Horne-a-palooza

Friends, in the middle of October, I went to see Marilyn Horne. She is about to celebrate her 75th birthday; her foundation (devoted to singing and song) is celebrating its 15th. I talked with her for a couple of hours in her apartment. And a piece appeared in National Review (12/1/08): “Celebrating Horne.”

I propose to expand on that piece now, using more of our interview. Call it a Horne-a-palooza — a Horne extravaganza, or Horne-o-rama. Anyway, it will be a feast for Horne fans, which you surely are, if you know her.

Who is she? Ah, let me be clear: She is one of the greatest singers who ever lived (a mezzo-soprano, although she began life — or at least her career — as a soprano). She is also an extremely smart, interesting, articulate, and fun woman. If you ever have a chance to sit down with her, don’t pass it up, for heaven’s sake.

‐Her apartment is on the West Side of New York, overlooking Central Park. (It is also near the Metropolitan Opera, where she spent many a night, on the stage.) As I enter, she speaks of the New York Sun. The paper has just folded. She says that she did not care for its “political pages,” but cared a lot for its arts pages. (I was a Sun music critic, which is why she mentions the paper.) Indeed, she subscribed.

Horne is an outspoken liberal Democrat, and the Sun was right-leaning. I like to think that, if she had been born at a later date — say, when I was — she would be right with me, but that is a subject for another time . . .

‐Her nickname is Jackie, and sometimes she claps her forehead and says, “Okay, Jack, get the brain in motion: Why can’t I remember that?” But she remembers plenty, trust me.

‐Around the apartment are busts of Rossini, Schubert, and other figures with whom she has been friendly. There are also pictures of her grandchildren: the three of them. “Someone said that having a grandchild is like falling in love again,” she says. “And it’s so true.”

I remember that she recorded the song “Always,” late in her career. And she said she needed some inspiration: so she put a picture of her granddaughter, Daisy, on the music stand. “It’s a great song,” she says, “and it’s not just a love song” — a song of romantic love. “You can sing it to a grandchild you adore.”

And I relate to her one of my favorite stories. Someone asks Irving Berlin which is his favorite song, of all he has written. He answers “Always.” And this person has the temerity to say — this is where the story is a little hard to believe — “But Mr. Berlin, it’s such a simple song, anybody could have written it.” And he, according to the tale, answers, “I know — but I did.”

‐She began her life in Bradford, Pa. — and I remember that she had some hard things to say about this town in her memoirs (published years ago). Does she retain any ill feelings? No, she says: none. “I think I was disappointed, because when my father tried to get people to subsidize me in some way — to go to Europe or whatever — they declined.”

Does Bradford claim her now? “Oh, yes,” she says. “As a matter of fact, there’s a bust of me in the new concert hall.”

And “my foundation is there,” she says — the Marilyn Horne Foundation. “We present two artists a year there.” (The foundation is based in New York, but reaches out to all corners of the country.) “It’s very difficult to get an audience” in Bradford, as it is most everywhere else.

Horne remembers what the builder of a performing-arts center in South Carolina told her: “It was easier to get money to build the center than it is to get behinds in the seats.”

I tell her that a recital was always my favorite musical event (and it’s recitals that the Horne Foundation especially supports). She says, “Me too.” She remembers hearing Menuhin “when I was eight or nine.”

‐Horne finished her growing up in the Los Angeles area. And she speaks of “a gilded time in my life,” from about age 17 to age 22. She rehearsed with Stravinsky in his home, she heard Aldous Huxley speak, she ran into Schoenberg, though “I never got to know him.” (His widow, “Gertie,” she knew “quite well.”)

And then there were the many Hollywood figures: You’re talking about a gal who sang with Judy Garland at a party chez Rock Hudson.

She says that she saw André Previn not long ago: “We never performed together, but we were on the same program, and it was in the Hollywood Bowl. This was probably in 1947.” Previn played Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Horne, still a girl, sang in the chorus. They sang a song called “Halloween,” by Lionel Barrymore (!). Kathryn Grayson and Mario Lanza sang the Love Duet from Madama Butterfly.

“And we were all in love with Lanza. He was young and thin and gorgeous — and that sound! Man, he was the real thing. He would have been a spinto tenor. He was a spinto tenor. That was the real thing, and Kathryn became a really dear friend later on.”

‐Horne married Henry Lewis, a double-bassist and conductor. He was the first black player in a major symphony orchestra, the first black conductor to lead a major orchestra: a pioneer. (Horne is white, I might mention.) Horne speaks of him frequently during our conversation together. “He was quite something. We divorced, ultimately, but I miss him very greatly. He’s been dead now for quite a while” (1996).

‐We talk about mementos — souvenirs, documents — of her career. “I’ve never been good with taping my performances. Just . . . I don’t know . . . It’s like I never kept a journal, and I regret it. My colleagues have so many recordings — they’re recording every breath they take, and I think, ‘My God, I should have done that.’ But I have enough. So many things that people have given me — air-checks and things like that. I have a closet or two full.”

That should be plenty. And Horne is pretty well represented on disc. I mention in particular a live recital from Salzburg that I’m especially grateful for — because it tells you what a Horne recital was like, when she was in her glorious prime. “That was a good recital,” she acknowledges. “I know I was on that night.” That’s putting it mildly.

(Find that recital here — it took place in 1979.)

‐Horne was also on when the Met celebrated its centennial — that was in 1983. She sang “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix” from Samson and Delilah. Why did she choose that (or did she)? “I was singing Samson and Delilah in San Francisco at the time — at the opera — and I had to be flown in [to New York] by special plane, right after a performance.” The Met gala was the next night, “so I thought, ‘I’d better sing something I’ve got in my voice right now.’”

There were a bunch of retired singers — legends — sitting on the stage behind Horne and the other performers. One of them was Risë Stevens, who, as it happened, had been a famous Delilah. Horne greeted her after the aria — embraced her. She says that people criticized that as “calculating.” But that is untrue:

“I didn’t know all those former singers were going to be on the stage. I walked out, and there they were. And as I was singing, I said, ‘Oh, shit, Risë Stevens is sitting right behind me.’ I had to acknowledge her — it would have been terrible if I hadn’t. Calculating it was not.”

Of Stevens, I say, “She was pretty, wasn’t she?” “Beautiful woman,” says Horne. “Nice gal, too.” Could she sing? “Oh, yes. She could sing.”

Of her own performance of “Mon coeur” that night, I say, “It’s perfect.” Horne nods, “It’s good.”

(And, by the way, if you’d like to see what we’re talking about, go here.)

‐I say that some people regard Bryn Terfel as a natural, someone who came out of the womb singing. Discoursing generally on singing, she says, “A lot of us are born with voices that work — but you have to put an awful lot into it,” with studying, practicing, being coached, and so on. “It’s a very hard profession. I have argued with ballet dancers that it’s the hardest there is — singing.” And the challenge is as much mental as physical: actually, more.

And a singer, says Horne, is “half artist, half athlete.”

‐She mentions a young singer named Melody Moore — a good name for a singer, huh? She is “a wonderful young soprano,” and “you’re going to hear from her.” She’s “a full lyric, heading to spinto.”

‐And that leads to a broader point: “My standards are still the ones I was raised with — and everything has been upshifted. You’ve got many lighter voices these days singing things that should be sung by heavier voices.” That is a change for the worse, according to Horne (and a lot of others).

Take the role of Mimì, in La Bohème: “My Mimì, when I was coming along, was Renata Tebaldi, and she had probably the biggest voice I have ever heard. Renata had a huuuuge voice — I think it was even bigger than Birgit’s.” (Birgit Nilsson, of course, the Swedish Wagnerian.) “Birgit had a laser beam on hers, but Renata also had a laser beam,” and more. “Now I’m hearing lyric sopranos — light lyrics — sing Mimì, and that’s not for me.”

‐Another point: the increasing importance of looks in opera, because that is what administrators fasten on. Not everyone can look like Risë Stevens, of course — but this is opera, or singing theater, not the movies. Says Horne,

“We live in a visual age. The tube and Hollywood are probably the biggest influences we have, and, as someone said, no one eats in Hollywood. They are really skin and bones. I see these actresses — I remember seeing them when I was on the Johnny Carson show and so on. They were tiny. And that looks great on the screen,” apparently.

I relate to her a favorite joke: Zsa Zsa Gabor passes a wretched man on Rodeo Drive who is holding a sign that says, “Haven’t eaten in three days.” She says, “Oh, dahlink, I admire your villpower.”

‐I mention some great singers of the past, starting with Ebe Stignani. Horne: “Wow. I mean, that’s a wow. She was great, absolutely great. I never knew her personally, but Henry did — the San Francisco Opera would come down to L.A.”

She mentions that Stignani, a mezzo, had “a great top” — and this came in handy for Laura, to name one role (Laura in La Gioconda). “It’s really high. And I can tell you a funny story.” Not long ago, a famous mezzo-soprano appearing in La Gioconda passed Horne at a party. Said this mezzo to Horne, as she was passing, “Laura: Too high.”

“Yes,” says Horne, and “that’s why I never performed it, only recorded it.” This surprises me, because Horne was a soprano before she became a mezzo. “Yeah, but by then” — by the time she made the change — “I was getting to be happier a little bit lower. I didn’t have any fear of high notes or anything like that, but if you center your voice a little lower . . .”

‐Marian Anderson: a great singer, of course, and a great human being. But she had “real technical deficiencies,” as Horne says, and as everyone knows. She had two startlingly distinct — indeed, different — voices. Horne says that “she might have been a soprano” — a soprano who never developed in that direction. She sang “Pace, pace” (the soprano aria from La Forza del Destino) as an encore in recitals.

‐In the course of our discussion, Horne mentions the first opera she ever attended: Tristan und Isolde, in L.A., with Flagstad and Vinay. “I was maybe 15 or 16. My memory is that it was glorious. I remember falling asleep, because I had been in school all day. I didn’t know you needed a little nap before Wagner — now I know!”

‐I bring up two great contemporaries of Horne’s — two great mezzo contemporaries: Christa Ludwig and Janet Baker. “Wonderful. I mean, both fabulous singers.” Were the three of them friends? “Yes. Christa, I saw her a couple of years ago in France. She was living there, and I had gone to teach at a school there. She lived not too far away, near Nice, and we had dinner together. I also brought her over to the foundation one year.”

In very early days, “Christa and I sang madrigals of Gesualdo together, with Hindemith conducting, in Vienna.” Beat that, as Bill Buckley would say. “Christa’s a terrific gal. I heard a lot of her when she was young, because I was in Vienna in ’56, ’57. I was 22 — she would have been about 28, 29, and I heard her do Octavian, Dorabella, Carmen, so much . . . She was great.” Were those roles in German? “Yeah.”

And how about Baker? “Great, wonderful singer, with that wonderful voice and expression. I think she might have been a soprano — that’s a possibility — but she was great at what she did.”

Horne does not suffer from feelings of rivalry. “I feel great warmth for these people who have done so well. I’ve gotten great enjoyment from them.”

‐How about some singers on the scene today? We spend some time on René Pape, the German bass: “unbelievably great,” says Horne. I concur, of course, but suggest that, in some Italian roles, he is not especially Italianate. She isn’t really buying: “I just love him, in everything he does — and there just aren’t voices like that around.”

She recalls his singing a Broadway song, “If Ever I Would Leave You”: “It was thrilling. René knew the style, the English was flawless, and that voice of his — my God. After Siepi, it may be the best one.” (I have mentioned Siepi’s singing of Broadway songs, which is why that name is in the air.)

Okay, how about Joyce DiDonato, the American mezzo who excels in Rossini (as Horne did)? “Joyce is terrific.” And she will sing at Horne’s gala 75th-birthday concert next month. (That’ll be in Carnegie Hall.)

‐Turn to conductors, starting with Leonard Bernstein. “He hated it when someone said, ‘You’re really the Renaissance man,’ but, damn it, he was. He had more than music in him. One could learn so much from Lenny, just by having a meal with him. He had so much to give.” I ask, “Did he like singing?” “I think he did. I think he did. I never went to a rehearsal with him with something that I thought I knew rather well that he didn’t put a whole new insight into. I learned a lot from him.”

Who else? Henry Lewis, of course, her husband. “And Jim Levine, are you kidding? He’s practically in a class by himself.”

And she says something funny about George Solti. He would say to her, “You’re flat, darling, you’re flat!” (Horne does a wicked imitation of the late Hungarian maestro.) Now, understand: Horne’s intonation was the envy of the music world. “I think George heard high,” she says.

‐She has always been a great lover of popular music — high popular music. I’m talking about the breadbasket of Gershwin, Rodgers, Porter, Arlen, and so on. Plus, as Horne herself points out, “Ain’t much new stuff around.”

She is perfectly catholic in her musical tastes — and, in fact, reminds me of Shostakovich, who liked to say that he loved all of music, “from Bach to Offenbach.” (Remember, he was saying this many decades ago — he would update the saying now, if he could.)

‐Horne has also been, not just a great lover, but a great exponent of high popular music — anybody who heard her sing “In the Still of the Night” will never forget it. Of that song, she says, “I sang it quite a bit. And a famous Broadway arranger — I can’t remember his name at the moment — said that it might be the perfect song. I’m not comfortable singing it anymore” (owing to changes in the vocal apparatus).

‐“Two friends and I went to see the revival of Kiss Me, Kate” (a few years ago). “And one friend and I realized we knew the words to every song! The other friend was very young, and didn’t know them. But the other friend and I — we just sat there grooving on this unbelievable score and lyrics.”

‐“Marty and I were on tour one year, and it was Valentine’s Day.” (That would be Martin Katz, Horne’s longtime accompanist.) “He wanted me to sing ‘My Funny Valentine.’ So I learned it in a day. I never sang it again after that. And I didn’t think I sang it very well.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” I say. “That song should be right in your breadbasket.” “Now it might be,” Horne says — “if I gave it some time. But learning it in a day is not exactly digesting it.”

‐“I first appreciated the incredible lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein when I was doing Carmen Jones.” (Horne is the voice of Dorothy Dandridge in the 1954 film.) “Especially the words to the quintet” — and she sings some of it, right here in her living room! “‘Fabulous,’ I thought. ‘Man, great, great, lyrics.’”

‐She has admired many a pop or jazz singer, but I ask who really did it for her: Ella, Sarah, Peggy? “Lena,” she says — her fellow Horne. “Oh, my God. Did you ever hear her one-woman show on Broadway?” (I’m afraid I did not.) “Oh, my God, that was one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard.” She also remembers a concert Lena did with Harry Belafonte in Las Vegas. “It was one of the greatest evenings I have ever spent: two consummate artists. I have memories of that like I do of hearing Joan Sutherland for the first time.”

I ask, “Were you and Lena ever confused for each other?” Oh, yes. “One of my closest friends went to a recital of mine, and the woman sitting behind her said, ‘But I thought we were going to hear Lena Horne!’” (I’m sure the lady got a hard-to-forget recital.)

Marilyn Horne and Lena Horne became good friends — and Lena would tell her, “We’re sistahs under the skin.” This leads me to tell her about Rachel Noerdlinger, who is press secretary to Al Sharpton. She calls me Brother Jay, and I call her Sister Rachel.

Rachel has an “e” in her last name that I do not. Marilyn Horne’s father added an “e” to their name — it was Horn. And “that little ‘e,’” says Marilyn, “gave me a bond with Lena.”

‐Horne also likes Ella, Peggy, Jo Stafford — many others. She brings up Barbra Streisand: “I think she’s incredible.” And “do you know Amanda McBroom?” (No.) “Wonderful. Fabulous singer, terrific composer — I think she wrote ‘The Rose’ for Bette Midler. Bette Midler’s damn good too.”

‐Look, “I like talent. I like great things.”

‐At one point, I mention Louis Prima. And Horne says, “I’m a huge, huuuuge Louis Prima fan.” And she regards him as very underrated (as do I).

‐Does she ever sing for herself, alone in her room, for example? Not really, she says. But she teaches a lot, and she does a good amount of demonstrating in her teaching. Also, she’ll listen to Sinatra CDs in her car (Sinatra is a favorite of hers, too). She’ll sing along with the songs — and “now they’re in the right keys for me.” (Things are getting lower.)

She does some demonstrating in this conversation of ours, too. I’ve mentioned the snippet from Carmen Jones. She also sings a little of the aria from Oedipus Rex. She imitates Pavarotti at the end of “Pourquoi me réveiller.” She even imitates Schwarzkopf singing “Danny Boy”! (And no, you can’t listen to my tape — well, maybe we could discuss a fee.)

‐Horne had a phenomenal technique, being a virtuoso of the voice. “No one taught me to sing coloratura,” she says. She just did. And she had a stunning range stretching two and a half octaves. That is a true accounting. Don’t believe those who claim a bigger range, for themselves or others. Horne puts it this way: “I hear people talk about having three-octave ranges, and I say, ‘Bullshit!’”

Quite right.

‐She was famous for a big leap, high to low — something she interpolated. “Henry [Lewis] is the one who put me up to that two-octave jump. There are books that show that some of the Bel Canto Age singers did things like that.”

‐She is one of the great breathers of all time — and if you can’t breathe, you can’t sing (which is to say, do the most advanced kind of singing). I note, “Leontyne, too, was a great breather.” She says, “Yes. And Joan. And Caballé.”

‐Talking about the sound of Pavarotti’s voice, she sighs, and sighs. I mention that it was unusual in that it was both so lyrical and so big. She says that she really didn’t think of it as big. “Well, focused,” I say. She says, “Yes — and that’s what I say about myself: It was focused.”

‐We talk at some length about Mahler and Bruckner. When she was quite young, she was not such a Bruckner fan (which is common). “But Henry played me a recording of the Bruckner Eighth, with van Beinum conducting.” There was also an encounter with the Ninth, with Walter conducting. She came around, as we all do.

‐Mahler loved the mezzo voice, and wrote immortal music for it. Horne sang all of it — or almost all of it — and that includes the solo part in the Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.” (She also sang the soprano part.) Horne had the experience of having a brother killed in a plane crash. And “I could not get over it, it was such a blow. I just walked the floor at night with the headphones on, listening to the ‘Resurrection,’ trying to find some peace. It took me about ten years to put that one on the backburner.”

‐I ask whether there’s any music she feels closer to now than she once did. She answers, “You know, I’ve become so partial to Brahms. I just love Brahms. He makes me feel good when I hear his music, when I sing it, when I teach it.”

She was one of the great singers of “Von ewiger Liebe,” an especially good Brahms song. “It has a little story in it,” she says. “And that’s one of the great things I learned from Lotte Lehmann: You make each song a story.”

Horne participated in Lehmann’s famous master classes, out in California. And she says of Lehmann, “She was a great singer, a great, great singer — fabulous words. Ooooh, great words” (and she demonstrates a little).

‐In discussing Horne’s singing, I say that she is an exception to everything. She is not a particular vocal type. She sings coloratura, she sings dramatic music, she sings light, she sings heavy, she sings songs of every type (and opera of every type). She is all-purpose. The rules really don’t apply to her. I say, “I consider you a big asterisk.” She says, “I thought you were going to stop after ‘as[s],’” which is to say, the first syllable in “asterisk”!

‐I ask whether she was ever really conscious of her worth, of her place in history. On the hundredth anniversary of the Met, Harold Schonberg (late Times critic) listed the all-time greats — the greatest who had ever sung there. (His opinion, of course — but his opinions were good.) Horne was the only singer on the list still active. “I fell on the floor when I read that,” she says. “You shouldn’t have,” I say.

She says she was not really conscious of her worth or place in history. But “if I hear my recordings, which is not often, I will surely say, ‘I was pretty good.’”

Was she conscious of being better than most everybody else around her? “No, no — not at all. I think I was so busy trying to get it right myself . . . Of course, if I heard something, and thought I could help someone, I might give a word to the wise . . .”

‐Of course, you have to aim high, she says. To be great, “you’ve got to aim there” — even “if you want to get close to it. You can’t just go along.” We discuss a certain bass, an excellent one. “He did not aim that high — but he was fantastic.” It may take a certain hunger for immortality to attain it.

‐I ask whether she likes reminiscing or dislikes it — reminiscences can be double-edged, as we well know. And Horne has an extremely full present life. “I like it,” she says — the reminiscing, or discussing. “You’re more than likely going to tell me something I don’t remember. And you were listening and I was singing. I like to hear people describe the sound of my voice in their ear when they’ve heard me in the hall.”

So I give her an earful about what I heard — she seems interested.

‐We have a little discussion about orchestras — and about what orchestral players tend to be like: “They say, ‘Loud or soft, short or long — that’s all we need to know.’”

‐Before we part, she talks about her health, her family. She is overcoming pancreatic cancer — the disease from which Pavarotti died last year. They talked about it quite a bit toward the end of his life.

And she speaks again about her much-loved grandchildren. Many singers — I could name you a few — never had children, and feel it keenly. Horne has a vivid memory of Tebaldi: “When she would see pictures of my grandchildren, lights would come into her eyes. ‘Oh, you’re so lucky to have these children,’ she would say. I always tell my students, especially the women: ‘Don’t miss that, if you can help it. Having children is worth it — especially when you get old.’”

‐At her doorstep, I mention that I have already done two pieces on her for National Review. The second was a Horne-at-70 number. She exclaims, “And now we have Horne at 75 — thank God!” She has a lot to be thankful for, yes, and so do those who have heard her — at the Met, La Scala, Carnegie Hall, in her living room, wherever.