Sybyl Seligman

Helmut Krausser delves into the relationship between Sybil Seligman and Giacomo Puccini, and finds out more about the illusive person that became his friend, confidant and lover.

Sybil Seligman

When I met Dr. Schickling, the leading Puccini expert, in October and mentioned the Seligmans to him he said: "There's something wrong. We have no data whatsoever considering her or her husband, rarely any photos, just Boldoni's pretty charcoal drawing with which the biographers make do. There's something fishy about it."

And indeed, googling brought out nothing, no substantial entries for Sybil Seligman, no photos, how could this be brought together with the fact that her husband, David Seligman, is known as an affluent banker? At least we know Sybil's maiden name: Beddington. That did not help much at first - but after some research I came upon a certain Ada Leverson, born Beddington. Could it be that this was THE Ada? The "sphinx"? Was that really true? By way of Ada's biography finally the doors opened towards Sybil.

Puccini's life, in spite of the fact that thousands of books have been written about him, is still full of secrets and unsolved riddles. He was a master of self-mystification, always eager to conceal traces here and place hints there. Without his hysterically jealous wife Elvira he might have lived some aspects more openly, on the other hand he initiated many confidants into his hundreds of secret affairs and it is a miracle these buddies really all kept their mouths shut. Until today no one knows for instance who the mysterious "Corinna" was with whom he had a true love affair for over three years. Only after the Doria tragedy in 1909 - when his housemaid Doria Manfredi committed suicide after wrongly being accused of adultery by Elvira, who was sentenced to five months in prison for calumny but being bought free by Puccini - he pursued his affairs more carefully. Of his later and more steady relationships to Josephine von Stengel, Giulia Manfredi (Doria's cousin) and Rose Ader Elvira knew not much. But what about Sybil Seligman? How come she and Elvira respected each other, even became friends?

Puccini could convince his wife that his friendship to Sybil was of a purely intellectual nature. And Elvira, suffering from an inferiority complex for not being educated or interested in matters of art, accepted Sybil as Giacomo's artistic counsel and confidant she herself was never able to be. Sybil, also a close friend to Caruso, was Puccini's crony for more than 20 years, suggested topics and translated dramas and literature for him who barely spoke a word English. She found Native Indian songs for his underrated but currently rediscovered opera La Fanciulla del West, she got him his beloved Abdulla cigarettes (her grandfather has founded the tobacco company) of which he smoked up to 80 per day (once Elvira counted 83 stubs in his ashtray) and on Puccini's request she sent him "a medicine lifting the spirits" - probably cocaine, back then widely and legally consumed.

But back to the beginning. One of eight children, four brothers and four sisters, Sybil came from the Jewish Beddington family living at No. 21 (today 20) Hyde Park Place, London. She was born February 23rd, 1868. Her father, the merchant Samuel Beddington, a man of mostly German origin, had made a fabulous fortune. In his house many important balls were given. Samuel did not expect his children would ever have to work, though he let them all be educated in the best bourgeois fashion: piano and singing lessons, Greek and Latin, French and German were taught to them. Sybil additionally learned Italian. Much singing took place in the house, particularly German Kunstlieder and - very early - Puccini arias. Some early recordings of Sibyl from 1904 do still exist: two songs by Tosti, her illustrious singing teacher, who introduced her in the same year to Puccini.

The Beddington town house was huge and decorated in the dark opulence of the mid-Victorian fashion, massive oak furniture, staircases in light beige, the floor tiles dark red and blue. In the morning room heavy leather arm chairs and a small grand piano, adjoining to that the long dining room, the walls covered with oil paintings, mostly landscapes by Benjamin Leader. Upstairs, on the first floor, there was the spacious drawing room with it's view over Hyde Park and Zillah's, Sybil's mother's Steinway chosen by her teacher Paderewski. People say she spent most of her day at the keyboard and was one of the most talented piano players of her time. Around the marble fireplace in the same room the family assembled on long winter evenings. Trespassing a long gallery with paintings, one walks into the billiard-room. On the second floor a small fern garden with a cascade was illuminated by the red day- and starlight falling through the coloured glass skylight in the ceiling.

There were many rumours told about the family. Sybil's youngest sister Violet was proposed to by the old composer Arthur Sullivan, whom she declined - in spite of his humorous insistence, she might gain a title, a lot of money and a husband for a short time only. She rather associated with Marcel Proust and later married Sydney Schiff, who wrote novels under the pseudonym of Stephen Hudson. Literally more successful was Sybil's elder sister Ada, née Leverson, whose novels are in print, even in German, until today. She was Oscar Wilde's closest confidante, he admired her and called her his "Sphinx". At her home he seeked refuge during the trial which resulted in him having to spend two years in jail for practicing sodomy.

If only Wilde's and Puccini's biographers had linked some time earlier! Ada Leverson's biographer Julie Speedie for example fails to notice Sybil's sister Evelyn's tragic death, which she could have learned from Vincent Seligman.

Sibyl would later translate Wilde's A Florentine Tragedy for Puccini, he nearly turned it into a first third of the planned trittico but then decided otherwise. Not concerning the trittico but the Florentine Tragedy - which was later adapted by Alexander v. Zemlinsky.

In May 1891 Sybil married. It was a socially equal marriage - even though the father remains skeptical of David, the American - and a love marriage at the same time. Together with David Seligman she had two sons, Esmond (born 1892) and Vincent (1895). David, born 1864 in San Francisco, is an offspring of the Californian branch of one of the most influential Jewish families in the US. His father Leopold came to England in order to become head of the Seligman Bank London office. One of his uncles was Secretary of State under Ulysses S. Grant. David also had a very popular brother: Edgar, the first to become British Fencing Champion in all three disciplines (foil, epée, sabre) and part of the team that won the silver medal at the 1908 Olympics.

Sybil enjoyed life and traveled extensively, usually accompanied by one of her sons or/and her husband. The winter was spent in Nizza, Monte Carlo or St. Moritz. It was an unburdened and cultivated life, intelligently spent. Together with David and the sons she visited her beloved Giacomo in Italy several times - but more often Puccini resided in London. There he stayed at the Savoy, though Sybil even proposed to hire a cook who specialised in a sugarless diet, required for his diabetes.

Giacomo and Sybil got out to the theatre nearly every night, at his side she experienced the triumph of the operas at Covent Garden. David in the meantime, to whom music didn't mean much (and who didn't exactly like Puccini at first, but had to pretend he did), had allegedly countless affairs. Sybil didn't care, and so the first decennium of the new century were the happiest years of their lives.

But fate darkened, as if to add some different shades to such a colourful family portrait. During WWI and due to the collapse of the stock market in 1929, the Beddingtons lost a good part of their wealth. Sybil's favourite brother George died from consumption at the age of 21, causing her a trauma for many years. When she finally got over it, her sister Evelyn (whose first husband shot himself because of his wife's infidelity) died in May 1910 after a long suffering with a disease deadly and undefined.

In the same year her eldest son Edmond had his first epileptic fit shortly after his graduation at Eton and would for his remaining life be healthy for a few months only. Sybil nursed him devotedly and selflessly until his early death in 1930 - this is the reason why she met with Giacomo only sporadically later on. The anxiousness and mourning for him let her age before her time, and she was never able to cope with Puccini's death in November 1924, too. Sybil searched for relief in alcohol and drugs, her senses darkened. So it is not surprising that there does not exist any photos of Sybil in her old age - the Seligmans found themselves socially isolated. Still they were not poor, but the once enormous wealth would be used up by the next two generations.

Sybil died on January 9, 1936, she was 67 years old. The death certificate states pneumonia. Her simple monument in Hoop Lane Cemetery still stands, as do those of her parents and her husband. Her son Vincent published a selection of the more than 700 letters from Puccini ("Puccini among Friends"), an edition cleansed of compromising and intimate passages. Vincent wanted to prevent every suspicion of something inappropriate having taken place between Giacomo and Sybil. Also malicious gossip about then still living persons had been erased. But to Vincent's defence one must state that he had to act like this to remain a gentleman (and not become a befouler of his own nest) in the public eyes of that time.

Sybil's sister Violet, ten years younger, later came out with the truth: at first the intercourse between Sybil and Puccini had indeed been a sexual one, but Sybil had dropped it in fear of a scandal and a separation from her husband David. There is no reason not to believe this. On the other hand the slipshod biographer Stanley Jackson comes up with the story, after the forceps delivery of her first son Edmond Sybil had lost all longing for sex. Vincent agrees to this statement by having allegedly said he must have been the product of an immaculate conception.

But once in her old age, asked by a niece how in her time she handled the annoying corsets of social convention, Sybil answers without hesitation: "We knew how to get rid of them in no time." One thing is for sure: Though old Samuel Beddington led a morally rigid regiment including bible readings after dinner - nearly all of his children showed a strong love of life, tolerance and love for individual freedom. They had a talent for witty remarks and tended towards a somewhat intellectual relation to their own bodies, or, one could say: a favour for smart partners.

And what became of Sybil's letters? Puccini almost never threw anything away - and of course not his dearest friend's letters. They must be lying around somewhere (why?) or have been destroyed by Puccini's heirs (why?). Simonetta, the composer's granddaughter, gives no information. And what happened to David? He died on February 4, 1939, his death certificate mercilessly revealing the facts: Suicide by overdose of Veronal. Unsound Mind.

Bibliography:

Julie Speedie, Wonderful Sphinx, Virago Press, London, 1993

Stanley Jackson, Monsieur Butterfly

Dr. Dieter Schickling, Giacomo Puccini, Biographie, DVA, 1989

Sydney Schiff, The Myrtle, London, 1925

Frederick Beddington, The Rest of the Family, Stellar Press, 1963

Vincent Seligman, Puccini among Friends, London, 1938

birth, marriage and death certificates