Madison Culture 1899

“Madison Culture: 1899,” published by Isthmus, September 10-16, 1999

In 1999, the arts are booming in Madison. Large venues like the Madison Civic Center and the Wisconsin Union Theater bring in a full season’s worth of internationally acclaimed touring acts. The Barrymore Theatre and the Kohl Center host pop music’s best and brightest. Brave Hearts Theatre and the Esquire Theater provide a home for local productions. And the Madison Repertory Theatre, the Madison Symphony, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Broom Street Theater, Kanopy Dance, Mercury Players Theatre and dozens of other locally based troupes give Madisonians a wide variety of cultural choices.

What was it like 100 years ago? In 1999, we take our good fortune for granted, but in 1899 Madison was a frontier town with far fewer resources. On the verge of the 21st century, it’s instructive to see how far we’ve traveled by looking at cultural life here on the verge of the 20th.

In 1899 Madison was cultivating its image as a center of education and culture, and the efforts seemed to be paying off. The university under President Charles Kendall Adams was experiencing a boom, with enrollment quadrupling in a 13-year period ending in 1900. When the new school year began in September, enrollment had climbed to 2,200, a gain of 115 students, while the school of music’s enrollment had increased by 25 percent. The university offered an eclectic roster of cultural events, hosting regular performances in venues large (the Armory) and small (Library Hall).

Downtown, Turner Hall, which opened at the time of the Civil War, continued to provide entertainment to German-speaking audiences. Not surprisingly, audiences for entertainments of an imported flavor were large and responsive. And at a time when Madison was predominantly a German-American town with the significant majority of its residents foreign-born, the German influence was especially pronounced. The Dramatic Society of the Turnverein presented a series of German productions at Turner Hall that, in the praise of the Madison Democrat newspaper, had “surpassed by far those of previous years.”

Madison’s 1,200-seat Fuller Opera House played to the general audience. “A temple of culture,” in the words of theWisconsin State Journal, the Fuller was situated on the Capital Square at West Mifflin and Wisconsin Avenue, next to the old City Hall building. The five-story theater played host to 40 or more one-night productions a year, as well as multiple-night engagements.

One of those, a new musical comedy by playwright-actor Charles Hoyt, opened there January 26th. Heralded as Hoyt’s best play, A Stranger in New York employed all of the members of the original cast from New York City, where the show had a run of three months. The enthusiastic capacity audience in attendance that evening was well acquainted with both grand theatrical productions and nationally renown talent. This wealth of culture was largely afforded by Madison’s proximity to cultural centers like Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis that attracted many of the touring acts — from Vaudevillian-styled hypnotists to distinguished chamber music quartets — that came through Madison for shorter runs, primarily at the Fuller.

Of these many groups, none made the impression on Madison audiences in 1899 as did two national touring acts, the Ferris Comedians and the Polish actress Helen Modjeska. Using only her surname — though superlatives like “the incomparable” and “the glorious” were often applied — Modjeska lived in California with her husband, an exiled count, and made two memorable appearances in Madison during the year. The Madison Democrat called her March 23 performance to a standing-room crowd, “the achievement of almost historic perfection.” For her return engagement a six-ticket limit was imposed by the Fuller for her performance in the role of Marie Antoinette. The November 22nd show played to the expected full house “that sat charmed for three hours,” reported the Democrat. The show had such impact that the next week’s entertainment at the Fuller was cancelled for fear of producing disappoint amongst its patrons (the next show did not occur until December 5).

The Ferris Comedians were a perennial favorite of Madison audiences, bringing their repertory gifts to town for several nights a year, offering a different play with each performance. On May 11 they gave the first performance in Madison of Rostand’s Cyranno de Bergeac. On subsequent evenings, the “Kings of Repertoire,” as they were billed, presented another new play, The Three Musketeers, and Cinderella to “overflowing” audiences. The Fuller ranked their November booking as “the most successful theatrical week’s engagement in the history of the house.”

The university was not to be outdone, however. In January the city’s three dailies were filled with reports of the pending show at the Armory. The Daily Cardinal ran front-page stories and photographs about the show four days running, reporting on events as routine as rehearsals.

It was to be the first choral union series concert of the season and an ambitious one: a rendering of Handel’s “Messiah” by four Chicago soloists, the great choral union, and Bach’s Orchestra of Milwaukee. The Cardinal called them “the most able and famous galaxy of performers that has ever appeared in Madison.”

And they didn’t disappoint. On January 13, the State Journal, then Madison’s afternoon daily, pronounced the show a “supreme success,” adding: “In the entire course of its existence the Madison Choral Union never made so excellent an appearance.” The Democrat agreed, naming the show “one of the best that the choral union has ever given.”

In May, the choral union gave its last performance of the season, an even more formidable display of virtuosity headed by Signor Campanari, for several years the Metropolitan Opera’s leading artist. The State Journal named Campanari “the greatest baritone of his time,” while the Cardinal went further, calling him “incomparable as a baritone singer … regarded as one of the greatest of all times.”

In Helen Buckley, a young soprano from Chicago who had recently been abroad, the choral union found a soloist befitting Campanari’s reputation. On only her first American tour, Buckley commanded a greater salary than any female singer ever had in Madison. Together — along with the choral union’s 150 voices and Bach’s Orchestra of Milwaukee’s 40 pieces — they presented to a spirited audience Mendelssohn’s “42nd Psalm.” Said the Cardinal: “It is safe to say that a more high class and altogether enjoyable musical performance has never been given in Madison.”

Student dramatics also scored a pair of notable successes in 1899. On Valentine’s Day, Haresfoot, the UW student drama club founded only the year before, presented Edmund Kean, a five-act romantic drama by Alexander Dumas. TheMadison Democrat, in whose estimation the club was comparable to the Hasty Pudding Club of Harvard, was enthused, calling the show “generally the best amateur production ever played before a Madison audience.”

In the spring, A Night Off, the senior class play, was given to what was reported as “perhaps the largest house that ever listened to a class play in Madison.”

Music and theater were the most profitable draws with Madison audiences, but the city’s cultural affairs were certainly not limited to these. The university, churches, and even the Fuller Opera House, hosted an outstanding array of lectures, with topics as diverse as developments in color photography, the chemistry of fermentation and slum politics in Chicago. And by speakers as distinguished as a Yale professor who accompanied his lecture, “A Midsummer Trip on the Aegean,” with 40 lantern slides; the head of the Milwaukee Jewish synagogue, Rabbi Sigmund Hecht, who spoke over six spring evenings on the Talmud; and Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley.

And there were exhibits to see. In January, Ladies Hall held an exhibit of modern French and English art. Later in the year, Edwin Sumner and Sons drug store, 502 State Street, displayed the prize-winning entries of 40 American amateur photographers.

New books were accorded the attention of the Madison Literary club, which had met monthly for 20 years. One book that year, The Wonderful Century, offered a critique of the achievements and failures of the closing century. Another book, Caesar and Jesus by Professor George D. Herron, was, in the opinion of the Democrat, “extremely radical on the social question.” As a consequence, it was reviewed and discussed at length at the Unitarian church.

And then, there was the plain unusual. An April 6th concert given in the Senate chamber found Senator Lamoreux of Ashland, a tenor with a “ministerial appearance,” performing “two charming serenades … full of moonlight, evening dew, [and] throbbing hearts,” raved the Madison Democrat. The evening also featured a senatorial quartet (comprised, surprisingly enough, of four state senators), the UW Glee Club and Banjo Club, and an assortment of performers brought together from Green Bay to Milwaukee.

Later in the year, Perley Dunn Aldrich, tenor from Rochester, New York, delivered a lecture and song recital at Library Hall in which he speculated on how fairies, gnomes, sprites and “other visionary creatures had woven themselves into the melody and song.” He performed the music of Schuman, Franz, and Grieg.

The decade of the 1890s is often remembered as a time of cultural renaissance, of material prosperity, and imperial expansion. Madison was clearly a beneficiary of this boom period and audiences for live entertainments were generously rewarded, given choices as varied as a Mark Twain play one night and a program of Scandinavian folk songs another. But then, as now, artistic success did not always meet the demands of financial success. The Fuller was subject to the cruder whims of its patrons, allowing the sublime (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) to be countered — often during the same week — with the sordid (“The Hottest Coon in Dixie,” boasting “thirty of the greatest colored singers and comedians of their race.”) And the choral union closed its season with a deficit of $1,400. Its prospects seemed uncertain until a body of citizens agreed to raise contributions to eliminate debt and to ensure that expenses were covered for three years.

As 1899 ended, the Choral Union was making preparations to present Handl’s “The Creator” in the new year. In the new century.