Patrick Bade
Jewish Singers in the Shoah
Patrick Bade | Jewish Singers in the Shoah | 06.06.21
- [Judi] Patrick, we’ll give it another two more minutes, two, three more minutes before we start.
Right, good.
[Judi] Patrick, we have a note from Monica. She says, “I love your talks, Patrick.”
That’s nice.
[Judi] From Monica Goodwin, thanks, Monica. Patrick, you stopped your screen share.
Yes, because it’s frozen again.
[Judi] Oh, okay, don’t worry.
[Judi] Don’t worry, we have plenty of time.
We’ll do a new share maybe.
[Judi] Mm-hmm.
No, that doesn’t work. Doesn’t work.
[Judi] So is your PowerPoint still frozen?
[Patrick] Yeah.
[Judi] Do what you did before.
Right, so I’m going to have to try and bring it up again.
[Judi] That’s fine, so, don’t worry, take your time. Bear with us everybody while Patrick just tries to get his machine back up and running.
Let’s see if I can, yeah, it’s working.
[Judi] Okay, great.
Good, should I start then?
[Judi] So, welcome Patrick and welcome everybody who’s joining us today, and Patrick, over to you. Visual and music are displayed throughout the presentation.
Thank you, Judi, now, someone asked me last week why I didn’t include any women composers in this group of five composers. And I’ve been racking my brains to try and think of a significant Berlin songwriter that was a woman, and I can’t, and I can’t really think of anybody at the other end of my story in Hollywood, either. There weren’t really any significant women composers in the golden age, in the ‘30s and '40s in Hollywood. I’m sure it’s not through lack of talent, it’s through lack of opportunity. However, things were different in France and there were two really major female song composers.
Firstly, Marguerite Monnot, and she started off as a concert pianist, but she had terrible stage fright and she was, physical illnesses and she turned to songwriting. And her breakthrough song in 1936 was “Mon Legionnaire”. And that was originally launched with Marie Dubas, but it was when it was taken up by Edith Piaf, that it really went global. And it is the most incredible song. I mean, I’ve stopped including it in lectures because it always makes me cry and it’s kind of embarrassing to cry in front of an audience. But then Marguerite Monnot and Edith Piaf became really, I think possibly, the most successful female songwriting team in the 20th century. They went on to create many songs together with Edith Piaf writing words and Marguerite Monnot writing music.
And the other great French woman songwriter and I’ve mentioned her already, is Mireille Hartuch. Her most popular song being “Couches Dans Le Foin” but she wrote many songs for top singers like Trenet and and Sablon. She was the singer I told you about who was hidden in the convent during the war and help the nuns to turn the parachutes into silk underwear. Now this is a photograph of the incredibly beautiful Anita Lasker-Wallfisch when she was just a teenager. And she, you can see her with her cello, and it was her ability to play the cello that enabled her to survive the horrors of Auschwitz, where nobody was supposed to survive for very long.
So musical talent was a godsend to many people during the Holocaust. It was often the best kind of passport you could have. It was easier to travel with musical talent than, you know, if you were a lawyer, if you were a writer, whatever, you had linguistic problems travelling very often you had to re-qualify in your new country. But music is completely international. It’s slightly different with singers. Again, if you have, a great voice, is the best passport that you can have.
But there were two preconditions, really. One was, that you had to already have established some kind of career. We simply don’t know how many great singers were lost to us in the Shoah. People who might have gone on to be the Lehmanns, the Taubers, the Flagstads, we just don’t know, 'cause they will have, I’m sure there were many. And the other problem for singers sometimes is one of the vocal longevity. It’s unusual for singers to sing well past, well, they often get into trouble when they’re in their 50s. And very few singers continue beyond 60. So you needed to be a singer in your prime and with a certain reputation. And if this was the case, then you are well away.
This is Friedrich Schorr, and he was the son of a Romanian cantor and I think many record collectors and many experts think he was the greatest Wagnerian bass-baritone, that’s for roles like Flying Dutchman, Hans Sachs and Wotan. And he was at the Wotan in the Bayreuth 1925 Ring Cycle, which was the first time that Hitler saw a full Ring Cycle, and Hitler was scandalised that Wotan was sung by a Jew. So in fact, Schorr had, I mean, he was a very big star internationally in the late '20s and early '30s. He sang at Covent Garden every year from 1924 to 1933. He was the mainstay of the Ring, the annual Ring Cycle there and he was the mainstay of the Wagner performances in New York from 1931. So it was actually quite easy for him to just to move to other countries. Disgracefully, he was dropped by Covent Garden after 1933.
There’s a very poignant letter in the archives of the Royal Opera House from him saying he’d sung Wotan every year since 1924, why did they not want him anymore? Well, I’m afraid the answer is very obviously that the Royal Opera House management wanted to curry favour with the new Nazi regime and that they didn’t want to risk causing offence by having the main singer in the Ring Cycle sung by a Jew. I’m going to play you an excerpt of a recording that I find very, very poignant. I mean, it’s a scene I always find very poignant, anyway. It comes from the “Mastersingers”, certainly not, I have quite mixed feelings about, because it was chosen by the Nazi party quite literally as their party piece.
You know, it was performed every year at the Nuremberg rallies and and so on. And there are certain elements in it that could be construed as being anti-Semitic or nationalistic, but there is much the “Mastersingers” that seems to me to be profoundly anti-authoritarian, anti everything that the Nazis stood for. There’s one scene in particular at the beginning of the last act, the so-called “Wahn Monologue”, the “Madness Monologue”, and Hans Sachs is, he’s been shocked at a kind of outbreak of mob violence in Nuremberg that’s taken place in Act Two. And he says, “Wherever you look in history, in history of the world and the history of this town, you find irrational, mad, violent behaviour, even in the heart, this peaceful heart of Germany, Nuremberg.” Of course, this recording is made I think in 1931, so just a couple of years before the first Nuremberg rally. And so here is Friedrich Schorr with this wonderfully mellow, sympathetic tone that is just so right for this music.
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The story of Alexander Kipnis has some parallels and some differences. He’s another singer who is adored by critics and connoisseurs, and he’s generally considered to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest Wagnerian bass roles like Hunding and Hagen, King Marke and so on and so forth, wonderfully dark, velvety sonorous voice. And unlike ma most other Jewish singers in Germany, he did not have to stop his career or leave immediately, on the contrary, the Nazis do seem to have recognised his extraordinary value to them. And he was actually not allowed to break his contract. He was kept in contract until 1935 and he actually sang at the Bayreuth Festival in front of Hitler in 1934.
But in '35, he moved on, he sang in London, and then he again, became a mainstay of the great Wagner performances that took place at the Met. I know I’ve said this to you many times, but I’ll say again, if you wanted to hear great Wagner in 1940, there was no point in going to Berlin. New York was where you going to hear the greatest singers. This is from a live broadcast of “Tristan”, it’s part of King Marke’s monologue in Act Two. And when I tell you that this performance also included Kirsten Flagstad as Isolde, Lauritz Melchior, it’s of course, for any Wagnerian, that’s totally mouthwatering casting. So here is a bit of King Marke’s monologue, often dismissed as, he as he’s often called one of the great bores of opera, but not when it’s sung by Alexander Kipnis.
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This is Rose Pauly, she was Hungarian and she’s one of those strange singers who was truly great only in one role, that role was Elektra. She did sing other things, but she never really made a particular impression except in the role of Elektra. Elektra was definitely her passport to freedom. Everywhere she sung it, she caused an absolute sensation, in Vienna, in London, in New York, in San Francisco. I once met a very elderly man who’d never forgotten the shock, the amazement of hearing her in this role and also in Buenos Aires.
And then when her career was finished, she retired to Palestine and died in Israel. But her identification with this role was so complete, you know, critic said, “Ah, how is it that she just so completely becomes the character, did she murder her mother?” And I’m going to play you a little bit of the recognition scene where Elektra realises that her brother Orestes has survived and she recognises him. I’m afraid there’s a little bit of static interference in this. It is a radio broadcast from 1937 from Carnegie Hall. But I think the extraordinary beauty and intensity of her interpretation does come across.
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This is the Hungarian mezzo, Rosette Anday. She was one of four Hungarians, they were collectively known as the Hungarian Quartet, who dominated the cast of the Vienna Opera in the 1930s. There was the soprano Maria Nemeth, the bass-baritone Alexander Sved, and the tenor Koloman von Pataky. She was a much, much loved singer and she did not leave, she stayed, she had to spend the latter part of the war in hiding but she did survive and she continued her career after the war. So a very gorgeous, warm voice.
This is an aria that was unusual at the time. It’s now become more familiar, “Parto, Parto” from “La Clemenza di Tito” of Mozart. It’s a long aria, I’m only going to play you the beginning, but if you like it, I would suggest that you listen to it on YouTube. You can find quite a lot of this stuff on YouTube. At the end, she does some really spectacular florid singing. But here is just the beginning of that aria.
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This is the exquisite soprano, Rose Ader. She was Viennese, but the most important part of her career was as the leading lyric soprano in the Opera House in Hamburg and it was there that Puccini heard her and he fell in love with her. And they had a very passionate love affair over the last couple of years of his life. And there’s plenty of evidence of this. He wrote her very explicit and extremely passionate love letters and for whatever reason these have suddenly appeared on the market. There was one that was up for sale at Hotel Drouot in Paris just before Christmas and I left a bid on it, but I suppose it’s such historical interest that I didn’t get it, but it’s also clear from the letters that Puccini had written the role of Liu in his final opera specifically for her.
When it came to it, Toscanini didn’t use her. He used a local Italian soprano, Rosina Torri. Rose Ader only, well at least only, I think only two sides of one record were issued, maybe it’s two records, I’m not sure, but anyway, very, almost nothing during her lifetime. But there are a number of test recordings, and other private recordings that exist. And I think I’ve mentioned before, I know have mentioned before, that the label of Malibran have brought out all the surviving records of Rose Ader, including this test version of Liu’s second aria.
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Now there’s no doubt that, oh, she, well, she left, forced to leave Germany in '33. She sang some performances in Vienna up to '38 and then some performances in Italy and landed up in Argentina, but of course, her career really was blighted. And that is the case also of this soprano, Fritzi Jokl. She was the leading coloratura soprano in Munich between 1926 and 1933, then of course she was forced to retire from Munich Opera House, really at the height of her powers. She sang a few performances for the Judischer Kulturbund before Immigrating to America.
So she was 40 when she arrived in America, still should have been really in her prime. She fell in love with a much younger journalist and she married him and it seems that she consciously not only gave up any aspirations to her career, but sort of hid any mention of the fact that she had had a very important career in Europe. And it seems, well the reason for that, as she admitted later, was that she didn’t want to admit to her husband that she was old enough to have had a substantial career in Europe and was actually much older than him, great loss, I think, there’s wonderful ones, she made quite a few records, enough to fill a CD and they’re terrific. They’re really wonderful, and you know, I think she’s as good or better as any soprano in her repertoire at the Met in the late 1930s.
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Excellent trill there, of course, as you know, I’m a big trill fetishist and she has some of the, I think, of the warmth and impulsiveness of Lotte Lehmann. Now this is Vittorio Weinberg, whose career is rather different from anybody else. It goes in the other direction 'cause he was actually born in Palestine and he went to Italy to train. He had a major Italian career between the early 1920s and the early 1930s, he then went back to Palestine. He helped to found the Palestine Opera and he then landed up in America as a cantor in a synagogue.
It’s a beautiful voice, he’s today best remembered for singing the role of Sharpless in an early complete recording of “Madam Butterfly” with the Irish soprano Margaret Sheridan. And I’ve known this really since my childhood, my great mentor who owned the local record shop in Godalming, he was a passionate verismo specialist, and he always said he thought that Vittorio Weinberg was the best Sharpless on record. And here he is in a little extract from Act Two of “Madam Butterfly”.
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This is Frederick Lechner and he was a fine baritone who was starting to have a significant career in Germany in 1933, he had his breakthrough with the contract for the Charlottenburg Opera in Berlin 'cause it was a very bad year to have your breakthrough as a Jewish baritone in Germany. So he left and he went to America where he had a reasonable career, not the one he would’ve had in Germany, I think, he sang small roles at the Met and he also performed as a cantor in the Central Synagogue in New York. And the excerpt I’m going to play to you, is from a service for Saturday morning in that synagogue that was commissioned from the French composer, Darius Milhaud.
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This is Gerhard Pechner, I always get Lechner and Pechner muddled up, in fact, it is quite confusing because they’re both German baritones, and Pechner is, he was a little bit, I suppose, a bit older and a bit ahead of Lechner and he had already established himself at the Charlottenburg Opera, so if it were not for the advent of Hitler, they would’ve been colleagues and rivals at that opera house. He moved, '33, of course he had to leave. He went to Prague and then to Buenos Aires and from Buenos Aires, he arrived in New York. And he also landed out singing comprimario roles, quite small roles, rarely getting the bigger roles.
It’s a good voice, I’m going to play you something very, very curious, and that’s his version of “Lili Marlene”. I remember when I talked about “Lili Marlene”, there was somebody who said, “Why is it that 'Lili Marlene’ is normally sung by a woman?” It’s clearly a man talking about a girl. But this is well enough sung, but I think this will probably give you your answer, that somehow the song is much more affecting when it’s sung by a woman that even though it’s a man describing the girl somehow we want to feel that the singer is the girl being described, and here he is.
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This is Elena Gerhardt, who’s a singer who occupies quite important position in the history of modern singing in that she’s usually credited with being the first singer to make a career out of giving public performances of art songs of German lieder, the great songs of Schubert, Schubert, Schumann and so on, Brahms were not written for public performance. They were written for private performance. It was really a new thing at the beginning of the 20th century for somebody, if singers gave concerts of songs at that time, famous singers like Caruso or Melba or whatever, it was always a mixture of operatic arias, of popular songs, and they might throw in a few art songs.
So she was really the first person to do a whole evening of art songs. And she was considered to be really the high priestess of the German Lied, a big international reputation, and she was in, well, I suppose getting into her later career in ‘33. And she just moved to London and spent the rest of her career in London. And here she is singing a Brahms song.
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This is a very special favourite of mine, Lotte Schone. She was Viennese, but her most important career was as a star of the Berlin Opera and she was also a much loved singer on her visits to London. She sang the First Liu in “Turandot” in London and her records of the two arias are absolutely exquisite, really worth seeking out. She’s a very beautiful woman, a very charming woman. She, after leaving Germany in '33, she came to France and she continued her career in France until the Second World War, until the German invasion. She sang lots of Mozart conducted by Reynaldo Hahn and she did not manage to get out of France in time, but she fled to the Savoy, which was the area of France that was occupied by the Italians, not the Germans. So certainly Jews had a far greater chance of survival in the Savoy than they did in other parts of France.
Apparently She spent much of the war up mountains singing Schubert leader to the animals, lucky animals. This is an unpublished record of a song by Hugo Wolf. And again, this is a rather disgraceful story. EMI or HMV used to bring out the special additions for composers who weren’t necessarily very popular, wouldn’t necessarily say, sell a lot of copies, so that there was a Haydn Society, there was a Selvaggi Society and there was a Hugo Wolf Society and they brought out huge numbers of recordings of the songs of Hugo Wolf. And Lotte Schone, in 1934, recorded a whole set for the Hugo Wolf Society. But when it came to publication, her recordings were left out, and the obvious reason, again, is that a large part of the uptake for the Hugo Wolf Society was expected to be in Germany. And they didn’t, obviously, HMV felt they couldn’t publish a volume of Hugo Wolf with several songs sung by a Jewish singer. So this was only published many years later.
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Now, I had a conversation about her just before the pandemic, I suppose it’s about 18 months ago, I had dinner with the French critic Andre Tubeuf, who’s considered to be one of the leading experts in France on historic recordings and he knew Lotte Schone very well in her later years. And he said she was the most delightful person. He said she was one of those rare, rare people without a trace of bitterness. She was a totally, totally positive person. Rather like, as everybody describes Alice Sommer-Herz. So amazing to have had those experiences, to have your life blighted and to survive with such a positive and sunny spirit.
Now this is Edith Bach, and I’ve talked about her before and played you a record. She was known as the Berlin Nightingale. She was, again, she was not an opera singer, she was a concert singer and a radio singer and she was particularly popular on Berlin Radio and she was known as the Berlin Nightingale. I knew nothing about her until I was given a record of her by her son, William Kaczinsky and I was just enchanted by the charm of her manner and the beauty of her voice. Now, I mean, that record, I think probably for most Jewish singers the matrices in the factories were often destroyed and people destroyed their records so it was thought that that was the only surviving record of her. But about a year ago, I tried to initiate a search for more records and one, another recording of Edith Bach, I haven’t managed to get a hold of it yet, but it does exist and it turned up in a private collection in Germany.
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One of the most famous singers of the '30s, most loved was Joseph Schmidt. In fact, the peak of his popularity was the early '30s, '33, '34, he made his movies, which were massively successful in Germany, so it must have been a very extraordinary experience, one moment, you are the idol absolutely adored and the next moment you are thrown out and a pariah. He could easily, I mean, he had a world reputation and he’d been to New York and he had success in New York. He could easily have had a good career in America. But his mother was back in Romania and he didn’t want to leave her.
And through a whole series of unfortunate accidents, he failed to get out of France in time. And he threw himself on the mercy of the Swiss and was put in an internment camp in Switzerland and died in that camp. Apparently he was on the point of being released from the camp, but it’s such a tragic and unnecessary fate. But it’s an amazing voice, an amazing, amazing technique. I mean, it’s, I think next to Hermann Jadlowker, he has the best trills that I’ve ever heard from a tenor. And you’re going to hear one in an area from “Trovatore” I bet all of you have heard “Trovatore”, all of you who are interested in opera, it’s a very popular opera, and I wonder if any of you have ever heard a tenor actually sing the two trills that Verdi wrote for Manrico in that opera? Well, you’re going to hear it now with Joseph Schmidt. As with Jadlowker, he had a cantorial training, and I think this cantorial training may have something to do with his extraordinary technique and his ability to sing trills.
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Ah, but the great triller of all, this is Hermann Jadlowker and I know I’ve talked about him before and we had this very interesting email from somebody in South Africa saying, who is related to him, and that there had even been a discussion of him possibly going to South Africa to become a cantor there. World famous tenor, big career, Met, Berlin State Opera and so on, very famous in Lohengrein, famous Othello, these days, particularly appreciated for his amazing florid technique. This is a recording made towards the end of his career of an Italian song where, once again, he demonstrates a pretty spectacular trill.
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This is Louis Treumann and I’ve talked about him before and played you a record of him so I won’t play you another. He was the leading operetta male singer in the German speaking world in the years before the First World War and despite the efforts of Franz Lehar, he was eventually sent to Theresienstadt and died there in 1942, as you can see from this death to right hand side. This is another singer who died in the Holocaust. This is Grete Forst, she was a coloratura soprano, beautiful woman, much respected. She was part of Mahler’s team in Vienna in the early 1900s and she retired to marry a wealthy industrialist, but I’m afraid that did not protect her. And here she is, a recording made during Mahler’s time at the beginning of the 20th century in an aria from “Der Freischutz”.
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There were two important singers, female singers, who took part in the Bayreuth Festivals who died in the Shoah, the mezzo, Ottilie Metzger, and the soprano, Henriette Gottlieb, and this is the monument to them that is now at Bayreuth. Ottilie Metzger, magnificent, powerful mezzo voice. Here she is in the song by Beethoven with an Italian text 'cause she has a pretty terrible Italian accent. She sings, but it’s still a very impressive sound.
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Now she was still singing well enough to be considered for this project I think I told you about before, which was going to be an all Jewish Wagner Ring Cycle in New York in the early 1930s. It sadly didn’t come to anything, but it would’ve rescued many people if it had happened. And I can’t resist playing you a little excerpt. This must be the first ever recording of the Rhinemaidens. And oddly Metzger is one of the three of them here. So this is presumably very much how it sounded at the Bayreuth in the early years.
The imagery you see here are the first Rhinemaidens, including Lilli Lehmann, who had to lie on these very uncomfortable and rather dangerous looking contraptions and pretend to swim. I was sent this recording by a friend recently, and I found it very amusing. It’s beautifully sung, but it really does remind me of the famous quip by Anna Russell that the Rhinemaidens are aquatic Andrew’s Sisters.
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This is Henriette Gottlieb, a wonderful singer. Her records are really terrific, and there are a couple of them on that CD as a filler for Rose Ader. I mean, her career wasn’t what it should have been. I think mainly because she was so tiny. You see a picture of her here at Bayreuth surrounded by these very tall Wagnerian singers. And of course it would’ve been quite difficult, I think, to take her seriously as Brunhilda with her spear. But she certainly had the voice for it.
And she was, I think, again, she’s somebody who, in a way you could say just missed the boat because she was still, we know from records that she made in 1932, she was still singing very, very well in the early 1930s. It’s a wonderful voice, but she was 50 and I think she probably thought, you know, it’s too late to cross the Atlantic and try and start a new career in Buenos Aires or New York. And she stayed behind with fatal consequences. And here is, I played you this before, so I’ll just play you a little bit to remind you. This is “Brunhilda’s Awakening” in “Siegfried”.
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Now, I don’t want to end on a sad note. I want to end on something uplifting. So I’m going to play you my great hero, Richard Tauber, who I believe was on a tour of South Africa at the beginning of the war and could have, he had offers to go to America and could have gone to America, but decided to come back to Britain, which had offered him shelter, and he obviously felt great gratitude and devotion to Britain. And he spent the entire war years in Britain, according to his wife Diana Napier, there was not one day in the second World War where he did not sing in public for some audience. And he certainly did much to raise the spirits, probably in his way as much as Vera Lynn did to raise the spirits of the British.
So I’m going to play you, and of course, during the war, he wasn’t singing in German, he was singing in English with his delightful Austrian accent. And he was singing a lot of very popular stuff for which he’s sometimes being criticised. But I think whatever he sings, he brings a kind of magic touch. And I wish I could see your faces when you hear this. This is what he does to Cole Porter’s “Night and Day”. I mean, Cole Porter’s night and day was written specifically for Fred Astaire, Fred Astaire, an exquisite vocal artist as far as I’m concerned, but with a very, very narrow vocal range, and Cole Porter decided to make an advantage of this.
So the song, much of the song of course is on one note, da-da-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb, da-da-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb, dumb-da-dumb, da-da-da-dumb, I mean it never goes very far from that one note. And of course, when Fred does it, it’s wonderfully cool and kind of laconic, kind of elegant throwaway. And you could not imagine anything more different than Tauber’s approach, which is very operatic and incredibly passionate. And when Tauber sings “I want to spend my life making love to you,” he really sounds like he means it.
♪ Night and day, you are the one ♪ ♪ Only you beneath the moon and under the sun ♪ ♪ Whether near to me or far ♪ ♪ It’s no matter darling, where you are ♪ ♪ I think of you, night and day ♪ ♪ Day and night, why is it so ♪ ♪ That this longing for you follows wherever I go ♪ ♪ In the roaring traffic’s boom ♪ ♪ In the silence of my lonely room ♪ ♪ I think of you night and day ♪ ♪ Night and day, under the hide of me ♪ ♪ There’s an, ooh, such a hungry yearning ♪ ♪ Burning inside of me ♪ ♪ And this torment won’t be through ♪ ♪ Till you let me spend my life ♪ ♪ Making love to you day and night, night and day ♪
Right, well, let’s see what questions we have or comments.
Q&A and Comments
“It’s low chatting in Kiton” oh, I dunno what that means, actually, “Low chatting in Kiton, some will unfortunately not able to hear your talk to the end.”
“Thank you, would love to hear the song,” Oh, it’s the song that makes me cry, but I’m not going to play it to you, but you can play it. It’s the Edith Piaf version of “Mon legionnaire”, “My Legionnaire”, and you need to have the words 'cause it tells a story, it tells a very sad story.
Q: Could I do a session on Edith’s Piaf? A: Yes, I could, I could certainly do it, it’s of course, a very interesting life that she had as well.
Let me see, “Who sang Elektra?” You know, you’ve got all those names as usual. It’s Rose Pauly, but I’ve typed them all out and you will have been sent them by Judi with the notice for the lecture.
[Judi] I think that everybody needs, Patrick, everybody needs to scroll down the email that I do send them in the mornings 'cause all the details are on there.
Yeah, great.
Q: Do I have any information about Danica Ilic, the civilian soprano? A: Do you know, I’ve got my, I will tell you next week, I know the name and the information will be in the Kutsch and Riemens “Sangerlexikon” which I have aside there, I won’t look at it now, but if I find anything interesting, I’ll tell you next week.
Q: Have I heard of a singer called Jenny Zonberg? A: No, I haven’t actually, of course there was a, there were other very interesting singers who went to South Africa, it was a wonderful, Xenia Belmas, I wonder if anybody knows about her. She spent her last years in South Africa, a very great Russian singer.
There were at least two great American women songwriters between the wars, Kay Swift, of course, yes, who was associated with Gershwin. And she and George Gershwin were intimate friends for many years until his death. Dorothy Fields, not only the greatest female lyricist, but also one of the greatest of any gender contributed to the great American ensemble. Yes, but that’s, I’m not surprised at that now, of course, I did know about them, but does anybody know of any women composers in Hollywood who wrote scores? “A Canadian woman wrote, 'I’ll Never Smile Again’ when her sweet,” yeah, I mean, there are definitely women songwriters and of course there’s “Besame Mucho”, I think that’s one of the greatest 20th century popular songs, I think that was a Mexican woman who wrote that.
So somebody said yes, the story that Puccini, people have speculated about this, that Puccini was thinking of his maid, Doria Manfredi who killed herself when Puccini’s wife accused her of having an affair with Puccini.
No, no, you, you’ve misunderstood me there. I didn’t say, I mean obviously, he wrote the role for Rose Ader to sing. It’s not that she, it was inspired by her voice even if the character in the opera was inspired by Doria Manfredi.
Yes, Ron’s saying, “Was great to hear Frederick Lechner,” who was his Bar Mitzvah tutor.
My late mom, Chayela Rosenthal, who sang in the Vilna Ghetto concentration labour camp, was a Shoah singer whose life was spared because of her singing,“ that’s very interesting. "After she survived the Holocaust, she went on to sing in DP camps after the war and became a much loved Yiddish actress and singer, also on Broadway. It was Molly Pican who discovered her in Poland and helped her get papers to get her out of Poland to Paris. She later settled in South Africa.”
Q:“Are you planning to present Yiddish songs?” A: I love Yiddish songs, I really do. I’ve got quite, I don’t think I know enough about it. I think somebody else would have to do that. I don’t know which one of our team would be the best person for that.
“To follow up on Zola’s comment about her mother, Chayela Rosenthal, Leyb Rosenthal was Chayela’s poet brother who wrote songs that she sang during the war in the Vilna Ghetto.”
So, you know, somebody saying, “Could I focus more on Yiddish songs?” I’d have to do a lot of work for that ‘cause I don’t really know enough about it. And I think probably somebody else should do it.
“Ruth Lowe wrote, 'I’ll Never Smile Again’, she was from Toronto.” Joseph Schmidt also missed a great opportunity ‘cause he was so short,“ that’s true.
"Riemens the thing of it?” Yes, yes, yes, yes.
“I wonder if Kipnis,” Kipnis, his son, it could be Kipnis’ son was a famous harpsichordist and his grandson was a financier who was involved in some big scandal a few years ago. So the family is definitely around in America.
Q: “Why Buenos Aires was such a centre for opera singers?” A: Two reasons, money, there was tonnes of it there. And secondly, it’s the only major opera centre in the world that was functional over the summer that, you know, nowadays, of course, all these festivals and so on, but it meant that Buenos Airs had the money and they had the choice of all the best singers in the world. So I would say that the seasons in Buenos Aires in the 1920s and ‘30s were the most exciting to be found anywhere in the world.
Right, and so, very nice comments. Thank you, I really appreciate that.
“That Tauber was hilarious, such a beautiful voice, in terms of,” Yes, he does, he really, well, that’s typical of Tauber. I think that’s what makes him great. He sat down and he’s read the words and he said, “What do the words of this song mean to me?” He’s not imitating Fred Astaire, he’s not singing it. That’s typical Tauber, to really look at the text and interpret the text.
“Sylvia Fine, Danny Kaye’s wife wrote many songs.” Yes, yes, I know there have been.
“Xenia Belmas was my mother, Rose Ader’s teacher in Durban.” Oh, that’s so fascinating, I’ve always wondered, really, I mean it is a bit of a mystery to me that Xenia Belmas, again, actually in the middle of her career, she must still have been singing very well, retired to, I presume that she was Jewish and that that was part of the motivation of just wanting to get away from Europe.
The area of France, it was the Savoy, you know, in the mountains, it’s in the French Alps, the area that borders Italy.
Someone says, “Could we ask,” I don’t know if Vivi Lachs, to do a session on Yiddish songs, but just sounds like there’s definitely demand for a session on Yiddish songs and I wish I could do it, but I don’t think I can.
Ilse Wolf, I knew her, she was a lovely lady, she was, and an exquisite singer, she always reminded me very, very much one of my favourite singers, Elisabeth Schumann. She was a pupil by the way of Elena Gerhardt, who she did not talk about very warmly or kindly. She said she was a bit of a cow.
“I’m interested to hear Joseph Schmidt who was a popular opera singer on the radio before the war. Moshe Kraus, a cantor who was so taken by his singing that he decided to go to Vienna to study with Schmidt’s professor. This came in handy when he found himself in Bergen-Belsen and Commander Kramer asked him if he could sing like Joseph Schmidt, this ended up protecting his life.” That’s an amazing story, how amazing. He’s written his memoir, “Moshele Der Zinger, How Singing Saved My Life.” Thank you very, very much for that. That is really interesting.
Q: Do I know the work of Paula Lindberg? A: No, I don’t, “Who sang with Joseph Schmidt in a recording of a synagogue liturgy?” I’d love to, I didn’t know that recording, such a thing existed, I must see if I can get hold of it.
Buenos Aires is of course, very cosmopolitan. I mean, when in 1907 in Buenos Aires there were five theatres playing “The Merry Widow” simultaneously in five different languages. You could hear “The Mary Widow” in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English in Buenos Aires. It gives you some idea of how cosmopolitan it was.
Yes, thank you, Michael, it is so, I mean, so the waste, the terrible, 'cause Trudy always says, you know, the Holocaust, they may have killed a cure for cancer, but across the board the waste is just almost unbearable to think about.
Right, thank you all very much for your comments and and support and I really appreciate your appreciation.
[Judi] Thank you, thank you, Patrick. And thank you to everybody who joined us and we’ll see everybody for our next session later this evening, thanks everybody, thanks, Patrick!
Thanks, thanks, Judi!
Bye-bye, thanks, bye-bye.
Bye-bye.