Customer Reviews

The Bluebird of Happiness: The Memoirs of Jan Peerce

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This is a great book for learning about the life and career of one of the greatest tenors of the twentieth century. The book describes Jan Peerce's beginnings from his youth through his old age. There are many interesting and humorous stories in this book, including the story of how he got his stage name (Jan Peerce wasn't his original name). I highly recommend this book.

It is a great book of how a traditional Jewish Opera Tenor made it in the Opera world. it is a warm and revealing story of a great man on his way to the top of his singing career. it also tells of his relationship with the Lubavitch Chassidim which started in The Berekely Chabad House Where he met and befriended his Chabad conection Chaim Drizin.

This book is neither a biography nor an autobiography, but rather a mixture of both forms. What the Editor Alan Levy does is he builds the story of Jan Peerce's life on a series of interviews. Most of these are conducted with Peerce himself. And a good share of the others with his close family members. So we do not really see Peerce from outside, in the eyes of his peers. For instance I would have been interested in hearing what other opera stars of his time , aside from his protege Roberta Peters who expresses in the book her great gratitude to and admiration of him, felt. It is hinted that he did not get along with Richard Tucker who was married to a close relative of his. What about others of that time?
Peerce's story is in one sense that of the poor Jewish - boy from the Lower East Side who on the basis of hard work, and ability rises to the top of his profession. The opening part of the book paints in very non- idealistic terms what it was growing up on the Lower East Side. One may romanticize this world today but it was a tough one, one in which there were always threats of violence from rival ethnic groups, one in which people could be cruel and difficult over very petty things. Peerce describes his parents with great affection, and indicates that he wasn't always the most obedient child in the world.
But he can sing , and this gift is fostered by lessons his parents make sacrifices, to purchase for him. He tells the story of how he makes it to the Met. And one of the best parts of the book is his description of the great Arturo Toscannini, and how they worked together. This is one of the highlights of Peerce's career.
Peerce also describes a marriage of many years, stormy from day one in which his wife Alice appears as a formidable, and smart player in her own right.
Peerce is an admirable character in many ways. And he was by all accounts a quite wonderful singer.
His personality as it comes across in this work is not the pleasantest, and certainly not the most humorous. He could be very tough and stubborn, I gather even on his own close family members.
Peerce was an Orthodox Jew and one who visited Israel after its War of Independence, and was a strong supporter of it. This came out of his sense of the precariousness of Jewish existence, and also of deep positive ties to his own Jewish identity.
This book should be a very interesting read for anyone who knows and cares about Music. But it should be especially so for those who were fans of Jan Peerce and have a good relation to this singing.

This is a very strange book - the memoir of a great operatic tenor in which music plays a minor role. There is a great deal about his growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, of family feuds (he devotes a single paragraph to his brother-in-law Richard Tucker!), of his addictive gambling, of screaming arguments with his wife (he thinks all successful marriages involve screaming arguments), but precious little about how his voice developed, when he discovered he was a tenor (the typical male voice is baritone), when he learned how to read music, the regimen he followed to train his voice, to learn languages, and so on. He made his living for many years playing violin, but he says nothing at all about his technique - was he any good at it? Was he just an early incarnation of André Rieu or could he, did he, play any of the great violin concertos, sonatas, or solo suites? As I say, the lack of music in this book about a musician is strange and disappointing.

Moreover, it becomes rather clear early on that Jan Peerce was in many ways not a nice man - admirable to reveal in a memoir, perhaps (the "warts and all" thing), but not conducive to an enjoyable read. Even worse, Peerce is rather humorless, both in the telling of his stories (I know it was ghost-written, but the (disclosed) ghost supposedly mastered Peerce's style), and where he evidently misconstrued someone's joking remarks.

I should add that I have always liked Peerce's voice (a taste I shared with Toscanini). Perhaps I expected too much from this book - Peerce was after all a singer, one of the best, and not a writer - and that that accounts for my disappointment. Certainly a reader will learn a lot about life in New York City in the early 20th century, and about the music scene then and later, though rather little about the music itself.