Church Organist Aspired Career In Opera World Submitted by Larie Tedesco Saturday Morning, December 20, 1975 The Saturday Sun Herald/George ZI7 ************************************************* Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ By Emily Germanis Today's Living Editor Francis Hunt is probably best known on the Mississippi Gulf Coast as an organist and piano teacher and an active promoter of the musical arts. But few know the gifted Biloxian had a drmatic soprano voice that may have won her operatic acclaim; the medium she prefers above all others. A piano student at 12, she studied under the late Sister Theresa, a pupil of Lizst, the famous composer, and Geiseging, the world famed pianist. At 16, she was a voice student of Madame Jeanne Peodor, director of a music studio in New Orleans, which later became the New Orleans Conservatory and today is the Loyola School of Music. Mrs. Hunt continued studying voice until the career she aspired was abruptly halted by a throat operation, the first of three. She was in her early 20's. "Madame Jeanne still wanted me to pursue opera and go to France," she wistfully recalls. "She wanted me to study at a conservatory in Paris, but I remember my father objected." The determined singer continued the study of voice even after her marriage. "I really continued singing until 1954 when I had to have another throat operation. It was then," she said, "I noticed and began to seriously recognize another deterioration in my voice." After this second operation, the opera singer curtailed her singing. Another operation in 1968 ended it all. "I had no singing voice at all after that," she reflects with a tinge of sadness. Mrs. Hunt had been a soloist at Church of Nativity BVM since age 16, the parish she served as a organish during many of her 50 years as a church organist. "I've played the organ in every Catholic parish in Biloxi, including Keesler, at some time or another," she says with pride. Her service at Nativity spans 21 years. After her marriage to Walter H. (Skeet) Hunt, one of the founders of what is know today as the Gulf Coast Carnival Association and its long-time captain, the couple moved to Washington. The late Mr. Hunt was on the staff of U.S. Senator Pat Harrison. After Harrison's death, he continued "under patronge" with Senator James Eastland (D- Miss.). Washington years were among the best. The "Washington years" are remembered by Mrs. Hunt "as the most fabulous years of my life." The Hunts served on the entertainment committee for the Mississippi St ate Society. While there, she was a church organist for three years, as well as a member of prestigious Friday Morning Music Club, the Washington Chamber Music Guild and the Washington Music Teachers Association. "We made many friends in Washington," she recalled this week. "I also worked in Senator Eastland's office for five years. This was during World War II. We moved back to Biloxi when Skeeter (as she refers to her late husband) encountered ill health. "I remember many of our friends were members of the press. Years later Harmon Nichols, a UPI correspondent in Washington, was on the Coast to do a story on Keesler. When he learned that Skeeter was living there, he wrote a story on 'the man who went home to die but lived for 15 years' about Skeeter." The story was dispatched over the wire service and read by friends of the Hunts around the country. "I was reared in a home lively with song and piano," reflects the likable Biloxian, "My father (the late S.J. Tedesco) knew most of the Italian operas. When I was growing up we did not need any company. When our family was together wer were always singing and playing the piano. My mother played the guitar." She also pleasantly remembers visits to her paternal great-grandmother's New Orleans home on Esplanade Avenue near Chartres. "When I would go over and play the pump organ, she would call in all the neighbors," she recalls. "It was good to be appreciated for something you liked doing. "You know if you love music, as much as I do, it's very relaxing. I can be tired, worn out. But in a few minutes at the organ or a piano and I'm perfectly relaxed." She said people often remark to her, "Why don't you quit teaching. You don't have to work." "Look, I tell them, music is my life. Children do something for me. Especially some of my very fine students. It is a joy to teach them/ They're so interested. And really remarkably talented." When Sister Theresa, (her first piano teacher) formerly of Sacred Heart Academy, died Mrs. Hunt "assumed" some of her students. "When she retired she wanted me to take over all the students, but I refused. And since those teaching days I have managed to gradually taper off." Mrs. Hunt served as choral director at Sacred Heart Academy (during which time it was renamed Sacred Heart Girls School) for about 20 years. Many Biloxians, including those students, were members of her Gregorian Chant Choir. Reflecting on church music, Mrs. Hunt said simply, "I like Gregorian chant and I never intend to change my feeling for this type music. I will play this modern music. They expect it, but I don't like it. Maybe I have not grown with the times. I prefer the traditional music. It is really more inspriational in my opinion. I do like the trumpets in the church for processionals and recessionals and maybe on certain occasions." As Nativity's church organist, Mrs. Hunt plays a Kilgen motorized pipe organ, which se said cost about $35,000.00 some 30 years ago. I love this organ," she said rubbing her hands across its fine polished wood. "There is nothing to take the place of a pipe organ in a church as large as this one." Mrs. Hunt recalls the old hand pump organ on which she learned. "It was an excurs for the boys to come up (to the choir loft at Nativity) and pump it for us," she said. During the Washington days, the Hunts, as members of the state entertainment committee, often entertained. From recounts of stories, the audience never knew what to expect. Hunt and his wife wer a lively combination - he being an old New Orleans jazz buff and she a serious student of music, especially opera. One can quickly conjure up the reaction when the two put their heads together for one particular program and came up with a hillbilly band. "I played the piano," Mrs. Hunt recalls. "Skeeter played a plywood and rubber tire, someone else played bottles, another a washboard and one other a kasoo. Anyhow, we worked out a hillbilly repetorie befor a black-tie audience at a leading Washington hotel. All the senators were there, including the Mississippi delagation, and the presidents of the different Washington organizations. "We never imagined the reaction they gave us. The didn't want us to stop. Remember, this was in cultural Washington. As a result of that performance we were invited to perform at the Tennessee and Kentucky State Societies." Each state is represented by its own society responsible for one social a year. She remembers Skeeter Hunt as always interested in music, but not opera. "He liked jazz, preparing gourmet dishes, and Biloxi Mardi Gras and Fireman's Day parades," she says of the man rembered by oldtimers as "Mr. Carnival". One spring in Washington, "Mr. Carnival", to the embarassment of no one but his wife, fell asleep during an Igor Stravinsky concert in Constitution Hall. "But he made amens," his wife smilingly reflects. "After intermission, he pointed out a man across the aisle, who had also fallen asleep." These days, Mrs. Hunt divides her time between teaching a handful of students, serving as Nativity's church organist and continuing her musical interest in the community. She is a 50-year member of the Biloxi Music Club and four-time president of the organization she describes as the "oldest organized club of its kind on the Coast." She has continuously served as secretary of the Commuinity Concert Association for 26 years and is a member of the Biloxi Bicentennial Commission, Gulf Coast Opera Theatre, and the finance committee fo the Saenger Theatre of Performing Arts. She is corresponding secretary of Altrusa Club of Biloxi and listed in Personalties of the South and Who's Who in American Women. Life has been good to Frances Hunt, a woman whose handsome appearance belies her years. Large, dark expressive eyes are the dominant feature on her ageless face. "If I am happy," she confides, "it is because music gives me a lift. It was part of my Italian family." Family today is a sister, Rosalie, wit who she resides, and two foster sisters, Mrs. Doty Fournier of Biloxi and Mrs. E.J. Schneider of North Babylon, New York. "You know I guess a quotation I found and used in a speech before the state federation of music clubs 25 years ago still today, as it did then, struck me as the best account of the importance of music to one's life." She searches for the words, but only for a moment. "Music is the fourth great material want of our nature - first food, then rainment, then shelter, then music...."