by Ida Cook
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” f
rom 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.
READING GROUP GUIDE
SAFE PASSAGE
Questions for Discussion
Biographical Notes
A Listening Guide
For Further Reading
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Early in Safe Passage, 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 Safe Passage? 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?
In 1934 Ida and Louise assist music lecturer Mitia Mayer-Lismann and her family in leaving Austria and finding refuge in England. Over the next five years, until England formally declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, the Cook sisters raise consciousness and funds in England and make daring rescue missions throughout Central Europe. Discuss some of Ida and Louise’s “cases.” Do any of the images and stories in Safe Passage resonate with your own family history?
Ida’s entry into refugee work coincides with her success as a romance novelist. “So at the very moment when I was making big money for the first time, we were presented with this terrible need…. It was much the most romantic thing that ever happened to us.” Do you think Ida and Louise are unusual in viewing self-sacrifice as “romantic”? What did they gain by directing every spare resource toward saving lives?
Were you aware of the Nuremberg Laws and the Kindertransport before reading Safe Passage? Share your knowledge and thoughts about how the Cook sisters’ story fills in or intersects with historical background you’ve learned through books, movies, or conversation with people who lived through those dark times.
Ida’s account of her refugee work is not without glamorous elements and lighter moments. What manner of quick thinking and deception proved necessary on her trips to Germany and Austria? How did she use her passion for opera as a cover for her refugee work?
Discuss Ida’s portrait of London during the Blitz. In what ways does she celebrate the courage and perseverance of the British people? What aspects of Ida’s vivid account of “shelter life” were most terrifying to you? Which incidents or stories were the most uplifting?
In 1965 the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Authority in Jerusalem bestowed on Ida and Louise Cook the honor of “Righteous Among Nations,” listing the sisters alongside Oskar Schindler and others who saved Jews from Nazi persecution. Discuss the ways in which Ida and Louise’s story is one of everyday individuals standing up to tyranny. Why is it important that such stories get told?
As a prolific romance novelist, Ida Cook writing as “Mary Burchell” created close to 150 heroines. Do you think Ida would describe herself as a heroine? Do you consider her one? If so, why?
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES: Ida and Louise’s “Stars”
When Ida and Louise Cook first began to haunt the gallery of Covent Garden, opera was in the midst of a golden age. Giacomo Puccini had only just died when the sisters attended their first performances, and major composers and conductors like Richard Strauss and Arturo Toscanini could be seen on the international concert circuit. While Ida’s friend Maria Callas remains well-known, many of the singers most dear to Ida and Louise have all but passed out of memory. Here is some background on those great and colorful figures.
AMELITA GALLI-CURCI (Italian, 1882–1963)
Born to an upper-middle-class family in Milan, Amelita Galli was a gifted pianist. At age twenty-three she was offered a prestigious professorship at Milan’s conservatory, but with the encouragement of a family friend, she began to pursue a singing career. Amelita made her operatic debut in 1906 at Trani, as Gilda in Rigoletto, and her fame quickly spread. In 1908 she married Marchese Luigi Curci, but the marriage did not last and Galli-Curci would eventually marry her accompanist, Homer Samuels, in 1921. That same year, she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Violetta in La Traviata. Galli-Curci remained at the Met until her retirement from the operatic stage in 1930. She continued to give concert performances, but throat surgery in 1935 is thought to have permanently damaged her voice. She retired to California, where she died at the age of eighty-two.
ROSA PONSELLE (American, 1897–1981)
Born Rose Melba Ponzillo to Italian immigrants in Meriden, Connecticut, Ponselle began performing in vaudeville at the age of seventeen. It was Enrico Caruso who recognized her great talent and arranged an audition for her at the Metropolitan Opera House. Ponselle made her Met debut in 1918 in Verdi’s La forza del destino, opposite Caruso. Maria Callas called Ponselle “the greatest singer of us all,” but the mental and physical exhaustion of constant performing and touring took its toll. Ponselle retired at the relatively young age of forty and lived out her days at Villa Pace, her home outside Baltimore, Maryland. She continued to sing, privately, and to teach. Among the singers Ponselle coached in later life are Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, and Placido Domingo.
EZIO PINZA (Italian 1892–1957)
Bo
rn Fortunato Pinza in Rome, this charismatic opera star showed promise as a professional cyclist, but ultimately chose a career in music instead. Pinza made his operatic debut in Bellini’s Norma in Cremona, Italy, in 1914. He served in World War I and afterward returned to Italy to resume his operatic career, performing at La Scala in Milan under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. The dashing Pinza was so closely associated with his most famous role, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, that music critic Virgil Thomson wrote: “It is doubtful whether without him the opera would be in the repertory at all.” Pinza’s daughter, Claudia, the little girl whose picture Ida took outside Covent Garden, would also become an acclaimed opera singer. After retiring from opera in 1948, Pinza had a successful second career on Broadway. In 1949 he appeared as Emile de Becque in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. Pinza would also make appearances in films and on television. He died at age sixty-four in Stamford, Connecticut.
ELISABETH RETHBERG (German, 1894–1976)
Born Lisbeth Sättler in Schwarzenberg, Germany, Rethberg was best known for her roles in operas by Mozart, Verdi and Wagner. She made her operatic debut in Dresden, Germany, in 1915, but moved to the United States in 1922 and was a fixture on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera for the next twenty years. Arturo Toscanini hailed Rethberg’s voice as “the most beautiful in the world” and many believed her to be the greatest soprano of her day. Her chief rival for this title was Rosa Ponselle, who possessed a bigger, warmer voice. Rethberg retired from the stage in 1942 and died in Yorktown Heights, New York.
VIORICA URSULEAC (Romanian, 1894–1985)