During the second year of the Damrosch Opera Company, while we were in St. Louis and just the day before Fischer was to sing _Hans Sachs_, a telegram arrived saying that his wife was very ill and was not expected to live more than eight hours. Frau Alvary insisted that I must make him go to New York to see her. He did not want to go. He had not been on particularly pleasant terms with her, he knew he could not arrive in time to see her alive, and besides that he knew also that I had no substitute to sing _Hans Sachs_ for him and that the cancellation of the opera would cost me about five thousand dollars. But Frau Alvary, who seemed quite ready to insist on reasons of sentiment when her own purse was not concerned, so bedevilled us both that I finally, being still young and sentimental, decided that he should go. I was therefore compelled to change the programme at the last moment and to substitute single acts from different operas, which, of course, was a very costly change, as the audience in St. Louis had especially looked forward to the first performance of “Die Meistersinger.” The news of a possible change of programme had travelled fast, and on that morning I received a visit from a young singer, Gerhardt Stehmann, who a year before had come to St. Louis with a little German opera company which had promptly stranded, leaving him without a job. He had, however, continued to live there, acting in occasional German plays and teaching Latin, as he was a man of excellent education. He asked me if I could not give him a place in my company. I found him to be an excellent singer, but above all a man musically so gifted that he could learn an entire rôle in a few hours. He learned the entire third act of “Die Meistersinger” overnight, so that I was able at least to present that to my St. Louis audience. I immediately engaged him as a permanent member of my company, and he remained with me until its dissolution three years later, when he returned to Germany and was grabbed by Mahler for the Imperial opera at Vienna, where he has been ever since. He literally knew and sang every bass and barytone part in the Wagner operas and music dramas. His _Beckmesser_ in “Die Meistersinger” was a masterpiece of delineation, and no one could depict this nasty, carping, jealous, and vain person in so convincing a fashion as he. But if the exigencies of the moment demanded it, he was just as able to sing _Hans Sachs_, _Pogner_, _Kothner_, or any other of the good old burghers of that opera. In “Tannhäuser” he was equally at home as _Landgrave_ or _Biterolf_, but his most remarkable feat of learning a part quickly was performed in New York one spring. The German composer, Xaver Scharwenka, was at that time living in New York as piano virtuoso and teacher. He had, years before, composed an opera which he was anxious to perform, and William Steinway and others asked me if I would let him have my