Patrick Bade
American Singers Conquer the Met: Rosa Ponselle, Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore

Patrick Bade - American Singers Conquer the Met :Rosa Ponselle, Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore

- I’m talking tonight about the first generation of American-born opera singers who made careers at the Metropolitan Opera in New York without having European training and European experience. And the three singers, it’s Lawrence Tibbett on the left, Rosa Ponselle in the middle, and Grace Moore on the right. Well, there had been American singers who’d been hugely successful at the Met right from the start. Emma Eames, I’ve talked about her before, who was taught by Mathilde Marchesi in Paris, and had big success in Paris and London. Lillian Nordica, who was taught by Lilli Lehmann and sang at Bayreuth, and Geraldine Farrar, who was also taught by Lilli Lehmann, and had a huge success in Berlin. So they all came back to America, trailing clouds of glory. But the very first singer to make her debut at the Met in a major role who had never even been to Europe was Rosa Ponselle, and she was born in 1897 in Meridian, Connecticut, into a family of Italian peasant immigrants, where she grew up in a completely Italian environment. It was a real ghetto of southern Italians. And I think you get a sense of the kind of family she came from, from this photograph on the left-hand side of a very plump-looking Rosa Ponselle with her mother. And you can see how through hard work, through discipline, through determination, she transforms herself into a very glamorous opera singer, as you can see on the right-hand side, more pictures here of the, it’s behaving, yes.

There she is again, very elegantly dressed. Oh, my computer is doing strange things. So she had right from the start, she had an amazing voice that developed very, very early. So in fact, when she was at school, she was forbidden to sing in the school choir because as soon as she opened her mouth, she drowned everybody else. Here she is with her older sister, and when they were in their teens, they developed a vaudeville act. They went round the vaudeville theatres as a sister act, singing duets. There are actually records, early records, of the two of them singing duets together, and her sister Carmela also had a very fine voice. And they both took lessons in New York, and initially it was the older sister that seemed to be more interesting. And their teacher knew Enrico Caruso, the great tenor at the Metropolitan. He persuaded Caruso to come and listen to them, and he was impressed by the younger sister, by Rosa. And she was then asked to audition for Gatti-Casazza, the director of the Metropolitan Opera. And he liked Rosa, he was completely blown away by her absolutely amazing voice. Apparently, she was so terrified during her audition that she fainted, she went into a dead faint halfway through the audition. But even so, Gatti-Casazza decided to take a chance on her, ‘cause it was a huge responsibility.

And she was made very aware of this 'cause he said to her, “Look, if you succeed, you will open the door to other young American singers. If you fail, that’s it. The door will be shut for another generation.” So she made her debut under the most intimidating of circumstances. She opened the Metropolitan season of 1918 to 1919 in November, mid-November, just a few days in fact, after the Armistice at the end of the First World War, singing the major role of Leonora in Verdi’s, “The Force of Destiny”. It’s a huge, huge role, and she was singing opposite the world’s greatest tenor, Enrico Caruso, so she was absolutely terrified. And in fact, those stage nerves never left her, and they certainly played a part in her rather premature retirement from the stage. Here she is in 1918, dying in the arms of Caruso at the end of the opera. And I’m going to play you her aria “Pace, Pace”, and I’d like you to pay particular attention to the first note. The very first note will tell you lots about why Rosa Ponselle is so great. I mean for me, she is still the greatest American singer of the 20th century. And I would, just in terms of voice, I can hardly think of any other sopranos who come near her. Maybe Jessye Norman, maybe Kirsten Flagstaff. The size of the voice, the voice is absolutely huge, and it’s gorgeous and beautiful, whatever way you cut it, from top to bottom, from loud to soft. And you’ll hear it in this first note, where she does an enormous crescendo, long, drawn-out crescendo, and then a diminuendo on the first note before leading into the aria.

• Well, that debut was just a huge success. And as one critic said, “The Met has struck a vocal gold,” and predicted a great career for her, which she went on to have. And I’d like to play another excerpt from “La Forza del Destino”, the scene where Leonora enters a monastery as a hermit. She’s welcomed by Padre Guardiano, the priest of the monastery, the high priest of the monastery, sung here by Ezio Pinza. We’re starting off with the voice of Pinza, who has one of the few voices, I would say, on record, to match that of Rosa Ponselle in sheer splendour. So first we hear Pinza, and followed by Ponselle.

• So it’s the poise and the nobility of her singing, which I think is absolutely extraordinary, and the beauty of the sound. And she was very well matched with Caruso, and they really got on well. Of course, they came from similar South Italian peasant background. But unfortunately her work with him was cut short by his death in 1921, but she did appear with him in his last great interpretation at the Met as Eleazar, the Rabbi Eleazar, in Halevy’s “La Juive”, she sang the role of his daughter Rachel. And so as the critics predicted, she went on to have an extraordinary career, extremely versatile, simply absolutely nothing that she couldn’t sing. Here she is very young, right at the beginning of her career as Santuzza in “Cavalleria Rusticana”. I mean, that must have been a role that must have been falling off a log for her, both character-wise and vocally. Sadly, only one aria from it recorded. This is, I think this is Fiora in “L'Amore Dei Tre Re”, I’m going to talk more about that opera later. Donna Anna, her only Mozart role, and she didn’t record anything from it, but there are fragments of a radio broadcast in very poor sound, but very fascinating, intriguing. You can guess, it must have been fantastic. She sang it with Pinza as Don Giovanni, and her Don Ottavio was initially Gigli and then Schipa. Here she is as Margared in Lalo’s “Le Roi d'Ys”, looking terrifically dramatic.

This is essentially actually a mezzo role, as is l'Africaine, here she is as l'Africaine. The voice, as you will have heard, had a very dark quality to it. It was really a mezzo voice, with a soprano extension at the top. Here she is as Aida, and she’s very frank about this in her autobiography. She loved the role of Aida. She said it was probably her favourite opera and probably her favourite role, but she only sang it a very few times. She had an absolute phobia about the top C in the Nile aria in the third act. And her great rival at the Met in the role was the German soprano, Elisabeth Retberg. In fact she was a generous singer, I think on the whole, to her female colleagues, with a couple of exceptions. She got on well with them very well, and she admired Retberg. And she actually said, “Well you know, if you really want the ideal Aida, you want me for the first act aria and Retberg for the third act aria.” Rather surprisingly, in 1930 in London actually, at Covent Garden, she took on the role of Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata”. Surprising because by this time, Violetta was considered to be a coloratura role, mainly because of her act one aria, and it was mainly sung by sopranos with much lighter voices. So it was a revelation to critics to hear Violetta sung by such a big and full voice. And we do have a complete recording in, so it’s reasonably good sound. It’s a of a broadcast of her Violetta. This is “La Vestale”, this is “Ernani”. And I’m going to play you just the cabaletta, the final fast section of her aria from “Ernani”. She said she thought this was her best record, and it is completely amazing actually. It’s amazing for the flexibility. It’s this huge voice that she hurtles around with such flexibility and such accuracy, amazing coloratura in this passage, and two fabulous trills. I’d like you to pay particular attention to how she comes off the trills at the end, very uniquely and precisely. I have in my opera-going career, which now goes back 60 years, it’s a terrifying thought. I went to my first opera in 1963. I’ve never heard any singer sing a trill as good as the two that you’ll hear in this excerpt.

• Yes, not even Callas, not even Sutherland, who both had wonderful techniques and trills, could match the precision and accuracy of the trills that you’ve just heard. But her greatest achievement was considered to be the role of Norma, which she undertook in 1927. She sang it at the Met, and then she came to London and sang it in London. In both cities, she completely wowed the critics. Now Norma is considered to be the Mount Everest of the soprano repertoire, just about the most difficult role of all. Both vocally, it’s insanely difficult vocally, but it’s also, makes great demands on the interpretative powers of the singer. And probably in the last 150 years, there have only been three singers who came close to satisfying critics in this role. Lilli Lehmann in the 1890s, Rosa Ponselle in the 1920s, and Maria Callas in the 1950s. We can’t really judge Lilli Lehmann from her recording, which I did play to you, of the “Casta Diva”. It doesn’t really give you, I think, an idea of why she was so great. I think we know why Callas was great in that role, and I would certainly, in any complete recording, I would certainly go for Callas and say that none of her rivals, not Sutherland, not Caballe, not Scotto, none of them can come near her in that role.

But it’s a role, in the two excerpts from the opera that Ponselle recorded, I would say she is superior to Callas because her voice is, well beautiful, and it’s perfectly steady, something that Callas, in legato moments, like the “Casta Diva” that I’m going to play to you, Callas could never produce quite such even and steady tone. Of course, we don’t have any recordings of Ponselle in those passages in which Callas reigns supreme, those sort of angry, dramatic moments from the opera. So it’d be very difficult to say which of the two was greater in the role. But certainly for this aria, it seems to me that Ponselle is absolutely incomparable. We’ll start off with the grand restorative, where there’s this tremendous, she sounds, this could be the Statue of Liberty singing. The nobility is extraordinary. And at the end of the this restorative, she floats the most exquisite piano, or pianissimo note, before then going into the beautiful aria, which as I said, requires exactly the kind of smooth legato that she can give it.

• Now by the middle of the 1930s, she was increasingly worried about the top of her voice. As I said, it sounds like a mezzo voice with an amazing soprano extension. But as with many singers, the voice began to shrink at the top, and she became more and more nervous, particularly about roles that involved using the top C. So she was searching around for roles with a slightly lower tessitura. The one obvious one was Carmen, and she undertook this role in 1936, put a lot of effort into making it as authentic as possible, as perhaps as you can see from this photograph. The public loved it, the critics hated it. She got an absolute critical drubbing. We have three complete recordings of “Carmen” with Ponselle, one of them with Pinza, and they’re in good sound. And I must say, I know what the critics mean. To me, she just isn’t Carmen, despite some very beautiful singing, now and then through the role. It just doesn’t work. And so she was looking for other roles. One she desperately wanted to sing was “Adriana Lecouvreur” of Cilea, but the opera had failed when it was first performed there before the First World War, and the director of the Met wouldn’t put it on for her. And that was one of the reasons, she felt very hurt by this, that they wouldn’t do this for her, and it was ostensibly the reason why, at the height of her prowess, she decided to quit the opera. And for a while, she considered a career in Hollywood. She went to MGM and they made some audition films of her in the role of Carmen.

You can see those if you want to on YouTube, and they’re very interesting. But as I said, she’s just, for me personally, she just isn’t Carmen. Here you see her in her home, Villa Pace, where she spent the rest of her life. And I’m going to come back to her again at the end of this talk. Moving on now to Lawrence Tibbett, couldn’t get more American than Lawrence Tibbett. He was born in Bakersfield, California. His father was the local sheriff who was actually killed by bandits in a shootout. He served in the First World War, and then began his career as an actor. But clearly he had a exceptional voice, great voice really, and he had it trained in America. And in 1923, I think it was, yes 1923, he auditioned at the Met and was given a couple of small roles. Importantly, that was the last season of the great Russian bass baritone Chaliapin, at the Met. So he sang on stage beside Chaliapin, probably the greatest singer-actor of the 20th century, and certainly learned a lot from him. So when Tibbett, in live performance, really lets rip, I can hear some echoes of Chaliapin. But his breakthrough came quite quickly, in 1925. He was on stage with another great baritone, Antonio Scotti. I’ve talked about him before. His career went right back to 1900, and he was a revered singer at the Met, as Don Giovanni and in Verdi roles, and very famous in the role of Falstaff. There’s a secondary baritone role in “Falstaff” of Ford. It’s not a big role, but he has this monologue, a jealousy monologue.

You might hear what I was meaning about the influence of Chaliapin when I play you this, with Tibbett. He really does let rip, and it’s a thrillingly uninhibited, over-the-top performance. And the audience were absolutely blown away and thrilled by this young American baritone, giving such a powerful and vivid performance, and he got huge ovations. And at the end of the performance, the audience wanted him to have a solo bow. Gatti-Casazza refused to allow it initially because he said, “No, no, Scotti is the star of this show, and I’m not going to let some new young baritone have a solo bow.” But the audience, and this turned into a confrontation really between the Met management and the audience. And they just wouldn’t go away and wouldn’t give up until Lawrence Tibbett was given his solo bow. And of course this was front page news, and it really made his reputation. So here is a recording made at the time of the young Lawrence Tibbett in this scene that really made his career.

• So he went on to have, like Ponselle, a tremendously varied career. Here are some of the roles that he sang. I can see Posa in “Don Carlos”, Escamillo in “Carmen”, Jermonpere, Falstaff, he eventually sang Falstaff. Scarpio, of course he was a great Scarpio. So a very versatile singer. And in the '30s he also came to Europe and had a tremendous success in various European opera houses. Escamillo on the left-hand side, Scarpio on the right. I think he’s greatest as a Verdi baritone. Somebody said that every great mezzo ought to say a prayer of thanks every night to Verdi for giving them such wonderful roles. But I think that’s the same is true of course of baritones. Here he is as Rigoletto, and there’s a very good broadcast, complete broadcast, from the Met with him as Rigoletto, Jan Kiepura, the Polish tenor, as the Duke, and Lily Pons as Gilda, so I recommend that, if you can get hold of it. But his supreme achievement, just as Ponselle’s was Norma, I think that the greatest interpretation that Tibbett had to offer was the role of Simon Boccanegra. That was an opera of Verdi’s middle period that had not really been particularly successful or frequently performed until it was revived, actually in Germany in the 1920s, as part of the so-called Verdi renaissance. And the Met decided to put it on in 1935. And Tibbett, as I said, really found his great role.

Again, there is a very, very good live performance, complete with a dream cast of Ezio Pinza as Fiesco, Giovanni Martinelli as Gabriele Adorno, the great Elisabeth Retberg as Amelia. I’m going to play you just a fragment of the end of a duet in act one, when Simon Boccanegra discovers that Amelia is really called Maria, and that she’s his long-lost daughter. I’m sure you know, there’s quite a tradition in opera of mislaying babies, and discovering, you know, 'cause even by the 18th century, by the time of the “Marriage of Figaro”, Mozart was already making fun of it, 'cause it was such a cliche really, of theatre and opera, to discover your long-lost children. And Verdi, of course, is always particularly moved by dramatic situations between a parent and a child. There are hardly any love duets of note in Verdi’s operas, but there are many duets, very moving, beautiful duets between a father and a daughter, or a mother and a son. And so this is the moment where they’ve just discovered their relationship, and there’s a rather excited passage, for the two of them, singing together. And then there’s a little orchestral interlude, and then they finish off the duet, and his final word is , daughter, and this is so beautiful. It’s rather like the first note I played you in this talk, of Ponselle. It’s just one of those notes that really stays in your mind. You’ve got this big, dark, bronze, burnished baritonal voice, and he fines it right down to a beautiful pianissimo on the first syllable of the word . It’s absolutely exquisite, and very moving, I think.

• The soprano who sang with him there was Rose Bumpton, very fine singer, another one of this first generation of American singers at the Met. So he was a great singing actor, somewhat in the style, I would say, of Chaliapin. And another of his greatest triumphs was in the opera “Emperor Jones” by Louis Gruenberg. Louis Gruenberg was an American-born composer of Jewish origin, and he wrote this opera based on the play by Eugene O'Neill. Eugene O'Neill had written it as a vehicle for Paul Robeson, and it had been a big success on Broadway as a play. So Gruenberg wrote the opera, and it was accepted by the great conductor Erich Kleiber to be performed at the Berlin State Opera, but in the fatal year of 1933. So of course once Hitler had come to power in January, 1933, there was no way that the Berlin State Opera was going to present an opera by a Jewish composer with a Black hero, but it was taken up by the Met instead. And I’m going to play you a monologue from this opera. It has been occasionally revived since. I’m not sure whether it’d be possible to present it today. Certainly not in the way it was in the 1930s, with a white baritone blacked-up, as you can see Tibbett is here, and the text as well. It’s a bit like the text of “Showboat”, it’s of its time. And of course it contains the N-word. I should give you a little trigger warning there, in case anybody’s likely to be offended by that.

♪ Oh Lord, Lord ♪ ♪ Oh Lord, Lord ♪ ♪ Lord Jesus, hear my prayer ♪ ♪ I’s a poor sinner, a poor sinner ♪ ♪ I knows I done wrong, I knows it ♪ ♪ When I catch a chap cheating with a loaded dice ♪ ♪ My anger overcome me and I kills him dead ♪ ♪ Lord, I done wrong ♪ ♪ When that guard hits me with a whip ♪ ♪ My anger overcomes me and I kills him dead ♪ ♪ Lord, I done wrong ♪ ♪ And down hear where these foolish Niggers ♪ ♪ Raised me up to seat of the Mare ♪ ♪ I steals all I could grab ♪ ♪ Lord, I done wrong, I knows it ♪ ♪ I’m sorry, forgive me Lord ♪ ♪ It’s me, it’s me oh Lord ♪ ♪ Standing in the need of prayer ♪ ♪ It’s me, it’s me oh Lord ♪ ♪ Standing in the need of prayer ♪

• He was a handsome man, and when sound came to the movies at the end of the 1920s, Hollywood was looking round for vocal talent. Either people who could speak, there’s lots of silent film stars, as I’m sure you know, from “Singing in the Rain”, had trouble just with speaking. But they were also looking round for singers, for actors who could sing, and he was a singer who could act. And he actually starred in the very first full-length sound colour movie, presented by MGM in 1930, which was “Rogue Song”, and it was a huge success, and he was actually nominated for an Academy Award. And then he went on to a second great success with the musical film, “New Moon”, wonderful songs by Sigmund Romberg, also starring the last of the three singers that I’m going to talk about tonight, Grace Moore. And here they are together.

♪ My heart is aching for someone ♪ ♪ And you are that someone ♪ ♪ You know the truth of my story ♪ ♪ You must believe what you see ♪ ♪ I too may someday find someone ♪ ♪ From somewhere, there’ll come one ♪ ♪ One who will tell the same story ♪ ♪ That you’re telling me ♪ ♪ Wanting you ♪ ♪ Everyday, I am wanting you ♪ ♪ Every night I am longing to ♪ ♪ Hold you close to my eager breast ♪ ♪ Wanting love in that heaven I’m dreaming of ♪ ♪ Makes that heaven seem far above ♪ ♪ Any hope that I’ll gain my quest ♪

• And let’s have a little bit of Grace herself in her big number, “Lover Come Back to Me”. ♪ The sky is blue and high above ♪ ♪ The moon is new, and so is love ♪ ♪ This eager heart of mine is singing ♪ ♪ Lover, where can you be ♪ ♪ You came at last, love had its day ♪ ♪ That day is past, you’ve gone away ♪ ♪ This aching heart of mine is singing ♪ ♪ Lover, come back to me ♪

• She was one of the most popular film stars in the world in the 1930s, particularly for, her greatest success was the film “One Night of Love” that came out in 1934, and it was one of the big, big money spinners of the 1930s, and it made her world famous. You can see she was a very beautiful woman, a woman with an enormous, vibrant personality that really comes across on the screen in her films. She was born in Tennessee in 1901 in a place that doesn’t sound very romantic, it’s called Slab Town. Later she was dubbed the Tennessee Nightingale. She began her career in musicals on Broadway, and she did in the 1920s have a short stint of study in Europe, in Paris and Milan, but nothing very significant. And she made her debut at the Met in 1928 as Mimi. Unlike the other two singers, she actually had a very limited repertoire on stage. So she sang Mimi and Tosca, Manon of Massenet, and generally her best role was thought to be Louise of Charpentier. And there was actually, was a commercial film made of that with the very fine French tenor Georges Thill, made by the legendary director, Abel Gance, so that you can easily get on DVD or you can see it on YouTube, and I recommend it. I think I’m going to move on to a live performance that she gave in 1940 at the Met as Fiora in Montemezzi’s opera, “L'Amore Dei Tre Re”, which has just been on in Milan.

I went with my friend Fiona down to Milan especially to see it, and it was gorgeous. It’s such a wonderful opera. I do recommend it, if you can listen to it on CD, there are various versions. It’s a wonderful cross, it’s between Wagner and Puccini. It’s luscious and melodious, and very, very exciting music, and quite taxing. She got quite sort of iffy reviews in this. I think the trouble was critics within living memory, they’d heard Ponselle in the role, they’d heard Lucrezia Bori, Claudia Muzio, so very, very great singers, and people didn’t really think that, critics didn’t think that Grace Moore was quite up to that standard. Well, I can’t really say. None of those three distinguished ladies recorded a note from the opera, but we have the whole thing in quite good sound, conducted by the composer himself with Ezio Pinza as a wonderful bonus, and another fine American singer of this generation, Charles Coleman, you’ll hear with her in this duet. And I have to say, not having those comparisons in the back of my mind, she sounds mighty fine to me. I think she’s really impressive in this, one hell of a voice on stage, over the very heavy Wagnerian orchestration.

• Her career continued until 1947, when she was killed in an air crash in Denmark. She was certainly quite a prima donna in temperament, and people said at the time, “Well, at least she would’ve been pleased that she got top billing in the newspapers the next day,” as you can see, it says, “Grace Moore dies in burning plane, prince also killed.” I don’t want to end on such a dark macabre note, so I’m going to play you one more song of Rosa Ponselle. She had left the Met in 1937, and after, I said a brief flirtation with Hollywood, she stopped appearing in public altogether. But people who went to visit her in her villa at Alta outside Baltimore, she sang to them, and reports came back that her voice was miraculously preserved. And nearly 20 years later in the 1950s, RCA took their recording equipment to her house, as HMV had done to Adelina Patti at the beginning of the century, and they made a whole series of recordings of her singing songs at the piano. Of course she doesn’t sing anything very high, but the middle and the lower part of the voice is more fabulous, more beautiful, more extraordinary than ever. So I’m going to play you this song by Beethoven, “In Questa Tomba Oscura”, with Rosa Ponselle by this time, well into her 60s, but still in miraculous vocal form. Oh, that is, oh that’s something quite different. Nevermind, I’ll play you that. No, I played you that already. So I’m afraid you’ll have to look that up. It’s another one of these weird computer slips, I’m afraid. So let’s see what questions you have.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: “What happened to her older sister?”

A: Well Carmela, Rosa was very loyal to her sister, and actually did get her into the Met, and for a couple of years she sang at the Met. But she, I think was quite an unstable character, and she wasn’t really able to pursue her career.

“I’m sorry I don’t know how to deal with your technical problems. It’s different for different people, I think.” Thank you, Sally.

“Ponselle, her trills are indeed superb, by the heaviness of her scoops.” I don’t think I agree with you about that. I’m not sure what you mean by scoop. She certainly attacks notes cleanly. She doesn’t go up onto notes. Of course, she uses a certain amount of portamento as singers did in those days. That’s an expressive device. She studied, I’m trying to remember the name of the man, with a male teacher in New York who she later then, because he was sort of exploiting the fact that she’d had such success, and she later claimed that she didn’t learn anything from him. This is Marshall Levine who lived next door to Villa Pace. I wonder if it’s visitable.

This is Iona, who says she’s downstairs, standing at the Met from 1963 until the old house closed. “During her Hollywood auditions, she requested more money than Clark Gable was getting, which was refused,” yes, that is true. But my guess is that she probably knew that it was going to be refused. I think she was somebody who chronically lacked self-confidence, and I think she probably, it was an excuse really not to do it, to make impossible commercial demands. But it’s interesting to see those audition snippets. You can see them on YouTube.

“1983, commemoration of the Met Centennial, 'New York Times’ special feature, which a panel of eminent critics rated the greatest singers in all voting categories. There was only one category that the top choice was on the current roster, and that was the mezzo soprano Marilyn Horne, a very great singer in my opinion.” I think she’s a great singer, but I wouldn’t say she had a voice, anything like as beautiful or great as Ponselle’s. But I think she is a fantastic artist, Marilyn Horne. I greatly, greatly admire her.

No, Paul Robeson never did sing in opera. And it was an interesting question, because he could actually have sung the Gruenberg Opera. But of course at that point the Met had a colour bar. The first Black singer to take a a solo role ever at the Met was in the 1950s, and that was Marian Anderson. Thank you, Ruth. “Villa Pace was visible for many years, but is now owned by a different person.” Do try to find out. I would love to go there and see it, and thank you Gail, thank you all very much. And I’m leaving music and going back to history and architecture for my next talk, which will be about New York in 1900.