The Girl Who Heard Dragons

Euterpe on a Fling

Looking through old files for something else entirely, I chanced upon the notes I'd made during an interview with Madame Florence Foster Jenkins. Considering that the musical world had been far more concerned with the curious and brief career of one Peter Pelty, substitute tenor at the Metropolitan Opera House, I'd never transcribed the notes into an article. But reviewing them now - after nearly fifty years - I was amazed at how vividly I recalled the incident. Of course, Madame Florence Foster Jenkins had had her own niche in the recital world of New York. Having met and then heard her, I knew that she was eminently memorable.

I carefully unfolded the two yellowed and now fragile clippings attached to my scrawled sheets, and suddenly it was as if I were back in that dark comer of the gloomy old Seymour Lounge, where Madame Jenkins had agreed to meet me.

The first article, lamentably in only the last paragraph, described her Carnegie Hall debut, at age seventy-six. I'd been there: I didn't need further joggling. I grinned as I read,

Her style, her artistry, her joy of singing, her technique remain one of the most refreshingly different pages in the annals of musical history. She was known as the mistress of the sliding scale, a skilled proponent of altered tempi. Her ability to remain a quarter tone above or below the written note was truly inspired.

Her rendition of the Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute had, to my astonished ears, been certainly all that and more.

The second clipping mentioned the curious and unscheduled debut of the American tenor Peter Pelty, who remains far more of a controversial musical mystery than Madame Florence Foster Jenkins.

Or, -I thought with sudden surprise, does he?

Pelty had substituted in the role of Radamиs in a Saturday matinee at the Metropolitan Opera, the advertised tenor having been injured in a taxi accident on his way to the opera house. Those in the audience vowed they had never heard such a magnificent voice - an opinion substantiated by not only Milton Cross but also Mr. Aaronsky, the director of the Met; Madame Neroni, who sang Aida; and Maestro Di Saltsa, the conductor. The radio audience, however, held a diametrically opposite opinion of Pelty's vocal accomplishments. The entire musical world was talking about the affair, so I had thought to set Madame Jenkins at ease by asking her opinion of the dichotomy, for she had been at the performance.

"Tenors are never so happy but when they are stage center," Madame Jenkins told me, inclining her torso toward me, a habit she used to emphasize a point. Her voice, which, up to that point, had been genteel and refined, suddenly oozed with disdain. "He had only himself to blame for overextending himself. Eighteen curtain calls is impolite: especially when he took most of them himself."

"He won't do it again," I said, remembering that he had expired before the curtain could be raised on the nineteenth demand of his audience to express their appreciation of that incredible performance.

"It shall remain as a lesson to others not to exceed operatic decorum." Again that slight forward motion, but her lips were primly thin in disapproval.

She was, in herself, an astonishing figure: small, and so well corseted I thought I heard subtle creakings - but then many singers are tightly corseted during performances to assist breath support. Her rounded face displayed the jowls that often plague singers and mar an otherwise pretty face, but Madame Jenkins looked more Victorian, e.g., like the Queen. Her mousy hair was neatly marcelled in waves reminiscent of a prewar style, and her clothing, while well cut and an attractive cherry red that lent color to a rather pale complexion, also harked back to the pre-flapper era. But it suited her.

"Didn't you think it odd, Madame Jenkins, that a total unknown would be called upon to substitute at the Met?"

"Not at all," she surprised me by saying. "He was not only a dedicated subscriber to the Metropolitan Opera Society but he knew every libretto by heart." An expression of mixed exasperation and then immediate remorse crossed her expressive little face. "He sat near me, you see."

"Sat near you, Madame Jenkins? I don't understand."

She waved a graceful hand, preparatory to enlightening me. "Ever since I have subscribed to my seat for the Saturday opera matinees, I have had his voice in my ear."

"His voice in your ear?"

"It's quite simple, young man. His seat was diagonally behind mine in row H. I was in row G. I'm just a teensy bit nearsighted," she added in a confidential tone. Then she drew herself up, reclasping her hands in her lap with Victorian precision. "For twenty-four years, through every opera, he hummed every single tenor aria and chanted, mind you, chanted the recitatives. No one ever sat beside him, on either side, more than once but.. " She shuddered delicately, eyes closed, her pale rounded face eloquently expressing her patient forbearance. "… he ought not to have done so."

"That must have been frightfully irritating," I said solicitously.

"Irritating?" One graceful hand rose in a gesture of dismay. "It was ill-mannered in the extreme. My papa and my mama would have had words with the manager at the very first occurrence. Of course. Papa was not fond of opera although he attended when the troupe came to Philadelphia, where we lived. But a lone woman, with no escort, speaking to a man to whom she hasn't been introduced… No, simply not done."

"But if he was interfering with your pleasure…"

Her eyes widened in surprise. "The irritating thing, young man, was that he was often so much better a singer than the one on stage."

I remember gawking in surprise.

"And when he took the stage as Radamиs, I have never heard a more brilliant performance. He lived the role. He suffered it. He sang it." Her voice wavered touchingly on the verb. "We were totally under the spell of his magic voice."

"Really?" It was hard to keep from laughing, either at her unexpected endorsement or my recollection of the cacophony I had heard issue from my radio - fortunately, for just the first act of Aida,

"Young man," she said, waggling an admonishing beringed finger at me, "I know whereof I speak. I was in that audience. You were not. I have seen Aida some…" She gazed heavenward, counting. "… some twenty times and I have never heard the role sung better. Furthermore, Mr. Pelty did not, as some tenors would, depart from the tempi of Maestro Verdi's score, or put in those little embellishments that tenors seem so fond of. Mr. Pelty was in flawless voice throughout the entire performance. Now, the Amneris…"

"Oh, come now, Madame Jenkins," I began, "I heard the first scene. Madame Schezani's Amneris was on pitch whereas Pelty…"

"Radio is in its infancy, young man," she said with a patronizing smile. "We, in the audience, to the last one of us, heard exactly what we were supposed to hear-a superb, never-to-be-forgotten Radamиs in full and glorious voice."

"Madame, my cat with its tail caught in the icebox door was Nellie Melba in comparison."

"Madame Melba, young man, was a soprano," she said in a prim reprimand. "Even Mr. Cross," and she smiled graciously at mentioning him, "could not understand why the NBC was in such a tizzy over what appeared to all of us to be a unique experience. He said so to me several times - that is, before he refused to discuss the matter at all. He told me that his ears could not have so deceived him. After all, Mr. Cross is Mr. Opera. My poor opinion is as nothing next to his but, on this, we are in agreement!"

"Hmm, yes, but he won't, as you say, discuss the incident. I believe Mr. Aaronsky has been on the carpet, too…"

"And so he should," she confused me by saying, "for not having assured himself of the availability of an understudy for the matinees as they invariably do for the evening performance."

"You surely can't blame Mr. Aaronsky for Mr. Sostenuto's taxi accident?" She gave me a stern look, her ample chin tucked down to her high bosom.

"Of course not. But, in my youth, every contingency was provided for. Consequently our society was very well ordered."

"To be sure, to be sure."

"At first," she continued, nodding at my meek apology, "when Mr. Aaronsky stepped in front of the curtain to explain a delay of the performance, I presumed that he had sent for the first cover of the tenor role. Albeit, Mr. Sostenuto had never missed a performance in his life - he resides on East Sixty-second Street during the season - still it was gross negligence of the director."

I remember that I couldn't resist teasing her then.

"Even when you were treated to such a musical debut?"

"Sagacious provision against unexpected emergencies is another matter entirely. I fault him on that score, not on permitting Mr. Pelty to sing Radamиs." A glow suffused her round face. "That was serendipitous."

"What I don't understand, Madame, is how he got on the Met stage at all!" A question that had been asked over and over. If Madame Jenkins had the answer, I might have a scoop on my hands, not a fill-in article.

"Of course, when Mr. Pelty rose from his seat behind me, I thought he was leaving, not going to offer to play the role." She paused, drawing herself to an even more rigid position on the edge of the chair she occupied. "You can imagine my surprise when, shortly thereafter, Mr. Aaronsky reappeared to announce that Mr. Pelty would sing the role."

"But Mr. Pelty was totally unknown…"

"He was known to me, though we had never been on more than nodding terms."

"And the Met has an enviable reputation. Very few get past the initial auditions. I mean, someone out of the audience, saying that he knows an operatic role… I mean, anyone can say he knows an operatic role but…"

"Young man," she said, interrupting me with an imperious gesture, "I have already mentioned that he had been humming and chanting the tenor roles in my left ear for years…"

"I remember that, but his… voice?" I grimaced in recollection of the tones that had assailed my ears from a usually trustworthy radio.

"Ah, but, as Mr. Aaronsky said several times, quite forcefully at one point, I believe, Mr. Pelty did have an audition. That is why Mr. Aaronsky permitted him to go on."

I must have looked my disbelief.

"Madame Neroni, who was singing Aida, as well as Maestro Di Saltsa," she continued, compounding the evidence in Pelty's favor, "were present. Madame Neroni declared herself delighted to sing Aida to his Radamиs and the conductor was certainly willing. Then, too, singers go from opera house to opera house with rarely more than a walk-through of stage movements. Mr. Cross said that Mr. Pelty assured them he had seen the Met production of Aida often enough to need only occasional prompting. Which, under the circumstances, with the network demanding to proceed, was the most minor of the considerations.

"So, no matter what you may think, no matter what you think you heard on that radio-really, it is an abominable invention. I certainly shall never sing through its medium if that is how it distorts the human voice. What we in the audience were privileged to hear that day was a transcendent performance of Grand Opera! Her eyes shone at the memory, her face lit with an inner warmth and dedication.

"Oh, no," I said under my breath.

"Oh, yes," she contradicted politely, not catching my facetious tone. "As I'm sure you're aware," she went on in a gently instructive manner, "Radamиs sings his big aria, the glorious 'Celeste Aida,' almost as soon as the curtain is raised." She interrupted herself to tsck-tsck softly, sighing before she picked up her story. "So often tenors will stint on the preperformance vocalizing. They appear on stage unprepared to do justice to the splendor of that magnificent Verdi aria. It has, you know, three B-flats and many a time I am forced to confess that I have heard the Radamиs distinctly under pitch on the second B-flat. And twice, no, three times, the tenor has not held that final note its full count."

"Inexcusable!"

"Of course, there are many tenors who, as the expression goes, 'milk' that final B-flat beyond what Maestro Verdi wished. But Mr. Pelty was in glorious voice." Her eyes turned heavenward again, her hands lifted eloquently in the same direction. "Each note, pure, spinning, magnificently supported."

She and the bemused audience had been unanimous on that point despite the fact that everyone in radio range heard a cross between a gargling scream and a wailing animal in acute distress. Before Mr. Pelty had finished the opening aria, there had been such a shocked wave of protest to NBC from radio listeners that the network - after tuning into the opera - had peremptorily cut Mr. Cross's microphones from the air and substituted a recorded but infinitely more acceptable performance of the opera. Mr. Cross, when called to the phone by the frantic studio director, had insisted with vehemence that the performance was truly a memorable one, the tenor inspired, and that it must be the fault of the electronic equipment. In the early thirties the radio facilities at the Met were still makeshift. Mr. Cross, however, would not credit the fact that only the tenor's voice seemed affected by the malfunction.

"His style," Madame continued, "his presence, his authority were… divinely inspired!" Her eyes returned to earthly horizons, still shining with remembered ecstasy. "And it was, of course, a distinct relief to have him onstage, singing the role instead of humming in my left ear."

An air bubble or something caught in my windpipe and I began to choke helplessly.

"Waiter, a glass of water, please," Madame directed thoughtfully.

"Oh, thank you, very good of you, Madame. My apologies," I managed to gasp between sips. "Would you join me? I mean, Madame, do you drink? Liquor, that is?"

She drew herself up with great dignity and said in measured syllables, "Does a fish swim?"

The waiter resorted to pounding me vigorously on the back before the second paroxysm passed.

When he returned with the drinks, I was limp but functioning. I tried to get back to the subject of Peter Pelty's performance.

"We have wasted entirely enough time on tenors, young man," she informed me. "I believe you asked to interview me?" Her emphasis on the pronoun was genteelly delicate.

"Yes, do forgive me, Madame Jenkins." I flipped to a fresh page. "Yes, Carnegie Hall next week."

She gave me a penetrating look before she retrieved her handbag from the floor beside her.

"You are, of course, attending?"

I hadn't planned to, but circumstances forced me to concur with a show of enthusiasm.

"Ticket agencies never make an exact accounting of their sales," she said. Then, with a minimum of fumbling, she brought out of the copious black purse a package of tickets, secured with a heavy rubber band. She riffled through them expertly, extracting one, which she checked before handing it to me with a dainty flourish of her wrist.

"I am my own manager," she said with a gracious smile. "That will be two dollars, please. I've given you row H."

I had no other option but to pull two dollars out of my wallet and complete the exchange with as good a grace as I could muster. Briefly I wondered if she would have the consummate gall to charge the music critics, too.

"The demand for tickets to my concerts has been so great that I have been forced to move from the Sherry-Netherland to the Hall," she said as she added my two crumpled bills to a huge roll, also confined by a rubber band. She returned money and tickets to the ancient black purse and it to its previous position.

"I've never trusted tenors, agents, or managers, and I find I do very well indeed without them," she said without a trace of rancor. "Now!" She folded her hands primly in her lap and cocked her head expectantly at me for my questions.

"Don't artistes usually start their careers somewhat earlier than you have, Madame?" I put it as diplomatically as possible. Not every seventy-year-old makes a debut in Carnegie Hall. I'd heard that her parents had kept her from singing while they were alive, and her husband during his life span. Unfortunately he had had a heart attack and died intestate, so she had inherited a considerable estate with no restrictions and immediately founded the Verdi Society, Giuseppe being her favorite opera composer.

"I have been a concert artiste, in my modest way, since 1924," she told me demurely. "I was taught, as all young girls" - which, in her enunciation, sounded more like "gels" - "in my day, to play the piano and accompany my vocal renditions evenings after dinner. I have always maintained that if you desire something badly enough, and work assiduously toward that goal, you will one day succeed. Papa and Mama were very strict, as indeed parents should be, and they felt that a stage career was not suitable for a young woman of my social standing. I approve of a certain amount of relaxation in such strictures these days. After all, these are modem times."

"Indeed. Very true. Very liberal of you."

"Of course, I would never dream of presenting myself in anything so lacking in taste as that dreadfully fast Oklahoma, which the public raves about."

"The public" was patently not in the same social sphere as those who attended operatic performances. I nodded encouragingly. She didn't need much, for she was well launched now.

"But the concert stage has always been eminently respectable."

"Indeed."

"And when dear Mr. Jenkins left me financially independent, I vowed to support my real love - Operah! - and to follow the career my parents felt constrained by the dictates of society to deny me."

She consulted the watch pinned to her pleated lacy shirt-waist and rose to her feet. I found myself drawn up, as by strings, to my feet.

"Mr. McMoon, my accompanist, is awaiting me. He is a jewel of patience and perseverance. So few pianists are gifted enough to follow me when I am inspired by the music I am performing. I have a mattinata tomorrow. The life of an artiste is rigorous and there are many demands on my time."

"Yes, yes, you've been most gracious, Madame, but one last question?"

She smiled, the epitome of the gentle lost grace of another era.

"Mr. Pelty," I began, seizing my last opportunity awkwardly, unable to phrase my notion.

A look of penitent remorse crossed her face.

"I fear I might have sounded, not entirely charitable," she said. "Tenors are, you know, the cross we sopranos suffer for our art. I'm sure, however, I could have put any personal feelings aside to have sung Leonora to Pelty's Manrico." She sighed expressively for the might-have-been. "And he did deserve many curtain calls. Perhaps not eighteen but what a glorious way for an artiste to pass to his reward!"

"Yes, glorious!" Fortunately she didn't catch the irony. "But, Madame, do you think it possible… It would explain why the radio listeners heard one thing and you in the audience another… Could he have been doing a reverse Trilby?"

She stiffened, her whole body rigid; her eyes lost their mildness and took on a piercing quality.

"What on earth do you mean to suggest?" she asked in the iciest of tones.

"That… he had the audience hypnotized into hearing… what they heard…" I stammered it out, slowing down with each word because of the awing, unnerving change in Madame Jenkins's face.

"The entire Metropolitan audience and Mr. Cross? Hypnotized?" she demanded with regal and searing scorn.

"Well, it's a possibility, isn't it? After all, fifty thousand radios can't be wrong, can they?"

She drew in a deep breath, obviously controlling herself. "And why not?" she intoned. "Radio being a mechanical contrivance, crackling at best, with wavering transmissions of dubious quality. You would do well to forget such a preposterous theory, young man. There is a mystic bond between artiste and audience which some minds can never understand!"

"Yes, of course, Madame. Silly of me to suggest such a thing. Impertinent."

"Indeed!"

After one more penetrating stare, she relaxed suddenly, smiling with more characteristic gentleness.

"Do not be late for my concert, now," she said as she turned away. "I can promise you an extraordinary musical experience. I know exactly where you'll be sitting and I shall throw blossoms at you during the lieder selections."

Stunned at the prospect, I could only bob deferentially as she swept out of the lounge. But I am positive I heard her saying:

"Pelty? A Svengali? Impossible! He was only a tenor!"

Nothing could have kept me from that concert. Carnegie Hall was packed out. The rose blossoms she lavishly threw from the basket that completed her Dresden shepherdess's costume missed me entirely in row H. The concert was… unforgettable. But then, so was Madame Florence Foster Jenkins.

Over the years, there have been others who have tried to emulate her highly personal form of singing. Though there are recordings of her recitals, she never did perform on the radio and I wonder if it had something to do with Peter Pelty and his doubly ill-fated debut. Or perhaps it was the "mystical bond between artiste and audience" that she felt she could count on. She could certainly hold an audience and, in her own way, she has remained unique: Euterpe on a fling!