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Conried had always drawn unsparingly on his reserves of energy and resistance, and there came at last a moment when those reserves were exhausted. An unpleasant episode, involving not himself, but one of his company, enlisted all his efforts. At its conclusion, he was met with a piece of bad news: Dr. Holbrook Curtis told him that he feared that a growth which had just appeared in the throat of Caruso would prevent this, now his particular star, from singing during the coming season and might end his career altogether. Conried went from the doctor’s office to the Opera House to watch an important, long-drawn-out rehearsal. Shortly thereafter he had a breakdown from which he never recovered.

When he died, his widow and son requested me to arrange the funeral, and readily adopted my suggestion that as Heinrich Conried’s greatest success had been won in the Metropolitan Opera House, so his obsequies should be held there as Anton Seidl’s had been ten years before. I knew that Conried had not been connected with any synagogue, but I asked whether he had mentioned a preference.