the hymn of nations
jan peerce with arturo toscanini

Alice Peerce, Uncle Jan’s wife and Ellen’s Aunt, was also Uncle Jan’s manager. When NBC was looking for a tenor to sing Hymn of Nations, NBC’s General Music Director, Samuel Chotzinoff, invited Uncle Jan to sing. Aunt Alice immediately accepted the invitation without first consulting Uncle Jan or the impresario, Sol Hurok, who was responsible for most of Uncle Jan’s bookings at the time. It turns out that Uncle Jan was double booked that day, having been previously booked by Hurok to perform at the 92nd Street YMHA. When Uncle Jan heard about the booking to sing on NBC at the RCA studios at Radio City he was upset and wanted to back out, thinking he would be performing a Beethoven symphony. When he heard they were asking him to perform Verdi’s Hymn of Nations, he became interested but still had the problem of being double booked that day. Aunt Alice, always the clever businesswoman, insisted he could do both performances. The day Uncle Jan sang Hymn of Nations at RCA studios was, coincidentally, the day Mussolini was overthrown as dictator of Italy. After the concert, Uncle Jan and Aunt Alice took a taxi to the 92nd Street Y and had trouble getting in to do the performance since the Y was mobbed by people who had heard Uncle Jan sing Hymn of Nations on the radio and were now anxious to hear him perform in person. Uncle Jan credits his performance of Hymn of Nations on the radio as making him a household name in America and created demand to book him for concerts from then on.