In the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament, there are two biblical injunctions or commands to “make a joyful noise.” If you are skilled at reading Roman numerals, you can look them up yourself to make sure that I know what I am talking about. One comes from Psalms, Chapter LXVI, verse one and the second is from Psalms, Chapter C, verse one. In both cases, the command is to “make a joyful noise.”
I am not widely known for quoting the Old Testament – or the New Testament either – but in this case if you ate at Guido Bocciola’s L’Aiglon Restaurant or if you listened to Aldo Bruschi play the piano, the oboe, the accordion and to sing, I suspect that any rational man could not help himself but to make a joyful noise.
Guido’s restaurant was on 55th Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue. Aldo played at a club he owned with a partner, In Boboli, in the 70’s on the East Side. He had a studio in Brooklyn and he played engagements all over New York after he ended his association with In Boboli.
Over the years, I knew Guido quite a bit better than Aldo mainly because I ate lunch fairly often at L’Aiglon. Aldo, on the other hand, played engagements in the evening and ran a studio where he taught voice and the three instruments he had mastered, the piano, the oboe and the accordion. So I propose we talk first about Guido Bocciola and then we’ll finish with the musician, Aldo Bruschi.
In the 1950’s, contract bargaining with the union was a yearly affair. There were also grievances and work stoppages to be dealt with. AT&T Long Lines had 35,000 people in those days. I had the day-to-day responsibility to handle the labor problems for this force spread from Nova Scotia to California. So I was busy and I found myself working late and staying in New York City.
I’m not sure how it happened, but I became friendly with the owner of Nino’s 10 East which was located at 10 East 52nd Street in New York. Nino was a suave individual who spoke three or four European languages. But running a New York restaurant that serves lunch and dinner and also caters to the after-theater crowd is a load. It ages men before their time, so somewhere in his early 60’s, Nino closed his place and moved to L’Aiglon, a top flight restaurant on 55th Street East of Fifth Avenue. He became a partner to Guido Bocciola who had run L’Aiglon for perhaps 25 years. That took a load off both Nino and Guido. In a year or so, Nino retired and went to Florida.
My friendship with Guido lasted for the 25 years he stayed in the restaurant business after I knew him. After that we corresponded until his death somewhere around 1990. I knew Guido was gone when his wife, Aurora, sent the last Christmas card.
Guido became a friend to me much like Jake Haberfeld in Israel. Over the years when guests were to be entertained, I always took them to L’Aiglon. That name incidentally, means young eagle or eaglet. If the guests were foreign, Guido would produce a waiter, or a captain, a bartender or even one of the men from the kitchen so that the guest could be addressed in his native tongue. With the possible exception of Russian, Guido’s people spoke nearly every European language. Aside from language, Guido’s food was first class in every respect because the boss oversaw just about everything that was placed before you. In the European tradition, Guido could tend bar, he could butcher, he could cook and he asked his staff to be attentive to the whims of customers.
L’Aiglon had an all male staff with one exception. That would have been his one-person office staff, Helen Dowd. She was a completely charming woman. It always baffled me why she had never married, but she seemed content to be Guido’s Office Manager. Guido treated Helen with old world charm. I suspect she never had thoughts of leaving L’Aiglon.
Aside from the good food and fine spirits, I attempted to learn something about the Italian, Spanish and French languages at L’Aiglon. Guido taught me that two “C’s”, as in his surname of Bocciola, were pronounced as a “K”. From Jorge Alonso, the bartender, the lessons in Cuban Spanish were offered. And from Guido’s new partner after Nino re-retired, Roger Delacroix, I had someone to interpret the French language.
I knew Jorge Alonso, the bartender, the same length of time that I knew Guido and the rest of his staff. Jorge left Cuba along with two or three brothers shortly before Castro slammed the door shut. My belief is that the brothers were able to get their mother out of Cuba from the city of Camagüey. Old Jorge used to claim that the baseball team in Camagüey played better ball than the New York Giants before they ran away to San Francisco. Maybe so.
In those days, I drank Black and White scotch. The more fashionable scotch drinkers asked for Cutty Sark, but when I came into his bar, Jorge always had the Black and White bottle sitting on the counter. Jorge was a good and decent man. He stayed with Guido until Guido left the restaurant business.
There are dozens of memories flooding back as I recall Guido’s place. Two stick out. My younger daughter was attending the University of Toulouse in France. This was a one semester arrangement with Dartmouth University. She planned to spend her two week holiday in Italy and France. The plan was for her mother and me to meet her and to see the sights in Venice, Bologna, Turin, Milan and two or three French cities in the South of France. Guido asked me about my itinerary and I gave it to him thinking that I was just passing the time of day. In a week or so I saw Guido again. He gave me a list of hotels and restaurants in each town that was on our itinerary. In each city, he had called hoteliers and restaurateurs to make reservations or to say that we were coming and to be sure that the Italians and French treated us well. This was done on Trans-Atlantic phone lines which was not an inexpensive. When I tried to thank Guido, he said, “You give me your business so it is my time to give you my business.”
As it turned out, before the holiday ever happened, my daughter was hit on a sidewalk in Toulouse by a motorcycle. Both legs were broken and her holiday was out the window. It was quite a job to get her home. Air France gave her three coach seats so she could lie down. The flight from Toulouse went through Bordeaux. At that intermediate point, the French required all passengers to go through immigration before going on to Paris. When this very snobbish French official found that I was carrying three passports, for my daughter and her mother and myself, he demanded that the other two passengers appear before him. With the help of my pocket Random House French-English dictionary, I attempted to explain that our daughter had two broken legs and was in no condition to see the Grand Inquisitor.
There followed a standoff with the French official saying that I should speak better French. By that time, I was pretty steamed over this little tin pot dictator. When it became apparent that the flight was not departing on time, one of the pilots came to find out the cause. When he saw what was holding us up, he became more steamed than I was and dressed down the immigration official. All things being equal, it was a long day for our daughter to get her from Toulouse, to Bordeaux, to Paris, to New York and that final hour and a half ride to Short Hills. I am deeply indebted to the concern shown by Air France to my daughter and I greatly enjoyed the dressing down given by the pilot to the immigration dictator.
Two or three weeks after we got home, Guido set up a dinner for us which he cooked pretty much by himself. The highlight was the dessert which Guido said was his “specialty.” It was a memorable evening even with old Suzanne in two leg casts.
I was able to return a favor to Guido around 1975. John DeButts had become the CEO of AT&T. DeButts somehow got the idea that the company ought to leave its traditional home at 195 Broadway and move uptown to Madison Avenue between 55th and 56th streets. This was a dumb, dumb move. But nonetheless, enormous sums were spent to buy the property which was probably among the most expensive in New York City. Then buildings had to be demolished and this new Taj Mahal erected. The fact that IBM was moving into the next block might have figured into DeButts’s thinking. I repeat, it was a dumb, dumb move.
In acquiring the property which extended about halfway from Madison Avenue to Fifth Avenue, the land under Guido’s L’Aiglon was sold. By then, Guido had operated L’Aiglon for probably 30 years. He saw this as the death of L’Aiglon. The thought that his staff would lose their jobs preyed most on Guido’s mind. I was unaware that AT&T was acquiring the property for the Madison Avenue site. Not many people knew about it for fear of driving property prices higher and possibly causing one or more owners to refuse to sell their property until an exorbitant price was met.
So early on a December morning, I was in my office at #5 World Trade Center when I got a call from Guido. He was about as far down in the dumps as a man could get. Guido asked me if there was anything I could do to keep L’Aiglon from being demolished. Real estate deals had no place in my marketing efforts with foreign telephone administrations, but I told Guido I would do everything to try to find out what was going on.
My first call hit pay dirt. I called a low level AT&T Vice President with whom I had worked in Washington on AT&T’s lobbying effort. He had returned to New York and had an administrative job at 195 Broadway, the headquarters of AT&T. I had known this fellow for three or four years and I am sorry to say, we got along without much love being lost on either side. If I wanted to have a drink with someone, this fellow would be about the last to be called – and vice versa. I am also sorry that his name has vanished from my head. In any case, he said that a hush-hush group was shepherding the new building project and that its head man was Jack Bradley. So I thanked my informant and called Mr. Bradley. I expected to be told to get lost; that property acquisition is none of your business.
That’s not the way it happened at all. Jack turned out to be a fellow Midwesterner who seemed inclined to hear my story. So I put on my coat and walked the block or two to get from the World Trade Center to 195 Broadway. There was no formality about Jack. There were no secretaries saying that the boss would be out for awhile and could you come later. Old Jack provided a chair for me in his office and I spilled out my story. At the outset, I made certain that Jack understood I had no financial interest in L’Aiglon. I told Jack that Guido had been in business there on 55th Street for 30 years and with Christmas coming up, kicking him out seemed like a cruel blow.
Jack seemed sympathetic about everything. He also disclosed to me that if he worked it properly, perhaps the last piece of property to be demolished would be Guido’s place. His estimate was that if he could make things happen in the right way, it might take nearly three years for the wrecking crew to reach L’Aiglon. That was great news if it turned out to be true. So I said to Jack that I would have Guido come to his office the next day at 9AM to make his case.
I was torn between going with Guido or having him appear by himself. If I went with Guido, it might appear that I was intruding on a straight-forward proposition. I also knew that Guido could make a better case for his own interests than I could. Well, Guido was greatly pleased to receive my call. He promised – guaranteed – that he would be in Bradley’s office 15 minutes before 9AM. And he did just that.
Jack heard Guido out and at the end, he told Guido to go back to L’Aiglon and relax. Jack said that from now on, AT&T would be Guido’s new landlord.
Now a word about landlords. For all the years that L’Aiglon had been at its location on 55th Street, it had been a great task to get the landlord to fix anything. There were times when Guido simply paid to have the property repaired. That, of course, should have been the landlord’s responsibility. As soon as AT&T acquired the property, Jack sent inspectors to examine the L’Aiglon operation. They even asked Guido for his recommendations. Guido almost fell over in a dead faint to think that his new landlord was asking Guido for his thoughts. As soon as Jack had his list, he sent workmen to Guido’s place and fixed everything to Guido’s amazement and appreciation.
Jack was a man of his word. Guido was permitted to operate for a little more than three years and he was very happy with AT&T as his landlord. He didn’t need to do it, but Guido sponsored two lunches at LaCaravelle for Jack Bradley and myself. It was entirely like Guido to make certain that he showed his appreciation.
Not long after AT&T became L’Aiglon’s landlord, we had a gathering there of about 30 people which included some of my staff and some representatives from N. W. Ayer, our advertising agency. On all previous occasions when we had used Guido’s private room, he would come around – very unobtrusively – to ask if everything was being taken care of. On this night, Guido asked me for a little air time to make a short speech. So after the crowd quieted down, Guido said that when he called me on that December morning, three years ago, I had said that I would get back to him in three days time. I don’t remember that, but it could be with the secrecy that AT&T was using in its acquisition of property. Perhaps I thought it would take three days to penetrate the AT&T bureaucracy. In any case, Guido said instead of three days, I had gotten back to him in three hours. I appreciated Guido addressing the crowd on my behalf. The effectiveness of his remarks told me that sending Guido to see Jack Bradley alone was a good move because Guido was a very moving speaker. Guido was a first class friend. I am glad that he considered me a friend to him and to the staff at L’Aiglon.
When the L’Aiglon building was demolished, Guido and Roger Delacroix scouted around for another location. After two or three years, they settled on the site of the old Italian Pavilion on 55 Street just west of Fifth Avenue. Somehow lawyers for the owners of the original L’Aiglon property went to court to prevent that name being used at the new location. So Guido and Roger said they weren’t going to pay through the nose to keep the old name, so they simply called the restaurant by its original name, the Italian Pavilion. Guido retired probably around 1988 and the Italian Pavilion was replaced by a California style restaurant in about 1990. And so another restaurant bites the dust as landlords raise rents to get every drop of revenue out of their property.
When Guido retired for good, he had business cards printed with the following information:

When I retired, I had the cards reprinted under my name.
I said at the outset of this essay that Guido became a friend to me much like Jake Haberfeld in Israel. Jake was one of my most admired friends. Guido joins that class of friends.
Guido said that running a restaurant that served lunch, dinner, cocktail parties and after theater meals, he figured in his 30 years at L’Aiglon he had actually worked 80 years. I never argued with Guido because he had a mighty tough job which he performed with grace and dignity. I simply can’t offer any higher praise than that.

Now we turn to another great artist, Aldo Bruschi, also an Italian. During the day, Aldo ran a studio in Brooklyn where he taught voice, mainly sopranos, accordion, piano and oboe. That wasn’t enough to keep him busy, so in the evenings and on weekends, he performed in nightclubs and restaurants.
My recollection is that I first saw Aldo in the early part of the 1960’s when he played at a restaurant he co-owned with Arturo Sacco on the upper east side of Manhattan. It was called In Boboli after a garden in Florence. It was a lovely restaurant that served delicious food and offered one of the best musical ensembles around. The food was overseen by Aldo’s partner; the entertainment was under Aldo’s control.
Aldo’s ensemble played dance music, show tunes and quite a bit of Italian popular music and folk tunes. Several times he brought female student singers to perform with him so that they could become accustomed to nightclub conditions. In his studio, he said he always taught the aspiring sopranos and altos a Venetian folk song. On many occasions Aldo also sang that folk song, “Voga E Va.” The card he signed simply meant that I asked for that old folk song wherever Aldo or Aldo and his ensemble were playing.
In Boboli had a run of several years. With teaching all day and performing six nights a week, Aldo needed some rest. He elected to drop out of the co-ownership of In Boboli and performed on a somewhat less taxing schedule.
Aldo was a big man with a barrel chest. His voice was in the bass range. The songs he sang were quite moving. As far as his playing the piano, the oboe and the accordion, I thought he was a first class performer. But I suppose anyone who teaches those instruments all day long ought to be good. Aldo was.
I followed Aldo around Manhattan from time to time, where he was performing. I suppose I kept track of his career from the early sixties through the middle of the 1980’s. His music was always in good taste and well performed.
Along the way, he recorded two albums, “Alps to the Sea” and “Enchantment Italy”. Along with songs like Tramonto, L’Edera, Core’ N Grata and Domino, I was pleased to find on both recordings the old stand by, “Voga E Va.” For those of you who like translations, Tramonto means sunset. L’Edera means ivy and Core’ n Grata is ungrateful heart. Domino is about a card game and my all time favorite, Voga E Va is a Venetian folk song meaning row and go. That’s what the men do who take you for a ride in Venice.
In researching Aldo’s background, I was pleased to find that he was a graduate of The Julliard School of Music majoring in the oboe. He continued his musical studies at Columbia University. And if that is not enough, he married Isabelle Pasqualicchio who was also a Julliard graduate. Aldo recorded several of the songs that Isabelle composed including “Boboli” which was the name Aldo and his partner chose for their cabaret-restaurant. Aldo was a major talent.
A few years back, we found a person who converts phonograph records into CD’s. Phonograph records wear out and they sometimes break. With Aldo’s records being converted to CD’s, those problems are avoided and we can listen to Voga E Va as often as we like.
I’m sorry to say that we have fewer reasons to go to Manhattan these days, so it is now more than 16 years since I have seen Aldo. So Judy and I figured that it would be good to talk to Maestro Bruschi. Judy turned her computer loose and found a web site that gave us two Aldo Bruschi names in Brooklyn. The first number I called produced Aldo. What good fortune.
Aldo is still hard at work. He teaches seven or eight classes at a parochial school and conducts the choir at St. Patrick’s Church on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. Obviously, Aldo hasn’t done much retiring.
When I reminded him of my devotion to Voga E Va, he said he still taught that song. He said Maria, his 20-year-old daughter, was at that moment taking a shower, but when she finished, they would call me back to sing that song to us about Venice. In a few minutes, Aldo and Maria called back and Maria delivered a beautiful rendition of Voga E Va accompanied by her father on the piano, who also joined in, singing the bass part. That made the day for two people here in New Jersey. I told Maria she speaks Italian in a classical fashion as taught by her father.
My dear friend from L’Aiglon, died about ten years ago. Aldo Bruschi, as you can see from these pages, is still going strong.
Aldo and Guido were hard working people who treated the people around them decently. In another essay, I will tell you why I had strong positive feelings for Italians before I first set foot in that country in 1943. These two men are the sort of people I had known in Missouri. The fact that they were engaged in two of my all time favorites of preparing gourmet food and fine music made dealing with them a great pleasure and a rewarding one at that.
And so as I said in opening this essay on two very good friends, the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament had it right. Guido Bocciola and Aldo Bruschi “made a joyful noise” for many years and for many people in New York City. They deserve a special place of honor in this series of essays devoted to New York, New York.
After all these years, it seems to me that great food and great music go together. Perhaps the writer of the Book of Psalms had Italian food and Italian music in mind as he wrote those verses. A joyful noise must have had Guido’s L’Aiglon and Aldo’s music in mind. Vive La Italia.
E. E. CARR
June 26, 2002
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It’s becoming increasingly evident that this series is one of Pop’s strongest sets of essays, in my opinion. I really enjoy learning about the people and the relationships involved, and especially how they fit in with life events that I already knew about, like mom’s sidewalk run-in with a motorcycle. Fun fact, the French doctors tried to get her to stand on it again barely a week after the accident, causing the knee to re-break. If you break your leg in France, go somewhere else to have it fixed.
Courtesy of Judy: Voga E Va, by Aldo Bruschi