Grand Opera: The Story of the Met (19 page)

The company staged a gala on behalf of the “Save the Met” campaign, the only farewell Gatti would countenance. And during the whole of the evening in his honor, he listened to the proceedings from the privacy of his office. Rosa Ponselle and Gladys Swarthout sang act 3 of
Norma,
Lucrezia Bori and Richard Crooks act 4 of
Manon,
Kirsten Flagstad and Friedrich Schorr the act 3 finale of
Walküre
. But the pièce de résistance was act 4 of
Otello
with Rethberg and Melchior. Verdi’s opera had been last heard in 1912. Melchior’s sensational interpretation put into relief Gatti’s failure to mount the Verdi masterwork in the last two decades and more of his tenure, and especially since the ascent of the Danish heldentenor. Four days later, during the intermission of the final broadcast of his final season, on March 23, 1935, Gatti spoke three sentences: “I have often expressed my faith in American talent
and operatic ideals. I am sure they will continue. I thank all who have enjoyed the performances.” He sailed for Italy on the
Rex
on April 27. When he said good-bye, he did it in eight words: “Viva America, viva Italia, viva Roosevelt, viva Mussolini.” The band struck up the Fascist anthem “Giovinezza” and Ponselle sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
²¹

By the time the Metropolitan had exhausted its reserves in fall 1931, the 1931–32 schedule was set. It was not until 1932–33 that the repertoire felt the effects of the Crash. That season, and for the next two, the number of new productions was cut by half, from six to three. But even with straitened budgets the company managed to stage important premieres and revivals.
Elektra
finally made it to 39th Street, more than two decades after its thunderous New York debut at Hammerstein’s theater on 34th. A more permissive climate and the waning influence of the Real Estate Company moguls repaved the way for
Salome,
banished since the night of its notorious 1907 premiere. Tibbett’s success in indigenous works, along with his exposure in radio, movies, and concerts, encouraged the management to introduce three American pieces in three successive seasons. As Brutus Jones in Louis Gruenberg’s adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s
The Emperor Jones,
Tibbett held nothing back. Even more explosive was his Wrestling Bradford, the tormented protagonist of Howard Hanson’s
Merry Mount
. Gruenberg and Hanson drew lukewarm notices at best. John Lawrence Seymour’s one-act
In the Pasha’s Garden
drowned in audience indifference and critical opprobrium. The company premiere of Donizetti’s
Linda di Chamounix
and a new production of Bellini’s
La Sonnambula
were vehicles for Lily Pons. The Met’s first hearing of Giovanni Pergolesi’s
La Serva padrona
and its revival of Donizetti’s
Don Pasquale
shared a décor, a concession to frugality.

The standard titles of the French and Italian repertoire, some given just once or twice a season, suffered from obsolete sets and little, if any, rehearsal. Ernst Lert, in charge of staging from 1929 to 1931, could only pity the director “responsible for the production, even though he [Gatti] has not granted him a single rehearsal for nineteen out of twenty such productions.” The run-of-the-mill opera was often cast with run-of-the-mill singers. By 1934–35, the defections of Gigli and Lauri-Volpi had left the tenor roster so depleted that utility singer Frederick Jagel was scheduled, with Ponselle and Tibbett, for the high-profile broadcast of
La Traviata. Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci,
and
Madama Butterfly
were also his; their second-rank casts relegated even their first performances of the season to the popularly priced Saturday night slot.
²²

Herbert Witherspoon, the new broom, was quick to sweep Gatti’s last seasons into the dustbin: “The plain truth is that the opera has been dead for years.” However graceless his pronouncement, Witherspoon had a point. Much of the standard repertoire had fallen into disrepair. Of late, no new star had captivated the public—none, that is, until Kirsten Flagstad made her debut on February 2, 1935, two months before Gatti quit the scene. Flagstad was an overnight sensation—some twenty-two years into a career almost exclusively confined to the operatic hinterlands of Scandinavia. She had sung everything from operetta to Micaela and Marguerite, Aïda and Minnie, all in Norwegian or Swedish. Kahn had heard her
Tosca
in Oslo in 1929. He had urged a Met agent to test the waters; the soprano had not responded. Her 1932 Oslo Isolde led to small roles at the 1933 Bayreuth Festival and success as Sieglinde the following year. Her engagement in New York came about almost by accident. In fact, but for the withdrawal of one dramatic soprano and the limited dates of another, Flagstad might not have come to the Met at all. Frida Leider had decided to forgo her contract after two seasons, citing the poor exchange rate. Anny Konetzni, in the limelight in Berlin and Vienna and a flop in New York, could commit only to the first half of 1934–35. Flagstad was hired for the remainder of the season.
²³

Both Gatti and Bodanzky had underestimated their amazing acquisition. They had auditioned Flagstad in a St. Moritz hotel room where heavy drapes dampened the impact of her voice. Only when he heard her in rehearsal in the vast auditorium did Bodanzky realize what the Met had in this remarkable artist. Fortuitously for us, her debut in
Die Walküre
coincided with a Saturday matinee broadcast. Act 1 conveys the wonder of her Sieglinde. Her voice is perfect over its full range, caressing at pianissimo, thrilling at fortissimo. If her Sieglinde lacks the febrile intensity of Lotte Lehmann’s interpretation, the refulgence of Flagstad’s instrument and her warm timbre, crystalline diction, precise intonation, sensitive phrasing, and dignified and disarming manner pulverize all quibbles. Farrar put aside her script and announced to the radio audience, “Today we are witnessing one of the greatest events that can happen during an opera performance. . . . A new star is born!” In little more than two months, Flagstad took on six more Wagnerian roles, including three she had never sung before: Kundry, learned in just three weeks, and the
Walküre
and
Götterdämmerung
Brünnhildes. The posters
imprinted with Flagstad’s name were inevitably stamped “Sold Out.” She was by far Gatti’s most precious bequest.
²⁴

TABLE 9.
Metropolitan Opera Premieres, 1932–33 to 1934–35

 

 

In late spring 1935, in the wake of Gatti’s retirement to Italy, and in defiance of best-laid plans, events took a turn no one could have foreseen. On May 1, Witherspoon gave a speech to the National Music League calling on the public to take up the cause of the arts. On May 2, at a meeting of the Advertising Club, he promoted opera grandiloquently as a force “to train the spiritual emotions and inner values of the people.” And then suddenly, on May 10, in the executive offices of the Metropolitan, after receiving better news about ticket sales for the coming season and stepping into the hallway to tell his wife he would not be long, Witherspoon collapsed to the floor. His death from a coronary at sixty-one came without warning. He had served as the Met’s general manager for all of two weeks. And he was, by all accounts, exuberant, looking forward to leaving for Europe on the new French liner
Paris
the following day. The appointment of a successor could not wait. The names of Erskine, Ziegler, and Johnson were again bruited about, along with that of Bodanzky. Much to Ziegler’s relief, on May 15 Johnson got the nod, and much to the relief of a very green Johnson, Ziegler was willing to continue as assistant general manager. A month later, on June 13, still shaken, Ziegler wrote to Gatti that he was not yet up to recounting Witherspoon’s death “at the threshold of my office.” He added confidentially that had Witherspoon lived, “I am perfectly certain that we would have found ourselves in the most tragic state imaginable.”

No sooner had Johnson been appointed than he set about reassuring nervous stakeholders that a smooth transition was already in progress and that the season would proceed as extensively planned by his predecessor. Witherspoon had mapped out operational reforms in a series of undated and unaddressed communications drafted in his preparatory year. Budgetary strictures (the last five years of Gatti’s regime showed a loss of more than $1.7 million), Juilliard demands, and his own biases converged around a set of interlocking measures: to engage new, less costly artists, present fewer operas, winnow the chorus and orchestra, renegotiate union contracts, and reduce the administrative staff. In response to the “Americanization” mandate, he
would seek to rely more heavily on native talent, thereby also circumventing the travel expenses incurred by Europeans. Some costs would rise: he favored investing in stagings, publicity, and a friendlier, more efficient box office. As to the season’s program, as late as May 7, Witherspoon’s repertoire list included
Le Jongleur de Notre Dame
for Helen Jepson and
Adriana Lecouvreur,
presumably for Ponselle. On the list released on May 16, these titles had disappeared, and without the two rarities, Johnson was left with Witherspoon’s conservative repertoire, devoid of even a single novelty.
²⁵

As to the roster, although Witherspoon thought Rethberg, Bori, and Martinelli “shaky,” he had put them under contract and was still haggling with Ponselle. He had been slow to reengage several others of the Met’s most highly paid stars, including the enormously popular Lily Pons, who, he asserted, “has lost a great deal in the last two years.” He was “confident we can get somebody who is better.” Cravath pointed out that “the outstanding success [of the tour to Boston] was not Mme. Flagstad, but Lily Pons in
Lucia
.” Essential to Witherspoon’s lineup were Melchior, Tibbett, and Pinza. Johnson went ahead and secured agreements from Ponselle and Pons. He filled three slots identified by Witherspoon as critical, that of an Italian dramatic soprano with Philadelphia-born Dusolina Giannini, that of an Italian dramatic mezzo with Bari-born Bruna Castagna, and that of a dramatic tenor with Belgian René Maison. Johnson’s magic bullet was Flagstad. Flights of fancy—casting her in a revival of
Rienzi,
as the Countess in
Le Nozze di Figaro,
as Tosca—were forgotten, leaving the Wagner roles and her first
Fidelio
.
²⁶

From the very start, Johnson wrestled with a question that resonated deeply in his own career: how to reconcile the necessity to present major international artists with the obligation to give Americans the chance they deserved. In 1897, the nineteen-year-old Canadian arrived in New York. He met early success as a concert and church singer, thanks in part to an exceptionally secure high C. At one point he toured with Herbert Witherspoon through whose good offices he found work in operetta two blocks from the Metropolitan. In 1908, as Edoardo di Giovanni, he made his way to Paris, and then to Florence for serious opera study. In time, he was engaged by La Scala; there, in 1914, he was Italy’s first Parsifal, Toscanini conducting. On June 17 of that year, Johnson heard from an agent that Kahn had been
approached on his behalf, but that, alas, there was little hope of an affirmative response. As the agent put it, “Beneath the surface I know positively that Gatti-Casazza is not favorable to Americans.” In 1920, Johnson returned to the United States to sing in Chicago. In 1922, as one of several tenors contracted to fill the void left by Caruso, he debuted at the Met in
L’Amore dei tre re
. Twelve seasons later, soon after his appointment as assistant general manager under Witherspoon, he made his farewell as Pelléas, the role he had created at the Metropolitan and for which he was best known. By the middle of May, Johnson was installed as general manager, a seat he would occupy for the next fifteen years. It was now up to him to champion the American cause. At hand were three examples of the construction of homegrown fame in contrast to the European-born celebrity of Eames, Nordica, Fremstad, and Farrar: Rosa Ponselle, whose electrifying entrance in 1918 opened the path to the top; Marion Talley, whose fleeting and problematic renown had been fabricated by publicists; and Lawrence Tibbett, propelled from secondary roles to instant stardom by audience acclaim.
²⁷

Opposite Caruso at the Met’s first performance of Verdi’s
La Forza del destino
was a twenty-one year old who had never had a voice lesson, let alone sung on an operatic stage. Ponselle had begun as a song plugger, had played piano at the nickelodeon, and, most recently, had been one of Those Tailored Italian Girls, a sister act on the vaudeville circuit. Caruso heard her in her manager’s office and brought her to the attention of the Met. Verdi roles had recently fallen to Claudia Muzio, a spinto even younger than Ponselle. But for the dramatic soprano role of the
Forza
Leonora, Gatti took a chance on the untested Ponselle. Reviewers acknowledged both her inexperience and her “vocal gold.” In 1918–19, Ponselle was entrusted with two more premieres, Carl Maria von Weber’s
Oberon
and Joseph Breil’s
The Legend
. In subsequent seasons, there followed numerous
Gioconda
s and
Cavalleria
s and a fair share of rarities. “Caruso in petticoats” would be the Met’s first Elisabetta
(Don Carlo),
its first Luisa Miller. In 1927, Gatti revived
Norma
for her; Bellini’s opera had not been heard for more than three decades. The title role calls for creamy legato (sung without separation between successive notes), emphatic recitative, and lyric and dramatic coloratura, all executed within the refined parameters of bel canto. Ponselle’s rendition of “Casta diva” was caught in the studio of the Victor Talking Machine Company. The forceful resolve of the
recitative, the rapture of the prayer, and the agitation of the cabaletta are plied without apparent effort. Through a broad dynamic range, the characteristically dark Ponselle voice remains ideally equalized here and in the duet “Mira, o Norma,” the other excerpt she recorded with her stage Adalgisa, Marion Telva. At its revival in 1928 with the identical cast, Downes proclaimed that this edition of
Norma
“would make history in any opera house” (
Times,
Nov. 8). Ponselle had brought a work of bel canto genius into the repertoire at last and for good. The kid from Meriden, Connecticut, set the bar for all future Normas.
²⁸

 

FIGURE 17.
Rosa Ponselle as Norma, 1927 (Herman Mishkin; courtesy Metropolitan Opera Archives)

 

The
Times
first mentioned Talley (“Singer of 16 a Prodigy”) on November 9, 1922, three years and more before her Metropolitan debut. She had auditioned for Kahn, Gatti, and Bodanzky. They encouraged her to continue her studies—and the construction of a star, born and raised in Missouri and American as apple pie, had begun. Two years later, Kahn, voicing his “high expectations,” confirmed that Talley had been asked to prepare two roles (
Times,
April 2, 1924). She was just seventeen. By July, she was off for coaching in Italy. In October 1925, her debut was featured in the prospectus of the upcoming season: “She will be heard for the first time by the public as a prima donna, though it was as a child in short dresses that she sang an audition just three years ago.” Gatti wrote to Kahn in uncharacteristically effusive terms: “I would be very much surprised if this young singer who possesses all the qualities to succeed brilliantly should not make a deep impression. . . . I hope that this time we have found a good ace who will make happy also all the nationalistic elements.” The press, meanwhile, had seized on the story of the shy teenager whose father had worked seven days a week for eighteen years as a telegraph operator with the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

As the debut approached, the hype grew more intense. Two hundred Missourians had hired a train to carry them to New York for Talley’s Gilda in
Rigoletto;
there would be a reception on the Metropolitan stage; all unsubscribed seats for the February 17, 1926, performance had been snatched up; all of America would be hearing her over the radio on February 19. A
Kansas City Star
editor wrote to the Met that “the Talley debut is, so far as Kansas City is concerned, an event comparable with the inauguration of a President or the sinking of the Lusitania” (
Times,
Feb. 10, 1926). Photographs depict a chubby young woman of no particular distinction. The debut itself made the front page: “Father Telegraphs Story Home from the Wings.” Ten curtain calls followed “Caro nome,” and double that number the final scene as hundreds stayed on after the asbestos curtain was lowered. “The story of the girl’s progress, a household word at home, has in the last week been told to thousands of children practicing their scales in New York’s schools”
(Times)
. But when it came to the notices, the ballyhoo was largely irrelevant; reviews sank from mixed to devastating. On February 28, looking on the bright side, Kahn wrote to Ziegler, “Even if Marion Talley should turn out, as the majority of the critics and some other benevolent people are good enough to forecast, a lemon, in due course of time, at least she has brought us a few full houses and
the opportunity to squelch for some time to come the absurd talk about the Metropolitan not being willing to give a fair chance to American artists.” And on March 4, Ziegler responded: “Her vogue and drawing power continues and the public for the greater part range itself on her side, and is angry at the critics, which attitude of course is of advantage to us.”

The promotion of Talley, and through her the philo-American posturing of the Met, continued, deaf to critical reception. She made the cover of
Time
on March 1, 1926. In August, a Vitaphone short that memorialized her immature “Caro nome” was on the program at the gala premiere of the Warner Bros.
Don Juan,
the first feature-length movie with synchronized sound. On October 7, Talley’s Des Moines recital grossed $9,000; the gate for Gertrude Ederle’s aquatic exhibition (she had just swum the English Channel), scheduled against Talley’s concert, was only $400. On December 21, Gatti and Talley agreed to a new contract consonant with her value to the company. By that time, her concert fee had reached $3,000–$3,500. A year and a half later, there were reports that in the coming season she would appear at the Met only sporadically. Earnings from her recitals were estimated at $335,000 over a period of just two years. Talley had exploited her bargain with the Metropolitan as deftly as the wily management itself. On April 12, 1929, the
Times
headline ran, “Marion Talley, Prima Donna Four Seasons, Quits to Buy Farm and Live on Earnings.” Talley was blunt: “I’m just through with it—that’s all.” She had sung seven roles; soon after her burst of success, her appeal had declined. Amelita Galli-Curci, long past her prime, was still the company’s star coloratura. On New Year’s Eve 1933, Talley sang one more Gilda, with the Chicago Opera Company, to good reviews. A few days later, she decamped over a salary dispute.
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