276 years of Goethe! Today would have been the birthday of the famous German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
David Bispham sings Schubert's "Erlkönig", recorded 6 March 1906.
From The American singer; a hundred years of success in opera by Thompson, Oscar, 1887-1945:
DAVID BISPHAM
DAVID SCULL BISPHAM bided his time. America's first internation-ally celebrated operatic baritone was an exception to the rule that great singers are early on the stage. One compendium gives the average age of famous women singers at the time of their débuts as 19; of famous men singers at 23. Consequently the fuss that at-tended the first appearance of two or three latter-day American sing-ers who had barely turned twenty could find little justification in comparisons with past parallels. But Bispham had reached thirty four when he made his début in London. True, he had been singing for years, in an amateur capacity; and he had given his stage talents a preparatory test in Philadelphia eleven years before the London début. Before going abroad he took part in a private performance of a work composed by a musician of his native city. However, that appearance in Eleanor Parrish's Golden-Haired Gertrude at the home of the composer scarcely warrants signaling out 1880 for the year of his stage début, as some of the lexicons do.
The fates were not propitiously inclined toward a musical career for young Bispham. Born in Philadelphia, Jan. 4, 1857, of Quaker stock, he grew up in a home that did not possess a piano. During part of his boyhood, room was made for a small reed organ, but the youth's instrumental accomplishments as he approached maturity were confined to the banjo and the zither. These he took up in his college days at Haverford. There he showed an aptitude for lan-guages, an aptitude that was of distinct value to him when he finally drifted into a musical career. To an uncle who took him to see his first opera in Philadelphia-a performance of Mignon with Clara Louise Kellogg in the title rôle and to his grandfather, whose home was a rendezvous for groups of children who sang hymns together -the youth owed such musical incentives as he had in his formative years. He early heard Zelda Seguin in opera, some concerts of the Thomas orchestra and song programs by Max Heinrich, who after-wards became an influence in shaping Bispham's musical destiny. Heinrich, a successful oratorio and Lieder singer, had come to Philadelphia from Germany when he was twenty years old and his career was chiefly in America. Bispham has related that he first heard Heinrich sing in one of Philadelphia's German beer gardens.
With no serious thought of a musical career Bispham "went into business" in Moorestown, N. J., with his uncle, David Scull, at $4 a week. It was the wool business, a long way removed from the fleshpots of opera. For a time, medicine was considered as the likely vocation for the hearty, active and still completely footloose young man. But in some manner he had been inoculated with the singing virus. Amateur choruses appealed to him. At 23, he had his amateur fling in Eleanor Parrish's private opera, already mentioned. The following summer he participated in a performance of Sullivan's Cox and Box at Bar Harbor. He began taking singing lessons from Edward Giles, a church bass; joined the Orpheus Club of Philadelphia, conducted by Michael Cross; and became a member of St. Mark's choir, under Menton Pyne, an English organist who incul-cated in him a love of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Soon he sang a small solo part with the Cecilian Oratorio Society. In his Recollections he tells of appearing with Reginald de Koven and others in a performance of Sweethearts. "Like a stenographer friend of mine," he wrote, "I did not let my work interfere with what was on my mind." He remained at St. Mark's for four years, becoming precentor there about 1884.
Of this period, he re-told a story related to him by Gustav Kobbé, the New York critic (1857-1918). It seems that Kobbé was talking with an elderly Quaker when Bispham walked by, humming. The Quaker pointed to Bispham and said: "Does thee see the young man going along there singing? Well, he is the grandson of an old friend of mine, but I tell thee he isn't going to come to any good, for he is always fooling around after music." Commenting upon this, Bispham wrote: "I have often thought since of Kobbé's story and of how essential it is for a person, in order to make a success of anything, to be always thinking of it and doing it, as far as lies in his power, and not to fool around after it."
The famous operatic baritones, Galassi and Del Puente, were the models of the amateur Bispham. When Georg Henschel became the first conductor of the Boston Symphony, Bispham went to consult him about the wisdom of taking up an artistic career. Hen-schel, under whose baton he sang later, discouraged him because of his apparent lack of musicianship, Henschel, it will be remembered, was almost equally gifted as a pianist, conductor and singer. There-after, Bispham was one of those who regarded musicianship as an essential to success in song, though his late start made difficult for him the acquirement of technical proficiency in any form of musical expression except that of the voice.
Bispham married Caroline Russell, daughter of Gen. Charles S. Russell, on April 28, 1885. Three children, two daughters and a son, were born to them, but they separated in 1908. The son, David Bispham, Jr., was killed in November, 1917, while on duty in the World War as a lieutenant of the Royal Flying Corps; one of a succession of saddening events in the final years of the patriarchal Bispham, who went on singing, teaching, campaigning for American opera and opera in English until almost his last day.
Soon after his marriage, the still amateur singer went abroad. In London he met the singing teacher, William Shakespeare, with whom he was later to study. He attended a festival at Bayreuth, where he heard Lilli Lehmann and Gura. The year 1886 found Bispham in Italy. He had definitely decided upon a musical career and, aided by an uncle, he placed himself under the tutelage of Vannuccini. One day he accidentally struck himself on the throat with his cane and was voiceless for some time. He went through the torment of fear that he would never sing again. He was thirty. Lost time now was irreparable. But he gradually recovered use of the voice box. In addition to Vannuccini he studied with Lamperti in Milan and Shakespeare in London. He was now determined upon the stage, though, as a concession to his mother, he had thought primarily of a career as an oratorio singer when he went abroad. Opera, however, was now in his blood and at one of the famous Birmingham festivals in England he had listened only too readily to the words of J. B. Long, the conductor, who told him that "oratorio is only opera spoiled."
Bispham later recalled how his master, Vannuccini, one of the most celebrated of singing teachers, denounced Tamagno, his own pupil, for singing to the groundlings, instead of relying upon his artistic instincts and his musical intelligence. Among the inter-esting personalities with whom the budding baritone was associated during his sojourn abroad were the actor, Salvini; the poet, Brown-ing; the novelist, Ouida; the scientist, Huxley. Still a student at 32, and troubled over his injured throat, he resorted to hypnotic treat-ments and dabbled with the spiritists and the Planchette diviner. It was "Planchette," he later averred, who persuaded him to study Wagnerian rôles when he had no prospect of singing them. When unexpected opportunities came to him later, he had not forgotten the advice. He was ready.
In 1890, Bispham had a number of appearances in amateur light opera in London and began making his way in concert. Grosvenor Gallery was the scene of what is commonly regarded as his profes-sional concert début. He was encouraged to learn the rôle of Cedric in Sullivan's grand opera, Ivanhoe, but never was called upon to sing it. Later, he frequently made use of one of its airs in his concert programs. His stage début, now at hand, was to be made not in an English, but a French work, Messager's La Basoche. At 34, the American was chosen from among fifty singers for the rôle of the Duc de Longueville. The work was staged at the Royal English Opera House, Shaftesbury Avenue, and it was there on Nov. 3, 1891, that David Scull Bispham completely turned his back on cer-tain preachments that had followed him from childhood, and made his public bow before the footlights of opera. He was highly praised not only for his good singing but for his humorous acting.
Sir Augustus Harris was then the operatic factotum in London, with performances under his ægis taking place concurrently at Covent Garden and at Drury Lane. A message came to Bispham saying that Harris wanted a Beckmesser. He was called upon to go into rehearsal at once for a performance of Wagner's Die Meister-singer that was to have none other than Jean de Reszke as Walther, the almost equally celebrated Jean Lassalle as Hans Sachs and the much-adored Emma Albani as Eva. De Reszke was 42, Lassalle 45, Albani 40. Less their junior in years than in repute, Bispham could scarcely have dreamt of a more glamorous beginning than with such a cast of topnotchers. It was not to be. De Reszke fell ill, and there was a change of bill. Then opportunity knocked at the door at the other house. A Kurwenal was needed there. So at Drury Lane, with Gustav Mahler conducting, Bispham sang that rôle as his first Wag-nerian part and his first part in serious opera. The same year (1892) found him regularly engaged at Covent Garden, adding rôle to rôle. He adhered largely to the advice of "Planchette," singing chiefly Wagnerian parts, though he added Pizarro in Beethoven's Fidelio. In 1893 he sang Fiorenza in Mascagni's now-forgotten Rant-zau. In 1897 he was Johannes in a production of Kienzl's Der Evangelimann. He created the part of William the Conqueror in Cowen's Harold at Covent Garden, June 8, 1895; Benedick in Stan-ford's Much Ado About Nothing, May 30, 1901 and Rudolf in Dame Ethel Smyth's Der Wald, June 10, 1902. The Dutchman, Wolfram, Telramund, Wotan, Alberich, Kurwenal and Beckmesser were, however, his outstanding rôles, in England as well as in America. With the candor worthy of a great artist, Bispham says in his autobiography that his Kurwenal and his Beckmesser were gener-ally recognized as the best of his time.
Among those whom Bispham later took occasion to thank for encouragement in his early London days was George Bernard Shaw, then a music critic, not yet come to the pinnacle of fame. Shaw, as may be recalled, has not been reluctant to accept the credit for in-fluencing the de Reszke brothers to sing German opera in German. At the time Bispham almost made his Covent Garden entry as Beck-messer in the company of Jean, Meistersinger, like the other Wagner works, invariably was presented in Italian. During his Covent Garden years occurred the incident which Bispham later described as The Unflying Dutchman. The old stage was sadly in need of repair. At a performance of Wagner's gloomy saga of the sea, the Dutchman's ship, careening into port with the momentum supplied by unseen brawn working with ropes and pulleys, became stuck in a crack. Bispham could not appropriately begin his air, "The term is past," until he had set foot on shore. The head stage carpenter solved the dilemma by providing him with a plank on which to walk over the canvas waves.
In another performance, when Bispham was singing Telramund, the curtain went up on a Lohengrin performance only to reveal that a Henley regatta scene had been used for a back drop. In a repre-sentation of Rheingold, with Bispham as Alberich, one of the Rhine daughters was suspended by the heel and screamed furiously for help. In a transformation scene in Tannhäuser, the tenor Van Dyck's wig was yanked off by some moving scenery. He snatched it back, but in his haste to cover his shining bald head, put it on backwards, so that his face was covered with long hair. The first time that Bispham played Falstaff with Harris's company-a performance of Verdi's opera in English at Blackpool-he perspired so in his bulky padding that his false nose melted and fell. When he stepped on it a moment later, he slipped and fell prone on his generous front. Bispham loved a story and perhaps it is no great matter if one that he related of a performance of Otello fails to conform to the stage business. Maurel as Iago, according to the story, put his foot on the prostrate form of Tamagno's Otello. Bispham tried it with Alvarez, who immediately lifted a hand and shoved the foot off his chest.
Success at Covent Garden in the early nineties meant almost in-variably engagement for the Metropolitan in New York. But Bis-pham's Metropolitan advent was delayed until four years after his Covent Garden début. Meantime, he had appeared as soloist with the Oratorio Society of New York. He cancelled a contract to sing with the Thomas Orchestra at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and this may have been the saving of his life. He had planned to travel with his mother. In the course of the trip without him, she was killed in a railroad accident.
Bispham first came to the Metropolitan for the season of 1896-97, when Maurice Grau was in his heyday and when opera was blessed with such casts as only the most implacable optimist may hope to hear again. His début was made on Nov. 18, 1896, as Beckmesser in a performance that boasted both the de Reszkes, Jean as Walther, Edouard as Sachs (and there are those who will insist that noble as was the Sachs of Emil Fischer, that of Edouard de Reszke was its superior); and, as Pogner, Pol Plançon. Aside from the incomparable tenor, the weight of vocal sonority divided between Edouard, Plançon and Bispham was something to ponder. The Eva was Emma Eames. Notable as was this cast, however, this was still not Die Meistersinger. The language was Italian and the pro-gram read I Maestri Cantori. Not until the season of 1900-1901 was the Metropolitan to hear the de Reszkes sing Walther and Hans Sachs in German, with Bispham as Beckmesser, Gadski as Eva, Schumann-Heink as Magdalene, and a second American, Robert Blass, as Pogner.
During Bispham's first season at the Metropolitan took place the celebrated if somewhat disastrous excursion of Nellie Melba into the domain of Wagner. The American baritone was the Alberich of the performance of Siegfried on Dec. 30, 1896, when the Australian nightingale, forsaking the velvet of her coloratura, attempted the heroic declamation of Brünnhilde. Jean de Reszke sang Siegfried, and Edouard, Der Wanderer. Bispham has told how the de Reszkes patroled the stage to keep Melba from the footlights. Others con-cerned were von Hubbenet as Mime and Sophie Traubman as the Voice of the Forest Bird. Anton Seidl conducted.
In the hiatus of the season of 1897-98, when there was no official tenant of the Metropolitan, Bispham was a member of the Dam-rosch-Ellis Opera Company, which presented a season of five-weeks duration in the house, Nordica being one of his colleagues. In the season of 1898-99 he was again a member of Grau's company and the Kurwenal of sundry memorable performances of Tristan und Isolde. Nordica sang Isolde, Jean de Reszke, Tristan, and Edouard de Reszke, King Marke, with Schalk conducting. Through the re-mainder of Grau's tenure he was to be found taking his place in a variety of historic casts, with or without the de Reszkes; such names as Gadski, Ternina, and Van Dyck appearing beside his; with Louise Homer joining Nordica among American women singers, and with Emma Eames holding equally high the prestige of the thenrisen American artist in rôles that ranged from Elsa to Juliet and Aïda to Micaela.
When Paderewski's opera, Manru, was given its American première on Feb. 14, 1902, with Walter Damrosch conducting, Bis-pham sang the rôle of Urok, the others in the cast being Alexander van Bandrowski in the title part, Sembrich, Homer, Fritzi Scheff, Blass and Mühlmann. The American première of Dame Smyth's Der Wald, in the next season, found Bispham in the same part he had created in London, that of Rudolf. As far back as 1898, Bispham had appeared widely in Muller's play, Adelaide, assuming the part of Beethoven and speaking his lines with the clarity acquired partly from his experience in amateur light opera and partly from a course in elocution he had taken in England. Returning to the stage as a protagonist of American opera, he created the rôle of Gomatez in Floridia's Paoletta when that opera was undertaken in Cincinnati in 1910. Another of his adventures in this period took him to San Francisco for Hadley's Awakening of Pan, given in open air by the Bohemians. After a trip to Australia, his varied activities arrived at a new focus in a delightful opera-in-English experiment with Mozart's Impresario, first given at the Empire Theatre in New York on Oct. 26, 1916, with Mabel Garrison, Lucy Gates, Albert Reiss and John Sainpolis as his associates, the venture being sponsored jointly by Bispham and Reiss. From it grew the Society of American Singers, which gave a series of performances of opera comique at the Lyceum Theatre in 1917, followed by two seasons of varied repertoire at the Park Theatre under the presidency of William Wade Hinshaw, one of a group of American basses and baritones who followed in Bispham's footsteps at the Metropolitan.
Continuing his teaching as the years made inroads upon his voice, Bispham advocated on and off the platform the use of the English language and of song material by American composers.
During his first year at the Metropolitan, he had given a recital in Carnegie Hall that contained a full group of American songs, a step then regarded as something of an innovation. He steadfastly contended that the words must be understood by the listener if vocal music was to assert its full value. A pioneer in the singing of Brahms's Four Serious Songs in this country, he invited criticism by singing them in English, arguing that words of Scriptural origin had no need of a German "original" when presented to an English-speaking assemblage. He was insistent on what he called the gender of songs-masculine songs for men, feminine songs for women-and held that women singers were the chief offenders in singing songs that rightfully belonged to the other sex. With his voice less and less tractable, he embarked upon recitations to music, the Strauss setting of Enoch Arden and Mendelssohn's score for Midsummer Night's Dream serving him in good stead.
Bispham's death on Oct. 2, 1921, when he was 64 years old, was an unexpected ending for a career of honorable length, though of late beginning. He had given a lesson the day before. Unlike some earlier and later American opera singers, he had not courted honors abroad. He never Latinized his name, though he confessed to falsify-ing his height by high heels, inner soles and other contrivances, like many another artist in need of additional inches. He aired no griev-ances against foreign artists, though he had a chuckle for the phonetic English of Plancon.
Diction was one of Bispham's strongest assets. Whether he sang Damrosch's "Danny Deever" or Verdi's "Il Balen," he gave all pos-sible care to the words. But he was not a singer for the high Italian airs he occasionally essayed. The voice verged on the bass, rather than conforming to the Italian high-note type. It was strongly resonant, but the quality, which inclined at times toward an edgy nasality, was more suitable to German parts than those requiring a Latin or Gallic suavity. It was an Anglo-Saxon voice and shared the virtues and the defects of such voices, the lower notes being fuller than those of the Italian voices with which it might be compared, the top lacking the soaring, tenor-like ring common to the baritones of Southern Europe. American and English opera being what it was-or was not-it was inevitable that Bispham, who expressed a belief that at one time he was the only American male singer in opera of importance on either side of the Atlantic, should have found his best opportunities in the German works of Richard Wag-ner, with or without the assistance of "Planchette."
