24 chapters
5 hour read
Selected Chapters
24 chapters
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
So many fantastic tales have come to us of students' life abroad, of their temptations, trials, finances, successes and failures, that I have attempted to give here the true story of the preparation for an operatic career, and its fruition. My road leads from New York to Paris, to Germany and thence to London, and back to the Metropolitan Opera House. My operatic experiences in Germany are inalienably associated with the lives of the people, particularly with the German officer class, viewed pub
1 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
I WAS very young and I was engaged to be married. We had just lost our money in rather dramatic fashion, and we were all doing what we could to supply the sudden deficit. My sister began to prepare herself to be a teacher, my brother left his boarding school and came home to go into a friend's office, and I—well, I accepted the hand and heart of the young man in our set with whom I had had most pleasure in dancing in winter and sailing in summer. My heart didn't lose a beat and turn over when I
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
T HAT winter in New York was a revealing experience to me in many ways. Numbers of things assumed different values in my estimation. One of the first new things I learned was the comparative insignificance of $500 as a provision for a year's expenses. I lived at one of those boarding houses which are called both "reasonable" and respectable, but are vastly inferior in both comfort and society to the European pension which costs a good deal less. I had lessons in singing, diction and French, all
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
I CROSSED on one of the steady big boats of the Atlantic Transport Line. I remember only one passenger, a boy of even then such personal magnetism that he stands out in my recollection as clearly as any one I have ever met, though he was then only a young fellow and unknown to fame. His name was Douglas Fairbanks and his ambition was to go on the stage. He said as we neared England: "Well, some day we'll read, 'Conried of the Metropolitan Opera House presents Miss Kathleen Howard,' and 'Charles
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
A T first I had no companionship and very little recreation, beyond the ever fresh wonder and delight of the Paris streets as I saw them in my daily constitutional. One day I went with a girl friend to visit her atelier . I wrote to my mother: "We spent a long time in the life-class room—nude, (not us but the model). It was a mixed class. A large oblong room, filled with I should think over a hundred students, mostly men. They sat in a circle facing the model throne. The floor is not raised, but
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
A FTER a few months of strenuous endeavour on my part, I began to be a little dissatisfied and restless. I saw clearly that in a year's time, working at such pressure, I should have a sufficient repertoire to begin my apprenticeship on the stage; but I did not see my way to a début quite so clearly. I talked with the other pupils, to get their ideas of progression. They all said, "When I make my début at the Opera," or "the Comique." They were all sure of an opening at the top and apparently wou
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
T HE first of September, without a word of German, I set out for Berlin. My mother had come over during the preceding Spring, to make her home in Paris with my sculptor brother Cecil and my sister. From this time on I went to them for the summers, and my sister joined me when I went to Metz, and has never left me since. It made it harder to leave both family and Paris behind and go into an unknown land, but I felt it to be the best way. Lilli Lehmann's studio was my objective point. I found her
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
B Y the first of December I had broken the back of the German declensions, understood a good part of an ordinary conversation, and had painfully acquired three or four rôles in German. The gadfly of my ambition began to torment me again, and I determined to look for a "job." Students often ask me "How did you get your first engagement?" This is how. I went to see the best agent in Berlin, Herr Harder, a man of the highest reputation for fair dealing, who was the recognized head of his profession
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
“W HEN I make my début” was the phrase that I had heard so often on the lips of my American fellow students. Each one had chosen her opera house, and decided in which rôle she would dazzle a clamouring public. Sometimes one more modest would choose Monte Carlo in preference to Paris, or if she intended to make a career in Germany, she might hesitate between the rival merits of Dresden and Berlin. But that the theatre should be one of the half-dozen leading ones in the world, and the rôle her fav
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
E ARLY the next morning, before we were up, our English friend kindly came to see us, and with her help we soon discovered just what we were looking for, in an eminently respectable house, where the Hausfrau was the wife of a policeman, so that we were under the shadow of the majesty of the law. A young doctor had the rooms, but she assured us that he was moving immediately, and that we might send our trunks the following day. We duly arrived the next afternoon with an avalanche of baggage and f
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
I HAD to sing Azucena , my first part on any stage, without rehearsal. The reason for this dawned upon me afterwards. Though I sang German well by this time, my conversational powers still left something to be desired. I have explained that the present director had never heard my voice; no one knew of what I was capable, and they quite expected that I would prove incompetent, and had engaged a native born contralto to provide for this contingency. When I heard one evening, that I should have to
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
W E had also what is known as Abstecher , on off nights. That is, performances in a neighbouring and still smaller town about once a month. We would travel altogether, taking our costumes and make-up with us, principals second class and chorus third. Our fare was paid, and the generous management allowed us two marks apiece (50c) extra for expenses! As we left at five P.M. returning at one or two in the morning, this allowance was not excessive for food alone, but the thrifty took black bread an
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
T HE Bohemian, Hungarian and Croatian singers nearly always add to one's joy in work by eating garlic. The "high dramatic" soprano in my next engagement was from Croatia. The first time I went to Prague to sing, on alighting from the train I sniffed a strangely familiar odour. The impression of familiarity grew stronger and stronger as I drove to the hotel—but I couldn't place it. At last it came to me—the whole town smelled like our soprano! I have often wished, while on the stage, for temporar
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
A T the beginning of the season, the director's family was still in the country, where they remained until the opera had been running for some time. We met his wife and daughter for the first time at a luncheon given by him at the hotel where we had arranged to take our two o'clock dinner, after trying all sorts of unsuccessful ways of dining in private. The stage manager of the drama, the first and second Kapellmeister, the "Bureau Chef," the Heldentenor, Heldenbariton, High Dramatic, Coloratur
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
T HE second year of my first engagement was drawing to a close, and I was much exercised over the next step. I wanted to try for one of the Hoftheaters , not the very largest and most famous, but a place with a good orchestra and carefully prepared productions. There seemed to be no vacancy in just such a theatre, and my agent offered me a contract for a great Stadttheater , probably the first municipal opera house in Germany. Their contralto, who was a great favourite, had a contract for a big
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
I F you make a hit with the audience your residence in the town is made very pleasant. Even the conductors and motormen of the street cars used to greet me as they passed and all the policemen were my friends. I had letters to some of the people in the town through relations, and took as much part as I had time for in the really charming, if slightly narrow, social life of the place. The centre of everything was, of course, the Court. The Grand Duke took a great interest in the theatre, and used
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
O NE factor in my success was the beautiful wardrobe I was enabled to have through the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Frank S. Jones. The first clothes I ordered from Marie Muelle in Paris, the summer before I went to Metz, I left entirely to her. She showed me designs and had bolts of wonderful shimmering silks unrolled for my inspection, and brought out boxes of curious embroideries, which she kept for her special friends. The Amneris and Dalila costumes she made me were very French of that period o
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
O NE of the first things you do on arriving at a new residence in Germany is to acquaint the police of your presence. This is called Anmeldung . It is a fearsome experience and admits of no trifling. You go to the appointed stuffy office, and tell your nationality, birthplace with date of birth, your parents' names, their profession if any, and your own, their birthplaces and ages, if they are dead and what they died of, whether you are married or single, number, names and ages of your children,
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
I WAS on the whole very happy in Darmstadt. All the leading contralto work came to me by right, and it was brightened by an occasional rôle in operetta. They found they could use me for smart ladies in such things as "Dollar Prinzessin," and I greatly enjoyed the dancing and gaiety of those performances. We had many operas in the repertoire that are seldom or never heard of in this country, "Evangelimann," "Hans Heiling," "Sieben Schwaben," all the Lortzings, "Undine," "Wildschuetz," "Zar und Zi
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
T HE Grand Duke was always very good to me. He liked talking English with my sister and me, and always referred to the Germans as "they," never as "we." He asked me to the palace one evening to dinner. We dined in a room hung with portraits of his beautiful sisters. They looked like fair angels, the portraits having been painted when both the Czarina of Russia and her sisters were quite young girls. We were told by friends that the Czarina used to be perfectly exquisite as a young woman, usually
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
A LL this time I was working very hard at the opera. Our repertoire was very large, including nearly all the Italian operas, from Verdi to Wolf-Ferrari, and the German operas from the time of Weber and Mozart up to Humperdinck. Everything was given in German, some of the translations good and some poor. At first it had seemed terribly difficult to accustom myself to the German sounds in Dalila or Carmen, after the sonorous French, but latterly German came to seem quite as natural, though never s
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
W E played continuously nine months from September to June, and then scattered for the holidays. I often went to Munich for the Wagnerian Festspiel . We have many German relatives (though not a drop of German blood), as three of my grandfather's sisters married German officers. Through remote ancestors we also have dozens of cousins in the north of Germany. The Munich relations I dearly loved. The son of the famous court architect, von Klenze, who built nearly all the noble buildings in Munich f
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
D URING that summer Baron S—— died in Munich. This of course was a great blow to me and I did not know what I could do about my contract. I went to Berlin to see Herr Harder, who told me I must gastieren according to contract in October, but as the new Intendant was not to come into office till November, no one could really engage me, especially as a very exacting new musical director was coming from Vienna later in the season, and they would both undoubtedly want to choose their own first contr
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
I N due time we set out for London. One of our cousins had found us delightful diggings in M—— Street, which I was able to enjoy, as dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones sent me an extra cheque to impress London with. We were waited upon by an old butler, and his wife did the cooking. Such legs of lamb, and deep plum tarts, with lashings of clotted cream! Such snowy napery, and silver polished as only English butlers can polish it. It was not by any means my first visit to London, professionally. I had sung
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter