Confessions of an Opera Singer Part 7

THE ART OF MARIE MUELLE

One factor in my success was the beautiful wardrobe I was enabled to have through the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Frank S. Jones. The first clothes I ordered from Marie Muelle in Paris, the summer before I went to Metz, I left entirely to her. She showed me designs and had bolts of wonderful s.h.i.+mmering silks unrolled for my inspection, and brought out boxes of curious embroideries, which she kept for her special friends.

The _Amneris_ and _Dalila_ costumes she made me were very French of that period of the _Comique_; pale pinks and greens and everything in long wigs. I wore them a few seasons, but as I grew more in knowledge I did not feel at all Egyptian in pink _crepe de Chine_, nor Syrian in pale green. My brother Cecil and I love the Egyptian part of the Louvre, and have spent hours there together. We found a fascinating bronze princess of the right period, which we proceeded to try and copy for me for _Amneris_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DALILA AS I USED TO DRESS IT]

We were staying out of town at Giverny, the artist colony made famous by Monet, Macmonnies, Friesieke, the A. B. Frost family and many artist friends. I had a big studio with my brother, and he made huge designs of the wings the princess used for her skirt, pinning them on the wall of the studio, then colouring them in the tones of the mummy cases, allowing for their fading through the ages. These designs we took to Muelle, who was most enthusiastic. We worked hard and long on that costume, getting the headdress just right, and making it practical as well as correct. The jewelry I made myself, from wooden beads painted the right colour and in the rue de Rivoli I found just the right Egyptian charms and figures of blue earthenware to hang on the necklace.

My wig maker could not seem to satisfy me, so I finally took a short-haired black wig, and braided into it one hundred strands, made of l.u.s.treless wool. The dress seemed to lack something when on, so I twisted ropes of turquoise beads round the wrists and the blue accented the whole.

The _Dalila_ clothes I had been wearing then seemed hopelessly pale, washy and conventional, so we hunted the shops of Berlin and Paris for vivid embroideries and searched museums for Syrian women. They did not seem at all popular, though we found magnificent reliefs of men. Taking these as a basis, we built some barbaric robes of scarlet and purple, added a fuzzy short black wig, and I felt much more "like it." I found a necklace of silver chains with clumps of turquoise matrix, in Darmstadt, and had a headdress made to match it. A comparison of the _Amneris_ and _Dalila_ photos will show how one's sense of costuming develops.

We bought all the books on the subject we could find, and studied them for hours. We cut out reproductions of historic portraits and invested largely in photos in the different art galleries we haunted, and pasted them into sc.r.a.p books. Caps and headdresses have always interested me intensely. The one I wear in "Meistersinger" I copied from a portrait in Antwerp. The Norwegian one I wear as _Mary_ in "Fliegender Hollaender" I bought in Norway, together with the rest of my costume.

Nothing gives such character to a silhouette as a characteristic head, and having to do endless old women, I could give them all just as endless changes of headgear. A comparison of the photos will also show how one grows into the role with years of playing, and how one's eyes "come to," how one develops histrionically--how the silhouette acquires snap and vim and carrying power at a distance, and outlines become crisp and authoritative.

My first _Carmen_ clothes were very _Opera Comique_ and not at all Spanish gipsy. I studied the Spanish cigarette girls and those of gipsy blood as carefully as possible, and my idea of the role changed naturally. I went to Muelle one summer, and told her that I was no longer happy in satin princess dresses. She said that Zuloaga had just designed and superintended the making of Breval's clothes for the _Comique's_ real Spanish revival of _Carmen_. She could duplicate these for me as she knew just where to send in Spain for the flowered cottons in garish colours, and the shot silk scarfs that Zuloaga had imported for Breval. I was delighted at this and adapted the costumes to my needs, using the last one exactly as Zuloaga had intended, with the huge red comb, made specially in Spain.

When I sang _Carmen_ before Prince Henry of Prussia in Darmstadt, he sent word to me that my skirts were too long, no Spanish woman wore them so long. I knew, however, that they were the right length, and any one can see by studying Zuloaga's paintings that the soubrette length skirt is not worn on the proud, swinging hips of the Spanish girl. I have been told by Spaniards that I am an exact reproduction of a Spanish gipsy as _Carmen_, which shows my studies were not in vain. People have said that Merimee's and Bizet's _Carmen_ is not Spanish, and perhaps they are right; but in aiming to portray a Spaniard, what model can one take but a real one?

My _Orfeo_ clothes I have never changed. The _crepe de chine_ for them was imported by Mounet-Sully for one of his characters, and Muelle gave me the piece that was left over. Its beautiful creamy colour and thick softness cannot be improved upon, to my mind.

Marie Muelle is now the first operatic costumer of the world. This reputation she has built unaided through her own unfailing energy.

Through her rooms pa.s.s the most fabulous-priced opera singers, the greatest actors, the stage beauties, famous managers, producers, and designers, the ladies of the great world seeking costumes for wonderful private _fetes_--and gentlemen seeking the ladies--all the varied crowd of many nationalities to whom the old childish pastime of "dressing up"

is a business or a pleasure. The present establishment in the rue de la Victoire is quite impressive. The hall is usually half-filled with the trunks of "Muelle artists" engaged in America, who bring their things into New York in bond to avoid paying the ruinous customs charges, and are therefore forced to go through the weary round of dispatching the same old stage wardrobe out of the country and bringing it back again every season. Even when the clothes are quite reduced to shreds and patches the rags have to be elaborately packed, identified by lynx-eyed officials, and sent at least outside the three-mile limit of the American Continent to be thrown away!

The first big white reception room of the Maison contains a long table usually littered with samples, some chairs, and a large mirror lit like that of a star's dressing room. There is a mantelpiece covered with photographs of singers of all grades of celebrity, each dedicated with a message of admiring affection to Marie Muelle. Around the wall are various _armoires_, one containing a library of works on costume, another a glittering collection of stage jewelry, a third many portfolios of water-colour designs for every sort and kind of theatrical garment for every role.

Oh! those designs! A young soprano has won an engagement in Monte Carlo and wants a stage wardrobe for her repertoire. Out comes the "Modern French" portfolio with a bewildering series of blonde and sinuous _Thaises_, Moyen-Age _Melisandes_, a scintillating _Ariane_ in contrast to a demure little work-a-day _Louise_; and the lady spends a delightful afternoon in selecting her favourites.

Then Muelle sends for an armful of samples--

"_Crepe de chine_, of course, for the _Thais_. Yes, in flesh pink with plenty of embroidery. Here is an _echantillon_"--and she pins it to the drawing.

The singer picks out a sc.r.a.p of heavy, l.u.s.trous crepe--

"No, not that quality. That is something special, and there is no more to be had for love or money."

Colours and fabrics are decided upon, all tested for becomingness under the bunched electric lights, which mimic the strong light of the stage.

Each design has an a.s.sortment of tags of material pinned where many others have been pinned before. Muelle is an expert in colours for the stage. She doesn't talk learnedly of synthetic dyes, processes, or German compet.i.tion, but she can give you a bright blue that is warranted to stay blue, no matter what vagaries of lighting a stage manager may indulge in.

Her pale colours never turn insipid, nor her dark ones muddy. She keeps a special dyeing establishment busy with her orders alone, and twenty-four hours seems time enough to obtain any shade known to the palette.

The textiles once chosen, Camille is called to "take measures" and arrange for the fittings.

"And now, one question," says Mademoiselle, "Is your stage level, or does it slope towards the back? Very well, that is all."

When the singer arrives for her first trying-on, the fitting room is filled with lengths of material, and Mademoiselle herself stands in the midst, brandis.h.i.+ng a huge pair of shears. She throws a length of silk over one of your shoulders, puts in two pins, and bunching the material in her left hand, gives a slash with the scissors in her right, with a recklessness that makes you shudder. A pull here, a fold there, two more pins--and the stuff hangs as almost no one else can make it hang, accentuating a good figure and disguising a poor one.

Occasionally in filling a regular order she will stumble upon an unusual effect. One day they were making Moyen-Age sleeves for the dress of a well-known singer whom Mlle. Muelle has gowned for years, but who has never been included in the list of her special favourites. The sleeve was of slashed silvery grey, lined with cerise, the lining showing on the edges. She picked up a bit of cloth of silver and pulled it through the slashes. The effect charmed her.

"_Tenez!_" she said, "That is too good for her. We'll keep that for La Belle Geraldine."

"La Belle Geraldine," as Miss Farrar is known in Paris, is one of Muelle's most constant patrons. Ever since her Berlin days she has been costumed by the Maison Muelle, and she stands very high in the list of Mademoiselle's favourites.

The outer room may contain the photographs of celebrities great and small, but in the inner room there are just two--a portrait of Miss Farrar as _Elizabeth_ and one of myself as _Carmen_.

Opening off the main reception and fitting rooms are others lined with _armoires_ and stacks of boxes running to the ceiling. Then come the rooms for cutting and sewing, and the embroidery rooms. Muelle uses quant.i.ties of solid embroidery and _applique_ work, where other costumers are content with stenciling and gilding. She has the secret of a metal thread that does not tarnish. Her idea is that the use of first-cla.s.s materials, good silks and satins, real velvets is a necessity in these days of electric lighting, which is as revealing as sunlight; that the subst.i.tution of imitation fabrics went out with the use of gas in the theatre, and that the superior wearing qualities alone of the best materials justify the greater expense.

The capacity of her _armoires_ and the size of the acc.u.mulated collections they contain were tested some years ago by the special production of Strauss's "Salome" at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris, when Muelle was called upon, at ridiculously short notice, to furnish all costumes for a cast of 150 people. There was a royal ransacking of cupboards and jewel cabinets, but everything was ready on time for the dress rehearsal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DALILA AS I NOW DRESS IT]

A greater feather in her cap was the order to costume the new productions of the Russian Ballet, from designs by no less a personage than the great Leon Bakst himself. Then ensued a dyeing of silks and a printing of chiffons, a stringing of beads and knotting of fringes which set the whole establishment humming like a beehive.

For all their thousand problems, the costumes were finished and delivered at the appointed time.

Since that triumph there has been hardly an important costume event in all Paris in which Muelle has not had a share, if not entire charge. She costumed Astruc's first season in the Theatre des Champs Elysees. She has been responsible for the costuming of many productions of the Russian Ballet, and for great spectacles like Debussy's "St. Sebastien"

and "La Pisanelle" of D'Annunzio. Society knows her as well as the stage, for she has been the presiding genius at many an exquisite fete, Greek, Roman, or Persian, held in lovely gardens behind the prosaic exteriors of exclusive Parisian homes.

But all this has not turned her head, nor changed her toward her old friends. She still loves a good gossip. Many a note have we had from her--"I am delighted that Mademoiselle is returning to Paris, and hope that she will come to see me. I have quant.i.ties of stories to tell her, and we shall die of laughing."

But though she enjoys a choice tidbit, she will tolerate no malicious tale-bearing. She refused an order, tactfully and firmly, from one singer because the lady tried to tell tales out of school against one of Muelle's chosen favourites. Her revenge in this case was typical. She knows that advancing age is the enemy _par excellence_ of popularity for stage people, so she makes a point of always referring to the delinquent as "La Mere So-and-So!"

The list of her kindnesses to artists is unending. One case that I know of personally is typical. A girl with an unusually beautiful voice had arranged a debut, leading to a first engagement, and she ordered her wardrobe from Muelle. She failed to be engaged after her debut, however, and one disappointment after another came to her, so that it seemed impossible for her to make a start at all. But Muelle had faith in her, and kept the beautiful clothes, unpaid for, hanging in her presses for several years. At last the girl made a great hit in Russia, and is now a well-known singer, and, needless to say, a faithful adherent of the Maison Muelle. This is only one instance of the kind, and, of course, there are many, many more in which Mademoiselle's kindness does not find a monetary reward.

Often have I heard her suggesting economy to those whose salaries are not in the "fabulous" cla.s.s. She will show a girl how to costume two roles, with the same dresses, by combinations and changes so cleverly thought out that the keenest public won't detect them. _Elizabeth_ and _Elsa_ may wear the same mantle, right side out in one role and wrong side out in the other. An extra tabard of brocade or embroidery will allow an _Ophelia_ to wear the gowns of _Marguerite_--all tricks of the trade, and well understood in the Maison Muelle.

Brilliantly clever, immensely capable, good-natured, and big-hearted, a splendid organizer and the faithfulest of friends, Marie Muelle has earned by the hardest of hard work, and now justly enjoys her t.i.tle of "First Theatrical Costumer," not only of Paris, but of the world.

CHAPTER XVII

THE NON-MILITARY SIDE OF A GERMAN OFFICER'S LIFE

One of the first things you do on arriving at a new residence in Germany is to acquaint the police of your presence. This is called _Anmeldung_.

It is a fearsome experience and admits of no trifling. You go to the appointed stuffy office, and tell your nationality, birthplace with date of birth, your parents' names, their profession if any, and your own, their birthplaces and ages, if they are dead and what they died of, whether you are married or single, number, names and ages of your children, and any little extra detail that may occur to the official in Prussian blue who holds the inquisition. If you have an unusual name, he won't believe you when you claim it. A girl I knew was christened Jean, but she is down in the police records of Berlin as Johanna, because her policeman said that Jean was a man's name, and French at that!

Every servant maid has a book, which must be signed by the police when you engage her, and when she leaves you, before she may take another place. When you engage her she must be _angemeldet_ too, in order that she may be charged with her proper insurance tax. This amounts to about five dollars a year; the employer pays one-half, the servant the other.

Many employers pay it all. This ent.i.tles the servant to treatment at the dispensary or in the hospital if she is ill. The police are very careful of her comfort, and pay a visit to the house in which she is employed to see that her room is big enough, airy enough, warmed in winter, and that her bed is comfortable! She has a long list of "rights" including so many loaves of black bread and so many bottles of beer per week; and she dare not be offended if you keep everything under lock and key.

You have not yet finished your _Anmeldung_ if you keep a dog, for he must be registered, too, and you pay highly for the luxury. The _Polizei_ decides when you may and may not play on your piano or sing.

Before nine in the morning, after nine at night, all musical instruments are taboo. The sacred sleeping hour after dinner, from two to four, must also be observed in silence in Berlin. Nothing dare interfere with the after-dinner nap; even the banks are closed from one to two, or even three. You write to the _Polizei_ in Germany where the Englishman writes to the _Times_. I remember a perfect avalanche of anonymous cards in Darmstadt because a child in our house would practise with her windows open and neighbours thought it was the _Hofopernsaengerin_ Howard.

The intricacies of paying your taxes take some study. Foreigners must pay taxes on money earned in the country; town and county taxes are payable every three months, on alternate months, in two different parts of the town. You arrive at the _Staedtische Halle_ to pay your town taxes, and you are very lucky if, after picking out the right month, you succeed in hitting the day when the place is open. A small sign on the locked door may greet you: "Closed on the ninth and fifteenth of every month." If day and month are right, you may easily strike the wrong hour, for town taxes are payable, say, from eight to ten A. M., and two to five P. M., while county ones are from nine to twelve, and four to seven. There are church taxes besides, very small if you are Catholic and larger if you are Evangelical. I succeeded in getting out of these by declaring myself neither. Unfortunately I did not know the word for undenominational and so had to say that we were "heathen." My sister was asked in a rasping official voice, filled with the large contempt for women which a certain type of German official always reeks with, "_Sind Sie ledig?_" She, poor dear, had never heard "_ledig_" before, and stammered "_Was?_" The question was rapped out again, and she said, "_Ich--weiss nicht._" When she got home and looked up _ledig_, she found the man had been asking if she were married or single. What he made of her answer we never knew.