Maretzek Italian Opera: Der Freischütz

“A flower basket, presented last night to Mme. Lucca, contained a card, which announced the intention of the Ninth regiment to pay a particular homage of respect to the great prima donna by marching past her house, in Fourteenth street, today, at a quarter past six o’clock.”

“The performance of ‘Der Freyschutz’ last night, in Italian, was in some respects one of the most creditable incidents of Mr. Maretzek’s season. There was indeed no evidence of particular care in the preparation or liberality in the appointments, but on the other hand there was much less of that conspicuous inefficiency in leading characters of the cast which we have had to lament so often under the present management. Not only Madame Lucca but M. Jamet also was admirable; and the Max of Sig. Vizzani and the Anna of Miss Doria were much above the ordinary of those two painstaking artists. Madame Lucca’s Agatha is not remarkable for picturesque action, nor for any original effects whatever, and yet it is a highly impressive personation, owing its strength entirely to the finished and eloquent delivery of two familiar numbers. The first of course is the prayer and scena of the IId Act, Come una rolta (or in German, Wie nahte mir der Schlummer), the first part of which was sung with great expression, although, truth to say, we cannot call it specially sympathetic, nor a very smooth example of the cantabile style. The joyous concluding portion of the scena, however, was superb, and the whole house was roused by it. The second piece in which the prima donna has an opportunity for display is the beautiful prayer in the IVth Act, E se le nubi (Und ob die Wolke), which Madame Lucca makes even more tender and delicious than the first. In the rest of the opera the part of Agatha is remarkably uninteresting. M. Jamet is by far the best Caspar who has been seen at our Academy of Music for many years, and it would be unfair to withhold a word of cordial praise from Sig. Vizzani, not only for his aria, Per I boschi (Durch die Walden), but for his bearing generally throughout the evening. And for the rest—well, is it worth while to repeat the protests of so many years against the sepulchral Weinlich and the gorgeous Reichardt? Is it worth while to rail any more against the supernatural machinery which always makes the IIId Act of this opera ridiculous? The monsters were all there—the dragon with a blazing eye and a broken tail, the sow with a Roman candle in her teeth, the goblin who could not be persuaded to come off the stage, and the skeleton who refused to be pushed on; there, too, was the witch in the air, who got disarranged midway of the scene, and turned to the audience a back of palpable pasteboard. It is enough to say that the scene was rather worse than usual, and the only reason the audience did not laugh longer is that they were choked with the smoke.” 

“One of the noblest pieces of musical compositions ever written, Weber’s ‘Der Freischütz,’ has lost no jot of its popularity through the advent of new schools, or the innovations of modern masters. The splendor of Weber’s imagination, as illustrated by a treatment of the supernatural never surpassed, if ever equaled; the grace, spirit, and originality of his melodies, and the tender melancholy of his sentiment, are the chief qualities that have maintained his fame, and bid fair to perpetuate it. To these, in the case of ‘Der Freischutz,’ may be added that preserving salt of the diabolical, which always has a charm for the popular heart, as is shown by the hold on the stage of so large a proportion of the plays and operas that contain it. The difficulties about getting up ‘Der Freischutz,’ even tolerably, are, of course many, and it was hardly to be expected that, at the fag-end of a season, and for the representation of a couple of nights, these obstacles would be altogether surmounted. All things considered, then, the performance of the work at the Academy, last night, was better than most of the numerous audience looked for, if in scarcely any respect to be set down as faultless. But to this qualified approving judgment—strong praise as it may seem—we think an exception must be taken in favor of the Agatha of Mme. Lucca. That performance is simply one of the grandest ever seen on the New-York stage; and, at all events, to Mme. Lucca’s second act we deem the epithet ‘faultless’ to be fairly applicable. The prayer, the subsequent scena, and its concluding brilliant aria, were all superb, and Mme. Lucca was called forward after it by acclamation three times to receive the public congratulations. Altogether, for passionate earnestness, for magnetic power, for vocal skill, and finally, for completeness of histrionic identification with the character, Mme. Lucca’s Agatha was an honest triumph last night, and will rank henceforth as among the very first lyric events ever known in America. Signor Jamet made a more acceptable Caspar. He received an encore for the famous drinking song of the first act, and for the noble scena at the end a hearty call before the curtain. It is satisfactory to find so true and good an artist prominent on critical occasions like this, which, suggesting former failures and disappointments, are apt to be looked forward to with a thrill of apprehension. When ‘Der Freischutz’ was last sung here—at the Grand Opera-House—it was so sadly butchered that the very name of the opera on the bills of the Academy made those who revere the name of Weber tremble. We rejoice to bear witness to the effacement of that bad impression by a fresh performance so generally worthy. Signor Vizzani sang the lovely tenor air of Act 1 very nicely, and was good in most of the concerted pieces. The chorus was ragged and uneven at times, but it was clear that Mr. Maretzek had worked hard with the forces at disposition, and he deserves to be congratulated on the result. It may be added that the malefic horrors of the ‘Witches’ Glen,’ although concocted at very short notice, were uncommonly effective, and, what with the streams of colored fire and the stench of sulphur, the staves of the Phantom Chorus, and the ‘gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,’ furbished up by the property-men, the audience had about as nice a foretaste of the regions below as any of them could desire, or are likely, we trust, to be called on to enjoy. ’Der Freischutz’ was, on the whole, immensely relished by the public, and the opera will be repeated on Friday.” 

“Carl Maria Von Weber is the most popular of all German composers—the only one, perhaps, who is strictly classical, mastering counterpoint second to none. He poured forth melodies with the liberality of a millionaire; melodies, too, that catch the ear of the many instantly, without being in any sense vulgar or commonplace in style or form. The pupil of the Abbé Vogler and Michel Haydn, he owes nearly all his fame to ‘Der Freischütz’—played for the first time in 1821, not, as Fétis says, in 1822—which has remained his most famous work in the long list of his symphonies, sonatas, concertos, masses and seven other operas, one of which he composed at the age of fourteen.

The fame of ‘Euryanathe,’ ‘Preciosa’ and ‘Oberon’ lingered behind that of ‘Der Freischütz,’ the airs and choruses of which are as well known in Germany as ‘Home, sweet Home’ is in America or England.

It is a singular fact, and one not generally known that the most popular airs of this opera were found by Weber in a piano-forte concerto of an organist named Bohner, who had gone mad, after leaving these manuscripts and other concertos for other instruments with a friend. They were shown to Weber, who expressed his admiration of them, and proved it by incorporating them in this opera.

The libretto of this opera is too well known to require our pointing out its absurdities. Weber chose it, as many composers have done since its day, because it furnishes many opportunities for dramatic display of effective music. Weber, who began his career as a painter, acquired a thorough education, and wrote much and with great success as a journalist. He was, therefore, quite able to see the emptiness of the plot; but he foresaw that the Wolfschlucht and, particularly, in Germany, the sentimental love affair could not miss their mark.

After the severe rigidity of Bach and Handel, Weber was certainly first to give new life to orchestration, to combine great art with sweet and natural melodies; and we might appropriately call him the bridge between the simpler composers of the beginning of the century and that giant in instrumentation, Beethoven.

‘Der Freischutz,’ from beginning to end, abounds in the highest flights of genius, brilliant style, the profoundest knowledge of music and inspiration of rare degree, every part being wonderfully adapted to the compass of the voice and the instrument for which it was intended; and gives us that depth of spiritual feeling which pervades all German creations, from Bach to Schumann, in music, and from Kant to Schelling, in philosophy.

A leader might well complain of a manager who would force him before the public without sufficient rehearsal, or a manager might complain of the leader for too much haste or rashness in venturing too soon; but here Mr. Maretzek is both manager and leader, and he cannot be expected to complain that he has rushed this opera before an American audience with a haste that would not be tolerated in England or France or Belgium. But the American audience may possibly feel some right to remonstrate. We think so.

The ambitious announcement of the mise en scene of the incantation scene went beyond the effects actually produced. The details—snakes, crocodiles and the like—were not up to the expectation, not up to the dignity certainly, of the occasion. The manager complains that American critics complain, while Englishmen approve and applaud; but Mr. Maretzek should not challenge such a comparison until he spends lbs. sterling 1,200, as was done in London. It may be wonderful to put such an opera upon the stage in one week; but it is music that we want and not wonders.

Madame Lucca sang the part of Agatha wonderfully, with her usual intensity of feeling and expression; and although her Allegro was perhaps not so brilliant as we could have wished, still her grand voice and her brilliant power of musical declamation elicited the heartiest applause, and deserved it. Her second air was not quite so successful. She sang with less spirit, and was possibly annoyed by the want of adequate support. This seemed to be the case; although Madame Lucca usually rises above such incidental circumstances. Mons. Jamet, who did his work artistically, sang his air in the first act most admirably, notwithstanding the overnoisy accompaniment.

None of the other singers did very well. Why Mlle. Doria, who cannot do it well, should have been selected to sing Annchen, when Miss Kellogg, who would have done it admirably, was left out, cannot be understood; unless it is a feat of penny-wisdom. Signor Vizzani did not appear at his best in Max. He seems called upon to do everything, as tenore robusto, tenore amoroso, and tenorino. This general business does him great injustice.

Upon the whole, ‘Der Freischütz’ last night did not come up to what an American audience has a right to expect. It is too cheaply put forward; and our opera-goers are estimated as too nearly innocents at home.”

“The chef d’oeuvre of Carl Maria Von Weber was produced last night at the Academy to a full house. It is many years since this great piece was heard in Italian in New York, if we except its singing once by the Arion Society. The cast last night included Mme. Pauline Lucca as Agatha and Signor Jamet as Caspar. In so far it proved strong, but the Max of Signor Vizzani was an indifferent performance. The rest of the characters were merely further descents in the scale of indifference. The work in which Weber wove all the weird and wild dreamings of his nature with a weird, wild story from the folklore of Germany presents such varied features and demands such excessive care in production that it is not wonderful managers at the Academy have avoided it. It tests the capacities of the best arranged operatic establishments in Europe, and the haphazard manager here finds very little to his hand when he attempts to improvise it in a week. It is over fifty years since it was first produced in Berlin, and it is nearly fifty since Henrietta Sontag set all Germany ablaze with excitement over her Agathe. The stage could not boast of the same scenic aids then as now, but it is questionable if it was ever produced with less regard to mise en scène. The terrible scene in the Wolf’s Glen, for which Weber tortured his brain in the production of the fitful and demoniac in orchestration, needs either a simple suggestiveness of the horrible visions on a darkened stage, or else a perfect realism of the gloomy and awful [illegible] that sweep shrieking through the ghost stories of medieval Germany. The incantation scene last night was farcical in the extreme, and badly as it was conceived, worked worse. The concealed echo chorus was out of all time and tune, and the orchestra and the performers labored through the scene with despairing efforts. The chorus, indeed, was poor throughout, and in the huntsmen’s dashing song was feeble and disappointing. They could scarcely be heard above the flourish of the horns.

It is pleasant to turn from these things to the two characters we have excepted. Mme. Lucca’s Agathe, in the second act, where she first appears, at once won the sympathies of the audience. The melodious, soul-filling melancholy of Weber could scarcely have found finer or fuller utterance than she gave it. The foil, dramatically speaking, of a joyous, light-hearted girl, which Weber placed beside the darkly foreboding Agathe in this scene, like a full light to set off the delicate toning of Rembrandtish shadows, fell into poor hands, and Lucca’s triumph was the more telling that she was victorious in its despite. The marvelous recitative and aria, ‘Come una volta il sonna,’ was the first proof how Lucca made the part her own. At the end of the first verse the house broke forth in a whirlwind of bravos and clapping of hands. The trying ordeal of varied emotion, rising ever to the enthusiastic dream of future happiness in store, was magnificently sustained, and brought forth a display of feeling on a rich tide of song that enthralled the beholder and listener. She was many times recalled at its close, but wisely refrained from marring the success by a partial repetition. The desperation of a soul struggling with an intangible fear could not have been more sympathetically rendered than in her acting and singing to the close of the scene. The ridiculous Fourth of July fireworks in the incantation scene filled the stage so completely with acrid smoke that Agathe seemed almost choking in the fourth act while attempting to sing of her dream.

The Caspar of Signor Jamet was his first appearance in the character, and whenever the other stage elements were not against him he achieved marked success. His song in the first act, ‘Or via cintamo,’ was splendidly rendered and well deserved its encore. The score is exceedingly difficult for Caspar to the end of the first act; but Jamet mastered it without effort.”

“’Der Freyschutz’ was repeated at the Academy of Music, last evening. To an earlier reference to the performance we need at present add but little. It must, however, be said that yesterday the representation was distinguished by increased smoothness, and that the personations of Max and Caspar, to be credited respectively to Signor Vizzani and M. Jamet, were in all respects worthy the record of these conscientious and hard-working artists. Caspar’s drinking song, in act the first, was redemanded. Of the impressiveness of Mme. Lucca’s picture of Agatha, much has already been written. Last night, as on Wednesday, the exacting grand air in the first act was superbly sung, the highly expressive verses of the opening passage, the deep pathos of the prayer, and the heartfelt joy of the allegro, being freighted in turn with equal significance. A unanimous recall marked the fall of the curtain a few minutes later.”

“The second performance of ‘Der Freischütz’ was given at the Academy of Music last evening. We cannot regard it as in any sense a satisfactory rendering of Von Weber’s beautiful opera. The cast included Mme. Lucca, Mlle. Clara Doria, and Messrs. Vizzani, Jamet, Reichardt, and Weinlich.

Both as to the solo and the concerted parts, there were lamentable deficiencies in every act. There was little for the chorus to do—far less than in most operas, but that little was for the most part deplorably done. For example, the hunter’s chorus in the fourth act is as simple a phrase of melody as ever was written, and as simply harmonized. There is no excuse for bad singing in it, and yet it was as broken, disjointed, and ragged an affair as we ever heard.

The whole finale of this act was equally bad and brought the opera to a lame and ineffective conclusion. To this consummation both Weinlich and Reichardt contributed their mite.

What there was of good in the performance centred in the efforts of Madame Lucca and Signor Jamet, perhaps we should also include Mdlle. Doria, who is a good singer, though one whose voice is not of the best.

Much undiscriminating praise has been bestowed upon Madame Lucca’s singing in this opera. The two arias of Agatha, Wie nahte Nur and the Und ob die Wölke, are so exquisite in their melodic structure that in the hands of even an average vocalist, they seldom fail to win the sympathy and delight of an audience. Madame Lucca sang them, in some respects, admirably. Her noble voice never seemed finer than in the allegro with which the former aria concludes. But as certainly her phrasing in the slow movement was defective, and she—purposely, we suppose—omitted twice a portion of a bar. This was a liberty that might be taken, but it evidently was a surprise to the orchestra, who failed to follow the singer, and in consequence made a break in the rendering. Signor Jamet’s Caspar was a conscientious and even performance, as all his work is, but he did not make the most of the Wolf Glen scene. Not so much as did Mr. Remmertz on the memorable occasion when the Arion Society performed this opera at the Academy.

On the whole, we do not think that these performances of ‘Der Freischütz’ have contributed anything to redeem the season or to add to its success.”

“The second rendering of ‘Der Freischütz’ last night, was better than the first the evening before. The acting as well as the machinery went more smoothly. The ruggedness that made the Wolf’s Glen scenery, on the former occasion, less grotesque than ludicrous, was abated; and the infernal elements were more in character. The number of important ensemble pieces in this opera, so masterly in itself, and its numerous choruses, render preliminary attention more than usually important. Such attention the audience last night seemed prepared to give; and the result was gratifying. The reigning diva, Madame Lucca, was fully herself; and that the deep, sympathetic and touching timbre of her voice and her inspired conception of the grand aria in the second act should be received with unbounded enthusiasm, was only to be expected. Mons. Jamet, who had so very short a time to master music not so familiar to him as to German singers, and in a foreign language, too, is all the more to be commended for his excellent rendering of Caspar, which received the same distinguishing encore and recall. Signor Vizzani was in good voice and gave his aria in the first act far better than before, and was greeted with flattering applause. The Annchen of Miss Clara Doria was certainly better than it was the first evening, and left us less room for regrets that Miss Kellogg was not assigned to the part.” 

“Last night Weber’s great work was given for the second time at the Academy. There was a full house and fashionable audience. The performance throughout was of the same level as on Wednesday, marked by the same successes and almost the same shortcomings. Mme. Lucca again received the most enthusiastic expressions of approval for her delicious singing and powerful acting through the second act. Her dramatic power is electrical in its effect upon an audience, and last night, when the aria by Annchen had barely escaped condemnation, Lucca at once riveted attention with her noble rendition of the remainder of the scene. Jamet’s Caspar was even more effective than on the first night. The orchestra, too, was improved; but the chorus seems past hope. The Roman candle and pasteboard demons were as smoky and ridiculous and offensive as ever.”

“Neither Lent nor the impression of partial inefficiency has prevented the houses from being very good this week at the Academy. It is just to say that the two operas given—‘Mignon’ and ‘Der Freischutz’—have been listened to with a respect warranted by the talent and evenness with which they have been represented. The Agatha of Mme. Lucca has been a brilliant success, and will be remembered as one of the most delightful events of her sojourn among us.”