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Alvary spent a whole year in learning this rôle, availing himself of the hints given him by Herr Seidl, who has the Wagnerian traditions by heart; and to-day he might, if he felt so inclined, amass wealth and win honor by travelling about Europe and singing nothing but this one rôle. Vienna and Brussels made strenuous efforts to entice him away from New York after his great success as Siegfried.
THURSDAY. They keep two teams of singers in stock for the chief roles, and one of these is composed of the most renowned artists in the world, with Materna and Alvary in the lead. I suppose a double team is necessary; doubtless a single team would die of exhaustion in a week, for all the plays last from four in the afternoon till ten at night.
According to W. F. Apthorp, Max Alvary once said that, considering the emotional intensity of music and situations, the constant co-operation of the surging orchestra, and, most of all, the unconquerable feeling of the reality of it all, it was a wonder that singing actors did not go stark mad, before the very faces of the audience, in parts like Tristan or Siegfried.... The critics, however, were inexorable; they stood by their guns.
If it were possible to secure half a dozen more singers like Lehmann, Alvary, and Fischer, the operatic problem might be regarded as solved. It is the scarcity of first-class acting vocalists that makes opera so expensive, and prevents it from being self-supporting.
The cast was as follows: Isolde, Lilli Lehmann; Brangane, Marianne Brandt; Tristan, Albert Niemann; Kurwenal, Adolf Robinson; Konig Marke, Emil Fischer; Melot, Rudolph von Milde; ein Hirt, Otto Kemlitz; ein Steuermann, Emil Saenger; ein Seemann, Max Alvary. Two circumstances bid us look a little carefully into the instrumental prelude with which Wagner has prefaced his drama.
But we have had Materna and Niemann and Brandt and Fischer, and Alvary and Lehmann, who have given us correct ideas of the German vocal style. Surely no one can say, on listening to Lehmann's Brünnhilde, or Fischer's Hans Sachs, or Alvary's Siegfried, that the vocal part is inferior in beauty or importance to the orchestral.
Herr Alvary, the second of the vocalists who unite Italian with German merits, is a young singer who has a great future before him, if his Siegfried, a most realistic and powerful impersonation, may be argued from. And as for the third of these artists Lilli Lehmann her equal can hardly to-day be found on the operatic stage.
When Alvary sang Siegfried for the first time in New York, he presented a creditable but uneven impersonation, not having sufficiently mastered the details of the acting to feel quite at ease, and not being able to husband his vocal resources for the grand duo at the close.
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