front&center Diane Kesling

Hot Springs was love at first sight for New York Metropolitan Opera diva

By BY WAYNE BRYAN Staff Writer

TRI-LAKES AREA — To know Diane Kesling, you need to know about her three love affairs.

Those passions are the foundation and structure of her life and are the key facts from which weaves an endless concert of stories.

Those great loves are music, her late husband, Jascha Silberstein, and Hot Springs.

“My husband and I were on our way to San Antonio,” Kesling began as she explained how she came to live in Garland County. “We were on vacation and we always took a driving trip across the country. I had won the Met (New York Metropolitan Opera) auditions there, but Jascha has never been there. We stopped at my father’s house in Columbus, Ohio, and he said we should stop in Hot Springs. We didn’t think that much about it, but when we stopped to see friends in Little Rock, they insisted we go to Hot Springs. So I said, ‘Let’s go,’ and that day we pulled up to the Arlington Hotel and never left.”

Silberstein said the landscape and bathhouses made him think of Baden-Baden, a spa resort know for its baths since Roman times in his native Germany, Kesling said. Next they found a German restaurant and agroup of his fellow countrymen and spent the evening there.

In the morning Kesling took a walk through town and picked up a real estate brochure.

“I said, ‘Jascha, they have a lake.’ We got a real estate broker and there was a condo that had been listed for only 30 minutes,” Kesling said. “We walked in the door, saw Lake Hamilton, and I bought it.” After a few days, the couple returned to New York and Silberstein retired and Kesling took a leave of absence. He was the principal cellist with the Metropolitan Opera and she was a starring soloist. Both were internationally known musicians, performing and recording all over the world, who found “heaven on Earth” in Arkansas, Kesling said.

“We never looked back,” Kesling said. “The climate is great, you don’t have a lot of snow to deal with and it’s in the middle of the country so you can get anywhere.” The lake became a source of delight for her husband.

“He loved it here. He learned to drive the boat,” Kesling said. “He never had a driver’s license. He used to say, ‘Finally, I can drive something.’” Most importantly, Kesling said she was touched by the people she met in Hot Springs and around Arkansas.

“We met more friends, true friends, in six months here than we had in the rest of our lives,” she said. ‘It is hard to find those kinds of friends, who are friendswithout conditions.”

Jascha Silberstein died last year. Born in 1934, he began his musical studies with the piano at age 4 and then moved to the cello. When bombing raids reached his home of Stettin in 1943, his family relocated and his lessons continued. He came to America in 1962 to teach at the University of Texas in El Paso.

“He got to America with only a cello bow, he didn’t have his own cello, the school said they would make one available,” Kesling said. “He was so excited that he left it in the airport in New York when he boarded his flight west.”

Silberstein soon became the principal cellist of the Pittsburgh Symphony and then moved to Boston to play with the symphony there and the Boston Pops with Arthur Fielder. In 1966 he was named principal cellist for the Metropolitan Opera, a position he held for 30 years until Hot Springs stole him away.

He also performed with opera greats Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland, toured with pianistcomedian Victor Borge and recorded with Billy Joel.

Kesling started off wanting to be a dancer, but that was not to be for the young Ohio native.

“I had trick knees in both legs and had extensive surgery at 16 and knew that dream was over,” she said.

There was not a lot of encouragement for her other musical pursuits. At Ohio State University, her violin teacher suggested she change her major.

“He suggested voice,” she said. “He said anyone could sing.”

She received a D-minus on her audition and was a provisional voice student. At her first voice lesson, her teacher asked if she had any other plans for her life.

“It was a loud and enthusiastic, but ugly sound,” she admitted.

Yet she graduated with degrees in voice and music education and was soon singing in the Houston Studies program with the Texas Opera Theater. Within a few years the mezzo-soprano was encouraged to enter a national series of auditions for the Metropolitan Opera. She won the San Antonio regional competition and then the national audition in New York.

“Winning doesn’t mean you go to work as a member of the company,” Kesling said. “So it was back to Houston.”

One day looking for work in New York, she ran into RiseStevens, an extraordinary Met star who became famous for her steamy portrayal as Carmen and then singing an Academy Awardwinning song in the film Going My Way.

“We talked and she said I should stay in town,” Kesling said. “The next day, [Met Conductor] James Levine called, wanting to hear me sing. I thought it was someone playing a joke.”

It wasn’t, and they offered her a contract the next day.

She made her Metropolitan debut covered in long robes and a beard as the Sandman in Hänsel und Gretel. Kesling went on to sing all over the world. She created the role of Dinah in the première of Leonard Bernstein’s opera A Quiet Place at the Houston Grand Opera, La Scala, the opera house in Milan, Italy, and the John F. Kennedy Center forthe Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

“I always thought I was that role, and Bernstein agreed,” she said. “I was a child of divorce and the 1950s and I could really relate.

“He married the operatic style with Broadway and I loved it, it was right up my alley.”

In a very different style she performed the music of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, the giants of German opera.

“I consider myself a Wagnerian singer,” Kesling said.

But while her voice and personality on stage could pull off the big roles, being just over 5 feet tall was often an obstacle at auditions.

“I am height-challenged,” she said, laughing. “I was once asked if I could grow 4 inches for a part. I said I was over 40 and thatwasn’t likely.”

Kesling’s career continues but she never is away from Arkansas for very long. She is also active in the state as well.

“I was asked to fill in for a professor at Henderson State University and I ended up teaching voice there for 10 years,” she said.

An accomplished violinist, despite the opinions of her early teachers, she plays with a baroque chamber group, a string quarter and will join with members of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra when they “roll out” for a day visiting and playing for schools in the state.

“My mother should be happy. All those lessons did not go to waste,” Kesling said.

She is also a patron of the arts and was appointed to the board of directors of the Arkansas Humanities Council by former Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Kesling is also a member of a committee that oversees the annual auditions for the Metropolitan Opera in Little Rock. Theauditions attract singers from Arkansas and surrounding states, as well as internationally. The winners of the Arkansas competitions go on to larger auditions. In the past several years, two young Arkansas singers won the Little Rock auditions and one went on to compete in the national finals in New York.

As a former winner in the auditions, Kesling said she feels obligated to help good young voices be heard on a bigger stage.

“I was given a gift and the muses guided me, but doors were also opened for me and I was blessed with scholarships and great teachers,” Kesling said. “I studied with a teacher who learned operatic techniques from Toscanini. There is an oral tradition in our business, and I have a duty to pass it on.

“Music has these little moments of perfection, when the world really seems in harmony. Helping others carry that magic on is what I want my lasting legacy to be.”matter of factBirthday: January 21 Occupation: Professional musician Family: Mother, Betty, two brothers, Bob and David, stepdaughters Esther and Rachelle When I was young I wanted: To be a Broadway hoofer I can not live without: My friends Most people don’t know that: I can twirl a baton

Tri-Lakes, Pages 134 on 11/29/2009

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