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| Photograph of Maria Callas by Sir Cecil Beaton |
On Saturday afternoon I went to Bing’s [Rudolph bing] box to hear Callas sing Norma a the Met. She was fighting a bad cold and all hell was apparently breaking loose backstage, but she completely captivated me. True her high notes were a bit scratchy but she is a fine singer, beautifully controlled and in technical command of every phrase. She is also an artist: she did some superb bits of acting which only Mary Garden could have equaled. The mezzo was a fat cow with a good strong voice and a good strong claque which shrieked and roared every time she came on. She tried to pinch the show from Callas but she didn’t succeed. At the very end Callas got an ovation the like of which I have seldom heard. She is a perfectionist and a stylist and it was fascinating to see how her quality triumphed with that vast, prejudiced, over-knowledgeable audience. At the Met the rule is that only the voices really count. It is a good rule, of course, for Grand Opera but personally I will always settle for a little less vocal perfection it is offset by good acting and strong personality. I believe that the public, even the diehards, secretly agree with me.
The Noel Coward Diaries edited by Graham Payn & Sheridan Morley
Wednesday October 3 2012
Rosemary and I attended the opening of the Arts Club production of Terrence McNally’s the Master Class directed by Meg Roe at the Granville Island Stage. On Friday we went to the Telus Studio Theatre for the penultimate Theatre at UBC, performance of Linda Griffiths’s The Duchess aka Wallis Simpson directed by Sarah Rodgers.
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| The Duke & Duchess of Windsor, photograph by Philippe Halsman, 1947 |
It was for a Life cover that I photographed the Windsors for the first time. They were sitting together rather stiffly, and they looked at my camera with expressions that reminded me of two elderly and hungry hyenas. After taking this picture, I said gaily, “Don’t look at me so carnivorously. You are the most romantic couple in the world – a king who gave up his thrown to marry the woman he loved.”
The Duke and the Duchess smiled, their heads moved closer together, their features relaxed, and suddenly they looked attractive and much younger. I often use these two pictures in my lectures as an illustration of how radically people can change in ten seconds.
Philippe Halsman
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| The Duke & Duchess of Windsor, photograph by Philippe Halsman |
I would normally write (if I like the plays and I do and did) of each on a separate day but I find that both these plays have much too much in common. Alas for those of you who might read on an realize that while you still can enjoy the Master Class, it ends on October 27, it is much too late to enjoy The Duchess, as much as we did, so exuberantly directed by that most passionate This brings me exactly to why I am writing about these two plays. to begin with, there is that Sarah Rodgers who is exuberant and passionate and a very good actor, also. This matched my realization that director and actor Meg Roe has a strong suit in those categories, too.
Monday 25 March 1946
At the Embassy [Paris] just a small dinner for the Windsors. Sat next to Wallis. She was very charming and rather touching. He loves her so much, and at long last I am beginning to believe she loves him. After dinner I played the piano to help the party out.
The Noel Coward Diaries
My primary reason for that above assertion is that as photographer I have been lucky enough to photograph both those women twice. Passion and warmth oozes out from them.
And it is as a photographer that I find so much in common between these two plays about two female celebrities from that past of the 20th Century where celebrities had more staying power. My primary image of both Wallis Simpson (and her husband the Duke of Windsor) and of Maria Callas is one that is seared in my mind by photographs (a few, by one photographer, Philippe Halsman) and one by the other Sir Cecil Beaton. How could I possibly forget Halsman’s photograph of the Windsors jumping up in the air? How could I forget Beaton’s portrait of Callas with those eyebrows and eyes? But it is not only as a photographer that I remember these people as real people much in the same way that H.G. becomes real when you step on his name in Westminster Abbey. I recall newsreels at the movies in Buenos Aires in the 50s and in Mexico City in the 60s. The Windsors are there but more so La Diva Callas shocking with all that eye makeup and those eyebrows.
Sunday 23 November 1958
I went to a grand dinner given by Elsa Maxwell for Callas and von Karajan which was quite enyoyable. Callas looked lovely and couldn’t have been more charming.
The Noel Coward Diaries.
Both plays had an air of that authenticity that made me suspect that Callas (Gina Chiarelli, my small beef, more eye makeup please!) and Wallis Simpson (Pippa Johnstone) were in a deep channeling mode. The image of these women in the plays matched those in my head of the women I had seen in photographs, newsreels and opera videotapes.
Sunday 7 December 1958
I took Marlene [Dietrich] to hear Renata Tebaldi tear off the last two acts of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, lovely, lovely singing but, oh, I wish it had been Callas.
The Noel Coward Diaries
I was particularly struck in a city where there seems to be very little cross platform transfer (from dance to ballet, from opera to theatre, from ballet to modern dance, from theatre to ballet) that here was a play, the Master Class, where anybody not too interested in opera might find a good reason to attend one. In fact I have never ever seen Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth but after having Ghina Chiarelli explain that part where Lady Macbeth does not sing before she does, I want to immediately locate the 1952 complete live recording on DVD by Maria Callas. Those who love opera should try the play. Those who like theatre might get a taste for opera with this play.
Sunday 28 June 1959
On Monday I took Graham [David his financial advisor] to Medea at Covent Garden and we were both overwhelmed by Maria Callas, who was completely and absolutely superb. The opera [Cherubini] is not really up to much and should have been by Strauss, but she makes up for everything. She is one of the few really great artists that I have ever seen in my life. On Wednesday I went to hear Callas again, this time with the Droghedas [Lord and Lady, he chairman of the Royal Opera House], Vivien and Diana Cooper in the royal box. She was more wonderful than ever and it was an enchanting evening.
The Noel Coward Diaries
While watching The Duchess I compared and contrasted two piano players. In The Duchess Alexander Keurvorst, brilliantly shining in his brilliantined combed back hair, played Noel Coward. He was handsome, charming. His accent was bang on and his piano playing and singing superlative not to mention a fair blow of the alto saxophone. His only competition came from Pippa Johnstone’s Wallis and Matt Reznek’s Hitler.
Saturday 6 April 1946
In the evening the Windsors arrived. The hotel [in Montecarlo] got into a fine frizz and old General Politigor was round my neck like a laurel wreath. I gave them a delicious dinner’ consommé, marrow on toast, grilled langouste, tournedos with sauce béarnaise, and chocolate sufflé. Poor starving France. After that we went to the Casion and Wallis and I gambles until 5 a.m. She was very gay and it was most enjoyable. The Duke sat rather dolefully at one of the smaller tables. At the end of the evening I was financially more or less where I started.
Sunday 7 April 1946
Woke with a slight hangover. The Duke telephoned me, full of charm, and asked us to drinks and to lunch, both of which I refused. In the afternoon we joined the Windsors at the ballet, then we had some supper and more gambling. I lost.
The Noel Coward Diaries
As good as Keurvorst was he was matched by the extremely low key but droll Angus Kellet who played Manny as the répétiteur for Chiarelli’s Callas. He said more by saying nothing and his saying nothing matched in excellence the words of Noel Coward as said so well by Keurvorst. There was something about Kellet’s face that reminded me of the puppy in a cage full of barking stray dogs at the SPCA that makes you pick him simply because he (and the dog) is doing really nothing to make you notice him!
Sunday 24 January 1965
On Sunday afternoon I went to see Fleur de Cactus, grossly overplayed by everyone but Jean Poiret, and vilely directed. The play somehow survived. After this, a pleasant tête-à-tête with Maria Callas, who looked wonderful and couldn’t have been sweeter.
The Noel Coward Diaries
The poor (as abused by Chiarelli’s Callas) female singers Shannon Chan-Kent and Melanie amply prove that our UBC Opera Program is doing just nicely as well as all those actors in The Duchess that speak for the excellence of the theatre program at UBC. If part of the outrageous fees for parking at the Chan (where the Telus Theatre is located) trickles down to those departments I will gladly bow to the extortion.
Sunday 28 March, 1965
I am reading Violet Bonham-Carter’s book on Winston which is very good indeed, and rereading Ebelyn’s Vile Bodies, which is masterly and fresh and wildly funny as it ever was. Maria Callas has had a supreme triumph in Tosca at the Met. I never stop plunging into the pool to rescue grasshoppers, bees, beetles and other insects. I cannot bear to think of those intricate, sensitive mechanisms perishing in chlorine. I also salvage an occasional frog. Not one as yet has had the gratitude to turn into Prince Charming.
The Noel Coward Diaries
I cannot stop here and not mention how charming, and funny Frédérick Robert (Tony the tenor) was with his bell-bottom pants that dragged on the floor. Only he was impervious to anything that was thrown at him by Callas. He was not affected and did it with a performance (and sang very well) that strangely reminded me (the appearance not the singing!) of Buck Cherry’s (aka John Armstrong) in that Vancouver punk band the Modernettes. Saturday 23 August 1946
Peaceful afternoon resting and bathing. Joyce and Graham went off to dine together and I went to the Windsors. A large party, Lelia Westminster, Odette Massigly, etc. I sang and played. The Windsors were charming. I like her and I think that, now, she is genuinely fond of him. They are lovers, so perhaps there is something to be said for the whole set-up. I wonder how their story will end.
The Noel Coward Diaries
The Duchess of Windsor refused the first time, but the second photo session, when her new book seemed a success, she was more relaxed. The Duke came into the sitting room of their apartment in New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, saw what was happening and asked to join.
Philippe Halsman had already learned that he could ask his famous subjects to jump – just for fun – after he took their formal portrait.
Since everyone jumps in a different way – feet together or feet apart; knees bent or knees straight; smiling or no smile; high or low – Halsman’s collection of leaps is both amusing and telling.
Telling, too, are the few who refused – pianist Van Cliburn, television’s Ed Murrow and several members of England’s Establishment. But not their former King. He and his love were happy to demonstrate that for a moment nothing was beneath them.
Life - Classical Photographs – A Personal Interpretation by John Loengard
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| The Duke & Duchess of Windsor, photograph by Philippe Halsman November 9, 1959 |
Tonight I watched on television the departure of the Queen and Prince Philip from London Airport. It was immensely moving. The Queen looked so young and vulnerable and valiant, and Prince Philip so handsome and cheerful. A truly romantic couple, star qualityin excelcis. True glamour without any of the Windsors’vulgarity. We felt truly sad that they were leaving us for such a long time.
Monday 19 January 1959
We had an orgy of theatre-going and social junketing [Paris]. The Windsors’party was very gay. She certainly is a most charming hostess and he was extremely amiable. The conversation was mostly general and largely devoted to the question of whether or not the Duchess should have her face lifted. The main consensus was no. Wallis brought up the subject herself with a sort of calculated defiance. I think, however, that she is a curiously honest woman and her sense of humour, particularly of herself, is either profound or brilliantly simulated. The evening finished with a blonde lady(French) pounding on the piano and everyone getting a trifle “high”. Princess Sixte de Bourbon was definitely shocked when the Duke and I danced a sailor’s hornpipe and the Charleston, but there was no harm in it, perhaps a little sadness and nostalgia for him and for me a curious feeling of detached amusement, remembering how beastly he had been to me and about our earlier years when he was the Prince of Wales and I was beginning. Had he danced the Charleston and the hornpipe with me then it would have been an accolade to cherish. As it was, it looked only faintly ridiculous to see us skipping about with a will. The Princess needn’t have been shocked, it was merely pleasantly ridiculous.
The Noel Coward Diaries
Monday 31 December 1962
Tomorrow 1963 begins and today 1962 is expiring in a splutter of gossip. The Duke of Windsor had been attacked in the Press for having hobb-nobbed with Hitler in the late thirties. Secret papers have disclosed his pro-Nazi perfidy which, of course, I was perfectly aware of at the time. Poor dear, what a monumental ass he has always been!
The Noel Coward Diaries
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| Meg Roe |
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| Sarah Rodgers & Allan Morgan |