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.