Word: maestro
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...years now, the "poison" of Arturo Toscanini has been seeping out into the world. Drugged by it, millions of music lovers (and not a few critics) have come to regard all of the Maestro's music with dumb and unquestioning adoration. Certainly he has brought the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner and Verdi to life as no other man has. He is now a white-haired little man of 81, and when a human being reaches that age, his critics, remembering his finer hours, are apt to temper their judgments with mercy...
...need make that kind of apology for Toscanini-and no one ever has. The "poison" that he spreads has only grown more potent and magical with the years. Today, the crowds that choke Manhattan's Radio City on Saturday nights for the Maestro's broadcast concerts hear the music of a man who is without question the greatest living conductor. They also look upon-and this is Toscanini's secret -an incorruptible man in a corruptible world...
Words & Music. Last week, Maestro Toscanini was busy brewing one of his favorite prescriptions in his own precise and painstaking way. Next week in Carnegie Hall he will conduct the Verdi Requiem in a charity performance for the New York Infirmary. And at $5 to $25 a seat and $250 a box, Carnegie Hall is already sold out, for the biggest gross in its history...
...does to others. After an explosive day of ranting, raving, stomping and swearing in rehearsal, he will sometimes sidle up to an intimate friend at a party, and say with downcast eyes: "I have a bad character." Most of his friends know the right response. "No, Maestro, you don't have a bad character; you just have a bad temper." But he will continue: "I was bad. I don't know what makes me do those things, but I can't help it. Do you think I am bad? I am not; I am a good...
...awful occasions, he brings the other Toscanini to a party. Then he glowers in a corner, refuses to talk, turns away food and drinks and generally casts a pall over everything. At one party, a waggish friend suggested hanging a sign around his neck, "Do not feed the Maestro." Another evening was saved only when a nonartistic friend, arriving late, went over to the sulking Toscanini, slapped him on the back and said: "Did you see that Louis-Walcott fight?-worst fight I ever saw." Toscanini brightened immediately. Ramming his fist into his hand, he shouted, "He couldn...