Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  It was easy enough. He divided a quarter-note into two eighths. Then she sang it, in a crystal and vibrant tone, even though in mezza voce.

  “Addio, mia dolce terra,

  Addio mia California!”

  (and there it soared up to the high B natural)

  “Bei monti della Sierra, o nevi, addio!”

  Puccini smiled, his hands still resting on the keys. “Beautiful,” he said.

  He worked at it all summer and through the fall, while Herma was vacationing at Stresa and later singing Cherubino at the Scala. The première, at the Metropolitan in December, was the event of the New York season. Puccini and Belasco were both present. The cast was a glittering one, with Herma as Minnie, Caruso as Johnson, and Pasquale Amato as the Sheriff Rance; the conductor was Toscanini. And when Herma galloped onstage, on a palomino borrowed from a circus act, and dismounted to the miners’ cries of “Minnie!” the house broke up into a roar that finally brought the audience to its feet. (“Upstaged by a horse,” Caruso muttered to Herma as she clung to the noose they were trying to hang him with.) At the final curtain the shouts of “Brava! Bravi tutti!” (“Bravo cavallo!” cried some clown) were mingled with insistent calls for the composer. Puccini, taking the stage for his own bows, was overwhelmed first by the cast and then by the audience, which clambered over the footlights to shake his hand and embrace him. “I was never so much bekissed in my life,” he told the press later in the evening. The papers the next morning, in addition to pointing out that Puccini was Italy’s most eminent composer and had a Rolls-Royce, a villa at Torre del Lago, and another at Viareggio, also praised Herma with warmth. The Times critic gave the impression that he was not quite sure who she was, but nevertheless commended the Met for presenting this American opera in its première performance on an American stage and with an American prima donna. “One hopes that Minnie’s Addio in the last act will be only a temporary one,” he concluded, “and that this new diva sprung from our native soil will return to the Met many times to sing this role so haunting in its Puccinian melodies and yet so American in its optimism, its declaration of independence from the decadence and world-weariness of the European musical theater.”

  Yet Herma knew, and Fred knew, and perhaps Puccini himself knew, that the music was not as great as all that. The opera owed its success, or its fad, perhaps, most of all to its setting, and to the figure of its slim and boyish heroine—frail and yet audacious, quintessentially American in the confident and slightly gauche verve of her manner—a cowgirl with a range of three octaves and the faultless tessitura of a Melba. Puccini may have written the music, but it was Herma who caught the imagination of the public. She was Minnie, in the popular mind, and it was a long time before anyone else dared to sing the part.

  So she sang the Fanciulla everywhere in those next two seasons—Genoa, Vienna, Covent Garden (at last), the Fenice in Venice, Aix, La Scala, Toulouse, even Buenos Aires and Melbourne. When she came into Maxim’s in Paris the band automatically broke into “Addio California.” And the horse (only at Covent Garden would they not allow the horse; there was a clop-clop in the wings, reminding Herma of Mr. Earl Koenig’s coconut shells, and she strode onstage stiffly as though she had just dismounted) shared almost equally in her popularity, especially in Argentina, a nation in which there is even more enthusiasm for horses than there is for women.

  By the end of the second season Herma was growing more and more weary of the whole business—the stupid libretto in which everyone incessantly shouted “Hello! Hello!” on all occasions in the belief that this was the way to speak English, the music in which the only good aria was the tenor’s “Ch’ella mi creda”—and especially the horse, which was a bother to make enter on cue and which frequently misbehaved on stage. (She knew now what Puccini had meant by writing “merda” on the score.) It annoyed her that, when she came into Maxim’s and the band struck up, people shouted “Minnie!” instead of “Herma!” Was she going to have to spend her whole life playing this ninny of a cowgirl just because she was an American? Did Melba have to spend her whole career on stage with a kangaroo because she was Australian?

  Finally one afternoon in Verona she lost her patience. She sent out for some beautiful glossy writing paper and, when it came, she seized a sheet of it and scrawled, “Fred, sono stufo di questa Minnie. She makes me throw up. I’ve had enough!” She jammed it into the mirror. Then, all this anger having made her hot, she got into the tub and took a cool bath.

  “Just chase the buffalo and let the chips fall where they may,” he wrote her on the mirror the next day. Still, Fred thought, he too was getting fed up (she should have written “stufa” instead of “stufo”—she could never get the grammar right) with all these miners and sweaty horses. More important, it was not getting the girl anywhere. Never was there a famous diva who owed her career to her skill as an equestrian.

  Some other feat was needed—equally striking but more musical—something like Caruso singing Chaliapin’s basso part. Herma could sing higher than anybody else, but so could every soprano. It had to be something more—some feat of virtuosity, something athletic that no one else could do. Like singing a trio singlehanded (it could be done with phonographs) or playing three parts in the same opera, with lightning costume changes between the acts. It would take some thought. Paris, La Scala, or the Staatsoper? De l’audace, encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace! Try for the top first. He went to the post office and sent a telegram.

  “MEYNER OPERA PARIS HERMA AVAILABLE NEXT SEASON MAJOR ROLE ONLY FANCIULLA EXCLUDED.”

  In Paris rumor had it that Pol Lloiseaux, the Artistic Director, had a notion of doing the Tales of Hoffman in the coming season, if he could find the sopranos for the three leads. Meyner, the Directeur en Chef, was not very enthusiastic about the idea. Too expensive, the sets were elaborate and you needed three prima donnas, and people were tired of Offenbach. Nothing was settled yet, and even if they did the Tales the casting would take place only in September.

  Herma, as soon as she was moved back into her apartment in avenue Kléber and unpacked, went out to the Café de la Paix with Lloiseaux, who was an old friend of hers. As they settled into the table on the terrasse she was annoyed to hear the band break into “Addio California” just as it did at Maxim’s. This was Fred’s work—he went around bribing Chefs d’Orchestre. Still, it was pleasing that the waiter, without being told, immediately set in front of her a Fraise Herma, perfectly made, with a large and symmetrical strawberry in the middle of it. Heads turned as she poised her spoon over it. She caught a murmur from the next table.

  “C’est la Herma.”

  “Ah, ça c’est formidable. Cette glace! C’est comme la Pêche Melba, tu sais. C’est la nouvelle sensation.”

  “Ah, mon ami, tu sais, à Paris on a la nouvelle sensation chaque jour.”

  “Oui, mais quand même …”

  Lloiseaux, who overheard it too, traded a smile with her. Herma carefully scooped around the edges of the glistening hemisphere with her spoon, to the dying strains of Johnson’s and Minnie’s duet. “Addio, mia dolce terra, addio, mia California.” How she hated that finale with its banal high B. And yet for some reason she felt her eyes brimming. She took the napkin and dabbed at them. Like Madame Modjeska and her “Last Rose of Summer”! It was stupid. She wasn’t a Californian, she was a European, an international opera star. The new sensation, as the Monsieur at the next table said. Home was the comfortable apartment in avenue Kléber, with the view of the Eiffel Tower and the river. She smiled through her tears, because of her tears, at Lloiseaux.

  “Tu a quelque chose, ma petite?”

  She shook her head. Perhaps the tears weren’t for the farewell duet at all but for the ice cream, which tasted, exactly like Aunt Minnie’s lemon vanilla. It was the nostalgia of Mignon’s song: Connais-tu le pays où neurit les citrons? The land where the lemons bloom is California, Herma.

  “Oui! oui!” warbles Olympia for the fifth time, in response to Hoffmann�
��s impassioned declarations. The others are gone, off at their supper, and they are alone on the stage with only Hoffmann’s friend Nicklausse as their witness. Seated in a Louis Quinze armchair, her arms arranged stiffly at her sides, she listens while Hoffmann sings his aria. “You are mine! Our hearts are forever united. Ah! say, do you comprehend the eternal joy of hearts at peace?”

  “Oui! oui!”

  The armchair is set slightly at an angle, so that Herma, wearing her bright doll-like smile, is facing directly into the tiers of boxes at the right-hand edge of the stage. For some time she has been aware of a queer-looking party occupying the box in the second tier. They contrast sharply with the occupants of the other boxes—the select society of Paris in their Sholte dinner jackets, their gowns of Paquin and Vionnet, their Cartier jewelry. These are a more raffish bunch. There are four or five of them, all male. One is an elderly man who is a musician or composer if Herma ever saw one, with a mane of unkempt white hair down to his collar, a tobacco-stained mustache, dark bags under his eyes, and a flowing Byronic cravat. The others are all younger, each in his way with a flair of the bohemian. In contrast to the society people, who are chattering and gazing at others across the theater with their opera glasses, they are watching the opera intently. The most striking of them, perhaps, is a pale and curious person like an oriental sorcerer, with a black beard and black-rimmed eyes. Or a Persian prince; there is something refined and exotic, slightly decadent, in the contrast between the pallid face and the eyes so dark they almost seem rimmed with kohl. This person is dressed in an extraordinary costume. Not only is he wearing a fur coat over his evening dress, but he is wrapped in a white shawl and seems to have a blanket or robe over his knees, even though it is a mild evening. Because of the arrangement of the theater, with the tiers of boxes extending to the edge of the stage, he is only a few yards from Herma. Their glances meet for an instant. He smiles faintly, then goes on watching with his intent and skeptical and yet penetrating expression.

  Hoffmann, having finished his “Ah! laisse éclore ton âme,” seizes Olympia’s hand and presses it. She stands up, still with her fixed little smile. Hoffmann, beside himself with delight, follows her as she parades stiffly around the stage in circles. Spalanzani, appearing with the chorus of guests, urges her to dance, and she falls into Hoffmann’s arms.

  “Oui! oui!”

  To the tune of a demented waltz they circle the stage, fly off into the wings, and reappear again dancing at a madder and madder pace.

  Hoffmann falls exhausted into the armchair, and Olympia, still whirling, disappears into the wings with the velocity of a cannonball. Behind the flat, in the semidarkness, she stops and turns back toward the stage.

  “Whew!”

  She exchanges a smile with the stage manager. Her part in the First Act is over. A few yards to her right the prop man, with a little machine turned by a crank, produces an appalling sound of exploding springs. Olympia is no more; the Doll is broken. “Un automate!” cries Hoffmann in anguish from the stage. The chorus sings their mocking little lament. “Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! It is shattered! shattered! shattered!”

  The stage manager watches the chorus. From where he stands he can’t see the conductor. He catches the eyes of the two stagehands waiting by their ropes. At the exact moment the chorus finishes he raises his arm and points. Curtain!

  2.

  The Second Act: Giulietta. Blechmann, the property manager, has provided a real gondola, an eighteenth-century one borrowed from the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice. It rolls on a carriage with noiseless wheels, and is drawn across the rear of the stage by a cord attached to a windlass apparatus. The gondola is a macabre and beautiful thing, a kind of black coffin with dark damask cushions. In it Herma is sitting with Maggie Teyte, who sings the role of Hoffmann’s companion Nicklausse. Madame Teyte is dressed in elegant tight-fitting silver breeches, an embroidered coat, and a short wig. Herma is in carnival costume: a black domino and a filmy black and white gown with a bouffant skirt. Her wig—it cost four hundred francs at Bodin’s in avenue de l’Opéra and she paid for it herself—is Titian blond.

  The gondola with its occupants waits offstage while the orchestra winds its way through the sinuous overture and into the Barcarolle theme. The full orchestra gives way to a harp continuo, and the stage manager raises two hands, one to Herma and the other to the man waiting at the windlass. The gondola moves forward. Herma stretches her mouth into the voix dans le masque—and now she really is wearing a mask, even though it is only a domino over the eyes.

  “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour,

  Souris à nos ivresses!”

  A funny little thought occurs to Herma—something she has forgotten for years—the man with his broken accordion in Union Square, singing, “Lovely night, oh night of love.” The Barcarolle, in fact, is about as difficult as a Baptist hymn. In the second chorus Madame Teyte joins in, in a somewhat fuller and more mature voice on the edge of the mezzo. Privately, to tell the truth, Herma and Madame Teyte are not on very good terms at the moment—Herma is jealous of Madame Teyte’s tight-fitting breeches, and Madame Teyte is even more annoyed because Herma has been given the lead in this act even though she herself knows the part thoroughly and has sung Giulietta a dozen times. However, as they glide into view on the stage, they gaze soulfully at each other.

  Madame Teyte has the easy part of the duet—Herma finds a way to suggest this by the expression on the lower part of her face, as they gaze at each other through the duet. Giulietta has the melody, and Nicklausse only follows along with her a third lower. However, the whole thing is in a low register—the trouble comes in projecting sufficiently on some of the low notes, not the highs. The highest note in the Barcarolle is only an F sharp, more than an octave below Herma’s top, while Madame Teyte—here at the end of the duet—croons away a good deal below her. But she has the range for it and can sing a mezzo part as easily as a soprano. When they finish there is a little rattle of applause from the audience, although this isn’t customary.

  Hoffmann is intrigued by the fair masked courtesan, but is warned of her false charms by Nicklausse. He begs him to flee—for, should he fall in love with her, the sinister Schlemil, her lover of the moment, would strike him down out of jealousy. “I, love a courtesan?” replies Hoffmann contemptuously. “Beware of spells and dreams,” Nicklausse tells him. He warns him that the magician Dapertutto, a second incarnation of his evil demon Coppélius, is lurking on the scene. “I’ll be damned if he makes me love her,” declares Hoffmann recklessly.

  Herma for the moment is offstage, and Chaliapin, at her elbow, is about to make his entrance as Dapertutto. He tugs at his demon costume and adjusts his wicked mustache. Although they are almost touching elbows he doesn’t smile at her or show any sign that she is there. He smells of cologne and greasepaint. Why is it, Herma thinks, that she is never particularly fond of bassos? Of course all basso parts are villain parts, but surely it can’t be that. There is something—sinister—about being able to sing so low. Bassos can make your bowels vibrate, even when you don’t want them to. And of course Chaliapin is a terrible egotist. But they are all terrible egotists. She, Herma, is a terrible egotist. And as for Maggie Teyte …

  Her hand on the curtain, she pushes it aside an inch. The hussy is still out there in her silver breeches, pretending to be a pretty youth. Her masculinity, Herma thinks, is not very convincing. Her breeches not only go all the way up her legs but a little beyond, into the vulva. A clearly visible crease shows when she faces toward the audience. The hypocritical bitch; she pretends to be so cool and English. Herma, waiting in the wings, is having a raging fit of her professional disease. Well, let her play Nicklausse in her circus tights. And to the devil too with Chaliapin, with his Russian-bear manners and his arctic aloofness. She, Herma, is Olympia, Giulietta, and Antonia—one diva in three parts, a Holy Wonder, a thing never before seen at the Opéra and declared impossible by Meyner the manager. And that was not easy to carry off. Even with Fred�
��s help, and Lloiseaux’s.

  When she came back from Verona to Paris that summer it took Herma a little while to realize that Lloiseaux had had all along the notion of casting a single soprano for the three parts of the Tales. And even, perhaps, that he had secretly thought of Herma for the role—although it was more likely that it was the timely arrival of Fred’s telegram that had put this idea in his head. She had met Lloiseaux several seasons before, when she first came to the Continent and had sung Oscar in Un Ballo in Maschera at the Opéra. It was a small part—just a page who announced people—but Lloiseaux had noticed her, offered her tactful advice, and took her sometimes for an aperitif in the afternoon to the Café de la Paix, where he always sat at the same table at the end of the terrasse, in the winter behind the removable glass partition.

  It was all perfectly innocent—Lloiseaux was a respectable gentleman in his sixties, even though he was a kind of wraith of a man, all bones and odd angles, with a piercing eye and a shock of electrified hair—something, in fact, like a character of E. T. A. Hoffmann. His eccentricities were celebrated. He walked in a kind of swoop like a flying bird, and he said “morbleu” or “ma foi” in every other phrase, usually at the end of the sentence. He also had characteristic gestures: one in which he waved an idea toward you with both hands as though he were wafting a spirit through the air, and another in which he stroked a quite imaginary beard, which seemed to end about six inches below his chin, to judge from the point where he stopped stroking.

  But who wasn’t a little eccentric, in this unreal and slightly fabulous world of the opera? At least he seemed harmless—avuncular was the word, although he made a very queer kind of uncle. The innocence in their relations persisted even though she once entertained him in her room at the Hotel Scribe, where she stayed in those days when she was in Paris. The circumstances were that there was a piano in her room and he wanted to show her something about Amelia’s part in the Ballo, and not her own little Oscar part. Why not go to the Opéra across the square, which was full of pianos, and why should he want to tell her something about Amelia’s part? Herma didn’t ask. There were many mysteries about Lloiseaux. Only a few things one could be sure of—that he had an impeccable ear, a prodigious memory, and the cunning of a fox; and that when he did something there was always a reason for it.