the time, but now, seven years later, it is very
vivid to me, an unforgettable impression. Of
how many nights in the theatre can I say as much?
Diabolical ecstasy was the keynote of Mme.
Mazarin's interpretation, gradually developing
into utter frenzy. She afterwards assured me
that a visit to a madhouse had given her the in-
spiration for the gestures and steps of Elektra in
the terrible dance in which she celebrates Orestes's
bloody but righteous deed. The plane of hysteria
upon which this singer carried her heroine by her
pure nervous force, indeed reduced many of us in
the audience to a similar state. The conventional
operatic mode was abandoned; even the grand
manner of the theatre was flung aside; with a wide
sweep of the imagination, the singer cast the mem-
[128]

MARIETTE MAZARIN AS ELEKTRA
rom a photograph by Mishkin (1910)
Mariette Mazarin
ory of all such baggage from her, and proceeded
along vividly direct lines to make her impres-
sion.
The first glimpse of the half-mad princess,
creeping dirty and ragged, to the accompaniment
of cracking whips, across the terraced courtyard
of the palace, was indeed not calculated to stir
tears in the eyes. The picture was vile and re-
pugnant; so perhaps was the appeal to the sister
whose only wish was to bear a child, but Mme.
Mazarin had her design; her measurements were
well taken. In the wild cry to Agamemnon, the
dignity and pathos of the character were estab-
lished, and these qualities were later emphasized in
the scene of her meeting with Orestes, beautiful
pages in von Hofmannsthal's play and Strauss's
score. And in the dance of the poor demented
creature at the close the full beauty and power and
meaning of the drama were disclosed in a few incis-
ive strokes. Elektra's mind had indeed given way
under the strain of her sufferings, brought about
by her long waiting for vengeance, but it had
given way under the light of holy triumph.
Such indeed were the fundamentals of this tre-
mendously moving characterization, a character-
ization which one must place, perforce, in that
great memory gallery where hang the Mélisande of
[129]
Interpreters 1
Mary Garden, the Isolde of Olive Fremstad, and
the Boris Godunow of Feodor Chaliapine.
It was not alone in her acting that Mme. Maz-
arin walked on the heights. I know of no other
singer with the force or vocal equipment for this
difficult rôle. At the time this music drama was
produced its intervals were considered in the guise
of unrelated notes. It was the cry that the voice
parts were written without reference to the orches-
tral score, and that these wandered up and down
without regard for the limitations of a singer.
Since Elektra was first performed we have trav-
elled far, and now that we have heard The Night-
ingale of Strawinsky, for instance, perusal of
Strauss's score shows us a perfectly ordered and
understandable series of notes. Even now, how-
ever, there are few of our singers who could cope
with the music of Elektra without devoting a good
many months to its study, and more time to the
physical exercise needful to equip one with the
force necessary to carry through the undertaking.
Mme. Mazarin never faltered. She sang the notes
with astonishing accuracy; nay, more, with potent
vocal colour. Never did the orchestral flood o'er-
top her flow of sound. With consummate skill
she realized the composer's intentions as com-
pletely as she had those of the poet.
im
[ 130 ]
Mariette Mazarin
Those who were present at the first American
performance of this work will long bear the occa-
sion in mind. The outburst of applause which
followed the close of the play was almost hysterical
in quality, and after a number of recalls Mme.
Mazarin fainted before the curtain. Many in the
audience remained long enough to receive the re-
assuring news that she had recovered. As a re-
porter of musical doings on the “New York
Times," I sought information as to her condition
at the dressing-room of the artist. Somewhere
between the auditorium and the stage, in a pass-
ageway, I encountered Mrs. Patrick Campbell,
who, a short time before, had appeared at the Gar-
den Theatre in Arthur Symons's translation of
von Hofmannsthal's drama. Although we had
never met before, in the excitement of the moment
we became engaged in conversation, and I volun-
teered to escort her to Mme. Mazarin's room,
where she attempted to express her enthusiasm.
Then I asked her if she would like to meet Mr.
Hammerstein, and she replied that it was her
great desire at this moment to meet the impresario
and to thank him for the indelible impression this
evening in the theatre had given her. I led her to
the corner of the stage where he sat, in his high
hat, smoking his cigar, and I presented her to him.
1
[ 131 ]
Interpreters
“But Mrs. Campbell was introduced to me only
three minutes ago," he said. She stammered her
acknowledgment of the fact. “It's true," she
said. “I have been so completely carried out of
myself that I had forgotten!”
August 22, 1916.
[ 132 ]
Yvette Guilbert
“She sings of life, and mirth and all that moves
Man’s fancy in the carnival of loves;
And a chill shiver takes me as she sings
The pity of unpitied human things.”
Arthur Symons.
Yvette Guilbert
.
HE natural evolution of Gordon Craig's
theory of the stage finally brought him to
the point where he would dispense altogether
with the play and the actor. The artist-producer
would stand alone. Yvette Guilbert has accom-
plished this very feat, and accomplished it without
the aid of super-marionettes. She still uses songs
as her medium, but she has very largely discarded
the authors and composers of these songs, re-
creating them with her own charm and wit and
personality and brain. A song as Yvette Guilbert
sings it exists only for a brief moment. It does
not exist on paper, as you will discover if you
seek out the printed version, and it certainly does
not exist in the performance of any one else. Not
that most of her songs are not worthy material,
chosen as they are from the store-houses of a na-
tion's treasures, but that her interpretations are
so individual, so charged with deep personal feel-
ing, so emended, so added to, so embellished with
grunts, shrieks, squeaks, trills, spoken words, ex-
tra bars, or even added lines to the text; so per-
formed that their performance itself constitutes a
veritable (and, unfortunately, an extremely per-
ishable) work of art. Sometimes, indeed, it has
[ 135 ]
Interpreters
seemed to me that the genius of this remarkable
Frenchwoman could express itself directly, with-
out depending upon songs.
She could have given no more complete demon-
stration of the inimitability of this genius than by
her recent determination to lecture on the art of
interpreting songs. Never has Yvette been more
fascinating, never more authoritative than during
those three afternoons at Maxine Elliott's Thea-
tre, devoted ostensibly to the dissection of her
method, but before she had unpacked a single in-
strument it must have been perfectly obvious to
every auditor in the hall that she was taking great
pains to explain just how impossible it would be
for any one to follow in her footsteps, for any one
to imitate her astonishing career. With evident
candour and a multiplicity of detail she told the
story of how she had built up her art. She told
how she studied the words of her songs, how she
planned them, what a large part the plasticity
of her body played in their interpretation, and
when she was done all she had said only went to
prove that there is but one Yvette Guilbert,
She stripped all pretence from her vocal method,
explained how she sang now in her throat, now
falsetto. “When I wish to make a certain sound
for a certain effect I practise by myself until I
11
[136]
Yvette Guilbert
20
succeed in making it. That is my vocal method.
I never had a teacher. I would not trust my voice
to a teacher!” Her method of learning to breathe
was a practical one. She took the refrain of a lit-
tle French song to work upon. She made herself
learn to sing the separate phrases of this song
without breathing; then two phrases together, etc.,
until she could sing the refrain straight through
without taking a breath. Ratan Devi has told me
that Indian singers, who never study vocalization
in the sense that we do, are adepts in the art of
breathing. “They breathe naturally and with no
difficulty because it never occurs to them to distort
a phrase by interrupting it for breath. They
have respect for the phrase and sing it through.
When you study with an occidental music teacher
you will find that he will mark little Vs on the
page indicating where the pupil may take breath
until he can capture the length of the phrase.
This method would be incomprehensible to a
Hindu or to any other oriental.” The wonderful
breath control of Hebrew cantors who sing long
and florid phrases without interruption is another
case of the same kind.
Mme. Guilbert finds her effects everywhere, in
nature, in art, in literature. When she was com-
posing her interpretation of La Soularde she
[ 137 ]
Interpreters
searched in vain for the cry of the thoughtless
children as they stone the poor drunken hag, until
she discovered it, quite by accident one evening at
the Comédie Française, in the shriek of Mounet-
Sully in Oedipe-Roi. In studying the Voyage à
Bethléem, one of the most popular songs of her
répertoire, she felt the need of breaking the monot-
ony of the stanzas. It was her own idea to inter-
polate the watchman's cry of the hours, and to add
the jubilant coda, Il est né, le divin enfant, ex-
tracted from another song of the same period.
With Guilbert nothing is left to chance. Do you
remember one of her most celebrated chansons,
Notre Petite Compagne of Jules Laforgue, which
she sings so strikingly to a Waldteufel waltz,
Je suis la femme,
On me connait.
Her interpretation belies the lines. She has con-
trived to put all the mystery of the sphinx into
her rendering of them. How has she done this?
By means of the cigarette which she smokes
throughout the song. She has confessed as much.
Always on the lookout for material which will as-
sist her in perfecting her art she has observed
that when a woman smokes a cigarette her expres-
sion becomes inscrutable. Her effects are cumu-
[ 138 ]
Yvette Guilbert
lative, built up out of an inexhaustible fund of de-
tail. In those songs in which she professes to do
the least she is really doing the most. Have you
heard her sing Le Lien Serré and witnessed the
impression she produces by sewing, a piece of ac-
tion not indicated in the text of the song? Have
you heard her sing L'Hotel Numero 3, one of the
the Divan Japonais? In this song she does not
move her body; she scarcely makes a gesture, and
yet her crisp manner of utterance, her subtle em-
phasis, her angular pose, are all that are needed to
expose the humour of the ditty. Much the same
comment could be made in regard to her interpre-
tation of Le Jeune Homme Triste. The apache
songs, on the contrary, are replete with gesture.
)
head before he goes to the guillotine? Again
Yvette has given away her secret: “Naturally I
have deep feelings. To be an artist one must feel
intensely, but I find that it is sometimes well to give
these feelings a spur. In this instance I have sewn
weights into the lining of the cap of the apache.
When I drop the cap it falls with a thud and I am
reminded instinctively of the fall of the knife of
the guillotine. This trick always furnishes me
with the thrill I need and I can never sing the
1
1
Y
[ 139 ]
Interpreters
last lines without tears in my eyes and voice."
It seems ungracious to speak of Yvette Guilbert
as a great artist. She is so much less than that
and so much more. She has dedicated her auto-
biography to God and it is certain that she be-
lieves her genius to be a holy thing. No one else
on the stage to-day has worked so faithfully, or
so long, no one else has so completely fulfilled her
obligations to her art, and certainly no one else is
so nearly human. She compasses the chásm be-
tween the artist and the public with ease. She is
even able to do this in America, speaking a for-
eign tongue, for it has only been recently that she
has learned to speak English freely and she rarely
sings in our language. Her versatility, it seems
to me, is limitless; she expresses the whole world
in terms of her own personality. She never lacks
for a method of expression for the effect she de-
sires to give, and she gives all, heart and brains
alike. Now she is raucous, now tender; have you
ever seen so sweet a smile; have you ever observed
so coarse a mien? She can run the gamut from
a sleek priest to a child (as in C'est le Mai), from
a jealous husband to a guilty wife (Le Jaloux et
la Menteuse), from an apache (Ma Tête) to a
charming old lady (Lisette).
It is easy to liken the art of this marvellous
[ 140 ]

YVETTE GUILBERT
from a photograph by Alice Boughton
Yvette Guilbert
woman to something concrete, to the drawings of
Toulouse-Lautrec or Steinlen, the posters of
Chéret . . . and there is indeed a suggestion of
these men in the work of Yvette Guilbert. The
same broad lines are there, the same ample style,
the same complete effect, but there is more. In
certain phases of her talent, the gamine, the
apache, the gavroche, she reflects the spirit of the
inspiration which kindled these painters into crea-
tion, but in other phases, of which Lisette, Les
Cloches de Nantes, La Passion, or Le Cycle du
Vin are the expression, you may more readily com-
pare her style with that of Watteau, Eugene Car-
rière, Félicien Rops, or Boucher. . . . She takes
us by the hand through the centuries, offering us
the results of a vast amount of study, a vast
amount of erudition, and a vast amount of work.
In so many fine strokes she evokes an epoch. She
has studied the distinction between a curtsey which
precedes the recital of a fable of La Fontaine and
a poem of Francis Jammes. She has closely scru-
tinized pictures in neglected corridors of the
Louvre to learn the manner in which a cavalier
lifts his hat in various periods. There are those
who complain that she emphasizes the dramatic
side of the old French songs, which possibly sur-
vive more clearly under more naïve treatment.
[ 141 ]
Interpreters
Her justification in this instance is the complete
success of her method. The songs serve her pur-
pose, even supposing she does not serve theirs.
But a more valid cause for grievance can be urged
against her. Unfortunately and ill-advisedly she
has occasionally carried something of the scientific
into an otherwise delightful matinée, importing a
lecturer, like Jean Beck of Bryn Mawr, to analyze
and describe the music of the middle ages, or even
becoming pedantic and professorial herself; some-
times Yvette preaches or, still worse, permits some
one else, dancer, violinist, or singer to usurp her
place on the platform. These interruptions are
sorry moments indeed but such lapses are forgiven
with an almost divine graciousness when Yvette in-
terprets another song. Then the dull or scholarly
interpolations are forgotten.
I cannot, indeed, know where to begin to praise
her or where to stop. My feelings for her per-
formances (which I have seen and heard whenever
I have been able during the past twelve years in
Chicago, New York, London, and Paris) are un-
equivocal. There are moments when I am certain
that her rendering of La Passion is her supreme
achievement and there are moments when I prefer
to see her as the unrestrained purveyor of the
art of the chansonniers of Montmartre - unre-
[ 142 ]
Yvette Guilbert
77
strained, I say, and yet it is evident to me that
she has refined her interpretations of these songs,
revived twenty-five years after she first sang them,
bestowed on them a spirit which originally she
could not give them. From the beginning Ma
Tête, La Soularde, La Glu, La Pierreuse, and the
others were drawn as graphically as the pictures
of Steinlen, but age has softened her interpreta-
tion of them. What formerly was striking has
now become beautiful, what was always astonish-
ing has become a masterpiece of artistic expres-
sion. Once, indeed, these pictures were sharply
etched, but latterly they have been lithographed,
drawn softly on stone. . . . I have said that I do
not know in what song, in what mood, I prefer
Yvette Guilbert. I can never be certain but if I
were asked to choose a programme I think I should
include in it C'est le Mai, La Légende de St. Nico-
las, Le Roi a Fait Battre Tambour, Les Cloches
de Nantes, Le Cycle du Vin, Le Lien Serré, La.
Glu, Lisette, La Femme, Que l'Amour Cause de
Peine, and Oh, how many others!
All art must be beautiful, says Mme. Guilbert,
and she has realized the meaning of what might
have been merely a phrase; no matter how sordid
or trivial her subject she has contrived to make of
it something beautiful. She is not, therefore, a
[143]
Interpreters
realist in any literal signification of the word (al-
though I doubt if any actress on the stage can
evoke more sense of character than she) because
she always smiles and laughs and weeps with the
women she represents; she sympathizes with them,
she humanizes them, where another interpreter
would coldly present them for an audience to take
or to leave, exposing them to cruel inspection.
Even in her interpretation of heartless women it is
always to our sense of humour that she appeals,
while in her rendering of Ma Tête and La Pier-
reuse she strikes directly at our hearts. Zola once
told Mme. Guilbert that the apaches were the log-
ical descendants of the old chevaliers of France.
“ They are the only men we have now who will
fight over a woman!” he said. When you hear
Mme. Guilbert call “ Pi-ouit!” you will readily
perceive that she understands what Zola meant.
Wonderful Yvette, who has embodied so many
pleasant images in the theatre, who has expressed
to the world so much of the soul of France, so
much of the soul of art itself, but, above all, so
much of the soul of humanity. It is not alone
General Booth who has made friends of " drabs
from the alley-ways and drug fiends pale — Minds
still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail! Vermin-
eaten saints with mouldy breath, unwashed legions
[ 144 ]
Yvette Guilbert
with the ways of death”: these are all friends of
Yvette Guilbert too. And when Balzac wrote the
concluding paragraph of “Massimila Doni” he
may have foreseen the later application of the
lines. . . . Surely “the peris, nymphs, fairies,
sylphs of the olden time, the muses of Greece, the
marble Virgins of the Certosa of Pavia, the Day
and Night of Michael Angelo, the little angels that
Bellini first drew at the foot of church paintings,
and to whom Raphael gave such divine form at the
foot of the Vierge au donataire, and of the Ma-
donna freezing at Dresden; Orcagna's captivating
maidens in the Church of Or San Michele at Flor-
ence, the heavenly choirs on the tombs of St. Se-
bald at Nuremberg, several Virgins in the Duomo
at Milan, the hordes of a hundred Gothic cathe-
drals, the whole nation of figures who break their
forms to come to you, O all-embracing artists —"
surely, surely, all these hover over Yvette Guil-
bert.
i
April 16, 1917.
[ 145 ]
111
Waslav Nijinsky
12 V
Curred a
“A thing of beauty is a boy forever.”
Allen Norton.
Waslav Nijinsky
CVERGE DE DIAGHILEW brought the dregs
of the Russian Ballet to New York and,
after a first greedy gulp, inspired by curi-
osity to get a taste of this highly advertised bev-
erage, the public drank none too greedily. The
scenery and the costumes, designed by Bakst,
Roerich, Benois, and Larionow, and the music of
Rimsky-Korsakow, Tcherepnine, Schumann, Boro-
dine, Balakirew, and Strawinsky -- especially
Strawinsky — arrived. It was to be deplored,
however, that Bakst had seen fit to replace the
original décor of Scheherazade by a new setting
in rawer colours, in which the flaming orange
fairly burned into the ultramarine and green
(readers of “ A Rebours ” will remember that des
Esseintes designed a room something like this).
A few of the dancers came, but of the best not a
single one. Nor was Fokine, the dancer-producer,
who devised the choregraphy for The Firebird,
Cléopâtre, and Petrouchka, among the number, al-
though his presence had been announced and ex-
pected. To those enthusiasts, and they included
practically every one who had seen the Ballet in its
greater glory, who had prepared their friends for
an overwhemingly brilliant spectacle, over-using
T1
[ 149 ]
Interpreters
the phrase, “ a perfect union of the arts," the early
performances in January, 1916, at the Century
Theatre were a great disappointment. Often
had we urged that the individual played but a small
part in this new and gorgeous entertainment, but
now we were forced to admit that the ultimate
glamour was lacking in the ensemble, which was
obviously no longer the glad, gay entity it once
had been.
The picture was still there, the music (not al-
ways too well played) but the interpretation was
mediocre. The agile Miassine could scarcely be
called either a great dancer or a great mime. He
had been chosen by Diaghilew for the rôle of
Joseph in Richard Strauss's version of the Po-
tiphar legend but, during the course of a London
season carried through without the co-operation
of Nijinsky, this was the only part allotted to
him. In New York he interpreted, not without
humour and with some technical skill, the inciden-
tal divertissement from Rimsky-Korsakow's opera,
The Snow-Maiden, against a vivid background by
Larionow. The uninspired choregraphy of this
ballet was also ascribed to Miassine by the pro-
gramme, although probably in no comminatory
spirit. In the small rôle of Eusebius in Carneval
YYY
[ 150 ]
Waslav Nijinsky
and in the negligible part of the Prince in The
Firebird he was entirely satisfactory, but it was
impertinent of the direction to assume that he
would prove an adequate substitute for Nijinsky
in rôles to which that dancer had formerly applied
his extremely finished art.
Adolf Bolm contributed his portraits of the
Moor in Petrouchka, of Pierrot in Carneval, and
of the Chief Warrior in the dances from Prince
Igor. These three rôles completely express the
sharply define his limitations. His other parts,
Dakon in Daphnis et Chloë --- Sadko, the Prince in
Thamar, Amoun in Cléopâtre, the Slave in Sche-
herazade, and Pierrot in Papillons, are only varia-
tions on the three afore-mentioned themes. His
friends often confuse his vitality and abundant
energy with a sense of characterization and a skill
as a dancer which he does not possess. For the
most part he is content to express himself by
stamping his heels and gnashing his teeth, and
when, as in Cléopâtre, he attempts to convey a
more subtle meaning to his general gesture, he is
he
Dhe ping ;. he is
useful member of the organization, but he could not
make or unmake a season; nor could Gavrilow, who
[ 151 ]
Interpreters
is really a fine dancer in his limited way, although
he is unfortunately lacking in magnetism and any
power of characterization.
But it was on the distaff side of the cast that
the Ballet seemed pitifully undistinguished, even
to those who did not remember the early Paris sea-
sons when the roster included the names of Anna
Pavlowa, Tamara Karsavina, Caterina Gheltzer,
and Ida Rubinstein. The leading feminine dancer
of the troupe when it gave its first exhibitions in
New York was Xenia Maclezova, who had not, so
far as my memory serves, danced in any London
or Paris season of the Ballet (except for one gala
performance at the Paris Opéra which preceded the
American tour), unless in some very menial ca-
pacity. This dancer, like so many others, had
LU
Bernhardt once told a reporter that the acquire-
ment of technique never did any harm to an artist,
and if one were not an artist it was not a bad thing
to have. I have forgotten how many times Mlle.
Maclezova could pirouette without touching the
toe in the air to the floor, but it was some pro-
digious number. She was past mistress of the
entrechat and other mysteries of the ballet acad-
emy. Here, however, her knowledge of her art
seemed to end, in the subjugation of its very mech-
[ 152 ]
Wasla v Nijinsky
1
anism. She was very nearly lacking in those quali-
ties of grace, poetry, and imagination with which
great artists are freely endowed, and although
she could not actually have been a woman of more
than average weight, she often conveyed to the
spectator an impression of heaviness. In such a
work as The Firebird she really offended the eye.
Far from interpreting the ballet, she gave you an
idea of how it should not be done.
Her season with the Russians was terminated in
very short order, and Lydia Lopoukova, who hap-
pened to be in America, and who, indeed, had al-
ready been engaged for certain rôles, was rushed
into her vacant slippers. Now Mme. Lopoukova
had charm as a dancer, whatever her deficiencies
in technique. In certain parts, notably as Colom-
bine in Carneval, she assumed a roguish demeanor
which was very fetching. As La Ballerine in Pe-
trouchka, too, she met all the requirements of the
action. But in Le Spectre de la Rose, Les Sylph-
ides, The Firebird, and La Princesse Enchantée,
she floundered hopelessly out of her element.
Tchernicheva, one of the lesser but more stead-
fast luminaries of the Ballet, in the rôles for which
she was cast, the principal Nymph in L’Aprés-midi
d'un Faune, Echo in Narcisse, and the Princess in
The Firebird, more than fulfilled her obligations to
(D
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S
the ensemble, but her opportunities in these mimic
plays were not of sufficient importance to enable
her to carry the brunt of the performances on her
lovely shoulders. Flore Revalles was drafted, I
understand, from a French opera company. I
have been told that she sings — Tosca is one of her
rôles — as well as she dances. That may very
well be. To impressionable spectators she seemed
a real femme fatale. Her Cléopâtre suggested to
me a Parisian cocotte much more than an Egyp-
tian queen. It would be blasphemy to compare
her with Ida Rubinstein in this rôle — Ida Rubin-
stein, who was true Aubrey Beardsley! In Thamar
and Zobeide, both to a great extent dancing rôles,
Mlle. Revalles, both as dancer and actress, was but
a frail substitute for Karsavina.
The remainder of the company was adequate,
but not large, and the ensemble was by no means
as brilliant as those who had seen the Ballet in
London or Paris might have expected. Nor in
the absence of Fokine, that master of detail, were
performances sufficiently rehearsed. There was,
of course, explanation in plenty for this disinte-
gration. Gradually, indeed, the Ballet as it had
existed in Europe had suffered a change. Only a
miracle and a fortune combined would have suf-
ficed to hold the original company intact. It was
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Wasla v Nijinsky
not held intact, and the war made further inroads
on its integrity. Then, for the trip to America
many of the dancers probably were inclined to de-
mand double pay. Undoubtedly, Serge de Diag-
hilew had many more troubles than those which
were celebrated in the public prints, and it must
be admitted that, even with his weaker company,
he gave us finer exhibitions of stage art than had
previously been even the exception here.
In the circumstances, however, certain pieces,
which were originally produced when the com-
pany was in the flush of its first glory, should never
have been presented here at all. It was not the
part of reason, for example, to pitchfork on the
Century stage an indifferent performance of Le
Parilion d'Armide, in which Nijinsky once dis-
ported himself as the favourite slave, and which, as
a matter of fact, requires a company of virtuosi
to make it a passable diversion. Cléopâtre, in its
original form with Nijinsky, Fokine, Pavlowa,
Ida Rubinstein, and others, hit all who saw it
square between the eyes. The absurdly expur-
gated edition, with its inadequate cast, offered to
New York, was but the palest shadow of the sen-
suous entertainment that had aroused all Paris,
from the Batignolles to the Bastille. The music,
the setting, the costumes — what else was left to
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Interpreters
celebrate? The altered choregraphy, the deplor-
able interpretation, drew tears of rage from at
least one pair of eyes. It was quite incompre-
hensible also why The Firebird, which depends on
the grace and poetical imagination of the filmiest
and most fairy-like actress-dancer, should have
found a place in the répertoire. It is the dancing
equivalent of a coloratura soprano rôle in opera.
Thankful, however, for the great joy of having re-
heard Strawinsky's wonderful score, I am willing
to overlook this tactical error.
All things considered, it is small wonder that a
large slice of the paying population of New York
tired of the Ballet in short order. One reason
for this cessation of interest was the constant rep-
etition of ballets. In London and Paris the sea-
sons as a rule have been shorter, and on certain
evenings of the week opera has taken the place of
the dance. It has been rare indeed that a single
work has been repeated more than three or four
times during an engagement. I have not found it
stupid to listen to and look at perhaps fifteen per-
formances of varying degrees of merit of Pet-
rouchka, Scheherazade, Carneval, and the dances
from Prince Igor; I would rather see the Russian
Ballet repeatedly, even as it existed in America,
than four thousand five hundred and six Broad-
[ 156 ]
Wasla v Nijinsky
way plays or seventy-three operas at the Metro-
politan once, but I dare say I may look upon my-
self as an exception.
At any rate, when the company entered upon a
four weeks' engagement at the Metropolitan Opera
House, included in the regular subscription sea-
son of opera, the subscribers groaned; many of
them groaned aloud, and wrote letters to the man-
agement and to the newspapers. To be sure, dur-
ing the tour which had followed the engagement
at the Century the répertoire had been increased,
but the company remained the same — until the
coming of Waslav Nijinsky.
When America was first notified of the impend-
ing visit of the Russian Ballet it was also promised
that Waslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina
would head the organization. It was no fault of
the American direction or of Serge de Diaghilew
that they did not do so. Various excuses were
advanced for the failure of Karsavina to forsake
her family in Russia and to undertake the journey
to the United States but, whatever the cause, there
seems to remain no doubt that she refused to come.
As for Nijinsky, he, with his wife, had been a
prisoner in an Austrian detention camp since the
beginning of the war. Wheels were set grinding
but wheels grind slowly in an epoch of interna-
T
1
[ 1571
Interpreters
tional bloodshed, and it was not until March, 1916,
that the Austrian ambassador at Washington was
able to announce that Nijinsky had been set
free.
I do not believe the coming to this country of
any other celebrated person had been more widely
advertised, although P. T. Barnum may have gone
further in describing the charitable and vocal
qualities of Jenny Lind. Nijinsky had been ex-
travagantly praised, not only by the official press
representatives but also by eminent critics and pri-
vate persons, in adjectives which seemed to pre-
clude any possibility of his living up to them. I
myself had been among the pæan singers. · I had
thrust “half-man, half-god ” into print. “A
flame!” cried some one. Another, “A jet of
water from a fountain!" Such men in the street
as had taken the trouble to consider the subject at
all very likely expected the arrival of some stupen-
dous and immortal monstrosity, a gravity-defying
being with sixteen feet (at least), who bounded like
a rubber ball, never touching the solid stage except
at the beginning and end of the evening's perform-
ance.
Nijinsky arrived in April. Almost immediately
he gave vent to one of those expressions of temper-
ament often associated with interpretative genius,
[ 158 ]
Waslav Nijinsky
the kind of thing I have described at some length
in “ Music and Bad Manners.” He was not at all
pleased with the Ballet as he found it. Inter-
viewed, he expressed his displeasure in the news-
papers. The managers of the organization wisely
remained silent, and a controversy was avoided,
but the public had received a suggestion of petu-
lance which could not contribute to the popularity
of the new dancer.
Nijinsky danced for the first time in New York
on the afternoon of April 12, at the Metropolitan
Opera House. The pieces in which he appeared
on that day were Le Spectre de la Rose and Pet-
rouchka. Some of us feared that eighteen months
in a detention camp would have stamped their
mark on the dancer. As a matter of fact his con-
nection with the Russian Ballet had been severed
in 1913, a year before the war began. I can say
for myself that I was probably a good deal more
appearance in America. It would have been a
cruel disappointment to me to have discovered
that his art had perished during the intervening
were soon dissipated. A few seconds after he as
the Rose Ghost had bounded through the window,
it was evident that he was in possession of all his
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Interpreters
powers; nay, more, that he had added to the re-
finement and polish of his style. I had called Ni-
jinsky's dancing perfection in years gone by, be-
cause it so far surpassed that of his nearest rival;
now he had surpassed himself. True artists, in-
deed, have a habit of accomplishing this feat. I
may call to your attention the careers of Olive
Fremstad, Yvette Guilbert, and Marie Tempest.
Later I learned that this first impression might
be relied on. Nijinsky, in sooth, has now no rivals
upon the stage. One can only compare him with
himself!
The Weber-Gautier dance-poem, from the very
beginning until the end, when he leaps out of the
window of the girl's chamber into the night, affords
this great actor-dancer one of his most grateful
opportunities. It is in this very part, perhaps,
which requires almost unceasing exertion for
nearly twelve minutes, that Nijinsky's powers of
co-ordination, mental, imaginative, muscular, are
best displayed. His dancing is accomplished in
that flowing line, without a break between poses
and gestures, which is the despair of all novices and
almost all other virtuosi. After a particularly
difficult leap or toss of the legs or arms, it is a
marvel to observe how, without an instant's pause
to regain his poise, he rhythmically glides into the
Y
[ 160 ]
Wasla v Nijinsky
succeeding gesture. His dancing has the un-
broken quality of music, the balance of great paint-
ing, the meaning of fine literature, and the emotion
inherent in all these arts. There is something of
transmutation in his performances; he becomes
an alembic, transforming movement into a finely
wrought and beautiful work of art. The danc-
ing of Nijinsky is first an imaginative triumph,
and the spectator, perhaps, should not be inter-
ested in further dissection of it, but a more inti-
mate observer must realize that behind this the
effect produced depends on his supreme command
of his muscles. It is not alone the final informing
and magnetized imaginative quality that most
other dancers lack; it is also just this muscular
co-ordination. Observe Gavrilow in the piece
under discussion, in which he gives a good imita-
tion of Nijinsky's general style, and you will see
that he is unable to maintain this rhythmic con-
tinuity.
Nijinsky's achievements become all the more
remarkable when one remembers that he is work-
ing with an imperfect physical medium. Away
from the scene he is an insignificant figure, short
and ineffective in appearance. Aside from the
pert expression of his eyes, he is like a dozen other
young Russians. Put him unintroduced into a
[ 161 1
Interpreters
drawing-room with Jacques Copeau, Orchidée,
Doris Keane, Bill Haywood, Edna Kenton, the
Baroness de Meyer, Paulet Thevenaz, the Mar-
chesa Casati, Marcel Duchamp, Cathleen Nesbitt,
H. G. Wells, Anna Pavlowa, Rudyard Chenne-
vière, Vladimir Rebikow, Henrie Waste, and Isa-
dora Duncan, and he probably would pass entirely
unnoticed. On the stage it may be observed that
the muscles of his legs are overdeveloped and his
ankles are too large; that is, if you are in the
mood for picking flaws, which most of us are not in
the presence of Nijinsky in action. Here, how-
ever, stricture halts confounded; his head is set
on his shoulders in a manner to give satisfaction
to a great sculptor, and his torso, with its slender
waist line, is quite beautiful. On the stage, Nijin-
sky makes of himself what he will. He can look
tall or short, magnificent or ugly, fascinating or
repulsive. Like so many interpretative artists,
he remoulds himself for his public appearances. It
is under the electric light in front of the painted
canvas that he becomes a personality, and that
personality is governed only by the scenario of the
ballet he is representing.
From the day of Nijinsky's arrival, the ensemble
of the Ballet improved; somewhat of the sponta-
neity of the European performances was regained;
[ 162 ]
Waslav Nijinsky
VI
a good deal of the glamour was recaptured; the
loose lines were gathered taut, and the choregra-
phy of Fokine (Nijinsky is a director as well as a
dancer) was restored to some of its former power.
He has appeared in nine rôles in New York during
the two short seasons in which he has been seen
with the Russian Ballet here: the Slave in Scheher-
azade, Petrouchka, the Rose Ghost, the Faun, the
Harlequin in Carneval, Narcisse, Till Eulenspiegel,
and the principal male rôles of La Princesse En-
chantée and Les Sylphides. To enjoy the art of
Nijinsky completely, to fully appreciate his genius,
it is necessary not only to see him in a variety of
parts, but also to see him in the same rôle many
times.
Study the detail of his performance in Scheher-
azade, for example. Its precision alone is note-
worthy. Indeed, precision is a quality we see ex-
posed so seldom in the theatre that when we find
it we are almost inclined to hail it as genius. The
rôle of the Slave in this ballet is perhaps Nijin-
sky's scenic masterpiece - exotic eroticism ex-
pressed in so high a key that its very existence
seems incredible on our puritanic stage, and yet
with such great art (the artist always expresses
himself with beauty) that the intention is softened
by the execution. Before the arrival of this dan-
[ 163 ]
Interpreters
TV1
cer, Scheherazade had become a police court scan-
dal. There had been talk of a “ Jim Crow" per-
formance in which the blacks were to be separated
from the whites in the harem, and I am told that
our provincial police magistrates even wanted to
replace the “ mattresses ” — so were the divans of
the sultanas described in court — by rocking
chairs! But to the considerably more vivid Sche-
herazade of Nijinsky no exception was taken.
This strange, curious, head-wagging, simian crea-
ture, scarce human, wriggled through the play,
leaving a long streak of lust and terror in his wake.
Never did Nijinsky as the Negro Slave touch the
Sultana, but his subtle and sensuous fingers flut-
tered close to her flesh, clinging once or twice
questioningly to a depending tassel. Pierced by
the javelins of the Sultan's men, the Slave's death
struggle might have been revolting and gruesome.
Instead, Nijinsky carried the eye rapidly upward
with his tapering feet as they balanced for the
briefest part of a second straight high in the air,
only to fall inert with so brilliantly quick a move-
ment that the æsthetic effect grappled successfully
with the feeling of disgust which might have been
aroused. This was acting, this was characteriza-
tion, so completely merged in rhythm that the re-
sult became a perfect whole, and not a combina-
[ 164 ]
Waslav Nijinsky
tion of several intentions, as so often results from
the work of an actor-dancer.
The heart-breaking Petrouchka, the roguish
Harlequin, the Chopiniac of Les Sylphides,- all
were offered to our view; and Narcisse, in which
Nijinsky not only did some very beautiful dancing,
but posed (as the Greek youth admired himself
in the mirror of the pool) with such utter and ar-
resting grace that even here he awakened a defi-
nite thrill. In La Princesse Enchantée he merely
danced, but how he danced! Do you who saw him
still remember those flickering fingers and toes?
“ He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his
feet, he teacheth with his fingers," is written in the
Book of Proverbs, and the writer might have had
in mind Nijinsky in La Princesse Enchantée. All
these parts were differentiated, all completely real-
ized, in the threefold intricacy of this baffling art,
which perhaps is not an art at all until it is so real-
ized, when its plastic, rhythmic, and histrionic ele-
ments become an entity.
After a summer in Spain and Switzerland, with-
out Nijinsky, the Russian Ballet returned to
America for a second season, opening at the Man-
hattan Opera House October 16, 1916. It is al-
ways a delight to hear and see performances in this
theatre, and it was found that the brilliance of the
[ 165 ]
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Ballet was much enhanced by its new frame. The
season, however, opened with a disappointment.
It had been announced that Nijinsky would dance
on the first night his choregraphic version of Rich-
ard Strauss's tone-poem, Till Eulenspiegel. It is
not the first time that a press agent has made
a false prophecy. While rehearsing the new
work, Nijinsky twisted his ankle, and during the
first week of the engagement he did not appear at
all. This was doubly unfortunate, because the
company was weaker than it had been the previous
season, lacking both Miassine and Tchernicheva.
The only novelty (for America) produced during
the first week was an arrangement of the divertis-
sement from Rimsky-Korsakow's opera, Sadko,
which had already been given a few times in Paris
and London by the Ballet, never with conspicuous
success. The second week of the season, Nijinsky
returned to appear in three rôles, the Faun, Till
Eulenspiegel, and the Slave in Scheherazade. Of
his performance to Debussy's lovely music I have
written elsewhere; nor did this new vision cause me
to revise my opinions.
Till Eulenspiegel is the only new ballet the Rus-
sians have produced in America. (Soleil de Nuit
was prepared in Europe, and performed once at
the Paris Opéra before it was seen in New York.
[166]
Wasla v Nijinsky
Besides, it was an arrangement of dances from an
opera which is frequently given in Russia and
which has been presented at the Opéra-Comique in
Paris.) The chef d'orchestre, Pierre Monteux,
refused to direct performances of this work, on
the ground that the composer was not only a Ger-
man, but a very much alive and active German
patriot. On the occasions, therefore, that Till
was performed in New York, the orchestra strug-
gled along under the baton of Dr. Anselm Goetzl.
In selecting this work and in his arrangement of
the action Nijinsky was moved, no doubt, by con-
sideration for the limitations of the company as
it existed,— from which he was able to secure the
effects he desired. The scenery and costumes by
Robert E. Jones, of New York, were decidedly di-
verting - the best work this talented young man
has done, I think. Over a deep, spreading back-
ground of ultramarine, the crazy turrets of me-
diæval castles leaned dizzily to and fro. The cos-
tumes were exaggerations of the exaggerated
fashions of the Middle Ages. Mr. Jones added
feet of stature to the already elongated peaked
headdresses of the period. The trains of the vel-
vet robes, which might have extended three yards,
were allowed to trail the full depth of the Manhat-
tan Opera House stage. The colours were oranges,
>
[167]
Interpreters
reds, greens, and blues, those indeed of Bakst's
Scheherazade, but so differently disposed that they
made an entirely dissimilar impression. The effect
reminded one spectator of a Spanish omelet.
In arranging the scenario, Nijinsky followed in
almost every detail Wilhelm Klatte's description
of the meaning of the music, which is printed in
programme books whenever the tone-poem is per-
formed, without Strauss's authority, but sometimes
with his sanction. Nijinsky was quite justified in
altering the end of the work, which hangs the
rogue-hero, into another practical joke. His ver-
sion of this episode fits the music and, in the orig-
inal Till Eulenspiegel stories, Till is not hanged,
but dies in bed. The keynote of Nijinsky's inter-
pretation was gaiety. He was as utterly picar-
esque as the work itself; he reincarnated the spirit
of Gil Blas; indeed, a new quality crept into stage
expression through this characterization. Mar-
garet Wycherly, one of the most active admirers
of the dancer, told me after the first performance
that she felt that he had for the first time leaped
into the hearts of the great American public, whose
appreciation of his subtler art as expressed in
Narcisse, Petrouchka, and even Scheherazade, had
been more moderate. There were those who pro-
tested that this was not the Till of the German
[ 168 ]

WASLAV NIJINSKY IN DEBUSSY'S JEUX (1913)
Waslav Nijinsky
legends, but any actor who attempts to give form
to a folk or historical character, or even a char-
acter derived from fiction, is forced to run counter
to many an observer's preconceived ideas.
“ It is an error to believe that pantomime is
merely a way of doing without words," writes Ar-
thur Symons, “ that it is merely the equivalent of
words. Pantomime is thinking overheard. It be-
gins and ends before words have formed them-
selves, in a deeper consciousness than that of
speech. And it addresses itself, by the artful lim-
itations of its craft, to universal human expe-
rience, knowing that the moment it departs from
those broad lines it will become unintelligible. It
risks existence on its own perfection, as the rope-
dancer does, to whom a false step means a down-
fall. And it appeals democratically to people of
all nations. . . . And pantomime has that mystery
which is one of the requirements of true art. To
watch it is like dreaming. How silently, in
dreams, one gathers the unheard sounds of words
from the lips that do but make pretence of saying
them! And does not every one know that terrify-
ing impossibility of speaking which fastens one to
the ground for the eternity of a second, in what
is the new, perhaps truer, computation of time in
dreams? Something like that sense of suspense
[ 169 ]
Interpreters
seems to hang over the silent actors in pantomime,
giving them a nervous exaltation, which has its
subtle, immediate effect upon us, in tragic and
comic situation. The silence becomes an atmos-
phere, and with a very curious power of giving
distinction to form and motion. I do not see why
people should ever break silence on the stage ex-
cept to speak poetry. Here, in pantomime, you
have a gracious, expressive silence, beauty of ges-
ture, a perfectly discreet appeal to the emotions,
a transposition of the world into an elegant ac-
cepted convention.”
Arthur Symons wrote these words before he had
seen the Russian Ballet, before the Russian Ballet,
as we know it, existed, indeed, before Nijinsky
had begun to dance in public, and he felt that the
addition of poetry and music to pantomime — the
Wagner music-drama in other words -- brought
about a perfect combination of the arts. Never-
marks to the present instance. There is, indeed,
the quality of a dream about the characters Ni-
jinsky presents to us. I remember once, at
a performance of the Russian Ballet, I sat in a
box next to a most intelligent man, a writer him-
self; I was meeting him for the first time, and he
was seeing the Ballet for the first time. Before the
[170]
Waslav Nijinsky
curtain rose he had told me that dancing and
pantomime were very pretty to look at, but that he
found no stimulation in watching them, no mental
and spiritual exaltation, such as might follow a
performance of Hamlet. Having seen Nijinsky, I
could not agree with him — and this indifferent ob-
server became that evening himself a fervent disci-
ple of the Ballet. For Nijinsky gave him, he
found, just what his ideal performance of Shake-
speare's play might have given him, a basis for
dreams, for thinking, for poetry. The ennobling
effect of all great and perfect art, after the pri-
mary emotion, seems to be to set our minds wander-
ing in a thousand channels, to suggest new outlets.
Pater's experience before the Monna Lisa is only
unique in its intense and direct expression.
No writer, no musician, no painter, can feel
deep emotion before a work of art without ex-
pressing it in some way, although the expression
may be a thousand leagues removed from the in-
spiration. And how few of us can view the art of
Nijinsky without emotion! To the painter he
gives a new sense of proportion, to the musician
a new sense of rhythm, while to the writer he must
perforce immediately suggest new words; better
still, new meanings for old words. Dance, panto-
'mimė, acting, harmony, all these divest themselves
0
[171]
Interpreters
of their worn-out accoutrements and appear, as if
clothed by magic, in garments of unheard-of nov-
elty; hue, texture, cut, and workmanship are all a
surprise to us. We look enraptured, we go away
enthralled, and perhaps even unconsciously a new
quality creeps into our own work. It is the same
glamour cast over us by contemplation of the
Campo Santo at Pisa, or the Roman Theatre at
Orange, or the Cathedral at Chartres,— the in-
spiration for one of the most word-jewelled books
in any language -- or the New York sky line at
twilight as one sails away into the harbour, or a
great iron crane which lifts tons of alien matter in
its gaping jaw. Great music can give us this feel-
ing, the symphonies of Beethoven, Mozart's Don
Giovanni, Schubert's C Major Symphony, or Cé-
sar Franck's D Minor, The Sacrifice to the Spring
of Strawinsky, L’Après-midi d'un Faune of De-
bussy, Chabrier's Rhapsody, España; great inter-
pretative musicians can give it to us, Ysaye at his
best, Paderewski, Marcella Sembrich in song re-
cital; but how few artists on the stage suggest
even as much as the often paltry lines of the au-
thor, the often banal music of the composer !
There is an au delà to all great interpretative art,
something that remains after story, words, pic-
ture, and gesture have faded vaguely into that
[ 172 ]
Waslav Nijinsky
storeroom in our memories where are concealed
these lovely ghosts of ephemeral beauty, and the
artist who is able to give us this is blessed even
beyond his knowledge, for to him has been vouch-
safed the sacred kiss of the gods. This quality
cannot be acquired, it cannot even be described,
but it can be felt. With its beneficent aid the in-
terpreter not only contributes to our pleasure, he
broadens our horizon, adds to our knowledge and
capacity for feeling.
As I read over these notes I realize that I have
not been able to discover flaws in the art of this
young man. It seems to me that in his chosen
medium he approaches perfection. What he at-
tempts to do, he always does perfectly. Can one
say as much for any other interpreter? But it is
a difficult matter to give the spirit of Nijinsky, to
describe his art on paper, to capture the abun-
dant grace, the measureless poetry, the infinite illu-
sion of his captivating motion in ink. Who can
hope to do it? Future generations must take our
word for his greatness. We can do little more
than call it that. I shall have served my purpose
if I have succeeded in this humble article in bring-
ing back to those who have seen him a flashing
glimpse of the imaginative actuality.
January 16, 1917.
[173]
Epilogue
as a substitute for a preface to the new edition.
Epilogue
I
[ T was formerly the custom, in England at any
rate, to publish one book in two or three vol-
umes. Judge, therefore, of my dismay and
delight on discovering, shortly after the first ap-
pearance of “Interpreters and Interpretations,"
in 1917, that I, abetted by my always delightfully
agreeable publisher, had issued two books in one
volume! Even the title itself fell apart. This
practical detail has made it a comparatively sim-
ple matter to exhibit these twins separately in the
future, and such is my intention. This volume,
then, contains the first half of the longer book.
I have been asked occasionally why I devote so
much attention in my writing to interpreters.
The answer is, of course, that I devote very little
attention to them, not enough, I sometimes think.
This book, indeed, says nearly all that I have said
up to date on the subject. But I am not at all
in sympathy with those critics of music and the
drama who lay stress on the relative unimportance
of interpreters. Sometimes I am inclined to be-
lieve that interpreters, who mould their own per-
sonalities rather than clay or words, are greater
[177]
Interpreters
than creators. I think we might have a more ideal
theatre if interpreters could be their own creators,
like the mediæval troubadours or the gipsies of
Spain. For there are many disadvantages about
creative art. One of them is its persistence.
Beethoven and Dante wrote notes and letters down
on paper and there they remain, apparently for-
ever. It is very annoying. Legends hover round
the names of these artists, and for centuries after
their deaths all the stupid creators in the world
try to do something similar to the work these men
have done, and all the really inspired artists have
to pass a period of probation during which they
strive to forget the work these men have done.
“ You will find,” remarks sagaciously one. Henry ·
C. Lunn, “ that people will often praise a bad
fugue because Bach has produced so many good
ones.” It would be much better for everybody if
a law were passed consigning all creative work to
the flames ten years after it saw the light. Then
we would have novelty. If Beethoven recurred
again, at least nobody would know it. Any knowl-
edge about books or pictures or music of the past
would have to be carried in the memory and in a
few decades all memory of anything that was not
essential would have disappeared. It must have
SL
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Epilogue
been a thrilling experience to have lived in Alex-
andria at the time the library was burned. Just
think, twenty years after that event, philosophers
and professors probably could be found in Al-
exandria who did not go round with long faces
telling you what had been done and what should
be done. No references to the early Assyrians
and the Greeks until the papyruses were replaced.
The Renaissance and the Revival of Learning, on
the other hand, doubtless pleasant enough at the
time, smeared a terrible blot on the future of art.
Now interpretative art is different. It depends
upon the contemporary individual, and some of
its most thrilling effects may be entirely acci-
dental. Any traditions which persist in inter-
pretative art must be carried in the memory. In
exceptional cases, of course, a singer, a dancer, or
an actor is able to so stamp his or her personal
achievement into the flowing rhythm of artistic
space that a style does persist. We have a very
good example before us in the case of Isadora
Duncan, who has been followed by a long train of
animated Grecian urns. The deleterious effect of
this persistence of an interpretative tradition
must be apparent to any one. For the imitator
of an interpreter is a thousand times more futile
[179]
Interpreters
than the imitator of a creator. Fortunately, on
the whole, styles in acting, in singing, and in danc-
ing frequently change. The Catalani-Jenny
Lind-Patti tradition, which God knows hạs hung
on long enough, is nearly exhausted. We live in
the age of the Mary Garden tradition.
There is another and even better reason why I
find it pleasant to write about interpreters. In
looking over the books on music written in the
past I find that the books about singers are in-
finitely more fascinating than the books about
composers. I am enthralled by what H. F.
Chorley has to say about Pauline Viardot and
Henrietta Sontag; I am delighted with the Gon-
court's books about Guimard, Clairon, and Sophie
Arnould. Auguste Ehrhard's “Fanny Elssler »
is an extraordinary document and one cannot af-
ford to miss P. T. Barnum on Jenny Lind and
Mapleson on Patti. But I find that the old
scribes on Mozart and Mendelssohn, Beethoven
and Schubert, quite bore me, and it is impossible
to say anything new about these men. Books
about Beethoven are still appearing but I advise
nobody to read them. The authors have arrived
at that fine point where they can only compare
authorities and quibble about details. Was Bee-
1IYY
IIIIC
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.
thoven in a cold sweat when he composed the Ninth
Symphony or was he merely angry? The ink on
the manuscript of such and such a work being
blotted on a certain page, interest naturally arises
as to whether the fifth note in the sixteenth bar is
F sharp or G flat. Did Haydn or Prince H—
conduct the first performance of the Symphony
in X major? Did Weber arrive in England on
Thursday or Friday? And so on. It is all very
tiresome.
Sometimes I believe that it is the whole duty of
a critic to write about interpreters, about the in-
terpretative arts. Less is understood about act-
ing, singing, and dancing than about anything
else in the field of aesthetic discussion, the more
that is written about them, therefore, the better.
Besides creative artists speak for themselves.
Anybody can read a book; anybody can see a
picture, or a reproduction of it. As for posterity
it rejects all contemporary criticism of creative
work; it has no use for it. It goes back to the
work itself. So the critic of creative work en-
tirely disappears in the course of a few years.
After his short day nobody will read him any
more.
Now an actor, a singer, or a dancer, can ap-
[181]
Interpreters
pear in comparatively few places for a compara-
tively short time. The number of people who
can see or hear these interpreters is relatively
small; consequently they like to read about them.
As for posterity it is absolutely dependent upon
books for its knowledge of the interpreters of a
bygone day. That is the only way it can see the
actors of the past. For that reason I am per-
fectly sure in my own mind that of such of my
books as are devoted to criticism this is the one
most likely to please posterity.
All criticism may not be creative writing, but
certainly all good criticism is. For all good writ-
ing should be self-expression and the subject
treated and the form into which it is cast are mere
matters of convenience. There is no essential dif-
ference between poetry, fiction, drama, and essay.
An essay may be as creative as a work of fiction,
often it is more so. You will find criticism else-
where than in the work of acknowledged critics.
Dostoevsky's “ The House of the Dead” is cer-
tainly a critical work, but the author chooses to
criticize the conditions under which human beings
are compelled to live rather than the works of
Pushkin. Turgeniev once wrote to Flaubert,
“ There is no longer any artist of the present time
[182]
Epilogue
TI
who is not also a critic.” He might have added
that while all artists are assuredly critics, all
critics are not artists. On the other hand Walter
Pater's famous passage about the Monna Lisa is
certainly creative; it might almost be held re-
sponsible for the vogue of the picture. Before
the war, nearly any day you might find frail
American ladies from the Middle West standing in
front of Leonardo's canvas and repeating the
lines like so much doggerel. All artists express
themselves as they may but they are not artists
unless they express themselves. Only thus may
they establish a current between themselves and
their readers ; only thus may they arouse emo-
tion. And if they succeed in arousing emotion
we may disregard the form in which their work is
cast and bathe in the essence of spirit and idea.
Whether you agree with this theory or not you
must be compelled to admit that criticism of in-
terpreters, if it is anything at all, is bound to
be creative. For the art of the interpreter exists
in time and space only for the moment in an
arbitrary place. Therefore he who writes about
an interpreter is using him to express certain ideas
as a painter uses his model.
It is a well-established fact that singers and
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Interpreters
actors in general only approve of the critics who
praise them, but it will readily be apparent that
there is a good instinctive reason back of this
peculiarity. Their work only lives as it exists in
criticism and people who dwell in places where
these actors are not to be seen or in times after
they are dead must perforce depend upon the
critic for their impressions of these interpreters.
The case of creative work is entirely different.
The creator of genius should never be disturbed
by a bad criticism. If his work is good it will
far outlast the criticism. Indeed a bad notice
helps a fine book to find its public sooner than a
good notice, because it attracts attention and
stimulates discussion. I think it is likely, for in-
stance, that the striking collection of bad notices
of his previous books, which James Branch Cabell
inserted in the end pages of “ The Cream of the
Jest,” did as much to advertise that author as the
subsequent publication of “ Jurgen.”
S
II
Somewhere in Agnes G. Murphy's vivid but
somewhat hysterical account of the life and ad-
ventures of Madame Melba, the diva's Boswell
declares that the singer never permitted herself
[184]
Epilogue
the pleasure of meeting newspaper critics lest, it
is to be assumed, they should be prejudiced in her
favour through the acquaintanceship. I can as-
sure Madame Melba that this decision, if strictly
adhered to, has cost her many pleasant hours,
for I number certain music critics among my
most diverting friends. I can further assure
these colleagues of mine that they have missed
knowing a very amusing woman, for once, not
being considered at the time anything so formida-
ble as a critic, I was permitted to sit next to the
Australian canary while she toyed with her grape-
fruit and tasted her oeuf bénédictine.
Madame Melba's point of view is not held ex-
clusively by her. There are many singers who
believe that a series of dinner invitations will buy
a critic's pen; a few do not hesitate to offer
emerald stick-pins and even substantial cheques.
These methods are often entirely successful. On
the other hand there are critics who will rush
across the street, though the mud be ankle deep,
to avoid an introduction to an artist. I have been
frequently asked where I stood in the matter, as
if it were necessary to take a stand and defend
tine
it.
S
I may say that if my profession kept me from
[185]
Interpreters
knowing anybody I really wanted to know I should
relinquish that profession without hesitation. It
is absurd to feel that you cannot dine with a
singer without praising her performances. Many
days in each month I dine with authors whose
works I abhor. I find their companionship de-
lightful. Should I be deprived of their society
because I happen to be a critic? I suppose I have
a price — almost everybody has —- but I should
like to state right here and now that it is not a
dinner, or a series of dinners, or even an emerald
scarf-pin. I should be inclined, however, I admit
frankly, to say at least gentle things about a lady
who made me a present of a blooded silver cat.
But the crux of the matter lies deeper than
this. No mere music critic can hope to write
about singing, violin playing, or piano playing
without knowing singers, violinists, and pianists.
He can learn much from books, from the reviews
of other critics, from hearing performances, but
the great critics are those who study from the
lips of the interpreters themselves. The valuable
hints, suggestions, and inspiration that a critic
with an open mind can gather from an interpreter
are priceless, and not to be found elsewhere. Not
that an interpreter will always tell the truth, not
[186]
Epilogue
that he always knows what the truth is in his par-
ticular case. Nevertheless any virtuoso will al-
ways have something of interest to say. It stands
to reason that any man or woman who has devoted
his life to his profession will know more about its
difficulties, limitations, and tricks, than a mere
critic can hope to learn in any way except through
social intercourse with the interpreter. A young
critic may learn much through reading Chorley,
Burney, Schumann, Ernest Newman, and James
Huneker. He can further prepare himself for
his trade by listening with open ears to concerts
and operas (although, in passing, it may be stated
categorically that no critic learns immediately
the value of opening his ears, so steeped is he in
the false tradition of his craft), by burying his
nose in the scores of the masters, and by reading
all that the composers themselves may have said
about the performances of their works. But he
can learn more in a five-minute conversation with
a great orchestral conductor, a great singer, or a
great instrumentalist than he can in all the other
ways combined.
Arturo Toscanini, Mary Garden, Ysaye, Mar-
cella Sembrich, Yvette Guilbert, Pablo Casals,
Fritz Kreisler, Waslav Nijinsky, Marguerite
[187]
Interpreters
d'Alvarez, or Leo Ornstein can give any reviewer,
young or old, invaluable lessons. Such as these
· are their own severest critics and they teach the
writer-critic to be severe — and just. One piece
of advice, however, I would give to prospective
critics. Become acquainted with artist-interpre-
ters by all means, but other things being equal, it
is perhaps better to meet good artists than bad
ones!
III
Chaliapine, Nijinsky, Mazarin, and Fremstad 1
have not appeared on the New York stage since I
painted their portraits ; nor have I seen them else-
where. Consequently any revision I might make
in these pictures would be revision of what I felt
then in terms of what I feel now. Nothing could
be more ridiculous. So I let them stand as they
are.
With Yvette Guilbert the case is somewhat dif-
ferent. She has been before the American public
almost consistently since the original publication
of this book. Her work at her own recitals is
still the fine thing it was and probably will remain
1 Madame Fremstad has appeared in concert in New
York but not in opera.
[188]
Epilogue
so for a great many years to come. Madame
Guilbert, however, has seen fit to appear in a play
at the Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York, a
fourteenth century French miracle play called
Guibour.
It is often said of an actress that she is too
great to fail even when a part does not suit her.
But this is an utterly fallacious theory. Only
great actresses can fail. A really bad actress al-
ways fails and consequently cannot be considered
at all. A mediocre or conventional actress is
neither very good nor very bad in any rôle, but a
great actress, when she fails, fails magnificently,
because she plays with such precision and author-
ity that she is worse than a lesser person possibly
could be.
Certainly Yvette Guilbert failed magnificently
in Guibour. I have been told that her infrequent
performances in comedy in Paris have been equally
unsuccessful. When Guilbert sings a song she is
forced by the very nature of her method to make
much of little; without setting, frequently without
costume, without the aid of other actors, she is
obliged in a period of three or four minutes to
give her public an atmosphere, several characters,
and a miniature drama. Now, taking into con-
[189]
Interpreters
sideration the average low rate of intelligence and
the almost entire lack of imagination of the ordi-
nary theatre audience, she is compelled to chuck
in as much detail as the thing will hold. The re-
sult is generally admirable. In a play, however,
this method becomes monotonous, tiresome, pic-
ayune, fussy, overelaborate. One does not want
the lift of an eyelash, a gesture with every line;
one does not want emphasis on every word. The
great actors employ broader methods. It was
here that Madame Guilbert failed, by applying the
extremely efficacious technique of her own perfect
craft to another craft which calls for another
technique.
Geraldine Farrar has been seen and heard in a
number of impersonations at the Metropolitan
Opera House (she has also enlarged her cinema
répertoire), since I wrote my paper about her,
Orlanda in La Reine Fiamette, Lodoletta, Thais,
Suor Angelica, and Zaza, but I can add very little
to what I have said. Orlanda, Lodoletta, and,
naturally enough, Thais, she has permanently
dropped, I think, after a short period of experi-
mentation. In Zaza, however, it seems possible,
although it is too early to predict with certainty,
[190]
Epilogue
as I am writing these lines a month after her as-
sumption of the part, that she has found a rôle in
which she will meet popular satisfaction for some
years to come. On the whole, however, I must
leave the case as I pleaded it originally, withal it
is probably a trifle rosier than I would plead it
now. Nevertheless I must state in fairness that
Madame Farrar has probably never sung so well
before as she is singing this winter (1919–20) and
that she retains the admiration of opera-goers in
general. It seems apparent to me now that in
exploiting herself as a “character” actress she
has perhaps made a mistake. Her best work has
not been done in operas like Thais, Carmen, and
Zaza, but as Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, as the
Goosegirl in Königskinder, and as Rosaura in Le
Donne Curiose. Usually, indeed, she is charming
in what are called “ ingenue” rôles. It may there-
fore be considered unfortunate that these are the
rôles in her repertoire to which she is most indif-
ferent. However it must be admitted that it seems
impertinent and even stupid to storm and fret
about a career which has been so evenly successful.
The public must admire Madame Farrar or it
would not go to see her, and at the Metropolitan
1
[191]
Interpreters
Opera House it is a recognized fact that she is
one of two singers in the company who is always
sure of drawing a full house.
IV
We come to Mary Garden. I never can resist
the temptation to write about Mary Garden. I
never even try to. Other subjects intrigue me
for a time, but I usually pass them by in the end
and go on to something new, new to me, at least.
But I always feel that I have left something un-
said about this singing actress. It is probable
that I always will feel this way for Miss Garden
in her performances constantly suggests some new
idea or awakens some dormant emotion. As a
result, although I may write about coleoptera, the
influence of cobalt on the human mind, or a history
of Persian miniatures, I shall probably always
find occasion to insert a few remarks about this
incomparable artist.
The paper devoted to her in this book seems to
me at present pitifully weak, absurdly inadequate.
I have gone farther in “ The New Art of the
Singer," which you will find in “ The Merry-Go-
Round” (1918), and in my study of Carmen in
“ The Music of Spain” (1918). This seems a
[192]
Epilogue
good place to state, however, that Miss Garden's
Carmen was only seen to its best advantage when
she appeared with Muratore. The nature of her
interpretation of this rôle is such that it depends
to a great extent on satisfactory assistance from
her fellow singers. Her Carmen is a study of a
cold, brutal, mysterious gipsy, who does not seek
lovers, they come to her. When, as at some re-
cent performances, the tenors and baritones do
not come (it is obvious that some of them might
take lessons to advantage in crossing the stage)
her interpretation loses a good deal of its inten-
tion. I offer this explanation to any one who
feels that my enthusiasm for her in this rôle is
exaggerated. To fully understand the greatness
of Miss Garden's Carmen one must have observed
it in fitting surroundings. I hope this environ-
ment may soon be provided again.
On the whole I feel that the most enthusiastic
of Miss Garden's admirers have so far done the
woman scant justice. Most of us are beginning to
realize that she is the greatest of living lyric
artists, that she has done more to revive the
original intention of the Florentines in inventing.
the opera to recapture the theatre of the Greeks,
than any one else. She has made opera, indeed,
[193]
Interpreters
sublimated speech. And she is certainly the con-
temporary queen of lyric sigaldry. .
It is said by some who do not stop to think, or
who do not know what singing is, that Mary Gar-
den is a great actress but that she cannot sing. 1
These misguided bigots, who try to make it their
business to misunderstand anything that ap-
proaches perfection, remind me of the incident of
Lady Astor and the American sailor. She met
the youth just outside the Houses of Parliament
and asked him if he would like to go in. “I
would not,” were the words he flung into her as-
tonished face. “My mother told me to avoid
women like you.” Some day a few of the most
intelligent of these sacculi may realize that Mary
Garden is probably the greatest living singer. It
is, indeed, with her voice, and with her singing
voice that she does her most consummate acting.
Indeed her capacity for colouring her voice to
suit the emergencies not only of a phrase but of
an entire rôle, might give a hint to future inter-
preters, were there any capable of taking ad-
vantage of such a valuable hint. But, good God,
1 The fault is really typical of that school of criticism
which is always comparing, instead of searching out an
artist's intention and judging whether or not he has realized
it.
[194]
Epilogue
in such matters as phrasing, portamento, messa
di voce, and other paraphernalia of the singing
teacher's laboratory, she is past-mistress, and if
any one has any complaints to make about the
quality and quantity of tone she used in the sec-
ond act of l’Amore dei Tre Re I feel that he did
not listen with unprejudiced ears.
There is, perhaps, nothing that need be added
at present to what I have already said of her
Sapho, Marguerite, Mélisande,1 Chrysis, Jean,
Louise, and Thais, except that such of these im-
personations as still remain in her répertoire are
as clean-cut, as finely chiselled as ever; prob-
ably each is a little improved on each subsequent
occasion on which it is performed. Some day I
shall have more to say about her marvellous Monna
Vanna. I am sure I would understand her Salome
better now. When I first saw her in Richard
Strauss's music drama I was still under the spell
of Olive Fremstad's impersonation, and was as-
tonished, and perhaps a little indignant at Miss
1 Maurice Maeterlinck broke a promise to Georgette Le-
blanc of seventeen years' standing to witness a performance
of Debussy's lyric drama on January 27, 1920, when, with
the new Madame Maeterlinck, he sat in a box, remaining
till the final curtain, at the Lexington Theatre in New
York. After the fourth act, responding to Miss Garden's
urge and the applause of the audience, he rose to bow.
TI
[195]
Interpreters
Garden's divagations. But now I know what I
did not know so well then, that an interpreter
must mould a part to suit his own personality.
It is probable that if Mary Garden should vouch-
safe us another view of her nervous, unleashed
tiger-woman I would be completely bowled over.
It seems necessary to speak of the portraits she
has added to her gallery since the fall of 1917.
Since then she has been seen in Février's Gismonda,
Massenet's Cléopâtre, and Montemezzi's l’Amore
dei Tre Re. The first of these is a very bad
opera; it is not even one of Sardou's best plays,
The part afforded Miss Garden an opportunity
for the display of pride, dignity, and authority.
Her gowns were very beautiful — I remember par-
ticularly the lovely Grecian drapery of the con-
vent scene, which she has since developed into a
first-act costume for Fiora; she made a handsome
figure of the woman, but the thing itself was paste-
board and will soon be forgotten. The posthu-
mous Cléopâtre was nearly as bad, but in the scene
in which the queen, disguised as a boy, visits an
Egyptian brothel and makes love to another boy,
Mary was very startling, and the death scene, in
which, after burying the asp in her bosom, she
tosses it away with a shudder, sinks to the ground,
[196]

MARY GARDEN AS CLEOPATRE
from a photograph by Moffett (1919)
Epilogue
then crawls to Antony's side and expires below
his couch, one arm waving futilely in the air in an
attempt to touch her lover, was one of her most
touching and finest bits of acting. Her pale face,
her green eyelids combined to create a sinister
makeup. But, on the whole, a dull opera, and not
likely to be heard again.
But Fiora! What a triumph! What a vol-
cano! I have never been able to find any pleasure
in listening to the music of Montemezzi's l'Amore
dei Tre Re, although it has a certain pulse, a
rhythmic beat, especially in the second act, which
gives it a factitious air of being better than it
really is. The play, however, is interesting, and
subtle enough to furnish material for quibble and
discussion not only among critics, but among in-
terpreters themselves. Miss Bori, who originally
sang Fiora in New York, was a pathetic flower,
torn and twisted by the winds of fate, blown hither
and thither without effort or resistance on her
part. It was probably a possible interpretation,
and it found admirers. Miss Muzio, the next
local incumbent of the rôle, fortified with a letter
from Sem Benelli, or at least his spoken wishes,
found it convenient to alter this impersonation in
most particulars, but she was not, is not, very
[197]
Interpreters
convincing. Her intentions are undoubtedly
good but she is no instrument for the mystic gods
to play upon.
But Miss Garden's Fiora burned through the
play like a flame. She visualized a strong-minded
mediæval woman, torn by the conflicting emotions
of pity and love, but once she had abandoned her-
self to her passion she became a living altar con-
secrated to the worship of Aphrodite and Eros.
Such a hurricane of fiery, tempestuous love has
seldom if ever before swept the stage. Miss Gar-
den herself has never equalled this performance,
save in Mélisande and Monna Vanna, which would
lead one to the conclusion that she is at her best
in parts of the middle ages, until one reflects that
in early Greek courtesans, in French cocottes of
several periods, in American Indians, and Spanish
gipsies she is equally atmospheric. Other Fioras
have been content to allow the hand of death to
smite them without a struggle. Not this one.
When Archibaldo attempts to strangle her she
tries to escape; her efforts are horrible and pa-
thetic because they are fruitless. And the final
clutch of the fingers behind his back leave the
most horrible blood-stains of tragic beauty in the
memory.
[198]
Epilogue
What is to become of Mary Garden? What
can she do now? What is there left for her to
do? Those who complain of some of the dross in
her répertoire can scarcely, have considered the
material available to her. In Pelléas et Mél-
isande, Louise, and Salome she has given much to
the best the contemporary lyric stage has to offer.
On other occasions she has succeeded in transfig-
uring indifferent material with her genius. Monna
Vanna is not a great opera, but she makes it seem
so. But where is there anything better? Can
she turn to Puccini, whose later operas seem bereft
of merit, to Mascagni, to Strauss, to any other
of the living opera composers?
Ravel's one opera is not particularly suited to
her, but why, I might ask, does not Ravel write
something for her? Why not Strawinsky? Why
not Leo Ornstein? Why not John Carpenter?
The talented composer of The Birthday of the In-
fanta might very well write an opera, in which her
genius for vocal experimentation might have still
further play.
In the meantime I can make one or two sugges-
tions. I have already begged for Isolde and
[199]
Interpreters
Isolde I think we shall get in time. But has it
occurred to any one that the Queen in The Golden
Cockerel is a part absolutely suited to the Garden
genius? Not, of course, The Golden Cockerel as
at present performed, with a double cast of singers
and pantomimists but as an opera, in the form in
which Rimsky-Korsakow conceived it. And I
hope some day that she will attempt Gluck's
Armide, perhaps one of the Iphigénies, and Donna
Anna. Why not? Of all living singers Miss
Garden is the only one who could give us the com-
plete fulfilment of Mozart's tragic heroine. Os-
car Hammerstein, whose vision was acute, once
considered a performance of Don Giovanni with
Maurice Renaud in the title part, Luisa Tetraz-
zini as Zerlina, Lina Cavalieri as Elvira, and Mary
Garden as Anna. It was never given. But I
hope at the next revival of the work at the Opéra-
Comique Miss Garden will undertake the part, and
I see no reason why the opera should not be added
to the already extensive répertoire of the Chicago
Opera Company. :
Her stride, her lithe carriage, her plastic use
of her arms and her body, give Mary Garden a
considerable advantage over a sculptor, who can
in the course of a lifetime only capture perhaps
[200]
Epilogue
ten perfect examples of arrested motion, while in
any one performance she makes her body a hun-
dred different works of art. Of course, some of
us, fascinated by the mere beauty of the Garden
line, more slender now than it was even in her most
youthful past, delighted with her irreproachable
taste in dress, would rest content to watch her
walk across the scene or form exquisite pictures
in any part, in any opera. But unless one of the
best of the moderns writes a great rôle for her, it
would be a great satisfaction to see her in one
of the noble classic parts of the past, and that
satisfaction, I hope, will be vouchsafed us.
March 18, 1920.
New York.
1
[201]
On the following pages you will find descrip-
tions of two other interesting books by Mr. Van
Vechten.
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
(12mo., 343 pages, $2.00 net.)
CONTENTS: In defence of bad taste; Music and
supermusic; Edgar Saltus; The new art of the
singer; Au bal musette; Music and cooking;
An interrupted conversation; The authorita-
tive work on American music; Old days and
new; Two young American playwrights; De
senectute cantorum; The Land of Joy; The
new Isadora; Margaret Anglin produces As
You Like It; The modern composers at a
glance.
“ Carl Van Vechten has the jauntiest pen that
ever graced the ear of a literary gentleman. He
uses it as D'Artagnan used his sword, with sheer
joy in the wielding of it, a sharp accuracy of aim,
and a fine musketeering courage back of it. His
pen is a pen of the world, a cosmopolitan pen
which is at home in the marts of Irving Berlin,
as well as in the rarefied heights of Igor Strawin-
sky. It knows how to turn a phrase or a repu-
tation. In The Merry-Go-Round his pen has the
time of its life. So will you when you flip a ride
on the whirligig."-- Fanny Butcher in The Chi-
cago Tribune.
ALFRED A. KNOPF, PUBLISHER, NEW YORK
IN THE GARRET
(12mo., 347 pages, $2.00 net.)
CONTENTS: Variations on a theme by Havelock
Ellis; A note on Philip Thicknesse; The folk-
songs of Iowa; Isaac Albeniz; The holy jump-
ers; On the relative difficulties of depicting
heaven and hell in music; Sir Arthur Sullivan;
On the rewriting of masterpieces; Oscar Ham-
merstein; La Tigresse; Mimi Aguglia as Sa-
lome; Farfariello; The Negro Theatre; The
Yiddish Theatre; The Spanish Theatre.
“ When he surveys the American scene we go
all the way with Mr. Van Vechten. He celebrates
his attachment to New York as ecstatically as
Charles Lamb's his to London, in a chapter called
La Tigresse. This is the best thing in the book.
And Mr. Thomas Burke, in England, alone has
caught this peculiar gusto.”—The London Times.
ALFRED A. KNOPF, PUBLISHER, NEW YORK

.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 00760 1746
1923
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آمد .14
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