The Opelousas courier., 1891-08-08
HIGH PRICES FOR SONGS,
EARNING OF FAMOUS SINGERS IN
THE PAST AND PRESENT.
Small Prices First-Fifteen Thousand
Dollars Received by a Singer o
One Performance;

AyOIIhA5 1hSSCLt@N w ~ ASS "
One Perforrnahee:
A common complaint among n~iusica
managers on the Continent is that the
compensation of the great singers of the
day is beyond all reasonable proportion
TO their service. That for the single
performance of q role in an opera, or fol
a song or two in q concert even, a Patti
should command thousands Of dollars, i
regarded as an abuse which is becoming
ruinous to the reputation of the musical
art. The wide gap between the rewards
of the best three or four and the ten OF
eleven next best is described as the re-
suit of musical caprice OF popular in
ability to correctly estimate relative
merits. "The favorites," said a Con-
t~inental critic recently, 'sare the cancers
of the modern opera"
When Catherine Gabrielle went to st.
Petersburg ii the latter part of the last
century she demanded 10000 foubles
salary. "Twenty thousand roubles!'
cried Katharine II. "For that l could
support two Field Marshals."
every WE'LL" answered the singer,
s'your Majesty may then have them to
sing for you"
Complaints of the extravaganza Of the
demands of musical artists have an an
cient history. Early in the sixteenth
century the citizens of Wurtemberg pro-
tested hat the expenditures of their So
Fereign for musicians were running the
land. In 1916 Duke Ulrich gave his
lords the assurance that their complaints
had been needed, and that in the future
he would cut down as low as possible his
budget for singers and trumpeters. His
successor, Duke C~hristoph, however,
was guilty of the wild extravaganza of
engaging several new singers at salaries
of from SIS to S25 each for the season.
Generally in those old times the salaries
of singers were in figures which seem
fidlculously small. The Italian Pergamin
received at the end of the sixteenth een-
fury from Landgrave Moritz, in Cassell,
about $50 annually and his board and
lodgings. His salary was, however,
equal to that of a high Minister of State.
Under Duke Eberhard Ludwig 1677-
1889, three singers in Stuttgart were
paidcby the court. Magdalena sybilla
Beck got $3.50 annually, and was re-
garded as unreasonably high-priced. In
Dresden, under Johann George Ill. who
died in 1891, the most famous song
stresses in central Europe, Marguerite
Salicola and Kosana S%antinelli, had an
nual salaries of $1100 d ich. Charles VI,
in Vienna, early in the eighteenth cen
fury, paid each of several %soloists $4,000
a year.
The more the Italian opera, with its
virtuosos, spread to the Northern courts
and thence to the Northern audiences the
larger became the rewards of the great
artists. England is supposed to have
been responsible for the enormous and
sudden increase of salaries which grad
ually raised prices or the Continent, as
America is supposed to have caused the
corresponding phenomenon in the oper-
attic world of to-day. Cuzzcni, in 1925,
refused the offer of $4S, 900 for a Con
tinental tour from an Italian impressario
because she could do better in England.
She died, however, in the most abject
misery after having squandered a dozen
or more fortunes: Gertrude Elizabeth
Mara, whose maiden name was schmeling,
was for some time content with $4,000
annually as court singer of Frederick the
Great in Berlin. In 1880 she received
an offer of $4,000 and $12ssao travelling
expenses for half a dozen concerts in
England. The great Hohenzollern, an
gered by this foreign competition, re-
fused to grant her a leave of absence, SO
she simply broke her contract and hur~
rie@ off to London, where for many
years she got ten times the income which
the German stage could give her.
After Catalani had sung twice before
Napoleon I, she was rewarded with
$1,000 cash, a life pension of $1,000
annually, and two benefits which brought
her $40, 600 more. Nevertheless, she
was not satisfied. AftR hearing her in
st. Cloud, the Emperor went to her
dressing room and inquired:
aWhere do you go from here, MADAME
ssTo London, SIRE"
stRemain in Paris and I will give yot
$40, 600 and two months leave of az. ,
sence annually. |
Catalina bowed and went to London,
she got $50, 900 from an Engage
ment and $50, 900 from concerts during |
her leave of absence. She sang sGod !
Save the King at receptions for $1,000 /,
a time, and she wa worshiped there as
no singer before her and few since. Her
parsimony was abnormal, and rendered
her the subject of innumerable curious
Among the ssdiyine An
g~elica's" most fervent admirers was the
Marquis of Buckingham. He enter
tanned the sill Ier and her husband, NJ.
de Valabregue at his country place for
weeks: Numerous receptions
we're given therein her honor, and at each
she responded to the urgent requests of
the guests by singing one song. AT the
end of the visit NJ. de Valabregue, in bid
ding the Marquis goodbye, pressed in
MS hosts hand a paper bearing the bill
Catalina-''for singing seventeen
'ongs, 1900 soverelgns.' The Marquis
ooked at it, wrote out his check for
ZOO sovereigns for seventeen "working
lays of Nine. Catalina, and remarked
II regret exceedingly that I did
not before know that NJ. de Valabreque
the cashier of the Catalina firm
This incident injured Catalina greatly in
England, as it had injured Mara in Der
that she refused to sing at a benefit
or widows and orphans, in 1903, unless
one-half of the proceeds were assured