Word: gatty
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When Giulio Gatti-Casazza returns to Manhattan from his summers in Italy, the long-established routine has been for him to summon musical reporters and inform them of the singers he has engaged, the operas he intends to produce the coming season. The picture in his dark, musty office has always been the same: Gatti settling his great bulk in a swivel chair, fumbling for the ribbon which holds his pince-nez, reading his announcement aloud in slow, painstaking English. When questions were asked, he would stroke his beard, answer warily or not at all. A grave "good afternoon" regularly...
With his resignation Gatti made public the correspondence between himself and Board Chairman Paul Drennan Cravath. Mr. Cravath's letters were suitably regretful: "I find it difficult to adjust myself to the thought of the Metropolitan without you in charge. . . ." Sphinxian Gatti was characteristically formal: "This decision is taken in consideration of my rather mature age [65], and of the continued and exhausting hardships of a long directorial career...
...Gatti could, if he would, have been eloquent on the subject of his career. He could have told how he and his friend Arturo Toscanini arrived at the Metropolitan 26 years ago, how between them they had given artistic and financial authority to a company rich with singers, poor in discipline. Gatti could have boasted rightfully of his business prowess. In the Opera's palmy days had he not made performances pay for themselves in addition to providing a $1,000,000 nest egg? He could have recalled many historic scenes: plump little Marcella Sembrich making her operatic farewell...
...Gatti was in no mood for such reminiscences last week. His pride was hurt. The $1,000,000 surplus had been eaten by Depression. The Metropolitan directors, under Chairman Cravath, had twice voted to beg publicly for money. Their appeals had brought forth life-saving cash but also sharp criticism of Gatti's administration: he was oldfashioned; he was a reactionary, a slave to routine; he was unwilling to experiment with new ideas for scenery and staging...
...goosegirl in Die Konigskinder she drove the property man to distraction by her successful insistence upon having live geese on the stage. She was the only Metropolitan prima donna ever to have her own permanent dressing room. Two older singers had been bickering for one for weeks but Manager Gatti-Casazza was obdurate. Miss Farrar went to his office casually one day, asked if any one would mind if she took that dirty airless room by the stairs. With Gatti's permission, she fixed the cubbyhole up, lined it with brocade and put a gold plate on the door labeled...