"If you put an Irishman on a spit," said George Bernard Shaw, "you will always find an Irishman to baste him".
John McCormack has not exactly been basted in his native country, the great international tenor has not - according to his latest biographer, Gus Smith - been sufficiently honoured here either.
In this book, published late last year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of McCormack's death, Smith sets out to redress a little of the balance, following the gentlemanly singer from his early studies in Italy - and his debut in Savona under the somewhat unlikely name of Giovanni Foli - through his time at Covent Garden, the controversial period which resulted from his, decision to become an American citizen in 1914 and the concert tours in which he specialised after retiring from the operatic stage at the age of 39.
There is surprisingly little sense of the excitement generated by the latter, well documented elsewhere by, among others, the accompanist Gerald Moore, and at 200 pages - which includes a somewhat baffling chapter entitled "Patterson in America" and consisting of an interview with Frank Patterson - the book is a little light on nittygritty biographical detail, though I was delighted by the nugget of information that the ebullient Oscar Hammerstein always addressed McCormack as Mike". The tenor, needless to say, was far too polite to correct him.
One fairly serious omission here is that of a good discography: the author offers some attractive selections of his personal favourites among the tenor's recordings, but there is little clue for the novice as to where these might be found, making one long to find a CD tucked unobtrusively inside the back cover. Perhaps with the next edition?
