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From George Borrow to Mary Garden

Alice, it will be recalled, adventured into Wonderland bearing a morsel of mushroom in each hand; now she munched one piece, which made her grow tall, now the other, which diminished her height. In this manner she adjusted her size to that of the various doorways and gates of the place as well as to that of the creatures she encountered. In somewhat the same fashion George Borrow, sent by the British Bible Society to distribute the Holy Word in the papalized peninsula, advanced into Spain. In one hand he held a Castilian version of the New Testament; in the other his very considerable curiosity. Doubtless he made many valiant attempts to hawk Bibles, but it is quite as certain that he never restrained his natural aptitude for the companionship of thieves, gitanos, contrabandists, and bandits. More than once his zeal in behalf of the Scriptures landed him in jail, but I can scarcely accept this as proof of his devotion to a holy cause when I remember that he had been attempting in vain to persuade certain Madrid officials to permit him to voluntarily incarcerate himself so that he might have such further opportunities for the pursuit of his studies of the "crabbed gitano" as intercourse with the prisoners might offer. As a matter of fact when he was arrested the English Ambassador secured his pardon before the day was done, but this Borrow refused to consider. He was in jail and he proposed to remain there, and remain he did, a matter of several weeks, during which period he had lengthy talks with all the prisoners, adding substantially to his foreign vocabularies.... His sympathy, indeed, was with the gitanos; he ate and drank and slept with them, sometimes in stables, sometimes in dirty lofts. If he himself did not connive at the "affairs of Egypt," at least he travelled with those who did; if he did not assist at robberies or murders, he was often aware that they were about to be committed. On one occasion he held converse, which is delightfully recorded, with Sevilla, the picador, whom Prosper M?rim?e met and who is referred to in Richard Ford's "Gatherings from Spain."... We must, on the whole, thank the British Bible Society for giving Borrow the opportunity to write two strangely charming books, one of them a masterpiece, but over what Borrow did for the Bible Society it is perhaps just as well to draw a shade.

The production of two such books as "The Zincali" and "The Bible in Spain" may be regarded, however, as sufficient justification for the incorporation and continued existence of the British Bible Society. If all the information he gives us concerning the gipsies in these books is not authentic we may at least be certain that Borrow had a better opportunity for making it so than that afforded any other writer. If, therefore, he has sometimes distorted facts it is because he is first of all an artist and "The Bible in Spain" is first of all a work of art. These books appeared in the early forties and were read and admired all over Europe, awakening an interest in the Iberian Peninsula, and more especially in the Spanish gipsies, which has never since died. In the preface to the second edition of "The Zincali" Borrow relates his astonishment at the success of his book: "the voice not only of England but of the greater part of Europe, informing me that I had achieved a feat--a work in the nineteenth century with some pretensions to originality." And when a writer in "The Spectator" called "The Bible in Spain" "a 'Gil Blas' in water-colours" Borrow fairly bubbled.

Whether gipsies are corporeally chaste or not is, however, a matter of the slightest moment in relation to the masterpiece that M?rim?e based on the theory that they are not. As Havelock Ellis so precisely puts it: "Art is in its sphere as supreme over fact as Science in its sphere is supreme over fiction. The artist may play either fast or loose with Science, and the finest artist will sometimes play loose." It may be remarked that in general Borrow was more inclined to play loose than M?rim?e.

According to H. Sutherland Edwards, who seems to have acquired this information from Marie Roze, in its original form the opera included two complete airs for Carmen which, in the end, the composer and his librettists decided to suppress. The gipsy was to have been represented as capable of remorse and after the scene in which she foretells her death by the cards was to be left alone to give vent to her feelings in a pathetic air! The other omitted air occurred in the last act.

Mr. Edwards gives us more details: The bull-fight, according to the original design of the authors, was to be shown in the form of a tableau, occupying all the back of the stage with live chorus figures and "supers" in the front of the picture and painted figures behind them. Escamillo was to have been seen triumphing over the figure of the fallen bull, while the crowd of spectators overlooking the arena shouted vociferously the air of the Toreador. In a dark background the figures of Carmen and Don Jos? were to be seen.

Mlle. C?lestine Galli-Mari? was the first Carmen. She is said to have been delightful, but the first interpreter of a part always has an advantage over those who follow her; she need not fear comparison. She was charged with immorality but it is not likely that she allowed herself as many gipsy liberties as some of her successors. Charles Pigot tells us that she took advantage of M?rim?e's vigorous etching: "elle avait pris mod?le sur ce portrait d'une ressemblance qui donne le frisson de la vie au personnage ?voqu?. Oeillades assassines, regards charg?s de volupt? qui livrent la victime pieds et poings li?s, d?hanchements lascifs, poings sur la hanche, rien ne manquait ? la ressemblance; et ce d?ploiement de perversit?s physiques, refletant ? merveille l'?me de cette boh?mienne ehont?e, cette crudit? de tons dans le rendu du geste et de l'allure qui choqu?rent bien des personnes et firent crier a l'immoralit?, ?taient indiqu?s par l'effronterie du personnage, et, j'ajouterai, n?cessaires ? la verit? du drame, ? l'explication de l'ensorcellement subit du navarrais."

Arthur Pougin says of her: "Mme. Galli-Mari? should take rank with those numerous artists who, although endowed with no great voice, have for a century past rendered to this theatre services made remarkable by their talent for acting and their incontestable worth from a dramatic point of view.... Equally capable of exciting laughter or of provoking tears, endowed with an artistic temperament of great originality ... which has permitted her making out of parts confided to her distinct types ... in which she has represented personages whose nature and characteristics are essentially opposed."... She died at Vence, near Nice, September 22, 1905.

Fr?ulein Ehnn seems to have been the second Carmen; as Vienna was the second city to produce Bizet's opera; the date was October 23, 1875. Brussels had the honour of being the third city; the date was February 8, 1876; Mlle. Maria D?rivis enacted the r?le of the gipsy here. Thereafter the opera made the grand tour of the world, and firmly established itself in the r?pertoire of the meanest singing theatres. Scarcely a singer but has at one time or other sung one of the r?les in this work. Sometimes it has been Micaela ; sometimes Frasquita, in which Emma Trentini made an instantaneous impression in New York, more often than not Carmen herself, for contraltos and sopranos have both appeared in the part.

"Mlle. Leblanc is clothed in a long robe of plaited tulle, ornamented with spangles. Her body, finely proportioned, is revealed by this indiscreet drapery. Her nobly modelled shoulders and arms are bare. Her hair is confined by three circles of gold, arranged in Grecian fashion. Alma, gipsy, daughter of the East, princess of the harem, Byzantine empress or Moorish dancer? All this is suggested by this fantastic and seductive costume. But a more ideal image pursues us. The singer is constantly urged by feminine visions of our ultra-modern poets. She finds absolute beauty in the exquisite body of a woman animated by a Florentine robe. And it is through this imaginary figure that she composes her other incarnations; and in a tavern where gipsy women meet soldiers, she evokes the apparition of a woman of Mantegna or Botticelli, degraded, vile, who gives the idea of a shameless creature that has not lost entirely the gracefulness of her original rank. She is never weary of cheapening her original model. She is sensual, impudent, voluptuous, gross, but in her white diction, in her blithe walk, you divine her desire of evoking something else.... Carmen is, according to Mlle. Leblanc, a hybrid, monstrous creature. You look upon her with eager curiosity and infinite sadness.... Mlle. Leblanc makes light of her voice. She maltreats it, threshes it, subjects it to inhuman inflections.... Her singing is not musical, her interpretation lacks the na?vet? necessary to true dramatic power. Nevertheless, she is one of the most emotional interpreters of our period. Her limited abilities, hidden by a thousand details in accentuation, remind one of the weak and ornate poetry of artistic degeneration.... Thanks to her, Antioch and Alexandria, corrupt and adorable cities, live again, for an hour."

Perhaps Philip Hale's description of Carmen owes something to this picture of Mlle. Leblanc. At any rate it is striking enough to reproduce:

"Carmen lived years before she was known to M?rim?e. She dies many deaths and many are her resurrections. When the world was young, they say her name was Lilith, and the serpent for her sake hated Adam. She perished that wild night when the heavens rained fire upon the cities of the plain. Samson knew her when she dwelt in the valley of Sorek. The mound builders saw her and fell at her feet. She disquieted the blameless men of Ethiopia. Years after she was the friend of Theodora. In the fifteenth century she was noticed in Sabbatic revels led by the four-horned goat. She was in Paris at the end of the last century and she wore powder and patches at the dinner given by the Marquis de Sade. In Spain she smoked cigarettes and wrecked the life of Don Jos?."

Carmen was a r?le that Lilli Lehmann had frequently sung in Germany before she came to America and she made her American d?but in the part. Here is Mr. Krehbiel's description of her performance :

"Lehmann as the gipsy cigarette maker, with her Habanera and Seguidilla, with her errant fancy wandering from a sentimental brigadier to a dashing bull-fighter, is a conception which will not come easy to the admirers of the later Br?nnhilde and Isolde; and, indeed, she was a puzzling phenomenon to the experienced observers of that time. Carmen was already a familiar apparition to New Yorkers, who had imagined that Minnie Hauk had spoken the last word in the interpretation of that character. When Fr?ulein Lehmann came her tall stature and erect, almost military, bearing, were calculated to produce an effect of surprise of such a nature that it had to be overcome before it was possible to enter into the feeling with which she informed the part. To the eye, moreover, she was a somewhat more matronly Carmen than the fancy, stimulated by earlier performances of the opera or the reading of M?rim?e's novel, was prepared to accept; but it was in harmony with the new picture that she stripped the character of the flippancy and playfulness popularly associated with it, and intensified its sinister side. In this, Fr?ulein Lehmann deviated from Mme. Hauk's impersonation and approached that of Mme. Trebelli.... In her musical performance she surpassed both of those admired and experienced artists."

How many Carmens have we seen since Calv?! Z?lie de Lussan, who gave an exquisite op?ra-comique performance, with a touch of savagery and a charming sense of humour! Fanchon Thompson, who attempted to sing the part in English with Henry W. Savage's company at the Metropolitan Opera House but who broke down and left the stage after she had sung a few bars. Olive Fremstad, who had appeared in the part many times in Munich was the Metropolitan Opera House Carmen for a season or two. Her interpretation followed that of Lilli Lehmann. It was very austere, almost savage, and with very little humour. Olive Fremstad was applauded in the r?le but she never succeeded in making the opera popular.

Other Carmens who may be mentioned are Anna de Belocca, Stella Bonheur, Kirkby-Lunn, Ottilie Metzger, Emmy Destinn, Marie Tempest, Selina Dolaro, Camille Seygard, Alice Gentle, Eleanora de Cisneros, Jane Noria, Ester Ferrabini, Margarita d'Alvarez, Tarquinia Tarquini.... It might be said in passing that some Carmens do not get nearer to the Giralda Tower in Seville than Stanford White's imitation in Madison Square.

FOOTNOTES:

It must be remembered that M?rim?e and Borrow were writing nearly a century ago; what was true then may not be true today. Borrow, himself, says : "It is, of course, by inter-marriage alone that the two races will ever commingle, and before that event is brought about, much modification must take place amongst the Gitanos, in their manners, in their habits, in their affections, and their dislikes, and, perhaps, even in their physical peculiarities; much must be forgotten on both sides, and everything is forgotten in the course of time."

There is a picturesque account of this F?brica de Tobacos in Baron Ch. Davillier's "l'Espagne" .

Notes on the Text

Notes on the Text

P. 15. "the earlier vogue of Carmencita": This list could be extended almost indefinitely. I have made no mention of Lola Montez, who danced, acted, lectured, and died in this country. However, her pretensions to Spanish blood were mostly pretensions. Her father was the son of Sir Edward Gilbert of Limerick, although she had some Spanish blood on her mother's side. She spent some time in Spain and studied Spanish dancing there, but there is no evidence that she ever achieved proficiency in this art.... I believe both Otero and La Tortajada have appeared in this country. But neither of these women could help the cause abroad of Spanish music or dancing. Of these two I can speak personally as I have seen them both. Elvira de Hidalgo, a Spanish soprano, sang a few performances at the Metropolitan Opera House and the New Theatre at the end of the season of 1909-10. One of her r?les was Rosina, which is a greater favourite with Spanish women singers than Carmen. Margarita d'Alvarez, a Peruvian contralto born in Liverpool, sang in Oscar Hammerstein's last Manhattan Opera House season. Tortola Valencia danced for a short time during the season of 1917-18 in a revue at the Century Theatre. As for painters Francis Picabia, the Cuban, and Henry Caro-Delvaille, who is almost wholly Spanish in sympathy and appearance, but quite French in his art, are both living in this country at present ... and the work of Pablo Picasso is well-known here.

P. 16. To these should be added Juan Nadal, tenor with the Chicago Opera Company, Jos? Mardones, bass, Hipolito Lazaro, tenor, and Rafaelo Diaz, tenor, with the Metropolitan Opera Company.

P. 18. "in Spain Italian and German operas are much more popular than Spanish": This situation must be quite familiar to any American or Englishman, for neither in America nor in England has English opera any standing. See note to Page 70.

Mr. Laparra elaborated this suite, adding other piano pieces and songs and on April 24, 1918, in Aeolian Hall, with the assistance of Helen Stanley, soprano, he gave a concert at Aeolian Hall, New York, which he entitled "A Musical Journey Through Spain." "They are not songs as they are sung in Spain," said Mr. Laparra, "but they are the musical forms of that country expressed through the vision of a French traveller and treated by him with complete imaginative freedom."

Mr. Laparra was born May 13, 1876, and studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Massenet and Gabriel Faur?. He secured the Prix de Rome in 1903.

P. 29. "El Sombrero de tres Picos": This amusing novel of Alarc?n, translated by Jacob S. Fassett, jr., has recently been published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Here, too, I may speak of La Goya, a delightful music-hall singer who has won fame not only in Spain but in South America as well. She has made a special study of costumes. Of a more popular type, but not more of a favourite, is Raquel Meller.

P. 46. "its origin in the twelfth century": Tom?s Bret?n writes me that he considers it ridiculous to attribute any such age to the jota. His researches on the subject are embodied in a pamphlet entitled "R?pida ojeada hist?rica sobre la m?sica espa?ola."

P. 49. Curiously enough in a music critic's account of a voyage in Spain only a single page is devoted to a discussion of Spanish music or dancing. The author is not sympathetic. The rhythmic and dynamic features of the performance which so aroused the delight of Chabrier only annoy Mr. Finck. I quote his account which begins with an experience at Murcia: "In the evening I came across an interesting performance in the street. A woman and a man were singing a duet, accompanying themselves with a guitar and a mandolin, making a peculiarly pleasing combination, infinitely superior to the performances of the Italian bards who accompany themselves with hand-organs or cheap harps, not to speak of the horrible German beer-bands which infest our streets. It was indeed so agreeable that I followed the couple for several blocks. But with the exception of a students' concert in Seville, it was almost the only good music I heard in Spain. Madrid and Barcelona have ambitious operatic performances in winter, and the Barcelonese go so far as to claim that they sing and understand Wagner better than the Berliners; but as the opera-houses were closed while I was there, I have no comments to offer on this boast. In a caf? chantant which I visited in Seville I heard, instead of national airs, vulgar French women singing a French version of 'Champagne Charley' and similar vulgar things; no one, it is true, cared for these songs, whereas a rare bit of national melody in the program was wildly applauded; but fashion of course must have her sway. At another caf? the music was thoroughly Spanish, with guitar accompaniment; but, according to the usual Spanish custom, there were a dozen persons on the stage who clapped their hands so loudly, to mark the rhythm, that the music degenerated into a mere rhythmic noise accompanying the dancing. These dances interest the Spanish populace much more than any kind of music, and I was amused occasionally to see a group of working men looking on the grotesque amateur dancing of one or two of their number with an expression of supreme enjoyment, and clapping their hands in unison to keep time."

Seeing indifferent dancing performed, he affirms, by women who were no longer young, in the early part of his Spanish sojourn, Th?ophile Gautier, too, at first was inclined to treat Spanish dancing as a myth : "Les danses espagnoles n'existent qu'? Paris, comme les coquillages, qu'on ne trouve que chez les marchands de curiosit?s, et jamais sur le bord de la mer. O Fanny Elssler! qui ?tes maintenant en Am?rique chez les sauvages, m?me avant d'aller en Espagne, nous nous doutions bien que c'?tait vous qui aviez invent? la cachucha!"... This was at Vitoria. In Madrid he writes: "On nous avait dit ? Vitoria, ? Burgos et ? Valladolid, que les bonnes danseuses ?taient ? Madrid; ? Madrid, l'on nous a dit que les v?ritables danseuses de cachucha n'existaient qu'en Andalousie, ? S?ville. Nous verrons bien; mais nous avons peur qu'en fait de danses espagnoles, il ne nous faille en revenir ? Fanny Elssler et aux deux soeurs Noblet."... In Andalusia he capitulated: "Les danseuses espagnoles, bien qu'elles n'aient pas le fini, la correction pr?cise, l'?l?vation des danseuses fran?aises, leur sont, ? mon avis, bien sup?rieures par la gr?ce et le charme; comme elles travaillent peu et ne s'assujetissent pas ? ces terribles excercises d'assouplissement qui font ressembler une classe de danse ? une salle de torture, elles ?vitent cette maigreur de cheval entrain? qui donne ? nos ballets quelque chose de trop macabre et de trop anatomique; elles conservent les contours et les rondeurs de leur sexe; elles ont l'air de femmes qui dansent et non pas de danseuses, ce qui est bien diff?rent.... En Espagne les pieds quittent ? peine la terre; point de ces grands ronds de jambe, de ces ?carts qui font ressembler une femme ? un compas forc?, et qu'on trouve l?-bas d'une ind?cence r?voltante. C'est le corps qui danse, ce sont les reins qui se cambrent, les flancs qui ploient, la taille qui se tord avec une souplesse d'alm?e o? de couleuvre. Dans les poses renvers?es, les ?paules de la danseuse vont presque toucher la terre; les bras, p?m?s et morts, ont une flexibilit?, une mollesse d'?charpe d?nou?e; on dirait que les mains peuvent ? peine soulever et faire babiller les castagnettes d'ivoire aux cordons tress?s d'or; et cependant, au moment venu, des bonds de jeune jaguar succ?dent ? cette langueur voluptueuse, et prouvent que ces corps, doux comme la soie, enveloppent des muscles d'acier...."

'O mi, O mi amada Immaculada!'

"And, yes, I found it perfectly dignified, perfectly religious, without a suspicion of levity or indecorum. This consecration of the dance, this turning of a possible vice into a means of devotion, this bringing of the people's art, the people's passion, which in Seville is dancing, into the church, finding it a place there, is precisely one of those acts of divine worldly wisdom which the Church has so often practised in her conquest of the world."

P. 57. "cannot be transplanted, but remains local": James Huneker's Spanish experiences as related in the chapter on Madrid in "The New Cosmopolis" seem to have been unfortunate. There are those who would disagree with every separate statement in the following paragraph: "The best Spanish dancing is not to be found in Spain today. You must go to Paris for Otero and Carmencita. Nor is the most characteristic cookery in Spain; at least not in Madrid. The greatest Spanish opera was composed by the Frenchman Bizet."

P. 62. "Spanish folk-tunes": The Spanish catalogue of the Victor Phonograph Company offers a splendid opportunity for the study of Spanish and gipsy folk-music. You may find therein even examples of gipsy songs, conceived in esoteric scales, sung by gipsies, accompanied by the guitar. Mr. Caro-Delvaille has brought to my attention Nos. 62365 and 62289 . Nos. 62078 and 62077 , sung by Pozo, are also good. Most of Pozo's records will be found to be interesting.

P. 64. "often introduce dialogue of their own": This is no longer true, Mr. John Garrett Underhill informs me, as the Sociedad de Autores has forbidden such interpolations.

P. 70. "the Italian opera": In Gautier's day Bellini was the favourite composer .

It is well to remember in this connection that the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and Covent Garden Theatre in London "might as well be in Naples" too, "for all the national character" they have. Our symphony orchestras, too, perform works by native composers as infrequently as those in Madrid.

P. 84. Tradition and often necessity have driven many Spanish composers out of the peninsula to make their careers abroad. Victoria went to Rome; Arrieta to Milan; Alb?niz, Valverde, de Falla to Paris. Of late, indeed, Paris has been the haven of ambitious Spanish composers who have been received with open arms by their French confr?res and where their music has been played by Ricardo Vi?es, the Spanish pianist, and by J. Joachim Nin, the Cuban pianist. Vi?es, indeed, has been friendly to the moderns of all nations. His programs embrace works of Satie, Alb?niz, and Ravel ... doubtless, indeed, Leo Ornstein.

As a result some of the zarzuela writers who have stayed at home have produced more characteristic Spanish music than some of their more ambitious brethren. One of the reasons is explained by Mr. Underhill in his essay on the Spanish one-act play: "Spaniards are very particular about these things . They insist upon the national element, upon the perpetuation of indigenous forms of expression, both in the matter of literary type and convention, and in mere questions of speech as well. Few writers of the first rank belonging to the past generation have escaped reproach upon this score. They were expected not only to spring from the soil but to taste of it." Equal demands are made upon the zarzuela writers. As a consequence the zarzuela, although scarcely taken seriously by either Spanish musicians or public, and always, according to the pedants, in a tottering decadent stage, may be considered the most national form of Spanish musical art.

Other light composers who may be listed are Rafael Calleja, Enrique Br?, Alberto Foglietti, Pablo Luna, Vicente Lle?, and Arturo Saco del Valle.

The war, it may be suggested, has had a most salutary effect on Spanish music, while it has killed the tonal art in most other countries. It has driven the Spaniards, however, back into their own country and thus may be directly responsible for the foundation of a definite modern school of Spanish music. One of those to leave Paris in 1914 was Manuel de Falla, of whom G. Jean-Aubry says, "Today he is the most striking figure of the Spanish school, tomorrow he will be a composer of European fame, just as is Ravel or Stravinsky."

When the Russian Ballet visited Spain Serge de Diaghilew was so much interested in the work of de Falla that he commissioned him to write a ballet on the subject of Alarc?n's novel, "El Sombrero de tres Picos."

P. 85. "perhaps the first of the important Spanish composers to visit North America": Alb?niz came to the United States as a pianist in the seventies when he was about fifteen years old.

Index

Index

"Afro-American Folk-Songs," 37

Aguglia, Mimi, 93

Aid?, 155

Alarc?n, Pedro de, 29, 153, 190

Alb?niz, Isaac, 15, 18, 41, 50, 71, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 148, 182, 183, 193

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