s impossible to tell when the conductor made his appearance in
music," Mr. Henderson asserts. "At the beginning of the seventeenth
century, the conductor was at first nothing more than a leader; he was
one of the performers whom the rest followed." An inscription in verse
on an engraving of a conductor, published in Nuremberg, early in the
eighteenth century, declares that "silent myself, I cause the music I
control." In the nineteenth century, the conductor had won full
recognition as an instrumentalist of a new type, who, without any
instrument of his own, played on the whole body of musicians under his
command. Of late, he has become so prominent in the eyes of the public,
and his personality has been so insisted upon, that there is danger
often lest he may distract attention from the music to himself. As Mr.
Henderson records calmly: "We have beheld the curious spectacle of
people going, to hear not Beethoven or Wagner, but Nikisch or Seidl."

What the conductor is to a performance of orchestral music, the
stage-manager is to the performance of a play in the theater. (And in
this paper the term "stage-manager" is to be understood as meaning the
"producer" of a drama.) His art is as special, as necessary, as novel,
and as difficult; and, if it is as yet scarcely recognized and rarely
appreciated, this is due in part to the conditions under which his work
must be done. The conductor is not only visible but conspicuous; the
audience is likely to watch him rather than any one of the musicians he
is guiding; whereas the stage-manager must ever be invisible, and is,
indeed, most successful if his existence is unsuspected. When the
conductor brings a concert to a close, he bows to the applause and then
lays down his wand; and all is over. The stage-manager has wrought his
wonders, and his labors are practically concluded, before the curtain
rises on the first act at the first performance. In this respect, he is
like the trainer of a college-crew, who cannot go into the boat with
them when the pistol is fired for the race to begin. But everybody is
now well aware what it is that the trainer has done for the crew; his
portrait appears with theirs in the newspapers and he shares in their
glory.

Only the expert ever thinks of giving due meed of praise to the hidden
stage-manager who is responsible for a more arduous victory in the
theater than any ever won on the river. His face is not familiar on the
posters; and his name i