Mary Lou Falcon lived most of her life out of the spotlight. “I made a conscious decision that I wanted to be behind the scenes,” she said during a recent lunch at Café Luxembourg, a few blocks from Lincoln Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Fifty years ago, after a short career as a performer and teacher, Falcon changed course and became a leading exponent in the world of classical music. She worked in the background with leading organizations and artists including soprano Renée Fleming, pianist Van Cliburn, flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal and conductors including Gustavo Dudamel, Georg Solti and Jaap van Zweden, helping to raise his profile in the years before his passing. He was appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic.
Now, for the first time since she was 28, Falcone has put herself center stage to promote a new personal cause. In early 2019, her artist husband died Nicholas Zahnwas diagnosed With Lewy body dementiaNeurodegenerative disease. He died in 2020. She wrote: To raise awareness of the disease and highlight becoming a caregiver “I Didn’t See It Coming: Scenes of love, loss and Lewy body dementia“, a memoir about her life, their relationship, and Zhan’s diagnosis and decline. Falcone, 78, has now embarked on a publicity tour for the book, giving readings, talks and interviews. In many ways she is doing what she has always done: crafting the narrative, then sharing it.
“I just happen to be telling my own story,” Falcone said.
Falcone grew up as the eldest of three children in an Italian-American family in New Jersey. When she was 10 years old, her father suffered a stroke, and music became her emotional outlet. As a teenager she won a scholarship to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. She refers to herself as a “chicken soprano” – a soprano who is afraid of high notes. Many of her colleagues were extraordinary singers. Falcon felt that her talents were less. She soon discovered that performing was something she could take or leave.
“I didn’t need it,” she said. “I needed to communicate. That was different.”
After graduation, she took a teaching job and embarked on a brief performing career that took her for several summers to St. Paul Opera. During her third season, she was asked to supervise a photo shoot. It sparked something inside her. The following year, in addition to performing, she asked to intern in the publicity department. The Director General rejected this request. Instead, he asked her to become the company’s publicist.
“He just looked at me and said, ‘I watched you. You like challenges. Say yes and figure it out,” Falcone recalls. “And I did.”
The word spread. Soon more customers came calling. Falcon rejected some of it, even though she couldn’t afford it. She only accepted those she believed in and felt she could help. Although not an agent or manager, she has advised her clients on matters of repertory, performance, and even wardrobe, helping many of them craft memorable public personas.
“I’m a media person, but I’m also a strategist,” she said.
Fleming, the distinguished American soprano, met her three times before Falcone agreed to take on her. Falcone’s first task was to ensure that Fleming, who was giving her first concert at Carnegie Hall, sold out the hall. Which is what I did. She went on to help make Fleming “the diva next door.”
“People have great respect for her,” Fleming said in a recent phone interview. Getting Falcone’s approval was an instant nod.
Deborah BordaBorda, who resigned earlier this year as president and CEO of the New York Philharmonic and led the Los Angeles Philharmonic before that, has worked with Falcone in various capacities since 1988. Borda called Falcone a “master of the art.” It’s a combination of mystery, an amazing nose for talent and a wonderful generosity of spirit.
Falcone never intended to break this mystery. Even when she knew she had to write about Lewy body dementia, which also suffered from pitcher Tom Seaver and actor and comedian Robin Williams, she was initially determined to leave herself out of the narrative. The first draft of her book was like a disease awareness brochure. Her friends and early editors told her that no one would care about Lewy body dementia unless they cared about it first. So she rewrote it, starting in her childhood and continuing, in minute detail, even including a record of what Zhane’s care was like at the end.
“It opened my heart,” Falcone said. “And I allowed everything that I suppressed.”
But after so many years of waiting, she was still unwilling to focus on herself. As Falcon points out in the introduction, “For decades I have avoided using the words ‘I, me, and me’, preferring to focus on the lives and careers of others, often writing in their voices through my work in public relations.” This shyness might inspire anyone Literary styles of the book: Many of the short chapters begin with Falcone’s voice, then transition into the voice of a family member, colleague, or artist (Fleming has maintained that the passage written in her voice was completely accurate).
When Falcon was asked about her literary style, she said: “I’m bored of me, of me, of me, that’s the truth.” “It has nothing to do with modesty. It has to do with boredom and I don’t want to be boring.”
Falcon is approaching retirement. It has only two clients, Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic. Although she was now an agent, she didn’t do it alone. One of her first actions when she found a publisher was to hire a publicity firm that specialized in books. Some of her friends joked that she was probably the agent from hell.
She hopes not. “I think I’m the customer who realizes how difficult this is,” she said.
And at Café Luxembourg, which she used as an extra office, she made it look fairly easy. Hosts and servers visit her corner room to tell her they have already ordered the book and ask her to sign it. In a forest green jacket and faded bohemian gold jewelry, Falcone accepted their congratulations with humility and poise.
She believes that the first job in her career was performing. The second was teaching. The third and longest was propaganda. This is her fourth time as a speaker working to raise awareness about this devastating disease.
“I thought it was going to be difficult,” she said. “But I’m just telling my story.”
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