Word: salmaggi
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Mandolin to Management. Salmaggi's methods of financing are a mystery even to his closest associates. He has made enough money to own a huge 19-room villa in Brooklyn, where his wife cooks gargantuan spaghetti dinners for the 300 relatives of the Salmaggi family who visit in droves of 40 or 50 at a time. An imposing 6-ft. figure, Salmaggi stalks Manhattan's streets in spats., a hat two feet in diameter, sporting a glittering diamond-studded lapel pin and a silver-headed cane that once belonged to Caruso. But in 1932 Impresarío Salmaggi...
Italian-born, Salmaggi began in the U.S. as a singing teacher with the claim of having taught Italy's Queen Margherita how to play the mandolin. In 1915 he took his first plunge: a production of Pagliacci at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in which he sang the part of Canio himself. As a tenor, he was a spectacular bust. But he took in $7,000 at the box office...
Thereafter Salmaggi stuck to management. His big chance came in 1933 when
Managers Cecil Mayberry and William Carroll were stuck with an expensive lease, and no show, at Manhattan's huge Hippodrome. Salmaggi proposed filling the place with opera. Managers Mayberry and Carroll asked for a $5,000 guarantee. Salmaggi did not have a cent but promised the money anyhow. Advertising a stupendous list of 53 operas (many of which were never performed) at 99? top, he raised the $5,000 before he had raised the curtain...
Thereafter Salmaggi presented opera at Manhattan's Polo Grounds, Akron's dirigible hangar, Chicago's Soldier Field, Washington's Griffith Stadium, the open-air stadium at Randall's Island, N.Y. At one Polo Grounds Aïda, a Manhattan stable refused Salmaggi's check for the use of its elephants, camels and horses, walked them out the center aisle during the performance. Salmaggi shrugged philosophically. He had advertised elephants and camels, and the audience had seen them...