INTERVIEW WITH COSME MCMOON (KALW, 5/26/91) (Weekend Radio, WCLV, 26501
Emery Industrial Parkway, Cleveland OH 44128):
I presume you have lots of questions, and they're going to be
answered in the following interview with Miss Jenkins' accompanist for many
years, Cosmé McMoon:
Q. Like many artists of unusual ability, Florence Foster Jenkins has
been understood by the world and even by her most devoted followers in a
partial, limited sort of way. What is needed for a full appreciation of
numbers such as we hear today is not only background of a sort but a clear
explanation of her personality by someone both familiar and sympathetic with
its unusual development. It is for this reason that we are fortunate in
being able to interview Mr. Cosmé McMoon, who coached Mme Jenkins and
accompanied her on these records. Toward getting as complete a picture as
possible, Mr. McMoon, would you be willing to tell our listeners something
about Mme J's history prior to her belated concert career?
A. I think I could. Mme Jenkins was born in Wilkes-Barre PA around
1868, of very wealthy parents, but very early she demonstrated this desire
to sing, and her parents objected to the excruciating quality of her voice,
and in her early teens she ran away from home and went to Philadelphia to
try to make her way. There she suffered great hardships and privations
until her father, hearing of it, came down to town and took her back home.
She was restored to her social and wealthy position, but with the proviso
that she wouldn't sing anymore. Therefore, during the whole lifetime of her
father, she did not sing but she had this terrific repression. Finally,
when he died, he left her very well provided for and her mother was a little
more lenient than her father had been, so she was allowed to take singing
lessons again, but not to sing in public. And her mother died in 1928, and
at that time she was left this additional fortune and completely free to
pursue her own way, so that is when she decided to make her concert career.
At that time she must have been about sixty years old.
Q. Did anyone encourage her in this idea of taking up a singing
career seriously? Who were the people that were instrumental in this?
A. Well, she had sung at small affairs in her big musical club,
which was called The Birdy Club. They had a ball yearly, and in the last
few years she had created an intermission in the ball during which she sang
an aria, and so great was the enthusiasm and the mirth that people clamored
for more. She was encouraged to sing more and more, both by professionals
and laymen. There were a great many singers from the Metropolitan in this
club - I think Enrico Caruso was one of the founders - and all these
people, to kid her along, told her that she was the most wonderful singer
that ever lived, and encouraged her that way.
Q. Through which of these activities, Mr. McMoon, did you first come
to know Mme J?
A. I met Mme Jenkins socially about a year before her mother's
death, and I saw her socially every once in a while, and, knowing that I was
a concert pianist, she asked me, when she decided upon her first concert, if
I would coach her program and supervise the numbers, which I did.
Q. Before we go on to any further description of Mme J's career, I
think it would be appropriate if you could tell us, right now, some of the
most memorable numbers that she performed, describing perhaps the costumes
she was known for and her stage presence in general.
A. Well, I might say that every number was memorable, the way she
performed it, because it was not only a performance of this sort that we
hear on the records, but she added histrionics to every number, generally
acting the action, if it were an aria, or other appropriate action if it
were a descriptive song, or else she would go into different dances during
these numbers, which were extremely hilarious. I might say that I think her
most unusual number was a fast Spanish song by the name of Clavelitos.
During this, she insisted on having introductory music, to which she danced
a Spanish step in the style of a fandango. She came out dressed in a high
comb and mantilla, with a gorgeous Spanish shawl and carrying a basket of
carnations. During the actual singing of the number, she would pause
altogether and toss these flowers out into the audience, with shouts of
ˇOlé! And this created such a pandemonium at the end that she was forced to
repeat it always. Then of course she had thrown the flowers out, so she
asked the audience if they would return them so she could toss them out
again, and many brought them up to the stage, others threw them up. When
the basket was refilled, she started again, only this time they accompanied
the whole thing with hand-clapping and each toss of a flower, for instance
at Carnegie Hall, was accompanied by a great salvo of "ˇOlé!" from the whole
house of several thousand people. There were many other unusual numbers,
each one in its own costume and action.
Q. In what way was the audience able to contain itself, or to
maintain some semblance of approval during all this, Mr. McMoon?
A. Why, there wasn't any question of semblance of approval, because
they approved of it wholeheartedly, but the audience nearly always tried not
to hurt her feelings by outright laughing, so they developed a convention
that whenever she came to a particularly excruciating discord or something
like that, where they had to laugh, they burst into these salvos of applause
and whistles and the noise was so great that they could laugh at liberty.
Q. Perhaps what's even more important, how did Mme Jenkins herself
rationalize these performances? How was she able to interpret this audience
reaction as encouragement?
A. She had gotten a conception that is because, at that time, Frank
Sinatra had started to sing, and the teenagers used to faint during his
notes and scream, so she thought she was producing the same kind of an
effect, and when these salvos of applause came, she took them as great marks
of approval of some tremendous vocal tour de force, and she loved that. She
would pause altogether and bow, many times, and then resume the song.
Q. At this time, she was led to draw comparisons, wasn't she,
between herself and other serious divas of the opera stage.
A. Oh, yes! Naturally she must have made comparisons, but I do
think that she could not hear her own work in the proper pitch, and that's
one of the characteristics of her singing. Now, I know sometimes she had At
Homes, with different guests, and she would put two records on the Victrola
to have a voting upon which was the better. She would put The Bell Song by
herself and by Galli-Curci, and then she would hand little ballots out and
you were supposed to vote which one was the best. Of course they all voted
for her, and one woman once voted for Galli-Curci so Mme said, "How could
you mistake that! My tones are much fuller than that!" So she really
didn't hear the atrocious pitches in these things. She used to sit
delightedly and listen for hours to her recordings."
Q. I know a lot in the public's mind has been made of the appearance
of the great final appearance she made at Carnegie Hall. Would you be
willing to recount some of the unique characteristics or some of the
especially interesting things that happened during that performance?
A. Yes, her performance in Carnegie Hall was the most remarkable
thing that has happened there, I think. I was supposed to play for her that
night, and when I approached the hall I could hardly get near it, because
the crowd stretched all the way to the Little Carnegie and around Seventh
Avenue, and you hardly mill through them. You had to prove your identity to
get in, and inside the house held a record audience. It seemed that the
people were hanging on the rafters, besides taking up every inch of
available standing room. When she came out to sing an old English group,
she came out in a sort of shepherdess's gown with a shepherd's crook,
holding it, and the ruckus was so great that it lasted five minutes before
there was enough quiet for her to begin. Then the concert went on with the
most noisy and abandoned applause that I have - I have never seen such a
scene, either a bullfight or at the Yale Bowl after a winning touchdown.
When she sang Clavelitos, one famous actress had to be carried out of her
box because she became hysterical.
Q. During the years since Mme J's death, there have been many
attempts, have there not, to imitate her, on the part of other singers less
- less qualified, or less completely sincere, as she was, about that type of
vocal art?
A. Oh, yes. Such a golden shower as the audiences which she was
able to attract are certainly a temptation to anyone, and many have tried
since to give studiedly discordant recitals at Town Hall and different
places, or trying to make the music funny that way, but they have no success
at all, and they just make a dismal evening, and the reason is that they're
not sincere in their efforts, as Mme Jenkins was. She is inimitable, and
many have tried also to imitate her, but without success.
[Announcer:] You may be interested in knowing that Cosmé McMoon was in
reality Edwin McArthur, the famous accompanist.
[The elders among us may recognize that name from the numerous recordings he
made as the favorite accompanist of . . . wait for it . . . the one and only
Kirsten Flagstad, the greatest dramatic soprano of her time, and the
greatest Wagnerian soprano I ever heard; she did everything in her
considerable power to get the Met to engage him as its Wagnerian chief, but
he lost out to Erich Leinsdorf, to Mme Flagstad's considerable vexation.
She did, however, euchre RCA Victor into letting him conduct when she and
her favored partner Lauritz Melchior recorded great chunks of ×Tristan und
Isolde× with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. I'd heard before that
McArthur had played for Mme Jenkins at the beginning of his career, but had
never taken it seriously. I can only assume that at the time he, as any
musician can understand, simply needed the scratch. The discovery of Cosmé
McMoon's true identity set me on fire to get into contact with him, and ask
him some probing psychological questions about her rare disorder.
Unfortunately, I learned from Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians that
Edwin McArthur had already died, at the age of 79, on February 2, 1987. I
still marvel at the sublime serenity of his facial muscles the only time I
heard him and Mme Jenkins together. At that time I had the feeling that
nothing short of an atomic explosion would have ruffled his extraordinary
aplomb.]
Paul Moor
<Texas-Paule@Sigmund-Freud.Org>
Wilhelmsaue 132
D-10715 Berlin
Telefon (4930) 8639-5784
Telefax (4930) 8639-5785
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