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By Robert Wilder Blue

Rosalind Elias

American mezzo-soprano Rosalind Elias has been before the public for nearly 50 years singing leading roles on the world’s greatest opera stages. She has grown from ingénue to matriarch, playing characters that span nearly the entire timeline of opera. Her appearances in American operas have included the title role in Marc Blitzstein’s Regina, the Mother in Hugo Weisgall’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, the Old Lady in Leonard Bernstein’s Candide and Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. But her place in history was taken when she created roles in two of Samuel Barber’s operas: Charmian in Antony and Cleopatra and, of course, Erika in Vanessa. USOPERAWEB talked to Ms. Elias last spring about her career and about Samuel Barber. Her life begins in New England. “I was born and brought up in Lowell, Massachusetts. I’m the last of thirteen children. Music was not in my family at all – not classical music anyway. I came from very strict parents and, you know, any girl going on stage was bad. But from childhood I used to sing around the house all the time and they finally said, ‘Gee, you know she’s talented. Why don’t we get her some lessons.’ And so I went for lessons.

“I continued on to New England Conservatory of Music and got a scholarship to go to Italy. I studied with Maestro Luigi Ricci at Santa Cecilia in Rome and then went up to Milan and auditioned for La Scala. They gave me a contract to cover Queen Alkmene in Die Liebe der Danae [The Loves of Danae] by Richard Strauss and, of course, the girl singing the role never got sick. But then my mother had a heart attack and I had to come back home. I didn’t know what to do next. I was going to try New York but I had no money with which to study. So I auditioned for the American Theatre Wing scholarship and the judges were Helen Hayes, Rose Bampton and Max Rudolph, who was Rudoph Bing’s assistant at the Met. And I won the scholarship, which was $750 and that took care of me for a while.

“After the audition, Mr. Rudolph came to me and suggested I go on the Met Auditions of the Air. They were broadcast live from a theater on Broadway. Before they would accept me, though, I had to audition on the Met stage. So I went and sang at the Met and they took me on that first broadcast, which was January 4, 1954. The following Friday he called me to come to his office. When I arrived he sent me up to the rehearsal room where Maestro [Tibor] Kozma played through the third act of Die Walküre [The Valkyrie] with me to see how I would read it. Evidently, by the time I got back to Mr. Rudolph’s office, Kozma had sent down word to Mr.Rudolph that he thought I could learn it in ten days. Mr. Rudolph said to me, ‘I can give you a contract for two performances of Die Walküre but you have to get out of the competition. I don’t know if we would renew your contract next season either. Or you can continue with the competition, but we don’t know if you’ll win. You have the weekend to think about it.’ Of course, I came back on Monday and told Mr. Rudolph that I wanted the contract very badly and that maybe if I proved myself they would let me continue with the company. My debut was as Grimgerde on February 23, 1954. [The cast included Astrid Varnay as Brunnhilde, Margaret Harshaw as Sieglinde, Blanche Thebom as Fricka, Set Svanholm as Siegmund, Hans Hotter as Wotan. Fellow Valkyries included Martha Lipton, Lucine Amara, Jean Madeira and Sandra Warfield.] They did renew my contract and for the next two seasons I sang a lot of small roles. You name them, I did them. My first two years I sang more performances than anyone else in the Met.”

For its 1957-58 season the Met announced the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s first full-length opera, Vanessa. Today the casting of a world premiere would be set four or five years in advance; but in that time, contracts were handed out barely a season ahead. Ms. Elias would end up being in the right place at the right time. “Again Mr. Rudolph was really my guardian angel. Samuel Barber had completed the opera but they hadn’t cast the role of Erika yet. Mr.Rudolph looked at the score and told Sam and Gian Carlo Menotti [Vanessa librettist and Barber’s companion] that he knew the right person for the role of Erika. They didn’t really know me so I had to audition for them and then I had to audition in the opera house again. And they wanted to come to see me in a performance, which they did. Finally, they gave me the role.

“I worked very hard and as I was learning the role, going through the score, day in and day out, I began to think, ‘Gee, it’s a shame I don’t have an aria.’ So I went to Mr. Bing and I told him I wished I had an aria. You know when you’re very young you have a lot of nerve; I wouldn’t do that today. He said, ‘wait a minute Rosalind,’ and picked up the phone. He dialed and then I heard him say, ‘Sam, I’ve got Rosalind Elias here. She wants to talk to you.’ Well, I thought I was going to faint. But Bing handed me the phone and told me to talk, so I said, ‘Mr. Barber, your opera is so wonderful and Erika is such a great role, but I wish I had an aria.’ [As it happened, Lee Hoiby was at Barber’s apartment that day and told USOPERAWEB the same story.] So Sam wrote ‘Must the winter come so soon?’ which, of course, has become one of the most famous American arias for mezzo-sopranos. And after that, everything happened. Erika changed my life; the roles were not small anymore.”

Vanessa premiered on January 15, 1958 with Eleanor Steber in the title role and Ms. Elias as Erika. The all-star cast also included Regina Resnik (the Baroness), Nicolai Gedda (Anatol), Giorgio Tozzi (the Doctor), George Cehanovsky (Nicholas) and Robert Nagy (the Footman); Dmitri Mitropoulos conducted. Did you all know that it was going to be a success? “Well, we felt it. We were enveloped in all of this beautiful music and it became very emotional. You know they wanted [Maria] Callas to do Vanessa and she refused it because she thought Erika was the more important role. She said she didn’t want to do Vanessa with that other role in it. Then they offered it to Sena Jurinac but that didn’t work out. Eleanor only had a short time to learn the role and that in itself was hectic. It made us all quite nervous. It was hard work because Erika is always on the stage. But I tell you it was so thrilling. We all got along beautifully and we knew we were making great music and that we were involved in something special. Mitropoulos had some of the rehearsals in his apartment in what was called the Great Northern Hotel on West 57th Street. (I don’t think it’s there anymore.) You know he was in a monastery at one time – he was a monk – and his apartment was filled with all these icons. He’d have candles lit under the icons when we arrived to rehearse and it had this very spiritual feeling. These were experiences that I will never forget. He was a wonderful, calm and soothing man. We were all Pisceans it seems – myself, Samuel Barber and Maestro Mitropoulos.”

After its initial success, Vanessa’s fortunes faded. Today it remains on the fringe of the repertory, never quite finding a regular place. Its critics complain of excessive melodrama, a curious accusation when viewed in the context of all the operatic literature. We asked Ms. Elias why the opera still has failed to catch on, especially with two such marvelous roles. “Well you know at the Met we did it a few times with Mary Costa and Brenda Lewis, but not too many times really. You’re right about that. I don’t know and I can think of wonderful singers now who would be perfect in it. Vanessa is not an easy role. I did it once with Ashley Putnam and now I’m doing it with Kiri [Te Kanawa], who is wonderful. We did it in Monte Carlo a year ago and, oh God, it’s just the perfect part for her because she’s so beautiful.

“Sam wrote beautifully for singers. Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is incredible music. I only wish he’d written more operas. Of course he did Anthony and Cleopatra for the opening of the Lincoln Center. When he was writing it, he called me and asked me to do Charmain. He said, ‘you’re my lucky charm, Rosalind.’ I told him I’d do anything for him. If he had wanted me to say ‘dinner is served,’ I would have done it; I didn’t care how big the role was. I loved that piece also; it contains some wonderful music.”

Antony and Cleopatra saw the spotlight for the first time on September 16, 1966. However, the opening night was hardly the triumph the company and artists had hoped for. Franco Zefferelli’s production was designed to take full advantage of new stage’s technology but instead distracted the audience and overwhelmed what was really a rather intimate work. Critics treated the event as a colossal disaster, trumpeting the evening’s proceedings long and loud. Barber was devastated; his creative life never really recovered. “You’re right about Sam. I felt very sorry for him. He was a wonderful human being but he became a very sad person after that. But working with him was an experience I’ll never forget. I felt charmed. I’d sit with him working on the music and he was so accommodating, asking how things fit in my voice. I wish all singers could have that experience.”

Recently, Ms. Elias returned to Vanessa to play the Baroness. “So now we come to another great role. She is mostly silent on stage; she has very few pages to sing, but it is such a riveting and strong role and I love doing it. I remember when I did Erika and Regina Resnik was the Baroness, they always seemed to seat me forward and she would be sitting in the background. I could feel her presence behind me and I used to want to turn around to see what she was doing! I tell you the Baroness is not an easy role because it’s all about your reaction to what’s going on. It actually takes much more concentration. But, you can draw the whole audience in if you do it well. You know when I did the Baroness in Monte Carlo – I’m always afraid lightening is going to strike when I say this – it was such a success for me. Magazines came from all over wanting interviews. It sort of was like a pebble in a lake, you know. One after another, from Germany, Sicily, they came and wanted to speak with me.”

Vanessa is based on Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen. It is set in Sweden in 1905. Vanessa has lived as a shut-in with her mirrors covered for 20 years since her lover Anatol deserted her. Her mother, the Old Baroness, will not speak to her and her only companion is her niece, Erika. As the opera opens, they are preparing for Anatol's return. When he arrives at the door, Vanessa declares her love for him, then faints when she discovers that it is not he, but his son, also named Anatol. Anatol explains that his father has died, but he wanted to meet the woman that haunted his father for so many years. Meanwhile, Erika has fallen in love with Anatol. He seduces her. When he turns his attentions toward Vanessa, Erika discovers that she is pregnant. Vanessa and Anatol announce their plans to marry while Erika flees from the house, causing her to miscarry. Vanessa and Anatol depart from the house as Erika covers all the mirrors. (Synopsis from operaamerica.org)

What does the Baroness think of what’s going on? “Oh I think she is just fed up with Vanessa. The sad thing is she won’t talk to Vanessa and she doesn’t talk to the doctor either. The only one she talks to is Erika, who confides to the Baroness that she wants Anatol’s love. The Baroness tries to stop Erika from making a mistake like Vanessa had made with the first Anatol, but it doesn’t work out because of Erika’s pride. So the Baroness stops talking to Erika too. The way I did it in Monte Carlo, when it came time for Vanessa to leave with the young man, I asked the director if I could put my hand to her as if I wanted to say something. But Vanessa walks by me and turns and says her line, ‘Goodbye, mother,’ over her shoulder. Well I think that one moment said it all. She’s been silent throughout the whole opera with Vanessa, just listening and knowing and agreeing or not agreeing. Finally she wants to say something and it’s too late. There are a lot of unanswered questions about this, you know, but I think that’s what is good about it.”

Rosalind Elias as Erika in Vanessa (1958). Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera Archives.

What was the Baroness like when she was Erika’s age? “I think she had the most wonderful love affair of her life. I think she had quite a life and had great disappointment also. I think she’s bitter because something terrible happened.

Had the Baroness made the same mistake Vanessa made and that Erika makes now? “I knew you were going to ask me that. Well, we discussed it in Monte Carlo with the director. I don’t remember too well, but I think we even discussed it with Menotti. That’s what I mean – there’s a lot up in the air that we don’t know. Yes, it could be.”

You’ve sung another great American role, the title role in Regina. “Oh, that is a fantastic part. I mean, who would not think this character was great. There’s a reason she was such a tough climber you know. Read the Lillian Hellman background to it and see the family that Hellman came from, and oh my gosh, you see where she got that character. Regina is an ambitious woman who got that way because she had to survive.

“I did about thirty performances up at the Long Wharf Theater. I did a lot of research on it beforehand and of course I got the recording of Brenda Lewis singing Regina. Ah, please, there’s nothing greater than that performance – that intensity she gave Regina. When I was learning the role, I called her and asked, ‘Please Brenda, can we talk? Can I pick your brain?’ We met and talked and she came to the performance and everything. She originated the role of Birdie, you know. And it was the southern soprano, Jane Pickens, who sang Regina on Broadway. She was very famous at the time. Did Brenda tell you the story? Jane Pickens had the whole first floor dressing room and Brenda was on the third floor. At the first performance Brenda sang that fantastic aria Birdie has and walked off the stage up the stairs three flights and they were still applauding. And that’s when Jane went to Blitzstein and said, ‘you’re going to write me an aria.’ So he wrote Regina’s aria, ‘The best thing of all.’

“You have to be careful with this role though and not become the dragon lady. You’ve got to give her some vulnerability. It’s a danger when she says to Horace, ‘I hope you die,’ because if it’s overdone the audience will snicker. But, in the end, you see she’s a lonely person. Her daughter Alexandra is leaving her and asks, ‘What’s the matter Mama? Are you afraid Mama?’ and you see she’s going to be left all alone.”

Tell us about doing Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. “I really had fun with that. It’s not an easy role. Oh my dear, musically it’s so difficult. I was surprised that I was offered it. Do you know who thought of me? It was Beverly Sills. I was really shocked. You know Angela Lansbury is my idol and I’d seen her do it. (I still watch reruns of Murder She Wrote. I love Jessica Fletcher.) Paul Gemignani was the conductor and he came to my apartment to work on it. We’d be working and he’d call Stephen Sondheim to ask him questions about the way I was singing the role – if what I was doing was alright. And Sondheim would say, ‘yes, go ahead and do it that way.’ Sondheim came to the rehearsal hall after we had been working for a while and I was a nervous wreck. But, he was very kind. And Timothy Nolan [Sweeney Todd] was very supportive; he had done it a lot. It was such a different experience from anything I had done before. I thought, how lucky everybody was who had done it on Broadway night after night after night, to be able to get into the part that way. We had, what, maybe four performances at the most? But that music is wonderful – I just loved it.

How did the part fit your voice? Did you sing it differently than you would an operatic role? “It was difficult. I really think it’s an opera. The ‘pie’ aria? oh please. You come out and you bump the door and hit the table and all that. It’s all very rhythmical and rather complicated. Finally I decided I couldn’t sing it, I really had to almost speak it. On opening night, you know, something went wrong with the mike system and at the first intermission, Beverly came to my dressing room and said ‘Rosalind turn around.’ The body mike had gotten all tangled and the sound was distorted. She fixed it for me. They didn’t have a good sound system though.”

Wasn’t the New York State Theater too big of a house for that piece though? “Oh, yes. It’s impossible to get that dialogue across. I find that even the dialogue in Carmen is a problem. You shouldn’t do that at the Met, I’m sorry. It just doesn’t work because you have to yell the words out and then that’s not acting. So much of that dialogue is intimate and you’re yelling so that you can be heard a block away. It doesn’t work – not in those big houses. Sorry.”

Your official bio calls you a ‘singing actress.’ There have been so many wonderful American singers who were terrific actors but didn’t have major international careers or recording contracts. The New York City Opera was brimming with wonderful singing actors in the 1950s and ‘60s who had an enormous impact on American opera. “I know what you’re talking about. I believe the roles should be acted well and it would be nice if we could get good singing too. When you talk about Callas, for example, she had flaws in the voice, yes, but she sang the role as the character and I believe that if she sang words that needed a screechy, yelling sound she didn’t feel it was appropriate to sing them ‘bel canto.’ If I’m saying something terrible, I’m not going to pound on my chest as many opera singers do. No, I’m going to do it with subtlety, using the words. I’m going to understand the size of the theater and where my audience is so that they can see me, so they won’t laugh at me because I’m being melodramatic. It’s a matter to knowing the intensity to give and believing what you’re doing. Character is number one with me; then comes the voice. If the character is singing a beautiful, long, lamenting aria, sitting by the window asking, ‘must the winter come so soon?’ then that will be sung as beautifully as I can. But when Erika sings ‘No Anatol – oh no. Let Vanessa have you. She who waited so long for so little,’ then you sing it accordingly. You have to sing it as though you believe what you’re saying. There are people just sing, sing, sing, beautifully all the time. Then there are others who have to make the character believable and sometimes that means not singing beautifully all the time. When I go to a performance I want to see both. And I know it’s possible.”

Any reflections as you look back over your career? “Gee, I don’t know. I couldn’t have hoped for a better musical life than I’ve had. And if I had it all to do over again I’d do it the same way. I got my experience through all those small roles. I really worked so hard to the point that my asthma kicked up on me. The Met paid for me to go to the best allergist on Park Avenue. But for all of those experiences, I would go through it all again. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

How did you sing with asthma? “I was asthmatic from the time I was a child and I had it in some of the conservatory days. Asthma is an emotional thing, it really is. Then in New York I was carrying around ten scores in my arms and doing opera after opera and the nerves set in and my stamina let down and the asthma kicked up again. So I went every day to the doctor. He’d give me a shot and I used to do that inhaler that you squeeze in your mouth. I was living on that and for two-and-a-half years I was on Prednizone. Finally I asked the doctor, ‘When am I going to finish with this?’ and he told me, ‘You can’t live without me.’ Well all you had to do was tell me that. That day I went to my general practitioner and I told him what had happened and he told me to come to him six days in a row when the season is off for shots. I never had a problem again, except once in Salzburg when we did the Così there, it kicked up a little bit on me, but not too much. I don’t even want to talk about it. I’m knocking on wood here.”

What do you think about the future of opera? “You know, I was down in Florida recently and I was shocked to discover that they don’t have a classical radio station anymore. So the Met is not broadcast there. What’s happening? I read in the paper yesterday that one of the classical stations in New York was not going to have classical music any longer, it was going to be talk radio. Now that’s kind of scary. Thank God we have those three tenors and other people who are bringing opera out to the people. I don’t know what the answer is. I know we’re going to have to bring the young people to opera. I hope they’ll continue to show opera on television. I think people will watch it and maybe come to see an opera.”

Plans for the future? “My continual hope is to do character roles. I’d love a cameo character role in a new opera, even if it was one or two pages, where people would walk off and say, ‘Wasn’t that wonderful!’ That’s all. I like doing new operas. It’s challenging to continue to learn new music.”