Part 13 (2/2)
Probably I respect French art as much as any one; but I believe it is looked up to a great deal more than is justified. Consider Mme.
Carvalho's wig for example, and, as for that, her costume as well. Yet we all turned to the Parisians as authority for the theatre. The pictures of the first distinguished Marguerite give a fine idea of the French stage effects in the sixties. A few years ago I heard _Tannhauser_ in Paris. The manner in which the pilgrims wandered in convinced me in my opinion. The whole management was inefficient and Wagner's injunctions were disregarded at every few bars. The French Gallicise everything. They simply cannot get inside the mental point of view of any other country. Though they are popularly considered to be so facile and adaptable, they are in truth the most obstinate, one-idead, single-sided race on earth barring none except, possibly, the Italians.
Gounod's _Faust_ is a good example--a Ger man story treated by Frenchmen. Remarkably little that is Teutonic has been left in it.
Goethe has been eliminated so far as possible. The French were held by the drama, but the poetry and the symbolism meant nothing at all to them. Being German, they had no use for its poetry and its symbolism.
The French colour and alter foreign thought just as they colour and alter foreign phraseology. They do it in a way more subtle than any usual difficulties of translation from one tongue to another. The process is more a form of trans.m.u.ting than of translating--words, thoughts, actions--into another element entirely. How idiotic it sounds when Hamlet sings:
_etre--ou n'etre pas!_
Perhaps this, however, is not entirely the fault of the French.
Shakespeare should never be set to music.
There is also the question of traditions. I may seem to be contradicting myself when I find fault with a certain French school for its blind and bigoted adherence to traditions; but there should be moderation in all things and a hidebound rigidity in stupid old forms is just as inartistic as a free-and-easy elasticity in flighty new ones. It is possible to put some old wine in new bottles, but it must be poured in very gently. French artists learn most when once they get away from France. Maurel is a good example. Look at the way he grew and developed when he went to England and America and was allowed to work problems and ideas out by himself.
Once when in Paris I wanted to vary and freshen my costume of Marguerite, give it a new yet consistent touch here and there. I was not planning to renovate the _role_, only the girl's clothes. Having always felt that the Grand Opera was a Mecca to us artists from afar, I hastened there and climbed up the huge stairway to pay my respects to the Director. Monsieur had never heard of me. Frenchmen make a point never to have heard of any one outside of France. The fact that I was merely the first and the most famous Marguerite across the sea did not count. He was, however, very polite. He brought out his wonderful costume books that were full of new ideas to me and delighted me with numberless fresh possibilities. I saw unexplored fields in the direction of correct costuming and exclaimed over the designs, Monsieur watching my enthusiasm with bored civility. There was one particularly enchanting design for a silver chatelaine, heavy and mediaeval in character. I could see it with my mind's eye hanging from Marguerite's bodice. This I said to M. le Directeur: but he shook his dignified head with a frown.
”Too rich. Marguerite was too poor,” he said with weary brevity.
”Oh, no!” I explained volubly and eagerly, ”she was of the well-to-do cla.s.s--the burghers--don't you remember? Marguerite and Valentine owned their house and, though they were of course of peasant blood, this sort of chatelaine seems to me just the thing that any German girl might possess.”
”Too rich,” Monsieur put in imperturbably.
”But,” I protested, ”it might be an heirloom, you know, and----”
”Too rich,” he repeated politely; and he added in a calm, dreamy voice as he shut up the book, ”I think that Mademoiselle will make a mistake _if she ever tries anything new_!”
As for sightseeing in France, my mother and I did any amount of it on that first visit. Sometimes I was charmed but more often I was disillusioned. There have been few ”sights” in my life that have come up to my ”great expectations” or been half as wonderful as my dreams. This is the penalty of a too vivid imagination; nothing can ever be as perfect as one's fancy paints it. The view of Mont Blanc from the terrace of Voltaire's house near the borderland of France and Switzerland is one of the few in my experience that I have found more lovely than I could have dreamed it to be. Of all the palaces that I have been in--and they have numbered several--the only one that ever seemed to me like a real palace was Fontainebleau. Small but exquisite, it looked like a haven of rest and loveliness, as though its motto might well be: ”How to be happy though a crowned head!”
Speaking of crowned heads reminds me that while we were in Paris Mr.
McHenry, our English friend from Holland Park, made an appointment for me to be presented to the ex-Queen of Spain, the Bourbon princess, Christina, so beloved by many Spaniards. I was delighted because I had never been presented to royalty and a Spanish queen seemed a very splendid sort of personage even if she did not happen to be ruling at the moment. Christina had withdrawn from Spain and had married the Duke de Rienzares. They lived in a beautiful palace on the Champs elysees.
There are nothing but shops on the site now but it used to be very imposing, especially the formal entrance which, if I remember correctly, was off the Rue St. Honore. Mrs. and Mr. McHenry went with me and, after being admitted, we were shown up a marble staircase into what was called the Cameo Room, a small, austere apartment filled with cameos of the Bourbons. Queen Christina liked to live in small and unpretentious rooms; they seemed less suggestive of a palace.
I found that ”royalty at home” was about as simple as anything could conceivably be; not quite as plain as the old Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset to be sure but quite plain enough. The Queen and the Duke de Rienzares entered without ceremony. The Queen wore a severe and simple black gown that cleared the floor by an inch or two. It was a perfectly practical and useful dress, admirably suited for housekeeping or tidying up a room. Around the royal lady's shoulders hung a little red plaid shawl such as no American would wear. She was Spanishly dark and her black hair was pulled into a knot about the size of a silver dollar in the middle of the back of her head. I have never seen her _en grande toilette_ and so do not know whether or not she ever looked any less like a respectable housekeeper. She had a delightful manner and was most gracious. She had, with all the Bourbon pride, also the Bourbon gift of making herself pleasant and of putting people at their ease. Of course she was immensely accomplished and spoke Italian as perfectly as she did Spanish. The Duke seemed harmless and amiable. He had little to say, was thoroughly subordinate, and seemed entirely acclimated to his position in life as the ordinarily born husband of a Queen.
Our visit was not much of an ordeal after all. It was really quite instinctively that I courtesied and backed out of the room and observed the other points of etiquette that are correct when one is introduced to royalty. As it was a private presentation, it had not been thought necessary to coach me, and as I backed myself out of the august presence, keeping myself as nearly as possible in a courtesying att.i.tude, I caught Mr. McHenry looking at me with amused approval.
”Well,” said he, when we were safe in the hall and I had straightened up, ”I should say that you had been accustomed to courts and crowned heads all your life! You acted as if you had been brought up on it!”
”Ah,” I replied, ”that comes from my opera training. We learn on the stage how to treat kings and queens.”
Not more than a fortnight after this I had an offer for an engagement at the Madrid Opera for $400.00 a night, very good for Spain in those days.
I suppose that it came indirectly through the influence of Queen Christina. I wanted to go to Spain, but my mother would not let me accept. We were almost pioneers of travel in the modern sense and had no one to give us authoritative ideas of other countries. People alarmed us about the climate, declaring it unhealthy; and about the public, which they said was capricious and rude. The warning about the public particularly frightened me. I should never object to my efforts being received in silence in case of disapproval, but I felt that I could not survive what I had been told was the Spanish custom of hissing. I was also told that Spanish audiences were very mercurial and difficult to win. So we refused the Madrid Opera offer, and I have never sung in either Spain or Italy princ.i.p.ally because of my dread of the hissing habit.
That same year I heard Christine Nilsson for the first time, in _Martha_ at the Theatre Lyrique and, later, in _Hamlet_ at the same theatre with Faure. Shortly after both Nilsson and Faure were taken over by the Grand Opera. Ophelie had been written for Nilsson and composed entirely around her voice. She created the part, singing it exquisitely, and Ambrose Thomas paid her the compliment of taking his two princ.i.p.al soprano melodies from old Swedish folk-songs. Nilsson could sing Swedish melodies in a way to drive one crazy or break one's heart. I have been quite carried away with them again and again. There was one delicious song that she called _Le Bal_ in which a young fellow asks a girl to dance and she is very shy. It was slight, but ever so pretty, and it had a minor melody that was typically northern. These were the good days before her voice became impaired. In this connection I may mention that it was Christine Nilsson who, having heard the Goodwin girls sing _Way Down upon the Swanee River_, first introduced it on the stage as an _encore_.
While speaking of Nilsson, I want to record that I was present on the night, much later, when she practically murdered the high register of her voice. She had five upper notes the quality of which was unlike any other I ever heard and that possessed a peculiar charm. The tragedy happened during a performance of _The Magic Flute_ in London and I was in the Newcastles' box, which was near the stage. Nilsson was the Queen of the Night, one of her most successful early _roles_. The second aria in _The Magic Flute_ is more famous and less difficult than the first aria and, also, more effective. Nilsson knew well the ineffectiveness of the ending of the first _aria_ in the two weakest notes of a soprano's voice, A natural and B flat. I never could understand why a master like Mozart should have chosen to use them as he did. There is no climax to the song. One has to climb up hard and fast and then stop short in the middle. It is an appalling thing to do: and that night Nilsson took those two notes at the last in _chest tones_.
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