The Leonard Bernstein Letters

by Leonard Bernstein

  You won't believe it, but Charlie Roth93 just arrived, & I'll have to see him tomorrow. God, what a burden he is.

  All the Ricordis are waiting for you to come, as is Wally, & Luchino (a doll), and Ghiringhelli & the works. It is fun here, really. You won't be bored. Wally is giving a Ballo in Maschera next Tuesday: that sort of thing. Ghiringhelli sent you a telegram of love on your birthday, & still awaits an answer, kind of hurt & pouting. Do send him one.

  I visited the sartoria of the Scala the other day – an incredible experience. On the outskirts of Milan – a huge warehouse with 40,000 costumes, and thousands of new ones constantly being made, all by hand, & such materials & designs & care of work! (I'm going to have tails made for me there!) Ghiringhelli wants to sell about 10,000 of them, since the constant procession of new productions creates a surplus of costumes they cannot house. I promised him I would ask you if you would ask Eaves or Brooks94 if they'd be interested in buying such a number of really marvelous costumes. Do let me or him know.

  What is this with Bourgeois Gentilhomme? What part? Who How What? It sounds glorious – tell me more. And of course, I want to hear all the news of the opening of Samarkand. There must be a lot to tell.

  I'm so relieved you've been given the OK by all your MD's. I hope you're blossoming in spite of your kepepelt [cold]. You sounded so strange on the phone: remote & unexcited; and I couldn't decide if it was the kepep or 7:00 a.m. (which was ungodly, but I couldn't help it, as I'd been trying for days, & had to take the call when it got through) or just plain old abstractness. I'm planning something with an emerald when you get here (this must have something to do with the foregoing) – and Callas is going to wear moonstones in Sonnambula, imagine. I'm wandering.

  I've never worked so close to a show: really into everything: painting the sets, & spending one hour arguing about the color of the cuff of a sleeve of one costume for one chorus-lady, and kind of co-directing with Luchino, & planning out every second. I'm learning, learning. It's a glorious theatre. Tonight is Nanni's birthday, so a party: & first I'm going with Wally & Luchino to a revue with an incredible sequin-blonde dame who calls herself Dorian Gray. I'm trying to get out of Bohème (which is an old production, & therefore a bore for me) & do instead Traviata with Callas & Luchino & a fabulous décor de Lila di Nobile (do you know of her?) – but [Victor] de Sabata is supposed to do it, but his heart is bad, & it's therefore indefinite, but how can one be sure, & as you see – it's all very complex.

  I hope you can get here in time to see Sonnambula at least once: it will be a sweet production, slightly campy, with the stage apron advanced way out, so that Callas sings in the middle of Scala, & sings her last fabulous aria with all the houselights up, & flowers flying from the boxes and – you must see it.

  My darling lady, I love you & miss you & wait for your letters with real impatience. Love to everyone, & a big hug & millions of kisses to you & Jamie & Fink.95

  L

  347. Leonard Bernstein to Felicia Bernstein

  Grand Hotel Duomo, Milan, Italy

  28 February 1955

  My Darling,

  I am so happy that you got out of that Samarkand affair when you did. Of course, it would have been a different show with you in it, but maybe not with Schneider.96 As they say here, meno male.

  I have just had two days of that nameless Milan disease again, fever and bed. No symptoms, no diarrhea, nothing, just fever and bed. It's becoming a bore. Maybe I have something glorious and important like hepatitis. Now begins the Settimana Santa, with dress rehearsals and the whole bit you know so well. I'm not quite up to it, as usual, and I can't seem to memorize the recitativi, but I suppose it will all be fine in the end. I spent three days in London (how I wished you were with me) and it was if anything grayer and colder than Milano, with whipping rain and wind and snow Londonness. The show was a smash,97 and the Rag98 was encored, and the people screamed (tears running down, not quite, not in London town) and the press was as good as the London press ever is. The experts forecast a year's run at least.99 Which would pay for Fink, and save our lives.

  The black fairy100 will not give up. He arrived in Milano, and I bought him lunch and listened to his drivel and sent him home. He wanted to become my assistant, imagine, and co-conduct all tours with me, etc. I told him to knock it off and go back to Vienna. Since then there has been arriving a series of letters, really unbelievable, in which he is threatening me: blackmail, no less! Unless, he says, I make him the world's top conductor (“And when I walk on to the podium, God himself will sing”) he will send around copies he has made of all my letters to him in the past, and ruin everybody's lives. The idiot. Of course, there is nothing in any of those letters, nor has there ever been any relationship between us of any kind: but it's still annoying, aburridisimo, and all the rest, to think of that ugly little maniac running around making trouble. I've been sending back his letters and parcels (whatever they may be) by the ton, unopened. Crazy people always scare me, and especially this one.

  Speaking of such things, the Diamonds are here, as is to be expected, and very sweet they are, faithful to the end. They want us to stay with them in Florence, but no.

  I don't quite understand about your big trip here with Helena. You mean you would wait until April to come? Que lata! What does Karish say? I know it would be lovely to make the trip with Helena, and I'd love you to, but can't she come earlier too? Your traveling tourist wouldn't make no never-mind. But I hope you don't expect to start with her a pension too! Of course I'll find a nice inexpensive place, as soon as you tell me definitely that she's coming and when. I hope you sent an answering cable to Ghiringhelli.

  I have to dash off to rehearsal. God, I wish I could have a week of sun and rest. When and where? Please tell me when you will be coming so I can try to promote a week off from the Scala to fit your arrival. Then maybe we can go to Sevilla for Holy Week, or something glorious like that.

  I miss Jamie and you terribly. Everyone writes that you are both in the pink, and that helps. But do come in person!

  All my love, darling Bubbles.

  L

  Can Jamie say “Sonnambula” yet?

  348. Betty Comden to Leonard Bernstein

  350 East 69th Street, New York, NY

  17 March 1955

  Dearest Leonard,

  Shortly after the arrival of your letter, for which many thanks, came photostats of the London reviews101 which cheered us considerably – particularly the one which said our score was full of “toe-tapping tunes” and the one about the cab driver who will soon be whistling his fares home with “Ohio” and the “Wrong Note Rag.” We won't rest until some New York cabbie whistles us home with “A Million Kids Just Like You etc.” For the further popularization of the above and others we have completed a new venture – an album. And it is of this that I am now writing you – in the main, that is.

  One Bob Israel, head of Heritage Records called us about making an album – having heard of us from Harold Rome with whom he just made two highly successful albums – one “retrospective” (anyway back to Pins and Needles) and the other Fanny (also rear-view if you like). Herbie Harris, drummer-boy extraordinaire also urged this lad to get in touch with us. Although cool at first – and seemingly not at all familiar with us – Israel blossomed, after one meeting, into the most hysterically devoted fan we ever had – and after a few rehearsals with a pianist named Milton Greene,102 and the above mentioned Herb Harris, we cut a platter of some nineteen items one rainy afternoon – and it is about to be released to the unsuspecting public. At least each and every Sadvorousky will buy one apiece.

  Here's what is crammed into a twelve-incher:

  On the Town

  New York New York

  Lonely Town

  Taxi Song

  Some other Time

  Carried Away

  Billion Dollar Baby

  Bad Timing

  Broadway Blossom

  Good News (!?X!?X!!!)

  Frenc
h Lesson

  Two From the Aisle

  If

  How Will He Know

  Catch Our Act at the Met

  Peter Pan

  Distant Melody

  Captain Hook's Waltz

  Mysterious Lady

  Wonderful Town

  Ohio

  It's Love

  Quiet Girl

  Wrong Note Rag

  The last two shows were in the above order – not chronological as all else above – because W[onderful] T[own] was a better ending. You may wonder at our not doing much in the way of material-ish things in WT. This was so decided because of our burning desire to get the songs on records – somehow. Maybe someone might hear one and make a record? It seemed more important than getting the special stuff recorded. This boy is now so excited anyway he wants to make yet another album. He is convinced it is a smash. We've heard it and are timidly pleased with it – hoping it will sound to others as good as we blushingly admit it sounds to us. He (Bob) has played it for a few outsiders who echo his enthusiasm. Steve [Kyle] thinks it's terrific.

  Here comes the somewhat embarrassing part. Adolph and I would be thrilled and honored if you would write a little something about us for the record jacket. The thing will be called, I believe, simply Comden and Green and our pictures will adorn the front. The back is wide open for a paean of praise – say, two–three hundred words long.103 Gene O'Kelly may say a word or two about us because of his movie connections with our lives – but we more than anything hope you will send us something printable about us – if you can and want to, and have the time to.

  Other news – we're in Hollywood two and a half weeks to come up with outline for new picture to write this summer. Hope to write show – maybe. Family all well. Adolph well. Miss you very very much.

  Send very very much love,

  Betty

  349. Leonard Bernstein to Marc Blitzstein

  Grand Hotel Duomo, Milan, Italy

  20 March 1955

  Dear Marc,

  You're right to be boiling mad, and I would be too; and you're also right in knowing that Regina has never slipped my mind, to put it mildly. It is very hard to get definite word out of these people: there is a kind of compulsion to let things simmer for ages before taking any real step. I don't know if you can feel this ambiente at the Scala; it is such a world of its own, and so convinced that almost nothing else exists or happens on earth, that the time-continuum becomes different from the normal one, and all the time ordinarily allotted to all worldwide decisions is gathered together for Scala purposes only. And this combined with the enormous amount of work and number of hourly problems of work make delays inevitable.

  I have brought up the subject on several occasions. Ghiringhelli seems to take it for granted that the work will be done next year, every time I mention it: but it is really up to de Sabata. The latter, a very fine gent, loves the piece, and readily quotes and sings from it (especially “Watching my gal watch me”, which he performs by heart at the piano) but he has worries about the translation. He has told me that he feels that the “tough” quality of the English has no decent equivalent in Italian; and at the same time he feels that the work will not mean much to the Scala public in the original English. I have suggested a kind of bilingual version, wherein all the Negro parts (not affecting plot: i.e. Chinkypin, spirituals, etc.) could be done in English and the “white” parts in Italian. How does this strike you? With a pick-axe? Each time we discuss this (between acts of Sonnambula or other interruptions) he always ends by saying “We must have a long talk about this soon”. And that's why I've been delaying writing to you – until there was something definite to write. But I'm writing anyway to tell you that the work is very much on my mind, and that I love you and it. What suggestions do you have? I tried to think of Regina in English here, watching Porgy having such a big success: but Porgy is different, obviously, the story being so apparent and drawn in huge choral strokes. But maybe you feel that Regina would work just as well in English. There is also a slight worry about the amount of spoken stuff: the Scala is not well adapted for talk, and the Italians don't understand too well the Opera-Comique idea. Karajan did Carmen here in a sort of horrid version of the “talk-version”, and it was a large bomb. I don't know what all this adds up to in your mind, but I would love to know soon what you think. I shall try tonight to corner de Sabata (he's been ill) and talk it out. We have had, for example, a tentative date for a month to talk about my Violin Serenade which he likes, and haven't yet said a word. You get the picture?

  Still, with all this being true, I still apologize for not having written. It has been a wild rush, as you know; and this is now the first breathing spell, now that Bohème is finally on (and I alternate operas almost daily). The critics murdered me for Bohème, which is natural, since they think they “know” this one; but the public loves it. It's really not a very good production, and I have little to do with the stage, which is ridiculous; but the orch. is divine. The cast is mediocre, the sets likewise, the direction horrid. All this in contrast to Sonnambula, which was closely worked out from the beginning by Luchino and me, and shows it. I learn, I learn, all the time.

  Now that I have a little time free from rehearsals, etc., I can begin to do the things I have been postponing for six weeks: get Regina settled, give some real thought to the problems of Candide (which are multitudinous) and all the rest. Let me hear from you about the translation business, and about all the other news that your ire prevented you from sending this time.

  It's wonderful to have Felicia here, and we are taking off the next couple of days, probably driving to Florence to see David [Diamond] and Ciro [Cuomo].

  Love from us both,

  Lenny

  350. Leonard Bernstein to Marc Blitzstein

  Grand Hotel Duomo, Milan, Italy

  28 March 1955

  Dearest Marc,

  I've been through hell over Regina. I am furious and disgusted, and what is worse, helpless. I now understand the run-around I've gotten: and I've spent the better part of three days discussing it with de Sabata. The latter is genuinely thrilled with the music, there is no doubt. But since the score did not supply the full dialogue, he was waiting for the arrival of the libretto before putting to rest his qualms about the subject matter. After reading the libretto, he finds he cannot allow it to be done at the Scala. He says that the public will not accept such a theme: it is too sadistic, cruel (he even doubts whether censors here would pass it, which is nonsense), and non-operatic in nature. The talk of money is not for the Scala, nor is the spectacle of a woman letting her husband die, etc. etc. etc. I talked it all out with him, tried to explain the values of the play, that it was internationally famous and loved,104 etc. etc. etc. To no avail. I dug up a copy of Ghiringhelli's letter to me last fall saying that it was definite for next season: he admitted that there was a misunderstanding. I have one card left to play: that I will take it to Florence for the Maggio [Musicale] next year. That might make him react. And I will talk to them in Florence about it. I am now angry about it, especially after your last letter with all your suggestions and willingness to change and set spoken lines and all the rest.

  The worst is that de Sabata admires you so very much, and wants to see everything you've done: and is worried that Regina might ruin you here at the outset. Gian-Carlo [Menotti] is here for the Saint [of Bleecker Street], and while not agreeing with de S. does agree that it is a dangerous work for the Scala public. Screw them, say I, and do it anyway. That's the duty of an opera house, in whatever city.

  I'm going to have one last fling with de Sabata on it, and then bring up the subject in Florence.

  Dear Marc, I'm sorry. What can I do? Tahiti is off in Florence also, through Italian bungling of another sort. And the headlines scare me. And Burtie sends a miserable letter from Puerto Rico. It is all in all a depressing day, and the sun is shining away as though it were really spring.

  Much love from us both.

  Lenny


  351. Elia Kazan to Leonard Bernstein

  7 April 1955

  Dear Lennie,

  I felt terrible about their passing you by.105 Tiomkin's speech told the whole story. I agree with him.106 You wrote one of the really original scores and I felt terrible about what happened. Anyway, I hope you feel that you want to do more pictures because I'm going to come at you with another one.

  Budd and I really have a very good idea.

  I'm going to Greece and Turkey. I'll be back on June 2. Where will you be this summer? I'll be driving around a lot. Where will you be? I'll be headquartered at Box 25, Sandy Hook, Connecticut. I'd like to see you. Let me know your plans.

  Love,

  Gadg

  352. Betty Comden to Leonard Bernstein

  350 East 69th Street, New York City, NY

  21 April 1955

  Dearest Lenny,

  A short note about a number of things. First, many many thanks for your beautiful words about us. Second, we are still wildly furious about the stupid Academy and could not hear the next ten minutes of the telecast because of our disappointment. Third, saw Trouble in Tahiti's opening and was re-thrilled, re-inspired, and cried like – like an idiot. It was a triumph.

  To get back to the album, one of the things Adolph and I hoped to accomplish with it was getting our songs recorded – so that maybe someone would hear one and decide to do something with or about it. And that has already happened. Lena H[orne] and Lenny H[ayton] were here at a small gathering – and Adolph brazenly put on the record, and comes “It's Love” both L[ena] and L[enny] got excited and asked about a verse – and getting hold of it – and then at the Tahiti opening, there they were and Lena said she's been rehearsing it like mad for nearly a week – and it's great!! Incidentally we'll ship you an album as soon as we have one – in about two weeks.