Opera Inglese: In memoriam H. W. Savage, of New Durham, New Hants.

Speranza

The man who introduced Madama Butterfly to America also did more to popularize Italian opera and provide employment for native singers than any other entrepreneur of his time.

Yet the name of once-prominent producer Henry Wilson Savage is largely forgotten now, while those of such contemporaries as David Belasco (1859-1931) and Charles Frohman (1860-1915) endure, still evoking a certain vague glamour, though most people today would be hard put to tell you precisely why.

To a large extent, Savage's faded fame is his own fault.

Unlike Belasco and Frohman, whose public personas were only marginally less flamboyant than those of the legendary stars they managed, Savage traditionally shunned the spotlight, preferring to let the success of his numerous and varied undertakings speak for itself.

Yet many of his companies were certainly named "H. W. Savage's Company"

Unfortunately, that habitual reserve now frustrates us in efforts to learn more about him than the handful of bare facts recorded in reference books, virtually obliging us to shift our focus from the man himself to a consideration of his many splendid achievements — a state of affairs that would have pleased this elusive gentleman greatly.

As with so many people, Savage's destiny was determined more by chance than by design.

Born in the New Hampshire village of New Durham on 21 March 1859, the son of Capt. Henry Savage and the former Betsey Woodhouse, he graduated from Harvard with a B. A. in 1880, embarked on a prosperous career in real estate, and in 1889 married Alice Louise Batcheler, by whom he had two children, John Savage and Bettina Savage.

In 1894, in partnership with Canadian-born theatrical factotum Edward Everett Rose (1862-1939), and solely as a financial investment, he built the "Opera House" at Castle Square, on Boston's Tremont Street.

It was a handsome edifice of iron, brick, and marble ("no woodwork of any kind" was used in its construction), which seated 1,800 and boasted such welcome amenities as elevator access to its two balconies ("the first theatre in New England to make this innovation") and even a pioneer form of air conditioning ("the extraordinary popularity of the house as a cool and comfortable summer resort has been attained by a specially installed cooling plant that furnishes a steady breeze of iced air to all parts of the house").

On a purely decorative level there was also much to admire, including, suspended directly over the auditorium, "an immense circular electrolier forty feet in diameter" bearing "three hundred and eight incandescent lamps of frosted glass" and, above the proscenium arch, a fifteen-foot-high sounding board graced by a painting in which "twelve dancing girls, life size in figure, present themselves in artistic abandon."

Alas, as a moneymaker, the Castle Square, inaugurated 12 November 1894 with Rose's own play "Captain Paul", got off to an unpromising start, its first few tenants falling victim to poor box-office receipts.

After the failure of a troupe headed by Quebec's Louise Beaudet, bass William Wolff, who had been appearing with her, approached Savage regarding the possibility of forming a permanent company to present a full season of Italian operas as translated to English.

Born in Germany but brought to America as a child and already a veteran of seventeen years in the theater, thirty-six-year-old Wolff was given a go-ahead, put in charge of the project, and rapidly organized an ensemble that, in its first astonishing season of fifty-three (!) consecutive weeks, would present over four hundred performances of thirty-four works, each featuring bright new sets (by Frank King) and brand-new costumes (by Anne Fording, who, somewhere down the road, consented to become Mrs. Wolff).