Metropolitan Opera Archives

Misfortune attended this season's second performance of "Die Meistersinger " at the Metropolitan Opera House last evening. It came in the shape of vocal disability to Hermann Weil, who was the Hans Sachs. He was evidently in poor voice from the beginning, and in the second act his voice was in such a condition that he was singing with great effort. After a long intermission Mr. Guard of the executive staff of the house appeared before the curtain and announced that the management was in a great dilemma - that Mr. Weil had entirely lost his voice, and that, as there was no available substitute for him, it would be necessary to cut out the first scene of the third act in which Hans Sachs sings almost continuously, and go on with the last scene on the meadow outside the walls of Nuremberg.

This was accordingly done, although the loss in an artistic sense was irreparable. But the damage did not cease with this, for at the end of the act Hans Sachs has a long and important passage that is in a way the climax of the work and sums up the artistic philosophy that Wagner wished to enforce in the drama. Mr. Weil continued in the part of Hans Sachs but sang with about quarter voice, enough to deliver his speeches and allow the rest of the music to be continued to the end.

There were several changes in the cast though no new singers appeared in this performance. Mr. Slezak and Mme. Gadski were respectively the Walther von Stolzing and Eva, well remembered and admired in their impersonations of these characters. The Magdalena was Marie Mattfeld, who, in former years. had taken that part, but had not done so since the present management has ruled at the Opera House. She is an excellent Magdalena, especially in her acting and her denotement of the peculiarly Teutonic humor of the part.

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