REFLECTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE (Sixty years attending thousands of performances- and writing about each).
YKB Publishers New York; 263 pages.
Mr. Epstein is a New York enthusiast of opera, musicals and drama and he decided to share his experiences, loves and hates with us all. Therefore this book is very New York centred though Americans and (few) Europeans might have seen many of these performances as well during a visit to what I still call Nieuw-Amsterdam (Peter Minuit who bought Manhattan was the son of protestant refugees from the Southern Netherlands; nowadays called Belgium). Epstein emphasizes he doesn’t have a special education in music and his custom of reviewing most performances he saw for personal memoirs has no special distinction. That is not correct. He is fair, well-versed and has almost impeccable taste (which can be interpreted as we both like the same singers a lot). I regret he didn’t include more of his reviews as in my opinion they are well to the point.
Mr. Epstein’s love for music started in the fifties when a lot of pop singers (Crosby, Como, Martin, Sinatra) still used vocal techniques not much different from opera singing (especially legato and an immediately recognizable timbre) though they clung to a microphone. I understand Epstein’s admiration though I am a mono-culturalist for belcanto singers only (exceptions made for Piaf and dame Vera Lynn) while the author clearly remained multicultural. Nevertheless I am happy to read an American author who doesn’t warm to Sinatra’s “pleasant but not overwhelmingly beautiful ” recordings of the 1940’s while later on finding him arrogant (and boring I add). I wish I had known the author in the eighties and nineties when I often visited New York. He tells us he would have been broke if he had paid full price for tickets as I used to do. He of course knew where to find last minute tickets at Broadway and 47th Street and moreover he learned his trade with the (in)famous Lois Kirschenbaum who almost made The Met her home (She already got a chapter as the greatest fan of the house in a book which appeared in the seventies). I had no idea she and the author simply asked for free tickets at the entrance and most of the time they were successful as many people arrived with a ticket to spare. As a last resort I read they bribed a ticket-taker if they didn’t receive a free gift. No wonder Mr. Epstein tells us the lady died rich. But Mr. Epstein reminds us that in the early golden sixties tickets for the opera were not more expensive than tickets for a movie house. Nowadays the cheapest or even discounted tickets for Broadway cost four times more than the price of a movie ticket and there are only three layers of pricing.
Epstein’s love for classical singers began with same singer the generation born between 1940 and 1950 started with and who is still the most influential opera singer of the post-war period and the name is not Sophia Calos but Mario Lanza. Little we knew of the tenor’s brief operatic career but the magnificence of the voice couldn’t and cannot be denied. He is still one of the vocal giants; in my opinion not in opera arias but in songs and ballads. Mr. Epstein still gives “summa cum laude” to “Beloved” (insert by Nicolas Brodzky in The Student-Prince) while I once included “Golden Days” from the same movie in my list of 8 desert discs for The Record Collector (quarterly journal for recordings of opera singers). Mr. Epstein’s favoured vocal category is the tenor and he has some idiosyncratic opinions (as we all have). He thinks Caruso’s records are difficult to rate at their true value due to the acoustic process. He adores Gigli, even as late as 1951 (I find him unlistenable compared to the glory between 1923 and 1937). Beauty of sound is his main criterion. Therefore Richard Tucker is his bête noire. Harsh and guttural he calls him and he suffered a lot during Tucker performances (I have most of his recordings and it is one of the joys of collecting to disagree heartily with another opera maniac). Other tenors who don’t figure high in his opinion are Gedda (agreed), Vickers (applause) and Bergonzi (big surprise as he is one of my favourites). Epstein thinks Luciano Pavarotti is overrated too (sometimes) and “for some reason unfathomable to me” Epstein cannot understand why the tenor is associated with “Nessun dorma” as he only sang five performances of Turandot which is way too heavy for his voice. The reason is a simple one. During the world cup of soccer in Italy in 1990 BBC started its hugely successful broadcasts with Pavarotti’s recording and his high B flat on “Vincero, vincero”. Millions of people who didn’t know the aria were captivated and soon imitators turned up at popular television shows to discover new popular singers. The wave reached Europe and in one generation “Nessun dorma” became the most popular opera melody, eclipsing older favorites as “Vesti la giubba” and “La donne è mobile”. Mr. Epstein is cross because he is an undulated fan of Franco Corelli (I fully agree with him); once called the Calaf of Calafs in Opera News. I sigh when I read his reviews of dozens of Corelli performances. Epstein even has a small scoop. He knew the lady who once was responsible for a marriage crisis in the tenor’s household though he refuses to reveal her name. He reminds us of biographies by Seghers (fine) and Zucker (trash). The one worthwhile nugget in Zuckers books is the true height of the tenor (1 m 79) and not 6 feet 2 inches as Mr. Epstein and most Corellistis think. Mr. Epstein compares Toscas he saw and heard performed by Tebaldi and Callas (return to the Met in 1965) and while he admires the former in 1964 he was not happy with the latter’s one year later: small and unsteady voice. He is even too positive for the strident wobble Callas’ voice had become since the mid-fifties. My late friend Richard Soper (author of “Belgian Opera Houses and Belgian Opera Singers) was a ship captain in the Mediterranean and heard her in Naples in 1949 and 1951. He became CEO of Sea link and a patron of the Met and the New York City Opera. He told me her voice during her New York performances of 1956 was not half the one he remembered. By the way, Mr. Epstein thinks Onassis contributed to Callas’s decline. On the contrary I think. I she had not met the Greek and forsaken a full career, by 1960 she probably wouldn’t have been able to utter a single sound.
The second half of the book is devoted to musicals and straight theatre. Once more I fully agree with Mr. Epstein’s love for (classical) musicals and one can only envy him he saw so many. In Europe we have to do with recordings and lucky we are with many complete and well sung performances (recently a brilliant one of Carrousel) but they are not a full substitute for the performances the author saw on Broadway. The older I get the more I admire Kern, Rodgers, Porter etc. and the less difference of quality I think there is between them and Puccini and Verdi. The chapters Epstein devotes to the many plays and actors he saw are less interesting for Europeans.
So far so good and then we find three flies in the ointment. The book is published by a commercial editor and he insisted Mr. Epstein notes a relevant entry on youtube every few lines he discusses a singer. It doesn’t make for easy reading. Moreover in an appendix you get these entries once more. As publishers for this stuff are almost impossible to find these days Mr. Epstein had to comply. Even worse are the many typos to be found. Ever heard of composers Masanet, Spontint, conductors Bohm and Molinai-Pradelli, singers Udavich, Triegle and Rysenek etc. etc. ? Mr. Epstein didn’t get a second proof reading of his manuscript but even then an opera lover shouldn’t have written such mistakes in a first draft. The last fly belongs to American culture wars. I think the use of Black with a capital B is racist and people don’t have to make excuses for sins of their great grandfathers. Of course the book was written at the height of woke fascism when everybody who didn’t comply to their disgusting feelings of moral superiority was cancelled and I understand finding a publisher in New York requires some sacrifices. Still that shouldn’t have led to mistakes as the author showing his regret Paul Robeson (Epstein writes “Robson” all the time) never sang Boris Godunov. Robeson never singing an operatic role was his own choice and had nothing to do with racism. His best biographer Martin Duberman tells us the singer fled to London at the idea of studying the music of Porgy and Bess. Robeson just wanted to sing songs and ballads and was too lazy (his wife’s words) to study less popular and more difficult music.
Jan Neckers, January 2025
Click here to listen to an interview of the author at age……17 !!