Maatstaf. Jaargang 30

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Estelle Debrot A Homage to Mme Morosini

The name Morosini comes from a noble family of Venice (Francesco Morosini, 1619-1694, Doge of Venice). Whether or not this was Elvira Morosini's own name or that of her husband, I do not know.

It was during the year 1912 that I first saw her. I was some eight years old, living in an apartment house on the corner of Larkin and Sacramento Streets bearing the very local name: ‘De la Sierra Apartment House’, probably in honour of the proprietor's mother who was a gentlewoman of old California Spanish stock. The entrance was on Larkin Street, and around the corner on Sacramento Street, which sloped down towards Polk Street (it could hardly be called a hill according to San Francisco standards) was a door with a frosted glass top on which was printed in large, black letters the words ‘Mme Elvira Morosini, Ballet Mistress from La Scala, Milan’. I may be wrong in the exact wording that followed her name: the ‘from’ could be interpreted in two ways: that she had been mistress of the Opera school of La Scala or, that she came from there. I believe the latter to be the fact. In any case, I learned from her later that she had been a solo dancer of the La Scala Opera Company, and once when it was giving a performance in Monte Carlo, a fire broke out. She was badly burned and left with scars, making it necessary to graft skin onto her face, an operation that in those days was not up to our modern methods.

When I first peeked through the low iron-barred window next to the door of her studio, I could see someone from the waist down in a black pleated skirt and black satin toe shoes giving a lesson to a young girl. I saw the figure move across the floor on her toes in a perfect ‘pas de bourée’. Then I heard a rasping voice making sounds from which I could hardly make out any words, so I squatted down on the sidewalk for a full view and was startled to see the face that went with the legs. The voice, the sounds, and the face together, gave an impression of a fairy-tale witch; enough to frighten an eight-year old. However, in my case, the legs won, and after days of persuasive talk, my mother went to arrange for me to have lessons with Mme Morosini. I remained with her until the year 1919.

During those years, I came to know her as intimately as one of that age could know anyone of her age. She turned fifty-eight years old each year I was with her and, to me, she really grew no older than when I first saw her.

Her story which she told not only to me, but to all and sundry, was, that while in the hospital recovering from her burns and the surgery necessary to make her presentable for her work, her husband ran away with someone else leaving her to care for their small daughter as best she could. She vowed that if ever she found him she would kill him. It was said with such Latin vehemence that, as a child, I had a vision of her using a knife to some unknown figure looking like the villain one saw in the movies or in illustrated books.

The plastic surgery on her face was not very successful, which made it impossible for her to continue her career as a dancer. She was

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obliged to become a Ballet Mistress which was difficult in those days since Ballet Masters were preferred. This left her dependent on finding work with secondary Opera Companies or sometimes as Mistress of Ballet in travelling circusses. In the meantime, her daughter grew up to become an actress and had a daughter of her own, though without marrying, which was part of Mme Morosini's story of her troubles in life.

It was with one of the smaller opera companies that Mme Morosini arrived in San Francisco.^* When this company was stranded there, most of the members found their way back to Europe, but some kind, local ladies who were interested in ballet took up Mme Morosini's cause and helped her to open a studio and settle in San Francisco.

After starting lessons with her, I soon became her small companion. When school was over I went immediately to the studio and watched all the lessons in which I did not participate. Living in the same apartment house above the studio, she would ask me to come and have dinner with her; like most Italians she had no liking for solitude. She had acquired an Italian cook called Ciccio. He really excelled in his culinary art, for I have been able to compare it since then with many restaurants in Italy. I remember his homemade ‘pasta asciutta’, long strips of ‘lasagne’ hanging on a clean cloth draped over the back of a chair to dry; his ‘minestrone’, ‘cotelettes a la milanaise’ and ‘zabaglione’.

When an Italian or French opera company visited San Francisco, as they often did, she was asked to furnish the ballets with her pupils, according to our capabilities at the time. In later years there was a group of us quite equal to the task - even to performing the ‘Dance of the Hours’ in ‘La Gioconda’. Some of us also danced in the Italian Operetta Company which had a season every year in the Italian Quarter. We were paid small sums for this, at least when the companies did not ‘go broke’. Mme Morosini would invite the members of these various companies for dinner. Her invitation was always accepted with the kind of enthusiasm and promptness that revealed the situation of the singers. I am afraid that some took advantage of her hospitality for lengthy periods. There were times when the cook, Ciccio, was angered at this and would pack up his own carving knife and return to his lodgings in the Italian Quarter of the city. Then Mme Morosini would take me with her and go to talk him into returning. I realized later that I was used as bait, for it is known that Italians love children. Mme and Ciccio were a little like grandparents to me; he must have been around her age. She was well known in the Italian Quarter and also in our neighborhood, but sometimes on street cars people would stare too long at her. Besides the scarred face, she dressed rather conspicuously, with ostrich feathers in her hat, also wearing expensive jewelry: long, or round-shaped gold earrings, diamond solitaire rings, etc. These, as she said, were bought as an investment.

But when a passenger, or passengers, stared too long for her liking she was not averse to scolding them in her un-understandable lingo: a mixture of Italian, French, and a few English words, accompanied by pantomime, such as pointing to her buttocks and then to her nose signifying that part of the flesh from the former had been grafted onto the latter. At such times I studied my shoes for the rest of the trip. Sometimes she would take me to see a movie at one of the film theaters on Polk Street, and if the person sitting in front of her moved too often or wore a large hat, that person would also get a loud scolding. Here, however, because it was dark, I did not feel it necessary to stare at my shoes. When I first knew her, she lived in a one-room apartment with kitchen and bathroom, but as her pupils increased she

* I have learned from Mr. Russell Hartley, director of San Francisco Archives for the Performing Arts, with whom I have had some correspondence concerning Mme. Morosini, that it must have been the Grazi French Opera Company which came to San Francisco in 1911.

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moved into two rooms, using one as a bedroom where the bed folded into the wall during the day, and the other as a dining-sitting room. She had a large collie dog and a lovely, black cat called Pom-Pom.

I forget the dog's name, but she usually called her ‘ma belle cocotte’. She spoiled them inordinately giving them big pieces of meat while eating her dinner - another point of contention with Ciccio.

The one object that drew attention in her dining-sitting room was placed on a small table against one of the walls: a crucifix with, on one side some artificial red roses, and on the other, two framed photographs, one of a handsome-looking woman in some kind of theatrical costume, the other of a child, perhaps some twelve years old, with long, dark, corkscrew curls and a very serious expression, in a convent uniform: her grandchild.

When anyone looked at them she would again repeat the story about her daughter being a bad girl, like the father, but it was for her grandchild, Charlotte, that she was working so she could finish her convent education and become a schoolteacher, if not a nun. Indeed, I also accompanied her to the Bank of Italy every month where she paid a cheque to be sent to the convent in Marseilles for that purpose. Though her mother tongue was Italian, she had lived in the south of France for some time so that French was her second language. As long as I knew her though, she had never been able to form one sentence in English. However, this was no drawback in her teaching. Not only did the pupils and their mothers (who always lined the walls during classes) grow to understand her special lingo, but what she could not say, she could more than make understandable by her wide range of gestures and movements.

From time to time, a benefit performance was given for one of the members of the Italian or French colony. She was always asked to have her pupils contribute with some dances. During the first years it would be the ‘Beautiful Blue Danube’, waving long, blue scarves. The waltz steps and the criss-cross patterns were simple enough. There was also a ‘Japanese Dance’ for a group, in which the long kimonos, the yellow paper chrysanthemums pinned in our hair and the use of fans, played a more imposing part than our shuffling steps.

As the years passed, a group of us who had remained steadily became advanced pupils. We had been ‘put on our toes’ and taught dances from the ballet ‘Coppelia’, a ‘Pizzicato’ from ‘Sylvia’, some of the dances from ‘Walpurgis Night’ in the Opera ‘Faust’, etc. Mme Morosini could not really be called a choreographer.

These were dances as she had learned them from the repertoire of various companies; she never attempted a full scale ballet. Nevertheless, what she did give us was a good foundation: the barre exercises in correct sequence, ‘de port de bras’, the ‘glissades’, ‘jetés’, ‘pirouettes’, ‘arabesques’, ‘attitudes’. We were even able to perform ‘fouettés’. I feel sure no one else there at that time could have done this. Her own position and attitudes were quite perfect; perhaps if her career had not been prevented, she would have become an outstanding ‘prima ballerina’. However she had not the kind of analytical mind which can compel one to work on the more subtle details of technique which I found later with the Russians I studied with though, ironically enough, it was her own countryman, the great master, Enrico Cecchetti, who taught most of these Russians. Once, when Anna Pavlova's Company was appearing in San Francisco, Cecchetti was travelling with it as Ballet Master. Mme took me back-stage with one or two other pupils to visit and had us do the barre exercises while Pavlova and Cecchetti watched. We were too young to appreciate such a distinction, though we were wide-eyed with excitement. However, they nodded their heads in approval, probably because we knew the routine. Madame, who was a friend of Maestro Cecchetti, was permitted to watch a performance from the wings, with me at her side. We saw Mikhail Mordkin do his famous ‘bow and Arrow’ dance and heard the thunders

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of applause coming from the audience. Then something happened which has made a lasting impression on me. I was to learn my first lesson about theatrical temperament; in this case, a dancer's: I witnessed the lovely, fragile dancer whom I had seen as a dying swan - like listening to a fairy-tale - burst into a rage, scolding Mordkin in a strange language. I saw him shrug his shoulders and walk away. Maestro Cecchetti took Mme and me to his room where they talked together in Italian. On the way home, Mme told me something about theatrical life not always being good: Sempre jalousie, toujours jalousie. When I met Mordkin years later and reminded him of this scene, he laughed heartily and, with true generosity said, ‘Yes. Still, she is a great dancer.’

One of the most important days of the year for Mme Morosini was the 14th of July. She became completely French then. We, her pupils, were all taken to some hall where the French colony. celebrated the ‘Fall of the Bastille’. We were given ‘tri-colours’ to wave as we marched around the platform joining, as best we could in singing the ‘Marseillaise’. On such occasions, during the first years, she would often don a black satin half mask like one sees on figures in Venetian paintings, and do a lovely short dance, mostly the ‘pizzicatti’. For the rest of the year she kept her Italian nationality.

Another important day in the year was her birthday - always her fifty-eighth. She would remind all of her pupils as well as their mothers and the other occupants of the apartment house who all knew her: ‘You no forget my birthday.’ And no one did. There was always a party with cakes and lemonade, and, of course, presents galore all laid on a table placed for that purpose. After everyone left, I was often alone with her when she would start sorting them out: ‘This for me, this I send to my Charlotte.’ And I, too, would be remembered. After a few days when the things for Charlotte would be well-packed by Ciccio, off we would go to the post office to send the package to Marseilles. During the Panama-Pacific International

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Exposition of 1915, her pupils also appeared in many performances. I seem to remember a group of us in Grecian costumes doing some dance at the Palace of Fine Arts and somewhere a ‘Garden Dance’ with baskets of flowers over our arms.

During the first years of World War I, she had as pianist a young German called Schaeke; his sister, Eleanor, was also a pupil, and their mother always accompanied her to classes. One exchange of conversation between Mme Morosini and Frau Schaeke remains engraved in my memory. Mme's adjective for something she found the worst of the worst of things, sounded something like ‘rrraffle’ - I think it was a combination of ‘terrible’ and ‘awful’. She would say to Frau Schaeke: ‘de Kayser is a rraffle man’, to which Frau Schaeke would answer: ‘Ze Kayser iss awl rright, Madame.’ This exchange was often repeated until the United States entered the war and the son was drafted and disappeared from the piano stool. Poor Frau Schaeke was silenced. It gave us a queer and sad feeling, as did the sight of the pink coloured newspaper with large black headlines, ‘War! U.S. Joins Allies!’

The last two years that I was with Mme Morosini, she made me her assistant to help with the younger pupils and beginners. Then came the influenza epidemic of '17 and '18. I was also seized with it, and though most people were very afraid to go near anyone who was infected (even the doctors gave instructions over the telephone), she would come everyday and stand by my bed. She would say to my mother, who was nursing me, ‘She be all right, you see, you no worry.’ And Mme's prophecy did come true. When I was convalescing she wanted to take me to the slaughter house to drink bull's blood which seems to have been a well-known remedy for regaining strenght. However, I shudderingly baulked at that and settled for eating rare steaks. Now I must end, with what is most difficult for me to write about. Leaving her! I was gradually becoming aware that I could go no further with her as to dancing. Mme Morosini knew this as well as I did. In one of the last benefit performances in which I participated under her banner, I was to do one of the older dances she had thaught. A solo from ‘Coppelia’, I think it was. In the meantime, I had been inspired by a poem that an older cousin had given me to read: Keats's ‘Ode to Autumn’, and had found some music called ‘Song d'Automne’. Then I started composing my first dance.

Somehow, I worked up the courage to tell Mme that I wanted to do this dance instead of the other. I remember well the expression as she looked at me; there was surprise, disapproval, but also curiosity in it.

She objected at first, but once started, I kept to my point and finally she agreed to watch the dance.

I had already worked on it unknown to her with the pianist in her spare time. When I had finished dancing it for her I could not see Mme's expression for she turned and went upstairs to her apartment, saying as she went, ‘All right, you do.’

Soon afterwards, I found myself preparing to leave for Los Angeles to study with Theodore Kosloff, who came from Diaghileffs' Russian Ballet. I remained at his studio for the next four years.

Perhaps when youth sees something it wants wholeheartedly, it is able to go towards it with a singing heart. Whatever is left behind comes later...

In after years, I heard that Mme Morosini ended in a house for the aged in Marseilles where, one day, while showing others in the house how she used to dance, she fell and broke her hip and, as often happens with the elderly, never recovered.

And so she came back to me later... With memories.