The Bravest Voices

by Ida Cook

  How the years and the miles fell away again. Last time, it had been The Marriage of Figaro in Salzburg and war was just over the horizon.

  We went around afterward and just stood in the doorway of his dressing room and grinned.

  “Good lord!” Pinza said. “Where did you two spring from?”

  “We just arrived from England this morning,” we explained airily, “and thought we’d come and hear the best basso in the world tonight.”

  Then we all laughed and were suddenly exchanging the news of the years in between. It was all like something one invents in a nostalgic daydream. But this was really happening.

  Ten magical days in New York followed. Days of reunion and reminiscences and endless discussion. We ought to have been worn out, but one has wonderful staying power when one is so happy.

  Backed by the letter of introduction from our old friend in the Covent Garden queue, we telephoned Geraldine Farrar and were immediately invited, in the kindest terms possible, to come out to Connecticut and visit her in her home there. And one cold day, when a light powdering of snow lay on the hills, we motored out to Ridgefield to meet one of the brightest stars of other years.

  With characteristic and enchanting humour, Geraldine Farrar described herself as “a prima donna of ancient vintage,” but if ever anyone had the secret of eternal youth, she had. I am, as everyone who knows me will confirm, a chatterer by nature, but I would willingly have sat silent for hours while Geraldine Farrar talked. She still retained a vitality, a charm, a wit that would have made her the centre of any stage, and we could not hear enough of her recollections of the great operatic years through which she had moved as a queen.

  Her turn of phrase was superb. It was she who said of Caruso: “I sang with every great tenor of my time, but there was not one who was fit to polish a jewel in his crown.”

  Later in that unforgettable afternoon, our dear Elisabeth Rethberg came to collect us and drive us over to her country home nearby. But first, we all had tea together. And though, of course, the warm friendliness of the occasion was what really mattered to Louise and me, perhaps a certain measure of pride may be forgiven us. We smiled at each other across the table, as on either side of us sat an operatic star whom all the world had been delighted to honour. I think no operatic fan would hold it against us that our heads would probably not have fitted our hats at that moment.

  A few days later, we took another airplane to California, where Lita and Homer waited.

  We arrived early on a hot afternoon and called them before we had taken our coats off. Homer answered and promptly said, “Can you girls be ready in twenty minutes? We’re taking you to a concert, and we’ll be with you as soon as we can make the hotel.”

  It was wonderful how none of the previous reunions ever took the edge off the next one. It would have been worth coming the 6,000 miles only to embrace Homer and then rush out to Lita, waiting outside in the car, and overwhelm her with kisses in her turn. We were fulfilling all we had promised ourselves that night we had crouched under the dining-room table while the flying bombs whizzed past overhead.

  For the four days we were able to spend in Los Angeles, Lita and Homer had cleared the decks of every other social engagement. All their time was ours. We drove around in their car and saw something of that then-beautiful garden city of the west, or sat in their enchanting bungalow or sometimes on the side of the beds in our hotel bedroom—or wherever it was most convenient and easy to park ourselves while we talked and talked and talked.

  After all, we had thirteen years’ news to exchange. There was so much we had done that had to be told and re-told and enjoyed. Our method of voice production must have been pretty nearly as good as Lita’s own, we decided, for our vocal chords stood up to the strain splendidly.

  Even when the all-too-short visit was over and we had to say goodbye, we were sustained by the thought that we could plan for a foreseeable future once more. We promised that we would not let more than two years go past before we came again. And this promise, I am glad to say, we were able to keep.

  We went east once more to New York; then to Philadelphia, to Washington, even for one day to Virginia, just to take in everyone we had promised to see. And then, as we neared the end of this magical month, we took a train to Baltimore.

  It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, I remember—what we used to call “Ponselle weather” in her years at Covent Garden because, somehow, we always seemed to queue for her performances in sunshine. Earlier in the visit, we had telephoned to make final arrangements, but Rosa had been away from home. However, we had spoken to her husband, Carle Jackson, who had made us unreservedly welcome and promised that he would himself meet us at Baltimore station.

  We had no difficulty in recognizing each other—I suppose we looked very British—and we were soon in the car and heading for Villa Pace. At this point, and with a calmness we were afterwards to find characteristic of him, Carle dropped a bombshell.

  “I didn’t tell you on the telephone,” he said, “because I knew you’d think it necessary to be polite and make all sorts of excuses about not coming after all, but Rosa isn’t at home. She’s in a nursing home and won’t be back for a couple of days.”

  In answer to our chorus of anxious enquiries, he assured us that she was not seriously ill and that we should certainly see her during our visit. Meanwhile, he did everything a perfect host could do to make us feel at home, and several of their friends on the neighbouring estates were equally determined to see that we enjoyed our visit. It was impossible not to feel some disappointment, of course, but it was equally impossible not to have that disappointment yield before all the kindness and thoughtfulness that was lavished upon us. We might have been lifelong friends, rather than two unknown admirers out of the past. And to this day, Louise and I feel grateful to Carle.

  There we were, installed at Villa Pace in a room that was so exactly like the last act of Traviata that every time I sat down before the mirror, I felt I ought to sing the “Addio.” And although that room has become very much ours over the years, we still sometimes feel a little as if we have strayed onto the stage by mistake and may be called upon, most disastrously, to do some singing on our own account.

  On the afternoon before he went to fetch Rosa home, Carle said unexpectedly, “You realize, I suppose, that Rosa’s rather scared about meeting you?”

  This was such a complete reversal of what we considered to be the natural order of things that we cried in chorus, “Scared? Of us? Why?”

  “Oh, well, you knew her in the greatest days of her fame and glamour,” Carle explained. “And she has some idea that you may be disappointed, may find her changed.”

  “But, good heavens, what about our sensitive feelings?” I asked. “If she remembers us at all, she remembers us as gallery girls, and we’ve come back as nearly middle-aged women, if you like to look at it that way. What about our feeling scared?”

  Carle laughed at that, and said, “Oh, but you know what Rosa is.”

  We didn’t, of course. But it was gratifying to have it implied that we did. And then he went to fetch her.

  It was very strange, that last half hour before she came. Something like the nerve-racking wait for the phone call that first time we spoke to her again. We felt very keyed up until we heard the sound of the car returning, then all I could remember was Carle saying that she was scared at the thought of meeting us, and I said to Louise, “Don’t let’s leave her to walk in and have to make an entry. Let’s go down to her.”

  So we ran down the stairs from our Traviata room lookout and flung open her own front door to her.

  She stood there on the threshold, our Rosa, looking as we had always remembered her and had always hoped somehow to see her again. Her eyes were wide and dark, like a Verdi heroine, and there was that indescribable air of drama about her that was absolutely natural. She was as beautiful and glamourous as ever
. And she was ours once more.

  “Rosa!” we cried in chorus. “Darling Rosa!” And we threw our arms around her and embraced her.

  It would be unrealistic to believe in a strict scheme of reward and punishment in this life, but I do know that was God’s reward to us for the refugee work.

  Really, there was very little we found to say to each other in the first few minutes. I think she was probably as moved as we were. But presently we began to talk very much of the past—it amused her to find that we remembered far more details of casts and dates and artists than she did—a good deal of the present and because we were already laying the foundations of a friendship that was to mean so much to us all, something of the future, too.

  It was impossible to describe in detail the full joy and wonder of that visit. Then, and on subsequent visits that followed over the years, she sang to us, told us operatic stories, answered our endless questions about the details of her career, showed us the glorious stage costumes she had worn, allowed us to take our pick of the tremendous collection of photographs she had and in every way, did all that she could to recreate for us the things which we had feared lost.

  Our greatest discovery on those early visits was that the voice, that dark, matchless voice that had set the standard for us for all time, was absolutely unimpaired. We also discovered that the fascinating, almost melodramatic personality that had enchanted us across the footlights was as endlessly intriguing offstage.

  At first, we simply could not resign ourselves to the idea that she absolutely refused to sing in public any more, and we pestered her with, “Why?”

  She finally came back with the indisputable reply: “For nineteen years, I was a slave to my art—and I mean a slave. I am not prepared to do that any more. But nor am I prepared to be less than perfect. That’s all.”

  Anything after those days at Villa Pace would have been an anticlimax, and perhaps it was just as well that they came at the end of our trip. It was hard saying goodbye, but we knew now that we had forged links that would never be broken. There was always Rosa, and we need never fear anything else.

  By the time we returned to England, we had not only done all the things we had vowed we would do, seen all the people we had determined to see and enjoyed every thrill that we had hoped to enjoy; we had also laid the foundations of a future in which we could expect something of the sort of crazy, delightful planning that had once been the breath of life to us.

  Life would, naturally, never be quite the same as when we were very young. We did not even wish it to be. All we had asked was that it might be recast in something of the old pattern, and up to a point, this had been accomplished.

  In the autumn of that year, we learned that the Vienna Opera Company was to pay London a visit. Krauss was to be among the conductors, and we knew that meant Ursuleac would come too. It was the first real news, as distinct from rumours and counter-rumours, we had had of them. All we had known for certain before then was that they were alive.

  Louise and I had vague ideas that the time would come when we could revisit Europe at last and find them. We had somehow never thought that it would be the other way around, that they would come to us. We had visualized our meeting in Munich, in Vienna, in Salzburg, in any one of those ghost-filled cities. Instead, we met them in Victoria Station, amid the whistling of engines, the rumblings of trucks and the impatient cries of porters.

  The train was full of Vienna Opera personnel. One figure after another from the old days presented themselves to our fascinated gaze, as Louise and I hurried from group to group, looking for the two who really mattered to us.

  And then we saw them.

  They had never expected us to be at the station. They had written several times, we learned afterwards, but none of the letters had arrived, and from us there had been only a deep and, I suppose, rather ominous silence. They had not even known that we were alive, until a very recent postcard from Mitia. Years of war had rolled in between, and who was to know how friends on opposite sides felt toward each other when so much blood had been spilt?

  There was not much doubt about how we, or they, felt as we ran to greet them. The sheer discovery of each other again was all that counted. Once more, the rapture of reunion. Once more, the exclamations, the questions, the half-answers, more questions and the endless exchange of news. It seemed that we would never be able to say or hear enough of what had happened in the years in between.

  And then, the next day, we took them for the first time to the flat; the place where we had worked out in detail the task on which they had, almost unwittingly, started us. The visit was a curiously moving experience.

  From the earliest days in the flat, we had amused ourselves by declaring that we would have them there one day. Now they were there, and amazingly at home they looked in that setting, too.

  We asked after their own beautiful flat in Munich. When a phosphorous bomb hit the place, the apartment and practically everything they possessed had been destroyed. We started to say something sympathetic, but Krauss dismissed our exclamations with a gesture of his hand.

  “Why complain?” he said. “We are alive, when many people are dead. We are lucky. Let’s admit it.”

  It was true, of course. So we talked instead of the days before the war, when we had dashed back and forth to the Continent under cover of those operatic performances. We discovered for the first time just how clearly they had understood what we had been doing, and just how completely they had cooperated on some occasions when we had not even realized the fact.

  We also learned, not from them, but from others, that the work had not completely ceased when war broke. Even after that, they had had a hand in some interesting escapes, notably that of Lothar Wallerstein, the well-known operatic producer who, having escaped before the war, was caught again when the Germans entered Holland. Krauss and two other good friends from the Vienna Opera exerted much pressure and finally succeeded in having him released with permission to go to America.

  To Wallerstein’s credit, let it be said, he returned years later to testify on Krauss’s behalf at the deNazification proceedings. Although he had resisted all attempts to make him join the Party, these proceedings were necessary because Krauss had held a high position in the German musical world throughout the war years. This was, understandably, the fate of many fine artists who had done no more than pursue their profession during those troubled years. I don’t think many of them resented the inevitable inquisition into their behaviour during those years. What was contemptible and damaging was the amount of intriguing and false witnessing among lesser artistic rivals who sought to oust those whose places they hoped to take.

  In connection with these same deNazification proceedings, it is irresistible to tell one anecdote that shows the true Krauss-ian touch of humour.

  He was asked—as he had to be asked—if he had ever visited Hitler at Berchtesgarten.

  “Oh, yes,” Krauss said frankly. “Certainly.”

  “How often?”

  “Once,” was the answer.

  “And when?” he was asked.

  “I cannot recall the exact date,” Krauss explained courteously, “but it should not be difficult to check. It was exactly one week after Mr. Chamberlain visited him there.”

  During the weeks that the Vienna Opera Company remained in London, there were countless meetings among those who had not seen each other for years. For us, the most significant and charming was a supper party we organized at a quiet Soho restaurant.

  There were nine of us. Krauss and Ursuleac, Louise and I, Mitia—representing the very beginning of our refugee work—and Elsa, and the three Maliniaks—almost the last people we had brought out of Europe, representing, in a sense, the completion of our work.

  We were all in tremendous spirits, though inwardly deeply moved to meet like this after so many years, and we were determined to drink a triumphant toast to “R
eunion outside Vienna.”

  Our waitress, I noticed, was obviously interested in our group and beamed upon Krauss with such approval that I saw she must have recognized him. She so evidently wanted to say something that I whispered to her, “What is it?”

  It appeared that she wanted Krauss’s autograph.

  Guessing that he was in a mood to refuse nothing that evening, I told her to go and ask for it, assuring her that he would give it. Sure enough, he smilingly complied, and Louise, in sympathy with a fellow star-gazer, said, “If you collect autographs, you should ask this lady too. She is a very famous singer, Viorica Ursuleac.”

  “Why,” the girl cried, “of course! I hadn’t realized for a moment that it was Frau Ursuleac.”

  We all gazed at her in surprise, and I said, “Do you know them, then?”

  “Know them?” she exclaimed, flushing and laughing, and yet a little tearful too. “Know them? Of course I know them. I come from Vienna. Many, many times I heard Mr. Krauss conduct. I never thought I should wait on him in a London restaurant.”

  We were dumb for a moment. Somehow, she was a symbol, this unknown girl from Vienna, of all the thousands of grains of sand that had been stirred by the tide of history and now were settling down on the quieter shores. She was of the old days, and yet she was of the new. To her, Krauss and she were part of Vienna; to us, she and we were part of London.

  So I said, “Go and fetch yourself something to drink with us. We have met together for the first time for many, many years. We are going to drink a toast to our reunion. Come and drink it with us, because you come from Vienna.”

  She brought her glass to our table and we all stood up. I suppose the other people in the restaurant thought we were a bit mad. But we clinked glasses with each other across the table and drank to the fact that we had all, in our different ways, survived the hurricane that had swept over Europe and lived to smile at each other again in a London restaurant.