Article on mismanagement of the Maretzek Italian Opera Company

“There is no subject in which the people of this city feel a deeper interest than in the success of the opera and none in which their expectations have been so often disappointed. Time and again operatic managers have learned from experience that one prima donna does not make a successful season any more than one swallow makes a Summer. The director of the Academy of Music is learning it over again this Autumn for nearly the hundredth time. He engaged Lucca, and gave the promise of a brilliant season. He engaged Jamet and we were satisfied that if Lucca was supported by artists of Jamet’s ability his promise would be realized. But here he stopped and turned from the right into the wrong path. Vizzani, the tenor, has been a failure both as as an actor and as a singer. He makes the most ineffective Faust who ever sung at the Academy and as Fra Diavolo he is an exceedingly unromantic and yet unrealistic brigand. Abrugnedo is a better tenor than Vizzani, but he broke down completely in the part of Vasco di Gama, in Meyerbeer’s ‘L’Africaine,’ and barely sustained himself as a smooth, cultivated singer of limited power as Manrico. Of the baritones Sparapani has no voice, and Moriami is wandering and uncertain. Señorita Sanz, the contralto, gives proof of considerable artistic ability, but she is suffering from diphtheria and is practically unfitted for continuing her engagement. Added to these are other singers for subordinate parts who are too bad to be named or endured, and a chorus which the adjective condemnatory fails fitly to describe. Under such auspices it is impossible that a musical season can be either a financial or an artistic success, and the present venture, like many that have preceded it, must prove a decided and complete failure.

The readers of the Herald are well aware how strenuously and earnestly this journal has advised a directly opposite course from the one which has been adopted. We have implored managers, both for their own interests and the interests of the public, to do whatever they attempted with thoroughness and efficiency. Only once—in the Nilsson season of last year—was our advice heeded, and that operatic venture was the only one in many years which was a musical triumph and a financial success. Under other conditions the present season would have been equally triumphant. There was great eagerness to hear Lucca if she could be heard with proper surroundings. Long before the season began every part of the house was taken, and the eagerness manifested in the beginning would have continued till the end had not the disappointment been so complete as to be overpowering. Now the enthusiasm has died away, and the interest which still attaches to the opera is due solely to the abilities of Lucca and Jamet. People go to the Academy determined to endure everything else for the pleasure of hearing the brave little prima donna, and they meekly sit through the evening showing a sullen contentment, because Mr. Maretzek has given them one artist who can beguile them for their disappointment. This is the star system in its worst form; for it neither gives the prima donna a fair opportunity nor provides the public with such an entertainment as will make the season successful.

It this were the last disappointment of the kind we could allow it to pass unnoticed; but it can only be the last by making opera in New York impossible in the future. Distinguished artists will hesitate about coming to a country where other distinguished artists have failed to reap the reward of their talents. If the people of this city were unwilling or unable to support the opera we could console ourselves with whatever consolation there might be in a fact so unpalatable; but the contrary is the truth. That New York is always ready to sustain a meritorious combination is apparent from the success of the Nilsson season. Failure only follows from the want of a meritorious combination. If ‘L’Africaine’ had been presented with anything like a cast able to render it, the favorite opera of ‘Faust’ would have proved an ovation. When ‘Faust’ gave us nothing but a Gretchen and a Mephistopheles it was impossible that the noisy music of Auber should satisfy. And ‘Fra Diavolo’ realized the old complaint, for it was ‘Hamlet’ with Hamlet left out—‘Fra Diavolo’ with a stage ghost instead of a singing brigand. To all these failures must be added the artistic failure of ‘Don Giovanni.’ This is an opera which can be only a musical success at best—an opera which seldom succeeds even in Paris, with the best talent to make to effective. Without talent, except in one or two parts, it necessarily fails, and helps to drag down with it the success of the season and the prospects of the future.

That the failure of the present season has not been even more marked than it has been is owing in a great measure to the sublime patience of our people. If the demonstrative part of an American audience were compelled to stand up throughout the performance, as in the Hof Theater at Munich, the expressions of censure would take a wilder and fiercer form and a bad representation would become a dangerous experiment. It does not follow, however, that where financial disaster fails to teach wisdom it will be learned from the disapprobation of a disappointed and impatient audience. There is no truth more self-evident that that which the Herald has been trying to impress upon managers for years. A worthy entertainment will always meet with a worthy recognition. An artistic success is sure to be rewarded with a financial success. If the music-loving public is treated with fairness the response is certain to be as generous as it will be enthusiastic. Experience has taught this, though managers have failed to learn it. Whoever will apply honest commercial principles to the organization of an opera company for New York will find a fair return for a fair outlay, and it will not be possible to make Italian opera a permanent institution in this city till this is done. All our theatres are successful because they put the best attainable talent in their performances, and the opera fails because a rule so unmistakable is not heeded.”