Geraldine Farrar has been seen and heard in a number of impersonations at the Metropolitan Opera House (she has also enlarged her cinema répertoire), since I wrote my paper about her, Orlanda in La Reine Fiamette, Lodoletta, Thais, Suor Angelica, and Zaza, but I can add very little to what I have said. Orlanda, Lodoletta, and, naturally enough, Thais, she has permanently dropped, I think, after a short period of experimentation. In Zaza, however, it seems possible, although it is too early to predict with certainty, as I am writing these lines a month after her assumption of the part, that she has found a rôle in which she will meet popular satisfaction for some years to come. On the whole, however, I must leave the case as I pleaded it originally, withal it is probably a trifle rosier than I would plead it now. Nevertheless I must state in fairness that Madame Farrar has probably never sung so well before as she is singing this winter (1919-20) and that she retains the admiration of opera-goers in general. It seems apparent to me now that in exploiting herself as a "character" actress she has perhaps made a mistake. Her best work has not been done in operas like Thais, Carmen, and Zaza, but as Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, as the Goosegirl in Königskinder, and as Rosaura in Le Donne Curiose. Usually, indeed, she is charming in what are called "ingenue" rôles. It may therefore be considered unfortunate that these are the rôles in her repertoire to which she is most indifferent. However it must be admitted that it seems impertinent and even stupid to storm and fret about a career which has been so evenly successful. The public must admire Madame Farrar or it would not go to see her, and at the Metropolitan Opera House it is a recognized fact that she is one of two singers in the company who is always sure of drawing a full house.
IV
We come to Mary Garden. I never can resist the temptation to write about Mary Garden. I never even try to. Other subjects intrigue me for a time, but I usually pass them by in the end and go on to something new, new to me, at least. But I always feel that I have left something unsaid about this singing actress. It is probable that I always will feel this way for Miss Garden in her performances constantly suggests some new idea or awakens some dormant emotion. As a result, although I may write about coleoptera, the influence of cobalt on the human mind, or a history of Persian miniatures, I shall probably always find occasion to insert a few remarks about this incomparable artist.
The paper devoted to her in this book seems to me at present pitifully weak, absurdly inadequate. I have gone farther in "The New Art of the Singer," which you will find in "The Merry-Go-Round" (1918), and in my study of Carmen in "The Music of Spain" (1918). This seems a good place to state, however, that Miss Garden's Carmen was only seen to its best advantage when she appeared with Muratore. The nature of her interpretation of this rôle is such that it depends to a great extent on satisfactory assistance from her fellow singers. Her Carmen is a study of a cold, brutal, mysterious gipsy, who does not seek lovers, they come to her. When, as at some recent performances, the tenors and baritones do not come (it is obvious that some of them might take lessons to advantage in crossing the stage) her interpretation loses a good deal of its intention. I offer this explanation to any one who feels that my enthusiasm for her in this rôle is exaggerated. To fully understand the greatness of Miss Garden's Carmen one must have observed it in fitting surroundings. I hope this environment may soon be provided again.
On the whole I feel that the most enthusiastic of Miss Garden's admirers have so far done the woman scant justice. Most of us are beginning to realize that she is the greatest of living lyric artists, that she has done more to revive the original intention of the Florentines in inventing the opera to recapture the theatre of the Greeks, than any one else. She has made opera, indeed, sublimated speech. And she is certainly the contemporary queen of lyric sigaldry.
It is said by some who do not stop to think, or who do not know what singing is, that Mary Garden is a great actress but that she cannot sing.[B] These misguided bigots, who try to make it their business to misunderstand anything that approaches perfection, remind me of the incident of Lady Astor and the American sailor. She met the youth just outside the Houses of Parliament and asked him if he would like to go in. "I would not," were the words he flung into her astonished face. "My mother told me to avoid women like you." Some day a few of the most intelligent of these sacculi may realize that Mary Garden is probably the greatest living singer. It is, indeed, with her voice, and with her singing voice that she does her most consummate acting. Indeed her capacity for colouring her voice to suit the emergencies not only of a phrase but of an entire rôle, might give a hint to future interpreters, were there any capable of taking advantage of such a valuable hint. But, good God, in such matters as phrasing, portamento, messa di voce, and other paraphernalia of the singing teacher's laboratory, she is past-mistress, and if any one has any complaints to make about the quality and quantity of tone she used in the second act of l'Amore dei Tre Re I feel that he did not listen with unprejudiced ears.
There is, perhaps, nothing that need be added at present to what I have already said of her Sapho, Marguerite, Mélisande,[C] Chrysis, Jean, Louise, and Thais, except that such of these impersonations as still remain in her répertoire are as clean-cut, as finely chiselled as ever; probably each is a little improved on each subsequent occasion on which it is performed. Some day I shall have more to say about her marvellous Monna Vanna. I am sure I would understand her Salome better now. When I first saw her in Richard Strauss's music drama I was still under the spell of Olive Fremstad's impersonation, and was astonished, and perhaps a little indignant at Miss Garden's divagations. But now I know what I did not know so well then, that an interpreter must mould a part to suit his own personality. It is probable that if Mary Garden should vouchsafe us another view of her nervous, unleashed tiger-woman I would be completely bowled over.
It seems necessary to speak of the portraits she has added to her gallery since the fall of 1917. Since then she has been seen in Février's Gismonda, Massenet's Cléopâtre, and Montemezzi's l'Amore dei Tre Re. The first of these is a very bad opera; it is not even one of Sardou's best plays. The part afforded Miss Garden an opportunity for the display of pride, dignity, and authority. Her gowns were very beautiful—I remember particularly the lovely Grecian drapery of the convent scene, which she has since developed into a first-act costume for Fiora; she made a handsome figure of the woman, but the thing itself was pasteboard and will soon be forgotten. The posthumous Cléopâtre was nearly as bad, but in the scene in which the queen, disguised as a boy, visits an Egyptian brothel and makes love to another boy, Mary was very startling, and the death scene, in which, after burying the asp in her bosom, she tosses it away with a shudder, sinks to the ground, then crawls to Antony's side and expires below his couch, one arm waving futilely in the air in an attempt to touch her lover, was one of her most touching and finest bits of acting. Her pale face, her green eyelids combined to create a sinister make-up. But, on the whole, a dull opera, and not likely to be heard again.
But Fiora! What a triumph! What a volcano! I have never been able to find any pleasure in listening to the music of Montemezzi's l'Amore dei Tre Re, although it has a certain pulse, a rhythmic beat, especially in the second act, which gives it a factitious air of being better than it really is. The play, however, is interesting, and subtle enough to furnish material for quibble and discussion not only among critics, but among interpreters themselves. Miss Bori, who originally sang Fiora in New York, was a pathetic flower, torn and twisted by the winds of fate, blown hither and thither without effort or resistance on her part. It was probably a possible interpretation, and it found admirers. Miss Muzio, the next local incumbent of the rôle, fortified with a letter from Sem Benelli, or at least his spoken wishes, found it convenient to alter this impersonation in most particulars, but she was not, is not, very convincing. Her intentions are undoubtedly good but she is no instrument for the mystic gods to play upon.
But Miss Garden's Fiora burned through the play like a flame. She visualized a strong-minded mediæval woman, torn by the conflicting emotions of pity and love, but once she had abandoned herself to her passion she became a living altar consecrated to the worship of Aphrodite and Eros. Such a hurricane of fiery, tempestuous love has seldom if ever before swept the stage. Miss Garden herself has never equalled this performance, save in Mélisande and Monna Vanna, which would lead one to the conclusion that she is at her best in parts of the middle ages, until one reflects that in early Greek courtesans, in French cocottes of several periods, in American Indians, and Spanish gipsies she is equally atmospheric. Other Fioras have been content to allow the hand of death to smite them without a struggle. Not this one. When Archibaldo attempts to strangle her she tries to escape; her efforts are horrible and pathetic because they are fruitless. And the final clutch of the fingers behind his back leave the most horrible blood-stains of tragic beauty in the memory.
V
What is to become of Mary Garden? What can she do now? What is there left for her to do? Those who complain of some of the dross in her répertoire can scarcely have considered the material available to her. In Pelléas et Mélisande, Louise, and Salome she has given much to the best the contemporary lyric stage has to offer. On other occasions she has succeeded in transfiguring indifferent material with her genius. Monna Vanna is not a great opera, but she makes it seem so. But where is there anything better? Can she turn to Puccini, whose later operas seem bereft of merit, to Mascagni, to Strauss, to any other of the living opera composers?
Ravel's one opera is not particularly suited to her, but why, I might ask, does not Ravel write something for her? Why not Strawinsky? Why not Leo Ornstein? Why not John Carpenter? The talented composer of The Birthday of the Infanta might very well write an opera, in which her genius for vocal experimentation might have still further play.
In the meantime I can make one or two suggestions. I have already begged for Isolde and Isolde I think we shall get in time. But has it occurred to any one that the Queen in The Golden Cockerel is a part absolutely suited to the Garden genius? Not, of course, The Golden Cockerel as at present performed, with a double cast of singers and pantomimists but as an opera, in the form in which Rimsky-Korsakow conceived it. And I hope some day that she will attempt Gluck's Armide, perhaps one of the Iphigénies, and Donna Anna. Why not? Of all living singers Miss Garden is the only one who could give us the complete fulfilment of Mozart's tragic heroine. Oscar Hammerstein, whose vision was acute, once considered a performance of Don Giovanni with Maurice Renaud in the title part, Luisa Tetrazzini as Zerlina, Lina Cavalieri as Elvira, and Mary Garden as Anna. It was never given. But I hope at the next revival of the work at the Opéra-Comique Miss Garden will undertake the part, and I see no reason why the opera should not be added to the already extensive répertoire of the Chicago Opera Company.
Her stride, her lithe carriage, her plastic use of her arms and her body, give Mary Garden a considerable advantage over a sculptor, who can in the course of a lifetime only capture perhaps ten perfect examples of arrested motion, while in any one performance she makes her body a hundred different works of art. Of course, some of us, fascinated by the mere beauty of the Garden line, more slender now than it was even in her most youthful past, delighted with her irreproachable taste in dress, would rest content to watch her walk across the scene or form exquisite pictures in any part, in any opera. But unless one of the best of the moderns writes a great rôle for her, it would be a great satisfaction to see her in one of the noble classic parts of the past, and that satisfaction, I hope, will be vouchsafed us.
March 18, 1920.
New York.
On the following pages you will find descriptions of two other interesting books by Mr. Van Vechten.
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
(12mo., 343 pages, $2.00 net.)
Contents: In defence of bad taste; Music and supermusic; Edgar Saltus; The new art of the singer; Au bal musette; Music and cooking; An interrupted conversation; The authoritative work on American music; Old days and new; Two young American playwrights; De senectute cantorum; The Land of Joy; The new Isadora; Margaret Anglin produces As You Like It; The modern composers at a glance.
"Carl Van Vechten has the jauntiest pen that ever graced the ear of a literary gentleman. He uses it as D'Artagnan used his sword, with sheer joy in the wielding of it, a sharp accuracy of aim, and a fine musketeering courage back of it. His pen is a pen of the world, a cosmopolitan pen which is at home in the marts of Irving Berlin, as well as in the rarefied heights of Igor Strawinsky. It knows how to turn a phrase or a reputation. In The Merry-Go-Round his pen has the time of its life. So will you when you flip a ride on the whirligig."—Fanny Butcher in The Chicago Tribune.
Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, New York
IN THE GARRET
(12mo., 347 pages, $2.00 net.)
Contents: Variations on a theme by Havelock Ellis; A note on Philip Thicknesse; The folk-songs of Iowa; Isaac Albeniz; The holy jumpers; On the relative difficulties of depicting heaven and hell in music; Sir Arthur Sullivan; On the rewriting of masterpieces; Oscar Hammerstein; La Tigresse; Mimi Aguglia as Salome; Farfariello; The Negro Theatre; The Yiddish Theatre; The Spanish Theatre.
"When he surveys the American scene we go all the way with Mr. Van Vechten. He celebrates his attachment to New York as ecstatically as Charles Lamb's his to London, in a chapter called La Tigresse. This is the best thing in the book. And Mr. Thomas Burke, in England, alone has caught this peculiar gusto."—The London Times.
Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, New York
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Madame Fremstad has appeared in concert in New York but not in opera.
[B] The fault is really typical of that school of criticism which is always comparing, instead of searching out an artist's intention and judging whether or not he has realized it.
[C] Maurice Maeterlinck broke a promise to Georgette Leblanc of seventeen years' standing to witness a performance of Debussy's lyric drama on January 27, 1920, when, with the new Madame Maeterlinck, he sat in a box, remaining till the final curtain, at the Lexington Theatre in New York. After the fourth act, responding to Miss Garden's urge and the applause of the audience, he rose to bow.
| Note of transcriber of this etext: |
| the consistent spelling of choregraphy has not been corrected |
| overwhemingly=>overwhelmingly |