CHAPTER THREE

“There Is No Visible Relationship between a Wagner Opera and a Submarine”

From Manhattan Riots to Wagner’s Piano

ON THE DAY THE GREAT WAR ENDED, the Metropolitan Opera inaugurated its new season with Pierre Monteaux conducting Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delila, which featured the acclaimed tenor Enrico Caruso as Samson. According to one reviewer, the evening of November 11, 1918, was marked by a “scene of blazing patriotic spectacularism,” which allowed an audience of 3,500 to experience not simply a magnificent performance by Caruso but a stirring example of musical nationalism.¹ While another review noted that the proceedings began with no great sense of excitement, with the start of the intermission after the second act, the energy level changed dramatically as the curtain rose to reveal an explosion of color, which dazzled the throng of opera lovers. Dozens of performers filled the stage, all waving American flags. Standing in front were the principal singers, holding the banners of America, England, France, and Serbia, with Caruso in the middle, waving the Italian flag. The anthems of France, England, and Italy were sung, as were “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Save the King.” After Monteux departed, cries of “Vive la Belgique” rang out, which led the concertmaster, an Italian, to leap from his seat to lead the ensemble in a performance of the Belgian national air.²

Two weeks later, on Thanksgiving Day, music resounded across the country; thousands participated in a national event that saw America raise its voice in song, expressing gratitude for the war’s victorious end. In Atlanta, from atop an army truck, a conductor led a throng of several thousand citizens, accompanied by a regimental band, in a variety of pieces—from Sousa marches to “Suwanee River.” In St. Paul, ten thousand residents packed the municipal auditorium, where renditions of everything from “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” to “Long, Long Trail” rang out. And on it went, this musical catharsis, from Lima, Ohio, to Scranton, Pennsylvania; and over to Philadelphia, Providence, Boston, and to a multitude of other cities and towns, where the nation reacquainted itself with peace.

In Madison Square Garden, more than eight thousand New Yorkers expressed their thanks in song, as one publication reported, for “the victory won by the nations of the civilized world.” A Boy Scout bugler began the proceedings, during which one speaker called song the best way to express the nation’s gratitude for those who had helped win the war. Singing had been essential to the Allied triumph, a major-general told the crowd, for it enabled soldiers to endure the challenges they faced.³ Commenting on the importance of hundreds of similar events across America, the Musical Courier highlighted music’s crucial role in the day’s proceedings.⁴

But the most intriguing matter on the classical-music agenda concerned a subject raised by Musical America: “German Music or Not?—‘That Is the Question.’ ” While the shooting was over, it was unclear whether the wartime rancor had evaporated, even if, as the article observed, Americans were different from others in their willingness to reconsider “enemy art.” It behooved the United States, the journal noted, to ponder which German music should be “reinstated.”⁵ But as the battle raged over the fate of German music, it seemed no armistice had been signed and few weapons laid to rest.

From late 1918 to the mid-1920s, one sees an evolving capacity to move beyond wartime anti-Germanism, as concern over the Teutonic threat and anger toward all things German dissipated. Vanquishing the kaiser made it difficult to believe that Germany continued to imperil the United States. But equanimity did not emerge overnight, as many continued to believe German compositions were a toxin to be held at arm’s length.

Speaking in New Haven one week after the war’s end, Professor William Lyon Phelps, who taught at Yale and was president of the city’s symphony orchestra, claimed the only standard for judging music was its quality. Calling music humanity’s “only universal language,” the professor recounted hearing the Paris Orchestra’s recent performance of Beethoven’s Fifth, which demonstrated that the “classics belong to no one nation but represent universal feeling.”⁶ Writer Owen Wister expressed a similar idealism, telling the Drama League in Philadelphia that Beethoven had composed “no hymn of hate,” but a “hymn of brotherhood.” Banning German music was wrong, Wister claimed, as most German music had been composed by men who did not share the “spirit of the modern Hun.” The time for such misguided patriotism was over.⁷

Adding to the conversation was the more cautious voice of Reginald De Koven, the composer and critic, who remarked that some German music should be heard in the postwar concert hall. If the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms belonged to the “whole world,” De Koven believed Wagner’s case was different, for his music now reflected the “modern German spirit.” De Koven would welcome back the old masters, while restricting Wagner and the works of living Germans.⁸ On the West Coast, the Los Angeles Times observed that it was no longer necessary to “endure the spectacle of Germans who had become Dutch or Belgian.” At last, Beethoven could be German again.⁹

In late November 1918, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra opened its season led by Belgian maestro Eugène Ysaÿe, the replacement for Ernst Kunwald, who continued to languish in a Georgia prison camp. With Beethoven’s Fifth on the program, the audience experienced an evening’s music-making, which, in the words of the city’s Commercial Tribune, was “in the nature of a patriotic celebration.” On the right side of the stage stood the flags of the Allies, while on the left, stood the orchestra’s service flag, whose stars represented members who had served in the war, including a gold star for one musician who had fallen. The spectacle was enhanced by the performance of five national anthems, for which the audience rose. Before the American air was played, the Belgian turned to his listeners and asked them to sing along. As for the Beethoven, no one was reluctant to embrace the German’s creative spirit. Instead, in the four-note theme, one heard “a relentless rush of retribution over the face of the universe.” It was said that Maestro Ysaÿe’s interpretation of the symphony’s triumphant final march was energized by events taking place that day across the Atlantic, where the Belgian king and queen returned to Brussels. Thus, German music heralded the revival of the small nation Germany had invaded four years earlier, suggesting such compositions could help rebuild the world.¹⁰

A few weeks later, Henri Rabaud, the man who had supplanted Karl Muck in Boston, led a highly successful concert at Carnegie Hall, where the Bostonians performed Beethoven’s Third, demonstrating that German music would not be denied to American concertgoers. The reaction of Rabaud’s listeners suggested an audience eager to consign the Muck era to the past.¹¹

There were rumblings, however, from some who remained distressed by German compositions, especially by Wagner. Reviewing a December concert by the New York Philharmonic, Reginald De Koven claimed it was “unthinkable” for Stransky to offer an excerpt from Tristan and Isolde so soon after the war, when many attendees undoubtedly had relatives who had been wounded by the Germans. Connecticut-born and British-educated, De Koven wondered whether a “native born” American conductor would have done this, noting that Stransky had just become an American citizen. While offering the well-worn trope that music’s great figures belonged to the entire world, De Koven asserted that Wagner was different, for his music symbolized the “German spirit of lust of conquest,” which had “plunged the world into a slough of blood, of rapine, wanton destruction and unspeakable cruelty.” The critic was shocked that the audience had endured the music “without protest.”¹²

De Koven’s lament foreshadowed what, in some places, would be a tumultuous year in the music world. In other locales, however, the concert hall and the opera house would become more tranquil, suggesting a desire to move beyond the travails of war.

On the first of January 1919, Pittsburgh listeners had the opportunity to hear the orchestra of the Paris Conservatory, then touring the United States. The city’s concertgoers, who had heard no German music since the fall of 1917, were treated to a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth, which they greeted enthusiastically. According to one critic, it was noteworthy that this excellent orchestra was willing to play German music despite having suffered at German hands for four years. But the French could distinguish the Germany of the past from the Germany of the present, a sentiment shared by three thousand Pittsburgh music lovers, whose behavior demonstrated that the city’s Germanophobia had abated.¹³

Detroit, too, saw musical barriers begin to fall in January, when Walter Damrosch brought his New York Symphony to the Arcadia Auditorium, where they performed the Prelude to Lohengrin. The piece caused considerable excitement, suggesting the city’s listeners, who had been denied Wagner for more than a year, had sorely missed it.¹⁴

Change was afoot in Philadelphia, as well. Early in January, critic H. T. Craven had penned a thoughtful piece on whether continuing the Wagner proscription made sense. Noting that Berlioz’s orchestration of the Rákóczy March, a “stirring national air” of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (a wartime foe) was performed regularly, Craven declared it absurd to ban Wagner. A policy that drew “national lines in music” was deficient in logic and common sense, he insisted.¹⁵ By the end of the month, the wartime ban on Wagner had been lifted. Under the direction of Walter Damrosch, whose New York Symphony was on tour, and with Leopold Stokowski leading the city’s own estimable ensemble, Philadelphians heard several of Wagner’s orchestral offerings. All were met with enormous enthusiasm.¹⁶

In letters and opinion pieces from just after the war, one sees considerable support for the return of German music. A New Jersey man argued that German opera, including Wagner, should be heard. “The great masters of German music” were not to blame for the war, Louis Kohler noted, the kaiser is.¹⁷ The director of a Pennsylvania music conservatory insisted that music, a “spiritual asset,” was “universal,” which meant Americans had no more right to ban the work of a German than to ban Protestantism.¹⁸ From Albany, New York, Enna King said she again hoped to “rejoice in Wagner’s . . . thrilling harmonies,” remarking that Germany’s legendary composers would not have done what the “contemporary Germans had done.”¹⁹ And Ferdinand Dunkley, a musician in Tacoma, Washington, wrote that he had set aside German music during the war because, like the rest of America, he had abhorred the behavior of the “Huns,” and had believed that playing their music would have fortified Germany’s war effort. But the time had come to allow America the “nourishment” that only German music could provide.²⁰

If such observations were widespread, it would be wrong to imagine that discomfort with German music had evaporated. In the summer of 1919, more than six months after the armistice was signed, as Metropolitan Opera singer Marie Sundelius offered songs by Grieg in a solo recital in Milwaukee, several members of the audience stormed out of the concert hall and headed to the ticket office to protest the performance of music sung in German. Demanding a refund, the linguistically challenged listeners were told that the performer had been singing in Norwegian, a revelation they accepted, albeit reluctantly.²¹

Writing in the New York Times in the spring of 1919, Eleonora de Cisneros, a well-known American mezzo-soprano, offered an imaginative meditation, which condemned those who countenanced listening to German music, especially Wagner, so soon after the war. Recounting her phantasmic experience upon hearing a performance of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony on a rainy Sunday afternoon, Cisneros described being transported to a troubling place made infamous by the war—the Somme—where only the dead had crossed to “No Man’s Land.” On a “moonless night,” thousands of lights “moved over the fantastic field,” and with these strange apparitions rushing past, she heard “a cry of pitiful pleading—Do not forget us!” Cisneros also wrote about actually hearing the Prelude to Tristan, which compelled her to declare that it was too soon for Wagner to return. “Let our dead have time to sleep.”²²

But how long would it take to jettison the musical nationalism unleashed by war? As the case of Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler suggests, such questions were difficult to answer. The famed virtuoso, who had served as an officer in his country’s wartime army, had incurred the wrath of American concertgoers, which, in the fall of 1917, led to the cancellation of his recitals in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. To avoid further controversy, the Vienna-born soloist, who had been wounded in battle and had been performing in the United States while on furlough, cancelled his American performances for the duration of the war.²³ With the conflict over, the question of Kreisler’s return became the subject of widespread debate.

In Ithaca, New York, an angry mob protested outside the concert hall during a Kreisler recital sponsored by the Cornell music department in December 1919. Police repelled the protesters, many of whom were American Legion members, and the city’s mayor issued a proclamation stating that Ithacans should refuse to attend the performance given by an “enemy alien artist.” Despite the opposition, Kreisler played before a large and supportive crowd, which applauded enthusiastically, even as they endured a period of complete darkness after the mob cut the electrical wires to the recital hall. Unfazed, the Austrian continued playing in the dark for some forty minutes, as shouts of “Hun!” could be heard from outside.²⁴ In Kentucky, Louisville residents felt much the same, and objected strongly to Kreisler’s return. But in Philadelphia, concertgoers responded enthusiastically to his playing. As one listener declared, if floridly, “Come, oh artists of the world. . . . Long have we waited for you. You are ours. We are yours equally.”²⁵

On New Year’s Day 1920, Kreisler played the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Damrosch and the New York Symphony at Carnegie Hall. According to one review, the soloist received remarkable ovations when he strode onto the stage and again at the end of the Beethoven, the second applause lasting some ten minutes. The reviewer speculated that the magnitude of the response was not simply a result of Kreisler’s superb performance, but was meant to send a message to those, small in number, who continued to oppose his return. The reaction could be read as the community’s judgment on the “pygmy-minded provincialism” of those still “hounding” an extraordinary artist. Lauding Kreisler’s Beethoven, the review mocked any who would deny concertgoers the opportunity to hear a musician unfairly charged with contaminating wartime audiences with “propaganda.”²⁶

But some remained unconvinced that a former officer in the Austrian army should be permitted on an American stage. The Musical Courier argued that it was not proper for an “enemy alien” to perform in the United States, which was Kreisler’s status until the peace treaty was ratified.²⁷ In Pittsburgh, where the anti-Kreisler agitation was especially intense, the violinist was scheduled to return in January 1920, a development that unleashed well-organized opposition. While the mayor did not object to his appearance, a letter issued on behalf of thousands of female members of the Service Star Legion of Allegheny County declared Kreisler’s recital would be the “grossest insult to every mother who ha[d] a boy under the lilies of France.”²⁸

Despite rumors and threats to disrupt the Pittsburgh recital, Kreisler played before an audience that greeted him with fervent applause. According to one review, his technique was “in fine fettle,” and while other violinists had performed in the city, none had the “Kreisler magnetism.”²⁹ By the summer of 1920, Kreisler was being lauded for his humanitarian activities as he helped the suffering children of Europe, and by late 1921, the Austrian government was considering appointing him ambassador to the United States.³⁰

Across postwar America, musical developments were in flux. In Boston, which had endured its share of musical tribulations, Henri Rabaud was on the podium, at least for a season, during which the city’s ensemble would play no Wagner or Richard Strauss. This decision by the French maestro was assessed in the press, which noted that American listeners in some cities could again hear Wagner.³¹ In early 1919, Rabaud explained his stance, stating that in the United States, as in France, public opinion seemed to oppose reintroducing Wagner; it was a position he was unwilling to ignore. At some point, he imagined, the question might be revisited.³²

But Rabaud’s tenure would last only one season, and by the fall of 1919, Pierre Monteux returned to lead the ensemble that he had conducted for six weeks the previous season.³³ Until his military discharge in 1916, Monteux had served his country in the war. “I had my violin with me,” he said. “I played in the French churches on Sundays” with an organist and a solo singer. When no singer or organist was available, he recalled, “I played by myself.” Looking back, he said, “I watched the shells flying overhead in Rheims, Verdun, Soissons, and later in Argonne.”³⁴ But the war was over, Monteux said. “Let us forget the war,” which should not influence “our musical programs.”³⁵ In the 1919–1920 season, Monteux’s first with the orchestra, he played no Richard Strauss but he did offer eight pieces by Wagner, including the “Immolation Scene” from Götterdämmerung, sung by Margaret Matzenauer, who was born in what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire.³⁶

Given the furor caused by the Muck saga, it was no surprise that the postwar status of their former conductor attracted the attention of Bostonians. In the summer of 1919, just before his release from Fort Oglethorpe, Muck spoke to a reporter and pondered his predicament, his uncertain future, and life in America. “My future? It may be anything,” he said, since he had nothing to go back to in Germany. “I have no home there, no connections there, nothing there, nor here now.” Reflecting on his time in Boston made him sad. “If you have spent four years in doing the best that you can for art . . . and never mixed in politics . . . the hardest part of all is to be suddenly taken out.” Having bought a house in Boston, he had intended to remain in the United States, and had planned to become an American citizen. But that was not possible, for in America, he claimed, there was no longer any place for a German. He was shocked by what had occurred, and had no idea such "discrimination could take place.” Even children had been “taught that a German is something to be despised.”³⁷

On August 21, 1919, Karl Muck and his wife left the United States, sailing from Hoboken for Copenhagen. The couple was brought to the pier by an agent from the Department of Justice, who instructed the captain to make sure Muck did not leave the ship within the three-mile limit, though where he would have gone (and how he would have gotten there) is difficult to say. To a fellow passenger, he called himself “a man without a flag or a country.” America had become a land “controlled by sentiment that is closely bordering on mob rule.” Muck maintained that he had never refused to play “The Star-Spangled Banner,” calling the story a fabrication. Once, he had thought of Boston as his home. “Now . . . I don’t know what is to become of me.”³⁸ As the Mucks sailed for Europe, their outbound ship passed the inbound French liner carrying Pierre Monteux, who would take the reins of Muck’s old ensemble.³⁹

But Boston was not quite finished with its erstwhile conductor. In November 1919, a multipart series in the Boston Post made the case that Muck had served as an agent of the German government during the war, a charge that is not sustainable. Day after day, Boston readers encountered screaming headlines, which could not have been more damning: “Muck’s Hate is Fanatical”; “Muck an Official Spy for Germany”; “How Muck Fooled All His Friends.” Even Mrs. Muck was not immune: “Muck’s Wife Very Active Propagandist.”⁴⁰ In story after story, the paper described in elaborate detail the alleged treachery the German had committed, which included everything from participating in secret meetings with German diplomats, to his alleged signaling of German ships at sea from his rented coastal cottage in Maine.⁴¹ The conductor, it was reported, had been working for the German government all along, in a despicable scheme to undermine the war effort.

Beyond such fantastic allegations about Muck’s pro-German activities, the Post also published a raft of love letters the musician had penned to the nineteen-year-old Rosamond Young, an aspiring soprano who happened to be a member of a prominent Boston family. The letters, which federal agents had seized from the young woman’s bedroom in 1918, revealed Muck to be both virulently anti-American and something of a scoundrel.

Upon encountering the conductor’s wartime correspondence, readers were undoubtedly outraged by his description of his German homeland, which he compared to “a noble stag which only cowardly hyenas and jackals attack,” or his declaration that the United States was “ruled by a crowd of bums,” whom he hoped the American people would hang “to the highest tree.” As for the American president, whom Muck thought (not unreasonably) was motivated by pro-British sentiment, he was the “English shoe shiner,” and the country he governed was a collection of “English colonies,” a servile condition the United States had entered willingly. The musician wrote that he did not know if he could “keep up any longer this horrible life in a country full of fanatical enemies,” and he even spoke of turning his Boston residence into a “fortress,” in which, with “a rifle . . . a six-shooter, and two automatic pistols,” he could hold the house “against a cowardly mob,” a challenge that “would be great sport.”⁴²

What was surely worse than Muck’s disdain for life in America or his disgust with American diplomacy were the revelations about his personal behavior. Readers encountered his amorous notes to the young singer in which he arranged secret assignations and spoke of the need for concealing their ardent activities. “My Darling,” the conductor wrote, “I sympathize with you in your fear for the consequences of our very sweet relationship. We must not overlook any precaution that will save us both from a scandal.” The German worried about what his opponents would do to him were the affair revealed (as thousands of Bostonians followed along). “My enemies would rejoice in our dragging to vulgar public gaze our love that is sacred and which we alone understand.” The aging maestro sought to assure the young soprano that she would be fine whatever happened, as he would “shoulder it all.” One can only imagine the horror Bostonians experienced upon reading about the conductor’s plan for securing a place for the pair’s trysts. “I have made arrangements to secure a small apartment,” he wrote, “secret and secluded, where no vulgar footsteps will tread.” Thinking only of the needs of his young lover (so he claimed), the maestro wrote, “I will see to it that you have a duplicate key to the apartment,” for he wanted a safe place where they could meet—a “new nest.” And there, “we will snap our fingers to the herd of swine and drink the sweet cup to the last drop.”⁴³

Inevitably, the subject of the conductor’s wife arose, which the German assured his youthful companion should not be a concern. Sounding the timeless note of a man in his position, Muck said all would work out. “You are right in saying so, darling, that my marital entanglements make it very hard for you.” He pointed out that he, too, confronted a challenging situation, asking, “Can’t you see, darling, how much harder it is for me to renounce the love that grew between us?” Maintaining his effort to keep the affair alive, he pleaded, “Must we, for the sake of foolish sentiments . . . imposed on us by others, foreswear the love that is divine and inexpressible?” He answered resoundingly: “No, a thousand times no! You are mine and I am your slave.” Muck then let his mistress (and all Boston) in on a secret: “It will perhaps surprise you to learn that to a certain extent Mrs. Muck knows our relationship.” He then bowed to his wife’s open-mindedness, which was “beyond the comprehension of the swine-like people among whom we must live a little while longer.” The conductor offered the final enticement to his young lover, which included the potential help of a celebrated figure. “Our gracious Kaiser” would surely respond to a request to return to Berlin, and once Muck was in Germany, the German leader would “see the benefit to the fatherland in my obtaining a divorce and making you my own.”⁴⁴

Although Muck was back in Europe by the time the Boston Post series appeared, readers no doubt viewed the musician as reflecting exactly the sort of treachery “the Hun” was capable of perpetrating. On the one hand, he had allegedly sought to undermine America’s safety by meeting regularly with representatives of the German government, while he had also engaged in scandalous personal behavior, which revealed him to be a faithless husband and the seducer of an innocent young woman. Thus, Muck perfectly embodied what the US government had convinced millions of Americans they had been fighting against: the subject of an outlaw state made up of people whose public and private behavior was sordid, immoral, and, ultimately, un-American. The exposé on Muck’s extramusical activities surely played into the fear and loathing Americans had been instructed to have toward Germany and its people. As the Boston Post reminded readers, Muck was “typical” of those who are thought “superior beings in Germany,” a group that saw “treachery . . . as a virtue.”⁴⁵

As for Muck’s fellow internee Ernst Kunwald, after his release from Fort Oglethorpe in June 1919, he made his way to New York and sailed for Europe to resume his career.⁴⁶ The following year, Kunwald reflected on American musical life in an interview that appeared in the United States, offering unflattering comparisons between classical-music culture in Europe and in the United States. American orchestras, unlike those in Europe, had not developed over the centuries out of local traditions of fiddlers or pipers, he said, but had sprung fully formed from the directives of local magnates. As for the musicians, in the American setting, this was not typically an occupation passed down from father to son; instead, they were often recruited from overseas, making the ensembles resemble a “vari-colored mosaic.” Kunwald claimed that orchestras in the United States had “no roots in the life of the American people” and answered no “crying aesthetic or emotional need.” Nor did the state support the arts in the United States; rather, it was often women who helped maintain the orchestral tradition. Kunwald did acknowledge some positive aspects of American musical life: good pay, ample rehearsal time, and conductors devoted to their ensembles.⁴⁷

Reflecting on the war years, Kunwald noted that German music had been the centerpiece of America’s classical music culture, at least until the United States entered the war. Even on the day after the British passenger ship Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915, killing innocent Americans, Kunwald recalled hearing Muck conduct Wagner, Beethoven, Liszt, and Strauss in Boston to great acclaim. In Cincinnati, Kunwald had had no trouble performing or lecturing on German music until America went to war, at which point the “feeling which had been glowing faintly under the cover of . . . love for art, broke out into a flame of hatred.” Then there was no stopping the tide, and the “war against German music” began. He described standing before his orchestra one night and basking in the applause, only to be taken off to prison the next morning. Concluding, Kunwald said he had heard that conditions had not improved in America, and that the antipathy toward “everything German continue[d].” Germans could derive hope from the fact that in their own country “musical art” still flourished. And soon, when the “war madness” subsided and gave way to “sanity in the minds of our enemies,” Kunwald declared, German music would again serve as the most powerful “asset in the balance between other countries and our Fatherland.”⁴⁸

With the war’s end, the highlight of the 1918–1919 Chicago concert season was the return of Frederick Stock, who had submitted his resignation in August 1918. Early the next year, on February 28, the much-admired maestro strode onto the stage to conduct the Chicago Symphony in a program that included standard orchestral fare and the premiere of a piece from Stock’s hand, the March and Hymn to Democracy, which, according to the program notes, reflected the glory of “democracy as the salvation of humanity.” Notwithstanding Stock’s grandiose expressions of patriotism, the piece was destined for musical obscurity. But that mattered little, as the audience welcomed Stock to the stage with tumultuous applause, while his musicians stood and played a fanfare.⁴⁹

Before raising his baton, the conductor, who had never fallen out of favor, spoke from the stage, expressing appreciation for the city’s support and his love for America. Recalling the words of a writer who had urged “a man to hitch his wagon to a star,” the conductor asserted, “I have hitched my wagon to the Stars and Stripes.” However questionable the rhetorical merit of his words, the concert by conductor and orchestra reminded listeners what a potent duo they were.⁵⁰ Stock’s uplifting return suggested that Chicago’s musical life would shortly regain its prewar luster; emphasizing his patriotism (he had taken out his citizenship papers), the Musical Courier declared, “Fredrick Stock Is One of Us.”⁵¹

Though Chicago’s conductor had come back in triumph, moments of cultural uncertainty persisted, as the musical public pondered what to do about German music.⁵² A few weeks after Stock returned, audiences heard the orchestra perform Wagner for the first time that season. Under the direction of the Italian Georgio Polacco, the ensemble played the Prelude and the “Love Death” from Tristan and Isolde in late March, in two performances received without protest. The critic for the Herald and Examiner observed that the “skies did not fall nor did the walls of Orchestra Hall cave in.” Indeed, the newspaper highlighted the audience’s enthusiastic reaction.⁵³ While this was the lone Wagner offering heard during the 1918–1919 season, the following year, excerpts from eight Wagner operas would be performed, though Richard Strauss’s compositions would not be played in either season, as living German composers remained off-limits.⁵⁴

Elsewhere in the city, musical life began to resemble its prewar character. In May 1919, a wounded soldier strolling through the streets paused in front of a downtown theater to listen to the strains of a German folk song, “Die Lorelai,” sung in German, drifting through an open door. “And in the loop, too,” he said. “Well, I’ll be d–––.” But the mayor had earlier offered his approval, and his representative told the large German audience that evening, “I take pleasure in assuring you of the city’s warm welcome upon the return of your music.” According to the press, many distinguished Germans were on hand for the music, including Oscar Mayer, “of meat fame.”⁵⁵

Despite such tolerant moments, concerns echoed across the city about the reappearance of German music, especially performances in German. Commenting on the German tongue, Chicago Daily Tribune critic Frederick Donaghey declared, “I am with those who believe that its public use, in speech or print, ought to be prohibited for eternity by federal statute.” To say German is “essential to Wagner’s operas is blah!” Nothing in Wagner mattered “save the music.” Continuing, he labeled Wagner “a third-rate play-write, and a joke as a stage director.” For Donaghey, who betrayed a remarkable ignorance about the Wagner canon, the operas, once shorn of the German language, could be heard without reservation.⁵⁶

As Wagner returned to the repertoire of Chicago’s orchestra, and devotees could again hear his operas, Donaghey was surely heartened that, for a time, they could do so only in English. In the 1920–1921 season, Lohengrin and Die Walküre (in English) were welcomed back to the Chicago Opera Association’s repertoire.⁵⁷ But the following year, in November 1921, a milestone was reached, as Wagner was performed in German for the first time since the war, with Tannhäuser making a triumphant reappearance. The local press praised the cast, with the Tribune proclaiming, “Peace was officially declared by the Chicago Opera . . . last night.”⁵⁸ And in 1922, for the first time since the war, Parsifal was offered in German, a performance, one critic wrote, which reminded opera lovers of its beauty.⁵⁹

With the return of Wagner to Chicago, an episode involving Johanna Gadski, the noted German soprano, rekindled some of the unpleasant passions of the war. In early November 1921, Gadski was engaged by the Chicago Opera Association to sing in Tristan and in Tannhäuser during the coming season; but within weeks, the company’s board decided to bar her from appearing. Given a check for $7,500, Gadski was told her services were no longer needed.⁶⁰ In response, she brought a $500,000 lawsuit against the company, alleging slander. One will recall that Gadski’s German husband, Captain Hans Tauscher, had been tried and acquitted for plotting to commit an act of terrorism prior to America’s entry into the war. Equally disturbing was the rumor that after the Lusitania sinking, German baritone Otto Goritz had performed at Gadski’s New York home, singing a derisive ditty about the horrific episode that had killed more than a hundred Americans. This was a story Gadski repeatedly denied. While the singer would lose her suit, the fact that three years after the war’s end a German engaged to sing Wagner could be dismissed because of local opposition, suggests that anti-German feeling still had traction.⁶¹

Johanna Gadski

Out west, the debate about Gadski became still more contentious, though she was welcomed enthusiastically in Seattle and San Francisco in November 1922, where she offered Wagner, as she had the previous year in well-received performances in Carnegie Hall and in Washington, DC.⁶² But Los Angeles was a different matter entirely. In early December, Gadski denied the allegations directed at her and her husband, noting that he was seeking US citizenship. She was determined to perform in Los Angeles, and claimed there was not “one iota of evidence” against her.⁶³

A week before the December 11 recital, a meeting of the local American Legion council, with support from representatives of local women’s auxiliary groups and veterans’ organizations, passed a resolution protesting Gadski’s upcoming appearance. The decision, her opponents claimed, was a result of Gadski’s questionable wartime activities, all of which she denied.⁶⁴ Her manager called the Legion’s allegations a rehashing of unsubstantiated charges, and Gadski asserted that her wartime behavior had been above reproach.⁶⁵

It remained unclear whether there would be a concert, with some from the Legion claiming the event might endanger the public safety.⁶⁶ Ultimately, the office of the attorney general was asked to weigh in when the parties agreed that Washington would be contacted to see if Gadski had done anything wrong. If she had, she would cancel.⁶⁷

Despite the Justice Department’s sterling report, which cleared Gadski of any improper behavior, those opposing her Los Angeles appearance were unmoved. The facts were irrelevant. “It is not what the Justice Department has against Mme. Gadski that influences the Legion,” but local public opinion, remarked a Legion member.⁶⁸ Disregarding the report, Gadski’s opponents now claimed to be worried that, were she to appear, “grave disorders” might result.⁶⁹

Yet, Gadski was determined to sing. She bore no ill will toward the men of the American Legion, she said, as “they were led to believe that they were doing a patriotic duty.”⁷⁰ But on the afternoon of December 11, 1922, the day of the concert, Gadski announced she would not sing that evening, concerned that her appearance might cause a public disturbance. Nevertheless, several hundred ex-servicemen joined a crowd that gathered at concert time outside the Philharmonic Auditorium, where they protested for over an hour.⁷¹

Although the war had ended more than four years earlier, demonstrators carried signs proclaiming their opposition to an alien artist: “Real American money for real American people; Gadski shall not sing” and “We are not unreasonable, only patriotic.” While the mayor’s office noted that it hoped she would perform in the future when the public understood the facts,⁷² the veterans’ groups claimed a “moral victory.” They pointed out that Gadski’s opponents were not just veterans, but also “civic, religious and social groups,” thousands of club women, and even well-known pastors whose sermons decried the German singer. According to the veterans’ public statement, countless citizens believed it would have been a “gross affront to the wounded and disabled war veterans” to spend money on the wife of Captain Hans Tauscher, who had served as an agent for Krupps munitions. Letters and telegrams had poured in to Los Angeles from across the country, establishing solidarity with the city’s veterans, the statement said.⁷³ While this might have been so, one voice of reason could be heard amidst the chorus of anti-German zealots. The editorial page of the Los Angeles Times called the demonstrators a mob, and insisted Gadski had a “legal and a moral right” to perform. When misdirected, “patriotic zeal” could injure the “very institutions” it sought to protect.⁷⁴

Without question, anti-Germanism lingered for a longer time in some places than in others. In Cincinnati, the reaction to German music after the war suggested a calming of the cultural waters. An older (and safer) German music, Beethoven’s Eroica, was performed in the Queen City in the spring of 1919 to commemorate the city’s soldiers who had fallen in the war. Conducted by Ysaÿe, the piece was played before a silent audience, which, with the musicians, rose as one during the Funeral March.⁷⁵ But more-recent German compositions remained problematic. For some five years after the 1917–1918 season, the orchestra played no Richard Strauss, and it performed no Wagner until the 1919–1920 season.⁷⁶ In Boston, the question of offering German music was straightforward. After the Muck upheaval, tranquility characterized the postwar period, as the orchestra, which performed no music by Richard Strauss in either the 1918–1919 or 1919–1920 seasons and no Wagner in 1918–1919, resumed playing works by both composers on a fairly regular basis by the middle years of the decade.⁷⁷

But New York was a different story, as the performances of a local opera company would lead to violence. In January 1919, it was announced that the Lexington Theater would host a season of German operettas, to be presented in German by the Christians Producing Company, an outfit headed by Rudolph Christians. The music director for the proposed performances, Paul Eisler, had worked at the Metropolitan before he and a number of other German artists had been dismissed during the war. Opposing the venture was a group of New Yorkers, especially women, whose rhetoric suggests that the war’s end had neither dulled their anti-Germanism nor dampened their suspicion of German motives.

Among those expressing such sentiments were two members of the American Defense Society, a nationalist organization that had advocated American intervention in the war. Elsa Maxwell noted that no formal treaty had been signed with Germany and claimed it was necessary to put a stop to this “arrogant German propaganda.” The organization’s president, Richard M. Hurd, describing the proposed concerts as a “pernicious plot,” said the public should resist it. All German propaganda was dangerous, he insisted, including German music, and he promised his group would look into the upcoming plans for the Lexington Theater.⁷⁸ Reginald De Koven weighed in on the proposed performances, arguing it was too soon to hear the German language in America because Germany had yet to acknowledge the “evil” it had perpetrated.⁷⁹

Inevitably, the Lexington Theater proposal saw the return of Lucie Jay, who asserted that Germany, which had not signed a formal peace treaty with the United States, remained “our enemy,” making it “disloyal” to perform German opera. Still more forceful was Mrs. J. Christopher Marks, president of the Theater Assembly, who read the newspaper story about the Lexington Theater plan aloud to the women of her club who had gathered at the Hotel Astor. Upon completing the article, she asked whether they supported such an idea. Their response was unanimous: “No! No! Down with German plays and music and opera.” According to Mrs. Marks, the time had come for “all good Americans” to oppose the performances and to keep the German language off the concert stage.⁸⁰

The next phase in the Lexington Theater affair was to convince New York’s mayor to cancel the performances, an effort that attracted a large number of local soldiers. Writing to Mayor Hylan in March, Eunice Maynard, a woman’s leader in the YMCA, said soldiers and sailors had contacted her for help in quashing the performances. “We fellows feel sore about this German opera business. We have lost a lot of our pals—they were killed by those Germans—and now this doesn’t seem a fair deal,” they told her. She joined them in asking the mayor to stop this “flagrant breach of good taste,” if not something far worse.⁸¹

In private exchanges, citizens expressed concern about the proposed series. Writing to Walter Damrosch, a church rector named William Guthrie asked if Damrosch would lead a gathering to help people sort through the issue.⁸² Unable to participate because he was leaving for France, Damrosch said that he opposed performing music by living Germans and did not believe German should be sung in the opera house or concert hall. The German classics should be played, he noted, since they belonged to the entire world and had been composed before Germany was “brutalized . . . by the lust for material gain and power.” As for Wagner, Damrosch thought it was acceptable to perform instrumental excerpts from the operas, since the music did not represent “modern Germany,” and the philosophy underlying the Ring cycle was a repudiation of the “reign of force.”⁸³

But the Lexington Theater affair was not merely about Wagner, and the Christians Producing Company was determined to gain support for its upcoming series. Dr. Max Winter, their business manager, issued a statement claiming that a vast number of Germans and German-Americans were living in New York City, among whom many thousands could not relax in the theater because they had never learned English. Moreover, “thousands of sons of these men and women had gone overseas” to fight, and many had been killed or wounded. Those left behind contributed generously to charitable causes and were true patriots. As for the plays to be performed, they contained no propaganda at all, he said, and the operettas were written by composers no longer alive. Winter insisted the operettas were not at all political. “They are just amusing and full of good music.”⁸⁴

Local veterans rejected this stance. Turning up the political heat, they wrote to Governor Al Smith, asking him to prevent the “Huns” from insulting both the flag and the soldiers who had given their lives to keep the United States “free from German Kultur.” Smith said he had no power to stop the performance, and advised them to contact the mayor. With that, a committee of soldiers, with a petition signed by more than two thousand of their brethren, arranged to meet with the mayor on March 10, in an effort to have him call off that night’s performance of Der Vogelhändler. Should he refuse, several thousand soldiers and sailors planned to march to the theater in formation just before the operetta began. If that failed, one sailor declared, they would enter the auditorium and stop the performance. Throughout the city, there was widespread support for the position, with the well-known actor John Drew declaring, “Art is not international, never less so than now.” Performing German operettas while the country awaited the return of American troops would be an affront to our fighting men.⁸⁵

Still unable to comprehend the vehemence against performing German works, Winter again claimed his group was not disloyal. The company was simply offering New Yorkers the chance to hear “light operas composed by men long dead, who used to be very popular in this country.” The series sought to entertain “loyal American citizens who like good music.”⁸⁶

Notwithstanding Winter’s belief in the purity of his group’s motives, on the day of the performance, city officials cancelled the entire run at the Lexington Theater. According to news reports, the pressure from citizens and soldiers had been strong enough to convince the mayor to call off the theater’s German-language events. Earlier, as protest leaders had awaited the verdict, one key naval figure, C. S. King, assessed the mayor’s challenge by asserting that it was up to Mayor Hylan to “show us . . . whether he is 70 per cent German and 30 per cent American or . . . 100 per cent American.”⁸⁷

Despite the decision, some five hundred sailors and soldiers decided to march in formation to the theater, where good-natured policemen greeted the group and informed them that no German opera would be heard. “Keep on moving, boys; there’s no German shows around here.” As one officer observed, “They’re a fine bunch of lads.”⁸⁸

The episode concluded in opera buffa style. Having learned there would be no performance, the throng heard that a German-language play was being performed at the Irving Place Theater. In response, a committee of sailors marched off, determined to stop this latest outrage. Arriving on the scene, they were told the play was being performed by a Jewish theater company, in Yiddish, a discovery that led to an apology and a hasty retreat.⁸⁹

Several months later, New Yorkers again faced the question of what to do about German opera, except this time, blood would be spilled. In the summer of 1919, music lovers learned that a new organization, the Star Opera Company, planned to present German-language light opera and classic operettas at the Lexington Theater, of all places. If the public supported the idea, the company, which featured German singers who had previously appeared with the Metropolitan Opera, would offer performances from October 1919 through January 1920. Adding insult to injury was the decision to make German baritone Otto Goritz the company’s artistic director.⁹⁰ Stunned by the company’s tin ear, Musical America was dubious about the role of Goritz, whose alleged “antics” at the time of the Lusitania sinking had not been forgotten. According to the editor, the Germans had a right to perform such works, but this was a matter of good sense. For now, the best approach was the “modesty of silence,” which was the most effective path to their reentry into the cultural mainstream. Those Germans still living in the United States should allow the war’s wounds to heal.⁹¹

However insensitive, New Yorkers would soon have the chance to hear a light opera in German on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, followed by a classic operetta on Fridays and twice on Saturdays. Sunday nights would be reserved for Wagner, allowing listeners to hear The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, and the entire Ring cycle. One American opera, a new work sung in English, would be presented.⁹²

A few weeks before the first performances were to begin, Miss Phadrig Ago’n, a singer engaged by the Star Opera Company, stood up to speak at a mass meeting of the Manhattan Naval Post of the American Legion, which had convened to protest the upcoming German operas: “I am ashamed of you claiming to represent America and being opposed to the singing of Wagner’s music.” Despite efforts to silence her, she continued: “I am an American and would resent as quick as anyone criticism against my country by any member of the company.” As the audience hissed and shouted for her removal—“Why don’t you go back to Germany?” someone screamed—she was asked to what Legion post she belonged. She admitted having no connection to the organization: “I am only a citizen who resents this cowardly—” but her words were drowned out and she left after several angry participants moved toward her.⁹³

Outside the hall, she explained that she was a Kentuckian who had sung in Germany before the war. Singing German roles was how she earned her living, Miss Ago’n said, and preventing her from performing in German was like snatching food from her mouth. It was “cowardly to stop German opera” here. Recounting her patriotic activities during the war, she said the males in her family had served in the military. Those inside the hall, who would surely have been unmoved by such assertions, passed a resolution stating that the American Legion would use every peaceful means to prevent the production in New York of German-language opera.⁹⁴

As opening night neared, some predicted the performances would never happen, others insisted the works should not be presented in German, while still others said the company could do what it pleased, even if the time was not right.⁹⁵ That last perspective was embraced by the Musical Courier, which assumed an unusually tolerant posture, arguing that classical music devotees could choose for themselves whether they wished to hear opera in German. Moreover, the editors rejected the notion that a nefarious German propaganda effort was at work in the company’s plan.⁹⁶

A few days before the first production was to be heard, a small group of wounded soldiers headed to the city’s financial district where they distributed petitions, made speeches, and attempted to generate enough opposition to stop the performance. Part of a citywide effort spearheaded by the American Legion, the goal was to galvanize those who wanted to keep German-language opera from New York. A Legion representative expressed confidence in the effort, claiming he believed city and state officials would realize that New Yorkers overwhelmingly opposed such performances at a moment when the area’s hospitals remained packed with “men maimed and crippled in the war.”⁹⁷

On October 20, the day of the opening performance, at a City Hall hearing to determine whether the opera would be heard, representatives of the American Legion tangled with the directors of the Star Opera, along with singers and German opera lovers, who believed continuing the ban was absurd. Those opposing the performances were rumored to be working on behalf of the Met, which, it was said, aimed to quash a competitor. Star officials declared they had sons who had served nobly overseas, and the head of the company’s board produced a US government document commending his work in designing an airplane propeller used to fight the Germans.⁹⁸

Ultimately, the hearing hinged on whether it was appropriate to offer performances in German while wounded American doughboys were still suffering in the nation’s hospitals, and whether a company featuring Otto Goritz should be permitted to perform at all. An American soldier who had “left an arm in France” was angered by those who spoke German or had strong German accents. The people here look just like those “we met in Belleau Wood,” he cried, “flinging the German language in our face. . . . I am just as much at war as I ever was, because I’ll never get rid of this hand. It is wood.”A woman rose to decry the continuing hatred. “I have two little children, and if I am ostracized, just because I have German blood in my veins, I don’t think I can make good Americans of them.”⁹⁹

The New York Times acknowledged it was true that loyal American citizens of German descent had suffered because of anti-German hostility, calling the ongoing hatred a “grave menace.” But the fault lay with German “tactlessness,” the editors argued, pointing to the disorders over German opera that had occurred earlier that year. It was obvious that the present musical venture was likely to cause a riot, but the Star Opera had gone ahead anyway. The Allies had suffered the loss of “millions in killed and wounded” and the destruction of “countless fair cities and villages.” The Germans had caused this, for they had “willed the war.” The time would come, when the “passions inflamed by the slaughter” would cool, but that time had not yet arrived.¹⁰⁰

Despite such declarations, that night the German language rang out from the stage of the Lexington Theater to a large and enthusiastic audience. While the mayor had ruled that the company should not perform until a peace treaty with Germany was ratified, the group believed it had a legal right to play and ignored his order. Thus, shortly after 8:30 P.M., the audience heard Theodore Spiering begin the proceedings with a shortened version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” followed by excerpts from Die Meistersinger, performed in a concert version. After intermission, the company played lighter German fare. Such works, it was said, offered some charming music and little in the way of a plot over which to dawdle. According to the review, which did not comment on the decision to play German music, the sizable audience “applauded madly.”¹⁰¹

If a lively cohort of German music lovers was enthralled by the familiar melodies inside the theater, outside the hall the feeling was far less euphoric. An irate mob clashed on Lexington Avenue with hundreds of policemen, who had been called to the scene and would batter the far-larger number of soldiers and civilians.¹⁰² The New York Times claimed the protesters numbered several thousand, including civilians and military men in uniform. The mounted police charged at the demonstrators, who hurled stones, bricks, and bottles. The crowd waved flags, marched (at times) in formation, and jeered and hissed at those heading to the theater, while calling for the police to halt the performance. At one point, a woman who called herself “Mrs. Johnson” and then “Carrie Nation” broke through the police lines to give an impassioned speech demanding that the police “show their Americanism” by stopping the opera. Ushered back through the throng by the police, she continued her harangue, spurred on by the frenzied mob. Protesters and police ended up bloodied, with some hospitalized.¹⁰³

The day after the riot, the mayor ordered the police commissioner to close the Lexington Theater. He had decided the opera company should defer all future engagements until after the ratification of the peace treaty. Under the present circumstances, according to the counsel for the city, performing German opera could lead to violence. For its part, the American Legion, a leading advocate of the shutdown, published an editorial in its weekly organ asserting that the trouble with German opera sung in German was that one heard “the shrieks of the Lusitania’s dying.” The “measured cadences” of the language evoked “not tender human emotions, but a firing squad marching at the goose step upon defenseless women and children.”¹⁰⁴

A line of some fifty policemen kept hundreds of expectant operagoers from entering the theater that second evening, while exchanges for the next night’s performance were promised to all ticket holders. Standing nearby in reserve were another five hundred police officers. At around 8:00, a group of sailors who drove up Lexington Avenue in a truck were stopped by the police and forced to scatter. They re-formed on a side street, marched to the theater, and realizing there would be no performance, cheered enthusiastically and left the scene. An hour later, a man approaching the theater with a suitcase, broke through the police line, pulled out a hammer, and smashed one of the theater’s windows. He was arrested and hauled away. There was no more unrest that night.¹⁰⁵

Yet, the very next day, on October 22, 1919, German music in the form of Lortzing’s Tsar und Zimmermann was offered at the Lexington Theater. The company’s producers had secured a temporary injunction in state supreme court the night before, restraining the police from barring the production. Although the performance was sold out, many stayed away fearing that violence would occur—which it did. For several hours, mobs clashed with police who swung nightsticks and fired their revolvers. If mayhem ruled outside, the auditorium was hardly free from commotion, as one man in the third tier stood up at the end of the first act, reached into a bag and, winding up like a baseball pitcher, proceeded to throw eggs down to the stage, where Herman Weil was singing, along with the full chorus. An agile Weil leapt to one side, making the first projectile miss its mark. The left-handed protester continued hurling eggs at the stage, while the singer repeatedly managed to dodge them; the chorus scattered and the audience fled their seats for the aisles. Finally, after the strong-armed patron broke free from the clutches of another audience member, the police apprehended him and carted him off to the station house, where he was booked as John Doe, a salesman. More distressingly, a sailor was taken to the hospital with serious injuries to his skull, suffered outside the theater.¹⁰⁶

Over the next few days, the Lexington Theater continued to offer German-language performances, which, by and large, went off uneventfully. Crowds of a few hundred to a thousand would mill around outside, only to be dispersed by the police, who arrested groups of protesting sailors. Despite a police officer firing his gun one night, the furor was beginning to ebb.¹⁰⁷

Nevertheless, as the week wore on it seemed likely that the Star Company’s run of German-language performances would end, especially after its business manager resigned upon questioning the wisdom of offering German opera. But the decision on whether such pieces could be performed rested with the courts.¹⁰⁸ Representing the city before the New York State Supreme Court, counsel George Nicholson acknowledged that, under ordinary circumstance, producing German opera would be neither wrong nor illegal. But under “existing conditions,” he said, it was clear that such pieces aroused “the emotions” of the community and excited “disorder.” The lawyer claimed the company’s productions sought to glorify the “German spirit which could not be conquered by American cannon.” Moreover, Nicholson observed, neither America nor New York were appropriate locations for preserving the “Hun spirit.”¹⁰⁹

In the end, the court ruled it was illegal to perform opera in German in New York City prior to the formal ratification of the peace treaty with Germany. According to the ruling, the police could prevent such performances because, as one newspaper noted, “a state of feeling existed” that made German-language opera a “provocation to large numbers in a community still deeply stirred against Germany.” The ruling noted that Otto Goritz, the company’s director, had embittered the public because he had allegedly declared he had no intention of becoming an American, had claimed he had remained in the United States only for the money, and had supposedly celebrated the Lusitania sinking in song. Remarkably, the judge acknowledged that he could not ascertain whether any of these charges were true, but contended it was unnecessary to do so. What mattered, he wrote, was that “they are made and widely believed, and the effect upon the people not yet recovered from the passions of the war is substantially the same as though every charge had been proven.”¹¹⁰ In postwar New York, feelings trumped facts.

The judge then turned to what he called a more pressing reason to stop the performances. It was “desirable,” he said, that “the passions of the war subside as rapidly as may be,” and continuing such productions would retard that process. It was clear, he suggested, that public sentiment was not ready for performances of opera in German.¹¹¹ The Star Opera Company was ordered to end its New York run.¹¹² Within a month, it had passed into receivership.¹¹³

Besides the Star uproar, New Yorkers experienced no shortage of opera in this period, though the language question persisted. The postwar restoration of Wagner, sung in German, would take three years, a change that unfolded gradually. The announcement in mid-1919 that Parsifal would be performed at the Met in English was memorably described in the Literary Digest, which said a “German foot” would once more be “thrust inside the partly open door” of the city’s leading opera house, though it would be “wear[ing] a home-made shoe.” According to the Brooklyn Eagle, the Met’s Italian administrator, Gatti-Casazza, waited to announce the news until just before sailing for Europe. Nevertheless, the paper suggested it was reasonable to choose Parsifal to start the “experiment” of performing Wagner in English because the piece lacked the bellicose spirit of the Ring and did not glorify “Teutonism,” which had likely made Die Meistersinger “unacceptable.”¹¹⁴

And so in February 1920, Parsifal was sung before a large audience, using an English text prepared by the critic H. E. Krehbiel. The work had not been performed at the Metropolitan since April 6, 1917—the day the United States went to war with Germany. According to Richard Aldrich of the Times, Bodanzky led a “masterly” performance and Krehbiel’s translation was a superb example of the librettist’s art.¹¹⁵ Not everyone agreed. One critic asserted that Bodanzky’s interpretation moved “heavily on leaden feet,” while Krehbiel’s contribution was “tedious.”¹¹⁶

Whatever the quality of the performance, a more interesting question concerned whether to offer Wagner at all. Those pondering Wagner’s return to the Met had the chance to hear from Gatti-Casazza, who claimed he had suspended performances of Wagner not because of public opinion, but because of the “lack of tact and petulance” on the part of Wagner’s compatriots. Without elaboration, he lauded the composer for creating a “new musical world.” But then, reflecting on opera’s significance, Gatti-Casazza opined bizarrely that Wagner’s works had “no influence, either philosophical or moral or social, because the operatic stage cannot exceed its confines or its mission, which is [only] to educate and refine the taste and produce emotions of an artistic nature.” Performing Parsifal would have no social or religious function, but only an “artistic” one.¹¹⁷

While one can perhaps understand Gatti-Casazza’s inclination to downplay opera’s significance, his contention that it lacked philosophical, moral, or social influence was belied by the events of the past several years. Developments in New York and across the country made it impossible to believe that the power of opera, and of classical music more generally, was limited to the refinement of taste or to producing emotions of an artistic nature. Without question, thousands were convinced that opera possessed the power to do far more than that, with countless Americans believing it could strengthen the cause of a bitter foe, thus imperiling the United States.

Whatever Gatti-Casazza’s convictions, in late November 1921, Wagner was heard in German at the Metropolitan for the first time since the war, as Tristan was offered in the composer’s tongue after being performed in English the previous year. According to Aldrich, the “masterpiece . . . wrought its old magic” in a performance of “dramatic power” and “emotional poignancy.”¹¹⁸ A few weeks later, Die Walküre was offered in German, with a performance that thrilled New Yorkers, who had not heard it since the 1916–1917 season. As one reviewer noted, the music “swept and swirled” in a “colossal tide of surging sound, through three and a half hours of tonal glory.” With the opera’s return, it appeared the anti-Wagnerian clamor had all but evaporated, as the December performance demonstrated that the “rightful sound” of the piece was the language in which it had been conceived.¹¹⁹

Thus, some three years after the end of the war, the Metropolitan was again a place from which the German language rang out, as Wagner’s operas began to assume their accustomed place in New York’s cultural life. But memories of the war had not evaporated entirely. In late November 1922, a few weeks before the company’s restoration of Parsifal in German, the city’s grandest operatic space was the scene of an emotional appeal served up by the eighty-one-year-old “Tiger” of France, Georges Clemenceau. The former prime minister spoke to an audience of four thousand and claimed the threat Germany posed to Europe had not disappeared. In an address lasting more than ninety minutes, he described the peril faced by France, and asked for a commitment from the American people to help preserve French security and that of all Europe. It was essential, he said, for the United States not to forget its international obligations.¹²⁰

Even as Clemenceau was inveighing against the Teutonic threat, plans were afoot to bring to America a German opera company, which would offer a large helping of German fare. In January 1923, members of the Berlin State Opera arrived in the United States, where they would perform works in New York and other cities, including an uncut version of the Ring, along with compositions by Wagner, Beethoven, and Richard and Johann Strauss. The Manhattan Opera House would be the site for four weeks of what was billed as the “Wagnerian Opera Festival,” followed by three additional weeks at the Lexington Theater, where violent protests had exploded a few years before.¹²¹

New Yorkers responded enthusiastically to the offerings of the Berlin troupe under conductor Leo Blech. Over seven weeks, the company gave fifty-six performances of fifteen German operas. Surely, the forty performances of Wagner, including multiple Rings, slaked the thirst of the most devoted Wagnerites,¹²² who formed crowds that “literally fought their way into the doors” of the auditorium.¹²³ According to one critic, “the war reaction to German music and the German language had vanished with hardly a trace.”¹²⁴

Nor was this enthusiasm limited to New York. In Baltimore, the company played to sold-out houses, and on opening night, the audience was enthralled.¹²⁵ Bostonians were similarly enraptured by the company, including one mesmerized listener who wrote to “Mr. Richard Wagner” at the Boston Opera House, telling him she had written a song and asking whether he would “kindly look it over.” While there is no record of Mr. Wagner’s reply, the letter suggests a measure of support for the return of the icon’s music, especially the Ring cycle, which had not been heard in Boston since 1889.¹²⁶

From the excitement the German troupe created in the operatic realm, we consider New York’s orchestral domain, in which the Philharmonic and the Symphony confronted the question of performing German music, particularly Wagner and Richard Strauss. The symphonic challenge was less daunting than that encountered in the operatic sphere, where one faced the prickly matter of the German language. Damrosch’s New York Symphony had played Strauss, who was alive and well, for the last time during the war in December 1917, and did not revisit his work until 1922. In January 1918 under Stransky, the Philharmonic had offered its final wartime performance of Strauss, whose music was not heard again until December 1920. Both orchestras had continued to play Wagner throughout the war, though they limited themselves to orchestral excerpts, which satisfied New York audiences without forcing them to endure the German tongue. In conducting Wagner, Stransky did not engage a singer until late 1919, while Damrosch waited until late 1920.¹²⁷

In time, the less fevered postwar atmosphere even tempered the outlook of Lucie Jay. In early 1919, she railed against an orchestral concert to be led by a Japanese conductor, who was scheduled to direct a program comprised partly of Wagner’s music. While the one vocal excerpt on the program, an aria from Die Walküre, would be performed in English, Jay’s postwar posture remained the same as it had been in wartime. The Carnegie Hall concert was “a monstrous attempt to introduce things German in this country,” she declared.¹²⁸ Despite the objections of Jay and her allies, the concert was given and the audience was unperturbed.¹²⁹

A few months later, in the summer of 1919, Jay was in a different humor, which she discussed in a letter to the Times. “Peace has come at last!” she exclaimed. “Germany is on her knees before outraged but forgiving humanity.” Explaining her wartime opposition to German creative culture, she said that she and her circle had “uncovered ample evidence that German propaganda lurked in these apparently harmless entertainments.” But all had changed and she would protest no more.¹³⁰ The next day, the Times offered a positive response, noting that Jay was now in line with most Americans. The editors spoke of their past support for her position against German music, while acknowledging that it was problematic to draw “national or racial lines in art.” But the circumstances had left no other option, they insisted, for the Germans had acted as “enemies of civilization.” Now, with the crisis over, German compositions could again “delight the ear.”¹³¹

By early in the next decade, New Yorkers would again enjoy their Wagner and Strauss.¹³² Indeed, on several Sunday afternoons in the autumn of 1921, a hungry musical public gathered in Aeolian Hall to listen to a series of lectures on the Ring given by Walter Damrosch. For more than a thousand auditors, the conductor explored the complexity of the music dramas, pointing out in the first lecture that it had been a mistake to spurn the composer’s music during the war.¹³³

Despite the milder musical temperature, American passions had not cooled entirely, though unsavory sentiments were now expressed more privately. Writing to a New York Symphony administrator, a long-time subscriber expressed dismay at the decision to hire Bruno Walter to lead a handful of concerts in 1923. Of the Berlin-born Walter, who had obtained Austrian citizenship before the war, the subscriber wrote, “I am sorry that the conductor for those concerts is not to be a Frenchman, an Italian or anyone but a German. I need not weary you with the usual twaddle about music having no nationality.” What was most important, the subscriber averred, was that Walter was, in every way, German.¹³⁴ This xenophobic subscriber could not have known that ten years later, Walter, who was Jewish, would decide to flee Europe for America.

If Bruno Walter was not yet a musical luminary, Richard Strauss surely was, and his visit to the United States in 1921 and 1922 suggests how American attitudes had begun to shift. In the spring of 1921, it was announced that Strauss would be in the United States from October to January to conduct orchestral concerts and to perform as a pianist in recitals featuring his chamber music and songs.¹³⁵ Prior to the trip, a small tempest swirled due to an interview published in The Nation in which the composer offered disparaging observations about the United States. Declaring that Salzburg needed a new concert hall and that the million-dollar price tag should be picked up by the United States, Strauss explained that it should do so because America was devoid of culture. “Culture will always come from Europe. America needs Europe. Europe does not need America—only her dollars.”¹³⁶

Before his autumn arrival, Strauss denied having uttered those words, claiming his “alleged statements” were “maliciously garbled and contrary to my opinions.” He was looking forward to his visit, he said.¹³⁷ Upon reaching New York in late October, the composer offered the hopeful observation that “all art must become happier in the present age.”¹³⁸

Whether all art would be happier was an open question. What was surely happy was the response to the opening concert in which the German musician conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in a program comprising three of his tone poems. The audience greeted the visitor with a cry of approval, and the performance, lauded in the Times, suggested that Strauss was poised for a triumphant visit. It was not surprising when Carnegie Hall erupted in applause and audience members placed flowers and a wreath upon the stage.¹³⁹

Earlier that day, Mayor Hylan had received Strauss at a City Hall reception where historic grievances seemed consigned to the past, even if a critical letter or two appeared in the local press.¹⁴⁰ The mayor welcomed the musician, while Strauss apologized for speaking in German. He had not yet mastered the “beautiful language of Shakespeare,” and did not wish to offend anyone’s ears. In his native tongue, Strauss acknowledged that he was honored by the reception, and accepted it as a “representative of the noble German music,” which had always been “a welcome guest in this impressive country.” He concluded by envisioning a tranquil future, especially between America and Germany. He hoped the United States would “blossom and prosper,” and wished the “blessing of true peace” might bring the two countries closer together.¹⁴¹

While in New York, Strauss conducted several orchestral concerts, comprising mainly his own music, with the Philadelphia Orchestra (and once with the New York Philharmonic); he also performed as a pianist in his chamber music pieces and as an accompanist for his songs. The orchestral concerts received glowing reviews and the audience was thrilled to hear the iconic figure direct the Philadelphians in such familiar fare.¹⁴² Describing Strauss’s conducting style, one critic spoke of the “economical rhythmic beats of his baton.” And this observer of the Philharmonic concert gushed that the “strange genius of the man reaches everyone with whom he comes in contact. His cerebral vibrations are irresistible.”¹⁴³

Perhaps the most luminous writing on Strauss came from the pen of the Tribune’s H. E. Krehbiel, who rhapsodized about the opening concert at Carnegie Hall, writing of the performance and of Strauss’s interpretation of his own music, that it was “full of delicate witcheries, pellucid as the waters of a mountain brook, sparkling as a mountain cascade.” Equally notable was Krehbiel’s assessment of the audience, whose behavior was marked by “rapt attention.” As for its political bent, the audience “proclaimed only honor for the artist—not a political or national tone could be heard.” The response of those who gathered at Carnegie was “glowing . . . as a stream of lava hot from a volcanic crater.”¹⁴⁴

A few weeks later, after attending Strauss’s other New York performances, Krehbiel was less charitable, observing that his current visit “offered nothing new.” Reflecting upon an earlier Strauss tour that had brought him to America in 1904, Krehbiel said the musician had done little since to enhance his stature, having composed only Salome, Elektra, and the Alpine Symphony, which suggests the esteemed critic was more than a bit harsh in judging the German’s creative output.¹⁴⁵

America’s renewed enthusiasm was not confined to New York, for Strauss appeared in cities across the country. In Boston, where he accompanied on piano a violinist and a singer, the Globe noted that Strauss was “excelled by no living composer.” While acknowledging that Strauss’s thinking on the war and the United States undoubtedly differed from that of the audience, the paper said his reflections on politics were not worthy of attention. He was in Boston not to give a lecture but to allow people to hear his music.¹⁴⁶ At the program’s end, the response was so fervent that Strauss’s admirers were driven off only when the lights at Symphony Hall were extinguished.¹⁴⁷ Audiences in Pittsburgh, the site of virulent wartime opposition to German music, welcomed Strauss excitedly; likewise did large crowds in Baltimore, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.¹⁴⁸

In Philadelphia, the mayor hailed America’s esteemed visitor, who offered remarks in German at the annual luncheon of the Matinee Musical Club, a women’s organization, where he said women were the “greatest supporters and appreciators of music.” That evening, Strauss offered another of his many successful recitals.¹⁴⁹ Detroit music lovers had the opportunity to hear the composer conduct their orchestra in superb performances of three of his tone poems. A delirious audience recalled him to the stage nearly thirty times.¹⁵⁰

Chicagoans saw Strauss perform as accompanist in a German Lieder recital in November, and then return in December to conduct their symphony in two of his orchestral masterworks, Death and Transfiguration and Also Sprach Zarathustra, both of which the ensemble had played for years under Frederick Stock. These were extraordinary performances, the Tribune reported, and the praise for the composer was “resounding.” One critic observed that in his tone poems, Strauss “became the culmination of a school, so high that no one could improve upon what he had done.”¹⁵¹ In the words of another critic, with “a genius like Strauss” offering “musical joys,” life was “really worth living.”¹⁵²

The night before Strauss departed, Josef Stransky delivered an intermission message to the composer on the stage of New York’s Hippodrome, where the visitor was conducting his final concert. The encomium had been penned by Otto Kahn, Met board chairman, who regretted he had to miss the concert but wanted to thank Strauss for his visit. According to Kahn, “Your genius had brought joy and inspiration to millions.” Noting there was “no country” where the composer’s art was “held in higher . . . appreciation” than in the United States, Kahn claimed Americans were a generous and forgiving people. It was not in their character to “store up national ill-will.” Instead, Americans loved music and great art, and their country was assuming its place among those “foremost in striving for the higher things in life.” Finally, Kahn looked toward a time when “the sun of true peace and reconcilement will shed its beneficent rays upon a world that too long has walked in the shadow of strife.”¹⁵³

For his part, Strauss was deeply impressed by the quality of American orchestral playing, with the Philadelphia and Chicago ensembles meriting special praise. He wrote glowingly to Philadelphia’s conductor, Leopold Stokowski, conveying his appreciation for the superb instrument he had created, which had provided him with “hours of the purest joy.”¹⁵⁴

In all, it was a remarkable tour, as the German was revered by a country now ready to set aside the bitterness of the war. As one critic observed, the arrival of Strauss was akin to the ongoing international disarmament conference in Washington, which sought to stabilize great power relations in the war’s aftermath. The only difference was that “disarmament in music . . . [had] already been consummated.”¹⁵⁵

If Strauss’s sojourn pointed to a condition of musical disarmament, a visit two years later by Siegfried Wagner, the only son of the other creative bête noire of the war years, left no doubt that anti-Germanism had faded. In January 1924, Siegfried arrived in the United States, along with his wife, in order to raise $200,000 to revive one of his father’s most consequential achievements, the Bayreuth Festival, which had been interrupted by the war. A conductor and sometime opera composer, the younger Wagner (who was also the grandson of Liszt), had come to tour America as a speaker and conductor. Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, and New York were among the cities in which he would conduct.¹⁵⁶

In Chicago, he was honored with a luncheon by that city’s German Club, before and after which members of the Chicago Symphony offered scaled-down versions of his father’s music. After the mayor welcomed the fifty-four-year-old Wagner, an orator delivered an appealing speech on the life and accomplishments of the father. Siegfried then offered some amusing remarks, after which he unexpectedly took up the baton to lead the small ensemble in a performance of Siegfried Idyll, which had been composed by his father as a birthday gift for his wife Cosima. The guest’s conducting prowess, especially with a group he had not rehearsed, was “masterly,” and the rendition concluded to great applause.¹⁵⁷

Between the arrival of Strauss in 1921 and Siegfried Wagner’s visit in 1924, further signs indicated the German musical tradition would again be embraced. The establishment of the Austro-German Musicians’ Relief Fund, which asked American artists to aid starving Austrian and German performers, suggested that anti-Germanism was receding. According to a January 1923 advertisement in the Musical Courier, the musicians of Germany and Austria were starving to death, which had led the American music community to join together to aid their musical brethren. Among those backing the call to action were figures like the pianist Josef Hofmann, the composer Victor Herbert, the pianist and conductor Ossip Gabrilowitsch, and the violinist Bronislaw Huberman. This distinguished group asked their colleagues to help save the life of “a brother artist,” who was stretching his “sad, yearning arms toward us.” American musicians were told that art knew “no geography and no nationality,” and that in saving the life of an artist, they could save their own.¹⁵⁸

As American musicians were implored to send funds across the Atlantic, the piano of Richard Wagner had made the journey in the opposite direction, to be displayed in New York at 437 Fifth Avenue, the home of Knabe Pianos. On a December evening in 1922, just a few blocks from where soldiers had clashed violently with police three years earlier over the performance of German opera, an invited audience gathered to see the master’s piano. The instrument had been discovered in Berlin by an American soldier who had purchased it from a music teacher in whose home it had stood for nearly fifty years. Made by Bechstein, the esteemed manufacturer, the instrument had been given to the composer in 1864 by King Ludwig of Bavaria, and it was said that Wagner had written or orchestrated much of his greatest work while seated at its keyboard.¹⁵⁹

At the studio that evening, the ceremony, which one publication likened to “an unveiling,” was attended by numerous celebrated artists, including some of the Metropolitan Opera’s leading Wagnerians, who sang to the accompaniment of the iconic instrument. In addition to the distinguished singers and a handful of pianists, several women described as “patronesses” were in attendance. Not only did the guests have the opportunity to see and hear the instrument, which had assumed the character of a sacred relic, but they could also view the original pencil score of Das Rheingold, which a New Yorker had acquired.¹⁶⁰

If some had yet to move beyond the war’s enmity, within five years of the conflict’s end, those drawn to classical music had largely made peace with the compositions of their former enemies and with the German and Austrian musicians working in the United States. The Teutonic threat had receded as a concern, the musical nationalists were mainly tranquil, and the fear of German autocracy that had swept the nation no longer inflamed the landscape. Most devotees of American concert and operatic life would now have agreed with the Musical Courier’s sentiments, that it made no difference where art came from. “A Strauss [tone] poem is not loaded with dynamite,” the editors observed, “nor is there any visible relationship between a Wagner opera and a submarine.”¹⁶¹ While developments in the next decade would compel the United States to reevaluate its perception of Germany, for now, Americans were content to hear their Strauss and their Wagner. Germany had been tamed, and its music could again inspire, soothe, and invigorate the American listener.