GERALDINE FARRAR

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 281, 28 November 1938, Page 11

GERALDINE FARRAR

VANISHED GLORIES. = WHEN A KAISER KISSED HER HAND. EX-OPERA STAR'S NEW LIFE. NEW YORK. A long. low limousine, chauffeur prim at the wheel, plic* up and down the pike between Ridgcfield, Conn., and town regularly these days and nights, bearing a <ieraldine Farrar who is al>otit to burst upon the world in a new guise. Author, this tin*, of (an autolnography ("Such Sweet Compulsion,"' emerging at the end of this month), and the demands of literature are exacting. Hence the frequent trips to town at a season when the. usual reasons for them do not yet exist. Mimic is not. yet here. The Met., Carnegie Hall. Town Hall, all her usual haunts are still shuttered and the theatrical sea-son lias only begun. Geraldine Farrar! The opera singer whoso beauty was so overpowering that," even in the days of silent films, Hollywood summoned her and paid her £50.000 regularly for every 12 summer weeks site consented to appear. More than .UNDO a day not to sing! Knrico Caruso used to average only £500 for singing. When she wore starched dresses that , boomed out above the knees, she dried dishes in a Melrose highlands, Mass., kitchen and sat stiffly through sermons in a country church. When she let her dresses down and put her hair up. His Imperial Highness, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, kissed her hand, and his eon, the Crown Prince, kissed her lips. "A Sweet Romance," says Miss Farrar. " to remain just that all our lives." Proof? When the Crown Prince was married. Miss Farrar became friendly with his wife. When the Crown Prince's son visited this country he came calling to Ridge field. A Royal Contxast. A startling contrast father ancT son offered in their manner of calling. They look alike—tall, broad, supple men with rosy cheeks and blue eyes. When the father came (for a time, in Berlin, that meant almost every day), trumpets blew a path for him down Unter Den Linden, equerries marched ahead to keep the path clear and finally there was the prince—"a blushing face," recalls. Miss Farrar, "with two brilliant blue eyes peering over the traditional German nosegay." The son came alone, callouses on his hands from five years in a Ford factory. And! then there was the opera. Berlin, Pari*, London, New York's Metropolitan Opera in its golden age, concert tours through the country in a private railroad car —£700 for a night in Bismarck, N.D., £2500 for a night in San Francisco. Marriage to the late Lou Tellegen, matinee idol of his day, then separation (bitter, apparently, because even to-day she won't talk about him, and there is no picture of him on view among the hundreds of photographs in her house). To-day, Geraldine Farrar is 56 years old. She lives in a large, old, white frame house with three dogs, aging servant*; and an aging gardener, the most junior of whom has been in her employ 12 years. The house stands on 10 acres of ground —gardens, a small, sunken pool, a thrust of woodland, rolling lawns with thick, close-cropped grass, a vegetable patch and small orchard, and, off in a corner of a flower garden, guarded by a huge blue spruce, a dog cemetery. Four dogs lie buried here, each with a white headstone to mark its grave —"Sid. 1938," being the most recent, "Oui Oui" having preceded it. Miss Farrar —to use her own phrase —"puts them to flee])" when age inflicts its miseries upon them. The three remaining dogs—a Dachfihund and two spaniels —all have grizzled muzzles now. " I Have Grown Into a New Life." "Everything is getting old around me," exclaims Miss Farrar, not without bitterness. "Even my piano won't stay in tune any more." This is the piano she has carried through most of her career and which stands now prominently in the main room downstairs. "When I was 40," she says, '1 decided—no more opera. The life is too lush. It requires a romantic to live it. How can a woman of 40 be a romantic? When I was 50. I decided no more con. cert pinging. After ">O. o woman cannot sing and cannot stand the vigours of a singer's life. She might screech like an echo of her past, and bring horror to (hose who knew licr before she was a wreck." So Miss Karrar sings no more —"not even in my bath." "But do not think I mourn what's past. I have grown into a new life now. If I had not, I would think there is something wrong with me upstairs." She tape her forehead brightly. "The Tula If h 1

4tante all her life, the man who wants to be a Mchoolbov forever, the singer who clings desperately to a stage oil which she doon't belong—they are all the same, they nil have something wrong with them upstairs." The new life is being lived bv a greyhaired woman with beautiful light blue eyes, a nkin the colour of ro«e-tinted ivory and a manner so imperially gracious you're surprised to discover, when she rises, that tdie is not tall, but of middling height. It's a life still crowded with music. "I write little melodies, not music; you cannot call me n composer." And thereV a storv of how this activity began that tells volumes about the kind of person the Melrose Highlands girl has grown up to be. "Auntie" Writes New Carols. It seems the Ridgefield children have a habit of going carolling from house to house on Christmas and Easter. Auntie Geraldine," said lier favourite a few years ago (they all, heedless of the groans of the blades of 30 years ago. call her "Auntie" now), "we'd like permission to call at your house last." Auntie was a little hurt. "Of course," she re [died, "but why?" "Well." replied the child, "we all think you'd have the best buffet." So, at nine o'clock evcrv Christmas Eve, from 40 to 50 famished folk swoop down on auntie s house and tear turkevs limb from limb. Thev are cold and! hungry and they arc good and sick and! tired of singing the .same old carols. So' auntie decided to write them some new ones. She picked them out. on her piano and wrote sweet, sad words for them. A music publisher heard about them. I Hie result was a new career f'T auntie. Young musicians, chiefly singers, come to her for help and advice. Her friends come over to sing while she accompanies them on the ]>iano. The house itself—a growing thing—is a kind of career. And there is New York—theatres, concert halls, operas, drama and music capital of the world now—just 40 miles awav.— (N.A.N. A.) J