Memoirs of an American Prima DonnaKellogg, Clara Louise
General
Memoirs of an American Prima Donna
Kellogg, Clara Louise
Kellogg, Clara Louise, 1842-1916; Singers -- United States -- Biography
Carlton had to go on in them. The critics next day gave him a couple of
columns of praise; but Morgan, whose wardrobe was gorgeous, was a
complete failure in his _début_. Our manager had finally to tell him
that he could be second tenor or resign. In six weeks he was drawing
seventy dollars less salary than Carlton, who was a baritone and a
beginner. Carlton said that about this time Wilfred Morgan came up to
him exclaiming,
"Well, Bill, I wish I had your voice and you had my clothes!"
William Carlton was a young Englishman, only twenty-three when he joined
us; but he was already married and had two children. When we were
rehearsing _The Bohemian Girl_, in the scene where the stolen daughter
is recognised and Carlton had to take me in his arms, he said:
"I ought to kiss you here."
"Not lower than _this_!" said I, pointing to my forehead. He was much
amused. Indeed, he was always laughing at my mother and me for our
prudish ways; and my not marrying was always a joke between us.
"It's a sin," he declared once, when we were talking on a train, "a
woman who would make such a perfect wife!"
"Louise," interrupted my mother sternly, "don't talk so much! You'll
tire your voice!"
My good mother! She was always ruffling up like an indignant hen about
me. In one scene of another opera, I remember, the villain and I had
been playing rather more strenuously than usual and he caught my arm
with some force. I staggered a little as I came off the stage and my
mother flew at him.
"Don't you dare touch my daughter so roughly," she cried, much annoyed.
Mr. Carlton has paid me a nice tribute when writing of those days and of
me at that time. He has said:
I have the most grateful memory of the sympathetic assistance I
received from the gifted _prima donna_ when I arrived in this
country under the management of Maurice Grau and C. D. Hess, who
were conducting the business details of the Kellogg Grand Opera
Company. Like many Englishmen, I was quite unprepared for the
evidences of perfection which characterised the production of opera
in the United States and, as I had not yet attained my
twenty-fourth year, I was somewhat awed by the importance of the
_rôles_ and the position I was imported to fulfil. It was in a
great measure due to the gracious help I received from Miss Kellogg
that, at my _début_ at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, as
Valentine in _Faust_ to her Marguerite, I achieved a success which
led up to my renewing the engagement for four consecutive years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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