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Authors: Rosamond Bernier

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BOOK: Some of My Lives
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Aaron often came to Mexico. He had a particular affinity for Mexico, its people, its landscape, and he had a collegial friendship with the Mexican composer and conductor Carlos Chávez. Chávez performed Copland's music regularly with his Sinfónica de México. Copland dedicated several works to Chávez.
In Mexico, Aaron and I used to go to a sprawling lower-class dance hall called El Salón México. There were three separate spaces, each with a different admission fee. The very cheapest had a sign requesting patrons not to throw their lit cigarettes on the floor because they would burn the ladies' feet. The ladies in question were of course barefoot. Aaron's popular
El Salón México
came out of these evenings.
The gifted photographer Irving Penn took my favorite photograph of Aaron for me, sitting at the piano, in profile, the curve of the sheet music propped on the piano echoed by that beak of a nose. I was pleased that in a recent profile about Aaron (it was his centenary) in
The New Yorker
, “my” photo was used full page.
A
fter meeting Leonard Bernstein at Aaron Copland's house in Tanglewood, I was to be based in Europe for the next twenty-and-some years (1948–70), mostly in Paris. He had gone on to glory.
Our paths crossed on many occasions, Lenny usually accompanied by his sister, Shirley. He conducted in Paris in 1948, starting modestly with the Radio Orchestra and rapidly building to engagements with the top French orchestras. At first he was dismayed by the undisciplined orchestra musicians, who did not always come to rehearsals but would send substitutes. (Jerome Robbins had the same problem when he started to work with the ballet company of the Paris Opéra.) But by sheer force of personality, and his dazzling talents as conductor and pianist, he soon had them playing their hearts out for him.
The doyenne of Paris society, the aged and very musical Baronne Edouard de Rothschild, gave a supper party in his honor, after one of the concerts. Her invitations were prized. Guests arrived, most unusual in Paris, on the nose.
That evening Lenny had a particularly frenzied triumph. Shirley was not there to ride herd. In his dressing room backstage, admirers of various sexes were pressing one more scotch on him, gratefully received. In my role as sheepdog, I did my best to extract him; it was slow going. Finally, embarrassingly late, we arrived at the grand town house. I will never forget the tones of the butler as he announced in a stentorian voice, “La Baronne Edouard ATTEND.”
Of course the usual Bernstein charm righted the situation after a few Bernstein kisses.
Lenny and I were both friends of the French composer Francis Poulenc's. On an unforgettable occasion, Poulenc invited us to a dress rehearsal at the Opéra Comique of his latest work, a spirited musical setting, full of fun, of a farce by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire,
Les Mamelles de Tirésias
.
Poulenc, Lenny, and I sat huddled in the darkened house—it was freezing cold, as there was still very little heating in postwar Paris—while the ravishing Denise Duval, in transparent veiling—how she avoided pneumonia is a mystery—sang from a Folies Bergère–type runway that she was not going to be a housewife anymore. She was going to lead a man's life.
We both loved Poulenc's lilting music, and Lenny was to conduct
Les Mamelles
later in New York. David Hockney designed the engagingly witty sets.
That same year, Lenny was conducting in Holland, and I was in Holland writing some features for
Vogue
. Lenny and his sister were staying at a nearby beach resort, Scheveningen. I was at a hotel in The Hague. I went out to join the Bernsteins for lunch.
It was a glorious day, one of those days when the Dutch light lived up to all those marine landscapes. “Let's go riding” was Lenny's sudden inspiration.
I had arrived in a town outfit; this was long before the ubiquitous blue jeans. “I'll fix you up,” Shirley offered. We went to her room, and I got into a pair of her slacks and one of Lenny's shirts, and we were off.
Our rented horses responded to the great stretch of open beach and Lenny's urging and galloped
presto con fuoco
. Lenny started shouting poetry into the wind, Auden mostly. “Don't you know any poetry?” he shouted to me. I was too out of breath from holding my plunging horse to respond.
A few days later we went to Amsterdam for a concert, at the Concertgebouw, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. “You
know
I'm a better conductor than von Karajan,” Lenny whispered all too audibly.
By now it is 1950. I was living and working in Paris, and Lenny and Shirley were in town. Lenny had come to conduct the Radio Orchestra. It so happened he had a gap in his schedule and I had accumulated a month's vacation time. We were having dinner in one
of those little upstairs rooms at Lapérouse and had finished off a diaphanous soufflé. “Let's go somewhere, anywhere, you choose,” said Lenny. “All right, let's make it Spain” was my contribution.
So we went. Those were still the Franco days, and Spain was very puritanical. They were dismayed at the Ritz in Barcelona that Lenny and Shirley wanted to sleep in the same room. They were also dismayed by the dachshund puppy the two had picked up en route that was far from housebroken.
Lenny was delighted by the
sardana
that was danced in the public square in front of the cathedral on Sundays. It is the most democratic dance in the world. Anyone can join in. You just step into the circle and grab the hand of your neighbor. The women place their handbags and the cake for Sunday lunch in the middle of the circle, and everything is safe.
Lenny being Lenny, he had to be part of the action. He pulled me in, and being a
músico
, he immediately grasped the structure and when we should stop—the music had a way of suddenly stopping, leaving me with one foot in the air.
He liked best the little bars of the
barrio chino
with its flamenco singers and children dancing outside entranced by the music. There was an old man who sang as if his heart were broken, eyes closed, stretching out his hand. We went to hear him night after night while Shirley sensibly went to bed. We loved his lament for his love who had entered a convent, “She who was most loved has become a nun” (“La Hija de Don Juan Alba,” it was called).
From Barcelona we went to Majorca, to a little fishing village a Spanish friend had recommend, Cala d'Or. We settled down happily to the swimming routine, but Lenny missed having a piano. The hotel management owned a little shack across the road we could use, and I managed to arrange for an old upright piano to be sent out to us from Palma, the capital.
So every day we went to what Lenny called “a mansion grand in a foreign land”—(courtesy of Auden?). Lenny played everything from musical comedy to grand opera, with Shirley a worthy singing partner, both of them remembering every word of every lyric, including numbers by our friends Adolph Green and Betty Comden—such as “I Can Cook Too.”
Both Bernsteins were confirmed hypochondriacs and traveled with a bulging satchel of potions and remedies. Inevitably, Shirley fell ill. A doctor from the nearest village was called in. He arrived in his little horse-drawn buggy. His name was Don Virgilio.
He examined Shirley. “What did he say?” Lenny asked me anxiously (at that point I was the only one who knew Spanish). “He says, ‘Either she will get better, or she won't.'”
Some time later Lenny stepped on a bee, and his foot swelled alarmingly. Don Virgilio came back on the double. By this time, he was completely under the Bernstein charm and invited us all to his little house, where he gave us small glasses of sweet Málaga wine and danced and sang to a song called “Mi Jaca,” with us providing a clapping accompaniment. Then we all danced.
Our month's holiday over, we headed for the airport, with a few tears. Lenny went on to Israel to conduct; I returned to my Paris office. He took off a heavy gold link bracelet I always wore and put it on.
It was not as usual then as now for men to wear jewelry. A conductor's wrist is very visible. The gold bracelet was the subject of comment. Later, when Lenny married Felicia, she sent the bracelet back to me. I still wear it.
I had not met Felicia Montealegre, the beautiful Chilean girl who had come to New York to study piano with Claudio Arrau. But Lenny talked to me about her often, and the pros and cons of marrying her. Twice he had been officially engaged, but twice he couldn't go through with it.
Felicia hung on resolutely, in spite of what must have been humiliating public rejections (nothing was kept under wraps with Lenny).
He wanted to be a good Jewish family man, but he had an unquenchable, as he called it, “dark” side.
Finally, they did marry in what was the best possible move for him but not all plain sailing for her. I became extremely fond of Felicia. She was charming and talented—both musically and as an actress. She gave him three splendid children. Lenny adored them. She made their apartment in the Dakota a center of lighthearted multilingual hospitality. I owe many happy evenings and stimulating encounters to her.
At one such evening, a fellow guest was the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. He spoke no English or French but had picked up a bit of Spanish while in Cuba. He rather stuck to me as, aside from our Chilean hostess, no one else spoke Spanish. We left at the same time, and in the elevator he asked me, “What did you think of the dinner?” Somewhat surprised, I answered I thought it delicious. “But so short …” I understood he meant so few courses. He continued as we exited, “When you come to my house, there will be
platos y platos y platos
”—“course after course after course.” I gathered Russian hospitality involved a steady succession of dishes.
Sadly, Felicia died far too soon, in 1978. I was deeply touched when Lenny and the children asked me to speak at her memorial.
On a happier note, Jamie, Lenny's eldest daughter, had a baby boy. We were all in the Bernstein box to hear and watch Lenny conduct the Philharmonic. After the concert we rushed to the Dakota, where the baby was left in the care of their faithful Julia. Lenny, bursting with pride, pointed to the baby: “There goes the first Jewish president of the United States.”
Lenny was as generous as he was expansive. Soloists who performed with him have told me that no conductor could be more supportive. When I started my lecturing career at the Metropolitan Museum in 1971, he sent me, unsolicited, this little text to be used for my publicity: “Madame Bernier has the gift of instant communication to a degree I have rarely encountered, and in a field where it is not easy to be communicative without being glib. Indeed, her lectures are richly informed, full of fresh surprise, and delivered with elegance and simple charm.”
And the night after my lecturing debut at the Met, Lenny and Felicia gave me a large party. If it had not been for that, I think only a handful of people might have come to the auditorium. I had been away from New York for twenty years and so was an almost unknown quantity.
Lenny immediately took to my husband, John Russell, when he arrived from England. Typically, he wrote an eloquent paragraph for John's book
The Meanings of Modern Art
. When John Russell and I were married, on May 24, 1975, Lenny was John's witness; Aaron Copland gave me away; Philip Johnson gave the wedding. He had
arranged a little concert following the ceremony in his new sculpture gallery. And who led me in on his arm? My new husband? Not at all—Lenny Bernstein.
Afterward, Lenny asked me, “Why didn't you ask me to write a piece of music for your wedding?” “It never occurred to me; I wouldn't have had the pretension,” I answered. A few days later a music manuscript arrived from Lenny.
 
For the Russells, R. + J.
Meditations on a Wedding
With love from Lenny, May 1975
(Marked
Andante con tenerezza
[tenderness] followed by
dolce
… )
So I own an unpublished Bernstein work.
Whenever something important happened in my life, I always wanted Lenny around, and he was always there.
I was given a French decoration in 1980 (Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres). I was told that I could have a few guests but that the ceremony had to start on time. I told Lenny, “I'm inviting you, but don't come if you are going to be late.” He was notoriously late everywhere. When John and I arrived at the French consulate, there was Lenny, walking up and down in front of the entrance, cape flapping in the wind, pointing to his watch when he saw us to indicate he had arrived not only on time but ahead of us.
When John's book of essays
Reading Russell
was published some years ago, his publisher gave him a lunch in a private room at Le Cirque. Lenny was invited. We sat at the bar together before the tables were seated. “Do you remember ‘La Hija de Don Juan Alba'?” he asked me. More than thirty years had passed since we had heard it in Barcelona, and he remembered every word, in Spanish, and conducted me for a duet in his cigarette rasp and my feeble contralto.
I was lecturing in Turkey for an American organization in 1990. John and I were cut off from the outside world for some time, so we did not get news of Lenny's alarming deteriorating health.
The day I got back to New York came the unbelievable headline:
Leonard Bernstein was dead (October 14). A heartbreaking note was that I found a telegram from Lenny apologizing for being late with my birthday greetings—my birthday is October 1—and sending love. It must have been one of the last things he did.
We had a cloudless friendship. He inscribed one of his books to me with the affectionate nickname he had for me and added, “who has never given me anything but joy.” I could say the same about him.
BOOK: Some of My Lives
4.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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