"You don't make love to me enough! You don't put enough devil into it!"
"I can be a devil if I like," she informed him. But, in spite of this assertion, she never put any devil into anything she did--on the stage at least.
Very few singers ever seem to get really inside Carmen. Some of the modern ones come closer to her; but in my day there was an unwritten law against realism in emotion. In most of the old standard _rôles_ it was all right to idealise impulses and to beautify the part generally, but Carmen is too terribly human to profit by such treatment. She cannot be glossed over. One can, if one likes, play _Traviata_ from an elegant point of view, but there is nothing elegant about Mérimée's Gypsy. Neither is there any sentiment. Carmen is purely--or, rather, impurely--elemental, a complete little animal. I used to love the part, though. When I was studying the part, I got hold of Prosper Mérimée's novel and read it and considered it until I really understood the girl's nature which, _en passant_, I may say is more than the critic of _The New York Tribune_ had done. I doubt if he had ever read Mérimée at all, for he said that my rendering of Carmen was too realistic! The same column spoke favourably in later years, of Mme. Calvé's performance, so it was undoubtedly a case of _autres temps, autres moeurs_! Carmen was, of course, too low for me. It was written for a low mezzo, and parts of it I could not sing without forcing my lower register. The Habanera went very well by being transposed half a tone higher; but the card-playing scene was another matter. The La Morte _encore_ lies very low and I could not raise it. Luckily the orchestra is quite light there and I could sing reflectively as if I were saying to myself, as I sat on the bales, "My time is coming!"
[Illustration: Musical notation: Ri-pe-te-rà: l'av-el!....an-cor!
In the fortune-telling quartette I arranged with one of the Gypsy girls--Frasquita, I think it was,--to sing my part and let me sing hers, which was very high, and thus relieve me.
A _rôle_ in which I made my _début_ while I was with Marie Roze and Gary was Aïda. Mapleson was anxious that Roze should have it, but Strakosch gave it to me. One of Mapleson's critics wrote severely about my sitting on a low seat instead of on the steps of the dais during the return of Rhadames, I remember in this connection. But nothing could prevent Aïda from being a success and it became one of my happiest _rôles_. A year or two later when I sang it in London my success was confirmed. Gary was Amneris in it and ranked next to the Amneris for whom Verdi wrote it, although she rather over-acted the part. I have never seen an Amneris who did not. There is something about the part that goes to the head. Speaking of my new _rôles_ at that period, I must not forget to mention my mad scene from _Hamlet_; nor my one act of _Lohengrin_ that I added to my _répertoire_. Lucia had always been one of my successes; and I believe that one of the points that made my Senta interesting was that I interpreted her as a girl obsessed with what was almost a monomania. She was a highly abnormal creature and that was the way I played her. It was a satisfaction to me that a few people here and there really appreciated this rather subtle interpretation. In commendation of this interpretation there appeared an anonymous letter in _The Chicago Inter-Ocean_, a part of which read: