The complete idiot's guide to classical music (49 page)

“In a chorus girl it’s bad taste,” goes a famous line from the musical
42nd Street
, “in a star, it’s temperament.” When two stars collide in the heavens, there is a spectacular explosion. Why should it be any different down here?

In Handel’s day, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni actually came to blows on stage when they were cast in the same opera, their fans divided into two camps, wildly applauding one while hysterically booing her rival until the performance lay in total shambles. Their feud caused such a stir that it became the subject of a popular satire in London called
Contretemps,
or
The Rival Queens.

A century later, Adelina Patti grew so convinced that another soprano, Etelka Gerster, was out to get her that she would extend the first and fourth fingers of her right hand whenever Gerster’s name was mentioned, the classic horn sign designed to ward off the evil eye of her nemesis.

Sometimes, of course, a singer’s temper flares up against the audience rather than a colleague. Caruso, booed (by jealous rivals) when he sang in his hometown, vowed never to sing there again. “I will come to Naples only to eat a plate of spaghetti,” he said. The same thing happened in Barcelona, with the same results (minus the spaghetti); years later, Caruso turned down full-fee engagements in Madrid because it was only 350 miles away from Barcelona.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Back in Naples, there was another tenor named Armandi who, even on his best days, was pretty terrible. Landing a contract to sing in six performances of
Norma
, he was soundly hissed at the premiere, whereupon, after the end of Act I, he stepped in front of the curtain and made a deal with the audience: If they would treat him with respect, he’d leave town after that night’s show. If they kept booing, he vowed to stay and sing the remaining five performances.

As if to prove that the 19th century had no monopoly on operatic fireworks, the 20th gave us Maria Callas. She was of Greek heritage, but was actually born in New York (1923–1977), and lived there until the age of 13, when her family moved back to Athens. Maria studied at the Conservatory there, made her stage debut in a school production of
Cavalleria Rusticana
at 15, and took on her first major professional role as
Tosca
four years after that. Her opera debut in Italy came in 1947, when she starred as
La Gioconda
in Verona. The conductor Tullio Serafin, greatly admiring her work, helped promote her blossoming international career and led her toward the stardom that seemed to be her birthright.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
The soprano had long since changed her name. Maria Callas fits your average marquee a lot better than Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulos.

Prodigious as her vocal gifts were, and as famous as she became for many bel canto (literally beautiful singing) operas, Callas achieved her place in vocal history through the dramatic intensity of her performances. “Some of the texts we have to sing are not distinctive poetry,” she said. “To convey the dramatic effect to the audience, and to myself, I must sometimes produce sounds that are not beautiful. I don’t mind if they’re ugly, so long as they are true.”

Callas’ electrifying presence on stage (Nicolas Slonimsky called her “an incarnation of carnality”) was matched by her tempestuous private life. Her liaison with Aristotle Onassis was a source of sensational gossip in the press (this, of course, before the Greek shipping magnate’s romance with Jacqueline Kennedy ushered in an equivalent barrage of tabloid coverage), and her battles with opera impresarios and managers were legendary. She more than once stalked off the stage in a fury over some disagreement (once, in Rome, she walked out at the end of the first act of an opera even though the Italian President was in the audience) or failed to show up for a scheduled performance altogether. She canceled her first contract at the Met, delayed signing a second one because she didn’t like the conductor assigned to her debut, and demanded (at least her manager-husband demanded) payment in cash before the curtain rose each night.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
The Met manager at the time, Rudolf Bing, got his revenge: He arranged to have Callas’ husband paid in a unmanageably large wad of $5 bills. Not that Callas herself was disinterested in money. When a reporter questioned her about her American birth, her Greek upbringing, and her Italian residence, wondering in which language she felt most comfortable, the soprano answered, “I count in English.”

Sparks continued to fly between Bing and Callas. She held onto her next Met contract for ten weeks before signing it and later cancelled a run of
Traviatas
because Renata Tebaldi had been offered them first. When she balked at agreeing to a substitute group of
Lucias
as well, Bing fired her, their falling-out making still more banner headlines. “Madame Call is constitutionally unable to fit into any organization not tailored to her own personality,” said Bing at his most haughty, while Callas, in more earthy terms, dismissed the Bing production of those
Traviatas
as “lousy, really lousy.”

Eventually, the claws were pulled in, Bing and Calls mended their rather heavily battered fences, and the soprano retuned to the Met to more extensive press coverage than before. even the Tebalidi-Callas feud, which had been blown up out of all proportion by the eager gossip columnists, ended in 1968 when Callas attended Tebaldi’s opening night of
Adriana Lecouvreur
. Bing took her backstage after the perfomance, and as he later described it, “Miss Tebaldi opened the door and the two sopranos fell into each others arms, crying.”

Callas retired from the operatic stage after a final
Tosca
in 1965, but her legend lives on in recordings, video tapes, the biographies that continue to appear at regular intervals. She even appears as the leading character in the play
Master Class
, which author Terrance Rattigan derived (at least in part) from transcripts of the singer’s 1971–72 master classes at the Juilliard School.

Although it sprang from the evil practice of slavery, black music in America has enriched our national heritage beyond measure. In 1781, Thomas Jefferson would write that “in music, the blacks are more generally gifted than the whites, with accurate ears for tune and time.” In the early 1800s, many southern plantations had bands of black musicians; by 1867, a book called
Slave Songs of the United States
was published to document the widespread use of work songs, dance tunes, and spirituals. With emancipation came a new upswing of interest in black music, and an outpouring of talented musicians to create and perform it. The Jubilee Singers of Fisk University brought choral spirituals for the first time to the concert platforms of America and Europe. Pianist-composer Scott Joplin sparked the rise of ragtime; and in the concert world, extraordinary artists like the tenor Roland Hayes, and Hall Johnson, conductor of the legendary choir that bore his name, brought black music to the eager attention of music lovers everywhere.

In 1900, the brothers James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson wrote “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” an inspiring piece that quickly became known as the Negro National Anthem. “Lift every voice and sing,” the lyric begins, “till earth and heaven ring with the harmonies of liberty.” But it was Roland Hayes (1887–1977) who proved that a black singer need not restrict his repertory to black music, and that high artistry would be recognized all over the world: his 1917 concert debut was a program of Mozart arias and German lieder, and his subsequent tours took the tenor to Paris, Vienna, Madrid, and many other European centers. The pioneering path he blazed was followed by hundreds of other superb singers, but none more distinctive and influential than the two historic figures we consider next.

Marian Anderson was the precise opposite of the stereotypical diva: A woman of gentle demeanor, extraordinary modesty, and noble, spiritual dignity. “Yours is a voice one hears once in a century,” said Arturo Toscanini in 1935, when Marian Anderson sang in Salzburg. Indeed, she became the most celebrated contralto of the modern age. Her illustrious career spanned 40 years, reaching dizzying heights of musical acclaim even as she triumphed over the ugly depths of racism. In Europe, she was treated like royalty; in her own land, she was led to service entrances and asked to take the freight elevators, even in concert halls that proudly displayed her name on their marquees.

Marian Anderson was born in Philadelphia (1897–1993), where her father sold coal in the winter and ice during the summers and her mother took in laundry. As a child, she sang in the Union Baptist Church Choir in a community that recognized her talent and actually contributed funds so that she could take voice lessons. In 1923, Anderson won a local singing competition, two years later she took first prize in auditions sponsored by the New York Philharmonic, appearing with that celebrated orchestra at Lewisohn Stadium, then made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1929. Although attendance was nothing like the packed houses she would later command,
The New York Times
wrote that the young singer possessed a vocal talent “beyond the usual endowment of mortals.”

Anderson’s London debut in 1930 led to a triumphant tour of Europe. Her repertoire combined art songs, arias, and African-American spirituals, and she conquered audiences from England to Scandinavia, Central Europe to Russia. Back home, recognition arrived more slowly, but her reputation continued on an ever-upward spiral. Then came an event that would thrust Anderson—however unwillingly—into the national spotlight, and help transform the American social landscape.

Anderson’s contralto voice had been heard in the nation’s capital a number of times, but always in churches or schools. Finally, in 1939, her manager arranged a recital date on Washington’s most prestigious concert platform, Constitution Hall. A few weeks before the scheduled date, Anderson learned that the Daughters of the American Revolution, the owners of the theatre, had decided that it would not be seemly to have a black artist performing on its stage. A storm of outrage arose around the country. The First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, promptly resigned from the D.A.R., and Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, invited Anderson to perform in an outdoor Easter Sunday concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Seventy-five thousand people gathered for that recital, while the rest of the country listened on the radio. “I had sensations unlike any I had experienced before,” the singer recalled in her autobiography.” The only comparable emotion was the feeling I had had when Maestro Toscanini had appeared in the artists’s room in Salzburg. My heart leaped wildly, and I could not talk. I even wondered whether I would be able to sing.”