Word: maestro
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...topnotch prices within a few hours. Subsequent demands fairly exhausted the patience of the box-office staff. One person would argue that he had never heard a Toscanini performance, that this was therefore his last chance. The next in line would claim that he had attended all the Maestro's concerts, that he could not miss the last. Speculators were offered $100 and more for a ticket. In Portland, Ore. a music-lover was ready to charter a plane, ily East for the performance. He stayed home, because no amount of money could get him a seat. Inside...
...Ride of the Valkyries ended the program, brought the audience to its feet, too moved at first to cheer the conductor as he turned from the players, looking suddenly tired. In that tense moment a news cameraman popped up at the footlights, exploded a flashlight directly in the Maestro's face. Toscanini fled to the wings. Out leaped Bruno Zirato, the Philharmonic's assistant manager, to seize the photographer by the scruff, hustle him out to the lobby where detectives and doormen de prived him of his camera and the plate he had used...
...audience wanted more of Toscanini, clapped, stamped, cheered. But the little Italian never returned. Instead Maurice Van Praag, the Orchestra's personnel manager, faced the clamoring crowd, said: "The man who just came down here and snapped that picture almost blinded our beloved Maestro. He asks me to say that he loves you all and begs to be excused." With that a mighty chorus of boos and hisses filled the Hall...
Backstage Toscanini quickly recovered. Not really blinded, he had been dazed, upset, enraged. Cameramen have long been requested not to use flashlights near the Maestro's weak eyes. The request was disregarded when he arrived in the U. S. last January. Last week the shock was greater because he was under a heavier strain. After his next-to-last concert when the audience stood cheering him for 15 minutes, Toscanini had shut himself up in his dressing-room and wept...
...gold traveling clock. The Metropolitan directors gave their usual scroll; the chorus, a silver coffee urn; the stage hands, a silver vase; the orchestra, a plaque. Nothing seemed to please Bori more than when Manager Edward Johnson handed her a silver bowl filled with gladioli "from the great Maestro Arturo Toscanini...