Word: gatti
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...seemed to have gathered in the wings as a reminder that the Metropolitan owed them its world-wide prestige. In the corridors it was easy to imagine the small erect figure of Otto Hermann Kahn, carnation in buttonhole, a quick shrewd word for everyone. No ghost was big Giulio Gatti-Casazza, for 27 years the Metropolitan's general manager. But Gatti's regime ends next month. Last week his successor was named and a momentous bargain sealed. In a desperate attempt to save its life, the Metropolitan sold its independence. Price: $150,000. The buyer was the Juilliard...
...long been ambitious to dictate Metropolitan policies. In exchange for its donation, the Juilliards claimed also the right to pass on the Metropolitan's new managerial force. Herbert Witherspoon, oldtime basso and now a member of the Juilliard teaching staff, was named to succeed General Manager Gatti. Experienced Edward Ziegler will be retained as assistant general manager. Tenor Edward Johnson was appointed as another assistant, to concern himself chiefly with the Juilliard's pet supplementary season...
...milestone of U. S. musical history was the opening night of Impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza's last season at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House (TIME, Dec. 31). Into the Metropolitan that night went The March of Time's photoreporters (in top hats & tails) with the first sound-camera equipment ever permitted inside the old opera house during a performance. From a grandtier box wired for sound two of the reporters filmed the action and music on the stage, the swank audience. Others followed Gatti-Casazza backstage, saw what he saw through his private peephole to the stage...
Until Depression Manager Gatti made Metropolitan performances pay for themselves. And although he engaged the most expensive singers he managed to set aside a surplus of $1,000,000 which lasted him into 1932. Gatti's credo, then as now, came from Verdi who once said to him: "The theatre is meant to be full-not empty." When the surplus was exhausted Metropolitan performances necessarily suffered...
First-nighters thought Gatti might break his rule last week, take a curtain call with the singers and the new conductor. But Gatti took his first and last bow from the Metropolitan stage in 1908, standing proudly between his friends Toscanini and Caruso...