by Beth E. Levy
A similar but simpler moral economy guides Cadman's operetta The Golden Trail, in which the miners operate on the periphery of a convoluted domestic drama devised by George Murray Brown, who also wrote the lyrics for Lelawala. The widower Don Carlos Alvarado is traveling south to Sonora with his daughter Barbarita, who is in love with the valiant Pony Express rider Smiling Charlie. Stationed at the foothills of the Sierras, the Golden Trail Hotel makes room for them even though the dashing Don Pedro Carranza has taken up residence with his entourage and despite the fact that a wagon train of westward moving emigrants is expected to arrive at any moment. In contrast to Puccini's score, there is no homesickness whatsoever at the Golden Trail Hotel, only the excitement of multicultural encounter.
Unlike Fanciulla's miners, Don Carlos and the emigrants travel as families, and much of the first act is devoted to highlighting their cultural differences. The Hispanic characters are divided between the respectable Spanish Alvarado family and the Mexican Don Pedro (a.k.a. the singing bandit Murietta). Like Fanciulla's prostitute, Nina Micheltorena, he only pretends to be Spanish, but he does so poorly; when hotel proprietor Mike O'Rourke asks his guests how they wish to eat supper, Don Alvarado replies “a la Espagnol,” while Don Pedro suggests “a la Mexico”—to which the freckled orphan emigrant Tad protests “Alabama!”
When the emigrant Hurd family appears on the horizon (just after the bandits have sneaked off with the miners' gold), they sing a lusty march called “The Golden Trail”: “From farthest east to farthest west, Across the desert sand, / O'er mountain height, we toil with might, A bold and dauntless band.” The Anglo travelers match Spanish serenades with square dances. But even before their wagon train arrives on the scene, there is a diverse “American” presence. The oddest man out is certainly Montmorency Puddington, whom hotel proprietor Mike O'Rourke describes as a “tenderfoot…. From Bawston and now my pardner. Also, house-maid, waitress, gardener, book-keeper and utility man.” Set apart by his effeminacy and his ambiguous social class, Monty is the chief source of comic relief—standing in sharp contrast to western locals like Trapper Joe and a band of Gold Creek miners who take the stage to sing a parody of Stephen Foster's “Oh, Susanna.” Although its imitation banjo strumming may evoke the black-and-white imagery of the plantation south, in this arrangement (as in many other western settings), gold has displaced black or white as the primary color referent.14
Given the stark differences sketched between the families moving on the “golden trail,” it is all the more remarkable that the operetta ends with not one, but two Anglo-Hispanic couples: the predictable union of Barbarita and Smiling Charlie and the utterly unexpected engagement of Monty to Carmela, Queen of the Mexican Dancers. Monty and Carmela never have the chance to sing together, but Barbarita and Charlie share music that reflects Cadman's attitudes toward their union. Their “Betrothal Dance” is labeled a tango in the vocal score, and it comes complete with habañera rhythms, frequent motion in parallel thirds, and the indication that, if Charlie and Barbarita do not wish to dance, “this number may be performed entirely by Mexican Dancing Girls.” Attentive listeners may hear a softening of the habañera profile, however, particularly as the number progresses (example 18). It is frequently overlaid with rhythmic patterns that Cadman considered characteristic of a fiddle tune or frontier square dance. Downbeats subdivided into an eighth note plus two sixteenth notes muddy any audible lingering on the tango's all-important dotted eighth. Hereafter, and particularly when she sings of love, the Spanish Barbarita will employ the unmarked “Anglo” style of Cadman's sentimental ballads, unsullied by even the whiff of a corporeal habañera.
EXAMPLE 18. “Betrothal Dance (Tango)” from The Golden Trail, mm. 1-15 (Cincinnati: Willis Music Co., 1929)
The implied absorption of Spanish into Anglo becomes more explicit in an optional tableau that may be inserted immediately after the “Betrothal Dance.” Here, without warning, the allegorical figure of Columbia emerges out of an otherwise normal choral reprise of the “Golden Trail.” Speaking with a fervor worthy of Farwell's dramatic masques, she reveals the true historical importance of Charlie and Barbarita's engagement: “(Gesture to the emigrants, L. H.) My children of the east, you are winning in the golden lands of the west, (Gesture to Californians, R.H.) My children of the west, you are winning the best blood of the east. (Unfurls flag and holds aloft) Under one flag! Forever one people! (Here, while Columbia waves Stars and Stripes, piano or orchestra strikes up and plays one verse of ‘America.’)” Charlie and Barbarita celebrate a melting-pot marriage, meant not just to signal Charlie's graduation from pony express rider to family man, but also to mark the maturation of his United States through the fruitful union of eastern blood and western land. The riches of the West—literally the gold dust of the suspicious miners, figuratively the Alvarado family jewels—thus become a betrothal gift to those Anglo men who seize their destiny as discoverers.
MISSIONARY WORK
The miracle of the western mine lies not just in its veins of ore, but also in the way its treasure is hidden from view. To discover its riches requires a certain amount of speculation and often a leap of faith. As the real action of Manifest Destiny was bound up with experiences of pilgrimage and conversion—from the stalwart Puritans to the Mormon migration—so the rugged trails and desert expanses of the West offered a backdrop for strenuous spiritual endeavor. Taking their place alongside the all-purpose Protestant churches that came to dot the plains and the solitary homestead corners where pioneer women observed designated “prayer hours” with distant fellow believers, the most dramatic sites for religious encounter in North America were surely the Spanish missions. Here the theological disparity between Franciscan Padres and Indian neophytes was matched by looming battles among world powers for dominion over the western lands of Texas, New Mexico, and California.
The conflicts of colonization are part and parcel of mission-themed texts, whether they are set in the Southwest—like Helen Hunt Jackson's widely read novel Ramona (1884)—or the Northwest, the location of Mary Carr Moore's historically inspired grand opera Narcissa. The 1847 massacre of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and their Presbyterian converts made a gripping tale, and some survivors still lived in the Seattle area when Moore's opera was premiered there in 1912. Moore recalled: “The stirring romance and martyrdom of the Whitmans…interested me beyond measure. It seemed that someone should commemorate the lives of these noble patriots.”15 According to Catherine Parsons Smith and Cynthia S. Richardson, Moore first urged Farwell or San Franciscan Henry Hadley to try their hands at an operatic rendition; after they refused, she turned to her mother, an accomplished writer, for a libretto.
Sarah Pratt Carr and her daughter chose to call their opera The Cost of Empire, and for good reason. In her foreword to the 1912 piano-vocal score (published by Witmark thanks in part to Farwell's endorsement), Sarah Pratt Carr stated that “missionary passion is the theme of the opera, with patriotism as a second motive scarcely less powerful.” When the curtain rises, the U.S. claim to Oregon Territory is contested by the British; in Act 2, we meet the Englishman McLoughlin, whose American sympathies cause him to lose his job with the Hudson Bay Company; and in Act 3, Marcus prepares for a dangerous midwinter trek to Washington, DC, to urge the U.S. government not to cede the Columbia River valley. An ensemble number foreshadows his success. Against an orchestral “Star-Spangled Banner,” the settlers proclaim “Our country's flag, the glory of the Lord,” while the Natives mutter “Woe, the Indians' fate is sealed” and McLoughlin admits “My doom comes with the morrow, my state is gone.”16 In the end, however, the victorious outcome of Marcus's geopolitical “mission” places his religious mission in peril, for it is “a cowardly American” who murders the friendly Indian Elijah, thus giving the bellicose Indians led by Delaware Tom an excuse to avenge themselves against the Whitmans. In the end, McLoughlin is the only Anglo to survive; yet it is the wailing of the Indian women that brings the opera to its close. Delaware T
om may have won the battle, but the Indians are destined to lose the war.
While territorial conquest is never far from the surface of Narcissa, Christian conversion is ostensibly the Whitmans' goal, and religious themes inflect the opera in several ways. Perhaps predictably, the Christian Indians sing differently from the non-Christian ones. As Smith and Richardson observe, “The two most colorful character roles in the opera belong to unfriendly Indians.” By contrast, the convert Elijah sings an innocuous ballad to his beloved Siskadee before departing to explore California. Despite the Act 2 war dances and the final massacre, both Moore and her mother were outspoken about their attempt to depict Indian life with sympathy. The foreword to the score reads: “Misunderstood, defrauded, outraged, his relations with Americans make that chapter in our history one of growing shame. No plea of the ‘destiny of the white race' can ever wipe out the infamy. The Whitmans least of all people deserved their martyrdom; yet according to Indian ethics—probably as good as any in the sight of God—their lives paid only a just debt.”17
While religious identity helps shape the music of Narcissa, the pace of religious ritual seems also to have shaped its narrative, as a critic for Musical America noted: “There is a solemnity and dignity pervading the whole which never loses its grip…. Strangely enough, there is not a single incident in the action of the play worthy of the name, until the climax.” Indeed, Smith and Richardson have pointed out that the first act of Narcissa, in which the missionaries are commissioned to leave upstate New York, was occasionally performed on its own as a cantata.18 The later action at the mission is more varied, but there are few extraneous subplots, few emotional arias, and no carefully engineered scenes of confrontation. One audience member testified: “I have twice witnessed the Passion Play in Oberammergau, and this opera…approaches nearer to that than anything else I have ever witnessed.” The critic for Musical America concurred: “It would seem as if ‘Narcissa' is destined to be featured in historical pageants, instead of becoming part of popular operatic repertoire.”19
The missionary work that stood the best chance of joining “the popular operatic repertoire” was not Narcissa but Natoma, Victor Herbert's much-vaunted effort at historical Americanism.20 Composing at almost precisely the same time, Moore and Herbert arrived at their grand operas from different directions: Moore came by way of the cantata, while Herbert was undergoing a very public conversion from operetta to more “serious” fare. As might be expected, Natoma relies on love triangles, local-color choruses, and stock character types. Still, Herbert could not sidestep the question of “authenticity.” He described his use of Indian themes in terms quite similar to Cadman's: “I have composed all of Natoma's music, at least the greater part of it, out of fragments of Indian music, which I have collected and studied for some time past. However, I have pursued none of these melodies to their logical conclusion. If I used Indian music with all its original intervals and cadences it would become very monotonous, and so, of course, I have adapted it.”21
Herbert's tunes came by way of his librettist, Joseph Deighn Redding (attorney, composer, and creator of several “Grove Plays” for San Francisco's Bohemian Club). Redding also drew on historical sources to justify his much-maligned libretto and his multifaceted understanding of its title character.22 As servant and bosom friend of the Spanish debutante Barbara de la Guerra, Natoma is demure, watchful, and charming. In service of the plot, however, she becomes a creature of conflicting impulses: as the would-be lover of the “Americano” Paul, she is Barbara's unrequited rival; when accused by the crafty Castro of abandoning her Indian heritage, she is a haughty princess: “You half-breed,” she cries. “Don't touch me! You are no Indian!” When Castro later challenges her to the ancient (and apocryphal) “Dagger Dance” amid the Spanish dances of the fiesta, she drops her civilized mien and stabs the Spaniard Alvarado when he attempts to kidnap Barbara.23 Yet, in the end, Natoma is transfigured almost without explanation into an obedient and cloistered devotee of the Catholic Church.
In Narcissa, the plot replicated the missionaries' westward journey from their home church in New York to the Whitman Mission. But in Natoma the mission is present from the opening. In Act 1, all anticipate Barbara's return from the mission's convent school. The Act 2 celebration, dance, and murder of Alvarado occur under the shadow of the church's facade, outside in the Spanish plaza—a colorful marketplace of piping shepherds, Mescal-drinking guitar players, fruit vendors, and whip-cracking vaqueros. Act 3 transpires within the mission itself. As we are drawn into the ceremonial presence of the mission, its figurehead, Father Peralta, also grows in stature. In Act 1, he is courteous, even obsequious, to Barbara's father, Don Francisco. He remains invisible during the climactic events of Act 2 until Natoma's stabbing of Alvarado incites the crowd against her. At this point, Paul shouts “To the rescue!” But it is actually Father Peralta who silences the mob with the imperious words “Hold, hold, nomine Christi!” From this moment onward, Peralta towers over all the opera's other characters. Natoma drops her bloody dagger and falls at the padre's feet while he intones “Vengeance is mine saith the Lord!”
Up to this point, much of Natoma's action has unfolded in song and dance. But once the action moves inside the mission, an atmosphere of religious ritual prevails. Alone on the altar steps, Natoma might be expected to offer up a prayer. Yet the childless heroine instead sings a lullaby—a peculiar choice, but one that prepares the way for Father Peralta, who calms and converts the refugee in his sanctuary by appealing to her childhood memory of the mutual affection between her and Barbara. At the padre's signal, an onstage organ begins to play, monks open the mission doors, and the church fills with congregants as the sun slowly sets. Candles are lit and nuns (anachronistic, as convents did not appear in California until after the missions had been secularized) sing “Te lucis ante terminum.” The pantomime action overlaid on their sacred song looks for all the world like a wedding procession. According to the stage directions in the score, Paul and his fellow officers occupy one side of the aisle; Barbara and her father, the other. Then “NATOMA steps slowly down toward the main aisle. She walks down main aisle, reaches the pews where PAUL and BARBARA are seated, pauses, and turns facing altar. BARBARA and PAUL, as though under the spell of some controlling power, come into aisle and kneel in front of NATOMA, who takes the amulet from off her neck and places it over BARBARAS shoulders. She then turns and continues down main aisle to cross-aisle, then turns and walks between the kneeling nuns up cross-aisle to open door of convent garden.” The mission has swallowed up all the principal characters: Paul and Barbara in a mystic, Anglo-Hispanic marriage, Natoma in the chastity of the convent. While the region's future population might spring from the young lovers, the church doors close upon Natoma, burdened as she is by her inexplicable but apparently inevitable regression to savagery and murder.24
The librettist Redding described the opera's symbolic treatment of race: “To me Natoma is somewhat allegorical in that she epitomizes the pathos and heartache of the disappearing race as against the influx of the Aryan tribes. Again the work shows that two characters are virtually obliterated: the devil-may-care and romantic Spaniard and the Indian.”25 The fiery Alvarado dies by the native dagger, leaving the elderly Spanish men (Father Peralta and Don Francisco) to live out their days in peace. Meanwhile, with Father Peralta as presiding magician, Natoma performs the vanishing act expected of her as “the last of her race.” What's more, with her final gesture she cedes her birthright (as represented by the abalone amulet she received from her father) to Barbara, and by extension to Paul. Already decorated with the Castilian lace she inherited at her coming of age, Barbara now wears the tokens of both East and West, civilized artifact and natural emblem. And as for Paul, while his status as an “Americano” (stationed on a ship called the “Liberty”) at first set him apart from the Californian community, he becomes at the last its pater familias.26
Cadman heard Natoma in 1911, and Shanewis may reflect some less
ons learned from Herbert's free treatment of Americana; in fact, at least one critic seems to have confused the two “Indian operas” in retrospect.27 Natoma also bears comparison with Cadman's later mission operetta, The Bells of Capistrano, completed in 1928 on another text by George Murray Brown. Replete with an Indian serving girl, Spanish maids, Anglo lovers, and lively cowboys, it also unfolds in the shadow of a mission, but in the manner of any good operetta, it steers its cast of characters out of tragic circumstances into carefully coupled happiness and good fortune.
More than Moore's or Herbert's scores, The Bells of Capistrano deals explicitly with matters of real estate. The Rancho Ortego belongs to Ramon but is heavily mortgaged to the villainous Jake Kraft, who has convinced some disgruntled Indians to rustle the Rancho herd, thereby ensuring bankruptcy and foreclosure. The mission attracts guests to the Rancho, including “eastern scientist” Professor Anderson and James Alden, who (in apparent homage to preservationist Charles Lummis) has been commissioned to restore the crumbling California missions. Alden's daughter Marian happens to be in love with Ramon, and Professor Anderson's students happen to fall in love with Ramon's sisters. (The Indian girl Noneeta loves Lone Eagle, and Professor Anderson's sister Laura is destined for the cowboy Billy Burns, leaving no female unattached.) A prophecy has circulated that if the damaged mission bells were to ring again, the Indians' stolen lands would be restored. More mysterious still, the last padre died with a secret on his lips—something about a treasure. The Bells of Capistrano thus treats its mission as a locus of superstition and material wealth more than spiritual enlightenment.
