‘I was walking back from the coach where I had put the boy. About half an hour later. I knew Christine had gone with the Funmaster to examine a sideshow called the Hall of Mirrors. A small door in the side of the building opened, and he came running out. He went past a newspaper reporter who was ahead of me and as he came past me to throw himself into a small coach and disappear, he stopped and stared at me again. It was the same as the first time; I felt the day, already cold, had dropped another ten degrees. I shivered. Who was he? What does he want?’
‘I think you mean Darius. Do you wish to redeem him too?’
‘I do not think I could.’
‘You are right. He has sold his soul to Mammon, he is the god of gold’s eternal servant, until he comes to me. It was he who brought Erik to his own god. But Darius has no love. That is the difference.’
‘But he loves gold, Lord.’
‘No, he worships gold. There is a difference. Erik worships gold also, but somewhere deep inside his tortured soul he once knew love, and could again.’
‘Then I might yet win him?’
‘Joseph, no man who can know pure love, excepting only love of self, is beyond redemption.’
‘But like Darius, this Erik loves only gold, himself and another’s wife. Lord, I do not understand.’
‘You are wrong, Joseph. He cherishes gold, he hates himself and he loves a woman he knows he cannot have. I must go.’
‘Stay with me, Lord. A little longer.’
‘I cannot. There is a vicious war in the Balkans. There will be many souls to receive tonight.’
‘Then where shall I find this key? The key beyond gold, self and a woman he cannot have?’
‘I told you, Joseph. Look for another and a greater love.’
14
THE REVIEW OF GAYLORD SPRIGGS
NEW YORK TIMES, 4 DECEMBER 1906
WELL, MR OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN’S MUCH-VAUNTED new Manhattan Opera House was inaugurated last night in what can only be fairly described as an unmitigated triumph. If ever another civil war was going to start again in our dear country, it must have come in the fight for seats as all New York was rocked on its heels by the spectacle we saw before us.
Exactly how much some of the great financial and cultural dynasties of our city paid for their boxes and even seats in the stalls can only be conjectured, but certainly the prices must have left the official charges out of sight.
The Manhattan, as we must now call it to differentiate from the Metropolitan across town, is a truly sumptuous building, richly ornate, with a reception area inside the doors to put to shame the rather crowded pre-auditorium public space afforded by the Met. And here in the half-hour before the curtain rose I saw names known only as legends across all America milling like schoolchildren as the lucky few were escorted to their private boxes.
There were Mellons, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Goulds, Whitneys and the Pierpont Morgans themselves. Present among them, genial host to us all, was the man who staked a huge fortune and limitless drive and energy to create the Manhattan against all the odds, cigar czar Oscar Hammerstein. Rumor still persists that backing Mr H. is another and even richer tycoon, the phantom financier whom no-one has ever seen, but if such a one exists he was nowhere in evidence.
The opulence of the sweeping portico and the lushness of the reception area were impressive, as was also the gilt, crimson and plum ornateness of the surprisingly small and intimate auditorium. But what of the quality of the new opera and of the singing that we had all come to hear? Both were of an artistic and emotional level that I cannot recall in thirty years.
Readers of this poor column will know that but seven weeks ago Mr Hammerstein took the extraordinary decision to cast aside the Bellini masterpiece I Puritani for his inaugural offering and instead undertake the frightening risk of introducing a completely new opera in the modern style by an unknown (and amazingly still anonymous) American composer. What an enormous gamble. Did it pay off? One thousand per cent.
Firstly, The Angel of Shiloh secured the presence of Vicomtesse Christine de Chagny of Paris, a beauty with a voice that last night eclipsed any in my memory, and I believe I have heard the best in the world over these past thirty years. Secondly, the work itself is a masterpiece of simplicity and emotion that left not a dry eye in the house.
The story is set in our own Civil War of only forty years ago and is therefore of immediate s
ignificance to any American of North or South. In Act One we meet the dashing young Connecticut lawyer Miles Regan, hopelessly in love with Eugenie Delarue, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy plantation-owner of Virginia. The former role was taken by rising American tenor David Melrose until something most strange occurred - but more of this anon. The couple duly plight their troth and exchange golden rings. As the Southern belle Mme de Chagny was magnificent and her simple girlish pleasure at the proposal of the man she loves, expressed in the aria ‘With this ring for ever’, communicated that delight to the whole audience.
The neighboring plantation-owner, Joshua Howard, magnificently sung by Alessandro Gonci, has also been the suitor for her hand in marriage but accepts his rejection and heartbreak like the gentleman he is. But the clouds of war are looming and at the end of the act the first guns fire on Fort Sumter, and the Union is at war with the Confederacy. The young lovers have to part. Regan explains that he has no choice but to return to Connecticut and fight for the North. Miss Delarue knows she must stay with her family, all dedicated to the South. The act ends with one heart-rending duet as the lovers part, not knowing if they will ever meet again.
For Act Two, two years have passed and Eugenie Delarue has volunteered as a nurse in a hospital just after the bloody battle of Shiloh. We see her selfless devotion to the terribly injured young men in the uniforms of both sides as they are brought in, a formerly sheltered plantation belle now exposed to all the filth and pain of a front-line hospital. In a single and utterly moving aria she asks ‘Why must these young men die?’
Her former neighbor and suitor is now Colonel Howard, commanding the regiment occupying the site of the hospital. He resumes his courtship, seeking to persuade her to forget her lost fiance in the Union Army and accept him instead. She is half decided so to do when a new arrival is brought in. He is a Union officer, terribly injured when a powder magazine exploded in his face. This face is swathed in surgical gauze, clearly ruined beyond repair. Even as he remains unconscious Miss Delarue recognizes the gold ring upon one finger, the same ring she offered two years ago. The tragic officer is indeed Captain Regan, still sung by David Melrose. When he awakes, he quickly recognizes his fiancee but does not realize that he himself has been recognized while asleep. There is a supremely ironic scene in which, from his bed and helpless, he witnesses Colonel Howard enter the ward to press his suit yet again with Miss Delarue, trying to convince her that her lover must by now be dead, when she and we know that he lies a few feet away. This act ends when Captain Regan perceives that she knows who he is behind the bandages and, seeing himself for the first time in a mirror, realizes that the once handsome face is now a ruin. He seeks to snatch a revolver from a guard and end his own life, but the Confederate soldier and two Union prisoner/patients restrain him.
The third act is the climax, and deeply moving it turns out to be. For Colonel Howard announces that to his new knowledge Eugenie’s former fiance is none other than the leader of the fearsome Regan’s Raiders, who have carried out devastating ambushes behind the lines. As such he will, upon capture, be subjected to a drumhead court martial and shot.