When Diana happened upon a National Geographic piece in 2003 dealing with Egyptology, numerous memories were awakened. Hanging on the wall only a few feet from her chair, for many years, was a framed photo given to her in 1956. She took it down for a moment to look at the inscription at the bottom:
Diana –
Add thanks here too, to the she-Puffer –
So many interpretations, girl ambassador, and humorist.
Hail and Hello –
Robert Shaw
As she put the photo back up, i couldn’t help but think of the times she told about her travels in 1956. Thanks to “Uncle Bob,” as members of the Robert Shaw Chorale affectionately called him, Diana and Ted visited a number of countries they might never otherwise have seen.
In her radio interviews, she recounts not only how she became a coloratura without ever having had a voice lesson in her life but, also, how she was selected as soprano soloist for the Chorale when they went on their domestic and subsequent world tours.
The tour throughout the US and subsequent recording sessions in NYC, beyond the revenues generated, were largely a final rehearsal of sorts for the international tour under US State Department auspices. By that time three or four programs were in place from which “mix ’n’ match” would enable some variety.
Early in the domestic tour Shaw would get annoyed that, before concerts, Diana never practiced or vocalized like the others. She countered, “Don’t I always produce when needed?” When he sheepishly had to concede, “um, yes …” she went off to continue playing chess with the stage hands or poker with the lighting guys leaving Shaw to scratch his head in silence.
In fairness, she’d often also recount how, when there was any time off late at night and she couldn’t sleep, she’d find jazz clubs that allowed folks to sit in and jam (NY City had many in those days). One night when someone kept sending her drinks, she had a friend find out who it was. Sitting in a dark corner was Shaw. (Since he wanted to remain anonymous, Diana never told him she knew.)
To the specifics on the photo inscription, in reverse order, “Hail and Hello” was the motto used in those earliest days on many of the printed programs. While numerous incidents probably caused Shaw to write “humorist” and “interpretations,” the one Diana spoke of most often was one performance including an arrangement of the old song, “Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day.”
First published in a Harvard student songbook in 1880, the tune was popularized in a 1935 flick starring Shirley Temple, The Littlest Rebel. A technique used by Shaw to keep things from getting too hum-drum when performing so many of the same pieces night after night (day-in, day-out), was to point to whoever looked most likely to zone out. Nothing like a little stark terror to notify, “This solo is yours to sing. Now!”
Diana said that most folks when cued this way seemed to lapse into the predictable pseudo-sophisticated “recital pose” and sing in quasi-operatic mode which struck her as borderline silliness. Diana was so good at concealing any trace of boredom (hence her being able to bluff so easily in poker) several weeks passed before Shaw (probably to break up his own ennui) cued Diana for the solo.
Rather than take the phony high-brow approach, Diana immediately launched into a southern-hick drawl causing Shaw to break into spontaneous (doubling-over) laughter nearly rendering him incapable of conducting.
In addition to their salaries for singing, Diana, Ted and the late alto, Florence Kopleff, were paid extra managerial fees. Ted and Flossie handled book-keeping tasks. Diana had a flair for snuffing out better deals on lodging, transportation as well as extensive knowledge of which were the best eateries in each locale.
Shaw called Diana “girl ambassador” for being fluent in so many of the local languages throughout Europe as well as enabling him to avoid at least one potential major faux-pas. Part of their normal program included a collection of old Italian madrigals which were published with text in English as well as the original words.
When Shaw asked Diana, “Could you coach those who don’t know Italian so we can perform it in its original form?” She warned him, “You obviously don’t understand Italian. The original text is highly obscene and would offend most in the audience.” She said he was grateful to her for saving him great embarrassment.
Straddling the topics of translation and humor is one other story Diana told numerous times about the after-party at the Egyptian Embassy following a large concert in their auditorium. Because Shaw only spoke English, Ted or Diana often had to translate, usually into and out of French.
Following the performance, Shaw asked Diana to translate since the Egyptian ambassador, she said he was the grandson of some Emir, seemed to want to tell how much he enjoyed the program and ask a few questions. Once the discussion was over, everyone had shaken hands and Shaw went about other business, the ambassador came back to where Diana was standing and, in perfect English, asked, “I had a question for you: I am fairly well off and can afford a fourth wife. Would you be willing to join my harem?”
The retort was quintessentially Diana-esque: “Why don’t you join my harem?”
With the background dynamic laid out above, Diana’s most vivid memories of her time in Egypt were from the first day. She and Keith Wyatt were the only two of the group not wiped out from jet lag after flying from NYC through Shannon Airport to Amsterdam where they changed planes for the flight to Cairo.
Their first order of business was the hiring of a dragoman and obtaining camels for their trip to the Valley of the Kings. As they left the hotel, they were surrounded by beggars who kept chanting “baksheesh.” Diana insisted that she had no money but, not believing her, she threw a wallet out in front of them which they opened up and, indeed, there was no money to be found. The dragoman, once the crowd disbursed, said to Diana, “Let me guess, that was an extra decoy wallet. You’re either part Egyptian or Neapolitan.” When she nodded in the affirmative he said, “Of course, Italian!”
Upon mounting their camels, Diana christened (bar mitzvah’d?) hers “Manishewitz.” All these decades later she recalled the hideous halitosis of the camel as being one of the most obnoxious she’d ever encountered anywhere.
After seeing the Sphinx and surrounding sights the dragoman showed Diana and Keith the “thieves’ entrance” to the tomb at Deir el-Bahri which was broken into sometime in the mid-1800s. They hired a guide to accompany them inside where, in an outburst of spontaneity, they launched into a rousing rendition of the final duet-aria of Aida. The guide, frightened by these loud noises fled leaving them on their own to retrace their footsteps to the outside.
What Diana did not know until almost half a century later was that, while she and Keith were at Deir el-Bahri, Ramses had been removed in the mid-1800s by tomb breakers and mummy snatchers who sold off mummies, coffins, and royal artifacts to tourists and collectors.
The mummy was sold to a physician from Canada named James Douglas in around 1860. Douglas acquired the royal mummy for the owner of a tacky museum in Niagara Falls “Toot ’n’ Come In.” With Ramses resting in “Diana’s backyard” for 150 years, the term “cultural exchange” took on new meaning.
February 2017