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Page 55
* * * * *
THE CALDRON
'_Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble_'
OPERA VERSUS DRAMA
Why opera, which is a less old and less vital form of entertainment than
drama (in America), should spring into such prominence is difficult
to understand. San Francisco has raised one hundred thousand dollars
towards a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar opera house, which will be owned
and managed by the municipality. The Metropolitan and the Chicago
and the Philadelphia and the New Orleans Opera maintain themselves
as centers of real artistic work, though they are not municipal
enterprises. Opera in Boston is assured for another three years, and
this has been accomplished through the efforts of citizens.
But America has no endowed nor municipal theater.
I would in no way decry opera, but it is very clear that some of the
energy which is now being used for opera might far better be put into
the wider field of drama. Because of its very nature, opera is bound to
appeal to and to reach fewer people than drama. As a force and a power
for education and general uplift, it can never compare with drama. There
is a considerable number of people who attend the opera because they
love it, but a much larger number attend because it is fashionable.
All the drama leagues and numberless organizations which are trying to
cultivate taste for good plays and to better the drama are on the wrong
track. It is not a cultivated, appreciative public that is needed. Let
those interested in drama learn a lesson from opera. Let them employ
their energies to make drama fashionable. When it becomes incumbent upon
society leaders to occupy stalls in the theater for a season, we shall
have an endowed theater and not until then.
THE DEUTSCHES K�NSTLERTHEATER
Readers of THE NEW DRAMA may be interested to hear that the enterprise
of the actors of the Brahm Company, which in the winter seemed
uncertain, is now secure. The Deutsches K�nstlertheater was incorporated
on April 20, with a capital of 790,000 marks. Willy Grumwald is
really to be manager, Ernst Friedmann, business manager, and among the
associates are Tilla Durieux, Carl Forest, Gerhart Hauptmann, Hilde
Herterich, Else Lehmann, Emil Lessing (Brahm's stage manager), Theodor
Loos, Hans Marr, Emanuel Reicher, Rudolf Rittner (who declares, however,
that he is to return to the theater only as associate, artistic adviser,
and stage manager, and that he still has no intention of ever
acting again; since his blending of blazing passion with austere
self-discipline is all too rare, let us hope he will change his mind),
Oscar Sauer, Mathilde Sussin (whose sublime Deaconess in 'When We
Dead Awake' so fully meets Ibsen's requirement of the actor of this
character: complete self-effacement until the close, and then tragic
acting of the highest order; Alfred Kerr, whose words--don't you
think?--no other living critic can equal, has called her 'eine der
Schattengestalten dieses gr�ssten Theaters der Unscheinbarkeit, der
Seele'), and Paul Wegener. The Deutsches K�nstlertheater is still
undecided whether to build a theater or to lease one; it will enter into
active being in July, 1914, when Otto Brahm will pass, alas, from the
active service of the theater, which he has served as has no other man.
JAMES PLATT WHITE.
THE 'SLAM'
A characteristic feature of modern newspaper criticism is the 'slam.'
The fundamental principles upon which 'slams' are based are as follows:
The writer of a 'slam' ought to be quite young, not long out of college.
That is the only sort of person who knows enough to construct a really
effective 'slam.' After one has been out of college for a few years the
dividing lines between what is good art and what is bad art become more
vague. The would-be critic starts out in life with a sort of Procrustean
ideal of measurement, to which everything has to be cut down. He is
blissfully sure of his standards, and does not need to bother his mind
over any possibilities in the way of new artistic developments. Only
after he begins to delve into the history of criticism upon his own
account does he wake up to the fact that 'the genius is the thing,' and
that the slings and arrows of outrageous critics have been powerless to
crush him out.
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