by Ida Cook
In 1934 Ida and Louise assist music lecturer Mitia Mayer-Lismann and her family in leaving Austria and finding refuge in England. Over the next five years, until England formally declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, the Cook sisters raise consciousness and funds in England and make daring rescue missions throughout Central Europe. Discuss some of Ida and Louise’s “cases.” Do any of the images and stories in The Bravest Voices resonate with your own family history?
Ida’s entry into refugee work coincides with her success as a romance novelist. “So at the very moment when I was making big money for the first time, we were presented with this terrible need.... It was much the most romantic thing that ever happened to us.” Do you think Ida and Louise are unusual in viewing self-sacrifice as “romantic”? What did they gain by directing every spare resource toward saving lives?
Were you aware of the Nuremberg Laws and the Kindertransport before reading The Bravest Voices? Share your knowledge and thoughts about how the Cook sisters’ story fills in or intersects with historical background you’ve learned through books, movies, or conversation with people who lived through those dark times.
Ida’s account of her refugee work is not without glamorous elements and lighter moments. What manner of quick thinking and deception proved necessary on her trips to Germany and Austria? How did she use her passion for opera as a cover for her refugee work?
Discuss Ida’s portrait of London during the Blitz. In what ways does she celebrate the courage and perseverance of the British people? What aspects of Ida’s vivid account of “shelter life” were most terrifying to you? Which incidents or stories were the most uplifting?
In 1965 the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Authority in Jerusalem bestowed on Ida and Louise Cook the honor of “Righteous Among Nations,” listing the sisters alongside Oskar Schindler and others who saved Jews from Nazi persecution. Discuss the ways in which Ida and Louise’s story is one of everyday individuals standing up to tyranny. Why is it important that such stories get told?
As a prolific romance novelist, Ida Cook writing as “Mary Burchell” created close to 150 heroines. Do you think Ida would describe herself as a heroine? Do you consider her one? If so, why?
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES:
IDA AND LOUISE’S “STARS”
When Ida and Louise Cook first began to haunt the gallery of Covent Garden, opera was in the midst of a golden age. Giacomo Puccini had only just died when the sisters attended their first performances, and major composers and conductors like Richard Strauss and Arturo Toscanini could be seen on the international concert circuit. While Ida’s friend Maria Callas remains well-known, many of the singers most dear to Ida and Louise have all but passed out of memory. Here is some background on those great and colorful figures.
AMELITA GALLI-CURCI (Italian, 1882–1963)
Born to an upper-middle-class family in Milan, Amelita Galli was a gifted pianist. At age twenty-three she was offered a prestigious professorship at Milan’s conservatory, but with the encouragement of a family friend, she began to pursue a singing career. Amelita made her operatic debut in 1906 at Trani, as Gilda in Rigoletto, and her fame quickly spread. In 1908 she married Marchese Luigi Curci, but the marriage did not last and Galli-Curci would eventually marry her accompanist, Homer Samuels, in 1921. That same year, she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Violetta in La Traviata. Galli-Curci remained at the Met until her retirement from the operatic stage in 1930. She continued to give concert performances, but throat surgery in 1935 is thought to have permanently damaged her voice. She retired to California, where she died at the age of eighty-two.
ROSA PONSELLE (American, 1897–1981)
Born Rose Melba Ponzillo to Italian immigrants in Meriden, Connecticut, Ponselle began performing in vaudeville at the age of seventeen. It was Enrico Caruso who recognized her great talent and arranged an audition for her at the Metropolitan Opera House. Ponselle made her Met debut in 1918 in Verdi’s La forza del destino, opposite Caruso. Maria Callas called Ponselle “the greatest singer of us all,” but the mental and physical exhaustion of constant performing and touring took its toll. Ponselle retired at the relatively young age of forty and lived out her days at Villa Pace, her home outside Baltimore, Maryland. She continued to sing, privately, and to teach. Among the singers Ponselle coached in later life are Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, and Placido Domingo.
EZIO PINZA (Italian, 1892–1957)
Born Fortunato Pinza in Rome, this charismatic opera star showed promise as a professional cyclist, but ultimately chose a career in music instead. Pinza made his operatic debut in Bellini’s Norma in Cremona, Italy, in 1914. He served in World War I and afterward returned to Italy to resume his operatic career, performing at La Scala in Milan under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. The dashing Pinza was so closely associated with his most famous role, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, that music critic Virgil Thomson wrote: “It is doubtful whether without him the opera would be in the repertory at all.” Pinza’s daughter, Claudia, the little girl whose picture Ida took outside Covent Garden, would also become an acclaimed opera singer. After retiring from opera in 1948, Pinza had a successful second career on Broadway. In 1949 he appeared as Emile de Becque in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. Pinza would also make appearances in films and on television. He died at age sixty-four in Stamford, Connecticut.
ELISABETH RETHBERG (German, 1894–1976)
Born Lisbeth Sättler in Schwarzenberg, Germany, Rethberg was best known for her roles in operas by Mozart, Verdi and Wagner. She made her operatic debut in Dresden, Germany, in 1915, but moved to the United States in 1922 and was a fixture on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera for the next twenty years. Arturo Toscanini hailed Rethberg’s voice as “the most beautiful in the world” and many believed her to be the greatest soprano of her day. Her chief rival for this title was Rosa Ponselle, who possessed a bigger, warmer voice. Rethberg retired from the stage in 1942 and died in Yorktown Heights, New York.
VIORICA URSULEAC (Romanian, 1894–1985)
Ursuleac was Richard Strauss’s favorite soprano and she sang in world premieres of four of his operas. Strauss called her “the truest of the true.” In 1924 Ursuleac heard that renowned conductor Clemens Krauss was assuming directorship of the Frankfurt Opera and needed a soprano. She asked for an audition, but was rejected by Krauss, who was contemptuous of Balkan singers. Ursuleac then submitted her request under a false name. When Krauss discovered her attempt to trick him, he hired her anyway, and thus began a legendary collaboration and a long, mutually devoted marriage. It is said that recordings of Ursuleac do not do justice to the magic of her performances. She was widely regarded as a great musician and actress; she died in Austria at the age of ninety-one.
CLEMENS KRAUSS (Austrian, 1893–1954)
Krauss was born in Vienna to Clementine Krauss, an actress and singer. As a boy, he attended the Vienna Conservatory and began conducting regional orchestras in 1913. He traveled to the United States in 1919, conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. Among numerous appointments, he was a regular conductor at the Salzburg Festival from 1926 to 1934. In 1935 Krauss became director of the Berlin State Opera. He continued to conduct throughout the Nazi era. After the war, Krauss came underscrutiny from colleagues and the Allied authorities for his close ties to Nazi officials. As a result, he was banned from public performance, but when officials discovered that Krauss had, in fact, aided numerous Jews in their escape from Nazi persecution, the ban was lifted and he resumed conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. He died while on vacation in Mexico in 1954.
A LISTENING GUIDE
To experience the artists and music beloved by Ida Cook, listen to the following recordings.
Amelita Galli-Curci, Lo, Here the Gentle Lark (Pearl, 1999)
Galli-Curci: Prima Voce (Nimbus, 1992)
Bellini: The Supreme Operatic
Recordings (Pearl, 2001)
Includes performances by Ezio Pinza, Rosa Ponselle, Maria Callas and Amelita Galli-Curci, among others.
Rosa Ponselle, Casta Diva (Pearl, 1996)
Rosa Ponselle: The Columbia Acoustic Recordings (Pearl, 1993)
The Golden Years of Ezio Pinza (Pearl, 1992)
Le Nozze di Figaro, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Idi, 2002)
The complete opera, featuring Ezio Pinza as Figaro.
Recorded live in 1937 in Salzburg, Austria.
Lebendige Vergangenheit: Elisabeth Rethberg
(Preiser Records, 1994)
Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss (Guild, 2004)
Selections from the Strauss opera, featuring soprano Viorica Ursuleac and conductor Clemens Krauss.
Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss
(Preiser Records, 1996)
The complete opera, featuring soprano Viorica Ursuleac and conductor Clemens Krauss, recorded in 1935 in Berlin, Germany.
John McCormack: Great Voices of the Twentieth Century (Castle Pulse, 2005)
This compilation of recordings by the great Irish tenor includes “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.” Ida Cook writes, “Among my own list of great performances...
I must place that strange and moving occasion whentwo hundred Cockneys sang “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” in the cellar of a London factory and forgot that overhead bombs were falling.”
Anna Bolena, Gaetano Donizetti (EMI Classics, 1998)
The complete opera featuring soprano Maria Callas in the title role. Recorded live in 1957 at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy.
La Traviata, Giuseppe Verdi (EMI Classics, 1997)
The complete opera, featuring Maria Callas as Violetta. Recorded live in 1958 at the San Carlos Theater in Lisbon, Portugal.
Norma, Vincenzo Bellini (EMI Classics, 1998)
The complete opera, featuring Maria Callas in the title role. Recorded in 1960 at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy.
FOR FURTHER READING
FICTION
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001)
Atonement, Ian McEwan (2001)
The Night Watch, Sarah Waters (2006)
The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen (1948)
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene (1951)
The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark (1963)
Human Voices, Penelope Fitzgerald (1980)
NONFICTION
Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera, Fred Plotkin (1994)
Opera Anecdotes, Ethan Mordden (1985)
The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust, Martin Gilbert (2003)
Conscience & Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust, Eva Fogelman (1994)
ISBN-13: 9780369704306
The Bravest Voices: A Memoir of Two Sisters’ Heroism During the Nazi Era
First published as We Followed Our Stars in 1950. Reissued as Safe Passage in 2008.
This edition published in 2021.
Copyright © 1950, 1976 by Ida and Louise Cook
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This publication contains opinions and ideas of the author. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. The reader should seek the services of a competent professional for expert assistance or professional advice. Reference to any organization, publication or website does not constitute or imply an endorsement by the author or the publisher. The author and the publisher specifically disclaim any and all liability arising directly or indirectly from the use or application of any information contained in this publication.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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