Scan 20
Musical Courier 1895-12-25: Vol 31 Iss 825, 1895
48 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. Printed page 21. See the scan on archive.org.
1lovers and Ghismonda's maidens. But in all the rest the extraordinary difficulty of the musical execution cannot be denied. Schuch directed the performance in a style worthy the highest appreciation. Frau Wittich as Ghismonda and Anthes as Guiscardo were excellent. The other parts were in good hands. Perron was Manfred, Schrauff the Prince, Nebuschka Dagobert. The scenery was admirable.
3"Although," continues the correspondent of the Berliner Boersen Courier, G. D., "a permanent place in the repertory of German opera can hardly be won by this work, in spite of its beauty and importance, owing to the difficulty of its execution, there is, for our consolation, a promise—nay, a certainty, for the future. We possess in d'Albert an artist who is destined to attain the highest goal, and we await with certainty something great from him in the musical-dramatic field."
5NO REMEDY POSSIBLE.
7UNDER existing conditions it does not seem possible to get finished orchestral work from the various organizations in New York city. To get ensemble, to secure finished performances, the orchestral bodies must not only rehearse more for each concert than they have been in the habit of doing, but the orchestras must become permanent in character, and that is impossible, as we say, under existing conditions. There can be no esprit de corps when there is no corps, and we have no orchestral corps in this city.
9Mr. Damrosch attempted to create such an institution, but found it more satisfactory to abandon his work of years to enter the operatic field. The Symphony concerts, or rather the concerts of the Symphony Society, are played by two sets of musicians now, for while Mr. Damrosch is on the road with his orchestra, which plays the Symphony Society and Oratorio Society concerts, a different body must be temporarily organized to give, for instance, the second concert of the first named society and the concert of the Oratorio Society. Mr. Van der Stucken, who is to conduct the second Symphony concert, will not have the so-called Symphony orchestra, but what is called a scratch orchestra, and if he were the greatest conductor that ever stepped upon a podium he could not give such a concert with such a body gotten together under such circumstances as he would desire or wish to give. New York does not afford him the opportunity.
11Mr. Seidl is in the same predicament. The Philharmonic Society, of New York, gives six concerts in six months, and then during six months does not play as an orchestral body. There are three rehearsals to each; one very hurried, the other less hurried, and the third no rehearsal at all, for a public rehearsal is a paradox, and is neither rehearsal nor concert. Assuming that the Philharmonic Orchestra is the best instrumental body in the Union, how can it compete with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which plays and rehearses incessantly nearly every day or night from the beginning to the end of the season? It cannot. It is not the best instrumental body, for it is filled with what is known as "dead wood," consisting of superannuated members who are not capable of playing their instruments. It lacks cohesion; it is not homogeneous. It is not a permanent body; it is no body at all except in name, six times in 365 days.
13During the greater part of the year what is done by its members? Some teach, others play in summer resorts and during the season in the absurd theatre orchestras. Some play at receptions and dances and some march in parades. There can be no ensemble when these six isolated performances occur during the season, and no intelligent auditor really expects it. In fact it is about time to declare it as a principle that no orchestral body can be artistically successful when its conductor depends upon the members themselves for his position. No conductor of the Philharmonic Society can exercise the rudimentary law of an orchestral body, and that is the selection, and control of its members as such. The conductor of the Philharmonic is its tool and not its commander; the constitution of the body so ordains it, and the result is that the position of conductor has become ornamental and political instead of useful and artistic.
15There is no remedy for this condition; there can be none so long as New York has no permanent orchestra. A philanthropist may one of these days come forward and become a genuine benefactor by ordaining that we shall have a permanent orchestra here, but until then we can have no finished orchestral concerts, no matter who the conductor may happen to be, except the concerts of that permanent body, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which always obliterates all orchestral concerts of our city when it plays here.
17OPERAS IN NEW YORK.
19IF a goodly group of aspiring musical centres in the United States to-day were to cry out for a Christmas musical gift that would give them the permanent right to be considered true representative musical cities, they would say beyond peradventure: "Give us opera, grand opera regularly."
21Which brings the vast musical population of the city of New York to a realization at this fruitful climax of the season that they have superior reason to felicitate themselves. And in so doing there is a big volume of congratulation and thankfulness due the source, from which this artistic satisfaction comes. We have opera, an established, high-class annual institution, and we have it mainly through the enterprise and liberality of Messrs. Abbey & Grau.
23So, wishing them a very merry Christmas we acknowledge cheerfully the value and significance of their labors, and for all sakes, public, artists' and managers', crave earnestly many exactly such returns. Opera such as we have in New York is a gift horse, which we are not thus far justified at looking too closely in the month. We begin at the wrong end when we chafe too vigorously at a meagre, indifferently executed ballet or an irregular, stilted chorus, together with some scenic infidelities. The Metropolitan enterprise is only in its lusty babyhood, and more seasons can modify or replace matters of faulty detail. What we should do is to thank Messrs. Abbey & Grau with a thankfulness of infinite fervor for giving us opera at all, and realize with pride and enjoyment that in its leading elements we have opera given us which is equal to the performances of any opera houses in the world.
25A glance at the table of leading living singers will show the cream of that list—if not its total—to be singing at the Metropolitan Opera, in New York, at the present moment. Anyone of them who is not here has either been tried and found wanting or has been replaced for desired change by a singer of corresponding abilities. Not as in former impresario days, asked to be content with one large star of a kind, no matter how qualified and satisfactory, we are given two, three, or even four, as they may happen to exist. We have all the heroes and heroines of song in their costliness, their variety and celebrity, and probably at no opera house in the world at the same time can such a procession of renowned and expensive artists file forth as at the New York Metropolitan.
27This and the fact that this opera is permanently established, an annual recurrence, are the primary matters upon which to dwell with zealous congratulation. Our grand opera season comes and lasts one half the year just as surely as our Christmas Day returns, and we may look to it that whoever are the foremost singers of the world will belong to the Abbey & Grau organization, and that no expense will be spared to let us hear the last vaunted prima donna craze or the last tenor whose throat is a gold mine when it comes to salary. And not only may we assure ourselves that we will hear these exceptional lights, but we may know beforehand that if there is a specific London success, a Paris success, a Vienna, St. Petersburg or Milan success, we are pretty likely to have them each and all, and pass our own judgment on the claimants to renown of various leading European centres.
29To give New York this enormous table of expensive opera Messrs. Abbey & Grau have had to assume heavy risk. The fact that they have not lost anything does not make their risk a little the less appreciable. They took the chances and New York has reaped an artistic benefit therefrom, which is the benefit essential to any city assuming to consider itself a musical centre. A city without regular opera has no claim to be rated a genuine musical city. Until grand opera was established in New York, as it is in Paris or London, New York was no true musical centre. That it now is and can stand a fair and honorable rival to the old-time musical centres of Europe has been brought to pass by those citizens who give their moral and financial support to the liberal promoters of the enterprise. Opera flourishing without municipal subsidy of any kind, which must be well borne in mind is the case with opera in New York, is a particular credit to the management and public.
31The Abbey & Grau management had courage to embark upon the unsubsidized scheme, a venturesome risk, but they find that they have not miscalculated their public, which responds adequately to their enterprise in a way of which the New York populace has reason to be a little proud.
33Again, in the opera field we have a new impresario in Walter Damrosch. His German opera venture, quite as courageous of its kind, has been made exactly on the same lines as that of Abbey & Grau. No subsidy, no backing, should the public fail to respond. But, as in the Italian and French case, the public has not been found lacking, and Mr. Damrosch's enterprise has been genially rewarded. To carry out his German opera career Mr. Damrosch, however, has taken an artistic as well as financial risk. To forsake his Symphony Society and the direction of other concerts in the very heart of the season is to imperil somewhat his permanent artistic status in New York. While achieving much honor and accomplishing high artistic ends by taking German opera into barren, provincial places, he is at the same time forfeiting a large amount of his consistent control and authority with the permanent Symphony organization and with other large Metropolitan affairs. On the diffusion and success of German opera, however, Mr. Damrosch nobly enough has his heart set, and to abandon temporarily for it his Orchestral Society is a step of sacrifice which deserves to be appreciated.
35Between Abbey & Grau and Damrosch, New York is placed in an operatically proud position. The cities dependent on the visits of operatic companies, no matter how regularly these visits may be planned, can hardly be taken into consideration as representing opera seriously at all. The company may at any time fail them for a variety of reasons. It is naturally arranged for in the same way as a company of theatrical players, and negotiations may fall through with just as much irregularity. Boston, usually managing to secure the company for a brief space, enough to give its people a taste of the repertory, has no opera house in which to frame the pictures, the big, bleak Mechanics' Hall being made to do duty for the purpose. This is a horrible state of degeneracy for the "Hub."
37Chicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Washington, all these great cities West and South, full of a musical population, look to New York to send them through Abbey & Grau and Damrosch their pitifully spare taste of opera. German opera, because of its limited repertory, they may have in fair proportion, but the Italian and French can only be enjoyed by them in a reduced degree, and both German and Italian are subject at any time to be withheld for a score of fluctuating causes. Familiarity with opera is precluded in these cities of wealth and musical habitation. Enough opera is never given to allow people more than a distant, uncertain acquaintance with each production.
39And so in the force of contrast we find additional reason for our own self-congratulation. New York is fortunate, and it is a wholesome thing now and again to have her rise up and genially assure herself of the fact.
41Of course she likes to complain, and more faults than virtues are commented on as a rule in the opera house. "Why," say the people, "do we not have new works? Wherefore this same old repertory of which we are tired?"
43The answer to this can be given with practical pathos by Messrs. Abbey & Grau, who may well remark that fatigue with the so-called old repertory is in no way on a par with the fatigue in the case of any novelties they have put on when the public was so extremely fatigued that it could not even come out to hear what they were like.
45It pays not to produce novelties in New York. Gird and reason as the public may, it accepts novelties in no such fashion as to justify a management's expense in producing them. One of the most hopeful anticipatory productions, that of Samson and Delilah, of which the music was universally sung and liked, and of which the dramatic setting had long been craved, was put on with admirable effect last season and sung to half empty benches. It has been the same in other cases, until the cry of novelties seems principally for novelty's sake. We are in New York exceedingly well off. Let us be grateful.
47And here we may state that within recent time there have been but three operas which can be classed among European successes, and these are Cavalleria Rusticana, I Pagliacci and Verdi's Falstaff, and all of
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