Safe Passage Page 4

  That evening was the prelude to an unbelievable four weeks of musical festivity. In addition to hearing Lita once more in Traviata, we heard her as Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and as Gilda in Rigoletto, which I still think her greatest part. I never heard another Gilda who even remotely approached her. She was an absolute mistress of the art of recitative, and her coloratura was as effortless, as natural as the spoken word. Also, she was a very good actress. Not a very great one—that is something different—but a very good one. She even looked a Gilda—quite a tough assignment for some who have essayed the role. With her oval, Renaissance type of face, her magnificent dark eyes, and that essential touch of melancholy, which could sometimes transform her face as well as her voice, she was the living embodiment of Rigoletto’s daughter.

  As well as our Galli-Curci performance, we heard Turandot, Falstaff, Tosca, Romeo and Juliet, and La Forza del Destino. We also heard La Bohème and I think that it was on this first visit that we heard Martinelli in Pagliacci.

  It will be seen from this list that we leaned very much to the Italian side of the operatic repertoire. Later, at our own Covent Garden, we discovered the great German artists of this rich period. But meanwhile, did we have fun among the Italians!

  I cannot complete an account of these magical weeks without mentioning the amazing American hospitality we received. I mean the heart-warming welcome Americans extend to anyone they recognize as an eager and interested visitor. Because of the particular events in our later lives, we thought that the golden, happy things of life lay largely on the other side of the Atlantic. Because of those lovely, carefree, happy days of our youth, we found a particular touching significance in the words, “Westward, look, the land is bright.”

  Like all good things, our American visit could not last forever, and finally we had to go to say goodbye to Lita and Homer. It was a melancholy occasion, but Lita said something that changed everything.

  “If you come back one year in the fall, we will give you a really lovely holiday at our home in the Catskill Mountains.”

  “If you’ll wait while we save up the money,” we cried, “we’ll come. But it takes two years.”

  Lita promised to wait. And then she added thoughtfully, “Time and distance don’t matter, if you are really fond of someone.”

  A profound and simple assertion, put to the test again and again in the years that followed, but always to prove true.

  3

  We went home on the Aquitania. Third class this time, which was the nearest thing to steerage that existed in our day. In working out our expenses, we had realized that we must travel one way in lowly state; we reasoned that, on the return journey, there would be no emigrants. This was true, but there were deportees—twenty-two of them, if I remember rightly. But it was an experience and we could hardly expect roses all the way.

  As we ste pped off the Aquitania at Southampton, a man approached us: “Are you the Misses Cook?”

  When we replied in chorus that we were, he went on, “Well, I’m from the Daily Mail.” And a milder version of our New Yorker publicity experience began all over again. We returned to the bosom of our amused family as minor celebrities of a moment; to this day, there exists an incredible photograph of Louise and me smirking falsely at each other in an attempt to “look sisterly,” as requested by the press.

  We were spent out, down to our last shilling. Since we intended to return to New York, I thought it was time I tried to make some extra money and decided—like many a deluded creature before me—that the easiest thing might be to write something. Since they seemed interested, I sent a breezy little article about us and our trip to the Daily Mail.

  Luckily for me, we were news in a very limited way; the article was accepted, and I saw myself in print for the first time. Intoxicated by success, we thought we were famous for life. Needless to say, in two or three days everyone had forgotten all about us, and in rather chastened mood, I pondered on possible topics that would interest anyone.

  I hit upon a brilliant idea—or so it seemed to me. Mabs Fashions m ight like to have an article on how we made our clothes to go and hear Galli-Curci.

  I wrote the article, typed it out carefully on my office machine, and sent it in. It too was accepted. But for a while, this was the full extent of my journalistic career. To become a shorthand-typist, instead of a mere copying typist, I had to take an exam, and this took up all my time and energy.

  I passed my exam—top marks in English and bottom marks in shorthand, which is rather thought provoking when one reflects that I was offering myself as a shorthand-typist—and found myself in the Official Solicitor’s Department of the Law Courts.

  There were four of us in that particular section, and very soon I turned the other three into operatic enthusiasts, with a gramophone apiece. We all earned approximately three pounds a week, made our own clothes, saw life in simple terms, envied no one, often worked shockingly hard, but saved systematically for whatever we wanted and enjoyed it extravagantly when we got it.

  The height of social glamour in those days was to sit for two hours over a pot of tea and a roll and butter at a Lyons Corner House, talking endlessly about ourselves, our hopes and the deliciously distant glitter of our favourite stars. The short International Season of Opera at Covent Garden was the most expensive time of the year.

  For those unfortunately born too late to know Covent Garden in those days, and for the nostalgic enjoyment of those who shared those joys with us, let me recall the life of a Covent Garden gallery-ite.

  I think it was the German conductor, Heger, who was reputed to have said of the Covent Garden audience that our enthusiasm was kindled to red heat by the simple expedient of starvation for ten months, and stuffing for two. Whether he really said it or not, the analogy was, largely speaking, correct. For nearly ten months of the year, Covent Garden was a dance hall, covered with yellow posters bidding anyone who wished to spend one shilling or half a crown to come and dance there.

  But in the spring, those notices would be torn down and replaced by the preliminary lists of works and artists for the coming season. On the Sunday afternoon before the opening Monday—could it always have been as sunny as it now seems in retrospect?—the “regulars” gathered—some having seen little of each other since the previous year. Those Floral Street reunions stand out in my memory as among the happiest days of my life.

  In those days, the gallery seats could not be reserved. Instead, under the masterly direction of Gough and Hailey, our two “stool men,” we hired camp stools, which marked our places whenever we had to leave for such unimportant matters as earning our living. Rumour had it that both Gough and Hailey did a substantial amount of betting on the side. Certainly their financial situation fluctuated in the most extraordinary way, and it was always difficult to know if Gough were employing Hailey or Hailey employing Gough. But from our point of view, they were splendid. I can see Gough now, pontificating gravely when called on to settle any question of queue-jumping. Not that there was much of this; anyone caught cheating was regarded with boundless contempt and handled with something less than kid gloves.

  Apart from the first night of the season—marked by the Sunday gathering—and big “star” nights—when most of the real enthusiasts would gather overnight—we put down our camp stools at six or seven in the morning. Those of us fortunate enough to work near Covent Garden rushed over at lunchtime and sat on our stools, munching sandwiches—or a mere roll and butter if hard up—while watching the stars go to and from rehearsal.

  The one disadvantage was that, for those of us who went almost every night, life became a series of late retirings and early risings. But either we were tougher then or youth cares little for that sort of thing. Louise and I regularly caught our last train from Victoria at twenty-to-one in the morning and rose to catch the first train to town next day before six. I was dreadfully weary sometimes. But I remember that my heart was high those early summer mornings, because we lived in a wonderland of
opera, of interminable conversations with fellow enthusiasts in the queue, of glimpses at and sometimes even snatches of conversation with the stars, and of a dozen other delights.

  Oh, the friendships and enmities of that queue! What book of this kind could be complete without mentioning some of the familiar figures?

  Francis had attended every performance of every single opera at Covent Garden since the early nineteen-twenties, usually accompanied by Jenny. Francis had some wonderful turns of phrase from time to time and once uttered the pearl of succinct criticism when we were all recalling a singer we had deplored. “She had an enormous voice,” he agreed thoughtfully, “and all of it came from her nose.”

  George was three when he first queued with his mother, though he didn’t actually come into performances until later. He adored Pinza and was the first person the amused basso used to ask for when he passed the queue.

  Arthur was attending a finishing school in Switzerland when he received word that Ponselle was to make her Covent Garden debut. Unable to contemplate missing such an event, he wrote immediately to his father. He said he had been seriously considering the future and felt strongly that, instead of wasting money abroad, the time had come for him to assist his father in business. So admirably did he state the case to his unsuspecting parent that, somewhat touched, his father brought him home—just in time for Ponselle’s debut. “But, by God, it was a near thing!” was Arthur’s invariable comment when he told the tale later.

  Dennis cycled up every morning from Forest Gate and once fell asleep on his bicycle, worn out by a series of late operatic nights. He always declared that he remembered seeing the Law Courts, and that the next thing he knew, he was lying on the pavement, fifty yards farther on.

  Colin was afterwards to found perhaps the most famous record collectors’ centre in England. I have always thought he owed the phenomenal success of his venture partly to his uncompromising statement of views. They carried such shattering conviction.

  There was the famous occasion when a customer dared to speak disparagingly of Dame Nellie Melba. “Sir,” said Colin, rising in his wrath from behind the counter, “Sir, I would have you know that here we worship at the shrine of Melba. Kindly go out of my shop and never come in again.” And if anyone can say “sir” more insultingly than Colin can, I have yet to meet him.

  There was Mrs. Price who, with her family, headed the queue for many a long day. She always lingers in my memory as one of the few women who had the gift of dignity and repose. It was she who once consoled me when I was seething with rage over what I considered an unjust musical criticism and encouraged me to judge a performance for myself. “No critic is infallible,” she said. “He may be wrong and you may be right.”

  Then there were Douglas, Jenny, Ray, Noel and Freda—who did most of their courting in the queue and subsequently chose a foreign opera festival as the scene of their honeymoon—Anne, Norwood, Phyllis, Harold—who had written a fan letter to Geraldine Farrar in 1919 and started a regular and entertaining correspondence with that great woman, that lasted until her death forty-seven years later—Mollie—one of my friends and colleagues from the Law Courts days—Reg—whom Mollie afterwards married. There were dozens of them! Chance acquaintances, old friends, part of one’s life. Bobby, who was later shot down over the Mediterranean, Peter who died in the North African campaign. Impossible to name them all, but every one represented part of the scene that belongs to those golden days before 1934, when we were young and the world was ours.

  And what was the operatic fare offered to us when we handed in our camp stools and scrambled up the stairs to our wooden seats in the gallery?

  Well, of course, there is a great deal of nonsense talked about those days, mostly by people who never experienced them. The times I have had people say naïvely, “They didn’t act much in those days, did they?” or “Of course it was the star system then, wasn’t it?” or “There were no real productions, I imagine.”

  No one, least of all myself, is going to pretend that there were no poor, dull or even uninspired performances at Covent Garden during the Grand Season of the “old days.” There were occasionally perfectly frightful performances, often very good ones, and sometimes truly great and memorable performances, which stand out still as milestones in our memories.

  It was, I freely admit, a considerable disadvantage that the opera house inevitably lacked a permanent orchestra and chorus. But this deficiency was usually surmounted with amazing success, first by the wholesale importation of one of the standing London orchestras—as is done today, in the case of Glyndebourne, for instance—and secondly by the natural British genius for choral singing. It was easier than it would have been in most other countries to assemble a chorus of high standard, because the chorus members probably were accustomed to singing together, either in oratorio or as members of some choral society.

  Against this background appeared artists—and in some cases whole casts—who were perfectly used to performing together in other parts of the world.

  And now for my favourite comment, “They didn’t act much then, did they?”

  Act! Why a man like Chaliapin could act everyone off the stage today with the exception of Callas and Gobbi. It must be forty years or more since I last heard Chaliapin’s Boris, but my spine still chills enjoyably as I recall his Clock Scene, where the Czar, who has murdered his way to the throne, sees the ghost of the child he has murdered. And he did the whole thing with a chair and a handkerchief: a monumental and solitary figure in a splendid costume of brocade and fur, he scarcely made a movement at first, only the agitation of the red handkerchief in his hand showing his growing uneasiness and his incredulous horror. Then, at the moment when he actually saw the child, he would take the chair on which he had been sitting and try to hold off the figure, unseen to all but him. And we, sweating with heat and terror in the gallery, could have sworn in the end that we saw the child too. That was acting!

  Of course, in a singer, the first essential is the voice. But it is useful to put the record straight for those who imagine that the stars of those days stood stolidly at the footlights and sang.

  When people ask, “Are there not just as many great vocal artists today?” I am afraid the simple, if unpopular, answer is: No. This is not because God has stopped giving out good voices. It is because the full development of a great singing talent is a near-impossibility in a world where everything from coffee to soup to philosophy and art must be “instant.” Presently someone is going to discover how to grow an instant tree. It won’t be much like the tree that has taken years and years to mature, but it will satisfy quite a number of people who will, incidentally, be rather huffy if you talk about the superiority of the real thing.

  The development of a complete musical artist differed a little from country to country, but in every case it took time. In Austria, for instance, anyone lucky enough to be accepted into one of the famous musical conservatoria faced six years of study. No agent or talent scout was allowed to approach the singer during the first five years.—Nor, of course, was there any chance of preening and twittering on television to a chorus of uninformed praise.—At the end of the fifth year, the conservatory would organize a students’ concert, to which agents and talent scouts would be invited. An interested agent or scout would approach the teacher, not the student, with the request that, in a year’s time, he or she might hear the singer again. An engagement—probably in a provincial opera house, where immensely varied professional experience would be available—might result.

  The greatly gifted artist might find a few short cuts, and there was always the occasional phenomenon who conformed to few of these rules. But, generally speaking, any artist who succeeded in the international scene—in parts great or small—had this wealth of understanding and experience behind him or her. What we, the audience, enjoyed was the tip of the iceberg. Underneath was the firm base of knowledge and hard work that supported the performance.

  The luckiest—and usually the
most gifted—were those who came under the direct influence of one of the great musical directors. Directors like Serafin, Marinuzzi and probably Panizza, or Clemens Krauss, Bruno Walter and, a little later, Kleiber. These were men who knew exactly how to develop a voice rather than exploit it. Not all the greatest conductors had this special flair, though this is no criticism of them. They probably expected to handle the finished article rather than perfect it. This expectation is legitimate if the conductor is truly great and can recognize whether or not the singer is really capable of taking on the projected role. The operatic highways and byways nowadays are strewn with the wrecks of voices called in to support the prestige of a conductor rather than the cause of true singing.

  This lack of basic development is combined with overexposure and over-performing. Everyone wants to hear everything today. By way of the airplane, which is no friend to a singer, artists rush to and fro doing their admired and over-recorded performance of this role and that.

  Also, modern recording tends to inflate the size and quality of many voices. A “souped up” recording results in some attractive smallish artist being pressed to sing in large opera houses. The role is, in life, totally beyond his or her safe capacity. Very soon the individual colour and charm of the voice disappear, and another good singer fails to reach the legitimate goal.

  In the space of a few paragraphs, one can mention only a few points, and the whole issue becomes oversimplified. But in those days, both abroad and here among our British singers, there was a great deal more of what Eva Turner has so aptly called the mixture of “inspiration, dedication and perspiration.”

  We probably did not know how supremely fortunate we were. I suppose one never does until the light begins to fade. But in those happy days, there was a great deal of glory around us. Naturally, there were always older fans to assure us that we, who had not heard Destinn, Caruso, Plancon and other safely dead, could not possibly know what real singing was. One tactless old boy once asked Louise superiorly if she had heard “Ternina in ’02.”