The Leonard Bernstein Letters (49 page)

94
In spring 1947, Bernstein was listed as a member of the Renée Longy Miquelle anniversary committee, set up to celebrate her 50th birthday. It is a sign of how widely admired she was that the members of the committee included Samuel Barber, Olin Downes, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Fritz Reiner, and Randall Thompson. Its aim was to encourage donations from friends, colleagues, and former pupils to pay the outstanding mortgage on her cottage on Cape Cod to “insure her future security” in honor of her “long-standing devotion to the profession.”

95
Sid Ramin married Gloria Breit on 9 January 1949.

96
Note in Helen Coates' hand: “Tried to call him but he was in Boston.”

97
April 1947 was a crucial time in the history of Palestine, soon to become Israel. On 2 April the British government referred the problem of the future of Palestine to the United Nations, and on 13 May the UN appointed a Special Committee to examine the question of Palestine.

98
Bernstein conducted the European premiere of Copland's Third Symphony with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra on 25 May 1947, at the Prague Spring Festival.

99
Koussevitzky had commissioned Copland's Third Symphony, and gave the first performance in Boston on 18 October 1946.

100
Thomson's
The Mother of Us All
was first performed on 7 May 1947 at Columbia University. The cast included Teresa Stich-Randall as Henrietta, her operatic debut.

101
In the Beginning
was first performed on 2 May 1947 at Harvard Memorial Chapel by the Collegiate Chorale, conducted by Robert Shaw.

102
Romolo de Spirito (sometimes given as “di Spirito”), a tenor who specialized in the performance of music by American composers. In his New York debut recital (27 February 1944) he included songs by Paul Bowles, David Diamond, and Virgil Thomson.

103
Carrington Welch, who was Romolo de Spirito's regular accompanist.

104
The legendary singer and actress Lena Horne (1917–2010) was closely involved in the civil rights movement. She fought institutional racism in Hollywood in the 1940s (her scenes were customarily shot so that they could be removed for distribution to states in the South), she refused to sing for segregated audiences of troops, and she worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws. She was named as a Communist sympathizer – along with the likes of Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Aaron Copland, Judy Holliday, Langston Hughes, Burl Ives, Zero Mostel, Dorothy Parker, Pete Seeger, and Artie Shaw – in the infamous
Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television
(1950), and she was blacklisted by Hollywood. After her death in 2010, the president of the NAACP – America's oldest and largest civil rights organization – described Horne as “an outstanding, groundbreaking entertainer and a staunch civil rights activist who stood on the side of justice and equality. Lena Horne won the hearts of millions of Americans of all backgrounds as a glamorous and graceful actress and singer. She broke many color barriers and fought valiantly to bring down the institutionalized racism that plagues our society and prevents all Americans from an equal opportunity to pursue the American dream.”

105
This may have been the occasion referred to by the television personality Ed Sullivan – “at the very least a facilitator, if not an informant, for the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee” (Vaill 2007, p. 171) – when he put pressure on Jerome Robbins in 1950 to disclose “the names of people who had been at a cause party for Soviet–American friendship he'd allowed the singer Lena Horne to give at his apartment” (Vaill 2007, p. 172). At that point Robbins did not name names, though he did so when he testified in public to the HUAC in May 1953.

106
This was one of many organizations supporting African-American causes that came under suspicion from the government. FBI records reveal that the United Negro and Allied Veterans of America was described by US Attorney General Tom Clark on 4 December 1947 as “subversive and among the affiliates and committees of the Communist Party, U.S.A. which seeks to alter the form of government of the United States by unconstitutional means.”

107
Richard Adams Romney (1918–2009) was often known to his friends as “Twig”. A collection of letters to him from Bernstein, Christopher Isherwood, Osbert Sitwell, Pavel Tchelitchew, John Van Druten, and others is to be found in Yale University Library (Beinecke Library, Gen Mss 462). Romney's obituary published in the
Albany Times Union
(19 July 2009) includes the following information: “Richard Adams Romney, born July 15, 1918 in Salt Lake City, Utah, died in Troy, N.Y. on July 15, 2009. Mr. Romney had been a resident of the Van Rensselaer Manor since September 2001 where he received wonderful care and made many friends. A veteran of the US Coast Guard, he served in the North Sea, receiving an honorable discharge in 1944. Mr. Romney was a resident of Manhattan's Upper East Side from 1945 to 1997 where he worked in the real estate and insurance industries. From 1950 to 1954, he was a gallery assistant at the Betty Parsons Gallery, Manhattan, the first home of artists like Ellsworth Kelly, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. He was the original owner of Pollock's
Number 3, 1949
. The great relationship of his life was that with the American heiress and supporter of the arts, Alice De Lamar. Their correspondence for half a century resides in the Beinecke at Yale. There are no surviving family members.”

108
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Romney had served as a Coast Guard in the Second World War.

109
The Gallery
by John Horne Burns (1916–53) was published in the summer of 1947 and acclaimed by the likes of Gore Vidal, Edmund Wilson, and John Dos Passos. Burns, a Harvard graduate, served as a US intelligence officer in North Africa and Italy during the war, and his book is one of the first to explore gay life in the army.

110
This letter indicates that the suggestion for using Auden's
The Age of Anxiety
as an inspiration came initially from Romney, who developed his idea in the letter of 29 July 1947. Romney sent Bernstein a copy of the poem very soon after it was first published in July 1947. In Bernstein's reply of 1 August he thanks Romney for the books, but after that there is no mention of
The Age of Anxiety
in his letters to Romney until May 1950.

111
Romney predicts the early performance history of
The Age of Anxiety
with uncanny accuracy. After its first concert performances in 1949, the work was used for a ballet by Jerome Robbins in 1950.

112
Presumably a reference to Bernstein's concert at Tanglewood on 27 July 1947 when he conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Mozart's
Magic Flute
Overture, Schubert's “Great” C major Symphony, and Stravinsky's
Rite of Spring
, the first time anyone other than Koussevitzky had conducted the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood.
The New York Times
reported that the concert was attended by 8,500 people and that “Dr Koussevitzky listened from his box in the center of the music shed, and later appeared on the stage to congratulate Mr. Bernstein.”

113
Whatever was “enclosed” has not survived.

114
James M. Cain (1892–1977) was an American writer and journalist whose novels included
The Postman Always Rings Twice
(1934),
Mildred Pierce
(1941) and
Double Indemnity
(1943) as well as
Serenade
(1937). Though Cain disliked the label, he was one of the leading writers of “hardboiled” crime fiction.

115
The “most successful operetta composer we have” and the “highly successful librettist” who had approached Cain (in 1940) were Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II (see Hoopes 1982, p. 366), so Bernstein had reason to be flattered by Cain's positive response to his request for permission to base an opera on
Serenade
.

116
This project was reported in
The New York Times
more than a year after the exchange of letters between Bernstein and Cain. On 5 December 1948 an article headed “Opera Projects” stated: “Leonard Bernstein has asked James M. Cain for permission to base an opera on
Serenade
. He also asked Mr. Cain to write the libretto for him. The author declined the job, suggesting the composer was competent to write his own book. He promised, though, that he would give no one else prior operatic rights to the novel before the end of the year. He himself is skeptical about the project, for he wrote his agent, Harold Ober: ‘I know that anyone who undertakes any stage work based on this book is letting himself in for a thousand headaches.’ It was in April that Mr. Bernstein gained his promise from Mr. Cain. Since the composer–conductor will not be back from Palestine till some time this week, it is not known how far he has gone with his plans.” In fact, this project went back to the autumn of 1947, as we see in the correspondence between Cain and Bernstein.

117
The “theme” of
Serenade
referred to in the letters between Cain and Bernstein needs some explanation. In the original novel, the opera singer John Howard Sharp loses his voice, ostensibly as a consequence of the trauma of his gay relationship with a famous conductor. His voice is restored when he falls in love with a young Mexican prostitute. Cain explained his premise in a letter to his old friend (and erstwhile colleague on the
Baltimore Sun
), H. L. Mencken: “The lamentable sounds that issue from a homo's throat when he sings are a matter of personal observation. … But the theme demanded the next step, the unwarranted corollary that heavy workouts with a woman would bring out the stud horse high notes” (see Paul Skenazy,
James M. Cain
, New York: Continuum, 1989, p. 54). In the end, Bernstein abandoned his
Serenade
project, but a few years later plans were made for a Broadway musical based on the same story. Louis Calta reported in
The New York Times
on 11 November 1954 that “The musical stage rights to
Serenade
, James M. Cain's earthy and highly successful novel of 1937, have been purchased […] Arthur Laurents […] has agreed to do the adaptation. Shortly the producers hope to announce the composer and lyricist for the musical venture.” Stephen Sondheim was auditioned as a potential lyric writer, and Bernstein was asked whether he wanted to compose the score (see his letter of 6 May 1955 to Felicia, Letter 353). This project, too, came to nothing. The 1956 film adaptation of
Serenade
, starring Mario Lanza, differs wildly from Cain's novel.

118
Cain's new wife, Florence Macbeth, was an opera singer.

119
Cain attached a formal agreement, reserving for Bernstein the dramatic rights to
Serenade
until 31 December 1948.

120
Burr was Vice-President of the United States under Thomas Jefferson. In 1804, he challenged Alexander Hamilton (former Secretary to the Treasury) to a duel in which Hamilton was mortally wounded.

121
A report of the concert appeared in
The New York Times
on 11 May 1948: “at the close of the performance, the audience stood on its feet and applauded [Bernstein] for more than ten minutes in repeated curtain calls, amid a storm of ‘bravos’. After the first half dozen bows, Bernstein returned to the podium and with the orchestra, repeated the final portion of the [Ravel] concerto.”

122
Bruno Walter conducted Mahler's
Resurrection
Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic in the Musikverein on 15 May 1948. It's extraordinary to think that this legendary – and marvelous – performance (with Maria Cebotari and Rosette Anday as the soloists) was given to a half-full house. A recording of it has been issued on CD by Sony Japan (SICC 92–3) and others.

123
“All Vienna in one go,” but Bernstein's Viennese debut was also his one and only concert with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. The program consisted of Schumann's Second Symphony, the Dvořák Violin Concerto (with Gerhard Taschner), and the Ravel G major Piano Concerto with Bernstein directing from the piano. Bernstein's report of an enthusiastic audience may be true, but the concert wasn't a critical success: according to Burton (1994, p. 178), “several Viennese critics disliked Bernstein's conducting style intensely […] he did not work again with the Vienna Symphony and it was nearly twenty years before he overcame his prejudice and accepted another Viennese conducting engagement.”

124
Koussevitzky sent a telegram on 9 November 1948: “Deeply moved your letter authorize you select outstanding student conductor. Heartiest greetings to all and orchestra. Love Serge Koussevitzky.”

125
Bernstein was never afraid to make cuts in recent pieces, even ones as substantial and significant as Copland's Third Symphony.

126
This latest love may well have been Yossi Stern, the Hungarian-born Israeli artist (1923–92), who illustrated Letter 276.

127
This letter, describing Bernstein's experiences in Israel, is illustrated on every page by Yossi Stern.

128
Yardena Cohen (1910–2012), Israeli dancer, choreographer, and teacher. In the 1940s this legendary figure in the dance history of Israel created dance dramas and pageants for kibbutzim. Many of these featured female characters in the Old Testament as the central roles. Cohen opened her Haifa dance studio in 1933 and ran it for the next seventy years. She died on 23 January 2012, at the age of 101.

129
The “Furtwängler & Gieseking business” is a reference to the banning of Walter Gieseking from a concert tour of the United States at the time Bernstein sent this letter, and of Wilhelm Furtwängler from returning to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic the same month, both because of concerns about their Nazi past. The “
echt
Fascism” that so enraged Bernstein was taking place in Detroit. According to a report in
The New York Times
on 21 January 1949, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra “had been warned by Mr. [Henry] Reichhold that every man would be fired if that were necessary to weed out disloyalty to the conductor [Karl Krueger].” Reichhold, the orchestra's president added: “I think a shake-up and good housecleaning is just what the Detroit orchestra needs.” Georges Miquelle, the orchestra's principal cellist (married to Renée Longy Miquelle in 1919; they later divorced) was fired in public by Reichhold during a rehearsal on the grounds that he had apologized to the violinist Erica Morini about the orchestra's poor accompaniment for her – an apology that both Miquelle and Morini denied was ever made.