Grand Opera: The Story of the Met (11 page)

Seven of eleven premieres of Conried’s half-decade tenure, excluding
Parsifal
and
Salome,
were Italian. Of these, two looked to bel canto, and the five remaining to the contemporary generation of composers. Old or new, all seven were sung by Caruso. He had been an overnight sensation, the darling of audiences of all social and economic strata.

The bel canto novelties were Gaetano Donizetti’s
L’Elisir d’amore
and his
Lucrezia Borgia
. None of Caruso’s thirty-seven Met roles better suited the tenor’s chunky physique and legendary sense of fun than the endearing bumpkin of the comic
Elisir
. His Nemorino and Sembrich’s Adina filled the Met’s coffers; they succeeded in the daunting enterprise of softening the hearts of the Wagnerites, so long hardened in contempt of bel canto. Reverting to form, critics shot the poisoned arrows they reserved for bel canto tragedy at
Lucrezia Borgia,
“a repetition of empty formulas and passages . . . absolutely without a trace of dramatic characterization”
(Tribune)
.

Composed by the masters of
la giovane scuola
(the young school, a group of late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century post-Verdi Italian composers) during the Belle Époque,
Manon Lescaut
and
Madama Butterfly, Iris, Fedora,
and
Adriana Lecouvreur,
all Conried premieres, belonged to a manner that continues to carry the problematic brand of “verismo.” They have in common the signature feature of the “hidden” aria. To be sure, and to the relief of singers and record companies, verismo admits excerptable pieces designed to invite applause and timed to the capacity of early disks. But the two-part structure of the bel canto aria, the slow cavatina capped by the fast cabaletta embellished with intricate fioritura and stratospheric high notes, gave way to a shorter-breathed and shorter-ranged arioso embedded in an ongoing fabric of dramatic recitative accompanied by orchestral comment. Sung phrases often approached the rhythms of spoken dialogue. At the same time, the subjects of Conried’s five verismo premieres fit uncomfortably under a single umbrella. An Italian outgrowth of French literary naturalism, verismo applies accurately to the plebeian characters and locales of
Cavalleria rusticana
and
Pagliacci,
but much less well to the exotic
Iris
and
Madama Butterfly,
to the ancien régime of
Manon Lescaut
’s young lovers, to
Adriana Lecouvreur
’s aristocrats, or to
Fedora
’s contemporary European nobility.
²¹

Manon Lescaut
and
Madama Butterfly
reaped the lion’s share of press attention and its most fulsome praise. Puccini’s stock had risen rapidly in the wake of the 1900–01 first nights of
La Bohème
and
Tosca
. For the
Times, Manon Lescaut,
which predated
La Bohème
by three years, was the title that had lifted Puccini above his
giovane scuola
cohort. Even Krehbiel was willing to succumb to its allure: “fresher, more spontaneous, more unaffected and more passionate in its climaxes”
(Tribune)
. Caruso’s Des Grieux met the usual high expectations. Manon exposed the vocal and dramatic limits of Lina Cavalieri, better known for her looks than for her art. Another great beauty, Geraldine Farrar, made a phenomenal impression as Cio-Cio-San, the most important assignment of her debut season. Winning “the tribute of tears from many eyes . . . her triumph was complete”
(Tribune)
. The extended excerpts recorded by Victor a couple of years later capture the commitment of the inaugural cast. Puccini had been happy with the production of
Manon Lescaut
and with Cavalieri’s performance; he was disappointed in
Madama Butterfly
. He complained about the inadequately
prepared orchestra and its conductor, Arturo Vigna, but most especially about Farrar, who sang out of tune and failed, in his view, to make the desired impact in the large auditorium. For sixteen consecutive seasons, Met audiences disagreed; Farrar portrayed Puccini’s tragic geisha a record 139 times.
²²

The role of yet another Japanese woman abused by a callous lover, the unfortunate Iris, fell to Emma Eames. She had more success than the work bearing the victim’s name. Caruso in kimono (much to the amusement of the spectators) made the most of limited opportunities. And the pioneering Mascagni, who had blazed the trail of verismo with
Cavalleria rusticana,
suffered in the inevitable comparison with Puccini.
Iris
was generally dismissed as a collection of Eastern effects with a few lyric effusions, an excess of tired symbolism, and an unsavory subject. The Met’s décor and lighting received special mention; admired particularly was the metamorphosis of a trash heap, the site of the heroine’s death, into a field in bloom. It was not the first time
Iris
had been heard in New York or, for that matter, the first time it had been staged at the Met. Mascagni had brought his opera to the city and to the house with his own touring company in October 1902 during a three-month-long visit that Krehbiel called the “most sensational fiasco ever made by an artist of great distinction in the United States.” The composer had contracted to prepare and conduct “not more than eight operas or concerts a week,” including productions of
Cavalleria rusticana, Zanetto, Iris,
and
Guglielmo Ratcliff
. The last never saw American footlights. “It was foolishly reckless in the composer to think that with such material as he had raked together in his native land and recruited here he could produce four of his operas within a week of his arrival.” When Mascagni moved on to Boston, he was arrested for breach of contract. He countersued for damages. “The scandal grew until it threatened to become a subject of international diplomacy, but in the end compromises were made and the composer departed to his own country in bodily if not spiritual peace.”
²³

Giordano and Cilea fared more poorly still than Mascagni. Reviewers noted uncharitably that their music detracted from the plays on which
Fedora
and
Adriana Lecouvreur
were based, both previously staged in New York with Sarah Bernhardt. Cavalieri was unequal to the challenge of the eponymous roles. But Farrar herself could not have saved either title from its excruciating reception. Caruso, who had appeared in their world premieres, did his superlative best, as evinced in his recordings of
Fedora
’s “Amor ti vieta” and in an excerpt from act 4 of
Adriana
.

Conried produced five German novelties, two of which,
Parsifal
and
Salome,
set off the mayhem we recall above.
Die Fledermaus
and
Der Zigeunerbaron
came in for attack. Only
Hänsel und Gretel
emerged unscathed.

The controversy over Johann Strauss’s operettas was two-pronged. Reviewers took up their old refrain: operettas, no matter how charming, even brilliant, had no place at the Met. Their dialogue was lost in its vast reaches; their scores befit only intimate theaters. And as he had been for
Parsifal
and would be again for
Salome,
Conried was chided for pocketing the first-night receipts of
Die Fledermaus,
designated, like the others, “director’s benefit,” an annual event at which the artists were called upon to make a gift of their services to the boss. The prospect of hearing the Met’s stars during the act 2 ball all but guaranteed a rich haul. The soloists joined the chorus in the “Brüderlein” finale and then, led by Caruso and Eames on one side of the stage, Fremstad and Plançon on the other, proceeded to dance a raucous cancan. But the critics, even as they acknowledged the
Fledermaus
precedent at some European opera houses, and the luster and merriment of the occasion, were prepared to forgive neither the musical trespass nor Conried’s greed. He repeated the stunt the next season with
Der Zigeunerbaron
. Humperdinck’s
Hänsel und Gretel
needed no star wattage to galvanize success. The critics were predisposed to the score’s Wagnerian sonorities. And they agreed that “it did not seem as if there could be anybody in the house to whom [it] did not appeal as something beautiful, something delightful and enjoyable”
(Times). Hänsel und Gretel
remained in the repertoire until German was banned in 1917; it has returned regularly since 1927–28.

With the exception of
Lucrezia Borgia,
all of Conried’s novelties have had subsequent productions and more than half have become staples of the repertoire. However vexed
Parsifal
was in New York in 1903, it had been blessed at Bayreuth, and the two Puccini operas and Humperdinck’s had been applauded throughout Europe. In that sense, they were sure bets just as
Salome
would have been but for Mr. Morgan and his pew.
Adriana Lecouvreur
and
Fedora
have languished, but have refused to die. Nearly five decades after its company premiere, Rudolf Bing found the winning formula for
Die Fledermaus
. The survival rate of novelties under Conried’s much maligned leadership far exceeded that recorded by the premieres of Stanton and Abbey-Grau.

TABLE 4.
Metropolitan Opera Premieres, 1903–04 to 1907–08

 

 

By the end of Conried’s first season, 1903–04, the directors of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company were already displeased: numerous subscription performances had dodged the required inclusion of two of the six approved artists, some of whom had decamped before the season was over; and above all, there had been “unsatisfactory performances, notably of the French operas
Faust
and
Roméo
” (board minutes, March 2, 1904). Another set of minutes tells us that two years later similar complaints were aired, namely, “that performances of opera lately produced have been below the standard called for under [the] lease” (Jan. 24, 1906). At the end of two rounds in the mano a mano between Conried and Hammerstein, 1906–07 and 1907–08, the board of the Conried Metropolitan Opera Company, separately and distinctly from the equally distressed board of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, had had enough. A letter from Otto Kahn to the general manager itemized his “grievous and irreparable faults”: the failure to sew up the Tetrazzini contract, to bring conductor Campanini to the Met, to produce successful novelties (an unfair charge), to secure the rights to the Puccini operas at less than exorbitant cost, to secure the rights to modern French works, leaving those prizes to Hammerstein, “and many other acts of omission and commission . . . of great advantage to the competing house—so much so that it is within bounds to say that the very existence today of the Manhattan Opera House is, in considerable part, attributable to what you [Conried] did and failed to do.” Besides, only in the first three years of Conried’s regime had the company showed a profit; in the last two it racked up significant losses. Conried’s poor health, greed, ignorance of grand opera, and imperious vulgarity did the rest. The board bought out his contract; he resigned in February 1908. And so the early period in the Metropolitan’s history came to a close.
²⁴

One year after the exhausted impresario retired to Europe, the banner above his obituary in the April 27, 1909,
Times
ran: “Former Metropolitan Opera Director Succumbs at 2:30 This Morning to Apoplectic Stroke. Health Undermined by Worries Growing Out of the Management of the Opera House.” The policy taken out on Conried’s life was still in effect. A sizable payment to his widow left the Met with $150,000 with which to offset the losses he had incurred. Friends and enemies alike recognized that if at his appointment Conried had found a “public [that] was opera-mad,” as Krehbiel put it, five years later, when he was gone for good, he left behind a city more opera crazed than ever.
²⁵