THE OREGON SUNDAY" JOURNAL. PORTLAND. SUNDAY ; KORNING. MAY f0 1903
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Vocal chords
TUTARE AS VALUABLE
ZASG0LD MINES
. TJ W in Toulouse, in France.
X efore judges of this, year's
, - group of candidates, in the public com
petition for the discovery of new, tenors,
a dark, handsome-man, clad in the humblest.
f garb, advanced and began to sing. ,
' . "t,is Nicnut Villeneuve, the sand
"dredger, the dog clipper," they remarked.
41 Oh, brave; but very ignorant."
As brave as he rvas poor, for he saved
mtny Jives during the flood that devastated
wide areas in the south of France; as poor
as he was brave, for his repeated risk of his
i life brought him not a centime of reward to
"keep handsome body and daring joul to
gether; and as ignorant as he -was pre .
sumptuous, for he knew, with his eyes, not
one note from another of the music he as-"
! pired to sing.
But when he sang! When the clear,
crystal purity of his une quale d tenor notes
welled, bell-like, upon the thrilling air , what
a charge in the attitude of the judges
- The cable heralded his name to distant
lands. A II France rejoiced, as though it had
acquired a new government or another
fashion. Riches fabulous, uncountable
the homage of the multitudes, the passion
ate admiration of women, the luxuries of
monarchsjjhe castles of their nobles await
the magic of his voice. -. ;
For he owns the great tenor's vocal
chords, which make words. golden, whose iie&
.vcTjr oreain ts. rtcnes.
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warbling trials of her wondrous voice, prepara-.' i ' ff
torytothe glorious flights she musttake in
"Lucia.", "Tha secret! There is no secret. The -
voice is an endowment, not a reward to be ac ' " "
Ah, yes; a fairly good voice-can be made
more pleasing by expert cultivation ; but it can
never astonish, never inspire the supreme de--light.
" The voice is not all, perhaps; to; make'
the artist, there must be," in the temperament,
the' feeling ; for music, an instinct for the
emotions of the heart. Yet these, without the
Tocal chords alas, it is the poet born dumb.
1 1 bee 1 have always had the voice. For
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'TpWO slender little lines of ivory white that
'. 1 ' ) show, in their sheer nakedness of mus
," 3l ' ' cularity, side by ide amid the delicate
' V" pinkness of the ainger'a throat every
human being who is ; able , to speak-articulately
has them, and not one in one million has them
in the perfection which makes the world-famous
tenor or soprano. ': ':-. . . . !.
They are heaven's capricious, unaccountable
gift, as commonly denied to the rich as they
are liable to be conferred upon: the poor. ;.
The ; daughter of an Emma Nevada may
chance to inherit her robust father's physique
and her melodious mother's throat;- the mother
thrush will hasten her child prodigy to the stage
before she has grown up to long dresses. .
And perennial processions of the ambitious
poor and the1 adulated rich may petake them-
stives to tne JUarcbesis and JJe iieszkes, eager to
irive life and health and fortune for the power
they crave, onlr to -tearn tnat the workers of Her sisters, both,' were sixers. One w. oil
r.uc. u m.racuiouS material as . lotta, a miracle in coloratura. l.""
trst enaowment ot jiature. .- : fMm Wruli...,. .1. CrV"'"""3'
; . r, .-u, .UUD wumjcuucj irom oper
atic rivalry with Adeline. ' .
stein called for a payment of $4000 a night, and
she' was to sing in a number of concerts at the
same price. .
She was expected to do little more concert
singing than Patti; and, at the same average of
notes, her earnings must have reached (222
. j note. - - .- 1
" AVhen the opera season, ended in ;Nf vr York
a calculation was madq of tho money that single
- city had paid for the pleasure of listening to the
more or less famous singers of the Metropolitan
and. the Manhattan companies.
Included in the list were such sums as $1000
for Caruso at every performance in which he
sang; $1500 each for Calve and Mary Garden,
the latter the one woman on the operatio stage
who has made daring costume . and intense .
! dramatic power replace, in a measure, the won
( defs f the perfect singing voice; $1000 each for J
Jomelli,Renaud and Challapine; $500 each for !
I Emma Eames and Zenittello; $700 for Geraldine
Farrar, and $200 "for Ellen Beach Yaw, whose
r astounding high notes are esteemed less as legiti
mate vocalization than as preciosities of music,
j curiously interesting rather than potently thrill
j ing. ' , ' '.
' When all was said and done, when the full
, account was taken, it appeared that New York's
' opera enjoyment had cost $2,310,000; for the
j directors, the musicians, the minor singers all
' the vast ensemble that makes up the opera
had to be included. . " V ' ,
i v ; $4,000,000 A .YEAR FOR MUSIC
Yet the season's music in Carnegie Hall,
which cost $650,000, and the miscellaneous con
certs, that brought to their promoters a million
more, were still tx come into the. account, until
the musical .expense bill of om great American
city was only a triflo' under $4,000,000.
Yet of all these singers, from the great
Grisi, whom childish ; Patti reproved, ;, to the
great Jean de Keszke, with his recompense of
$1250 a night, nonei has ever approached the
enormous wealth which has como to one man,
. utterly unknown to fame as. a Singer. ,
Charles M. Schwab, witL his fortune vari
ously estimated at from $12,000,00$ to $25,000,
000, can look at the Carnegie residencoon Fifth
avenue and thank his lucky stars that, if his old
patron war born wi th an -ear i or -music, he him -self
. was born with something like the vocal
chorda of a Caruso.
At 8 o'clock every morning a master organ
, ist takes bis place at , the' great organ in the '
main-hall of-the Carnegie residence. 'For an
hour, while the owner enjoys his' breakfast, his
vtaste for: musio is gratified. lie is the same
f Carnegie to wbom, years ago, bellicose "Bill"
Jones sent the daily reports of the Jbraddock
"When the once peerless sonsrbird was ac . Grau.' which was notoriously a failure. ; !
:: cnxflulating the $3,500,000 which she hai earn- ; She contracted for a minimum recompense mills by messenger, because Jones and his chief
; ed by- her voice, and when people werrf being of $5000 a concert, with sixty in the series; and, always quarreled when they discussed them. '
crushed to death in the frantie struggles 'waired every time she sane, she 'rot the money. She r" ; The messenger was a lad of 18, "Charley"
mghtly in. New York to. hear her nightingale was on the stage for no more than forty min- , Schwab, whose hrst appearance with the Jones
. v " - - . iiiirii i iv in
in SoS wfnfn1 h-flVe TU m:Ialy i not", she was the cause of the contention be- utes. Apart irom the royally'- splendid accom- coincidedwith, Carnegie a immurement
" r"10"', m Ef8ia. I do not take vtween' Mapleson and Abbe which resulted in modationa furnished hat a cost which the n hls home with an injured ankl: The boy,
that iTMtmTto iJ -lmpi7 Uv1 Te h! the salary crime" that was supposed to be unhappr impresario: alone can estimate, she Xapparently .cared not . a d cent about the
nleasp m. 'IL" aesunea 10 noia tne record iorever in musical
.wwow U4vi Avjviuiiu in inn rman aia vim
the natural foods my appeiite craves, letting my
M C"5 of itself nwh is all that
- kindly Nature demands of me."
."Si11 -Krure kindness, the diva
draws $3000 from Oscar Hammerstein every
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extravagance.
.. Abbey offered her a contract, with .W. H.
Vanderbilt as guarantor, , at $5000 a night;
Mapleson offered her $400C and wooed her with
flowers. Shylock as she can be, Patti has loyalty
in her nature. She chose Mapleson's offer. -But
:s the price marked the begmning'of the era of
conjur great musio for the United States; ; it set. a
Adelina Patti to Wlr tMr 4 t,
Seszkesager to v; ing name-declared she never studied at 11 ih ' P i?? Jteatai
s for the power .rt of the voice; it was born in hei baby oftt eV ot TV
the workers of II Her sisters, both niabZ.that-. ,Y?t only -a few years ago, . u
"The secret t" protested Tetrazzini, between'
garded now as positively, "her last appearance"
here, when age had staled that unapproachable
voice, Patti herself-surpassed the record, in a
concert ttour, tinder the auspices - of Robert
received 8125 a minute while she was at work.'.w. Carnegie ; ne was an eyes lor the grand
.--She sang an average of 1800 notes during a.rpiano.m ne rnertfj-rr r
concert, at the rate of $2.77-a note. If ahe ; "Can you playl inquired the steel master.
Breathed every second, ahe earned $2 every time ' ' Sm? answered the non-jalant Charles,
she drew her breath, For all the failure of the - ahead, then. . - r ; ; . : ,
enterprise, Patti returned to Europe with $200.- V ' H went ahead, reveling m the splendid in
000 to add gto her hoard the - rich gleanings strument, and speedily launching his strong and
from the last, exhausted vein of the gold mine sweet tenor voice into songs that 'delighted
she carried in her throat. - ; fli Carnegie. He was held at the piano for two
Melbavhas-4 already attained th level 'of hours that evening, ana Jones received word to
keep on sending in nis reports by the tuneful
messenger.-' - ' r
..The "Charley" Sehwab who was Cartts
songbird remained with him to become . his
partner. . V" -.' .
in-what is re- Patti's high salary of years ago. When she' last
came . to the United States, "with a corps of
detectives waiting at the pier to undertake the
safeguarding of her half-million dollars' worth
of jewels, her opera 'contract with .Hammer-