Jennie Tourel Returns to Juilliard
by CHRISTOPHER MOSSEY

In recognition of a generous gift, The Juilliard School has named the 2001-02 vocal arts series and master classes after Jennie Tourel, the internationally known mezzo-soprano who taught at Juilliard from 1963 until 1973. Miss Tourel was an unrivaled interpreter of French and Russian vocal literature who also championed the songs of Gustav Mahler, premiered numerous works by influential composers of her day, and drew toward her a diverse circle of artists, friends, and admirers who continue to extol her impact on the world of music some 20 years after her death.

Jennie Tourel

Miss Tourel, who was born in Belarus in 1900, fled the Russian Revolution with her family and settled in Paris. There she studied voice with Reynaldo Hahn and Anna El Tour, developing a rare linguistic versatility, a solid technique, and a remarkable sensitivity to text. As she recalled in a 1971 Juilliard Convocation address, “The most important thing for me at the beginning of my career was an inner need and hunger for music—to be in touch with music… At the age of 16, I knew I wanted to become a singer and an actress, so I began to study voice. It isn’t easy. It is a great struggle. Music is a difficult art; she demands patience, perseverance, courage, total commitment, and dedication.”

Miss Tourel surpassed all of these demands as a performer and human being. At the age of 30, she made her American operatic debut at the Chicago Civic Opera in Ernest Moret’s Lorenzaccio. Then followed 10 years at the Operá-Comique in Paris, where she sang Carmen (one of her best-known roles), Cherubino, Charlotte (from Massenet’s Werther) and Adalgisa (from Bellini’s Norma). Miss Tourel’s operatic career included hundreds of performances of Mignon, the role in which she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1937. Her performances of Carmen in the New York City Opera’s first season, in 1944, are remembered as among the most sensational in the company’s history. Her operatic career extended to the very last weeks of her life in 1973, in which she had finished performances of Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment opposite Joan Sutherland at the Chicago Lyric Opera.

Throughout her career, she appeared frequently as a recitalist in the United States and abroad, excelling in every musical style in which she performed. The program for an April 19, 1970 recital, accompanied by James Levine at Alice Tully Hall, was typical for Miss Tourel in its versatility but uncommon for most singers: songs and arias by 11 composers—from Stradella and Beethoven to Tchaikovsky and Dargomijsky—sung in six languages. Her recitals were celebrated for the intimate atmosphere that Tourel was able to create through her simplicity of expression, attention to words, and lack of pretense.

Part of Miss Tourel’s reputation rested in her advocacy and performance of new vocal works, both in the song and opera repertories. Notable premieres by Tourel included Bernstein’s I Hate Music, the role of Baba the Turk in Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Paul Hindemeth’s Marienleben cycle, and numerous songs by Francis Poulenc.

Miss Tourel’s total commitment to music extended also to her unofficial role as a chief hostess of New York’s artistic community. Jennie Tourel loved people and people loved her back. Her modest apartment at 200 West 58th Street, near Carnegie Hall, served in the truest sense as a salon where some of the city’s brightest minds gathered nearly every night to eat, drink, and sing. By all accounts, she was an impeccable entertainer, often serving homemade Russian food, and her alluring intelligence and charm caught hold of Virgil Thomson, Igor Stravinsky, W.H. Auden, Serge Koussevitzky, David Diamond, Gerard Souzay, Ned Rorem, Pablo Casals, Joan Sutherland, Leonard Bernstein, and countless others. If you were an established or rising artist in New York during the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, you would have eventually crossed paths with Jennie Tourel.

Jennie Tourel with Ned Rorem in Venice in 1951. (Photo by Naomi Siegler)

Among the most enchanted—and most helped professionally—by Jennie Tourel was Leonard Bernstein. They bonded immediately as friends when they first met at Tanglewood in the summer of 1943. At her much-anticipated Town Hall debut recital on November 13, 1943 (described by Virgil Thomson as “the best recital debut since Kirsten Flagstad’s in 1934”), Tourel gave the New York premiere of Bernstein’s I Hate Music, bringing him into the spotlight as a composer for the first time. She would become Bernstein’s choice as soloist in the first performances his Jeremiah and Kaddish symphonies, and subsequently was soloist in his legendary performances of Mahler’s symphonies with the New York Philharmonic and in recordings. Tourel traveled with Bernstein on tours to Europe and Palestine, most notably for a concert atop Mount Scopus following the Six Day War in Israel.

Miss Tourel’s vast experience in opera and song, and her rare ability to bring out the best musical qualities in young artists, made her faculty appointment at The Juilliard School in 1963 one of the most important in Peter Mennin’s tenure as president. Miss Tourel had already established herself as a teacher at the Aspen Festival and at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. At Juilliard she taught more than 70 students, including Barbara Hendricks, Neil Shicoff, and Faith Esham. Diane Richardson, principal coach and acting director of graduate opera studies at Juilliard, coached voice students under Miss Tourel during Tourel’s 10-year tenure here. “Jennie was a demanding and sometimes impatient teacher,” Ms. Richardson says, “but for an important reason: she had very high standards and values that she wished to share with young people. She used the music to work through issues of technique, expression and phrasing, all at the same time.” Ms. Richardson thinks that “Miss Tourel would be very pleased to know that the vocal arts series is named for her, because the series helps young singers focus on public performance and communication,” and this is what Miss Tourel was famous for.

In 1991, Jennie Tourel’s estate donated her papers to the archive of Juilliard’s Lila Acheson Wallace Library. The collection comprises correspondence, programs, news clippings, publicity materials, scrapbooks, and photographs documenting Tourel’s performing and teaching career from about 1946 through 1973. Included are letters from Leonard Bernstein, Darius Milhaud, Aaron Copland, James Levine, and Serge Koussevitzsky, as well as an extensive collection of music.

The opportunity to welcome Jennie Tourel’s name back to Juilliard is made possible by a generous gift from Milton Jacoby, a longtime friend of Miss Tourel who fell in love with her voice 60 years ago. The Jennie Tourel Vocal Arts Series comprises 11 vocal arts presentations in 2001-02: the Jennie Tourel Master Class, which this year features the acclaimed soprano Barbara Bonney (December 4); the Juilliard Songbook (four concerts: October 4, December 6, February 7, and April 25); Liederabend (five concerts: October 18, November 29, January 31, March 21, and April 11); and the First-Year Songbook on May 3, 2002, featuring Juilliard’s newest young singers. In recognition for Jennie Tourel’s achievements as a performer and teacher, and in gratitude for all the ways that she touched the lives around her, Juilliard is pleased to name the Jennie Tourel Vocal Arts Series.

Christopher Mossey is researcher for The Campaign for Juilliard.