Confessions of an Opera Singer

Kathleen Howard

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• Publié par: sook
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 78
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Project Gutenberg's Confessions of an Opera Singer, by Kathleen Howard This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Confessions of an Opera Singer Author: Kathleen Howard Release Date: June 26, 2010 [EBook #32980] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF AN OPERA SINGER *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material at The Internet Archive.) Photo of Kathleen Howard, Autographed COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY KATHLEEN HOWARD BAIRD Published September 1918 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To Marjorie FOREWORD So many fantastic tales have come to us of students' life abroad, of their temptations, trials, finances, successes and failures, that I have attempted to give here the true story of the preparation for an operatic career, and its fruition. My road leads from New York to Paris, to Germany and thence to London, and back to the Metropolitan Opera House. My operatic experiences in Germany are inalienably associated with the lives of the people, particularly with the German officer class, viewed publicly and privately; in fact in the town where I was first engaged, Metz, I found they were as vital a part of the Opera house life as the singers themselves. Their arrogance tainted the town life as well, and here I first became acquainted with the pitiful attempt at swagger and brilliancy which often covered a state of grinding poverty, or the thwarted natural domestic instincts which were ruthlessly sacrificed to the "uniform"—the all-desirable entrée to society, for which no price was too high to pay. I hope this book will be of interest not only to those whose goal is the operatic or concert stage, but to those to whom "human documents" appeal. It is a story of real people, real obstacles overcome, and contains much intimate talk of back-stage life in opera houses. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE WAY IT ALL HAPPENED II A STRUGGLE AND A SOLUTION III PARIS AT LAST IV PENSION PERSONALITIES V OPERATIC FRANCE VERSUS OPERATIC GERMANY VI PREPARING RÔLES IN BERLIN VII MY FIRST OPERATIC CONTRACT SIGNED VIII MY ONE LONE IMPROPOSITION IX THE MAKINGS OF A SMALL MUNICIPAL OPERA HOUSE X MY DÉBUT AND BREAKING INTO HARNESS XI SOME STAGE DELIGHTS XII MISPLACED MOISTURE AND THE STORY OF A COURTLADY XIII HUMAN PASSIONS AND SMALLPOX XIV DISCOURAGEMENTS THAT LED TO A COURT THEATRE XV SALARIES AND A TENOR'S GENIUS XVI THE ART OF MARIE MUELLE XVII THE NON-MILITARY SIDE OF A GERMAN OFFICER'S LIFE XVIII GEESE AND GUESTS XIX RUSSIANS, COMMON AND PREFERRED XX THE GRANDMOTHERS' BALLET XXI STAGE FASHIONS AND THE GLORY OF COLOUR XXII ROYAL HUMOUR 13 21 30 39 50 59 67 76 85 100 110 123 139 153 164 172 184 199 206 220 230 242 XXIII COVENT GARDEN AND—AMERICA REPERTOIRE 257 270 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Kathleen Howard I Carmen as I Used to Dress It II Carmen as I Now Dress It I Amneris as I Used to Dress It II Amneris as I Now Dress It I Dalila as I Used to Dress It II Dalila as I Now Dress It Caruso's Caricature of Kathleen Howard Frontispiece 76 84 126 134 172 180 260 CHAPTER I THE WAY IT ALL HAPPENED WAS very young and I was engaged to be married. We had just lost our money in rather dramatic fashion, and we were all doing what we could to supply the sudden deficit. My sister began to prepare herself to be a teacher, my brother left his boarding school and came home to go into a friend's office, and I—well, I accepted the hand and heart of the young man in our set with whom I had had most pleasure in dancing in winter and sailing in summer. My heart didn't lose a beat and turn over when I saw him coming as did those of the heroines in Marion Crawford's novels, but we were the best friends in the world, and I thought that anything else must be a literary exaggeration, put in to make the story more exciting; just as the heroine's eyelashes were usually exaggerated to the abnormal length of an inch to make her more beautiful, though none of the girls I knew had them like that. He was a young business man, just starting as assistant to his father whose business was an old established, comfortable sort of family affair, big enough to supply, in time, an extra income for an unambitious young couple like ourselves. Every one congratulated us heartily, and I began to embroider towels and hem table napkins and to dream about patterns of flat silver. The whole arrangement was satisfactory to the point of banality, and I might be quite an old married woman by this time, but—I had a voice. Nine-tenths of me, at this age, were the normal, rational characteristics of a wellbrought up, bright, good looking girl. But the last tenth was an unknown quantity, a I great big powerful something which I vaguely felt, even then, to be the master of all the other tenths, a force which was capable of having its own way with the rest of me if I should ever give it a chance. My voice, the agent of this vague power, had developed rather late. It is true that our whole childhood had been coloured by music, that we read notes before we could read letters, and that music was our earliest and most natural mode of expression. My father's greatest joy in life was music, and he always played imaginative musical games with us in the evenings. The earliest one I remember was when we were tiny tots. He used to improvise on the small organ we had and ask us questions which we had to answer, singing to his accompaniment. I was Admiral Seymour and Marjorie was General Wolsey. I remember his singing, "And how would you get your ships along, Admiral, If your sails and oars were shot overboard?" I sang solemnly, "I'd shubble them along with shubbles." Afterwards when I began to sing from printed music with him I remember saying one evening as he was playing hymns and unfamiliar English ballads for me to sing, "Papa, please let me look at the music and follow the notes up and down." I really began reading music at four years old. We played and sang all our childhood. When Marjorie was seven and I was six we sang Even-song at the village church, as the members of the regular choir were ill or absent. Marjorie had a heavenly childish soprano and I a heavy nondescript voice. But I always pleased my father by singing real "second voice" and not just following the soprano in thirds. He used to give us a note, and we then had to run round our rather large house humming it. It was the deepest disgrace we ever knew if we had sharped or flatted when we got back to the starting point. He taught us musical terms by making us dance to different rhythms he played, and would call out "Allegro," "Vivace," "Adagio," "Molto allegro," "Legato," and so forth, to which we had to change instantly. Whenever any one came to the house, we played and sang for them, and though it might have been rather awful for the visitors it was very good for us to get used to an audience. He used to arrange fairy tales like "Bluebeard" in doggerel verses and write accompaniments to them, and we then learned them by heart and rehearsed them, and some grand night played them for all the neighbours. I remember the way we showed Bluebeard's chamber where the heads of his wives were kept. We hung a sheet on the wall and Marjorie and I stood in front of it, with pale faces, closed eyes and open mouths, and our long hair pinned up high above our heads on the sheet. Another sheet was then stretched across us, just below our chins, and the effect was rather ghastly in a dim light. I remember we sang at the last: "Oh, Bluebeard, oh, Bluebeard, Frustrated, checkmated, Dissipated, agitated, Castigated, lacerated, Bluebeard!" When school was over we always gave a dramatic performance; if the weather was fine enough we held them in the big garden that was our childhood's playground. We dressed behind a huge flowering-currant bush, and I can remember a performance of an act of "Twelfth Night," in which I, aged about seven, was Malvolio, Lal, my brother, Maria, and Marjorie, Olivia. I had always been able to sing, but the sudden growth of my voice was a surprise. One day, in school, we were asked to write a composition on our favourite wish. All the other girls said they wished for curly hair, for pretty dresses, for as much candy as they could eat, for any other frivolous thing that came into their heads. But I took it seriously and told my dearest wish in all the world—a great voice, a voice with which I could make audiences cry or laugh at my will. And, strangely enough, from that time my girlish voice began to grow stronger and stronger, until I could proudly make more noise with it than any other girl in school. Then it grew louder and higher, until it was impossible to ignore such a big possession any longer, and the family decreed that I must have singing lessons. I took lessons accordingly from an excellent local teacher, practised scales and exercises and later studied the classic songs and arias as seriously as I could, but it was so fatally easy to be interrupted. We were all out of school for the first time and enjoying our freedom. It was so much more chic to go down to Huyler's in the mornings, when the girls only a year younger were hard at their lessons, than in the afternoon when the whole girl world was at liberty. I would just begin a morning's work when some one would call me on the telephone to go to the dressmaker's with her, or help arrange the flowers for a dinner party. I loved both flowers and dresses, and it was easy to think, "Oh! I'll practise this afternoon!" and fly off to be gone all day. In the evening there was my fiancé who had to tell me all the absorbing details of his office, or there was a dance, or