1

Mahler in (I) Discovering the New World—New York in 1908 The Metropolitan and Tristan and (January–February 1908)

The public here is not blase´. It is greedy for anything new....

N the early years of the twentieth century, everything concerning the New IWorld, and particularly New York, was already a matter of intense interest to Europeans. Mahler had numerous friends and acquaintances who had visited the , including , Franz Schalk, , Moriz Rosenthal,1 and Gerhard Hauptmann, and he must certainly have questioned them about their experiences. But the picture he obtained from them concern- ing that distant world was doubtless a confusing one. So Mahler’s emotions on leaving were surely divided: on the one hand, he could feel satisfaction at leaving behind a country which had shown itself unable to appreciate his true value; on the other, there must have been quite a considerable degree of apprehension as he contemplated such a huge new challenge. The European perception of America was largely one of a continent where money was omnipo- tent, enterprise untrammelled, and advertising deafening. Beyond that, it was a place where virtuosos hogged the limelight: Mahler would scarcely have contem- plated becoming a star in the American style, but how else would he have a hope of succeeding in a society which was said to be a desert of ignorance and philistinism?

1 Concerning Moriz Rosenthal, see above, Vol. ii, Chap. 10, 325, and n. 35, and Vol. iii, Chap. 10, 722. Rosenthal’s writings have now been collected and edited by Mark Mitchell and Allan Evans in Moriz Rosenthal in Word and Music: A Legacy of the Nineteenth Century (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2006). Of Rosenthal’s conversation with Mahler about America, there remains only the following sentence: ‘The discussion turned to America, to the material chances of an American artistic tour, and unfortunately I gave him favourable news.’ Obviously Rosenthal was one of the many European musicians who believed that America had ‘killed’ Mahler. 2 We now have evidence that Mahler’s interest in America may have begun a whole decade before he first crossed the ocean. As early as 1887 one of his letters mentions an offer received from a New York agent to replace , no doubt at the .2 What is more, Mahler is clearly taking the offer seriously.3 Later on, in a letter he wrote to his friend Lilli Lehmann, who had sung no less than 260 performances at the Met,4 he mentions a second proposal that had come his way. The letter which refers to it is undated, but Zolta´n Roman compared it with a much later one (1907)5 addressed to Mahler by the impresario Charles Lo¨wenstein. Roman concluded that the first letter men- tioned above must have been written after Anton Seidl’s death, which occurred on 28 March 1898, and that it refers to Lo¨wenstein’s proposal that Mahler should direct the National Conservatory of Music (a position left vacant since Anton Dvorˇa´k’s departure in 1895) and conduct fifty concerts per season in New York.6 What is particularly surprising is that Mahler should seriously have considered accepting such an offer only two years after being appointed to the directorship of the Vienna Opera, a position that he had only managed to achieve after a long struggle over many years.7 As it soon turned out, there was justification for Mahler’s hopes and for his fears concerning America. However, for an understanding of the world which he was about to encounter in 1908, a brief description of New York and the influential families which supported the arts there seems indispensable. This is not because Mahler’s contacts with these circles were ever any closer than with their Viennese counterparts, but because this high society had brought into being the Metropolitan Opera, the setting for most of his activity throughout his first two transatlantic visits. It has often been claimed that at the turn of the century the spectacle at the Met was to be seen in the audience rather than on the stage. The society which had founded the institution had indeed planned it as a showcase for the rich and the successful, and it had become the faithful reflection of a swiftly changing milieu. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, New York society was ruled by a money aristocracy consisting of families whose fortunes went back no further than a hundred years, and sometimes a good deal less than that. The small world of the ‘Knickerbocker Gentry’, of the ‘four hundred families’, was haughty, closed, and exclusive, the more so since the criteria underlying its establishment were ill-defined and artificial. In The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton, who better than anyone else knew the milieu into which she had been

2 A summary of Anton Seidl’s American career is given further on in this chapter. 3 See MBR2, no. 62, to Fritz Lo¨hr. 4 Concerning Lilli Lehmann’s activity at the Metropolitan Opera, see below in this chapter. 5 AMS. Lo¨wenstein’s mention of the death of Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, one of Mahler’s assistant conductors at the Hofoper, which occurred in 1899, is a vital clue to the dating of Mahler’s letter to Lehmann. 6 See above, Vol. ii, 102 ff. 7 See Zolta´n Roman, ‘Gustav Mahler and Lilli Lehmann’, NBLS, 105 ff.; and Gustav Mahler’s American Years (Pendragon, Stuyvesant, New York, 1989), 2ff. This book will hereinafter be referred to with the initials MAY. January–February 1908 3 born, describes New York and its society in the 1870s with a subtle mixture of irony and nostalgia. Here was a closed circle, with its own rites, habits, and taboos. The unique identity of the clan was characterized by its favourite sports and pastimes, its winter balls and summer resorts. It bragged of being out of the reach of anyone not born an Astor, Goelet, Roosevelt, Cutting, Livingston, Lorillard, Bayard, or Schuyler, or who was not at least related to these illustrious clans by marriage. Yet this society also had its parvenus. The most famous among them was certainly August Belmont, born Aaron Belmont8 in the vicinity of . He had been sent over to the United States by the Rothschild Bank earlier in the century, and so successful were his first years there that in 1837 he founded his own bank. After marrying a Christian, Commodore Perry’s9 daughter, he had taken to collecting works of art, built an elegant mansion on , and would become President of the Jockey Club. Soon nicknamed ‘the King of Fifth Avenue’, he was one of New York’s most prominent personalities, and as such was appointed president of the Stockholders’ Committee at the Academy of Music. The Academy was the small, shabby theatre (luxury was not yet con- sidered good form) that stood at the corner of 14th Street and Irving Place, and was New York’s leading opera house for nearly three decades. In those days, in New York as elsewhere, opera had been the favourite pastime of the well-to-do, although one that belonged more to the sphere of ‘good form’ than to culture. In this world, ruled by affectation and boredom, works of art—mainly paintings—were collected largely for their market value, although artists and intellectuals were definitely not welcome in fashionable drawing rooms. In this decidedly provincial New York of the 1860s and 1870s, the opera house was of crucial importance as a showcase for successful business families. For preference, one went to the Academy of Music on Monday evenings, and those were also the evenings reserved for grand balls. Edith Wharton describes one such Monday evening at the Opera: On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in at the Academy of Music in New York: Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan distances ‘above the Forties,’ of a new Opera House which should compete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the ‘new people’ whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the

8 The name of Belmont was common in Frankfurt, as was its German-language equivalent: Scho¨nberg. 9 Matthew Galbraith Perry (1794–1858), American naval officer, diplomat, and younger brother of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, became famous for entering the Bay of Yedo (Tokyo) with four ships and delivering a letter from the president of the United States to the emperor of Japan. The letter requested a number of favours which were later granted by the Japanese. The resulting changes in the country were far-reaching: in two generations the nation was raised from a feudal level to the status of a world power. 4 Gustav Mahler sentimental clung to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music. It was Madame Nilsson’s first appearance that winter, and what the daily press had already learned to describe as ‘an exceptionally brilliant audience’ had gathered to hear her.10 Newland Archer, the hero of the novel, arrives late at the Opera, for New Yorkwas a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was ‘not the thing’ to arrive early at the opera, and what was or was not ‘the thing’ played a part as important in Newland Archer’s New York as the inscrutable terrors that ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago. . . As if by chance, the hero of the Age of Innocence enters his mother’s box just as Madame Nilsson11 is singing: ‘He loves me—he loves me not—he loves me!’ and sprinkling the falling daisy petals with notes as clear as dew. She sang, of course, ‘M’ama!’ and not ‘he loves me,’ since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the New York musical world required that the German text of French sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences. This seemed as natural to Newland Archer as all the other conventions on which his life was moulded: such as...never appearing in society without a flower (preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole. As Wharton’s masterly portrayal of New York manners unfolds, we learn that the dictates of good form in New York included a weekly appearance at the Opera—always on the same day of the week—and the elegance is personified in the novel by a fashionable young woman named Julia Beaufort, who always gave her ball on an Opera night in order to emphasise her complete superiority to household cares and her possession of a staff of servants competent to organize every detail of the entertainment in her absence. [On this particular evening] she had as usual appeared in her box just before the Jewel Song; and when, again as usual, she rose at the end of the third act, drew her opera cloak about her lovely shoulders and disappeared, New York knew that meant that half an hour later the ball would begin. Julia Beaufort was thus acting out ‘the inexorable New York conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern’. In this exclusive club, in which everybody knew and observed everybody else, there were no exceptions to the rules. ‘Gentlemen couldn’t go into politics’, and they spent their time in a ‘profession’, preferably the law or medicine. The ideal ‘lady’ possessed ‘radiant good looks’, ‘health’, ‘horsemanship’, ‘grace and quickness in games’, and perhaps even a ‘shy interest in books and ideas’. Only ‘odd’ or ‘original’ individuals moved in the circles of musicians, painters, or ‘literary’ people. Divorce was out of the question. These were people who

10 Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (Random House, The Modern Library, New York, n.d.), 1 ff. 11 In 1869 Christine Nilsson had sung the role of Marguerite in , at the first performance of the new version of Faust, in the presence of the composer. She made her American debut in 1870. January–February 1908 5 dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than ‘scenes’, except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them. They inhabited mansions on Fifth Avenue, belonged to numerous committees, and ‘tolerated hypocrisy in private relations; but in business matters. . . exacted a limpid and impeccable honesty’. The principal concern of the women was to show that they belonged to high society and to preserve their position within it. The best way of doing this was to dress with elegance, and the best place to show off a new dress was the Opera. Hence the front rows at the Academy of Music provided an ideal display case for the latest Paris fashions. The climax of the performance was undoubtedly the intermission—when the ladies remained seated. Loud conversation often con- tinued into the following act, though the most famous airs sung by the ‘stars’ were listened to with affected concentration. Those in the audience who were bored by the music often left the hall—to go and play cards in the foyers. The action of The Age of Innocence takes place during the 1870s. Twenty years later, as Wharton makes clear at the end of her novel, a veritable revolution modified the customs and criteria of New York ‘society’. It was triggered by a handful of nouveaux riches, self-made magnates with fabulous fortunes, who were determined to carve out a place in society commensurate with their wealth. They built houses (or better still Renaissance castles) on Fifth Avenue between 40th and 60th Streets, and bought themselves yachts, racing stables, and, of course, boxes at the Opera. Cornelius and John Pierpont Morgan were the most famous figures in this new class. Son of a modest farmer, Cornelius Vanderbilt I (1794–1887) began amassing his huge fortune by founding a shipping company on the Hudson River. Its activities soon extended to the Atlantic Ocean, and later to New York Central Railroad, the most important line on the East coast. Vander- bilt was famous for his luxurious yachts and thoroughbred horses, but also on account of his taste for gambling and his utter lack of education. Hence the social ascent of the family only really started with his eldest son, William Henry. As it happened, the whole ‘adventure’ of the Metropolitan Opera began with Mrs William H. Vanderbilt, the daughter of a modest Minister named Kissam. After building a palatial mansion on Fifth Avenue, she wished to acquire that ultimate sign of full membership of New York Society, a box at the Academy of Music. The Academy of Music had opened in 1854, and it was destroyed by fire in 1866. Rebuilt after the fire,12 the building’s auditorium had the misfortune to possess only a very limited number of boxes. There were just six initially, and still only eighteen after the rebuilding, and of those a mere dozen were considered sufficiently prestigious for the members of New York’s high society. In 1878 the

12 See Henry Krehbiel, Chapters of Opera (Holt, New York, 1909; repr. 1980), 71 ff. and James Gibbons Huneker, Steeplejack (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1923), ii. 32, quoted by Joseph Horowitz, Wagner Nights: An American History (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994), 74. 6 Gustav Mahler opera house had finally acquired an impresario with staying power. This was James Henry Mapleson (or ‘’), a colourful figure who, according to James Gibbons Huneker, was known for ‘smearing his singers’ with ‘the unguent of fair praise’, and was adored by them.13 But the house still did not have enough boxes to accommodate New York’s nouveaux riches. In his negotiations with August Belmont, president of the Stockholders’ Committee, William Vanderbilt offered $30,000 to purchase a box there, but his request was turned down when Mrs William Backhouse Astor, Jr., ne´e Caroline Schemerhorn and the undisputed queen of the ‘Knickerbocker Society’, expressed her disapproval.14 But the Vanderbilts were not about to take ‘no’ for an answer. Four days after Belmont’s final refusal, on 3 April 1880, the New York press announced that a newly formed committee was planning to buy a plot of land on which to build a theatre. On 28 April the Metropolitan Opera Society Ltd was formed with a capital of $600,000. The stockholders were none other than the most prominent parvenus

13 Horowitz, Nights, 74. James Gibbons Huneker (1857–1921) was born in Philadelphia, where he began to study piano. He continued his studies with Theodor Ritter in Paris and Rafael Joseffy at the National Conservatory in New York, where he subsequently taught (1888–98). He then transferred his talents to writing for the Philadelphia Press (1917–18), (1918–19), and the World (1919–21), where he remained until his death. He was also the correspondent for numerous European newspapers. His articles on Chopin and other composers he admired were appreciated for their stylistic refinement and flights of poetry, while composers he disliked, like Debussy, were treated with extreme virulence and humour. His books and anthologies include: Mezzotints in Modern Music (1899); Chopin, the Man and his Music (1900); Melomaniacs (1902); Egoist: A Book of Supermen (1909); Franz Liszt: A Study (1911); Old Fogy: His Musical Opinions and Grotesques (Memoirs) (1913); The Philharmonic Society of New York and its 75th Anniversary (1917); Bedouins (1920); Steeplejack (Memoirs) (1920); Variation (1921). A selection of Huneker’s letters was published posthumously by his wife. In 1908 Huneker’s journalism in the Sun was devoted to the theatre and painting, and he only began to write on opera after 1914. From 1880 to 1895 Huneker conducted a potpourri column called ‘The Raconteur’ in the Musical Courier. Theatre and music critic for the New York Recorder (1891–5), Morning Advertiser (1895–7), and Town Topics, he began writing for the New York Evening Sun in 1900, and remained there until 1912. Unlike most of his colleagues, he became a passionate admirer of Strauss as early as 1897, and dedicated a book to him in 1904, at a time when the majority of New York critics excoriated and . According to Irving Kolodin, although Huneker was the youngest of the ‘Big Four’ (Krehbiel, Finck, Henderson, Huneker), he was ‘its universal choice as elder statesman, not only for erudition and wit, but also for the racy fluency of his writing’, and because he was ‘without question the most gifted writer on music this country has ever produced’ (see ‘The Big Four’ by Erik Hinton Huneker, in Opera News, 18 Dec. 1965, 12 ff.). 14 The lawyer George H. Warren was the spokesman for the Vanderbilts in these negotiations. The anecdote leading to the foundation of the Metropolitan impressed Lilli Lehmann so much that she quotes it in her memoirs. The author’s sources on New York Society at the turn of the century were recom- mended to him by the novelist, Louis Auchincloss, a specialist on the subject. They are: John D. Gates, The Astor Family (Doubleday, New York, 1981); David Black, The King of Fifth Avenue, The Fortunes of August Belmont (Dial Press, New York, 1981); Edwin P. Hoyt, The Vanderbilts and their Fortunes (Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1962); Andrew Sinclair, Corsair: The Life of J. P. Morgan (Little, Brown & Co., , 1981); Dixon Wecter, The Saga of American Society (Scribner, New York, 1937; new edition with preface by Louis Auchincloss, Scribner, New York, 1970); and Mary Jane Matz, The Many Lives of Otto Kahn (Macmillan, New York, 1963). On the history of the Metropolitan Opera and Hammerstein’s rival institution, see Irving Kolodin, The Metropolitan Opera Company, 1883–1966 (Knopf, New York, 1966); William Seltsam, Metropolitan Opera Annals (Wilson, New York, 1947); Quaintance Eaton, The Miracle of the Met (Meredith Press, New York, 1968); John Briggs, Requiem for a Yellow Brick Brewery: A History of the Metropolitan Opera (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1969); Martin Mayer, The Met: One Hundred Years of Grand Opera (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1983); and also John F. Cone, Oscar Hammerstein’s Opera Company (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1966). January–February 1908 7 of New York, among them the Vanderbilts (railroads), J. P. Morgan (railroads and banking), Henry P. Clews (a broker), Jay Gould (railroads), and Richard Wilson (railroads and business). At the last moment August Belmont proposed to save the Academy of Music by adding more boxes. But the gesture came too late, and the only hesitation of the new Metropolitan stockholders was over the location of their future hall. The Vanderbilts suggested a rectangular site they owned next to Grand Central Station,15 but ultimately it was thought that the construction of a theatre there would be against city building regulations, and also that the underground railroad might be audible within the theatre. In the meantime a competition had been announced, and four architectural firms worked for three months on plans for the future Metropolitan Opera. The winning project was that of Joshua Cleveland Cady, a specialist in religious architecture who had designed the neo-Gothic church of St Andrews and was also responsible for the Museum of Natural History and several neo- Renaissance university buildings. Oddly enough, he had never set foot in Europe, nor visited any of the main opera houses which might have been expected to serve as models. The site finally chosen, between 39th and 40th Streets, and Broadway and Seventh Avenue, was irregular in shape, since Broadway crosses the whole length of Manhattan diagonally. Cady nonetheless retained and adapted his original design, which had been conceived for the Vanderbilt Avenue rectangle. After it was announced that his project had won the competition, Cady hurriedly left for England on 15 October 1880, accompanied by his Swiss assistant Louis de Coppet Bergh. Their mission was to have a look at the opera house in Covent Garden, the plans of which they obtained permission to study. The site was purchased for $622,000, and building work began almost immediately. As it proceeded, construction costs escalated to such a degree that at one point the sixty-five stockholders (each of whom owned 150 shares) even considered abandoning the project altogether. However, the building was completed before the summer of 1883. Of its 122 boxes, the thirty-eight Parterre and thirty-six Grand Tier Boxes, being the most conspicuous and the only ones to offer social standing to their occupants, were reserved for the stockholders, while the Dress Circle Boxes were rented out for the season at the price of $12,000, and the baignoires to the highest bidders. The Metropolitan originally held 3,045 seats, of which 700 offered only a partial view of the stage, or even no view at all. This was the drawback of a hall conceived in terms of boxes which allowed their owners not only to see, but also to be seen. The boxes were separated by partitions that had been copied from those at the Paris Opera, and each of them included a small salon at the rear where the owners could take off their coats and wraps, often assisted by a chambermaid whom they had brought along for that purpose. The goal of the Metropolitan—at least according to its statutes—was ‘to present operas under the best possible conditions’, but in fact the hall’s primary function was to

15 The site was delimited by 43rd and 44th Streets, Madison and Vanderbilt Avenues. 8 Gustav Mahler celebrate the success of ‘this business royalty’.16 Nevertheless, the new Metro- politan remained ‘a clumsy building with a shallow stage, minimal stage ma- chinery, and flawed sight lines and acoustics. But its five-tiered horseshoe auditorium was breathtakingly vast—104 feet long from the proscenium to the back of the centre box.’17 On 23 May 1883, six months before the opening, boxes were allocated by lottery. Five of them had been bought by the Vanderbilts, and others by those members of the Knickerbocker gentry who had already decided to abandon the Academy of Music, notably the Astors, Roosevelts, Goelets, and Iselins. By this time the old aristocracy had already capitulated to the Vanderbilt offensive. On 26 March Mrs William Kissam Vanderbilt had given the most sumptuous masked ball that New York had ever seen, in her brand new Fifth Avenue mansion.18 None of the daughters of Mrs William Astor19 was invited, for Mrs Astor had never condescended to call on any member of the . Thereupon, the queen of New York high society made a historic gesture of appeasement by calling on Mrs William Vanderbilt. In exchange for this formal visit, her youngest and still unmarried daughter was added to the list of the 1,200 guests.20 Mrs Astor soon gave proof of her final surrender by purchasing box number 7 at the Metropolitan. There, for the next twenty-five years, she made her appearance punctually at 9 p.m. every Monday evening, whatever the opera being performed. She would always wear her jewels, but her famous tiara was reserved solely for premie`res. In the intermission Mrs Astor would receive visitors in her box, in order of eminence, and she usually left after the next (not the final) act, not once having stirred from her seat. Her departure acted as a signal for the rest of ‘society’, and one by one the other ladies in the audience followed her example. For the opening gala on 22 October 1883, Christine Nilsson, the principal star of the Academy, was invited to sing in Gounod’s Faust, along with the and the bass Franco Novara, under Cleofonte Campanini’s direction. On the night, however, the performance itself was overshadowed by the furore set off by the hideousness of the building, which was decried in the press as ‘the new yellow-brick brewery on Broadway’. Yet the vast dimensions and luxuriousness of the hall elicited general admiration. Criticized for failing to provide a grand central staircase, and for the small size of the foyers, the

16 This oxymoron is attributed to Henry Clews. 17 Horowitz, Nights, 75. 18 On the corner of 52nd Street. 19 The ancestor of the Astor family was a certain Jacob Ashdorf from Waldorf, , who emigrated to New York at the end of the eighteenth century and made a fortune in the fur trade and in real estate. The descendants of his eldest son, plain John Jacob Astor I, built the New York Waldorf Hotel before emigrating to England (where they were subsequently ennobled), while the branch issuing from the second son, William Backhouse Astor, remained in the United States (see Wecter, Saga, 113). To conceal their modest beginnings, one of the English descendants, in 1899, invented a glorious ancestor, Jacques d’Astorga, a Spanish noble who supposedly emigrated to France during the eleventh century. 20 Mrs Astor had four daughters and a son, ‘plain in face and mind, who must be married off into the rank suitable for their exalted station in the American aristocracy’ (see Harvey O’Connor, The Astors (Knopf, New York, 1941), quoted by Kolodin, Metropolitan, 63. January–February 1908 9 architect retorted that ‘no other building in our country had ever been the object of such detailed studies’, and he rightly claimed that he had been constrained by the natural limitations of the site. But far more serious faults soon came to light, defects that hampered the proper functioning of the theatre. These included a lack of rehearsal space, the narrowness of the dressing rooms (with only those of the ladies furnished with toilets—undivided from the rest of the room!), unevenness of acoustics and visibility,21 and lack of space for the stage sets.22 Furthermore, there was barely enough room for the singers to pass between the backdrop and the back wall of the theatre on Seventh Avenue. During the eighty- three years of the functioning of the Met, stage sets were stored in five different warehouses dispersed across the city. This gave rise to enormous logistical problems, for the Met was a repertory company that performed a different opera every evening, and there were two performances on Saturday, the trad- itional matine´e day. A further complication arose out of the fact that the two ‘towers’ framing the Broadway entrance, originally designed to be warehouse space, had been transformed into apartments and offices instead. This decision had been made in order to produce rental income that would compensate for the increase in construction costs.23 Another factor was that city building regula- tions prohibited constructions above the stage. Like the auditorium, the Met stage was of ample proportions, ranking in size only after the Paris and Saint Petersburg operas.24 The orchestra pit, originally intended to be out of sight of the audience, was soon raised to the level of the orchestra stalls at the request of conductors who wanted to be seen. But it also proved too small, because, for the large orchestras required in works by Wagner and Strauss, the brass and percussion instruments had to be placed in the stage boxes. Once the building was completed, the owners of the ‘Metropolitan Opera’— i.e the stockholders, who were also boxholders—had to find someone to produce operas there. They declined any artistic or financial responsibility for produc- tions and rented out the building to an impresario from Ohio, Henry E. Abbey, whose only musical experience consisted of having organized an American tour for in 1881. Faithful to the style of the Academy of Music, he engaged eminent stars of Italian opera, including a new one, , who was soon to become the darling of New York. Abbey sent to Paris for majestic sets, had everything sung in Italian, mounted an impressive number of operas. . . and ended the season with the gigantic deficit of $600,000. According to the statutes, the stockholders could only be held responsible for one-tenth of the amount. They magnanimously permitted Abbey to hold a benefit perform- ance in order to help him pay off the debts he had incurred on their behalf,25 and

21 Only the first rows of the balcony and gallery enjoyed a full view of the stage. 22 The architect had envisaged storing them beneath the stage, but this was prohibited by the New York Fire Department after the fire of 1892. 23 Including the architect’s fees but excluding the cost of the plot ($622,000), the whole structure cost $1,835,000. 24 It was 101 feet wide, 91 feet high, and 86 feet wide. 25 The performance netted $16,000, a mere drop in the ocean of debts Abbey had run up. 10 Gustav Mahler then they unceremoniously relieved him of his functions. In spite of the enor- mous investment he had made in the sets and costumes of twenty-odd operas, the properties all remained in the ownership of the Metropolitan. The pendulum now swung back, in the earliest of many swings which characterized the first twenty-five years of the Met’s history. The stockholders chose a less brilliant but more economically viable solution, that of presenting German opera, which relied more on the quality of ensemble than on individual stars. They entrusted their 1884–5 season to a German conductor, , a native of Breslau and prote´ge´ of James Roosevelt, the president of the Met’s board of directors. Damrosch, a 52-year-old conductor of Jewish extraction,26 had started a double career as doctor and violinist, and had played as Konzertmeister of Liszt’s Court Orchestra in Weimar. In 1871 he emigrated to the United States, where he founded the New York Oratorio Society and the Arion Concerts. In 1878 he founded his own orchestra, the New York Sym- phony, with which he gave the first American performance, in concert, of Act III of . He put a plan before the stockholders to organize, with his orchestra and choruses, a season of German opera aimed at the 15,000 living in , and he also promised to bring over some prominent German stars. The repertory was mainly Wagnerian, using copies of the Bay- reuth sets, but it also included German language performances of Don Gio- vanni, Guillaume Tell, Rigoletto, , Le Prophe`te, and La Juive. The only stars were Amalia Materna, Marianne Brandt, Marie Schro¨der- Hanfsta¨ngel, and Anton Schott. The first season included three Wagner works, Tannha¨user, , and the first Met Walku¨re (with Materna as Bru¨nnhilde), which opened in New York under Leopold Damrosch’s baton on 30 January 1885. For the occasion, Dam- rosch imported from Germany an experienced and imaginative stage director named Wilhelm Hock, who modernized the style of the original sets. But Damrosch himself did not survive the superhuman task of preparing such a season. He died of pneumonia on 20 February,27 leaving his 23-year-old son Walter to conduct the last performances as best he could. Edmund C. Stanton, the former secretary of the board, who now directed the Met, was a man of little culture, but he was an enthusiast for German opera and soon realized that the younger Damrosch had neither the capacity nor the talent required to conduct the predominantly Wagnerian season. Walter was accordingly sent to Europe to find a suitable replacement for his father. His choice of Anton Seidl proved a master-stroke, because, at 35, Seidl was not only a seasoned opera conductor, but

26 This is important because his son, Walter, married into a prominent political family and later became a friend and prote´ge´ of , and one of the few Jews of his time whose origin New York society chose to ignore. 27 Mahler’s example should teach us to be careful when ascribing Leopold Damrosch’s death in 1885 to his preparation of a German season at the Met. The cause of Mahler’s death, twenty-six years later, has often been ascribed to exhaustion resulting from overwork, and to his conflict with the Philharmonic’s Guarantors’ Committee; yet he, like Damrosch, died of an infectious disease which in our day could have been cured with antibiotics. January–February 1908 11 he was also a tireless worker, a passionate Wagnerian, and a man endowed with great charisma, whose influence on the Metropolitan Opera and the New York musical scene in general was to prove deep and long-lasting. As recounted earlier in these pages,28 Anton Seidl had been engaged by as principal conductor of the Neues Deutsches Theater in Prague, and was about to open Neumann’s first season there when he suddenly left for America at the end of August 1885. His career path had thus crossed Mahler’s, who at this time had arrived in the Bohemian capital to take up his first post as full Kapellmeister. That Neumann should have agreed to release his star conductor at the very beginning of a season may seem surprising, but he was devoted to and wanted his works to reach new audiences on the other side of the Atlantic. He knew that he could rely on Seidl’s gifts and boundless enthusiasm. In releasing Seidl, on whom he had undoubtedly founded great hopes for his Prague theatre, Neumann once again proved his devotion to his revered master and late friend. Seidl’s personality and career deserve closer examination at this juncture, if only because he and Mahler were later on often compared with each other. Both men were regarded as Wagner conductors of high calibre, and both were engaged by the Met for extended periods of time. Born in , Anton Seidl had studied piano and composition at the Conservatory and attracted the attention of a prote´ge´ of Wagner, the conductor Hans Richter, who took him to Bayreuth in 1872 to attend the laying of the cornerstone of the Festspielhaus. Later on, when Wagner needed an assistant, Richter recommended Seidl, who from then on, and between the ages of 22 and 28, belonged to the Bayreuth household. His responsibilities there included copying out scores of the Ring and helping, as Richter’s assistant, to prepare its first performance. As early as 1878, Wagner had praised the young man in glowing terms: ‘None of the other conductors has such a clear understanding of my tempi, and the harmony between the music and the action.’29 In 1879 Seidl became chief conductor of Neumann’s . Two years later he introduced the Ring to , and in 1882–3 conducted Neu- mann’s touring Wagner ensemble throughout Europe. When he arrived in New York, Seidl—like Mahler twelve years later in Vienna—chose Lohengrin for his debut at the Met on 23 November 1885. Joseph Horowitz, whose pioneering research has rediscovered the facts of Seidl’s extraordinary American career, describes him as ‘poised and mysterious, undemonstrative and impassioned. No previous conductor had so embodied the podium virtuoso prophesied by Wagner. With his remote manner, Gothic features, and flowing hair, he was priestly, mysterious, charismatic.’ Seidl, the disciple of Wagner, was ‘one of the new race of conductors who played on the orchestra as a virtuoso played his instrument’.30 His masterly conducting soon earned him high praise in the New

28 See above, Vol. i, Chap. 10. 29 Horowitz, Nights, 85. 30 Howard Shanet, Philharmonic: A History of New York’s Orchestra (Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1975), 178 (henceforth SPH). 12 Gustav Mahler York press, the critics admiring his ‘subtle and delicate nuances’, and his ‘various minute modifications of tempo, which are indicated by the emotional character of the music’.31 He could make the orchestra ‘sing and sigh and whisper, exult, plead, and threaten, storm, rage and overwhelm as no other conductor could’.32 According to the Musical Courier: No conductor that we ever heard could build up such massive climaxes, such over- powering, such thrilling altitudes of tone. His breadth ...wasno less wonderful. With him there was the abiding sense of foundational security; his accelerandos were never feverish, a calm logic prevailed from the first bar to the last, yet he was a master of whirlwind and rode it with a repose that was almost appalling.33 High praise indeed, even if one takes into account man’s natural propensity to idealize past experiences, and the fact that many of the reviews quoted by Horowitz were obviously written long after Seidl’s death. James Gibbons Hune- ker, one of New York’s most important and lucid critics,34 recalled Seidl’s extraordinary authority on the podium: he ‘riveted his men with a glance of steel. It was the eye of the omniscient.’35 After his debut at the Met with Lohengrin, Seidl subsequently led six German seasons, and conducted the first American performances of Tristan (1886), Meistersinger (1886), Siegfried (1887), Go¨tterda¨mmerung (1888), and Rheingold (1889),36 and finally the first Ring cycles, most of these with first-rate casts, as Horowitz points out: The ensemble of those years surpassed that of any company in Germany or . Lilli Lehmann, who had taken part in the first Bayreuth Ring, was an especially beloved figure. , the first Bayreuth Siegmund, was regarded by New York’s critics...asthe supreme singing actor of his time.37 . . . Seidl would conduct three or four times a week. During one 1889 stretch, Lehmann sang all three Bru¨nnhildes in the space of six days, plus Rachel in La Juive. The entire undertaking was consumed by an implausible energy and idealism.38 Besides Lehmann, who had crossed the Atlantic to avail herself of the opportunity to interpret the great Wagnerian roles—Isolde and Bru¨nnhilde— that she had been refused in Germany, Seidl once again brought over several other stars from that country. At the same time the Met was giving its German language performances of Italian and French operas, which appealed far more to

31 Horowitz, Nights, 91. 32 Henry T. Finck, quoted SPH 178. 33 Horowitz, Nights,91ff. 34 See above, n. 12, for Huneker’s biography. 35 Horowitz, Nights,91ff. 36 Joseph Horowitz, ‘Wagner’s American Emissary’, New York Times, 10 Mar. 1991, and also, by the same author, ‘The Imp of the Perverse, Mahler, New York, and the Question of ‘‘Moral Aesthetics’’ ’, Times Literary Supplement, 8 Jan. 1999. As seen above, the Met premie`re of Die Walku¨re had already taken place under Leopold Damrosch. 37 Albert Niemann (1831–1917), a member of the Berlin Court Opera, had been the first Bayreuth Siegmund. Henry Krehbiel, in the New York Tribune, wrote of him: ‘He takes possession of the stage like an elemental force. . . . When he staggers into Hunding’s hut and falls upon the bearskin beside the hearth, . . . the voice is as weary as the exhausted body.’ (See Horowitz, Nights, 119 ff.) 38 Joseph Horowitz, ‘Emissary’ and Nights, 141 ff. January–February 1908 13 New York’s large German community than to the stockholders, but Stanton had been persuaded by Leopold Damrosch to slash ticket prices by half, and to place the emphasis of the performances more on the evenness of the casts than on the prowess of world-famous and expensive stars. Thus the first season ended with a deficit of a mere $40,000. The principal achievement of these early German seasons at the Met was the establishment of Wagner, once and for all, as a towering musical dramatist, and a powerful innovator in the field of opera: Not the least remarkable aspect of this [Seidl’s] enterprise was its reception. The Wagner acolytes read books and librettos. They attended classes and lectures. Especially for wives whose husbands were away making money, and whose own professional possibilities were suppressed by Gilded Age conventions, Sieglinde’s ecstatic pregnancy and Isolde’s orgasmic love-death became necessary opportunities for intense emotional release. At the Met, the ladies were in love with Seidl: according to the Musical Courier: ‘Middle- aged women in their enthusiasm stood up in the chairs and screamed their delight ...for what seemed hours.’39 The American premie`re of took place under Seidl on 1 December 1886 at the Met, with Lilli Lehmann and Albert Niemann singing the title roles. Although Seidl had had only five rehearsals, Tristan was the season’s most popular offering, with eight performances in eight weeks. As Lilli Lehmann recalls in her memoirs: In the whole world there was nothing that could release greater emotions in me than [my] Tristan performances in New York with Niemann, where the audience sat still for minutes, silent and motionless in their places, as though drunk or in a transport, without being conscious that the opera was over....Seidl was in sympathy with us, carried his orchestra along the wings of worship of his master, and made every instrument proclaim what he had inherited, in teaching and knowledge, from the creator.40 The Metropolitan Opera’s German seasons, with Anton Seidl as music director, lasted from 1884–5 to 1890–1. There were normally four performances a week. Of 589 performances in New York and on tour, all in German, 329 were of works by Wagner. In one respect only were these performances unsatisfactory: the quality of the staging had sadly declined, and Seidl never ceased to complain about the ‘incompetent’ and ‘careless’ stage managers, the lamentably conven- tional decor, and the poor lighting effects.41 Nevertheless, during those seven seasons, German opera, with Wagner as its king, reigned supreme at the Met. But these golden early German years came to an end in 1891: The stockholders had endured German opera because it was economical, because the public responded in sizable numbers, and because the enthusiastic reception of the press for the unfamiliar masterpieces of Wagner gave them a flattering status as art patrons....Asthenovelty of these works wore off, and the prospect of sitting through

39 Ibid. 40 Lilli Lehmann, Mein Weg (Leipzig, 1913), 350. 41 Horowitz, Nights, 143. 14 Gustav Mahler still another Tristan or Tannha¨user was endured with diminishing grace, some of the box holders were moved to outspoken rebellion.42 As early as 1889 Seidl and Stanton had been warned by Lilli Lehmann that the repertoire ‘was made up of too much Wagner’.43 An attempt was made to present some Italian novelties, sung of course in German, such as ’s Asrael, Anton Smareglia’s Il Vassallo di Szigeth, and Diana von Soulange by Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (the last two works con- ducted by Seidl). All three works failed miserably, forcing the manager to revert to the usual Wagner repertoire. By this time, and following his success in paying off the debts he had earlier incurred, the stockholders decided to re-hire Henry Abbey as manager and to present performances in Italian and French only. In 1891–2 Seidl, now mainly devoting his energy to concerts, conducted only two Wagner works, both of which were sung in Italian. Three performances of Die Meistersinger were given, and one of Der fliegende Holla¨nder. He did, however, return to the Met in 1895, for a few German language performances of Tann- ha¨user, Lohengrin, Walku¨re, and Tristan, in which the two de Reszke brothers participated. During the years 1891 to 1898, Seidl’s Metropolitan Opera duties were mainly confined to Sunday night concerts.44 Luckily, his energies and talent were in demand elsewhere. In 1889 an enterprising Brooklyn woman, Laura Holloway (later Mrs Langford), founded a non-profit society solely made up of women and named after Seidl. Its aim was to organize orchestral concerts, which took place in the winter at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and in the summer at popular prices in the 3,000-seat Brighton Beach Music Pavilion in Coney Island.45 The orchestra, although usually called ‘Seidl Orchestra’, was made up of members of the and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Needless to say, excerpts from Wagner’s dramas predominated in these concerts. This was also the case after 1891, when Seidl (replacing Theodor Thomas) was appointed conductor of the twelve concerts given each year by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.46 Loyal to his Bayreuth past, Seidl respected the wishes of Wagner’s family and never conducted in the theatre. His first performance of the opera took place in concert form on Palm Sunday, 30 March 1890 in Brooklyn, and was described as ‘Parsifal entertainment’, with Lilli Lehmann as Kundry. Joseph Horowitz describes the event as a ‘singular religious-social hybrid, unimaginable in any period but the Gilded Age’: The academy was speedily decorated, inside and out, for the great occasion. The stage was set as a Gothic cathedral. The proscenium arch was adorned with the letter ‘S’, badge of the Seidl Society (worn by many members on their dresses), and, underneath, the word ‘Parsifal’ in brilliant colours. Wagner’s score was trimmed by a quarter. The performance

42 Kolodin, Metropolitan, 53. 43 Lehmann, Mein Weg, 360. 44 Robert Tuggle, review of Horowitz’s Nights, Opera News, 59 (1995): 9, 43. 45 As musical director of the New York Philharmonic from 1891 to 1898, Seidl had the honour of conducting the world premie`re of Dvorˇak’s New World Symphony on 16 Dec. 1893. See Horowitz, ‘Emissary’, and Nights, 157 ff. Later on the number of Philharmonic concerts was increased to sixteen. 46 Horowitz, ‘Emissary’, and Nights, 181 ff. January–February 1908 15 began at 5 in the afternoon. . . . The audience, described as the most distinguished in the history of the house, took it all in rapt attention. Ex-President Grover Cleveland was observed following the music ‘text book in hand’.47 Early in 1898 New York began to fear that Seidl would return to Europe, now that he was no longer in demand at the Met, and the rumour spread such consternation among his many admirers that a large group of well-to-do music lovers were assembled by Mrs William Henry Draper in her home to draw up a plan for a permanent Seidl orchestra. Tragically, Seidl’s sudden death from food poisoning on 28 March 1898, at the age of 47, brought his brilliant American career to an abrupt end.48 His obsequies, conducted on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, were the most imposing ever accorded a conductor. The corte`ge, which included a 100-piece band, followed a route lined with dense crowds of people who had been unable to gain entrance to the house. There, with the orchestra pit floored over, the stage was draped in black and surrounded with masses of flowers sent by friends and musicians from all parts of Europe. The casket was placed on a tall catafalque marking the conductor’s desk. ‘Tickets were prepared for the occasion, and nearly 12,000 persons applied for them, although only 4,000 could be squeezed into the theatre.’49 On the stage, set as a cathedral, the New York Philharmonic performed a programme suitable for the occasion: Outside, where 150 members of the Musical Union played Chopin’s Funeral March, Broadway was clogged for seven blocks with a ‘surging mass of people’. Inside, many wept openly during the playing of two works that they associated with Seidl’s memory, the Adagio lamentoso from Tchaikovsky’s Symphonie Pathe´tique and ‘Siegfried’s Death’ from Wagner’s Go¨tterda¨mmerung. Among the pallbearers were famous musi- cians (Euge`ne Ysay¨e, Rafael Joseffy, Edward MacDowell, Xaver Scharwenka), respected critics (Henry Krehbiel, Henry T. Finck), and prominent citizens...On1 and2 April, the concert scheduled to have been led by Seidl featured a performance in his memory of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under Frank Van der Stucken, in which Siegfried’s Death from Go¨tterda¨mmerung replaced the final ‘Hymn to Joy’.50 James Gibbons Huneker called Seidl’s funeral ‘more impressive than any music drama ever seen or heard at Bayreuth. The Metropolitan Opera House was for the moment transformed into a huge mortuary chamber. It was extremely pictur- esque, yet sincerely solemn. The trappings of woe were not exhibited for their mere bravery.A genuinegriefabsorbedeverypersoninthebuilding....Itwasover- whelmingly touching.’51

47 Horowitz, ‘Emissary’. 48 SPH 185. Although Seidl’s death has always been attributed to food poisoning, several physicians ‘agreed that its immediate cause . . . was some irritant poison, probably ptomaine, but they also found cirrhosis of the liver and other degenerative changes which indicated that the acute attack had simply accelerated the advent of death . . . ’ (Henry T. Finck, My Adventures in the Golden Age of Music (Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1926), 247 ff.), quoted SPH 442, n. 119. 49 SPH 185. 50 Horowitz, ‘Emissary’. 51 Henry T. Finck (ed.), Anton Seidl: A Memorial by his Friends (New York, 1899), repr. 1983, vii, quoted by Horowitz, Nights, 16. 16 Gustav Mahler Joseph Horowitz deserves gratitude for having revived the memory of ‘Wagner’s American Emissary’, for it is obvious that the New York public’s appreciation of the music dramas owed a great deal to him. But, as seen earlier, great changes had occurred at the Met in 1892. Italian again prevailed in the house, and the stockholders demanded the establishment of a strict quota for Wagnerian works on ‘their’ Monday evenings; they also insisted on better lighting in the auditorium—even for an episode like the dark dungeon scene of —just so that they should be able to see each other better and make conversation the more easily. Despite acquiescence to their demands, no one was really satisfied. The Met had been threatened with closure as early as 1887, and now Stanton and Seidl were severely criticized for having imported second-rate German works like Nessler’s Der Trompeter von Sa¨kkingen or Ignaz Bru¨ll’s Das goldene Kreuz. In actual fact, many of the stockholders still attended the Opera out of habit rather than cultural enthusiasm, and showed less and less interest in what was happening on the stage. On 15 January 1891 Stanton had been obliged to post the following notice in the boxes: Many complaints having been made to the directors of the Opera House of the annoyance produced by the talking in the boxes during the performance, the Board requests that it be discontinued. By order of the Board of Directors.52 When Henry Abbey returned, he managed the Metropolitan Opera in collaboration with Maurice Grau, who was an experienced impresario and had an exceptional flair for building casts. Born in 1849 in Bru¨nn (Moravia), Grau arrived in New York at the age of 5. He studied law, then started directing operettas, and eventually became Anton Rubinstein’s tour manager. According to ,53 he was a ‘first-class manager’ who readily confessed to utter ignorance in artistic matters, but more than made up for it with the traditional skills and flair of his profession, and by his scrupulous honesty—a somewhat rarer quality. Under Abbey and Grau, the Met was now to enjoy twelve successful years, highlighted by the presence of the greatest ‘stars’ of French and Italian singing. They included the de Reszke brothers, Jean and E´ douard, soon to become public idols; ,54 the first American-born Wagnerian; , an American-born in Shanghai and renowned for her lyric coloratura portrayals; , incomparable bel canto virtuoso, triumph- ing in Lucia, Rigoletto, Hamlet, and Semiramis; and of course the perennial Lilli Lehmann, who survived the change of regime, learning her roles in Italian and giving unforgettable performances in Wagner operas. As in Vienna, rivalries between prima donnas, especially the jealous hatred between Eames and Melba (both former pupils of Mathilde Marchesi in Paris), fed backstage gossip, as did Lehmann’s resentment of Nordica’s success, which kept her away from the Met between 1892 and 1898. By then the Met corresponded perfectly to the original conception of the founding fathers:

52 Kolodin, Metropolitan, 53. 53 Walter Damrosch, My Musical Life (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1923), 105. 54 Lillian Nordica (ne´e Norton) (1857–1914) sang at the Metropolitan Opera from 1891 to 1910. January–February 1908 17 It incarnated New York in its Augustan era, prosperous, urbane, self-assured, the undisputed leading city of the whole nation in finance, business, science, industry and the arts, accepting only the best and ready to pay for it. Like the Public Library in Fifth Avenue and Pennsylvania Station, the Met was part of what Lewis Mumford called the ‘imperial facade’ [of New York].55 What might well have been a catastrophe for the Met turned out to be an act of Providence. The fire of 27 August 1892, which destroyed the entire interior of the hall, ultimately served to eliminate from the Stockholders’ Committee those for whom the Opera primarily fulfilled a social function, and paved the way for early modernization. Fifty-one stockholders left the company and were refunded the amount of their original contribution; nineteen remained, and sixteen new members joined. For nearly half a century not merely the ownership company as a whole but any two members of it remained a self-appointed, self-perpetuating judge and jury of what persons were socially acceptable in a city of mounting millions....A few thousand [people] doubtless yearned to be box-owners for all the privileges that the status conferred; fewer than twenty aspirants realized this ambition in nearly fifty years. It was this power to scrutinize and reject, to include and exclude, that made opera-patrons of non-music lovers....Ifyou‘owned’, you were ‘in’; if you merely ‘rented’, you were more than ‘out’—you were socially nonexistent. Needless to say, those who ‘rented’ swallowed their unhappiness with this caste system, but extended it a bit farther by looking down on those who neither owned nor rented, but merely bought tickets.56 After the 1892 fire, the thirty-five luxurious Parterre boxes (at $60,000 each) were divided between the Vanderbilts and their relations (the family was a particularly big one and occupied twelve boxes); the Astors and other members of the Knickerbocker Gentry (ten boxes); and J. P. Morgan and his associates (thirteen boxes). Morgan himself, appropriately enough, was ensconced in Box 35, the furthest from the stage—the traditional location of the box of honour in European opera houses. His interest was limited to the ‘old, familiar, tuneful operas’, and ‘his special favorite was . He always went when it was given and was very discriminating as to how the different numbers were sung. . . . In later years, he generally would not go to the opera except on opening night or for some gala performance.’57 Yet J. P. Morgan was invariably consulted on policy decisions from 1892 until his death in 1913. With the rebuilding of the hall after the fire, its total audience capacity was increased from 3,045 to 3,400, following the elimination of the second boxes and baignoires. The proprietors’ names were now inscribed on the doors of the boxes. The installation of electricity lent additional sparkle to the boxholders’ diamonds, hence the epithet ‘the diamond horseshoe’ which survived till the end. ‘For the generation that lived between 1893 and 1913, the winter’s social life revolved about the Opera as never before or since.’58 The boxes ‘were either

55 Briggs, Requiem, 17. 56 Kolodin, Metropolitan,55ff. 57 Herbert Satterlee, quoted by Kolodin, Metropolitan, 58. 58 Kolodin, Metropolitan, 58. 18 Gustav Mahler hereditary or else the result of a purchase from an original investor. The grand tier and stall boxes. . . were . . . socially second-class—which in society meant worse than nothing, so that if one loved prestige more than music he would do better to stay at home.’59 The new Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company handed over the hall free of charge to the Metropolitan Opera Company, which produced the performances and in return promised the stockholders to limit the proportion of Wagner operas in the repertoire to 40 per cent, especially on the traditional Monday evenings. These were the years when the Met boasted of its ‘ideal casts’, often justifi- ably so. Melba reigned (flanked by Eames and Sembrich), but it was also at the Met that, intoxicated by success, she experienced the biggest flop of her career. That was in 1896, when she appeared as Bru¨nnhilde in Siegfried, with in the title role. She had obtained the exclusive right to sing her role for the whole season, which led to Lillian Nordica’s indignant departure. Faust, the boxholders’ favourite, continued to fill the house, and after the fire that same opera was again chosen for the reopening of the hall on 17 November 1893, with Eames, de Reszke, and Lassalle. Subsequently Emma Calve´ sang the title role in the first French language performance of at the Met, and triumphs were enjoyed by Sigrid Arnoldson in Les Huguenots and Lucienne Bre´val in Reyer’s Salammboˆ. Tamagno and Maurel, both of whom had participated in the first performance of Verdi’s , were invited to stage its Met premie`re in 1894. The de Reszke brothers gave proof of their conscientiousness as artists by taking eighteen months’ leave to learn their roles in German before making their Wagner debut in 1895, under Seidl, in Tristan (with Lillian Nordica). Yet the linguistic policy of the house was far from consistent. The aim, ‘international- ism’, led to such priceless absurdities as Fidelio with the soloists singing in German and the chorus in Italian. Both Lohengrin and Die Meistersinger were sung in Italian until 1899, and Tannha¨user was performed in French until 1896, with the exception of a brief period when it was sung by Italian stars in Italian. After Abbey’s death in 1897, Grau withdrew from activity at the Met for a season. His place was initially taken by Walter Damrosch, who guest-conducted a season of Wagner operas, and subsequently by the Boston impresario Charles Ellis, who organized performances of Italian opera and managed to sign up Melba on an exclusive contract that would run for several years. She had enlarged her repertoire to include Faust, La traviata, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and La Bohe`me, but when she again failed in the role of her unsuitability for big dramatic roles gradually dawned on her and she never again tackled them. The year 1898 saw the creation of the Maurice Grau Opera Company, but the policy of the Met remained essentially the same, with ‘ideal casting’ as its principal aim. The production of Les Huguenots was dubbed the ‘night of the seven stars’,60 and Grau took advantage of the opportunity to raise box office

59 Wecter, Saga, 563 ff. 60 See above, Vol. ii, Chap. 14. In 1895–6, the ‘seven stars’ were Nordica (Valentine), Melba (Marguer- ite), Scalchi (Urbain), Jean de Reszke (Raoul), Edmond de Reszke (Marcel), Planc¸on (St Bris) and Maurel (Nevers). January–February 1908 19 prices. But while he spent fortunes to keep his stars happy, he economized on everything and everyone else. Whereas in 1901 Jean de Reszke, for example, earned up to $2,500 per evening, plus a percentage of the box office receipts, the orchestra musicians earned $50 a week, and the chorus members $15. Grau was labelled ‘the man who spent a dollar to save five cents’. During those years, however, critics kept complaining that, while the Met had the great solo voices which were often lacking in European court opera houses, it did not possess the high quality choruses and orchestras, nor did it mount adequate stage productions. The departure of Jean de Reszke marked the end of an era. During his final New York season he sang in Lohengrin, Tristan, and Siegfried, as well as in Faust, ´o et Juliette, Les Huguenots, Aida, and Massenet’s Le Cid. After the second act of his farewell performance of Siegfried the audience ecstatically applauded for a whole hour. The Grau regime survived the departure of its hero, but only for another two years. Complaints were soon to be heard about the ‘end of the golden age’ of opera in New York and the paucity of great singers at the Met. The orchestra was overworked, the sets were mediocre, and the number of rehearsals proved insufficient. Furthermore, Grau committed an error deeply resented by New York high society when he opened the 1901 season with Tristan (interpreted by and ). The Vanderbilts emphat- ically displayed their displeasure at the choice of such a ‘serious’ work, by snubbing the opening gala and ostentatiously leaving New York for the weekend. Many other members of ‘society’ made a point of arriving late and leaving after the second act. But whatever the problems of the Met, Grau turned out to be a good businessman, as well as a prudent director. He made a personal profit of almost $200,000 during the 1901–2 season alone, and received the comfortable salary of $20,000 from the Metropolitan Opera Company for each of his final three seasons. During the whole of the Grau period, Walter Damrosch profited from the relative dearth of Wagner at the Met by staging performances of his operas before and after the actual season, and by organizing tours to other cities. In 1902, when the Stockholders’ Committee met to select Grau’s successor, Damrosch felt sure he would be appointed, particularly since the name Heinrich Conried had hardly ever been mentioned.61 But Damrosch probably fell victim to his passion for Wagner, while Conried had many friends who put in a good word for him with committee members. Born, like Selma Kurz, in 1848 in Bielitz, Austrian Silesia, Conried was the son of a weaver named Josef Cohn. He studied in Vienna, and it was there that he acquired his passion for theatre and first displayed a talent for acting. Despite his small stature and ill-proportioned body, he played a number of character roles in the provinces before being hired at the Burgtheater. He overcame the

61 Walter Damrosch was all the more sure of being chosen because he was the son-in-law of a famous politician, James G. Blaine, a close friend of Andrew Carnegie and once presidential candidate (Signale fu¨r die musikalische Welt, 5 May 1909, Heinrich Conried’s obituary). 20 Gustav Mahler handicap of his ugliness by methodically developing both his inborn feeling for the theatre and his equally pronounced business instinct. Under the pseudonym of Robert Buchholz, Conried played roles such as Iago and Mephisto, and subsequently took up directing. In this capacity he was engaged first at the Leipzig and then at the Theatre. In Bremen, his self-assurance, author- ity, and ability attracted the attention of the theatre manager, Adolph Neuen- dorff, whom he more or less saved from bankruptcy in 1878. So Neuendorff (who had earlier played an important role at the Academy of Music where he introduced Wagner’s works) took Conried along with him to the United States. From then on, Conried’s ascent continued at an American pace. After playing a few roles at the New York Germania Theater and on tour, he and two associates bought the Thalia Theater in the Bowery district. There, for the benefit of New York’s considerable German-speaking population, he put on popular operettas by Strauss, Millo¨cker, Suppe´, and Gene´e, works for which he held exclusive rights. He also produced modern plays by Hermann Sudermann, Ludwig Fulda, and Gerhart Hauptmann. At the Thalia Theater—and later on, during the ‘nineties’, at the Casino and at the Irving Place Theater which he made into the first German theatre in America—Conried introduced some of the greatest German and Austrian actors. Amongst them were Adolf von Sonnenthal, Helene Odilon, Agnes Sorm, Katharina Schratt, Ernst von Possart, and Karl Wagner.62 In addition to operettas, he put on the great German classic plays by Schiller and Lessing, as well as modern masterpieces by Ibsen and Hauptmann. Conried also invented a modern and profitable subscription system, and, after becoming an American citizen in 1887—and still not speaking a word of English—further considerably increased his income by founding a small com- pany, the Ocean Chair Company, which rented deckchairs to passengers on the -Amerika line. Unlike Grau, who considered himself primarily a businessman and manager, Conried, as a former actor, had intellectual and artistic pretensions. His musical experience was practically non-existent. In fact it was limited to the management of two tours: one for the child violinist Bronislaw Hubermann, the other for the Austrian conductor Ernst von Schuch. On the basis of his five years at the Irving Place Theater and some lectures he had given on the profession of impresario, Conriedwas elected director of the Met. The appointment was for a five-year term, starting on 1 June 1903, and it was won by a majority of one vote over Damrosch. He then funded the Conried Metropolitan Opera Company, which subscribed a guaranteed capital of $150,000, and bought all of Grau’s rights. Its shareholders included Jewish philanthropists like Henry Morgenthau and Otto Kahn, some members of the ‘good’ New York society like George J. Gould, Emmery Smith, Clarence Mackay, Eliot Gregory, and James Hazen Hyde, and even three box owners: Alfred Vanderbilt, Harry Payne Whitney, and Robert Goelet. Conried was aware of the habitue´s’ discontent and the urgent need for reform, especially concerning the orchestra, chorus, and ballet. He inaugurated

62 Karl Wagner had been Mahler’s close friend in Hamburg. (see above, Vol.i, Chap. 19) January–February 1908 21 his reign (like most of the Met’s newly appointed directors) with resounding declarations that promised to abolish the ‘star system’, restore discipline, and create a coherent ensemble by increasing the number of rehearsals. Further- more, from the Metropolitan and Real Estate Company he obtained the neces- sary funds for the redecoration of the hall in red and gold to a scheme by John M. Carrie`re and Thomas Hastings, architects of the Public Library and the future New Theater,63 the ‘branch’ of the Met that was inaugurated in 1908. Moreover, the orchestra pit was enlarged through the demolition of a few orchestra seats, the lighting system was entirely modernized, and the framework of the stage renovated and inscribed with the names of six composers.64 These inscriptions remained until the closure of the old hall in 1966. Conried’s other innovations included mandatory formal attire for the ushers on gala evenings, with silver badges to distinguish them from the members of the audience. He soon enough acquired a reputation for tactlessness, especially with journalists,65 and also for irascibility. At the same time, another unpleasant personality trait came to light: unbridled greed. For instance, in addition to his salary and a significant share of the box office receipts, he made artists sign contracts with himself personally, rather than with the Opera, thereby ensuring their appearance, without fee, in concerts which he organized for his own benefit. He separated his office from that of the commercial director (one floor below) so that he would be able to give acting lessons, an activity which was deemed incompatible with the dignity of his position. In addition to his salary and a share of profits, he also received special indemnities ($150 per week) from the Opera when travelling on its behalf, dividends from his shares in the Conried Metropolitan Opera Company, and the proceeds from his annual benefit concert. It became clear that the ‘reforms’ announced with such a fanfare were purely formal, and that his overriding concern was to enrich himself. So it is easy to understand how, upon his death, he was able to bequeath his son a truly imposing fortune.66 Conried knew how to find and engage singers, but, despite all his high- sounding declarations on art and music, he knew nothing about voices and little about the repertoire. First and foremost, in fact, his policies were inspired by the materialistic wish to ‘give the public what it demands’: ‘You cannot force the public to like certain operas any more than you can force it to like certain dishes. Both are matters of taste. Knowing that, the opera impresario has but to give the

63 See below, Chap. 2. 64 Beethoven, Verdi, Wagner, Gounod, and also Mozart and Gluck, two classics who were, as they have been since, sorely neglected at the Met. 65 On the occasion of Caruso’s debut in Tosca, for example, he stormed into the press room at the Met and threatened with eternal wrath those who left before the aria ‘E lucevan’ (Act III). The following year, in reply to criticism for putting on the and making all the Met stars take part in it (see below), he declared during an official dinner that ‘New York critics take themselves much too seriously’, provoking such a storm in the New York press that he was obliged to retract. 66 After Conried’s departure in 1908, the shares he had acquired for the sum of $75,000 were bought back by William K. Vanderbilt for $90,000. 22 Gustav Mahler public what he thinks it will like, not what he thinks it ought to hear.’67 One shudders to think how many masterpieces would have remained unknown and unperformed if all theatre impresarios had shared Conried’s credo! Two master- strokes, during the first year of his directorship, were largely the result of managerial flair and promotional instinct. Like Grau, though, who often quipped ‘Nobody ever paid a penny to see somebody else’s back,’ Conried seems to have underestimated the importance of the conductor in opera. When he was considering engaging E´ douard Colonne, and tried to do so on the most favourable terms possible, he remarked to the impresario Gabriel Astruc: ‘Mr. Colonne will increase my expenses, but certainly not my income!’ Perhaps he had been discouraged by his first experience with Felix Mottl, whom he brought over from for the 1903–4 season. Mottl conducted Die Walku¨re (for the debut, as Sieglinde, of , a young American Wagner singer of Norwegian origin) and Le nozze di Figaro, but he failed to obtain the hoped-for success.68 Conried had planned to take advantage of his engagement by organizing a series of Sunday Philharmonic concerts at the opera, but they were snubbed by the fashionable audience and he was forced to turn them into popular concerts. Mottl himself, discouraged after being obliged to conduct Zauberflo¨te in Italian after producing it in German, broke off relations with Conried and returned to Europe at the end of the season.69 Conried’s first stroke of genius was the engagement of . In fact, the credit for discovering the great Neapolitan tenor belongs to Maurice Grau, who had signed a contract with him two years earlier. This contract was cancelled with the change of director, but Conried had sufficient sense to choose Caruso rather than Alessandro Bonci, at least for twenty-five performances (instead of the forty originally planned). Myth has it that, after hearing an early recording by Caruso on one of the Paris boulevards, Conried telegraphed to ask him to give the forty performances which Grau had proposed, but this proved impossible as Caruso had accepted other engagements in the meantime. Thus he made his debut at the Met on 23 November 1903, in Rigoletto with Marcella Sembrich and . This, the first of the 607 performances he was to give at the house, was not the triumph his backers had hoped it would be, for he was overcome by stage fright, but he soon made up for his inauspicious beginnings. Conried quickly offered him a contract which gave the promoter exclusive world rights in exchange for ever-increasing fees,70 and he also actively helped to spread

67 Interview of Heinrich Conried, New York Herald, 5 Jan. 1908. 68 Mottl also conducted Tannha¨ user, Lohengrin, Tristan, and Siegfried, as well as La Dame blanche, Carmen, and Rome´o et Juliette. 69 Not, as Alma affirms, after the first performances he had conducted (AMM1, 163; AMM2, 158). 70 At the beginning of his contract at the Met, Caruso received $1,000 per evening. Starting in 1907, he demanded a minimum of fifty performances per season. By 1914 his fee for a performance had risen to $2,500 at the Met, but outside New York his fees were much higher, reaching $15,000 per evening. In Vienna, from 1907 onwards, he received 12,000 kronen, or $2,400 for a performance. All in all, he sang at the Met for eighteen complete seasons, in 607 performances of 37 different works. It has been estimated that by the time of his final departure in 1920 he had received $1,500,000 in fees from the Met, as well as $1,825,000 in royalties for the 266 recordings in which he had participated. January–February 1908 23 the Caruso legend. For years, theatrical gossip columns treated readers to tales of the singer’s renowned generosity, his stage fright and superstitions, his mania for cleanliness (he changed his shirt several times a day and always travelled with his own linen and bedding), his various collections, and the famous practical jokes he used to play on colleagues whilst on stage. His caricatures, always masterly and often cruel, were published every week by the Italian journal La Tollia in New York.71 In Caruso Conried controlled the most sensational attraction in the opera world at that time. He fully realized it and knew how to exploit it to the fullest.72 During his first season as director, Conried’s second stroke of genius was to mount, in America, the first stage production of Parsifal ever given outside Bayreuth—a coup which the witty critic Henry T. Finck, editor of the New York Evening Post, dubbed ‘the rape of Parsifal’. This referred to the bloody battle that Conried had to fight against the Wagner family, who were furious that this work, considered by them to belong exclusively to the , should be performed elsewhere.73 The ‘Christianity’ of the work had already set off shock waves and scandalized New York church circles. Protestant pastors and Catholic priests in every pulpit fulminated against the work, which ‘put Christ on the stage’, and also against the impresario who exploited this ‘sacrilegious’ work and used it to attract crowds. It was even said that Christ actually appeared, and that Communion was served! A petition was addressed to the Mayor of New York demanding that the performances be prohibited. The Wagner family, having lost its legal battle (no copyright agreement then existing between the USA and Germany), tried to win the E´ mperor of Germany to its cause. But all these quarrels only served to increase public curiosity. At zero hour Conried offered the Wagner family a percentage of the box office receipts in the hope of stilling their wrath. The formidable Cosima responded by banishing from the Bayreuth stage forever all the singers who had dared participate in this production.74 Conried certainly spared no pains to make the production a high-quality affair, sending for the Munich stage director Anton Fuchs and for Karl Lauten- schla¨ger, the greatest German specialist in stage machinery,75 who installed the trapdoors and counterweights necessary for the rapid set changes of the second act. At the same time, the auditorium was redecorated in gold and deep maroon—the Vanderbilt house colours—and a block of seats was removed at

71 Caruso produced at least three caricatures of Mahler, one of which has often been reprinted. This author owns a little-known one, a present to him from Selma Kurz’s daughter, Desi Halban, who had received it as a gift from Bruno Zirato, Caruso’s biographer and friend. 72 Montrose J. Moses, Conried’s biographer, ingenuously describes the level of Conried’s musical culture with the revelation that he only really enjoyed opera when Caruso sang. 73 As a fervent Wagner disciple since his youth, Mahler had strongly supported Cosima’s battle to preserve the exclusivity of Parsifal. One of the clauses of the agreement he signed with Heinrich Conried in Vienna on 21 June 1907 specified that he was ‘not obligated to conduct Richard Wagner’s Parsifal’. 74 She made an exception for Alois Burgstaller, who was re-engaged at Bayreuth a few years later. Even in those days, Heldentenors were too much in demand for her to do without him—while he still had his voice! 75 See above, Vol. ii, Chap. 9. 24 Gustav Mahler either side of the orchestra pit, which was thereby widened.76 Thanks to the Met’s press service, directed by the dynamic Gustav Schlotterbeck, all of Amer- ica was supplied, on a day-by-day basis, with information about the preparations for Parsifal and sensational details relating to its opening. The public was confused as to what was the most appropriate attire for the premie`re, and such difficulties provided material for several articles. Would it really be possible to leave one’s home in evening dress at five o’clock in the afternoon; or would the first intermission (scheduled to last an hour and a half) give the opera-goers sufficient time to dine and change clothes?77 A train, the ‘Parsifal Special’, brought Chicago Wagnerians to the premie`re on Christmas Eve 1903, and the New York Evening Telegram announced a ‘Parsifal Extra’. Babies born that day were named after the opera’s hero, and amongst their number was the son of an usher at the Met, born on 23 December and thereafter saddled with the name of Parsifal McGillicuddy. The extent of the box office success must have left Conried rubbing his hands with delight. The five scheduled performances were followed by five more, plus a benefit one for Conried and a further sixteen on tour. Although ticket prices had doubled, the houses everywhere were sold out. A new box office had to be installed at the Met to handle the thousands of postal demands for tickets, a large proportion of which could not be satisfied. Conried himself netted at least $100,000. The production was a complete success from an artistic point of view too, the first-rate cast including Alois Burgstaller and Milka Ternina. William Henderson, in the Sun, even found it ‘better than at Bayreuth’, while Richard Aldrich stated in the Times that ‘the artistic value of the production was of the very highest’ and it was ‘without doubt the most perfect production ever made on the American lyric stage’. Conried’s second Metropolitan season (1904–5) was equally successful. It included eight more performances of Parsifal with Nordica and Fremstad alternating, and nine Caruso performances on Mondays. The stockholders were delighted, since they had largely succeeded in excluding Wagner from the stage on Monday evenings, exceptions being made only for Lohengrin and Die Meistersinger. Despite all the Parsifal excitement, the decline in audience sizes for Wagner operas, which had begun after Seidl’s death, became more and more noticeable during the years of Conried’s tenure. Italian operas continued

76 A foyer was also created at the Grand Tier level, and elevators were installed to carry patrons to the balcony and the family circle, the only alterations made at the Metropolitan until 1934. 77 For some, the dilemma was resolved by the precedent which King Edward VII of England and Queen Alexandra had set the previous summer by attending matinee performances of a complete Ring cycle at Covent Garden in evening attire. Mrs Astor for once did not set the tone and solved the problem by staying away, as did the William Vanderbilts and Whitneys, who were spending Christmas in the country. Mrs Warren and some of her friends went against tradition and appeared in afternoon dresses, but they left after the first act. Mrs Ogden Mills changed into evening dress, probably going without dinner in the process. Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt, then the most likely successor to Mrs Astor as ‘queen’ of New York society, showed great imagination. She wore a ‘convertible’ gown which changed from a simple black velvet dress, eminently suited to the religious character of Parsifal, to an evening gown when she removed her nutria-trimmed silk hat for the second act. January–February 1908 25 to predominate, particularly with a new production of Donizetti’s (with a new role for Caruso), but the season also included two complete Ring cycles. For his own benefit performance Conried chose Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, which was conducted by Nahan Franko, the concertmaster of the Met’s orchestra. The cast included Marcella Sembrich, Andreas Dippel, Bella Alten, and Edyth Walker. For the ball scene Conried had the original and highly successful idea of introducing solo numbers by all the stars of the house, in a brilliant kind of entertainment concert. The singers who took part were Emma Eames, Olive Fremstad, Lillian Nordica, and , as well as Caruso, Scotti, and Planc¸on. Although the season’s artistic accomplishments were not particularly noteworthy, Conried once again made a gross profit of over $125,000. However, the more enlightened New York critics, no doubt because of Conried’s policies, complained that the taste of the public today is far below that of the public which used to attend the performances at the old Academy of Music twenty-five years ago....Thunders of applause are bestowed on doings which can be nothing but grievous to lovers of chaste and honest art. . . . The public steadily and with irresistible power refuses to regard it [opera] as an art form.78 The following season (1905–6) was completely centred on Caruso, Conried having adroitly persuaded the tenor to learn two of his roles in French (Faust and Carmen) and to introduce three new operas into his repestoire: Donizetti’s La favorita, Flotow’s , and Bellini’s La sonnambula. Of the hundred or so performances at the Met that year, Caruso sang in no less than forty. Despite the very considerable profits earned at this time, the serious shortcomings of the regime—narrowness of repertoire and relative weakness of both orchestra and chorus—were soon to result in one of the greatest calamities of Conried’s tenure, and of the Met in general: the unexpected emergence of very serious competi- tion. Meanwhile, however, in December 1906 Conried suffered a stroke which left his legs paralysed. At the end of June the New York Press published the news under the following headline: ‘Conried Still Ill; May Not Return’.79 On 23 July the Telegraph found him better, but wrote: ‘He walks with difficulty, and two sticks. But legs are no more as essential to an impresario than intellect to a tenor.’ Although the press did not fully realize the gravity of his condition, for several months Conried was obliged to conduct the business of the Opera from his bedroom, and the Stockholders’ Committee began to think about replacing him. But before we turn to the most difficult year of the Conried regime, which led to Mahler’s engagement and several other artistic innovations, it has to be admitted that the Metropolitan Opera, as it was, fulfilled the purpose of its founding fathers, providing costly and choice entertainment for a class that had little or no interest in music, and not much awareness of theatre either. And although some of its members collected old paintings, they admitted of no

78 New York Sun, 5 Apr. 1908. The article was undoubtedly written by the paper’s chief critic, William Henderson. 79 Undated clipping from the Press, dated from the context. 26 Gustav Mahler responsibility towards contemporary art. This was a set that was mainly inter- ested in bel canto and its stars, and content to hear Caruso, Eames, Sembrich, Nordica, Scotti, and Planc¸on over and over again in the same operas. Firmly convinced that it possessed ‘the best money could buy’ in opera, this society paid little or no attention to the critics’ complaints about Conried’s shabby productions. Two novels by Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country, suggest that the customs and behaviour of the stockholder class had changed little by the turn of the century. The House of Mirth describes the social ascent of Sam Rosedale, a wealthy Jew who managed to work his way into high society by donating large sums of money to charity and to municipal committees, so that eventually even his application for membership of one of the principal New York clubs was found acceptable: ‘Already his wealth, and the masterly use he had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in the business world, and placing Wall Street under obligations which only Fifth Avenue could repay.’ Rosedale had his box at the Opera, from which Lily Bart, the novel’s heroine, who has the misfortune of being poor, could show off the dresses she nevertheless managed to have sent from Paris. Clearly, no one could have cared less about what actually happened on stage during the performance. Wharton fails to indicate whether or not Rosedale’s box belonged to that select group which conferred social standing on their proprietors, but the list of the actual proprietors of boxes at the Metropolitan in 1905, the year in which the action of the novel occurs, contains no Jews besides the Belmonts. By that stage they had managed to make people forget their origin by converting and taking exclusively Christian spouses. Even Otto Kahn, who was to play a determining role in the affairs of the Met for twenty years, was obliged to wait until 1920 before being permitted to acquire a box, and that was only as an exceptional favour.80 The heroine of The Custom of the Country, Undine Spragg, is of modest, and, which is even worse, of midwestern origin. Her one aim in life is to find a wealthy husband and to win a place in New York society. Two crucial scenes in the novel unfold at the Metropolitan Opera. The first takes place amidst the comings and goings during an intermission, and culminates in the appearance of the heroine’s future husband and his courtship of her in the box she had recently rented. In the second scene Undine returns to the Opera with her father. Now divorced, and consequently banished from society, she gazes longingly from the orchestra stalls at the world of the boxes to which she had once belonged. At the end of the performance she makes her way to the stockholders’ exit, as if by accident. The members of society who had rejected her turn away so as not to

80 See Wecter, Saga, 152, who attributes the virulent anti-Semitism of turn-of-the-century American society to its lack of self-confidence. He points out that anti-Semitism did not exist in the eighteenth century, when American Jews were exclusively of Sephardic origin. After August Belmont (1816–90), whose wife was the daughter of Commodore Perry, no Jew managed to enter the ranks of the society which gave birth to the Met and whose queens were Mrs William Backhouse Astor (until 1908), and Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt (ne´e Grace Wilson). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German Jews of New York began to resent the invasion of Polish or Russian Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. January–February 1908 27 have to greet her, and she then fully realizes that she is an outcast. Thus, until the war of 1914 the Metropolitan Opera and its boxes remained the most important and the cruellest of showcases for New York society. As the novel’s author pithily observed, ‘because an exclusive society must isolate itself to survive, it must demonstrate its exclusivity by being seen by those it excludes’.81 The testimony of Wharton’s fiction is corroborated by an account of the Czech tenor Karl Burrian, published in the New York Sun at the end of 1908: The Wagner performances are the least patronized by the public. The whole business apparently bores the audiences to death. If one of the performances does interest the public, how do the most conspicuous—that is, the richest—express their feelings? The beginning of the performance is announced for 8 o’clock. ‘They’, however, come after 9. An usher with an electric light in his hands enters the box and shows the guests their seats. There is a constant coming and going, the spectators greet one another, look around them to see who is there. And the climax of the delight of the evening? You might think that it came in the supreme moment of the music drama. Not in the least. The principal thing is the long intermission during which the gentlemen and ladies of society promenade about arm in arm to show their toilets and diamonds in their greatest beauty.82 After the long intermission one need only to glance in the boxes to see that by a few minutes after 11 there is a packing up of opera glasses in reticules and the start for home. What may happen on the stage after that interests nobody. It is true that in Tannha¨user the audience rises and flees from the opera house after Wolfram’s song to the ‘Evening Star’. The tenor who appears after Wolfram’s solo sings the closing music of his part to the baritone on the stage or the conductor. He might as well play cards with them on the stage so far as the public is concerned. I would like to bet that the fewest possible number of subscribers to the Metropolitan Opera House have the least idea how the story of Tannha¨user and poor Elisabeth ends.83 Why then did New York’s ‘fashionable society’ continue to frequent the Opera, particularly as it was bored unless it could listen to its favourite idols, Caruso or Sembrich? The following description of the ‘box parties’ confirms the view of Burrian, who otherwise might be suspected of ‘European arrogance’:84 In the front of each box sit either two or three ladies; behind them are either three or four men—each box party consists, therefore, of from five to seven persons....The box parties go because the opera is fashionable; the opera is fashionable because the box parties go....Why,ifSociety is bored by the music, if Society has all the opportunities for scrutinizing its clothes, its jewels, and its members in the closer proximity of its

81 Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country (Constable, , 1965, repr. 1981), 62 ff. and 262 ff. 82 According to the novelist Louis Auchincloss, a connoisseur of all the rites of New York society at the turn of the society, the women in the fashionable first row of boxes did not walk during the intermissions but received visitors in their seats. Karl Burrian was probably not aware of this fact since he spent most of his time at the Opera behind the curtain. 83 New York Sun, 27 Dec. 1908 (BDB, 253). See also the memoirs of Elisabeth Drexel Lehr, quoted by Kolodin, Metropolitan, 63. 84 Felix Weingartner states in his memoirs that somewhere about 1905 he attended a performance of L’elisir d’amore at the Met. The only time the boxholders interrupted their chatter was to listen to Caruso singing Una furtiva lagrima (WLE, ii. 135). 28 Gustav Mahler dinners and its balls, why does Society patronize the opera? Why, replies our philosopher, because exclusive Society, to have any reason for existence, must exclude. It must prove that it is select by showing itself in the midst of those whom it is rejecting.85 The author of these lines, Ralph Pulitzer, had published several books on New York and its upper class, and he was familiar with its tastes, its customs, and its rites. His comments undoubtedly applied to a large section of the Met public. Thus the gap was deep and wide between the critics, arbiters of taste and dispensers of musical knowledge, and a ‘high society’ that was proud of being just that, and for whom the Opera had a predominantly social function. Such was the state of affairs that awaited Mahler at the Met, at a time when everyone, including the stockholders, was dissatisfied with Conried’s policies. Hence the future of the institution was unpredictable. But the background to Mahler’s arrival would be incomplete without a brief chronicle of the exception- ally rich and also eventful 1906–7 season, when it became clear that the demo- graphic explosion of the city had begun to give rise to a new public which genuinely appreciated opera. Here was a golden opportunity for a new, imagina- tive, and daring opera impresario to appear.86 Little in Oscar Hammerstein’s previous life—except perhaps his personal fortune, his experience in Vaudeville, and his production of a few operas— indicated that he would be capable of building an opera house, engaging the necessary singers and musicians, and organizing a season.87 Born in Berlin in 1840, eight years before Heinrich Conried, he was the son of a building con- tractor bent on making his son into an artist. Hammerstein received intensive musical training in his childhood, and in 1863, at the age of 15, revolted against paternal authority. He ran away, pawned his violin, and left for America where he found a job in a cigar factory at two dollars per week. After founding a journal designed for the tobacco industry, he invented a number of processes to improve the manufacture of cigars. As a result of his cigar patents, and some astute real estate investments, he made a fortune. At the same time he composed music, wrote German plays, and struck up a friendship with , the conductor who had brought Conried to America. Thanks to him, Hammerstein managed to produce his plays and get his theatre music performed. His first great ventures in the theatrical world were both located in Harlem, where he built the Harlem Opera House on 125th Street in 1889, and after that a theatre. In 1892 he opened the first Manhattan Opera House on West 34th Street, and later on he would turn the same building into a lucrative house of variety. During 1893 there occurred a well-known episode in his life: in forty- eight hours, for a wager, he wrote both the music and libretto of an operetta, and the resultant work—The Kohinoor—achieved a fair degree of success.

85 Ralph Pulitzer, New York Society in Parade (Harper, New York, 1910), 52 ff. (quoted by BDB, 253). 86 New York had 2,500,000 inhabitants in 1890, 3,400,000 in 1900, and 4,700,000 in 1910, including 500,000 Italians. Manhattan alone grew from a population of 1,440,000 in 1890 to 2,300,000 in 1910. Cf. Henry Hanson (ed.), The World Almanac and Book of Facts (New York, 1961), 304. 87 Cone, Hammerstein,3. January–February 1908 29 In the Olympia, another variety theatre which Hammerstein built on Broadway, between 44th and 45th Streets, he presented European celebrities such as Yvette Guilbert and produced works of his own, but this venture led to resounding bankruptcy. However, thanks to loans and income from his patents, this remark- able man managed to build a new theatre in nine months. The Victoria opened in 1899, and it soon rebuilt Hammerstein’s fortune with musical comedies and variety shows. Back in 1889 Hammerstein had put on a series of operas in English at the Harlem Opera House. Although that first venture ended in failure, in March 1890 he brought about his first miracle: in just a few weeks he managed to put on for Lilli Lehmann, then at the height of her glory, a series of six performances at the Harlem Opera House: Norma, Les Huguenots (in German), and Il trovatore. Among the members of the troupe he had assembled for the occasion were Theodor Reichmann and —Lilli Lehmann’s husband. The public turnout surpassed all expectations, and Hammerstein began to think that there was room in Manhattan for another opera house besides the Met. That same year he organized another three-week season of opera in English, which he repeated the following spring, always playing to full houses. In 1891 he clashed with a rival impresario, Rudolph Aronson, regarding the American premie`re of Mascagni’s . His rival won the race by a few hours and put on fifty-three performances of the opera. In January 1893 Hammerstein took advantage of the void left by the closing of the Met after the fire in August 1892, and produced Moszkowski’s Boabdil, but like some great repertory operas which he put on at his first Manhattan Opera House, the production was a flop. Many years earlier, Conried and Hammerstein had tried to work together on the production of a German play, but their collaboration had ended in a spectacular conflict and estrangement. Rivalry with Conried certainly contrib- uted to Hammerstein’s determination to continue producing opera, despite all his failures and half-successes which thrice had made him a millionaire and thrice had ruined him. He openly considered Conried totally incompetent as far as opera was concerned, and had nothing but contempt for the policies of the Metropolitan. Indeed, during the 1904–5 season Conried had cut back the size of the orchestra to save money. None of the conductors he engaged possessed sufficient stature, and some of his productions were considered so poor that they would ‘not even do credit to a provincial German theatre’. The chorus showed no interest in what was going on and usually stood in a semicircle in the middle or at the front of the stage, thus hiding the stars from the view of the audience seated on the sides.88 All this criticism was of importance, for it induced Oscar Hammerstein to do better and differently, and in various ways his competition forced Conried to raise the artistic level of the Met. If the press is to be believed, Hammerstein’s criticism of Conried was fully justified. According to William Henderson, in the Sun, the four Ring operas had never been performed at the Met ‘with more slips, blunders, and unsatisfactory

88 Ibid. 27. 30 Gustav Mahler illusion than in that year’. Everyone agreed that the Metropolitan was declining under Conried’s direction. He defended himself on the grounds that the size of the repertoire—about forty works—left no time for adequate rehearsals. More- over, as in the previous year, he showed lack of taste by playing Johann Strauss’s Zigeunerbaron for his personal benefit, instead of the Fledermaus. The events which followed were so extraordinary that they almost defy belief. In a district which was being transformed by the construction of Pennsylvania Central and Grand Central Terminal, on West 34th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues, Hammerstein began to build a ‘coliseum’ for popular grand spectacles. In 1906 he changed his mind about its function and decided to turn it into a popular opera house. Two years later he defined the noble aim of his new enterprise as follows: Grand opera is, I truly believe, the most elevating influence upon modern society, after religion. Grand opera is more than music; it is more than drama, it is more than a spectacle; it is more than a social function, it is more than a display of passion, whether subdued or fierce; it is more than a song or a tale of love, it is more than a series of pictures; it is all these things and more.89 This time, at almost 60 years of age, Hammerstein was determined to realize his dream. However, he apparently underestimated the obstacles in his path. For as soon as Conried heard of his intentions—which Hammerstein had announced in countless interviews—he hurried to secure the exclusive rights to all Puccini’s operas, and warned every agent and impresario in Europe against dealing with his rival. Hammerstein began by announcing the return of the de Reszke brothers to the United States as members of his new opera company. The project failed to materialize, but the ebullient entrepreneur showed the extent of his talent and knowledge of opera by engaging a first-class conductor, Cleofonte Campanini,90 who had conducted the premie`re of Verdi’s Otello at the Met, and had just left La Scala because of a conflict with the management. In this respect he was far ahead of Conried, who until then had engaged only second-rate conductors. On Conried’s roster for the 1906–7 season were Samuel Bovy, Nahan Franko, Arturo Vigna, and Alfred Hertz. Thus Mahler’s engage- ment at the Met can partly be ascribed to Hammerstein’s competition, which had forced Conried to recognize the importance of a conductor to an opera performance. In May 1907 he wrote to a member of the stockholders’ commit- tee, James Hazen Hyde, who had no doubt complained of the absence of first- class conductors at the Met: You speak of negotiations with Mottl and you suggest Nikisch.91 I have been in negoti- ations with Nikisch for the last four years, and I will name the rest of the leading conductors to whom I made offers since the day I became manager of the Conried

89 This statement was made in 1908. It is quoted by Cone, Hammerstein, 32. 90 The brother of tenor Italo Campanini. 91 Further on in the same letter to James H. Hyde, Conried mentions his last-minute negotiations in London with Campanini. He had attempted ‘to get him as cheap as possible’ and ‘went to him personally but was too late’. January–February 1908 31 Opera Company—Richter, Schuch, Weingartner, Muck, Strauss, Mahler, Mader; Nikisch for instance has a binding contract with the Philharmonic societies of Berlin and Hamburg, and the Gewandhaus Concerte in Leipzig. Those three cities, two and four hours apart, give Mr. Nikisch a clear income of about 130,000 Marks in not quite seven months. What could I offer him? . . . P.S. Toscanini to whom I sent a special agent to Milan, replied that financial consideration would persuade him to an engagement in America, and the reports concerning Mugnoni [recte Mugnone]92 were such as to give me the conviction that he would be impossible with our orchestra, after two days.93 Mahler’s engagement had been triumphantly announced in the following cable which Conried sent to the board on 6 June 1907: I am happy to announce the engagement of the very best of all musical directors Gustav Mahler for three months each season at very favourable terms Lilli Lehmann went personally to Mahler for Hammerstein offering him exorbitant terms to direct Lohengrin Mahler negotiated with my knowledge and consent I received the sanction to engage Mahler five weeks ago through Oberhofmeister Prince Montenuovo but emperor’s consent has to be granted.94 Hence it is clear that Hammerstein’s more enlightened policies had consciously inspired Conried’s reforms, of which one of the first had been Mahler’s engage- ment. As far as singers went, Hammerstein surely knew as much as his rival, and probably a good deal more. Employing a veritable treasure-chest of energy, skill, and finesse, he succeeded in engaging Nellie Melba, the greatest prima donna of her time, who felt flattered by his efforts and enjoyed the prospect of being, at last, the sole and undisputed star of an opera house.95 The company’s other members included the Alessandro Bonci and Charles Dalmore`s, the baritones Mario Ancona and Maurice Renaud, and the basses Charles Gillibert and Vittorio Arimondi. Among the singers on the distaff side were the Giannina Russ, the coloratura Regina Pinkert, and the altos Eleonora de Ciseron and Clothilde Bressler Gianoli. All in all, it was a first-class ensemble and Conried might well have envied many of the voices. Hammerstein had decided to give operas in both Italian and French, with a chorus of 100 singers (partly imported from Europe) and an orchestra of seventy-five musicians. In short, the Metropolitan’s competitor was formidable. In Hammerstein’s own words,

92 Leopoldo Mugnone (1858–1941) had studied at the Naples Conservatory, made his debut at Teatro La Fenice in Venice, and from 1890 on had fulfilled many engagements as guest conductor in Europe and in North and South America. considered him the best Italian conductor of his time. Obviously, Conried did not at this time know Mahler’s reputation as a tyrant and a ‘martinet’ in rehearsal. 93 Letter dated 14 May 1907 from Heinrich Conried to James Hazen Hyde, Metropolitan Opera Archives. 94 Ibid. On 24 June the New York Mail announced that Conried was ill and would perhaps not return, and that Mahler would succeed him as director of the Met. According to one of the columns (called ‘Reflections’) published in the Musical Courier on 14 Aug. 1907 (quoted in MAY, 35, no. 15), Mahler was to have conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in an American tour of eight concerts, but the plan was cancelled because of his contract with the Metropolitan Opera. 95 Hammerstein’s account of his negotiations with Melba is completely different from the tale she tells in her memoirs. See Cone, Hammerstein,35ff. 32 Gustav Mahler . . . This second home for grand opera is not to be second at all, but to be first and foremost, ...forcing its predominance and respect by its already predominating value ...In accessories, in surroundings the great artists under my management are entitled to, I confess I will lack one thing—the provincialism which our opera goers have been forced to accustom themselves to.96 There were obviously many obstacles still to overcome, but clearly, even if Hammerstein accomplished only part of what he planned to achieve—and his declarations filled the newspapers for weeks before the opening of the season—he would still constitute an unprecedented threat to the Metropolitan. Nonetheless, the 1906–7 season looked auspicious for Conried. He had invited Puccini to attend the premie`re of Manon Lescaut, as well as Madama Butterfly, and he was presenting the first New York performances of Giordano’s Fedora and a stage version of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust. Furthermore, with Salome he hoped to repeat the fabulous publicity coup he had mounted for Parsifal. But this time his luck failed him, and the difficulties did not come from Hammerstein alone. In January 1906 the members of the chorus demanded a weekly wage of $25 per week, and they went on strike for the first time in the history of the Met. For the performance of Faust that evening, Caruso received a fee of $1,340, Eames $1,500, Scotti $600, and Planc¸on $500. For that same performance, chorus members were paid a mere seventh of their weekly wages—$2.14 at most.97 After two days of negotiations, Conried bargained them down to $20 per week. Incidentally, the 3 January performance of Faust took place in spite of the strike, with the chorus parts hastily transcribed for brass by Nahan Franko. At the end of the 1905–6 season, as happened every year, the Met left on tour. Nineteen operas were scheduled for San Francisco in April, and the decors, costumes, properties, scores, and parts98 for nineteen operas had already arrived there. Two performances had taken place when, on the morning of 18 April, the earth shook. Most of the city collapsed, and what remained was engulfed in one of the greatest fires of all time. The members of the Metropolitan emerged safe and sound, but Marcella Sembrich’s jewellery melted into a formless mass in the flames which ravaged her hotel. Caruso risked his life to rescue his silk shirts from the inferno, and Louise Homer suffered a nervous breakdown. Worse still, the decors and costumes were completely destroyed, along with a great number of instruments. In a magnanimous gesture, Conried refunded the advance bookings for a total of $84,000. Back in New York, many artists—particularly Sembrich—gave benefit concerts for the Met, but these were nowhere near sufficient to meet the

96 Quoted Cone, Hammestein, 44. 97 Kolodin, Metropolitan, 172. Conried discusses this strike, which according to him could have spread to the orchestra, the stage hands, and the electricians if the Central Federation of Labor had not supported his position and considered ‘the demands of the chorus union . . . ridiculous and impossible’ (Letter from Conried to James Hazen Hyde, dated 14 May 1907, Metropolitan Opera Archive). 98 In his letter to James Hazen Hyde, already quoted above, Conried mentions the special rehearsals which had to be organized for most of the operas in the repertory ‘in order to have the orchestra parts put in the proper condition’. January–February 1908 33 deficit, let alone the loss of receipts. Fortunately, the opening night of the season, which took place on 26 November with a performance of Gounod’s Rome´oet Juliette, launched a new star, .99 With the cinema still in its infancy, the public’s appetite for stars centred on the opera. Farrar had studied with Lilli Lehmann, and her love affair with the Crown Prince of Germany had already set tongues wagging. She thus had all the makings of a star: beauty, voice, talent, and a whiff of scandal, which made her irresistible; the ‘serpentine grace’ of her walk is said to have equalled Sarah Bernhardt’s, and her portrayal of passionate love earned her a title to compare with the famous and tempestu- ous Emma Calve´. She was alleged to have had enough lovers to make all male hearts beat faster. Even her historic tempers contributed to her legend: it is recounted that in the course of a love duet she once slapped Caruso’s face because he had spit over her shoulder. Nevertheless, the two remained friends and sang together in countless productions. In the history of the Met, Farrar was one of the few singers to obtain two exclusive privileges: her fees were paid without any deductions, and she was entitled to a special locked wardrobe in which to store her magnificent costumes. Vocally less gifted but of equal beauty, another prima donna, Lina Cavalieri, also caused a sensation at the Met that winter in Giordano’s Fedora. All the newspapers were filled with tales of her idyllic affair and marriage in Paris to a member of the Chanler family (related to the Astors), and her insistence that he sign over his entire fortune to her.100 But the notoriety of his stars was also a source of headaches for Conried. Two days before the season opened, Enrico Caruso was arrested at the Central Park Zoo, in front of the monkey house, accused by Mrs Hannah Stanhope of making ‘improper advances’ and a concomitant gesture. Caruso did not appear at the trial, but the testimony of the policeman to whom Mrs Stanhope had reported the incident persuaded the court to declare him guilty and impose a ten-dollar fine.101 Fortunately, the affair had no adverse effects on the enthusiasm of the audience, which greeted him with a thunderous ovation when he appeared on stage in La Bohe`me on 28 November.102 But the most serious scandal, as far as Conried was concerned, erupted at the beginning of 1907. He had been careless enough to schedule the public dress rehearsal of Salome for Sunday 20 January, at 11 a.m. Many subscribers proceeded to the Opera straight after church, and were all the more scandalized by the depravity of Herod’s court. At the premie`re two days later (with ticket prices doubled, as usual), the opera was preceded by an interminable concert103

99 See above, Vol. iii, Chap. 6 and here below, n. 267. According to the New Music Review (66 (1907): 6 (May), 386), Farrar ‘did not make that immediate and triumphant sweep of success which she and her friends anticipated for her’ but had been found as ‘an artistic personality really interesting and persuasive’. 100 Fortunately for him, the lawyers managed to prove the gift to be invalid and the marriage broke up. Cavalieri nonetheless wrested a substantial settlement from the family. 101 In his letter to Hyde quoted above, Conried complains of having had to work five whole days with ‘detectives, lawyers and newspaper men’. Later on, ‘I was forced to stand from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon in a district court room, on a platform intended for six or eight persons, . . . which was now occupied by thirty or forty’. 102 A small growth on Caruso’s vocal cords had also been detected by his doctor. 103 Strauss insisted upon Salome being the sole opera performed on any given evening. 34 Gustav Mahler since Salome was considered too short fare. For the dance of the Seven Veils, Olive Fremstad had herself replaced by a dancer,104 but the realism of her acting in the final scene, when she embraces the severed head of Jochanaan, was such that the New York puritans were horrified. The following day, the Tribune (no doubt its main music critic, Henry Krehbiel) described their reactions as they were leaving the hall: Many voices were hushed as the crowd passed out into the night, many faces were white,...manywomen were silent, and men spoke as if a bad dream were on them. In the galleries men and women left their seats to stand so they might look down on the prima ballerina as she kissed the dead lips of the head of John the Baptist. Then they sank back in their chairs and shuddered. . . . What shall be said ...when music adorns itself with its loveliest attributes and leads them to the apotheosis of that which is indescribably, yes, inconceivably, gross and abominable? . . . There is not a whiff of fresh and healthy air blowing through Salome except that which exhales from the cistern. . . . Salome is unspeakable; Herodias...isahuman hyena; Herod, a neurasthenic voluptuary. That same morning the Times published a letter from a doctor who declared that he had spent twenty years of his life in daily contact with ‘degenerates’. ‘I say after deliberation that Salome is a detailed and explicit exposition of the most horrible, disgusting, revolting and unmentionable features of degeneracy that I have ever heard, read of, or imagined.’105 Henry Krehbiel106 spoke of the ‘moral stench’ of this ‘pestilential work’, while Henderson fulminated against what he described as ‘operatic offal’. J. P. Morgan’s hair stood on end at the description which his daughter, Mrs Herbert Satterlee, provided for him. He hastily summoned the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company to his famous library, where they agreed to send a threatening letter to Conried. That letter, dated 27 January, stated that Salome was ‘objec- tionable, and detrimental to the best interest of the Metropolitan Opera Com- pany’, and that it must be banned. Conried tried to compromise, proposing to darken the stage at the crucial moment of the kiss and to schedule the opera exclusively for non-subscription performances, but Morgan and the committee were unyielding. However, as grands seigneurs they offered to compensate Conried for the production costs and the bookings, an offer that he angrily turned down. Later he announced a series of performances of Salome at the New Amsterdam Theatre, but they did not take place. The tour performances were also cancelled on the instructions of the various municipalities,107 and Conried lost at least $25,000, excluding bookings. By this time, contrary to all predictions that he might lose his battle, Hammerstein had already opened his Manhattan Opera House with Bellini’s

104 Salome had its first Paris performance at the Chaˆtelet before the summer, with in the title role. However, Fremstad later replaced her there. 105 Quoted by Edward Lawrence, The Life and Times of Emma Eames: A Fragrance of Violets (Vantage, New York, 1973), 155. 106 Concerning , see below, n. 201. 107 In Boston, Salome was outlawed by Mayor Kennedy, grandfather of President John F. Kennedy. January–February 1908 35 I puritani. The opera was chosen as a foil for the honeyed voice, brilliant high notes, and acrobatic virtuosity of Alessandro Bonci, the star tenor of Hammer- stein’s company and the only one then capable of tackling the role’s particularly high tessitura. The handsome theatre, decorated in ‘Louis XIV style’, contained 3,100 seats. The dimensions of the stage, more modest than those of the Metropolitan, were adequate nonetheless, even for grand opera. Brilliantly lit, the hall contained boxes but was not submerged by them as at the Met. Hammerstein declared that members of his audience would come to see and hear Bonci and Melba, not to show off. The architecture was designed to increase the comfort of the spectators, and to improve the visibility of the stage which was closer to the audience than the one at the Met. As Hammerstein had promised, the productions reflected much more care than their counterparts at the Metro- politan, and all the artists declared themselves more than satisfied with their working conditions. Just before the opening, Hammerstein was obliged to announce the defection of the de Reszke brothers. Right up until the very last moment, New York was sceptical about the enterprise, and on the day of the grand opening workers left the hall only minutes before the first patrons were admitted. Even so, 750 persons had to be turned away. Many of the Met stockholders were present in the audience, including Otto Kahn and the Vanderbilt, Belmont, Gould, Whit- ing, and Goelet clans. One of the first signs of the rigour of the Manhattan’s artistic policy, compared with that of the Met, was Campanini’s adamant refusal to permit encores.108 Many critics found Bonci more refined than Caruso. Regina Pinckert, the prima donna, was a disappointment, but the baritone Ancona and the bass Arimondi were acclaimed. The critics all commented on the excellent acoustics, and on the vigour and precision of the choral singing, which was considered to be of much higher quality than anything that could be heard at the Met. It was also reported that the artists were delighted by the warm welcome they received from the public. Subsequent performances displayed the talents of two other Hammerstein stars, Charles Dalmore`s and Maurice Renaud, but they sang to half-empty houses. Certain productions, however, seem to have decisively convinced the public that the Manhattan could rival the Met, and even surpass it artistically: Don Giovanni (a work long absent from the Met’s repertory) on 12 December, Carmen on 14 December (with Clothilde Bressler-Gianoli), and Aida on 19 December (with Amedeo Basse´, Gianina Russ, Eleonora de Cisneros, Ancona, and Arimondi), were triumphs. It was now quite clear that Hammerstein’s astounding audacity was paying off; indeed, the New York public seemed sufficiently motivated to fill the house for both operas. ‘What strikes the observer of the new opera house’, wrote Richard Aldrich in the Times, ‘is the fact that there are intelligence, skill, and zeal at work in it continually to improve its [artistic] results.’

108 During this same month of December critics reported that Campanini broke his own rule and allowed an air from Rigoletto to be repeated. The same evening an entire scene from Fedora was ‘encored’ at the Met. 36 Gustav Mahler Melba arrived on 2 January 1907 and created a sensation in La traviata.At the last moment Conried’s partisans tried to spread rumours that, after a ten- year absence from New York, she had lost her voice. But her enormous range, from the lowest B flat to F above high C, her ‘unique, impeccable, translucent and glittering’ timbre, the absolute evenness of her voice throughout its entire register, its brilliancy and strength, and her phenomenal trills all demonstrated that at 46 years of age she was still at the height of her powers. Cleofonte Campanini accompanied her with competence, fervour, and talent which the critics called ‘unique in their time’. The audience was delirious with enthusiasm, calling Melba back on stage eleven times after Act I, and showering her with flowers and acclamations at the end of the evening. A few days later a production of Rigoletto was hailed by the critics with delight, the Times claiming that nothing comparable had been seen in New York for many years. During the 1906–7 season, Hammerstein presented 22 works in 121 per- formances, including Il trovatore, L’elisir d’amore, Les Huguenots, Il barbiere, and La sonnambula, as well as Cavalleria and , , Fra Diavolo, Marta, and the inevitable Faust in which Melba shone with particular brilliance. She also sang in Lucia and Rigoletto with consistent success, appearing in the latter with a sensational new baritone, Mario Sam- marco. The house was always sold out, enthusiasm ran high, and, to crown it all, even high society began to frequent the Manhattan Opera. Hammerstein had emerged victorious. He even won his suit against Puccini’s publisher Ricordi, and was finally able to give a performance of La Bohe`me (featuring Bonci, Sammarco, Gillibert, and Arimondi) which far surpassed the Met’s production. If Conried wanted to revive his fortunes he had a hard job ahead of him, particularly as Hammerstein reserved one of his first trump cards for the end of the season: the return of Emma Calve´inCarmen and Cavalleria rusticana (with Charles Dalmore`s). Once again she surpassed herself, even though one critic, with a notable lack of gallantry, opined that she had ‘gained in weight what she lost in artistic dimension’. Whereas Hammerstein concluded his season with $750,000 in receipts and a $100,000 profit, Conried made a loss of $84,000. The competing directors then started employing underhand methods. Conried managed to secure Bonci by offering $1,500 instead of $1,000 per performance, but Hammerstein parried the blow by engaging another excellent Italian tenor, Giovanni Zenatello. When Conried also tried to convince Campanini to quit the Manhattan, Hammer- stein commented ironically in the press: ‘This all proves that Mr. Conried believes I know where to obtain good artists and he does not, so he gets them from me.’109 At the same time, Hammerstein was trying—in vain—to lure Caruso away from the Metropolitan, and by Machiavellian cunning succeeded in securing the collab- oration of Lillian Nordica and Ernestine Schumann-Heink. Hammerstein’s competition promised to be every bit as devastating the following season. He instituted daily rehearsals,110 increased the number of

109 The World, 28 Feb. 1907. 110 That winter Campanini even provoked a brief strike by attempting to impose a seven-hour rehearsal of Don Giovanni. January–February 1908 37 orchestral players to eighty-two, and expanded the chorus to 140.111 Like the Met, the Manhattan put on five evening performances a week, plus a matine´e, and the season consisted of 124 performances of twenty-eight works. Hammer- stein turned the poverty of the Met’s repertoise, especially in French opera, to his advantage. With the help of the French impresario Gabriel Astruc, he acquired exclusive rights to Louise and Pelle´as et Me´lisande, as well as to Massenet’s Thaı¨s, La Navarraise, and Le Jongleur de Notre Dame. In order to ensure the success of these operas, Hammerstein announced his intention to engage Mary Garden, another pupil of Mathilde Marchesi. With Garden’s appearances the public would be introduced to a new-style soprano who had already conquered audiences in both Paris and London.112 This time Conried was clearly at a disadvantage, especially since he was increasingly immobilized by his ill-health, which often prevented him from going to the theatre. He had also made a very costly mistake: after opening negotiations for a contract with Luisa Tetra- zzini—the last great Italian coloratura soprano—immediately after her London debut, he let the occasion slip. Hammerstein promptly stepped into the breach with the help of his conductor Campanini, who happened to be Tetrazzini’s brother-in-law.113 Starting on 15 January, Tetrazzini sang a fabulous series of twenty-two performances at the Manhattan, including La traviata, Lucia, Rigo- letto,andDinorah, instead of the fifteen originally planned. New York’s blase´ critics had to acknowledge that, although ‘the whims of the populace are as unquestioning and irresponsible as the fury of the elements, it would be difficult to find a parallel for it [Tetrazzini’s triumph] in the opera annals of New York’.114 All Conried could do was to have Caruso perform as often as possible. (Henry Finck eventually nicknamed the Met the ‘Carusel’.)115 Bonci sang in 25

111 The chorus was probably the weakest element in Conried’s Met. In his letter to James Hyde, he explains that he had had to form a new one after the San Francisco earthquake: ‘The German and Italian contingent were compelled to study Damnation, Faust, Rome´o, and Carmen in French, the Italian and French chorus to study the German operas in that language; and the French chorus to study the Italian operas in Italian.’ 112 On 13 Apr. 1900, Mary Garden created a sensation at the Ope´ra-Comique when she replaced Marthe Rioton, the creator of the title role of Louise, in the middle of a performance of the opera (the premie`re had occurred on 2 Feb. of the same year). She was equally successful in Manon the following year, and in the premie`re of Pelle´as et Me´lisande on 30 Apr. 1902. Thereafter she was the reigning star at the Ope´ra- Comique, where she created the title role in Erlanger’s Aphrodite on 27 Mar. 1906. Garden made her debut at the Manhattan while still recovering from a bout of flu. Although not in her best voice, she subjugated the critics with her ‘passionate intensity of utterance and emotional realism’. 113 Italo Campanini was married to Eva Tetrazzini, who had created the role of Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello at the Academy of Music in 1889. 114 Krehbiel, Chapters of Opera, 392–3, and New York Times, 19 Jan. 1908, quoted by Michael Scott, The Great Caruso (Knopf, New York, 1988), 104. 115 Caruso also sang Radames, Rodolfo, Pinkerton, Loris (in Fedora), Lionel (in Martha), Edgar (in Lucia), Cavaradossi, Faust, des Grieux (in Manon Lescaut), Vasco da Gama (in L’Africaine sung in Italian), the Duke (in Rigoletto), and Canio during the same season. The New Music Review reviewed the whole season in May 1907: twenty-nine different operas had been performed and the Italian performances had outnumbered the German and French put together. However, the composer most performed was still Wagner, with twenty-nine performances of eight works, after which came Puccini (21 of 4 works), Verdi (11 of 3 works), Gounod (9 of 2 works), and Humperdinck (8 of Ha¨ nsel). Most of the seats had been sold by subscription. 38 Gustav Mahler performances and Caruso in 51. The 1907–8 season opened on 18 November 1907 with Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, in which Caruso played the role he had created at La Scala in 1902, but the production was a failure and was only repeated once. As the London World had written after the Covent Garden premie`re of Fedora, ‘opera goers prefer that which they know and take only languid interest in that which is unfamiliar, even when the cast contains the brightest stars’.116 Another premie`re at the Met that year, Mascagni’s Iris, failed to elicit public enthusiasm, despite the participation of Caruso and Emma Eames, and it disappeared from the year’s programme after only four perform- ances. Conried played a new card when he presented Boito’s Mefistofele, with the Russian bass Fedor Chaliapine who was famous all over Europe. Unfortu- nately, the realism of his acting and his outlandish garbs were badly reviewed by the New York critics. Henderson rated his art ‘cheap and claptrap’117 and Henry T. Fink alone recognized his true dimension as a singer and singing actor.118 Later, as Basilio in Il barbiere, Chaliapine created a scandal by blowing his nose in his bare hand. Robert Aldrich, the most urbane of the New York critics, coined this charming euphemism in the Times: ‘Chaliapine made a deep impression . . . if not a wholly agreeable one.’119 Krehbiel went further and declared himself repulsed by Chaliapine’s ‘disgusting frankness’. As for Henderson, he branded the Russian bass as ‘an operatic impersonator of the first rank, and a mediocresinger....Hehasmuchskillincoloringtone,butitistheskillofanactor rather than that of a singer. Indeed throughout no small portion of every opera, Chaliapin is talking instead of singing.’ All in all, none of the events at the Met attracted as much attention as the premie`re of Thaı¨s at the Manhattan on 25 November, with Mary Garden in the title role.120 The opera had a mixed success with the critics, but Garden, from her first entrance scattering the rose-petals, inspired them to unprecedented flights of lyricism: ‘At

116 World, London, 13 July 1907, quoted by Scott, Caruso, 103. 117 New York Sun, 27 Feb. 1908, quoted by Scott, Caruso, 104. 118 Scott, Caruso, ibid. 119 Fedor Chaliapine (1873–1938) was born into a modest family in Kazan. Apprenticed to a shoemaker at the age of 10, he (along with the writer Maxim Gorki) sang in a chorus at the age of 14 before being noticed by a Tiflis professor who began to train his voice. He began his career in 1894 in a summer opera company, sang at the Imperial Opera of Saint Petersburg, and finally achieved stardom in Moscow. His debut abroad took place at La Scala in Milan, where he sang the title role in Boito’s Mephistophele in 1901, and returned in 1904 and 1908. His international career was launched in Berlin in Apr. 1907, with the German premie`re of Boris Godunov. It was well under way before he made his debut at the Met in the same year. As mentioned previously, Chaliapine’s acting and costumes in Mefistofele created a scandal in New York. During his first American season he also sang Me´phisto in Gounod’s Faust and Bartolo in Il barbiere. Interviewed just before he left New York, Chaliapine indulged in a bitter criticism of the Met and its policies: ‘Do New Yorkers really think they possess a good opera house? The sets and productions would be unthinkable in Russia or even South America—not to speak of the great world centres of lyric theatre!’ After singing Leporello in Don Giovanni under Mahler’s direction in 1908, Chaliapine left New York swearing that this visit would be his last. 120 Garden had made a sensational debut at the Ope´ra-Comique in Louise on 13 Apr. 1900, when the prima donna fell ill halfway through the performance: ‘The unknown, untried understudy took over— with the big aria ‘‘Depuis le jour’’, immediately ahead of her. The sensation, the triumph is all part of history.’ (John Steane, Singers of the Century (Duckworth, London, 1998), ii. 24.) January–February 1908 39 moments it seemed as if this creature of supple frame, slender as a sapling, pliant as a willow, wore only the garment of Eve as she moved along the boards with the stride of a tigress and the tortuousness of a serpent.121 Garden was no less fabulous in the premie`re of Louise (3 January 1908), or in Pelle´as et Me´lisande (20 February); and there was no greater sensation that season than the New York debut of Luisa Tetrazzini in La traviata on 15 January, with the possible exception of Mahler’s debut at the Met on 1 January with Tristan and Isolde. What is certain is that Mahler’s arrival was the only offensive weapon Conried had left.122 To complete the picture of New York at the time of Mahler’s arrival, one more event remains to be mentioned: the unprecedented financial panic which seized Wall Street and the whole of America in October 1907. At first all the great financiers blamed the newly elected liberal president Theodore Roosevelt, because of his crusade against the Trusts and the Wall Street magnates. But, as in 1929, the real underlying cause seems to have been the excesses of the speculators during this exceptionally prosperous period, and their overesti- mation of the market’s potential. The panic began when the Knickerbocker Trust failed, triggering off a run on other banks by countless clients, especially those abroad, and scenes of mass hysteria and collective disorder the like of which had never before been seen on Wall Street. The president called the all- powerful banker and financier John Pierpont Morgan,123 then 70 years old, to ask him to save the Trust Company of America by pumping liquidity into the banking system. During two weeks of panic, Morgan mobilized hundreds of millions of dollars from New York banks in order to staunch withdrawals from other banks and corporations as the market tumbled, using every possible means to make the bankers bring forth the necessary funds, on one occasion even locking them up in his room for that purpose. He spent the crucial day alone in his private office at his library on Madison Avenue, near his residence.124

121 New York Press, 26 Nov. 1907, quoted by Steane, ibid. 27. 122 The 1907–8 performances at the Met lasted less than nineteen weeks (not counting the complete Ring cycle in April) and consisted of 124 performances, which represented a considerable improvement over the preceding season (97 performances in 17 weeks). Wagner was the composer most performed, with 29 performances of 8 operas in 1906–7 and 23 performances of 7 operas in 1907–8. Yet the New Music Review had written in April 1907: ‘German Opera is dying in New York. Its obituary is to be read in the list of performances of the present season at the Metropolitan.’ During this same season Ha¨ nsel und Gretel was the single work most often performed, but, apart from Wagner, the Italians predominated with La Bohe`me performed seven times, and Aida and Tosca six times. 123 Banker, financier, philanthropist, patron of the arts, collector of paintings, rare books, porcelain, and armour, James Pierpont Morgan has already been mentioned several times above. A scion of several generations of bankers, he had financed large sectors of the American transportation, steel, and electricity industries, and played a decisive part in transforming the United States into an industrial colossus. After the earlier crash of 1893 he had already acted as unofficial banker for the US government. and had been known to intervene in the foreign exchange market on his own to prop up the dollar. Sitting at the centre of a web of trusts and holding companies, negotiating with presidents (for a profit), Morgan had become a symbol of uncontrolled and unaccountable financial power. See the review of Jean Strouse’s biography of J. P. Morgan by Robert Skidelsky (New York Review of Books, 6 May 1999, 7). 124 Many of Mahler’s letters and manuscripts are today preserved in this famous library, most of them deposited by the great collector Robert Lehman. 40 Gustav Mahler Historians of the period have described how, like the captain of a vessel in danger of shipwreck, he played patience and from time to time received visits from frantic members of his bank. That day the life and death of many establishments depended on Morgan and his vast fortune, and they were saved by his masterful handling of the situation.125 This fact alone symbolizes the era then drawing to a close, an era in which America was secretly controlled by the great financial magnates. The whole country was affected by the bank run, since the reconstruc- tion of San Francisco absorbed most liquid assets. Morgan alone had the power to save various banks or trusts from disaster. Even the City of New York and the US Treasury would have faced bankruptcy without his help. During this panic, the first in modern times, gigantic sums disappeared in a matter of moments. Stock exchanges throughout the world anxiously watched the depression, which revealed the vulnerability of a system in which colossal power was concentrated in the hands of a few. According to Musical America of 18 February 1908, the panic cost Conried $100,000, as subscribers who had sustained heavy losses gave up their boxes for the season.126 Yet during this same season 1906–7 Hammerstein made a profit of $250,000. In a certain sense, his victory was that of a man refusing to be bound by systems and taboos. Shortly afterwards he once again braved public opinion and New York puritan morality with a new production of Salome’. On the other hand, J. P. Morgan embodied a different America. Conservative and hypocritical, he had kept mistresses right through. Nevertheless, in 1873 he founded the infamous New York Society for the Prevention of Vice, ‘which sought to tell New Yorkers during the next fifty years what they should see, read, and hear’.127 When Mahler arrived in New York on 21 December 1907 the city looked very different from its appearance today. Most of the buildings were only two or three storeys high, and the few sky-scrapers already in existence rose to a height of only eighteen or twenty floors. The construction of the Grand Central and Pennsylvania stations was under way, along with that of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Near the Met, the Times Building was rising above the triangular block formed by Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Twenty-five stories high, it would soon tower above the whole theatre district, including the Met, and for many years it remained one of the highest buildings in the world. Three years earlier, after four years of construc- tion, the New York Subway opened, linking the metropolis from City Hall to 145th Street, with secondary lines stretching through tunnels to Brooklyn and Queens. Every day it transported thousands of inhabitants from the suburbs to

125 Skidelsky, New York Review of Books,7. 126 The same issue of Musical America reports litigation between Conried and the City of New York over the problem of Sunday evening concerts. A city ordinance (Dec. 1907) had forbidden all public entertainment on that day, and Conried had to wait two weeks until a more liberal interpretation of the ruling authorized concerts and other performances of a holy or ‘educational’ character. 127 Kolodin, Metropolitan, 58. January–February 1908 41 the city centre. Automobiles were a rarity and electric lighting was just begin- ning to replace gas. In 1906 the Daily Tribune christened New York ‘The Electric City’, and baptized Broadway ‘The great white way’ between 36th and 46th Streets because of all the illuminated advertisements. The Tribune proudly reported that New York City consumed ‘four times the electric current of London and its suburbs’. The Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, on which the Mahlers had crossed the ocean, belonged to the Hamburg America Line, the largest of the two German shipping companies which carried passengers across the Atlantic. Built in Germany in 1905, she left Hamburg harbour for the first time on 10 May 1906, bound for Dover and New York. She was then the largest ship in the world128 and the pride of the German fleet, although she was not its fastest vessel, having an average speed of 18 knots.129 Leaving Cherbourg on the evening of 12 December, she arrived in New Yorkonly on the morning of the 22nd. According to Alma, the arrival in New York harbour made a deep impression on Mahler. For him it was even ‘the most colossal spectacle of man and nature’. ‘We were so spellbound that we forgot all our sorrow,’ she wrote. Their ship docked at 10 a.m. Long before disembarking, Mahler was assailed by a mob of reporters and photographers, but he insisted on watching the entry into the harbour from the upper deck. The Morgen Journal reported that William R. Steinway, the piano manufacturer, was also on the ship and had answered many of Mahler’s questions about New York during the crossing. Looking about him in the harbour, Mahler repeated again and again: ‘How splendid! How wonderful!’ Asked for his impressions by a Staats-Zeitung reporter, he replied humorously: ‘For the moment I can’t tell you yet what I think of America.’ Straightaway he explained that, contrary to rumour, he had not come to replace Conried, but added: Every conductor is also, in a certain sense, an artistic director. If Beethoven’s Fidelio is performed in the production which I conceived and Professor Roller designed,130 Iwill obviously want to have something to say about the staging. [But] I do not yet know when and if I will conduct Mozart and Beethoven here. That depends entirely on Director Conried. I shall probably give concerts, and perhaps perform one or another of my own symphonies as well. But I don’t have any plans—for everything always turns out differently.131 Before concluding the interview, Mahler repeated that he had no intention or desire to replace Conried: ‘I am a conductor, happy to be free from the worries besetting a director! My entire programme as a conductor can be summed up in one sentence: I will do my best.’132 Thus Mahler was well aware of the fact that, ever since the preceding summer, the American press had introduced him as

128 Her gross tonnage was 24,581, length 677 feet, and beam 77 feet. She had two funnels and four masts, and accommodation for 472 first-class passengers, 174 second, 212 third, and 1,608 fourth. She ended her career under a Canadian flag, under the name Empress of Scotland. 129 However, the ship’s speed depended on the weather and the state of the sea. 130 Roller’s sets were in fact imported for the March performance. 131 New York Staats-Zeitung, 22 Dec. 1907. 132 Ibid. The sentence is in English in the text, which is a translation from the German. 42 Gustav Mahler Conried’s obvious successor133 which indeed seemed very likely at the time. As early as 25 May 1907 the Musical Courier had depicted him as an ‘inexorable drillmaster’ and as such ‘unexcelled’ and ‘feared accordingly by the players’. He worked so hard that he sometimes ‘forgot all about the passage of time’. ‘Mahler demands the best of the performers who are under his charge and does not seem satisfied with that. A player once ventured to say: ‘‘That is very difficult.’’ ‘‘Well, and for what reason are we called artists?’’, replied Mahler.’ On 8 June 1907 the Sun had announced that Mahler would insist on ‘some kind of reorganization’ at the Met, and would ‘demand complete control of orchestra singers and the stage when he conducts a performance. He allows no question of his authority, and it was said yesterday by musicians aware of his peculiarities that he would have a profound influence at the Metropolitan or leave at the end of a week.’ A week later the magazine Musical America had provided a summary of his career, which emphasized his ‘genius’, bad temper, and ‘tyranny’ over the singers at the Vienna Hofoper. In the same issue, Emilie Francis Bauer134 proclaimed that Mahler was going to play a determining role in the preparation of the productions, and was not going to be satisfied with conducting. Her article, published in the New York Mail on 23 September, contained the following interview by a young American conductor named Walter Rothwell,135 who had been one of Mahler’s assistants at the Hamburg Stadt- Theater: Mahler is a small man and one can hardly say that he has a pleasing personality, indeed, that hardly enters one’s mind. [He is very small and very quiet in manner, but his depth is immeasurable.] But he has magnetic qualities which are uncanny. For instance, I have seen men in the orchestra simply lay down their violins, and say, ‘I can not play a note until you take your eyes off me.’ So are his eyes—one glance can be like the blow of a club, and he secures what effects he wants from any man in his orchestra by a glance. You will recognize at once that there are volumes of unspeakable things, and you will know that they are like no others. His master [probably ‘manner’] is something quite as indescribable, and even beyond that, is the marvellous contrast between the Mozart conductor and the conductor of Wagner and the moderns. It is not within understanding that the same man who can be as dainty as a jewel box [of the most wonderful workmanship], and whose Mozart is like a

133 On 20 Dec. the New York American claimed that Mahler’s contract at the Met could not be explained otherwise, especially given the presence of Hertz. Much of the press (particularly the Morgen Journal of 22 Dec.) affirmed that Mahler’s denials were purely formal. Even newspapers in the Midwest— including the Grand Rapids Herald—carried articles on Mahler and the Met throughout the summer. 134 See below, n. 212. 135 Walter Rothwell (1872–1927) was born in England, but had studied with Robert Fuchs and Julius Epstein at the Vienna Conservatory, where he had obtained prizes in piano and composition. After concluding his training in Munich with Ludwig Thuille and Max Schillings, he toured for several years as a pianist. Apparently, he was at least for a brief period active under Mahler in Hamburg, probably as a Korrepetitor. In 1895 he began a conducting career in Germany and Austria. In 1903 he was named director of the Royal Opera in Amsterdam. Following an American tour with an English opera group, with Parsifal and Madama Butterfly on the programme, he was appointed conductor of the Saint Paul Symphony Orchestra, a post he left in 1916 for that of musical director of the Los Angeles Orchestra. As a composer, Rothwell left a number of scores belonging to all genres. January–February 1908 43 Watteau or a miniature of the most exquisite coloring, is a towering giant in Wagner, and his exposition of Wagner detail is, believe me, a revelation. It is as though he held the key to a cipher around something [which had remained unawakened until he called it into life] which every one has been searching in vain. [Such a revelation of details! Such a mastery of effects! Such a magic and at the same time a majesty—I assure you that a Mahler cannot be described in words, you must hear him.] I think that those who love Wagner will be unanimous that where every one else has left off, Mahler begins. But his Wagner is not more beautiful than his Mozart, because here one is bewildered at the power of his delicacy or the delicious delicacy of his power—take it asyouwill....136 Tales of Mahler’s bad temper were also rife in the newspapers: in August 1907 the New York Times had entitled an article: ‘Mahler, Martinet in Opera Direction’137 and had recalled Mahler’s accomplishments in Vienna: ‘[He] reformed everything: the orchestra, the company, the scenic decorations: noth- ing escaped his attention, the least chorus member no more than the prima donna. He was orchestra conductor, singer, actor, stage director, scene painter, costumer. . . ’138 The following report suggests that the New York American must have had a journalist on board the steamer: When the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria steamed up to Cherbourg. . . there were the Mahlers, hand in hand, waiting at the dock. Alois Burgstaller was on board, and he and others cheered Mahler up so that the voyage, though long, wasn’t half as bad after all, and Mahler played for Burgstaller at the ship’s concert off Nantucket on Friday. As the huge steamer neared the Battery he showed keen interest in the Statue of Liberty and the other large, if not necessarily impressive, monuments which greeted him. Gustav Mahler is a tall, [sic] dark, unusual looking be-spectacled man, with a worn and haggard face, marked with deep lines that seem to tell of a nervous and artistic temperament.139 The Kaiserin Auguste Victoria docked at about 10.30 in the morning on 22 December, and the main organ of New York’s German community, the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, devoted most of its two front pages to the event. At the head of the feature was a photo of Mahler and Alma, with the tenor Alois Burgstaller and Conried’s assistant Ernst Go¨rlitz, standing at the railing before they disembarked. Maurice Halperson, the newspaper’s principal music critic, contributed substantially to these pages, with a long essay that outlined Mahler’s biography and career, and described his appearance and personality. The essay summarized his years at the Vienna Opera and told of the boundless praise that had been lavished on him, as well as the bitter attacks to which he had been

136 Musical Leader, 26 Sept. 1907. A slightly different version of the same interview had appeared in the New York Mail issue of 23 Sept. A few sentences of the earlier and longer version have been inserted in the later one. 137 Other newspapers or journals called him a ‘drillmaster’, a ‘disciplinarian’, a ‘man of iron will’, and an ‘absolute dictator’. 138 New York Times, Aug. 1907, quoted by Robert Tuggle, ‘Mahler at the Met’, in the booklet accompanying the CD album: Mahler broadcasts (1948–82), New York Philharmonic Orchestra, 1998, 85. 139 American, 22 Dec. 1907. 44 Gustav Mahler subjected. Among the ‘sins’ for which Mahler had not been forgiven, Halperson mentioned his retouching of Beethoven’s orchestration, and his performance of one of Beethoven’s Quartets with the full body of strings of the Vienna Philhar- monic. He had warned Conried that, even for a millions dollars, he would never accept any mission other than an artistic one, and that he would insist on the most accomplished performances, devoting to each revival at least two and a half weeks of preparation. Although today’s readers may feel that Halperson’s introductory essay offers no fresh insights, it was still an impressive piece for its time, if only for its length and for the information it gave concerning Mahler’s compositions and the strength of his talents and character. Here was Mahler ‘the orchestra con- ductor, stage director, dramaturge, in charge of presentation (Vortragsmeister), adviser in technical, decorative, and costume questions, a brilliant personality of creative strength and astounding drive, a great, imposing man of the theatre.’ His description of Mahler on the podium was also striking: His beat displays iron calm and concentration. There is no search for effects, no wild waving of arms, no affected posing! In other words, not a spectacular conductor (Dirigir- Clown), but also by no means a human metronome. The man on the podium gives off a mysterious aura, a magnetism that is contagious and exciting. With relentless severity he demands from orchestra, singers, and chorus their complete attention and their most loving identification with the work. In his first American interviews, Mahler made a point of denying the rumours that had found their way into the press (and into Halperson’s summary of his Viennese years) about his ‘tyrannical nature’: ‘Do not believe any such thing. I am the most amiable man in the world, but I expect my people to do their duty and to do it quickly. We get along very well together, my employees and I.’140 To a reporter who asked him if his reputation as an ‘autocrat’ was justified, he replied: What good would it do me to be one? No one can order an artist to do anything. It is the composer that commands the conductor. [But] when I was in charge of the Vienna Opera, I naturally did not want to see my singers slip away from me, because it was my duty to keep them for myself or rather for the opera.141 Mahler told reporters that he had arrived a month before the beginning of his engagement in order to ‘look things over’ and ‘prepare everything carefully’. On disembarking he was met by Dr Karl Weiss, a representative of the Austrian Embassy, and by two of Conried’s envoys, Ernest Go¨rlitz and Ralph Edmunds, accompanied by Alfred Hertz, the conductor of German opera at the Met.142

140 New York Mail, 22 Dec. 1907. 141 Ibid. 142 Alfred Hertz (1872–1942) born in Frankfurt, was Anton Urspruch’s pupil at the Raff Conservatory. He began his opera career in Altenburg (1892–5), Barmen-Elberfeld (1895–9), and Breslau (1899–1902) before Conried hired him for the Met, where he conducted the premie`re of Parsifal on 24 Dec. 1903. In 1905 he was invited to assume the direction of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, where he remained until 1930. Organizer of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl beginning in 1922, he was nicknamed ‘the father of the Hollywood Bowl’. In the autumn of 1903, before the New York premie`re of Parsifal, Mahler wrote to Hertz recommending a young conductor, Paul Adler, ‘who is fully conversant with this work’. Adler had January–February 1908 45 Asked beforehand about Hertz, who had conducted the premie`re of Parsifal four years earlier, Mahler had replied simply: ‘Why shouldn’t we get along, Hertz and I? I know him and he knows me. I can’t do everything, and I can’t conduct every evening!’ An interview which Mahler gave at his hotel proves that he was still clinging to certain illusions, for he announced that Der Freischu¨tz, Fidelio, and the Ring would be staged and presented ‘exactly as in Vienna’.143 The Mahlers checked into New York’s Hotel Majestic, a huge ungainly building on Central Park West at the corner of 72nd Street.144 Their spacious apartment, on the eleventh floor, was located in the north wing and overlooked Central Park.145 They had scarcely begun to unpack when the tenor Andreas Dippel,146 Conried’s closest collaborator, called to take them to lunch with the director.147 They found themselves in a strange apartment, its rooms hung with precious materials in dark colours and adorned with gathered drapes. They were illuminated by multicoloured light bulbs. Conried himself both amazed and amused his guests with his nervous manner, the high-heeled suede ankle boots he wore to hide his small stature, and his large head and theatrical gestures. His imperious manner had earned him the dislike of most of his collaborators, while the conspicuous eccentricity of his clothes, including his top-hats and red gloves, often made him the object of ridicule. As a German, and as Heinrich Conried, he seemed firmly convinced of his superiority over the rest of mankind. Of that first meeting in Conried’s apartment, Alma reports: What a comedy that first luncheon [with Conried] was! The couple’s thorough-going lack of culture, and that apartment! We couldn’t conceal our merriment, and on the street we both burst out laughing. In Conried’s smoking room, for example, stood a suit of armour illuminated from within by a red light bulb, and in the middle of the room a sofa, with convoluted pillars and a baldachin. On it the great Conried reclined when giving audience to members [of the company] . . . Elsewhere, dark, precious materials and

been Korrepetitor at the Vienna Opera but had left to find a Kapellmeister post elsewhere. He could not keep it, however, and was now without work. His former job in Vienna was no longer available and Mahler ‘did not know anybody to whom he would rather recommend him’ than to Hertz. In conclusion he asked Hertz to transmit his greetings to ‘Director Conried’ (undated letter (1903) sold in 1983 by Altmann Autographs, New York). Another message, written on a Hofoper postcard, was dispatched in 1907 by Mahler to Hertz, who was obviously hoping that he might succeed him at the Vienna Opera. Mahler informs Hertz that he knows nothing about the choice of his successor, not even whether any of the rumours reported by the press have any truth in them (catalogue of Kotte autographs, , December 2005, no. 485). 143 The interview, which was published in the Times on 22 Dec., added the Marriage of Figaro to the list and announced that Mahler would also be conducting concerts. 144 The Majestic apartments, at 115 Central Park West, built in the 1930s, now occupy the site of the old Majestic Hotel. 145 Mahler sent a postcard of the Majestic to Anna Moll, marking the windows of their apartment with a double line. The hotel was demolished after the First World War. 146 See Vol. ii, Chap. 3 and 4. Andreas Dippel (1866–1933) was born in Kassel, where he worked in a bank while studying singing with a singer from the Opera. He sang in Bremen from 1887 to 1892, made his debut at the Met in 1890, and also sang in London, Munich, and Bayreuth. A member of the Hofoper on Mahler’s arrival in 1897, he left after a conflict the following year. 147 Conried was then living near the Mahlers at 65 West 71st Street. 46 Gustav Mahler multicoloured lightbulbs. And, to crown it all, Conried on top of it all, had ‘made’ Sonnenthal148 and was now going to ‘make’ Mahler.149 Conried’s ignorance was the subject of many anecdotes. Henry Krehbiel tells the story of being invited by him to a small meeting at which the latter put forward a new project: the creation of two different choruses, one for Italian and the other for German opera.150 ‘Isn’t it unbearable, for example in Lohengrin,’ he had declared, ‘to hear some [of the chorus] singing ‘‘Ein Schwan’’ and others ‘‘un sogno’’!’151 On another occasion he violently reprimanded the chief lighting engineer for forgetting a certain lighting effect which had been conceived for the following act. And one day, in Mahler’s presence, he suggested that for the role of Titurel in Parsifal he would use a tenor to replace a bass who was ill.152 Mahler fortunately had sufficient sense of humour to be amused by Conried’s nouveau riche eccentricities. Delighted with his freedom from administrative tasks, he even resigned himself to the ugliness and decrepitude of the Metropolitan’s sets, and to Conried’s ‘often, but not always abominable’ staging. Alma even claims— and this is hard to believe—that Mahler was secretly pleased to have escaped from the ‘yoke’ imposed by Roller, whose last productions, he thought, had ‘done violence to the music’.153 He did not even protest against the traditional cuts made in Wagner’s scores in New York,154 and found compensation in the great voices at the Met. Yet it is likely that Alma’s picture of her husband’s ‘new outlook’ is more than slightly overdrawn, for his correspondence shows that he expected artistic conditions at the Met to improve, and that he was indeed looking forward to working there. His campaign to get Roller brought over testifies to the fact that he himself intended to take part in improving standards. Mahler went to the Metropolitan on the very day of his arrival. He attended a matine´e performance of Tosca with Caruso, Emma Eames, and Antonio Scotti,155 or perhaps only part of the performance because several years earlier, in a letter to Alma, he had made it clear that he considered the work unworthy of its author.156 Furthermore, Eames, who was soon to be Mahler’s Anna in Don Giovanni, was well known for her lack of temperament and must have been a handsome, statuesque, but somewhat placid Tosca, not quite the passionate prima donna that both Puccini and his librettist had had in mind:

148 Adolf Ritter von Sonnenthal (1834–1909), famous Austrian actor of the Burgtheater. 149 AMM1, 162. 150 This must have happened after the San Francisco disaster, when he had been obliged to disband his former choruses. 151 In his ignorance of Italian, Conried confused the words signo (swan) with sogno (dream). 152 AMM1, 172; AMM2, 165. 153 AMM1, 162; AMM2, 157. If this had really been the case, Mahler would not have made strenuous efforts to have his former collaborator hired at the Met as from Jan. 1908 (see below). 154 Concerning the cuts Mahler made in Tristan in New York, see below. 155 Rodolfo Ferrari conducted the performance. For the 1907–8 season he replaced Arturo Vigna who was considered one of Conried’s most ill-inspired choices to conduct the Italian repertoire of the Met. 156 See above, Vol. ii, Chap. 9. January–February 1908 47 As Tosca, her [Eames’s] calmness in the face of disagreeable possibilities was much criticized and if she did indeed study the role with Sardou its creator and Bernhardt its great exponent, it was felt that their teaching must have inculcated principally the virtues of the well-known saying ‘toujours la moderation’.157 At the time of Mahler’s arrival in New York the ‘opera war’ was in full swing. The season, which had begun on 6 November at the Manhattan and on the 18th at the Met, offered the largest repertoires in the history of opera in New York, totalling 237 performances in all (of which 115 were at the Manhattan). On 27 November Mary Garden had made her debut in Thaı¨s, and on 3 January she created a sensation in Louise. Prior to Mahler’s arrival the Met’s Wagner offerings had been confined to Die Meistersinger, Der fliegende Holla¨nder, and Lohengrin, all directed by Hertz. The four-year contract which Mahler had signed with Conried158 stipulated that he would conduct every year for three months during the season at an annual salary of 75,000 kronen, i.e. 25,000 kronen (or a little over $5,000) per month.159 Conried undertook to pay for Mahler’s round trip travel expenses (luxury class—130 kronen each way) and hotel accommodation, and to provide 700 kronen towards his living expenses in New York. During this first season (out of four), Alma’s expenses would also be reimbursed. The contract further specified that Mahler would not conduct more than two or three times a week, and that he would travel first class on his tours in America. Should he fall ill his salary would be withheld, but hotel costs would still be met. Conried also finally agreed to pay a supplement of 20,000 kronen for the extra month Mahler spent in New York.160 One of the last postcards that Mahler and Alma had sent from Europe at the beginning of their outward journey was written on the train itself and was addressed to Arnold Schoenberg.161 Schoenberg also received one of their first communications writtenintheNewWorld,apostcardwithabriefmessagefromAlma,towhicha simple sentence had been added by Mahler: ‘Let’s hear from you some time.’162 On Sunday afternoon, 22 December, Mahler attended a concert at , with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony in a pro- gramme that included Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto (with Teresa Carren˜o as soloist). No doubt his purpose was to pay his respects to Damrosch, who had conducted the first New York perform- ance of his Fourth Symphony, and also to acquaint himself with the city’s 17-year-old concert hall.

157 Steane, Singers of the Century, ii. 156. 158 See above, Vol. iii, Chap. 9. 159 The fees which singers received at the Met are surely the best possible way of appraising their popularity with the public. During the 1905–6 season Emma Eames received $1,500 per performance (she gave 19), Marcella Sembrich $1,000 (with 45 performances), and $1,000 (with 40 performances). For five months, Louise Homer was paid $1,500 per month of 10 performances, plus a $1,000 bonus at the end of the season. Caruso, with 40 performances, received $1,400 per evening. As usual, the baritones received more modest fees: Scotti, $600 per evening and Van Rooy $500 (both performed 40 times during the season). See Kolodin, Metropolitan, 179. 160 Metropolitan Opera Archives. 161 MBRS 184 (no. 5), undated (no doubt 9 Dec. 1907). 162 Postcard from Trinity Building, New York, MBRS 184 (no. 6), dated 24 Dec. 1907. 48 Gustav Mahler The next day Conried presented the new conductor to the orchestra and the first rehearsal began immediately. Mahler had chosen Tristan und Isolde for his New York debut, and a first-class cast had been placed at his disposal together with ten full days for rehearsals.163 His Isolde, Olive Fremstad, had been born illegitimately in Stockholm in 1871 and was later adopted by an American couple. She had lived in Minneapolis and New York before moving to Berlin, where her teacher was Lilli Lehmann. On one occasion she performed the role of Branga¨ne in Vienna, with her former teacher singing the role of Isolde. Frem- stad had enjoyed success at Covent Garden before coming to the Met, where she eventually became the leading Wagner soprano from 1903 to 1914. According to Joseph Horowitz, she was ‘high tempered and moody, restless away from the stage’.164 A handsome woman with auburn hair and a passion for sports, Frem- stad was gifted with an exceptionally generous, velvety voice. She had begun her career as an alto, and was now tackling Isolde on the stage for the first time, after her Bru¨nnhilde and Kundry. The famous high Cs in the second act were not without problems for her. In the interview she gave the Times before Mahler’s arrival, she proclaimed that ‘his greatness cannot be overestimated’, that ‘his force is tremendous’, and that he ‘literally hypnotizes his men and his singers’.165 Alois Burgstaller was scheduled to sing Tristan, but shortly after arriving he injured his shoulder when thrown from a dog cart in Hoboken. This meant that he had to be replaced by the Munich tenor Heinrich Knote,166 who had made his Met debut on 13 December in Die Meistersinger. Apparently, both his voice and appearance were well suited to a role which Will Crutchfield has described in the following terms: ‘He [Wagner] has bequeathed his tenors a role so magnificent that it must be attempted, but so difficult that it must inevitably humble those who accept the challenge.’167 None of the three tenors in Mahler’s casts, either at

163 For one performance, on 3 Feb., Fremstad was replaced by (see below). In a letter surely written by Rudolf Winternitz (see above, Vol. iii, Chap. 10, 715), Mahler tells Conried that he will no doubt quickly understand the advantage of his having come to the USA four weeks earlier to rehearse Tristan adequately. For that purpose he had cancelled a trip to Holland (MAY 38). The same letter also mentions the preparatory work he had accomplished in Vienna with Fremstad (Mildenburg as mentor) and Rita Fornia (or La Fornia: see below, Chap. 2), and a tenor named Riccardo Martin (see below, ibid.) who never sang under him. At this time (27 Sept.), Mahler still plans to conduct Fidelio immediately after Tristan (AMS and MAY, no. 20, p. 38). 164 Wagner Nights, 338 ff. 165 Times, 9 Dec. 1907. Fremstad adds: ‘I heard a performance of Fidelio at his theatre in Vienna and it made me cry to watch him.’ Olive Fremstad (1871–1951), born in Stockholm, emigrated to the United States with her adoptive parents when she was 10 years old. After studying singing in Minneapolis she went to Berlin, where she continued her training with Lilli Lehmann. She then belonged to the Munich Opera for three years, and made a brilliant debut at Covent Garden in Tannha¨ user. She remained a member of the Met for twelve years. 166 Heinrich Knote (1870–1953) studied singing and made his operatic debut in his native city of Munich, and subsequently divided his activity between the Munich Opera and Bayreuth Festival. He was invited several times to Covent Garden in London and sang at the Met until 1913. The press suggested that Burgstaller’s accident had been a diplomatic way of giving in to Mahler’s preference for Knote, since Burgstaller had disappointed Mahler during the concert on the transatlantic ship (see above, Vol. ii, Chap. 10 and the Musical Courier of 8 Jan.). Knote sang the first six performances of Tristan in 1908. Burgstaller took part only in the last one of the season, on 11 Apr. 167 See Will Crutchfield, ‘The Tristan Test’, in Opera News, 64 (1999): 6, 112. The four singers whom Crutchfield lists as memorable Tristans of the twentieth century are , , Wolfgang Windgassen, and Jon Vickers. January–February 1908 49 the Vienna Opera, or at the Met where the cuts facilitated their task, were among the great figures in the history of the role—neither Knote, nor Burgstaller, nor even Schmedes, whose weaknesses in the part were detected by many critics in New York, as will be seen. According to the New York Globe, Knote was ‘hardly heroic in presence or in voice, nor has his acting romantic illusion. . . . Vocally it was uneven. He sang well . . . in the earlier part of the last act, though the terrific climaxes later on were beyond him physically, as they are beyond almost any tenor.’ Louise Homer,168 one of the glories of American singing, was Branga¨ne, and Anton von Rooy, who sang Kurwenal, ranked amongst Bayreuth’s most admired Wotans although he was now well past his prime.169 The American bass Robert Blass,170 in the role of King Marke, was apparently not up to the same level. With such a cast, Mahler could look forward to his production, although there were other features to which he must have resigned himself only with great reluctance. He, who had fought a hard battle in Vienna to open all the cuts in Wagner’s scores, was now to conduct them heavily cut and with stage direction that was undoubtedly primitive. For French and Italian works, the stage director was Jules Speck, and for German works, Anton Schertel.171 According to Martin Meyer, ‘the director’s function, as it was generally understood, was to tell people where to stand’. Although it had been announced in advance that Mahler would ‘have much to do with the producing of operas’,172 none of the reviews seem to have noticed any major change which clearly betrayed his participation.173 As for the sets, little attention seems to have been paid to them, either by the critics or the public. Most of the Met’s sets for Wagner had originally been created after Bayreuth’s models, and had mainly been imported at the time from the same Vienna ateliers which worked for the Vienna Opera. However, by now

168 Louise Homer, ne´e Louise Dilworth Beatty (1871–1947), was born near Pittsburgh and studied in Philadelphia and Boston where she was taught harmony by her future husband, the composer Sidney Homer. In 1895, after her marriage, she studied singing with Fide`le Koenig in Paris and made her operatic debut in Vichy, after which she was engaged by the The´aˆtre de in Brussels. She then sang Wagnerian roles at Covent Garden with great success and made her debut at the Met in Aida while it was on tour in San Francisco in 1900. She remained with the company until 1919, and sang with it again in 1927. Homer attained her greatest celebrity in the title roles of Gluck’s Orphe´e (under Toscanini’s direction) and Samson et Dalila, which she interpreted with Caruso. 169 Antonius (Maria Josephius) van Rooy (1870–1932), was born in Amsterdam and studied singing in Frankfurt am Main. After his concert debut he was engaged in Bayreuth on the advice of Daniela Thode, one of ’s daughters. After 1898 he sang every year at the Met and was the first Amfortas there in Parsifal. He left America at the end of the 1907–8 season and settled in Frankfurt, where he continued to perform as a singer of Lieder. 170 Robert Blass (1867–1930), born in New York, studied violin with Hans Sitt in Leipzig and singing with Julius Stockhausen in Frankfurt, before making his debut in Lohengrin in Weimar in 1892. In 1900 he was engaged at the Met, where he sang Gurnemanz in the famous production of Parsifal in 1903. 171 Both of them are mentioned in a letter written by Andreas Dippel to Mahler on 9 July 1908 (AMM1, 430 ff. and MAY, no. 143, p. 144). Schertel’s title on contemporary playbills was ‘stage-manager’. 172 Musical America, 15 June 1907. 173 Mayer, Met, 166. According to Mayer it was only in the late 1920s that Gatti-Casazza ‘had decided that the Germans had a point in their recent emphasis on the re´gisseur and hired Ernst Lert to upgrade the dramatic probity of the repertory. Lert resigned with a blast at a management that simply threw most of its productions on stage with no rehearsal at all, and gave him no more than three or four sessions with the singers and chorus for even the most elaborate new presentations. . . ’ 50 Gustav Mahler they had become ‘shabby, flimsy, or both’, while ‘the lighting effects were poor’.174 In Mahler’s time they were certainly not of a high enough standard for an international opera house.175 No set designer was ever mentioned either in the posters or in the programme before 1918. In that year Joseph Urban, a Viennese architect and scenic artist, was employed by the Met and he remained there until his death in 1933. Until Urban’s appointment none of the produc- tions were in any way integrated.176 Henry Krehbiel’s comments on the first act set of Tristan suggests that the production showed its age, to say the least: ‘There were some changes in the first stage picture from that which has for years been equally familiar and absurd; but the changes only accentuated the absurd- ities. We have at last attained a mastless ship, with shrouds running up into nothingness and illustrating a score of other absurdities.’ Mahler’s appearance in the orchestra pit was greeted with the customary fanfare, following which he immediately began to rehearse the Prelude. After only a few measures he stopped the orchestra because he had heard a chorus rehearsing in another hall. ‘All other rehearsals in the theatre must stop at once,’ he said, ‘I can’t hear my own orchestra.’ The order was actually carried out, and the Times reporter who told the story noted that no other conductor trying to enforce this had ever succeeded.177 Alfred Hertz, who attended the rehearsals, reports that Mahler conducted the Prelude from beginning to end without saying a word. But at the end he suddenly said: ‘At the entry of the main motif, the trumpets stronger: one must hear the crescendo.’ And through that single remark the entire Prelude was transformed.178 Then, after working for about three-quarters of an hour with the orchestra, he said he was satisfied. ‘Now I shall work with the singers,’ he declared.179 According to Heinrich Knote, Mahler ‘conquered the entire orchestra dur- ing this first rehearsal’,180 as the New York World reported on 2 January: Mahler’s reputation for tyranny had preceded him in New York, but the first day he took charge of the rehearsals of Tristan und Isolde there was a surprise in store for every one who figured in it. The man who was expected to rule by stern commands, by angry glances, by sharp, unsympathetic criticisms, was as mild and gentle as the proverbial lamb. His suggestions were made in the kindliest tone of voice and in the most considerate manner possible. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if such and such a phrase were sung this way?’ would come the query. And ‘how much more effective to subdue the brasses here, don’t you think?’ Artists, members of the orchestra, the chorus and those who were responsible for the

174 Horowitz, Nights, 143. 175 As will be seen in Chap. 2, Roller’s sets were imported to New York for the Fidelio production, but his name was never mentioned except by a few enlightened critics like Richard Aldrich. Lefler’s sets were used for Mahler’s production of Figaro in 1909. 176 Information furnished by Robert Tuggle, head of the Met Archive. 177 Times, 24 Dec. 1907, and Musical America, 28 Dec. 178 Peter Heyworth, Conversations with Klemperer (Gollancz, London, 1973), 32. 179 Times, 23 Dec. 1907. 180 Interview in the Mu¨nchener Zeitung, 22 Feb. 1908, reproduced in the Neue freie Presse the following day and published by the review Musical Leader on 2 Apr. January–February 1908 51 stage effects alike were disarmed by the courtesy with which criticisms were offered and with the pertinence of each one of them. Instead of a bear, here was a man who meant truly to be a man and a comrade. The result was amazing and the first rehearsal concluded with those taking part enthusiastic to the last degree. ‘A very good orchestra here,’ remarked Mr. Mahler after the men had filed out of the pit. ‘There is good material and I believe I can do great things with it.’ As a member of the orchestra testified in an interview published at the time in the Musical Courier: Mahler is the quietest leader we ever had at the Metropolitan and that is why we do our very best for him. He explains things to us at the rehearsals in clear and musical fashion, and at the performances he gives us credit for being intelligent and conscientious enough to remember his directions. After all, we are not apprentices, but musicians, and we have played the Wagner and other operas possibly more times than the leaders at the Metropolitan have conducted them. Hertz does not give us credit for being able to count four quarters time in strict rhythm; Mahler treats us as though he knew that we know the score, and accordingly there is no necessity for him to drag and pound the music out of us. . . . Mahler is the supreme Wagner conductor of the world, and even if the local daily press has not yet discovered that fact, the singers and orchestral players at the Metropolitan recognised it at once, and they are the best authorities on the question.181 Mahler’s gentle and courteous behaviour was widely commented on during his first weeks in New York. Alma attributes this change of method to his disillusioned state of mind resulting from the heart diagnosis and the death of his daughter. But in this respect he might also have taken to heart the lessons he had learned in Vienna. Apparently he had decided that ‘Zorn und A¨ rger machen die Menschen ohnehin nicht besser’ (Whatever happens, irritation and anger never improve human beings), as he had once said in Vienna, speaking from experience.182 He was now employing different methods, and with beneficial results. He concentrated on piano rehearsals with the singers during his first week,183 leaving the rehearsals with orchestra for the final two days, 30 and 31 December. The day of the premie`re was 1 January. That evening, as Mahler and Alma were entering the hotel lift, en route to the Met, he accidentally trod on the train of her dress, which was torn open. Alma reports the consequences as follows: I was half-naked, and had to go back. I was still sewing when the telephone rang from the Opera. Superstitious as he was, Mahler didn’t want to leave without me, not at any price. We didn’t pick up the telephone and both of us remained exceptionally calm. When everything was ready and we were sitting in the car, Mahler said: ‘It serves them right! They should have come to pick me up!’ The audience was waiting impatiently. Mahler rushed to the podium, and one of the most beautiful performances I have ever witnessed

181 Musical Courier, 15 Jan. 1908. 182 See ‘Ausspru¨che Gustav Mahlers’ [Sayings of Gustav Mahler], retold by Emil Freund to one Dr Kronfeld (copy in BGM). 183 The Musical Courier of 8 Jan. reports that Mahler was ‘pitiless’ with Van Rooy during these rehearsals. 52 Gustav Mahler took place ...Forthefirsttime in my life, I heard the Second Act sung perfectly. Mahler revelled in musical bliss. . . 184 The arrival of the couple was certainly not as late as Alma claims, for Mahler had enough time, according to the World, to visit the principal singers to ‘reassure’ them. ‘Don’t be nervous,’ he said with just a glimpse of a smile. ‘You have studied your roles with me, haven’t you? Well, just remember that and remember, too, that if anything happens I’ll be right there to help you.’ And he was. To the World critic’s amazement: He sang every note of the opera. His personality seemed everywhere, in the orchestra pit and on the stage, and when he was called before the curtain at the end of the first act he knew, and so did the audience, that he had demonstrated his greatness and that any rumours as to his hardness of method had been effectively disproved . . . There is unanimous opinion that Gustav Mahler has made the most profound impression, not only on the public, but on the members of the Metropolitan board, of any conductor who has come here in years, and after the first act of Tristan and Isolde last Wednesday night several directors who were present said that Mahler had shown them a new Tristan and that in many respects he was the most remarkable man that had ever directed a performance of opera in this country. One member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, though asking not to be directly quoted, said that it certainly looked as though it were not necessary to go much further to find the future artistic head of the organisation. ‘It is too early to speak at length,’ he remarked, ‘but so far as a single performance of opera can give one the opportunity to show ability, there is no doubt that Mr. Mahler’s great equipment has been pretty thoroughly demonstrated.’185 According to Heinrich Knote, interviewed upon his return to Munich: He [Mahler] came and captured the entire orchestra by storm at his first rehearsal. He rehearsed in the most thorough-going manner in the briefest possible time. Nothing was lost and yet in the audience every syllable could be understood. He breathed with the singers. The production of Tristan was grandiose beyond description. It was the most powerful I have ever experienced, and an unprecedented success for German art in New York . . . The greatest stars, all the spoiled prima donnas, listened with breathless attention to the directions of this man. He gave his directions in a very calm and business- like manner. Naturally, he protested against inadequacy with equal firmness. There was no question of bargaining with him. His staging instructions were equally accurate. His opinions were absolutely convincing. He knew what he wanted and knew how to get it (Kenner und Ko¨nner). Before Mahler, many sins were committed in the accompaniment of the singers. The conductor simply fired away, the audience didn’t understand a word of the text and got bored. Now suddenly, we were also intelligible, and the interest came of itself. Mahler, on the other hand, was as enchanted with the singers as they with him. To me, he said: ‘You have the most beautiful tenor voice I have ever heard, and I have never yet heard the third act of Tristan sung like that: at last I have heard it sung, and not declaimed.’

184 AMM1, 163; AMM2, 157. 185 The World, 5 Jan. 1908. In all likelihood, this unsigned article was by Reginald de Koven (see below). In the following pages all newspapers cited are from New York unless otherwise specified. According to The World, Mahler was handed a big laurel wreath during the ovations which ended the evening. January–February 1908 53 Mahler is thoroughly happy over there [in America], for he has a lot of work. He is an extraordinary man.186 Mahler’s emphatic compliment to Knote seems highly implausible, at least as reported by the tenor, unless it was made after the dress rehearsal of Tristan, at a time when Mahler believed that such praise was indispensable to boost the singer’s morale.187 It was bound to irritate Knote’s rivals, although in fact his voice was surely more reliable than that of Schmedes, who had been the Hofoper’s Tristan for several years.188 But Knote’s interview exasperated Krehbiel as well: since he was always eager to provide his readers with examples of the exaggerated or absurd comments published in the European press about American musical life, Krehbiel read it in the Neue freie Presse and reproduced it in the Tribune with comments which were of course bitterly sarcastic: Here solemn comment would be too bad. ...Fiveperformances at which the smallness of the attendance grieved the soul of the lovers of Wagner,189 grown to seven at which the house was sold out! The first intelligible and intelligent performances of ‘Tristan und Isolde’ that were ever vouchsafed to New York; yet we have known the drama over twenty years, and have heard it sung by Lehmann and Niemann, [etc.] and conducted by Seidl and Mottl and Hertz and Damrosch. Mahler never heard so beautiful a tenor voice as Knote’s; how diligently he must have closed his ears to Caruso! But it must be so, for Knote—he himself—said it. Verily the German proverb is correct: Paper is patient.190 The New York Press’s report of the premie`re mentions the presence in the auditorium of two New York Isoldes, Lillian Nordica (in blue satin) and Johanna Gadski (in black), and goes on to describe Mahler’s appearance in the pit, when ‘half the persons in the parquet rose to get a good view of him, and there was thundrous applause from every part of the auditorium. He bowed dignifiedly and took his place in his chair. There was enthusiastic applause after every act and a magnificent laurel wreath at one of the curtain calls.’191 To judge by the quality and length of the articles in the New York papers, Mahler’s debut in the city had been eagerly awaited. One of the thorniest problems that was soon to face him was the existence of hugely divergent points of view: on the one hand there were the society people who patronized the Met, who went there to be seen rather than to see and listen, and who in any case preferred Italian opera; on the other there was a battalion of critics who were

186 Mu¨nchener Zeitung, 22 Feb. 1908. The publication of this interview created a stir in New York (see below, Chap. 2). In March Krehbiel devoted a whole article to it in the Tribune. The other tenors (Schmedes and Burrian) resented the compliment Mahler was said to have paid to Knote. 187 See above, Vol. ii, Chap. 4, 131. 188 The majority of New York critics were of this opinion when reviewing Schmedes’s debut under Toscanini in Go¨tterda¨ mmerung in November 1908. See below, Chap. 3. 189 In fact, according to the box office reports only the performances of 9 Jan. and 3 Feb. were badly attended (see below the reports of box office takings, in n. 229). Furthermore, Mahler did conduct seven performances of Tristan during the 1907–8 season, but two of them were out of town, one in Philadelphia and the other in Boston. 190 New York Tribune, 17 Mar. 1908. 191 New York Press, Jan. 1908, quoted by Robert Tuggle, the Metropolitan’s archivist, on the Metro- politan Opera Web page. 54 Gustav Mahler familiar with the repertoire, studied scores, had visited Berlin, Vienna, and Bayreuth, and were anxious to display their erudition. In that respect, Richard Aldrich was one of the exceptions. Students of musical New York in the early years of the twentieth century usually group him among the four members of the New York ‘Old Guard’, alongside William Henderson, Henry Krehbiel, and Henry T. Finck, respectively in the Times, the Sun, the Tribune, and the Evening Post. Lawrence Gilman192 called them the ‘Elder Statements’ of Ameri- can musical criticism, and considered them such because of their extended tenure of the relatively stable New York musical scene before the First World War: Krehbiel and Finck each served their newspapers for forty-three years....William Henderson and Richard Aldrich joined the New Yorkcritical fraternity in 1887 and 1891 respectively, and were active into the 1920s and 1930s. Adding several of their Boston colleagues [to the list], . . . Oscar Thompson193 called them the first truly ‘American school of criticism’. Gilman described the self-appointed role filled by the members of the Old Guard as follows: ‘They were guides, counsellors, friends to the operatic and concert- going public of their times. They were journalists, lecturers, pamphleteers, writers of books.’194 All four critics should now be introduced in turn to the reader, because their names will soon appear on very many pages of this chronicle of Mahler’s four-year tenure at the Met and the New York Philharmonic. Richard Aldrich,195 the music editor of the New York Times, was born in 1863, in Providence, Rhode Island, where he received his high school education. He entered Harvard College in 1881 and studied English, philosophy, and economics there, and also musical theory and appreciation under John Knowles Paine, graduating magna cum in 1885. After working as a reporter for the Providence Journal, Aldrich travelled to Germany to further his musical stud- ies. Following a short period as a music reviewer for the Evening Star, in 1891 he joined the New York Tribune as assistant editor on books, art, and music, and in this last capacity he worked under Henry Krehbiel. When William J. Henderson left the Times for the Sun in 1902, he recommended Aldrich as his successor. Aldrich then became the chief music critic for the

192 See above, Vol. ii, Chap. 5, for biographical notes on Gilman. 193 See Oscar Thompson, ‘An American School of Criticism: The Legacy left by W. J. Henderson, Richard Aldrich, and their Colleagues of the Old Guard’, Musical Quarterly, 23 (Oct. 1937): 428 ff. Thompson succeeded Henderson on the Sun in 1937. 194 Lawrence Gilman in Tribune, 20 June 1937. 195 Richard Aldrich (1863–1937) began his career as a journalist in his native city, first as a reporter on the Journal (1885–9), then on the Evening Star (1889–91). From 1891 to 1901 he was Henry Krehbiel’s assistant on the Tribune, writing on music, art, and literature, and from 1902 to 1933 editor-in-chief of the Times, as well as its music critic until 1924. He wielded considerable influence over the paper’s editorial policy until his death. His music library was considered one of the finest private collections in the United States, and he was known and respected for his integrity, his meticulous scholarship, his clear and elegant prose. The extent of his broad musical tastes may be gathered from the fact that he was simultaneously a champion of Brahms and of Debussy’s Pelle´as et Me´lisande. Aldrich was related by marriage to the Chanler family, itself linked by marriage to the Astors. Author of guides to Parsifal (1904) and the Ring (1905), he also published an anthology of his articles, Musical Discourse, in 1928. Another anthology, Concert Life in New York, was published posthumously (1941). January–February 1908 55 Times, a position he was to retain for more than twenty years, after which he still carried on writing as the paper’s critic emeritus. Aldrich was a scholar and an accomplished musicologist, as well as a good pianist and sight-reader of scores. He was also one of the first American critics to be interested in music of earlier epochs. Despite his expertise he was devoid of pedantry, often generous with his praise, and always objective and reliable. He sported a proud walrus mustachio, ‘looked like a bookish Edwardian Londoner’, and was described by the American composer Daniel Gregory Mason in the following terms: He was temperamentally mild and cautious, inclined to take the most kindly possible view of everything, and rather smiled at for his recurrent phrase ‘There is much to be said on both sides’—especially by those who, knowing him personally, remembered how hard his stammer made it for him to say anything.196 Nevertheless, Aldrich’s objectivity had one happy result: he was a conservative, but a thoughtful one, as will be shown later in these pages, if only by his enlightened review of the first New York performance of Salome. He was ‘all too aware of the ridicule heaped upon earlier critics whose judgments have been reversed by history’. Only for the sake of disparaging Berlioz did he at times abandon his usual reserve. Aldrich’s first article on Mahler’s Tristan—unsigned as was the custom in most of the New York papers except on Sunday197—reported on 2 January that there had been the promise of a performance remarkable in many respects. The promise was kept, and more than kept. The performance was indeed a remarkable one.... Theinfluence of the new conductor was felt and heard in the whole spirit of the performance . . . His tempos were frequently somewhat more rapid than we have lately been accustomed to; and they were always such as to fill the music with dramatic life. They were elastic and full of variations. Most striking was the firm hand with which he kept the volume of the orchestral sound controlled and subordinated to the voices. These were never overwhelmed; the balance was never lost, and they were allowed to keep their place above the orchestra and to blend with it always in their rightful place. And yet the score was revealed in all its complex beauty, with its strands of interwoven melody always clearly disposed and united with an exquisite sense of proportion and an unerring sense of the larger values. Delicacy and clearness were the characteristics of many passages, yet the climaxes were made superbly effectual. Through it all went the pulse of dramatic passion and the sense of fine musical beauty. In a much longer essay, that appeared in the Sunday Times of 5 January 1908, the same critic wrote: Mr. Mahler’s conducting resulted in a reading of the score that is comparable with the best that New Yorkhas known—the readings of Anton Seidl and of Felix Mottl. It was on

196 Daniel Gregory Mason, Music in My Time, and Other Reminiscences (1938), quoted by Mark N. Grant, Maestros of the Pen: A History of Classical Music Criticism in America (Northwestern University Press, Boston, 1998), 98. 197 It can safely be assumed that most or all the unsigned reviews of Mahler’s debut were written by the first critics of the various daily newspapers. 56 Gustav Mahler the whole, a finer reading than Mottl’s, conceived in a larger mould, with all its finesse and subtlety, and with a greater power in the dramatic climaxes. Refinement and poetic insight were the salient characteristics of it. In the old days of Seidl, there used to be complaint from the boxes, so it is said, that the music of Tristan was too soft, that it was not possible to converse comfortably during the performance without arousing anger in the pit. It was this kind of reading that Mr. Mahler achieved. ...It seemed likely last Friday night that he was a man who will give New York music lovers some interesting experiences. His methods in the conductor’s chair are straightforward and direct. His beat is uncommonly sharp, decided, and angular, and his attention is alertly directed at all points, seemingly, at once. It is significant that his left hand was almost constantly used in the Tristan performance to check and subdue. He gives the unmistakable impression of a man of commanding authority and of keen insight. It was noted . . . that Mahler’s tempi in ‘Tristan’ are in some passages somewhat more rapid than we have lately been accustomed to—whereby he is differentiated at once from the prevailing Bayreuth school of conductors upon whom the influence is always towards deliberation and even dragging the movement. Mr. Mahler’s tempi in Tristan are made for the enhancement of the dramatic effect, to keep the blood of life pulsing in the score; yet there was nothing subversive in them or destructive of the musical values. The skilful and elastic modifications of tempo is one of the touchstones of fine dramatic conducting, and in this respect Mr. Mahler showed himself a master. There were innumerable instances of it through the score; take, for instance, the approach to the climax of the Prelude. How often is this driven on with an obvious hurrying of the beat! Mr. Mahler made an acceleration that was well nigh imperceptible as it advanced, yet when he arrived at the climax, the beat was materially increased. It followed from the poetic subtlety and refinement of Mr. Mahler’s reading that the voices were given rights of which it is certain Wagner never intended them to be deprived. Chief of these is to be heard, and (if the singers’ diction is of the true kind) understood. The orchestral part had all its beauty, all its dramatic power and effective- ness; it had all the contrast and variation of power, of accent, of crescendo and climax. Yet it did not drown the voices, and here, too, was an added beauty brought into prominence that has not always been heard in Wagnerian performances, that of the blending of voices with the orchestral tone . . . Mr. Mahler is a conductor after Wagner’s own heart in his instinctively right feeling for the pervasive melody of the orchestral score. He seeks what Wagner called the ‘melos’ and never lets it sink from its position of preeminence. Altogether he is a man that has some very high ideals. . . For Aldrich, Fremstad’s voice was of ‘indescribable beauty’ and it had ‘never seemed more perfectly under her control. Its richness and power, its infinite modulation in all shades and extremes. . . made her Isolde unforgettable even if her interpretation, gentle rather than imperious’, . . . ‘was more convincing in her moments of passion in Act II than in the scorn and irony of Act I’. The second member of the ‘Old Guard’ whom we encounter here is the Sun critic, William James Henderson,198 who was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1855.

198 William James Henderson (1855–1937) took his degree at Princeton University where he studied singing, piano, and harmony. He entered the Times as a reporter before becoming its music critic, which he remained from 1887–1902. Thereafter he was the main music critic for the Sun and remained so until January–February 1908 57 After graduating from Princeton he studied piano and singing, but remained largely self-taught in music theory. In 1883 he joined the Times, working as a reporter for four years, and then as its music critic from 1887 until 1902. On moving to the Sun, where he was to remain for thirty-five years, he was replaced by Richard Aldrich, whom he had recommended for the job.199 Henderson is today regarded as having been the first distinguished music critic of the Times, valued for his acute reasoning, broad background, and lucid literary style, as well as for his impressive pursuit of knowledge concerning the history and practice of the art. His favoured subject was always singing and the voice, on which he had written several books and for many years lectured regularly at the Damrosches’ music school, the Institute of Musical Art. Henderson was a passionate Wagnerian, but also an enthusiastic Brahmsian. His conservative standards were ‘beauty, sincerity, emotional expressiveness, melody, clarity of structure, and moral and spiritual character’. He detested Strauss’s Salome, about which he wrote: ‘The whole story wallows in lust, lewdness, bestial appetites, and abnormal carnality.’ He also hated most Italian operas post-Verdi, but made an effort, ‘at times successful to understand anything written in the 20th century’. About Mahler’s first New York Tristan, he had this to say: The house was large as it might have been on a Caruso night. Mr. Mahler was elected the star of the evening. The audience received him most royally. The applause was general and prolonged. Many stood up and cheered. Mr. Mahler looked happy....[His] guiding hand . . . was discernible in every musical detail of the interpretation. [He] read the score with refinement, with poetic feeling, and with an artist’s consideration for the ensemble.’ Yet the memory of Seidl once again entered Henderson’s mind: Many times has the objection been raised that the Wagnerian orchestra was too powerful in tone and that it was merciless to singers. The answer to this has always been that not the score but the conductor was to blame. People with good memories have always invited the objectors to recall the days of Seidl. We never had any trouble then in hearing the

1937, except for the years 1920–4 when he wrote for the Herald, which had been absorbed by the Sun.He also lectured at the New York College of Music and at the Damrosch brothers’ Institute of Musical Art. His favourite subject was singing and singers, as witness a numbers of his books: The Act of the Singer (1906); Some Forerunners of Italian Opera (1911); Early History of Singing (1921). But he also wrote The Story of Music (1899, rev. edn. 1912); Preludes and Studies (1891); How Music Developed (1898); What is Good Music (1898); The Orchestra and Orchestral Music (1899); Richard Wagner: His Life and his Dramas (1901); and Modern Musical Drift (1904). He wrote the libretto for Walter Damrosch’s opera Cyrano de Bergerac, performed at the Met in 1913. Resolutely conservative in his taste, he was sharply critical of Strauss, both in his symphonic and operatic works. Generally considered the most brilliant of the ‘Old Guard’ critics, in view of his lively style and thorough knowledge of music history and practice, he was known for his love of Wagner and for his conviction and enthusiasm. Henderson was also a fervent yachtsman and wrote a technical book on navigation. On the subject of New York critics, the main sources used for this book were an article by Edward Downes, ‘The Taste Makers: Critics and Criticism’, in Paul Henry Lang (ed.), One Hundred Years of Music in America (Schirmer, New York, 1961); and Marvin von Deck, ‘Gustav Mahler in New York: His Conducting Activities in New York City, 1908–1911’, Dissertation, New York University, 1973. 199 He died by his own hand in 1937. 58 Gustav Mahler singers. So far as balance of tone ...isconcerned, Mr. Mahler did nothing that had not been done in this town quite as well in former years, but nonetheless he must be accorded hearty praise for doing the thing correctly. He was gentle with the brass. From the beginning of the Vorspiel, not a full forte of trumpets and trombones was heard only till Isolde raised the cup to her lips, and then it came with the crash of catastrophe.200 ...He held to the firmest and most finely spun texture, the iridescent web of tone in which Wagner enmeshed his ideas. He who has seen the rainbow tints in the dewdrops of the cobwebs in the morning sun ...mayrealise the variety, the delicacy, the fineness and the exquisite color scheme of this marvellous score when it is read with refined art and not torn to shreds in an attempt to treat it with turbulence. Tempi familiar in late years were changed here and there. Accelerations and retardations of high value were employed. But best of all, the eloquent variety of Wagner’s instrumentation was displayed by the simple process of bringing out clearly every solo phrase, while the harmonic and contrapuntal background was never slighted. Mr. Mahler knows well how to hunt Wagner’s melody, from the top of the ruled page to the bottom, and let the auditors hear it. But no one must imagine for a moment that all this is new to this public. There have been other days and other masters. Comparisons are odious, and for the most part uninstructive, but no one should forget that Seidl, whose successor Mahler was when the able Anton left Germany, did all these things in the brave days of old, when there were also mighty singers in the land. . . . Concerning Fremstad’s Isolde, Henderson emphasized the precariousness of ‘the higher flights of the part’, but ascribed it to her past as a : ‘Generally she succeeded with them. She at any rate sang the notes, though not always with power and fullness.’ Henry Krehbiel,201 the third member of the ‘Old Guard’ to be encountered in these pages, was born in 1854 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the eldest of nine

200 Hamilton Ormsbee, of the Brooklyn Eagle, compared the effect of the trumpets at this moment to an electric shock. Ormsbee (1858–1921), originally from Vermont, worked for a lawyer before making his journalistic debuts in Rutland and Springfield. After working for the New York Post he was engaged by the Brooklyn Eagle, where he wrote music, theatre, and book reviews. He will be frequently quoted in the next chapters. 201 Henry Edward Krehbiel (1854–1923), studied in , where his father had settled down, before becoming a journalist. Engaged by the Cincinnati Gazette (1874–80), he quite soon became its ‘star’ reporter, on general news and sports, and later on music. He went to New York as editor of the New York Music Review, and joined the New York Daily Tribune in 1880, as writer, reporter, and interviewer, covering at first yacht races, and sometimes politics, before specializing in music and embarking on a systematic course of musical self-instruction. He stayed there until his death and became known mainly as a fervent promoter of German music. Author of English versions of Wagner librettos, he also published more than twenty-five books, including Studies in Wagnerian Drama (1891); The Philharmonic Society of New York: A Memorial (1892); Music and Manners in the Classical Period (1898); Chapters of Opera (1908, rev. 1911); A Book of Opera (1909); The Pianoforte and its Music (1911); Afro-American Folksongs (1914); A Second Book of Opera (1917); and More Chapters of Opera (1919). He translated several biographies of musicians from German. Furthermore, he edited and completed Alexander Thayer’s unfinished biography of Beethoven, which he published in English in 1921. He was well known in New York for his ponderous style, his preference for Romantic and post-Romantic music, and his hatred for ‘moderns’, especially Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Schoenberg. According to Harold Schonberg, Krehbiel was ‘short, heavyset, tough-looking, moustachioed’, had a pugnacious chin, and could also write pugnacious prose. The war he would soon declare on Mahler did much to create the stormy atmosphere which troubled Mahler’s final two seasons in New York. January–February 1908 59 children born to a German-American Methodist clergyman. They all soon moved to Cincinnati where Henry briefly studied law, together with piano and harmony, and where he conducted the choir in his father’s church. For a few years he wrote for the Cincinnati Gazette, where he was initially its ‘star’ reporter on sport and crime. Later on he became the paper’s music correspond- ent, furthering his study of the subject in his leisure time. This self-instruction was continued during the period of his next appointment, with the New York Tribune, for which publication he wrote on general news and sports. In 1884 he replaced John R. G. Hassard, the paper’s prestigious music critic, and that was a post he would retain for almost forty years, right through to 1923. Probably because he was self-taught and lacked any university training, of all the reviewers Krehbiel was the most anxious to display his erudition and to praise American musical culture, of which he himself, of course, was the most conclusive evidence. By the turn of the century he had already begun to seize every possible occasion to display his knowledge and relentlessly to denounce the arrogance of European critics. By 1910 he was also anxious to remind his readers that Seidl, to whose circle of friends he had belonged, had been greater than all the conductors who succeeded him, and that Mahler could never measure up to him.202 Essentially a classicist, Krehbiel was also an early admirer of Wagner. His review of the new Tristan production provided his readers with a detailed history of the opera’s performances in New York, and welcomed the opportunity to claim, once again, equality of status for the musical lives of America and Europe: Herr Mahler...isa newcomer whose appearance here, while full of significance, is not likely to excite one half the interest in New York that his departure from Europe did on the other side of the water. This will seem paradoxical in Germany, where the density of ignorance of what musical conditions are outside of the environs of German cities which enjoy opera houses supported by municipal or national subsidies is a phenomenon of a character simply incomprehensible to a public that has been familiar with all that is best in operatic art for a quarter of a century. An ominous beginning and a curious way to welcome a distinguished foreign artist! Krehbiel seems to have been determined, right from the start of Mahler’s tenure in 1908, to assert that American musicians and critics were lacking neither in culture nor experience. He [Mahler] was welcomed with an unusual and cordial demonstration last night. . . . There was no question of the amiability of such a proceeding on the part of the public, though there might of the New York public’s judgment and knowledge, of which our foreign friends, and even our self-conceited native artists, profess at times in other climes to have a poor opinion. Nevertheless, Mr. Mahler did honour to himself, Wagner’s music and the New York public. It was a strikingly vital reading which he gave to Wagner’s familiar score; livelier in tempo in many portions than we are used to, and inasmuch as the acceleration of tempo in nearly every instance inured to the benefit of the dramatic

202 On Seidl’s close relationship with Krehbiel, see Horowitz, Nights, 101. 60 Gustav Mahler effect, to that extent admirable—eloquent in phrasing, rich in colour, elastic in move- ment, and always sympathetic with the singers. However, ‘those who expected new things from Mahler in the way of stage management must have been woefully disappointed’.203 After acknowledging that Fremstad had ‘delighted her admirers and moved them to tears’, Krehbiel called her interpretation ‘far from finished’. At the same time, he preferred it to the ‘conventionality’ of Knote’s Tristan, whatever the latter’s ‘splendidly virile expressiveness’. The last of the ‘big four’ music critics must now be introduced: he was Henry T. Finck204 of the Evening Post, the son of a German born apothecary, amateur violinist, and chamber music player from Bethel, Missouri. Having received a thorough classical education as a child, Finck was a brilliant Harvard student— under Charles Eliot Norton for the humanities, and John Knowles Paine for music. It was at Harvard that he also became a passionate Wagnerian. Conse- quently, after graduating with high honours in 1876, he sailed for Europe on money borrowed from a member of his family and reviewed the first Bayreuth Festival for the New York World and the Atlantic Monthly. Returning to Harvard, he won a fellowship which allowed him to spend three whole years in Germany and Austria studying philosophy and psychology, in both of which subjects he now considered making a career as a teacher. Nevertheless, it was to music that he turned at the end of his studies, when he was offered the post of music critic of the Tribune in 1881. He declined this offer in favour of a position at the Evening Post and the Nation, a more appealing prospect since reviewing for an afternoon paper meant that there would be no need for him to write at night. Finck belonged to that blessed race of critics who are born enthusiasts and use their position to defend the artists they believe in. This is how he described himself in his autobiography: Many critics love to dwell on flaws in the work of the great and the greatest. I heard those flaws but ignored them, dwelling instead on the things that raised these artists above the level of dull mediocrity on which most musicians and other mortals dwell. ...Inlooking back on my long career as a musical critic nothing strikes me as so strange as that I should have been so often called upon to act as champion and defender of the greatest musicians against some of my colleagues.

203 Krehbiel cited the lack of a mast in Tristan’s ship as an example. 204 Henry Theophilus (originally Gottlob) Finck (1854–1926) spent his boyhood in Oregon. He took his first music lessons from his father and played the cello at the age of 7. He became music critic of the Evening Post in 1888, and remained there until he retired in 1924. At the same time he also wrote for The Nation and lectured on history of music at the National Conservatory. He finally retired in 1924 to write his memoirs. His twenty-two books (not all about music) include Chopin and Other Musical Essays (1889); Wagner and his Works (1893); Songs and Songwriters (1900); (1906); Grieg and his Music (1909); Success in Music and How it is Won (1909); Massenet and his Operas (1910); Richard Strauss: The Man and his Works (1917); Musical Progress: A Series of Practical Discussions of Present Day Problems in the Tone World (1923); Musical Laughs (1924); My Adventures in the Golden Age of Music. Finck’s assistant at the Evening Post, Herbert Francis Peyser, also wrote for Musical America. His only blind spot was Brahms, whose music he detested. January–February 1908 61 Many instances which confirm this vocation of Finck’s will be found in the following chapters. His favourites were well known to be ‘the more lyrical, the more sanguine composers’, i.e. Bach, Gluck, Weber, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky, as well as Grieg, whom he had once visited in his Norwegian villa. He hated Mozart and Brahms, disliked Strauss and Debussy, but loved Massenet, Bizet, and Gounod. As distinct from Krehbiel, whose pedantry he detested, Finck did not feel that his love for ‘lyricism and miniatur- ism’ displayed a ‘lack of intellectual power’, and he often enlivened his reviews with flashes of wit. For instance, he never developed a taste for Richard Strauss, yet he attended the New York premie`re of Elektra and declared himself ‘ready to be electrified, or, perchance, Elektracuted’. Because he distrusted Germany, he changed his middle name from ‘Gottlob’ to Theophilus long before such feelings became ‘politically correct’ (during the First World War). In his review of the new Tristan, Finck found that Mahler did not surpass Mottl and Seidl, but was ‘equally great’.205 True, ‘he did not make the orchestra surge’ in the Prelude as they had done, the love music of the second act ‘was a trifle less luscious and tender’ [and] the Liebestod ‘was robbed of the climax for the sake of the singer’s voice’. Nevertheless, it is difficult to say how Mr. Mahler’s reading could have been improved. It brought out with microscopic clearness all the subtle melodic beauties of the score, gave the disson- ances the proper degree of poignancy, left no orchestral flower to blush unseen. It was enchanting. Not since the day of Anton Seidl have we had a conductor who at every moment was at such close accord. The singers when Mahler conducts are in one sense like members of the orchestra, forming with them one ensemble. In another sense they were no more important. . . . Much of the beauty of last night’s performance was owing to this re- straint which, however did not prevent the conductor from bringing out the climaxes thrillingly....’206 In his closing paragraphs, Finck reminded his readers that Fremstad had been singing Isolde ‘for the first time on any stage’, that her voice had been ‘steadily gaining in beauty and power in the upper range’, but that her high notes ‘still need a little more power in some of the most passionate moments’. Reginald de Koven,207 critic for the New York World, devoted most of his two reviews to the singers, especially Fremstad. Unlike his colleagues, he admired a ‘note of elemental fierceness in her passions’, but found Knote ‘almost disagreeable’

205 Henry T. Finck was also the correspondent for the German review Die Musik (1926). In April Finck announced in Die Musik (7 (1908): 13, 47) the appointments of Gatti and Toscanini at the Met. His report emphasizes Mahler’s flexibility, which had come as a surprise to everyone, especially his acceptance of cuts in Wagner operas. Finck consistently remained Mahler’s most fervent admirer. 206 According to Finck, Knote had equalled Jean de Reszke in the final act, while Fremstad could have shown greater intensity. 207 Henry Louis Reginald de Koven (1859–1920), born in Middletown, Conn., son of a physician, pursued studies in Oxford, England, before studying piano and harmony in Stuttgart and composition in Frankfurt. He also studied singing in Florence, and composition with Richard Gene´e in Vienna and Le´o Delibes in Paris, returning to the USA in 1882. In 1902 he founded the Washington Philharmonic Orchestra, which he conducted for three seasons. He was responsible for music criticism at the Chicago 62 Gustav Mahler and falling ‘woefully short vocally’. Mahler came in for unqualified praise, espe- cially for his ‘authority and restrained force, bred of great artistic knowledge and experience, . . . his great lucidity and balance of tonal effect, strong rhythmic quality’ and ‘remarkable feeling for romance and dramatic contrast and climax’. ‘The marvellous orchestration’, de Koven continued, ‘as clear and soft and lumi- nous as a moonlight night in June, was given all its force, majesty, pictorial qualities and emotional suggestion under the baton of this real master of his art whom we are fortunate to welcome among us, as conductors of his stamp are rare indeed.’ The Evening Sun’s anonymous reviewer208 acclaimed the dignity and re- straint of Fremstad’s gestures and her dramatic interpretation in general, in which he detected Mahler’s influence: As the voices, so the instrumental choir also, became a blend of vanishing color, a gossamer web in which every strand was stretched with design. Let us hear no more talk of orchestra ‘hoods’209 and Wagnerian ‘noise’. One upraised hand makes it all a dream. You forgot the players, the actors. And—last touch of art—while the music lasted you forgot Mahler. According to Charles Henry Meltzer,210 critic of the New York American, the Prelude to Tristan had never, since Seidl’s time, been played at the Metropolitan with anything like the breadth and suavity, the charm and intensity of expression, with which Mahler invested it. The Viennese music director has not usurped his reputation. He is a living force. The orchestra responded to every hint of its new conductor. Once more, as in the days of Seidl, the orchestra was welded into a great singing instrument.211 ...Itmaybedoubted whether—so far as the orchestra was concerned—there has ever been a more remarkable or more eloquent rendering of Tristan and Isolde in this city than was heard last night. In the Evening Mail, Emilie F. Bauer212 thought that Mahler’s readings did not radically differ from those previously heard in New York, but

Evening Post (1889–90), Harper’s Weekly (1895–7), the World (1898–1900 and 1907–12), and finally at the Herald. De Koven composed a great number of operettas, including Robin Hood (1890), The Fencing Master (1892), The Knickerbockers (1893), The Algerian (1893), The Tzigane (1895), The Mandarin (1896), The Paris Doll (1897), The Highwayman (1897), The Three Dragons (1899), The Red Feather (1903), Happyland (1905), The Student King (1907), etc. He also wrote two operas: The Canterbury Pilgrims (Metropolitan Opera 1917) and Rip Van Winkle (Chicago 1920). 208 The article is so substantial and enlightened that it might have been by James Gibbons Huneker, who was then writing for the Sun, though not on music. 209 At one time, in fact, there had been some question of placing a cloth or a hood over the orchestra at the Met. 210 Charles Henry Meltzer (1852–1936), born in London, pursued his studies in both London and Paris. After writing as a correspondent for the Herald and the , he moved to New York in 1888. Ardent advocate of opera sung in English, he translated the librettos of the Ring, Les Contes d’Hoff- mann, Monteverdi’s Orfeo, etc. 211 Meltzer thought that the conspicuous improvement in the sonority was due to the regrouping of the musicians which Mahler had insisted on: horns and woodwinds on the extreme left, brass and drums on the extreme right, the double basses in the centre and the remaining strings more or less in their usual places. 212 Emilie Frances Bauer (1865–1926), born in the state of Washington, began her musical career as a pianist and child prodigy. She wrote her first music criticism in Portland, Ore., before settling in New York where she was simultaneously critic for the Evening Mail and editor of the Chicago Musical Leader. Under the pseudonym of Francesco di Nogero, she also composed some songs. January–February 1908 63 he has wonderful illuminative powers in his phrasing, shading, and bringing forward the melodic lines. His tempos, at times faster than those to which we have been accustomed, and at times slower, are never robbed of majesty, nor are they leaden-weighted. The sense of surpassing authority and absolute purpose was ever present. Max Imhoff Smith,213 in the New York Press, rejoiced that every word uttered on the stage last night had its full value. Yet there was no loss of effectiveness in his method, for the conductor, by dint of exceeding refinement of shading, by an almost uncanny control over his forces, by rhythmical precision and incisiveness and by a wonderful mastery of significant accentuation, scored his points by emphasis rather than by outbursts of noise.214 However, in Smith’s opinion the Liebestod failed to attain the same level of perfection it had reached under Mottl’s direction. Concerning the conducting, the Globe reviewer, John P. Sanford, merely stated that Mahler could stand comparison with Seidl in every way, and he then went on to discuss the cast: Mme Fremstad’s appearance as Isolde had been awaited with some misgivings. Vocally the part is longer and more fatiguing than almost any other in the soprano repertory. Moreover, it is ominously high for one who began her career as a contralto. Mme Fremstad has shown remarkable skill in lifting her voice to a higher vocal range, and she is discretion itself in her use of it. Her singing of the first act last night was generally admirable. Only one or two high notes in her second scene with Branga¨ne and the ensemble with Tristan near the close of the act seemed out of her range. In the second act the text is harder. The first and last parts of the great duet call for the pure soprano tones of a Lehmann. They were frankly too high for Mme Fremstad. But in the ‘Sink hernieder’ passage her singing was of great beauty. In the ‘Love Death’ her voice sounded tired, but then nine times out of ten Isolde has no voice left for this final scene. According to the same reviewer, Louise Homer made Branga¨ne ‘the simple, affectionate waiting woman’: she sang the long, sustained phrases of her warning ‘with remarkable ease and vocal richness’, while ‘Van Rooy’s impersonation of Kurwenal was as winning as ever in its rugged sympathy’, even if ‘his singing wasn’t what it was a few years ago’. The Globe was the only paper to single out the new setting of the last act as an improvement. A visitor from Boston, the critic Henry Parker Taylor,215 underscored the extent to which Mahler carefully avoided exaggerated effects:

213 Max Imhoff Smith (1874–1935), born in New York, was the son of a doctor who was also an amateur musician. He began his musical studies—piano, violin, cello, and singing—in early childhood, and continued his training in Germany and finally at under Horatio Parker. He later studied law at and practised it for a brief period. His career in music criticism was divided between the Press 1903–16, the American 1916–23, and finally the Herald Tribune, as an occasional correspondent. Smith was Toscanini’s closest American friend, and he repeatedly helped him when he wanted to make a statement to the press, which occurred first of all when he resigned from the Met in 1915 (see The Letters of , ed. Harvey Sachs (Faber, London, 2002), 87 ff.). Smith was thought to be responsible for Toscanini’s appointment as conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1926. 214 Smith pointed out that the execution was not beyond reproach, which is not surprising for the Met orchestra was not of the first order and suffered from overwork. 215 Born in Boston, Henry Taylor Parker (1867–1934) was educated at Harvard University. After serving as New York correspondent of the Boston Evening Transcript, and later as its London correspondent, 64 Gustav Mahler Apparently he does so deliberately that it may steadily mount and mount to fuller passion and more poignant appeal. He makes the opera from the first measures of the fateful cello to the final ecstasy of the violins a long, unbroken, throbbing crescendo. Or to shift the figure, the voices of the singing actors float upon the excited, passionate, and endlessly changeful seas of the orchestral mass.216 The Herald’s critic was one of the very few to detect an improvement in the staging: ‘The scenic setting of the third act was new and effective, and the light and stage business showed many points of decided improvement.’ Mahler’s conducting he had found ‘memorable’,217 ‘nothing short of a revelation’, and Arthur Scho¨nstadt, in the German language Morgen Journal, fully agreed. He admired the ‘strength and energy’ with which Mahler communicated the dra- matic meaning, and the ‘sovereign self-assurance’ derived from his absolute control of an orchestra, which achieved an intensity of expression reaching the very limits of the possible. The other German language paper, the Staats- Zeitung, also stressed Mahler’s magnetic personality, his insistence ‘on laying bare the poetic content of the work’, and the ‘pulsating passion’ he imparted to the orchestra, which he handled ‘like an organ’. ‘The plastic highlighting of the motifs, the nobility of the timbre, the subtlety, the discretion . . . but all these words seem almost sacrilegious. It is all so obvious!’ With one major exception, the various American magazines echoed the admiration of the daily press. Although Mahler’s performance did not ‘obliterate the memories of all previous ones’ for Musical America, the ‘new life infused into the orchestra by the new conductor’, the ‘poetically conceived and finely wrought exposition of the score’, and ‘the excellent balance maintained at all times between the stage and the orchestra pit’ were all admirable. Quoting many different critics, the unsigned article found that Conried had reinforced the bases of his authority and the solidity of his ensemble by engaging Mahler. The New Music Review published a review so close in content to Richard Aldrich’s Times article, that one can safely assume that he was the author of both, while in the Musical Leader Emilie Frances Bauer published a long paean to Mahler in almost exactly the same terms as in the Evening Mail. She pointed out that the love which was Tristan and Isolde’s principal theme infused Mahler’s subtle and reserved interpretation, endowing it with tremendous force. Lawrence Gilman’s218 lengthy essay for Harper’s Weekly provided the only loud dissonance in the general applause bestowed by the critics on Mahler. Like many others, he recalled that Mahler was not the first great conductor of in 1905 he became the paper’s principal drama and music critic. Although not trained as a musician, he possessed ‘an extraordinary sense of aesthetic values’ and, in his judgements on modern composers and young performers, showed greater perspicacity than many others, despite his ‘curiously antiquated prose’ (Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1971 edition). In 1922 Parker published a collection of essays on music called Eighth Notes. 216 Boston Transcript, 7 Mar. 1908. 217 New York Times, Aug. 1907, quoted by Robert Tuggle, ‘Mahler at the Met’, in booklet accompanying the CD album Mahler broadcasts (1948–82), New York Philharmonic Orchestra, 1998, 85. 218 See above, Vol. ii, Chap. 5, for biographical notes on Gilman. January–February 1908 65 Tristan to come to New York. Echoing earlier disparagement by several Vienna critics, he deplored Mahler’s ‘analytical order of mind’, comparing him to a botanist laying bare the intricate loveliness of a rare and complex plant . . . bent upon dissecting it with the utmost faithfulness, and with rigorous precision. Mr. Mahler possessed, seemingly, the order of the mind that is called analytical. . . . His attitude is detached, rigorously objective....He exposed the gorgeous yet delicate and often rec- ondite strands of that wonderful woof of orchestral tone with a vivid clarity that was wellnigh pitiless. Moreover he knows how to subdue the surge and thunder of the orchestral tides in such a manner that they never overwhelm the voices of the singing actors on the stage....His reading is indescribably lucid, exquisitely calculated, extra- ordinary in its finesse, its poise, its distinction and dignity of plan. In Gilman’s eye, however, none of these virtues was essential in this particu- lar work: But Mr. Mahler fails, in considerable measure, to lay bare the heart of this music. There is a greater and a deeper Tristan than that which he makes known. His fastidious taste, his admirable discretion, his respect for the voice parts, his horror of obvious effects leads him, in the end, astray. In this music is the mightiest, the most unconfined emotional declaration that the art of the world can show. This incomparable score—incomparable alike in its flaming passion and its superlative beauty—issued from the brain of Wagner at white heat: not to make evident and irresistible its very ecstasy, its unique ardors, is to be unfaithful not alone to its spirit, but to its letter: is, in other words, to be false to the genius of Wagner at its most precious and typical. It is not extravagant to say that so tame, so intellectual a performance of the last act of this music drama as that achieved by Mr. Mahler has not been heard in New York; the delirious longings of Tristan were scarcely recognisable as such; the exultant transports of Isolde’s Liebestod were turned into a gently pathetic berceuse; the music was, to be frank, emasculated, shorn of almost all its glory and its strength. In the matter of tempo, Mr. Mahler does not appear to have that sure and instinctive sense of what is appropriate and inevitable which, as Wagner conceived, is the ultimate test of fitness in a conductor. According to Gilman, the Prelude was taken ‘at so somnolent a pace that its smoulder- ing fires seem at times on the point of extinguishment’. Like many of his German colleagues, Gilman mistook Mahler’s distilled, restrained, transfigured vision of Tristan and Isolde for one that lacked passion. For many critics, in Vienna and elsewhere, ‘intensity’ was no doubt synonymous with loudness and strong contrasts. Although Gilman’s castigation remained exceptional in the New York reviews of Mahler’s Tristan, some of the critics who had reacted favourably after the first performance later on expressed reservations. Several of them disapproved of Mahler’s cuts. Gilman condemned them as performed ‘with ruthlessness and a lack of regard for its dramatic relationships’ and suggested that, if necessary, the work be performed outside the regular subscription repertoire and, as in the case of Parsifal, uncut.219 In fact, still more surprising than Mahler’s amiability in

219 Harpers Weekly, 52 (1908): 30 ff. (25 Jan). Cast for the 1 Jan. 1908 performance: Fremstad (Isolde, replaced by Johanna Gadski on 3 Feb.); Homer (Branga¨ne in all of Mahler’s performances); Knote 66 Gustav Mahler rehearsal had been the good grace with which he had accepted the cuts which were traditional in New York.220 In an interview published in the Telegraph the following year,221 he insisted that his criteria in making them were in no way aesthetic ones. He would never, he said, cut a passage because it seemed too long to him or to others, for such judgements were purely arbitrary. Nevertheless, cuts were compulsory in New York since the performances started at 8 o’clock. Under these conditions neither the public, nor the singers, nor the orchestra, could be expected to stay up until 2 a.m. With regard to the cuts, the critics seem to have been particularly unfair, because, according to the archives of the Met, Mahler’s cuts in Tristan were identical to those made earlier by Anton Seidl.222 After the second performance the New York Press headlined its review: ‘Mahler mutilates Wagner score’: Many persons who heard the last act of Tristan und Isolde as performed last night in the Metropolitan Opera House [with most of Branga¨ne’s and Marke’s music missing] wondered whether Mahler would have dared to present Wagner’s score in such abbrevi- ated form abroad, or whether he had reserved this slashing for the ‘musical barbarians’ of New York. Mahler is a great conductor, a great musician. But if he wishes to retain the respect of American opera-goers he will have to treat them as intelligent lovers of music, whose experience of Wagner opera is not of today. Unless the important portions of Tristan und Isolde which Mahler sees free to omit, are restored speedily, opera–goers will feel they are being defrauded of that they have a right to expect.223 On 1 February a brief and unsigned notice in Musical America declared that the New York critics and the public had given too much credence to Mahler’s reputation: A dozen or more years ago Mr. Mahler would have been accepted on his European reputation and would have gone through with flying colours. Not so, however, today. Music lovers, who are competent to judge, insist that Mahler does not maintain a proper balance in his conducting, and subdues the orchestra at times to a point where it is barely audible.... Mr. Mahler is accused of leaving the audience cold, because the orchestra played in a spiritless way. At the end of the season, on 22 March, Henderson’s final comment on Mahler’s Tristan is closely akin to that of Gilman:

(Tristan in all the performances); Reiss (Hirt and Seeman); Berger (Steuermann); Van Rooy (Kurwenal); Mu¨hlmann (Melot); Blass (Marke). 220 Henry T. Finck, in the Evening Post of 2 Jan., indicates that the second act lasted from 9.30 p.m. to 10.22 p.m., and that Mahler’s cuts had been more extensive than Seidl’s. In Act II the principal cuts were from ‘dem Tage, dem Tage’ to ‘was dir gezeigt der da¨mmernde Tag’, and from ‘doch der Tag’ to ‘der Tod gegeben’. The performance began at 7.15 p.m. and ended at 11.37 p.m., with two intermissions. 221 12 Oct. 1909. The music critic for the Telegraph was Martin W. Bethke. 222 However, Seidl agreed to split into two acts separated by an intermission. Uncut cycles of the Ring had nevertheless been given at the Met in 1898–9 and 1899–1900. The next uncut one took place in 1929–30 (information furnished by Robert Tuggle, head of the Met Archive). 223 New York Press, 10 Jan. 1908. According to the Metropolitan Opera Archives, performances under Mahler began at 7.45 p.m. and ended, after three acts and two long intermissions, at 11.30 p.m. It seems that the same cuts remained the tradition at the Met at least until the beginning of the Second World War under Arthur Bodanzky. (See ‘Mahler at the Met’ by Robert Tuggle, in booklet accompanying the CD album of Mahler broadcasts (1948–82), New York Philharmonic Orchestra, 1998, 89.) January–February 1908 67 Mr. Mahler came and the flowing tides of the experiences bore him with equanimity. He conducted Tristan and Isolde, and he did it beautifully. It was a refined, polished, intellectual interpretation, more like Seidl in its continence than many others which we have had, but lacking the flaming passion of the other conductor,224 who taught us our first ‘Tristan’ lessons. The disclosure of the delicate details of the score by Mahler was masterly, but we have sighed for something more overmastering than ‘these wrought riddles of the night and day’.225 Likewise the Evening Post accused Mahler, not of lacking passion, but of accelerating the tempos to the point of ‘blurring the outlines of Wagner’s inimitable melos’. Mahler’s Tristan was not, on the whole, that to which ‘the music-lovers of New York have been accustomed’.226 Anyone familiar with Mahler’s career, and with the critical reception of his performances, will not be surprised that he should have disturbed and even shocked at least some of New York’s ‘infernal judges’, because this had often happened before, wherever he had conducted. The most serious consequence of this relative disappointment seems to have been a measure of defection on the part of the public. After the second performance, of 9 January, Aldrich complained that ‘it is unfortunate that so many found it necessary to enter during the Prelude and leave before the Liebestod’.227 Yet the box office reports sometimes disagree with the critics. Of that same 9 January performance, the Sun claimed that ‘the audience was large’, (although the box office figures were the lowest of all), and added that it had been a ‘pleasure to hear the music given with such buoyancy, such nuance, and with such a limpid, transparent tone’.228 Of the final performance of Tristan that season, on 3 February, Krehbiel wrote that it had taken place in a house that was far from full and that this had ‘deeply grieved Wagner lovers’.229 Knote was about to return to Europe early in February, and Alois Burgstaller had been scheduled to take over the role of Tristan for the 3 February perform- ance. A few hours before, he backed out once again, this time because of hoarseness. Knote, who had already packed his bags to catch the boat to Europe the following day, responded to an eleventh hour appeal and consented to return to the Met that evening—provided he could find his costumes. Presumably he succeeded, since he arrived at the Opera minutes before the curtain went up.

224 No doubt Felix Mottl, who conducted his first New York Tristan on 9 Jan. 1904. 225 New York Sun, 22 Mar. 1908, quoted in MAY 111 ff. 226 Musical America, 7 (1908): 12, 1 Feb. 227 New York Times, 10 Jan. 1908. No better explanation need be sought for Mahler’s extensive cuts than Aldrich’s remark. 228 On 19 Jan., the Times noted the presence, at the Tristan performance the evening before, of four conductors: Alfred Hertz, Walter Damrosch, Frank van der Stucken (see above Vol. iii, Chap. 2, 133), and (see below, Chap. 9, n. 334). 229 Robert Tuggle, the Head Archivist of the Metropolitan Opera, has kindly placed at the author’s disposal the box office reports and accounts which have survived for the Mahler years. No more reliable record can be found of the public attendance at each performance of Tristan. The figures are the following: 1st performance (1 Jan. 1908, $9,839); 2nd: (9 Jan., $6,322); 3rd (18 Jan., $9,435); 4th (24 Jan., $8,120); 5th (Philadelphia, 28 Jan., $7,543); 6th (3 Feb., $7,753); 7th (Boston, 11 Apr., $7,658). The box office figures for the performances in which Caruso took part usually reached $10,000 to $11,000: the Aida matinee on 4 Jan. netted $10,721, Faust on 6 Jan., $11,186, and La traviata on 8 Jan., $9,744. 68 Gustav Mahler Quite understandably, his interpretation suffered from a certain ‘nervousness’, according to Musical America.230 Many critics remained steadfast in their admiration for Mahler right through to the end of the season, preferring his economy of gesture and variety of nuances to the febrile gesticulations and loud accompaniments which were characteristic of Hertz. What Mahler could not have anticipated before he came to New York was the strength of animosity which divided the New York musical world and influenced the opinions of the city’s main critics. Marc Blumenberg,231 editor of the Musical Courier, devoted two whole pages of his magazine to this matter. A large part of his piece comprised fifteen parallel quotes offering diametrically opposed viewpoints concerning the new Tristan production.232 His chart is accompanied by a sarcastic editorial in which he enumerates the close friendships and business relations which at the time linked some of the reviewers with either musicians or musical institutions, thereby greatly influencing their judgement. The Damrosch brothers were apparently Blumenberg’s beˆtes noires, and also the most powerful men on the New York musical scene. They controlled the Oratorio Society, the Musical Art Society, the New York Symphony, the Young People’s Symphony, and the People’s Choral Union, as well as the Loeb Conservatory (or Institute of Musical Art), where Krehbiel and Henderson were both active as lecturers. Here is the conclusion of Blumenberg’s editorial: Again we exclaim with the gentleman in the story: ‘What a system!’ How the system works in the securing of opera subscriptions, the selection of soloists by managers, the import- ation of certain artists and their exploitation here, and the use and manipulation of society patronage—all that is a separate chapter and will be set forth at some future time. But Blumenberg’s virulence does not stop there. Another section of his editorial is named ‘The Mummies of Music’: To the list of illustrious mummies who are dragged into musical affairs every time certain New York personages get a chance at press publicity, there must now be added the name of Anton Seidl. Hardly a single critic in our dailies omitted to inject a mention of Seidl in the report of last Wednesday’s ‘Tristan and Isolde’ performance.... Thespectre of the defunct conductor was waved at Mahler from every journalistic side until he must have begun to wonder whether he had come among a nation of children or of fools. What has the dead and gone Seidl to do with the vital and present Mahler? ...AsSeidl was practically the first conductor our critical friends heard in the Wagner operas, they have no standard of comparison, and naturally confused the power of the man at the baton with the power of the man behind the music—Richard Wagner. However, there is no excuse for standing still and brandishing the Seidl effigy at every conductor who comes here to conduct Tristan.

230 Musical America, 7 (1908): 13, 8 Feb. 231 Marc A. Blumenberg (1861–1913), president of the Blumenberg Press Corporation, founder (in 1880) and first editor-in-chief of the Musical Courier, had a permanent feud with the music critics of the daily newspapers, whom he ceaselessly attacked in his editorials. (MAY 47, n. 51). 232 Musical Courier, 56 (1908): 2, 20 ff. (8 Jan.). January–February 1908 69 Seidl was an excellent leader, but he lacked the individuality, personality and mentality of a man like Mahler. The latter lives in a time when the orchestral boundaries and their application are considerably wider than in the day of Seidl, and the musician who wielded the baton last Wednesday has made himself a master of the modern orchestra not only by conducting it, but also by writing for it music which exhausts the possibilities of every instrument and combination of instruments in the body orchestral. Mahler’s conducting of ‘Tristan and Isolde’ was a tremendous achievement and revealed the score in absolutely new aspects, intellectual, poetical and musical. Those who tried to belittle the event by shoving forward the mummy of Seidl not only demonstrated their ignorance, but also made the knowing musical persons of this town ‘sit up and take notice,’ as the term of the day has it. What is the game? Would Mahler’s permanent retention at the Metropolitan Opera interfere with the selection of some one else who would like to conduct Wagner operas there?233 Is there fear in certain quarters that Mahler might possibly succeed Conried as head of the Metropolitan? Has anyone found out that Mahler is every inch the autocrat he has been described, and that he will brook no intrigues, dictation, or even suggestion from the outside, as to singers he employs and the role he assigns them? Does Mahler’s presence at the Metropolitan in any way interfere with some of the commerce carried on by those who traffic with the singers in diverse ways? These are questions to be answered by the persons responsible for the presence of such suspicions in the minds of New York’s musical public.234 Mahler, who had been so relieved to leave a city of intrigues for a New World that he hoped would be free of them, had clearly been mistaken. Soon he was to find out that, whereas what went on behind the scenes in New York was perhaps not so malicious as that experienced in Vienna, it still presented considerable dangers to a man such as him, a musician whose genius necessitated utter self- reliance and whose sole aim was to serve the cause of his art rather than that of his personal career. The articles published in the German and Austrian press were a constant source of irritation to those American critics whose contacts with Europe were close and frequent. In June 1907 Richard Heuberger235 had published the following article in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt: What heretofore was music to the American? This most subtle, immaterial, most soul inspiring of all arts was to him a noise which pleased him only if it was loud, very loud. The clashing of cymbals, orchestra tuttis, were the indispensable conclusion effects of music pieces designed to ‘please’. Gentle, soft, sweet music was not considered music at all. The creation of large orchestras and choirs, which dates back only a few decades in the United States, has made a beginning for something better. First class instrumental associations, like the Gericke236 Orchestra in Boston, have prepared the ground and

233 Here Blumenberg is no doubt alluding to Walter Damrosch, who had in fact conducted several Wagner seasons at the Met, but with modest success. 234 Musical Courier, 56 (1908): 2, 21 ff. (8 Jan.). 235 Concerning Richard Heuberger, see above, Vol. ii, Chap. 1, 27, n. 57. 236 Concerning Wilhelm Gericke, who led the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1893 to 1898, and again from 1898 to 1906, see above Vol. iii, Chap. 5, 312, n. 114. 70 Gustav Mahler accustomed the American public to pay for the best. In time, haply, they will also learn to understand the best. One of the principal reasons why there is so little musical understanding in America is probably to be sought in the preponderance of the English race, so little gifted in the matter of music. The Germans, for whom the day brings so much labor that there is little time and money for joyful festivities—these Germans are too small a fraction of the population to exert a decided influence . . . Such a display of Viennese arrogance and overt racism could not but irritate an experienced and scholarly critic such as Krehbiel. He vented his exasperation in the Tribune by quoting Heuberger’s article in extenso, and appending the following comment: The insinuation that thus far the Boston Orchestra has taught Americans only to pay for music, not how to enjoy it, is too silly, and it is too contemptible for comment. How long has Vienna been paying for orchestral music of the same character? Longer than Boston, truly, but not so long as New York. . . 237 Krehbiel was not the only New York critic thus to defend the cause of American musical life against European arrogance. At the end of the Met season, another Viennese article attracted William Henderson’s attention, and he re- plied to it at great length in the New York Sun, attacking a journalist who had claimed that Mahler had refused the directorship of the Met and the huge salary of $120,000 offered to him: It is always instructive to read European newspapers on American affairs. It gives us a much needed opportunity to see ourselves as others see us—with their eyes shut. If one of the returning singers were to assert that the new managers of the Metropolitan . . . would be paid a million for their services, this flamboyant fable would be gravely disseminated through Europe as another evidence of the gross and vulgar wealth of the Americans. . . . What are millions to us? Do we not reek with malodorous lucre? Are we not a nation of tradesmen? Are not our foremost financiers merely opulent malefactors? Suppose then at the end of a season the balance sheet showed half a million? Would there be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth? Not at all. Mr. Morgan or Mr. Vanderbilt would dash off a check for the amount. . . . It is most instructive to study the logic of the European intellect when it is engaged in its favorite amusement, that of demonstrating that the American is the product of a distinctly inferior order of the dust of the earth. In one sentence it writes us down as a nation of moneymaking merchants and in the next charges us with business methods fit only for the ravings of an asylum. Doubtless the Viennese observer of American barbarism might find a deeper convic- tion of our benighted conviction [sic] in the indisputable fact that the artistic cataclysm which separated Mr. Mahler from the Imperial Opera in the Austrian capital and brought him to this city has not been measured here by the yardstick of European pride. The coming of the new interpreter of German operas was awaited with interest and received with pleasure, but there was no public excitement. The stock market was not affected. The comment is made because it would naturally be expected of us in Europe. It would

237 Musical America, 6 (1907): 7, 13. January–February 1908 71 be quite useless to remark in passing that we do not grow excited over the arrival of new interpreters from Europe, for the sufficient reason that we have already heard many of the best Europe has ever known, and we are fully informed that the present generation is distinctly inferior to that which enlightened us. Pretty much the same thing is the state of affairs in respect to conductors. The final paragraph relates to Mahler’s Tristan. The article has been quoted earlier, but a feeling is displayed there which later inspired or coloured quite a few of the articles Henderson wrote about Mahler’s concerts during the first year of his Philharmonic tenure. Like Gilman, he now felt that Mahler’s ‘lack of passion’ in Tristan had disappointed New York: Naturally this will be interpreted by Vienna to mean that Mr. Mahler is too scholarly for the American barbarians....Meanwhile certain facts are indisputable. The Wagner drama is today less popular than it has been for some years, and that too despite the arrival from Vienna of the great conductor. But for the further information of the usual Vienna journalist, let us hasten to declare that [its] comparatively smaller popularity...atthe present moment is in no way due to Mr. Mahler. It is principally due to the patent fact that the interest of the public is entirely centered upon beautiful vocal interpretation and that its hero is Mr. Caruso. The most interesting singers, the most magnetic personalities, are found in the works of the French and Italian schools....238 However, New York also had many independent and fair-minded critics whose judgements were in no way influenced by friendships or business connections, or by the desire to defend music in America against its contemptuous European critics. After reading such a great number of ‘enlightened’ opinions, it is interesting and refreshing to get acquainted with another point of view, that of New York’s young musicians for whom Mahler’s arrival at the Met had been an exciting revelation. Samuel Chotzinoff’s testimony is all the more interesting since he later became the director of the National Broadcasting Company and thus was closely associated with Toscanini:239 In Katz’s store one day I learned that the well-known conductor Gustav Mahler had been engaged by the Metropolitan. I had read a good deal about Mahler in the musical reviews, and I knew that he had lifted the musical standards of the Vienna Opera House to great heights. He had also composed a number of symphonies, none of which I had heard. They were said to be epic in character and of unusual length, and they were controversial, for some people held they were very great, while others said they were worthless. . .

238 New York Sun, 22 Mar. 1908, quoted by Roman in MAY 111 ff. 239 Samuel Chotzinoff (1889–1964), pianist and critic, was born in Vitebsk, and followed his parents to the USA in his early childhood. After studying the piano with Oscar Schack, he enrolled at Columbia University, where he obtained his degree in 1912. He became a well-known accompanist, for Efrem Zimbalist and Jascha Heifetz, whose sister he married. Music critic for the World (1925–30) and the Post (1934–41), he was also active in teaching and in business. Chotzinoff was the author of a novel, Eroica, based on the life of Beethoven; memoirs entitled A Lost Paradise (1955); a monograph on Toscanini entitled An Intimate Portrait (1956); and two volumes of memoirs published posthumously: Day’s at the Morn and A Little Night Music (1964). 72 Gustav Mahler The Wagner repertoire at the Metropolitan had for years been in the hands of Alfred Hertz. Hertz was a German conductor who went to the Bayreuth Festivals religiously and brought back all the great traditions that animated the performances in that shrine. In consequence, we accepted as definitive his interpretations of the Wagner music dramas at the Metropolitan. Though I never dared to say it, I myself was unable to repress a few reservations about Hertz’s musical orthodoxy. For example, I could not understand why his orchestra generally overpowered the singers. I wondered if Wagner intended it; and if he had, why had he bothered to write elaborate librettos, and a great variety of nuances for both orchestra and singers? However, we took Hertz on trust. He was a picturesque figure as he hobbled with the aid of a cane (he was lame) to the podium and painfully hoisted himself into the conductor’s chair. He was a rotund man, quite bald, and he had a very big black beard which came down to his chest. From the gallery all one could see of him was his shining pate and his spreading beard. His gestures were so extravagant that I often wondered (again to myself) whether they were really necessary to convey the varying degrees of loudness he exacted from the pit and stage. On the night of Mahler’s American de´but, in Tristan and Isolde, a large contingent of Katz’s customers lined the railing of the Metropolitan’s top gallery. Mahler came out hurriedly and climbed swiftly into the conductor’s chair. His profile was sharp and arresting. He looked and behaved quite unlike Hertz. His gestures were economical and precise. The prelude sounded different. It was not as lush as with Hertz. There were fewer retards and accelerations. There was a severity about this interpretation that, strangely enough, heightened both its sensuousness and its suspense. The curtain went up, the invisible sailor sang his precarious measures, and suddenly the orchestra and Isolde plunged me into waves of strong, beautiful, rugged sound. For the first time I could remember, I heard distinctly the words Isolde was singing. My eyes turned to Mahler to find a reason. He was ‘riding’ the orchestra with the calculated sureness of a master trainer, at one moment curbing it to a crafty balance between it and the voice on stage, at another giving it its head as it raced alone. Perhaps at certain climaxes he was too solicitous for the voice. Though I heard the words and the voice, I was sensible [sic] of the reins on the orchestra, and I did not feel the thrill and elation of a great fusion of both, which I had expected. Nevertheless, it was an entirely new Tristan for me. Now at last I knew how Wagner should sound. Hertz had misled us. Wagner could be as clear, as understandable, as lucid as Aida.... I expected that Fremstad’s Isolde would be different from all other Isoldes at the Metropolitan, but I was not prepared for the original impersonation it proved to be. Hers was no tiared, heavy, sentimental and shrewish princess, but a beautiful, aware woman in the grip of a passion so exigent and overpowering as to make her yearn for the release and oblivion of death. The details of her Isolde were so vivid that the passage of nearly half a century has not dimmed my remembrance. She was, in the first act, one with the raging elements evoked by the orchestra. She held me spellbound with her story of Tristan’s love and treachery. In no theatre had I ever heard passion and contempt so nakedly expressed. The movements of her body and her gestures were so eloquent that they appeared to be the reflex actions of ideas and emotions possessing her at the moment, which would the next instant find expression in words and music. Indeed, Fremstad’s Isolde was so vivid and, because of Mahler’s concern for the audibility and diction of the singers, so clear, that every detail of her characterisation was instantly apprehended and related to the drama as a whole. Not a false move, gesture, or nuance marred this January–February 1908 73 extraordinary impersonation. The ‘Liebestod’ was its crown. This ‘Liebestod’ was no dirge, no farewell, no submission to fate. It was a hymn of gratitude to death for fulfilling the lover’s true destiny. The poet Shelley had apprehended this true destiny for insatiable love when he wrote ‘one life, one death . . . one immortality, one annihilation.’ The ‘Liebestod’ as Fremstad sang it was a paean to annihilation. No Isolde before Fremstad had been aware of this joyful implication of the ‘Liebestod’. I grasped at this implication, for I had myself vaguely sensed it at my first reading of the music drama. Now Olive Fremstad, perhaps unconsciously, confirmed it, and made it clear. By her rapturous other-worldly smile as she gazed at her dead lover, she illuminated the hidden idea of the story—that it was not King Mark who had stood between her and Tristan, but life itself.240 The final word on Mahler’s New York Tristan will come from James Gibbons Huneker who, despite his many gifts and thorough knowledge of music, was not at this time reviewing concerts and operas in the daily press. Yet, after the third performance, on 18 January, he had emerged from the Metropolitan Opera House intensely moved, as the following passage in one of his letters reveals: ‘...aufgeregt (excited) as we were, the Missus and I, we were forced to go home, our nerves taut, my mouth a dusty cavern and head humming with that marvellous music. Oh! I cursed pictures and longed for a bath of tone. . . . What a performance! Mahler is a painter.’241 Several months later the same Huneker, who had heard many performances of Tristan in Germany, summed up his impressions of the new production in a substantial essay published at the end of 1908. The piece appeared in the magazine Century and was entitled ‘A new Isolde: Olive Fremstad’ since it centred on the American soprano’s performance: A new Isolde! It is almost like saying, a new Juliet or, considering the more tragic significance of Wagner’s heroine, a new Lady Macbeth. Yet it was precisely a new Isolde that Olive Fremstad gave us last winter in the Metropolitan Opera House. We have heard, here in New York, nearly all the great interpreters of this psychologically complicated role: its originator, Madame Schnorr von Carolsfeld,242 never visited us; neither did Frau von Voggenhuber;243 Materna244 was not particularly sympathetic. Lilli Lehmann was actually our first Isolde. A half dozen have followed her, but she remains in our memory as the most brilliant, though not, however, an ideal Isolde. The Valkyr steel flashed through the voluptuous measures of the music; nor did she display womanly tenderness. She was a daughter of the gods, remote, glacial, haughty, and her voice was like a diamond. Klafsky,245 affluent vocally, lacked poetry. She was a bourgeois Isolde. Others

240 Samuel Chotzinoff, Day’s at the Morn (Harper & Row, New York, 1964), 121 ff. 241 Huneker was surely playing on words (Maler in German means painter). James Gibbons Huneker, Letters, ed. Josephine Huneker (Scribner, New York, 1922), 80. 242 Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld, ne´e Garrigues (1825–1904) sang the first Isolde with her husband Ludwig as Tristan in the first performance of Wagner’s opera in Munich on 10 June 1865. 243 Vilma von Voggenhuber (1845–88) was born in Budapest, where she began her career. She sang at the Berlin Opera from 1868 until her death. Huneker must have heard her in Europe because she never appeared at the Met. 244 The Austrian soprano Amalie Materna-Friedrich (1844–1918) sang the first Bru¨nnhilde and the first Kundry in Bayreuth. She came to New Yorkin 1885 and sang several Wagnerian roles at the Metropolitan. 245 Katharina Klafsky (1855–96), born in , a pupil of the great Marchesi, had been Mahler’s Wagnerian prima donna in Hamburg (see Vol. i, Chap. 16). 74 Gustav Mahler who have essayed the part need not now detain us; they were not of the generation of giants, old Wotan’s Bayreuth brood. Then Milka Ternina246 appeared, and we heard and saw another Isolde. For the first time possibilities latent in the character were made visible and audible to us. Broadly composed, and without the old-fashioned Wagnerian rhetoric of gesture and attitude, Ternina’s Isolde was a human woman, not a spouting volcano, not yet a histrion brandishing aloft arms or strutting like a queen in some transpontine tragedy. The advent of this Isolde was marked by Wagner-worshippers with a white stone. To follow her and not to better her was merely to employ again the old Bayreuth stencil; in a word, to present the obvious Isolde of the German opera-houses. But Madame Fremstad has followed, and at once we forgot the occasional Isoldes, for she is of the lineal artistic blood of Lehmann and Ternina. She is new; that is, she is different, and to be different, as Stendhal said, is to be original. Fremstad has not the majestic presence, the heroic voice, not the commanding authority, of her glorious predecessors. But she is lovelier, vocally and physically. She is the most alluring Isolde we have seen, and her charm is of the most intimate. This lovelorn, unhappy Irish princess was, it must be remembered, poetic of temperament as well as passionate. She was not a contemporary of the cavemen, not an aboriginal, despite her fierce hatred of her foes. She was of royal descent. Fremstad played her in the key of womanhood outraged by treachery, implacable in the desire for vengeance, but yet the woman, always the woman—tender, clinging, enchanting, reckless, brave, scornful, a creature of a miriad moods, and as true to her love as the flower to the sun. In the first act we miss at first the storm and stress, the too often undignified agitation, even feline spitefulness, of some Isoldes. The Fremstad Isolde is not in a clairvoyant condition; she moves as if in a dream. After the first fiery outburst, ‘Destroy this proud ship, swallow its shattered fragments, and all that dwells upon it!’ she seems to commune with her dreams. A soliloquy is her vocal speech, upon the first withdrawal of Kurwenal; her narrative is spoken more to the soul of Isolde than to the ears of Branga¨ne. The meeting of the lovers, the drinking of the potion, and the sublime surrender to destiny, are not isolated notes in the dramatic fabric, but a closely spun synthesis. Not a gesture is exaggerated; the comminglement of repose and passion is harmonious. And her second act never descends to the exhibition of a too easily stimulated theatric emotion; the high-born princess loves, as well as the ardent woman. The ending, while arousing criticism, was all of a piece with the entire conception. Ternina it was who showed us that the ‘Liebestod’ was not a bravura concert aria to be delivered in accents of mock-heroic grief and exultation. Fremstad is even more subtle. Sorrow, immitigable, profound, clothes in crape the closing measures, the swan song of Isolde. Her mien, her despair, the hopeless cadence of woe in her voice—all these are subtly indicated. Predictions that the vocal tessitura of the part would prove too high were happily not realized. Never has her voice sounded so sumptuous, so velvety; never has it been so plastic in its adaptation to the ever-changing moods of the music. Opalescent were the ever-shifting hues of her powerful and plangent organ. From irony to ecstasy, she underlined the faintest nuance. Naturally the impersonation left untouched several sides: it will grow in inches; it will be bigger in sweep, swifter, intenser, and more beautiful. To the eye, Fremstad was a dramatic picture, sinuous, graceful, and pathetic. ‘When I have sung Isolde fifty times, then perhaps you may praise me, but now!’ This

246 Milka Ternina (1863–1941), born in Croatia, made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1896 and later sang Kundry there in 1903 in the American premie`re of Parsifal. January–February 1908 75 modest remark only demonstrates that the versatile American singer, who as Carmen or Kundry, Salome or Sieglinde, Ortrud or Branga¨ne...,hasneverlacked artistic probity. And she is the only artist who ever achieved the distinction of singing Branga¨ne and Isolde on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. In Gustav Mahler’s reading of Tristan and Isolde we may recognize the germ of Fremstad’s Isolde. She rehearsed the character with him. This reading is the modern, not the tempest-tossed Wagner of other years. The analysts are busy with the masterwork; dissecting it, digging into it for new beauties. The torrential swing and profound poetry of Seidl are lacking. Mottl’s massiveness seems a trifle slow and old-fashioned. Variety, tonal and rhythmic variety, and a potent musical intellect, are in Mahler’s interpretation. Granting the validity of his dynamic scheme at the outset, his logic of tonal gradations is inescapable. From a pin-point pianissimo to a pin-point pianissimo the music surged through the three acts to adequate climaxes. It is a reading that laid bare the nerves of the music, and its tempi never relapsed into mere speed for speed’s sake, or into swampy grandeur of the average conductor. One sighed for moments of more sultriness, more lightning and thunder. Mahler over-refines, the ‘scholar’s fault’. Tristan’s entrance is not majestic, there are too much logic and too little sensuousness in parts of the second act; as for the final climax, Herr Mahler can quote Wagner at the dissidents, Wagner who said that the orchestra should serve merely as coloring material to beautify and emphasize the action. However, there is no reason why we should not accept this novel Tristan and Isolde, and this new Isolde. Remember that Nietzsche, a backslider from the Bayreuth faith, wrote: ‘Apart from Wagner the magnetizer and fresco-painter, there is yet a Wagner who deposits little jewels in his works, our greatest melancholist in music, full of flashes, delicacies, and words of comfort . . . the master of the tones, of a melancholy and languorous happiness....’247 Mahler’s Tristan had undoubtedly created a sensation, if only because his interpretation had been recognized as an altogether different achievement from those heard previously in New York. With Don Giovanni he embarked upon an even more perilous venture, for, while Wagner had an established following in the New York German community, the general public had not shown much interest in Mozart’s operas, which had never remained in the repertoire for any length of time. To be sure, Conried did all he could to make this production of Don Giovanni outstanding. He had promised to order new sets in Europe (but in the event only refurbished the old ones), and he allowed Mahler to have fifteen rehearsals,248 which was apparently unheard of at the time, at least for the soloists. ‘Never before in this country have the principals been required to appear at so many preparatory performances. . . . [He] has demanded from leading men and prima donnas the same amount of preparation that he would from the last member of the chorus.’249 Yet Mahler’s authority had shone so bright that the Evening Sun wrote after the last rehearsal: ‘[Playing] five and a

247 In these final lines, Huneker quotes from Henry T. Finck’s Life of Wagner, ii. 150. See ‘A new Isolde’, Century, 77 (Nov. 1908): 143 ff. 248 The Musical Courier (8 Jan. 1908) mentions fifteen rehearsals, whereas other sources speak of thirteen. 249 American, 9 Jan. 1908. 76 Gustav Mahler half hours union labor time, without a murmur, one of the exhausted men said: ‘‘Tired? Yes! But I feel that I am at least a musician once more.’’ ’250 Conried had put together what he called an ‘all-star cast’, which was more likely to attract the public in larger numbers than Mozart’s music alone. Emma Eames,251 who was singing her first Donna Anna, has been described as a grande dame of the Golden Age, and her singing was felt to be ‘classic’ and ‘cold’. In 1889 she had been coached by Gounod himself for her Paris debut in Rome´oet Juliette, and at the time of that performance the following portrait of her appeared in the city’s newspaper Le Figaro: Twenty years old, tall, svelte, the figure and profile of Diana, the nose fine and the nostrils quivering, the carmine mouth exhaling the breath of life, the face a pure oval lit by big eyes full of independence and candour at the same time, the forehead high and crowned by a mass of blonde fleece, the arms superb attached to the charming shoulders, such is Melle. Emma Hayden Eames.252 By 1908 Eames had probably lost some of the beauty of her youth, but the passage of time had surely made her even more ‘ladylike’ and had brought to her carriage an element of regal dignity not unsuited to the role of a Spanish aristocrat. She was undoubtedly not an exciting singer but she certainly must have had enough vocal talent to delight her many admirers, for together with Marcella Sembrich she has been named ‘one of the twin pillars of the Golden Age in New York’. Mahler must have been particularly careful never to get embroiled in argument with her, since she was known for her sharp tongue and her low opinion of most of her colleagues (except Sembrich). She can hardly have fulfilled his requirements for the role of Donna Anna, for she had none of the passion required for the part, and clearly lacked the coloratura expertise demanded by Mozart in the coda of Anna’s second aria, ‘Non mi Dir’. Her coldness had once inspired James Gibbons Huneker’s most famous bon mot after he had heard her sing Aida: ‘Last night, there was skating on the Nile.’ Marcella Sembrich (Zerlina),253 was the most popular light coloratura sop- rano, and another of the true stars of the Met. She and Eames had been the main resident lyric sopranos there during the years when Jean de Reszke was their

250 Evening Sun, 23 Jan. 1908. 251 Born in Shanghai of American parents, Emma Hayden Eames (1865–1952) studied singing, first with her mother, then in Boston and Paris, and finally with the famed Mathilde Marchesi. She made her debut at the Paris Opera in Faust in 1889, sang at Covent Garden, and made her debut at the Met on 9 Nov. 1891 in Lohengrin. Her most famous roles were Marguerite, Desdemona, Elisabeth, Aida, and Tosca. Melba’s most hated rival (both had been pupils of Marchesi), she left the Met in 1909 and continued her career elsewhere. In the course of her stormy personal life, she married the painter Julian Story, whom she divorced after a widely publicized scandal, and the baritone Emilio de Gogorza, who then abandoned his career to direct the commercial services of the RCA Victor Company in Camden, New York. Eventually she left him, too. (Lawrence, The Life and Times of Emma Eames). Eames had already appeared in Don Giovanni, but as Donna Elvira. 252 See J. B. Steane, Singers of the Century (Duckworth, London, 1998), ii. 156. 253 Marcella Sembrich, ne´e Praxede Marcellina Kochanska (1858–1935) was taught the piano and the violin by her father and gave several concerts as a child prodigy. After studying at the Lwow Conservatory (which she entered at the age of 11), she followed Liszt’s advice and studied singing with Viktor January–February 1908 77 tenor, and since then she had remained immensely popular in New York, where she was often dubbed ‘the world’s greatest vocalist’. Sembrich too had been the subject of an eloquent description by Huneker: Conceive my amazement when this modest-looking woman with the spirituelle face sat down before the piano, and with a finger agility and a grace and delicacy that Joseffy would envy, played Chopin’s E flat Polonaise. Then she tuned her violin, which was handed to her by her husband, and dashed off the Wienawski Polonaise in G, [and] in response to an overwhelming demand for an encore gave the same composer’s touching Le´gende. Then further to mystify us, with that enchanting smile of hers, sat once more at the piano and sang—ah, so divinely, Mme. Viardot-Garcia’s transcription of Chopin’s D major piano mazurka. When I got out in the open air I felt like throwing my hat up and crying aloud, ‘A miracle, a miracle’.254 The fame of Johanna Gadski (Elvira) never equalled that of her two colleagues. Most of her career was devoted to Wagnerian roles which she sang with unfailing beauty of voice and purity of style, yet she also appeared in Verdi roles, many times with Caruso and Homer.255 Mahler’s Don was the Italian baritone Antonio Scotti,256 who had become one of the Met’s stars soon after his debut with the company nine years earlier. Fedor Chaliapine257 sang Leporello for the first time in his life and once again scandalized the critics, while Alessandro Bonci258 was no

Robitansky in Vienna and Gianbattista Lamperti in Milan. She married Wilhelm Stengel, one of her singing teachers, and made her debut in Athens in 1877. From 1878 to 1880 she sang in Vienna, after which she made her debuts in London and, on 24 Oct. 1883, at the Met in Lucia di Lammermoor. Italian opera provided her with her most famous roles: I puritani, La traviata, La sonnambula, Rigoletto, Il barbiere, etc. 254 Steane, Singers of the Century, ii. 157 ff. 255 ‘May Mozart’s ghost forgive her costumes’, wrote the magazine Theater. Johanna Gadski (1872–1932), born in Anclam, Pomerania, studied singing in Stettin and made her Berlin debut at the age of 17. Her career as a dramatic soprano then took her to the opera houses of Stettin, Mainz, Bremen, and Berlin before her first appearance in New York. In 1895 she was hired for the Met by Walter Damrosch, and as a member of his Opera Company she made her debut as Senta, undertook the leading part in Boston in his The Scarlet Letter, and sang Wagnerian roles and Aida with the de Reszke brothers. From 1899 to 1916 she regularly sang both Italian and German roles at the Met. Her husband, Hans Tauscher, represented the Krupp armament firms in the United States and she returned to Germany with him in the middle of the First World War. She was not heard again in America until 1929, when she became the leading member of a Wagnerian touring company organized by Sol Hurok. She had founded her own touring company when she was killed in a motor accident in Berlin in 1932. As Eames was Melba’s most dreaded rival, so Gadski’s rivalry with Fremstad was an open secret. 256 Antonio Scotti (1866–1936), born in Naples, was the pupil of Francesco Lamperti. After his debut in Malta he sang in Italy, Russia, Spain, and South America. His first appearance in the title role of Don Giovanni was at Covent Garden in 1899. Shortly thereafter he sang it at the Met, where he remained until 1933, when he began touring the United States with his own company. He was famous for the quality of his timbre, his musical sensitivity, and acting ability. Besides Don Giovanni, his most famous roles were Scarpia, Rigoletto, and Falstaff. In a commemorative booklet on Mahler, published in 1916, Scotti recalled the Met rehearsals under him with great emotion and added that there was no conductor he remembered with greater respect (MFM, 29). 257 He did, however, return to New York thirteen years later, in 1921. 258 Alessandro Bonci (1870–1940) was born in Cesena (Romagna) and studied singing under Carlo Pedrotti in Pesaro. In 1896 he made his debut at the Teatro Regio in Parma and pursued his operatic 78 Gustav Mahler doubt an ideal Don Ottavio.259 Euge`ne Dufriche,260 whose name is also mentioned as stage director, sang Masetto at the first two performances. Most of these singers were new to Mozart, and Mahler must have had his hands full during rehearsals, particularly since he himself was conducting Don Giovanni with the original Italian libretto for the first time in his life. He remained faithful to the version which he had prepared for Vienna: discarded were some of the traditional insertions made in Mozart’s score in the nineteenth century—the chorus in the first Finale, the trombones in the same scene, and the prostitutes who were formerly introduced as a realistic touch during Don Juan’s supper. The latter were notably absent from the New York performances, just as they had been in Vienna.261 And again as in Vienna, Mahler reinstated Mozart’s original division of the work into two acts, reduced the size of the orchestra, and restored Elvira’s great aria ‘Mi tradi’, composed by Mozart for his Vienna production. On the other hand, he again deleted the final sextet, as well as Donna Anna’s second aria—this no doubt because Emma Eames lacked the requisite vocal agility for the allegro section. To imitate the sound of a harpsi- chord, an instrument which in all likelihood could not be found in New York, Mahler used a small piano, the strings of which were covered with sheets of paper for the recitatives.262 As in Vienna, the podium on which he accompanied his forces was placed in the middle of the orchestra. At the beginning of the first rehearsal Mahler warned the company that his tempos would be lively, for ‘speed, in Mozart, is indispensable’.263 He undoubt- edly missed Roller’s sets, if only because they facilitated quick changes of scenery, but Conried allowed him to place the singers in front of the curtain for a few of the arias, while sets were being changed. For the first Finale the three orchestras were on stage, while groups of dancers occupied three separate platforms; and during the second Finale the small wind ensemble was placed career at La Scala, St Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, London, etc. As we have seen, he came to the Met after leaving the Manhattan and sang there for three seasons. From then on he appeared only at the Opera and as a guest in many European cities, and taught singing in Milan. Of small stature and unheroic appearance, Bonci was renowned for the absolute evenness of his voice in all registers and for the perfection of his technique. He sang only lyric roles, although, strangely enough, he excelled as Manrico in Il trovatore, a role which he sang several times in New York during his first season at the Met. 259 Robert Blass sang the Commendatore. On 3 Apr. he replaced Chaliapine as Leporello, Rita Fornia sang Elvira, and Adolph Mu¨hlmann the Commendatore. As seen above (Vol. ii, Chap. 10), Mahler had rehearsed the American mezzo-soprano Rita Fornia-Labey (ne´e Newman, 1878–1922) in Vienna in June 1907. She was a member of the Metropolitan Opera company from 1907 until her death. 260 Since 1893 Dufriche had appeared at the Met in roles such as Ramfis and the King in Aida, Bartolo in Il barbiere, Valentin in Faust, Hortensius in La Fille du re´giment, Lescaut in Manon, Germont in La traviata, Masetto in Don Giovanni, etc. After a performance of Le nozze, on 24 Mar 1901, the Times reported that ‘M. Dufriche was permitted to exhibit his famous feat of singing two roles at once’, one being Antonio, and the other the Count, a role in which he stood in for E´ douard de Reszke. He would leave the company in 1908. 261 Mahler once again displayed his erudition in the Tribune by explaining that the trombone parts in the autograph score of Don Giovanni are not in Mozart’s handwriting. 262 AccordingtotheEvening Sun, Bonci sang the two arias of Ottavio at the premie`re. For the Philadelphia performance, ‘Dalla sua pace’ was cut, but the Boston performances in April again included both. 263 Boston Evening Transcript, 13 Mar. 1908. The article reports that the performance lasted two hours and forty-five minutes, with only a twenty-minute intermission. It began at 8.15 p.m. and ended at 11 p.m. January–February 1908 79 on stage too. According to Alma, Mahler was highly amused when Conried suggested hoisting the three singers up to the flies at the end of the Mask Scene during a set change.264 At first Mahler apparently intended to influence the staging. But, as the Sun wrote after his death: He was probably wise to make no effort to beat his head against the stone wall of incompetence and self-satisfaction that prevailed at the Metropolitan in the later days of the Conried regime. It was only when he began the rehearsals of Don Giovanni and Fidelio that he tried to impress his own ideas on the staff. He was soon discouraged, however, and did not hesitate to express his views as to the inadequacy of the scenery and properties in the frankest way. ‘How do you expect Zerlina to hide herself?’ he suddenly called out one day at a rehearsal of Don Giovanni, as Mme. Sembrich was vainly trying to pretend she was behind an arbour when there was nothing but a painted stone wall plainly in view. ‘Do you expect her to disappear through the stone wall and then come out again?’ He was equally exigent about some other parts of the production. In the ballroom scene he was disgusted with the quality of the dishes brought out and was astonished to learn that they were the best that the property room of the Metropolitan Opera House afforded. ‘Then,’ he observed, resuming the rehearsal with a resigned air, ‘it will look as if the ball were taking place in the kitchen of the palace instead of the salon.’ When Mahler began the long drawn out rehearsals of Don Giovanni he wanted to withdraw the principal singers from the [other] casts just as he did in Vienna, in order that they might rehearse every day. Such singers as he had under his baton then had never sung under him before. But he nevertheless wanted them to come every day to rehearsal, in spite of their duties in the evening. When they refused he wanted them all to withdraw from the opera casts in order that they might have more time to rehearse. As it was the preparations for this revival of Don Giovanni continued for more than six weeks.265 The result of Mahler’s efforts was no doubt appreciated at the beginning, but soon the changes of cast must have had a destructive effect on the production. Sembrich left on tour after the first two performances on 23 and 27 January, and Geraldine Farrar stepped in on 12 February, in the part of Zerlina which she had already sung in 1906 in Lilli Lehmann’s Salzburg production.266 According to her memoirs, Farrar had taken part in the preliminary rehearsals. She had the makings and the looks of a prima donna, and the stories she had heard of Mahler’s ‘tyranny’ frightened her. She later described the atmosphere of the rehearsals as tense, mainly because Chaliapine was ‘out of sorts’, feeling that New York was not appreciating him.

264 AMM1, 172; AMM2, 165. 265 ‘Gustav Mahler in New York’, Sun, 28 May 1911. The article was probably by William J. Henderson, the paper’s principal music critic. 266 See above, Vol. ii, Chap. 6. On 12 Feb. and 3 Apr. Aristide Baracchi replaced Eugene Dufriche in the role of Masetto. 80 Gustav Mahler [He] dissolved in a huge Russian pout all winter. . . [and] this humour did nothing to effect harmony in a revival of Don Giovanni in which he was cast as Leporello, under the electrical baton of Mahler. Mahler was very ill—a doomed man; highly sensitive, irascible and difficult, but not unreasonable if the singer was serious and attentive. Chaliapine, however, was completely oblivious to rehearsal obligations. Mahler was sorely tried. The beautiful Emma Eames and the reliable Gadski, with Scotti, Bonci and myself, did our best to avert clashes. As I had sung Zerlina in Berlin under Strauss—under Muck in Salzburg—this training earned me Mahler’s pleasant commendation; but we were, nonetheless, on pins and needles at every meeting. Happily, no overt act marred the performances, though it was a trifle disconcerting, to Scotti particularly, to have Chalia- pine make a studied departure into Russian recitative where the fluent Italian text offered cues none too facile at any time; but this was purveyed with such bland impertinence, it was impossible to resist or chide this naughty giant!267 Once again the New York critics displayed their familiarity with the score by noting that Mahler’s tempos were far from traditional. The first performance, on 23 January, took place on a Monday evening, and New York high society turned out in full evening array. The Evening Sun remarked that even the standing room was completely sold out, despite the terrible blizzard which had brought New York to a standstill.268 In his Daily Tribune review the following day, Krehbiel wrote: Though Mozart’s Don Giovanni as performed under the direction of Mr. Mahler...was not an unalloyed delight, it came near to that, and even more, in some of its features, notably those in which the distinguished conductor could give expression to his wishes unhampered by the shortcomings of the stage folk. . . . Unfortunately for the perform- ance, though much more work was devoted to the music than is usual. ...Mr. Mahler’s labors stopped there: he could not look after the stage picture, or the action, and—as the greatest weaknesses of the Metropolitan regime are in this department—there was much repetition of the old folly and confusion which have always made the opera look like a thing of shreds and patches. This was particularly noticeable in the second act; with its finale, which has been the despair of all stage managements and conductors ever since the original finale was abolished and the opera was brought to a close with the death of the libertine.... [Last night] we did have again the strange and unaccountable destruc- tion of Don Giovanni’s palace. [In the penultimate scene of the ‘atrio tereno’] We were also treated to the spectacle of six persons finding their way into a room, two of them

267 Geraldine Farrar, Such Sweet Compulsion (Greystone, New York, 1938), 111. Born in Melrose, Mass., Farrar (1882–1967) decided as a child to become a singer and studied music in Boston. At the age of 17 she crossed the ocean and pursued her studies in Paris and Berlin. She became Lilli Lehmann’s pupil and made her stage debut as Marguerite in Faust under Muck’s direction on 21 Oct. 1901. After singing at the Monte Carlo Opera for three years, she made her debut at the Met in Rome´o et Juliette with Caruso on 26 Nov. 1906. Rumours about her affair with the Crown Prince of Germany had preceded her to New York and played a large part in the sensation she created. She remained at the Met for sixteen seasons in a row, singing the roles of Marguerite, Mimi, Nedda, Carmen, Charlotte (in Werther), Thaı¨s, Louise, etc. and singing Butterfly, her most famous role, ninety-five times. In 1922 she gave her farewell performance in Leoncavallo’s Zaza but continued to sing on tour until 1931, the date of her final retirement. Farrar, who married the actor Lou Tellegen, was a star in every sense of the word. The miraculous voice of her youth quickly deteriorated through lack of discipline, but her magnificent costumes, fiery temperament, and determined character never ceased attracting the public. She sang in two films, Carmen and Joan of Arc. 268 The box office takings for that evening were $8,932. January–February 1908 81 having entered in an obviously burglarious manner, and groping around in a darkness which may have been felt, but certainly could not be seen, inasmuch as it was illuminated by torches considerately held at the foot of a staircase by two lackeys in livery....[This scene] in some scores is supposed to represent a court in front of Donna Anna’s house, in others the interior of a dimly lighted church. Last night it was plainly a room in somebody’s house, but how Donna Elvira and the disguised Leporello, Donna Anna and her milk sop attendant, Don Ottavio, Donna Zerlina and her bruised Masetto, all in search of the arch-scoundrel, got into it at once must be left to the imagination of Director Conried. According to Krehbiel, Mahler had ‘attempted to recreate the opera as it was in the period of the composer, both in spirit and matter. In doing this he was hampered by the magnitude of the theatre, in whose space much of the beauty of the performance was dissipated.’ Unfortunately, Mahler had refused to follow the traditional tempo in a few instances, generally to the grievous disappointment of his hearers....Butthis notice must not close without a word of praise, which cannot be warm enough, for Mr. Mahler’s treatment of the orchestral part. The Metropolitan’s walls have never echoed to anything so exquisite as last night’s instru- mental music. Strangely enough, four days later, when he wrote his second review, Krehbiel had changed his mind about Mahler’s tempos, probably because he had exam- ined the score and found justification for them there: by hastening the slow first part of both the Zerlina–Masetto duet and the one between the Don and Zerlina, and in her aria ‘Batti, batti, bel Masetto’, Mahler had no doubt chosen to retain the same moderate tempo throughout and follow Mozart’s score to the letter, no accelerando being marked therein. Later on in the performance, Scotti ‘was permitted to dash off with a speed possible only to the nimblest of Italian tongues, the ‘‘Champagne’’ Aria and some of the concerted numbers with which the sluggish tongue of Chaliapine could not keep pace’. Like most of his colleagues, Krehbiel praised Sembrich as a true Mozartian and an ideal Zerlina, but found the other two sopranos so little accustomed to Mozart’s style that they seemed ill at ease: Mme. Eames, who is the representative of Donna Anna, though she sang much of the music admirably, is not a singer of the tragic stature required to do full justice to the call for vengeance, with its tremendous sweep of feeling, though she sang the accompanied recitative . . . with surprising eloquence and power. Her voice sounded lighter than that of Mme. Gadsky (Donna Elvira). Krehbiel found the male side of the cast even more disappointing: in his opinion, Dufriche, the Masetto, ‘murdered that capital song ‘‘Ho capito’’ (which used to be omitted when better singers filled the part), and marred the many concerted pieces in which the role of Masetto is of great importance’. Furthermore, It would be a waste of time, but more a trial of patience, to discuss the Leporello of Mr. Chaliapine, who seems to conceive all his characters as if they had been dug out of the muck of Gorky’s stories of Russian low life. Such a vulgarian the companion (for 82 Gustav Mahler companion though servant he is) of a Spanish nobleman! Faugh!269 Bonci’s Don Ottavio is musically impeccable but dramatically a nullity.... For Mahler and ‘the revolution [he] accomplished . . . in the matter of the orchestral part’, Krehbiel reserved his highest praise: ‘The instrumental music was an unqualified delight, full of exquisite witchery and wonderfully illumina- tive of the sentiments of the vocal part.’ Regarding the elimination of the trombones in the final scene: ‘at first it seemed as if their omission left a deplorable gap, but this feeling soon gave way to one of amazement at the wondrous power of the simpler orchestration. . . . This music must be read as Mahler read it and played as his musicians played it to produce a conviction.’ Krehbiel also praised Mahler’s decision to use a ‘harpsichord’ for the ac- companiment to the recitatives: ‘He occasionally added a bit of adornment to the dry chords which ordinarily suffice to buoy up the rapid musical speech and introduce the key of the songs. He even did this in the dramatic recitative for full orchestra which introduces Donna Anna’s great air, ‘‘Or sai che l’onore’’. ’ In the Times, Richard Aldrich approved Mahler’s reducing the size of the orchestra, and ‘admired the perfection and pertinence of his phrasing’, and the ‘elasticity’ of his rhythm. In the Sun, Henderson emphasized Mahler’s feeling for ensemble: Mozart’s Don Giovanni was performed at the Metropolitan Opera House last night in a manner which must have astonished many of the old habitue´s of the house. For many years this great classic opera has been offered at the Metropolitan as a bargain counter attraction. It has been made mainly a vehicle for the exploitation of a star cast. People have been drawn in crowds to hear six stars at prices usually charged for three. But the mise en sce`ne has always been neglected. The acts have been chopped up to meet the exigencies of scenic changes. The stage business has been ignored to such an extent that some scenes were incomprehensible. The continuity of the action has been destroyed and Mozart’s dramatic unity sent into outer darkness. And no attempt has been made to unify the styles and interpretations of the various singers in an organic whole. It has been every singer for herself and the evil one take Mozart. All this has been changed by the artistic influence of one man, and the result was that last night’s performance moved swiftly, steadily, even relentlessly toward its great climaxes—one in the Finale of the first act, another in the closing scene of the opera. The credit must be given to Gustav Mahler....Mr. Mahler is known in Europe as a great interpreter of Mozart, and much was expected of him. Much was received. Doubtless Mr. Mahler would himself be the first to declare that the performance was not ideal; but it was made in the spirit of the ideal which has hitherto been as far from Metropolitan Opera performances as the equator from the poles....Andthetrue nature of the noble old classic shone out as it has not in previous local performances....Thegradual deepening of the musical tints, the gradual growth in the weight of the accents in the later scenes, were full of eloquence....Mr. Mahler treated Don Giovanni not as a collection of set pieces for singers, but as a drama in music. The beauty of the arias was enhanced by the exquisite sense which was present

269 On 9 February 1908 Krehbiel published an anonymous letter in his newspaper. It was supposed to have been written by an ‘indignant subscriber’ for whom ‘the coarseness and vulgarity of his [Chalia- pine’s] representations are an insult to the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera House’. January–February 1908 83 in the interpretation, and the interest of the audience in them was heightened by the restoration of the continuity of the dramatic thought. ...He [Mahler] induced the singers to treat Mozart’s music with continence of tone and delicacy of touch. . . . The same Henderson commented on the absence of Mozart in Italian repertory opera houses, and the fact that only the major German theatres of Munich and Vienna continued to perform his works. Mahler’s affection for Mozart was, in his opinion, one of the main reasons he had to be ‘kept as musical director’ of the Met. The Evening Sun approved of most of the changes in the production, the renovation of the old sets, and the single intermission of twenty minutes. Mahler’s inspired interpretation of Don Giovanni ‘absolutely had to be heard’, Finck claimed in the Evening Post, praising the liveliness of the recitatives and Mahler’s general ‘lightness of tone’, with all the strong dramatic accents reserved for the climaxes of the opera. He called Conried’s lighting ‘abominable’, but nonetheless saw the influence of an ‘inspired hand’ at work in the performance. Writing in the Daily Herald, Edward Ziegler’s preoccupation was to name and describe those members of high society who were present in the auditorium, rather than to review the performance itself.270 The audience had been enthralled, and the artists had served Mozart and entered into the spirit of the work ‘to the best of their energies and abilities’. Yet Max Smith, in the Press, disagreed. His review began as a description of Mahler in the pit: Instead of occupying the usual post close to the first row of the parquet, Mahler sat on a raised platform well forward in the orchestra pit, with only a grand piano between him and the stage. On this instrument, the strings of which were covered with thin paper in order to imitate the sound of a harpsichord, Mahler himself played the recitative accompaniments usually entrusted to an assistant conductor behind the scenes. Despite Mahler’s efforts towards authenticity, Smith had not found the performance ‘perfect in every detail as we had been led to expect’. Among the singers, only Sembrich and Bonci had ‘stood forth as pre-eminent impersonators of their respective roles’. As for the playing of the orchestra, it reflected only a fraction of his [Mahler’s] mental energy. Every singer seemed to have come under the conductor’s psychical dominion. One was conscious that [they were all] expressing the ideas of Mahler. The modulation of their voices, their dynamic shading,

270 In one of his letters to Ziegler, James Gibbons Huneker wrote in 1908: ‘on the Herald, you can’t expect space enough for the psychology of voice production. The Herald won’t stand for elaborate criticism.’ (See Letters of James Gibbons Huneker, ed. Josephine Huneker (Scribner’s, New York, 1922), 79.) Edward Ziegler (1870–1947) was born and studied in Baltimore. He settled in New York in 1898, was immediately engaged by James G. Huneker at the New York Sun, and became his assistant and close friend. Later on Ziegler wrote a regular column for Town Copies and the Musical Leader. Music critic for The American (1902) and the World (1903–8), In 1908 Ziegler had been hired as music and theatre critic for the Herald and remained in that position until 1916. During his years on the Herald he attracted the attention of Otto Kahn, who in 1916 created the post of ‘Administrative Secretary’ for him at the Met. In 1920 he became its Assistant Manager, a post he retained for the rest of his life, i.e. for twenty- seven years. He was the author of a monograph on Tristan and Isolde, published in 1909 along with a new translation of the libretto. 84 Gustav Mahler their phrasing, seemed to have sprung from his mind ...Reserve of tone and quickness of tempo were the most conspicuous features of Mahler’s reading. According to Smith, ‘there were times when his speed seemed too much like hurry’, and ‘frequently the only rhythmical understanding between the orches- tra and the singers was poor’.271 But all in all, ‘in balance of tone and phrasing the performance came perhaps closer to an ideal interpretation than any previ- ous one in the Metropolitan’. Certain scenes were carried out with a perfection of musical detail never before attained in this city. For example, in the ballroom scene, there were three orchestras on the stage, just as the composer intended, and these three small groups of musicians succeeded in playing the music allotted to them with rhythmical precision and clarity. Mahler, with no apparent effort, held the various forces fully in check. Another stage band was brought on the boards in the final scene. Everywhere he obtained ‘the maximum efficiency with the minimum effort’. The inappropriate size of the Met stage for Mozart operas was a recurring leitmotif in the Globe’s review of Don Giovanni. Mahler had been the true hero of the evening. His orchestral accompaniments were interpreted with ‘exceptional spirit, versatility, exemplary expression, and exquisitely beautiful sonority’. Chaliapine fortunately avoided the vulgarity which had characterized his performances of Il barbiere, although his portrayal of Leporello was nothing but a ‘miserable caricature’. In the Staats-Zeitung Maurice Halperson272 ex- pressed unqualified admiration: ‘Now in a sweet melodic flow, now in dramatic agitation, this immortal music flowed by us, at times awakening happy memor- ies, at times appearing to be something new, uncommon, stimulating, elevated and inspired, notwithstanding certain reservations, by a magnificent, in parts, unforgettable interpretation.’ The most substantial commentary on Mahler’s conducting technique and interpretation in Don Giovanni was given by Henry T. Parker in the Boston Evening Transcript: There sits Mahler,...settled at ease in his chair. With one hand he gently, but explicitly, plies his stick; the other lies loosely in his lap. With that stick he indicates pace, rhythm, and accent, while with the left hand, when need is, he lessens or heightens the volume of the tone. It is with his eyes seemingly that he conducts, and they are very bright, alert, and wide-ranging. Simultaneously, as by a kind of triple glance, they seem to follow the score, the stage, and the orchestra. With his eyes Mahler ‘picks up’ a singing actor at the beginning of an important passage and starts him well on his way. With his eyes, he summons a particular instrument or group of instruments. It is in the conductor’s face

271 Smith was one of the two critics who noted that Eames sang her first aria below the original pitch. Yet, according to him, ‘no one had thought’ her capable of expressing such ‘tragic feeling’ and ‘passion’ as she did in the recitative Don Ottavio, son morta, which can be ascribed to Mahler’s influence on her. 272 Maurice Halperson (1860–1928) was born in Trieste, where he studied music and literature. Emigrating to the United States in the middle of the 1890s, he quickly replaced August Spanuth as the principal critic of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and became the New York correspondent of many European journals and reviews. As a young man, he had attended the premie`re of the Ring at Bayreuth. January–February 1908 85 rather than in his gesture that his men may find the word—or rather the look—of command for a significant phrase or for a slowly mounting climax. Conducting could hardly seem more effortless, yet so plainly sway the conductor’s forces and so palpably gain the end that it seeks. For Mahler, the music is the music of a drama speaking and commanding in tones. To us of the younger generation the point which he gave to the chattering recitatives, the eloquence with which he invested the sustained declamation, and the emotional quality, rising often to high passion, which he infused into the set arias, and with which he differentiated them, were a new and thrilling sensation. Vanished the haunting and distorting memory of Don Giovanni as a concert in costume, and returned the ever- lasting music drama that Mozart imagined and wrote. Everywhere the music became the voice of the characters and of their emotions, and everywhere it wrought, maintained and communicated the atmosphere, be it of comedy or of tragedy. Nowhere did Mr. Mahler force the note. In his zeal for dramatic pith or eloquence, he never forgot the delicacy, the economy, the intrinsic and often exquisite loveliness of Mozart’s music. It flowed or bubbled in the light scenes, or it was quick or tense in the passionate speech, even if traditional tempi went, Mahler-wise, by the board. (Is not tradition the mother of dullness?) It was a Mozart alive and speaking, irresistible, of 1908 no less than of 1788, man and brother to us all in the common tie of his music drama.273 Among the musical magazines, only the Musical Courier for once took a negative view of Mahler’s Mozart. It claimed that his ‘misdoings’ had elicited ‘an avalanche of indignant cries’ from the audience, that he ‘changed all the tempos’, ‘tore tradition to pieces’, and ‘struck a blow against the purists of New York’.274 The New York public’s lack of interest in Mozart and the effect of Hammerstein’s all-too-efficient competition were sad facts reported only by Musical America, which noted that—already for the second performance on 27 January—the house was far from sold out.275 Don Giovanni was performed altogether four times in New York, and it was not revived during the following season. On 18 February 1908 the whole Metropolitan Opera company—singers, chorus, and orchestra—moved to the Academy of Music in Philadelphia for a performance of Don Giovanni which Alma still recalled after the First World War, when she wrote her Erinnerungen: Donna Elvira was supposed to enter for her great Aria,276 but she couldn’t: in the little space on the stage, the door had been left out. Mahler signalled repeatedly to the orchestra to hang on, smiled with amusement, looked over at me, and we were enjoying

273 Boston Evening Transcript, 7 Mar. 1908, section 3, p. 4. 274 In the Musical Courier, as seen above, Blumenberg defended Mahler from the start against Krehbiel’s attacks and the alleged intrigues of the Damrosch ‘clique’. Nonetheless, in this produc- tion of Don Giovanni he praised only the ‘miracles’ accomplished by the star singers, none of whom had any feeling for, or experience of, Mozart’s music. 275 In fact, the house that evening would have been a big one, even for Caruso. The box office takings were $9,664, as against $8,932 for the evening of the premie`re. They amounted to $9,301 on 12 Feb. and $7,732 on 3 Apr. 276 This was surely ‘Mi tradi’ (no. 21b), which Mozart had composed for the Vienna production of Don Giovanni. Mahler had reinserted it in the second act, before the cemetery scene (see above, Vol. iii, Chap. 5, 297). 86 Gustav Mahler the incident, which was worthy of a third-rate travelling theatrical company. Finally Gadsky stout-heartedly stepped forward from the corner of the room. The entire set rocked and reeled, and for a moment the back of the stage was visible; then the walls quickly closed in again and the aria began, very beautifully, much more beautifully than in our Music Ministry, as I called our Opera,...with its innumerable corridors, leading to other corridors and all sorts of rooms backstage.277 The story, as told by Alma, might seem far-fetched, but it is utterly believable to anyone who has taken the trouble to investigate the manner in which the Met’s Philadelphia performances were organized. The ‘city of brotherly love’ was not far from New York (90 to 100 minutes by train), and since 1900 had become an industrial giant, with steel, railroads, and diversified manufacturing vital to an expanding economy. All this intense industrial activity had engendered large fortunes, and many of the owners of such wealth became generous philanthrop- ists. In the early 1850s they had sponsored the construction of a 3,000-seat house called the Academy of Music. Since Philadelphia did not have an indigenous opera company, the house’s main activity was to accommodate travelling opera companies from New York and elsewhere. The main visitor since 1883 had of course been the Metropolitan Opera, which each year presented there its most recent and noteworthy productions. For this particular season, 1907–8, Philadelphians were to spend between $100,000 and $150,000, all pocketed by Conried, who in return sent them performances of eighteen different operas. However, the same dangerous competition that had challenged the suprem- acy of the Met in New York, was now threatening the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Oscar Hammerstein had lately decided to build on the corner of Broad and Poplar Streets a magnificent new theatre to accommodate 4,000, a thousand more than the rival opera house. The repertoire, as at the Manhattan Opera, was to be composed mainly of French works. Attempting to meet this challenge, the Academy’s scenery was treated to a ‘refurbishing’ and the audi- torium was renovated: walls were repainted and the seats were given ‘reuphol- stering’ to effect a ‘resilliance’ which they were accused of lacking. Also, the draperies of the boxes were overhauled in order to ‘restore to them the lustrous sheen which was the best possible background for the grey plumage of the box holders’. Even ‘the venerable chandelier, traditional in its long undisturbed attendance upon operatic events, sparkled blithely back at the glitter of dia- monds in its burnished radiance, giving off a prismatic effulgence of red and gold and purple and blue.’278 The Philadelphia season of 1907–8 had opened with simultaneous perform- ances of two operas: La Bohe`me at the Academy with Caruso, Sembrich, Scotti, and Didur, under Francesco Spetrino, the Italian conductor whom Mahler had earlier engaged at the Hofoper; and Carmen at Hammerstein’s sumptuous

277 AMM1, 167 ff.; AMM2, 162 ff. In fact Gadski did not sing the role of Elvira in Philadelphia (see below). 278 See John Francis Marion, Within these Walls: A History of the Academy of Music in Phila- delphia (Restoration Office, The Academy of Music, Philadelphia, 1984), 157. January–February 1908 87 brand-new house with Labia, Dalmore`s, and de Segurola, under Cleofonte Campanini’s direction. Quite a few patrons of the Academy also held boxes at the new Opera, and there was a partial exodus, after Puccini’s second or third act, to hear Bizet’s final scenes as presented by Hammerstein. Never had such a throng of hurried opera fans and such a ‘dense, unreasonable mob’ of curious onlookers been observed in the streets of Philadelphia: ‘Every artery of travel disgorged its hundreds of persons anxious to see society walk from curb to door.’ And the next season at Hammerstein’s opera house promised to be every bit as brilliant, with five performances a week. The opening, on 9 November 1909, had originally been set for a week later than the Met’s at the Academy. But Hammer- stein later changed his mind and decided to advance his first night so that it should coincide with the Met’s, and he even chose to open with Aida, the very same opera as was playing at the Met. ‘Little by little Hammerstein was drawing attention away from the Academy and to his new house. His productions seemed to drip glamour.’279 No doubt exists as to which of the two houses offered the most lively stage direction, the best rehearsed performances, the most beautiful sets, and the handsomest costumes: the Met (now 25 years old) could not compete, at least visually, with Hammerstein’s much admired achievements. Assuredly, since the beginning of its fifty-year activity, the Academy of Music had collected an array of stock props such as chairs, tables, lanterns, spears, wine bottles, and even anvils’ (staple for the ‘Anvil Chorus’ [of Il trovatore]). Likewise, [all] theatres needed to provide a virtual warehouse of scenery—back and side drops, border curtains, and flats and other free-standing set pieces—to manifest the setting of each opera’s action. These sets encompassed interior as well as exterior scenes, in ancient as well as contemporary renderings.280 It had also enlisted the services of a talented landscape painter named Russell Smith, who had been responsible for every one of its decors from 1856 to 1883. However, While a limited amount of Smith’s work was commissioned for specific operas (such as his Egyptian sets for Aida), the vast majority of drops and set pieces was necessarily generic, and could be used interchangeably for any number of operas. The 1883 inven- tory identifies Smith’s drops with such non-specific titles as Alpine, Garden, Park Grove, Rocky Glen, Mountain Side, Horizon, Prison, Encampment, Cave. The inventory further specifies hundreds of wings and flats that seem even more mundane, for example, 8 cave wings, 14 German Street wings, 2 prison doors, 17 small rocks. Under such conditions it is obvious that no great refinement was to be expected in the presentation of operas at the Academy of Music, even though Colonel James Mapleson, whose world-renowned opera troupes regularly appeared there during the last decades of the nineteenth century, was quoted

279 Ibid. 161. 280 See JoAnne E. Barry, ‘Russell Smith and Philadelphia’s Academy of Music’, unpublished article placed at the disposal of this writer by the author. 88 Gustav Mahler as judging the Academy’s scenic department to be of such excellent calibre as to ‘surpass any house he has been in, either in Europe or in this country’.281 The performance of Don Giovanni that Mahler conducted on 12 February 1908 was well reviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, which paper’s critic had previously warned that ‘he [Mahler] treats the opera in what is to modern opera goers an entirely novel and extraordinary manner’ and ‘has restored the original score [and] in every way has sought to produce the opera as Mozart wrote it’. However, the same reviewer later wrote that the performance had ‘on the whole left a good deal to be desired. . . . Mr. Mahler conducted with sympathy and skill, although he might advantageously have given the orchestra a looser rein.’282 Alma had earlier accompanied Mahler to Philadelphia, when he paid his first visit there on 28 January to conduct a performance of Tristan. Since the above list of generic sets does not include a ship, the visual set-up of the performance must be left to our imagination, if only because Alma’s report of the perform- ance concentrates on other matters: I was sitting in the first row, right behind Mahler. Suddenly I saw in his face such terrifying, new, naked traits of suffering, that I was overcome with a deadly fear of losing him. Nervous dread gripped my heart so fiercely that I fainted. Professor Leon Corning had been watching me, and he pulled me out of the audience and took me backstage to Heinrich Knote’s dressing room.283 Mahler, who often turned in my direction, suddenly saw that my seat was empty and had to continue conducting without knowing what had happened. Corning ran off to a pharmacy, and when Mahler came rushing up at the end of the act I could already sit up. But I remained backstage.284 When returning to New York by train, the Mahlers travelled with James Corning, the eminent physician who had taken care of Alma. This unexpected encounter resulted in their being invited to dinner at his home in New York, for despite his notorious ‘reserve’ and ‘timidity’ Corning had discovered an affinity for the couple.285 This strange occasion gave rise to the following vivid descrip- tion in Alma’s Erinnerungen: ...hescarcely spoke, but in his fakir-like sombre and deeply lined face lightening and darkness seemed to alternate incessantly. He was very famous in America, very feared, and notorious for his avarice. He was a millionaire and could sometimes be enormously generous. Thus, for example, he placed a gift of $200,000 in the cradle of his brother-in- law Knote’s new-born child. No one had ever seen his New York house. A few days after our return from Philadelphia his car came to fetch us.... Agentleman in a top-hat was standing near the car. We took him for a servant and didn’t pay any further attention to him, for he sat next to the driver. When we arrived at Corning’s, he opened the car door,

281 Quoted in Virginia E. Lewis, Russell Smith: Romantic Realist (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1956), 212. 282 The Inquirer critic apparently did not know that the chorus in the Finale of Act I was a posthumous insertion in Mozart’s score and blamed Mahler for having done away with it. 283 Corning was Knote’s brother-in-law. 284 AMM1, 166; AMM2, 161. 285 James Leonard Corning (1855–1923), born in Stanford, Conn., studied medicine in Heidelberg and Wu¨rzburg, and specialized in a study of the injection of liquid paraffin into tissues. He also demonstrated that the action of certain medicines could be prolonged if the patient breathed compressed air. Corning January–February 1908 89 bowed, and came into the house with us. He was a guest like us, only deaf and dumb! Corning greeted us upstairs. In passing, he introduced his wife to us (she disappeared immediately after) and ushered us into his laboratory. If he looked like a character out of E. T. A. Hoffmann, this room was like a medieval alchemist’s chamber. Wire hung down from the ceiling in all directions, steps led up and down to an iron gallows and ancient apparatuses. He strode before us, opened a small door, and led us into a steel-plated cell where patients were put to sleep by breathing compressed air. A crumpled bed, its cushions showing the form of a human body, an open book on the floor. The room was scarcely wide and high enough to stand up in. Everything seemed ghostly; his wife, in black mourning veils, swept through the room, without a word, without a glance, a dead-mask with sharp, dead eyes. He led us on into the music room, where there were three or four grand pianos aligned in a row. Doctor Corning became cheerful and played the flute while walking up and down. Finally the door opened and a living being entered the room. Actually two. Corning’s brother and his wife. Up to that moment, with this bizarre man and the keenly observing deaf-mute, we had often felt as if we were in a haunted house. We went to dine in a small square room. Small candles were smouldering on the table and had to be extinguished immediately, rendering the atmosphere opaque and the air stifling. The small electric lamp scarcely managed to pierce the thick smoke. An indefinable, small something lay on each small plate, and a half bottle of champagne, of which each of us were given a thimbleful, was opened in our honour. We were seven at table. The brother whispered: ‘How ever did you get in here? My brother is a pathological miser. He never has guests. What has happened to him today?’ With emotion, each of us saw a little bronze symbol in front of our plates: Mahler a little music desk, I a piano, and we realised that this child, with his face full of grandeur, had for days been preparing for this evening. His wife, however, didn’t say a word; whenever she wanted to open her mouth, it was closed by an angry look from her husband.286 This bizarre evening, and Corning’s original but unendearing personality, seem to have left Mahler and Alma with little desire to pursue the relationship. But another Philadelphia performance provided the occasion for them to meet the famous Assyrian scholar Hermann Hilprecht,287 who invited them to visit his museum. Excavations in Babylon which he directed. Room after room, Sumer, 3,000 years before Christ, cuneiform inscriptions on tiles, market reports from ancient Babylon. Relief sculptures of remarkable Mongol-Jewish faces. We were captivated by his explanations. was the author of treatises on epilepsy, pain, and hysteria. He had married Julia Crane in 1883, and the house which Mahler and Alma visited was situated at 53 West 38th Street in New York. 286 AMM1, 169; AMM2, 162. 287 Herman Volrath Hilprecht (1859–1925), born in Hohenerxleben in Germany, completed his secondary education in Bernburg, and studied theology, philology, and law at the University of Leipzig (1880–5). His thesis was on a subject related to the Old Testament. He moved to Philadelphia and became curator of the Semitic Department of the University of Pennsylvania Museum (1887–1911), which soon afterwards contained some 150,000 objects, many of them from his own excavations in Nippur, near Babylon (1895– 1914). Hilprecht became Professor of Comparative Semitic Philology, participated in scientific explorations in Syria and Turkey, and was appointed curator of the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Istanbul (1893–1909). He was considered one of the foremost authorities in the world on cuneiform writing. After publishing many books and retiring from the University of Pennsylvania, he returned to Germany in 1914, but finally went back to the United States where he became a naturalized citizen. During the winter he lived in Philadelphia at 807 Spruce Street, spending his summers at Meerholtz in Hesse-Nassau. 90 Gustav Mahler A year later, he came under the most violent attack, he was even accused of falsifying these stone inscriptions. My God, if they were forgeries, they were so good that for many years they duped the whole scholarly community. When all is said and done, will the ‘truth’ ever be known? With his enthusiasm and explanations he enriched both of us.288 The last New Yorkperformance, on 9 April, was well attended and successful, with box office takings of $9,373, yet it was the last Don Giovanni to be heard at the Met for the next twenty-one years.289 In a letter to his friend, the Viennese banker Paul Hammerschlag, Mahler revealed his mixed feelings about his latest effort: After a performance of Don Giovanni with Italian artists, among whom only Bonci (Ottavio) and Sembrich (Zerlina) would be familiar names to you, I thought of you and deeply regretted not having the true companion of my Mozart experiences with me. And despite the fact that all the singing was virtually unsurpassable, I yearned for my Vienna production. I believe Mozart would have preferred it as well. If I were young and still had the energy I squandered for ten years in Vienna, something which floated before our eyes as an ideal in Vienna could perhaps happen here: the elimination of all commercial motivations. Unfortunately, at the beginning of 1908 the Metropolitan Opera was fighting against the serious competition of the Manhattan Opera, which at this time had played one of its trump cards, the bel canto nightingale Luisa Tetrazzini. She made her debut there on 15 January, and proceeded to explore the seemingly limitless potential of her voice in a series of virtuoso roles: Lucia, Gilda in Rigoletto, and Rosina in Il barbiere. The interest of the more sophisticated, on the other hand, was drawn to Mary Garden’s exploits in Thaı¨s and Louise, soon to be followed by Pelle´as et Me´lisande (19 February). According to Alma, during this first New York season the couple’s mood was anything but serene: It might have been so beautiful, but we were shattered by the death of the child. Mahler lay in bed for half a day at a time, to conserve his strength; the child’s name was not allowed to be mentioned. Sometimes, after sleeplessly walking to and fro the whole night, I would sit on the top of the stairs on the eleventh floor just to hear the sound of a human voice below. Mahler and I were, for the time being, strangers to each other, estranged by suffering. Without knowing it, he blamed me for the death of the child. Furthermore he now knew that he himself was ill, and everything else became unreal for him. He was nervous, irascible, irritable, and that winter was a sad one for me—certainly for us both. The saddest evening of all was Christmas Eve, the first one without children290 and

288 AMM1, 168; AMM2, 162. 289 Cast for the premie`re of Don Giovanni on 23 Jan. 1908: Emma Eames (Donna Anna, replaced by Marion Weed in Philadelphia on 18 Feb.); Johanna Gadski (Elvira, replaced by Rita Fornia in Phila- delphia, and on 3 and 9 Apr. in New York); Marcella Sembrich (Zerlina, replaced by Geraldine Farrar on 12 Feb. and 3 and 9 Apr. in New York, and 18 Feb. in Philadelphia); Alessandro Bonci (Ottavio); Antonio Scotti (Don Giovanni); Euge`ne Dufriche (Masetto, replaced by Raphael Barocchi on 12 Feb., 3 and 9 Apr. in New York, and on 18 Feb. in Philadelphia); Fedor Chaliapine (Leporello, replaced by Robert Blass on 3 and 9 Apr.); Robert Blass (Commendatore, replaced by Adolf Mu¨hlmann on 3 and 9 Apr.). With so many changes of cast and replacements, it is easy to understand why Mahler had found conditions at the Met under Conried’s directorship so unsatisfactory. 290 Gucki had remained in Vienna, in the care of her grandparents. January–February 1908 91 abroad. Mahler did not want to be reminded that it was Christmas, and I was alone and forlorn and cried without stopping the whole day long. Towards evening, someone knocked on the door, and Baumfeld291 (that good Schlemihl, with his ide´e fixe of a German theatre in New York)292 came in. He saw the truth on my tear-stained face and insisted that we both go with him where we could see a Christmas tree, children, and friendly faces, freeing us from ourselves. A few actors and actresses, arriving after dinner, chased us away, for one of them, a depraved female, was called ‘Putzi’ and reminded us of our pain.293 Sometimes we accepted a dinner invitation. The first was from Mr. Boas,294 the American director of the Hamburg-America line. Still unaccustomed to the colossal [dimensions of the] city, I had left the invitation at home, and instead of the number 72, I had 27th Avenue in my head, making us an hour late.295 The hostess was beside herself. Finally we sat down to dinner. Suddenly Mahler, who was sitting opposite me, to the right of the hostess, raised his voice, and the silent guests heard the following: ‘What are you saying? That Wagner was ungrateful to Liszt? That he had a bad temper? And you? What is Tristan to you?’ Anxiously, Frau Boas tried to soothe him by explaining that she could never sleep after a performance of Tristan. To which Mahler replied, ‘And you dare to apply some sort of yardstick to Wagner’s character, to measure him according to Philistine standards!’ Frau Boas was struck dumb. Everyone was silent, and rose from the table. One of the guests, who had not followed the conversation, came up to me and asked innocently: ‘Does your husband always make scenes at dinner?’296 Yet the article which the Sun published after Mahler’s death claims that his patience in New York was in marked contrast to his demeanour in Vienna, where he had been known to rise from the table, take a book, and retire to his room. But, as always, he ‘preferred the society of a few intimate friends and his wife’. The same article also describes how, at the Hotel Majestic, all telephonic communication between the reception and the apartment was cut off and callers had to wait until the bellboys had taken the cards up and come downstairs again before they knew if they were to be received. The great man had installed a dining table in a corner of his reception room. This is where he took most of his meals with his wife. Time permitting, he spent as much as possible of every morning in bed. Often, after

291 Maurice Baumfeld (1868–1913), born in Vienna, studied there at the Theresianum and the University of Law and Commerce. Secretary of the Bohemian Railway Company until 1890, he became the theatre critic of the Handelszeitung and the Neue freie Presse. After emigrating to New York in 1900, he became the music critic of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and the correspondent of several German and Austrian periodicals. He worked at the Irving Place Theater (previously managed by Conried) for several years and became its director in 1911. 292 In fact, several German theatres were already flourishing in New York. 293 Alma’s description of this Christmas is somewhat different in AML. ‘Gustav Mahler did not understand my uncontrollable tears that first Christmas in New York without my two children in 1907. Maria was dead and Anna with my mother. I did not buy or decorate a tree and forbade myself any presents.’ (AML 60.) 294 AMS. AMM only provides the initial B. Emil Leopold Boas (1845–19??), born in Go¨rlitz in Germany, settled in the United States in 1873, and married Harriet H. Sternfeld in 1888. In 1892 he was appointed director of the Hamburg-America line for the United States. His address was 128 West 74th Street, in the new neighbourhood of New York then being built near Riverside Drive and the Hudson River. 295 In fact, Boas lived on 74th Street, which Alma probably mistook for 47th Street. 296 AMM1, 159; AMM2, 159. 92 Gustav Mahler breakfast, he arose and put on a suit of flannel pyjamas and went back to bed with a board in front of him which he used for work and composition.297 To the members of his family in Vienna, Mahler reported on his daily life and described the care he was taking to observe his doctor’s orders. He wrote the following letter to Carl Moll: My dear Karl, my conscience reminds me daily that I have not yet replied [to your letter]—but you will understand when I tell you that I really have no time here; for I spend the whole time lazing around. That is a job that goes on and on. My work programme is amazingly simple. When I get up I have breakfast. Then, for a while, I feel some pangs of conscience—depending on the weather. Then I do a full stint of being lazy. Then comes lunch. After this I am under doctor’s orders to rest for a few hours. When I get up it’s tea-time. From then on until dinner I would in theory have some time at my disposal. But being lazy is a difficult habit to break. Oh, it just occurs to me, I do now and again conduct and hold rehearsals.298 In a letter to Countess Wydenbruck, Mahler adds: ‘I am very well, but I prefer to go for a walk lying down. Only when I think of Vienna do I become somewhat elegiac.’299 In another letter, to Zemlinsky, he describes his daily routine in similar terms: I really live from day to day, conduct, rehearse, dine, go for walks, just as the programme dictates which my wife keeps with her. I am not exerting myself at all, I am doing very little, and yet have never had so little time as now. You will know this from your own experience.300 Reports of Mahler’s new found calm and patience are occasionally contra- dicted by some witness who found him as irritable as ever. The anonymous author of the Sun article (quoted above) written after his death describes his nervous tics as ‘very difficult to tolerate’, for instance ‘his habit of suddenly tapping his feet on the floor two or three times vigorously’. One of the directors of the Hotel Majestic recalled the following incident: Mahler had a heart of gold and a childlike character, but he could also be uncouth. At such times, he didn’t mince words, and the slightest disturbance in his work reduced him to despair. Thus, for example, nothing made him lose his composure more quickly than the sound of his electric door bell, which the hotel management had strictly forbidden

297 New York Sun, 29 May 1911. During the winter of 1907–8, Mahler was undoubtedly engaged upon the revision of the score of the Seventh Symphony, the premie`re of which was scheduled for the autumn, along with the usual annotation of the scores of those works he was going to conduct at the Opera. 298 Letter to Carl Moll dated Sun. 16 Feb. 1908, Pierpont Morgan Library. 299 Unpublished letter to Countess Wydenbruck, postmarked 4 Jan. 1908 (BGM, Paris). Most of the text is by Alma, who writes: ‘We like it here enormously. On the 1st Tristan had an unprecedented success, now comes Don Giovanni. We already know quite a number of kind and intelligent (lieber und gescheiter) people and will soon have a larger circle here than in Vienna. The singers here are a pure joy. What voices! Our dear Selma [Kurz] would not shine here as she does in Vienna!’ 300 MBR1, no. 401; MBR2, no. 389, undated. This letter was sent to Zemlinsky from Philadelphia, where Mahler spent 18 Jan., 11, 18, and 24 Feb., and 24 Mar. 1908. Mahler expressed his disappointment that Weingartner had abandoned the project of staging Die Traumgo¨ rge. January–February 1908 93 the employees to ring! But then one morning, as Mahler sat as usual at his desk in his nightshirt, a new employee, who was unaware of this standing order and had letters for Mahler, rang. He jumped up from his seat as if stung by a wasp and bolted into the hall, still clad only in his nightshirt, his fists clenched and gnashing his teeth, crying: ‘You miserable wretch—if I get hold of you!’ He didn’t catch him: the unsuspecting employee dashed downstairs as though he were pursued by the Furies, exclaiming in the kitchen that a man upstairs had gone crazy.301 The same hotel manager, Otto Wantuch, reports that one winter afternoon a young man managed to gain access to Mahler’s rooms and asked to play him his latest opera, a work peopled by ‘supermen’. With exemplary patience Mahler sat him down at the piano, but as the composer presented his score and characters he grew increasingly nervous. Finally, just as the principal leitmotif was about to repeat itself, Mahler touched him on the shoulder, and said ‘Such a superhuman work demands superhuman ears.’ He then left the room. Wantuch also recalls an example of Mahler’s absent-mindedness: once he stayed on the subway until 140th Street instead of getting off at 72nd Street. Finally, he describes Mahler in one of his depressed moods, caused by working conditions at the Met. Alma must have often witnessed such moods, although she seldom comments on them. Once, though, returning to the hotel in the evening after a rehearsal of Fidelio, she recalled him saying, just as he was about to take a piece of bread and butter from the table: ‘This is hard-earned bread. How I envy the worker who can eat it with greater satisfaction than I!’ Alma, it seems, tried to hearten him by suggesting that the situation would surely improve.302 Fortunately, as Alma herself acknowledges, the depressed mood of those first weeks, when Mahler spent half the day in bed, even taking some of his meals there, gradually improved.303 First and foremost, the disturbing memories of Putzi still lingered powerfully in both parents’ minds, and would continue to do so. All in all, Mahler was able to adapt to working conditions at the Met since he accepted that there were limits to what he could change, at least for the moment. Thus he resolved to ‘make do’. His purpose now was gradually to educate the American public. Sometimes mistakes due to routine and lack of culture even amused rather than annoyed him: ‘his attitude to the world and indeed to everything had changed. The death of his child; his own suffering. Everything else lost some of its importance by comparison.’304 Alma, in truth, thrived when entertaining friends and acquaintances, and she found it difficult to accept the secluded life which Mahler’s physical and mental condition presently seemed to impose on her: One morning, I could not get up. Mahler called a doctor, he came, called another, and both of them diagnosed cardiac weakness and nervous collapse and thus prescribed a four-week rest cure. I took strychnine, was forbidden to move, and finally, finally, could

301 Otto Wantuch, ‘Gustav Mahler als Mensch’, New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, 7 June 1911. 302 Ibid. 303 AMM1, 173; AMM2, 166. 304 AMM1, 163; AMM2, 165. 94 Gustav Mahler yield to my sorrow and physical exhaustion. Mahler immediately felt his own suffering less—and turned all his thoughts to my recovery. In fact, as her long life proves, Alma’s heart was extremely robust, and once again her malaise was undoubtedly of psychosomatic origin. Gabrilowitch’s declaration of love in Paris305 had certainly shaken her, but she does not mention it as a cause of her depressed moods at the beginning of 1908. On the other hand, her cloistered life in New York was against her nature. Moreover, as we shall see later on, Alma was certainly pregnant in 1909, but miscarried, either intention- ally or unintentionally. It also seems as if she expected a child at the beginning of 1908, but lost it prematurely. This is implied in the following passage of a letter Mahler wrote to Carl Moll in 1909: ‘Alma is very well. She herself must have written about her condition. She is relieved of her burden. But this time she herself regrets it.’306 Two incidents, one comic and one tragic, epitomize their secluded life during those early weeks. Both took place in Central Park West, which ran below their hotel windows. Once, while Mahler was at work in his room, Alma suddenly heard some music down below in the street: it was an organ-grinder with an old Italian hurdy-gurdy. Knowing Mahler’s allergy to any kind of noise which interfered with his work, she called the receptionist and asked him to give the old man a few coins and tell him to play elsewhere. All was quiet, when Mahler suddenly burst out of his room, exclaiming: ‘Just think! There was such a lovely barrel-organ playing, it took me back to my childhood, and suddenly it’s gone! What a shame!’307 In the second incident, Alma was with her new Viennese artist friend Maria Uchatius,308 with whom she spent much time during those lonely days of 1908 in her room at the Hotel Majestic: Suddenly, in the wide street bordering Central Park, noise and tumult. Leaning out of the window, we saw a big crowd of men. A funeral—the procession was approaching. We realised that it was a fireman who had met his death fighting a conflagration, as we knew from the newspapers.309 The procession came to a standstill. The chief stepped forward and gave a brief speech—from the eleventh floor, we guessed rather than heard that he was speaking. A brief pause, then a single blow on the crepe-covered drum. A moment of silence, and the procession went on. It was over.

305 See above, Vol. iii, Chap. 10, 795. 306 MBR2, 357, no. 409: hitherto unpublished postscript to a letter written by Mahler to Carl Moll on 10 Mar. 1909. 307 AMM1, 171; AMM2, 164. 308 Maria (von) Uchatius (1882–1958) was a student of painting and art history, and formerly Roller’s pupil at the Kunstgewerbeschule. She is mentioned in two of the letters Mahler sent to Roller in February 1908 (MBR1, no. 385; MBR2, no. 381 and 384). 309 On 16 Feb. 1908 the funeral was that of a high-ranking deputy chief fireman named Charles W. Kruger (1851–1908), which explains why the procession along Central Park West was in the thousands (25,000 are mentioned in the Times front-page article), while other thousands swarmed the sidewalks of 57th Street, Columbus Circle, and Central Park West. Kruger had died at 217 Canal Street at 1 a.m. after thirty-six years of service—not from fire, smoke or building collapse, but because he weighed 300 pounds, was carrying a backload of equipment, and drowned in a basement that had become filled with water from the hoses. January–February 1908 95 This strange funeral ceremony moved us to tears. Anxiously, I glanced over to Mahler’s window. He too was leaning out, and his face was streaming with tears. The scene made such an impression on him that he used the same short drumbeat in the Tenth Symphony.310 The story of the death of the 57-year-old fireman was told at length on the front page of the New York Times issue of 15 February 1908. Known for his bravery, Deputy Fire Chief Charles W. Kruger had earned himself the nick- name of ‘Big Hearted Charlie’ and had done thirty-six years of loyal service at the time of his death. At 217 Canal Street, in the furniture district of the city known as the most dangerous one because the buildings were full of inflammable material, a mirror and picture-frame factory was ablaze from top to bottom when the firemen arrived. ‘A steady volume of smoke’ poured out of the next building and hampered the firemen working on ladders, ‘frequently sending them dizzy- headed to the ground’. The Deputy Chief searched ‘for a quicker and safer way to down the fire’, and plunged into the dark cellar of the next house, from which most of the smoke emerged, ‘swinging a lantern with him’. Too late, he realized that the whole basement was filled with water from the hoses. The fireman’s driver, who was following, heard a splash and saw the lantern vanish. A moment later the chief’s hand grabbed his foot: he had ‘plunged in a stone cellar filled with eight feet of water, with slimy walls and no ladder or steps to the floor above’. The driver called for help and three men came to the rescue, but the smoke and gas weakened their efforts, the chief weighed nearly 300 pounds with his fire fighting equipment, and before they were able to fasten a rope around his body he whispered ‘I’m going, boys!’, ‘splashed back into the pit and was gone’. The funeral of Deputy Fire Chief Kruger was again described in detail on the front page of the Times on 17 February. A brigade of 100 firemen had marched to the dead fireman’s home, 226 East 58th Street, at 1 o’clock, and thousands of people crowded the streets as the funeral procession approached St Thomas’s church, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, where it was met by representatives of all the departments of the city government. The church had been ‘filled to the last inch of standing room with mourners from every sphere of society’. In Bishop Henry C. Potter’s eulogy, Kruger’s ‘cool bravery and fear- lessness, his unostentatious heroism’ were compared to those of the ‘knights of olden times’. The bishop opened a subscription for a monument to the dead fireman, whose bravery he summarized with the motto that had been his when he led his men in action: ‘ ‘‘Come, boys’’, never ‘‘Go, boys’’ ’. After the service the coffin—on

310 AMM1, 170; AMM2, 164. Alma told Ludwig Karpath that Mahler first thought of ending the second Scherzo of the Tenth with a ringing sound—more like a clash of cymbals (Neue freie Presse, 13 Dec. 1923). Mahler’s long letter to Carl Moll, quoted above, was apparently written on the day of the burial. Stuart Feder establishes a link between the muffled drum heard during the fireman’s funeral and the hammer- blows in the Sixth Symphony. Both, to his mind, show how closely linked Mahler’s life was to his music. This might be one of the reasons why he now ‘eschewed written programmes’ for his works, because he had ‘long since taken himself as the subject of his symphonies’. As another example of his ‘superstitious’ fear of death, Feder recalls Mahler’s fear of naming any of his new works ‘Ninth Symphony’ FGM, 158). 96 Gustav Mahler which lay only a simple wreath and the fireman’s cap—was carried out to the hearse to the sound of Chopin’s Funeral March. ‘Two troops of mounted police in squadron formation’ led the way north, on Fifth Avenue, then east along 57th Street, followed by the band of the Police Department and the entire first and second battalions in uniform. The corte`ge marched on to Broadway, and turned north towards Columbus Circle where swarms of onlookers were assembled. It moved on along Central Park West, between throngs of bare-headed people crowding the sidewalks. At 71st Street, a brief ceremony took place below Mahler and Alma’s windows, ending the funeral proper. From there on, only cars and carriages accompanied the deceased to his grave, along with two electric trucks that were draped in black and transported great masses of flowers. Obviously the fireman’s funeral had reopened Mahler’s still unhealed wounds and reawakened the obsessive sense of loss which had never left him since the preceding summer. However, he must have realized that, whatever his own grief, he should no longer keep his young wife away from the pleasures she enjoyed most, those of meeting and enjoying the company of new people. Among the friends they quite soon made in New York were Karl Bitter,311 an Austrian sculptor who had emigrated to the United States some twenty years earlier, became successful, and received many commissions there; the young German conductor Kurt Schindler,312 Alfred Hertz’s assistant at the Met, who helped and advised Mahler and Alma on all things American; Alexander Lam- bert, the pianist and pedagogue;313 and Ernest Schelling, the composer, pianist,

311 Karl (Theodor Francis) Bitter (1867–1915), born in Vienna and a student at the Fine Arts Academy there, emigrated to the United States in 1889 to avoid the Austrian draft. The sculptures which he exhibited at the Chicago Exposition in 1893 brought him several commissions for decorative bas-reliefs which won prizes at the Buffalo Pan-American Exhibition (1901), Philadelphia Exhibition, and St Louis World’s Fair (1904). After the 1902 Exhibition in Philadelphia he became the curator of sculpture at the same city’s Museum. His many works included commissions for the homes of C. P. Huntington and Cornelius Vanderbilt, and friezes for the Philadelphia railway station. On 3 Mar. 1908 Mahler and Alma sent Anna Moll a card, which was also signed by Bitter and an artist couple named Schwill. 312 Kurt Schindler (1882–1935) was born in Berlin, where he was the pupil of Konrad Ansorge and Friedrich Gernsheim. After studying at the University of Berlin, and in Munich where he was a pupil of Ludwig Thuille, he was named conductor at the Stuttgart Opera and the Wu¨rzburg Theatre. Hired by Conried for the Metropolitan in 1905, he remained there until 1908, when he became a reader for the music publishing firm G. Schirmer. In 1909 he founded the MacDowell Choir, which was renamed the Schola Cantorum in 1912, and performed little-known works of early music and also first performances. He wrote many choral arrangements of Spanish, Italian, and Russian popular music. He became the official organist of the Temple Emanu-El in New York and at the end of his life was named Head of the Music Department at Bennington College. Schindler wrote some twenty-odd works for solo voice and for chorus and compiled anthologies of choral music. A few months after Mahler’s death, Alma wrote him a few short undated notes. One of them concerns a song of his which the young man had sent her, together with a score by Debussy. Another one is an invitation to ‘dinner, after which music will be played’ (BGM, Paris). 313 Alexander Lambert (1862–1929), born in Warsaw, studied the piano with his father and later with Julius Epstein at the Vienna Conservatory, where Mahler might well have met him. After working with Liszt in Weimar, he moved to New York in 1884 and became director of the New York College of Music (1887–1905). He was the author of several works for piano and of an important teaching manual. In MFM, Lambert pays tribute to ‘a great musician who loved his art above all else, worked in the cause of it unselfishly, often against his own interest, and, I may say, sacrificed his life for it!’ January–February 1908 97 and conductor.314 Then there was the Crosby family,315 and also Ruth Dana Draper, talented musician and close friend of Mary Sheldon, who was the wife of William Henry Draper, a professor of dermatology.316 This couple’s daughter and grandson later became famous, Ruth Draper as an actress and Paul Draper as a dancer.317 Among the closest and most faithful friends that Mahler and Alma made during their first American visit was Joseph Fraenkel, a neurologist from Vienna318 who made a powerful impression on them both, as Alma relates: This genius of a man and a doctor, with whom we both fell in love the first time we met him, became our friend. He was the most brilliant improviser—with dazzling humour, boundlessly daring flights of thought, perhaps somewhat splenetic but always original. Thus, for example, he once said: ‘I divide men into two categories: those with whom I live and those from whom I live.’ Or: ‘Prometheus didn’t give man fire so that he could strike it on matches.’ He so impressed us with his theory on the ear that afterwards we couldn’t look at a man without noticing the shape of his ears. Pursuing the path of Lavater’s Physiological Fragments for the Advancement of Human Knowledge and Brotherhood,319 he came to the most surprising result. He said that since all the parts of the face except the ears were subject to control, the ears alone revealed the naked truth. Mahler fell ever more

314 (Henry) Ernest Schelling (1876–1939), born in Belvedere, NJ, began his career as a piano child prodigy, playing in a concert in Philadelphia at the age of 4. Pupil of George Mathias (himself a pupil of Chopin) and Moritz Moszkowski in Paris, Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna, Hans Huber, and Paderewski in Switzerland (1898–1902), he toured Europe and South America extensively before returning to the United States in 1905, where he concentrated on composing and conducting. In 1924 he founded the Young People’s Concerts in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, etc. Conductor of the Baltimore Orchestra for three years, he also composed a number of symphonic works and concertos. Mahler mentions Schelling in a letter to Mengelberg written in Feb. 1908 (MBR1, no. 373; MBR2, no. 383). His first wife was Lucie How Draper. Mrs Janos Scholtz, his second wife, once informed this author that she owned a copy of Orlik’s engraving of Mahler dated Christmas 1908 and bearing the inscription: ‘To my dear and honoured friends Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Schelling’. Schelling had played Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto in one of the concerts Mahler conducted in St Petersburg on 18 Mar. 1902 (Western calendar). See below Chap. 4 for his tribute to Mahler in MFM. 315 Alma speaks of ‘beautiful [Mrs.] Crosby’ (AMM1, 109 and AMM2, 195) in a passage concerning the year 1910, but AMS already mentions the family in 1908. 316 William Henry Draper (1830–1901), born in Brattleborough, Vt., became Professor of Clinical Medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. His second wife, Ruth Dana Draper (1850–1913), shared her husband’s passion for music and was, like him, an amateur pianist. Their home in New York, 18 West 8th Street, was a meeting-place for artists. A friend of Paderewski, she greatly helped his career in the United States. With Mrs George Sheldon and Mrs Samuel Untermyer, she was one of the three founding members of the committee which reorganized the New York Philharmonic in 1909, with Mahler as conductor (see Dorothy Warren, The World of Ruth Draper: A Portrait of an Actress (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 1999), 11 ff.). 317 In MFM, Ruth Dana Draper’s son, Paul, pays tribute to the composer of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and the Kindertotenlieder. In his estimation, ‘the quality of appreciation in the country [the United States] is in such an embryonic state that this man and his work have passed by with little heed. Like every man of genius, [he] was in his lifetime beset by detractors.’ 318 Joseph Fraenkel (1867–1920) obtained his medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1889 and emigrated to the United States in 1893. Director of the Montefiore Hospital and professor of medicine at Cornell University, he lived at 101 East. 94th Street in New York. He visited Alma and Mahler in Toblach in 1909, and died in New York on 25 Apr. 1920. 319 Johann Casper Lavater (1741–1801), Zurich pastor and metaphysician, between 1775 and 1778 wrote a work simply entitled Physiognomische Fragmente. It brought him posthumous celebrity, although he had written many other books. 98 Gustav Mahler under his spell, and would have done anything Fraenkel ordered him to do without question.320 Mahler’s friendship with Fraenkel was once again expressing a familiar aspect of his personality: his passionate interest in the natural sciences and hence his keenness to discuss them with scientists. Furthermore, his health now required regular medical attention, and the vigilance and care with which Fraenkel looked after him demonstrated his generosity and the affection in which he held Mahler. In Mein Leben Alma tells the interesting story of Fraenkel’s life up to his meeting with the Mahlers in New York. Born into a Viennese Jewish family, he had studied medicine and planned to become a military doctor. In order to be enrolled in the army he needed to convert to Catholicism, and was about to do so when he turned back at the church door and decided to emigrate. In 1893 he left for the United States with only a small sum of money, a sum which he had nearly spent by the time he reached Hamburg. There he found he still had just enough left to pay for his passage on a German ship, in steerage. On board the liner he made the acquaintance of an elegant lady travelling in luxury class. Impressed by his fiery eyes, she immediately arranged for handsome meals to be sent to him from the first-class kitchen. Upon landing in New York,Fraenkel fell victim to a swindler who promised him board and lodging for a week in exchange for his gold watch. In fact, the lodging in question was only a closet in a rooming house, and the ‘bed’ consisted of the floorboards. In those austere conditions Fraenkel contracted typhus, and he lingered between life and death for some time before making a gradual recovery. For several weeks after that, Fraenkel survived by doing small jobs such as selling newspapers and washing dishes, while reading medical journals in a Jewish cafe´. Once, he was called upon to take care of an old Jew whose abscess he opened with a pair of rusty scissors. The operation succeeded but Fraenkel refused any money for it ‘because it had brought him his first pleasure in many months’. As a result he became the most popular doctor in the poorest section of the ghetto, and was soon called upon to treat some well-to-do Jews such as the Otto Kahn associate, banker Jacob H. Schiff, who in turn offered him a job at the Montefiore Hospital. By the time he met Mahler and Alma, Fraenkel had become its director and one of New York’s most esteemed doctors, though he had not stopped caring for the poor free of charge. Also, he was now president of the American Neurological Society and other important associations.321 By the time the Mahlers arrived in New York he had become a fashionable doctor, not only of Jewish patriarchs such as Kahn and Schiff, but also of many scions of New York and Newport high society, such as the Vanderbilts and the Astors.

320 AMM1, 172; AMM2, 166. In the letter to Carl Moll mentioned above (MBR, no. 356, 10 Mar.) Mahler calls Fraenkel ‘ein genialer Diagnostiker’ and forwards his prescription for Anna Moll’s kidney and heart trouble. He copied the diet himself, and with scrupulous care. 321 AML, 50 ff. Some time after Mahler’s death, Fraenkel went to Vienna to demand Alma’s hand in marriage, but she had already met Kokoschka and their stormy affair was under way. She refused Fraenkel’s proposal, and he later married the Polish singer Ganna Walska. He died at the age of 53 of an intestinal disease, probably cancer. January–February 1908 99 Joseph Fraenkel was to become a major figure in Gustav and Alma Mahler’s life in New York—he became, so to speak, their house doctor—and much later on he would take care of Mahler during the first weeks of his fatal illness. However, Alma’s portrayal, quoted above, is a brief summary of Fraenkel’s romantic past more than a sketch of his character and personality. Luckily, the autobiography of another famous beauty, Ganna Walska, to whom Fraenkel was married during the last three years of his life, contains a fuller portrayal of this interesting and unusual man.322 She describes Fraenkel as an eccentric but highly talented physician—far more intuitive than scientific in his practice— who was fascinated by the supernatural. Like Alma, Walska had a powerful sense of the dramatic, and also a fertile imagination. Thus, as she recounts her first encounter with him, she describes a figure akin to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Doctor Miracle, part magician, part clairvoyant, and part genuine physician. Otto Kahn had spoken about him as ‘the only man able to help any difficult, hopeless or helpless case’, and had added: ‘He is no ordinary practitioner. He is an artist, a poet, a great man, a genius!’ At this time Fraenkel lived on East 66th Street, and Walska was ushered into his presence after climbing a ‘mysterious spiral staircase’ from which she emerged into ‘a beautiful if dark library full of bookcases with the effigies of wise thinkers everywhere’. Fraenkel came towards her immediately, ‘a long- haired, extremely artistic-looking man, rather small in stature—as great men often are’. His face reminded her of Lincoln’s, as he stared at her ‘very strangely indeed’ through ‘enormous tortoise-shell glasses’ and addressed her in a deep voice: ‘What can I do for you, my child?’ Walska started telling him the story of her throat ailments, but he soon interrupted her: he was not interested in the curriculum vitae of her throat and didn’t even need to look at it before writing his prescription. Walska was shocked that he wouldn’t bother to examine her, but he claimed to have known what the matter was the moment she had walked into the room. Furthermore, he considered all surgical operations ‘criminal’ and believed that ‘if Nature gave us certain organs it was not for the purpose of having them taken away’.323 And he felt that some other doctor would surely have recommended an operation.

322 Ganna Walska (1887–1984), a famous beauty and adventuress, was born more prosaically Hanna Puacz in Brest-Litovsk, in Russian-occupied Poland. In 1907 she married a tubercular Russian nobleman, Baron Arcadie d’Eingorn, whom she left in order to study singing in Paris and New York. After Fraenkel died in 1920 she spent the next ten years in futile attempts to build a singing career which she finally had to give up. By then she had already embarked on a far more successful career as a femme fatale and collector of rich husbands. The first was Alexander Cochran, the heir to a carpet manufacturing firm, whom she divorced after two years to marry Harold Fowler McCormick, the president of International Harvester. He bought her the magnificent The´aˆtre des Champs Elyse´es, which she subsidized and ran as a music centre for several years with the French conductor Walther Straram (1876–1933), who became her mentor. The whole undertaking collapsed in 1931, when McCormick divorced her. Her next husband, in 1937, was the physicist Harry Grindell Matthews. Having no doubt amassed enough wealth during the war, she moved to California with her last husband, who posed as a guru but turned out to be a liar and a fake. She ended her life in a large property near Santa Barbara, transforming her garden into a unique botanical wonderland which is today one of the town’s most popular landmarks. 323 Fraenkel was probably a victim of his own aversion to operations. Walska describes the excruciating pain he suffered from the mysterious stomach illness which finally killed him. 100 Gustav Mahler A few minutes later, while writing his prescription, he opened a drawer and produced the large picture of a handsome woman, which he handed to her with trembling hands and then took back ‘quite roughly’. Suddenly, Walska’s name, which he asked for, set his memory in motion: he opened another drawer and handed her a piece of paper on which the following sentence was to be read in a shaky handwriting: ‘Don’t have anything to do with that Walska woman.’ Having reached this point in her memoirs, it must be obvious to any reader that nothing logical or banal could ever have happened to this lady. One is not too surprised to learn that Walska much later on found out that the shaky handwriting was that of a woman whose life Fraenkel had once saved, and that the striking words had been written during a ‘mediumistic’ se´ance, organized as an ‘after-dinner enter- tainment’. Mediums and their mysterious and fascinating activities were then much in fashion in New York, as will soon be confirmed by an account of the strange evening to which Otto Kahn’s guests were treated in the presence of the most famous medium of their time, Eusapia Palladino. Fraenkel’s slip of paper with the warning was apparently all that was required to convince Walska that she was to marry the doctor, which is exactly what happened only ten days later, in September 1916.324 It is all very odd, very obscure, and tortuous, although Walska’s narration is written in a matter-of-fact tone. As will be mentioned later, Fraenkel discreetly courted Alma during her last winter in New York, and asked for her hand in marriage after Mahler’s death, but he was turned down.325 The picture the Doctor had shown me was that of Frau Gustav Mahler, widow of the famous Viennese composer who had directed the destiny of the New York Philharmonic. . . . After Gustav Mahler’s death, Frau Mahler had accepted Dr. Fraenkel’s proposal of marriage, but taking advantage of a woman’s privilege had later changed her mind and married a Viennese architect. Walska’s story of course anticipates events which took place several years after their first meeting. However it is told here because it displays much about Fraenkel’s character, his fascination with occultism, and his no doubt uncanny talent for diagnosing patients’ illnesses or ailments. Its conclusion is dramatic: the letter in which Alma had ‘broken off her engagement’ to Fraenkel arrived in New York after his death; and he had shown Alma’s picture to Walska because he thought she looked like her.326 Fraenkel’s meeting with the Mahlers took place at the home of the New York banker Otto Kahn. Since Conried’s appointment in 1903, Kahn had assumed a

324 Actually, Walska had just arrived in New York when she met Fraenkel and she well knew that, as his wife, she would meet many members of New York’s upper class. Her marriage to him was indeed the first step in an adventurous life. 325 Fraenkel is mentioned in a letter from Alma to Gropius: she confesses that he is courting her (see below Chap. 9). 326 See Ganna Walska, Always a Room at the Top (Richard Smith, New York, 1943), 19 ff. The book is illustrated with the author’s ‘favourite picture’, in which she looks just as formidable as the mature Alma, but doesn’t much resemble her. The two sirens, the fortune-hunter and the self-appointed muse to great artists, met a few years later in Venice and formed a strange kind of alliance, a fictitious ‘sisterhood’. It seems to have lasted for quite a long time, although (or because) they very seldom met. January–February 1908 101 leading role in the management of the Metropolitan Opera, as a member of both the Metropolitan Real Estate Company and the Conried Metropolitan Company. When the Metropolitan Grand Opera Company took over in 1908, Kahn was appointed president, and his role grew in importance because the new company was now to engage the next director and accept his selection of new productions. Thus Kahn held the future of the Met in his hands. Born in in 1867, the son of a banker, Otto Hermann Kahn had left Germany for London when he was 18 years old and had been appointed assistant director of the English branch of the . In 1893 he went to New York,where he became director of the branch office of the Bank Speyer. In 1896, through his marriage to Addie Wolf, he was named co-director of the firm Kuhn, Loeb and Co., which he made into the second biggest private banking house in the States. Endowed with a combination of instinct, tenacity, and daring, he built up a gigantic financial empire, in large part through the reorganization of several railroad companies. Unlike most Wall Street financiers, Kahn—even as a child—showed a strong interest in, and even a talent for, the arts. He had studied the piano in his youth, and later became an opera fan with a particular affinity for Wagner. He also loved literature and the theatre,327 and was a bon vivant and a liberal with modern ideas. A man of small stature who always dressed impeccably, he was now 40 years old; and although he was the president of the English Speaking Union, he still spoke with a thick German accent. His 68th Street house harboured an impressive art collection, especially strong in Italian masters. But opera was his main passion, and he was about to devote a huge amount of time, energy, and money to the Met, and allegedly contribute more than $100,000 a year to its finances. Yet, in keeping with the mentality of New York society at the time, as described earlier, he was excluded from the Diamond Horseshoe up to the First World War and was only able to acquire a box for himself after 1920. But by this time he had become a worshipper at St Thomas’s Episcopal Church.328 Having tried out all the different categories of seats, Otto Kahn was perfectly familiar with the Met’s auditorium and fully aware of all its shortcomings. The construction of a new theatre became one of his main aims, indeed an obsession. In the 1920s329 he spent enormous sums out of his own pocket towards that end, but this was of no avail in the face of the entrenched opposition from New York high society, and especially that of Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt III, ne´e Grace

327 Kahn had written plays in verse as a young man. During the 1920s he brought the actor , his friend, to New York, and also arranged visits by Max Reinhardt, the The´aˆtre de l’Ode´on, Stanislavski’s Moscow Theatre Company, Pavlova, and the Diaghilev ballet. He also supported Eugene O’Neill at the start of his career. Later on he built a palatial mansion at Cold Spring Harbor, , with a private golf course specially designed for him. (See Mary Jane Matz, The Many Lives of Otto Kahn (Macmillan, New York, 1963).) 328 Kahn was on the board of the Metropolitan Opera Company until his death in 1934. He also served as vice-president of the New York Philharmonic. 329 Otto Kahn even paid for a site between 56th and 57th Streets out of his own pocket. Following his failure to have a new theatre built on it, he retired from the presidency of the Metropolitan Grand Opera Company, a position which he had occupied since 1918. 102 Gustav Mahler Wilson, who was greatly attached to the old house. Indeed, after Mrs Astor’s death in 1908 Mrs ‘Neely’ Vanderbilt could be seen presiding in her box at every gala premie`re until the 1950s.330 Apparently, she had ‘a flair for intrigue’ and ‘all the qualities that make a ruler’.331 But Kahn did succeed in changing the policy of the Metropolitan. As early as the summer of 1907 it had been reported in the press that Conried’s health might no longer allow him to cope with his responsibilities as manager. ‘I do not direct the Opera with my legs’, he was reported to have said,332 yet the strokes he had suffered had greatly affected him and it was obvious that, even if he were able to remain as manager until the end of the 1908–9 season, he would not be able to face another one. Thus the members of the Stockholders’ Committee were feverishly searching for a new manager. However, the problem was a larger one than simply finding another adequate candidate: the former Conried Metropolitan Opera Company had to be dissolved, and a new company, which would appoint the next incumbent, had to be formed. The stockholders soon decided that Conried would have to be replaced by an appointed director rather than by a mere concessionary.333 Kahn had suggested several possible candidates: Pierre Gailhard, the former director of the Paris Opera; Anton Fuchs, the famous Munich stage director; Jean de Reszke (but it was feared that he would pack the Met with his students); and the composer Andre´ Messager (considered by some to be ‘too French’). While prospecting in Europe for the new director, Kahn consulted Count San Martino,334 director of the Santa Cecilia Society in Rome, who strongly recommended Giulio Gatti- Casazza, the highly successful director of La Scala in Milan. When Gatti-Casazza received the offer, at the end of spring 1907, he hesitated before accepting, not least because he had just signed a new ten-year contract with La Scala, but his musical director, Arturo Toscanini, was beginning to tire of Milanese audi- ences and strongly advised him to accept. Thus Gatti-Casazza accepted the offer in principle,335 provided that his chief conductor, Arturo Toscanini,336 was

330 Once, shortly after the Second World War, the author—together with his mother Emily Sloane de La Grange—visited Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt’s palatial mansion on Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street. Emily Sloane had been particularly grateful to her for having facilitated her marriage to Amaury de La Grange, a marriage to which her father, Henry T. Sloane, had been hesitant in giving his consent. 331 Elizabeth Lehr, King Lehr and the Gilded Age (Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1935). 332 New Music Review, 6 (1907): 70, 631. 333 The Executive Board of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company nobly announced in the middle of February that ‘in the future the policy of the institution will be to give opera for art’s sake only and that all profits which may accrue from the undertaking will be devoted to a pension fund for the advancement of the opera house as an institution’. 334 See above, Vol. iii, Chap. 9. 335 In his memoirs, Gatti-Casazza relates that he received Kahn’s telegram during the opening of Franchetti’s opera Cristoforo Colombo, at the very moment when the chorus was singing ‘America, America!’ A few days later Rawlins Cottenet arrived in Milan to have him sign a three-year contract, revocable at the end of each season. See below, Chap. 3, Gatti-Casazza’s biography. The New York World of 5 Jan. 1908 already mentions Gatti as ‘the probable new head of the Metropolitan’. 336 Conried made an offer to Toscanini several months earlier, but Toscanini, knowing nothing about the Met and its director, had refused. At the time, he was slated to conduct Tristan (New York Sun,16 Mar. 1907). January–February 1908 103 engaged with him. When his condition was accepted he signed a three-year contract with Otto Kahn. A letter written by Mahler to Alfred Roller on 20 January 1908 shows that soon after Mahler arrived in New York Otto Kahn had sought his advice on the artistic future of the Metropolitan Opera. The letter indicates that, at that stage, Mahler still believed he would have some say in the way things would develop at the Met. He had accordingly conceived the idea of asking Roller to join him in New York. The text of the letter is as follows: I am writing in haste to inform you (quite officially) of the imminent visit of Herr Cottenet,337 one of the most influential members of the Directorate of the Metropolitan Opera, who is leaving for Italy on the boat tomorrow, from whence he will proceed to Vienna, arriving a few days or so after you receive this letter. His sole purpose in travelling to Vienna is to have a meeting with you, and possibly to hire you for the Opera here. Use the following as a guide: In general: As a consequence of the long- standing, total incompetence and crooked practices of the business and artistic stage management (directors, producers, designers, etc.) whose ranks are almost exclusively made up of immigrants, the situation of the institution is desolate. Yet although the public here and all the factors important for an artist—not least the Directors themselves (millionaires for the most part)—are misguided and spoilt but, in contrast to ‘our people’ in Vienna (in which I also include Messrs. the Aryans),338 they are not blase´, they are hungry for what is new, and to the highest degree, eager to learn. The situation here is as follows: Conried has, for a long time, ruined things with his bad management. He has become impossible, principally through unfair and inept behaviour. The Direct- ors (namely the millionaires’ committee) have given him notice. At the same time the idea arose of my taking his place—this long before I arrived. My great success (incom- prehensible to me) has apparently accelerated matters. As you can guess, I have most emphatically declined, but [I have] expressed willingness to help the gentlemen in some way or another on artistic matters and in any case to go on conducting and producing.— Unfortunately, under these circumstances, I have no say in shaping future developments. For the moment the gentlemen plan to engage the present manager of the Scala as manager of the Metropolitan Opera and to appoint the highly praised conductor Toscanini to be in charge of Italian Opera while German Opera will be, so to speak, handed over to me. But all this is for the future. On my part, I must wait and see how it all affects me. Now to the main business! I have demonstrated to the gentlemen in detail (actually to one of them, the principal339) that here, above all, it is the stage that needs a new master and that I only know one man capable, both personally and professionally, of pulling the cart out of the mud. At the same time necessity requires (and I am insisting on this) that the stage and everything connected with it must be handed over to this man lock, stock, and barrel—similar to what

337 Rawlins Lowndes Cottenet (1866–1951) was a member of New York society and was on the board of the Metropolitan from 1908 until 1950. The friend of many musicians (Hoffmann, Kreisler, Heifetz, etc.), he was also an amateur composer. 338 At the time, the term ‘Aryan’ (Indo-German) had no anti-Semitic connotations. Here, for Mahler, Jews and non-Jews in Vienna formed a single category (Unsere Leut’). Eithne Wilkins, Ernst Kaiser, and Bill Hopkins, the translators of the selection of Mahler’s letters published in English (Faber, London, 1979, 309), explain in a footnote that ‘unsere Leut’ was a term used by Jews in reference to other Jews. 339 Obviously Otto Kahn. 104 Gustav Mahler I always conceived your position to be in Vienna. There is much more one could write about. Personally, I must tell you that here you would find the richest resources and a most generous (noble) society—without intrigue—without petty officialdom. In short, the most splendid field of action that I could wish for you. If I could take over the direction—I wouldn’t be wasting words. But since you will be working with someone I know nothing about (the Italian from La Scala or whomever) I would advise you to be careful. Should it come to an official offer—which is not yet certain—you must, above all, ensure that you will be given total power and freedom of movement concerning everything to do with the stage. At least the kind of position you have in Vienna. Above all, you must insist on coming over as soon as possible to look at and get to know everything yourself while the season is in progress (the gentlemen will grant your every wish once you approach them in earnest). For your information, I must tell you that the season here lasts about five months leaving a seven month holiday which can partly be used for preparation. Last not least, I think you could demand $15,000 (75,000 marks). But to be on the safe side, hide behind your ignorance of conditions and ask for time to think things over. You might ask these gentlemen to conduct all these negotiations with me on your behalf since I am now thoroughly familiar with conditions here and also with your needs and demands. Con- cerning the $15,000—in case it comes up for discussion—don’t seem too decided. I am not yet quite sure, actually, how far we can go, as the kind of position you must ask for has not yet been created at this theatre. It would be best if you could arrange things so that negotiations on this point are left to me, giving as a reason that I alone am capable of paying due regard to both your interests and the situation over here....Seize the occasion, my dear friend, if it presents itself and nothing else detains you in Vienna. People here are unbelievably vigorous, and their coarseness and bad manners are child- hood diseases they will grow out of. The meanness and deceit come only from our dear immigrant compatriots. The dollar isn’t king here—it’s only easy to earn. Only one thing is respected here: know-how and determination (Ko¨nnen und Wollen)! Well, I hope that in this respect I have enlightened you. Everything here is generous (grosszu¨gig) and healthy—but spoiled by the immigrant gang. I am writing in a mad rush—it was only half an hour ago that I was authorised to write this letter and the ship leaves tomorrow morning. Be cold-blooded with Herr Cottenet. What works best with these people is what you possess to a high degree: firmness and calm without coldness. Your Mahler. I have forgotten something important. You are being portrayed in a nasty light here by certain obscure gentlemen who had suspected that I would put your name forward: you supposedly ‘lavish millions and there aren’t enough in New York for you’. I have explained to them that you lavish money in the right place and are therefore very economical. That seemed very plausible to the (very generous) committee men. But in your discussions, be sure to show your rational budgeting side. That will reassure them and make it all the easier for you to ask for what you need. Once more: nothing is settled yet. My refusal will perhaps create unforeseen circumstances. But in any case, before you commit yourself in Vienna, let me know first.340 Thus the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, through Otto Kahn, had in fact proposed the artistic direction of the Met to Mahler before turning to

340 MBR1, no. 391; MBR2, no. 379, dated 20 Jan. 1908. January–February 1908 105 Gatti-Casazza.341 However, the letter written by Eliot Gregory342 to James Hazen Hyde343 (both leading members of the Stockholders’ Committee), sheds a somewhat different light on the matter. It is dated 15 January 1908: We have been having a most exciting time here at the Opera. We made up our minds, as you know, that Conried would have to go, and the question of his successor remains a burning one. Then Mahler, the great German conductor, came to us and has been a great success. Kahn at once jumped at the idea of putting him at the head of the Opera. This we all sat on as we were anxious to work away from the German atmosphere and the Jew (Mahler is a J[ew]). To make a long story short, we have at last decided (only last evening) after a very hot sitting at [Robert] Goelet’s house. We take as impresario the man from the Scala Milan, Gatti Catrzzai [Casazza] and with him Toscanini as conductor of all French and Italian music. And Mahler for German Operas. Cottenet sails next week with the contracts for Italy and one of the Italians will return with him to take control here at the end of the season. This is Cottenet’s plan with Mahler added to please Kahn, and I am convinced an excellent one as it gives us the three greatest men in Europe for the three places. After long thought on the subject, [Edmund L.] Baylies and I gave up insisting on a Frenchman as everybody was against us and also because there seems to be no public for anything French here.344 We give only three operas in French, Faust, Carmen, and Rome´o. Toscanini and Mahler stand the undisputed heads of their class and with them we have what no Opera in the world has ever been able to afford before. Cattzztza (I never can spell that name) has been for ten years at the head of the Opera in Milan and has done great work there, both as stage manager but as an organizer of the first order. San Martino345 cannot say enough in his favor. You will I fear be disappointed but, with you away, it was impossible to work your plan.

341 Kolodin asserts that power would have been divided between Mahler and Dippel, and that in any case, given that both were of German origin, this solution would not have been unacceptable to the stockholders (Metropolitan, 196). 342 Eliot Gregory (1850–1915) was both a painter (specializing in portraits of prominent members of ‘high society’), and a writer. His essays, often dealing with French subjects, were regularly published in the Evening Post, and later appeared in book form. 343 At the age of 23, in 1899, James Hazen Hyde (1876–1959) had inherited 51 per cent of the stock— and the vice-presidency—of Equitable Life Assurance from his father, who had founded the company. A luxury-loving young millionaire and an ardent Francophile, he dressed in the French manner, wore long sideburns, a pointed black beard, a moustache, yellow gloves, and violets in his buttonhole. His most famous extravagance brought him fame, but also led to his downfall. On 31 January 1905 he organized a huge fancy-dress ball, to which he invited prominent people from all over the world. After engaging the French actress Re´jane and the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, he had the well-known architect Stanford White and the painter Whitney Warren transform Sherry’s grand ballroom into the Trianon gardens and the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles in the time of Louis XVI. The cost of the party, estimated at first by the press at $200,000, was later more realistically put at $75,000, the amount Hyde was shown to have recently made for the company through astute investments. This lavish party crystallized public complaints against insurance companies, who were accused of ‘gambling with the savings of widows and orphans’. The scandal provoked drastic revisions of the insurance laws of the state. The battle for control of the company turned into front-page nationwide news, and Hyde had to sell his majority holdings to Thomas Fortune Ryan, and reimburse $72,000 to the company. For the next twenty-six years he lived in self-imposed exile in Paris. Gregory’s letters proved, however, that he had not lost interest in the Metropolitan Opera. 344 An odd statement, since Hammerstein was at this time enjoying tremendous popularity with at least two French works, Louise and Pelle´as, as Gregory acknowledges at the end of the same letter. However, it is obvious that the Met stockholders had decided to disregard and belittle Hammerstein’s enterprise. Yet they feared his competition so much that they later decided to buy him out. 345 Concerning Count San Martino, see above, Vol. iii, Chap. 9, 628 ff. 106 Gustav Mahler Now to the Conried complication. A week ago when Kahn first hinted to him that we might not renew his contract, he turned ugly at once, getting on a high horse. It appears that we have put $600,000 into stage improvements, costumes, scenery, etc. Conried now claims half of this ($300,000) as his contract gives him half of all profits above 6%. Baylies says that this is an absurd claim but it may lead to trouble. Kahn is to see him today and give him the chance to resign (giving his health as an excuse) and to save his vanity and his face. Kahn will also, if C[onried] is half way decent about it, offer to be liberal in settling his claim. Kahn thinks we might at the last go as far as offering him $20,000 a year for five years. Poor old man, he is badly down and out, having lost all his money in the panic and being absolutely helpless as to legs. In a sentimental way, he has a claim on us even if he has no legal one, as he has lost his health in our service. Of course, if he is nice (and I rather think he will be), we will blow him off to all sorts of compliments in the press, etc. on him ‘retiring’. He has everything to gain by being nice, especially as we still think he can be of great use to us for a year or two while we are building the new theater,346 but with a vanity of the size of his, one never can count. He is convinced that no one has, or ever can, run opera as well as himself. Cottenet is wild with delight at the success of his plan, and Kahn has really been very nice in giving up his wishes to the general desire of the board. . . . We are to pay each of our three big men $20,000 a year and will take Dippel on in Goerlitz[’s] place at $15,000. All this is less than Conried cost us....I am going tonight with the W.[illiam] K. [Vanderbilts] to hear Tetrazzini’s de´but at Hammerstein’s. Louise is a go. At H[ammerstein]’s.347 As this letter shows, Otto Kahn had indeed offered the post of artistic director of the Met to Mahler. However, the majority of the stockholders wanted an Italian director, and this explains why Mahler’s plan to bring Roller over had no chance whatever of being accepted. Another letter written by Gregory to Hyde, on 10 February, describes subsequent events. Far too early, Reginald de Koven had revealed the stock- holders’ intentions to the readers of the New York World. Members of the Real Estate Company (whom Gregory call ‘the old gents’ or ‘the old fogies’) had gone to J. P. Morgan and complained of the stockholders ‘getting too fresh’. While Conried had been advised by the ‘old fogies’ that ‘they were quite contented with him’, Cottenet was already in Milan, delivering the stockholders’ offer to Gatti, who was about to sign their contracts. A meeting between the members of the two committees was arranged to take place in J. P. Morgan’s office, and it was there that the imbroglio was overcome. Whereas the Real Estate Company had formerly rented their house to an impresario, letting him find the financial backing, a five-year lease was now to be made by the Stockholders’ Company, allowing them to choose the new manager as they pleased. Kahn had largely contributed to the success of the transactions and would thus become president of the new company, which of course did not make all the stockholders happy.348

346 Gregory is alluding to the smaller New Theater which was then being built as a branch of the Met. 347 Metropolitan Opera Archives. 348 No doubt because he was a Jew. The other letters concern the construction of the New Theater, which was a financial disaster and had to close after a few seasons (see below). The same letter describes the financial situation of the company as excellent. January–February 1908 107 A legal document was drawn up on 27 February, whereby the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Conried Metropolitan Opera Company announced that Conried ‘would settle his claims against this corporation in full for the sum of $75,000’, and that the committee was authorized to prepare contracts for Gatti, Dippel, Mahler, and Toscanini. Gatti was to be paid no more than 125,000 lire per annum, Dippel no more than $20,000 per annum, and both Mahler and Toscanini no more than $5,000 a month. On 30 January 1908 the Times reported that Mahler had been invited to a ‘secret’ meeting in ‘one of the uptown hotels’, had ‘flatly refused’ to work under a ‘new director’, but ‘does not care for the Directorship himself’. One month later, nevertheless, Mahler had agreed to work under Gatti, but still harboured illusions as to Roller’s engagement: In the meantime, events have been taking their irresistible course. The future direction has been settled and everything clarified to the extent that the decision-makers—the stockholders’ representatives (the millionaires), then Dippel, who is in charge of the administration, and your humble servant who, up till now and probably also in the future, if nothing changes, will hover like a sort of spirit over the waters—are now seriously airing the question of your engagement. Hopefully within the next few days, and before receiving this letter, you will receive a telegram proposing that you come here on a study trip as soon as you possibly can, the purpose being to discuss and, I hope, settle everything. First, whether you want to and can accept the position here, in other words, what you think of the situation here and what influence you can exert on things in the future. It is agreed, between the final deciders and myself, that you are to be the principal producer in charge of everything to do with the stage, with unlimited power within your sphere, answerable only to the directorate. After all the negotiations I hope to arrange a salary for you of $12,000 (60,000 kronen) per year. According to all the enquiries I have made, you can comfortably save $7,000 a year out of that.—What Herr Cottenet will work out with you in the meantime has already been superseded, so act only on what I am telling you here. The best thing would be for you to take your leave in April and arrange your voyage so as to return with us on 23 April after spending at least 14 days here so as to acquaint yourself with all matters relating to your functions.—But what about your Vienna contract? Have you already received it? And if so, what is it like? Naturally you must take it into account. . . . Fra¨ulein Uchatius, who lives here and often comes to see us, declares that she can imagine no better place for you, and that you would find here a great deal of inspiration and satisfaction.—I think so too. Everything remains to be done, and you would come just at the right moment. It would be wonderful if we were together again, but I cannot hide the fact from you that I will only be enjoying that pleasure for a short time. I do not intend to stay here long, but, if I remain healthy, at least the coming season. This last, however, strictly between ourselves!349 On 15 February, the very day Mahler wrote this letter, Musical America officially announced Conried’s departure (listing all the shortcomings for which the directors had blamed him), and the appointment of Gatti-Casazza, with Andreas Dippel as his assistant. The Conried Metropolitan Opera Company

349 MBR1, no. 392; MBR2, no. 381, dated 15 Feb. 1908. 108 Gustav Mahler would be replaced by a new operating company, the Metropolitan Opera Com- pany, and Otto Kahn would be president of the new entity. A week later Conried published an interesting list of his grievances in Musical America: The box holders have drawn up a selected list of artists. At least two names on the list are supposed to appear on the programme for every subscription concert,350 and each of them must sing a certain number of evenings per month. In such conditions, given that the artists in question are never to sing two evenings in a row and that the same opera cannot be given twice during the subscription series, the problems of the repertory are such that I would refuse the job even if it were offered to me.351 Conried then cited all the improvements he had made in the hall, and to the stage which had consequently become ‘the best in the world’. He also boasted of being the first to employ the machinists, chorus, and orchestra musicians on a yearly basis.352 This defence, by the interested party of a regime, the failings and shortcom- ings of which were common knowledge, proved of no avail, and Otto Kahn’s point of view gained ground. During the 7 February meeting of the boards of the two companies—Real Estate and Stockholders—mentioned by Gregory in his letter to Hyde, it had been decided that Gatti-Casazza and Dippel would become salaried employees, with none of the privileges Conried had enjoyed (e.g. his ‘benefit’ performances). Otto Kahn and William K. Vanderbilt promised to devote some of their time regularly to the administration of the Metropolitan Grand Opera and Real Estate Company, which was buying out Conried’s company. To avoid a division of power between the two companies—in the past a cause of much conflict and misunderstanding—it was agreed that their membership should now be more or less identical. It was undoubtedly Gatti-Casazza who cut short any discussion of Roller’s engagement, for he insisted on bringing with him from La Scala several collab- orators in whom he had complete trust.353 Although Roller’s sets for Fidelio were imported to the Met because of a previous decision taken by Conried, the Viennese stage designer was not to be engaged there. Gatti had no interest in employing him, especially as he was aware of Roller’s reputation as a tyrant to

350 What Conried means is of course ‘for every opera performance’. For the 1907–08 season, the list consisted of Fremstad, Eames, Sembrich, Farrar, Gadski, Caruso, Bonci, Scotti, Planc¸on, and Van Rooy. One of Otto Kahn’s first conditions in accepting the direction of the new operating company was the cancellation of this list. 351 Musical Courier of 15 Jan. had already replied to Conried’s complaints (in an interview published in the Herald on 5 Jan.) with the assertion that conditions were neither better nor worse than in Europe, where the ensemble was formed only a few days before the start of the season, where rehearsals sometimes began only a week before the opening, and where nonetheless many more new works were produced than in New York. 352 During the final two years of Conried’s direction his company lost $84,000 (1906–7), and $95,000 (1907–8). See Kolodin, Metropolitan, 198. 353 His staff in New York included a secretary, a chorus master, and several coaches from Milan. In an interview published in the Tribune, Rawlins Cottenet firmly denied, no doubt for diplomatic reasons, having visited Paris, Vienna, Milan, and their Operas for any other reasons than for pleasure. Yet Gatti’s name as a possible successor to Conried had already been mentioned many times by the press, and with increasing insistence. January–February 1908 109 boot. In retrospect, it seems unfortunate that Mahler’s project to engage Roller should have failed, for the presence of a great set designer at that crucial moment in the Met’s history, when it was taking a new direction, could well have exerted a decisive influence. Instead, and for a long time, the weak points of the Met remained the stage designs and the stage direction. One cannot but wonder what a man like Roller, if provided with adequate means, could have accomplished in New York. However, in 1908 the New York audience, not to mention the stockholders, would very likely have been incapable of understand- ing, appreciating, and even less supporting an artist with Roller’s character, standards, and modern conception of his art and craft. On his arrival in May 1908 an unpleasant surprise awaited Gatti-Casazza. Past events had made it an obsessive concern among the stockholders to maintain an equal balance between the German and Italian halves of the repertoire, each of which was seen as requiring a different type of experience and approach. Thus, at the 7 February meeting in the Morgan Library, when the appointment of Gatti-Casazza had been announced, J. P.Morgan himself spoke up, asking why a director had been sought in Europe when they had the very man they needed in New York.354 Kahn was startled, and asked the banker to explain what he meant. Morgan replied that Andreas Dippel ‘knows all the roles and all the languages and every-one knows him’.355 Thus Gatti-Casazza was appointed ‘General Man- ager’ and Dippel ‘Administrative Manager’, while Mahler and Toscanini were both made ‘Music Directors’. Inevitably, the ill-defined roles of the two ‘man- agers’ and the two conductors quickly led to conflicts which could easily have been predicted. Mahler had obviously been left in the dark, and he complained about this in another letter to Roller: Things have taken a new turn which I do not yet completely understand. The only thing that seems clear to me is that as far as my plans go, somebody’s been putting a spoke into my wheel. What strikes me is that this reversal has taken place since Cottenet’s visit to Vienna. What happened there? Did you see him? And whom else did he see? I can’t seem to find out anything about it (which is itself suspect), but I feel a distinct drop in the temperature from the people who count. As a gesture of defiance, I wanted to have you here for Fidelio. Unfortunately, as your telegram explains, this is impossible, and so the sole opportunity we had to support our case with positive arguments has come to nothing. I no longer believe in your engagement. The only thing I have achieved is that you will be invited here in April (obviously at the company’s expense) for one or two

354 According to Edward Lawrence (Life and Times of Emma Eames), it was Emma Eames who intervened with Morgan for Dippel, pointing out that he had been present in New York for several years and had therefore followed the evolution of the Met closely. It seems that Eames, who had been engaged by Grau, saw the advent of a new ‘Italian’ regime as a dangerous development for her career. In December she, together with Farrar, Sembrich, Scotti, and Caruso had signed a joint letter in favour of Dippel. (see below, Chap. 3). Eames had long enjoyed a close relationship with the old banker, who regularly advised her on legal and financial matters. 355 Briggs, Brick Brewery, 90. Dippel enjoyed a very special reputation because of his wide repertory, said to include 150 operas, which earned him the nickname of ‘one-man opera company’. Indeed, he often replaced many artists in a variety of tenor roles, lyrical and dramatic, German and Italian. 110 Gustav Mahler weeks to discuss the matter (which I consider closed). I am putting it bluntly to avoid illusions. If it could be useful to you to look around here—as an artist you would be tremendously stimulated—tell me so, and I’ll arrange everything. But remember gossip in Vienna, and [the fact] that such a trip, if it is not a preliminary to your engagement here, would perhaps compromise you and make your position difficult ...Iamconvinced that Mr. Cottenet—a big ignoramus and a supporter of the Italians—was thoroughly ‘informed’ about you and me by our beloved countrymen . . . 356 In his reply, dated 11 March, Roller gave the opening of Julius Bittner’s Die rote Gret in April as an excuse for not coming to New York. He knew neither whom Cottenet had seen in Vienna, nor why the project of his engagement at the Met had failed to materialize: I cannot tell you how upset I am to see this marvellous dream collapse. Particularly at this moment an offer from New York would have been most opportune for I am afraid I will not be able to keep my position at the [Vienna] Opera much longer. Just now I am again involved in a disciplinary enquiry which I myself had to ask for as the Wardrobe Manager has formally accused me of treating him in an inhuman manner and, citing Stoll, Bennier, Schikaneder, all workers ‘and others’, that I have a sadistic tendency to torment my subordinates. In view of the general hatred against me I am sure I will not be able to get hold of witnesses testifying in my favour and the only man who knows my work and what I am trying to do is, of course, you. It could therefore easily happen that the outcome of the enquiry will be against me and that I have to leave the Opera not of my own accord, but under compulsion.357 Two days after Mahler had written the preceding letter, Musical America announced his resignation from the Met, to which he was bound only through his contract with Conried, but predicted that he would accept the new director’s offer.358 This turned out to be correct. Gatti-Casazza was reported to have asked Toscanini if he had any objection to working in the same Opera with Mahler, and Toscanini had replied: ‘But of course I will have no difficulty at all. There is room at the Metropolitan for several conductors and I am very happy to find myself with an artist of Mahler’s worth. I hold him in great esteem, and would

356 MBR1, no. 393; MBR2, no. 384, dated 27 Feb. 1908. After many conflicts with Weingartner (see below, Chap. 2, etc.), Roller finally left the Hofoper on 28 Dec. 1908, but he worked there again in 1911 for the premie`re of Der Rosenkavalier, in 1913 for Der fliegende Holla¨ nder, in 1914 for Parsifal, and in 1919 for the world premie`re of Die Frau ohne Schatten. During those years, he had resumed his teaching post at the Kunstgewerbeschule, of which he eventually became director. He went on to design the decors of many opera and theatre productions at the Redoutensaal, the , and Shakespeare productions at the Burgtheater. He was also invited to Stockholm and Philadelphia to design stage sets. His last achievements included Bayreuth sets for Parsifal and the Ring in the early thirties. He died on 21 June 1935. For a complete list of Roller’s stage designs, see Vol. iii, Appendix 3. Most of the information about him is taken from Liselotte Kitzwegerer’s thesis ‘Alfred Roller als Bu¨hnenbilder’ (LKR). 357 AMM1, 426. Roller explained that he had seen Cottenet the day he left Vienna. His rudimentary English had made effective communication difficult but he had followed Mahler’s instructions and insisted that he never wasted a penny. He rightly surmised that Gatti-Casazza had been the obstacle to his appointment. In conclusion he added that at the Hofoper everybody was against him except Franz Schalk and Hubert Wondra. 358 On 16 Feb. the Herald announced that Mahler’s resignation had been submitted officially on the 15th, and that negotiations for a new contract were already under way. January–February 1908 111 infinitely prefer such a colleague to any mediocrity.’359 So for the moment Mahler saw no possibility of a conflict with Toscanini. Obviously he had not read—or had not taken seriously—an article published in the Tribune on 22 February, which contained the following sentences: ‘We are told of the skill of Signor Toscanini as a conductor of Wagner’s operas and of the achievement of Signor Gatti-Casazza in creating a love of those operas in Italy. He found Wagner proscribed when he took charge of La Scala in 1898, and now Wagner is popular.’360 Knowing nothing of Toscanini’s ambitions, Mahler only remem- bered that in the past he himself had hired Spetrino at the Vienna Opera to conduct the Italian works, and he took it for granted that Toscanini would undertake the Italian repertory while he and Hertz would share the German works. But that was reckoning without the Wagnerian ambitions of a fiery Italian who did not see things in the same way and would not accept specialization of any kind.

359 Giulio Gatti-Casazza, Memories of the Opera (Scribners, New York, 1941), 147. Arriving in New York in May 1908, Gatti tactfully asserted that ‘Toscanini would not have accepted the Met’s propositions if Mahler had not also been hired’, and claimed that the two conductors would meet over the summer in Munich to decide upon their respective repertoires, a meeting which of course never took place, as will be seen below. 360 New York Tribune, 22 Feb. 1908.