The complete idiot's guide to classical music (50 page)

Sing she did, of course, and America had a new cultural icon. In due course, she would also sing at Constitution Hall, the outcry having caused the theatre to open its stages to artists of all creeds and races. Another color barrier fell on January 7, 1955, when Marian Anderson became the first black soloist at the Metropolitan Opera, singing the role of Ulrica in Verdi’s
A Masked Ball
. “The chance to be a member of the Metropolitan has been a highlight of my life,” the contralto wrote in her autobiography. “It has meant much to me and to my people. If I have been privileged to serve as a symbol, I take greater pride from knowing that it has encouraged other singers of my group to realize that the doors everywhere may open increasingly to those who have prepared themselves well. Not everyone can be turned aside from meanness and hatred, but the great majority of Americans are heading in that direction. I have a great belief in the future of my people and my country.”

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
In the eyes of her countrymen, Marian Anderson was always a goodwill ambassador to the world, but the title was made official in 1957 when the State Department invited her to tour India and the Far East.

The Anderson legend continued to grow even as she began slowing down her arduous performing schedule. President Eisenhower appointed her a delegate to the General Assembly of the United Nations; she sang at President Kennedy’s inauguration; and she received the American Medal of Honor from President Johnson. On the occasion of her 75th birthday, Congress passed a resolution to have a special gold medal minted in her name.

And in 1991, Marian Anderson received her last standing ovation at Carnegie Hall; not on stage this time, but from one of the loges, when Kathleen Battle dedicated a Rachmaninoff song to her idol and acknowledged the beloved contralto’s presence in the hall she had first illuminated with her artistry more than 60 years earlier.

“Greatness was his cloak,” said Count Basie, and the statement well applies to all aspects of Paul Robeson’s life: His athletic prowess, his unforgettable singing, his brilliant acting, his scholarly writings, his unyielding battles for social and racial justice. “It wasn’t just his voice which made us all love him,” said Pete Seeger. “It was his quality as a person, his courage, his determination, and his not retreating into just being a musician.”

The son of a former slave, Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey (1898–1976). He was a two-year football All-American, graduated Rutgers as a Phi Beta Kappa scholar, and became only the second African-American to get a law degree from Columbia University. As an actor, he created the role of “The Emperor Jones” in Eugene O’Neill’s play (he also starred in two other O’Neill stageworks,
All God’s Chillun Got Wings
and
The Hairy Ape
) and then—both in London and on Broadway—was hailed as the definitive
Othello
.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
George Jean Nathan, the notoriously ascerbic critic, wrote that Robeson was “one of the most thoroughly eloquent, impressive, and convincing actors that I have looked at and listened to in almost 20 years of professional theatre-going,” and added that the effect of his Othello was that, “of a soul bombarded by thunder and torn by lightning.”

As a singer, Robeson brought spirituals to the concert platform, indeed becoming the first recitalist to present a program consisting exclusively of spirituals and secular songs derived from Black slave culture. He later expanded his repertoire to encompass folk songs of many lands (in their original languages), becoming also the first male black artist to achieve top radio and recording popularity.

In stunning combinations of those singing and acting talents, Robeson starred in
Showboat
, turning “Ol’ Man River” (which had been written especially for him by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein) into a permanent fixture of American popular culture, and later appeared in nine other major films, the first pictures to break the prevailing stereotypes and allow a black male to be portrayed as a person of strength and dignity.

During the 1950s, when America was consumed with anti-Communist witch-hunts, Robeson’s outspoken demands for equal rights, his open support for unpopular causes, and his unwillingness to keep silent on issues deemed embarrassing to the State Department, subjected him to an unprecedented campaign of personal vilification and professional harassment. When a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee referred to Robeson’s trips to Russia and asked him why he didn’t stay there, his proud answer was typical: “Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it is just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?”

If they couldn’t drive Robeson out of the country, they did make sure that he couldn’t leave by illegally withdrawing his passport, ending his American career by pressuring major concert halls to refuse him access, causing music stores to pull his albums off the shelves, and forcing recording studios to deny him use of their facilities. As Studs Terkel put it, the government effectively made “a non person of Paul Robeson.” The campaign was carried to hysterical extremes. His name was stricken from historical records, radio stations dared not play a Robeson song lest their licenses be revoked, and for nearly a decade, his magnificent voice could be heard only in the black churches of America.

After seemingly endless legal battles, and a gradually changing climate in America, Robeson was vindicated; his passport was returned and his international career resumed. When he appeared in San Francisco, the
Chronicle
reported that “the years have done nothing to the greatest natural basso voice of the present generation. Two sold-out concerts in Carnegie Hall (his first appearances there in 11 years) followed, and on June 1, 1958 he sang what proved to be his final American concert. Appropriately, it was at Mother A.M.E. Zion Church in Harlem, where his brother, the Rev. Benjamin C. Robeson, was pastor. Two months later, he was cheered at his concert return to the Royal Albert Hall in London, and his European triumphs continued in concert as well as with a reprise of
Othello
in a new production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Becoming ill with a circulatory disease in 1961, Robeson returned home to retire from public life, living quietly with his sister in Philadelphia until his death from a stroke in 1976. “Here I stand,” wrote Paul Robeson in 1958. “To achieve the right of full citizenship which is our just demand, we must ever speak and act like free men. Americans who wish for peace among nations—and I believe the vast majority of them do—can join with my people in singing our old-time song: I’m going to lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside—Going to study war no more!”

Singing Wagner requires a lot more than a helmet and armor. You need a full and powerful voice to override the sumptuous orchestrations, and—given the length of the music dramas—the stamina of a marathon runner. In the days when Dietrich and Garbo were big box office draws, Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchoir were the Wagnerian headliners, with the peerless Birgit Nilsson following in their footsteps. Must be something in the Scandinavian diet.

Born in Hamar, Norway (1895–1962), Kirsten Flagstad began her vocal training at home. Those early lessons with her mother lead to professional studies and a 20-year career in Scandinavia, where she gave many concerts in addition to staged operas and operettas. In 1933, she sang several minor roles at Bayreuth, then hit the Wagnerian jackpot as Sieglinde in
Die Walkure
, the role in which she then made triumphant debuts at Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera. When World War II broke out, many musicians fled Europe for America; Flagstad took the opposite route, leaving the United States in 1941 to return to her husband in Nazi-occupied Norway.

This politically unpopular decision caused much anguish among her fans, and complicated her return to international performances after the war. Art did triumph eventually, Flagstad resuming her career in England and then the U.S., where she appeared as Isolde in 1951. Nearing 60, the soprano soon afterward retired from the operatic stage, though she continued to make recordings, and from 1958 to 1960, served as director of the Norwegian Opera in Oslo. Those fortunate enough to have seen Flagstad as Kundry, Brunnhilde, Elizabeth, and other strong Wagnerian women (or to have heard the live Met broadcasts) know the intensity of her portrayals; the rest of us must stay contented with the recording legacy she left us all.

Every Sieglinde must have her Siegmund, every Isolde her Tristan, and for many wonderful years at the Met, these leading men were often forthcoming in the substantial personage of Lauritz Melchoir.

Born in Denmark (1890–1973), the great tenor studied at the Royal Opera School in Copenhagen and made his debut there (as a baritone!) in
Pagliacci
. He soon learned the error of his musical ways, and reemerged as a full-blown tenor in
Tannhauser
, adding Siegmund to his stentorian repertoire for his Covent Garden debut, and Siegfried for his first performances at Bayreuth, both in 1924. Two years later, the Met beckoned, and his triumphal debut, again as Tannhauser, began his long career as one of the America’s most distinguished artists. He missed only one Met season until his farewell performance as Lohengrin in 1950, after which Melchoir found life after the opera in concerts, a batch of MGM films, and musical comedy. Nonetheless, it is as one of the greatest Heldentenors (literally, heroic tenor) of our century that he is best remembered. As Francis Robinson expressed it, Melchior and Flagstad “put the Metropolitan back on the gold standard.”

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Another of Melchoir’s frequent Wagnerian partners at the Met was Helen Traubel, and every time they appeared together, they would indulge in a little game of “who can hold the high note longer,” each valiantly trying to outdo the other without making a shambles of the music. Traubel admitted that the tenor could usually outlast her in direct competition. “He seemed to enjoy turning purple,” she said.

The third of our Scandinavian Wagnerians (though she also sang many other roles superbly) is Birgit Nilsson (1918–). “I’m a simple person from the country,” she told an interviewer, and indeed she grew up as a farmer’s daughter in Sweden, and used to milk ten cows a day before getting down to musical business. Singing, however, was always part of the Nilsson story, starting with the songs her mother taught her at age two, and when at age 23 she was accepted by the Royal Academy in Stockholm, she pulled her last weeds, milked her last ten cows, and settled down to serious studies. “I really wanted very much to sing,” she said, “a whole new life began. . . .”