Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

Around 1962, long before I became a broadcaster, I was director of program services for SESAC, a performance rights organization. I was flying to Nashville to attend a broadcast convention and, owing to my company's generous policy, I was traveling first class. Two seats before me I sighted an attractive woman who looked very much like the great soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. But what would that illustrious Marschallin and Ariadne be doing in Nashville, the capital of country music? Before attempting anything foolish, I asked the flight attendant if she could verify the identity of the mysterious traveler. She did more than that: she actually showed me Schwarzkopf's own signature on the plane's registry. Thus emboldened, I proceeded to introduce myself as the author of my recently published Callas biography. Schwarzkopf, being also the wife of the omnipotent impresario Walter Legge, knew about the book and, as we began our conversation, she surprised me by showing true concern that Callas's prominent recent exposure to the swirl of social life with Aristotle Onassis would have a harmful effect on her still active career. I then learned that Schwarzkopf was about to appear with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, performing the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss. The short flight soon ended, my companion couldn't have been friendlier, and we wished each other well and went about our rather disparate business activities.

Fast forward to 1980, by which time my nationally syndicated broadcast programs on WQXR were in their twelfth year, and I celebrated Schwarzkopf's seventy-fifth birthday with a tribute that so pleased one of the partners of the Colbert Artists Management (the singer's longtime American agents) that she urged me to send a cassette copy of the program to the artist's residence in Switzerland. In my brief cover letter I mentioned my earlier New York meeting with Legge (who had passed away the previous year) and that we both had been ardent admirers of Titta Ruffo, the legendary baritone. I also reminded her of our previous encounter on that plane to Nashville. A gracious reply came soon thereafter, thanking me for the birthday tribute, saying that "I am looking forward to half an hour when I shall be able to listen to your charming gift. . . . We have naturally all the recordings Titta Ruffo ever made, and Walter played them to me often. . . . As to 'the talk above the clouds,' I am afraid I am at a loss."

I never had a chance to meet Mme Schwarzkopf after that "talk above the clouds" and had no reason to expect that such an incident would make an impression on the world-traveling diva. But this episode clearly illustrates that we who interview celebrated stars rarely amount to more than passing and unmemorable moments in their lives. And yet I did develop warm friendships with many of the great artists whom I have interviewed on radio and other venues during the past thirty-six years. They number nearly a hundred and will be more lastingly remembered if I ever get around to completing my memoirs and succeed in getting them published. Jarmila Novotná, Bidú Sayão, Sándor Kónya, Martti Talvela, and André Kostelanetz, all of whom I counted as close friends, live forever in my memory.

It is perhaps understandable that I have felt a more intimate kinship with those closer to my age than with artists still wrapped up in the upward spiral of a burgeoning career. There is more wisdom to be distilled from a backward glance on things past than from someone constrained by the pressures of choosing new roles, meeting schedules, and planning promotional strategies, to say nothing of domestic conflicts. Some or all of these can sometimes descend on a young artist not quite accustomed to wearing the flowing and occasionally uncomfortable halo of fame. Nonetheless, a couple of hours spent in the company of a Renée Fleming, a Susan Graham, or a Vivica Genaux—blending information, fun, and enchantment—is an experience to treasure.