Chapters of Opera Part 4

"This party consisted of three prime donne. These were the Signore Steffanone, Bosio, and Tedesco. Its only contralto was the Signora Vietti. There were three tenors--Salvi, Bettini, and Lorini. Badiali and Corradi Setti were the two barytones, while the two ba.s.si were Marini and Coletti. At the head of this extraordinary company was the great contraba.s.sist Bottesini, a.s.sisted by Arditi. It would be useless, my old friend, to attempt to indicate to you the excellence of this company.

You have long since known their names, or been aware of their standing as artists in the world of music. The greater portion of them enjoy a wide and well-deserved European reputation, and their reunion anywhere would form an almost incomparable operatic troupe."

Some of these names are those of singers whom, in his later days, I have said Maretzek was in the habit of chanting while telling them off on his fingers. His was not the credit of having brought them to the country, but he did, a year after they had made their first appearance in the Havana company, succeed in enticing them away from their generous manager and enlisting them under his banner at the Astor Place Opera House. All but Tedesco.

Of these singers Maretzek has more or less to say in his book, but the point of view is that of the manager perpetually hara.s.sed by the jealousies, importunities, and recalcitrancy of his singers. Steffanone was a conscientious artist, but had an infirmity of body and mind which was exceedingly troublesome to her manager; Bosio was talented and industrious, but had a husband whose devotion to her interests was an affliction to her manager; Tedesco was husbandless, but had a father who was so concerned about her honorarium that he came to the opera house on payday with a small pair of scales in his pocket, with which he verified every coin that came out of the exchequer of the unfortunate manager, "subjecting each separate piece of gold to a peculiarly Jewish examination touching their Christian perfection;" Salvi was a mountain of conceit, who believed himself to be the Louis Quatorze of the lyric drama, and compelled his manager to imagine him exclaiming "L'opera c'est moi!" Toward his manager Salvi was a despot, who rewarded favors bestowed upon himself by compelling the manager to engage persons who had served the tenor. Maretzek cites a ukase touching a singer named Sidonia:

Caro Max: Fa di tutto per iscriturare la Sidonia, altrimenti io non canto ne "Don Giovanni," ne "Norma," ne altri.

A 250 $ il mese, e che la scrittura porti 350 $. Amen, cosi sia.

Il tuo, Salvi.

19. 4. 53.

(In English: "Dear Max: Do everything to engage the Sidonia, otherwise I shall not sing in 'Don Giovanni,' 'Norma' or other operas. At $250 per month, but let the writing bear $350. Amen, and so be it.")

"At $250 per month, but let the scrittura bear $350." I wonder how many of my readers think of this cheap device of singers and managers when they read about the honoraria received by opera singers to-day!

Bettini drank to excess and spent whole nights in the gambling room, rendering him unfit for duty ever and anon; Badiali was singularly conscientious as an artist, and became a favorite with the public, but not with his colleagues, because of his extraordinary meanness and avarice and a jealous disposition; Marini was the greatest living Italian ba.s.so, save Lablache, but his voice was occasionally unreliable, and he frequently ill-humored, capricious, splenetic, and peevish.

In private life Angiolina Bosio was Mme. Panayotis di Xindavelonis, the wife of a Greek gentleman, whom she had married in 1851. She was in her prime when she came to New York, though she had not reached the meridian of her reputation. Her features were irregular, and she was not comely.

Richard Grant White claims credit for having given her the punning sobriquet "Beaux Yeux," by which she was widely known on account of her luminous and expressive eyes. "Her voice," says White:

was a pure, silvery soprano, remarkable alike for its penetrating quality and for its charm so fine and delicate that it seemed almost intellectual. But she was not a remarkably dramatic singer, even in light comedy parts, which best suited her; and her style was not at all declamatory. She _sang_; and in her vocalization she showed the results of intelligent study in the old Italian school. Her phrasing was incomparably fine, and the delicacy of her articulation has been surpa.s.sed by no modern prima donna, not even by Alboni. Thus much of her as a vocal artist; but her charm was greatly personal. Although her acting was always appropriate and in good taste, and at times--as, for example, in the saucy widow of "Don Pasquale"--very captivating, she never seemed to throw herself wholly into her part. She was always Angiolina Bosio, and appeared on the stage like a lady performing admirably in private theatricals. Her bearing was a delight to her audience, and seemed to be a performance, whereas it was only herself.

She sang the music of all the great operatic composers to the admiration of the public and the critics of the most exacting disposition; but she was greatest in Rossini's operas, and in Bellini's and Donizetti's. Yet her exquisitely charming and finished performance of Zerlina should not be pa.s.sed over unmentioned.

Tedesco, who came to New York with the first Havana company in April, 1847, presented herself to the always susceptible mind of Mr. White as a great, handsome, ox-eyed creature, the picture of lazy loveliness until she was excited by music; then she poured out floods, or rather gusts, of rich, clear sound. "She was not a great artist, but her voice was so copious and so musical that she could not be heard without pleasure, although it was not of the highest kind." Bettini left nothing here that remained in the memory of New Yorkers except the half of a name which he gave to his wife, the contralto Trebelli-Bettini, who was a member of Mr. Abbey's company on the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House in 1883. Salvi came over with the Havana company in the spring of 1848, and was one of the fish which Maretzek took from Marty's weirs. If we are to believe the testimony of contemporaneous critics he was the greatest tenor of his time, with the exception of Mario. That was the opinion of White, who wrote of him as follows in The Century Magazine for May, 1882:

Although Salvi was past his youth when he first sang in New York, his voice was yet in perfect preservation. It lacked nothing that is to be expected in a tenor voice of the first cla.s.s; and it had that mingling of manliness and tenderness, of human sympathy and seraphic loftiness which, for lack of any other or better word, we call divine. As a vocalist he was not in the first rank, but he stood foremost in the second. His presence was manly and dignified, and he was a good actor.

But it was as a vocalist, pure and simple, that he captivated and moved his audiences. He was heard in America at brief intervals during a few years, and his influence upon the taste of the general music-loving public was very considerable and wholly good. Singing at Niblo's or Castle Garden and other like places at which the price of admission was never more than $1, and was generally 50 cents, he gave to mult.i.tudes who would otherwise have had no such opportunity that education in art which is to be had only from the performances of a great artist. In purity of style he was unexceptionable. He lacked only a little higher finish, a little more brilliancy of voice and impressiveness of manner to take a position among tenors of the very first rank. Of these, however, there are never two in the world at the same time, scarcely two in the same generation; and so Salvi prepared the public for the coming Mario. His forte was the cantabile and his finest effects were those in mezza voce, expressive of intense suppressed feeling. More than once when he sang "Spirto gentil," as he rose to the crescendo of the second phrase, and then let his cry pa.s.s suddenly away in a dying fall, I have heard a whole house draw suspended breath, as if in pain, so nearly alike in their outward manifestation and fine, keen pleasure.

Such were some of the singers whose names are a.s.sociated in the musical annals of New York with that of Max Maretzek.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MUSIC

Fifty-one years ago the center of operatic activity had s.h.i.+fted to the Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place, and there it remained until the Metropolitan Opera House was built. From the opening of the Academy in 1854 to the opening of the Metropolitan in 1883 the former had no rival as an establishment, though the rivalry between managers and singers was the liveliest that New York has ever seen during the first decade of the time. For twenty years Burton's Theater revived its early traditions, and housed an opera troupe at intervals, and Niblo's Theater and Castle Garden were open to every manager who wished to experiment with the costly enterprise. English companies came and went, and a new compet.i.tive element, which soon became more dangerous than that which several times crushed the Italian exotic, entered in the shape of German opera, which, though it first sought a modest home in the lesser theaters of the Bowery and lower Broadway, soon achieved recognition at the fas.h.i.+onable Academy. The eagerness of the rivalry in the Italian field alone is indicated by the fact that the Academy had five different managers in the first three seasons of its history, and that thereafter, until the coming of James H. Mapleson in 1878, it was almost a rule that there should be a change of management every season. Maretzek was alternately manager and compet.i.tor over and over again, and the bitterest rivals of one season would be found a.s.sociated with each other the next. Already in the first season the stockholders had to step in and a.s.sume some of the risks of management to save the enterprise from s.h.i.+pwreck, and, despite the attractiveness of the house, the excellence of the performances, the presence of such phenomenal artists as Mme. Grisi and Signor Mario, and generous public patronage, the first season cost the different managers between $50,000 and $60,000--three times as much as Maretzek had lost in the previous six years, if that gentleman's word is to be taken. The figures look modest now, but twenty years later their duplication at the Metropolitan Opera House sufficed to effect a revolution in methods, and eventually tastes, which had a profound influence upon musical life in New York.

The Academy of Music had its birth in the expiring throes of the Astor Place Opera House. The spirit of which it was the material expression seems to have been admirable. To this the name of the establishment bears witness. It was not alone the official t.i.tle of the French inst.i.tution, popularly spoken of as the Grand Opera, which was in the minds of the promoters of the New York enterprise--the new opera house was to be a veritable academy of music, an educational inst.i.tution.

Not only was fas.h.i.+onable society to have a place in which to display and disport itself, but popular taste and popular knowledge were to be cultivated. To this end the auditorium was to be three times as commodious as that of the Astor Place Opera House, and the low prices which had been prevalent only at Niblo's, Burton's, and Castle Garden were to be the rule at the new establishment. In the charter granted by the State, dated April 10, 1852, the purposes of the Academy were set down as the cultivation of taste by entertainments accessible at moderate charges, by furnis.h.i.+ng facilities for instruction and by rewards. These purposes were overlooked at the beginning, but before the first season had come to its end Ole Bull, for a few weeks a manager, proclaimed his intention to pursue them by promising to open a conservatory in the fall of 1855, and at once (January, 1855) offering a prize of $1,000 for the "best original grand opera by an American composer, and upon a strictly American subject." The compet.i.tion ended with Ole Bull's announcement, for his active season endured only two weeks.

It is doubtful if the compet.i.tion would have produced anything more than a curiosity had it been carried to a conclusion. On the spur of the moment I can think of only two American musicians whose capacity was adequate to such a task--Mr. W. H. Fry, who was then musical critic and an editorial writer for The Tribune, and Mr. George F. Bristow, both of whom had composed operas found worthy of performance. Mr. Fry's "Leonora" was performed at the Academy on March 29, 1858, with Mme.

Lagrange in the princ.i.p.al role, but the score was already a dozen years old, and it is not likely that the composer's state of health would have permitted him to undertake the writing of a new opera even if he had been so disposed. Mr. Bristow's "Rip Van Winkle," which had a production in New York in the year of Ole Bull's announcement, may, for all that I know to the contrary, have been written for the prize. The scheme of uniting a training school for singers with an opera house was not heard of again, so far as I can recall, until Mr. Conried became director of the Metropolitan Opera House. It has much to commend it, and might be made a power for artistic good with an operatic establishment on a really public-spirited, artistic, and unselfish basis; as it is, its influence is apt to be pernicious morally, as well as artistically.

How seriously Mr. Fry took the proposed educational feature of the inst.i.tution is indicated by an article on the new opera house, which he published in The Tribune, in the course of which he said:

The expense of maintaining an opera house so nurtured at home will be at most not more than one-fourth what it would be if the artists were brought from Europe. American vocalists would be content with some few thousand dollars a year, and, if they were sought for and educated, boarded and lodged gratuitously the meanwhile, their services could be procured for several years in payment of the expenses of apprentices.h.i.+p.

In that way alone can the exorbitant demands of foreign artists be diminished; and the folly and extravagance of paying them from one to ten thousand dollars a night, as has been done in this city, will be forever avoided. In connection with this it may be mentioned that there are some Americans now studying for the operatic stage in Italy, and one lady of Boston has appeared in Naples with success. It may yet come to pa.s.s that art, in all its ramifications, may be as much esteemed as politics, commerce or the military profession. The dignity of American artists lies in their hands.

Mr. Fry's hopes, so far as the Academy of Music is concerned, were never realized, and after half a century his words are echoing wherever writers indulge in discussion of ways and means for promoting American music. Yet, without schools connected with opera houses American singers have made their mark, not only at home, but in the lyric theaters of Italy, France, Germany, and England. Names like Clara Louise Kellogg, Annie Louise Cary, Minnie Hauk, Alwina Valleria, Emma Nevada, Lillian Nordica, Adelaide Phillips, Emma Albani, and Josephine Yorke are connected more or less intimately with the history of the Academy of Music, but they do not exhaust the list. To them must be added those of Charles Adams, Suzanne Adams, David Bispham, Robert Bla.s.s, William Candidus, Emma Eames, Signor Foli, Geraldine Farrar, Julia g.a.y.l.o.r.d, Helen Hastreiter, Eliza Hensler (the daughter of a Boston tailor who became the morganatic wife of Dom Fernando of Portugal), Louise Homer, Emma Juch, Pauline l'Allemande, Marie Litta, Isabella McCullough, Frederick C. Packard, Jules Perkins, Signor Perugini, Mathilde Phillips, Susan Strong, Minnie Tracey, Jennie Van Zandt, Emma Abbott, Bessie Abott, Julia Wheatley, Virginia Whiting (Signora Lorini), Edyth Walker, Marion Weed, Zelie de Lussan, Clarence Whitehill, Allen Hinckley, Joseph F. Sheehan, and half a dozen or more singers now attracting attention in London and Germany.

Max Maretzek was the first lessee of the Academy of Music, but the company that opened it on October 2, 1854, was that engaged by J. H.

Hackett to support Grisi and Mario, which had appeared at Castle Garden two months before. Maretzek sublet to Hackett, who thought that the brilliancy of his stars, and the new house, justified him in advancing the price of seats to $2. He had a rude awakening, for the audience on the first night was neither large nor brilliant. It numbered not more than 1,500, and on the second night the prices came down to the popular scale, with $1.50 as the standard. By the middle of December, though the stockholders had been obliged to come to the rescue of Hackett, the collapse of the opening enterprise was announced, and Hackett took Grisi and Mario to Boston for a brief season, and then came back for three or four performances at the Metropolitan Theater.

The last performance took place on February 20, 1855. Though many excellent singers had been heard in New York between the coming of Malibran and that of Grisi and Mario, the three months of their sojourn in America have ever since remained memorable. For a generation afterward all tenors were measured by Mario's standard. Grisi created a less enduring impression, because the audiences that heard her were within the s.p.a.ce of a few years permitted also to hear such singers as Jenny Lind, Henrietta Sontag, and Marietta Alboni, three names that are still resplendent in operatic annals. There does not seem to be any reason for questioning the belief that Mario was the greatest tenor singer that ever gladdened the ears of American music lovers. Richard Grant White, who was then writing the musical reviews for The Courier and Enquirer newspaper, had chosen Benedetti as his ideal of a dramatic singer, and he found Mario lacking in pa.s.sion, while confessing that he had the sweetest tenor voice in all the world. He retired from the stage in 1867, but came to America in 1872, under Strakosch, and sang in concert with Carlotta Patti, Annie Louise Gary, Teresa Carreno, and Sauret. He had always been a somewhat unreliable singer, frequently disappointing his audiences by not singing at all, or singing listlessly until he reached the air in which he could produce a sensational effect, and when he returned to America he had only a superb presence and bearing, and a magnificent reputation with which to arouse interest. He was sixty-two years old, and had accepted an engagement for the reason that frequently brings worn-out artists to the scenes of their earlier triumphs; he needed money. Eight years later his financial condition so distressed his old friends and admirers in London that they got up a benefit concert for him. He was living in Rome when he died in 1883.

Such satisfaction as can come to one from seeing a renowned artist was mine in 1872; but I can scarcely say that I _heard_ Mario. With Annie Louise Gary he sang first in a graceful little duet, "Per valli, per boschi," by Blangini ("Dear old Mario had to warm up in a duet before he would trust himself in solo," said the admired contralto, many years afterward), and later attempted Beethoven's "Adelaide." Romances were Mario's specialty, and Beethoven's divine song ought to have been an ideal selection for him, but it was quite beyond his powers and I do not now know whether to be glad or sorry that I heard him attempt it. It is always unfortunate when great singers who have gone into decay are tempted again to sing. To the generation who knew them in their prime they bring a double measure of disappointment--grief for the pa.s.sing away of the art which once gave pleasure, and regret that the younger generation should carry down to posterity a false impression of the singer's voice and style. Who shall measure the heartburnings left by Madame Patti's last visit to America when she sold herself to a trumpery balladist, and, affecting the appearance and manner which had been hers a quarter of a century before, tried to make a new generation believe that it was listening to the vocalist whom veterans maintained was the last one ent.i.tled to be called "la Diva." How much lovelier and more fragrant the memory of Annie Louise Cary, whose American career began during the Strakosch regime at the Academy of Music, and ended with her marriage to Charles Mon son Raymond, when she was still in the very plenitude of her powers. Many a time within the first few years after her retirement have I seen her surrounded by young women and old, as she was leaving the Academy of Music or the Metropolitan Opera House, and heard their pleading voices: "Oh, Miss Cary! aren't you ever going to sing for us again?" and "Please, Miss Cary, won't you let me kiss you?"

Ole Bull's management of the Academy of Music was but a fleeting incident, memorable only for the protestations with which it was begun and for its brevity. For the famous Norwegian violinist it was a Utopian dream with a speedy and rude awakening. After he had retired the Lagrange troupe came from downtown and completed the season with the help of the stockholders, and Maretzek, the erstwhile impresario and lessee, became the conductor. For four years, 1855, 1856, 1857, and 1858, the Academy saw Maretzek, Strakosch, and Ullmann alternately installed as impresarios, and then for a year there was no opera at the house, the three men at the head of as many different companies seeking their fortunes outside of the metropolis. With Ullmann Thalberg was a.s.sociated for a s.p.a.ce, the great pianist having come to America to make money under the management of Ullmann, and probably having been persuaded to risk some of his gains by his manager. It was but a brief interlude, however. Ullmann, whose activities in America extended over a quarter of century, lived to manage some of the artists who are still before the public. The beginning of his career, like that of Maretzek, fell in the period when Barnumism was at its zenith, and Ullmann was utterly unconscionable in the methods to which he resorted for the purpose of exploiting his artists. It was under his operatic consuls.h.i.+p that the winsome Piccolomini came to New York--an artist of insignificant caliber, lovely to look upon and fascinating as an actress in soubrette parts. "A Columbine," said Chorley about her when she effected her debut in London, "born to 'make eyes' over an ap.r.o.n with pockets, to trick the Pantaloon of the piece, to outrun the Harlequin, and to enjoy her own saucy confidence on the occasion of her success--with those before the footlights and the orchestra." But this was not all. "Never did any young lady, whose private claims to modest respect were so great as hers are known to be," said the same critic, "with such self-denial fling off their protection in her resolution to lay hold of the public at all risks. Her performances at times approached offense against maidenly reticence and delicacy. When she played Zerlina, in 'Don Giovanni,' such virtue as there was between the two seemed absolutely on the side of the libertine hero--so much invitation was thrown into the peasant girl's rusticity." Here was a capital subject for the methods dear to the heart of Ullmann. In London the Piccolomini had been proclaimed to be of a n.o.ble Roman family, the niece of a cardinal, who had quarreled with her relations because of her theatrical propensities. There may have been some truth in the statements, but Ullmann adorned her history still more, and proclaimed from every New York housetop that the lady was a lineal descendant of Charlemagne, and the great-grand-daughter of Schiller's tragic hero Max Piccolomini.

It was under the co-consuls.h.i.+p of Maretzek and Ullmann that Adelina Patti made her operatic debut at the Academy of Music. The date was November 24, 1859, the opera "Lucia di Lammermoor." Twenty-five years later Patti was again the prima donna of the Academy, though Mapleson was now the manager. It was the second year of the rivalry between the Academy and the Metropolitan Opera House, and Colonel Mapleson conceived the idea of profiting by the anniversary. At first it was planned that "Lucia" should be given, with Brignoli as Edgardo, the part he had sung in the opera at Patti's debut, but two months before the time the tenor died. Instead, "Martha" was performed, in a manner wholly commonplace in all respects except as to the t.i.tular role, in which Mme. Patti appeared, as a matter of course. There was only a little perfunctory applause, but Colonel Mapleson had resolved that the scene should be enacted, of which we have often read, in which the devotees of the prima donna unhitch the horses from her carriage, and themselves drag it, with wild rejoicings, through the streets. To make sure of such a spontaneous ovation in staid New York was a question which Mapleson solved by hiring fifty or more Italians (choristers, probably) from the familiar haunts in Third Avenue, and providing them with torches, to follow the carriage, which was prosaically dragged along to its destination at the Windsor Hotel. As a demonstration it was the most pitiful affair that I have ever witnessed. In fact, it seemed to me such a humiliation of the great artist that on the next opera night I suggested to my colleague of The Times newspaper that something adequate and appropriate to so interesting an anniversary be arranged. He agreed and within a fortnight or so a banquet was given in Mme. Patti's honor at the Hotel Brunswick, under the auspices of a committee consisting of a number of well-known gentlemen, including Judge Daly, William Steinway, and Nahum Stetson.

The committee of arrangements, having visited Mme. Patti and gained her consent, went to work right merrily, but before the invitations were issued an obstacle was met which threatened s.h.i.+pwreck to the amiable enterprise; the wives of several gentlemen who had been invited privately refused pointblank to break bread with the prima donna on account of the scandal caused by her separation from the Marquis de Caux and marriage to Nicolini, the tenor. Somewhat perplexed, the two critics visited her a second time, and put the matter to her as delicately as possible. Would she, under the circ.u.mstances, be the guest of a number of gentlemen, representative of the legal, artistic, and literary professions? Again she accepted, and without a moment's hesitation. So, instead of the gathering that had been planned, there was a stag party of about seventy gentlemen in the ballroom of the Brunswick, handsomely decorated and discreetly lighted with wax candles.

The preliminary reception was held in one of the rooms adjoining the banquet hall, and there a scene was enacted which brought into relief a trait of character which was extremely useful to the Colonel in the difficult task of managing his wilful and capricious prima donna. Mme.

Patti received her hosts seated upon a divan. She looked radiant, and was wholly at ease after having taken a peep into the hall to see that the light would not be prejudicial to her complexion. One after another of the seventy gentlemen advanced to her, took the hand which she extended with a gracious smile, muttered the pretty compliment which he had rehea.r.s.ed, and fell back to make room for the next comer. The room was pretty nearly full, when the Colonel appeared in the glory of that flawless, speckless dress suit, with the inevitable rose in the lapel of his coat. Not a glance did he give to right or left, but with the grace of a practised courtier, he sailed across the room, sank on his knees before the diva, and raised her hand to his lips. Such a smile as rewarded him! A score of b.r.e.a.s.t.s bulged out with envy and a score of brains framed the thought: "Confound it! Why didn't I think of doing that?"

The dinner pa.s.sed off without a hitch, Mme. Patti managing by a hundred pretty coquetries to convince nearly every one of her three-score and ten hosts that he had received at least one smile that was more gracious than that bestowed upon his fellows. Speeches were made by Judge Daly, William Steinway, Dr. Leopold Damrosch, William Winter and others, but, as Colonel Mapleson had carried off the palm by his courtliness at the reception, Max Maretzek made himself the most envied of men at the dinner. Quite informally he was asked to say something after the set programme had been disposed of. Where the other speakers had brought forward their elegantly turned oratorical tributes the grizzled old manager told stories about the child life and early career of the guest.

Amongst other things he ill.u.s.trated how early the divine Adelina had fallen into the ways of a prima donna by refusing to sing at a concert in Tripler Hall unless he, who was managing the concert, would first go out and buy her a pound of candy. He agreed to get the sweetmeats provided she would give him a kiss in return. In possession of her box she kept both of the provisions of her contract. When the toastmaster declared the meeting adjourned Patti bore straight down on her old manager and said:

"Max, if I gave you a kiss for a box of candy then, I'll give you one for nothing now!"

And she did.

CHAPTER VII

MAPLESON AND OTHER IMPRESARIOS

Memories are crowding upon me, and I find there is much still to be said about the Academy of Music, and the operatic folk whom it housed between 1854 and 1886. Just now the incidents which have been narrated about the banquet given in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Adelina Patti's debut recall other characteristic anecdotes of Colonel Mapleson, who managed the Academy of Music from 1878 to the end of the disastrous season of 1885-'86. When Mapleson and Abbey were drawing up their forces for the battle royal between the Academy of Music and the Metropolitan Opera House in 1883, one of the New York newspapers reported Mme. Patti as saying: "Colonel Mapleson comes here when he wants me to sing, and he calls me 'My dear child,' and he goes down on both knees and kisses my hands, and he has, you know, quite a supplicating face, and it is not easy to be firm with a man of such suavity of manners." I have often thought of this in connection with the outcome of the disastrous rivalry between the two houses and their managers. When Colonel Mapleson let himself down so gracefully upon his knee and pressed the prima donna's hand to his lips, the act was not all unselfish adoration. It used to be said that there was no manager alive who had succeeded in becoming debtor to Adelina Patti. It was golden grain alone that persuaded this bird to sing. The story is old of how her personal agent once hovered between her dressing room and the manager's office, carrying the message one way: "Madame Patti will not put on her slippers until she is paid,"

returning the other way with a thousand dollars; coming again to the manager with: "Madame has one slipper on, but will not put on the other till she has her fee"--and so on. Doubtless apocryphal and yet only a bit fanciful and exaggerated. Yet it was known in the inner operatic circles in 1885 that Colonel Mapleson had succeeded in getting himself pretty deeply into her debt. How he did it the anecdotes of the reception and Mme. Patti's interview serve to indicate. In sooth, the persuasive powers of the doughty colonel were distinctly remarkable, and it was not only the prima donna who lived in an atmosphere of adulation who fell a victim to them. I have a story to ill.u.s.trate which came to me straight from the lips of the confiding creditor. He was a theatrical costumer, moreover, and one of the tribe of whom it is said that only to a Connecticut Yankee will they lower the flag in a horse trade.

My friend was a theatrical costumer with a shop conveniently situated in Union Square. When the clouds began to lower upon the Academy around the corner he became curious to know whether or not he was likely to get a balance of some $1,500 owing him for costumes furnished to the establishment. He sent his bill many times, and, being on amicable terms with Colonel Mapleson, called on him at intervals to talk over the situation. When he left the impresario's office he always carried away profuse promises of speedy payment, but nothing more. Finally, he put the bill into the hands of his lawyer, who at once took steps to attach the property of the foreign debtor, and, to bring about pressure in a manner that seemed likely to be effective, he instructed the deputy sheriff, who was to serve the legal papers, to present himself at the office of Colonel Mapleson an hour or so before the beginning of the opera. The arrangements perfected, he informed his client of what had been done. But there remained a kindly spot in the costumer's soul, and of his own volition he called on the manager in the afternoon of the day set apart for the coup in order to give him one more opportunity to save himself from the impending catastrophe.

"I found the Colonel in his office," said he, in relating the incident, "cutting the corners off of tickets and sending them out to fill his house for the next performance. While he clipped he talked away at me in his cheerfullest and blandest style, told me how sorry he was that he could not pay me out of hand, and deplored the action which I had taken, but with such absence of all resentment that I began to feel ashamed of myself for having threatened to shut him up. After half an hour I agreed to send a messenger post-haste to my lawyer and call off the sheriff.

This done he borrowed $75 cash from me, and I went away happy. I tell you I know lots of managers, but there's only one Colonel Mapleson in this world."