Читать книгу Canadian Performing Arts Bundle - Michelle Labrèche-Larouche - Страница 10

Emma emerged from her reverie. “So much has happened since then,” she mused. “What would have become of me if I had succumbed to the Tsar's charm?”

“But what a silly thought! The Queen has honoured me with her friendship, I'm in London, and time is pressing.” The 1874–1875 opera season was a very busy one for Albani: she had a heavy schedule of performances at Covent Garden and at the Liverpool Festival. She would also go on her first American tour: to New York City, Albany, back to New York City, then to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and Indianapolis. Her travelling companions would include her faithful Cornélia, and Ernest Gye, acting as his father's agent in the United States.

The Lajeunesse girls did not travel lightly. Emma reminded her sister, “You know how cold it can get in October; we can't cover up too much.” Accordingly, Nelly filled their stylish Vuitton trunks with layers of cloaks and capes, raincoats, scarves, muffs and kid gloves, as well as an assortment of flowery hats – it wouldn't do to go about bareheaded. To this, she added day dresses and evening gowns. On the large transatlantic steamers, it was not uncommon for upper-deck passengers to change their clothes as often as four times a day, and on this crossing, the young songstress and her companions were travelling first class.

The ship passed close to the Statue of Liberty as it moved into New York harbour. On the pier, a clutch of newspapermen were waiting for Albani, who disembarked in a grey dress augmented by a bustle, a blue-grey jacket that matched her eyes, and a frivolous velvet-ribboned hat. This lovely vision declared to the press: “I only eat a little and I rarely go out. A certain discipline is necessary if I want my voice to keep its clear timbre.”

The façade of the New York Academy of Music, at the corner of 14th Street and Irving Place, was plastered with posters announcing Albani's coming performances in Lucia di Lammermoor, Rigoletto, Mignon, and La sonnambula. Emma's impresario, Max Strakosch – the brother of Maurice, whom she had met in Albany – was as pleased as punch: the shows were all sold out, presaging the success of the important New York leg of the Albani tour. The public was not disappointed by the diva. The New York Herald Tribune, the morning after Emma's first performance, was unequivocal in its praise:

“The Academy of Music has rarely been the scene of such a genuine triumph as the one obtained by Miss Albani last night.”

After this success, Emma felt more confident when she set off for Albany, her adoptive American home. She was welcomed as a prodigal daughter by the proud townspeople. In the words of the Albany Argus, “Now she returns, every hand is extended to welcome her back home.”

“Nelly,” asked her sister, “You remember Miss Bulger of the Sacred Heart Convent in Kenwood, don't you? She's written a poem for me! She has joined the order as a nun. We must go and visit her.”

Soon, rumours began to circulate in Albany that Emma was engaged to be married. When these wild conjectures reached the ears of the person concerned, she acted quickly to dispel them, and the following day, the Albany Morning Express issued a rebuttal: “Miss Albani's admirers will be pleased to know that, in spite of her remarkable success, Miss Emma remains heart and fancy free, just as she was on the morning she left her home on Arbor Hill six years ago.”

When Emma returned to New York City to sing Mignon, an unexpected development awaited her. Her impresario asked her if she could replace a sick colleague in a new role. She would have fifteen days in which to learn the music and lyrics.

“It's the main soprano part in Wagner's Lohengrin,” Max Strakosch told her. “Elsa is a great role. You'll sing in Italian, but your familiarity with German will be an advantage: you'll be able to convey the essence of the Teutonic soul.”

Albani's immediate and instinctive reaction was to accept the challenge.

At the hotel, Ernest Gye, who had remained in Manhattan during her triumphant visit to Albany, asked her, “Do you really think you should take on such a modern work?”

“I'll dedicate all my time to it,” she answered in a tone that brooked no argument.

Perfecting the role of Elsa at such short notice would be a considerable feat. Emma reflected that if she had taken more time to consider the proposal, she probably would have turned it down. She fretted over her commitment, but kept her worries to herself.

The opening night of the opera arrived all too soon. Emma was rehearsing at the last minute, alone, pacing up and down in her dressing room. She knelt (she never sang sitting down when she was wearing a corset), humming to herself. After a moment, she rose, donned a full-length brocade robe and unpinned her hair, letting it flow onto her shoulders. Albani was now Elsa. She straightened her back, lifted her chin, and squeezed the cross pendant, Queen Victoria's gift, in her left hand. It was time to go on stage.

“Even Wagner's detractors must admit that his harmonious melodies exercise a peculiar fascination. Miss Albani acts and sings as if she were the high priestess of Wagnerian opera,” wrote a critic in the Republic of November 26, the day after Emma's first Lohengrin.

Albani had always had courage; now that she had acquired self-confidence, nothing could hold her back.

In Philadelphia, she received a letter from her father, telling her that a biography of her, written by Napoléon Legendre¹ had just been published. Emma was touched by this tribute, although she hadn't yet forgiven her native country for not having given her more recognition in the early days, when she had really needed it.

The tour was due to end in Indianapolis, but Albani's success was so great that Max Strakosch went ahead and scheduled extra performances.

“But Max, ever since I started at Covent Garden, I've never sung two days in a row. Mr. Gye insists upon it, as you very well know,” Emma said, annoyed.

“I thought that in the circumstances, you would accept. It's a flattering compliment to you and a boost for your career,” answered the flustered Mr. Strakosch. “I've already booked the dates.”

That was too much. “Without consulting me? You'll just have to replace me, or cancel the performances.” Turning to Ernest Gye, the diva added: “Next time we go on tour, I want everything clearly stipulated beforehand. In writing!”

In February 1875, Albani and company travelled eastward to New York, where the ship for England was docked. Sitting together in the train, they exchanged their impressions of the tour. Emma declared:

“I confess that I prefer Europe to North America. It's more a civilized continent. I fit in there. But for nothing in the world would I act like those British expatriates who create little Englands wherever they go, especially in the colonies, where they conceive it their duty to govern defeated peoples according to their own standards.”

“Their attitude of conquering heroes oppresses people everywhere,” agreed Cornélia readily.

“However,” countered Emma firmly, “for my part, I am proud to be a British subject.”

Ernest nodded approvingly at this, while Cornélia pressed her lips together.

An invitation awaited Albani upon her return to the English capital: to sing Lucia di Lammermoor at the Teatro della Fenice in Venice, opposite Francesco Tamagno, a rising young tenor. Emma hadn't met him, but she knew of his reputation as a seducer of women.

“He may be a wonderful singer, but if he makes any comments about my décolleté, I will simply ignore him. He's only twenty-three, after all, and has a lot to learn. Who do these hot-blooded Latin singers think they are?” scoffed Emma, still in her twenties herself.

In Venice, all went smoothly. Tamagno acted with unexpected reserve towards his leading lady.

“I believe they have exaggerated about him,” said Emma to her sister in their hotel room.

“Ah, but you've become an ice maiden since our return from Russia,” Cornélia needled her.

“Touché!” acknowledged Emma's ruefully.

The window of their Venice hotel room gave on to the Grand Canal. Emma wrote to her father:

Dearest Papa, My thoughts are of you as I look out at this sublime city with its pink palaces, its byzantine domes, and its canals. Last night, I sang before King Vittorio Emmanuele and Queen Margherita, who wore nine ropes of pearls. Magnificent! Emperor Franz-Josef was also present; it was his first visit here since the cession of Lombardy to Italy. Unfortunately, his beautiful wife Elisabeth – the famous Sissi – did not accompany him; she must be travelling elsewhere. When I left the theatre, to my great amusement, I stepped into the canal instead of into the launch! They fished me out very quickly, thank goodness. Gondolas escorted me to my hotel, where I was serenaded. It was marvellous! Cornélia sends her love.

In London, spring had arrived. Daffodil shoots were pushing up through the earth, people threw open their windows, and the clopping of horses blended with the sound of trundling carriage wheels.

Albani was at home, honing the roles she was to perform at Covent Garden, including Marguerite in Faust and the Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro. In Rigoletto, Signor Francesco Graziani was to sing the title role of the jester. “The English adore him,” complained Albani, “but they don't realize how difficult it is to work with him. When his back is to the audience, he makes jokes at the most dramatic moments and it takes a superhuman effort to keep a straight face!”

In May, Albani was Elsa in the English premiere of Lohengrin; in keeping with Covent Garden tradition, the work was sung in Italian. Emma had insisted on performing it, despite Frederick Gye's fears that the British public would find Wagner too forbidding. With her fine musical instinct, Emma realized that the German composer was ushering in a completely new style. Among other Wagnerian innovations, she appreciated his inventive use of leitmotif to reinforce the dramatic significance of the opera's themes and characters.

Albani plunged deeply into the study of her Wagnerian roles – Elsa in Lohengrin and Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, which was scheduled to open in London the following season. She was helped in this by Franz Wüllner, conductor of the Munich opera house orchestra and one of Wagner's close friends. While in Munich, Emma fell under the spell of the city's great parks, the half-timbered Bavarian houses, and the town hall with its façade of animated figures that come alive to mark the hour.

The director of Covent Garden was indeed taking a risk by including Wagner in the season's programme, but his audacity was well rewarded. The production was a wild success. It didn't hurt that the stage sets were grandiose and the entire performance outstanding from an artistic point of view. Albani was obliged to sing Elsa's prayer over and over again before the audience would allow the opera to continue. Hans von Bülow, another well-known Wagnerian conductor and a pupil of Franz Liszt, declared, “If Miss Albani comes to perform in Germany, she'll show the Germans how Wagner can be sung!”

In September, at the beginning of the English festival season, Albani was asked to perform a quite different repertoire from that of grand opera: at the Norwich Festival, she sang a choral work by Mendelssohn, Hymn of Praise, and created² a cantata composed by her friend, Sir Julius Benedict: The Legend of St. Cecilia.

The autumn festivals in England are triennial, except for the Preston Festival, which only takes place every two decades. The residents of the host towns and regions look forward to these events and turn themselves inside out to be hospitable. Parties of festival-goers throng to the churches and cathedrals where concerts of sacred music are performed; profane works figure much less frequently on festival programmes. Banners are hung and period costumes are worn, creating a truly festive atmosphere, which continues for a whole week.³

Albani rounded off her professional activities in 1875 by a tour of England and Ireland. In Dublin one evening, her hotel was surrounded by six thousand people, who refused to disperse until she had sung The Last Rose of Summer from her balcony.

In 1876, the London critics expressed golden opinions of Albani's interpretation of Elisabeth in Tannhäuser. That same year, when Queen Victoria was consecrated Empress of India, her subjects in the great subcontinent saluted the mythical British Empire as incarnated in her small, dumpy person.

Albani was in increasing demand. The entire season's programme of the Théâtre Italien in Paris revolved around her; she sang her ever-successful favourite roles, in Rigoletto, La sonnambula, and Lucia di Lammermoor. She also sang Elvira in I puritani, another well-loved Bellini opera, and Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni. All of this was a sweet victory over the xenophobia she felt she had encountered during her Parisian debut eight years before.

“Nelly, please ask the chambermaid to lay out my most beautiful gown for tonight,” Emma ordered her sister. “And don't forget to keep a close eye on my costumes while we're in Paris. Remember how they were almost stolen last time?”

Cornélia was not the only member of the diva's coterie when she went on tour.

Albani now employed a secretary and a personal maid. There was also Beauty, the Maltese terrier that followed Emma everywhere and waited for her backstage during her performances. “You're my only pet, now that my nightingale, Philomèle, who echoes my voice, can't sing anymore: he's ill and had to stay home,” Emma told the little dog. “But I'm warning you, don't come onstage barking and jump on me, like you did at Covent Garden!”

The press kept Albani's London fans up to date on her Parisian performances. A British correspondent wrote:

“Miss Albani's success at the Théâtre Italien in Paris grows with every performance. It is a great pity that French fanaticism prevents the presentation of Lohengrin here: Albani's sweet rendering of Elsa would reconcile the Parisians to Wagner.”

When she was not performing, the young diva was invited to various society receptions. She met members of the great aristocratic families of France, as well as eminent republican personalities. She was received at the Élysée Palace, where she sang before the President and his guests. She wrote to her father: “The Marshall of France, Patrice de MacMahon, Duke of Magenta and President of the French Republic, received me at his official residence, for a recital. He and his wife paid me very generously and presented me with a lovely little Sèvres porcelain sculpture group⁴ from the last century. I was extremely flattered and deeply honoured.”

Like many notables of the day, Albani decided that it was fitting to have her portrait painted.

“By whom?” asked her sister.

“Will Hicock Low. Don't you remember him?”

Low, who hailed from Albany, was currently living in Paris.⁵ Emma arrived at his studio accompanied by Mary, her maid, who lugged carpetbags stuffed with opera costumes. Emma tried the costumes on, and they discussed the merits of each for the purposes of Albani's portrait.

The prima donna and the painter finally chose the costume from Lucia di Lammermoor, for its pleasing combination of aquamarine, burgundy, and white. With it, Emma wore the pearl cross and necklace that Queen Victoria had given her two years before. The background of the painting would be plain, to make the subject stand out better.

The artist perfectly captured the steely determination in Albani's eyes, the slightly childish pout of her mouth, and her luxuriant dark curly hair.⁶

Years later, giving an account of the numerous sittings that had been necessary for the portrait, Emma said: “It was so draughty in that studio that I caught a terrible cold. Fortunately, it was during a two-week holiday from my schedule!”

In June 1877, Emma sang the role of Senta in Die fliegende Holländer (known in English as The Flying Dutchman). She was fascinated by the poetic aspect of Wagnerian opera: its otherworldly atmosphere inundated by light and colours; its fantastically costumed heroines in enchanted, epic settings. Wagner's celestial harmonies transported the audience into a phantas-magorical world that echoed the taste of the times for spiritism. Rapid technological advances in the nineteenth century had allowed possibilities never dreamed of before. Stage designers were now able to create sets and effects of imaginative splendour, bringing onto the stage real ships, live horses, railway cars, hot-air balloons, cannons and smoke, rain, snow, waterfalls, stormy seas, lightning bolts, fires, and even earth-quakes. It happened occasionally that, when faced with such realistic catastrophes, opera-goers would panic and flee the theatre!

At the Handel Festival held in London's Crystal Palace, Albani was engaged to sing a main role in a majestic work: the Messiah. Twenty-one thousand people crowded into the gigantic glass structure to attend performances by four thousand choral singers and musicians. Considering the monumental size of the Palace and the number of people in the choir and orchestra, Emma wondered if her voice would carry sufficiently. However, her fears were allayed during rehearsals. Emma remembered what Clara Novello, the great oratorio singer, had said: “Oratorio supplies no fictitious aids of scenery, impersonation, or story to bring the audience into sympathy with the singer. It is just music in its purest, boldest form.”

Emma returned in triumph to Paris to perform La traviata. “Violetta is a superb role, but a dangerous one,” she confided to a French newspaper reporter. “The aria of the first act ends in a high half-tone. If a singer doesn't carry it off, nothing can save the rest of the performance: the audience will lose interest.”

She did carry it off. Albani's Violetta was praised to the skies. This particular character, dear to French hearts, is modelled after Marguerite Gauthier, the heroine of the novel, La Dame aux camélias, by Alexandre Dumas Fils. All French-speaking actresses dream of being able to play Marguerite one day.

Albani was at the height of her glory. Still in Paris, she created Alma Incantatrice, written for her by Friedrich von Flotow, the composer of Martha. She also sang in Rigoletto and several other operas. One evening, a group of art students in the audience executed a set of sketches of Emma performing, and presented them to her as a tribute. One of the drawings was signed Sargent.⁷

An anecdote was doing the rounds of the Parisian cafés and salons:

A young dandy called his friend on that new invention, the telephone – a machine with bells and a crank, which transmitted nasal tones on a line that frequently went dead. “Allô, mon cher; are you going to the Baronne's tonight?” “No, my friend,” was the reply. “I have been Albanized: I'm going back to the Théâtre Italien!”

Was the idolization of Albani in Paris glibness, or was it sincere admiration? It was certainly a bit of both. At that moment, however, the object of the adulation did not really care one way or the other, for she was preoccupied by a matter of a completely different nature. On her return to London, she would make a surprise announcement to her public.

1. Napoléon Legendre was a poet and journalist, and a founding member of the Royal Society of Canada.

2. Singers and musicians “create” a work when they perform it in public for the first time.

3. Over her career, one of Albani's most popular successes at the English festivals was her rendering of Angels, Ever Bright and Fair from Handel's oratorio, Theodora.

4. Now in the collection of the Société d'histoire de la Seigneurie de Chambly.

5. Low (1853–1932) studied under Gérôme from 1873 to 1877. He is known for his stained glass work and mural panels.

6. The portrait is now part of the collection of the Musée du Québec.

7. British painter John Singer Sargent.