Page Eight

THE JEWISH NEWS

Jews Make Their
Mark In Music

BY PAUL GOULD

I

T IS WITHIN
the realm of possibility that one night
before a glittering audience at the
historic Metropolitan Opera House in
New York a cast made up predomin-
antly of featured Jewish stars will
thrill the Diamond Horseshoe in
Halevy's "La Juive."

For, at the rate that Jewish artists
have been dis-
tinguishing
them selves at
the Met, it may
not be long be-
fore the season
is marked b y
nightly appear-
ances of these
singers. At one
time only the
brief mention of
"List" comprised
the sum and
total of Jewish
operatic genius
in America. To-
day it has swell-
ed to a notable
crescendo with
such eminent
Regina
figures as Leon-
ard Warren, Jan
Resnik
Peerce, Freder-
ick Lechner,
Alexander Kip-
Alexander
nis, Richard
Kipnis
Aucker, Regina
Resnik, Mimi
Benzell, Jennie
Tourel, Thelma
Altman and
Martha Lipton-.
There are others,
too, among t h e
galaxy but they
a r e secondary
figures in this
fabulous world of musical make be-
hew.

At least two of the men are no
strangers to the Jewish community in
New York, for Rubin Tucker, now
Richard Tucker, and Lechner are still
enchanting congregations as cantors.
Tucker, the most recent Jewish
singer to be acclaimed at the Met, is
the cantor at the Brooklyn Jewish
Center while Lechner sings at the
Central Synagogue in Manhattan.
Tucker's tenor career is closely linked
to that of Peerce in more ways than
one. Not only did Peerce, too, have a
distinct Jewish flavor to his early ca-
reer—he played for Alexander Olsha-
netsky's band on the East Side—but
the two are brother-in-laws and it was
Peerce who urged Tucker to become
a-- cantor when the latter was court-
ing Miss Sara Perlmuth, his sister.

A sardonic twist of fate catapulted
Emanuel List to operatic fame. Aus-
trian born and a singer in Germany
for many years, • List was at the Hip-
podrome when Europe's first World
War broke out in 1914 and he was
literally booed off the stage. Bewild-
ered and without friends, he was
championed by Roxy and Hugo Risen-
feld and soon he was at the Capitol
Theater again enchanting audiences
with his rich bass. voice. So from
vaudeville he soared to fame on Broad-
way and thence to the Met, and it is
a rich source of satisfaction to him that
several years ago he was able to turn
over 27 medals, most of them given
him by German municipalities, to the
metal salvage campaign.

was at a summer theater in the Cat-
skills, caroling everything from
classics to boogie-woogie, that she
fully realized her own capabilities.
Her father died and the family fi-
nances became depleted; working in
a department store didn't help much,
so she began to sing professionally and
soon was engaged at. the Rainbow
Room. Then followed a Broadway
run of "Rosalinde," and the Met,
anxious to encourage native talent,
came to hear. It wasn't long before
she, too, was • emblazoned in
the lights on Broadway and
39th St.

Leonard Warren found him-
self thrust into fame and for-
tune in 1943. Lawrence Tib-
bett became ill one day and
Warren replaced him on short
notice, as the baritone in
"Rigoletto." His performance
was sparkling and he, too, rose
overnight from an understudy
to a full-fledged star. His ca-
reer had begun after he had
graduated from Columbia
night school
when he won
the radio audi-
tion in 1938. He
took up with the
Met directly
after that.
Probably t h e
most publicized
career of all is
Jan Peerce's.
Born Joshua
Pincus Perl-
muth, he didn't
know until 12
years a g o that
he could sing.
For many years
he had played
the violin for
bands while his
mother wailed
that he should study to be a doctor.
It was at the Golden Anniversary
celebration for Weber and Fields that
Roxy—who had befriended List in
1914—heard him sing and immediately
signed him as leading tenor on the
opening bill at the Radio City Music
Hall.
Poverty had dogged the Perlmuth
family throughout Jan's early life and
his mother had to scrape pennies to-
gether to have him learn the "fiddle".
He worked his way through school
by organizing a band but when the
- faithful mo-
ment came
to him he
s aid falter-
ingly to
Roxy:
"Mr. Ro-
thafel, I'm
too short to
g o o n a
stage. I ' m
too funny
looking."
Roxy bang-
ed his fist
on his desk

Jan
Pearce

business man and so he went to study
under the dean of Jewish composers,
Zavek Zilberts. After becoming can-
tor for the Temple Emanuel in Pas-
saic, N. J., and Temple Adath Israel
in the Bronx, he took a fling at opera
and sang five times in New York and
Boston. A private audition with the
Met's Wilfred Pelletier followed and
Tucker made a glowing debut Jan.
25 in "La Gioconda," at the age of 31.
But this month he will be back sing-
ing the Passover songs at the Brooklyn
Jewish Center, as ever.
And his friends are proudest not of
his operatic accomplishments but of
his refusal to sing Friday nights and
Saturday matinees at the Met because
of his religious convictions.
Lechner, who was born in Stettin,
Pomerania, came to this country in
1936. He had been starred, like List,
in his native land for five years be-
fore Hitler and almost from the start
he was engaged as cantor at the Cen-
tral Synogogue. He made his oper-
atic debut two years ago at the age
of 38.
Tucker, Peerce, Resnik and Benzell
hail from Russian stock, but most Rus-

sian of all is the Basso Kipnis, v.-he
was born in Zhitomir in the Ukraine.
He became an American citizen in
1925, and treasures his nationalization
above all for it is with sadness that
he looks back on the years that he
was the star of the Wagner Festivals
at Beyreuth and the Mozart Festivals
at Salzburg.
Altman first appeared at the Metro-
politan's opening night of the 1943-44
season when "Boris Godounoff" was
presented as a grateful gesture to Rus-
sia. Lipton one year later was a be-
lated counterpart to Altman, for she,
too, made her Met debut at an open-
ing night in—"Faust". Vivacious,
dark-eyed, she is one of a family of
artists and musicians long associated
with the theater.
Judging by the number of Jewish
men and women who in the past sev-
eral years have emblazoned their
names imperishably on the pages of
American music, a glorious future
faces others like them who will look
to them, take heart and follow in
their footsteps.

(Copyright, 1945, Seven Arts Features
Syndicate.)

Jews in Soviet Science

By L. SINGER

The most coveted honor among Soviet
scholars and scientists is to become a
member of the Academy of Sciences of
the U.S.S.R. This is an article about
some of the many Jewish men and women
who hold this distinction.

J

EWS, barred from Russia's
universities under the Czar,
occupy leading faculty posts
with the Academy of Sciences of
the U. S. S. R., which, with its
numerous institutes, is conducting
tireless research, and is closely
bound up with the national econo-
my of the country. The country's
productive forces and its natural
resources are carefully studied by
expeditions organized - by the
Academy. The Academy is an or-
ganizing center for the study of
economics, technology, jurispru-
dence, history, ethnography, chem-
istry, physics and mathematics.
The Academy played an especial-
ly important role during the war
in aiding the Red Army by means
of research.
Among the scientists of the
Academy now decorated by the
government we find quite a num-
ber of Jews: members and Cor-
responding members, doctors and
masters of sciences, professors and
docents.
Abraham Joffe, member of the
Academy, secretary of the physio-
mathematical section of the Acad-
emy, is director of the Institute of
Applied Sciences; Alexander
Frumkin, member of the Acad-
emy, is director of the Colloidal
Electrochemical Institute; Gregori
Shein is director of the Crimean
Astrophysical Observatory; Prof.
Israel Razgon, historian, is chair-
man of the Commission for Col-
lecting Data on the Great Pacific
War.
Noted Scientists
Among those decorated by the
government are: Physicist Vladi-
mir Simon Wolkowitz, corres-
ponding member of the Academy
and assistant secretary of the De-
partment of Chemistry; Gregori

Landsberg, physicist; Isaac Mintz,
historian; David Talmud, bio- -
chemist; Isaac Bruck, energetics
specialist.
Prof. Lev Landau is elaborating
on the theory of superfluidity at
the Physics Institute; Eugene
Varga; academician, is secretary
of the Department of Economics
at the Academy, and head of the
Institute of World Economy and
World Politics; Benjamin Weitz,
corresponding member of the
Academy, head of the Energetics
Department Commission for the
Investigation of German Atroci-
ties, and head of the Law Institute
of the Academy.
In Medicine and Law
The same (law) institute in-
cludes Joseph Levin, authority on
constitutional and international
law; historian Zorach Greenberg,
who for many years has been
working on a history of the Jews
in the early middl&ages, and is a
senior scientific worker at the
Gorki Institute of World Litera-
ture; Abraham Deborin is a de-
partment head at the Institute of
History; Esther Genkina, histo-
rian, is a member of the Com-
mission for Collecting Data on the
Great Patriotic War; Rachel
Dozortseva, biologist, is scientific
secretary of the Biological Depart-
ment of the Academy.
These are only a few of the
many Jewish. scientists connect-
ed with the Academy, its insti-
tutes, libraries, laboratories and
experimental stations. Then too,
there are special academies with
specific functions. There is the
Academy. of Agriculture and the
Academy of Medicine. In the
field of Medicine we find Lena
Stern, one of the most prominent
members of the Academy, who
won the Stalin Prize for her new
discoveries in the treatment of
tetanus.

-

(Copyright 1945 by Jewish Press Service. Inc.)

HORSE and BIDER

By J. 1. Gordon (1830-1892)
ITrans!ated by Maurice Samuel)

Young Favorites

A dramatic soprano, Regina Resnik
was graduated from Hunter College
three years ago and after brief training
was awarded a $1,000 prize at the Met
radio auditions and signed as a star.
Her debut in the historic Opera House
was a story-book tale. On 24 hours'
notice she was called upon to fill the
role of Leonora in "Il Trovatore" when
Zinka Milanov came down suddenly
with laryngitis. . Unshaken, calm, ut-
terly devoid of trepidation though she
had never publicly sung the part be-
fore, Resnik performed like a veteran.
The acclaim she received "made" her.
Mimi Benzell is classed as a lyric
coloratura and at 21 is one of the
youngest of the Cinderellas who have
made good. Like Resnik a Hunter
College student, only recently did she
become interested in singing and it

Friday, September 7, 1946

Emanuel

List

and shouted, "You're the tallest man
in the world! You're the handsom-
est man in the world! All you have
to do is believe that and ifs so."
But his mother, who still clings to
the East Side, wants him to become
a doctor. She can't understand all
this singing, all this foreign opera
business.
Tucker's Career
Richard Tucker's career was as
meteoric as that of his brother-in-
law. Once a runner in Wall Street,
he decided he didn't want to be a

On a wild horse, scattering rage and terror,
The rider passed through the streets of the city.
Like storm and the breath of the tempest
Galloped the horse: and like the spray on the surf
Was the form of its gasping on its nostrils.
Its hooves were harder than the fabulous shamir-stone,
And the rain of sparks flew upward from the road.
And a boy passed with those that went along the road:
"How goodly, how beautiful is that horse,
How well that he crushes not under his hooves
Those that come in at the gate."
And the rider on the horse of terror answered:
"Seest thou not, foolish bOy,
The ring and the bridle which hold him back and guide him?
Know that without them he would scatter death
And in the flash of an eye the passers-by would be slain."
How many wilt thou not find on earth,
Wild as the untrained steed, wild as the breath of the tern-
pest,
Whose wickedness would carry the world to destruction,
if it were not for the ring and the bridle of the faith.

