Singular life
Improving notes
PetroneIla Wyatt
Iwas watching a video of The Al Jolson Sto,y the other day. Larry Parks who played Jolson, and won an Oscar for it, was later brought up before HUAC accused of having communist sympathies. He burst into tears under questioning. It was a strange irony: an actor accused of having left-wing views who had just portrayed a Jew who made his name blacking up as a minstrel.
Most of my politico-musically correct friends recoil in horror when I tell them what a great man Jolson was. Racism, they yell. But when I inform them he was a Jew, they shut up. Which is worse, attacking a Jew or someone who blacked up at the beginning of the last century? Why is there not a useful government handbook that would place politically incorrect crimes in order of their villainy. Otherwise it is just too confusing. I mean, would attacking a coloured man who attacked a Jew be more heinous than attacking a Jew who attacked a coloured man?
All this makes a nonsense of the whole concept. But it makes a nonsense of those who scream and shout about political correctness from the other side. too. When I was a child you never insulted someone of a different race, not because it was politically incorrect but because it was obvious bad manners. Likewise, we had no antiJewish jokes at the dinner table. Why do busybodies have to invent these lugubrious expressions for something which simply means being rude. As Churchill said, the short words are the best and the oldest words the best of all.
Al Jolson, for example, was a strictly brought-up cantor's son. He had no intention of insulting anyone. Few would disagree now that minstrels were foolish, something with which Jolson himself concurred, which is why he moved away from that sort of act to jazz and later made the first jazz musical for Hollywood.
Jolson, apparently, was only really happy when he sang. Medical science recently came up with an explanation. Singing is supposed to release large quantities of serotonin to the brain, the equivalent of a Prozac tablet. As someone who sings, I can assure you that it is the best cure for depression I know. The only trouble is that when depressed I don't feel like singing a single note.
This is why anyone prone to ups and downs should book a course of expensive singing lessons — expensive because the money lost in missing them makes it more likely that the depressed one will turn up. I was first introduced to formal singing, that is with a teacher, by Clive James. He and I once had lunch together. To my astonishment he was taking singing lessons and would one day stun the world with this new talent. (The world has yet to be stunned.) James raved about a marvellous teacher in Knightsbridge. To illustrate his teacher's skill and patience he then burst into a chorus of Cole Porter's So In Love'. It wasn't Frankie but it wasn't a frog either. So off I went to this man and asked him to give me lessons. First of all he told me that I couldn't breathe. So I dutifully held my breath. It turned out he had meant that I couldn't breathe properly. Women, it seems, breathe differently from men. When they breathe in they pull their stomachs and chests in and when they breathe out they let it all go. It ought to be the other way around. Girls, think of yourselves a pair of bellows.
For three weeks we did nothing but breathing exercises. I began to wonder if I hadn't mistakenly gone to an ante-natal class instead. He then informed me that my voice should pop out from the top of my head and not my chest. This appeared odd advice. But if you watch an opera singer in particular you will notice that their chest never moves. So off I went to watch opera singers. After two-and-a-half years of this, when I decided I was a dramatic high mezzo — melodramatic, more likely — I was allowed to give a small recital. This, I decided, should be as far away from London as possible. At least when I flopped I could show my face in my own country again. So I did it in Central Europe.
I remember writing about the evening in this column. A few weeks later I met the real and brilliant opera singer Thomas Allen, who has been perhaps our greatest ever Don Giovanni — in the opera house, I mean, though he looks as if he could play it elsewhere with considerable ease. He remarked enviously that I was the only singer who was able to write their own reviews. May I boast? My singing isn't great but it isn't stinkingly bad either. A few years ago I met a rich man who said he would sponsor my debut at the Wigmore Hall. A couple of months ago I ran into him at a party. He ran too. In the other direction.
But nonetheless it made me happy. And still does. Perhaps this is a service the NHS should provide. I am certain that private doctors, instead of prescribing their selfindulgent patients a course of anti-depressant tablets simply because they have gone up one dress size, should make them sing do ray mi. instead. Warbling, incidentally, is quite a good way to keep your figure. Gone are the days when opera singers looked like Bedouin tents. Now they resemble sticks. Actually, they are on Prozac to counteract the stage fright. So here we are in a muddle again. I, fortunately, will never find myself in that position.
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