CHAPTER XXV BEETHOVEN IN DRAMA This is our master, famous, calm, and dead, AFTER all my experience I seldom felt that I was really acting in opera, and always longed to take part in straight drama; though opera was my business and my pleasure as well, I nearly always felt myself in an anomalous position. To sing was one thing, to act quite a different matter; but both to sing and act seemed to me somewhat artificial. I have found operatic acting so limited by the music that it imposes a restraint upon the performer and often obliges him to make gestures which carry no conviction. But some gestures have to be made; the singer cannot stand motionless as in a concert. Opera acting is sui generis and would be entirely out of place and grotesque in drama. Yet fortunately such parts as generally fell to my lot on the lyric stage were so strong in character that they are not open to these objections. Some years before, when living in Florence and studying for concert work, I was shown by a friend an old photograph, which at first I took to be a copy of Beethoven's portrait. This was not the case, however, for the picture was the representation of a well-known Viennese actor in the part of Beethoven in a little play by Hugo Müller called "Adelaïde." I was greatly interested and realized that I, too, could look like Beethoven. I made up my mind to act the part, though I did not know where the play could be found. Several years later I mentioned the matter to a friend in London, who said he knew of the play and had seen it in Germany. As he was starting for Berlin that very day he promised to make inquiries of an actor of his acquaintance and try to obtain it for me. A few weeks after, I was delighted to find that he had brought me a little pamphlet yellow with age which he had seen by chance upon a second-hand book stall in the street and bought for a few pence. With my German master I immediately set to work translating it, though there seemed then to be no opportunity of performing the piece. This opportunity came, however, as all things come to him who waits. Soon after I reached America in October, 1897, my friend Morris Bagby, at whose now famous Musical Mornings I had already sung twice, asked me if I had anything new to vary the character of these entertainments, particularly of that with which the ballroom in the new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was to be opened on December 6. I told Mr. Bagby of my musical find in the Beethoven play. Very enthusiastic, he immediately made arrangements to produce it and to have Anton Seidl with his orchestra render a short program of the master's music before the play began. In the cast were Mrs. Wolcot and Mrs. Whiffen, two of the most distinguished elder actresses of the American stage, and the beautiful Julie Opp, later Mrs. William Faversham, who was admirable in the title rôle. The services of these three ladies were loaned me through the courtesy of my friend Daniel Frohman, from the famous company of the old Lyceum Theater, which then stood in Fourth Avenue near Twenty-fourth Street. I had the further assistance of Miss Nita Carritte and of MacKenzie Gordon, the sweet-voiced Scotch tenor, who played the other male part and sang Beethoven's exquisite lyric, "Adelaïde." The piano on the stage, which represented as nearly as possible the interior of the room in which Beethoven died, was the master's own concert grand, which had been kindly loaned me for this occasion by Morris Steinert of New Haven, out of his famous collection of old instru ments. As I sat in my dressing room before the play, I had beside me on the table a bust of Beethoven, from which I was making up. The touches here and there, added to the assumed expression on my own countenance, made the resemblance between my face and that of the bust quite remarkable. A friend, entering the room at my back, saw my face in the glass and that of the bust over my shoulder, and in amazement exclaimed, "If you were whitened or the bust colored no one could distinguish between the two heads." Thus encouraged I went on with my part. At the conclusion of the play, Seidl came on the stage, his eyes all red, and said to me in a broken voice, "You are ze only man vich haff effer made me to veep." The occasion was memorable to me in more ways than one, and led to many subsequent performances of the piece that season in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and also in London during the following summer. There were changes of cast, which included the names of Yvonne de Tréville and Kitty Cheatham as Clara and Hilda Spong as Adelaïde; and I had on several of these occasions either Mr. Damrosch to conduct the Beethoven program for my play, or the Dannreuther Quartette to play the master's chamber music, or Madame Gadski to sing. The performances without exception gave pleasure and made an indelible impression on the minds of our audiences, but for some reason the Press has with almost one accord objected to the presentation of Beethoven on the stage, several critics even going so far as to hold that I was trespassing upon sacred ground in impersonating him. Events had brought about a cessation of opera under Mr. Grau, but my second American season began, nevertheless, at the Metropolitan Opera House, where I assisted Madame Marcella Sembrich at her first appearance in concert in America, when that celebrated and gifted lady sang in superb fashion. On several subsequent occasions that season was I honored by Madame Sembrich's request to participate with her in her concerts in New York and elsewhere. It will be recalled that we had both been pupils of the old Italian master, Francesco Lamperti. Sembrich had the advantage over almost any singer I ever knew in being so musical as to have practically mastered both violin and piano before taking up the study of the voice. Being so fine a musician it is no wonder that she was able to accomplish what she did in her later years. Added to these accomplishments was a great histrionic talent, which made her one of the outstanding ornaments of her profession. The season upon which I embarked in this way turned out to be one of the busiest of my whole career: it gave me 112 appearances in 28 American cities, in most of which I had not sung before, embraced every kind of vocal work, including opera, oratorio, my own individual song recitals, miscellaneous concerts, and musical festivals, such as those of Indianapolis, of Ann Arbor, and the famous Cincinnati festival, with which my season closed. During these appearances I sang in ten different oratorios or works of a similar nature. For the sake of the student I will mention their names: Handel's "Messiah," Mendelssohn's "Elijah," Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis," Schumann's "Paradise and the Peri," Berlioz's "Damnation of Faust," Gounod's "Redemption," Benoist's "Lucifer," Massenet's "Eve," Grieg's "Olaf Trygvasson," and Stehle's "Frithiof's Return," besides selections from "Parsifal" and other Wagnerian music dramas. However interesting such concerts and festivals as these may seem to the singer, however valuable they are to his artistic standing, it is nevertheless a fact that grand opera exercises the greatest influence upon the mind, not only of the participant, but upon that of the public as well. The average music lover thinks more of an opera singer than he does of an oratorio singer, nor is the reason far to seek - the glamour of the stage holds undisputed sway, and a story told in choral form is far less impressive than a story told in costume, with action, and upon a stage furnished with appropriate scenery. While singing at the Metropolitan Opera House, during the previous season, we were given to understand that most of the money made in New York was lost during the opera company's visit to Chicago. Whatever may have been the reason for the temporary abandonment of opera, the fact remains that Maurice Grau did not have an opera company in New York during the season of 189798. During the previous year, Walter Damrosch had conducted a season of grand opera in Philadelphia, and, the field being left open in 1897-98, in conjunction with Charles Ellis, manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he inaugurated in the Quaker City that winter a sea |