>> Sue Vita: I'd like to welcome
you to tonight's presentation,
American's Forgotten
Love Affair with Opera.
The next installment
in the lecture series
at the music division
happily co-sponsors
with the American
Musicological Society.
We began the series over 10
years ago with the intention
of highlighting meaningful
scholarship
that the American Musicological
Society members have produced
in researching the music
division's unique collections.
Over the past decade, we've
been fortunate to learn
about a variety of topics
from Schoenberg to Showboat.
Tonight, we turn to Opera
in 19th Century America.
As always, we are
recording tonight's lecture,
so it will be available to watch
online in the coming months
on the Library's website
and YouTube channel.
Past lectures are
already available online.
For those of you here in
the Montpelier Room tonight,
I'd like to point out that
we have a collection display
of Libretti Score's programs
and scrap books relevant
to tonight's lecture.
If you haven't had a
chance to look at that yet,
I hope you will after
the lecture concludes.
And now, I'd like to
introduce Dr. Suzanne Cusick,
Professor of Music at New
York University, and President
of the American Musicological
Society,
who will introduce
tonight's speaker.
Suzanne?
[ Applause ]
>> Suzanne Cusick: Thank
you, Susan, and thank you all
for coming to this
lecture this evening which,
as Susan has just pointed
out, is a partnership
between the Library of Congress
and the American
Musicological Society,
one of three partnerships,
three lecture series that,
from the American Musicological
Society's point of view
that are part of a broader
initiative to make the work
that we do as music
scholars more available,
and obviously pertinent to the
musical lives of regular people.
The other two lecture series
are at the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame, and at NYU, actually
where the AMS offices
currently are.
I'm particularly
happy to be able
to introduce Katie
Preston to you.
That is, Katherine Kay
Preston, the David N.
and Margaret C. Bottoms
Professor of Music Emerita
at the College of William and
Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
She has long been
interested in all aspects
of 19th Century American
musical culture,
and has published
extensively on that topic.
In fact, the book from which the
research that she's presenting
to you tonight, comes, is, her
sixth monograph, I believe.
And she is already mostly
done with the next one.
She's an amazingly prolific and
energetic scholar and thinker
and worker in the fields of
both the nitty gritty work
of the American Musicological
Society with members,
as a member of untold
committees,
but also as a past President of
the Society for American Music,
and a very important force
in developing that society
as a force in American
musical life.
I took the opportunity to
read Opera for the People,
English Language Opera,
and Women Managers
in Late 19th Century America,
which was published two years
ago by Oxford University Press,
in preparation for
this introduction.
And I'm here to tell
you as someone
who teaches two courses
every year on opera,
both of them intensive seminars,
that the book is situated
exactly in the hottest new field
in opera studies,
namely histories of opera
as an industry and as
an economic engine.
It's just so striking what
Kitty has done for the history
of opera in the United States,
something that people are doing
for the history of opera in
France, the history of opera
in various places in Italy.
Understanding opera as both
an aesthetic product and a way
that really thousands
and thousands
of people still earn their
livings, earn very good livings,
with highly, highly
intelligent craftsman like work.
Opera for the People sits at
the intersection of the history
of class, particularly
the competing interests
of a wealth-based
and a cultural elite
in late 19th Century
America, and the relationship
of that competition to middle
class desires for entertainment.
But it's not only that
intersection or the history
of class, but that
intersection intersects
with the history of women.
Women singers who became
entrepreneurs, with the history
of the industry of theater
and the industry of opera
in the United States,
with the history
of taste in the United States.
With the history of European
longings, and the nostalgia
and desires of European
descended peoples
in the United States.
And she puts all of these things
together with an amazing level
of archival edition, to tell
a new and compelling story
about the history of
this country's turbulent,
but passionate, relationship
with opera and musical theater.
Having said that,
I want to repeat
that it is my great pleasure
to introduce my friend,
Kitty Preston, to you all.
[ Applause ]
>> Katherine Preston: Thank you.
I am absolutely thrilled
to be here this evening.
Thank you for a very
kind introduction,
Suzanne, and Susan as well.
This-- I want to thank
the Library of Congress
and the American
Musicological Society
for sponsoring this talk.
Thanks are also due to the
College of William and Mary,
where I talked for 30 years.
The Fulbright Senior
Scholar Program,
the National Humanities
Center in North Carolina,
and the National Endowment
for the Humanities,
for support over the years,
for the research that I'm going
to share with you this evening.
I'm both absolutely
delighted and deeply honored
to be presenting a talk
here at the Library
of Congress of all places.
This is an institution
that was my local library.
When I was a graduate student
living in the Washington area,
during the late 70s, and
throughout the 1980s.
In fact, I cut my eyeteeth as
a scholar in the Music Division
of this institution, first in
its old digs, very cramped digs,
across the street, in
the original Library
of Congress building, now known
as the Thomas Jefferson
Building, and later,
in this the newer
facility, a modern facility,
this is a Performing
Arts Reading Room here
in the Madison Building, I think
this building opened in 1980.
The Library of Congress
is a national treasure.
And over the course of
my career, I've used many
of these wonderful
collections in addition
to the music division, materials
in the manuscript division,
the Maps Division, the
Princeton Photographs Divisions,
and newspapers and
periodicals, among others.
Now, I no longer live in the
immediate Washington area,
but I continue to use the
Library of Congress now
through its digital collections
which are free of charge
to anyone with an
internet connection.
The focus of my talk this
evening, as you can see
from the pictures,
is the popularity
of opera among middle
class Americans during the
19th Century.
I'll focus primarily on the
second half of the century,
but I'll summarize, beforehand,
Americans' fascination
with opera in the
antebellum period,
in order to provide a context
for later developments.
And I'll start with a
few words and images
about the general
perception of opera
in the United States today.
So today most Americans
think about opera
as capital C, Culture.
It's uplifting, it's
educational, it's edifying.
It is most definitely not
popular entertainment.
Many would say it's boring.
On the other hand, most
Americans don't know a lot
about opera, except
perhaps this stereotype
of a Nordic-looking fat lady
[laughter], with a horn,
helmet and spear, and she
has to finish something,
before something finishes
anyway, this is rather bizarre.
Or perhaps, this cartoon
of what's opera doc?
[ Music ]
>> Wabbit twacks...
[ Music ]
>> [Singing] Kill the wabbit,
kill the wabbit,
kill the wabbit!
[ Music ]
>> Kill the wabbit?
>> [Singing] Yo-ho-to,
yo-ho-to...
>> Now, most of the students
that I've taught music history
to at the College of William
and Mary don't really know much
about Ricard Wagner, and they
certainly don't know anything
about the Ride of the Valkyrie,
but they know [singing]
"Kill the wabbit, kill the
wabbit," so [laughter],
it seems to suggest that
to most modern Americans,
opera is either a cartoon or a
stereotype of something vague
that hasn't happened yet.
In fact, one can also find
evidence in the 19th Century
that opera was the subject
of satire in Burlesque.
In 1852, for example,
one John Schwabe
of Philadelphia wrote the
serious-looking Physiology
of the Opera, which looks like
a thoughtful examination of it.
Until you look at the pseudonym
of this particular author.
It's in fact a satire,
which is clearly indicated
by that pseudonym, which
is "screechy," [laughter].
Thirty years later, Mark
Twain poked fun at opera
in A Tramp Abroad, writing
that the banging and slamming
and booming and crashing
were something beyond belief.
The racking and pitiless
pain of it remains stored
up in my memory,
alongside the memory
of the time I had my
teeth fixed [laughter].
And then there were the popular
black-faced minstrel companies,
which satirize anything
and everything,
and which had a field
day with opera.
Here is some samples from
popular newspapers of the time.
Bellini's Norma became
Mrs. Normer,
Linda DeShamanay [phonetic
spelling] was transformed
into Lend her the sham money.
The Bohemian girl became
the Virginian girl,
Der Freischutes [phonetic
spelling] was "he fries
and shoots," and [inaudible]
became "the roof scrambler,
which is actually
not that far off.
In fact, the titles of
operas, the individual numbers,
even the names of singers
were all satirized,
which is pretty interesting.
All of which suggests
that Americans have
always considered opera
to be pretentious, somewhat a
feat-style of musical theater,
an affectation or a hot house
flower, as scholars of opera
in England used to write.
But once you start looking
beneath the surface,
it becomes quite clear that
this stereotype is not accurate
as all.
Even Mark Twain, Samuel
Clemens, freely admitted that
"I'm enchanted with the
errors of Trovatore,
and other old operas,
which hand organ
and music box have made
entirely familiar to my ear,"
which suggests that operatic
tunes were so familiar and run
of the mill to 19th
Century Americans
that you could hear them played
on the street by organ grinders,
and in fact, that was the case.
It's also almost a truism that
in order for Burlesque to work,
the thing being satirized has
to be familiar to the audience.
In fact, 19th Century
entries in diaries or comments
in letters suggest
that sometimes people attended
operatic performances one night,
and the next night
laughed uproariously
at the parody being
provided by the minstrels.
Now, I'm not suggesting
that our forefathers
and our foremothers were somehow
more cultured than we are today.
But I am suggesting that our
perception of opera has changed.
To us, it is uplifting,
educational, edifying, cultured.
To them, it was spectacle
and entertainment.
Now, it might be helpful if
I start this, whoops, sorry--
by explaining how I stumble
onto this research topic.
For my experience suggests
on one hand how knowledge
of 19th Century American
history, music history,
has changed over the last 30
years, and on the other hand,
it gives us information
about how I got started.
In the early 1980s, I had just
finished a book about the work
of journeymen musicians
in Washington,
D.C. These are musicians
who made a living
by playing gigs, and so forth.
This is the last quote
of the 19th Century.
The book was also about the
ubiquity of music in the lives
of some Americans
during this period.
I conducted most of
that research, or not--
well, probably most of it here
at the Library of Congress.
Did lots of other
research at other places
in Washington as well.
Now, while writing this book,
I noticed something
very interesting.
The programs from musical
performances in Washington,
and by extrapolation,
in the United States,
almost always included a
significant number of pieces
from the musical stage.
In the 1870s and 80s,
the sources were operas.
In the 1890s, they were also
operettas, and the newer forms
of American musical comedy.
The programs I examined were
from a wide variety of sources,
and a wide variety of events,
for example the theater.
There were frequently lists of
musical selections performed
by the orchestra included
on theatrical programs,
and I apologize for the
caliber of this image.
It is from a photocopy that is
30 years old, but you can see,
we have an example of Verdi,
well, two examples from Verdi,
amongst the other
pieces in this.
Other events would be
concerts, program concerts.
So there's Verity,
there's Garneau.
There is Pagani on this
example, and then dances.
And here we have
examples from operettas,
from the later part
of the 19th Century.
In fact, operatic music in
the 1870s, 80s, and 90s,
was performed at all sorts
of events, in parades,
at mountain resorts, on Potomac
River steamers for picnics,
at college commencements,
at bicycle races,
for heaven's sakes.
In other words, I
discovered not only
that live professional
musicians,
musical performances
permeated American society
in the late 19th Century,
but that Americans readily
consumed a steady diet of music
from operas and operettas.
Now, I was still a
graduate student.
So, I dutifully checked my
American music texts to learn
about the companies that were
performing all of these operas.
I looked earlier in the century,
that would make sense for,
you know, antecedents to
this, all this stuff going
on in the late century, but
I found pretty much nothing.
There was one chapter in Charles
Hamm's Yesterdays About Opera,
but almost nothing else.
This is very puzzling.
In fact, one major scholar
had described the situation
pretty definitively.
He wrote, "Of all the
kinds of art music
of the American cultivated
tradition between 1820
and the Civil War,
the least significant,
and probably the least
widely heard, was opera.
Hm, I thought, if this was the
case, how did I explain all
of this operatic music that
Americans dance to, listen to,
and perform in the 70s, 80s, and
90s, wherever did it come from.
So I set out to answer
that question
and in the process wrote
my PhD dissertation.
I discovered that during
the antebellum period,
starting as early as the
20s, but peaking in the 1940s
and 1850s, itinerant opera
companies regularly performed
all over the country in
regular theaters for socially
and economically
heterogeneous audiences.
Troops crisscrossed the eastern
half of the United States
on the ever-expanding
Railroad Network, but remember,
the Transcontinental Railroad
didn't go through until 1869,
so we're talking mostly the
eastern half of the country.
But some of them traveled
to California by water.
They were both foreign and
English language companies.
The foreign companies
mostly sang in Italian,
performing the Bell County
Repertory, early works by Verdi,
and also some translations
of French and German operas.
There were also a handful
of French language troops
and a smaller handful of
German language companies.
But there were many, many
English language companies
that mounted English operas by
composers like Michael Balfe,
William Wallace,
and William Rook.
In addition to translations
of that popular continental
repertory.
And they functioned as
an important component
of the American popular stage.
This project resulted in
my book, Opera on the Road,
but there were several other
scholars who were also working
around the same time
in this general field,
including Karen Alquist, and
George Martin, and the three
of us, two graduate students,
and an established scholar
discovered the same thing.
Together we essentially
rewrote that chapter
of American music history
and changed what we knew
about opera in America.
Now, I had decided to limit
my research on that project
to the antebellum period.
It was a PhD dissertation,
after all.
But by the time I was
finished, it was clear
that the operatic situation in
America in the 1850s had begun
to change with a growing
distinction between Italian
and English opera, and I'm
using scare quotes because both
of these types of companies,
those who sang in Italian,
those who sang in English,
performed continental operas.
The Italian companies were
increasingly supported
by the wealthy, who
wanted to make opera
into an exclusive
style of entertainment,
although they were not yet large
enough demographic to do this.
But because they were supporting
the Italian companies,
those troops became larger
and more extravagant,
and increasingly included
major European stars,
like Henrietta Sontag, Marietta
Alboni [assumed spelling],
Giovanni Mario, Judy
Agrece [assumed spelling],
Ana de la Grange,
Ignacio Marini,
and Teresa Parody [assumed
spelling], as well as many,
many others, all
of whom performed
in this country in the 1850s.
The secondary singers
and chorus members
of these companies
tended to be immigrants,
already living in
the United States.
Even more important than
the performers is the fact
that the image of Italian opera
began to change in the 1850s.
Now, for example,
there was proper attire
that should be worn to
attend operatic performances,
like opera cloaks,
or opera gloves.
And the starting times
for performances were
sometimes too late
for regular theater goers.
Critics jumped on the
bandwagon and began to preach
that Italian opera was superior
to translated English opera
frequently overlooking the fact
that a lot of the Italian
opera was also translated.
This proselytizing
about the correct style
of opera was communicated
to the rest of the country
through the musical press,
and people began gradually
to buy into this idea.
Now, the increased prestige
and fashionable reputation
of Italian opera worked
against the English troupes,
which were still
numerous, but were smaller,
because they were not as
well supported financially
and less reliant on
big name celebrities.
In essence, the English opera
companies were being outclassed
by the Italian troupes.
In fact, in the late 1850s,
many wealthy opera goers
and critics began to dismiss
English language opera
as old fashioned, and utterly
de classe [phonetic spelling].
English troupes increasingly
avoided the east coast cities
for that reason.
But they started performing more
and more in the middle west,
where they continued to
attract large audiences.
Opera in general remained an
extraordinarily popular style
of entertainment for Americans
of all social classes,
and there's plenty of evidence
that many working class people
in addition to folks of the
middle and upper classes readily
and happily consumed
these performances.
They also played operatic
potpourri and fantasias
on their pianos and
their instruments,
danced to operatic
quadrilles and lancers,
collected operatic arias,
translated or not, and listened
to operatic music in all
sorts of other guises.
And we have, over here,
some examples of the music,
the images of which
I'm showing you.
In fact, civil war bans even
play operatic selections.
Sometimes when they were
entertaining the troops,
like this Costa Diva, which
is an arrangement of an aria,
or this quick step,
[inaudible] quick step,
which could be used
for marching.
In music, the music
from operas, in short,
permeated the American
soundscape.
Opera also continued to be
very important on the stage,
despite efforts by the wealthy
to make it exclusive and elite.
By now, I had another question.
Having helped to establish
the importance of opera
and operatic music in
antebellum America,
and remembering also the
wealth of operatic music
that Americans consumed
in the 70s, 80s, and 90s,
I looked around in the late 20th
Century and pondered the reality
that offered today is exclusive
and expensive, and for want
of a better term,
a niche market.
So my main question at
the end of the opera
on the road research was simple.
How did we get from there
to where we are today?
So, I decided to write a book.
A follow-up book, to
answer that question.
And since there were
already books
on foreign language opera
troupes in the founding
of the metropolitan
opera, I decided to focus
on the prominent and influential
English language companies,
because they were so important,
and I fell into another
scholarly hole.
There was almost nothing in
American music histography
about English opera activity
in the late 19th Century,
despite the fact that these
troupes had been so prominent
in the antebellum period.
It was as if they simply fell
off the face of the earth.
So my first question,
how do we get from there
to here was amended
with the second one.
Why did the English opera
companies suddenly disappear
after the Civil War?
I started that research here
at the Library of Congress.
I was on my first sabbatical,
and spent seven months
in Washington, living
down on Capital Hill,
or over on Capital Hill, walking
down to the library every day.
I read through the
American music periodicals
in the music division's
extensive collection.
I perused every music and
theater periodical published
in the U.S. between 1860
and 1900, and kind of a run
of at least five years.
Looking for evidence about
English language opera.
What I found was a treasure
trove of information
which became the database
that formed the foundation
for my book, and people have
mentioned my book, here it is.
Big, thick book anyway [laughs],
it took a long time to write.
And there are some for sale if
you want to buy them afterwards.
Anyway, what-- to this
information that I found here
at the library, I added
additional information gathered
from all over the country,
major research libraries,
literally all over the country.
And although the discovery,
excavation interpretation
of this evidence took quite
a bit of time, I don't want
to say how long--
it's all there.
All you have to do
is look for it.
So, the short answer
to the question.
Why did the English
opera companies disappear
after the civil war was
quite simple, they didn't.
After the 1860s,
they flourished.
And multiplied.
And eventually replaced
foreign language performance
as the preferred operatic style
for post-war middle class
Americans, which gets us finally
to the post-antebellum period.
After the Civil War,
pretty much everything
in the country changed.
The American population in
general grew exponentially
because of the high birth
rate, and huge masses
of both European and
Asian immigrants.
New cities sprang up, sometimes
almost overnight, Denver, Omaha,
Kansas City, St.
Paul, and all cities
in America experienced
phenomenal growth.
The transportation and
communication systems,
especially the telegraph, also
expanded, and the wealthy,
especially in the urban
east, also grew in size,
power and wealth,
during and after the war.
The expansion of the railroads
helped, so did all the money
that the government
poured into reconstruction.
In New York, the nouveau
riche became a much larger
demographic, and they have a
very important part of my story.
In fact, the years 1865 to
73 saw a period of prosperity
and economic expansion in this
country that was unprecedented.
And this helped to create
an insatiable demand
for entertainment of all
kinds, including opera.
The situation in New
York City, for example,
illustrates the general
American thirst
for opera immediately
after the war.
As John Graciano has pointed
out, between 1862 and 1869,
seven years, over 1,000
performances of opera,
of more than 100
different operas,
took place in the city
making New York, he contends,
the operatic performance
equivalent of London,
or important continental cities.
But many of these companies
that mounted these works
in New York also toured
elsewhere in the country,
so the rest of the United
States likewise shared
in this rich performance
culture, and the audiences
in New York and elsewhere
remained
stubbornly heterogeneous.
For example, in 1865,
Charles Bailey Seymour,
critic for the New York Times,
commented on the audience
for Max Maretzek's opera
company writing, "In New York,
Opera has become a
necessity for every class.
When Mr. Maretzek
commences a season,
he scarcely considers
the subscription list
of the wealthy except for the
convenience of the habituates.
He looks to the amphitheater,
the family circle,
the lobbies were standing room
only as the modest requirement,"
and there he reads the
verdict of the town.
The audience for the performance
of Faust on 25 September 1865,
which he was reviewing, he
wrote, "was mainly provincial,
and further illustrates our
position that opera is general
in its interest and
confined to no class."
This is 1865.
But the companies that were
attracting these audiences were
almost exclusively
foreign language troops.
For the trend that had
started in the 50s continued.
This is Italian opera
Es Supreme.
This period, in fact,
the period right af--
excuse me, right after
the war, marked the Nadir
of English opera
performance in America.
As critic, Henry
Watson, observed in 1867,
"English opera appears to
be doomed in this country
because of the swelling
tide of public favor
which awaits grand
Italian opera."
Watson's opinion was shared
by many English critics,
but then something very
interesting happened.
An American singing
actress, Caroline Richings,
decided that the
critics were wrong.
There was still a viable
and untapped market
for opera in English, she said.
It wasn't dead.
It wasn't passé.
The critics were wrong.
They were misreading the tastes
of the American middle class.
So she formed an
English opera movement,
of which she was the directress
in our now English
opera company,
to mount the same repertory that
pre-war Americans had loved.
Her own translations of
works like The Daughter
of the Regiment, as well
as works, other works,
translated works, like Daughter
of the Regiment, Come On Up,
[foreign word spoken], Don
Pasquale, [foreign word spoken],
Linda Ashamonee [phonetic
spelling], Martha,
and the Crown Diamonds.
As well as operas
written in English, Bauss,
the Bohemian Girl, The Rose of
Castile, and The Enchantress,
William Wallace's Mary Tanna,
Julius Eichberg's The Doctor
of Alcon Tara, and
Benedict's Lily of Killarney.
And she was right.
Richings and her company was
toured all over the eastern half
of the United States, attracted
huge audiences for three years.
She enjoyed unprecedented
success
and quickly won over
the critics.
In fact, Caroline Richings
single-handedly rekindled an
interest in opera
performed in the vernacular,
and was quickly followed
by several other singers
who capitalized on her success.
The most important of these,
and her immediate successor,
was a Scottish soprano,
Euphrosyne Parepa,
later Parepa-Rosa, who
established her own company,
and toured America in 1869-70
and 1871-72, with again,
unprecedented success.
America swooned over her
voice and her performances.
During this same period, the two
most important foreign language
opera impresarios, Max
Strakosch and Max Maretzek,
who were also doing a
land-office business.
The wealthy were still
enamored of Italian opera,
and big-named European stars,
and although they still had
to rely on what they
call the hoi polloi,
to help fill New York's Academy
of Music, capacity was 4,200.
And theaters in other cities,
their ranks had been
growing steadily
as I mentioned during the
post-war economic boom.
And with more money to
burn, they demanded bigger
and bigger celebrities who
were more and more expensive.
This meant the ticket prices
for Italian opera increased
steadily, which was beginning
to irritate some of the
middle class opera goers.
But times were good,
and Americans' appetite
for entertainment was
insatiable, so all types
of opera companies drew huge
audiences during the late 60s
and early 70s.
Now, in preparation
for the banner--
was supposed to be the banner
year, the operating season
of 1873-74, both Strakosch
and Maretzek crammed their
two companies with expensive
and well-known European
celebrities.
The sopranos alone,
included Pauline Luca,
and Alma DiMerska
[assumed spelling],
in Maretzek's company,
Strakosch signed the diva,
Christine Nielsen.
And on the English opera front,
another American soprano,
Clara Louise Kellogg had decided
to launch her own English
language company, capitalizing
on Americans interested
in all sorts of operas.
Then catastrophe hit.
In September 1873, the
Panic of '73 happened.
It was the worst economic crisis
that had ever hit the
United States, banks failed,
businesses went bankrupt,
and within months,
20% of the American work
force was unemployed.
Recovery began in
1878, five years later.
But in some places,
the long recession
that followed the panic
lasted until the late 1880s,
15 years after the
beginning of the recession.
This disaster had a direct
impact on American support
for opera, for it created an
attitude shift among working
and middle class
Americans toward E--
excuse me, Easterners,
and the wealthy.
Many Americans blamed the
owners of banks, factories
and large corporations,
especially the Railroads,
for the depression.
And this created
a deep suspicion
of an animosity toward
wealthy easterners,
especially among farmers and
people who lived in small towns
in the middle and far west.
The financial crisis had also
created increased animosity
toward Europeans, because in
fact, it had started in Europe.
All of this contributed
to growing Xenophobia
in the United States in the
late-- throughout the 1870s,
which was exacerbated,
as you can imagine,
by the fact that millions of
immigrants showed up right
as the jobs were
all disappearing.
Now, despite the
economic calamity,
Americans still needed
diversion and entertainment.
As one critic pointed out,
amusement in all its healthier
forms is more needful now
than ever.
But potential audience
members did begin
to weigh much more carefully how
to spend their scarce
entertainment dollars,
and immediately sought
out cheaper options.
Variety. Vaudeville.
Low-end drama.
Burlesque.
And operetta.
Oprah Booth Comic Opera
and Continental Opera
translated into English.
And they turned their backs
on expensive styles
of entertainment.
Now, the aristocrats
campaigned to make Italian opera
into their own exclusive
style of entertainment,
had a really unintended impact.
American-- middle
class Americans reacted
against the now-hated
East Coast wealthy,
and began to view
their expensive style
of entertainment
as "un-American."
But the coup de gras was
a journalistic revelation
by a critic for the
Spirit of the Times,
which is a weekly newspaper,
who interviewed both Maretzek
and Strakosch to find out why,
in the face of empty seats,
they refused to reduce
their ticket prices?
Both explained that
they were legally bound,
but to honor the
contracts they had signed
with their expensive European
singers, most of whom refused
to reduce their rates.
The journalists decided
to make this
into a [foreign word spoken].
The first column,
titled Operatic Despotism,
was a bombshell.
The second had a similar impact.
The critic was blunt.
He called the situation a
public scandal, and referred
to the artists contemptuously
as a "band of singers
and tuneful pets," but the most
shocking revelation was how much
the singers were paid.
As he pointed out,
Nielsen, Luca, DiMerska
and the others demanded for
themselves the monstrous rate
of $600 a night,
or $3,000 a week.
In contemporary terms,
$600 is roughly $12,500,
and $3,000 per week is
approximately $63,500
for each singer.
And this wasn't the
worst of it, for he found
that Strakosch paid Nielsen
a thousand dollars a night,
which is equivalent of
$19,000 per performance,
and he also paid for
all her travel expenses.
Shocked, the journalist asked
Strakosch how much Adalina
Patty, who was the reigning
diva at that time, might demand
for an American tour, and
was astounded to learn
that her price for a tour of
100 performances was $200,000.
Almost a cool $4.3
million dollars today,
to be paid in gold [laughter].
To put it mildly, this
information did not go over well
in a country in the middle
of a huge economic crisis.
Both of the articles went
viral in a 19th Century manner,
and were quickly reprinted in
newspapers all over the country.
For example, the Milwaukee Daily
Sentinel described prima donnas
as an "over-pampered
class of public pets,"
greedy canaries,
and blackmailers.
Contrary to what P.T.
Barnum reportedly said,
there is such a thing
as bad publicity
and this is a great example.
All of the foreign
language companies active
in the United States
during the long recession
that followed the
panic went bankrupt.
But one company didn't fail.
That of Clara Louise Kellogg.
For four important years, 1873
to 77, the heart of the panic,
the Kellogg Grand English
Opera Company had the effect
of stimulating the
popular desire for opera,
it frequently attracted both
immense houses, and audiences
that were astonishingly large.
The company performed the
repertory very similar to that
of Richings, but somewhat
expanded, with the addition
of Bauss, The Talisman, as well
as Verdi's Three War Horses,
Trovatore, La Traviata, and
Rigoletto, Gounod's Faust,
[foreign word spoken] by
Toma, and [inaudible] Star
of the North, and The Hugonot.
The latter all adapted
to the English stage
by Kellogg herself.
One American critic summarized
Kellogg's fate in 1875 writing,
"The English opera with Kellogg
as prima donna has done a
splendid business throughout
the country.
This," he continued,
"is extraordinary
because it is an
acknowledged fact
that all other musical
enterprises this season have
encountered disastrous failures.
All the other enterprises,
of course,
were the foreign
language troops.
Kellogg's triumph was
particularly important
for her company's success,
suggests a real turning point
in the history of American
reception of opera.
A change that became permanent.
The American middle class
abandoned expensive foreign
language opera but
not opera itself.
They realized that they could
still consume their favorite
operas, but now in a language
they could understand,
at cheap prices, and with
no aristocratic trappings.
And by the time the
economy finally turned
around sufficiently to allow
foreign language companies
to make a profit,
there were scores
of vernacular language
troops that were happy
to provide non-elite opera
to middle class American
theater-goers.
Furthermore, the wealthy by
that time, was now large enough
that they could support
foreign language on their own,
and so they didn't need
the hoi polloi anymore,
and they turned their backs
on the middle classes.
The activities of Richings,
Parepa-Rosa and Kellogg,
and the situation created
by the Panic of '73, then,
set the stage for the
American English opera movement
of the 1880s, the high watermark
for Vernacular Opera
in the United States.
Now, these scores of
English language companies
that can be divided rather
roughly into two categories.
Grand opera.
These companies performed
a combination
of translated continental
operas,
the same repertory performed
by the foreign language troops
in the 1880s, and works
written in the vernacular.
The second type is comet
or light opera companies,
which mounted operetta,
[foreign words spoken],
and the lighter works of
the Continental Repertory,
such as the ones you see on the
screen [foreign words spoken]
and so on and so forth.
Both types of English language
opera companies were a normal
part of the American
musical stage,
and attracted heterogeneous
audiences comprised of upper,
middle and lower class, or
working class theater-goers
in contrast with
foreign language opera,
which in the 80s was
increasingly for the wealthy.
Now, to provide a snapshot
of these two different styles
of company, of popular opera,
I'll discuss briefly one
excellent example of each.
First is Grand English Opera.
Hands down, the best known
and most successful Grand
English Opera company
in America was somebody
you've never heard of,
a company you've never heard of,
and that is the Emma Abbott
Grand English Opera Troupe.
Abbott, a soprano, grew
up in Peoria, Illinois.
Her family was not wealthy,
but she was fiercely determined
to succeed, and she wanted
nothing more as a young girl
as to be a prima donna.
Some of her supporters raised
money to send her to Milan,
and to Paris, for training
in the Italian school.
But when she returned to America
in 1876, not a really good year,
the country was still in
the midst of the Panic.
Foreign language companies
were failing right and left.
She saw the handwriting
on the wall, and explained
to a reporter, "I was
educated to Italian opera,
and I love it dearly
and hated to give it up.
But English opera is
what the people want.
She and her husband, the
manager, Eugene Wetherell,
launched the Emma Abbot
Opera Company in 1879,
and she never looked back.
Now, these two, Abbott and
Wetherell, were a great team,
and knew instinctively how
to create a prima donna,
and a company that would appeal
to middle class American
theater-goers.
Their troupe was definitely
not elite or exclusive.
Ticket prices were kept low, as
demonstrated by this playbill.
The tenor, Tom Carl, in fact,
once explained in a letter
that Abbott was successful
because of the popular
prices the management charge,
and the fact that they
draw not the fashion
but the populace, so to speak.
The company performed almost
exclusively in regular theaters,
like the Coates Opera House
in Kansas City, Albaugh's here
in Washington, the Debar
Opera House, St. Louis,
Crosby's in Chicago,
the Chestnut Street Theater
Opera House in Philadelphia,
the Tabor Opera House in
Denver, and I should point
out that although they
were called Opera Houses,
they were regular theaters, and
had performances of Shakespeare,
and melodrama, and minstrel,
and opera, and all of it,
one week after the other.
There was no expectation
for special opera cloaks
or evening attire, and curtain
times were deliberately set
at a normal time, since the
company knew that many members
of their audience had to get up
and go to work the next morning.
Not something that the
wealthy worried about.
Most important, Abbott
and Wetherell promoted their
productions as entertainment,
not as uplift, and middle
class Americans responded
with enthusiasm.
The soprano also
created a public persona
that resonated strongly
with Americans.
She was a native-born singer,
from the American west,
which was, Peoria was
considered west at that time,
with roots in Yankee
New England.
She refused to change her name
to something more
European sounding.
She cultivated the
image of a friendly
and approachable girl
next door, by freely
and regularly giving
interviews to local journalists.
She rarely canceled
performances because of illness,
which is in stark
contrast with the snobbish
and condescending image of
European operatic celebrities.
She was also a moral and
upright church-going Christian
with a long and happy marriage.
She actually went to
church every Sunday.
Wherever her company
was, she would walk
out of the hotel Sunday morning,
because they didn't perform
on Sundays, turn either
right or left, and go to--
she would go to which
ever church she came
to the first church she came to.
She cultivated American-- oh,
I forgot, she defended women
on the stage, which
is quite important.
She also cultivated American
personality characteristic,
determination and pluck.
And financial success that
was the result of diligence
and fortitude, not inheritance.
She was also charismatic, and
she was a scrappy underdog.
Americans love underdogs.
She was not afraid to
fight for her rights.
She was as American
as apple pie,
and somehow may translated
European opera
into an American popular
theatrical entertainment.
Her many supporters called her
"The People's Prima Donna."
The Abbott Company
Repertory was a combination
of English opera standards,
like you've seen these before,
Bohemian Girl, Chimes of
Normandy, Maritana and Martha--
a handful of operas,
mostly Gilbert and Sullivan,
but mostly translations
of continental favorites
like Faust, Romeo and
Juliet, Mignon, La Sonambala,
Julie Lucia, Trovatore, and a
couple of lesser-known works,
including Victory
Mossay's Paul in Virginia.
Because her repertory
duplicated most
of the operas being performed by
the foreign language companies
in the 1880s, she gave her
audiences an opportunity
to hear grand operas
at the highest standard
at popular prices.
She also pleased her audiences
with specially commissioned
beautiful costumes,
and sometimes her company's
scenery was pretty spectacular.
For example, what you're seeing
here are drawings of the staging
and scenery in the
troupe's prompt book
for Paul in Virginia.
It was set on the tropical
island of Mauritius.
The penultimate scene
in the opera is the ship leaving
the port, going to Paris,
it gets caught in a hurricane,
and I would dearly love
to know how they did the
hurricane, and in any case,
these are from the Variety
Theater in New Orleans.
Abbott also gave her
audiences what they wanted
in terms of performance.
She gilded the lily by
adding extra fioritura,
which suited her high
and flexible voice.
She also added extra
songs to her performances,
an old practice that was now
considered quite unacceptable,
especially by the
critics, but she pointed
out that these interpolations
were usually in response
to the special requests
of managers,
gentlemen of the press,
singing societies,
and the general public.
She continued, "as I always
try to please my audience,
is it to be wondered at
that I should have complied
with these requests?"
Pleasing her audience
was Abbott's mantra.
The company performed all over
the country, including cities
on the pacific coast, and
never had a losing season.
As one critic put it,
season after season,
Abbott's company has traveled
over the country from Canada
to California, from
Maine to Mexico,
and while rivals have weakened,
falling by the wayside,
or retired from the field,
this troupe has remained the
most successful English opera
company in America.
All of the success came to an
abrupt end in January 1891,
when Abbott came down with
a cold while performing
on tour in Utah.
She ignored the advice of her
doctors and continued to sing,
and did not want to
disappoint her audiences.
The cold became pneumonia, and
in an era before antibiotics,
she was dead within days.
She had just turned
41 years old.
The company, without
its charismatic
and personable soprano,
disbanded.
Abbott's company was hardly the
only Grand English Opera troupe
active in America
during this period,
but it was the most successful.
It was also an excellent
counterpart
to the most successful
comic opera troupe,
the Boston Ideal Opera
Company, which was known
as the Bostonians after 1886.
We have, there's a playbill
over there, from The Bostonians,
and The Boston Ideals.
These two companies overlapped,
Abbott and the Bostonians
or the Boston Ideals
during the 1880s,
but the Repertories were
sufficiently different
that they complemented, rather
than competed with, each other.
The company was organized
not by a prima donna,
but by miss Effie
Ober, the owner of one
of the first American concert
agencies, which is another book.
I'll write it [laughs], I hope.
In Spring 1879, the management
of the Boston Theater had
asked her to organize some
of her singers into
an opera company.
They wanted to finish out
their season with a bang,
with a production of that year's
blockbuster, H.M.S. Pinafore.
This is kind of like the
Star Wars of the 1870s.
The company was called The
Ideals, because they promised
to mount a performance that
was as close to the original
as possible without any kind of
extra stuff, Americanizations,
or added jokes or whatever.
The run was an unmitigated
success.
It was supposed to be two
weeks, it went into seven.
One local critic wrote that
by the time Pinafore closed,
nearly 100,000 persons
would have enjoyed the ideal
presentation of the
favorite opera.
Now, Ober knew a good thing
when she saw it and she decided
to keep her company together
and take it on the road.
So its first tour was
in 1879, the same year
as Abbott's first tour.
The Ideals Repertory was
at first mostly operettas,
such as Gilbert and Sullivan's
Pirates of Penzance, Pinafore,
Ilanthy, The Sorcerer,
as well as operettas
by continental composers
like Don Supe's [foreign words
spoken], Czar in Carpenter
by Loertzing [assumed
spelling], Odran's The Mascot,
and Olivette, Louis Varney's
The Three Muskateers,
Bar Blue by Othenbach
[assumed spelling],
[foreign words spoken].
Now, unlike most comic opera
companies they also amounted a
good number of operas that were
now considered the standard
English language works.
You'll see, you'll be
familiar with these guys:
[inaudible] The Regiment,
The Bohemian Girl, Martha,
Fradiovolo [phonetic spelling],
even a less standard
work, Marriage of Figaro.
One critic pointed out that
The Ideals perform works
that everyday home people
wish to see and hear.
For the first two years,
Effie Ober managed the troupe
from her office in Boston.
She communicated with the
singers by means of mail
and telegram, and in fact, there
are 350 letters from the singers
to Effie Ober in the
Harvard Theater Collection,
which is a treasure
trove of information.
After 1882, she decided to
start traveling with the troupe.
Her management style was much
more democratic, collegial
and cooperative than that of
the usual male impresarios,
and actually, that aside in just
a second, this created a sense
of camaraderie, although
The Ideals included some
of the best English-speaking
singers active
in the United States,
including the tenor Tom Carl,
and the bass Myron
Whitney, there was very,
very little back-biting and
competition among this company.
This contrasted with
the contentious
and competitive foreign
language troops.
Ober used this as
a marketing tool
with overtones of patriotism.
She boasted, "My singers are
all ladies and gentlemen,
and they are all Americans.
Our home people are not as
cross-grained as the Italians
and Germans, who have been
taught to hate and wrangle
with each other,"
and I should point
out that the contentiousness
of the opera companies,
the foreign language opera
companies was just fodder
for the newspapers.
They loved to talk about this.
The company consistently
gave excellent performances
to immense audiences,
turning away hundreds unable
to gain admittance
to the performances
of their popular comic operas.
After six years, Ober
decided to retire.
She had made a mint.
Core members, still together,
form their own troupe with three
of the principles
as co-directors,
and renamed it the Bostonians.
The reconstituted ideals
continued to expand repertory
by adding such words
as don Pascuale,
Carmen, and El Trovatore.
But in the late 1880s,
the management
of the company decided to
focus more on operettas,
which are the most important,
most fascinating, popular kinds
of operas in the
U.S. in the late 80s.
In fact, they began to
solicit new operettas written
by American composers,
eventually commissioning
about a dozen such works.
The most important were
Reginald de Cova's Robin Hood,
and Victor Herbert's
The Serenade.
And there is, The
Serenade is over there,
as well as a scrapbook with
a playbill from The Serenade.
These became two of the most
popular American operettas
of the century.
Both the company and the
composers made a mint.
The Bostonians, like the Abbott
Company, also toured widely.
They made several trips to the
Pacific coast, for example.
They also had a strong
ensemble, of some 75-musicians,
18 principals, a chorus of
30, 28-member orchestra,
and they gradually
added new soloists,
like the mezzo-soprano,
Jessie Bartley Davis,
and the bass, Eugene Cowles.
And a bit later, the
soprano, Alice Nielsen,
who was actually a song
and dance kind of person,
and much smaller than the Big
Ideals, Bostonian singers.
Nielsen in fact later
described the veteran singers
of her company, especially
in comparison
with her own petite self as
"large people, deep of chest,
wide of hip, inclined to develop
chin upon chin, but sing mother
of heaven, how they could sing!"
The Bostonians, which
still included some
of its original core principal
members disbanded in 1904,
having dominated the
comic opera market
for a quarter of a century.
The success and popularity
of these two companies,
and the fact that there were
scores of other similar troupes,
should clearly illustrate
the widespread appeal
of performed opera,
both grand and light,
to middle class Americans
during the second half
of the 19th Century.
The popularity of operatic
music in other guises,
which I'd mentioned several
times, also continued
to be quite prevalent during
the last third of the century,
and since, as I mentioned, it
was my discovery of this type
of evidence from the
70s, 80s, and 90s,
that originally piqued my
interest in this topic,
I'll share a few final images
that illustrate the continued
popularity of operatic
and operetta music, played
for all sorts of social
and cultural gatherings
in America
in the late 19th century.
By the final decades
of the century,
sheet music was big business.
It was frequently
collected into binders,
volumes which were
bound volumes of music
that most middle class American
women collected throughout
the century.
These volumes provide ample
evidence of musical taste.
Put into modern terms,
sheet music functioned
as the music downloads
of the 19th Century.
The binders volumes were
basically the women's iPods.
Most of the music was for
voice and piano, or for piano,
which was the most popular
instrument of the century.
Most binders were a
hodgepodge of musical styles,
kind of like many
people's iPods,
but it was a rare volume indeed
that did not include either some
arias, or some instrumental gems
from the opera, or
from operettas.
The arias were sometimes
translated, sometimes not.
This collection features
Louise Kellogg.
Here's a close-up of the
various pieces in the series,
selections from Verdi,
Donizetti, Mozart, Flauto,
Bauff, Wallace, Bellini, etc.
Here are a few other examples,
all from the last
third of the century.
The gems are arrangements of an
opera's most popular melodies,
usually for piano, like
the duets on the right,
or the reminiscences
of Faust on the left.
But they were also made
for other instruments.
Here's one for violin and
flute, with piano accompaniment,
and examples for cabinet
organ, and guitar and piano.
There are lots of
other versions as well.
There were also numerous
arrangements
for dances, such as waltzes.
Here's Kellogg again.
Polka's, or country dances,
like quadrille and lancers,
and into the 1880s, and later,
the music is increasingly
adapted from operettas,
like this quadrille from
Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience.
Polkas from Offenbach
and Odran comic operas,
and a song from Harbert's
Wizard of the Nile.
Dance, of course, was the
most popular social activity
of the century, and
Americans regularly danced
to operatic tunes.
Here's an example of
selections available
for a large dance
orchestra or band.
Americans also attended casual
and popular concerts performed
by local bands and
town band shells.
Here's a band performing in a
band shell, here's another one,
ready to play at a resort
on the Potomac River.
And here's the type of music
they might have performed.
A concert program from
a Moonlight Excursion
on the Potomac in 1880.
We have here popular music
interspersed with selections
from operas including La
Grande-Duchesse by Offenbach.
Moses in Egypt, by Rossini.
Sonnambula by Bellini, here
misattributed to Donizetti,
Le Clair by Olayvie [phonetic
spelling] and Robert Planquette,
The Chimes of Normandy.
Bands even continued to play
operatic selections as marches.
Here is Souza's transcription
The March from the Macado.
I'm going to end with a
few final observations
and a couple of questions.
While conducting research
for this most recent book,
I uncovered information on
over 100 English language opera
companies that were active
during the last four decades
of the century.
Admittedly, many of them were
ephemeral and enjoyed success
for a season or two, but
others, like the Abbott Troupe
and the Boston Ideals
or the Bostonians,
had extraordinary artistic and
professional popular success
that lasted for years.
Sometimes for decades.
Furthermore, music from English
and foreign language operas
and operettas permeated the
American soundscape throughout
the entire century to
a remarkable degree.
So what does all this mean?
Is it all just fascinating
detail about a time long past?
As you might suspect,
I would suggest not.
Rather, it adds a great
deal to our knowledge
of American popular
culture during this period.
It furthermore helps us
to understand more
clearly the development
of American musical culture
during the 19th Century.
And it provides important
insight into the evolution
of American musical
theater, for by the 1890s,
new forms were evolving
that eventually would result
in the 20th Century
in the emergence
of American musical comedy,
a truly indigenous
American art form.
I would argue that the
activities and widespread appeal
of English language opera of all
sorts contributed significantly
to that evolution for when early
musical comedy was beginning
to emerge.
In the late 19th
Century, there was already
in place an American audience
for sung musical drama
in English primed and
ready for the new forms.
But the very fact
that we, as scholars,
have completely somehow
completely missed this rather
pronounced element of American
history is pretty interesting
in itself.
How is it that such
an important component
of American popular culture
has essentially disappeared
from our knowledge of
American cultural history?
How could this rich performance
history be completely absent
from most of our texts
on American music?
Now, the creation of new
knowledge, of course,
is what scholarship
is all about.
But we established scholars
should always be cognizant
of apparent blind spots,
and should continue
to wonder what else
are we missing?
All of which of course should be
encouraging to younger scholars,
for there's always something
new, or maybe something old,
that can be excavated,
examined, and reinterpreted.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Katherine Preston: Thank you.
And I didn't cough.
I've been fighting bronchitis
for two-- for three weeks now.
Questions, I hope.
I hope lots of questions.
>> Announcer: You
have a microphone.
>> Katherine Preston: Oh!
Microphone.
Question? Yes, please?
>> Audience Member: So,
why did the knowledge
of all this English
opera go missing?
>> Katherine Preston: [Sighs]
There's a very long answer
to that question.
A couple of the reasons,
well, I'll talk about one
of the reasons in particular.
We, as scholars, tend to rather
uncritically accept what critics
were saying at the time.
All right, and the critics had
bought into this idea of opera
as high art, and in
fact, by the 1880s,
they'd all become Wagnerians.
That's a part I didn't
even talk about.
They didn't pay any attention.
Those critics did
not pay attention
to the English language opera,
and so we are missing a lot
of information because we
haven't looked further.
Now, I found plenty of
information from critics
about English language opera,
but there were a lot of people
who just were willing to stop
with what the major critics
for the times or
whatever were saying.
So that's one of the reasons.
Another reason is that
the first music histories,
the first histories written
of American music were
by some of these critics.
Okay? So again, we have
to look more carefully.
We have to always ask,
"Is this all there is?"
So good question.
Other questions?
Yes?
>> Audience Member: Well,
you already touched on it,
but I was wondering what the
relationship is of the sort
of Beethoven-esque,
Wagnerian idea of the composer
as this capital A artist,
in relation to the formation
of attendance as a
display of social status,
and not just financial,
but also cultural status.
>> Katherine Preston:
All right, there's a lot
of things in that question.
The idea of the artist as an
intermediary between us humans
and the Gods is a
romantic period idea.
Okay? So it's evolving
during this period,
but what you're dealing with,
what we are dealing with today,
what students are dealing with
today, is the repercussions
of that, or the fact that we've
already gone through that,
and we've kind of accepted
it in the 20th Century.
This was not an issue
in the 19th Century.
I mean, it was developing in
the 19th Century, but it was not
as overwhelming as it is today.
Furthermore, musical
theater tends to be kind
of different, you know?
If you think about, in fact,
I like to point out that many
of these performers were
mucking around with theater,
they were changing things,
and they make it very clear
that they're changing things.
And so they were treating
opera the way we think
of musical theater today.
Now, if you have a high
school group, you have--
they rent parts for
Oklahoma or something,
and there's all these
disclaimers,
you can't change anything
but they do, right?
I mean, people change
things in musical theater,
and I think that
more casual approach
to music is typical
of the theater.
Okay, does that help
a little bit?
Okay. Yes, please?
>> Audience Member: In some
cities, you see opera houses,
[overlapping speakers], is that
where the operas were performed?
>> Katherine Preston:
Those were all theaters.
And there was a certain sense
of we've made it, as a city,
that we have a theater we
can call an opera house.
But in reality, until you--
I mean, 1883 is the first real
opera house in this country,
this metropolitan-- in
which only opera companies
are performing.
Before that, and most-- the rest
of the country while the
metropolitan was, you know,
there, and in fact, the
companies that performed
at the metropolitan performed
elsewhere in the country,
but in regular theaters,
sometimes called opera houses,
sometimes called
regular theaters.
So, for example, I showed a
picture of the Philadelphia,
you know, the Chestnut Street
Opera House in Philadelphia.
Well for most of
it, it's career,
the Chestnut Street Opera
House was called the Chestnut
Street Theater.
And in fact Crosby's Opera
House, which was burned
in a fire, the major
fire in Chicago,
was built to be an opera house,
but they couldn't make it.
And within a year, they had all
the other companies that were--
they were all traveling around,
on the theatrical circuit,
and they would stop in each
opera house, or each theater.
So if you're looking at
it from the point of view
of you're a resident,
and you're checking out,
well what's at the
theater this week?
It changes every week.
It's kind of like movies
today, they change every week.
Or sometimes they change every
week, but the variety is there.
And that's the same thing,
the way it was with theaters.
It's very different
than what we have today.
Today we have local
theaters, I mean,
there are some touring
companies, but the majority
of the touring companies
are in the 19th Century.
And these theaters that are
called opera houses were
theaters, okay?
Does that make sense?
>> Audience Member: Yeah,
but why did they call
them opera houses?
>> Katherine Preston: Because,
as I said, as I started out,
it's a sign of, I mean, the
wealthy are using opera as the--
for the ostentatious
display of wealth, okay?
So there is a certain kind of
sense of cosmopolitanism to it,
and for example, in Denver, the
Tabor Opera House was built in,
I think it was opened in 1881.
And it was the-- that's the
City of Denver was rallying
around the creation
of that opera house,
because now we were-- we could
compete with other cities.
That we're not just
out in the frontier,
we're not in the middle of
nowhere, it's now, we now have,
we have arrived as
a cultural center.
So there is a certain element
of prestige involved in this.
Yes?
>> Audience Member: Thank you
so much, I've heard you speak
about these topics
for many years,
and I always learn something
new and I'm comforted
by what I remember
from previous times.
And you know, people are still
building opera houses now.
I do research in the gulf,
and even though opera is not--
>> Katherine Preston: Gulf?
Explain what you mean by gulf?
>> Audience Member: The Arabian
Gulf, you know, like in Oman,
and United Arab Emirates.
Building an opera
house is a big deal,
and it seems so affronistic.
My question is about minstrelsy,
vaudeville, variety shows?
>> Katherine Preston: Yeah.
>> Audience Member: Where
audience is also seeing
that more, I mean,
were they concurrent?
Were they seeing
low-cal entertainments,
and would they have occurred
in the same building?
>> Katherine Preston: It
gets really complicated.
Because of the rise of, I mean,
I'm summarizing broadly here,
but there are some theater
historians who suggest
that variety and vaudeville
really got a jump start
in the-- after The Panic.
During the recession
that followed The Panic.
Because people were turning to
cheaper forms of entertainment.
The cities are growing.
I mentioned that.
When you have a larger mass
of people, you can start
to have different theaters.
So it's not just one or two
theaters, and you start--
the theater market
starts to break down.
So here in Washington and
in the 1870s, 80s, 90s,
there were maybe
five or six theaters.
There was the National
Ford's Opera House.
All Boughs Opera House,
but there were also current
variety theater, which were more
for lower-brow styled
entertainment.
There is evidence that working
class people attended opera.
There is a wonderful
anecdote that I've come
across for a performance
at, I mean an audience at--
I think it was Ford's
Theater, after it reopened
for Parepa-Rosa, and this
guy, he was a little--
tiny little anecdote was in
a journal, a music journal,
and this guy who is from, I
don't know, Denver or somewhere.
He's from somewhere outside,
he's visiting the City
of Washington, and he wanted
to hear Parepa-Rosa sing,
and he got there
late, and he clamored
up into what he called-- what
was called The Color Gallery,
because the theater
was segregated.
And he sat down in the Color
Gallery, and he was told
by the Usher, "You
can't sit here."
And he said "Oh, I
can, I don't mind."
And the Usher said,
"You can't sit here."
And so the last sentence
of this little anecdote is
that he then picked up
his hat, and he clamored
over to the other
part of the gallery
where the white trash sat.
Well, that's really interesting,
because if you read reviews
of these operas,
they're all saying
about how the house
was fashionably filled,
but in reality, if you think
about this, I don't know
if you're aware,
but most theaters
in the 19th Century
were divided,
as they are today,
into different parts.
There's the gallery, where
it was the cheapest part.
There was the boxes, there was
what they called the par chair,
it was the orchestra part.
Different prices.
It's the same thing
as we have today.
What is different is that then
there were separate entrances
to each of these sections, and
different-- different economic,
socioeconomic groups went
to those different sections,
and I mean, if you go to
a theater like Jury Lane,
or Coven Garden in London,
today, you still can't get
up into the Gallery, pay a cheap
price and look down and go oh,
third down from the back, five
over, there's an empty seat,
at Intermission I'll go down
there and I'll sit there,
as many of us have done.
You can't do that, because
you go outside the theater,
you can't get back
in with your ticket
because it's-- it's
for the Gallery.
That's the way theaters were
organized in the 19th Century,
so you had an audience
that was comprised of--
a heterogeneous audience, right?
So wealthy, middle
class, working class,
apprentices and so forth.
In the south, antebellum, you
had slaves up in the Gallery.
They were all watching
the same thing,
consuming the same performance,
but they weren't rubbing
shoulders with each other.
So you had separate entrances,
separate sections
of the theater.
Does that-- am I
answering the question?
I am, I hope I am.
So yeah, yeah, other
questions, yes please?
>> Audience Member: I know
from the period you cover,
it was probably too early,
but are there any sound
recordings of [inaudible]?
>> Katherine Preston: There
are sound recordings of some
of The Bostonians from
the 1890s, and very early.
I didn't introduce
this in my lectures,
just because that's all there
is, and I spent so much time
on Abbot, but there's
nothing from Abbot.
She died in '91,
and that's before--
it's not before the
invention of sound recordings,
but it's before any sound
recordings were being used
for things besides-- they were
used for office equipment,
for dictation and so forth,
before they figured out, oh!
We can make some money on this,
and record voice and so forth.
But none of these people had it,
except some of the
Bostonian singers.
So yes, please?
>> Audience Member: Something
I found really interesting was
like these women who were the
head of these opera companies,
was that something
indicative of the time period?
Or was it opera as an
industry [inaudible]--
>> Katherine Preston: That's
another complicated question.
I'll try to answer it quickly.
There were-- surprisingly,
there were lots
of women in the theater.
There were lots of women
theater managers in America
and in England during this time.
And I think that, that
some of the women in the--
especially certainly Caroline
Richings, because she came
from the theatrical world, could
see that that was happening.
Okay? So they were
encouraged by that.
But more important is the fact
that the American audience
in this time was really
enamored of celebrity.
Foreign celebrity.
Things don't change,
to a certain extent.
And I think the best
example I can give is Clara
Louise Kellogg.
When she started her
English opera company
in 1873 very fortuitously,
because the previous
year she had been
in her Italian opera company
and she had been a co-star
with a European diva, and the
European diva's manager was also
the manager of the company,
and he puffed her to the press.
Meaning, he really
pushed her to the press,
and so she got all
the publicity,
Clara Kellogg did not.
Furthermore, Kellogg
by that time had been
around for a while.
This new American-- this
new European diva was new--
so all the American audiences
went to her performances and not
to Kellogg's because they
figured we, you know,
we've seen Kellogg,
so we'll go to this--
you know, I can't
remember who it was.
And so Kellogg learned
a very important lesson
that she couldn't make--
she couldn't compete the
the European celebrities,
but she could-- she
could create a niche.
And I think the American
prima donnas
who created these opera
companies saw a niche,
as Richings did, and
they went for it.
And said if we can't get the
foreign impresarios to hire us,
if we can't get Maretzek
or Strakosch to hire us,
we'll just make our own, because
they're ignoring the middle
class audience.
So it was marketing.
So--
>> Audience Member: You
mentioned Denver a few times,
and I'm from Denver, and
of course [inaudible]--
>> Katherine Preston:
Yeah, yeah!
>> Audience Member:
...celebrity in that area.
But also, one of the most famous
historic opera houses is--
>> Katherine Preston:
Is Central City.
Yes. Also Tabor.
>> Audience Member: And
yeah, and also Tabor.
So what I was wondering,
did he have a motive
to make opera available
to the middle person,
the miners, whatever?
Was that the reason for
playing in so many opera houses?
>> Katherine Preston: That's
another complicated question.
I just served on a dissertation
committee for a young man
at University of Michigan,
who wrote a dissertation
on that very topic,
like Opera in Denver.
His basic take is that
Tabor was a politician,
and he felt that putting his
name on this opera company,
opera house, would help-- help
with his political aspirations.
It didn't work.
He ran for Governor,
and never got it.
So there, I mean, he was a
business man, and in fact,
the opera houses, like
the Albaugh's Opera House,
here in Washington,
Tabor Opera House,
Crosby's Opera House--
they were businesses.
They were not just theaters.
They had offices in them.
The upper floors, they
rented out those spaces
for barber shops and millinery
shops and so on and so forth.
So they were a business concern.
And you know, one of the
things, you know, I don't know--
it's not really why I got
into this, but I continue
to be fascinated as a
scholar, at many scholars,
music scholars, they are--
their reluctance to talk
about music as a business.
I mean, it is a business,
and if you don't make money,
you're going to go out--
you're going to stop doing it.
And so, I mean, so it's
a complicated question.
He did-- I think the
Central City one came first,
before the Denver one.
But-- but part of the idea of
having several opera houses is
that in order to get
Opera companies to come
from wherever they were
coming from, Chicago, perhaps,
or maybe KC, Kansas
City, to make that trek
to Denver, it's a long way.
So Denver wasn't on
the Railroad, I mean,
they missed the boat
there, sorry,
mixing my metaphors [laughter].
They needed, they needed to
attract companies that could go
to various places, and they
created what was called The
Silver Circuit, so that
you could have the--
you could have them in Denver,
and then they would go out
and also perform in a variety
of other places before
they went on to California.
So it makes sense.
It's a business decision.
>> Susan: So, I think
we have time
for just maybe one
more question.
Then I want you guys to have
a quick look at our exhibit.
>> Audience Member: You
mentioned Albaugh's,
where is that located?
>> Katherine Preston: Oh, I
knew you were going to ask,
and I don't know,
because I forgot.
Uh-- and it's, I mean,
the Theater District,
if you can imagine where
Ford's Opera House is,
and The National Theater,
that was the Theater District
in Washington in the 19th
Century, and they were like,
at one time I counted
something like 11 theaters.
But the theaters changed names,
and they went out of business,
and so forth, but between
6 and 8, maybe 11 theaters,
all in that same general area.
And you have to remember
that theaters were
basically the movie houses.
Actually they're the Netflix
of today, because I mean,
we just turn on our-- you
know, we turn on the computer,
or we turn on the TV,
or whatever, and log on,
and download whatever, they
would-- people in Washington,
which was a much smaller
city than it is today,
like other cities, they
would walk to the theater,
and they would do
it very casually.
They'd say all right, we just
had dinner, what should we do?
Oh, let's go to the theater.
So the theaters were all
in the same general area.
So I mean, if you really
want to know, there's--
I wrote this book on, it's
called Music for Hire,
and there's a copy here, and
the library is probably in,
you know, Maryland has a copy,
I don't know where else does,
but there's a map there
of the theater district
in downtown Washington,
Albaugh's, I'm sorry--
I really had my phone out,
I was going to look it
up to see what the address was,
and I just got distracted,
so I can't remember.
So, I think we're out of time.
>> Susan: It was
wonderful, thank you so much.
>> Katherine Preston:
Thank you all for coming.
[ Applause ]