Beniamino Gigli , Tenor

(1890 -1957)

“Io lo sapevo... il Babbo non era cattivo...”

By Francisco Chahín-Casanova

During my years studying and struggling as a young singer in the City of New York, I met many people in all walks of life, many of them very interesting. Even though I have been known to have a good memory, some of them I have forgotten with the passing of the years, as time inexorably put more distance between those encounters and myself.

There was, however, one particular person that will never be buried and forgotten under the weight of time.

Here is the story of how Renée came into our lives.

Janice and I moved from our apartment in Astoria to 900 West End Avenue on December 18th 1992. A nice apartment, a rent not so cheap then, which in time became more manageable as prices in the Big Apple constantly arose. The neighbors good, nice people in the great majority of cases.

Amongst them one was very special, a very small, very old woman, with a very thick German accent and such a high pitched voice, that between the accent and the high pitch of her voice, one had to stop and think carefully about what she might be saying.

She was Renée.

Renée was in the last years of her life then (I would say she must have been born in the late teen years of the 20th Century), but she still managed to go out and do her own grocery shopping whenever she needed to do so. I remember meeting her in the elevator very soon after we moved in the building. She welcomed me and Janice with a beautiful smile and a heartfelt: “So nice to have young people move in the building...!” We fell in love with her instantly.

One day, I would venture sometime in the Spring of 1996, I was downstairs, in the laundry room, washing the clothes I was going to take with me in a Verdi Requiem tour to Austria and Italy.

Renée walked in to do her own laundry. When she saw me, she smiled and asked me:

“Are you the singer?”

I answered in the positive and proceeded immediately to apologize in case my practicing had bothered her, explaining that I tried to do so only between the hours of noon and 6 in the afternoon.

She dismissed my explanation with a sweet smile and added: “I wish everyone would bother others the way in which you think you’ve bothered me. No, it is not that. What happens is that the other day you were practicing a piece which reminded me of someone I knew...”

The answer stunned me when I asked who it was she thought of when she heard what I was singing: “Beniamino Gigli..” she said.

Surprised, I asked her if she knew, and how, The Great Italian Tenor.

She said: “He saved my life.”

The expression on my face made her smile with a mixture of sadness, gratitude and joy, as she recalled that period of her life:

“It was the time of the War, I was a young Jewish woman from Vienna. They put me in charge of a group of 25 Jewish children.

“We were able to escape to Italy where a priest received us and hid us in the basement of his Church.

“One day I heard in the Church a beautiful tenor voice singing the piece you were practicing the other day at home when I heard you” (Panis Angelicus by Cesar Franck). “Even though the priest had told us never to leave the security of the basement, I could not resist. I went up to listen to the beautiful singing. My family used to take me to the Opera, you know?. I recognized him because I had seen pictures of him on record covers we had at home, in Vienna.

“When the Mass finished, I asked the priest if that man was whom I thought he was, and he said ‘Yes’, adding that thanks to him we had been saved from the Nazis, because he had paid with his own money for our rescue and the rescue of many other Jewish children victims of the War. He also sent every week from his farm, the food we ate every day, I was told by the priest, who also added that I should say nothing.

“The priest introduced me to Gigli and he and his wife took me to their home, so that I could live with them. I was supposed to be some orphaned, young relative... who was deaf and dumb...”

At this point, Renée had a good laugh:

“Can you imagine me being... mute...?”

Renée was radiant as she remembered that episode of her life, it had not made her bitter, angry, sad. On the contrary, it seemed to have given her a tremendous faith in human kindness. It seemed to have opened the doors to a tremendous, inexplicable joy she seemed to own, the sort of joy that only can be understood by those who have lived it. Seeing it, I understood the beautiful smile with which she greeted me and Janice every time she saw us on the elevator or in the lobby of our building.

Renée was very old when we met her. One day we came back from a trip somewhere and no longer was she walking by herself, but seated in a wheelchair, with an attendant that lived with her.

When she saw us she tried to get up, but her legs did not allow it. She smiled and touched her mouth making a negative sign. Apparently one day she just lost her ability to talk and to stand on her legs.

We were very saddened by the sight. She understood our feeling and made a gesture that we should not be sad, and pretended to be angry at us for being sad.

We kissed her.

We saw her in that condition many more times through about a year and a half until the day came when we saw her no more.

Sad day. Our Guardian Angel had gone Home.

Time passed and a very dear friend told me that I was going to be given the Beniamino d’Oro in Recanati in May 2004.

He knew the Story of Renée.

The afternoon of our arrival in Recanati, as we shared a coffee with Mr. and Mrs. Luigi Vincenzoni (nephew of the great Tenor), my friend asked me to share my story which I did. They were speechless. They suspected that lo Zio (The Uncle), was involved in the activity of saving Jewish refugees from the Nazi cruelty.

“He was accused unjustly of cooperating with the regime”, said Professor Vincenzoni, “but at the same time he was also persecuted by the cronies of the regime because they suspected him of having Jewish ancestry. Imagine this: his name was Beniamino, his elder brother’s name was Abramo, who was a priest in the Catholic Church. And to top it all, his mother’s name was Ester...

“So many Jewish names in this Catholic family made the authorities suspicious to the point that lo Zio had to change his artistic name for a while to Mimmo during the period of the fascist regime...”

That is the way the world is.

The night of the concert, as I sang Rachel, quand du Seigneur, I decided to go public with the story of what had happened to me a few years before in New York City. In the hall of the Teatro Persiani of Recanati you could not hear anyone breathe when I finished telling it. Behind the piano was a big portrait of the Great Tenor. I turned back to it in a gesture of respect. Everyone applauded.

At the dinner party afterwards, someone asked me to tell the story again to his son Giovanni, who could not believe what he had heard and insisted he needed to hear it again. He was sitting in a chair, confused, perplexed.

Giovanni was sitting, asked me to forgive him for not standing up, but he been crying since he heard what I had to told them in the theater. He asked me in an incredibly humble voice (which reminded me of his father’s, which added to the fact that he looked just like the Great Beniamino managed to leave Janice and me incredibly moved) to repeat it, which I did. He listened with his head bowed, assenting at this or at that fact. When I mentioned that there was  a priest involved, he muttered a name to one of the present. I did not ask the name of the priest, as they spoke in a low voice and I did not want to intrude into their privacy. They knew of the priest’s activities against the regime to save Jewish lives. They knew of the trucks filled with food that were sent periodically to different places. But they had no idea of what was really going on. They were too young to be allowed into the secret. They started piecing things together.

At some point, after hearing the story again, asking me to repeat details over and over, Giovanni raised his eyes, filled with tears, to me (his face could not have looked more like the face of his father), gave me his right hand and said humbly: “Grazie, Signore. Io lo sapevo che il Babbo non era cattivo”. (“Thank you Sir. I knew that my Daddy was not a bad man.”)

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