Famous Prima Donnas Part 9

"As a singer she has improved during the past year," said one. "Her tones are purer; she uses her voice with more discretion; and she has discovered that a scream is not synonymous with forte. She is vivacious; she lends a dramatic interest that has been sadly lacking in former performances of this company, when the members were too apt to mistake the audience for a congregation and the stage for a choir loft. She is fair to look upon, and yet she does not strive to monopolize attention."

After quitting the Bostonians Miss D'Arville starred in Edward E. Rice's spectacular production of the extravaganza "Venus," which was first acted in Boston in September, 1893. Her das.h.i.+ng Prince Kam, that imaginary Thibetian potentate, who, finding no earthly beauty that satisfied his ideal, journeyed to Mars, where he succeeded in winning the love of Venus herself, was a thoroughly delightful characterization.

"A Daughter of the Revolution," with which Miss D'Arville was next identified, was made over by J. Cheever Goodwin and Ludwig Englander from a comic opera called "1776," produced some ten years before by a German company playing at the Thalia Theatre in New York. It achieved but limited popularity at that time, but in its revised form it was an agreeable, if not exactly exciting, entertainment. It was not an ideal comic opera, by any means. Too much of the machinery of construction was left visible for that. There were two characters, the dealer in military supplies and the laundress, so obviously dragged in simply because the low-comedy man needed a foil and a soubrette to play opposite to him, that one looked to see the marks of violence on their ears. But librettos are hard things to write--they must be or we should certainly find one now and then that is above reproach--so one would fain overlook jarring circ.u.mstances for the sake of the tuneful melodies of the score and the brisk action. Miss D'Arville sang well, and made an attractive picture in her series of becoming costumes.

A starring tour in "Madeleine; or the Magic Kiss," a comic opera of considerable merit although it never won more than a fair degree of popularity, was her next venture, and then she was engaged to create the prima donna role of Lady Constance in "The Highwayman," a Reginald DeKoven and Harry B. Smith composition. A quarrel with the management while rehearsals were in progress caused her to retire from the company, however, and her place was taken by Hilda Clark.

CHAPTER XIX

MARIE TEMPEST

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIE TEMPEST.]

No better characterization of Marie Tempest, that wonderfully fascinating personality which last appeared in this country during the season of 1893-94 in "The Algerian," have I ever seen than that written by Charles Frederick Nirdlinger and published several years ago in the "Ill.u.s.trated American."

"Nell Gwynne lives again in the person of Marie Tempest," declared Mr.

Nirdlinger. "From out of a past tinkling with tuneful poesy, sparkling with the glory of palettes that limned only beauty and grace, bubbling with the merriment and gallantry of gay King Charlie's court, there trips down to moderns a most convincing counterfeit of that piquant creature. If one may trust imagination's ear, little Tempest sings as pretty Nell did: in the same tenuous, uncertain voice, with the same captivating tricks of tone, the same significant nuances, and the same amorous timbre. Tempest talks just as Nell did, and walks with the same st.u.r.dy stride,--there was nothing mincing about Nell,--and, if one may trust to fancy's eye, she looks just as Nell looked. I have seen Nell a hundred times, and so have you, dear reader. The mere sight of that curt, pert, and jadish name--Nell Gwynne--calls up that strangely alluring combination of features: the tip-tilted nose, the pouting lips, the eyes of a drowsy Cupid, the confident, impudent poise of the head.

None of them fas.h.i.+oned to the taste of the painter or sculptor, but forming in their unity a face of pleasing witchery.

"There is no record of Nell's artistic methods, of the school of her mimetic performance, or the style of her singing. All we know of that sort of thing we must gather from the rhymes and rhapsodies of the poets. Some of them wrote in prose, to be sure; but they were poets for all that, and poets are such an unreliable lot when it comes to judging such a girl as Nell. If she had any art, though, I'll be bound it was like Tempest's. There is but one way to be infinitely charming in the craft of the theatre,--the eternal verities of art prevent that it should be otherwise,--and whatever devices of mimic mechanism Nell employed must have been those of her modern congener. But she never studied in Paris, some sceptic will say, and Tempest did: how could Nell Gwynne have mastered the lightness of touch, the exquisite refinement of gesture, the infinity of significant byplay that const.i.tute the distinctly Parisian method of Tempest? To that I would answer that Tempest's method is not distinctly Parisian, that it is not at all Parisian. She is a delightful artist, not because of her brief period of Gallic training, but in spite of it.

"Elsewhere I have ventured an opinion on the subject of what we have been taught to regard as the French school of comic opera. That school, if we may judge of its academic principles and practices by the performances of some of its most proficient graduates, has nothing in common with the methods of Tempest. Wanton wiles and indecent suggestion,--these are the essential features of that ridiculously lauded French school; kicks and winks and ogling glances, postures of affected languor, and convincing feats of vicious sophistication. Where, in all that, is to be found the simple graciousness, the dainty, delicate, un.o.btrusive art of Marie Tempest? To liken her to the garish product of that French school--as well liken Carot's sensuous nymph of the wood to Bougereau's sensual nymph of the bath! For my own part, I don't believe Tempest belongs to any school, or if she does, it is a school of which she is at once mistress and sole pupil. Indeed, it may be doubted whether instruction and training have any considerable part in the charm of such a player. There are women of infinitely better method--not manner--of singing and acting; women with whom nature has dealt far more carefully and generously in beauty of face and figure; women even in no degree inferior to Tempest in innate allurement. But this little Englishwoman, with her svelte form and her bewitching face of ugly features, her tricky voice that makes one think of a thrush that has caught a cold, her impertinences and patronizing ways with her audience, has about her a vague, illusive something that makes of her the most fetching personality of the comic-opera stage."

Marie Tempest, whose real name is Marie Etherington, was born in London in 1867. Her father died while she was a child, and she was educated abroad by her mother. Five or six years of her life were spent in a convent near Brussels. From there she was sent to Paris to finish her education, afterward going to London, where she became a student at the Royal Academy of Music.

At that time she had no idea of going upon the stage. Her exceptional musical talent at once became apparent to the professors at the academy, notably Emanuel Garcia, who, although then upward of eighty years of age, took the liveliest interest in his young pupil. Miss Tempest worked so successfully with Garcia that within eighteen months of her entrance at the academy she had carried off from all other compet.i.tors the bronze, silver, and gold medals representing the highest rewards the academy could offer. She also studied for a time with Signor Randeggor, in London, and in 1886 made her first appearance on any stage at the London Comedy in "Boccaccio." It was a small part that she played in the London company managed by Arthur Henderson, and the salary which she received was four pounds a week.

After that she created the soprano part in an opera called "The Fay o'

Fire" at the Opera Comique, from thence returning for a few months to the Comedy Theatre to take Florence St. John's place in "Erminie." Miss Tempest then took an engagement with Augustus Harris at the Drury Lane in Hervise's comic opera, "Frivoli." In 1887 she joined Henry J.

Leslie's company, then playing at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, London, in Alfred Cellier's opera, "Dorothy," in which she a.s.sumed the t.i.tle role. In this part Miss Tempest made a very great success. She played in "Dorothy" for nearly nine hundred performances at the Prince of Wales and Lyric theatres. Subsequently she appeared at the Lyric in Cellier's opera of "Doris" and after that in "The Red Hussar." Although Miss Tempest was engaged chiefly in light opera, during these years she at various times undertook more serious work, frequently singing in oratorio and in the high-cla.s.s London concerts.

She came to this country for the first time in the spring of 1890, appearing in New York and after on tour as Kitty Carroll in "The Red Hussar." Her success was remarkable, and she at once became an established favorite. Although the prima donna of to-day might consider Kitty Carroll, with only its three changes of costume, from soldier to beggar girl and then to heiress, a veritable sinecure, Marie Tempest's skill in pa.s.sing quickly from one character to another was ten years ago quite as much commented on as was her unquestionably artistic presentation of the triple roles. She also repeated in this country her London success in "Dorothy," and sang in "Carmen" as well.

Miss Tempest was next seen at the New York Casino as the successor to Lillian Russell and Pauline Hall. In the operetta, "The Tyrolean," she had a part scarcely equal to her abilities, although the nightingale song, which came in the last act, was a charming melody and was so delightfully sung by Miss Tempest as really to be the feature of the performance. In her peasant's dress Miss Tempest was the choicest of dainty morsels, a dream of fairylike loveliness.

Her greatest success in this country, however, was "The Fencing Master"

in which the prima donna role was peculiarly suited to her personality.

This opera was built around the conceit of a master of fencing, who, not being blessed with a son to succeed him in his profession, brought up his daughter as a boy, and by severe training made her a most expert user of foil and sword. In this character Miss Tempest united remarkably well boyish freedom and masculine swagger with feminine charm and ingenuousness, and the picture that she made was one never to be forgotten. It was true, however, in spite of her great attractiveness in the part, that tights and tunic did take away a little of that subtle bewitchery, which was the root of her wonderful winsomeness in "Dorothy." It was a Boston critic, I believe, who said of her in this opera, that she suggested a Dresden china image that had hopped down from the mantel and committed an indiscretion. Still another, evidently a bit of a china connoisseur himself, applied the fancy porcelain simile with far more searching a.n.a.lysis. "She reminds one of a bit of Sevres china," he declared, "although a pretty piece of Dresden would not be an inappropriate simile, especially when she is dressed in that picturesquely ragged costume in the first act. Sevres china, however, is to an art connoisseur what truffles and pate-de-foie gras are to an accomplished epicure." Whether she were Dresden china or Sevres china, it mattered not; the main fact remained that a thoroughly feminine woman like Miss Tempest needed the fuss and feathers of feminine attire to bring out her attractions in the most effective way. That the public unconsciously felt this was proven even in "The Fencing Master," where her appearance in the last act in all the glory of court gown and flas.h.i.+ng jewels was always the signal for the heartiest applause.

In "The Algerian," by Reginald DeKoven and Glen MacDonough, which followed "The Fencing Master," being brought out in Philadelphia in September, 1893, Miss Tempest not only returned to the garb of her own s.e.x, but appeared as well in her own auburn hair with that tiny irresistible curl hanging down the middle of her forehead, just like that of the little girl in the old ballad.

At the close of the run of this opera in 1894, Miss Tempest returned to London. Her greatest hits of recent years in that city have been made as the heroine in "The Artist's Model" and as O Mimosa San in George Edwardes's original production of "The Geisha" at Daly's Theatre in London.

CHAPTER XX

MAUD RAYMOND

High in the ranks of women low comedians who have been graduated from the variety theatre into musical comedy and extravaganza, is Maud Raymond, who fairly shares the honors with the Rogers Brothers in their popular vaudevilles. It would be unfair to call Miss Raymond an actress, for she does not aspire to be anything more than a delightful entertainer, whose unusual mimetic gifts and whose real or a.s.sumed sense of humor led her to adopt as the most natural thing imaginable the serious calling of making the world laugh.

With her marked individuality, Miss Raymond drifted as a matter of course into character impersonation. In the days when she entered the varieties three distinct types of low-comedy characterizations were recognized--the Irish, the Dutch, and the negro. The first two were genuine burlesques, while the last named was the familiar minstrel type,--a great deal of burnt cork and an insignificant amount of genuine negro. Miss Raymond selected the Dutch type. Whether she was the first woman to attempt a Dutch character sketch, I do not know, but I am willing to risk the statement that she was the best one.

An amazingly grotesque figure she presented, with her figure built on the lines of a meal sack with a string tied around the middle, and her huge sabots that clattered noisily every step she took. Her face was a study in ponderous stupidity, and her movements were slow and unwieldy.

Yet, with all its grotesqueness, its mammoth exaggerations, there was human nature in the sketch and rich, full-blooded humor, the brutal, coa.r.s.e humor of the soil, humor that had not been refined into flavorless delicacy nor polished into insipidness for the moral salvation of too easily shocked tenderlings.

When the "c.o.o.n" craze struck the stage, Miss Raymond was among the first to take that up, and she has clung faithfully to it ever since. Like all her work, her interpretation of the modern "c.o.o.n" song is all her own.

She does not reproduce so fantastically as some others the antics of the swell cake-walker, but she infuses into her work a rich humor that is infectious. In this one particular she resembles closely Miss May Irwin.

May Irwin's "c.o.o.n," however, is the Southern "mammy" type, while Maud Raymond's is of Northern city birth and training. In this aspect of her "c.o.o.n" art, Miss Raymond seems nearer the progenitor of the up-to-date stage negro, who was, of course, the "n.i.g.g.e.r" minstrel of a number of decades ago.

Miss Raymond's method was capitally ill.u.s.trated in the song "I thought that he had Money in the Bank," which was introduced in "The Rogers Brothers in Wall Street" during the season of 1899-1900. Her dialect was by no means extraordinary. It had not the darky softness and tw.a.n.g, which one finds for instance so faithfully reproduced by Artie Hall.

Miss Raymond, however, got a curious comic effect by twisting her words out of the corner of her mouth in a manner indescribable, by hunching up her shoulders, one a little higher than the other, thrusting her head forward, crooking her elbows, and letting her hands hang loose and lifeless as if they had been broken at the wrists.

After seeing Miss Raymond's inimitable Dutch woman, I carried away the impression that she herself inclined toward embonpoint,--that she was grossly notoriously fat, in fact. Later observations, however, have caused me to revise that impression. Miss Raymond is not fat, merely comfortably plump. She is a decided brunette with rather irregular features, but features none the less attractive for that, snapping black eyes that seem always to sparkle with irrepressible merriment, and an inexhaustible amount of vivacity. Vivacity may, indeed, be said to be her specialty. It is always in evidence, and yet it never runs riot and it never becomes wearisome.

Miss Raymond has been a vaudeville feature for the past twelve years.

She made her first appearance with Rice and Barton's company, and afterward played two years with Harry Williams's Own Company. Her next appearance was in the soubrette part in "Bill's Boot," in which Joe J.

Sullivan starred. She then joined Irwin Brothers' Company, in which she sang with great success. She spent several weeks in the Howard Athenaeum Company when it was under James J. Armstrong's management, and finished the season with Fields and Hanson.

Miss Raymond was specially engaged to play the soubrette role in Bolivar in Donnelly and Girard's "The Rainmakers." Those popular stars declared that the part had never been so well done as it was by Miss Raymond, but she was obliged to retire at the end of the season on account of illness. During the summer she appeared on the roof gardens and in the continuous houses. She joined Tony Pastor's company in the early fall, and played a season of fifteen weeks with that organization, meeting with great success.

When the Rogers Brothers began starring with "The Reign of Error" in the fall of 1898, she was made a prominent feature of their company, and she continued with them as their leading support the following season in "The Rogers Brothers in Wall Street."

She is also the wife of one of the brothers, though whether of Max or Gus I never can remember.

CHAPTER XXI

PAULINE HALL

A very remarkable woman is Pauline Hall, whose stage career of twenty-five years encompa.s.ses every experience possible in light opera in this country. Miss Hall began as a dancer. She spent her apprentices.h.i.+p in the chorus. She sang inconsequential roles in opera, and she acted small parts in drama. She had her season in burlesque. She was for years the foremost figure in the best light-opera organization this country has ever known. She has starred, and she is to-day a better singer than the majority of her youthful contemporaries, a better actress than all except a very few of them, and a more satisfactory all-around artist--if the expression be permissible--than any of them.

When I heard her sing with Francis Wilson in "Cyrano de Bergerac"--about the stupidest opera, by the way, ever produced--and in "Erminie" in the spring of 1900, I was amazed; her voice was in splendid condition, certainly better than it had been five years before, true in tone, clear, and without huskiness. It showed its wear only in the loss of the richness and sweetness--the music, one might say--of the old Casino days. In figure Miss Hall was trim and youthful. Her face was plump and rounded like a girl's. Her hair, cut short for boys' parts and coquettishly curled, retained its dark, almost black, hue, while her eyes--wonderfully handsome they always were--snapped and sparkled like a debutante's.

Pauline Hall's fame reached its height during the long run of "Erminie"

at the New York Casino. She was the originator of the role of the Erminie, and she sang in the opera in all the princ.i.p.al cities of the country. She was--and is still, for that matter--one of the finest formed women on the American stage, and her stately manner and graceful demeanor gained for her the sobriquet so commonly a.s.sociated with her name--statuesque. During her subsequent starring career Miss Hall continued a popular favorite, although she was not consistently successful in obtaining operas of notable merit. "Puritania" met with excellent success, but "The Honeymooners" and "Dorcas" were neither of them strong enough to make any lasting impression. They were both of the familiar "prima donna in tights" type, and their librettos were without striking originality, and their scores showed only commonplace tunefulness.

In spite of this handicap Miss Hall succeeded in maintaining--largely through the force of her personality and art--her place among the foremost in light opera in this country. During the season of 1899-1900 she most happily again became a.s.sociated with Francis Wilson, who is also an "Erminie" product. Miss Hall, with her renewed youth and her years of experience, at once took a position in Wilson's company, second only to the star. In "Cyrano" she made Christian--a barren and sterile character--vigorous, picturesque, and attractive, while her Princess in "Erminie," barring the loss of vocal mellowness already referred to, was stronger than it was a dozen years ago.