Word: opera
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Fortnight ago one of Manhattan's most fabulous characters, known to every reporter in town yet mentioned rarely and discreetly in the press, blew the lid off his own story by standing on his head at the Metropolitan Opera House. By so doing, in the midst of a brilliant host of spectators who had gathered to celebrate opera's seasonal opening, Richard Allen Knight became news...
...after a tiff with the Met's management, Artur Bodanzky. still a Wagnerian conductor, resigned to conduct symphonies for Manhattan's Friends of Music. Said he: "I shall not say I am sorry to give up opera." To replace him the Metropolitan imported an unknown named Josef Rosenstock. After five of Rosenstock's feeble exhibitions of batonistic piddle-paddle, Manhattan critics howled him down, sent him scurrying back where he came from. General Manager Gatti-Casazza persuaded Bodanzky to return. For ten more years he went on conducting Wagnerian opera...
Last week, just as the Metropolitan was brushing off its costumes for the opening of the opera season, 61-year-old Conductor Bodanzky died of heart disease. Willy-nilly, he left behind him a reputation as a Wagnerian conductor-one of the world's best. Under his morose, buzzardy stare, Tristans and Götterdämmerungs became not only the best produced, but the most popular operas in the Metropolitan's repertory. Behind the throne of General Manager Edward Johnson, Bodanzky was a great power in the Met, had more to say about who should sing what...
...many years stocky, shock-headed Metropolitan Tenor Giovanni Martinelli nursed a secret ambition to sing Tristan, most glamorous, most gut-busting of German opera roles. But in the days when Martinelli's voice was at its sweetest, Metropolitan directors always chose a throatier Teuton for the job. Last week at the Chicago Opera, 54-year-old Veteran Martinelli finally got his chance. Playing opposite buxom Kirsten Flagstad's bosom, his white hair covered with a blond wig, Tenor Martinelli sang his part without a misplaced guttural. But between towering Soprano Flagstad and the booming orchestra led by Flagstad...
...helped some 30,000, has guided a national move toward unfettered speech, once inaugurated a campaign which has pretty much driven stuttering comedians from the cinema. Its Ephphatha Club, named for the command ("be opened") by which Christ cured the stutterer, has loosened some remarkable tongues, including two opera singers and a young man who celebrated his emancipation with a soapbox speech in Union Square...