The Leonard Bernstein Letters (61 page)

Darling,

I am just about to leave Genoa, which was after all great fun, in spite of the exhaustion. I had to rehearse the orch. here for the forthcoming tour, and it was a job and a half, teaching them the
Serenade
and the Berlioz, neither of which they knew, and at a time when they were so tired they could barely read the notes. Then […] the hall was not available for rehearsal, etc. We finally did it, by sheer dint, rehearsal all afternoon the day of the concert, after which I rushed around Genoa looking for a set of chimes, of all things, which Maria [Callas] helped me to find through Ricordi's […] and then there was the concert, and the report is that never before has Genoa seen such a success. Imagine, with my funny modern music and unpopular Berlioz! I had feared for the size of the audience as well as for their applause, and was surprised delightfully on both counts. The papers are raves, and Isaac [Stern] played better than ever, and the orchestra really did miracles, everything considered. Then they just went on to Rome, while I stayed here, thank God, for two days with the Sterns […] A lovely afternoon yesterday at the home of Maria's old parents; today we rented a car and drove to Portofino, but the sun went in bang and we had to come back.
But at least it was a breathing spell. Now on to Bologna, and the rest of the one-night-stands, for six days.
Then home
!

Listen: Lillian, from London, asks that I stop off in Paris for a day en route home, and I really can't refuse; but I worry so that you'll spring the Fink while I'm not looking that I hesitate. Keep me informed every minute about how things look and feel; if OK by you, I'll go to Paris, and be home probably on the 5th or 6th. I can't wait, really I can't; and you can't scare me with Jamie's tantrums. I've been expecting them all along. I'm dying to see her.

I loved your letter, and the Caddylacky sounds like a dream and I wish you were here to hear the
Serenade
. My, how pretty it is. Terrible about Agee:
¹¹³
I was prepared for it.

Darling girl, it won't be long now. Please stop yourself up with adhesive tape or corks till I get home!

LOVE

X

Papa Lensk!

Aren't you both smart! Take a
big
double bow. Hope Felicia and the Knabe are doing fine.
¹¹⁴

I'm sitting on top of a mountain in a villa overlooking Cannes and the Mediterr[anean]. Picked me a real nice spot (very different from Lago di Garda). It's work in the morning and work in the evening, and the beach in the afternoon (very different from Tanglewood).

Which reminds me – how is the old girl? (Tanglewood). Has anyone noticed anything missing?

After I left you in Rome I conducted in Paris and London. Watch out, I'm gettin' good.

And what, may I ask, has been happening to you? (Did you see the Amer[ican] issue of
The Score
, with
2
articles on Bernstein? If not, they'll tell you.)

Guess who I met in Cannes? – Kiki Speyer and son.

I hear you had to abandon
Canticle
[
of Freedom
] in Hollywood for lack of a chorus. Too bad. Tell Edie to send me Tanglewood school programs. Want to see what you're up to.

Love,

A

1
Marian MacDowell (1857–1956), pianist and widow of the composer Edward MacDowell. Though well into her nineties when she wrote this letter, Mrs. MacDowell remained an indefatigable enthusiast for new music. In 1896 she had bought Hillcrest, a farm in Peterborough, New Hampshire, as a quiet place for her husband, Edward MacDowell, to compose. After his death in 1908, this idyllic location became home to the MacDowell Colony, where composers, writers, and artists could work side by side in peace and quiet. Mrs. MacDowell lived to the age of 98. Colonists, and the works they created at Hillcrest, included Copland (
Billy the Kid
), Virgil Thomson (
The Mother of Us All
), Thornton Wilder (
Our Town
), James Baldwin (
Another Country
), and Du Bose and Dorothy Heywood (
Porgy and Bess
).

2
Mrs. MacDowell is writing to express her enthusiasm for the
Age of Anxiety
Symphony which she had heard broadcast from New York on 26 February 1950.

3
Bernstein himself spent time at the Colony only after Mrs. MacDowell's death, but his stays in 1962, 1970, and 1972 were all productive, as he recalled in 1987 when accepting the 29th MacDowell medal: “All of those times I was writing works which had, at least in intent, a vastness; which were dealing with subjects of astronomical if not mystical and astrological dimension. The first time was
Kaddish
. The second time was
Mass
. The last time was to write the six lectures that I later gave at Harvard known as the ‘Norton Lectures’. This vastness is inherent somehow in this place. The air smells higher here, and sweeter, and closer to the vastness.”

4
Marc Blitzstein (1905–64), American composer: a brilliant and innovative musician and a committed Communist. He met a violent death, murdered by three Portuguese sailors in Martinique. Bernstein's student production of
The Cradle Will Rock
in May 1939 took place less than two years after the famous Broadway opening of the original staging by Orson Welles and John Houseman (recounted in gripping detail in Houseman 1972, pp. 245–9 and 254–78). Bernstein was a dedicated advocate of Blitzstein's music (recording the
Airborne Symphony
twice), as well as a close friend. Blitzstein was godfather to Jamie Bernstein, and the two younger Bernstein children are named after characters in Blitzstein's stage works: Alexander after Alexandra in
Regina
, and Nina after the heroine in
Reuben Reuben
. In 1964, Bernstein led a performance of
The Cradle Will Rock
from the piano as part of the Blitzstein Memorial Concert at Carnegie Hall. The cast included some from the original 1937 production.

5
Bernstein was conducting in Italy and Israel during the preparations and opening of this revival of
Peter Pan
, for which he had written new songs and incidental music.

6
The opening night of
Peter Pan
at Broadway's Imperial Theatre was on 24 April 1950.

7
This letter gives a glimpse into the preparations for Bernstein's score of
Peter Pan
, and the involvement of not only Blitzstein but also Hershy Kay and Trude Rittmann.

8
John Burrell directed the production.

9
Ralph Alswang, the set and lighting designer.

10
Ben Steinberg was the show's conductor.

11
Blitzstein was clearly already at work in 1950 on his English version of
The Threepenny Opera
. Bernstein conducted the first performance of this in 1952 at Brandeis University in Walthau, Massachusetts, with Lotte Lenya leading the cast and Blitzstein providing narrations.

12
A reference to James Thurber's short story
The Night the Bed Fell
(1933).

13
Male and Female
by Margaret Mead, published in 1949.

14
The conductor Paul Paray and his wife Yolande. Paray was briefly Music Director of the Israel Philharmonic in 1949–50.

15
See notes 8 and 10 to Letter 296.

16
This is the only mention of
The Age of Anxiety
in Bernstein's letters to Romney, who had sent Bernstein a copy of Auden's poem when it was first published, with suggestions for its musical treatment (see Letters 257 and 258).

17
Kurt Weill died on 3 April 1950.

18
Oliver Smith, who had lived there.

19
The Baroness Bazooka
(1942) is a delicious send-up of operetta by Comden and Green.

20
The score for
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
was eventually written by Arthur Schwartz.

21
Erik Johns (1927–2001). He became Copland's secretary in 1948 and they had a romantic relationship. He was later the librettist of
The Tender Land
(under the pseudonym Horace Everett).

22
The Clarinet Concerto.

23
Robert McGinnis (1910–76), principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic from 1948 to 1960. He was succeeded by Stanley Drucker.

24
Judy Holliday was married to David Oppenheim at the time.

25
Born Yesterday
, directed by George Cukor. Judy Holliday won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Emma “Billie” Dawn.

26
Bernstein's
Age of Anxiety
was given at the Holland Festival in Scheveningen on 12 July 1950 by the Hague Residentie Orchestra conducted by Willem van Otterloo, with Bernstein at the piano.

27
On 13 July 1950, Furtwängler conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 and
Leonore
No. 3 Overture, and Brahms' Symphony No. 1. The whole concert was broadcast and has been issued on CD by Tahra (Furt 1012–13).

28
This is very similar to the story and screenplay that Comden and Green wrote for
It's Always Fair Weather
(1955), with a score by André Previn, directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.

29
The next Comden and Green film to be made was their greatest Hollywood success,
Singin' In The Rain
(1952).

30
Harry Kurnitz (1908–68), American playwright and screenwriter whose Hollywood credits included
Witness for the Prosecution
and
How to Steal a Million
. He collaborated with Noël Coward on
The Girl Who Came to Supper
. In the 1930s he had also worked as a music critic for the
Philadelphia Record
.

31
See note 88 to Letter 249.

32
Bernstein's first performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was given on 30 August 1950 in the Kurzaal, Scheveningen. It was performed by the Residentie Orchestra of the Hague, the Hague Toonkunstkoor, and the soloists Corry Bijster (soprano), Annie Hermes (contralto), Frans Vroons (tenor), and Willem Ravelli (bass). In the first half, Bernstein doubled as soloist and conductor in the Piano Concerto No. 1. An unsigned review appeared in
De Tijd
on 31 August 1950. The critic was lukewarm about some aspects of the performance, complaining of “sensationalized tempi […] superficiality and lack of nobility in the expression,” but the overall impression of Bernstein's Beethoven was “very handsome and very lively, and the applause was exuberant.”

33
Tanglewood.

34
A popular British car, made from 1948 to 1972.

35
Copland's Piano Quartet was composed in 1950.

36
Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), French teacher, conductor, and composer. On 5 December 1974, Bernstein recalled his first meeting with Nadia Boulanger in a letter to Sylvia Vickers: “I first visited Paris after the war (1947?), conducting the Radio Orchestra. I believe it was François Valéry (son of Paul) who took me at that time to the house of Marie-Blanche de Polignac, the beauteous Countess who had the great ‘salon’ of those years. I believe they were Sunday evenings, and since Marie-Blanche was a charming singer and music-lover (& patron) her salon was filled with the likes of Poulenc and Bérard and Valéry and, I think, Cocteau. It was there that I met Nadia, and have adored her from that day to this. I never studied with her, but I
feel
that I have since everything she said impressed me so profoundly. (Besides, so many composers who are close to me, such as Copland,
did
study with her.) I have almost never returned to Paris without visiting with Nadia, or at least speaking to her on the telephone. She is a super-faithful correspondent and has thus filled in the long gaps between Paris visits, if only with a few always moving lines. […] She is to this day so terribly aware of time passing, of missed contacts, of the need to be near those we love during every troubled moment. Only last week I had another note from her, in her own shaky but still legible hand, imagine, at her age and in her near-blindness. May she live forever.”

37
Written on the headed writing paper of the Écoles d'art américaines, with Boulanger's personal address printed at the foot of the page.

38
Written in French; English translation by the editor.

39
Robert Rossen (1908–66), American film director who won an Academy Award for
All the King's Men
(1949).

40
Presumably Mexico City, since Bernstein wrote this letter while staying in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

41
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), set up in 1938 to investigate subversive activities or Communist links of American citizens.

42
Albert Maltz (1908–85), American author and screenwriter. One of the Hollywood Ten who were blacklisted in 1947 for alleged involvement with the Communist Party.

43
Edward Dimitryk [Dmytryk] (1908–99), Canadian-born film director. Another one of the Hollywood Ten.

44
John Garfield (1913–52), American actor and a friend of Bernstein's who had been among the guests at the party for his engagement to Felicia in 1947. Garfield appeared before HUAC on 23 April 1951 (a few weeks before Bernstein wrote this letter). When he refused to name any names, Garfield's life quickly disintegrated, and a year later, on 21 May 1952, he died of a heart attack at the age of 39.

45
Ross Evans was Dorothy Parker's secretary and sometime lover.

46
Robert Presnell (1914–86) was a screenwriter, married to the actress Marsha Hunt (b. 1917). Both were friends of Bernstein, and both were blacklisted in Hollywood during the “Red Scare.”

47
Bernstein was composing
Trouble in Tahiti
.

48
Bernstein conducted Beethoven's
Missa solemnis
at Tanglewood on 9 August, in memory of Serge Koussevitzky who had died in Boston on 4 June 1951.

49
Felicia was getting regular work in TV drama series. In August 1951 she appeared in “Death Sabre,” an episode of
Suspense
, with the young Leslie Nielsen.

50
Felicia and Leonard had been married nine days earlier, on 9 September.

51
Bruno Walter's illness gave Bernstein the chance to make his spectacular debut with the New York Philharmonic on 14 November 1943.

52
The first recordings of Copland's Clarinet Concerto (Benny Goodman, Columbia String Orchestra, conducted by Copland) and the Piano Quartet (New York Quartet – Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Alexander Schneider, Milton Katims, and Frank Miller) were released on the same disc by Columbia Records (ML 4421).

53
Mina Kirstein Curtiss (1896–1985), writer, translator, and biographer of Georges Bizet. Her younger brother was Lincoln Kirstein, one of the most important figures in the development of ballet in the United States.

54
It should be on the “o”. Her full name was Eva María Duarte de Perón.

55
Hellman's plays included
The Little Foxes
and
Another Part of the Forest
.

56
This project for an opera on Eva Perón came to nothing, but it's clear from this letter that Bernstein was contemplating it within days of her death (on 28 July 1952). The theatrical potential of her story was famously explored quarter of a century later in
Evita
by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

57
Jamie Anne Maria Bernstein was born on 9 September 1952.

58
Wonderful Town
had opened at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre on 25 February 1953, directed by George Abbott. The show had a book and lyrics by Comden and Green, and a score (composed in four weeks) by Bernstein.

59
Abbott was directing
Me and Juliet
by Rodgers and Hammerstein, which had a pre-Broadway tryout at the Hanna Theatre in Cleveland.

60
Arthur Miller (1915–2005), American playwright.
The Crucible
was widely perceived at the time as an attack on McCarthyism. Miller was summoned to testify before HUAC in June 1956, following a routine request for a passport renewal (a parallel with Bernstein's situation in 1953; see Letter 328). For refusing to name names, Miller was found guilty of contempt of Congress in 1957, a conviction that was reversed a year later.

61
The Crucible
opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on 22 January 1953. In June 1953, Miller made several revisions and recast some of the roles. Brooks Atkinson wrote in
The New York Times
(2 July 1953) that in this revised version, “
The Crucible
has acquired a certain human warmth that it lacked amid the shrill excitements of the original version. The hearts of the characters are now closer to the surface than their nerves.”

62
Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), French composer. Bernstein conducted
Les Mamelles de Tirésias
at the Brandeis University Festival of the Creative Arts in June 1953. For Columbia he recorded Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos (with Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale), the
Gloria
, and – as pianist – three songs with Jennie Tourel. Bernstein commissioned Poulenc's
Sept Répons des Ténèbres
for the New York Philharmonic. Shortly after Poulenc's death, Benny Goodman and Bernstein gave the world premiere of the Clarinet Sonata, on 10 April 1963.