Once, indeed, there was a "Parsifal" festival in Brooklyn, under the direction of Mr. Seidl, in which all the music was sung by the best singers of the Metropolitan Opera House on a stage set to suggest the Temple of the Grail. Only the action and the pictures were new to the city"s music lovers. Nevertheless the interest on the part of the public was stupendous. The first five representations were over on January 21st, but before then Mr. Conried had already announced five more, besides a special day performance on Washington"s Birthday, February 22d. After the eleventh performance, on February 25th, Mr. Conried gave out the statement to the public press that the receipts had been $186,308; that is, an average of $16,937.17. But this was not the end.
Under Mr. Grau the custom had grown up in the Metropolitan Opera House of a special performance, the proceeds of which were the personal perquisites of the director. In all the contracts between the director and his artists there was a clause which bound the latter to sing for nothing at one performance. Before his retirement Mr. Grau grew ashamed of appearing in the light of an eleemosynary beneficiary under such circ.u.mstances, and explained to the newspapers that the arrangement between himself and the singers was purely a business one. Nevertheless he continued to avail himself of the rich advantage which the arrangement brought him, and in the spring closed the supplementary season with a performance of an olla podrida character, in which all of the artists took part. Mr. Conried continued the custom throughout his administration, but varied the programme in his first year by giving a representation of "Parsifal" instead of the customary mixed pickles.
The act was wholly commercial. That was made plain, even if anyone had been inclined to think otherwise, when subsequently he subst.i.tuted an operetta, Strauss"s "Fledermaus," for the religious play, and called on all of his artists who did not sing in it to sit at tables in the ball scene, give a concert, and partic.i.p.ate in the dancing. A year later he gratified an equally lofty ambition by arranging a sumptuous performance of another operetta by the same composer, "Der Zigeunerbaron," and following it with a miscellaneous concert. That operetta was never repeated.
In the seasons 1904-05 and 1905-06 "Parsifal" was again reserved for special performance at double the ordinary prices of admission, and it was not until a year later that the patrons of the Metropolitan were permitted to hear it at the ordinary subscription rates. By that time it had taken its place with the Nibelung tragedy, having, in fact, a little less drawing power than the more popular dramas in the tetralogy.
The reason was not far to seek. The craze created by the first year had led to all manner of shows, dramas, lectures with stereopticon pictures which were a degradation of the subject. Only one of the results possessed artistic dignity or virtue, and this justified the apprehension of the poet-composer touching what would happen if his unique work ever became a repertory piece. Mr. Savage in 1904-05 carried "Parsifal" throughout the length and breadth of the land in an English version, starting in Boston and giving representations night after night just before the Metropolitan season opened in the New York Theater.
Nevertheless there were eight performances at the Metropolitan in that season and four in the season that followed. At regular rates in 1906-07 only two performances were possible. All of Mr. Conried"s artistic energies in his second season were expended on the production of "Die Fledermaus," which he gave for his own benefit under the circ.u.mstances already referred to, on February 16th. The season lasted fifteen weeks, and consisted of ninety-five performances of thirty operas and two ballets, outside of the supplementary season, which, let me repeat, are not included in the statistics which I am giving. An incident of the second season was the collapse of the bridge which is part of the first scene of "Carmen," and the consequent injury of ten choristers. The accident happened on the night of January 7, 1905, while the performance was in progress. Fortunately n.o.body was killed.
CHAPTER XXII
END OF CONRIED"S ADMINISTRATION
A visit from Engelbert Humperdinck to attend the first German performance of his "Hansel und Gretel" on November 25th, a strike of the chorus which lasted three days, a revival of Goldmark"s "Konigin von Saba" which had been the chief glory of the second German season twenty years before, and the squandering of thousands of dollars and so much time that nearly all of the operas in the repertory suffered for lack of rehearsals on a single production of Strauss"s operetta "Der Zigeunerbaron," were the chief incidents of the season of 1905-06. That is to say, the chief local incidents. Out in San Francisco the company was overwhelmed by the catastrophe of the earthquake, which sent it back a physical and financial wreck. The calamity tested the fort.i.tude and philosophy of Mr. Conried as well as the artists, but through the gloom there shone a cheering ray when Mme. Sembrich, herself one of the chief sufferers from the earthquake, postponed her return to her European home long enough to give a concert for the benefit of the minor members of the company, and distributed $7,691 to musicians who had lost their instruments and $2,435 to the chorus and technical staff.
The season of 1906-07 marked highwater in the artistic activities of Mr.
Conried"s inst.i.tution. It was the year of "Salome" and the coming of Signor Puccini to give eclat to the production of his operas. Outside of "Salome" there was only one real novelty in the season"s repertory, and that, "Fedora," might easily have been spared; but the current list of the house was augmented by no less than seven works, namely, "Fedora,"
"La d.a.m.nation de Faust," "Lakme" (which had been absent from the list for many years), "L"Africaine," "Manon Lescaut," "Madama b.u.t.terfly," and "Salome." Berlioz"s dramatic legend, "La d.a.m.nation," had been a popular concert piece ever since its first production by Dr. Leopold Damrosch at a concert of the Symphony Society more than twenty-five years before, and its novel features were those which grew out of the abortive efforts of Raoul Gunsbourg to turn it into a stage play.
In the presence of the composer, who was received with great acclaim by a gathering notable in numbers and appearance, and amid scenes of glad excitement which grew from act to act, Puccini"s "Manon Lescaut" was performed for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera House on the evening of January 18, 1907. Signor Puccini reached the theater in the middle of the third act and, unnoticed by the audience, took a seat in the directors" box in the grand tier. After the first act the orchestra saluted him with a fanfare and the audience broke into applause which lasted so long that, finding it impossible to quiet it by rising and bowing his acknowledgments, he withdrew into the rear of the box out of sight so that the performance might go an. After the second act he sent the following statement in French to the representatives of the newspapers:
"I have always thought that an artist has something to learn at any age.
It was with delight, therefore, that I accepted the invitation of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House to come to this new world of which I saw a corner on my visit to Buenos Ayres and with which I was anxious to get better acquainted. What I have seen to-night has already proved to me that I did well to come here, and I consider myself happy to be able to say that I am among my friends, to whom I can speak in music with a certainty of being understood."
"Manon Lescaut" was not wholly new to the opera-goers of New York, for it had had one or two performances by a vagrant Italian company at Wallack"s Theater in May, 1898; but to all intents and purposes it was a novelty, for the musical itinerants of nine years before were not equal to the task set by Puccini, and gave a perversion rather than a performance of the opera. Why it should have waited so long and for the stimulus of the coming of the composer before reaching the Metropolitan Opera House was not easily explained by those admirers of the composer who knew or felt that in spite of the high opinion in which. "La Boheme," "Tosca," and "Madama b.u.t.terfly" were held, "Manon Lescaut"
is fresher, more spontaneous, more unaffected and pa.s.sionate in its dramatic climaxes, as well as more ingratiatingly charming in its comedy element, than any of its successors from Puccini"s pen. The voice of the composer rings unmistakably through its measures, but it is freer from the formularies which have since become stereotyped, and there are a greater number of echoes of the tunefulness which belongs to the older period between which and the present the opera marks a transition. Abbe Prevost"s story, familiar to all readers of French romance, had served at least four opera composers before Signor Puccini. In 1830 Halevy brought forward a three-act ballet dealing with the story; Balfe wrote a French opera with the t.i.tle in 1836, Auber another in 1856, and Ma.s.senet still another in 1884. Scribe was Auber"s collaborator, and their opera, which like Puccini"s ended with the scene of Manon"s death in America, received a touch of local color from the employment of Negro dances and Creole songs. It would be interesting to see the old score now that the artistic value of the folk-songs of the Southern States as an incentive to a distinctive school of music has challenged critical attention and aroused controversy. Ma.s.senet"s opera, which through the influence of Minnie Hauk was produced at the Academy of Music on December 23, 1885, dropped out of the local repertory until the restoration of the Italian regime as has been related elsewhere in this book. The opening and closing incidents in Ma.s.senet"s opera are the same as are used by Puccini, though MM. Meilhac and Gille, the French librettists, did not think it necessary to carry the story across the ocean for the sake of Manon"s death scene. In their book she succ.u.mbs to nothing that is obvious and dies in her lover"s arms on the way to the ship at Havre which was to transport her to the penal colony at New Orleans. The third act of Puccini"s opera plays at Havre, its contents being an effort to free Manon, the deportation of a shipload of female convicts, including Manon, and the embarkation of des Grieux in a menial capacity on the convict ship. Here the composer makes one of his most ambitious attempts at dramatic characterization: there is a roll-call and the woman go to the gang-plank in various moods, while the by-standers comment on their appearance and manner. The whole of the last act, which plays on a plateau near New Orleans, is given up to the lovers. Manon dies; des Grieux shrieks his despair and falls lifeless upon her body. Puccini has followed his confreres of the concentrated agony school in introducing an orchestral intermezzo. He does this between the second and third acts and gives a clue to its purposed emotional contents by providing it with a descriptive t.i.tle, "Imprisonment. Journey to Havre," and quoting a pa.s.sage from the Abbe Prevost"s book in which des Grieux confesses the overpowering strength of his pa.s.sion and determines to follow Manon wherever she may go, "even to the ends of the world." Here, at least, we recognize a sincere effort to make the interlude something more than a stop-gap or a device to make up for the paucity of sustained music in the course of the dramatic action.
"Madama b.u.t.terfly" in the original Italian had been antic.i.p.ated by a long series of English performances by Mr. Savage"s company at the Garden Theater, beginning on November 12th. This production is deserving of record. Walter Rothwell was the conductor, and the princ.i.p.al singers in the cast were Elza Szamosy, a Hungarian, as Cio-Cio-San; Harriet Behne as Suzuki, Joseph F. Sheehan as Pinkerton, and Winifred Goff as Sharpless. The opera reached the Metropolitan Opera House on February 11, 1907, when it was sung in the presence of the composer by the following cast:
Cio-Cio-San ........................... Geraldine Farrar Suzuki .................................... Louise Homer Pinkerton ....................................... Caruso Sharpless ....................................... Scotti Goro ............................................. Reiss Conductor, Arturo Vigna
A great deal of the sympathetic interest which "Madama b.u.t.terfly" evoked on its first production and has held in steady augmentation ever since was due to the New York public"s familiarity with the subject of the opera created by John Luther Long"s story and Mr. Belasco"s wonderfully pathetic drama upon which this much more pretentious edifice of Messrs.
Illica, Giacosa, and Puccini is reared. To the popular interest in story and play j.a.pan lent color in more respects than one, having at the time a powerful hold upon the popular imagination. We have had the Mikado"s kingdom with its sunshine and flowers, its romantic chivalry, its geishas and continent and incontinent morals upon the stage before,--in the spoken drama, in comic operetta, in musical farce, and in serious musical drama. Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan used its external motives for one of their finest satirical skits, an incomparable model in its way; but the parallel in serious opera was that created by Signor Illica, one of the librettists of "Madama b.u.t.terfly," and Signor Mascagni. The opera was "Iris," the production of which at the Metropolitan Opera House helped to emphasize the failure of the composer"s American visit. "Iris" is a singular blending of allegory which had a merit quite admirable though ill-applied, and tragedy of the kind to which I have already several times referred in this book. In "Iris" as in "Madama b.u.t.terfly" we have j.a.panese music,--the tw.a.n.ging of samisens and the tinkling of gongs; but it was more coa.r.s.ely applied, with more apparent and merely outward purpose, and it was only an accompaniment of a vision stained all over with purulence and grossness.
"Madama b.u.t.terfly" tells a tale of wickedness contrasted with lovely devotion. Its carnality has an offset in a picture of love conjugal and love maternal, and its final appeal is one to infinite pity. And in this it is beautiful. Opera-goers are familiar with Signor Puccini"s manner.
"Tosca" and "La Boheme" speak out of many measures of his latest opera, but there is introduced in it a mixture of local color. Genuine j.a.panese tunes come to the surface of the instrumental flood at intervals and tunes which copy their characteristics of rhythm, melody, and color. As a rule this is a dangerous proceeding except in comedy which aims to chastise the foibles and follies of a people and a period. Nothing is more admirable, however, than Signor Puccini"s use of it to heighten the dramatic climaxes; the merry tune with which Cio-Cio-San diverts her child in the second act and the use of a bald native tune thundered out fortissimo in naked unison with periodic punctuations of harmony at the close are striking cases in point. Nor should the local color in the delineation of the break of day in the beginning of the third act, and the charmingly felicitous use of mellifluous gongs in the marriage scene be overlooked. Always the effect is musical and dramatically helpful.
As for the rest there are many moments of a strange charm in the score, music filled with a haunting tenderness and poetic loveliness, music in which there is a beautiful meeting of the external picture and the spiritual content of the scene. Notable among these moments is the scene in which b.u.t.terfly and her attendant scatter flowers throughout the room in expectation of Pinkerton"s return. Here melodies and harmonies are exhaled like the odors of the flowers.
Giordano"s "Fedora," first performed on December 5, 1906, was given with this distribution of parts:
Fedora ................................ Lina Cavalieri (Her first appearance.) Olga ..................................... Bella Alten Dimitri ............................... Marie Mattfeld Un piccolo Savojardo ................ Josephine Jacoby Loris Ipanow ........................... Enrico Caruso De Siriex ............................. Antonio Scotti Il Barone Rouvel | Desire | ........................ Mr. Paroli Cirillo .................................... Mr. Begue Borow ................................... Mr. Muhlmann Grech ................................... Mr. Dufriche Boleslaw Lazinski ........................ Mr. Voghere Lorek ................................... Mr. Navarini Conductor, Arturo Vigna
The opera is an attempt to put music to the familiar play by Sardou; an utterly futile attempt. A more sluggish and intolerable first act than the legal inquest it would be difficult to imagine. Fragments of inconsequential tunes float along on a turgid stream, above which the people of the play chatter and scream, becoming intelligible and interesting only when they lapse into ordinary speech. Ordinary speech, however, is the only kind of speech that an expeditious drama can tolerate, and it is not raised to a higher power by the blowing of bra.s.s or the beating of drums. The frankest confession of the futility of Giordano"s effort to make a lyric drama out of "Fedora" is contained in the fact that only those moments in his score are musical in the accepted sense when the play stops, as in the case of the intermezzo which cuts the second act in two, or when the old operatic principles wake into life again, as in Loris"s confession of love. Here, in the first instance, a mood receives musical delineation, and in the second a pa.s.sion whose expression is naturally lyrical receives utterance. One device new to the operatic stage, in its externals at least, is ingeniously employed by the composer: the conversation in which Fedora extorts a confession from Loris is carried on while a pianist entertains a princess" guests with a solo upon his instrument. But the fact that singing tones, not spoken, are used adds nothing to the value of the scene.
On returning from Europe late in the summer of 1906 Mr. Conried announced his intention to produce Richard Strauss"s "Salome," and his forces had no sooner been gathered together than Mr. Hertz began the laborious task of preparing the opera--if opera it can be called--for performance. There can scarcely be a doubt that Mr. Conried hoped for a sensational flurry like that which had accompanied the production of "Parsifal"; but, with an eye to the main chance, he confined his first official proclamation to a single performance, which, in connection with a concert by all his chief singers not concerned in the opera, was to be given for his annual benefit. Evidently he felt less sure about the outcome of this production than he had about that of "Parsifal," and was bound to reap all the benefits that could come from a powerful appeal to popular curiosity touching so notorious a work as Strauss"s setting of Oscar Wilde"s drama. The performance took place with many preliminary flourishes beyond the ordinary on January 22d. Two days before there was held a public rehearsal, which was attended by about a thousand persons who had received invitations, most of them being stockholders of the opera house, old subscribers, stockholders of Mr. Conried"s company, writers for the newspapers, and friends of the artists and the management. The opera was given with the following cast:
Salome ................................. Miss Fremstad Herodias ................................... Miss Weed Herodias"s Page ..................... Josephine Jacoby Herod"s Page .......................... Marie Mattfeld Herod ................................... Carl Burrian Jochanaan ............................. Anton Van Rooy Narraboth ............................. Andreas Dippel First Jew .................................. Mr. Reiss Second Jew ................................. Mr. Bayer Third Jew ................................. Mr. Paroli Fourth Jew .................................. Mr. Bars Fifth Jew ............................... Mr. Dufriche First Nazarene ........................... Mr. Journet Second Nazarene ........................... Mr. Stiner First Soldier ........................... Mr. Muhlmann Second Soldier ............................. Mr. Bla.s.s A Cappadocian .............................. Mr. Lange Conductor, Alfred Hertz
Concerning the effect produced upon the public by the performance of the work I shall permit Mr. W. P. Eaton, then a reporter for The Tribune, to speak for me.
The concert was over a little after nine, and the real business of the evening began at a quarter to ten, when the lights went out, there was a sound from the orchestra pit, and the curtains parted on "Salome." The setting for "Salome" is an imaginative creation of the scene painter"s art. The high steps to the palace door to the right, the cover of the cistern, backed by ironic roses in the center, and beyond the deep night sky and the moonlight on the distant roofs. Two cedars cut the sky, black and mournful. Against this background "Salome" moves like a tigress, the costumes of the court glow with a dun, barbaric splendor, and the red fire from the tripods streams silently up into the night till you fancy you can almost smell it. Here was atmosphere like Belasco"s, and saturated with it the opera moved to its appointed end, sinister, compelling, disgusting.
What the opera is is told elsewhere. It remains to record that in the audience at this performance, as at the dress rehearsals on Sunday, the effect of horror was p.r.o.nounced. Many voices were hushed as the crowd pa.s.sed out into the night, many faces were white almost as those at the rail of a ship. Many women were silent, and men spoke as if a bad dream were on them. The preceding concert was forgotten; ordinary emotions following an opera were banished. The grip of a strange horror or disgust, was on the majority. It was significant that the usual applause was lacking. It was scattered and brief.
In this there is no hyperbole; it fails of a complete description only in neglecting to chronicle the fact that a large proportion of the audience left the audience-room at the beginning of the b.e.s.t.i.a.l apostrophe to the head of the Baptist. It was because of this p.r.o.nounced rejection of the work by an audience which might have been considered elected to it in a peculiar manner that it was a sincere cause of regret that the action of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company caused a prohibition of further performances. It would have been better and conduced more to artistic righteousness if the public had been permitted to kill the work by refusing to witness it. In my opinion there is no doubt but that this would have been the result had Mr. Conried attempted to give performances either at extraordinary or ordinary prices. Immediately after his benefit performance he announced three representations outside of the subscription, the first of which was to take place on February 1st. Two days after the first performance, the directors of the opera house company held a meeting and adopted the following resolution, which was promptly communicated to Mr.
Conried:
The directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company consider that the performance of "Salome" is objectionable and detrimental to the best interests of the Metropolitan Opera House. They therefore protest against any repet.i.tion of this opera.
Under the terms of the contract between the directors and Mr. Conried, such a protest was the equivalent of a command, disobedience of which would have worked a forfeiture of the lease. Mr. Conried parleyed, pleading his cause voluminously in the public prints, as well as before the directors, meanwhile keeping his announcement of the three performances before the people. But the sale of tickets amounted to next to nothing, and Mr. Conried yielded with as much grace as possible, when on January 30th the directors refused to modify their action, though they expressed a willingness to recoup Mr. Conried for some of his expenses in mounting the opera. The directors who took this action were J. P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt, G. G. Haven, Charles Lanier, George F. Baker, D. O. Mills, George Bowdoin, A. D. Juilliard, August Belmont, and H. McK. Twombly. Representatives of Mr. Conried"s company who argued the case before the directors were Otto H. Kahn, Robert Goelet, James Speyer, H. R. Winthrop, and R. H. Cottenet. For some time Mr. Conried talked about performing the opera in another theater, and the directors of his company formally agreed that he might do so on his own responsibility; but nothing came of it. Mr. Conried had probably seen the handwriting on the wall of his box office. The next year there were more solemn proclamations to the effect that it would be performed outside of New York. Boston sent in a protest, and the flurry was over, except as it was kept up in silly and mendacious reports sent to the newspapers of Germany touching the influences that had worked for the prohibition. There never was a case which asked for less speculation.
Decent men did not want to have their house polluted with the stench with which Oscar Wilde"s play had filled the nostrils of humanity.
Having the power to prevent the pollution they exercised it.
A reviewer ought to be equipped with a dual nature, both intellectually and morally, in order to p.r.o.nounce fully and fairly upon the qualities of this drama by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss. He should be an embodied conscience stung into righteous fury by the moral stench exhaled by the decadent and pestiferous work, but, though it make him retch, he should be sufficiently judicial in his temperament calmly to look at the drama in all its aspects and determine whether or not as a whole it is an instructive note on the life and culture of the times and whether or not this exudation from the diseased and polluted will and imagination of the authors marks a real advance in artistic expression, irrespective of its contents or their fitness for dramatic representation. This is asking much of the hara.s.sed commentator on the things which the mult.i.tude of his readers receive as contributions to their diversion merely and permit to be crowded out of their minds by the next pleasant or unpleasant shock to their sensibilities. He has not the time, nor have his readers the patience, to enter upon a discussion of the questions of moral and esthetic principle which ought to pave the way for the investigation. If he can tell what the play is, what its musical invest.i.ture is like, wherein the combined elements have worked harmoniously and efficiently to an end which to their authors seemed artistic, and therefore justifiable, he will have done much. In the case before us even this much cannot be done until some notions which have long had validity are put aside. We are only concerned with "Salome" in its newest form,--that given it by the musical composer. If it shall ever win approbation here, as it seems to have done in several German cities, it will be because of the shape into which Richard Strauss has moulded it.
Several attempts had been made to habilitate Oscar Wilde"s drama on the New York stage, and had failed. If the opera succeeds it will be because a larger public has discovered that the music which has been consorted with the old pictures, actions, and words has added to them an element either of charm or expressive potentiality hitherto felt to be lacking.
Is that true? Has a rock of offense been removed? Has a mephitic odor been changed to a sweet savor by the subtle alchemy of the musical composer? Has a drama abhorrent, b.e.s.t.i.a.l, repellent, and loathsome been changed into a thing of delectability by the potent agency of music?
It used to be said that things too silly to be spoken might be sung; is it also true that things too vile, too foul, too nauseating for contemplation may be seen, so they be insidiously and wickedly glorified by the musician"s art? As a rule, plays have not been improved by being turned into operas. Always their dramatic movement has been interrupted, their emotional current clogged, their poetry emasculated by the transformation. Things are better now than they were in the long ago, when music took no part at all in dramatic action, but waited for a mood which it had power to publish and celebrate; but music has acquired its new power only by an abnegation of its better part, by a.s.suming new functions, and asking a revaluation of its elements on a new esthetic basis. In "Salome" music is largely a decorative element, like the scene,--like the costumes. It creates atmosphere, like the affected stylism of much of Oscar Wilde"s text, with its Oriental imagery borrowed from "The Song of Solomon," diluted and sophisticated; it gives emotional significance to situations, helping the facial play of Salome and her gestures to proclaim the workings of her mind, when speech has deserted her; it is at its best as the adjunct and inspiration of the lascivious dance. In the last two instances, however, it reverts to the purpose and also the manner (with a difference) which have always obtained, and becomes music in the purer sense. Then the would-be dramatist is swallowed up in the symphonist, and Strauss is again the master magician who can juggle with our senses and our reason and make his instrumental voices body forth "the forms of things unknown."
It would be wholly justifiable to characterize "Salome" as a symphonic poem for which the play supplies the program. The parallelism of which we hear between Strauss and Wagner exists only in part--only in the application of the principle of characterization by means of musical symbols or typical phrases. Otherwise the men"s work on diametrically opposite lines. With all his musical affluence, Wagner aimed, at least, to make his orchestra only the bearer and servant of the dramatic word.
Nothing can be plainer (it did not need that he should himself have confessed it) than that Strauss looks upon the words as necessary evils.
His vocal parts are not song, except for brief, intensified s.p.a.ces at long intervals. They are declamation. The song-voice is used, one is p.r.o.ne to think, only because by means of it the words can be made to be heard above the orchestra. Song, in the old acceptance of the word, implies beauty of tone and justness of intonation. It is amazing how indifferent the listener is to both vocal quality and intervallic accuracy in "Salome." Wilde"s stylistic efforts are lost in the flood of instrumental sound; only the mood which they were designed to produce remains. Jochanaan sings phrases, which are frequently tuneful, and when they are not denunciatory are set in harmonies agreeable to the ear.
But by reason of that fact Jochanaan comes perilously near being an old-fashioned operatic figure--an ascetic Marcel, with little else to differentiate him from his Meyerbeerian prototype than his "raiment of camel"s hair and a leather"s girdle about his loins," and an inflated phrase which must serve for the tunes sung by the rugged Huguenot soldier. Strauss characterizes by his vocal manner as well as by his themes and their instrumental treatment; but for his success he relies at least as much upon the performer as upon the musical text. A voice and style like Mr. Van Rooy"s give an uplift, a prophetic breadth, dignity, and impressiveness to the utterances of Jochanaan which are paralleled only by the imposing instrumental apparatus employed in proclaiming the phrase invented to clothe his p.r.o.nouncements. Six horns, used as Strauss knows how to use them, are a good substratum for the arch-colorist. The nervous staccato chatter of Herod is certainly characteristic of this neurasthenic. This specimen from the pathological museum of Messrs. Wilde and Strauss appears in a state which causes alarm lest his internal mechanism fly asunder and scatter his corporeal parts about the scene. The crepitating volubility with which Strauss endows him is a marvelously ingenious conceit; but it leans heavily for its effect, we fear, on the amazing skill of Mr. Burrian, not only in cackling out the words synchronously with the orchestral part, but in emotionally coloring them and blending them in a unity with his facial expression and his perturbed bodily movements. Salome sings, often in the explosive style of Wagner"s Kundry, sometimes with something like fluent continuity, but from her song has been withheld all the symmetrical and graceful contours comprehended in the concept of melody.
Hers are the superheated phrases invented to give expression to her pa.s.sion, and out of them she must construct the vocal accompaniment to the instrumental song, which reaches its culmination in the scene which, instead of receiving a tonal beatification, as it does, ought to be relegated to the silence and darkness of the deepest dungeon of a madhouse or a hospital.
Here is a matter, of the profoundest esthetical and ethical significance, which might as well be disposed of now, so far as this discussion is concerned, regardless of the symmetrical continuity of the argument. There is a vast deal of ugly music in "Salome,"--music that offends the ear and rasps the nerves like fiddlestrings played on by a coa.r.s.e file. In a criticism of Strauss"s "Symphonia Domestica" I took occasion to point out that a large lat.i.tude must be allowed to the dramatic composer which must be denied to the symphonist. Consort a dramatic or even a lyric text with music and all manner of tonal devices may derive explanation, if not justification, from the words. But in purely instrumental music the arbitrary purposes of a composer cannot replace the significance which must lie in the music itself--that is in its emotional and esthetic content. It does not lie in intellectual content, for thought to become articulate demands speech. The champions of Richard Strauss have defended ugliness in his last symphony, the work which immediately preceded "Salome," and his symphonic poems on the score that music must be an expression of truth, and truth is not always beautiful. In a happier day than this it was believed that the true and the beautiful were bound together in angelic wedlock and that all art found its highest mission in giving them expression. But the drama has been led through devious paths into the charnel house, and in "Salome"
we must needs listen to the echoes of its dazed and drunken footfalls.
The maxim "Truth before convention" a.s.serts its validity and demands recognition under the guise of "characteristic beauty." We may refuse to admit that ugliness is ent.i.tled to be raised to a valid principle in music dissociated from words or stage pictures, on the ground that thereby it contravenes and contradicts its own nature; but we may no longer do so when it surrenders its function as an expression of the beautiful and becomes merely an ill.u.s.trative element, an aid to dramatic expression. What shall be said, then, when music adorns itself with its loveliest attributes and lends them to the apotheosis of that which is indescribably, yes, inconceivably, gross and abominable? Music cannot lie. Not even the genius of Richard Strauss can make it discriminate in its soaring ecstasy between a vile object and a good. There are three supremely beautiful musical moments in "Salome." Two of them are purely instrumental, though they ill.u.s.trate dramatic incidents; the third is predominantly instrumental, though it has an accompaniment of word and action. The first is an intermezzo in which all action ceases except that which plays in the b.e.s.t.i.a.lly perverted heart and mind of Salome. A baffled amorous hunger changes to a desire for revenge. The second is the music of the dance. The third is the marvelous finale in which an impulse which can only be conceived as rising from the uttermost pit of degradation is beatified. Crouching over the dissevered head of the prophet, Salome addresses it in terms of reproach, of grief, of endearment and longing, and finally kisses the b.l.o.o.d.y lips and presses her teeth into the gelid flesh. It is incredible that an artist should ever have conceived such a scene for public presentation. In all the centuries in which the story of the dance before Herod has fascinated sculptors, painters, and poets, in spite of the accretions of l.u.s.tful incident upon the simple Biblical story, it remained for a poet of our day to conceive this horror and a musician of our day to put forth his highest powers in its celebration. There was a scene before the mental eye of Strauss as he wrote. It was that of Isolde singing out her life over the dead body of Tristan. In the music of that scene, I do not hesitate to say again, as I have said before, there lies the most powerful plea ever made for the guilty lovers. It is the choicest flower of Wagner"s creative faculty, the culmination of his powers as a composer, and never before or since has the purifying and enn.o.bling capacity of music been so convincingly demonstrated. Strauss has striven to outdo it, and there are those who think that in this episode he actually raised music to a higher power. He has not only gone with the dramatist and outraged every sacred instinct of humanity by calling the l.u.s.t for flesh, alive or dead, love, but he has celebrated her ghoulish pa.s.sion as if he would perforce make of her an object of that "redemption" of which, again following Wagner but along oblique paths, he prates so strangely in his opera of "Guntram."
It is obvious on a moment"s reflection that, had Strauss desired, the play might easily have been modified so as to avoid this gruesome episode. A woman scorned, vengeful, and penitent would have furnished forth material enough for his finale and dismissed his audience with less disturbance of their moral and physical stomachs. But Strauss, to put it mildly, is a sensationalist despite his genius, and his business sense is large, as New Yorkers know ever since he wound up an artistic tour of America with a concert in a department store. When Nietszche was the talk of Germany we got "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Oscar Wilde"s play, too unsavory for the France for which it was written, taboo in England because of its subject, has been joyously acclaimed in Germany, where there are many men who are theoretically licentious and practically uxorious; and Strauss was willing that his countrymen should sup to their full of delights and horrors.
To think back, under the impressions of the final scene, to the dance which precipitated the catastrophe is to bring up recollections of little else than the striking originality of its music, its piquancies of rhythm and orchestration, its artfully simulated Orientalism, and the thrilling effect produced by a recurrence to the "love music" ("Let me kiss thy mouth, Jochanaan,") at a moment before the frenetic close, when the representation of Salome (a professional dancer, Miss Froehlich, was deftly subst.i.tuted for Miss Fremstad at the Metropolitan performance) approaches the cistern in which the white flesh, black hair, and red lips of her idolatry are immured, and casts wistful glances into its depths. Since the outcome was to be what it became it would have been folly in Mr. Conried"s performance to attempt to disguise the true character of the "Dance of the Seven Veils." Miss Froeblich gave us quite unconcernedly a danse du ventre; not quite so p.r.o.nounced as it has been seen in the Oriental quarters at our world"s fairs, not quite so free of bodily covering as tradition would have justified. Yet it served to emphasize its purpose in the play. This dance in its original estate is a dramatic dance; it is, indeed, the frankest example of terpsich.o.r.ean symbolism within the whole range of the pantomimic dance.
The conditions under which Wilde and Strauss introduce it in their drama spare one all need of thought; there is sufficient commentary in the.
doddering debility of the pleading Herod and the l.u.s.tful att.i.tude of his protruding eyes. There are fantastical persons who like to talk about religious symbolism in connection with this dance, and of forms of worship of vast antiquity. The dance is old. It was probably danced in Egypt before the Exodus; in Greece probably before Orpheus sang and
"Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers."
But it is not to be seriously thought that from those days to this there was ever any doubt as to its significance and its purpose, which is to pander to prurient appet.i.tes and arouse libidinous pa.s.sions.
Always, too, from those days to this, its performers have been the most abandoned of the courtesan cla.s.s.