Article on German Opera Company

“An inauspicious star seems to hang over the German opera’s current season.  Of the neighboring cities which the opera thrilled with its performances, and which was handled in the friendliest manner as well as being judged favorably and supported energetically, the opera succeeds as in a triumphful march, yes, this city, even after half a dozen performances to bring this city hardly beyond a succès d’estime.  Nevertheless, the whole undertaking was initiated to satisfy the wish of New York’s German population for a permanent German opera company.  From where this seemingly fainthearted support for the long-awaited and strongly wished-for institution from the sides of the German populace?  Perhaps the opera does not merit its protection?  It could be that the personnel do not completely live up to the highly anticipated expectations that one had harbored.  But as a whole it is decidedly as good as, if not even better than, the better-supported operas of previous years.  But the sad thing is that it is not compared with those, but instead, with the ones presented earlier this year in the same theater.  And such a comparison turns out to be a handicap.  The director of the Italian opera has an advantage if he contracts his personnel early: he has a choice of the great Italian singers of our time.  The impresario of the German opera must choose among those artists who may not be yet ready, or may be beyond their best voices, or among those who have failed to get a long-term engagement at the first or second stage in Germany.  Excellent German singers without a standing engagement, like Karl Formes and S[illeg.], et al., are among the few exceptions.  But their number is so small that they enlist for only one or another part, because our opera can pay only modest fees.

 

The German opera will have to struggle with this drawback in America as long as it remains necessary to recruit singers from Germany.  Here and there circumstances may once in a while allow us to entice an outstanding artist from there, and several times we have been fortuitous.  However, it is very optimistic to hope for an ensemble of artists.  But since the circumstances for the German opera are so inauspicious, one should be careful not to compare it to the Italian, despite the choice of venue.  But in another respect this choice was a mistake, because for the German opera-going public, the relationship to the Academy is much too strong, and the elements of the institution are not of the kind that would render German opera fashionable to Americans.  Thus, the danger emerged, that with the [illeg.] empty or half-empty houses…”  [Newspaper column ends here; no continuation is available.]