Jorge Bolet
The Mikado
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The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced by Emperor Hirohito on 15 August and formally signed on 2 September 1945, thus bringing the hostilities of World War Two to a close. Led by the United States with the support of the British Commonwealth and the supervision of the Far Eastern Commission, occupation of the country lasted from 1945 until 1952. The occupation was overseen by American general Douglas MacArthur.
This foreign presence marked the only time in Japan's history that it had been occupied by a foreign power.
The End of World War Two
The Havana newspaper Diario de la Marina reported that Jorge performed four times in Japan as a soloist with the Nippon/Japan Philharmonic (which became the NHK in 1951) under the direction of Józef Rosenstock (concertos by Schumann, Beethoven 4, Rachmaninoff 2 and Liszt 2). The Rachmaninoff was played at a gala night on Wednesday, 31 July 1946 in Hibiya Hall; it was followed by Haydn's Symphony No. 104 in D major, London.
Titipu in Tokyo
After the war, The Mikado, a comic opera (1885) by W S Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan was staged in Japan in a number of private performances. The first public production, given at three performances, was in August 1946, conducted by Lieutenant Bolet.
Setting the opera in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, allowed Gilbert to satirise British politics and institutions more freely by disguising them as Japanese. The Japanese were ambivalent toward The Mikado for many years; some Japanese critics saw the depiction of the title character as a disrespectful representation of the revered Meiji Emperor, but Japanese Prince Komatsu Akihito, who saw an 1886 production in London, took no offence.​
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'Tokyo, Thursday 8 August 1946: The Mikado had been postponed several times because of delays in installing the air conditioning system in the Ernie Pyle Memorial Theatre. It should be ready by Thursday but the show will go on anyway, even if the cast has to swelter under the heavy, ornate costumes, some of them made of seven layers of silk. The production, staged by Edward S Stephenson of Glendale, Calif., and Miss Frances Holy of Pasadena, Calif., has a cast of 102 and will be conducted by Lt. Jorge Bolet. It will play in Tokyo for a week and then take the road for 13 performances in Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka.' [In the end, the tour never actually took place]
The Gettysburg Times, 5 August 1946
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'The army made no attempt to dull the cut of Gilbert's pointed barbs. But to avoid making any offensive comparison with Emperor Hirohito, who is 5 feet 3 inches tall, the role of the Mikado was given to a 19 year old Illinois sergeant [Donald Mitchell] who stood a strangely un-Japanese 6 feet 5 inches in his socks.' LIFE Magazine, 9 September 1946
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'The audience was entirely GI [an informal term that refers to "a soldier in the United States armed forces"], and I suspect that the majority of those watching it would have preferred a recent movie, which was actually the standard fare at the Ernie Pyle on other nights. I saw a Russian general in a box one night, but did not recognize MacArthur or any other US brass at any performance.'​
Jospeh Raben (1998), G&S Archive
The Ernie Pyle theatre was a Tokyo landmark at the time, but before the Americans requisitioned and renamed it in honour of a war correspondent who was killed in the Pacific, it was the Tokyo Takarazuka Theatre, built in 1932. When the Americans left, it became the Takarazuka Theatre once again, as it is to this day, though the original theatre was demolished and rebuilt in 2000.
The Sullivan orchestral score was arranged by Klaus Pringsheim (1883, Munich – 1972, Tokyo), a German-born composer and conductor, twin brother of Katharina "Katia" Pringsheim, who married the famous author Thomas Mann in 1905.
The late 1940s
After his discharge in September 1946, Bolet began to tour Mexico, Central America, the West Indies and South America. He also gave frequent performances in Havana - solo recitals and concertos with the Havana Philharmonic. ​
Musical America noted that Bolet was on tour in Mexico and Cuba in February 1947. For example, on 6 February 1947, as reported in Cuban papers, he gave recitals in Ciudad Trujillo (present day Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic) .
On 1 March, he played Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto with Erich Kleiber in the Auditorio, Havana. Erich Kleiber, father of equally famous conductor son Carlos, was Austrian, but after the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, he resigned in protest against its oppressive policies, and left the country, basing himself and his family in Buenos Aires. ​
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It was in 1947 that Jorge’s sister, Maria’s missionary work in Spain began in earnest. Religious freedom at the time was an off-and-on proposition under Franco. She was repeatedly expelled from Spain and worked in France, Tangier and also back in Cuba. Maria endured famine during Spain’s Civil War and W.W.II, arrests, and even stoning. In 1968, when religious freedom was declared, she returned to Spain for good.
Camp Pocono
There are photos from Camp Pocono [dated 1947 in the International Piano Archive Maryland] where Bolet went on summer camp. ‘He retained a lifelong devotion to the community at Pocono in Pennsylvania, a boys' camp where he had been sent to improve his English and enjoy the benefit of a healthy and congenial setting, one fascinatingly remote from his Cuban background and also from many repressive and dominating influences.’ Bryce Morrison (1991)
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The camp was located on Lake Wallenpaupack, 1928-1969. It was a very 'woodsy' camp, the scent of pine everywhere. Jorge Bolet was godfather to the camp's founder, Chauncey 'Chum' Paxson's twin boys Ted and Chip .
Horowitz is "ill"...
It was in March of 1949 that Bolet replaced Vladimir Horowitz, ostensibly for two performances of Rachmaninoff's third concerto at Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh.
But as it turned out, he only played the first performance, because Horowitz made a miraculous recovery from indisposition, to play the second, Sunday afternoon performance.
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Bolet returned in November 1985, to play the same concerto, for his second appearance at the hall. 'Bolet, a peppery, fiery Cuban native,' says the Pittsburgh Press, 'leaves no doubt that he thinks Horowitz's recovery was strongly related to the success of his Friday night performance.' In all fairness, the same newspaper on 25 March 1949, in announcing JB's substitution for that evening, states that Horowitz hoped to be well enough to take over on the Sunday afternoon.
In 1949, Artur Rodzinski (1892- 1958, a Polish music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s) heard Bolet in Havana. He introduced him to the Greek conductor, resident in America, Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960) and the New York Philharmonic. This could be a big career break...