The Juilliard Chronicles: "Miss Callas" as Conservatoire Advisor
From "The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography." Chapter 19: "Inside is your mirror."
The scene: From 11 October to 19 November 1971, and again from 7 February to 16 March 1972, Maria Callas gave master classes to over two dozen students at The Juilliard School, New York.
Here are (some of) their stories.
Callas tutors mezzo-soprano Sheila Nadler “L’aborrita rivale a me sfuggia”: Amneris’ outburst of rage from Verdi’s Aïda.
Most of the female singers had no problem with her somewhat motherly approach. It would elicit onstage comments such as, “Gee, you look quite elegant—all of you today,”1 and “My compliments on your appearance, Ms. Schmidt. You’ve cut your hair. You look very well.” Maria faced the audience. “Doesn’t she?”2
Toward the end of October Eugene Kohn—a nineteen-year-old pianist who had worked as an accompanist to his great idol, Renata Tebaldi—wrote to Wriston Locklair at Juilliard “on the recommendation of my friend, Mr. Gideon Waldrop,” a former dean at the school. “My occupation is an opera coach. I work at my studio with many young singers… I could furnish letters of recommendation to you from the following people: Maestro Fausto Cleva…” etc.3
At the further behest of Maria’s old friend and colleague, George London, she considered Kohn as a replacement for her Juilliard accompanist, Viola Peters. “Eugene is so young that he’s not going to tell you anything. He’ll just do what you say,” London was said to have insisted to her.4 So she happily recruited him.
Despite not having quite warmed to the Callas artistry,5 Kohn adulated it when he became another student taking her advice: “Please don’t be offended,” he wrote shortly after the completion of the classes. “But I love you, I miss you and I am personally lonely for your person. I wish I could speak to you and see you.”6 That December he wrote a memo to all of her students inviting them to partake in a recording as a sign of their progress; the pedagogue’s Christmas gift.7
The greatest gift Maria gave to them was her command that every student tinge tradition in the opera world with a uniquely individual style. “Tradition in the theatre is not something to be respected unquestionably,” she stressed. “Sometimes it can foster vulgarity when a singer slavishly imitates the so-called traditional way.”8
To students enquiring whether it would be correct to add or remove a particular ornament or accentuate a particular syllable, Maria neither confirmed nor denied. Her prerogative was to allow each artist to apply their subjectivity. During Sheila Nadler’s treatment of Il trovatore’s “Stride la vampa” the latter asks which word to highlight in a phrase. “That’s up to you to solve. Try one; try the other, see which one is better. You can go to your coach. Very fine coach. She’ll tell you which. ‘Cause—sometimes we cannot hear what we do, but another ear can.”9
There were unbreakable rules. “Don’t pull the rhythm,” she advises bass Sung Kil Kim after his performance of La traviata’s “Di Provenza al mar.” “You must always keep rhythm rolling. If you slacken it a little bit you have to give it back. This is the secret of all music; especially the famous “rubato” [which means “robbed”]. If you steal a little bit from here you’ve got to give it back elsewhere.”10
Barrie Smith sings Cavalleria rusticana’s “Tu qui, Santuzza” duet with Mario Fusco and ends the phrase “La tua Santuzza… piange e t’implora” with an extra note on the “ra” syllable; much like Maria had done before Violetta’s outburst of “Amami Alfredo” on the phrase “sempre, sempre, sempre presso a te-EH”. The tutor reprimands her: “No—don’t do that.”11 At the same time she praises Sheila Nadler’s decision to add an extra sixteenth-note before “morire” in “L’aborrita rivale,” calling it “Good tradition” but insisting it has to be a “last-minute portamento—otherwise you cannot do it.”12
Thus Maria acknowledged that taste—even the name of her classes, the “Lyric Tradition”—relied on the nature of every interpreter. Components of her artistry were not to be conveyed; each singer was entitled to their own approach. Quality was measurable by listeners’ and critics’ tastes but passing time appraised it best.
Her relationships with the students were abundant and varying. Perhaps the most salient one was her kinship with Barrie Smith. “This young girl sang very beautifully [at the audition],” Maria introduced her at the second Juilliard class. “But I had the impression that she was a soprano instead of a mezzo. Now—I’d like to hear what she has done. Miss Barrie Smith did not want to—but I don’t want her to go on singing because I want to see whether she’s on the right path… So you must not criticize her.”13
South Carolinian Clifford Barrington “Barrie” Smith was now twenty-eight. After earning a bachelor’s degree in music from Converse College she had spent a year studying at the American Opera Center at Juilliard.14 Maria warmed to the young woman instantly—treasuring what Smith would describe as her own “strict self-discipline… Even as a third grader I would get up at 5:30 am to practice the piano. And I’ve always made myself go to bed at a certain hour, knowing that it would pay off when I had to perform the next day.”
A dreamer, Smith confessed a few months prior to the classes that she “[didn’t] have much social life… Besides, most guys, when they hear I’m an opera singer, stand back four paces and then run like mad!”15
This frankness aligned the two different sopranos. Following stints with the Texas Opera Theatre and Houston Grand Opera as soprano-in-residence, Smith would change course and eventually become a psychotherapist.16
Amidst the twosome’s mischievous shenanigans the lessons’ majesty made room for zany repartee. It called to mind a couple of contemporary rolemodels: Mary Richards and her sidekick Rhoda Morgenstern.
“How are you doing, Miss Barrie?” Maria asked her one November evening. “Not that I want you to sing…”
“Terrible.”
“Oh—you can’t feel terrible; you’ve got to feel well.”
“I don’t have to feel well; everybody keeps telling me I have to and I—”
“Of course you do… Well, so do I but I came to the class; I felt pretty lousy,” Maria conceded.
“We’re not helping each other, are we—”
“Of course we are. Of course I am helping you.”
“But you asked, so…”
“If you have that reaction, that means already you’re all right. So long as you have that nerve to react, then you’re all right.”
“Well—I’ve always got that.”17
On that occasion Barrie was excused. The next time, she approached Maria closely.
“Ooh, you’re coming near me.”
“Yes, I am. I need all the help I can get,” Barrie professed.
“Well—I’ll come near you.”
“So I’ll stand, and—look like I’m singing and you sing,” the student offered. “D’you want to? I’ve got three copies.”
“You’ve got three? Gee, that’s awful, eh?”
“I’ve come prepared.”
“This is yours, too.”
“Yes.”
“Well—you’ve got plenty of things coming to you.”
Barrie presented her with some kind of amplifier; possibly a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Maria burst into the waves of tuneful girlish laughter—her voice rising by about an octave as she spoke:
“Are you hoping to get my lousy voice outta that?”
“Yes. And I’m gonna ask Santa Claus for a trill for Christmas too!”
Maria struggled not to chortle.
“Well, I’m gonna answer that. If you think Santa Claus is gonna give you your trill—you’re wrong!” The audience applauded. Maria came to the conclusion: “So there’s no Santa Claus, Barrie.”
“No!” Barrie mock-lamented. “How can I sing now?!”
“No—you can sing; you’re gonna make it. Without Santa Claus, too. If I can make it, you can make it.”
Kohn began playing I puritani’s tough nut of an aria, “Qui la voce.”
“D’you want to start from the beginning?” Maria was referring to the aria’s prelude “Oh, rendetemi la speme.”
“I don’t wanna do that,” Barrie insisted.
“All right.” There was silence. Then—all of a sudden—Maria cried out in a near-melodic voice that made her sound like someone half her age: “But it’s good warming up!”
“I’d rather warm up somewhere else.”
“All right.” Another pause. A puzzled Maria remarked to her audience, “I’m being had today.”
“You know I’d never do that to you!” exclaimed Barrie. “Don’t you trust me?!”
“You watch until you sing and I’ll get even.”
“I know! God…” Barrie groaned. “My voice keeps going to sleep and I can feel it just… leaving.”
“No, no, no—now, no tragedy; come back to earth. To earth and to work. No more joking—please.”18
The two kept in regular contact after Maria left Juilliard. Barrie wrote to her a Christmas card that quoted Henry Thoreau: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”19 In her sixties Barrie began to write a book about her relationship with Maria. She passed before the memoir was completed.20
Mezzo-soprano Sheila Nadler had a different story. One of the older singers, Nadler had been training with Maria’s idol Rosa Ponselle for a few years21 and would go on to have a successful international operatic career.22 During her time at Juilliard she underwent a crisis of confidence. Maria’s abrupt order to change her appearance didn’t help to relieve it.
Nevertheless the two at one point had a tête-à-tête—and Nadler found behind a more controlled façade a softer person. “Looking back I think she gave me the courage to continue,” she would recall decades later. “I was so concerned about my nervousness. I told her I had to make a comeback. She said, ‘So do I—we’re both in the same boat.’”23
©Sophia Lambton 2023
The Callas Imprint: A Centennial Biography will be released TOMORROW.
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ibid. 14 February 1972.
Eugene Kohn to Wriston Locklair, 17 May 1971 [Archives of the Juilliard School, New York]. Quoted with kind permission from Kohn.
K. Shattuck, “A Profile—Eugene Kohn, Maestro in Residence,” The Palisades Newsletter, March 2012, issue 216.
Author’s interview with Eugene Kohn, New York, 24 March 2013.
Undated letter from Eugene Kohn to Callas (c. April 1972) [Juilliard Archive].
Memorandum from Eugene Kohn to all of Callas’ students, 1 December 1971 [Juilliard Archive].
D. Prouse, “Maria Callas Speaks,” 19 March 1961.
Callas, “The Lyric Tradition,” 9 March 1972.
ibid. 28 February 1972.
ibid. 13 March 1972.
ibid. 28 October 1971.
ibid. 14 October 1971.
Memorandum from The American Opera Center to Peter Mennin: “Length of membership information,” 25 April 1971 [Juilliard Archive]
L. B. Villela, “S.F. Opera: The Place to Watch for Barrie opening night,” Albuquerque Tribune, July 1971 [Precise date obscured in clipping at Juilliard Archive]
“Clifford Smith Obituary,” The Greenville News, 8 June 2014, https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/greenvilleonline/name/clifford-smith-obituary?id=19367573.
Callas, “The Lyric Tradition,” 8 November 1971.
ibid. 15 November 1971.
Christmas Card from Barrie Smith to Callas, 1971 [Juilliard Archive].
Author’s e-mail correspondence with Barrie Smith, 18 March 2012.
J. A. Drake & R. Ponselle, Ponselle: A Singer’s Life, (New York: Doubleday, 1982), 207.
Sheila Nadler’s career is described at https://operawire.com/obituary-mezzo-soprano-sheila-nadler-dies-at-82.
Sheila Nadler in “Tyne Daly on the legend of Maria Callas,” The Times, 6 February 2012.