ENRICO CARUSO (Feb. 25, 1873-Aug. 2, 1921)
HIS FAME: Enrico Caruso was one of the most popular opera singers the world has ever known. A lyric tenor noted for his strong, romantic voice, Caruso captivated audiences with his musical range and depth of feeling. He is generally credited with being the first singer to recognize the value of the phonograph as a means of recording one’s voice for posterity and making a great deal of money while doing it.
HIS PERSON: Born in the slums of Naples to a family with 21 children, young Enrico escaped a life of poverty on the strength of his voice. While singing in the church choir, he realized his voice was golden because young suitors were willing to pay him to serenade their sweethearts. Tutored by the great singers of Italy, Caruso achieved an unequaled prominence in both England and America. Commanding large sums for his performances, the tenor enjoyed an opulent life and spent a fortune surrounding himself and his loved ones with luxury. A man of tremendous appetites, Caruso risked losing his voice by smoking two packs of Egyptian cigarettes a day (but sought to protect his throat by wearing fillets of anchovies around his neck). In later life he suffered from a variety of physical afflictions, but he continued to sing until he succumbed to pleurisy.
LOVE LIFE: A dumpy little man with a barrel chest and an absurd waxed mustache, Caruso enchanted women with the magic of his voice. Early in his career he was betrothed to the daughter of an opera theater manager. At the last moment he broke the engagement and fled with a ballerina, the mistress of an elderly opera director, for a torrid but brief fling.
Attracted to older women, Caruso fell in love with Ada Giachetti, a voluptuous opera singer 10 years his senior. Responding to her young lover’s passion, Ada sacrificed her own singing career to care for him. In turn, Caruso turned down countless offers of liaisons from his female fans, although his constant flirtations drove Ada wild with jealousy. Their affair, marked by numerous separations and mutual accusations of infidelity, lasted for 11 years. They had two sons out of wedlock.
Caruso’s jealousy finally was justified when Ada ran away with their young chauffeur. Shocked but still in love with Ada, Caruso suffered a nervous breakdown that nearly cost him his career. Then, seeking revenge, Caruso plunged into a brief, turbulent affair with Ada’s younger sister. When this tactic did not bring Ada back, Caruso threw himself into a series of casual romances with the female opera lovers who flocked around the stage door after each performance. Ada responded by suing Caruso for “stealing” her jewelry, but she settled out of court for a monthly allowance.
Caruso had once said, “I am a great singer because I have always remained a bachelor. No man can sing unless he smiles, and I should never smile if I were married.” And for years he skillfully avoided marriage.
Then, at the age of 45, Caruso shocked the opera world by marrying Dorothy Benjamin, a quiet, prim woman 20 years his junior. The product of an old New England family, Dorothy was not a music lover; in fact, she considered opera “noisy and unnatural.” Her father immediately disinherited her, and friends of the passionate singer thought he would soon wear her out in bed. But Dorothy bore Caruso a daughter, and they remained devoted to each other for the rest of their lives. Frequently Caruso exhorted her to “become very fatty so no one else will look at you.”
QUIRKS: One of the most popular figures of his age, Caruso made headlines in 1906 when he was arrested in New York City for pinching a strange woman’s bottom while strolling through Central Park Zoo. In what became known as the Monkey House Scandal, Caruso was attacked by the press as an “Italian pervert” who was intent on seducing innocent American women.
At the trial a mystery witness, dramatically veiled in white, testified that Caruso had fondled her at the Metropolitan Opera House. Furthermore, a deputy police commissioner claimed that he had built up a file on Caruso as a frequent molester of strange women. Caruso was convicted and fined despite the fact that the arresting policeman had often been accused of filing trumped-up charges and had been the best man at the wedding of the “victim”—30-year-old Hannah Graham of the Bronx—who refused to take the stand.
Caruso steadfastly maintained that he had been framed by enemies in the operatic world who were trying to sabotage his popularity with the American public. Caruso’s friends pointed out that the singer had just returned from a tour of Latin America, where pinching women in public was considered a casual sport for the elite, and suggested that Caruso simply forgot where he was.
Worried that the Monkey House Scandal would ruin his career, Caruso hid for a time from the hounding press, but he finally returned to the New York stage, where he was greeted by wild applause from enthusiastic opera lovers who cared more about his voice than about his peccadilloes.
—R.S.F.
Musical Chairs
CLAUDE DEBUSSY (Aug. 22, 1862-Mar. 25, 1918)
HIS FAME: Acclaimed for Clair de Lune (“Moonlight”), Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and his single completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, Debussy was a composing giant and a major influence on 20th-century music. He was also a minor playwright and critic.
HIS PERSON: Debussy was both intensely brilliant and highly emotional. While he gratified his whims when it came to women and expensive baubles, he could never quite indulge himself in happiness. Claude Achille Debussy was born in Saint-Germainen-Laye, France, to a poor china-shop owner. He entered the Paris Conservatory of Music at age 10 and studied there for 11 years. In 1884 his cantata L’Enfant Prodigue won him the Grand Prix de Rome, a coveted award which gave musicians three undisturbed years to work at the Villa Medici in Rome.
Debussy taken by Félix Nadar
Debussy’s country upbringing and disinterested attitude made him unpopular with his teachers and fellow musicians, so he made his few friends among the progressive painters and poets of his time. He never had money, never went to see a single performance of his own opera, and rejected the moderate degree of fame he received in his 50s (he hated to be called a professional musician). After he had endured several years of treatment and private suffering, cancer of the rectum killed him at 55.
LOVE LIFE: Many women succumbed to Claude Debussy’s genius and dark, brooding character; two wives and a mistress loved him deeply; twice, a self-inflicted gunshot was the recourse taken by his women scorned.
While studying at the Paris Conservatory, 17-year-old Debussy took a summer job as music teacher to the children of Russian millionairess Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck, who was also Tchaikovsky’s patroness. In his third summer with her, Debussy asked Mme. von Meck for permission to marry her daughter and heiress, Sonia. Mme. von Meck pointed out that, as a musician, he was obviously an unsuitable prospect for an heiress and then she dismissed him summarily. In disgrace, Debussy returned to Paris.
Sex, however, was not to be denied him. His next job was as accompanist for an amateur singer whose husband could only suspect what was being taught in the private room he provided for their rehearsals. While working for Mme. Vasnier, Debussy won the Grand Prix de Rome but put off moving to the Villa Medici for seven months because he didn’t want to leave his comfortable situation at the Vasniers. Vasnier, suspecting the affair between his wife and the 21-year-old musician, persuaded Debussy that the opportunity was too great to pass up. He hated the Villa Medici and quit after only two of the resident three years. But when he returned to Paris, his affair with Mme. Vasnier was quietly and amicably relegated to the past.
The next two years of Debussy’s life are lost to history because of his bohemian ways. Passing time in coffeehouses with the likes of writer Marcel Proust and avant-garde pianist Erik Satie, Debussy had no fixed address until he moved in with a pretty young blonde named Gabrielle Dupont. “Gaby,” as he called her, worked at odd jobs to support him for the 10 years they were together. Although Debussy was constantly unfaithful to Gaby, she stayed with him even during the time he was engaged to singer Thérèse Roger. That engagement was abruptly broken off when Thérèse and Debussy were performi
ng in Brussels and she apparently learned of a one-night stand he enjoyed there.
Gaby’s patience was remarkable, but even she had her limits. Her affair with Debussy finally ended not long after an argument caused by a note she found in his coat pocket which spoke of yet another affair he was having. Gaby shot herself, although not fatally. After her release from the hospital she lived with Debussy several more months, and he behaved as if the whole scene had never happened. Then Gaby became friendly with Rosalie “Lily” Texier, a young, simple, dark-haired beauty, who was a dressmaker in a small Paris shop. She and Gaby often met in the coffeehouses, their friendship marred only by the way Gaby’s composer boyfriend mocked Lily’s way of talking. But his ridicule soon turned to flattery, and Gaby was supplanted. Debussy and Lily were married in October of 1899. They started married life literally without a sou, Debussy giving a piano lesson on their wedding day to pay for their breakfast.
Lily was absolutely devoted to Debussy, but youth, devotion, and beauty were not enough. After four years of marriage Debussy began seeing Emma Bardac, an amateur singer and the wife of a wealthy banker. On July 14, 1904, the composer went out for his morning walk and did not return. Weeks later Lily heard from friends that Emma had deserted her husband and that Debussy was with her. On October 13 Lily could stand it no longer and shot herself twice, once in the groin and once in the breast. She was found by Debussy, who had come home because she had sent him a suicide note. Lily recovered from her wounds with no help from Debussy, but she carried the bullet in her breast the rest of her life.
Debussy was divorced from Lily on Aug. 2, 1904, and Emma had his daughter out of wedlock in the autumn of 1905. (She was named Claude Emma, but they called her “Chou-Chou.”) When Emma’s divorce was settled in January of 1908, she and Debussy married. The marriage appeared to be a good one for both of them, though some people unfairly accused Debussy of marrying for money. Emma was not young or beautiful, but she had intellect and culture, and sustained Debussy as he aged and grew ill.
Debussy died in 1918 in Paris, while the city was under fire from German guns. Emma lost her daughter to diphtheria the following year. Gaby lived out her life in luxury as the mistress of an aristocrat. And nine years after Debussy’s death, in 1927, Lily could be found at every lecture that the biographer Léon Vallas gave about the life of Claude Debussy, trying to understand the genius of the man she still loved.
—J.M.
The Duke
DUKE ELLINGTON (Apr. 29, 1899-May 24, 1974)
HIS FAME: Edward Kennedy Ellington was one of the foremost jazz composers, orchestra leaders, and musicians of the 20th century, writing such classics as “Mood Indigo,” “Black and Tan Fantasy,” “Bojangles,” “A Drum Is a Woman,” and “Concerto for Cootie.” In addition he composed music for several films (including Anatomy of a Murder) and for the theater, and later in his career he wrote and performed so-called “religious jazz.”
HIS PERSON: Duke (a nickname given him by childhood friends because of his elegant dress and aristocratic manner) Ellington was born in Washington, D.C., to middle-class parents. His father, James Edward, was a blueprint maker for the Dept. of the Navy and a sometime butler who occasionally worked in the White House. The family was devoutly religious, and young Ellington was “terribly spoiled” by his mother, Daisy, to whom he was devoted throughout her life. Ellington showed an early talent in art and won a poster contest sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Subsequently, he was even offered an art scholarship. But Ellington, who’d taught himself to play the piano by imitating ragtime piano rolls on the family’s player piano, was far more interested in music and chose to pursue that as a career. He put together a band and played at various functions in Washington before finally traveling to New York, where he became a mainstay at nightspots like the Cotton Club in Harlem. Soon he and his band were touring the country, garnering great critical acclaim. In 1918, shortly after his 19th birthday, Ellington married a childhood friend and neighbor, Edna Thompson, and less than a year later they had a son whom they named Mercer. Another child born shortly thereafter died in infancy. The marriage to Edna was not a happy one. Duke remained with her several years before they permanently separated, and he continued to support her generously after the breakup. Though it was often rumored that he had two other wives, Ellington remained married to Edna until she died in 1966. Enormously respected throughout his life, Ellington died of cancer in New York City at the age of 75.
Duke with Beatrice Ellis, who for 37 years was known as Elvie Ellington
SEX LIFE: Duke stood 6 ft. 1 in. and weighed 185 lb., though his weight fluctuated wildly, for he loved to eat. Extremely urbane and gracious in his manner, he was a great ladies’ man, a charmer and flatterer who tossed off phrases like “You make that dress look so beautiful” or “Does your contract stipulate that you must be this pretty?” Even while he was still living with Edna he had numerous affairs, and according to his son, Mercer, during an argument over one of them Edna slashed his face with a knife, leaving a permanent scar. Duke always loved the attention women paid him, and his son believed that at least part of the reason he went into show business was because it was “a good way to get a girl to sit beside you and admire you as you played the piano.” Ralph Gleason, writer and jazz critic, recalled the time he stood with Ellington in the wings of a theater while his band was playing. A trumpet solo was in progress, and as Duke watched, two of his musicians who had a reputation for using drugs sat in their chairs, heads drooping, nodding off. Duke shook his head and said, “I don’t understand it at all. I’m a cunt man myself.” Another time, Gleason recalled, Duke turned to a script girl working on the documentary Love You Madly and remarked, “Sweetie, I don’t know your name. You must tell me right away because last night when I dreamed about you I could only call you baby.” But Ellington, according to Mercer, “never seemed to be interested in the perfect woman. If she had a scar, or was slightly misproportioned—big-busted, big-hipped, or a little off balance—then he was more interested.” But women definitely did interest him. At the notorious House of All Nations in Paris, after the spectacle was over and the girls had lined up, he was asked by a friend to take his pick. Ellington replied, “I’ll take the three on this end.” He had so many women that he had to develop tricks to deal with all of them. He got into the habit of giving everybody four kisses, thus making it impossible for anyone to know with whom he was actually involved. When someone would ask about the unusual number of kisses, Duke’s standard reply was “Once for each cheek.” In 1972, during a week-long festival, so many of his women showed up—and stayed in the same hotel that he was at—that he would get a friend to take two of them out to dinner while he took yet another one up to his room.
SEX PARTNERS: In 1929 his marriage to Edna ended in separation after Duke had a passionate affair with an attractive actress. Although Mercer calls it “one of the most serious relationships of his life,” the anonymous woman left Duke because he refused to divorce Edna and marry her.
Mildred Dixon, who caught Ellington’s eye from the chorus line at the Cotton Club, moved in with Duke in 1930 and stayed for almost a decade. Personable and intelligent, Mildred was Duke’s “Sweet Bebe,” but her charms paled next to those of Beatrice Ellis, a half-black, half-Spanish show girl who also worked at the Cotton Club. Strikingly beautiful, she spent the next 37 years answering to the name of Evie Ellington and patiently waiting for Duke’s infrequent trips to their lavish New York City apartment. Even when the globe-trotting Ellington breezed in to relieve Evie’s loneliness, they rarely were seen together in public. His sister Ruth was the “official” hostess, and her possessiveness and Evie’s greed were the major reasons that Duke never married Evie. Until Edna died in 1966, he maintained that a divorce would be very expensive, and Evie wanted to keep her deluxe standard of living. After Edna’s death, when Evie was certain Duke would marry her, he flatly refused, even when she pulled a gun on him. Evie r
esigned herself to a solitary life without a marriage certificate, and Duke called her daily, wrote her touching notes, and showered her with flowers, candy, and fruit.
In 1959 Duke met nightclub singer Fernanda de Castro Monte, who later became Madame Zajj in “A Drum Is a Woman.” Tall, blond, and fortyish, Fernanda accompanied Ellington on many of his world tours and was introduced as “the Countess.” Mercer remembers the farewell she gave Duke after they met in Last Vegas: “She was very smartly dressed in a mink coat. Just as the train was about to pull out, she opened the coat. She had nothing at all on under it, and she wrapped it around him to give him his good-bye kiss. With that, she left him to cool off.” Fernanda had expensive tastes and introduced Duke to vodka and caviar (which he touted as an aphrodisiac). When she started making demands, Ellington told her that he was legally married to Evie, who was so jealous of Fernanda that she threatened Duke with her gun a second time.
Fernanda de Castro Monte was the final woman of influence in Ellington’s life. He had affairs with many other women (some of whom divorced their husbands for him), but none of them made much of an impact on Duke’s life. To the end he insisted, “Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.”
—C.H.S. and the Eds.
The Music Lover
GEORGE GERSHWIN (Sept. 26, 1898 -July 11, 1937)
The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People Page 34