view raw text
RACE HORSES AND OPERA SINGERS A Note on Caruso and La Belle Geraldina j By SALVATOR. - It has long been one of my notions that among human beings there is no other kind offering such a close similitude to the race horse as the opera singer. The intensely artificial lives which they live; the glare of publicity that surrounds them; the hero-worship that attends the "bright particular stars"; the intensity of the efforts that they are obliged to make; the immense success that attends these efforts when they "go over" and the ruthless criticism that awaits upon their failures; the strictly exotic character of the appeal that they make to the public; the devouring interest with which their careers are followed; the fanatical devotions of their "fans" and the malicious detraction emitted by those who dont happen to worship their shrines all, when one comes to think of it, offer, in sum total, a curious and remarkable parallel. It is one that has long appealed to me because of the fact that all my life I have been just as much a devotee of the opera-house as of the race course, and would place the thrills and the pleasures that I have experienced at them just about on a par. There is, for me, little to choose between the two. A night at the opera with an all-star cast, and a day at the races with a great stake or handicap, also with an all-star cast, making, in turf parlance, a perfect dead heat, which it is quite unnecessary that any "eye-in-the-sky" should certify. CARUSO MOST FAMOUS. As everybody is aware, the most famous opera singer of modern times, and probably of any, was the late Enrico Caruso. His name became familiar to practically everybody in the entire civilized world and stood as the universal synonym for greatness in the art of song. While it is now something over fifteen years since he died, there are still hosts of Americans that heard him sing, either at the Metropolitan, in New York, at other great opera houses in this country, at concerts, etc. His earnings were fabulous. For every performance in opera, he received ,000, and for some years before his death, a percentage of the box-office receipts as well. He often sang several times per week. Sometimes his fees for concert appearances were even more highly paid than those in opera. Men and women of great wealth also occasionally secured him to sing at private musicales in their homes. On such occasions it was understood that his "douceur", or "gratuity" must be at least as large as his fee for an opera; while it is said that plutocrats who had been especially enraptured by his singing in their homes, had been known to give him checks of as high as 0,000. Unfortunately for Caruso, he antedated the broadcast era. Were he alive today, his earnings through the source alone would be gigantic, while his fame would be similarly greater than it was or is. However, he did live in the heyday of the phonograph and the record, and the demand for his vocal records was so great that for years previous to his death he had enjoyed an annual income from that source of over 00,000 in America alone, from the company which exclusively produced his discs. During all his later life, Caruso sang little outside the U. S. A., as the earning capacity he commanded here far surpassed anything that was possible abroad. LIKE GOLDEN TRUMPET. As is well known, Caruso was a tenor with a voice of such compass, range, power, volume, and above all, unequaled richness and sweetness, that it was often compared to some great golden trumpet, while also capable of the most delicate shadings and effects in his singing. There was something about it that reached the heart and the soul and gave the hearer a tremendous emotional, as well as merely aesthetic, reaction. Caruso was born in Naples, Italy, in 1873. His public career began in his native land in 1895, when he was twenty-two. Three years later he was famous and began the round of the great European opera-houses. In 1899 he first sang in South America, at Buenos Aires, where his success was so great that the price of seats was doubled on the nights when he sang. But it was not until Nov. 23, 1903, that he finally made his debut in this country, at the Metropolitan, as the duke in Rigoletto, receiving an ovation. Thereafter, as stated, the U. S. A. became his principal, and latterly almost his only field, owing to the factors above described. New York was his "second horns" and finally he married Miss Dorothy Benjamin, a member of an old and prominent family of that city. His last public appearances were made at the Metropolitan and the last one of all on Christmas eve of 1920. He died in .Italy the next August, aged 47. During the eighteen consecutive seasons that Caruso sang at the Metropolitan, the most famous and successful of the many "all-star" casts in which he took part were those in which the soprano singing opposite him was Geraldine Farrar. BRELLIANT DUO. Miss Farrar, by far the most famous American singer of the past twenty-five years, and whose father, Sidney Farrar, was before her day a famous baseball player, after great success in Europe as a very young girl, made her debut at the Metropolitan in November, 1906, three years after Carusos. They sang there together every season thereafter until his farewell season of 1920. Only two years later, in the spring of 1922, Miss Farrar made her farewell appearance before the famous "gilded horseshoe." and after a limited number of others in other cities, and one or two concert tours, retired permanently from the stage. She is now living in Connecticut, near New York, and is often seen in the audiences seated before the stage which she in past years so greatly ornamented. Though by no means an old woman, her hair is already snow white, while her face, still youthful, retains the remarkable beauty which was always one of her characteristics. There is probably no other woman in the U. S. A. today who is so beloved. - .... . . . , A In telling the stories of these two famous .singers and m relating them to the caption of this article I have had an object which I will endeavor to set forth. Caruso and "La Belle Geraldina," as he dubbed her familiarly, were closely connected in the public mind because of their many seasons of joint fame when singing together in opera. Caruso died at the very height of his career and while still a comparatively young man. Miss Farrar, though considerably younger than the great tenor, sang at the Metropolitan only two seasons after his passing and then in her turn disappeared from its stage forever. Neither artist has ever been replaced. No subsequent tenor has even approximated the glory of Caruso. No subsequent soprano has taken the hold upon the public affections of Geraldine Farrar. Yet both were lost to it when, normally speaking, they should have had years of activity before them in which to delight and thrill the public. What was the reason for this? One word tells it all: Overexertion. Overexertion in the effort to satisfy the demand for their performances. PREMIUM ON STANDING ROOM. For several years before his death, Caruso had been over-exerting himself in the filling of his engagements. Every appearance he made was before a sold-out house with great numbers of people unable even to obtain standing room. He had also been making exhausting concert tours, leaving him little rest between opera seasons. This he did in 1920, so that on the opening of the opera season he was tired from the long trip and nervous strain. Just previously to this tour he had been offered 00,000 for appearing in a group of film drama, which had caused him six weeks of hard work. Early in December, 1920, while singing in an opera, his throat gave way, he had several hemorrhages, the curtain was rung down and the audience sent home. But after a short rest he began singing again. On Christmas eve he never sang more gloriously. The next day he was taken violently ill, for weeks his life hung in the balance, finally he was pronounced able to go to Italy to recuperate, but died a few weeks after getting there, two days after collapsing while upon a short tour for pleasure. By a singular coincidence, not far from the same time when Caruso gave out, Geraldine Farrars voice broke one evening when she was singing in an opera in Brooklyn, as she was giving a high note. She attempted to finish the performance, but was unable to. Thereafter she did not sing in public for many months, then returned to the Metropolitan Caruso having meanwhile died sang there for a short time, her voice again threw out danger signals and her retirement became necessary. When subsequently heard on the concert stage, while still a great artist her vocal powers had to be conserved in a very careful manner. TAXING SERIES. Miss Farrar had sung at the Metropolitan for seventeen seasons and during that space had appeared nearly 500 times in a long and very taxing series of different roles. She was somewhat slight in physique. Caruso, while a short man, was robust in build. But both, practically every time they sang, were obliged to exert themselves to the utmost, not only in the use of their voices, but in acting as well. They were both conscientious artists who never gave other than their best. For that reason the public never ceased clamoring to hear them and the management to bill them as often as possible; on numerous occasions when they were not physically fit to sing and did so only at a cost to themselves that was ultimately ruinous, and, in the case of Caruso, actually fatal. The careers and breakdowns of these two great singers, the untimely ends of their public life, and their loss, never to be made good to the public, resembled very strongly the careers and breakdowns of many of our great stake horses, which, like them, after becoming famous and great public favorites and box-office attractions, in endeavoring to fulfill the inordinate demands made upon them, snap beneath the strain and never "come back," except as shadows of their former selves. There is, however, this great difference: The race horses have themselves no power of self-control. They arc mere pawns in the hands of those who own, train, manage and exploit them. They cannot speak and tell us when they are sick and unfit, lame, sore and overdone. They cannot pVotest to their owners and trainers. They cannot argue with their managers. They cannot rebel against the insensate allotments of the handicappers. They cannot refuse to be exploited by racing associations eager for dividends to be harvested from them as lures to the gate-paying and betting public. BECAME WRECKS. All they can do is break down, go lame, fall sick or degenerate into mere wrecks of their former selves, dragged around the country by callous and short-sighted men trying to wring still more dividends out of them, though they may already have earned in a single season more than a Caruso or a Farrar. It is only rarely that an owner or a trainer of other than the usual -run really, protects one and refuses to let him be butchered to make a handicappers or a track managers holiday. Exhibits, in short, not only "the saving grace of common sense," but a sense of decency, of humanity and of his obligation to the dumb brute that, very likely, has made his own name known from ocean to ocean. The curious fact being, at the same time, that it is just such men who are more apt to be criticised for their right actions as the opposite type for their indefensible ones, in which true sportsmanship has played no part.
