Word: opera
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Then, last year, Otto Klemperer went to Budapest. He appeared with the State Opera and with the Philharmonic, and the music he made was some of the best Budapest had heard in years. This year Opera Director Aladar Toth decided to risk hiring him for the full 1948 season of 40 operas and symphony concerts. When the season opened, Otto Klemperer had his first steady job since 1941. But this week Budapest was wondering how long he would be able to hold...
...could be pleasant and witty at parties; he could also be arrogant. When the opera hired him, he demanded 2,700 florins a night (about $230)-twice as much as any other conductor. Nightly, he was seen at cafés-a, scowling giant (6 ft. 6 in.) who shouted at waiters, flirted with young women, or just sat in a corner, thumping out jazz on the café piano...
...night, 41 years ago, the Budapest Opera, had a crisis of another sort. It was nearly curtain time, and the conductor was ill. Who would conduct Carmen? In desperation, the director grabbed the 18-year-old singing coach, and ordered him into the pit. "I had no preparation," says Fritz Reiner of that night. "It was sink or swim. I swam...
...kind of a guy who would gladly travel to the Opera House and pay the price of admission just to see Bobby Clark flick ashes in a poor play. Last night I did just that. I saw Mike Todd's latest, a trinket--it looks like about a third of a million dollars' worth of trinket--called "As the Girls Go." The show was lavish, polished, populated with every pretty girl this side of Billy Rose--and dull...
...days later, plump, curly-haired Dorothy, 26-a soprano hardly anyone in London had ever heard of-found herself in the studio of His Majesty's Voice recording company. The famed star of the Milan Opera, Madame Margherita Grandi, was making a recording of the sleepwalking scene from Verdi's Macbeth. Suddenly, right at the end, Madame Grandi shut her mouth, and Dorothy took over. She sang three notes-F, A flat, and top D flat. For her pains, she got a slight bow from Madame Grandi and 5 guineas ($21.15). Then she went home...