Interview Only w/ Anthony Tommasini - Remembering The “Voice Of A Century”

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2:04Join me, and an all-star cast of experts for everything you need to know from around the league. Get new episodes of the NFL Report, Monday through Friday, all season long. Listen to the NFL Report Podcast on the I Heart Radio app, and you'll have a great time. NFL Report Podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of the Chuck Todd Cast is brought to you by Chapter. Now almost everything you hear about Medicare is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're skeptical of that. And as you should be, I get it. I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most as some sort of broker. So if your default is to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it. I'm a bit distrustful these days, myself. That's the whole reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are not paid to push anyone plan.

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4:07This is a very transparent organization. It is Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing. The whole point of this is to make this easier and less confusing. Okay. So look, take the skepticism you already have in all of this. Point it at your own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure. And then call chapter today at 980-734-3985. Well, I'm going to do a bit of a turn with my guest today. We have a candidate barrier breaking in this country. Jackie Robinson taking the field in Brooklyn, Rosa Parks staying in her seat. The nine kids walking into central high school. And we teach those stories and we know the dates. Mary and Anderson belongs on that list. And I bet most Americans couldn't tell you much more about her than one photograph. Easter Sunday, 1939, the Lincoln Memorial, 75,000 people right here in Washington, D.C. outside.

5:12After the daughters of American Revolution refused to let her sing in Constitution Hall. And that's the whole life for most of us. One afternoon, one photograph. What I didn't know and what I found a little embarrassing for me not to know is that the concert was the least of it. She was already by then one of the great singers of the world. She'd been famous in Europe for years before America caught up and she spent the next two decades performing in that in cities that applauded her at night and wouldn't rent a room afterward. In 1955 at 57, she became the first black singer to appear at the Met in New York City. There's a second reason though I wanted to do this. Some of you know I spent a good chunk of my life with a French horn in my hands. And I often lament that I don't have it in my hands as often. And Anthony Thomasini was the chief classical musical pro-critic at the New York Times for last 20 plus years. So this is a book about the civil rights story.

6:13Most of us half know written by a critic can tell you what was actually happening inside that voice. His new book is called Voice of a Century. The life and artistry of Mary and Anderson. It's actually part of an interesting series being edited by our Friendship Gates, which I think Tony will tell us a little bit about. So Tony, welcome to the talk. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for your interest. Let's start with how you came about to do this biography. Was was this something you've been working on? Was it something people reached out to you? Skip Gates? Things like I know that this is part of a series that he's involved with. So tell me some of the origin story. This seldom happens to an author. I was asked to write the book. I had gone to no skip. And in the fall of 2021, so many classical issues. This big deluxe set of all of Anderson's RCA recordings. And I wrote a Sunday Times piece about it. And for people who didn't know about her, I talked about the Lincoln Memorial and her childhood and Philadelphia and stuff.

7:17But I focused a lot on the recordings. And I said, some of these recordings are just forgotten. You know, Kinder, Totten Leader, Moller, with the San Francisco Symphony of Paramount to Scandinavian songs in the original languages. And so Skip really liked it. And he emailed and told me so. Two months later, he asked me to write this book. What I write a book for. And why me? I mean, I did think about that. I mean, all the subjects are major black figures. Right. And one thing he said in interviews about this series is that there is an under appreciation. It's a remnant of prejudice of black intellectualism. And I think he's right. And in a way, in this article, I was saying, Anderson, for all her fame and her position that she were talking about as the civil rights pioneer or however reluctant, you know, she was for. And how people, she's in a way intellectual, the equivalent in music of intellectually underrated.

8:24She was a probing interpretive artist. She was a major musician. And that sometimes, that happens in a lot of fields to pioneers. They wind up being remembered mostly for, you know, breaking the, being breaking the path, you know. And well, how did they like you mentioned Jackie Robinson? Well, of course, the biggest path breaker in baseball history. Well, if you were writing a book about him, was he also one of the great, great play? Yes, actually he was. But we forget that all we remember. And in a way, that's happened to her. So I think he knew I would tell the story well and be sensitive to it. But he, in a way, he wanted the times critic to say, well, make a case for her. I know artistically. I mean, so that's why the book, the subtitle, the life and artistry. I spent a lot of time writing about her recordings, her voice, her approach, how she, once she was rejected from music school, she learned this stuff on her own.

9:26But she was a major, major artist. So what it is interesting, you know, her, her life story growing up in Philadelphia, not having these opportunities. And it's a, it's such a reminder. I mean, I'll be honest. I've always said one of the reasons why I'm not a professional French word player. As I remember, the first time I heard somebody not as good as I was technically, make a better sound. And there it is. There is something called a gift. We all know it. And you have it or you don't. And the way you describe her voice is, is terrific. Because I think a lot of people can sing. But can you, can you amplify on your own? Right. And she was doing it without all the modern help that everybody has today to boost sound or to boost different decibels within your sound. So describe her sound a little bit because I think that must be what really jumped out at you

10:27when you heard those recordings. And I think also what jumps out at all people who hear those recordings and heard her. In her church, one thing I learned, which I, is that from the Haley Jackson to Mary and Anderson to, you know, Beyonce today to Dion Moorbrook to Leon Price growing up in the black church was everything, everything, everything in their lives. And for her, that was true too. She was conscripted into the junior choir at six years old, you know. And before long, everybody was bragging about the baby contrato. So already this child had a kind of low set voice. But Anderson, both as a young woman and asher, and throughout her career, also had this wonderful middle and upper range too. She could get, but it was a haunting, beautiful thing about her voice that, once she got into soprano terrain and say,

11:27it was beautiful and radiant, but it sounded like it was emanating from that awesome low voice. Well, when you can go high and low and you're using your low, you're using your diaphragm to support it. I mean, you can hear thin versus full. Absolutely. You would never describe her, her high range is thin. No, no, no. She, she, it just emanated from everything was supported. And so that's the gift, isn't it? This isn't like training mechanism. I mean, you know, I went through diaphragm, breathing exercises back in the day and all of those things. And, you know, I'm sure she did learn those things over time. But this was just a gift that she had, wasn't it? Yes, I think that gift is, that's a gift. Also, for example, her younger sisters were both, both have very good voices. They actually thought about maybe, could they have a dad must have had some good voices as well. Well, her mother, not her father so much, but her mother did. But, yeah, I mean, she, so yes, the voice, that's a gift.

12:30Musicality, just having a, instincts for music. That's a gift. Do you either have it or you don't? The intellectual analytic part of music that you can learn, that you learn by going to school, by studying harmony, by working with composers, by, you know, working with coaches. And that's what she had to find her way around. I mean, I tell the story in the book that she was taking private lessons. And finally, around 17, she says, okay, I have to get serious. And she takes herself off to the Philadelphia musical academy, which no longer exists. And she tries to get an application. And, kind of, snippy, young, pretty blonde receptionist says, oh, we don't take colored. And Anderson, right, talked with her journalist friend, Emily Kimbrough, 50 years later about it, it's still hurt. She said, I finally came face to face with what it means to be a negro in this country. And the shock, you know, was like something physical.

13:32You would think she knew that already, but somehow having that happened to her. So even then, she wasn't going to go to music school. She had to keep learning from expert coaches and teachers, which is why she eventually made herself just found a way to get to Europe. Well, I was just going to say, I mean, this is, there's a lot of our 20th century, Black music history had to be popularized in Europe and respected in Europe. The musicians got more respect in Europe before they ever got back here. This has been true of multiple genres of music. So how did she get there? Well, it was, she was, it was 1927. She had just turned 30. She had saved money. The church raised money for her. And she finally took herself off to London for, and she stayed there for a year. And by the end, she sang at a London proms concert, believe it or not. I mean, that was a big deal. So it was kind of a big success. Then she came back home.

14:33And then the second time she went to Europe, that was in 1930. And she applied for a Rosenwald fund scholarship. And she wrote the most poignant letter where she said she wants to be a fine artist. And she, that will be accredited to her people. And she got a fellowship to go study in Germany. This was 1930 in Germany, 1931 in Germany. Can we say that again? 19th or early 1930s, Germany. This is Germany. Here's this Black woman. The Black woman. Yeah. And she, and it's really interesting. There's a scholar and historian, Kira Thurman, who's written a lot about this, about trying to parse the reception she got. And like German leader were so central to the identity of German culture and German people and stuff that they can founded them. that how could this black American woman sing all her music so beautifully?

15:33And she got reviews, rave reviews, but sometimes along the lines of, it's horrible to say it, but they would essentially were saying, she sings Schubert so well, you wouldn't know she was black. So they had to kind of bleach out her color and just sort of, but then she wound up going to Scandinavia and she had a promoter there and she found an accompanist there, a Finnish man, Kosti Vahonen, and before long, Marion Fever gripped Scandinavia. You know, she was a big step. How many different languages did she speak? Did she, was she able to sing it? This is someone who barely finished high school and she became fluent in German. It's hard to know. She was pretty comfortable in French and heard the Scandinavian language is a little bit because she had to finish a accompanist and she immersed herself in this songs and this stuff, but at least three, I'd say,

16:33you know, English and German and French. It's, and those are the three that she's recorded in. There's recordings of those three. She also recorded Italian areas, but the opera, but sort of brings up a whole nother, top of a fanatic or what? No, no, it's more that she, no, it's a beautiful language for singing. It's that she from the start didn't see the point of studying too much Italian opera because she wasn't going to get into opera companies in the United States. Oh, interesting. So she just, yeah. So a whole genre that she might have been, we may have missed out on a whole subsection. Oh, did we have of Canon had she not felt, had she felt like she could have broken into an opera company? She, in 1925, she won the competition from the, for the New York, Florida,

17:33to make her debut at Lucien Stadium. And she won against several hundred other applicants. And the big Arya that she sang was a Donetsedi Arya, Omiro Fernando. It knocked everybody out. At the London proms concert, she also sang that Arya. So it was exactly what you said. It was a hint of what she could have done. I mean, you mentioned her debut at the, at the Met in 1955. First of all, that is not that long ago that, you know, the Metropolitan did not have black singers on its stage. But she had already sung, you know, in Carnegie Hall, in major halls in the 30s and 40s. Why not? What was the difference was on, and the Carnegie Hall stage of black woman was sort of just a voice. On stage at the Met, you are a character. You could be somebody's lover or somebody's mother or somebody's brother or, I mean, sister. And the other singer would inevitably be white.

18:36And we couldn't have that, you know. You couldn't mix, he races on stage. There was still this issue of, you know, casting, that's still in a way, trouble is all the arts. But we've made huge progress over that, I think. But that was here. You make pretty clear. Yeah, go ahead, finish that. No, that was the inhibition, that, huh. And, but anyway, she did it. And she had had no experience in opera whatsoever. And it was, but she only sang in that one production of Verri Zumbalu and Neskara, this supporting but important role of El Rika. And, you know, it was a big triumph. And it brought, you know, sitting in the audience that night, that was 1955, was a young soprano named Lene Teein Press. Oh, wow. Who said, she told, later told me, she anointed me that night. And she said, maybe someday I can sing on that stage.

19:38And she went, how did she get to that stage? Exactly what you said. She went off to Europe. And she performed, price performed in European companies then eventually in 1961. She had triumphant metabia. What, what, if she had been born 30 years later, what genre of music do you think she would be singing? She would have, she loved songs. She especially loved German leader. We can talk more about what drew her to that, if you want, but she would have sung opera. And in 1960, she did a long interview for Lady's Home Journal, but a very good journalist, Emily Kimbrough, who was a friend of hers, and tried to get her to really talk openly about, as the article was called, you know, being black in a white America. And she said, and Emily said to her, well, you know, I know it was so tough,

20:40but you look at everything you've done. There's nothing you haven't accomplished. And Mary and turned on her and said, nothing, what about opera? I wanted opera, but they didn't, I wish I could have offered, I could offer, you know, now, but I could have offered then, but they didn't want it, they didn't want me. And she said, but at least I've broken this barrier for singers who will follow me, which she absolutely, absolutely did. So I think she would have had an opera career. It's interesting that she said it then, because the portrait you paint of her early is not someone who was, she was not focused on being a trailblazer, she was focused on being a mevacine. Right. And at times, look, I don't want to say you wrote critically about that, but it was almost like, I could, you wrote with a bit of disappointment that she didn't fight harder on stage. Except I think that's interesting that came through that way too. I do present that side of her,

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27:02No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sudako in the Thousand Paper Cranes by Auderman Donalds at the Wonderland bookstore, 14. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland bookstore yesterday. And I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Doctor 30. No way. I have to cut the last bookstore, though. Kim Ketrol is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. It's right up next to the microphone. I hear you get the elbows here. The eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on the IHERD Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't want to make it seem like you weren't, but it was sort of like, you know, and this is always to me the difficulty of writing about anything in history. He said, how much of today's morals and today's effects do you, do you as

28:07scraw, you know, how, and it is impossible if we're writing about something we did not experience. Right. We did not live in, you know, what was the norm is the best we can come up is what other people tell us what the norm was, right? So I, I, I get this challenge, but I could feel a little bit of that tension that you had of like, wow, in hindsight, it's easy to, you could have thought that you could have done this. So you could have stood this, but you didn't. But in some ways, she was playing a long game. Is the other side of that. And also, I can tell you one story I tell in the book. She's singing in church. She's the star singer, singer of the choir. She's having, having voice lessons. She's about 14 years old. And the great tenor, black tenor role in Hayes, it was about 10 years, her senior comes to her church and sings. And among the things he sings are German song, Schubert in German. And the congregation thought his voice was beautiful. Nobody knew what he was singing about.

29:08Mary didn't know what she was singing about. She didn't care. She was haunted. She was hooked. I have to, she made up with the songs were in her mind. But what role in Hayes and all she had this epiphany, this is something hard to define. This was an artist. This went beyond the components of his voice, his technique. There was something about getting to the essence of music that just got to her. From that moment forward, she wanted to be a fine artist. That was her driving thing. That was, you know, that even applied to the Lincoln Memorial Council that she described well. She, the night before that concert, she was on the phone to her manager trying to get out of it. Because she thought the whole thing had morphed into some kind of civil rights demonstration. And if she sang it, she didn't need to sing a Constitutional Hall, you know, like she didn't need to,

30:09she had sung everywhere. But if she was going to sing there, she was going to do it because she was a great artist. And that's what they wanted. That's what they wanted. And she was afraid. And Saul here on her manager had to say, no, Mary, and that's not what it's going to be like. People are, people, they're not going to be banners. People are going to come and express their support for you by savoring every moment of your artistry. And that's what happened. And that's why she was deeply moved by it. But it was, it was being an artist that drove her, you know, that she won. And she won, you know, the, why didn't she speak anymore? If I can, in 1937, she has her first concert at Princeton. She hasn't sung it every time. She thinks she has a room at the Nessio until she finds out, ah, ah, she can't stay there. She's there. What is she supposed to do? Word gets to a famous faculty member, a refugee from Nazi Germany, who had heard her at Carnegie Hall and come backstage, meekly, to meet her big fan Albert Einstein.

31:13Wow. And he says, you must, you will come. His wife had just died. He said, you will come and stay with my stepdaughter and me and my personal secretary at my house on Mercer Street. So she did. And they took wonderful care of her. And he went to the concert and they stayed up late. And he was ashamed of his adopted home town that this magnificent woman honors your hotel by staying at it. And are you kidding? You know, like, and, but, and he, they became fast friends and they, he, and there was one point of disagreement. He thought, why don't you speak out at more? You have this platform. You're marrying it. You know, and she was said, I can't know how she put it to him, but she probably said, well, basically, it's easy for you. You're Einstein. You know, you can go out and say whatever you want. Well, that's kind of what he was saying. It should be easy for you. You're right. And she was still trying to get through the door of an opera house in this company, yeah,

32:14in this country. You know, she was trying, there were still things, so many things closed to her. And she had to do it through the merits of her singing. But, you know, that, through her artistry. So, yeah, but she, I just think it was partly her nature. Maybe she wasn't bold enough. Paul Robison spoke out all the time, but career-wise, as a singer, he paid a price for it. You know, he lost a lot of opportunities. So, yeah, she could have been more outspoken, but she prevailed through her artistry, through her great, you know, great voice. So let's, you know, did she, you know, sometimes you, some artists, they go to Europe and they never want to come back. Right. Because they, they're so, they were so frustrated and had the, with help, poorly they were treated here. They stay there. I mean, and there's, there's plenty of generations of artists have done that. Especially early in the, in the 20s, early 20s, jazz musician.

33:16Jazz musicians. A lot of black artists just basically left America as they felt like they were, yeah. They were like, they were not like they were exactly safer, right in Europe. Why did she come back? She was an American and she was proud to be an American. And she was comfortable in this country and also she's, if she was not outspoken in a way that we would maybe admire even more today, she spoke all the time of my people. I want to be a credit to my people. She thought, she, but she thought the way to do that was to be an, an example of excellence and possibility. Give us a chance, look what we can do. And she wanted to prove herself that way in America. I think that's where she came back. And, but she kept going back to Europe for the, she long she would turn around and go have tours there and come back. She traveled a lot.

34:17But sure, she based herself here and, and eventually all the doors did open, open for her. But she, but she pride them open. What, um, you know, I, you say that if the genre that obviously she missed the most of opera, what did she make of the rise? Because you know, as she's becoming more well known, that's also the rise of jazz. Right. And the early days of the croners, right. Then we move from that to, you know, popular music and it goes from there. What did she make of that genre and it had all interest? Yes, she was friends with Duke Ellington and she respected all that music tremendously. I don't think she had great feeling for it or deep interest in it, but she was very curious and respectful. I kind of rescue her in a chapter from interviews she gave where she would talk about,

35:18I'm, you know, by upper higher music and, you know, that maybe, that during, it used to be that people favorite pop your little things more than the song she sang, you know, the art song she sang. But during the war, singing for the troops and going to hospitals, it's amazing how often people ask for sugar and drums. And she acted like the higher forms of music. She used that word, unfortunately, you know, like, well, it's funny. I mean, it's, look, let's be honest, especially if you, you know, I was a music major for a while, right. And so there's this mindset that real music, the real difficult music is classical music, right. And opera is a derivative of that. And popular music are for singers who could do opera. Right. And I'm sitting here being very obviously ham-handed here, but that was sort of this mindset. And yet I look at somebody like Whitney Houston, it's like, well, if she'd chosen to do opera, she might have been a great opera singer. Yeah.

36:19Yes, I think there's this chapter I'm proud of that was called Why Shoeberd, where I try to explain what drew her to this art form. And I compare it to myself growing up in the long Island suburb. But there was more, there was more music in her household than there was in mine. This grabbed me. I don't know how I just, I was listening to Salzburg Festival Radio concert on the radio by myself when I was a kid. It just, it just hooked me. And you don't have that parent or grandparent that said, hey, take a listen to this. I mean, I didn't have that. I had a, I had a father who had a, he collected in stuff. So I was hearing it in my house a little bit. No, I, I, I screened for, I want a piano. I want a lesson. It was through me. And if I finally ate eight years old, I got, I got one. But it wasn't, it wasn't through my parents. She, everyone in her family sang music and music at their church was, you know, crucial to her.

37:22But what I say is that when she heard the song like Roland Hayes singing Shoeberd, it wasn't, she may have used the word higher, but she didn't mean she ended every recital she ever gave with spirituals singing Negro. Was that, was that always connected to her first recording contract? That, that was the first recording she was asked to do were, were spirituals. But soon after, you know, other things, but it was her way of saying, these works are every bit as profound and great as any song by any European composer that, you know, that I, I've sung already. But what I think did grab her about classical music was, yes, it was the subtext of things. It was the multi-layered quality of it. Why is it that a shubrid song seeming on the surface seems so cheerful? But yet there's this undertow, there's this sadness, there's this longing.

38:23What's going on there? It's the subtleties and inner workings of it. I think that's what hooked her that she had to figure out what is that, you know, she used the word higher, but it wasn't higher, you know, she also piano player. Yes, she, she, she, she, she's took piano lessons. There wasn't a lot of money for them, but she learned a lot on her own. And was she a music reader or did she learn it by ear? No, no, she did learn to read, yeah, and, and, and all the, and all that stuff. But oh, not being able to get into the account music, Henry, what she never did was like take a course in harmony or something like that. Or that, you know, or counterpoint or these things that all music students do. Right. She was not doing like rudimentary composition. No, she wasn't, she wasn't doing that. And so, but again, she, she worked with really, really, I have scars by the, I still have scars from my music composition, professor who went to Yale, who absolutely

39:24eviscerated one of my first attempts at a Bach chorale. And I'm like still scarred from this terrible. I'm so glad she, so glad she didn't have to fear that. But normal, in classical music training that usually, by studying counterpoint and writing pieces in the style of Bach chorales and, and harmony, it's not that you become a master of this, but it changes the way you hear. It's not what you really do. It you hear, ah, you're alert to what you're, what you're listening, you're listening to everything. So she, she did miss that. But, um, yeah, she, she is somebody, I get the impression that, you know, when you did your review and skip gates reached out to you that in some ways, what skip gates is concerned about is, is some of these folks getting lost. Because I do think, and it goes back to this pioneer in this breaking barrier mindset that we have, the, the pioneers will always have their pages in the history books. Um, there's a whole group of people who, you know, she was a pioneer.

40:28She didn't choose to advertise being a pioneer, as we keep, as basically, we've spent 20 minutes talking about, um, that doesn't make her any less relevant to the music, to the history of music in the 20th century. And ultimately, I feel like what this book is, you can't tell the history of American singing. Of the 20th century without her. Absolutely not. And, and she, um, even the, even in the moment of being a pioneer, um, she was going to make the larger points about artistry. And for example, the Lincoln Memorial concert. Okay. She agrees to do it. There she is. She opens up singing America. She's so flustered to look at 75,000 people, black and white, was that the largest audience she'd ever performed in front of? That was the largest audience there ever been on that on the, on the, the Lincoln Memorial. And, you know, 24 years later for the, I have a dream speech at absolutely harken back to the Anderson concert, you know, like in a way, it was a reference to that.

41:31Um, that, that it was really one of the seminal events of the civil rights movement that, that concert in 1939. But so she sings America. She flubs the words a little because she's so flustered. It's only a half hour concert. It's going to include a shoe, shoe was Ave Maria and three spirituals. The second piece she sang was the longest that Donut Zedi area I mentioned before. Oh, Mia Fernando, seven minutes before an audience. It was then an obscure area. How many people among those 75,000 even radio listeners would have known anything about it? She said, I'm going to show them. This is real. Even in this, even if this is a civil rights, you know, a milestone, I'm going to also show them. And the newspaper reporters, surveying the crowd said people were awestruck.

42:31They didn't know what she was singing about, but just that voice could do this. Really, that's what gets forget forgotten about the, um, that concert one that's written about how well did she, did she sing? Well, the day she sure did, you know, is there a good way? Is there a really good recording of the concert? The radio broadcast. There was, uh, there's a radio broadcast, but that was an MV scene. It was and it was broadcast and, but the other thing that people forget about that concert. Okay. There are, there's a platform with sponsors, Supreme Court justices and senators and Catherine Hepburn and people like that and 75,000 people. She's greeted. It's a big, of course, her mother and her two younger sisters come from Philadelphia for this big day. And she's, you know, a news around the world. Of course, none of the Anderson women in 1939 could stay at any hotel in Washington, DC. So from all this, she has to rely on it at Vina Range.

43:33Gifford Pinsho was the former progressive Republican governor, two-term governor of Pennsylvania, her home state. His wife was big supporter of civil rights, women's rights. They had the Anderson women stay with them at their home in Washington. I mean, that's the part of our history that we keep. It's not only that she, as an artist, I think, is underrated, but even the, what she did as a civil rights pioneer is forgotten that she had to face the humiliation of not being able to stay anyplace in Washington. Your source material, you had quite a bit obviously, you had to go into multiple languages to see how she was received in Germany. But I'm curious about her. You note in her memoir that she left certain details, including about her father and his business. Oh, yes. He had a side business in selling alcohol, which I guess, you know, she didn't, you know,

44:34you get a sense of why she left that out. And what else did she leave out of that memoir? She, she left out any mention of, well, and throughout her whole life, she, she, the only romantic relationship she ever owned up to was with Orpheus Fisher, the man she eventually married, until 1943. And she, you know, she went to, in 1935, she was on a tour of Europe. And she went, made it to the Soviet Union, if you can imagine, in 1935, two tours. And while, and the Soviet government puts her up at a spa for two weeks, as a gift from the government. And there she has a fling with a younger Russian Jewish man who was a actor and reader, and it was apparently very passionate. And there are, we have his letters, but not hers. So, and she, of course, never, ever, ever mentioned this, you know, so there are, there are things like that. But, um, and also the other thing I do talk about in the book, this is how much,

45:38so she worked with a ghostwriter, Howard Taubman, who was very, very faithful to the recorded tapes, which you can hear at the University of Pennsylvania at the library. And is that where all of her stuff is? That's where all her, all of her stuff is. And, and he, and he, by the way, talking about conflict of interest in journalism, he had my job. He was the chief classical music critic of the, of the New York Times at the time. He wrote, he was her ghostwriter. They kept it quiet. His name was not given and even in mention. Not even in the, in the, in the Evalectments or any of the, no, in the acknowledgments, yes, for editorial help, but, but not that he actually wrote, you know, and he was left out of all the reviews. He was getting, sharing money that he made from it. It would be like, I, if I had, as a critic, was the ghostwriter for Renee Fleming's memoir, and we kept it quiet, and we were both making money. And I kept reviewing her positively. I mean, it was, that was just total different era of, of journals.

46:42Well, yeah. I mean, if you, I always say, be careful when you ask about the good old days of journalism, you don't want to know what some of the rules used to be. Exactly. Exactly. But once she finally got the draft of the book from, from Howard Taubin, she, and her first thing was she wanted everything about the Lincoln Memorial concert taken out. Hey, this episode of the Chuck Todd Cast is brought to you by Ethos. Look, let me tell you about life insurance. As you know, ethos is, is an incredible portal for helping you find the right life insurance policy. I'm a huge believer in life insurance. I wouldn't have gotten to college in Washington, DC without life insurance. My father had a policy buried somewhere that we discovered and it wasn't a lot of money, but it was an important bucket of money at a time that my mother, newly widowed, single mom, me on 16. It was in a, of enormous, enormous help at that time. And this is why I believe in life insurance. You don't know what could happen to you on any given day.

47:44This is literally an insurance policy for that. So let me tell you a little bit about ethos. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy. It's 100% online. You get a quote in seconds, you apply in minutes and you can get coverage the same day you begin this process. There's no medical exam. You just answer a few simple health questions. You can get up to $3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $30 a month and you'll get your lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers. Ethos is gotten 4.9 out of five stars on trust pilot with over 55 hundred reviews. So take 10 minutes to get covered today. Life insurance through ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash Chuck. That is E T H O S dot com slash Chuck application times may vary. The rates may vary. That trust pilot rating was as of August of 2026. Hey, everyone. It's the Jonas Brothers with the Hey Jonas podcast. We've been catching up with some great friends Paul Rod Michael Blay, Seth Meyers, now, Lauren Jake Shane and making some new friends while getting into what's

48:45really like to have sisters like Alex National. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone to control as a hard. I would say that's a hard. I am more outspoken, growing up a lot of the times because she was so quiet. I would speak for like the both of us. Now I'm working on like thinking a mom is really not taking before I speak. And Joey King. You know, if you're like mom is yelling at your sibling and even if you're in a way with your sibling, you just like won't let that slide. It's like you only can yell at your sibling. I'm like, you can't do that here. That is not what I want about her like that. I just want to talk about it. Plus we've been taking your calls, listening to your voice mail and giving advice or at least trying to. So if you've got catching up to do now's the perfect time. Listen to Hey Jonas on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what

49:46should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth smart. And these are the survivor files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up. Don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. Their stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with the Elizabeth smart on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is pros society, the weekly podcast. That's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture

50:48obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island to serve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. So like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is the Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to pros society on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hi, this is highly breakman, Angela Gerrata, Jeremy Colhane, Patrick McDonald and we're the hosts of the artists on artists on artists on artists podcast. The improvised character comedy podcast were each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft.

51:49Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know if you guys heard of faux journaling. Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So you're so we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay, a panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No, I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako in the Pousin Thousand Paper Cranes by Audrement Donald at the Wonderland bookstore. 14. That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland bookstore yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of zero dark 30. No way. I have to come to the last bookstore though. Kim Ketrol is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants and we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? Hi, he, he winks on Halloween. It's right up next to the microphone. I hear you get the elbows here. The eyelashes hate each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on the I heard radio app,

52:52Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. That's why are we doing the book? Right? And her, her, her whom she trusted in her husband and tablin had to convince her. No, no, that is quite wrong. But she didn't, she wasn't open with it. You know what? I almost feel like now listening to that story that your decision not to open with the Washington concert. I feel like was an homage to her. Yeah. And also what I, I, I wanted to make clear how, the, the, how for black, for all of us, but especially black people, even today, especially, but especially back then, I, you can overstate how important it is to have a model to see somebody ah, doing that. So I begin with Lansing Price who's still with us at 99.

53:55When Lansing, so Anderson comes back from Europe and she starts singing here again. And she has a concert in Jackson, Mississippi. And one day, Lansing prices mother assessed her. Well, Mary Anderson is not going to be coming to Laurel, Mississippi, but she is singing in Jackson and we're going to take the bus and we're going to go there and hear her. So they did. They went to see her. Now, of course, in this big auditorium, they're sitting in the colored section, you know, and this woman walks out. And elegant, beautiful and starts singing. And Price has the supiphany. And she looks at her and says to herself, I'm going to be her. That's my future. At the time, Price was the star of her church choir. She was taking piano lessons. She thought, maybe I could be a music teacher. Maybe I could be a voicing her and do some concerts. Then she's like, ah, that, that I'm going to do that. And what does she do? She goes out and does it.

54:57She becomes the most famous opera singer in the world. You know, Price, it's a wonderful way to open because it's the whole point is that she did break barriers. She did. Yeah. For the next generation. And then, and then so Price is in the audience when, ah, Anderson makes her debut. When, when Price makes her debut in 1961, who's in the audience? Mary and Anderson. I mean, wow, that's really moving. What, um, somebody listening right now, one recording, where would you tell people to start? Yeah. I'm such an advocate of wanting her. I, can I pick two? I'd say one is a Schubert's Ave Maria because it's so famous. And it will, the, I think even to people new to this music, the eloquence, the personalness, the authenticity, the sensitivity she brings to it is overwhelming.

55:57But the other one is this spiritual crucifixion. She recorded it in 1941. It wasn't released for years and years. I don't know why because maybe she thought it was too personal. The spiritual is amazing. It's profound. The words are, they begin day crucified my Lord. And he never said a mumbling word, not a word, not a word, not a word. So it, those spiritual is about Jesus's reaction that he never, even with this punishment, nothing, never said a word in his defense. The spiritual, it's a profound piece. It's meant to be sung very slowly. Anderson sings it at this glacial tempo. So slow you think the me she's taking a risk that the music is going to lose any kind of rhythmic thread. It's just going to go limp. But it's so intense.

56:59So the sound is so tremulous and grabs you and so hard-wrenching you hang on every word. It's just, it's four and a half minutes and it's one of the most profound vocal music recordings of the whole 20th century. And it, I'll tell you, she sang it in 1935 in Salzburg. Of course, she couldn't sing at the Salzburg Festival, Black Woman, Nazi, Nazi's overrunning, you know, Austria. But she, a hall was, the lobby of a hotel was rented for her. And she was kind of an informal concert for a few hundred people. Two people show up, famous conductors, Bruno Walter and Arturo Tuscany. And on the program, she sings some spirituals and everybody, and one of them is crucifixion. And the reporter reporting on the concert said at the end of crucifixion, no one applauded, not a sound, you know, and they were overcome.

58:04It just sounds haunting the way you, and it looked, it's the subject matter itself. If this is your fate, this is the moment. And then she interpreted it that deeply. Absolutely. This gets to the title of my book, which we don't have to go into, but Tuscany, and he goes up to her afterwards and congratulates her. Then he says, and this is the best quote we have is from her accompanist who is standing right next to him. He says, what I just heard, one is privileged to hear only once in a hundred years. So naturally her, her big shot public manager, Saul Yurag grabs that common and tweaks it into something much catchier and promotional. So all of a sudden her posters are plastered with Mary and Anderson quote, the voice of the century, Arturo Tuscany, and he never said that he never said that. The social media of that day, huh? It would have been immediately tweeted out in Instagram, didn't all of that, right?

59:05But at the, the, the president of Penguin talked, encouraged me to tweak that phrase into voice of a century. I didn't want to go anywhere because, because that implies ambiguous. I love that. That it's not the voice. It's voice. It's like it almost means she exemplified the century. She embodied this. She sang for it. She spoke for it, both the possibilities and the horrible shortcomings, you know, of it. It's all there. So, and also, by the way, it implies a little, she happened to also have one of the great voices of the century. But, but Tuscany also said what I loved about his quote, he didn't say the voice I have just heard. He said, what I have just heard, meaning everything, your artistry, your interpretation, your sensibility, and of course the voice. So, well, look, it's a, it's a tremendous story.

1:00:10Congratulations that you think you, that you got to do this because you know, you get to put your imprint on this. Before I let you go, I'm curious of your thoughts on the state of classical music. And I say this as I watch, you know, my last music professor was second chair at the National Symphony. Still is, still is at the National Symphony. They don't have a home. They don't have a home. You know, it is, look, one of the things that I've always said, I talked myself out of, of, of trying to go into music as a career was, you know, the opportunities are fewer and fewer all the time. No, in, in, unless you're the best of the best, it is, it is really, you want to talk about, it's not 1% it's that one, you know, one 10th of 1% are able to truly make a living in classical music. What's your sense of it as a, as a public genre and what's your sense of it?

1:01:14You know, how do we create a new youth movement? That's a huge topic. And we got two minutes. No, I'm kidding. Well, the Kennedy Center story, the tragedy there is that maintaining a symphony orchestra, maintaining an opera company is already so challenging. Even if you have the most supportive board and trustees and people and patrons, it's still so hard. And so to have politics just take over and run the place into the ground is just, it's just incredibly tragic. No, it's, it's, it's, it's a gut pludge. But you know, these come, the, the thing, the great hope I have in a way, I, I, I, I, I, I could maybe, even though we're all afraid of it, help this. If it dried, I know you've said things like this on your podcast that it might drive people back to the original to the, you know, I am like, I am a believer in this.

1:02:23That the, the greatest, the unintended consequence of, of the artificialness of everything is going to make us appreciate the, the original everything. Yeah, I know. And when you were talking to pop spits about the book on the Rolling Stones, you were both talking about it, that, that the kind of mystique of live instruments, even that's been, we've been losing that. And we have to, even in that field, we have to get it back. But my mantra in writing about this field and loving this field and promoting it and encouraging people is, this is one field art form. You have to hear live. You, you think you don't chamber music a string quartet. What? Now, unfortunately digital, I think the digitalization of it is turned it all into elevator music and it's not fair. If you, you hear string quartet playing in a hall that seats three or four hundred people, no amplification. I'm sorry. When I was a kid, I knew nothing about opera.

1:03:24I got seats up and met the old met one. I was really young. I had no idea what these alphas were about. But the sound of these voices coming up and encircling me, no amplification was enthralling. Every time I've brought some neo fight to the met opera in New York, who doesn't, they'll, the last ten times, there's no amplification. So no, no, you know, symphony or to hear a great orchestra at Carnegie Hall. That sound, you cannot record that. You know, like we all love our recordings. Obviously, they're wonderful. It's like, um, uh, Tuscanyany once said it's like getting a kiss or no, sterency. I'm sorry. I once said, so getting a kiss over the telephone. To, you know, but yeah, but I think if young people could just hear this stuff and go and hear it in the places where it's meant to be performed, I think, I mean, it's just enthralling a captivate to.

1:04:24And if the demand, that demand has to be there, but it's a very expensive art form, you know, putting on opera is very, very labor intensive. And, um, but I believe in the genre, I believe in the art form. I believe in its sustaining power. And I, uh, it's never going to have the big audiences that, of course, pop music has, but, but we can sustain it. We have sustained. Well, I always love to tell some of my friends who, you know, are not really, maybe fluent in classical music or just sort of, you know, appreciate it when it's in a cool movie score, you know, which can, which can is sort of, and then they go to a rock concert that brings on, you know, a brass, at least a brass accompany a mess, right? Or, um, might have 20, uh, instrumentalists behind them, you know, a couple of trumpets, a couple of French horns, a couple of violins. And it just, it just fills the stadium in a way that no synthesizer could.

1:05:32And, and no matter how many of those speakers you stack up, right? When for the past, it's on the floor. So you said, also, in the kind of concert you're describing, but also think of the symphony orchestra on a big concert stage. There's a spatial element to the listening that, you know, bases are here and the brasses are here and it's coming from different parts, you know, and you have a solo oboe sort of standing up against the whole orchestra. And there's that kinetic kind of spatial thing is also you have to be there to hear it. There's really no recording yet. I feel like that has truly been able to capture that sort of fullness, no matter what kind of, you know, can have the best. And I'm, you know, I was an audiophile until, until like our kids, right? And it's just sort of like there's only so much you hobbies you could keep up with. But you can have the best sort of set up to, you know, whether you're playing vinyl or you're playing something that, you know, through the best version, digital version you think it.

1:06:33And it's never going to fill the room the way life fills with them. No, I, I'm, you're singing my gospel that, no, I agree. Again, as someone who loves recordings and especially historic recordings, all of Andreson's recordings. I mean, I never heard her live. And so I, it's all, it's all I have, you know, and I cherish them. And, and, but no, I agree to hear it. I would rather, I would rather hear the, than the most highly touted, best engineered, amazingly perform recording of, let's say Beethoven's, a Roeck is so many, I'd rather hear this Juilliard Orchestra play it live, you know, or the Mahan School Music Orchestra play it live. Because those kids have never played it before, usually. They're thrilled. And they're also, by the way, very good. They're very talented. They're technically incredible. And someone who couldn't get into Juilliard, I will tell you that. That's I know. Oh, there you go. Maybe you've all worked out for the best.

1:07:34You know, it all, it all works out. Let me, if you could pick one, if you cannot see classical music live, what is your preferred recording? Is it vinyl? Is it, is it a high, high end digital sort of recording? Is it a 78 rather than a, than a 33 on the vinyl? You have a preference for, you're in a way you're asking the wrong person, Beth. And I, I have found that many musicians, and I'm first and foremost, I was a pianist and played a lot of concerts and are not audio files. Because you can listen through anything. I can listen through any old scratchy recording. And so when digital came along for me, just pragmatically, it's clean. It's not going to deteriorate. It's reliable. It's going, maybe a little colder than vinyl sound, you know, an analog sound.

1:08:37But there's a warmth to vinyl. It's hard to recreate anywhere else. There is, but you have to have really good equipment. And it's just, you know, it's, uh, um, and any old CD player can really, you know, so it, it's a convenience in a way that, but, uh, Anderson made some recordings from the early eras, you know, a recording that are full of crackles and stuff that doesn't bother me. I can listen right through, you know, to hear what I want, I want to, want to hear. Let me get you out of here. Yeah, go ahead. Finish. I'd say go hear something live. Yes. That's, I think we can't emphasize that. I mean, you know, even if it's something one of my favorite summer, um, uh, programs that we have here in DC is the National Symphony would, would do movie night at Wolftrap. Right. Right. Wonderful. And you do a movie and then they do the score live. And it's just, it's actually a great way to get to bring your kids into something. Right, right. Right. Are you sort of, you know, what music, music do your kids listen to?

1:09:39Oh, my, my daughters, just Taylor Swift and everybody else, my friend. She's awfully good. Go and adopt my daughter to pick up a guitar. I mean, both by, I look, I, I insisted on piano lessons. Let's just say it was a chore for that when they were younger, but, um, you know, I believe music is a language that you learn. And so even a rudimentary understanding of music is only going to help. Yeah. It's only going to help you in life down the road. Let me get you out of here in this because I, this used to be a fun little conversation I would have over the years when I was more active in the, in the music world, classical music world. Who would you say is the, what's, what's the premier symphony to get into now? You know, you'd have these little debates. There was the Cleveland Orchestra. There's New York and there's Philadelphia and there's, you know, they all had their strengths. Chicago, you know, some would argue Boston, of course, you know, with, with, with,

1:10:40with they had the problem arguably the most famous conductors for a while, you know, um, who's got the belt right now? Who's the number one symphony in the country? Where, where, where do the musicians going? No matter where they are, they go, I want to go there. Well, I guess I have, again, a sort of different take on that because it's, it's not just like you can calculate, uh, the excellence or, you know, I feel like it's hard to tell the difference. But it, my guess is it's, in some ways, it might be even director specifically. Yes, absolutely. I was just going to say it's, you know, for example, the Los Angeles, the Philharmonic just became the first under the composer conductor, S. A. Pekison, and then Gustavo Dutemah, who's now coming this fall to the New York Philharmonic. They were so such adventurous, such an adventurous whole institution, you know, that there was a,

1:11:42real connection between the conductors, those two conductors, especially Gustavo and the audience and those players and the programs, they really, they really had, um, they just made every concert seem important, you know, and it's, was it, were they playing greater than the Chicago Symphony, than the, it's not that. It's just something that was really happening there, you know, like, you could compare to, we now look back, you can read reviews criticizing Bernstein when he was a, you know, at the New York corner, Arthur Fiedler at the Boston Pops would get criticized, but it was fun. We look back at Bernstein now and those years, are you kidding? That was like the golden age ever, you know, everybody wanted to be with him and in New York. That was just, those concerts were incredible when, you know, he, so it's really the mix that, that makes an orchestra really great. I mean, basically there's eight to ten great symphonies to belong to,

1:12:43and it's really director specific, really, that sort of drives the moment. Yeah, but, you know, I have, you know, the Alabama Symphony came to, to Carnegie Hallmonds to play a concert and I, and they did, it was a really good concert and they played really well, and it was a new piece, and so I said, you know, I'm sorry, this, sitting there that last night, this was as good as any concert I can remember, you know, so it doesn't quite work that way, but yeah, when you have, let's see, but Gustavo does in New York, you know, he's got some big plans and he could be bringing all his, you know, charisma and energy and ideas we'll see, you know, like. Well, I, I, that's something to look forward to. I'm glad to hear that. Tony, this was great. Thanks for, thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing this moment. I appreciate it. Yeah, and I know it comes out about a week or so. Yeah, yeah, a little bit, a little bit, a little

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