Safe Passage

by Mary Burchell

  Early in 1929, when the preliminary list of artists and works were issued, the name of Rosa Ponselle appeared for the first time. She was to sing three performances of Norma, in which she had recently made a sensation in New York, and two performance of La Gioconda.

  This was news indeed! Louise and I had tremendously admired Ponselle when we had heard her in New York, and we felt in our bones—which were pretty reliable bones in matters operatic—that she was just what the Italian contingent at Covent Garden would rejoice in.

  May 28, 1929. How often have those of us who loved her recalled that first night Ponselle sang at Covent Garden? We were at a fever pitch of excitement when, just before the queue moved in, a tall, striking—indeed, almost melodramatic-looking—figure sauntered up Floral Street and stood for a few moments at the corner. The whisper went round that this was Ponselle, though we found it hard to believe that the star of the evening would just stroll up like any of us. I was commissioned to walk past and take a good—though surreptitious—look at her as the Forza Leonora we had last seen on the stage of the Metropolitan. This I did. But we were still in some doubt until she walked along the street and in the stage door. That settled all disputes.

  I am sure that no one who was there on that extraordinary evening will ever think of Norma as just a nineteenth-century coloratura role. It was written for a great singing actress. And by a great singing actress it must be played or, quite simply, be humbly left alone.

  Years and years afterwards, Callas once said to me, “I think you know, Eeda, that to me, Ponselle was probably the greatest singer to us all. But can you tell me how we differed on the stage?”

  A very interesting point. And, broadly speaking, the answer is that Ponselle played Norma almost as a goddess. One understood exactly why the tribe worshipped her; and when she proved so much a woman, the shock to the audience was almost a reflection of the shock to the tribe. Callas played Norma as a woman from the beginning, again employing her unrivalled gift of absolute pathos, combined, in this case, with a sort of passionate majesty.

  Ponselle was a splendid actress and the greatest singer I ever heard. Callas was an uneven but splendid singer and, without question, the greatest actress I ever saw. How blessed indeed I have been to be alive in the same age as both of them!

  At that first Ponselle Norma, I think what stunned us all was the almost unbelievable vocal control, displayed immediately in a “Casta Diva” of rocklike security but shimmering tone. She went on to give us an evening of drama and vocal splendour never matched in my experience.

  Her voice was warm, as smooth as velvet, and of a dark, exciting colour. From top to bottom, she had a perfectly even scale. Basically this was a natural gift, but how she worked to perfect it! Indeed, it is interesting to read the old New York newspapers of November 1918 just after she made her sensational debut opposite Caruso. To every interviewer, she said the same thing: “Don’t tell me I’m a great singer. I’m going to be one.” And from then until she retired nineteen years later, at the criminally early age of thirty-nine, she never ceased to work like a slave.

  Looking back over our years as opera-goers in many countries, Louise and I both consider Ponselle to be the greatest operatic artist we’ve ever heard. We are not alone. Farrar used to say, “When you are considering singers you must put aside Caruso and Ponselle, and then you may begin.” And Fred Gaisberg, in his book on the outstanding stars of recording, opines that “Rosa Ponselle was probably the greatest lirico-spinta that ever lived.” I would question that classification of her as a spinta; personally, I would call her a full dramatic soprano, as she was usually regarded. But we certainly agree that her voice was of unrivalled beauty.

  Perhaps the most interesting opinion passed upon her voice was expressed by no less a person than Puccini. She met him only once, in the summer of 1924, a few months before he died, when she was staying at a villa near his home. One afternoon, Romano Romani, her teacher, took her to meet the composer, and he asked her to sing for him. She sang him his own “Vissi d’Arte” from Tosca—a role she never sang on the stage. And at the end he said, “Finalmente sento la mia Tosca—ma, ahime, troppo tardi.”—“At last I hear my Tosca—but, alas, too late.”

  “What did he mean, Rosa?” we asked, when she told us the story years later.

  “I don’t know,” she replied simply. “I suppose he already knew he was dying. I didn’t like to question him. I just treasured the words.”

  Matchless Rosa! I am thankful that I heard every performance she ever gave in Europe. There were five in the first year at Covent Garden, seven in the second, nine—I think—in the third, and two performances of Vestale in Florence in 1933. I eternally regret not having heard her Donna Anna, her L’Africaine, her Luisa Miller, her Il Trovatore, her Santuzza and a dozen others. But, as will be seen later, we had claims on our time that could not be denied and we were unable to return to America during the years that mattered.

  At the end of the memorable evening of Ponselle’s Covent Garden debut, it was no wonder that even the orchestra stood and joined in the storm of applause that broke in wave after wave through Covent Garden. As we stood there, in the front row of the gallery, clapping madly, a complete stranger in the back row of the amphitheatre stalls just below us turned and simply asked, “Well, was it worth it?”

  “Worth what?” we said, hardly pausing in our applause.

  “The twenty-four hours’ queuing you must have done to be where you are,” was the reply.

  We laughed and said in chorus, “You bet!”

  “Well,” was his reply, “I’m glad I didn’t have to do it, but I think she’s worth it, if anyone is.”

  And this started one of our longest and firmest operatic friendships—with Douglas and his wife, Luigia.

  4

  When the 1929 season came to an end, Louise and I had a great compensation coming: we were due to sail for the States once more in September. Lita and Homer were waiting to welcome us at Sul Monte, their famous country house built at the top of Bellair Mountain, overlooking the most beautiful part of the Catskill country.

  In a sense, the departure and even the journey were something of a repetition of the earlier trip, though perhaps we were a little more experienced—if not worldly, at least more self-possessed than before.

  We arrived in New York in the middle of a heat wave, but nothing could dim our enthusiasm for the city, which would always represent excitement and high romance for us. Nevertheless, we were very glad to be going into the cooler, hilly country and very excited that, this time, we were travelling farther afield than New York City.

  On a bright Sunday morning, we left Grand Central for our fascinating journey along the banks of the Hudson. We went by train as far as Rhinecliff; there, Homer met us with a car. Perhaps the best impression of our feelings that first day can be gleaned from my rapturous letter written home after our arrival.

  Homer drove the car on to the ferry boat, and we were ferried across the Hudson—feeling like a million dollars. There were gorgeous wooded hills rising on every side, so I thought we should just begin to drive up one of them, when Homer smiled and said, “Now, you’ve a fifty mile drive in front of you.” We have found since that they have a station ten minutes from the house, but the darlings thought we should like to be met and driven through the wonderful Catskill country—so it was nothing to Homer to give up most of his day to doing it.

  It was heavenly! We stopped halfway, to eat corn soup and fried chicken and Boston cream pie. We dawdled and talked politics. We dawdled a bit more and talked music. And at last, late-ish in the afternoon, we turned up a rough woodland path leading to the top of Bellair Mountain. They own 132 acres right at the top, and Sul Monte—which is just the loveliest place you can possibly imagine—is built on a wonderful plateau with thickly wooded slopes rolling away on either side. You can see sixty miles or more back and front of the house and, on a clear day, right away to the faint purple outline of the Adirondacks.


  Homer tooted the horn as we drove up and Lita came running out, crying, “Here are the girls!” and there was such a kissing and greeting and talking as you never saw.

  * * *

  It was the beginning of another holiday. Homer and Lita had their own swimming pool, dance hall and cinema on the estate. There was darling Fagin, a shaggy sheepdog, who was very sentimental and friendly, but who hated Lita to play her castanets, which she sometime did, like a true Spaniard, for her amusement and ours. There was the farm to visit and the endlessly beautiful grounds.

  Above all, there was the wonderful studio, where Lita practised and sometimes allowed us to come and hear her. She explained how she used to allow the famous top range of her voice to rest almost completely during her holiday.

  “Take care of the middle of your voice,” she used to say, “and the top will take care of itself. Or, if you prefer—look after the cake! You can always put on the icing afterwards.”

  She gave another sound piece of advice one evening when we had been discussing La Gioconda. She immediately fetched the score and sang quite a chunk of this heavy, dramatic work.

  Astounded, I exclaimed, “Why, Lita, I had no idea you could sing like that!”

  “Oh, I can,” she replied, laughing, “but if I did I wouldn’t have much voice left in six months.”

  Sometimes later, as I have listened to ill-judged young sopranos happily tearing their way through the fabric of a bright upper register, I have thought of Lita’s words about the difference between what one can do and what one should do.

  On another occasion, she decided to sing some excerpts from Romeo and Juliet, which Homer said was his favourite role for her. Lita insisted on a certain amount of stage action for the death scene, so Homer was pressed into service. He

  finally agreed to pose on the studio steps in a dying attitude, with a resigned, “All right, all right. I’m Romeo—in black velvet,” while Lita swarmed over him, singing heart-rendingly.

  It was great fun being “Galli-Curci’s English girls.” We were invited out to the surrounding estates, and everyone seemed to vie with each other in an effort to give us the time of our lives. The wife of one millionaire newspaper owner gave an “old style” dance. She took over the whole of a picturesque Dutch inn, and we all drove out thirty miles through the moonlit Catskills to dine by candlelight in old world surroundings and dance until the early hours.

  I was still, be it remembered, a three-pound-a-week shorthand-typist, so it is easy to imagine what joyous novelty all this was for us. But best of all was the lovely home life of Sul Monte. The long talks in the library or the sun-parlour, the discussions as we drove out to Perch Lake to see some builder about alterations to the house. Tea and cinnamon toast on the way back. Taking Fagin for walks and suddenly realizing we were in the country of Queechy and The Wide, Wide World, and finding to our amazement that the extraordinary types still persisted. It was wonderful.

  Alas, this too had to come to an end. But this time, when we said goodbye, we were cheered by the fact that they were both coming to England on a concert tour the following year. To our lasting regret, Lita had already retired from the operatic stage. But at least we could always congratulate ourselves for our persistence in managing to hear some of her operatic performances.

  When we returned to England, I was fired afresh at the prospect of writing a profitable article or two about our experiences. And as Mabs Fashions was now running a series of holiday articles, I wrote and submitted an article on my holiday in the Catskill Mountains.

  Once again I was lucky. The article was accepted. More important, the editor wrote, saying that she liked my style, and asking if I had any other interesting holiday experiences I could write up.

  Apart from the American journeys, a very short trip to Brussels was the full extent of our foreign travels. But I said, “Yes, certainly,” bought a series of guidebooks and set to work. Over a period of some months, I wrote various articles for her.

  Meanwhile, operatically speaking, the wheel had turned full circle again. The preliminary notices for the opera season were out; this time, the most interesting newcomer to Covent Garden was Ezio Pinza.

  From our vantage point in the gallery queue, it did not take any of us long to discover that, behind all that face fungus, which is the hallmark of so many operatic bass roles, there was a fascinating person with a charming, lively small daughter—Claudia. I suppose Claudia was about five when we first knew her. She used to smile shyly at the queue and made childish dabs at the chairs as she went along the street, clutching her father’s hand.

  To Claudia, we owe the beginning of our collection of star snapshots, a hobby that was to acquire considerable significance later. Many in the queue were, of course, ardent autograph hunters, but I thought it would be more fun to have snaps of the stars instead. Nowadays, dozens of people do this, but it was something of a novelty when I first produced my ten-shilling Brownie box camera, which was about my mental level, photographically speaking.

  I never photographed an artist without asking permission first, so I started by asking Pinza if I might photograph Claudia one morning as he came from rehearsal. Not only was permission given, but Pinza insisted on being in the photograph as well, and made me take two pictures to make sure.

  The result was one of the best snaps I ever took, and I sent an enlargement of it to Claudia’s parents. A few days later, the little girl was brought along the queue during lunch time, and she thanked me in carefully rehearsed English. She was a charming child!

  During that first season, the snap collection grew rapidly, though it was not until the following year that I plucked up enough courage to ask Ponselle herself. As I told her long afterwards, I used to follow her through Embankment Gardens, near the Savoy Hotel where she stayed, trying to summon enough courage to ask if I might photograph her. She was very much amused, but a good deal mystified as to why anyone should ever have been in awe of her. But in those days, our stars were gods and goddesses to us, and I must say that their remoteness and mystique added greatly to their charm and glamour.

  On the night of what was to be Ponselle’s final appearance, she was unwell and Pacetti sang instead. I remember when Louise and I arrived at the queue that evening, Ray announced with a sort of malicious relish for the drama of the moment, “Ponselle has sung her last performance.”

  Thinking she must have walked under a bus or something, we gave gratifying shrieks of horror. Then Ray saw fit to explain. He was referring only to that season and that there had been a cancellation. But he spoke more truly than he knew. She never returned to Covent Garden to sing again. The following season was an entirely German one, and in later years, the management changed, and of course Ponselle made other connections. She had indeed sung her last performance at Covent Garden. Fortunately, we were unaware of it then and went on hoping for some years longer.

  The next day, Louise and I received some compensation for that final cancellation: one of the very few personal letters written by Ponselle at that period. She was never a great letter-writer and, in the busiest days of her career, she scarcely ever put pen to paper. But, in return for the snap I had sent her, she sent a wonderful photograph of herself in the third act of Traviata with a note saying that if we came to New York again—which we had mentioned as a possibility one day—we were to come around backstage at the Met to see her.

  Something else occurred about this time that tended to take my mind off any disappointment. I had continued to write the occasional article for Mabs Fashions, and I received a letter from the editor saying that she would like to meet me. Would I come to see her one afternoon?

  I obtained permission to leave my Law Courts’ office early one afternoon and went to Fleetway House to see Miss Taft—the woman to whom I owe all my training and all my early chances. I had never entered a publishing office before, much less been interviewed by an editor. But she soon put me at my ease and made that most flattering of all requests: to talk about
myself.

  I did so. At great length, I am sure.

  “But did you never think of becoming a journalist?” Miss Taft asked.

  “Oh, no!” I assured her, rather shocked. I was a permanent civil servant with a pension at sixty. Safe until I was nailed down in my coffin, in fact.

  She was unimpressed and merely said, “Well, think about it now. I am going to start a new weekly in the autumn, and I should like you for my fiction sub.”

  I didn’t really know what a fiction sub was, but I was flattered that anyone wanted me as anything. However, it still sounded terribly unsafe in comparison with my civil service job. This all sounds quite extraordinary now, I have no doubt, but in those days there were three people waiting for every job. So I continued to shake my head doubtfully.

  “Well, go away,” said Miss Taft, smiling, “and think it over. If you do want the job, it is yours.”

  I went away and not only thought about it, but being very loquacious by nature, I talked about it too. Several people said, “But it’s a great chance! Don’t just throw it away. People are walking about ready to give their eye-teeth for that sort of chance.”

  When I thought about it again, the pension at sixty didn’t seem quite so attractive, after all. In the end, I gave up my lovely safe job and the pension and went into Fleet Street as a fiction sub-editor at four pounds four shillings a week—one pound and four shillings more than I was getting as a government shorthand-typist.

  And there, for the first several months at any rate, I was a complete failure.

  I suppose it was inevitable. Most girls who go into that world do so at a much earlier age and learn the general jargon and rudiments of the profession as juniors. I hardly knew what people were talking about, much less what I should be doing, and I must have been a phenomenally slow learner.