Let the Bright Seraphim

Funny the places one can find solace and inspiration.

A Visit to the Portrait Gallery

On our last day in Washington, while Mr. Muscato slept (Ramadan being, for the fasters, a time for mornings starting as late as one can possible manage it), I slipped out and went for a walk.  It was the first time I'd been able, what with matters business, medical, and bureaucratic, to get away and actually be in the city, wander around, enjoy it a little.

I am surprised to say it impressed me.  I've always spent as little time as possible there, hurtling in for boring corporate stuff and flying away.  When I was first spending much time there, I was a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, and part of that package is a certain snootiness about Our Nation's Capital.  Also, in those days, much of the central part of town, away from the Federal Disneyland, really did look like a bomb zone.

Now, though - not so much.  We stayed near Thomas Circle, an area I remember finding distinctly unsavory, and on my morning out I walked from there, in a circuitous sort of way, down to one of my favorite places, the National Portrait Gallery.  It's astonishing how much the whole area has changed.  I suppose it's all really gentrification at its worst, and has all sorts of negative ramifications invisible to the outsider, but my goodness - the restaurants, the shops, the tidy new buildings of offices and apartments (many of them unusually quite handsome, and most at least in keeping with the city's distinct architectural atmosphere)!

Even the Portrait Gallery, along with its sister Museum of American Art, has been given a once over, the historic building they share gleaming and a dramatic new glass umbrella covering its central courtyard.  Fortunately, on the whole it has been spared the fate of Kensington Palace (and not a few of the other Smithsonian entities - and yes, I do mean you, Museum of American History) and not been hyper-stupidified for the benefit of the imagined hordes of ADD-afflicted tourists who seem to be the prime target of museum designers these days.

So I had a lovely hour or so, checking in on friends old and new at the Gallery, and I'll likely be sharing a few in days to come.

For example, a highlight of the New Acquisitions room is the lovely drawing above, in unexpected polychrome, of one treasurable New Yorker by another.  I really can't quite grasp that neither are still around, but hasn't Mr. Hirschfeld done well by Miss Sills?

I'm an unabashed, star-struck Bubbles fan, which I know isn't strictly fashionable these days in opera-queen-land, but what can I do?  She was a staple of television when I was a tot at my grandparents' knees, and while I only heard her in full performance once (a Barber of Seville in Philadelphia - I remember principally that she wore a powder-blue gown and romped beautifully), I had the enormous luck to spend a little time with her, some thirty years ago.

She came to campus, as a Distinguished Guest, for a week of talks and other programming.  As one the university's more obviously aesthetic types, as it were, I suppose I was drafted into helping, and so ended up taking her from activity to activity, holding on to her things when she was speaking and generally presaging my future career as a modern-day Birdie Coogan to the Great and Good (a phase of my life that I often reflect on for its sheer oddness).

She was everything one could hope - charming, funny, sensible, and with that great gift of the greatly gifted of making you feel, when they speak with you, that you are at that moment the center of their attention.

She was not, as you may remember, a small lady - in any way.  Sills was tall, and zaftig, and when she laughed, she laughed, in a way that made you laugh, too.  She was perfectly turned out, in a succession of elegant diva-in-the-daytime numbers, the shoes, the bag, the bits of jewellery here and there, all of them almost exaggeratedly understated, as if to offset her own larger-than-lifeness.  At one point, she noticed me noticing one piece that remained unchanged throughout the week - a ring that was noticeable precisely because it was larger and a shade more extravagant than the rest of her discreetly elegant accessories.

"Ah, you caught me."  And she showed me the ring, large and round and, if memory serves, diamond-encrusted - with, in the center, a tiny, ticking clock.

"I was raised, you see, that it was rude for a lady to check her watch, especially when people are talking to you.  But I have to keep on schedule, and nobody ever thinks twice about a lady admiring her own ring!"

And for the rest of our too-brief time, I would notice her, during Q&As or chatting during the inevitable coffee-hours after, discreetly looking with satisfaction at her perfectly manicured hand, and starting to make her goodbyes.  And off we'd go to the next engagement.

Sadly, she said her final goodbyes far too early, professionally while she was still in relatively good voice (and could likely have gone for years in undemanding recitals and crossover parts) and then, at last, permanently.  I don't know that we'll again have opera singers with her kind of general celebrity.  Then again, I don't suppose we today have anyone quite like Al Hirschfeld to immortalize them.

The Moment Divine

I think that we need, on this fine Thursday morning, a little something to remind us of the important things in life. Here, Miss Sills gives us a lesson in Truth and Beauty, courtesy of Mr. Kern.

My Gift to You

An uncharacteristically un-illustrated post today, my loves, because I have stumbled across something so special it needs no added frills.

Here and here you will find perhaps the most extraordinary ten minutes of entertainment I have come across in a long, long time. I encourage you to go, experience, and then return and discuss.

This originally aired on December 14, 1978. Where was I that I don't remember it? How is it not considered a landmark of American showbiz?

What a treat you're in for...

Diva Divissima

I think it's time for a little Friday Civilization. Thinking, a few posts below, about the glittering Miss Lily Pons has put me in the mood for more classics. How about a rather unusual rendering of that staple of parlor recitals the world around, "Il Bacio," by Luigi Arditi?

Guess what? The pint-sized prima donna is not, in fact, the demon spawn of Deanna Durbin and Shirley Temple. No, gentle readers, she is the darling of the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, Little Belle "Bubbles" Silverman - better known as America's favorite future public-television megastar, the one and only Beverly Sills.

At eight, and, as she has always averred, very definitely under the influence of those Galli-Curci recordings with which she was raised. Little girls just don't sing like that any more.

Birthday Trifecta

Too much richness to choose from today on the birthday front, so I didn't.

Instead, let's just spend a few minutes thinking about three very different careers. Two of our ladies have moved on to thrill audiences in the great beyond; the last is still on this mortal plane (as much as anyone recently touring in Hello, Dolly! can be).

Regal!

When I was a child - an Opera Princess, as it were - I was fascinated by Beverly Sills - so American! So Funny! But so... Operatic! I did see her, once, in Philadelphia, in The Barber of Seville. How much yet more sublime it would have been had it been, as here, as Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux.*

Sills joins the inevitable Miss Davis as the only, to me, truly convincing Elizabeths (yes, I'm looking at you, Miss Blanchett; Dame Judi's turn was a camp, and so doesn't really count).

Demure!

Jeanne Crain may hold a somewhat less superstellar place in the celebrity firmament, but it was a fine enough career, the stuff of Photoplay covers if not all that much more, really.

I was going to write that at least she escaped, unlike many of her contemporaries, making a late-career shocker. Then I discovered she in fact headlined what must be a nifty little picture, one that although forgotten now is, titlewise, right up there with the best of the worst: 1971's The Night God Screamed. One can only imagine.

Broadway!

Finally, a Great Lady of the Stage, still trouping: Miss Leslie Uggams. It was never as big a career as it could have been (she is big; it's the musicals that got small), but she's working, and there's a lesson for us there somewhere, kiddies.

*Remind me someday to tell you my story about Beverly Sills's ring. Total diva heaven.