Free Grand Opera: The Story of the Met by Charles Affron, Mirella Jona Affron Page A

travel had been brought home to the extended Met family by the tragic death of Spanish composer/piano virtuoso Enrique Granados. On his return from New York following the world premiere of his opera Goyescas, the ship on which Granados and his wife were crossing the English Channel was torpedoed by a German submarine. Still, the Met carried on its programming very much as usual. As late as October 16, 1917, six months after the disrupted performance of The Canterbury Pilgrims, Olive Fremstad had signed to sing Isolde. A week before opening night and only nine days before her homecoming after a three-year absence, Fremstad was told that all opera in German was canceled for the season and so, therefore, was her engagement. The long-awaited Tristan und Isolde turned into Boris Godunov . The action was taken, according to the official explanation, “lest Germany should make capital of their [operas in German] continued appearance to convince the German people that this nation was not heart and soul in the war.” Though no one could have guessed it at the time, the last performance in German from the Met stage for the duration and beyond had taken place on April 13, 1917. On that occasion, Isolde was sung by Fremstad’s archrival, Johanna Gadski, a fixture at the Met from 1900 to 1917. 19
    In May 1915, a day after the attack on the Lusitania, a gala for the benefit of the German Red Cross, a performance of Die Fledermaus not sponsored by the company, was scheduled for the house. Gadski, who had lately made no secret of her ill will toward the United States, was to sing “Deutschland über Alles.” But in light of the immediacy of the outrageous act of German aggression, she thought better of it. In the same year, the soprano’s husband, Captain Hans Tauscher, was charged with conspiracy to blow up the canal between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario; he was acquitted. Gadski herself was alleged to have said publicly that, given half a chance, she would happily blow up New Jersey’s munitions plants. In an editorial titled “Overriding Tolerance,” the Globe urged Gadski’s ouster from the company for hosting a 1915 New Year’s Eve party at which her colleague, German baritone Otto Goritz, was reputed to have sung a parody in celebration of the sinking of the Lusitania . At war’s end, Gadski sued the Tribune, claiming that Krehbiel, in response to protests over her impending Carnegie Hall concert, had made libelous statements. Krehbiel had simply repeated what had been previously reported and Gadski lost at trial. 20
    The press was, of course, correct in separating the denunciation of Gadski and her fellow revelers from the defense of German opera in time of war. Thenewspapers had engaged the issue for months. A Tribune headline read, “German Opera Is Still Welcome at the Metropolitan” (Sept. 23, 1917). The Sun was confident that the public did not “think of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner as exclusively representing the Teutonic people.” The Mail declared, “Art knows no frontiers.” A ban on German opera would, for the Times, be analogous to “excluding the great classics of German literature from the public libraries.” Signed contracts and the views of influential music critics notwithstanding, in a charged climate the board bowed to war hysteria, voting to exile the German language from its auditorium and Fremstad and other leading Wagner specialists from its roster. 21
    Subscribers who objected to the new policy and demanded refunds were refused on the grounds that the company had “made no definite promise as to the complete and precise repertoire of its present season.” They were informed that “the decision of the Board of Directors to withdraw opera sung in the German language was dictated not only by a sense of patriotic duty but also by a desire to safeguard the interests of our patrons and to prevent possible disorder.” The German-language repertoire tentatively announced for 1917–18,