Rosa Ponselle
Volume 3

Note by David Alexander Terry











Rosa Ponzillo, the youngest of three children, was born on 22 January 1897, in Meriden, Connecticut, to Italian immigrant parents from Caserta.

After leaving school at the age of twelve and eager to get on with her musical life, Rosa was engaged to sing between films at a Meriden movie theatre. Within weeks she was invited to sing an extended engagement at a movie theatre in New Haven, accompanied by a twenty-piece orchestra for which she composed the orchestrations. Because she was an immense hit with the Yale University students, she was engaged to sing, with orchestra, at New Haven's elegant Cafe Malone.

His sister Carmela, who was ten years older and a contralto, was studying in New York. Her agent said he could book her on the Keith Vaudeville circuit in a sister act if she could find a partner. Carmela went to New Haven to catch Rosa's act. After listening to her sister sing 'Voi lo sapete' and 'Un bel di' she decided to promote her in any way she could. Throughout her life, Rosa said it was Carmela who had the ambition. "Carmela pulled me by the hand, and I went along with whatever she said. She was my sister, so, to me she always knew best."

In February 1916, Rosa and Carmela made their vaudeville debut at the Star Theatre in Bronx, New York. Within seventeen months they had toured the United States and become headliners at New York City's Palace Theatre. They stopped the show at every performance and received rave reviews. Because they felt they were underpaid at nearly $1000 per week, they went on strike. It was during this hiatus in 1918 that Rosa auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera.

Victor Maurel, the creator of Verdi's Iago and Falstaff, had heard Rosa at Carmela's teacher's studio in Carnegie Hall. Carmela's teacher, William Throner, acted as both girls' agent and as their agent, invited his card-playing partner, Mr. Maurel, to hear his clients. When Mr. Thorner finished praising Carmela, Mr. Maurel asked incredulously, "Can't you hear the difference? It's the other one, Rosa, whom the gods have smiled upon!". Then, Mr. Maurel invited his friend, Enrico Caruso, to hear Rosa. Caruso arrived with a group of friends which included Rosa Raisa, who was to become a life-long friend.

Rosa had never had a singing lesson in her life and had been in an opera house twice. She had heard Caruso and Claudia Muzio in Madama Butterfly and Tosca. She often remarked she was so emotionally moved by watching those operas, that had she been asked, she could never have performed them.

Caruso told her she certainly possessed the Voice and the Heart for singing. She would have to prove she had the Mind for it. He arranged for her to sing for Giulio Catti-Casazza, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera. Present at this first Metropolitan audition, besides Caruso and Gatti-Casazza, were Giovanni Martinelli, Marguerite Matzenauer, Pasquale Amato and Frieda Hempel. Rosa sang 'Taceo la notte placido', 'D'amor sul'ali rosee', 'Suicidio!', 'Un bel di', 'Voi lo sapete', 'O Patria mia' and 'Ritorna vincitor'. Romano Romani, the man who would coach Ponselle for the rest of her career in all of her roles except Carmen, accompanied her at the piano. Mr Gatti asked him how long it would take to prepare Rosa in the aria 'Casta diva'. "Two weeks", he answered. It was the first time Ponselle had heard of the opera which she would sing to world acclaim eight years later. Mr Gatti knew that Ponselle would be the obvious choice to bring Norma back to the Metropolitan. It had been absent since 1892.

The second audition was scheduled for early June. Carmela was invited to sing with her and they sang the Act II duet from La Gioconda. When it was time for Rosa to sing 'Casta diva' she was nervous. During the aria her nerves overcame her and near the end she fainted and pitched face forward. After her recovery, she began an apology, but Gatti interrupted her. "You are not being asked to sing Norma now, so don't give the incident another thought. Just sing the 'Casta diva' for exercise now and then. With that advice, he handed her an already prepared contract. He offered $150 per week for a minimum of three performances each week for the season. She agreed to have ready for production: La Forza Del Destino, Cavalleria Rusticana, Il Trovatore, Aïda, and the Verdi Requiem - all by November 11, 1918... five months hence.

During the summer of 1918, Gatti changed her name to rid his star-to-be of any association with vaudeville. He invented the name 'Ponselle' as it was more international-sounding.

At age twenty-one she sang Leonora in La Forza Del Destino with Caruso. Opening night was a nightmare of stage fright. She would never get over the nerves of performing. She would often ride her bicycle from her penthouse at Riverside Drive and 81st Street to the Metropolitan at 39th Street and Broadway trying to work off her nervous energy. Following her debut, the newspapers were lavish in their praise. James G. Hunekar wrote: "She possesses a voice of natural beauty that may prove a gold mine. It is vocal gold, anyhow, dark, rich, and ductile; brilliant and flexible in the upper register..." She would also sing with Caruso the title role of La Juive, the last opera he ever learned; the last opera he ever sang.

During that autumn, upon the strong advice of her agent, she signed a contract with Columbia. Romani conducted all her non-electric, acoustic recordings, made between December 1918 and 1923 at the Columbia studios in the Woolworth Building; the tallest building in the world.

Today, record connoisseurs agree that it was a tragedy that Rosa Ponselle signed with Columbia Gramophone Company rather than Victor Talking Machine Company and was prevented from recording with Caruso. When her contract with Columbia expired and she was free to sign with Victor, Caruso was dead. The Victor recordings were both acoustic and electric and date from December 1923.

Walter Legge, writing a tribute in Opera magazine during Ponselle's 80th Birthday celebration, said of her 1919 Columbia acoustic recordings, "At last here was a woman with a recognisably woman-sized voice not showing off how fast or how high she could sing, but communicating emotion in velvet magic. She was at the age of the characters she was portraying, and in her impulsiveness (incredibly controlled by technique and taste), singing every note and emotion with the freshness of youth in life's spring. And this, with the most glorious voice that ever came from any woman's throat in the Italian repertory with a precocious sense of line, style, and emotional honesty. She had retired long before the days of tape recording and editing, so all her records are uncooked in terms of intonation and breathing. The acutest ear will have to spend a long time trying to fault her on a note even slightly out of tune. The best of her records - and in her case they are well in the majority - are such models of style, expression, and technique in all its aspects, and give such delight that they should be compulsory listening for students, audiences, and critics." Mr. Legge's wife, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, wrote, "The first records my future husband played for me were by Ponselle: to teach you the meaning of bel canto. Thirty years later, while he was replaying her records and preparing his tribute to her, I found myself repeatedly commenting, 'This is ultimate perfection'."

Ponselle sang for nineteen years with the Metropolitan in New York, three seasons at Covent Garden, and inaugurated the premiere season of the Maggio Musicale in Florence with La Vestale, to honour a promise made to her dying mother that she would one day sing in Italy. Each year she toured the United States singing concerts of Italian, French, German, and English Art Songs. In most cities, she engaged a hall at her own expense, and sang free concerts for children. Before singing each song, she explained the song and told something of the life of the composer. When interviewed, she said: "This is merely an illustration of my belief in the importance of musical education for young children. A large part of their outlook in life depends on their understanding of beauty."

At Covent Garden, Ponselle sang twenty-one performances of six operas - Norma and Gioconda the first season, Traviata, Norma, and L'Amore Dei Tre Re the second season, and Traviata, Forza Del Destino, and Romani's Fedra, the third season.

Ernest Newman wrote in the London Times of Norma: "Not only is her voice of great beauty but she also has the art of making it convey every nuance of the mind without its even for a moment losing its pure singing quality. The range of psychological inflection in it seems unlimited." And later, following La Traviata, "Nothing finer has been seen or heard at Covent Garden this season. Ponselle proved to us once again that the finest singing, given a good voice to begin with, comes from the constant play of a fine mind upon the inner meaning of the music; her Violetta is so exquisitely sung because it is so subtly imagined. Even coloratura, as she sings it, ceases to suggest the aviary and becomes a revelation of human character." Francis Toye declared, "I do not think that I have ever heard anything to surpass or even equal it."

Each summer Rosa relaxed and studied new roles in Europe, often at Lake Como or St. Moritz. During the summer Puccini was composing Turandot, Rosa lived in the villa next door. The first time she sang for Maestro Puccini, in his music room, he wept. After his death, Mme. Puccini discovered an incomplete manuscript of a concert aria dedicated to Rosa.

Ponselle's final performance with the Metropolitan was a Saturday matinee tour broadcast of Carmen from Cleveland, 17 April, 1937. The conductor was Gennaro Papi, the maestro of her debut. She told a press conference: "I stopped singing at the Metropolitan because I had disagreements with the new management. When the situation became hurtful, I had to stop singing there."

Rosa and her new husband, a sportsman son of the mayor of Baltimore, Maryland, travelled to Hollywood. It had always been a happy place for her to relax and she had many friends there. Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne and Gloria Swanson were all studying singing and stopped by her home daily to listen to Rosa sing and to receive helpful advice. MGM's Louis B. Mayer re-opened negotiations with her to consider filming Carmen and Tosca. She made a screen test for MGM and director George Cukor wanted to direct her pictures. One evening while she was having dinner with Cukor at home, a script of Carmen arrived from Irving Thalberg. They howled with laughter as they discovered the writers had eliminated Don Jose from the script! In order not to do the picture, Rosa requested an enormous fee prompting Mr. Mayer to inquire: "How did Miss Ponselle arrive at this amount? By adding up all of the numbers in the Los Angeles telephone book?"

In 1939, still in Hollywood, Ponselle recorded some songs for Victor and Romani accompanied her at the piano. After these sessions she did not record professionally until 1954. By 1940 she had returned to Maryland, designed and built a huge Tuscan-like villa, which she named Villa Pace, in the Greenspring Valley north of Baltimore. After her early retirement, she became interested in a small opera group in Baltimore and as its artistic director developed it over the years into today's Baltimore Opera Company.

In her autobiography, Pearl Mesta wrote that Rosa had lost none of her vitality and charm in retirement. At one of Mesta's famous Washington parties, Rosa, singing a popular song accompanied by her friend President Truman, was the highlight of the evening.

In 1952, the executives at RCA Victor heard that Rosa was singing again! She had sung impromptu at a political rally for her friend General Dwight Eisenhower that had been recorded. She received inquiries from both Capitol Records and RCA Victor. Since Victor had been her artistic "home" on records, she decided to sign with them. However, she would not travel to New York to record. If they wanted her they would have to come to Villa Pace, plan to stay with her for a few weeks and she would sing when she felt like it. Throughout her life, if, in the shower, her mezza-voce and high pianissimo were "there, in the voice," she knew she could sing: if they were not, she would not sing. In October, 1954, RCA sent its staff to Villa Pace.

Ponselle recorded 48 discs for Columbia and 118 for RCA Victor. Seventy-two works from radio broadcasts and nearly 150 private recordings made during parties at Villa Pace exist. There are duets with voices ranging from Ezio Pinza to Elaine Strich who sang a duet with Rosa from Call Me Madam, Irving Berlin's musicalization of her friend Pearl Mesta's life.

Rosa died in her sleep at Villa Pace, Memorial Day, 1981, a holiday she had helped initiate in 1919 when President Harding asked her to sing at the burial of America's Unknown Soldier.

Rosa Ponselle's place in the history of singing and opera is secure. The greatest artists of our time consider her to have been, as Maria Callas said, "the greatest singer of all." Years earlier, Geraldine Farrar said, "When discussing singers, there are two you must first set aside; Caruso and Ponselle. Then you may begin." In an 80th Birthday salute to Ponselle, Leonard Bernstein wrote: "Yours was the first operatic voice I ever heard, at age eight, on an old Columbia 78 singing 'Suicidio!'... that voice rang through in such glory that it made me a music-lover forever. I thank you every day of my life!"


© 1996 David Alexander Terry

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