ALCOCK, Merle (TILLOTSON)

TILLOTSON, ALCOCK, BRENIZER, BOOTH

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 3/3/2015 at 00:47:36

BIOGRAPHY ~ MRS. MERLE TILLOTSON ALCOCK

Leon Reporter
Leon, Decatur County, Iowa
Thursday, January 25, 1923

SHE REACHED HER GOAL

MRS. MERLE TILLOTSON ALCOCK, contralto singer, a niece of MRS. THEO. BRENIZER, has recently signed a contract with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York City, which is a very high honor indeed. This is the goal at which she set her aim when starting her musical career.

MRS. ALCOCK was born in a little log hut across the road from where MR. and MRS. BRENIZER now live, and started her education in the rural school of that locality. She moved later to Mitchell, South Dakota, and then to Des Moines where she secured the greater part of her schooling, graduating from Drake. She later studied voice under the best instructors in Chicago and New York City, afterwards going abroad where she continued her chosen work. She returned from Europe just prior to the breaking out of the war and has been filling engagements in America since that time.

-- Lamoni Chronicle

Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
"With permission from the Leon Journal Reporter"
July 16, 2002

* * * *

Des Moines Register
Des Moines, Iowa

FAMOUS IOWANS ~ MERLE ALCOCK
Written by Tom Longden

FAST FACTS ABOUT MERLE ALCOCK

AN AMERICAN GIRL: Alcock once told the Des Moines Tribune: “In the opera, no one ‘madamed’ me. I was Merle Alcock, quite thoroughly an American girl.” She preferred to be addressed as Miss Alcock.

NO HOBBIES: Alcock said she had no hobbies, did not collect anything, and was content to keep house, sing and “spend time with congenial people.” At one time she did have three canaries and a Maltese terrier named Jiggs, all of whom enjoyed hearing her play the piano, she said.

FAVORITE POSSESSION: Her favorite object was a bronze statue of Joan of Arc that had been brought to the United States during World War I and presented to her by an admirer whose name she refused to divulge.

PUNCTUAL: Alcock hated unpunctual people and she made sure she herself was always on time. She remembered being late for only one appointment at the Met, and that was because her clock at home had stopped.

DONATION: When Alcock retired from performing in 1936, she donated many of her opera scores to Drake University.

FAMOUS PHOTO: In about 1920, the U.S. Post Office asked Alcock to help publicize a new way of mailing letters. The photo that was released, still available on the Internet, shows a smiling Alcock posting a letter in a newfangled box affixed to a pole on a city street.

Merle Alcock’s warm, low, vibrant singing voice was so good that it led her to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

But the road to New York City and one of the world’s most illustrious opera houses was not a simple one for a girl born on a farm right on the Iowa-Missouri border.

As she told The Des Moines Register years after reaching success: “I was born in Andover, Missouri, at the Iowa state line. Our house was in Andover, the barn in Iowa.”

She described tiny Andover as “a post office and a general store.”

Her Iowa link was sealed when her family moved farther into the state, “near Van Wert, before my first birthday.”

Merle Tillotson was probably born Feb. 6, 1884, but as with many artists of her era, she was able to keep the exact year a closely guarded secret.

Tillotson’s parents were Zula and the Rev. Elijah Tillotson, who later ministered in the Murray and Osceola areas. Their musical daughter was one of seven children.

After attending public schools in Iowa, Tillotson joined one of her sisters in South Dakota, where she graduated from the high school in Mitchell and also embarked on vocal studies with Grace Goodykoontz, “my first and best teacher.”

A good opportunity brought Tillotson back to Iowa in September 1905, when Dean Frederick Howard of Drake University’s Conservatory of Music asked her to sing for him and subsequently awarded her a scholarship if she would agree to be the contralto soloist for University Christian Church (now First Christian Church).

In 1906, Tillotson received her diploma, with Howard telling her to acquire practical experience.

Tillotson quickly embarked on a summer concert tour with impresario Charles L. Wagner, and it was on this tour that she met her future husband, Bechtel Alcock, a tenor.

At the end of the summer tour, she later told the Register, Bechtel returned to New York City. She continued to tour through the winter season and then, in 1907, moved to New York City herself to wed Alcock that year. One of her first, short-lived singing jobs was with a women’s quartet at a vaudeville house.

The Alcocks became a singing team, performing “many joint recitals” and singing “in leading churches.”

The couple lived in New York City but spent their summers in Redding Ridge, Conn.

Concerts throughout the nation became the norm — and the Alcocks returned to Iowa for appearances in Grinnell and Mount Vernon.

PRAISE FOR ALCOCK ON BIGGEST STAGES

Alcock, who now would be described as a mezzo-soprano, gradually built up her reputation after performances with the New York Oratorio Society at Carnegie Hall, and with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony and the Philadelphia Symphony.

She first sang at the Met in a performance of Verdi’s Requiem Mass on Dec. 14, 1919, but her actual opera debut came on Nov. 15, 1923, when she sang the role of the gypsy fiddler Beppe in “L’amico Fritz.”

One reviewer attending opening night praised the singer highly, writing that “the sterling American contralto had received her chance to show the rich metal of her voice. She sang her two solos beautifully and was given a deserved ovation. Decidedly she is an acquisition to the roster.”

Many other roles followed, including Albine in “Thais,” Mercedes in “Carmen,” Martha in “Faust” and Maddalena in “Rigoletto.”

In all, she spent nine years at the Met, retiring April 12, 1929, after about 236 performances on the Met stage.

Her early career had also included numerous recordings, both with her husband and solo, many on the Victor label between 1919 and 1928.

She also made many guest appearances on radio programs.

As an established singing star, Alcock reportedly had few idiosyncrasies, but had a strong aversion to seeing anyone sing in public dressed in black or somber colors.

“It’s depressing,” she said, adding that it was also “unfortunate for any singer to appear in public shabbily dressed. A great deal of anyone’s success depends on the appearance they make, and I believe it is particularly important for singers to patronize, whenever possible, the smartest shops and buy only the smartest clothes. One smart dress will bring in more contracts than a dozen dowdy ones.”

CHOOSES A HOME LIFE OVER SINGING CAREER

Alcock returned to Iowa on occasion to visit her large family. On Dec. 3, 1932, the Des Moines Tribune reported that Alcock was in town for a family reunion of the Tillotson sisters and brothers, as well as the singer’s nieces and nephews.

She and her husband were visiting the home of her sister, Kathryn Tillotson, who lived at the Boekenhoff Apartments, 606 12th St. in Des Moines.

On her Iowa visit, the newspaper reported, Alcock was also visiting her girlhood home, where one sister, Mrs. J.W. Booth, was suffering from a serious illness.

During the Tribune interview, for which the singer wore “lounging pajamas,” she said that taking care of her husband’s home had made her give up her Met career.

“Opera, you know, takes every bit of your energy and time,” she said.

In another interview given about the same time, Alcock said: “There is a time in every woman’s professional life when she must decide between a home or a career. I chose a home, and having made that decision, I stick to it. I don’t mean that it has prevented me from going on with my music, but in order to take care of my home properly, I have willingly given up many out-of-town engagements and have avoided any alliance which would take up the time I must devote to my home.”

TEACHING LAUNCHES ANOTHER CAREER

After retiring from performing, Alcock became a vocal teacher, and her instruction was responsible for launching the career of noted singer Eileen Farrell.

Farrell wrote about Alcock in her autobiography, “Can’t Help Singing,” written with Brian Kellow in 1999.

Farrell told how, as a green and budding singer, she was afraid of the older woman’s strong personality.

“She was a very glamorous woman in her mid-50s, with jet-black hair and beautiful ivory skin. When she taught, she always wore huge, dramatic caftans, which gave her an imposing presence. ... One day she asked me if I knew how to sew. I said, yes, my mother had taught me to sew as a child. Before long, I was sewing outfits for her. Another time, she asked me if I knew how to cook. I said, yes, my mother had taught me how to cook, too. Soon I was baking pies for her. From time to time I did her ironing. But it never occurred to me to complain.”

While condemning her teacher with faint praise, Farrell admitted in her memoir that Alcock had introduced the novice singer to an executive at CBS Radio who gave Farrell her first singing job, which soon led to her own radio program.

After her husband’s death in 1961, Alcock lived in New York with her sister, Enid Tillotson, for two years and then both moved to Phoenix in retirement.

Then, on March 1, 1975, Alcock, at an estimated age of 91, died after an illness of several years.

When the Des Moines Tribune published her obituary on March 5, the day of her funeral service in Ohio, it was given no prominence, photo or headline. It was merely presented within a group of obituaries of Iowans whose lives had been far more ordinary than Alcock’s.

Her sister, Enid, was listed as her only survivor.

Alcock is buried in Wooster, Ohio, where her husband had family.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, March of 2015

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