Dangerous Melodies

by Jonathan Rosenberg

  Yet, Gadski was determined to sing. She bore no ill will toward the men of the American Legion, she said, as “they were led to believe that they were doing a patriotic duty.”70 But on the afternoon of December 11, 1922, the day of the concert, Gadski announced she would not sing that evening, concerned that her appearance might cause a public disturbance. Nevertheless, several hundred ex-servicemen joined a crowd that gathered at concert time outside the Philharmonic Auditorium, where they protested for over an hour.71

  Although the war had ended more than four years earlier, demonstrators carried signs proclaiming their opposition to an alien artist: “Real American money for real American people; Gadski shall not sing” and “We are not unreasonable, only patriotic.” While the mayor’s office noted that it hoped she would perform in the future when the public understood the facts,72 the veterans’ groups claimed a “moral victory.” They pointed out that Gadski’s opponents were not just veterans, but also “civic, religious and social groups,” thousands of club women, and even well-known pastors whose sermons decried the German singer. According to the veterans’ public statement, countless citizens believed it would have been a “gross affront to the wounded and disabled war veterans” to spend money on the wife of Captain Hans Tauscher, who had served as an agent for Krupps munitions. Letters and telegrams had poured in to Los Angeles from across the country, establishing solidarity with the city’s veterans, the statement said.73 While this might have been so, one voice of reason could be heard amidst the chorus of anti-German zealots. The editorial page of the Los Angeles Times called the demonstrators a mob, and insisted Gadski had a “legal and a moral right” to perform. When misdirected, “patriotic zeal” could injure the “very institutions” it sought to protect.74

  Without question, anti-Germanism lingered for a longer time in some places than in others. In Cincinnati, the reaction to German music after the war suggested a calming of the cultural waters. An older (and safer) German music, Beethoven’s Eroica, was performed in the Queen City in the spring of 1919 to commemorate the city’s soldiers who had fallen in the war. Conducted by Ysaÿe, the piece was played before a silent audience, which, with the musicians, rose as one during the Funeral March.75 But more-recent German compositions remained problematic. For some five years after the 1917–1918 season, the orchestra played no Richard Strauss, and it performed no Wagner until the 1919–1920 season.76 In Boston, the question of offering German music was straightforward. After the Muck upheaval, tranquility characterized the postwar period, as the orchestra, which performed no music by Richard Strauss in either the 1918–1919 or 1919–1920 seasons and no Wagner in 1918–1919, resumed playing works by both composers on a fairly regular basis by the middle years of the decade.77

  But New York was a different story, as the performances of a local opera company would lead to violence. In January 1919, it was announced that the Lexington Theater would host a season of German operettas, to be presented in German by the Christians Producing Company, an outfit headed by Rudolph Christians. The music director for the proposed performances, Paul Eisler, had worked at the Metropolitan before he and a number of other German artists had been dismissed during the war. Opposing the venture was a group of New Yorkers, especially women, whose rhetoric suggests that the war’s end had neither dulled their anti-Germanism nor dampened their suspicion of German motives.

  Among those expressing such sentiments were two members of the American Defense Society, a nationalist organization that had advocated American intervention in the war. Elsa Maxwell noted that no formal treaty had been signed with Germany and claimed it was necessary to put a stop to this “arrogant German propaganda.” The organization’s president, Richard M. Hurd, describing the proposed concerts as a “pernicious plot,” said the public should resist it. All German propaganda was dangerous, he insisted, including German music, and he promised his group would look into the upcoming plans for the Lexington Theater.78 Reginald De Koven weighed in on the proposed performances, arguing it was too soon to hear the German language in America because Germany had yet to acknowledge the “evil” it had perpetrated.79

  Inevitably, the Lexington Theater proposal saw the return of Lucie Jay, who asserted that Germany, which had not signed a formal peace treaty with the United States, remained “our enemy,” making it “disloyal” to perform German opera. Still more forceful was Mrs. J. Christopher Marks, president of the Theater Assembly, who read the newspaper story about the Lexington Theater plan aloud to the women of her club who had gathered at the Hotel Astor. Upon completing the article, she asked whether they supported such an idea. Their response was unanimous: “No! No! Down with German plays and music and opera.” According to Mrs. Marks, the time had come for “all good Americans” to oppose the performances and to keep the German language off the concert stage.80

  The next phase in the Lexington Theater affair was to convince New York’s mayor to cancel the performances, an effort that attracted a large number of local soldiers. Writing to Mayor Hylan in March, Eunice Maynard, a woman’s leader in the YMCA, said soldiers and sailors had contacted her for help in quashing the performances. “We fellows feel sore about this German opera business. We have lost a lot of our pals—they were killed by those Germans—and now this doesn’t seem a fair deal,” they told her. She joined them in asking the mayor to stop this “flagrant breach of good taste,” if not something far worse.81

  In private exchanges, citizens expressed concern about the proposed series. Writing to Walter Damrosch, a church rector named William Guthrie asked if Damrosch would lead a gathering to help people sort through the issue.82 Unable to participate because he was leaving for France, Damrosch said that he opposed performing music by living Germans and did not believe German should be sung in the opera house or concert hall. The German classics should be played, he noted, since they belonged to the entire world and had been composed before Germany was “brutalized . . . by the lust for material gain and power.” As for Wagner, Damrosch thought it was acceptable to perform instrumental excerpts from the operas, since the music did not represent “modern Germany,” and the philosophy underlying the Ring cycle was a repudiation of the “reign of force.”83

  But the Lexington Theater affair was not merely about Wagner, and the Christians Producing Company was determined to gain support for its upcoming series. Dr. Max Winter, their business manager, issued a statement claiming that a vast number of Germans and German-Americans were living in New York City, among whom many thousands could not relax in the theater because they had never learned English. Moreover, “thousands of sons of these men and women had gone overseas” to fight, and many had been killed or wounded. Those left behind contributed generously to charitable causes and were true patriots. As for the plays to be performed, they contained no propaganda at all, he said, and the operettas were written by composers no longer alive. Winter insisted the operettas were not at all political. “They are just amusing and full of good music.”84

  Local veterans rejected this stance. Turning up the political heat, they wrote to Governor Al Smith, asking him to prevent the “Huns” from insulting both the flag and the soldiers who had given their lives to keep the United States “free from German Kultur.” Smith said he had no power to stop the performance, and advised them to contact the mayor. With that, a committee of soldiers, with a petition signed by more than two thousand of their brethren, arranged to meet with the mayor on March 10, in an effort to have him call off that night’s performance of Der Vogelhändler. Should he refuse, several thousand soldiers and sailors planned to march to the theater in formation just before the operetta began. If that failed, one sailor declared, they would enter the auditorium and stop the performance. Throughout the city, there was widespread support for the position, with the well-known actor John Drew declaring, “Art is not international, never less so than now.” Performing German operettas while the country awaited the return of American troops would be an affront to our fighting men.85 />
  Still unable to comprehend the vehemence against performing German works, Winter again claimed his group was not disloyal. The company was simply offering New Yorkers the chance to hear “light operas composed by men long dead, who used to be very popular in this country.” The series sought to entertain “loyal American citizens who like good music.”86

  Notwithstanding Winter’s belief in the purity of his group’s motives, on the day of the performance, city officials cancelled the entire run at the Lexington Theater. According to news reports, the pressure from citizens and soldiers had been strong enough to convince the mayor to call off the theater’s German-language events. Earlier, as protest leaders had awaited the verdict, one key naval figure, C. S. King, assessed the mayor’s challenge by asserting that it was up to Mayor Hylan to “show us . . . whether he is 70 per cent German and 30 per cent American or . . . 100 per cent American.”87

  Despite the decision, some five hundred sailors and soldiers decided to march in formation to the theater, where good-natured policemen greeted the group and informed them that no German opera would be heard. “Keep on moving, boys; there’s no German shows around here.” As one officer observed, “They’re a fine bunch of lads.”88

  The episode concluded in opera buffa style. Having learned there would be no performance, the throng heard that a German-language play was being performed at the Irving Place Theater. In response, a committee of sailors marched off, determined to stop this latest outrage. Arriving on the scene, they were told the play was being performed by a Jewish theater company, in Yiddish, a discovery that led to an apology and a hasty retreat.89

  Several months later, New Yorkers again faced the question of what to do about German opera, except this time, blood would be spilled. In the summer of 1919, music lovers learned that a new organization, the Star Opera Company, planned to present German-language light opera and classic operettas at the Lexington Theater, of all places. If the public supported the idea, the company, which featured German singers who had previously appeared with the Metropolitan Opera, would offer performances from October 1919 through January 1920. Adding insult to injury was the decision to make German baritone Otto Goritz the company’s artistic director.90 Stunned by the company’s tin ear, Musical America was dubious about the role of Goritz, whose alleged “antics” at the time of the Lusitania sinking had not been forgotten. According to the editor, the Germans had a right to perform such works, but this was a matter of good sense. For now, the best approach was the “modesty of silence,” which was the most effective path to their reentry into the cultural mainstream. Those Germans still living in the United States should allow the war’s wounds to heal.91

  However insensitive, New Yorkers would soon have the chance to hear a light opera in German on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, followed by a classic operetta on Fridays and twice on Saturdays. Sunday nights would be reserved for Wagner, allowing listeners to hear The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, and the entire Ring cycle. One American opera, a new work sung in English, would be presented.92

  A few weeks before the first performances were to begin, Miss Phadrig Ago’n, a singer engaged by the Star Opera Company, stood up to speak at a mass meeting of the Manhattan Naval Post of the American Legion, which had convened to protest the upcoming German operas: “I am ashamed of you claiming to represent America and being opposed to the singing of Wagner’s music.” Despite efforts to silence her, she continued: “I am an American and would resent as quick as anyone criticism against my country by any member of the company.” As the audience hissed and shouted for her removal—“Why don’t you go back to Germany?” someone screamed—she was asked to what Legion post she belonged. She admitted having no connection to the organization: “I am only a citizen who resents this cowardly—” but her words were drowned out and she left after several angry participants moved toward her.93

  Outside the hall, she explained that she was a Kentuckian who had sung in Germany before the war. Singing German roles was how she earned her living, Miss Ago’n said, and preventing her from performing in German was like snatching food from her mouth. It was “cowardly to stop German opera” here. Recounting her patriotic activities during the war, she said the males in her family had served in the military. Those inside the hall, who would surely have been unmoved by such assertions, passed a resolution stating that the American Legion would use every peaceful means to prevent the production in New York of German-language opera.94

  As opening night neared, some predicted the performances would never happen, others insisted the works should not be presented in German, while still others said the company could do what it pleased, even if the time was not right.95 That last perspective was embraced by the Musical Courier, which assumed an unusually tolerant posture, arguing that classical music devotees could choose for themselves whether they wished to hear opera in German. Moreover, the editors rejected the notion that a nefarious German propaganda effort was at work in the company’s plan.96

  A few days before the first production was to be heard, a small group of wounded soldiers headed to the city’s financial district where they distributed petitions, made speeches, and attempted to generate enough opposition to stop the performance. Part of a citywide effort spearheaded by the American Legion, the goal was to galvanize those who wanted to keep German-language opera from New York. A Legion representative expressed confidence in the effort, claiming he believed city and state officials would realize that New Yorkers overwhelmingly opposed such performances at a moment when the area’s hospitals remained packed with “men maimed and crippled in the war.”97

  On October 20, the day of the opening performance, at a City Hall hearing to determine whether the opera would be heard, representatives of the American Legion tangled with the directors of the Star Opera, along with singers and German opera lovers, who believed continuing the ban was absurd. Those opposing the performances were rumored to be working on behalf of the Met, which, it was said, aimed to quash a competitor. Star officials declared they had sons who had served nobly overseas, and the head of the company’s board produced a US government document commending his work in designing an airplane propeller used to fight the Germans.98

  Ultimately, the hearing hinged on whether it was appropriate to offer performances in German while wounded American doughboys were still suffering in the nation’s hospitals, and whether a company featuring Otto Goritz should be permitted to perform at all. An American soldier who had “left an arm in France” was angered by those who spoke German or had strong German accents. The people here look just like those “we met in Belleau Wood,” he cried, “flinging the German language in our face. . . . I am just as much at war as I ever was, because I’ll never get rid of this hand. It is wood.”A woman rose to decry the continuing hatred. “I have two little children, and if I am ostracized, just because I have German blood in my veins, I don’t think I can make good Americans of them.”99

  The New York Times acknowledged it was true that loyal American citizens of German descent had suffered because of anti-German hostility, calling the ongoing hatred a “grave menace.” But the fault lay with German “tactlessness,” the editors argued, pointing to the disorders over German opera that had occurred earlier that year. It was obvious that the present musical venture was likely to cause a riot, but the Star Opera had gone ahead anyway. The Allies had suffered the loss of “millions in killed and wounded” and the destruction of “countless fair cities and villages.” The Germans had caused this, for they had “willed the war.” The time would come, when the “passions inflamed by the slaughter” would cool, but that time had not yet arrived.100

  Despite such declarations, that night the German language rang out from the stage of the Lexington Theater to a large and enthusiastic audience. While the mayor had ruled that the company should not perform until a peace treaty with Germany was ratified, the group believed it had a legal right to play and ignored his order. Thus
, shortly after 8:30 P.M., the audience heard Theodore Spiering begin the proceedings with a shortened version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” followed by excerpts from Die Meistersinger, performed in a concert version. After intermission, the company played lighter German fare. Such works, it was said, offered some charming music and little in the way of a plot over which to dawdle. According to the review, which did not comment on the decision to play German music, the sizable audience “applauded madly.”101

  If a lively cohort of German music lovers was enthralled by the familiar melodies inside the theater, outside the hall the feeling was far less euphoric. An irate mob clashed on Lexington Avenue with hundreds of policemen, who had been called to the scene and would batter the far-larger number of soldiers and civilians.102 The New York Times claimed the protesters numbered several thousand, including civilians and military men in uniform. The mounted police charged at the demonstrators, who hurled stones, bricks, and bottles. The crowd waved flags, marched (at times) in formation, and jeered and hissed at those heading to the theater, while calling for the police to halt the performance. At one point, a woman who called herself “Mrs. Johnson” and then “Carrie Nation” broke through the police lines to give an impassioned speech demanding that the police “show their Americanism” by stopping the opera. Ushered back through the throng by the police, she continued her harangue, spurred on by the frenzied mob. Protesters and police ended up bloodied, with some hospitalized.103

  The day after the riot, the mayor ordered the police commissioner to close the Lexington Theater. He had decided the opera company should defer all future engagements until after the ratification of the peace treaty. Under the present circumstances, according to the counsel for the city, performing German opera could lead to violence. For its part, the American Legion, a leading advocate of the shutdown, published an editorial in its weekly organ asserting that the trouble with German opera sung in German was that one heard “the shrieks of the Lusitania’s dying.” The “measured cadences” of the language evoked “not tender human emotions, but a firing squad marching at the goose step upon defenseless women and children.”104