# Red/On the Rewriting of Masterpieces

In a recent periodical George Moore, indulging in an imaginary conversation with Edmund Gosse, discussed the advisability of rewriting Robinson Crusoe: "The first part of the story could not be improved, but the end is a sad spectacle for us men of letters—the uninspired trying to continue the work of the inspired." And Mr. Moore makes a statement which is all too true, that few read on in the book after Crusoe leaves the island. So it is on the island that he would have him write his memoirs, dying before Friday, "and some admirable pages might be written on the grief of the man Friday, intermingled with fears lest his kindred should return and eat him—Friday, not Crusoe; and Friday true to his evangelization, would bury Crusoe ​with all the prayers he could remember. . . . Crusoe must not meet with sudden death, rather an accident among the cliffs that would allow him to continue his memoirs from time to time. I would have the last page of the manuscript relate Crusoe's anxiety for Friday, who he foresees will die of grief, and Friday's last act, the placing the manuscript hard by the grave, which would be necessary for the completion of the story, for it is the manuscript that explains to the captain of the next ship that visits the island the presence of the skeleton by the grave. The captain's reading the manuscript would have given Defoe an opportunity to evoke a new soul, the captain's. How the poor savage must have grieved for his saviour and master! 'Like a dog,' he mutters as he turns the last page."
While reading these lines my mind reverted to a conversation I once held with the sage of Forty-second Street, Oscar Hammerstein, relative to his next production of opera. Oscar's idea was that when he again presented opera he should lay as violent hands as seemed expedient on the published texts of composers, transposing, rearranging, adding, subtracting, in order that the entertainment might be made more brisk, more appetizing to the customers. He spoke with particular emphasis concerning Aida, in which the principal tenor air occurs a few moments after ​the rise of the first curtain, an absurd situation for a tenor air in opera, as it is a convention for opera-goers not to put in an appearance until the second act is well begun. Celeste Aida, therefore, in Oscarian opera was to be sung some time during the second or third act. He also had under consideration a rearrangement of La Forza del Destino, which he acknowledged was full of pretty tunes but which was handicapped by a preposterous fable, and he reminded me that when he had produced Les Huguenots he had imported from his own Victoria Theatre of Varieties a wire walker who simply transported the public as he threaded his way back and forth on the taut steel during the scene laid in a meadow on the bank of the Seine, thereby diverting attention from the "dull music," how Mary Garden, inserted in the tenor rôle of Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame, had made that opera a desirable form of entertainment, and again, how Odette Valery, plus live vipers and boa constrictors, had almost succeeded in making Samson et Dalila endurable.
The idea allured me, and seemed, at first thought, novel. As opera is seldom regarded seriously by musicians, there is no reason why it should be so solemnly conducted. There are times at the Metropolitan Opera House when one expects to hear the gong of high mass sound or Professor William Lyon Phelps begin to lec​ture on Browning. Reflecting in this manner, my enthusiasm mounted: surely no need to stop with Aida and La Forza del Destino.
The mere announcement, however, that operatic works of art were to be so tampered with would arouse the New York Times to such a condemnatory editorial that else only a threatened encroachment on Central Park could provoke, and yet, on second thought, I realized that this idea of Oscar Hammerstein's was not entirely new. He crystallized it into an advertisable slogan, gave it the power to create discussion, but he did not create it. Scarcely any work of art which requires interpretation, play, symphony, or violin concerto, is ever performed exactly as it was written, and I think it may be safely stated categorically that an opera never is.
Most conductors have found it expedient to modify orchestral masterpieces. I am inclined to believe that all of them have. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven did not write for the modern orchestra, and when their music is performed under modern conditions doubtless some liberties should be taken with the text. As a matter of fact, it usually is. The weak orchestration of Chopin's piano concertos has been reinforced by many pens. If some one with courage does not inaugurate a similar mode of pro​cedure with the Schumann Symphonies it may be predicted with certainty that they will drop out of the repertory. Schumann was an amateur at instrumentation; he heard these works on the piano. To those who rise in horror at this point to suggest that such meddling with the work of genius is sacrilegious I may be permitted to reply that any one who prefers to do so may always return to the original score. In case improvements are noted in the rearrangements probably fewer conductors will avail themselves of this privilege.
H. E. Krehbiel, an honest man with violent prejudices, wrote bitterly about one of the finest conductors we have had in New York for no other reason than that Mahler added a flute here or suppressed a kettledrum there. This one-sided battle, conducted with considerable din, ​would have been ridiculous, even farcical, but for the sudden death of the besieged musician, which gave to the matter a tragic aspect, somewhat accentuated by an article which appeared in the New York Tribune on May 21, 1911. Reread in calmer days, this paper seems rather droll, but at the time of its appearance it almost broke up homes. Amusing, indeed, is Mr. Krehbiel's pompous description of the eupeptic auditors of the Philharmonic Society: "He (Mr. Mahler) never discovered that there were Philharmonic subscribers who had inherited not only their seats from their parents and grandparents, but also their appreciation of good music. He never knew, or if he knew he was never willing to acknowledge, that the Philharmonic audience would be as quick to resent an outrage on the musical classics as a corruption of the Bible or Shakespeare." This was an unfortunate comparison. Probably even Mr. Krehbiel himself has swallowed without loss of appetite Mr. Daly's corruptions (monstrous, they were, too), Mr. Booth's corruptions, Mme. Modjeska's corruptions, and Sir Henry Irving's corruptions. I would be willing, indeed, to lay an even bet that ​no member of the Philharmonic Society has ever seen a Shakespeare play performed as written by Shakespeare. The dean gave Mr. Mahler credit for too little intelligence. The Bohemian Jew conductor probably was well aware of the fact that many of the grandparents of Philharmonic subscribers had assisted at the burning of witches and yet he would have been the last to advise the survival of this jolly custom. Striving to reawaken interest in music which had been heard so often, so badly performed, that it was received with apathy, he introduced careful alterations, perhaps not invariably well-advised, but never thoughtlessly, never for economic reasons, and never, I should be willing to swear, did he obscure a composer's intention. Rather he illuminated it. Permit me to continue to quote Mr. Krehbiel to show how far dull pedantry may exercise an ancillary function to blind obstinacy of opinion: "He did not know that he was doing it, or if he did he was willing wantonly to insult their intelligence and taste by such things as multiplying the voices in a Beethoven symphony (an additional kettledrum in the Pastoral, for instance), by cutting down the strings and doubling the flutes in Mozart's G minor, by fortifying the brass in Schubert's major until the sweet Vienna singer of nearly a century ago seemed a modern Malay running amuck, and—​most monstrous of all his doings—starting the most poetical and introspective of Schumann's overtures—that to Manfred—with a cymbal clash like that which sets Mazeppa's horse on his wild gallop in Liszt's symphonic poem. And who can ever forget the treatment of the kettledrums which he demanded of his players?"
Mr. Krehbiel presents a highly flattering portrait of the lay members of the Philharmonic Society. I doubt if meddling with the classics, even when it is radical, causes these ladies and gentlemen as keen suffering as he imagines. At any rate, this procedure did not begin with Mahler, nor did it end with him, and I would like to wager that I could introduce salient modifications in such frequently performed and popular works as the overture to Oberon, Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, and Mozart's Jupiter without their being detected by more than seven or eight persons in an average Philharmonic audience (and this is putting the percentage considerably higher than seems justifiable), an audience which might include the lynx-eared dean himself who once, even with a program before him, levelled a half-column of abuse at a man named Prokofieff for having composed a piece which the aforesaid program plainly attributed to Vasilenko.
​In one of the "golden periods" of opera no respect whatever was paid to the composer. When, for example, John Ebers was manager of the King's Theatre in London, the air, Voi che sapete, in The Marriage of Figaro, was sung variously, on different evenings, by the Countess, by Susanna, occasionally even by Cherubino, for whom it was written. It was the custom at this epoch for singers to do as they pleased by operas. When the great Mme. Pasta appeared in Coccia's Maria Stuarda "scarcely a single part in the piece escaped unchanged," writes Ebers, "so bent were the performers on introducing additions for the gratification of their amour propre." De Begnis chose Il Turco in Italia as the vehicle for his London début, but all the best parts of La Cenerentola were forced into it.
You may read, also, in historical tables and essays, which old gentlemen delight in preparing for us, of the character of the numerous operatic performances that took place in New York in the early nineteenth century, admittedly hodgepodges, airs from this and from that, with scenes transposed or omitted. We need only to recall Manuel Garcia's celebrated season at the Park Theatre in 1825, during which Il Barbiere was performed twenty-three times. Does any one imagine for a moment that Rossini's musical comedy was given as he wrote it? If any one ​does, let him examine the records, where he also may discover astonishing details concerning the presentation of the other operas offered during this season, which derives its magnificence from the presence of the elder Garcia and the young Malibran in the company. Thereafter, as before, on through the Mapleson seasons at the Academy of Music, operas were produced with due regard for the caprices of prime donne, and the pocket-books of impresarii. The ignorance of the public was taken for granted. Emma Abbott interpolated the Lullaby from Erminie in The Mikado and Adelina Patti interpolated Home Sweet Home in any opera she happened to be singing. To this day you may hear Frieda Hempel sing Keep the home fires burning somewhere in The Daughter of the Regiment.
This reference to Mme. Hempel has reminded me that I cannot recall a single opera in the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera House which has not undergone some change or other, many of them very considerable, and almost all of them advantageous. However, I prefer to hear and see the church scene in Faust given, as it appears in the score, after the death of Valentin, rather than before, as it is sung in our theatre and almost everywhere else. Valentin's air, Dio possente, was written for an Italian performance of the opera in London; it is never sung in Paris, ​but we hear it in New York, and, as the opera is performed here in French, Dio possente becomes Avant de quitter ces lieux. It was formerly the American custom, and a very good one too, to omit the ballet; that has been restored at our theatre, but one of Siebel's airs and Marguerite's spinning song are never heard. Gluck originally wrote Orfeo for a castrato and later arranged the part for a tenor. In the newer version prepared for the Paris Academie Royale de Musique, the principal singer, with the consent of Gluck, interpolated an air at the close of the first act, an air which, until recently, has been attributed to a contemporary composer named Bertoni, and has been held in disfavour. It is certainly not in keeping with the rest of the music of this lyric drama, but Tiersot has established the fact that Gluck transplanted it from one of his own early operas. However that may be, it still remains in disfavour. When Marie Delna sang Orfeo at the Metropolitan she substituted an air from Echo et Narcisse; Mrs. Homer's custom is to sing the grand air from Alceste, which has the disadvantage of releasing the trombones before their outburst in the furious scene of the second act. Fate played a considerable part in relation to modern perform​ances of The Barber of Seville. The manuscript parts of the overture and a trio were lost before the work was published; for the first, an earlier overture of the composer serves; for the second, sopranos substitute, during the lesson scene, whatever air or airs suit their voices and appeal to their tastes. Patti and Sembrich, indeed, often gave little concerts at this point in the opera, always singing three or four songs, frequently, seven or eight. Lucia was originally regarded as a tenor opera; now we only think of it as an excuse for a coloratura soprano to debate with a flute. As a result, the last act, which belongs to Edgardo, is omitted, and the work is terminated with the mad scene. As our opera-goers object to arriving at the theatre at six-thirty or seven, it has become necessary to cut huge chunks out of the Wagner dramas. Sometimes we are introduced to the Norns in Götterdämmerung, sometimes to Waltraute, but seldom to both together. Mr. Bodanzky, always original in such matters, dropped Alberich. I attended his next performance of Parsifal, hoping to find that the rôle of Gurnemanz had disappeared. No such luck. When Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride was produced at the Metropolitan Opera House it was in a German version, prepared by Richard Strauss, who had even composed the trio with which the opera ended. ​But the most striking cases of rewriting at present on view at the Metropolitan Opera House are Boris Godunoff, Oberon, and Le Coq d'Or.
Besides writing fifteen operas of his own, Rimsky-Korsakoff orchestrated The Stone Guest, left unfinished by the death of Dargomijski, and with the assistance of Glazunoff he completed Prince Igor. Another friend of Rimsky-​Korsakoff, Musorgsky, left La Khovantchina incomplete at his death. Rimsky orchestrated this opera, composing the last pages himself. He made several excisions, which later were restored in a version prepared by Stravinsky and Ravel. In relation to this episode Mr. Calvocoressi writes, "We can see, thanks to the work of Ravel and Stravinsky, that the score (published by Rimsky-Korsakoff in 1883) was little better than a libel. Rimsky-Korsakoff ​erred in all good faith. . . . Musorgsky believed anything resembling formalism to be fatal to art; he was as convinced that Rimsky-Korsakoff's idioms and methods were superfluously stiff and conventional as Rimsky-Korsakoff was convinced that Boris Godunoff and La Khovantchina were uncouth and crude."
Rimsky-Korsakoff called this doing his duty; his intentions were honourable. He also considered it his duty to rewrite Boris Godunoff, and since that work has been performed extensively in the singing theatres of Europe and America a constant hum of excited discussion regarding this version of the opera has simmered in the critical kettle. In a conversation with V. Yastrebtsieff, as reported in the Moscow weekly, Musica, June 22, 1903, Rimsky-Korsakoff said: "I originally intended writing a purely critical article on the merits and demerits of Boris Godunoff, but a new revised pianoforte score and a new orchestral score will be a more eloquent testimony to future generations of my views of this work, not only as a whole, but as regards the details of every bar; the more so, because in this transcription of the opera for orchestra, personality is not concerned, and I am only doing what Musorgsky himself ought to have done, but which he did not understand how to carry out, simply because of his lack of technique as a com​poser. I maintain that in my intention to reharmonize and reorchestrate this great opera of Musorgsky there is certainly nothing for which I can be blamed; in any case I impute no sins to myself. . . . Only when I have revised the whole of Musorgsky's works shall I begin to be at peace and feel that my conscience is clear; for then I shall have done all that can and ought to be done for his compositions and his memory."
Boris was apparently successfully produced at. The Mariinski Theatre at St. Petersburg on January 24 (O. S.) 1874, but the opera did not retain its place in the repertory, although it was sporadically revived, and it was not produced outside of Russia. In 1896, Rimsky-Korsakoff's version was published, and has held the stage ever since.
Of this version, Montagu-Nathan admits that Rimsky seems to have "toned down a good many musical features which would have won acceptance today as having been extraordinarily prophetic." V. V. Stasoff, the Russian music critic, was opposed to the alterations. "While admitting Musorgsky's technical limitations," writes Rosa Newmarch, "and his tendency to be slovenly in workmanship, he (Stasoff) thought it might be better for the world to see this original and inspired composer with all his faults ruthlessly exposed to view than clothed in his right ​mind with the assistance of Rimsky-Korsakoff. . . . We who loved Musorgsky's music in spite of its apparent dishevelment may not unnaturally resent Rimsky-Korsakoff's conscientious grooming of it. But when it actually came to the question of producing the operas, even Stasoff, I am sure, realized the need for practical revisions, without which Musorgsky's original scores, with all their potential greatness, ran considerable risk of becoming mere archeological curiosities." Arthur Pougin falls in with this theory, "In reality, the music of Musorgsky only became possible when a friendly, experienced hand had taken the trouble to look over and carefully correct it." James Huneker writes: "Musorgsky would not study the elements of orchestration and one of the penalties he paid was that his friend, Rimsky-Korsakoff, 'edited' Boris Godunoff (in 1896 a new edition appeared with changes, purely practical, as Calvocoressi notes, but the orchestration, clumsy as it is, largely remains the work of the composer) and La Khovantchina was scored by Rimsky-Korsakoff, and no doubt 'edited,' that is revised, what picture experts call 'restored.'" Calvocoressi contents himself with this laconic statement: "In 1896 a new edition of Boris Godunoff appeared, revised by M. Rimsky-Korsakoff. Certain of the changes that one remarks in this have a purely ​practical end, which is to facilitate the execution; others are only motivated by the desire to take away from the isolated aspect of the work, to render it less disconcerting to the public." Jean Marnold,/r//In Musique d'autrefois et d'aujourd'hui./r// on the other hand, screams with rage: "He (Rimsky-Korsakoff) changes the order of the last two tableaux, thus denaturing at its conclusion the expressly popular essence and the psychology of the drama. The scene of Boris with his children is especially mutilated. Rimsky-Korsakoff cuts, at his happiness, one, two, or three measures, as serenely as he cuts fifteen or twenty. At will he transposes a tone, a half-tone, makes sharps or flats natural, alters modulations. He even corrects the harmony. During the tableau in the cell of Pimen the liturgical Dorian mode is adulterated by a banal D minor. The interval of the augmented fifth (a favourite device of Musorgsky) is frequently the object of this equilateral ostracism. He has no more respect for traditional harmony. Nearly every instant Rimsky-Korsakoff changes something for the unique reason that it is his pleasure to do so. From one end of the work to the other he planes, files, polishes, pulls together, retouches, embellishes, makes insipid, or corrupts. In comparing the two scores one can hardly believe one's eyes. In the two hundred and fifty-eight pages of that ​of Rimsky-Korsakoff there are perhaps not twenty which conform to the original text."
Whether or no Rimsky-Korsakoff spoiled his friend's opera I have no personal means of determining. Original scores of Boris do not, so far as I am aware, exist in New York. Apparently, they do not abound anywhere. It may, however, be offered in extenuation of Rimsky-Korsakoff's act that his version has consistently held the stage and has made a tremendous effect wherever it has been presented. The original work may or may not have surpassed its successor, but, at any rate, Boris, as it now stands, is one of the most solid, one of the most striking, one of the most beautiful works in the current repertory.
The case of Oberon is another matter altogether. Regarding with greedy eyes the success of Der Freischütz in London, the Director of Covent Garden Theatre sought a new work from ​Weber. The composer, near death and anxious to provide for the future of his family, consented to set an English book to music. Two subjects were offered him, Faust and Oberon. He chose the latter and J. R. Planché prepared the book, from time to time sending scenes on to Weber, who went to the trouble of learning English so that he might the better understand what he was writing music for. It was felt that too great a strain must not be put upon the appreciatory powers of a Covent Garden audience. Difficulties, too, presented themselves. The singers in this theatre could not act, the actors could not sing. As a result of this situation Planché prepared a strange opera book with plenty of opportunity for a spectacular scene painter (there were something like twenty-one scenes in the original version), in which there was a great deal of spoken dialogue, much of it allotted to characters who never sang a note. With true fatidical spirit Weber wrote to Planché, "The intermixing of so many principal actors who do not sing, the omission of the music in the most important moments—all deprive our Oberon of the title of an opera, and will make him unfit for all other theatres in Europe." Nevertheless, deeply inspired by the subject, Weber completed the work, intending to rewrite it later for performance in other theatres, but he died in London in June ​1826, two months after Oberon was produced, before he had time to carry out his intention.
There the matter stood. Weber had composed what I, at any rate, consider his finest opera in a form which made it simply unpresentable under any but the original conditions. It is therefore no subject for wonder that since that day it has seldom, if ever, been performed as written. Huon's first air proving unsuitable to the voice of Braham, the tenor who created the rôle, Weber wrote a new air. In the early German performances the original song was restored, and it was not long before music was provided for the dialogue. Berlioz heard Schroeder-Devrient sing Rezia in Paris four years after the London production. The Théâtre-Lyrique, under the direction of Carvalho, mounted the work in 1857. In 1860, Sir Julius Benedict arranged an Italian version of Oberon for London, adding certain numbers from Euryanthe and providing music for the spoken dialogue. Willner, Josef Schlaar, and Gustav Mahler are others who have made new versions of the work for practical operatic production. Mahler's arrangement was heard at Cologne and when he was in New York he vainly urged Heinrich Conried to produce it at the Metropolitan. Up to the year 1918, however, no version had been regarded as definitive, unless it might have been that of Sir Julius Bene​dict, which has many disadvantages. Nevertheless, Oberon was a favourite opera in England and America during the Victorian era. Tietjens sang Rezia and Alboni sang Fatima; later, Pappenheim and Parepa-Rosa sang Rezia (often spelled Reiza) and Trebelli sang Fatima. The work, however, had never been performed at the Metropolitan Opera House until Arthur Bodanzky prepared his version. Aside from the lack of a definitive version, if any such lack were felt, there were probably many excellent reasons for this delay. The opera demands a great number of elaborate decorations, including the representation of a storm on a rocky coast, fairy festivals, and caliph's banquets. Obviously, expense is involved. Then the music exacts, for its correct interpretation, not only voices of great range, but also consummate art. The part of Rezia is beyond the reach of many a dramatic soprano, and tenors might sing Edgardo, Radames, Canio, and Rodolfo all their lives without being able to get through the first air of Huon.
Mr. Bodanzky telescoped the text into nine scenes, omitting several of the characters whose dialogue was spoken and providing music for the others. In every instance, this music is built up on themes found in the work itself. The final chorus, for example, is constructed on the num​ber, subsequently discarded, which Weber wrote for Braham. The result may be regarded as generally admirable, for Mr. Bodanzky's work has the desirable effect of knitting together the very lovely music of the piece. Oberon assuredly has the ardency of true beauty. The overture and Rezia's grand air are both familiar in the concert room, but both are heard to more advantage in the opera house. For Ocean, thou mighty monster, indeed, scenic embellishment is more essential than for the final scene of Die Walkie, and the overture, with its foreshadowing of the fairy music, Huon's chivalric air, and the quartet, Over the dark blue waters, comes back to memory with renewed force and meaning after the fall of the final curtain. For myself, I may say that I like Oberon almost as much as I like the operas of Gluck and Mozart, and a great deal more than I like the lyric dramas of Richard Wagner.
The third rewritten opera in the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera House is presented in its new form in direct opposition to the intentions of the composer and against the protests of the composer's widow. It is amusing to recall that the composer was Rimsky-Korsakoff who, after his death, has been served as he served others. In this instance, however, music and book escape ​ revision. The alterations concern solely the manner of interpretation.
Rimsky-Korsakoff completed The Golden Cockerel (given in New York in its French form as Le Coq d'Or) in 1907. The censor, justifiably regarding the book as a satire directed at royalty, at first refused to sanction its Russian production, and it did not reach the stage before the composer's death in 1908. Later, however, it was performed with success in Russia. Some time before the summer of 1914, Serge de Diaghileff, the director of the Russian Ballet, searching for novelties suitable for production by that organization in London and Paris, hit upon this quaintest and most beautiful of Rimsky-Korsakoff's many operas and, with the assistance of Fokine, invented a novel presentation of it. This was a performance involving two casts, one to sing and the other to act. The singing cast, ​ together with the chorus, was arranged in uniforms on two tiers of benches placed on either side of the stage, leaving the centre of the stage free for the ballet to enact the play. Consequently, after a first gasp of amazement, the spectators soon accepted the singers as part of the decoration and followed with glee the history of the silly King Dodon and the amazingly naughty and mysterious Queen of Shemakahn. The fantastries of the book lend themselves well to this manner of treatment and the result was a success which surpassed all expectations, a success which was repeated later in New York.
These three operas, indeed, Boris Godunoff, Oberon, and The Golden Cockerel, are assuredly the most delightful works in the current (1918–19) repertory of the Metropolitan Opera House. I should be the last to point the moral herein indicated. There may, indeed, be some operas which do not need rewriting. The fact remains that the creative power and a sense of the theatre do not always go together. As Sir ​Charles Villiers Stanford so justly remarks, it is a mistake to prolong the Elijah after the ascent of the fiery chariot. "When a piece is over it is over." This is a lesson Wagner never learned. His motto appears to have been, When a piece is over it is just beginning. Will some one, I wonder, have the courage to lop King Mark's speech off the end of the second act of Tristan?
But while we are rewriting masterpieces why not go into the matter with thoroughness? Why not engage J. M. Barrie to write a new book for The Magic Flute? Why not employ Mr. Belasco to cut and contrive and comb a single opera out of Mefistofele and La Gioconda? The idea fascinates me. I should delight in doing a little snipping and rearranging myself. I have a fancy, for instance, for playing I'll Trovatore backwards, something like this:
The opera opens with the scene in the prison where the Gipsy, Azucena, has been thrown at the instigation of the wicked Count. She and Manrico sing the duet, Si la stanchezza, after which Manrico obliges with Di quella pira. Leonora enters and vainly pleads with the Count to spare Manrico, but that one, being a baritone and jealous of the tenor's high C, orders him to be put to death at once. The audience, if we may take into account the way Di quella pira is usually rendered, will be properly grateful, but ​the horrified Azucena informs the Count that he has murdered his own brother. Here the scene changes to the tower where Leonora, assisted by the spirit of Manrico, looking down from heaven, warbles the Miserere.
The second act opens in the camp. Azucena, dragged in, moans her plaintive lament for Manrico, while Leonora, stricken with grief, immures herself in a convent, from which she is abducted by the Count, who learns that Azucena has lied about the burned Manrico, her own son and not his brother. The act is brought to a spirited conclusion by a performance of the anvil chorus in which all the principals ecstatically join.
In the third act, Leonora, hearing a voice in the garden of the Count's palace and in her madness fancying it to be the voice of her dear, dead Manrico, ventures out into the moonlight. The voice, however, proves to be that of the Count di Luna, but Leonora has reached such a state of indifference that she falls into his arms in a magnificent state of bravura, while the Count delightedly comes to her aid with a performance of Manrico's music transposed into as comfortable a key as possible.
Other ideas present themselves. The example of Le Coq d'Or should make it possible to continue indefinitely the enormous vogue of Geraldine Farrar, who might act her rôles unre​strainedly while somebody else sings them, and if any more American operas are to be produced at the Metropolitan Opera House, might I suggest that Irving Berlin be called in to rewrite them?
January 1, 1919.
* ↑ George Moore has rewritten many of his own books. Henry James rewrote all of his novels and tales that he cared to preserve for the definitive edition. On the other hand, Ouida believed (and expressed this belief in a paper published in her Critical Studies) that once a book was given to the public, it became a part of life, a part of history, and that its author had no longer the right to tamper with it.
* ↑ This conversation is now included in the volume called Avowals.
* ↑ In 1921, Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Orchestra, actually undertook to revise the scoring of Schumann's Rhenish Symphony. Occasionally, to give greater clarity to the thought, he even added a measure. He replaced Schumann's coda by another in which, however, he utilized the composer's material. He also seized opportunities as they arose for contrapuntal embellishment in the various voices. The instruments he added were one additional flute (interchangeable with piccolo), oboe (interchangeable with English horn), clarinet, bassoon, two additional trumpets, and, outside Schumann's original list, a bass tuba, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, side drum, and tambourine.
* ↑ The reader would do well at this point to open the first volume of Bernard Shaw's Dramatic Opinions and Essays (Brentano's; 1906) at page 160 and read the paper entitled Poor Shakespeare!
* ↑ The curious reader may find a complete account of this contretemps in the Musical Courier for December 19, 1918.
* ↑ Now the rôle is sung by a contralto.
* ↑ Divinites du Styx.
* ↑ Anything into which the human element enters is naturally uncertain. Conductors not only rewrite and cut operas before they perform them; they actually rewrite them during performance. For the past twenty-five years it has been the custom of Tom Bull at the Metropolitan Opera House to hold a stop-watch on every act. He has a complete and valuable record of the exact time it has taken each conductor to get through with an act on each separate occasion. Even the same conductor with the same opera with the same cuts varies somewhat on different evenings. The first night Mr. Polacco conducted Boris Godunoff he finished the first act three minutes later than Mr. Toscanini. There is also a record in Mr. Bull's book of a performance of Samson et Dalila in Philadelphia which was over twenty-five minutes earlier than those conducted in New York by Mr. Monteux. No extra cuts had been made; it was simply a matter of speedier conducting, and, of course, of shorter intermissions. In this connection it is interesting to recall that George Henschel once wrote to ask Brahms if the metronome marks at the head of the several movements of the Requiem should be strictly adhered to. "Well—just as with all other music," answered Brahms. "I think here as well as with other music the metronome is of no value. As far at least as my experience goes, everybody has, sooner or later, withdrawn his metronome marks. Those which can be found in my works—good friends have talked me into putting them there, for I myself have never believed that my blood and a mechanical instrument go well together. The so-called 'elastic' tempo is moreover not a new invention. 'Con discrezione' should be added to that as to many things." Singers, too, make many arbitrary changes in scores, sometimes because a tone is too high, sometimes because it is not high enough, sometimes for the same reason which led Rubinstein occasionally to startle academic hearers with cascades of false notes, because their memories fail them. Brahms may be quoted on this subject also. Because he had a severe cold and dreaded a certain high F, George Henschel wrote the composer asking if he would object if the singer substituted for that note another more convenient one. "Not in the least," replied Brahms. "As far as I am concerned, a thinking, sensible singer may, without hesitation, change a note which for some reason or other is for the time being out of his compass, into one which he can reach with comfort, provided always the declamation remains correct and the accentuation does not suffer." Certain changes of this nature have been made so frequently in opera airs that they have become traditional. It is no uncommon thing for an ignorant critic to severely condemn a singer for restoring the original, but infrequently heard, text.
* ↑ After the first edition of Rimsky-Korsakoff's My Musical Life (Knopf; 1923) was on the market, I received a letter from Mr. O. G. Sonneck informing me that the original vocal score of Boris had reposed in the Library of Congress at Washington "for years and years." No American critic, so far as I know, had hitherto been informed of that fact. Certainly, in all the protracted discussion that has raged in the press over this question, the phrase "the original score is not available for examination" has constantly bobbed up. I have no present intention of examining this score myself, but any one who suffers from curiosity, is apparently at liberty to do so.
* ↑ This is the second instance. Scheherazade was not writ- ten as a ballet and the composer's program for this symphony differs in every respect from that of Fokine.
* ↑ If this idea had occurred to Planché all the original difficulties in regard to Oberon might have been brushed aside. It was not a new idea even in Planché's day. In Lumley's Reminiscences of the Opera, I find the following: "On the English stage, where the double qualities of acting and singing were in those days not to be found combined in one person, a tenor-lover was introduced to sing the music of Gustavus (in Auber's Gustave III), whilst the part itself was acted by Mr. Warde, a tragedian of considerable merit. A similar arrangement of an operatic work had long before distinguished the English version of The Barber of Seville, in which the part of Almaviva was enacted by a light comedian, whilst an additional character, one Fiorello, sang Rossini's music of the part." One might go still further back: in Orazio Vecchi's Amfiparnasso, an attempt to convert the Commedia dell'Arte into lyric drama, produced at Modena in 1594, the music was sung by five singers behind the scenes while the action and speech of the actors on the stage was synchronized with the music.