{"id":9408,"date":"2014-05-05T21:53:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T01:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.schubincafe.com\/?p=9408"},"modified":"2021-03-22T16:20:38","modified_gmt":"2021-03-22T20:20:38","slug":"baseball-and-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsvideo.org\/2014\/05\/05\/baseball-and-opera\/","title":{"rendered":"Baseball and Opera"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n Below are most of the posts from the Baseball and Opera group on LinkedIn. I’ve added relevant illustrations (you can generally get larger versions by clicking on them). As more discussions are posted on the group, they will be added here. Unless otherwise noted, all posts and comments are by me.<\/p>\n To get directly to what you want, do a browser search for a category or word of interest. The easiest way to search for the headings is to enter the number, including the period after it. In a few cases, you might be taken to a year at the end of a sentence, but a click or two more will get you where you want to go.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1. Why This Group\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 22)<\/p>\n 2. In the Beginning….\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 22)<\/p>\n 3. Baseball Operas\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 22)<\/p>\n 4. Ella, Ida, Edna, Nella, Elda, and Hedda\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 23)<\/p>\n 5. First Base to Primo Basso\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 23)<\/p>\n 6. Shameless Commerce<\/strong> (2014 April 23)<\/p>\n 7. The Fans Went Wild and Stormed the Field\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 25)<\/p>\n 8. Lou Gehrig’s Other Record<\/strong> (2014 April 26)<\/p>\n 9. “Play\u00a0Ballo<\/em>!<\/em>” – Opera at the Ballpark\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 29)<\/p>\n 10. It’s the Law!\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 May 2)<\/p>\n 11. The Definite Article<\/strong> (2014 May 6)<\/p>\n 12. “Even the Music Was Nice”\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 May 10)<\/p>\n 13. “Coloratura Curves”\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 May 19)<\/p>\n 14. The Ringers\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 May 23)<\/p>\n 15. Drag\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 June 3)<\/p>\n 16. The Motion-Picture Inventor\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 June 8)<\/p>\n 17. Baseball at the Opera House\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 June 12)<\/p>\n 18. The Song\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 June 18)<\/p>\n 19. Under One Roof\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 June 22)<\/p>\n 20.\u00a0Ty Cobb\u2019s Football-Player Opera-House Baseball-Championship Tour of 1911-12\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 June 26)<\/p>\n 21. The Catcher Who Saved the Opera House\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 July 3)<\/p>\n 22. The Commissioner and the Composer\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 July 7)<\/p>\n 23. Pavarotti’s Balls\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 July 9)<\/p>\n 24. The Slow Fastball\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 July 22)<\/p>\n 25. “Beer, Here!”\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 July 30)<\/p>\n 26. The First Parabolic Mic\u00a0<\/strong>(2015 August 28)<\/p>\n 27. Knowing the Score\u00a0<\/strong>(2015 October 8)<\/p>\n 28. Without Opera There Would Be No Mascots\u00a0<\/strong>(2015 October 9)<\/p>\n 29.\u00a0The Tokyo Dome\u2019s Only Undefeated Manager\u00a0<\/strong>(2015 November 20)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1. Why This Group\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 22)<\/p>\n Babe Ruth sang in opera houses; Robert Merrill pitched on ball fields.\u00a0 In San Francisco and Washington, people go to ballparks to watch operas; for half-a-century before television, people went to opera houses to watch baseball games.<\/p>\n The intersecting histories of baseball and opera date back at least to 1849 and the Shakespeare riots in New York City.\u00a0 By 1867, baseball was being spoofed on an opera-house stage.\u00a0 In the 1870s the games of opera-house ball teams were reported in newspapers across the U.S., and one of the first well-known baseball players became a well-known opera singer (he would not be alone).\u00a0 Baseball\u2019s reserve clause and antitrust exemption are both based on opera, and some of the world\u2019s most famous ball players and opera singers once lived under the same roof.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n I plan to elaborate on those and other baseball-and-opera topics here.\u00a0 Who am I?\u00a0 I\u2019m a media-technology engineer and historian who knows a little about opera (having worked in the field for more than 40 years) and almost nothing about baseball.\u00a0 But, in the course of doing the research for a lecture on alternative content for cinema, I came across the technology used for presenting live, remote baseball games in opera houses, starting no later than 1885 — the subject of 44 U.S. patents, and some of the most-popular systems weren’t patented.<\/p>\n <\/a>As I expanded my research, I came across much more: Ty Cobb\u2019s performances in opera houses, baseball references in operas, the first known-to-be-African-American major-league baseball player running an opera house, the Metropolitan Opera\u2019s ballpark tour, and much more.\u00a0 Baseball\u2019s most-famous poem, \u201cCasey at the Bat,\u201d was introduced to the public at a performance of the opera Prince Methusalem;<\/em> its most-famous song, \u201cTake Me Out to the Ball Game,\u201d was likely first heard in public at a Brooklyn opera house.\u00a0 Lou Gehrig\u2019s record of consecutive-ball-game attendance eventually fell to Cal Ripken, but his record of attendance at the most performances of Tristan und Isolde<\/em>\u00a0in a single season at the Metropolitan Opera endures.<\/p>\n I hope you might be able to add to the list of intersections of baseball\u2019s and opera\u2019s histories.\u00a0 If not, enjoy the group anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s a two-pager<\/a> with more info<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n And, if you happen to be in Cooperstown on August 2 [2014], consider a lecture I\u2019ll be giving on the subject for the 75th anniversary of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, co-presented by them and Glimmerglass Festival, the local world-class opera company: <\/span>http:\/\/glimmerglass.org\/event\/showtalk\/mark-schubin\/<\/a><\/p>\n World Series rings on opera-company employees?\u00a0 Stay tuned.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. In the Beginning….\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 22)<\/p>\n <\/a>Many people say the first opera was Dafne<\/em>\u00a0in 1598 (1597 according to the local calendar). But some think it was Orfeo<\/em>\u00a0around 1480. Before that there was Ludus Danielis,<\/em>\u00a0a musical drama dating from the late 12th or early 13th century. And, what might be the first opera book, Galileo\u2019s father\u2019s volume on ancient and modern music (right), suggests that the ancient Greeks might have sung what we might call opera today.<\/p>\n Baseball\u2019s origins are similarly blurry.\u00a0 We know the game wasn’t created by Abner Doubleday, but there have been so many rule changes over the years that it\u2019s difficult to pick a \u201cfirst\u201d moment.\u00a0 And, like opera, baseball, too, has roots in antiquity.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a>The first intersection of baseball’s and opera\u2019s histories, however, might have occurred in 1849.\u00a0<\/span>Two actors were playing Macbeth at nearby theaters. One was an American, Edwin Forrest, performing at the Broadway Theatre; the other was a Brit, William Charles Macready, performing at the Astor Place Theater, previously an opera house.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a>According to Nigel Cliff\u2019s book The Shakespeare Riots,<\/em>\u00a0fans of Forrest recruited thugs at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, the first famous baseball field, to disrupt Macready’s performances. The disruptions turned into a deadly riot. According to his obituary in The New York Times,<\/em> Edward Plunket Fry, former impresario at the opera house, saved Macready\u2019s life, spiriting him out an unknown exit.<\/span><\/p>\n Fry, by the way, is sometimes said to have produced the first American grand opera, Leonora,<\/em> composed by his brother William with libretto by his brother Joseph. He also has a claim to having invented electronic home entertainment (and, possibly, the headphone) in 1880. For that story, see the discussion \u201cThe Tenor, the Impresario, and the Invention of Electronic Home Entertainment\u201d on the Media-Technology and Opera History<\/a> group.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3. Baseball Operas\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 22)<\/p>\n The most-famous baseball opera is probably The Mighty Casey,<\/em>\u00a0by William Schuman, a National Medal of Arts winner who was president of the Juilliard School at the time it was written and later became the first president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. But it\u2019s not the only one — not by a long shot.<\/p>\n <\/a>On August 26, 1867, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle<\/em> ran an ad for Hooley’s New Opera House (\u201cthe people\u2019s favorite resort\u201d). It announced the arrival of \u201cthe celebrated tenor singer Mr. J. R. Ricci.\u201d It also announced \u201cThe Great Base Ball Match between the well known clubs the Atlantics and Mutuals for the Championship of the Great National Game.\u201d It was neither an opera nor a baseball game but a \u201cscreaming burlesque,\u201d which the critic of the Eagle<\/em> found quite amusing.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a>The earliest opera I\u2019ve found that makes mention of baseball is Carl Mill\u00f6cker’s The Black Hussar,<\/em>\u00a0with libretto by Sydney Rosenfeld. A trio called \u201cRead the Answer in the Stars\u201d has the following:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n <\/a>Three years later came a performance of the first opera entirely about baseball, Paul Eaton\u2019s Angela: or the Umpire\u2019s Revenge.<\/em>\u00a0At least three of the pieces in it were scored by a different opera composer, one known better for his non-operatic works, John Philip Sousa: “He Stands in the Box with the Ball in His Hands,” “The Umpire and the Dude,” and “An Umpire I, Who Ne’er Say Die.” The tryout performance at Philadelphia\u2019s Grand Opera House was well received, but I\u2019m not aware of any succeeding performance.<\/p>\n That was before The Mighty Casey.<\/em>\u00a0After it, there were Cooperstown — Jazz Opera in Nine Innings<\/em>\u00a0music by Sasha Matson, libretto by Mark Miller and Matson; The Summer King<\/em>\u00a0music by Daniel Sonenberg, libretto by Daniel Nester & Sonenberg; Shadowball<\/em>\u00a0music by Julian Joseph, libretto by Mike Phillips; Play Ball<\/em>\u00a0by Warren Nelson, and Bambino<\/em>\u00a0by Richard Maltz. There was also the operetta The Fighting Phillies<\/em>\u00a0by Rod Johnston and Bill Schall, The Brooklyn Baseball Cantata<\/em>\u00a0by George Kleinsinger, and a number of musicals, including 1919: A Baseball Opera<\/em>\u00a0by Rusty (Benjamin Rush) Magee.<\/span><\/p>\n Do you know of other baseball operas? Here’s my list<\/a> so far.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4. Ella, Ida, Edna, Nella, Elda, and Hedda\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 23)<\/p>\n <\/a><\/span>He called himself \u201cthe uncanonized comic opera patron saint of base ball,\u201d and the larger-than-life De Wolf Hopper (six feet five inches tall) might well have been right. He made his comic-opera debut in John Philip Sousa\u2019s \u201cDesiree;\u201d later, when Hopper had his own opera company, Sousa wrote two operas for him: El Capitan<\/em>\u00a0and The Charlatan.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n As for baseball, Hopper would drive from his theater to the Polo Grounds for as many games as he could. He was permitted to drive right onto the field, and he and his fellow members of what The New York Times<\/em> called \u201cthe High and Mighty Order of Baseball Cranks of Gotham\u201d had keys to their own seats. In an 1888 team photo of the Chicago White Stockings (today\u2019s Cubs, not the White Sox), Hopper appears (bottom row, third from right), along with fellow comic-opera star Digby Bell (the two had performed in the trio \u201cRead the Answer in the Stars\u201d in The Black Hussar<\/em>\u00a0in 1885, probably the first reference to baseball in an opera) and a third opera performer, Clarence Duval, Chicago\u2019s mascot.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n On August 15, 1888, The New York Times<\/em> ran two stories featuring Hopper, baseball, and opera. One was headlined simply \u201cChicago Beats New-York.\u201d Hopper\u2019s friend and future Hall of Fame member Tim Keefe had been pitching 19 consecutive winning games for the Giants, a major-league record that still stands. Hopper, Mathilde Cottrelly (the third member of the baseball-opera trio), and some 30 other members of the McCaull Opera Company had come to the game on August 14 to watch Keefe win number 20. Alas, short-stop John Montgomery Ward was sick and was replaced by inexperienced Gil Hatfield, whose errors gave Chicago two runs and the game. According to The Times,<\/em> \u201cDe Wolf Hopper was exasperated. If comedians could weep he certainly would have done so.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/a>The other Times<\/em> story was headlined \u201c\u2018Prince Methusalem\u2019s\u2019 Baseball.\u201d After the game, the opera company performed the Johann Strauss II opera, and both teams attended. The first act was warmly received, and the second even more so, when Hopper added to the verses of \u201cThe Dotlet on the I\u201d \u201cone about the pennant that brought out long continued applause and laughter. In response to the demonstrations he then proceeded to recite a thrilling ode entitled \u2018Casey\u2019s at the Bat,\u2019 which was most uproariously received, particularly the ending thereof, which told in mock-heroic strain how the redoubtable Casey \u2018struck out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It was the first public performance of baseball\u2019s most-famous poem. By his own count, Hopper went on to recite it 10,000 times; others put the number as much as four times higher.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/a><\/span>Incidentally, Hopper was married six times. The names of his first five wives were, in order, Ella, Ida, Edna, Nella, and Elda. Elda didn\u2019t like being called by the wrong name, so she consulted a numerologist who suggested she change her name to Hedda (yes, that Hedda Hopper); their son William is best known for having played investigator Paul Drake on TV\u2019s Perry Mason.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Hopper\u2019s sixth wife was named Lillian.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 5. First Base to Primo Basso\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 23)<\/p>\n I know of only one person who gave up an opera career for baseball, but there seem to have been many who have gone in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n On Site Opera is a New York City company that specializes in site-specific productions. Last year, they did Gershwin\u2019s jazz opera Blue Monday<\/em>\u00a0at the Cotton Club, and some of the publicity — including a piece on BBC TV <http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/magazine-22997397<\/a>>– related to Clayton Matthews, a baseball player turned opera singer. Like Matthews, Michael Adams and John Fowler both switched from baseball to opera after injuries.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a>Semi-pro pitcher Robert Merrill (whose teammate was Tommy Holmes) went on to sing almost a thousand performances at the Metropolitan Opera. Kansas City Athletics pitcher Ara Berberian (left) sang a mere 334 there. Charles W. Barnum and Michael Fabiano had each been a professional umpire before turning to opera singing.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a>In his 1914 book Busting \u2018em,<\/em>\u00a0Ty Cobb (himself a performer on opera-house stages) wrote, \u201c\u2018Sammy\u2019 Strang, for the benefit of those who don\u2019t know, was a Big League ball player, but he quit the game some time ago to study abroad for grand opera.\u201d Not quite. After playing for the Giants and helping them win the 1905 World Series, Strang, for whom the term \u201cpinch hitter\u201d was created (by John McGraw, because Strang regularly got hits in pinches), did, indeed go to Paris to study opera under Jean de Reszke. And he was good enough to get offers from opera companies to sing. But he turned them down to coach baseball at West Point and then went on to manage and own the Chattanooga Lookouts.<\/p>\n <\/a>Long before any of those, however, there was the strange case of Signor Brocolini, or, as the great baseball historian Peter Morris titled his paper on the subject in volume 15, number 2 of Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture,<\/em> \u201cFrom First Baseman to Primo Basso: The Odd Saga of the Original Pirate King (Tra La!).\u201d Signor Brocolini was engaged by the impresario of the National Opera House in London (Colonel J. H. Mapleson) and was later a \u201cmainstay\u201d of Her Majesty\u2019s Opera Company. He performed in operas ranging from Lucia di Lammermoor<\/em>\u00a0to Les Huguenots.<\/em>\u00a0Performing as Captain Corcoran in H. M. S. Pinafore,<\/em>\u00a0he so impressed Gilbert and Sullivan that they created the role of the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance<\/em>\u00a0for him.<\/span><\/p>\n Pirates<\/em> premiered in New York City on the last day of 1879. If Signor Brocolini related the location, he might have called it Nuiorcasiti; after all, his name came from an Italianization of the place where he lived and worked before embarking (literally) on his opera career: Brooklyn. He was born John Clark in Cork, Ireland.<\/span><\/p>\n Starting in 1865, he also served as a director and first baseman of the Detroit Base Ball Club. One of two easterners (and, possibly, professionals) on the team, he was so good that, according to Morris, \u201cmost Michigan clubs were unwilling to play the champions. Even a match that pitted the Detroit Base Ball Club against an all-star squad of the state\u2019s best players resulted in another rout.\u201d The easterners left the team so it could play opponents. Clark returned to Brooklyn and started singing, his colleagues raised $5500 to send him to Milan to study opera, and, four years later, it was a glorious thing to be the Pirate King.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 6. Shameless Commerce<\/strong> (2014 April 23)<\/p>\n <\/a>Commerce: I’ve created a \u201cshop\u201d where you can buy clothing, bags, bottles, and other gifts in (so far) one of five baseball & opera designs. One reproduces the April 15, 1886 headline from the Atlanta Constitution:<\/em> \u201cBaseball at the Opera House.\u201d Another shows the cover page of the music for the \u201cBase Ball Song\u201d from the 1895 comic opera \u201cThe Mormons.\u201d Another shows an 1895 patent diagram for a system of automatons designed to reproduce live baseball games at opera houses. Another shows the headline of the 1910 New York Times<\/em> story \u201cOpera Ball Team Trounces Boston.\u201d The fifth (and last, so far) shows a promotional post card and some of the music (featuring Caruso and Tetrazzini) for the 1912 song \u201cBaseball vs. Opera\u201d (at the top of this column).<\/a><\/p>\n Shameless: All profits go to Opera America, and the more people see the designs, the more you\u2019ll help raise awareness of opera. So you’ll do some good, too.<\/span><\/p>\n Feel free to suggest more products and\/or designs.<\/span><\/p>\n Happy shopping!<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a link to the Baseball & Opera section of the shop (there are other sections for the statement “No opera, no X-rays!” and for a number of opera quotations as well as for a few designs –shocking, I know — not<\/em> related to opera; profits from even those still go to Opera America): <\/span>http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/no_opera_no_x_rays\/10434471<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 7. The Fans Went Wild and Stormed the Field\u00a0<\/strong>(2014 April 25)<\/p>\n <\/a>On June 16, 1916, something extraordinary happened at Robison Field in St. Louis. According to a contemporary account, \u201cIt is doubtful whether such action has ever before been taken…\u00a0 in the United States.\u201d Thousands of fans stormed the field! \u201cThe police did not interfere….\u201d Did the Cardinals win with a shutout? Did they lose an equally lopsided game?<\/p>\n No. The source of that contemporary account was the publication Musical America,<\/em> and the unruly mob was thousands of opera fans. They might have been even scarier than the baseball variety.<\/p>\n The story really begins more than a year earlier at Harvard Stadium. The Metropolitan Opera produced an experimental outdoor performance of Siegfried.<\/em>\u00a0The Boston Evening Transcript<\/em>\u00a0offered some idea of the difficulties of outdoor performance in the age before sound reinforcement when it noted augmentation of the Met\u2019s orchestra of 100 with local musicians. And there were other difficulties: \u201cThe Magic Fire did not come to pass save for one flash which may have meant a burnt fuse.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the Met took Siegfried<\/em>\u00a0on a ballpark tour the following year. On June 9, they played Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The opera was called due to rain after Act II, the fans got rain checks, and Act III was played the following night.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/span>The team was scheduled to play at what is now called Wrigley Field in Chicago on June 15. Alas, the weather didn’t cooperate there, either. The Chicago Tribune headlined its story, \u201cBlame the Weather Man for Not Seeing \u2018Siegfried.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Met played Redland Field in Cincinnati without difficulty on June 20. But first there was that Siegfried<\/em>\u00a0at Robison Field in St. Louis.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a>The 1916 Siegfried<\/em>\u00a0ballpark tour wasn’t the first time a cultural event had been performed at a baseball stadium. As early as 1887, impresario Bolossy Kiralfy intended to present\u00a0The Siege of Troy<\/em>\u00a0at Chicago\u2019s West Side Park, where the baseball team today known as the Cubs was then playing. The stage was to cover 36,000 square feet. Let me put that in context: The main stage at the Metropolitan Opera House, one of the world\u2019s largest, is less than 3,000 square feet.<\/span><\/p>\n Then there was that \u201cmagic fire,\u201d the sets, the curtain, and the other stage machinery (the Met had actually brought a \u201csteam curtain\u201d when they performed Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em>\u00a0at the Yale Bowl earlier that month). Musical America<\/em> picks up the story of what happened with the 12,000 fans at Robison Field.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThrough a most unfortunate contract with the owners of the park, Director Edward Siedle was unable to erect his enormous portable stage and orchestra platform at a distance close enough to the seats so that even a part of the music could be heard. Quite unfortunately, the managers did not foresee the action which was going to be taken by a major portion of the audience.<\/p>\n