a company already as notable as any brought to New York in years. This My own season comprised about a hundred appearances divided almost equally between opera and concert. In regard to the latter I always stipulated that I was to be allowed to accept as many engagements as could be conveniently arranged in connection with my appearances in opera. By contract I was guaranteed fifty operatic performances, including Sunday night concerts. The other concerts Grau arranged for me himself. If for these he obtained more money than the pro rata amount, the opera company was to benefit by the excess. was satisfactory to me inasmuch as all my expenses, except hotel bills, during the fulfillment of such engagements were defrayed, even to the salary of my accompanist. As Mr. Grau explained, Plançon had been such a moneymaker by the acceptance of outside engagements that he had cost the company nothing. Mr. Plançon's contract provided that every journey he took should be paid for by the company, with every wig, costume, and property that he had used in years. He was a handsome figure of a man, and to dress him handsomely in accordance with his handsome voice was the only handsome thing for a manager to do, and handsomely he did it. Maurice Grau reveled in difficulties and delighted in fitting together engagements for his artists in concert and opera. He was a great card player, expert at chess, and an inveterate operator on the Stock Exchange, and viewed the profession of an impresario in the light of a complicated and highly interesting game in which, when his partners did not upset his calculations, he was usually successful. I remember that I came into Mr. Grau's private office one day and found him in the midst of a discussion of the most intricate nature, arising out of the illness of several of his principals and the need for filling their places in compliance with their contracts, taking into further account the probable effect upon the public of the changes in the casts. At the same time he was hearing a complicated report from the managers of the company; discussing the terms of his written agreement with an artist without referring to the document, except to prove the artist wrong; speaking as many as three foreign languages in rotation with men of as many nationalities about him; calling up his broker in Wall Street to give him orders to buy and sell, and evidently calculating the possible gains and losses mentally as he spoke. He had indeed a photographic mind, the absorptive and retentive power of which I have never seen equaled. It takes a clear head to run two monster companies in two of the greatest opera houses in the world with the ocean rolling between them; but this Mr. Grau did, in addition to many other theatrical and musical ventures, making for himself a name that will go down in history as that of one of the ablest impresarios of his day. CHAPTER XXIX HAPS AND MISHAPS - Grasps the skirts of happy chance, - Tennyson. UPON my recovery from influenza this is the sort of work I had to do. The opera had finished its season in Chicago and elsewhere and had come to New York, where on December 9, 1898, I sang at the Metropolitan with Van Dyck and Nordica. The 11th I sang in the Sunday night opera concert in solos and in the duet from "The Flying Dutchman" with Madame Gadski. On the 13th I gave with Arthur Whiting the whole cycle of Schubert's "Müller Lieder" in Boston, repeating that program two days later in New York in the afternoon, and the same evening appearing with Madame Nordica at the house of the elder J. Pierpont Morgan. The following evening I declaimed Alberich at the opera, with Van Rooy as the Wanderer, making six performances in eight days. Then, fortunately, I had a little rest, just a breathing space, like the whale, only he comes up to spout but seldom, while the artist has to remain up, if he can, and spout continually. When it was decided that I should give the "Müller Lieder" in Boston I felt a distinct sense of alarm. I had looked up to Boston from my youth, and now that I visited its classic precincts, though I found the Bostonese much the same as other people, yet there still clung about them and their city and everything pertaining to it, from its hallowed Common to its crooked streets, from its Handel and Haydn Society to its Symphony Orchestra, something indefinitely alarming which a mere Philadelphian could not consider without trepidation. That curious assumption of right, that distinction of superiority that hangs about Boston, is undeniably felt as we approach the Hub from any quarter. We sense it, as we would Rome, with a feeling of something everlasting, as being the mundane spot where Deity deigns to touch the earth and make it brighter. As we approach we remember that we have heard of the sounds which turned out to be its people reciting Browning, and as we approach still nearer we recognize an odor - can it be that of sanctity? Upon stepping across the threshold of our American Mecca even the negro porter who carries our bags at the railway station has something superior about him; it must be that he knows more than the porters of other cities. The bell boys and the bootblacks at the hotels have they not access daily to the Boston papers? They must know all about us who make music, from these. I feel a vague alarm that critics Boston critics shall be at my concerts! Will any one recognize me in Boston? Ah, yes, I am recognized; the manicure has heard me sing in New York! Oh, joy, the waiter at the table remembers me from Europe! I am called upon by one or two friends. Though I have been there many a time, I have wondered at my temerity in tempting fate, and wondered, too, whether such visits were not made in a sort of bravado, not in the endeavor to conquer Boston, but just to show the rest of the United States that I am not afraid of it. Though it did not need my attention, I was not to be induced to pass by on the other side. I have felt that it might be well to receive from Boston that little corrective of which my system was in need, after a good deal of feeding up in other parts of the country — the feeding up that makes one feel so good and yet is so bad for one; the success that is so beneficial and yet so harmful; the sweet little morsels rolled under the tongue which are said to be so deleterious. But to continue. Four days' rest; and on December 21st I gave a song recital at Hartford, Connecticut. As I distinctly remember, my eccentric accompanist, Mr. Blank, refused to carry my music on the stage, and at the end of the concert threw it on the floor behind the door instead of placing it on the table at hand capricious as a soldier mutinying over a matter of daily routine. The next evening I gave a concert at the Brooklyn Institute, the program consisting of sixteen songs, different in every instance from those sung in Hartford. The following night, December 23, I sang my old part of Telramund with Madame Eames and Dippel. December 25 I sang "The Messiah" in Boston, repeating it there the next day. December 30 in the afternoon I took part in "The Messiah" in New York; that same evening singing in "Tristan and Isolde" at the opera. The following afternoon, December 31, we repeated "Lohengrin," and in the evening I sang "The Messiah" at Carnegie Hall, making nine heavy performances in eleven days. The year 1899 opened almost as strenuously. January 4 I sang in "Siegfried" in Philadelphia, on January 5 a whole recital program in Orange, New Jersey, January 7 an entire program again of a different nature |