These activities have been extended, with increasing interest towards a widening of cultural exchanges with the rest of the world: witness the most recent highly successful season of the Madeleine Renault-Jean Louis Barrault repertory company from Paris. For two seasons, the distinguished British actor, director, and playwright, Emlyn Williams, under my management, has brought to life, from coast to coast, the incomparable prose of Charles Dickens in theatrical presentations that have fascinated both ear and eye, performances that stemmed from a rare combination of talent, dexterity, love, and intelligence.
I am able to say, very frankly, that I am one impresario who has managed artists in all fields.
All these things, and more, have been done. For what they are worth, they have been written in the pages of the history of the arts in our time. They have become a part of the record.
So it will be seen that only one part of my life has been concerned with ballet. To list all the fine concert artists and companies I have managed and manage would take up too much space.
It is quite within the bounds of possibility that I shall do a third book, devoted to life among the concert artists I have managed. It could, I am sure, make interesting reading.
If art is to grow and prosper, if the eternal verities are to be preserved in these our times and into that unborn tomorrow which springs eternally from dead yesterdays, there must be no cessation of effort, no diminution of our energies. Thirty-odd years of dead yesterdays have served only to whet my appetite, to stimulate my eagerness for what lies round the corner and my desire to increase my contribution to those things that matter in the cultural and spiritual life of that unborn tomorrow wherein lies our future.
I shall try to outline some of the plans and hopes I have in mind. Before I do so, however, I should like to make what must be, however heartfelt, inadequate acknowledgement to those who have so generously helped along the way. If I were to list all of them, this chapter would become a catalogue of names. To all of those who are not mentioned, my gratitude is none the less sincere and genuine. Above all, no slight is intended. Space permits only the singling out of a few.
The year in which these lines are written has been singularly rich, rewarding, and happy: climaxed as it was by the production and release of the motion-picture film, Tonight We Sing, based on some experiences and aspects of my life. If the film does nothing else, I hope it succeeds in underlining the difference, in explaining the vast gulf that separates the mere booker or agent from what, for want of a better term, must be called an impresario, since it is a word that has been fully embraced into the English language. Impresario stems from the Italian impresa: an undertaking; indirectly it gave birth to that now archaic English word “emprise,” literally a chivalrous enterprise. I can only regard the discovery, promotion, presentation of talent, the financing of it, the risk-taking, as the “emprise” of an “impresario.”
The presentation of this film has been accompanied by tributes and honors for which I am deeply and humbly grateful and which I cherish and respect beyond my ability to express.
None of these heights could have been scaled, none of these successes attained, without the help, encouragement, and personal sacrifice of my beloved wife, Emma. Her wise counsel in music, literature, theatre, and the dance all stem from her deep knowledge as a lady of culture, an artist and a musician, and from her studies at the Leningrad Conservatory, her rich experience in the world’s cultural activities. Her sacrifices are those great ones of the patient, understanding wife, who, through the years, has had to endure, and has endured without complaint, the loneliness of days and nights on end alone, when my activities have taken me on frequent long trips about the world at a moment’s notice, to the complete disruption of any normal family life.