Hall of song: The 'Met,' 1883-1966; 1959 Through 1960

The following program was produced for national educational radio under a grant from the National Home Library Foundation by W. B U R Boston. Boston University radio presents Hall of song the story of the Metropolitan Opera from 1893 to 1966. You are the wrong War Ghoul. Warrior. Looted. Your hosts are miles cast and Dick is a critic of The New York world where you are. And know to uncross.

Definite indication of the progress the Metropolitan had made during the first nine years of Rudolph beings administration as general manager. Was the fact that the 1959 season was scheduled to run for 25 weeks making it the longest one ever in the history of the house. Not all of the repertoire for the year included a grand total of six new productions to those who realize that the Metropolitan was operating with more than half a million dollar deficit. The logic of this much expansion and expense was questionable. Some critics suggested that it might have been wiser to retrench somewhat on the number of productions and spend the money that's saved in other ways. Many felt that the high standards of quality exhibited during the first few years of beings regime were slipping and that they would not be substantially bolstered by a preponderance of new productions and the fleeting presence of a few highly paid stars. Whatever relaxation there may have been and being as rigid standards it certainly wasn't reflected

by the public's response. Out of one hundred and sixty four performances given during the 1058 Season One hundred and ten were sold out. The first new production of the 1959 season was Tristan and Isolde. Despite the fact that the work had not been freshly mounted in forty nine years many critics were still dissatisfied with the settings devised by Teo Otto. Nevertheless only a confirmed cynic could have let the shortcomings stand in the way of his enjoyment of the evening. The performance marked the début a very good Nielson and from the moment she appeared on the stage it was perfectly clear that this was the dramatic soprano for whom New York had been waiting for many years. The audience sat spellbound as Nielson soaring brilliant stunningly accurate voice surged over the footlights and flooded the Metropolitan to the highest reaches of the family circle. Who.

But I suppose just about everyone when they think back about the old Metropolitan think in terms of the great performances they've heard there. And I personally can pick out one of the greatest is the one that came on December the 18th 1959 which was a tree's done and he's older when you made your debut and I know at the time I thought that was just about the greatest voice I've ever heard and was surprised the next morning when I was really surprised but gratified from the next morning most of the New York critics came out and thought the same thing.

Sensational debuts haven't been unusual at the Metropolitan but yours made front page news in most of the newspapers do this surprise you at all. Yes very much that surprised me because I didn't expect the wonderful response you know the ones I spent of all of them I know it was very difficult to you know to be successful here and when one comes to a new country one doesn't know how the public will respond because oh they count as a defendant and the public has different taste. So I was very happy that it went so fine but that it didn't please my ear hears the fact when they go how is so much product down for uploads. But. It was one of my most happiest moments when you were new to the United States at that point or you'd made a debut in San Francisco a couple of years earlier on. Yes I was singing as I have been singing in San Francisco and Chicago but you know New York isn't he working in this is something special so I I didn't take anything for granted.

I think my success in New York was greater than it was in San Francisco and Chicago. You wanted to come to the matter a little sooner than you did didn't you. You were hoping I think after San Francisco the most to bring my take you on right away. OK you know one is always a little bit out of patience when one ever thing is you know go very quickly. But I have learned that you didn't build Rome in one day so and I was that it is very good to wait and to be ready for things before to instead to force yourself into them. So now I'm I'm only thankful that I get all the time you know I did. I think I am a slow developer and I think everything was good for me the way it worked out. Once you did get to the map things began to happen pretty fast. You did a number of roles in your first season I guess about your Flying Dutchman and Leo to write and it looked as if you were.

What we become we turn to Wagnerian a German soprano. Yes miss the being he saw me almost as if I'm a soprano. So I heard him slowly had to change his mind telling him I could think things something else and since I know that also that Mr being was not a he didn't fire Rice Wagner too much in this house I just felt I had to do something else which you know could keep me busy between my back narrows for when I started to do it. Italian rose and finally I can convince the management that I could be reduced to pretty acceptable so I have been very busy advising about a NASCAR tour around out to one of my biggest pros here have a thing that I think most of the time here and I have been singing Tosca so so now I sing Italian and German repertoire equally much.

I think you turned out I guess was the first of the Italian wasn't it or was it the masked ball. No I think two are the first to tell you you know 200 is really not. Not so Italian It can always be sung but with the German voice because as a Brit in a certain way but that was my first time when they were here. I think you once said something about being a placation opera for you. You must have some fun when we are working and so and some joke going jokes going on. I know I am aware of that too and at this extremely difficult because it has all this height this is tooled up but if you have you know those high notes and you are not afraid of them then relate to the not his or her short role and so is everybody who is being afraid of that role of that role I have been

calling it my vacation all because you know that on Earth after all she doesn't thing in the back and she is only on our end of the second or the third so its much shorter stall. Everybody I think it's very funny but it's really one of my my role so you want to win you know. How about your relations with the Sopranos because here you are you started out as a Wagnerian soprano and everyone probably in the Italian wing probably thought they were safe and then in the next season you started singing Italian roles to this I don't know if they were feeling me too much and feel I don't know. I only met I remember I met one Italian soprano and when I came here and I was starting out in Wagner and she said told me well that's fine as long as you think Wagner is good for you but don't try I don't try to sing there. Maybe he was right but I try the way.

If you run into any difficulties because of that with your other colleagues who they are. Oh no and I think the comics are very rare. They're very nice and everybody is very they are friendly by the way I think it's a friendly atmosphere here in New York than it is in Europe where maybe you Americans are more used to so many people you're used to live with each other in another way than we are in over Europe and you know Sweden is quite a big country where we have only 7 8 7 million people and all the country and we are a little bit annoyed when we have somebody you know too close to us here in America I think it's a run of feeling and everybody accepting each other and everybody is very friendly. And how much they mean I don't know but but the way the people and the callers and the singers behave to each other I think it's absolutely wonderful.

Do you worry much about taking care of your voice or what you know I guess every singer dreads the morning he wakes up. There's nothing there. I don't think except when I have been you know. I've been working too hard and I thought maybe maybe I heard my voice and never worry about my voice I'm leaving. Absolutely as our normal person and I never sing the whole day before I come through terror with for ever having my performance because I feel I feel the way I am or the way I feel in the whole body I know the voice is there. I never try to like come to theatre one hour for an opera my mother warms up the voice but I think you're. Not missing those who do like that but most who say they try very much but I think it is so nervousness they have because. I think you should you know live to voice in peace and just you know

you sit to the right of this individual you know one is happy one way and others have another way. When you work pretty much on your own without a coach as a true will. I think I'm beginning to think is that you may have what so many people talk about and that is a natural voice. Do you think that's true or yes I think it's true in one way I am born with a very good at quick minds I have a very healthy natural voice but even do some natural things have to be taken care of and one has to know what has to get a technique because you cannot own a saying of you know what you have got you have to develop it you have to take care of it. And in the right way and I think there are many who have been who have been born with natural voice voices. But if you don't take care of it right way I think you can even spoil the natural voice very. But and I when I started to take lessons

I couldn't find a very good voice teacher I my very very first voice teacher wasn't a cunt when I was born. But since I wanted to go to Stockholm and study I couldn't you know take the teacher with me so I had to look for somebody else and I I looked up to different. Which one which I had unusual eyecare to me and they were both very bad for me. And after that I decided my I would you know do with myself and I was listening and I was feeling and I was practicing and and I learned very much every evening I was standing on stage and I think it is the best school because one learns so much from evening to evening by singing I roll and feeling you know how Ron feels if it's tired if this partyers one or what one is doing wrong and so and so I love to work with coaches because they are most great musicians and they have a lot to teach you and I am thankful to all of them. But to us for our service voice to go I I have been pretty much on my own.

We worked up a dramatic angle to as well. Oh no I have been working with a lot of our first stage directors and I had a teacher say in the opera school and I had to. Where I live I started and of course one has to think you know one has to get a conception of the role one has to think so and so. I see the world from that on this point. So but I would say I am working. You know the dramatic the acting business myself because I have to cooperate with all of the different banks Sambo's and all the different stage directors and one has to take out the best of everything and then try to to to get it into one's mind and then to build up the whole conception of that. When your conception seems to be changing because I know that all of your roles are different almost from season to season and this is you know very dramatically demonstrated by some of

the recordings that you make where for example now there just been a second recording of touring dogma second recording of OC you're out and everyone has noticed that it's not at all the same as the first one. I don't know if I should take it as a compliment or not what you mean about chains this is developing it well. It's hard to know because in the beginning you know when the first one would come out everyone said this is great. And then. In the case of the vulgar I guess what it's maybe two three years later they come out and say this no one is even better. I'm glad I'm here to say that because I always thinking out. I'm always thinking of that I have to develop as far as I can as much as I can. However if I am successful I don't know. And as I always try to to to change my roles and made my way to the better. And I always think them true and I think I

first try to find something new in everything and even them. About the recordings I was maybe early a little bit lazy about my poem sation about two words you know about all I am born in Sweden I never have any opportunity to sing in my own language. Everybody who has to do this must understand how terrible difficult it is. If we are singing can sing in our own language like the Italian always DOS or the German. It is so easy to get the right expression and to get a strong expression. But when one half of the fun to do work with a foreign language and one really things one is putting everything into it but distinctly less because it is a foreign language for us and that is right. Now since I'm more and more get familiar with with the language in which I sing my operas I try to put more and

more intention to the words and the meaning and the phrasing. And there's of course the way I also try to do in my acting as far because I think even if they say well that I have had a good success and I am a good singer I go actor. But everybody has to develop because if if I would just remain on the same place as I did on my own they view the public would look at me as I was you know going backwards. Can I also once said it's no problem to reach the top. But that is a problem too. To remain there and to be able to remain at the top that we can always only do to go in Firdos trying harder developing. How are you. How much for the now do you think you can go. Let's talk not in terms of your you know the quality of performances but in in terms of roles

I don't know you have any plans for new ones. If anybody can show me a role which is more interesting to act and sing than deuce I already have on my patter I would be very glad to study them. But for the moment I think I have to greatest roles which belong to my repertoire. I already have them and I'm only only singing them and do the roles which I haven't been saying I think it would be a let down because I don't find them as interesting as those which I already have been singing. Except maybe I would want to fly I want to show them the dyer's wife I don't know maybe it would be an idea. What about something like Norma. I don't know I don't think my code to write is good enough. Well I will tell you the truth I am lazy. I can sing color throughout but I have to do I have to have my

voice in two hours at least one hour you know and it's so long time and then finally the great voice gets very light and then begins to work. So if they did I would have been written in the end I don't know probably better beginning maybe I would think of taking over the role. But I one of the very last things you did at the old Metropolitan was to sing and Elizabeth verse same performance of tone was what made you want to do it. Well I don't know it was just being you know where he is who who is try to convince me that I should do it. Some years ago I had the same offer for reel of Wagner. And I was very interesting in it but I couldn't do it because the my rehearsals for the ring with Balkan Wagner was just interfering with each other's. So I had to refuse it. But then I've been playing with it thought and and being the mystery being offered me that I said OK but the closer I came to the premier the more unsure. So I

was the week before I was absolutely myself that I thought I should never do that who is the biggest. It will be the biggest fiasco in the world but the critics were very nice and I had very good success then and it was it was great fun. I even think that my Elizabeth became better. Because I was singing Venus before so I was really warmed up when I came you know he was Elizabeth. I felt more much more free and much more ease that way. What happens as I'm sure most known and your ideas about an opera don't agree say with the conductors of the stage directors or something. Would you say your temperamental or. No I don't think I have been to temperament to wonder since the chief very seldom achieve anything by being too temperament to kill when Always good to the people always will say ones back that

well she has a hard time for as he said that prima donna and I don't think one achieves really what one wants. I think most of the time when she's by you know telling something very firm and very very sure of it and I wanted that in that way and I think it should be done and then we have to you know discuss us together solution of the problems. Cause. If something happens during a performance and if I see somebody who is not doing too trying to do their best if you see a you know a conductor who is going along conducting without a score or not knowing that they are prime they're leaving the course on the soloists you know behind or on their own. I get very annoyed and I think everybody would do that because I try to give my very very best and that is what I what I ask of everybody else and they're in the wind when I see they're

not doing it I can be very very annoyed and I just think that's that's not good enough. Just try to to make a show off or something like that. That said the public pay pay the highest price for the tickets and they want to see the very very best and at least when everybody tries to do their best. We cannot blame them but if they don't even try it's very bad. You once said it. Seem to recall once that you were done Solomon I believe in Munich or someplace and had been dissatisfied with the way the way the dancers come out and so that you wouldn't do it again. And I saw that I was surprised when I guess it was two seasons ago you made you first saw me at the Metropolitan. Yes when I started out to do him. I started out to do it in Stockholm and at the time I had been sick I had a

player it was you know I don't know why you call him. Yeah so I was not allowed to work very hard so we mixed up the day then as with the other. Ballerinas too but I was in it we were a lot of you know people it was moving around. And that was okay and then finally I came to Munich and the stage director he didn't want me to dance because he said it's too much for us all the way if you have to sing the final scene I don't want there's too much then to dance because they can never sing the final scene after. So I I agreed to that. And somebody else was then saying but there were time then when I came in after them and I had to take a complement from the King Herod when he says oh oh wonderful wonderful you have been dancing for me I was blushing and felt very much ashamed because it was a fake I had been dancing in every race thing to 12 minutes to spare because it was very very good for my voice but I

felt I felt uncomfortable. So finally then I decided to dance myself and I have been doing that since it was of the same performance when the head came up out of the system with a cigarette in its mouth. But it did happen once I think in the end it was maybe a made up story. And one of your many traced on performances you found yourself with an unusual situation with a couple of your turners being so over the years I remember Mr Big he called me up the morning of the performance and he said Mr v nice sake. Mr. LIEBELER second Mr Darkhorse that he only noted third act. Of Tristan. So I said I would be no Tristan tonight. Yes there will be would run ten or anything but it was fantastic experience and they want to take a picture of all those

three twisters. But as the trace that only had two different costumes and are proud one has to take a picture and hes over there with make up on. Its very funny. Then later on it having to save in the balcony or the vote bam cancel after the second act so they had to change to another author. But that was not I who was singing the hell of the time it was Margaret harsher. And later on when she made her 20th anniversary here and they gave her presents and flowers and so somebody said where it has been granted to call sometimes and it has not been very easy to sing too with two different fathers in one arc for us. What an opera that Mr being said what's about to for those big ears will have been singing with ray trace. So that is absolutely nothing Mr. Bingley said and then of course your answer. Oh I would rather prefer to have three lovers through fire.

How do you feel about leaving the old Metropolitan. You've been there for what seven seasons and you must have formed something of an attachment to the old house. Well I was looking forward to being in a new house I was where I was quite happy all the time until the last performance and the last gala performance then finally I I got so many emotions so I was weeping a little bit too. I thought it was you know how so full of traditions and there has been you know having so many wonderful artists. It was a great moment to say goodbye. But you know there was so bad conditions behind the stage and it was absolutely impossible to continue working there. One has to face the reality. And so what can one do. That was the one and only bit of good Nielson as she discussed her career at the

old Metropolitan when she spoke recently with our producer Richard Calhoun. Much to everyone's shock and dismay However this 1959 season which had begun so gloriously with Madame Nielsen's debut ended amidst an air of gloom and tragedy on March 4th Leonard Warren suddenly pitched forward and collapsed on stage during a performance of the fall of the Delta Steen or the curtain fell at once the horrified audience waited fretfully for more than half an hour. And then Rudolf being appeared before the footlights. This he said is one of the saddest nights in the history of the Metropolitan. The audience gasped No no. May I ask you all to rise. Mr. Bing continued in memory of one of our greatest performers who died in the middle of one of his greatest performances. Nothing more could be said. The Metropolitan had suffered a blow that cannot be described by mere words alone. Next

week we'll be hearing about a somewhat different aspect of opera at the Metropolitan. As Dame Alicia Mata called tells us about the intricate problems of directing the company's called a ballet. I hope you will plan to be with us again then. For now this is Milton Cross on behalf of Myles Kasten Deek thanking you for listening. Her. Long long her long in the thigh. In the nude. Lauren. Boston University Radio has presented Hall of song the story of the Metropolitan Opera from 1883 to 966. The series is created and produced by Richard Calhoun a grant from the National Home Library Foundation has made possible the production of these programs for national

educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.