There are some things about this production which would please you very much. I think that the space it is in, an enormous arena, is better for the work than an opera house. The Deutschlandhalle, however, is just too big.17 I would like to see Mass done in a smaller arena in three-quarter round as it is here. When we see each other next, I'd like to discuss this production and what should be done in the future.
Everyone here working on the show – the cast, the staff, singers, players and dancers – send their love and gratitude. It is really wonderful working with this Czech orchestra, all very fine musicians, who consider it such an honor to be invited to the West to play an American piece. They understand the music quite well and find a lot of joy in it. As with every production of Mass that I know, the piece has brought the cast together as a family. It is an experience which everyone comes away from a little bit changed. I am always in awe of its power.
I wish you joy with your tours and hope that you are having time to work on your new opera. I have a feeling that “Tahiti Two” is a very important work for you and for all of us who know and love you. I am looking forward to hearing it and seeing it and studying it.
I hope to see you in Milano at the end of the month. If not, until July.
Shalom,
David Abell
P.S. And the flowers! I'm having them framed – will you sign them? Thanks so much.
605. Yehudi Menuhin to Leonard Bernstein
15 Pond Square, Highgate Village, London, England
[1982]
Dear Lennie,
I asked a friend to send me a tape of your Enigma Variations in London recently.
I have just listened to it and it is the most moving performance of the work I have ever heard.
I just wanted you to know how much I admire your interpretation and how I felt it revered Elgar's every indication.
Love,
Yehudi
606. Leonard Bernstein to Helen Coates
19 July 1983
Dearest Helen,
I want you to have this in writing on your birthday, since flowers can wilt and the telephone-voice is ephemeral. This is only to say, once again and for always, this I cannot imagine my life without you, not one year of it out of the soon-to-be-three decades.18 My admiration, gratitude and deep respect are matched only by the intensity of my prayers for your health and happiness.
Love,
Lenny
607. Leonard Bernstein to Stephen Sondheim
28 July 1983
Dear SS,
Saw [Sunday in the Park with] George Tues eve (but not you). It (and you) is brilliant, deeply conceived, canny, magisterial, and by far the most personal statement I've heard from you. Bravo.
Love,
L
608. Kristin Braly19 to Leonard Bernstein
10 January 1984
Dear Man,
Somehow, in the midst of clicking cameras and microphone-bearing reporters, mystified onlookers and frantic volunteers, conducting students, my buzzing musician colleagues […] the wires, lights, echoes and occasional blurtings of babies, I discovered that Leonard Bernstein was not just an image on a screen, a part of the title on a page of sheet music, a dusty recording on my shelf. What had been a name to me became a heart. His heart was in my heart, and I warmed myself by the fire of his affection. I wanted to hold him in silence. But so many needed him, his touch, his smile, that I became very small.
At home, after the concert, I found myself alone, surprised and shaken. From all those hands and faces, would he remember mine?
If only I were a cat needing a fish, how simple life would be! But here I am, traveling the human road, and needing Leonard Bernstein.
Kris Braly, viola,
Baltimore Symphony
609. Christa Ludwig to Leonard Bernstein
Vienna, Austria
8 March 1984
Dear Lenny–Maestro,
In the last weeks I worked on the Wunderhorn-Lieder and found out that my voice isn't suitable any more to these songs and I don't want to be my own competition to the wonderful records we made – 18 years ago!
So, I am really very sorry, but wise enough not to sing with you in the coming summer!
I hope I am not making you and Harry [Kraut] too many problems with my cancellation, but please understand my point of view.
Love,
Christa
610. Mary Rodgers to Leonard Bernstein
The Watergate Hotel, Washington, D.C.
received 24 July 1984
Dearest Lennie,
The last time I had as glorious a time in DC was '57 – West Side – you asked me if I'd like to work on the Y[oung] P[eople's] C[oncert]s – and you've been making me happy – musically, personally, too, ever since.
With deepest love and praise and delight. A Quiet Place is not uncomplex but boy is it worth it. It's truly wonderful.20
Love you,
Mary
611. Oliver Smith to Leonard Bernstein
Box 184, Yellowgate, North Salem, NY
4 August 1984
Dearest Lenny,
It was a wonderful occasion to attend your opera A Quiet Place at the Kennedy Center. The work is very moving, absorbing and complex. All is held together by the wrenching beauty and intensity of the score, which as I told you at the party gave me the good “old goose pimples” of emotional involvement. I especially loved the trio at the end of Act I, and all the third act. That does not mean I did not appreciate the second act, which is full of its special delights.
While melding the two operas may make for a better balanced evening, I still feel the two operas have very separate emotional values. The performances were superb and could not have been better. It was also beautifully directed and simply, but very effectively designed.
I can think of no modern opera of such intensity or in a sense generosity. By letting it all “hang out”, you have bared your soul, which few modern composers are prepared to do. Thank you for your beautiful music.
I do love you.
Oliver
612. Alan Jay Lerner to Leonard Bernstein
21 Bramerton Street, London, England
16 April 1985
My dear old chum,
Bobby passed on to me your interest in trying to reshape and make something out of 1600 [Pennsylvania Avenue]. I gather that although there is no schedule you would like to get it done some time before the tri-centennial.
To get to the point: of course a fresh pair of eyes is needed. Even though I've had an eye implant and don't wear glasses any more (can you believe it?) I don't think this brand new one will be sufficient, and I would welcome a writer with ideas on how to reorganise and rewrite.
As far as the lyrics are concerned, I suddenly seem to have taken on a new lease of life and am scribbling away like fury. I have a musical in rehearsal here in July which John Dexter is directing,21 and am two-thirds through the score of another that Allan Carr plans to put into rehearsal sometime in the autumn. Besides that I am just completing a huge tome for Collins on a history of the musical theatre since Offenbach. So if the right time for you should be impossible for me, and time adjustments cannot be arranged, as much as I would dislike it I would understand if you had to turn to someone else for any additional lyrics. But I truly hope that will be only the last resort. I would love to have another crack at it.
It is very interesting how 1600 started because Robby22 remembers its inception one way and I have a clear memory of it in another. Originally I wanted to do five episodes which were critical in the history of the White House. I remember that I thought the entire production would look like a rehearsal, on the theory that democracy is still rehearsing. Robby, on the other hand, is convinced that the original intention was to write a sort of “Upstairs Downstairs” history of the White House – without the upstairs. In other words, it would be told strictly through the eyes of a multi-generational servant family. What I think we got was a mixture of both with moments of th
e black experience thrown in, all of which added up to a horse with three heads. I still vote for the “upstairs” story – perhaps now even more than ever because the upstairs material is fresher and we have been surfeited with the history of the blacks in America. Another reason is because I don't – and didn't – do that sort of thing very well. But, I am open to any and all approaches.
In any event, I have some two thousand books and crates of pre-play material that are finally about to be shipped over to me and I will be able to examine all those early versions.
I am, at long last, not happily married but ecstatically so to a smashing lady23 – we've been together for five years and married for four, a track record for me. We bought a house too quickly that was and is too small, but we have finally got around to looking for a place large enough to accommodate all that I left in storage. I adore living in London and I've had the most wonderful five years of my life here. So whenever we meet – which I hope will be soon, somewhere – prepare yourself for a bubbling version of your old Virgo friend.
I hear the new West Side Story album is terrific. We have been in Spain for a few days on hol and this is our first day back, but I've already ordered a copy.
I think of you often. And always with love.
Aye,
Alan
613. Stephen Sondheim to Leonard Bernstein
[April 1985]
Dear Lenny,
Thanks for the album – very impressive – but I wish you'd have asked me before restoring that first (and not-my-favorite) Jets quatrain.24
Love,
Steve
614. Leonard Bernstein to Stephen Sondheim
25 April 1985
Dear Steve,
It's particularly hard to apologize to today's Pulitzer Winner for a bit of thoughtlessness (or perhaps it's easier: you might understandably be in a euphoric and forgiving mood). In any case, I was thoughtless, so carried away by the fun of presaging the Gym-swing-music that I neglected to consult you for approval. I am sorry, but also (forgive me) singing and leaping about in celebration of your new glory. And does your show deserve it!25
Congrats
Blessings
Love
Lenny
615. Leonard Bernstein to Helen Coates
Ben-Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, Israel
27 August 1985
Dearest Helen,
A quick note from Ben-Gurion Airport, en route to Munich & Japan and …
The last two nights have made concert history here (Mahler #9).26 I don't think I've ever heard it played with quite so much passion and tenderness. The orchestra is transformed, the newspapers ecstatic. I'm enclosing the one non-ecstatic review, at least of Halil; the rest is the usual rave. I personally, on the other hand, have fallen in love all over again with Halil, and Ransom W[ilson] is playing it like a god.
I think of you so often, and send you love from so many friends – especially the Lishanskys, who gave me a great fish-festival dinner-party after our Haifa concert.
Keep well, and cool. I'm managing to do so, although I frankly don't understand how, given this formidable schedule of rehearsals, travel, concerts, receptions, parties, time-changes … But I've survived my birthday, and feel younger than ever.
A big hug & kiss,
Lenny
616. Jerome Robbins to Leonard Bernstein
9 December 1985
Lenny,
What a good concert!27 Especially the Copland & the last movement of it. Thank you! It was good to see you working again, and so finely. Sorry I couldn't get back stage to say hello & thanks in person.
Have a good holiday season – & all love.
Jerry
617. Leonard Bernstein to Helen Coates
19 July 1986
For HGC
[Echo from Haydn's Creation]
The Heavens are tellin'
The glory of Helen!
And me too, I'm yellin'
HOORAY FOR HELEN!
And I'm tellin' Heaven:
She's now eight-seven;
So you better keep her well ‘n’
Happy! PRAISE HELEN!
All love, as always,
Lenny
618. Yevgeny Yevtushenko28 to Leonard Bernstein
Peredlikino, near Moscow, Russia
[?September 1986]
My dear Lenny!
I haven't seen you for ages. I send you with a kind help of Sarah Caldwell my script The End of [the] Musketeers. In my immodest opinion it could be very easily transformed into kind of “sparkling tragedy”, full of joy and bitterness, strange mixture of French champagne with a womit [vomit]. Probably, only composer who could create music for such kind of theme are you, because you are all of my musketeers and it could be your own confession, like it was mine. Of course it needs a lot of work if you'll like it in collaboration with me and one American poet. I am waiting for your answer. I was hopelessly trying to find you in USA.
My love and respect,
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
619. Leonard Bernstein to Yevgeny Yevtushenko
“Napoli – Paris – Zurich – Jerusalem” [sent from Jerusalem]
27 September 1986
My dearest poet-friend Yevgeny,
I have just tried to telephone you to Peredelkino; I think I got through to someone who understood. In case not, the message was: I finished yesterday reading the Musketeers script. I loved it; I love you.
Further, I am moved and excited and want to work with you (and, of course, an English or American lyricist, although you are already a great lyricist).
Further: I believe this will be a great musical work – not an opera in an opera house, but directly for film. It is a natural film, “cast of thousands” as they used to say in the great old days of Eisenstein and Cecil B. de Mille – a wildly funny epic that tears out your heart even while you laugh. I don't know exactly how this film should be made, or where; perhaps it is all animated, like Disney cartoons, or played by robots (they make fantastic ones now in California) or eventually by real actors and singers, or all together. Maybe someone like Fellini should direct it; it should be a major international project.
What is the next step? I don't know now, but I will soon. I will be in Wien, Hotel Bristol, this next week, then back in New York on 8th October. Then I become composer for five months! In this period we can decide many things. Where and when can we meet? Can you call me in Vienna, or if too late, in New York?
Beginning of big song: music already shouting in my head!:
Live before you die!
Don't die until your death!
(in Eb)
Call me, write me, come to me, or all three … we have a lot of work to do, and play …
Much love,
Lenny
620. Sid Ramin to Leonard Bernstein
6 October 1986
Dear Lenny,
What an experience!29 The Via Dolorosa, The Masada, wading in the Dead Sea, peering into Lebanon, exploring Jerusalem, meeting new friends, hearing and seeing you conduct in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and so much more.
There is no way I can express my feelings towards you and to you when I think of our magnificent trip to Israel. A first visit would always be exciting but the circumstances that permitted me (and Gloria) to share with you, be part of your routine, to be included in your success and adulation, to listen to you, to learn (!) from you, and, most important, to be with you – is something I will never forget.
It's incredible for me to realize that we spent so much time together in Israel (and in Fairfield) and the thrill of being with you will never diminish. It seems you are a bit biased. Whatever I do, right or wrong, you always justify my mistakes or ignorance with a kindness and warm admonition that I am grateful for and love.
And so, Lenny, I thank you again for a “dream trip” and my gratitude for including me in your life knows no bounds.
Imagine, from Roxbury to Jerusalem!
Where next?
With l
ove, from your devoted and oldest,
Sid
621. Sid Ramin to Leonard Bernstein
[New York, NY]
15 October 1986
Dear Lenny,
After spending so many wonderful hours with you in Israel, I thought you'd like to have something to remind you of the many wonderful hours we spent together over a half-century ago. God, that sounds ancient!
The first few letters were written in the summer of 1933, when you were in Sharon and I was at Revere.30 Luckily you numbered your pages so that you can now better follow the order in which they were originally written.
In 1937, when you were at Harvard, I began to “seriously” study with you … no more governing chords, finishing chords, pre-finishing chords, etc. Your notes to me show that we really started with the basics … and we're still at it!
Now on to the next fifty!
With love as always,
Sid
622. Leonard Bernstein to Stephen Sondheim
[1986]
Sorrowful Song
Last night
I sat down and wrote a poem.
This morning
I looked at it and didn't like it much.
So I started
All over again,
Making (major and minor but) significant
Changes.
This evening
I looked again and didn't like it much better.
So I changed it back
To Version One
Which I wrote last night,
And this is it.
Love,
L
623. Leonard Bernstein to Harry Kraut31
7 April 1987
Dear Harry,
The Leonard Bernstein Letters Page 77