FIGURE 14. Geraldine Farrar (Hartsook; courtesy Photofest)
Caruso, too, was seduced by the movies, although he first contemplated with some anxiety the potential loss of prestige should he, as Farrar put it, follow her “towards the concentrated vicinity of the lens.” Ultimately, his foray onto the silent screen was both brief and forgettable. Between July 15 and September 30, 1918, Caruso made two films, My Cousin and A Splendid Romance, for which he was paid the astronomical sum of $100,000 by Lasky’s Famous Players. Only My Cousin was released in the United States. It opens with a series of shots of Caruso as a celebrated tenor in mufti, and then in costume as Rodolfo, Canio, Samson, and the Duke of Mantua. He also plays the part of an impoverished Little Italy sculptor who has made a plaster bust of his cousin, the singer. The sculptor is portly and mustachioed, his face deeply lined, and immensely likable. He smokes a pipe and accompanies himself on the obligatory guitar. As the famous tenor, Caruso resembles his photographs, clean-shaven, sporting a cigarette holder. Throughout the opera sequences there are views of the Met’s family circle, the boxes, the orchestra, the stage, and moments from Pagliacci itself. Caruso manages the pantomime of “Vesti la giubba” without excessive expression or gesticulation, not an easy task. In a subsequent scene, as if to underscore his own onstage restraint, he parodies the caricatural Italian tenor, grimaces and all.27
Barely two years later, Caruso’s L’Elisir d’amore of December 11, 1920, at Brooklyn’s Academy of Music made the front pages of both the Times and the Tribune, but not, alas, for the wonder of his artistry. During the first act, the tenor began to cough up blood. From the wings, his wife and physician implored him to leave the stage. He refused and continued to pass red-stained handkerchiefs to choristers who passed him fresh handkerchiefs in return. At the end of the act, the theater manager stepped in front of the curtain: “‘He assures me that he is willing, in spite of the accident, to finish the performance, and if you wish he will go on with it. It is for you to decide.’ Hundreds of persons rose to their feet, crying ‘No! No!’” (Tribune). Caruso would make just three more appearances with the company, his last in La Juive on Christmas Eve 1920. The Brooklyn Elisir foreshadowed his death the following August from complications of lung disease. During the critical phase of Caruso’s illness, as hopes of recovery faded, the Metropolitan management was faced with the frightening prospect of a post-Caruso season. On March 5, 1921, Edward Ziegler, assistant general manager and right hand to Gatti, recommended the engagement of the coloratura soprano Galli-Curci and of the baritone Titta Ruffo, both with the Chicago Opera. “Whatever happens to Caruso,” he wrote to Kahn, “we shall be in a position to offer to those of our subscribers whose first thought is of the ‘stars,’ if not an absolute substitute at least a relative substitute.”
FIGURE 15. Enrico Caruso as Nemorino in L’Elisir d’amore, 1904 (White Studio; courtesy Metropolitan Opera Archives)
By August 2, 1921, the date of Caruso’s death, the time for signing credible replacements for the coming season was at an end. Gatti wrote to Kahn on August 7, “The loss of poor Caruso is indeed great: we may have now and later tenors possessing some of his qualities, i.e., who may have a beautiful voice, who may be good singers or artists, etc., but I think it will be impossible to have the fortune to find again another personality who possesses in himself all the artistic and moral gifts that distinguished our poor and illustrious friend!” Once the long funeral cortege had followed the crystal coffin from the Royal Basilica of Naples, a replica of Rome’s Pantheon, to the cemetery, Gatti was ready to float the names of tenors who might fill the void: Gigli and Martinelli, already at the Met, and Aureliano Pertile and Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, whom he had auditioned during the summer and would subsequently sign. Gigli took over from Caruso in the Met premiere of Andrea Chénier. Pertile made his debut as Cavaradossi on December 1, 1921, the night Maria Jeritza sang her historic first Met Floria Tosca, after which the role was essentially hers for the next decade. The Moravian diva stole the show by redefining the title role that had been created by Ternina, had been favored by Eames and Fremstad, and had lately been jealously guarded by Farrar. The composer, effusive in his praise of Jeritza (“perhaps the most original artiste that I have ever known,” “sublime”), had sanctioned her blonde Tosca despite the “bruna” Floria inscribed in the libretto. The fair-haired soprano invented new inflections and gestures, all of which elicited glorious notices. Her most vivid coup de théâtre, a “Vissi d’arte” sung prone on the floor, was not to the taste of at least one in the audience. Farrar wrote caustically in her autobiography, “From my seat . . . I obtained no view of any expressive pantomime on her pretty face, while I was surprised by the questionable flaunting of a well-cushioned and obvious posterior.”28
Farrar sang Tosca only twice more after that. She had turned forty, the age at which she had pledged to leave the company. Despite her explicit preference and the vociferations of her most ardent fans, the Gerryflappers, Gatti refused to allow Tosca for her farewell, some said in retribution for her zeal in the insurrection that had met his appointment fourteen years earlier. He scheduled Leoncavallo’s Zazà instead. Nonetheless, Farrar’s April 22, 1922, adieu remains among the most emotional in the history of the company, the house festooned with banners, its stage covered with flowers, the star, queen of the event, wearing a tiara and bearing a scepter, her car surrounded by noisy admirers, traffic halted as it carried her away. We are left to wonder what a Caruso farewell would have been.
MOSTLY PUCCINI: 1918–1929
During World War I and after, Gatti held fast to the policy of repertoire expansion set at the beginning of his regime. Each season, he introduced two or three operas, more often four or five, once seven, and in 1918–19 as many as ten, including five one-acters. From 1918–19 to 1928–29, Gatti presented forty-eight novelties, proportionally as many as in his prewar period. New York’s music critics were generally happy with older scores new to the Met, such as Verdi’s La Forza del destino (“a vital opera still” [Times, Nov. 16, 1918]) and Mozart’s Così fan tutte (“some of the most delightful music ever written” [Tribune, March 25, 1922]). As always, they were hard on contemporary European compositions and inclined to condescend to the American pieces. Gatti’s repertoire continued to show commitment both to opera’s past and to its vitality as a contemporary art form.
Of the seven world premieres listed in table 6, the three that made up Il Trittico aroused far and away the most excitement. For one thing, they were creations of Maestro Puccini. For another, his triptych was the first world premiere to be staged in New York, or indeed anywhere, after the armistice. Il Tabarro, Puccini’s slice of squalid proletarian life, his sole excursion into the heart of verismo, was attacked for its naked realism, for the perceived paucity of lyric passages, and for the ostensible monotony of the river motif that threads through the narrative. No one liked Suor Angelica (“over an hour of almost unrelieved female chatter” [Tribune]) despite Farrar’s moving portrayal of the hapless nun, deprived of her illegitimate child and ultimately driven to madness and suicide. Gianni Schicchi, a hilarious demonstration of the composer’s farcical vein, mustered all the acclaim. Florence Easton’s “O mio babbino caro,” “the most exquisite bit of melody and singing of the evening” (Tribune), was encored. Puccini’s first and, as it turned out, only comic opera had entered the repertoire to stay. The negative view of the other panels endured for half a century, shattering the conception as a whole until the trio was reunited in 1975. By then, Il Trittico was seen as yet another successful turn in the composer’s inspired journey. Leaving aside the non-subscription premiere in 1918 at raised prices, the initial two-season run missed even the box-office mean. Leoncavallo’s Zazà, which soon disappeared, did better.
TABLE 6. Metropolitan Opera Premieres, 1918–19 to 1921–22
TABLE 6. (continued)
Gatti would produce twenty-four new works between 1922–23 and 1928–29, all but two (Gaspare Spontini’s La Ve
stale, Massenet’s Le Roi de Lahore) born in the twentieth century. The 1928–29 season alone registered four modernist novelties, fresh from their European réclame. Ottorino Respighi’s fantasy La Campana sommersa, Ildebrando Pizzetti’s declamatory Fra Gherardo, and Ernst Krenek’s jazz-inflected Jonny spielt auf disappointed the critics and the public. So did Die Ägyptische Helena, further evidence, insisted the reviewers, of Richard Strauss’s waning invention. Igor Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol would return after a protracted absence; it has yet to prove its staying power. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande found its way into the repertoire without delay. Leoš Janáček’s Jenufa was made to wait even longer than the thirty years it took Puccini’s Turandot to break through.29
The posthumous Turandot (unfinished at the composer’s death in November 1924, with the final scene completed by Franco Alfano) was an event of national moment at its La Scala world premiere in April 1926. Prior to reaching the Met in November of that year, it had been the subject of copious attention. Gatti filled the stage with stars, comprimarios, choristers, dancers, and supers reported to number between six hundred and seven hundred. Joseph Urban’s spectacular orientalist design, a pinnacle of art direction under Gatti, was just one of his fifty or so Met commissions, an oeuvre never to be equaled. Jeritza had the heroic upper register, the charisma, and the fabled beauty of the eponymous Chinese princess. The reviews marveled at her imperious manner and prodigal tone. For Olin Downes, Lauri-Volpi had the “leather lungs” and “good stage presence” (Times) demanded by Calaf. Conductor Tullio Serafin marshaled the multitudes with his wonted authority. Fifteen curtain calls spoke eloquently of the public’s approbation. But most critics disagreed, some vehemently. Downes, for one, embarked on the mission of striking the opera from the boards. He fulminated whenever it was revived: “a whole resplendent operatic edifice, destined sooner or later to collapse like a house of cards, has been made of virtually nothing” (Times, Nov. 21, 1926); “Puccini had stopped creating when he wrote it, but had mastered the art of saying nothing exceedingly well” (Times, Nov. 1, 1927); and in a final insult, “there is only one work by a great composer of modern times that we think as bad, and that is the Egyptian Helen by Richard Strauss” (Times, Nov. 17, 1928). Turandot led the box office in 1926–27 and rang up receipts far above average the following season. After a run of twenty-seven performances between 1926 and 1930, it was dropped, no doubt the victim of high production costs, hefty royalties, and the departure of Jeritza in 1932. In 1961, the clarion voices of Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli would secure Turandot’s place in the Met’s canon.30
TABLE 7. Metropolitan Opera Premieres, 1922–23 to 1928–29
TABLE 7. (continued)
Gatti presented one last Puccini premiere. Commissioned as an operetta for Vienna in 1913, reconceived as an opera first heard in Monte Carlo in 1917, La Rondine came to New York only in 1928. Critics were generally well disposed to Urban’s sets and the stellar cast. Lucrezia Bori had, they avowed, imbued Magda with exceptional charm and pellucid diction, qualities we discern in a 1934 broadcast of a live Chicago performance and in a recording of the aria “Ore dolci e divine” made a year after her retirement in 1936. Gigli compensated for his unprepossessing appearance and rudimentary stagecraft with honeyed timbre. Although reviewers granted the work its due in terms of craft and melody, and some even admitted to liking it, almost to a man they dismissed the composition as “the afternoon off of a genius.” La Rondine failed to take flight in its initial Met run and in its 1935–36 revival. Box-office receipts came up short. But then, in the late 1920s and into the 1930s, even La Bohème and Madama Butterfly languished. That would, of course, change.31
FIVE
Hard Times, 1929–1940
WAGNER
DEPRESSION
THE LAST SIX YEARS of Gatti’s regime saw difficulty depreciate into misery. In 1929–30, the company coasted on the momentum of the cushy 1920s and on fortuitous new revenue streams. For the next two seasons, it survived on the $1 million the tightfisted administration had squirreled away. The final three years were, in the words of the famously unflappable general manager, his “Calvary.”1
Business as Usual: 1929–1930
The season opened with Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Lucrezia Bori as the flighty Manon and Beniamino Gigli as the besotted Chevalier Des Grieux. Bori and Gigli, on-stage lovers in so many of the 129 performances they sang together, were soon to find themselves on opposite sides of an internecine divide. Opening night was October 28, 1929, a Monday, as had been and continues to be the almost unbroken tradition. “Black Monday,” a day in which the Dow Jones lost almost 13 percent, followed on the “Black Thursday” of the week before. The next day, the front-page headline in the Times ran, “stock prices slump 14 billion dollars in nation-wide stampede.” The customary opening-night feature article, oblivious to the crisis that shook the wealthy regions of the auditorium, devoted its considerable length to the glamour of the occasion. The following day was “Black Tuesday,” October 29; the market fell another 12 percent, and the Great Depression was on. The only reference to the likelihood of less glittering future openings was linked not to the financial bust, but to a prospective new house at Rockefeller Center: “These events need the half antiquated setting, the absurd plush and gold manner which they have at Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street, and cannot have when that locality has given place to something a little less pompous and splendid, and a little more comfortable, practical and contemporaneous, uptown” (Times, Oct. 29, 1929). In his balancing act, Olin Downes betrays the ambivalence that had plagued plans for a new house in the preceding decades and would prove to be an insurmountable hurdle for decades to come.2
The most persistent and passionate advocate for a state-of-the-art home was Otto Kahn. He had made it his personal crusade beginning in 1903 with his appointment to the board, had promised Gatti new quarters in 1908, and from 1925 to 1927 had played his last and strongest hand. He put together a nearly $2.7 million deal for a plot bounded by 56th and 57th Streets and Eighth and Ninth Avenues. What he lacked was the backing of the “fogeys,” the directors of the Real Estate Company. In an effort to stare them down, Kahn embarked on a campaign to draw the city’s music constituencies to his side. His “Statement” of October 5, 1925, titled The Metropolitan Opera, could only have irritated his socially prominent opposition: “It is a solemn obligation of a semi-public institution, such as the Metropolitan Opera, to provide amply and generously for music lovers of small or modest means. I have had frequent occasion to observe how much music means to such devotees of the art. Indeed, I venture the assertion that it means a good deal more to the denizens of, say, Third Avenue than to those of Fifth Avenue.” In a letter of early 1926 in which he rehearsed the deficits of the present house—too many seats with poor visibility, a hopelessly outmoded stage, minimal storage, inadequate rehearsal space—Kahn informed the Real Estate Company of his acquisition. He went on to rub the noses of the directors in their classism: “A considerable number of the lower priced seats are so bad that it is really an act of unfairness to take money for them—especially from people of small means.” On January 25, 1927, he detailed his plan: increased seating to at least four thousand, improved sight lines, and, most distasteful to the old guard, the reduction of the number of boxes to thirty, which would be leased, not owned. However the matter was decided, the company would not produce opera on 39th Street beyond the next five years. Expenses had proved too great, the facilities too decrepit. On February 2, its back to the wall, the Real Estate Company board recommended Kahn’s proposal to the stockholders. On April 12, the stockholders, led by Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and Robert Goelet, turned their board down. They objected to the 57th Street location: as the directors put it, the site was simply not “monumental enough.” Monumentality was not what Kahn was after: “Our conception is that [the theater] should be plain and dignified, on good but simple lines, seeking its distinction in being perfectly adapted to its purpose, b
oth on the stage and in the accommodation to the public, rather than in outward impressiveness.” But Kahn knew he had lost. He put the property up for sale. In the months and years that followed, he kept his counsel in debates on the Rockefeller Center solution that was assumed imminent by Downes on opening night 1929.3
Grand Opera: The Story of the Met Page 13