BEGINNING OF OPERA.

547

was Brignoli's. He is not in the least magnetic. He is even more of a lay-figure than tenors generally are. He has all the childish whims and absurdities of the tenor. But his voice is exquisite, and he sings much more easily than he walks. We have had no such voice except Mario's. Antoquini I did not hear. Salvi had to pump up his voice, and it was a thin trickle when it camethin, but very clear and sweet. Bettini's voice was inadequate for the house and his own size. But Brignoli's has the charm and quality which make a tenor voice the luxury of kings and the enthusiasm of fashion. A king gives enormous sums to tempt a tenor to his theatre, as the Emperor of Russia tempted Rubini. But he does it as he would give a fortune for the rarest flower or the most brilliant gem. And Nature hides all these treasures in queer places. You shall find the flower in a lonely, noisome marsh, or the pearl in the oyster, or the voice in Alboni. It is well worth a fortune when you find it. * The The opera with us began properly in Chambers street. There was the old National, indeed, where Miss Sherriff sung; and we do not forget that Malibran herself had sung in the old Park. But as an institution of our fine society it dates from Palmo's in Chambers street. They used to sing 'Belisario' there, and we all looked knowing, and said that it was really very well. They sang, too, the plaintive, pathetic 'Puritani;' and then some people for the first time felt the character of Italian music. The theatre was very small. It was prodigiously uncomfortable. But dear me! in white gloves and white waistcoats (they were actually worn then), who could be conscious of anything but bliss? Then came the flight up town to Astor Place. Palmo was submerged, and Patti and Sanquirico appeared as managers. The golden age of the Astor Place Opera was the brief and beautiful epoch of Truffi and Benedetti. No operatic success in

548

BOSIO-PARODI-STEFFANONI.

this country was ever so entirely satisfactory, probably, to the audience as theirs. We all went mad with the loveliest of Lucias, and died in tuneful agony with the most delicious of tenors. Poor Benedetti lost his voice. The climate was too sharp, or he had his tonsils cut, or some sad mishap befell; in any case he lost his voice, and all we Easy Chairs of both sexes, our joy. Truffi herself faded after Benedetti failed. She never seemed quite the same, and gradually she disappeared from the scene. A multitude of singers followed, chief of whom was Bosio, whom some of us-that is, we who made up the truly wise part of the opera-goers-knew to be as fine a singer as she was afterward declared to be in Europe. But the poor Astor Place house floundered along in its latter days, attempting to believe Parodi a tolerable prima donna, and flying white doves to her from the gallery on the night she appeared, with sonnets of adulation and ecstacy tied round their necks and showered about the house. But Steffanoni came, took snuff, and carried the town by her ample self-possession and unctuous voice. She had the dowdy air and pure good humor of Alboni, and she sang with a richness and fire that charmed and surprised."

The expenses of grand opera are very large. It is unnecessary to go into details; the chief expenses arise from the fact that the director has to pay leading artists high salaries; has to appropriate a considerable sum nightly for a numerous and imperative orchestra; has to satisfy the perpetually craving appetite of a clamorous chorus; has to feed and clothe a more or less brilliant ballet; has to employ "supers" who will not work for nothing, although the work is light; has to purchase the assistance of prompters, stage managers, machinists, and sceneshifters; has to keep a well stocked wardrobe; has to provide new scenery and have the old frequently retouched; has to see his best seats occupied by dead-head

OPERATIC EXPENSES.

549

stockholders; and has to pay a dividend to the same stockholders in the shape of a heavy rent. He has, in short, to meet the usual expenses of a first class theatre, with a very large amount of additional expense for his peculiar attractions.

When it is remembered that even in foreign cities, where certainly the opera is more popular than with us, its expenses are largely met by governmental appropriations, the wonder is, that here-where the government has enough to do to pay its own expenses, and does little or nothing for art-we should have ever had any opera

at all.

The Parisian Grand Opera, since its foundation by Louis XIV., has constantly been-except during the reign of Louis Philippe and the ephemeral Republic of February--a strictly governmental establishment, "founded and sustained to advance national musical genius, and, perhaps, it should be added, to attract and retain strangers in Paris. Louis XVIII. is reported to have said to one of his courtiers who remonstrated with him on the enormous amount of money annually expended on the opera, 'Do you think the receipts of the opera are taken in at the door? No, they are received at the frontier.' The royal remark was just, for it is these intellectual appeals which allure the roving traveler, who, after 'doing' a score or so of cathedrals and museums, is but too glad of a decent excuse for retiring from sight-seeing and closing his 'Murray' forever. But it is rather difficult to suppress a stare, when we learn that this decoy-duck requires annually sums varying from a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars above the receipts at the door. Even after we are told that there is an orchestra of eighty performers, some seventy choristers, eighty dancers, seventy machinists, and we know not how many supernumeraries, all living on the opera-house treasury, it is

550

SALARIES OF SINGERS.

hard to avoid resorting to the use of the pedagogue's safety-valve, and relieving our astonishment with a deep-fetched 'Prodigious!' The keeping of a white elephant is a trifle by the side of the alimony of this syren. All this, however, is the business of the taxpayers on the other side of the ocean, and is of no more concern to us than the tortures of the man who rests hours, salamander-like, in a red-hot oven, or of the beast-tamer mangled by his pet lion or darling tiger. We may have our private opinion on the matter, but so long as the eleemosynary hat is not intruded into our face-play, opera! roast, mountebank! bleed, tamer!"

The salaries paid to singers are sometimes enormous. Prima donnas, especially, are often in receipt of very high salaries. "No one among women receives a larger income, apart from property, except she be an empress or a queen. There is only this difference: the income of the sovereign is for life, while that of the prima donna is only for the life of her voice, which, however, may fairly be reckoned at twenty-five years. Among men, no minister of state is so highly paid as Madam Patti was last winter, at St. Petersburg. The salary of a first-rate prima donna is about equal to that of an ambassador (say $50,000 a year), and she retains the right denied to the unfortunate ambassador, of receiving presents. Alboni receives equal terms with Patti, from the Emperor of Russia. Mlle. Christine Nilsson, for a few concerts in the provinces, receives $20,000. Rarity and excellence are always well paid. When the Empress Catherine heard the terms demanded by a popular prima donna, she exclaimed that that was more than she gave to one of her marshals. Thereupon Gabrielle advised her to get one of her marshals to sing."

The history of grand opera in America is forever inseparably associated with the name of Ferdinand Palmo.