and I had interposed the suggestion that to me he seemed to lack
virility, that he burst out with:

"But, my dear fellow, a tenor isn't a man; it's a disease!"

I supplied the quotation marks in my mind, for though the remark was
his, it had served him on at least one other occasion, as I chanced
to know.

Other members of the company were Anna Slach, Anna Stern, Hermine Bely,
Adolf Robinson, barytone (another of Dr. Damrosch's professional friends
from Breslau); Josef Staudigl (bass, son of the great Staudigl); Josef
Koegel, bass; Emil Tiffero, Herr Udvardi, Otto Kemlitz, Ludwig Wolf,
Josef Miller, and Herr Schneller. John Lund, who came from Kroll's,
in Berlin, and Walter Damrosch, were chorus masters and assistant
conductors. The first season began on November 17, 1884, with a
performance of "Tannhäuser."



CHAPTER XI

GERMAN OPERA AT THE METROPOLITAN


After German opera began at the Metropolitan Opera House it endured
seven years. It was only at the outset that it had the opposition of
what had been the established régime of Italian opera at the Academy of
Music, but it was pursued throughout its career by desultory enterprises
and hampered greatly by the fact that the stockholders were never