Elvira Helal: A Forgotten Brooklyn-born Opera Singer Gets Some Guidance

 

Elvira Helal: A Forgotten Brooklyn-born Opera Singer 

Gets Some Guidance

Elvira Helal University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries. Photo by James Abresch. Courtesy of University of Florida. Gainesville, Florida. Permission granted.

While several Arab American musicians during the 78 RPM era had formal training and performed classical Arab music few with the exception of Fadwa Fedora Kuban, Midhat Serbagi, and Leon Nahmee ventured into the area of opera. Even among this group of performers, Elvira Helal stood out from amongst her peers. We have had no luck locating a recording of her voice, though the various opera in which she performed were immortalized on shellac and wax by some of the world's leading opera outfits.

Elvira Helal was born to Grace and Leon Abraham Helal on 4 September 1910 in Brooklyn, New York, in burrough's Little Syria neighborhood. Both of Elvira’s parents were born in Aleppo, Syria in 1880 or 1882 and 1890 and the couple married approximately two and a half months before their arrival in New York on 1 August 1909 onboard the Patris. Within two years of Elvira’s birth, Grace and Leon had Joseph (b. 1912) and these two would be their only children. Because of terms set forth in the 14th Amendment to the United States, Elvira and Joseph claimed natural-born citizenship although it took their parents nearly two decades to become naturalized United States citizens (24 June 1930). Shortly after his arrival, Leon became a business partner in the Helal Brothers Grocery at 135 Atlantic Avenue. The family first resided at 403 Henry Street in Brooklyn.

Although not a recorded musician, Leon played oud at home and sang folk songs from Syria. Elvira often sat on Leon’s knee and learned tunes and lyrics directly from her father. She and her brother attended grade school in Brooklyn and she also attended Fordham University for a short period. At Fordham, Elvira studied languages including French and Italian to enhance her repertoire for her classical singing career. Her French instructor was Dr. Basile G. D’Oukylie a specialist in Near East studies and later regular contributor to the Caravan newspaper.

Elvira Helal, Caravan, April 1954. Courtesy of Newspapers.com

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Like other musicians and their families discussed in previous Midwest Mahjar posts, the Helals lived through the worst of the anti-naturalization and anti-immigration eras. The Shishim and Dow represented a tug-of-war with respect to whether the Federal government considered Syrians racially white or not. The 1924 Immigration Act limited the number of immigrants from Syria to 100 per year using 1890 as a marked determination point; and even after the Federal government lifted the whites only restriction for naturalization, restrictive quotas remained in place well past Grace’s death in 1948 and Leon’s passing in 1955.

In the 1930s, the Helal family lived at 169 Prospect Park Street and on 11 September 1930 Elvira Helal made her concert debut singing an aria from “Faust” at the Prospect Park concert series attended by some 8,000 people. The concert aired on WNYC and others on the program included Arthur Gibson, Frank Chiaraffareli, and a recording of Thomas Shannon and his 23rd Regiment Band. Not all of Elvira’s performances were full concerts, sometimes she opened events with renditions of the US National Anthem which Congress declared to be “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1931. Arab American composer, pianist, and record label owner Alexander R. Maloof’s “America Ya Hilwa,” of course, once contended for the anthem. On 17 March 1931, the Holly Club of Brooklyn Incorporated’s Annual Ball at the Hotel Saint George commenced with Elvira Helal singing the National Anthem ahead of an afternoon of musical and dance entertainment. Then Helal made her operatic debut in the part of Nedda in Pagliacci in May 1932 with the Educational Grand Opera Company at Columbia University and she gave an encore performance at Bryant Park on 25 August 1932. She was only nineteen years old. One year later, she and dozens of other acts entertained at the Prospect Follies at Brooklyn’s Prospect Theater and on February 27, 1933, Elvira sang the part of Violetta in excerpts from Verdi’s La Traviata on WMCA radio. She was joined by Albin Werner as Alfred. Next up was a part in Pietro Mascagni’s Japanese opera Iris receiving praise from the Brooklyn Eagle for her role. Helal closed out the year at the Hippodrome with an appearance as Micaela in Carmen and Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele as Elena. Around this time, Elvira Helal started to work with the Chicago Opera Company for the first time.

As a member of the Chicago Opera Company Elvira Helal, took some of her performances to Atlanta, Norfolk, and other cities along the east coast,  and as far north as Ottawa, while she continued her role in La Traviata, Carmen, and Pagliacci but assumed new roles in Aida, Moses, La Boheme, Hanzel & Gretel, and Cavalleria Rusticana. She appeared regularly from 1934 until 1940 with the Chicago Opera Company and other opera companies. Even through the Great Depression work appears to have been plentiful. There were regular opera performances, special appearances, and private engagements that filled her calendar. Sometimes Helal sang medlys of the various roles she played as was the case in November 1938 at the Alexander Hamilton Hotel where 500 people came out to hear he do selections from “The Jewel Song” from Faust, Arditi’s “Il Bacio,” Brewer’s “The Fairy Pipers,” and songs from La Traviata.

Elvira Helal, front row left, with the other stars of the Chicago Opera Company in Atlanta, 1934. Atlanta Journal. Courtesy of Newspapers.com

For all her fame, and despite the fact that she earned two hundred dollars more per year than her father, who continued to run his Brooklyn grocery business, Elvira Helal continued to live with her parents by 1940. Some journalists claim this is the year her career really entered the stratosphere and attribute this to working with composer Giuseppe Creatore.

Contrary to some sources, Helal met composer and conductor Giuseppe Creatore in 1936 in Ottawa not in 1940 in the United States. Creatore encouraged Helal to pursue more opportunities in the United States and Europe. Performances of Carmen and Hanzel & Gretel at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn in 1944, boosted Helal's opera profile. After securing the role of Gilda in Rigoletto opposite famed baritone and Victor Talking Machine Company star, Lawrence Tibbett, the pull to perform in Europe and audition for composers like Camille de Nardis increased four times over. But there was one problem. The expense to travel overseas proved too great. After soliciting the general population in Brooklyn’s Little Syria, former Syrian World founder and Al-Holda (The Guidance) newspaper editor, owner, and publisher, Salloum Mokarzel stepped up and financed Elvira’s trip to Italy. This consequently led to meetings and opportunities to work with de Nardis and Maestro Umberto Giordana. By 1947, eleven years after her first work with Creatore, Helal appeared in the role of Sinaide in Moses by Rossini in a revival at the San Carlo Opera House in Naples. Over the next two years, she sang the parts of Violetta in La Traviata  and Gilda in Rigoletto. These were, of course, roles she played in the United States earlier.

Document from the Brooklyn Academy of Music featuring Elvira Helal in 1944-1945. Courtesy of the BAM Hamm Archive, Brooklyn, NY.

Sadly, death fell upon those who had mentored Helal and guided her career including her mother, manager, and advisors. Depressed about the loss of her mother in 1948 while on tour in Europe, the deaths of Umberto Giodano (d. 1948), her managers and mentors Giuseppe Creatore (d.1952), Camille de Nardis (d. 1951), and Salloum Mokarzel (d. 1952), Elvira went into mourning and took a break from opera from roughly 1951 to 1954. When Helal returned from Europe in 1949, her brother Joseph, stepped in to care for their father. In 1950, Elvira boarded in Queens with Olivia Vincenza and lived next door to Giuseppe Creatore and his wife. 

Giuseppe Creatore and Elvia Helal, center photo, attend a concert reception at Millersville State Teachers College. 21 March 1950, Intelligencer Journal. Courtesy of Newspapers.com

Elvira Helal finally shed her protective bubble again when she performed at an event for Antiochian Metropolitan Anthony Bashir in January 1954 and planned a full three hour show for 7 May 1954 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The celebration for Bashir included Amer Kadaj and Naim Karacand. The ad in the Caravan for the May event encouraged Arab people in Brooklyn and Manhattan to turn out for this world renowned opera singer and daughter of Syrian immigrants. A few weeks later, Helal appeared alongside Elie Baida, Philip Solomon, Naim Karacand, Joe Budway, and Naif Agby for the Eastern Star Restaurant Spring Festival. To close out 1954, Helal sang the US National anthem at an anniversary of 400 attendees for Church of the Virgin Mary at 8th Avenue and Second Street in Brooklyn.

20 May 1954, Caravan. Courtesy of Newspapers.com

On 13 May 1954, a fan known only as "Gee Gee" published a poem for Elvira Helal in the Caravan. It read:

There is no mirth through leafy boughs,

No music on the green.

No mating call o'er rill and dale,

No bird of song is seen.

The Finch and Lark are silent now,

The Nightingale is still.

The Humming-bird no longer sings

To his mate on the hill.

The Red-breast tells the Mocking-bird,

In whisphers sad and dear,

"I cannot sing a single note

While Miss Helal is herer."

Their jealous hearts are beating low,

A dirge to their renown.

For the Thrush of old Aleppo

Has come to Brooklyn town.

Over the next few years, Helal worked private bookings and regularly scheduled events as she reconnected with the Chicago Opera Company, reprising the role of Nedda in Pagliacci. There was the wedding reception with 175 people of George Jerro to Joan Mary Jerro 19 June 1955. Also a special presentation at the 25th Annual Our Lady of Assumption Society Festival in the Summer of 1955.  Several bookings in February 1957 including at the Boro Park Menorah Temple. The Saint Janerro Italian Festival in Manhattan with over 50,000 in attendance in September 1957. In addition to the Chicago Opera Company’s production of Pagliacci in Hackensack, New Jersey in May 1958, the celebration honoring an Armenian Cardinal in June, Manhattan’s Lotus Club in October with special guest Lebanese Representative to the United Nations, Dr. Charles Malik, and a return gig in New Jersey, Helal performed at the Gala Hafla with Olga “Kahraman” Agby, Jeanette “Hanan” Harouni, Danny Thomas, Naim Karacand, Jack Ghanaim, George Hamway, Mohammed el Bakkar, and Eddie Kochak on June 29, 1958 at Brooklyn’s Hotel Saint George.

Gala Hafla ad from 26 June 1958 Caravan. Courtesy of Newspapers.com

Toward what appears to be the latter stages of her public career, Elvira Helal gave more operatic/religious performances on television and at churches. On channel 9 in New York, shows like The Evangel Hour and The PALMS featured Helal in March 1959, April 1960, and December 1960. At least two of her final documented performances took place at Nyack Presbyterian Church in 1965 and 1966, the last of which featured Helal’s performance of the “Lord's Prayer.”

Elvira Helal, 1949. Courtesy of Richard M. Breaux collection.

We don’t know much about Helal’s private life, but a marriage certificate showing that she wed a man named Francis Greco in 1970 documents an occasion that cannot be confirmed by other sources. Ironically, a married man named Frank Greco lived in the same apartment building as she in 1950. Information on the Greco family is scant at best. Greco was approximately Helal’s age and born in New York. Attempts to find additional information on Greco, his first wife, or two children remain difficult to trace with any accuracy. 

Elvira Helal’s father, Leon, passed away in 1955 and her brother and sister-in-law died in 1987 and 1990. Helal was not listed as a surviving relative in either of the latter obituaries, suggesting she died before 1987. Our efforts to contact Helal’s niece or grand nieces and nephews have to date been unsuccessful but in all likelihood she died before 1987.

If you have additional information about Elvira Helal, reach out to us. We'd love to fill in the gaps here or learn about any rare recordings.

Richard M. Breaux

© Midwest Mahjar