Ritzner,
director; Nevada City (10), Visalia (8), Prof. Hirsch,
director; Oregon (22), and many individual singers of no
society.
[Illustration:
John P. Morgan
Oakland
Carl Zerrahn
Boston
Rudolf Herold
San Francisco
MUSICAL DIRECTORS OF THE MAY FESTIVAL
San Francisco, 1878]
It was a pity that after all this success there should come an
aftermath of unhappy, unpaid singers and players who were unable to
realize a farthing from their splendid work. Mr. Bugbee slipped
quietly out of the city, Mr. Kinross sailed on the Portland steamer,
Mr. Benham disappeared, as did also Mr. Easton. The concerts certainly
paid a splendid profit, but expenses and high salaries of these men
ate up the expected profits. Everything was carried out with a
lavish hand and Mr. Bugbee, with all his promises, did not fulfill
them as by contract. I do not know what the other soloists' losses
were, but my portion was to be $150 for three days, carriages, etc.
After the concert in the opera house I never saw Mr. Bugbee, although
I made every effort to do so. He was lost to San Francisco forever. A
number of years after all this trouble I saw a notice of his death in
a southern city. Carl Zerrahn was the only one who benefited by his
coming and he returned home with $2,500 in his pockets, a gold medal,
laurel wreath and embossed letters of appreciation from the musicians
of California. I never knew how settlement was made with the managers
and the Eastern artists.
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