[Illustration: =Newspaper Print of the Kellogg-Lucca Season=
So interesting did our supposed rivalry become, however, as to excite considerable newspaper comment. In reply to one of these in _The Chicago Tribune_ a contributor answered:
SIR: In your issue of this morning, there is an editorial headed "Operatic Failure," which is, in some respects, so unjust and one-sided as to call for an immediate protest against its injustice. Having taken your ideas from _The New York Herald_, and having no other source of information, it is not to be wondered at that you should fall into error. For reasons best known to Mr. James Gordon Bennett, _The New York Herald_, since the commencement of the Jarrett-Maretzek season, has undertaken to write up Madame Lucca at the expense of every other artist connected with the troupe; and it is because of _The Herald's_ fulsome laudations of Lucca, and its outrageously untruthful criticisms of Kellogg, that much of the trouble has occurred. Of the two ladies, Kellogg is by far the superior singer. Lucca has much dramatic force, but, in musical culture, is not equal to her sister artist, and there is no jealousy on the part of either lady of the other. The facts are these: The management, taking their cue from _The Herald_, and being afraid of the power of Mr. Bennett, tried to shelve Kellogg, and the result has been that the dear public would not permit the injustice, and they, the managers, as well as _The Herald_, are amazed and angered at the result of their dirty work.
Lucca and I gave _Mignon_ that season together, she playing the part of Mignon and I that of Felina, the cat. Mignon was always a favourite part of my own, a sympathetic _rôle_ filled with poetry and sentiment. When I first studied it, I most carefully read _Wilhelm Meister_, upon which it is founded. Regarding the part of Felina, I have often wondered that people have never been more perceptive than they appear to have been of the analogy between her name and her qualities, for she has all of the characteristics of the feline species. Our dual star bill in the opera was highly successful and effective in spite of Jarrett's continual attacks upon me through the press and in every way open to him. He did me a particularly cruel turn about Felina. I started off in the _rôle_, the opening night, in what I still believe to have been the correct interpretation. _Wilhelm Meister_ was set in a finicky period and its characters wore white wigs and minced about in their actions. My part was all comedy and the gestures should have been little and dainty and somewhat constrained. So I played it, until I saw this criticism, written by one of Jarrett's creatures, "Miss Kellogg has no freedom of movement in the _rôle_ of Felina, etc."