Metropolitan Opera Archives

Very few in the audience who heard Mme. Louise Homer in the part of Fricka in "Das Rheingold" last Thursday evening understood what an astonishing feat she was accomplishing. The notice on the door said that she had learned the part at very short notice: but it did not say how short. The fact was that she began to study it at 2 o'clock that afternoon, after rehearsing "Un Ballo in Maschera" for two hours at full voice, and after one of the other principal singers of the company had tried to master it and had given it up in despair. Mme. Homer spent the entire afternoon going over the music, which she had never before studied, with Mr. Herz and one of the accompanists of the Opera House. After a brief rest she returned to the task at 7 o'clock - only to find that in her weariness almost all she had learned had dozed from her memory, and a beginning had to be made over again; and even then one phrase vanished as soon as she began to memorize the next. Her rehearsal lasted till 8:30, when the curtain rose on the performance, and was continued when the scene changed to Nibelheim and she was able to leave the stage for half an hour or so, for further study, till she came on again. Her performance under these conditions was a remarkable tour de force. It is difficult enough with plenty of time to master the Wagnerian declamation, which has so little to impress itself definitely upon the memory. Mme. Homer sang with all her beauty of tone and got through the music without noticeable lapses of any kind. For the words she was, of course, almost entirely dependent upon the prompter.

Mme. Lehmann once made a record by learning a Wagnerian part in a day; perhaps such a one as Fricka's was never before mastered in an afternoon.

Search by season: 1904-05

Search by title: Das Rheingold, Ring Cycle [29],

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