After standing in line in the cold outside the old Met on Broadway and 40th Street for four hours, I was able to get a standing room ticket for Kirsten Flagstad's farewell performance. It was in Beethoven's Fidelio. Several years later, after she had supposedly retired, she came out of retirement to sing a concert with The Symphony of the Air, which had been the NBC Symphony under Arturo Toscanini. After Toscanini's death, the orchestra tried to make it without a conductor for several years and had asked Flagstad if she would return to sing with them. She sang the Wesendonck Lieder and the Immolation Scene of Wagner in fine fettle. Toscanini's grand-daughter, Liana, lives just around the corner from me in Sandisfield today. Small world! Alex Williams, a long ago friend of mine from New Jersey, was principal clarinetist in that orchestra.
I remember hearing Zinka Milanov and some tenor standing on the stage of the old Met belting out an incredible 'Anything you can sing, I can sing louder' duet from La Gioconda. The walls would still echo with that sound if they had not torn down the building to build Lincoln Center. I often think I can still hear it when I walk down Broadway in that block. I heard Milanov many times and she is still one of my favorite singers. Like the little girl with the little curl, 'When she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid'. But I loved her anyway. Of course it was Mae West who said, 'When I'm good, I'm very, very good, and when I'm bad, I'm better'. But I don't think she was talking about her singing!
Speaking of Mae West, in 1950 John and I saw and heard her on the stage of the Broadway Theatre in Diamond Lil. She sang a very risqué version of 'Frankie and Johnny.' Her legendary bust preceded her onstage by at least 30 seconds! But that's another story.
I saw Joan Sutherland's début at the old Met in Lucia. A student of mine called one morning and told me that someone had given her tickets for the Met that evening. Some British soprano was making her début! I guess so!
I saw Leontine Price and William Warfield in the revival of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess at the Broadway Theatre. Now there was a Bess! I also heard her sing songs by John La Montaine in the Miller Theatre at Columbia University when I was Searle Wright's assistant at St. Paul's Chapel. Searle took me to the party at John's apartment afterwards where I met her. I heard many of her appearances at the Met.
I saw Monserrat Caballe sing a concert at Carnegie Hall where the bows and encores went on for a half hour. The stage was filled with flowers, looking like a Mafia funeral. As her final encore, she sang a Spanish folk song and literally danced all the way around the piano so the people seated onstage behind the piano for this sold-out concert, could get a chance to see her head-on. Amazing grace, as this super sized Señora, her arms lifted over her head, danced around the Steinway D. They don't make 'em like that anymore!
I must not give short shrift to the New York City Opera Company. When they were still at the City Center on 55th Street, I heard Beverly Sills in the first performances of Douglas Moore's Baby Doe. Moore was the head of the Music Department at Columbia when I was getting my degree there.
I also heard Phyllis Curtin sing the title role in Carlyle Floyd's Suzanna many times as well as the title role in Vittorio Gianinni's Taming of the Shrew. I saw every performance of that opera because a dear friend of mine, Dorothy Fee, was the librettist (along with William Shakespeare) for the opera and asked me to accompany her to all the performances.
Dorothy was also a composer and studied composition with Vittorio. I got to know him and his amazing wife, Lucia, through my friendship with Dorothy..
I was also happy to hear Judith Raskin's début at City Opera as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. Judy studied with Anna Hamlin, with whom I also studied as well as playing for her lessons when she came to the city from Northampton where she was the head of the voice department at Smith College, where I now teach. Judy often coached with me in those days and we did one performance together. She died much too young.
And, of course, I was at the Met when Lorraine Hunt Lieberson made her début there in John Harbison's Gatsby. She was one of six students of mine who have sung at the Met. I was also in the Palais Garnier in Paris for her début in that hallowed hall. She died at age 52, breaking my heart.
Well, that's enough for now. This one not-so-hot Otello has brought forth a million memories; a sort of mental diarrhea. I'd better quit while I'm ahead.
I'm so glad I saw and heard all these singers and I am just as glad that I am working with fine young singers at Smith College these days. I have had the enormous honor to teach some of the world's greatest singers over my career. As somebody (Yogi Berra?) once said, 'It ain't over 'til it's over!'
Truer words were never spoke!
