I could not attempt to explain the work which, to me, consists solely of atmosphere. I liked Richard Arnell’s score; but the ballet, as a ballet, is one I found myself unable to watch very many times. Perhaps the simplest answer is that it is not my favorite type of ballet. Nevertheless, the fact remains it is a work of genuine distinction and was warmly praised by discriminating critics.
The first nights of the two classical works came a week apart. Coppélia was the first, on the night of the 4th September. It was, indeed, a fine addition to the repertoire. There were, in the Sadler’s Wells tradition, several casts; the first performance had Elaine Fifield, as Swanilda; David Blair, as Frantz; and David Poole, as Coppelius.
I was not too happy with the three settings designed by Loudon Sainthill, the Australian designer who had a great success at the Shakespeare Festival Theatre, always feeling they were not sufficiently strong either in color or design. However, as the first full-length, uncut version of the Delibes classic, it was notable, as it also was notable for the liveliness of its entire production and the zest and joy the entire company brought to it. Elaine Fifield was miraculously right as Swanilda, in her own special piquant style; David Blair was a most attractive Frantz; and David Poole was the first dignified Coppelius I had ever seen, with a highly original approach to the character. Alternate casts for Coppélia included Svetlana Beriosova as a quite different and very effective Swanilda, and Maryon Lane, another South African dancer of fine talent, with a personality quite different from the other two, as were Donald Britton’s Frantz and Stanley Holden’s Coppelius.
The 11th of September revealed the new Nutcracker I have mentioned. Actually, without the Prologue, it became a series of Tchaikowsky divertissements, staged with skill and taste under, as it happened, great pressure, by Frederick Ashton. It was a two-scene work, utilizing the Snow Flake and the Kingdom of Sweets scenes. Outstanding, to my way of thinking, were Beriosova as the Snow Queen; Fifield and Blair in the grand pas de deux; Maryon Lane in the Waltz of the Flowers. The most original divertissement was the Danse Arabe.
Following the first performance of The Nutcracker, I gave a large party in honor of both companies: the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Company and that from the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, at Victory Hall.
In this godspeed to the sister company, Margot Fonteyn was, as usual, very much on the job, always the good colleague, wishing Fifield and Beriosova the same success in the States and Canada as she and her colleagues of the Covent Garden company had enjoyed. From Covent Garden also came David Webster, Louis Yudkin, and Herbert Hughes, “Freddy” Ashton, and Robert Irving, the genial and able musical director of the Ballet at Covent Garden, all to speed the sister company on its way, to give them tips on what to see, what to do, and also on what not to do.
The reader will, I am sure, realize what a difficult thing it was for the sister company to follow in the footsteps and the triumphant successes of the company from Covent Garden. A standard of excellence and grandeur had been set by them eclipsing any previously established standards that had existed for ballet on the North American continent.
It is a moot question just what the public and the press of America expected from the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet. For more than a year, in all publicity and promotion, with all the means at our command, we emphasized the differences between the two companies: in personnel, in principal artists, in repertoire. We also carefully pointed out the likenesses between them: the same base of operations, the same school, the same direction, the same moving spirit, the same ideals, the same purpose.
The success of the company throughout the entire breadth of the United States and Canada magnificently proved the wisdom of their coming. The list of cities played is formidable: Quebec, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit, East Lansing, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Omaha, Des Moines, Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, B.C., San Francisco, San José, Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Waco, Houston, Dallas, Shreveport, Little Rock, Springfield, Mo., Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis, Nashville, Knoxville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery, New Orleans, Daytona Beach, Orlando, Miami, and Miami Beach, Columbia, Greensboro, Durham, Raleigh, Norfolk, Richmond, Washington—where for the first time ballet played in a proper theatre—Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Toledo, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Syracuse, Troy, White Plains, Providence, Hartford, Boston, and New York City. Perhaps the most characteristic tribute to the company came from Alfred Frankenstein, the distinguished critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, who wrote: “This may not be the largest ballet company in the world, but it is certainly the most endearing.” There is no question that the mounting demand for the quick return of the company on the part of local managers and sponsoring organizations and groups throughout the country is another proof of the warmth of their welcome when they next come.
The musical side of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet revealed the same high standards of the organization, under the direction of that splendid young British conductor, John Lanchbery. Lanchbery, a thorough and distinguished musician, not only was a fine conductor, but an extremely sensitive ballet conductor, which is not necessarily the same thing. So admired was he by the orchestra that, in San Francisco, the players presented him with a lovely gift in a token of appreciation.
During the entire association with the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet there was always the warm cooperation of George Chamberlain, and the fine executive ability and personal charm of their tour manager, Douglas Morris.
It is my sincere hope that, following the season 1953-54, they will be able to make an even more extended tour of this continent. By that time, some of the company’s younger members will have become more mature, and the repertoire will have been strengthened and increased by the accretion of two years.
There is the seemingly eternal charge against ballet dancers. They are either “too young” or else “too old.” The question I am forced to ask in this connection is: What is the appropriate age for the personnel of a ballet company, for a dancer? My answer is one the reader may anticipate from previous references to the subject in this book: Artistry knows and recognizes no age on the stage. Spiritually the same is true in life itself.
It is, of course, possible that, by that time, there may be some who will refrain from referring to the members of the company as “juniors,” and will realize that they are aware of the facts of life. Three years will have elapsed since their first visit. During all this time they will have been dancing regularly five or six times a week; will have behind them not only London successes, but their Edinburgh Festival and African triumphs as well.
At the close of the American Festival Season in Rosebery Avenue, the company entrained for Liverpool, there to embark in the Empress of France. It was a gay crossing, but less gay than had been anticipated. Originally, the Empress was to have carried H.R.H. Princess Elizabeth, and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, on their Royal Visit to the Dominion of Canada. The ship’s owners, the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, had constructed a specially equipped theatre on the top deck, where the company was to have given two performances for the Royal couple. H.R.H., Princess Margaret is the Honorary President of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, and there is considerable royal interest in ballet. Unfortunately, the serious illness of the King, and his operation, necessitated a last moment change of plans on the part of Princess Elizabeth and her husband, who made their crossing by plane. At the last moment before sailing, the theatre was dismantled and removed.
Two members of my staff made a long journey down the St. Lawrence, to clamber aboard the Empress at daybreak and to travel up the river with the company to Quebec, the opening point of the tour. I had gone on to Quebec to greet them, as had our American staff and orchestra from New York. This was the same orchestra, the “American Sadler’s Wells Orchestra,” that had constituted the splendid musical side of the Covent Garden company’s two American seasons. There was no cutting of corners, no sparing of expense to maintain the same high standards of production. For those with an interest in figures, it might be noted that the orchestra alone cost in excess of $10,000 weekly.
Heading the company, and remaining with it until it was well on its way, were Dame Ninette de Valois and George Chamberlain, with Peggy van Praagh as “Madame’s” assistant, and ballet-mistress for the entire tour.
There were three days of concentrated rehearsal and preparation before the first performance in Quebec. Some difficulties had to be overcome, for Quebec City is not the ideal place for ballet production. Lacking a real theatre or opera house, a cinema had to be utilized, a house with a stage far from adequate for a theatre spectacle, an orchestra pit far too small for an orchestra the size of ours, and cramped quarters all around. Nevertheless, a genuine success was scored.
Following the Quebec engagement, the company moved to Ottawa by special train—this time the “Sadler’s Wells Theatre Special.” The night journey to Ottawa provided many of the company with their first experience of sleeping-car travel of the American-type Pullman. Passing through one of the cars on the way to my drawing-room before the train pulled out, I overheard one of the corps de ballet girls behind her green curtains, obviously snuggling down for the night, sigh and say: “Oh, isn’t it just lovely!... Just like in the films!”
Ottawa was in its gayest attire, preparing for the Royal visit. The atmosphere was festive. The Governor General and the Viscountess Alexander of Tunis entertained the entire company at a reception at Government House, flew afterwards to Montreal officially to welcome the Royal couple, and flew back to attend the opening performance, as the official representative of H.M. the King. Hundreds were turned away from the Ottawa performances, and a particularly gay supper was given the company after the final performance by the High Commissioner to Canada for Great Britain, Sir Hugh and Lady Clutterbuck.
Montreal, with its mixed French and English population, gave the company a wholehearted acceptance and warm enthusiasm, by no means second to that accorded the sister company.
So the tour went, breaking box-office records for ballet in many cities, including Buffalo, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver (where, for the eight performances, there was not a seat to be had four weeks before the company’s arrival), Los Angeles, the entire state of Florida, and Washington, where, as I have said, I had been successful in securing a genuine theatre, Loew’s Capitol, and where, for the first time ballet was seen by the inhabitants of our national capital with all the theatrical appurtenances that ballet requires: scenery, lights, atmosphere, instead of the mausoleum-like Constitution Hall, with its bare platform backed only by a tapestry of the Founding Fathers.
So the tour went for twenty-two weeks in a long, transcontinental procession of cumulative success, with the finale in New York City. Here, because of the unavailability of the Metropolitan Opera House, since the current opera season had not been completed, it was necessary to go to a film house, the Warner Theatre, the former Strand, where Fokine and Anatole Bourman had, in the early days of movie house “presentations,” staged weekly ballet performances, sowing the seeds for present-day ballet appreciation.
The Warner Theatre was far from ideal for ballet presentation, being much too long for its width, giving from the rear the effect of looking at the stage through reversed opera glasses or binoculars. Also, from an acoustical point of view, the house left something to be desired as it affected the sound of the exceptionally large orchestra. But it was the only nearly suitable house available, and Ninette de Valois, who had returned to the States for the Boston engagement, and had remained through the early New York performances, found no fault with the house.
Among the many problems in connection with the presentation of ballet, none is more ticklish than that of determining on an opening night programme in any metropolitan center, particularly New York. Many elements have to be weighed one against the other. Should the choice be one of a selection of one-act ballets, there is the necessity for balancing classical and modern and the order in which they should be given, after they have actually been decided on. In the case of the Sadler’s Wells companies, featuring, as they do, full-length works occupying an entire evening in performance, there is the eternal question: which one?
The importance of the first impression created cannot be overrated. More often than not, in arriving at a decision of this kind, we listen to the advice of everyone in the organization. All suggestions are carefully considered, and hours are spent in discussion and the exchange of ideas, and the reasons supporting those ideas.
What was good in London may quite well be fatal in New York. What New York would find an ideal opening programme might be utterly wrong for Chicago. San Francisco’s highly successful and popular opening night programme well might turn out to be Los Angeles’ poison.
Whatever the decision may be, it is always arrived at after long and careful thought; and, when reached, it is the best product of many minds. It usually turns out to be wrong.
If, as is often the case, the second night’s programme turns out to be another story, there is the almost inevitable query on the part of the critics: “Why didn’t you do this last night?” Many of them seem to be certain that there must have been personal reasons involved in the decision, some sort of private and individually colored favoritism being exercised....
I smile and agree.
The only possible answer is: “You’re right.... I’m wrong.”
IN the minds of many I am almost always associated with ballet more frequently than I am with any other activity in the world of entertainment.
This simply is not true.
While it is true that more than thirty years of my life have been intensely occupied with the presentation of dance on the North American continent, these thirty-odd years of preoccupation with the dance have neither narrowed my horizon nor limited my interests. I have simultaneously carried on my avowed determination, arrived at and clarified soon after I landed as an immigrant lad from Pogar: to bring music to the masses. As an impresario I am devoted to my concert artists.
The greatest spiritual satisfaction I have had has always sprung from great music, and it has been and is my joy to present great violinists, pianists, vocalists; to extend the careers of conductors; to give artists of the theatre a wider public. All these have been and are leaders in their various fields. My eyes and ears are ever open to discover fresh new talents in this garden for nurturing and development. At no time in the history of so-called civilization and civilized man have they been more necessary.
Throughout my career my interests have embraced the lyric and “legitimate” theatres: witness the Russian Opera Company, the German Opera Company, American operetta seasons, revues such as the Spanish Cablagata, and Katherine Dunham’s Caribbean compilations, as but two of many; the Habima Theatre, in 1926, the Moscow Art Players, under Michael Tchekhoff, in 1935, as representative of the latter.
These activities have been extended, with increasing interest towards a widening of cultural exchanges with the rest of the world: witness the most recent highly successful season of the Madeleine Renault-Jean Louis Barrault repertory company from Paris. For two seasons, the distinguished British actor, director, and playwright, Emlyn Williams, under my management, has brought to life, from coast to coast, the incomparable prose of Charles Dickens in theatrical presentations that have fascinated both ear and eye, performances that stemmed from a rare combination of talent, dexterity, love, and intelligence.
I am able to say, very frankly, that I am one impresario who has managed artists in all fields.
All these things, and more, have been done. For what they are worth, they have been written in the pages of the history of the arts in our time. They have become a part of the record.
So it will be seen that only one part of my life has been concerned with ballet. To list all the fine concert artists and companies I have managed and manage would take up too much space.
It is quite within the bounds of possibility that I shall do a third book, devoted to life among the concert artists I have managed. It could, I am sure, make interesting reading.
If art is to grow and prosper, if the eternal verities are to be preserved in these our times and into that unborn tomorrow which springs eternally from dead yesterdays, there must be no cessation of effort, no diminution of our energies. Thirty-odd years of dead yesterdays have served only to whet my appetite, to stimulate my eagerness for what lies round the corner and my desire to increase my contribution to those things that matter in the cultural and spiritual life of that unborn tomorrow wherein lies our future.
I shall try to outline some of the plans and hopes I have in mind. Before I do so, however, I should like to make what must be, however heartfelt, inadequate acknowledgement to those who have so generously helped along the way. If I were to list all of them, this chapter would become a catalogue of names. To all of those who are not mentioned, my gratitude is none the less sincere and genuine. Above all, no slight is intended. Space permits only the singling out of a few.
The year in which these lines are written has been singularly rich, rewarding, and happy: climaxed as it was by the production and release of the motion-picture film, Tonight We Sing, based on some experiences and aspects of my life. If the film does nothing else, I hope it succeeds in underlining the difference, in explaining the vast gulf that separates the mere booker or agent from what, for want of a better term, must be called an impresario, since it is a word that has been fully embraced into the English language. Impresario stems from the Italian impresa: an undertaking; indirectly it gave birth to that now archaic English word “emprise,” literally a chivalrous enterprise. I can only regard the discovery, promotion, presentation of talent, the financing of it, the risk-taking, as the “emprise” of an “impresario.”
The presentation of this film has been accompanied by tributes and honors for which I am deeply and humbly grateful and which I cherish and respect beyond my ability to express.
None of these heights could have been scaled, none of these successes attained, without the help, encouragement, and personal sacrifice of my beloved wife, Emma. Her wise counsel in music, literature, theatre, and the dance all stem from her deep knowledge as a lady of culture, an artist and a musician, and from her studies at the Leningrad Conservatory, her rich experience in the world’s cultural activities. Her sacrifices are those great ones of the patient, understanding wife, who, through the years, has had to endure, and has endured without complaint, the loneliness of days and nights on end alone, when my activities have taken me on frequent long trips about the world at a moment’s notice, to the complete disruption of any normal family life.
To my wife also goes my grateful thanks for restraining me from undertakings doomed in advance to failure, as well as for encouraging me in my determination to venture into pastures new and untried.
At the head of that staff of loyal associates which carries on the multifarious details of the organization on which depends the fulfillment of much of what has been recited in these pages, is one to whom my deepest thanks are due. She is that faithful and indispensable companion of failures and successes, Mae Frohman.
She is known intimately to all in this world of music and dance. Without her aid I could not have been what I am today. It is impossible for me to give the reader any real idea of the sacrifices she has made for the success of the enterprises this book records: the sleepless nights and days; the readiness, at an instant’s notice, to depart for any part of the world to “trouble-shoot,” to make arrangements, to settle disputes, to keep the wheels in motion when matters have come to a dead center.
The devoted staff I have mentioned, and on whom I rely much more than they realize, receives, as is its due, my deep gratitude and appreciation. I cannot fail to thank my daughter Ruth for her understanding, her sympathy, her spiritual support. With all the changes in her personal life and with her own problems, there has never been a word of complaint. Never has she added her hardships to mine. It has been her invariable custom to present her happiest side to me: to comfort, to understand. In her and my two lovely grandchildren, I find a comfort not awarded every traveller through this tortuous vale, and I want to extend my sincere gratitude to her.
It would not be possible for any one to have attained these successes without the very great help of others. In rendering my gratitude to my staff, I must point out that this applies not only to those who are a part of my organization as these lines are written, but to those who have been associated with me in the past, in the long, upward struggle. We are still friends, and my gratitude to them and my admiration for them is unbounded.
During the many years covered in this account, my old friend and colleague, Marks Levine, and I have shared one roof businesswise, and one world spiritually and artistically. Without his warm friendship, his subtle understanding, his wholehearted cooperation, and his rare sense of humor, together with the help of his colleagues, and that of O. O. Bottorf and his colleagues, many of the successes of a lifetime might not have been accomplished.
At this point in my life, I look with amazement at the record of an immigrant lad from Pogar, arriving here practically penniless, and ask myself: where in the world could this have happened save here? My profoundest thanks go to this adopted country which has done so much for me. Daily I breathe the prayer: “God bless this country!”
In all that has been done and accomplished, and with special reference to all of these wide-flung ballet tours, none of it could have been done singlehanded. In nearly every country and in nearly every important city there is a person who is materially responsible for the success of the local engagement. Local engagements cumulatively make or break a tour.
This person is the local manager: that local resident who is often the cultural mentor of the community of which he is an important member. It is he who makes it possible for the members of his community to hear the leading concert artists and musical organizations and to see and enjoy ballet at its best. In these days of increasing encroachment on the part of mechanical, push-button entertainment, it is the local manager to whom the public must look for the preservation of the “live” culture: the singer, the instrumentalist, the actor, the dancer, the painter, the orchestra.
In the early days of my managerial activities, when I did not have an office of my own, merely desk space in the corner of a room in the Chandler Building, in West Forty-Second Street, I shall never forget the “daddy” of all the local managers, the late L. H. Behymer, of Los Angeles, who traveled three thousand miles just to see what sort of creature it was, this youngster who was bringing music to the masses at the old New York Hippodrome. A life-long bond was formed between us, and “Bee” and his hard-working wife, throughout their long and honorable careers as purveyors of the finest in musical and dance art to the Southwest, remained my loyal and devoted friends.
This applies equally to all those workers in the vineyard, from East to West, from North to South, in Europe and South America. It is the friendly, personal cooperation of the local managers that helps make it possible to present so successfully artists and companies across the continent and the world we know. It is my very great pleasure each year, at the close of their annual meetings in New York, to meet them, rub shoulders, clasp hands, and discuss mutual problems.
The music and ballet lovers of the United States and Canada owe these people a debt; and when readers across the breadth of this great continent watch these folk—men and women, often helped out by their wives, their husbands, their children, striving to provide the finest available in the music and dance arts for their respective communities—do not imagine that they are necessarily accumulating wealth by their activities. More often than not, they work late and long for an idea and an ideal for very little material gain.
Remember, if you will, that it is the industrious and enlightened local manager, the college dean, the theatre manager, the public-spirited women’s clubs and philanthropic organizations that make your music and dance possible.
In the arts as in life, amidst the blaze of noon there are watchers for the dawn, awaiting the unborn tomorrow. I am of them. This book may, conceivably, have something of historical value in portraying events and persons, things and colleagues who have been, at one and the same time, motivating factors in the development and growth and appreciation of the dance in our sector of the western world. Though it has dealt, for the most part, with an era that is receding, I have tried not to look back either with nostalgia or regret. At the same time, I have tried not to view the era through rosy spectacles. As for tomorrow, I am optimistic. Without an ingrained and deeply rooted optimism much of what this book records could not have come to pass. Despite the lucubrations of certain Cassandras, I find myself unable to share their pessimism for the fate of culture in our troubled times. We shall have our ups and downs, as we have had throughout the history of man.
I hold stubbornly to the tenet that man cannot live by bread alone, and that those things of the spirit, those joys that delight the heart and mind and soul of man, are indestructible. On the other hand, it is by no means an easy trick to preserve them. While I agree with Ecclesiastes that “the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth,” I nevertheless insist that it is the supreme task of those who would profess or attain unto wisdom to exert their last ounce of strength to foster, preserve, and encourage the widest possible dissemination of the cultural heritage we possess.
As these closing pages are written, the Sadler’s Wells Ballet from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, is poised on the threshold of its third North American visit, with a larger company and a more varied repertoire than ever before. The latter, in addition to works I have noted in these pages, includes the new Coronation ballet, Homage to the Queen, staged by Frederick Ashton, to a specially commissioned score by the young English composer, Malcolm Arnold, with setting and costumes by Oliver Messel; The Shadow, with choreography by John Cranko, scenery and costumes by John Piper, and the music is Erno von Dohnanyi’s Suite in F Sharp Minor, which had its first performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 3rd March, 1953. Included, of course, is the new full-length production of Le Lac des Cygnes, with an entirely new production by Leslie Hurry; The Sleeping Beauty; Sylvia; Giselle, in an entirely new setting by James Bailey; Les Patineurs; a revival of Ashton’s Don Juan; and Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe, staged by Ashton, making use of the full choral score for the first time in ballet in America.
Yet another impending dance venture and yet an additional aspect of dance pioneering will be the first trans-continental tour of the Agnes de Mille Dance Theatre. This is a project that has been in my mind for more than a decade: the creation of an American dance theatre, with this country’s most outstanding dance director at its head. For years I have been an admirer of Agnes de Mille and the work she has done for ballet in America, and for the native dance and dancer. In this, as in all my activities, I have not solicited funds nor sought investors.
It is the first major organization to be established completely under my aegis, for which I have taken sole responsibility, financially and productionwise. It has long been my dream to form a veritable American dance company, one which could exhibit the qualities which make our native dancers unique: joy in sheer movement, wit, exuberance, a sharp sense of drama.
It was in 1948 that Agnes and I began the long series of discussions directed toward the creation of a completely new and “different” company, one that would place equal accents on “Dance” and “Theatre.”
For the new company Agnes has devised a repertoire ranging from the story of an Eighteenth-Century philanderer through Degas-inspired comments on the Romantic Era, to scenes from Paint Your Wagon, and Brigadoon. Utilizing spoken dialogue and song, the whole venture moves towards something new under the sun—both in Dance and in Theatre.
The settings and costumes have been designed and created by Peggy Clark and Motley; with the orchestrations and musical arrangements by Trudi Rittman.
With the new organization, Agnes will have freedom to experiment in what may well turn out to be a new form of dance entertainment, setting a group of theatre dances both balletic and otherwise, with her own personalized type of dance movement, and a group of ballad singers, all in a distinctly native idiom.
In New York City, on the 15th January, 1954, I plan to inaugurate a trans-continental tour of the Roland Petit Ballet Company, from Paris, with new creations, and the quite extraordinary Colette Marchand, as his chief ballerina.
In February, 1954, I shall extend my international dance activities to Japan, when I shall bring that nation’s leading dance organization, the Japanese Dancers and Musicians, for their first American tour. With this fine group of artists, I shall be able to present America for the first time with a native art product of the late Seventeenth century that is the theatre of the commoner, stemming from Kabuki, meaning “song-dance-skill.”
The autumn of 1954 will see a still further extension of my activities, with the introduction of the first full Spanish ballet to be seen on the North American continent.
We have long been accustomed to the Spanish dancer and the dance concerts of distinguished Iberian artists; but never before have Americans been exposed to Spanish ballet in its full panoply, with a large and numerous company, complete with scenery, costumes, and a large orchestra. It has long been my dream to present such an organization.
At last it has been realized, when I shall send from coast to coast the Antonio Ballet Espagnol, which I saw and greatly admired on my visit to Granada in the summer of 1953.
On the purely musical side, there is a truly remarkable chamber ensemble from Italy, which will also highlight the season of 1954. It is I Musici, an ensemble of twelve players, ranging through the string family, including the ancient viola di gamba, and sustained by the cymbalon; and specializing in early Italian music, for the greater part. This organization has the high and warm recommendation of Arturo Toscanini, who vastly admires them and their work.
I have reserved, in the manner of the host holding back the most delectable items of a feast until the last, two announcements as climactic.
I have concluded arrangements with England’s Old Vic to present on the North American continent their superlative new production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, staged by Michael Benthall, with really magnificent settings and costumes by James Bailey.
The cast will include Robert Helpmann, as Oberon, and Moira Shearer, as Titania, with outstanding and distinguished British actors in the other roles; and, utilizing the full Mendelssohn score, the production will have a ballet of forty, choreographed by Robert Helpmann.
The production will be seen at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in mid-September, 1954, for a season, to be followed by a short tour of the leading cities of the United States and Canada.
This will, I feel, be one of the most significant artistic productions to be revealed across the continent since the days of Max Reinhardt’s The Miracle. It gives me great personal satisfaction to be able to offer this first of the new productions of London’s famous Old Vic.
The other choice tid-bit to which I feel American dance lovers will look forward with keen anticipation is the coast-to-coast tour of London’s Festival Ballet with Toumanova as guest star.
The Festival Ballet was founded by Anton Dolin for the British Festival, under the immediate patronage of H.H. Princess Marie Louise. Dr. Julian Braunsweg is its managing director.
It has grown steadily in stature and is today one of Europe’s best known ballet companies. Under the artistic direction of Anton Dolin it has appeared with marked success for several seasons at the Royal Festival Hall, London; has toured Britain, all western Europe; and, in the spring of 1953, gave a highly successful two weeks’ season in Montreal and Toronto, where it received as high critical approval as ever accorded any ballet company in Canada.
There is a company of eighty, and a repertoire of evenly balanced classics and modern creations, including, among others, the following: a full-length Nutcracker, Giselle, Petrouchka, Swan Lake, (Act I), Le Beau Danube, Schéhérazade, Symphonic Impressions, Pas de Quatre, Bolero, Black Swan, Vision of Marguerite, Symphony for Fun, Pantomime Harlequinade, Don Quixote, Les Sylphides, Le Spectre de la Rose, Prince Igor, Concerto Grosso.
This international exchange of ballet companies is one of the bulwarks of mutual understanding and sympathy. It is a source of deep gratification to me that I have been instrumental in bringing the companies of the Sadler’s Wells organization, the Ballet of the Paris Opera, and others to North America, as it is that I have been able to be of service in arranging for the two visits of the New York City Ballet to London. It is through the medium of such exchanges, presenting no language barriers, but offering beauty as a common bond, that we are able to bridge those hideous chasms so often caused by misunderstood and, too often, unwise and thoughtlessly chosen words.
In unborn tomorrows I hope to extend these exchanges to include not only Europe, but our sister republics to the South, and the Far East, with whom now, more than ever, cultural rapport is necessary. We are now reaching a time in America when artistic achievement has become something more than casual entertainment, although, in my opinion, artistic endeavor must never lose sight of the fact that entertainment there must be if that public so necessary to the well-being of any art is not to be alienated. The role of art and the artist is, through entertainment, to stimulate and, through the creative spirit, to help the audience renew its faith and courage in beauty, in universal ideals, in love, in a richer and fuller imaginative life. Then, and only then, can the audience rise above the mundane, the mediocre, the monotonous.
During the thirty-odd years I have labored on the American musical and balletic scene, I have seen a growth of interest and appreciation that has been little short of phenomenal. Yet I note, with deep regret, that today the insecurities of living for art and the artist have by no means lessened. Truth hinges solely on the harvest, and how may that harvest be garnered with no security and no roof?
More than once in the pages of this book I have underlined and lamented the passing of the great, generous Maecenas, the disappearance, through causes that require no reiteration, of such figures as Otto H. Kahn, whose open-hearted and open-pursed generosity contributed so inestimably to the lyric and balletic art of dead yesterday. I have detailed at some length the government support provided for the arts by our financially less fortunate cousins of Great Britain, South America, and Europe. The list of European countries favoring the arts could be extended into a lengthy catalogue of nations ranging from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, on both sides of that unhappy screen, the “Iron Curtain.”
Here in the United States, the situation becomes steadily grimmer. Almost every artistic enterprise worth its salt and scene painter, its bread and choreographer, its meat and conductor, is in the perpetual necessity of sitting on the pavement against the wall, hat in hand, chanting the pitiful wail: “Alms, for the love of Art.” Vast quantities of words are uttered, copious tears of regret are shed about and over this condition at art forums, expensive cocktail parties, and on the high stools of soda fountains. A great deal is said, but very little is done.
The answer, in my opinion, will not be found until the little voices of the soda fountain, the forums, the cocktail parties, unite into one superbly unanimous chorus and demand a government subsidy for the arts. I am not so foolish as to insist that government subsidy is the complete and final cure for all the ills to which the delicate body is heir; but it can provide, in a great national theatre, a roof for the creative and performing artists of ballet, opera, theatre, and music. More than anything else, the American ballet artist needs a roof, under which to live, to create, and hold his being in security. Such a step would be the only positive one in the right direction.
It is only through governmentally subsidized theatres, or one type of subsidy or another, that ballet, opera, music, the legitimate theatre may become a living and vital force in the everyday life of the American people, may belong to the masses, instead of being merely a place of entertainment for a relatively small section of our population. We have before us the example of the success of government subsidy in the British Arts Council and in the subsidized theatres of other European countries. How can we profit by these examples?
A national opera house is the first step. Such a house should not, in my opinion, be in New York. It should, because of the size of the country, be much more centrally situated than in our Eastern metropolis. Since the area of Great Britain is so much smaller than the United States, our planning of government subsidy would, of necessity, be on a much larger scale. In many of the countries where ballet and music have the benefit of government subsidy, government ownership of industry is an accepted practice. Yet the government theatre subsidy is managed without stifling private enterprise.
I am quite aware that securing a national subsidy for the arts in this country will be a long, difficult and painful process. It will require, before all else, a campaign of education. We must have an increasing world-consciousness, a better understanding of our fellow humans. We must develop a nation of well-educated and, above all, thinking people, who will do everything in their power to make a full-rounded life available to every man and woman in the nation.
Only during the days of the WPA, in the ’30’s, has the United States government ever evinced any particular interest in the arts. I cannot hope that the present materialistic attitude of our lawmakers will cause them to look with much favor on things of the spirit. The attitude of our government towards the arts is noteworthy only for its complete lack of interest in them or care for them. In the arts, and notably in the ballet, it has the most formidable means and potential material for cultural propaganda. The stubbornness with which it insists upon ignoring the only aspect of American cultural life that would really impress and influence Europe is something that is, to me, incredible. It is a rather sad picture. How long will it take us in our educational process to understand that in the unborn tomorrow we, as a nation, will be remembered only through our art rather than through our materialism and our gadgets?
Meanwhile, excellent and highly valuable assistance is being given by such Foundations as the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. The latter’s contribution to the New York City Center has been of inestimable help to that organization.
Certain municipalities, through such groups as the San Francisco Art Commission, financed on the basis of four mills on the dollar from the city tax revenues, the Art Commission of the County of Los Angeles, the City of Philadelphia, among others, are making generous and valuable contributions to the musical and artistic life of their communities.
There are still to be mentioned those loyal and generous friends of the arts who have contributed so splendidly to the appeals of orchestras throughout the country, of the Metropolitan Opera Company, and the New York City Center.
But this, I fear, is not enough. The genuinely unfortunate aspect of the overall situation is that we are so pitifully unable to supply an outlet for our own extraordinary talent. For example, at an audition I attended in Milan, out of the twenty-eight singers heard, sixteen of them were Americans. This is but further evidence that our American talent is still forced to go to Europe to expand, to develop, and to exhibit their talents; in short, to get a hearing.
In Italy today, with a population of approximately 48,000,000, there are now some seventy-two full-fledged opera companies.
In pre-war Germany with an approximate population of 70,000,000, there were one hundred forty-two opera houses, all either municipally or nationally subsidized.
Any plan for government subsidy of the arts must be a carefully thought out and extensive one. It should start with a roof, beginning slowly and expanding gradually, until, from beneath that roof-tree, companies and organizations would deploy throughout the entire country and, eventually, the world. Eventually, in addition to ballet, music, opera, and theatre, it should embrace all the creative arts. Education in the arts must be included in the subsidization, so that the teacher, the instructor, the professor may be regarded as equal in importance to doctors, lawyers, engineers, and politicians, instead of being regarded as failures, as they so often regrettably are.
Until the unborn tomorrow dawns when we can find leaders whose understanding of these things is not drowned out by the thunder of material prosperity and the noise of jostling humanity, leaders with the vision and the foresight to see the benefit to the country and the world from this kind of thing, and who, in addition to understanding and knowing these things, possess the necessary courage and the indispensable stamina to see things through, we shall have to continue to fight the fight, to grasp any friendly hand, and, I fear, continue to watch the sorry spectacle of the arts squatting in the market-place, basket in lap, begging for alms for beauty.
So long as I am spared, I shall never cease to present the best in all the arts, so that the great public may have them to enjoy and cherish; so that the artists may be helped to attain some degree of that security they so richly deserve, against that day when an enlightened nation can provide them a home and the security that goes with it.
With all those who are of it, and all those whose lives are made a little less onerous, a little more tolerable, to whom it brings glimpses of a brighter unborn tomorrow, I repeat my united hurrah: Three Cheers for Good Ballet!
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