Books › Musical Courier 1927-06-16: Vol 94 Iss 24, 1927 › scan 25
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Musical Courier 1927-06-16: Vol 94 Iss 24, 1927
44 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. Printed page 26. See the scan on archive.org.
1NOTES ON AMERICAN OPERAS
3[This is an unpublished article written last winter by the late H. O. Osgood, and found in his desk after his demise.—The Editor.]
5When the Beggar's Opera came to us three or four seasons ago and vanished again after languishing for a few rather unprofitable weeks at the Greenwich Village Theater, few realized that New York was greeting—or, rather, failing to greet—its very first opera, returning after an absence of nearly a century and three-quarters, for it was this same Beggar's Opera, performed on December 3, 1750 ("and innumerable times thereafter," says Elson), which began the long story of opera in New York. Yes, New York began in the right way, with opera in English. It was not until November 29, 1825, when Manuel Garcia and his family—members of which formed practically the entire troupe—performed Rossini's Barber of Seville in Italian that the foreign invasion began to dominate the operatic field and has done so ever since.
7Between the Beggar's Opera and the Barber of Seville there were many operas in English performed here, some imported from England, some native works. Of the native variety the first work appears to have dealt with that favorite operatic subject, William Tell, and was called The Archers, or The Mountaineers of Switzerland, the libretto by one, William Dunlap, the music by Benjamin Carr, an Englishman who lived in this country, a brother of Sir John Carr. New York is said to have seen this on April 18, 1796, and on December 19 of the same year Edwin and Angelina, libretto by someone with the extraordinary name of Smith, music by Victor Pellisier, a French horn player, who lived and played here, was given its first performance. The first opera of any value to boast a native composer was called Leonora. William H. Fry, a very prominent musician and composer of his day, wrote the music. It was produced in this city in March, 1858—in Italian; but the fact that it was written in English and produced in that tongue thirteen years earlier (1845) at Philadelphia entitles it to be called the first all-American opera. George F. Bristow, another early composer, a native of Brooklyn, anticipated Reginald DeKoven by over a half century, writing an opera, Rip Van Winkle, which was produced in 1855. Then native opera languished for several decades. There was practically no other work of marked importance until Walter Damrosch's The Scarlet Letter appeared in 1906.
9Only two years after this, in 1908, the regime of Giulio Gatti-Casazza as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera began. Mr. Gatti and his directors early showed a genuine interest in the promotion of American opera. In the decade, 1910-20, no less than ten different American works were produced. Then their enthusiasm seemed to weaken, perhaps owing to the fact that not a single one of these ten had showed signs of any very vigorous life. Since January, 1920, only one American work has been produced and that was not an opera but the jazzical ballet by John Alden Carpenter, Skyscrapers.
11The list of American operas which Mr. Gatti has produced begins with the one-act Pipe of Desire, by Frederick S. Converse. This work was not written primarily for the Metropolitan. Its first production was at the New England Conservatory of Music (where the composer is still a professor) in Boston, several years before the Metropolitan production on March 18, 1910. The book, by George Edwards Barton, was more of a philosophical treatise than an operatic libretto (the prevailing fault of nearly all American librettos). It survived two performances at the Metropolitan and one in the New Theater before folding its tents and imitating the Arabs.
13Next came Horatio W. Parker's full-length opera, Mona, on March 14, 1912. Bryan Hooker's book was excellent from a literary standpoint. It read beautifully. Unfortunately, reading quality is one of the last things necessary in an effective opera book. Parker's music is made with the hand of a fine musician, but he did not have a feeling for the stage. It is principally slightly agitated oratorio, and, combined with the undramatic book, left the audiences cold. Four performances was its record.
15The next to come, Walter Damrosch's Cyrano, produced on February 27, 1913, got one more performance than Mona. For this work W. J. Henderson had written a skillfully made book which might very well have survived had it been set by a lighter hand than that of Mr. Damrosch, who, however notable his accomplishments in the conductorial field, cannot be reckoned in the front rank of American composers. His traditions are essentially German; so is his music, and rather undistinguished German-American music did not do much to help along the cause of a book that was French in origin and character.
17Victor Herbert's one-act opera, Madeleine, followed Cyrano, the premiere taking place on January 24, 1914. The rather frail plot, made into a libretto by Grant Stuart, staggered under the weight of Wagnerisms and Straussisms heaped upon it by Mr. Herbert in a score whose weight was out of all proportion to the specific gravity of the text. It stood four performances.
19After Madeleine came The Canterbury Pilgrims, which holds the Metropolitan record of six performances, one more than any other of those ten operas. Percy MacKaye wrote the text, Reginald DeKoven the music. Mr. MacKaye's whole attitude as a dramatic writer is a little bit too solemn and heavy-handed for anything so delightfully witty as a revision of Chaucer's famous tales should be, and Mr. DeKoven by that time had, as they say of the veteran baseball pitcher, "nothing left but his glove." All the sparkle, joy, and invention that had lit up such light opera classics as Robin Hood and the Fencing Master were gone. Part of the love music in the second act was good second-rate DeKoven, the rest of the score merely pretentious and empty. The most notable thing connected with its short life was the fact that, during one of its performances in April, 1917, the almost entirely German cast was thrown into panic by the arrival back-stage of the electrifying news that its Fatherland had just entered into a state of war with America.
21Following on Canterbury Pilgrims came what was in the judgment of many the nearest to a real opera that any American has yet produced, Shanewis, in two acts, by Charles Wakefield Cadman. Mr. Cadman, by no means the musician that H. W. Parker or Victor Herbert were, showed, however, in Shanewis a much keener feeling for the theater than either of them. The libretto, by Nelle Richmond Eberhardt, was a rather crude affair but provided several incidents and a number of dramatic situations. To each of these Mr. Cadman hung easy-flowing tunes, tunes readily comprehended by the average auditor, never so simple as to be banal, and never so complicated as to be puzzling, even to the untrained ear. Had the second act of the libretto been as well made as the first the opera would have been still better, but it was very short and broke off suddenly in an abrupt, unsatisfactory manner. Shanewis had five performances, one of them being a part of the only triple bill of all-American works that the Metropolitan ever presented.
23The other two operas included in this triple bill were The Legend, a one-act work, by Joseph Breil, and The Temple Dancer, another one-acter, by John Adams Hugo, both of which had survived for only three performances each. Jacques Byrne wrote the book for The Legend, very melancholic indeed. And the music was even gloomier. The book of The Temple Dancer was decidedly more operatic in character. It was written by Mme. Jutta Bell-Ranske and included a sort of Salome dance effect, but Mr. Hugo's music, although frequently tuneful, hardly did much to cover the frequent weaknesses of the book and the performances were quite unimaginative. The last production of original American opera at the Metropolitan took place January 31, 1920, when Henry Hadley's Cleopatra's Night was produced. This is a very workmanlike score, as is to be expected from Mr. Hadley's pen. The book, prepared by Alice Leal Pollock after the familiar story of Theophile Gautier, was by no means bad as librettos go, but neither it nor the music had sufficient originality and character to attract more than a passing nod of approval. It saw four performances.
25Another interesting American production at the Metropolitan was H. F. Gilbert's symphonic poem, The Dance in the Place Congo, after a short-story by George W. Cable. An appropriate scenario was made for this and it was presented as a ballet in March, 1918. Another ballet, Skyscrapers, by John Alden Carpenter, produced on February 19, 1926, created quite a sensation. The score contained moments of what Mr. Carpenter fondly imagined to be jazz. The scenario leaned heavily upon Irene Lewisohn's ballet. Now and then, though, Miss Lewisohn failed to receive credit. The dances were designed and executed under the direction and according to the style of Sammy Lee, previous to the Skyscrapers much better known a little farther up Broadway. Metropolitan traditions were shattered, and the younger generation welcomed their shattering as evidence of a more advanced trend of thought in the Metropolitan administration than was suspected.
27During these same years two productions of American opera outside the Metropolitan stand out. One was Victor Herbert's Natoma, which had some quite effective and tuneful music but perished because of the lack of humor on the part of the librettist, Joseph Redding. Who can forget John McCormack and his chorus of U. S. Marines chanting lofty patriotic sentiments at the top of their voices, or Mary Garden, gone Spanish. This was produced by the Chicago-Philadelphia Opera at the time when that doughty company was striving earnestly to spread itself over two cities and take an occasional look-in at New York as well. The other was Rip Van Winkle, another DeKoven-Mackaye production, written on commission for the Chicago Company and even poorer than most written-to-order works are.
29Since Cleopatra's Night no American operatic work has had the honor of a Metropolitan production. Today, for the first time in over seven years, the big Broadway institution stands immediately before an American premiere, that of the long-heralded and eagerly awaited work, The King's Henchman. The music is by Deems Taylor, who stands in the very front rank of American creative musicians today; the book by one of the best-known of American poetesses, Edna St. Vincent Millay. For months the musical world has buzzed with rumors about it, but everyone immediately concerned has been extremely reticent. The story, with a Tristan and Isolde twist, is laid in England in the ninth century; the text is redolent with appropriate old Saxon words; the score is extremely difficult for the singers and the orchestration splendidly made; so much one hears—and the rest will remain secret until Tullio Serafin raises his baton on Thursday evening, February 17, and the big gold curtain opens to disclose the mystery.
31One thing about this opera sets it apart from any of its predecessors at the Metropolitan—it was commissioned. In the spring of 1925 Mr. Gatti and Mr. Kahn got together with Mr. Taylor, as the man most likely to produce an effective operatic score, and requested him to prepare an opera work for the Metropolitan, giving him a free hand. Almost as soon as these lines are read, the result of this—for America—highly novel and interesting experiment will be known.
33THE PASSING OF THE SOLO CELLO
35It is remarkable that the violoncello, the beautiful tenor-bass of the string family, seems in recent years to be losing its place as a solo instrument.
37There is, we think, no musical sound more beautiful than the deep-pitched passionately vibrant tone of a cello in capable hands; and yet, today, with the number of its votaries so much greater than in former years, there are practically no cellists anywhere who are in a position to maintain the status of soloist exclusively. The best of them are compelled to play in orchestras and to teach in order to subsist musically and materially.
39Only a few decades back there was quite a coterie of brilliant performers on the cello whose names were as familiar on concert programs as those of eminent pianists, violinists and singers. There were Servais, De Munck, De Swert, Piatti, Davidoff, Popper, Klengel, Becker, Hollman, Hekking and Gerardy, besides a number of others of lesser fame. They were soloists pure and simple, except that most of them, notably Servais, De Swert, Piatti, Davidoff and Popper were eminent composers for their instruments as well.
41Servais wrote a large number of inimitable Fantasies (a type of composition popular in his day), besides valuable studies and other pieces. De Swert contributed several excellent concertos to the literature of his instrument, as did Piatti and Davidoff. Piatti's Caprices and his arrangements of the old Italian works of Boccherini, Locatelli, Valentini and others are the pride and joy of every real cellist's heart. David Popper's shorter pieces are known to everybody; for grace, elegance, ingenuity and esprit, they have never been approached. The Buda-Pesth master had the faculty of writing things that "sound" for the instrument, as no one had before or after him. De Munck wrote pleasing salon-pieces, and Klengel and Becker contributed serious and important works.
43In those days the great composers also thought highly of the cello as a solo instrument, as is attested by the beautiful concertos of Schumann, Moliq, Volkman, Saint-Saëns, Lalo and Dvorak, and the Variations of Tschaikowsky and Boellman. Since
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