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Thursday, June 09, 2005
Art/Commerce
Lynn Garafola's 'Diaghilev's Ballets Russes' is the best hing I've seen yet on this v interesting corner of modernism -- the book is not just about the ballets and dancing, but about the economics and the audiences. The appartus of notes appendix and bibliogrpahy is also first-rate.
Back to Gracie, not Fields, but Moore.
Following up with a read through Grace Moore's autobiography, I was impressed by how well it shows the effects on an artist of cross-over from one genre to another. For 'genre' read economic sphere. There's Broadway and the demands of touring, then there's the continual attempts to fulfil the ambition to sing in opera at the Met, then there's Hollywood, movie-stardom and celebrity concert tours, with one-night stands in the opera houses of Northern Europe.
The money comes into the story mostly in terms of the later passion for buying houses, lavish entertainment & staff of secretaries, limos & chauffeurs, &, noteworthy moment, determination to get the pure white Royal Copenhagen porcelain dinner service like that reserved for the King of Denmark. There's not much analysis, but the raw data is interesting.
Whoever actually wrote this rather standard star-biography did a fairly efficient job of stressing the positives and drawing a littel veil over the negatives. Quarrels and temper are always seemingly justified. She did break some glass, but never threw telephone receivers. A Polish tenor upstaged her, Sir Thomas Beecham was suspicious of her as a singer, and is said to have spread malicious gossip, Lady Cunard cut her dead at her Covent Garden debut, a Polish tenor upstaged her -- why exactly? As for Beecham he was rude & his tempos were too slow in Louise, so says the book. She sang once with Dino Borgioli, who is misprinted as Brogioli, [the Duke in the old Columbia complete Rigoletto with Stracciari] --and the author's version of "Les Six" is Milhaud, Honegger and Stravinsky.
She is, in the end presented as all heart, making up for whatever limitations of voice, small range of operatic roles & the cashing in on the movie-stardom, in which she turned opera to use as standards alongside sentimental songs. Common enough practice. But Mengelberg could not for the life of him understand why she would actually want to sing Ciribiribin. Audiences kept on demanding it after her hit-movie, 'One night of Love'. What she did achieve, in difficult circumstances of approaching WWII was an 83 minute movie of Charpentier's 'Louise' with that fine tenor Georges Thill. Repeatedly she is seen as in contact with Mary Garden, socially and then professionally and studying the role with Charpentier, tho her French at that time was apparently rather shaky. The date for this appears to be 1938, tho in the autobiography it sounds as if it's the last months of 1939 only just in time before the outbreak of war. This, it is claimed, in the book was the first filmed opera. When I get a copy I'll report.
Meanwhile why did I, aged 4, dream of marrying her, rather than Deanna Durbin, apart from the fact I heard her record of 'One Night of Love' before I ever got to see musicals on the screen. I only wish she'd recorded 'Ciribiribin' with Mengelberg or with her friend Toscanini -- that would've been something else.
Back to Gracie, not Fields, but Moore.
Following up with a read through Grace Moore's autobiography, I was impressed by how well it shows the effects on an artist of cross-over from one genre to another. For 'genre' read economic sphere. There's Broadway and the demands of touring, then there's the continual attempts to fulfil the ambition to sing in opera at the Met, then there's Hollywood, movie-stardom and celebrity concert tours, with one-night stands in the opera houses of Northern Europe.
The money comes into the story mostly in terms of the later passion for buying houses, lavish entertainment & staff of secretaries, limos & chauffeurs, &, noteworthy moment, determination to get the pure white Royal Copenhagen porcelain dinner service like that reserved for the King of Denmark. There's not much analysis, but the raw data is interesting.
Whoever actually wrote this rather standard star-biography did a fairly efficient job of stressing the positives and drawing a littel veil over the negatives. Quarrels and temper are always seemingly justified. She did break some glass, but never threw telephone receivers. A Polish tenor upstaged her, Sir Thomas Beecham was suspicious of her as a singer, and is said to have spread malicious gossip, Lady Cunard cut her dead at her Covent Garden debut, a Polish tenor upstaged her -- why exactly? As for Beecham he was rude & his tempos were too slow in Louise, so says the book. She sang once with Dino Borgioli, who is misprinted as Brogioli, [the Duke in the old Columbia complete Rigoletto with Stracciari] --and the author's version of "Les Six" is Milhaud, Honegger and Stravinsky.
She is, in the end presented as all heart, making up for whatever limitations of voice, small range of operatic roles & the cashing in on the movie-stardom, in which she turned opera to use as standards alongside sentimental songs. Common enough practice. But Mengelberg could not for the life of him understand why she would actually want to sing Ciribiribin. Audiences kept on demanding it after her hit-movie, 'One night of Love'. What she did achieve, in difficult circumstances of approaching WWII was an 83 minute movie of Charpentier's 'Louise' with that fine tenor Georges Thill. Repeatedly she is seen as in contact with Mary Garden, socially and then professionally and studying the role with Charpentier, tho her French at that time was apparently rather shaky. The date for this appears to be 1938, tho in the autobiography it sounds as if it's the last months of 1939 only just in time before the outbreak of war. This, it is claimed, in the book was the first filmed opera. When I get a copy I'll report.
Meanwhile why did I, aged 4, dream of marrying her, rather than Deanna Durbin, apart from the fact I heard her record of 'One Night of Love' before I ever got to see musicals on the screen. I only wish she'd recorded 'Ciribiribin' with Mengelberg or with her friend Toscanini -- that would've been something else.
Posted by: Tony Green / 11:46 AM 
