After imposing my cadenza at the end of the Bellini aria, I asked his opinion. He smiled, rose and walked up to me and said, tapping my shoulder, “It’s great, if the conductor will let you get away with it!”
Henry Pleasants was a lover of beautiful singing, and in his work he devoted himself to research and writing that helped to spread across many lands and many generations his admiration and respect for the best opera singers of the past.
He encouraged and kindled my spirit of independence – against musical conformity – since our first encounter in the 70s. Henry demonstrated the right to be opinionated in artistic matters in a field that encourages conformism, and rose against imposed ideas and doctrines (his first book was of course ‘The Agony of Modern Music,’ 1955). This important encounter was before I became one of the founders in Paris of ‘Les arts florissants’ with William Christie. Henry sparked for me and many others the love of searching tirelessly for the vocal ideal, of authenticity.
The 1977 hard-bound version of the original edition of his 1966 magnum opus “The Great Singers,” with a touching dédicace, is now on my shelf in Paris. But a 1980s updated sequel in paperback recently fell into my hands at a flea market, and today I wanted to brush up on what Henry said about Mattia Battistini, so many years before I embarked on a journey with Jacques Chuilon to research his project: a complete biography and analysis of the art of the great baritone. One expected to find treasures of information. Curiously, Battistini was only passingly referred to with due admiration, grouped alongside others of that remarkable generation of singers, whereas he is obviously owed an entire chapter. A picture, a couple of lines. Same for Eleanor Steber, not found in the index.
Yet, page after page of this pioneer book beautifully traces and defines the historic steps of bel canto. It is well-documented and researched. And passionate. But this reflection has brought out to me how, in the after-war context of that book, the subsequent revival of great singing is still, even now, in it’s infancy.
Henry loved to tell how he was able to study with Giuseppe De Luca, while stationed in Italy in the 40s. This we had in common, a devotion to this magnificent artist. De Luca is my epiphany moment, my Proust madeleine, my Rosetta stone. In a bookstore in Cambridge, Mass, in 1973-74, I miraculously fell onto a 33rpm edition of De Luca from the RCA series called “L’età d’oro del belcanto.” How could this voice exist? Up until this moment, my only live examples of this repertoire were the contemporary models I won’t bother to name. All ideas had to be replaced and shuffled if this singer could ascend freely and expressively to the top of his range.
The first time meeting Henry Pleasants brings the fond memory of his lectures in 1978 at AIMS in Graz, Austria, to which he traveled equipped with his priceless stock of private cassette tapes. Thus, he delighted us apprentices to lyric art gathered in the amphitheater with sound examples of arias sung by Galli-Curci and Caruso, not to mention the Pearl-Fishers duet with De Luca and Gigli (imagine the effect!)… and as a teaser, he demonstrated with fine wit, for the first time for our sensitive young ears, a perfect example of how improvised vocal tradition is not notated in the printed score: a cut from Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in the Cole Porter song ‘What a Swell Party This Is’ from the film ‘High Society.’
From later that summer, in Italy, I recall the warm evenings and outdoor dinners at sunset with Henry and his wife Virginia at my teacher’s house on the island of Elba, overlooking the bay of Portoferraio while discussing singing, and wine.
A few years later, the year I sang ‘Les Indes galantes’ in Venice at La Fenice, we met again in London, where he lived. We were researching Battistini’s career – and buying photos, 78s and even an old turntable to be shipped to Paris – and Henry invited Jacques and me for tea. Virginia made wonderful sandwiches, and Jacques was enthusiastically, energetically, emphatically encouraged to continue the project of the Battistini book. Henry still wrote, and was strong. This was, apart from some correspondence, the last time we met. It was also the day he inscribed for me inside the cover of his book, ‘The Great Singers:’ “For Greg, who came along a bit too late to be included, but is on his way, and with best wishes from Henry/ London, Aug ’83”