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).
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