The Funniest People in Music – Page 10

David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music — Audiences, Auditions, Autographs

Audiences

• Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was so distressed by the lack of manners displayed by audiences that he decided to do something about it. At a concert, he had many musicians arrive late and noisily make their way to their seats. He also had some musicians talk noisily throughout the concert. Finally, he had some of the musicians leave the concert in a hurry a few minutes before the performance was finished. The audience laughed at the actions of the musicians, but the audience continued to act the same way it had been acting.

• Celebrities are adored everywhere, but are they adored for their talents or for the hype surrounding them? Enrico Caruso — a gifted tenor — once decided to find out. During a performance of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, he stood off stage and sang Beppe’s Act II serenade. Had he been onstage, he would have caused a sensation, but after he had sung out of the sight of the audience (without his presence having been announced), no one applauded his singing.

• Sir Rudolf Bing enjoyed telling the story of an incompetent tenor from Chemnitz who went to Bremen for an audition. Although the tenor was terrible, many people in the audience applauded and shouted such encouragement as “Wonderful! Wonderful! Stay here! Stay here!” Why? Because many of the members of the audience were from Chemnitz.

• Hans von Bülow once played piano in front of a very appreciative audience, and even after he had played several encores, the audience showed no signs of going home. Therefore, Von Bülow threatened, “If you don’t stop this applause, I will play all of Bach’s 48 preludes and fugues, from beginning to end!” The threat worked, and the audience went home.

• Audiences tend to like happy endings. Gioacchino Rossini wrote the opera Otello, based of course on William Shakespeare’s Othello, but the audience hated the ending, and kept trying to warn Desdemona that Othello was going to murder her. Eventually, Rossini was forced to change the ending to a happy one where Othello and Desdemona reconcile.

• In 1949, before Victoria de los Angeles had become a famous soprano, she traveled to Oslo for two concerts. At the first concert, barely 30 people attended. However, news of good singers travels fast. At the second concert only two days later, over 1,000 people tried to attend the concert but couldn’t because the concert hall was full.

Auditions

• James Morris’ voice teacher, Nicola Moscona, helped him greatly during his audition with the Metropolitan Opera. On the morning of the audition, Mr. Morris was understandably nervous, and he vomited. He telephoned Mr. Moscona, who took him — and a bag — to the Met. During the audition, Mr. Morris sang one aria, but when he was asked to sing another, his mind went blank. Fortunately, Mr. Moscona hissed at him, “Simone, stupido, Simone.” Mr. Morris sang the Simone Boccanegrabass aria and the Met offered him a contract.

• Early in her career, Moravian soprano Maria Jeritza auditioned for the director of the Vienna Volksoper, Rainer Simons. Halfway through her first song, Micaeli’s aria from Carmen, he shouted, “Stop! That’s enough!” Ms. Jeritza complained that he hadn’t allowed her to finish even one song, but he explained, “I didn’t need any more — I’m engaging you.”

Autographs

• The great Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad used to enjoy giving autographs to fans who wrote to her for them, but she was surprised when several fans complained that the autographs weren’t genuine, but were instead written by her secretary. After investigating, she discovered what the problem was. Not only did Ms. Flagstad write the autograph, but she also wrote the names and addresses on the envelopes she used to send her autograph to her fans. Fans compared the writing, noticed that it was done by the same hand, and incorrectly concluded that a secretary had written the autographs.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music — Alcohol, Animals, Audiences

Alcohol

• During the early part of the 20^thcentury, dancer Anna Pavlova toured in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is famous for its beer. There, Ms. Pavlova’s music director, Theodore Stier, asked a traffic officer where he could find a place in Milwaukee that sold really good German beer. The traffic officer looked Mr. Stier over for a moment, and then he said, “Brother, there’s a place on every block — thank God!”

• Shortly after Edwin McArthur had become the accompanist for soprano Kirsten Flagstad, he struggled as he attempted to open a champagne bottle in her dressing room. She watched him for a moment and then told him, “Here, Edwin — this is more important for you to learn than all the songs we will do together.” She then taught him how to open a champagne bottle.

Animals

• While overseas entertaining troops in the Middle East during the Second World War, Joyce Grenfell was singing when a mouse ran over her foot. Because she was occupied, she didn’t even notice the mouse, but her accompanist did — and played the rest of the concert without using the piano’s pedals because she kept her feet off the floor. While in the Middle East, they were warned to shake out their shoes each morning before putting them on in case snakes or scorpions were curled up inside.

• In Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigolettois a scene in which the title character throws into a river a sack containing what is supposed to be the dead body of his enemy. Unfortunately, at a 1950 performance at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, a kitten wandered on stage during the scene and was fascinated with the sack. The kitten kept digging its claws into the sack, and the “dead body” inside the sack kept squirming. Finally, the singer playing Rigoletto noticed the kitten and removed it from the stage.

• Katheryn Bloodgood, a mezzo-soprano, was singing at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, when a bat flew into the recital hall. While she was finishing singing a Henschel lullaby that was supposed to end with the word “shu” sung very quietly, the bat flew directly at her. Instead of singing “shu” very quietly, she shrieked the word, and then ran offstage to escape from the bat.

• During a New Orleans production of the opera Nabucco, a horse committed a large indiscretion on stage. The producer, Jim Lucas, ordered the stagehands to clean up the mess, only to find out that they didn’t have a shovel. Angrily, he shouted, “Don’t you know you never hire a horse without a shovel?”

• The conductor Artur Nikisch was very popular and received many letters from women who asked him for a lock of his hair. A friend told him that he would soon go bald because he always responded to these letters. Mr. Nikisch smiled, and then said, “I won’t go bald — but my dog might.”

• Tenor Gilbert Louis Duprez once sang a high C in Gioacchino Rossini’s apartment. Mr. Rossini checked to see if any of his glassware had shattered; later, he said that the tone of the high C had been like “the squawk of a capon whose throat is being cut.”

Audiences

• In Vienna, Alfred Piccaver and Elizabeth Schumann gave a joint recital, the program of which promised that they would sing a duet from La Boheme. Unfortunately, the pianist brought the wrong music, so they sang a duet from Madama Butterflyinstead. Nevertheless, the audience declined to go home until they had heard the Bohemeduet, so the house manager asked the audience, “Is there a Boheme[score] in the house?” A person in the gallery answered, “I’ve got one.” Borrowing the score, the pianist played the duet and the audience was able to hear Mr. Piccaver and Ms. Schumann sing it.

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music — Activism, Age

Activism

• Jazz musician Duke Ellington was active in the civil rights movement. In Baltimore, he performed at a concert. Afterward, he presented himself at a restaurant where African-American students had protested segregation. Like the students, Mr. Ellington was not permitted to eat at the restaurant, but his action succeeded in giving lots of publicity to the civil rights struggle in Baltimore. In addition, Mr. Ellington declined to perform a concert in Little Rock, Arkansas, after learning that the audience would be segregated. A short time later, he did perform in Dallas and Houston — but only after he was promised that blacks and whites in the audience could sit together.

• Because African-American actor/singer Paul Robeson used his right of free speech to criticize prejudice and injustice in America, the United States government revoked his passport. In 1952, he attempted to cross the border into Canada — which was normally permitted even when one didn’t have a passport — but he was stopped at the border. It looked as if the concert he had planned to give to benefit Canadian union workers would have to be cancelled, but the workers traveled to the border, and Mr. Robeson sang to them from across the border in the United States.

• World-famous cellist Pablo Casals often took a stand for his beliefs. In Brussels, Belgium, he once declined to perform unless the musicians were paid for their rehearsal time. Tickets had been sold to the rehearsals, and Mr. Casals believed that the musicians ought to be paid when they performed at any event that people paid to attend. In addition, when Francisco Franco took control of Spain, Mr. Casals opposed him, and he declined to perform in countries that recognized Francisco Franco’s fascist government.

• On a trip to Southern Rhodesia, which was then part of the British empire but is now the self-ruled country of Zimbabwe, jazz musician Louis Armstrong insisted that he play only in front of integrated audiences. For the opening concert, 25,000 people showed up and the seats were filled with both blacks and whites. During his concert, Mr. Armstrong looked out over the audience and said, “I gotta tell y’all something — it’s very nice to see this.”

• Pianist Artur Rubinstein cancelled a tour in Italy because of the then-government’s anti-Semitism; he also returned a prestigious award — the Order of the Commander of the Crown. Although people talked about how much money Mr. Rubinstein would lose, he talked about how many hearts he would win. He signed the letter with which he returned the award, “Artur Rubinstein, Jewish pianist.”

• World-renowned conductor Pierre Monteux was once denied a room at a hotel, but when the manager discovered that Mr. Monteux was famous, he said that he could arrange a room for him because Mr. Monteux was “somebody.” Mr. Monteux refused the room and departed, saying, “Everybody is somebody.”

Age

• The aged conductor Serge Koussevitsky disliked the spiritless playing of a musician, so he told him, “Don’t play like an old man.” The musician responded, “You are an old man yourself.” Maestro Koussevitsky replied, “I know that. But when I conduct like an old man, I will give up the job.” The musician thereafter played with spirit.

• For decades, Sir Thomas Beecham conducted from memory. However, in his old age he sometimes used a score while conducting. When Neville Cardus asked him about this, Sir Thomas replied, “I have been going through my scores recently, and I find that they hold my interest from the first page to the last.”

• Latin singer Ricky Martin, famous especially for the huge hit “Livin’ la Vida Loca” (“Living the Crazy Life”), sang when he was a teenager as a member of the Latin boy band Menudo, but he left the group before he turned 18. He had to — the group’s mandatory retirement age is 17.

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