by Ida Cook
It is there for the newcomers too. In witness, let me call to mind the return to London of Giovanni Martinelli in his eighties. Young and old rose as one to acclaim him, and rightly so. Not only did he electrify everyone by singing some fragmentary but unforgettable phrases at a master class; but just by talking he had, as the saying goes, everyone eating out of his hand.
Among our own cherished recollections of him in old age is the occasion when Lauder Greenway and Francis Robinson, of the Metropolitan, took him and us out to Connecticut to visit his old colleague Geraldine Farrar. He was in splendid spirits and, on the way out, told us he had recently become eighty. We did think he had been seventy-nine for some little time, but were charmed, when he added that he usually gave his age in French, quatre-vingts because, as he said, “I say the quatre very quickly and linger on the vingts.”
When we arrived at Farrar’s home, she was standing there ready to greet us, leaning slightly on a cane, her hair silver, her figure no longer slender. But one looked at that old lady and knew instantly why she had been the toast of two continents at the beginning of the century.
She also spoke of her age—even more frankly and a trifle boastfully—informing us that she was in her eighty-fourth year. This was a little awkward for Martinelli, who could not very well age within the hour. However, he firmly—perhaps not quite so firmly—repeated his bit about being eighty. Whereupon Farrar regarded him with those famous forget-me-not blue eyes twinkling and said, “Is it possible, Giovanni? Then I am older than you.”
He blushed slightly at this and exclaimed gallantly, “I will run and catch you up.”
She smiled at him them, with ineffable charm, and replied, “Giovanni, I cannot run so fast nowadays.”
If that had happened on a stage and the curtain had then been rung down, the whole house would have risen and applauded to the echo. The wit and charm of those two old stars and, above all, their perfection of timing was little short of miraculous.
Something the same still happens with Ponselle. But with her, it is more a kind of dynamic projection of personality, with which neither age nor youth has any connection. Even now, if she enters a room, no one can look at anyone else. And to be with her while one of her own records is played is a fascinating experience. She will tip back her head, as though listening to something across the years, and then her whole appearance changes. Even the shape of her face seems to alter and become young, while her eyes widen. For a few brief, magical minutes, she is there again as one knew her in the old days—and unforgettable Norma, Violetta, Gioconda, and so on.
She also has the capacity to recall a great colleague with one or two telling phrases. Of Caruso, she once said, “His voice was not in any sense directional. Even if you were near enough to him to sing a love duet, the sound did not just come from his mouth, it came from his head. It was all around you—and at the back of your neck as well.”
Once, when we were listening to a Chaliapin record and I rather expected her to say something about the phenomenal size of the voice, she exclaimed, “Listen—listen now for that pianissimo!” Then she added, almost humbly, “I always used to listen for that when I sang with him—and try to copy it.”
Understandably, she is a wonderful judge of a voice—except that she tends to start with perfection as the norm and to be slightly irritated by anything that deviates from it. Among our treasured possessions, we have a tape-recording in which she describes how she got some of her own most famous effects. It contains the best throwaway line I have ever heard from a prima donna. At the end, she says almost plaintively, “It’s so simple, really!”
Over the years, we have become very close indeed. We still telephone her across the Atlantic on May 28; and whenever we visit the States, we spend some days with her in her Maryland home. Our long association with Rosa constitutes one of our strongest and most valued links with the past. But those indestructible links are not always operatic ones. From time to time and over land and sea, some entirely unsuspected strand will tug us back in a startling and moving way to the days described in the earlier part of this book.
A year or two ago, when we were in New York, we went with our good friend Mary Ellis Peltz—the incomparable archivist of the Metropolitan—to a lecture she was giving at a Senior Citizens Club. It turned out to be a Jewish club, which made Louise and me feel particularly at home; and just before the talk began, a distinguished looking old lady came up to me and asked if I were the speaker.
I assured her I was not—that we were, in fact, just house guests of the speaker. Whereupon she looked at me more closely and said, “Are you one of the two sisters?”
Surprised, I replied, “We are Louise and Ida Cook, if that is what you mean.”
“I met you once,” she said. “In Frankfurt in 1938. You were not getting me out. You were getting out friends of mine. We all knew what you were doing, and we never forgot you.”
I could have burst into tears. Frankfurt in 1938 and New York in 1973! If I had invented that in one of the Mary Burchell romances, someone would have been sure to say that such things don’t happen in real life.
Here is a thought-provoking little story about the unbreakable links that exist between those who make great music and those who joyfully receive it.
Earlier in this book, when I listed some of those who shared our happy gallery days, I mentioned Jenny. I suppose we knew her surname at some time or other, but if so, I have forgotten it. Jenny, like Francis, could be very trenchant in her criticisms, but among the artists she truly loved was Elisabeth Rethberg. On one of our visits to the States after the war, I tried to recall her to Elisabeth. But though she thought she remembered the name, she said, “I can’t actually visualize her. I wish I could!”
I said she could hardly be expected to remember more than a few of us. But when we met again some days later, Elisabeth said triumphantly, “Of course I remember Jenny! How could I have forgotten her? The strange thing is that I dreamed of her last night—so clearly that she almost stood there before me, and I remembered her instantly. Do give her my love when you get home.”
We promised that we would. And on our return, I telephoned a mutual friend to ask for Jenny’s address.
“My dear, I’m so sorry,” came the reply. “Jenny died while you were away.”
Inevitably, since I am now looking back over many years, there have been other gaps in the circle of our operatic friends on both sides of the curtain; the one that affected our lives most deeply was the death of Clemens Krauss. After our great reunion in 1947, Krauss and Viorica came quite often to London. They always stayed at the flat and came to be among our closest and most dearly loved friends. It was therefore a great personal blow to us—quite apart from the loss to our musical world—when Krauss died suddenly in May, 1954.
We had known him and Viorica for exactly twenty years, and one of the stories we never tired of hearing was how they had shared the world premiere of Strauss’s Arabella together. I think many people knew that, in a whimsical, romantic way, Viorica was always Krauss’s Arabella after that, as he was her Mandryka. But what is both touching and extraordinary is that the parallel ran to the last minute of his life.
Those who know the work will recall how Mandryka tells Arabella that, in his village, if a man woos a girl and she wishes to show she accepts him, she comes to him in the evening with a glass of water from the village spring. And naturally, Arabella makes great play with this in the final scene when she comes downstairs, bringing him a glass of water.
On the last day of his life, Krauss had conducted an enormously successful concert in Mexico. When they returned to their hotel, he said he felt unwell and asked Viorica to fetch him a glass of water.
In her own words, “I know I was not gone more than a minute or two, and when I came back he was dead. Do you realize that his last thought in this life was, ‘She is coming—with the glass of water.’”
It was almost two years later, in March, 1956, that I was chosen as the subject of the famous television programme This Is Your Life. With the assistance of people who took part, the life story of a selected person is reconstructed. The whole point of the programme is that the central character should not know that he or she is going on television until the camera and the microphones are turned on. There are various ingenious ruses for getting the right person in the right place at the right time, and of course there has to be a great deal of backroom work beforehand, in which someone near the victim gives essential help. In my case, the “contact woman” was naturally Louise.
Everything worked perfectly that night, and I am bound to say that I loved every minute of it. There were old friends, refugees we had not seen for years, a worker from our displaced persons camp in Bavaria, Alice from my wartime shelter in Bermondsey, a recording of Rosa speaking to me across the Atlantic and so on. Most exciting of all was that they brought Viorica from the village of Ehrwald in the Tyrol, where she was living in retirement.
The programme was followed by a party in a hotel on the other side of town. The remarkable thing was that, although all the people came from different parts of our lives, they all got on like a house on fire, which shows that, throughout one’s life, one chooses one’s friends for the same reasons. Or perhaps one is chosen by them.
When it was all over and we had said goodbye to those who were not staying on in London, Louise and I called a taxi from the nearby rank and drove the whole way home. Just as I went to pay the driver he asked, “Am I right, madam, in thinking I saw you on TV tonight?”
I said, “You did.”
“Well,” he replied, “may I complete your evening? Will you have this drive on me?”
It could happen only in London!—where there are the best taxi-drivers in the world.
The whole evening was thrilling and memorable. But what followed must rank, I think, as the most remarkable of all our operatic-cum-refugee experiences.
Four months later, I went to speak at a Women’s Institute in Surrey, and at the end, an old lady came up to me and told me how much she had enjoyed my This Is Your Life programme, adding, “What I can’t get over is that couple.”
I explained as tactfully as I could that there had not been a couple on my programme.
“Yes, you know who I mean,” she insisted. “The couple—with the refugee work.”
When I repeated that they had all been single people on my programme, she seemed quite annoyed with my stupidity, so I said something polite and got away. On the way home, I thought over what she had said. She had got the refugee part right. But for the rest, I decided she had just been mistaken. What else could I think?
A whole year later, I went to speak in Newcastle-on-Tyne, where I always stay with good friends of ours. The sister-in-law of my hostess telephoned and asked me to come to lunch with her and a friend of hers, Brenda, who very much wanted to meet me. Over lunch, the subject of This Is Your Life once more came up in the conversation. I discovered that my friend, Meg, had not seen the programme and was greatly disappointed about this, but Brenda, who was meeting me for the first time, had seen it. She knew nothing much about Louise and me, had never read any book of mine, was not interested in the operatic world—but she had remembered that her friend Meg knew someone called Ida Cook, and so she was interested.
“I had a wonderful time,” she told me. “My husband was out and I sat and watched it all on my own. But there’s something I want to ask you. Who was the tall, very good-looking foreigner who absolutely dominated the programme?”
“There wasn’t one,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“The tall, good-looking foreigner with the tremendous personality—and such charm,” she insisted. “You must know who I mean. I remember him above everyone else.”
Puzzled and intrigued, I asked at which point he had come in, and she replied unhesitatingly that he came in with the singer—Viorica—and remained during the whole of the refugee part of the programme.
I questioned her on other details, but I could not shake her story, and finally I said, “Well, of course, you are exactly describing Clemens Krauss, the husband of the singer. He started us on the refugee work and ever afterwards kept his hand upon us and hid our work for us. But he died two years before the programme.”
“Oh, no! This man was there, like everyone else,” Brenda insisted. “Only he didn’t speak.”
“Would you recognize a photograph of him?” I enquired.
Yes, she was sure she would recognize him anywhere—he had made such an impression upon her.
As will be imagined, when I revisited Newcastle in a few months’ time, I took some photographs with me. When my hostess said we were going to have some friends in on a certain evening, I asked her to invite Brenda and send her up to my room beforehand, so that I could speak to her alone.
When Brenda came in and I had greeted her, I said, “Before we go downstairs, I want to ask you something. Do you remember saying you saw an extra person on my television programme?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“Can you still visualize that man?” I asked her.
“Give me a minute,” she said, and she put her hands over her eyes. “Yes. I’ve got him—absolutely.”
“Would you recognize a photograph of him?” I pressed her.
“Oh, I think I would, Ida,” she assured me. “Yes, I think I would.”
I spread some photographs on the bed. And she cried out immediately.
“Oh, beyond any shadow of doubt! There’s no question about it—this is the man. It’s almost funny that he’s so like himself. That is how he stood—” She pointed to one of the photographs. Then she added wonderingly, “But how extraordinary. On the programme his hair was dark, not grey.”
He was young again.
Eventually I wrote an account of the incident, which was published in World Digest. And even at that point of time, three complete strangers came forward from different parts of the country—including a tough East End businessman who to this day thinks we somehow “spoofed” him—and identified “the extra person” from photographs. Each said almost the same thing: “I just wondered why he didn’t speak.”
In some sense, I suppose, that would make a fitting end to this book. But, in point of fact, it was not an ending but a beginning for Louise and me of what I might call a fresh series of discoveries and adventures, so fascinating and so rewarding that another whole book would be required to describe them.
Instead, since this is a book about star-gazing, in which the star-gazer has had full indulgence, let me give the last word to one of the stars on whom we gazed. It is true that these words were addressed to Louise and me from Martinelli, in 1967, but it is equally true that they may be taken to the hearts of all who have loved and appreciated great artists, humbly acknowledging that without them life would have been a much less glorious affair.
Dear Ida and Louise,
What could any singer do without friends such as you? Believe me, without the devotion so selflessly expressed by both of you, it would be almost impossible for a singer to have a career. Self-ego is that which sustains most of us—the childlike desire to believe we, gifted by God with voices to please, are creatures set apart from mere mortal men.
Yet doubt constantly assails us.... Are we as good as we think...? Do we have a right to the adoration cast upon us...and, most important, when our voices fade, and we are old, will we be forgotten? You two dear ladies have helped us, in your teen years and later mature life, to retain forever our dream of adoration, and in so doing have made so many veteran artists very happy, not the least of whom by far is Giovanni Martinelli. God bless and keep you both.
* * *
THE
BRAVEST
VOICES
IDA COOK
Read
er’s Guide
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Early in The Bravest Voices, Ida recounts a conversation with her eighty-nine-year-old mother. “I’ve never seen you cry,” Ida says, wonderingly. “What do you mean?” Mrs. Cook says. “I never had anything to cry about. I didn’t ask very much, but I had everything that mattered.” What does Mrs. Cook’s comment say about the expectations of that time and place? What values were emphasized in Ida and Louise’s childhoods? Do you share them?
Ida attends her first operatic performances at Covent Garden in London in 1924. She reflects back on their impact and describes how raw enthusiasm can lift one out of the ordinary world to the “golden heights” of loving admiration. Discuss the idea of “hero worship” as the Cook sisters experience it. Do you see a distinction between Ida’s adoration of opera singers and the fascination with celebrities that pervades contemporary popular culture? How is fandom different today than it was in the 1920s and 1930s?
What was your familiarity with opera before reading The Bravest Voices? Does Ida’s passion raise your own level of interest? What is appealing about the world and experiences she describes as an opera fan?
After two years of scrimping and planning, Ida and Louise set sail for New York in 1926 to hear their favorite performer sing at the old Metropolitan Opera House. What does the story of their years of “skimpy lunches, cheese paring and saving” say about Ida’s and Louise’s characters and priorities? Have you had a similar experience in your life where you sacrificed day-to-day pleasures for some distant reward? Was the result as satisfying as Ida describes?
What qualities shine through Ida’s narrative “voice”? To what do you credit her sense of humor and unfailing optimism even in the face of great tragedy? At what points in the memoir does Ida seem most shaken?