Olga Rudge & Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well..."

67 A Marriage That Didn’t Happen
expatriate literary and musical circles of Paris—Joyce, Hemingway, and
Eliot, among others.
In lieu of a fully staged production (set in a brothel next to a cathedral),
Pound settled for an expanded concert version. Villon—wanted for
crimes, with a premonition of his own death—reviews the transcience of
life and love, followed by the ironic comments of his friend, Thier. The
Old Prostitute Heaulmière laments her vanished charms (an aria Ezra
called ‘‘the fireworks of the piece’’); then a foppish Gallant stumbles in to
visit one of the girls. The voice of Villon’s mother can be heard o√stage in
the cathedral, praying for his salvation. A priest attempts to enter but is
barred by Bozo, the boozy brothel keeper, while a chorus of companions
sings the drinking song, ‘‘Père Noë.’’ As the opera ends, Villon is arrested
and carried o√ for execution; in the final act he is seen hanging from the
gallows as the chorus echoes ‘‘Frères humains.’’
Yves Tinayre, the lead tenor, doubled in the Old Prostitute’s role in
falsetto with a shawl draped over his head when Pound was unable to
enlist a soprano. Robert Maitland, a bass-baritone borrowed from Sir
Thomas Beecham’s opera season, sang Bozo. A miniature orchestra featured
Olga on violin, Jean Dervaux and Edouard Desmoulin on tenor and
bass trombones, a clavichord, and a five-foot cornet de dessus (medieval
horn) played by Tinayre’s younger brother, Paul. Constantin Brancusi
called the concert ‘‘une scandale,’’ but composer Virgil Thomson conceded,
‘‘it was not quite a musician’s music, though it may well be the
finest poet’s music since Thomas Campion.’’ To Agnes Bedford in London,
who was invited to play the harpsichord but did not appear, Ezra
wrote: ‘‘Dare say it went fairly well—no riots or departures.’’
Another concert version of Le Testament was presented on Monday
afternoon, July 12, at the avenue Fouquet home of Mrs. Christian Gross, a
wealthy patron of the arts. Olga accompanied Robert Maitland on the
violin in this ‘‘premiere audition’’ of Villon’s Les Neiges d’Antan, with the
often-quoted line ‘‘Where are the snows of yesteryear?’’ On the same
program, Olga and Antheil premiered George’s Third Sonata for piano
and violin, which inspired a critic to comment: ‘‘Miss Rudge has developed
an entirely new violin technique for the interpretation of the tempestuous
and, as classical players would say, ‘anti-violinistic,’ music of