I am often asked who is the Belmont for whom the Belmont Room on the Metropolitan Opera’s Grand Tier is named. This is where donors at a certain level to the Opera Guild go for coffee and conversation before performances and during intermissions. A painting there by Simon Elvis of a warmly elegant lady depicts Eleanor Robson Belmont (1879-1979), who was the first woman on the board of directors of the Met and was crucial in creating the Metropolitan Opera Guild in 1935.
Mrs. Belmont always sat in box 4 in the Golden Horseshoe at the old Met. When the company was in its most parlous financial condition in the early 1930s, she raised $300,00 to create the guild. In 1940, it was she who had the idea to cut up the gold silk curtain at the old Met and have the pieces stitched to make handbags, bookmarks, eyeglass cases and other items whose sale raised $11,000.
Mrs. Belmont proudly declared that, with the establishment of the guild, “democratization of opera has begun!” In the spring of 1936 she hired Mary Ellis Peltz, whom she described as a “gifted walking encyclopedia of opera” to edit the newsletter that would become Opera News. Mrs. Peltz also created educational programs, a lecture series and backstage tours. She edited the magazine until 1957, at which point she initiated the Metropolitan Opera archives and was its director until her death in 1981. They were then headed by Robert Tuggle, who died on Jan. 24 at the age of 83.
The year 1957 was important for several reasons. The archives were established then. It was also when Bob Tuggle first came to work in the education department of the guild. And it was when Mrs. Belmont published her memoirs called The Fabric of Memory.
Mrs. Belmont was a remarkable woman whom I met once when I was very young, and she was very old. I attended her funeral at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue, three blocks from her grand apartment. She became a famous actress as a teenager. G.B. Shaw was besotted with her and wrote her many love letters as well as Major Barbara, which she never got to play because she was fully booked.
She left acting to marry the fantastically wealthy August Belmont Jr. in 1913. When World War I began, she decided to serve in the Red Cross in Europe and was given a letter of introduction that said, in part, “she has a man’s understanding, a woman’s sympathy, and a sense of of honor and a gift of expression such as are possessed by very few either among men or women.” The letter was written by Theodore Roosevelt.
I read The Fabric of Memory soon after she died 35 years ago and was struck by the fact that Mrs. Belmont was a first-person witness to and protagonist in so much American and opera history. I realized then how essential it is for opera that a certain kind of institutional memory be preserved to know how things work best. Similarly, on a much more personal level, there is a genius and sacred knowledge that only can be transmitted from an older musician to a younger one.
No musician knows more and has more to impart than James Levine. I hope he continues to thrive and conduct, but if that is not possible, I hope the Met makes certain that he is kept actively engaged to teach and advise. Watch Levine rehearse Falstaff with a young cast in 2013.
One of the problems when the fabric of memory is frayed is that wisdom and experience are not there to counterbalance ideas that are more about being new and different than being smart. Tyler Brûlé, author of the "Fast Lane" column in the weekend Financial Times, wrote on Feb. 13, “We don’t always need to reinvent the world. There are many good ideas and lessons that are easily lost, simply for the sake of innovation or cost-cutting.”
It is said that when a person of unique knowledge and experience dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground. Several key Met people have passed away recently, including Joe Green, a beloved member of the stage crew who died suddenly and too young, and Richard Horowitz who was the longest-serving employee — 66 years! — in Met history. James S. Marcus, the passionate and sagacious former chairman of the Met board, died in the summer of 2015.
I noticed that quite a few long-time company members chose to retire just before labor agreements expired in the summer of 2014 so they could be assured of favorable benefits and terms guaranteed in the older contracts. When new agreements were signed, at least 85 additional Met employees lost their jobs as the company sought to reduce its operating budget. The institutional memory they took with them is a devastating loss of capital for the company.
A huge, seemingly irreplaceable, loss came with the recent passing of Robert Tuggle. Only James Levine has more institutional memory than Bob. He was the director of the Met archives for more than 34 years and, before that, worked at the Metropolitan Opera Guild, where he began in the education department in 1957 (the year that Mrs. Belmont published her memoirs) and later was its director. He was the guiding spirit and authoritative presence in the creation of the Met’s wonderful online archive database, a source of information and pleasure for anyone who loves opera. It contains details of every Met performance since Oct. 22, 1883, including casting, reviews, debuts, last appearances and so much more that is infused with Bob’s recollections and passion for thoroughness.
According to an obituary in The New York Times, Bob persuaded the Met to make this database available free to anyone who wants to consult it. In so doing, he expanded on Mrs. Belmont’s desire to democratize opera through accessibility, which is something quite different from marketing and commercialization.
People who are guardians of memory often tend to be guardians of their memories, however accurate or inaccurate they might be. This is demonstrated by the dictum that “history is written by the victors,” attributed to Walter Benjamin, Winston Churchill, and others.
In contrast, an archivist or librarian must disregard personal preference and make a commitment to factual accuracy. Bob did that, which is why his legacy is both so strong and so important. Like anyone who is passionate about opera, Bob had his favorites. He loved Kirsten Flagstad and, at his death, left incomplete a biography of the dramatic soprano. As Bob said in a documentary film, Flagstad set a “standard for singing no other singer in my lifetime has provided.”
His pursuit of accuracy and thoroughness could make him seem prickly when he felt others fell short of his high standards. He was very exacting and had little patience with those who are fatuous and self-aggrandizing. But he was a wonderful man who was ethical, intelligent and intellectually curious. And when, in my writing, I got a fact wrong he was the first to let me know, always with kindness and in the interest of accuracy rather than showing off.
Robert Tuggle and I were both interviewed in a recent film for French television by René Jean-Bouyer about the purported duel between Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi. When the producers contacted me, they asked who else they should talk to, and I immediately recommended Bob. Not only did he know how to instantly access information about the Met appearances of these two divas, but he also heard them in their debuts in Chicago and New York.
After he was interviewed, Bob called to thank me for recommending him but also complained that the filmmakers were not fully prepared and that their questions were too basic. I gently tried to tell him that interviewers often start conversations with simple questions because they put the subject at ease and often elicit unexpectedly rich information and comments. “I could have told them so much more,” Bob said.
In memory of Bob, here is Flagstad singing "Dido’s Lament" by Purcell. Notice how plaintively she implores, “Remember me. Remember me.”
As I was drafting this article, some wonderful news arrived. Peter Clark, who retired as the Met’s press director in March 2015 following decades of excellent work, returned on Feb. 29 to become the director of the archives. This is a superb hire and represents a strengthening of the fabric of memory.