Word: toscanini
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...Toscanini's temper last week gave the Swiss city of Lucerne an unexpected treat...
Like some 200 other European cities, Lucerne had hopefully asked for a Toscanini concert and had been refused in favor of Paris and London. Then Toscanini, mad at the way Italy was faring at the hands of the Big Four, huffily canceled his dates in Paris and London in protest ("I personally am not in a state of mind to conduct [because of my] sadness for unjust political decisions."). Suddenly the city of Lucerne got word that the Maestro was willing to play two concerts there-the first one five days from date. Toscanini had a sentimental memory of Lucerne...
Swiss tourist offices stayed open 16 hours a day to sell concert tickets; Swiss railroads hurriedly scheduled special late trains to carry concertgoers back to outlying cantons. In the required five days, the opera house was sold out. Toscanini arrived from Milan with the 112-piece La Scala Orchestra for his first European concert outside Italy since the war. Lucerne heard the Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms and Debussy he had prepared for Paris and London...
...Milan, 79-year-old Arturo Toscanini, Wagnerian and symphonic conductor and renowned antiFascist, reacted to the news by canceling a benefit concert he was scheduled to give this week in Paris. Later he canceled a London engagement, offered to reimburse the Music, Art and Drama Society for its losses on 2,800 tickets. In protesting against "Italy's humiliation," he echoed the frenzied lamentations of Italian politicians and editors, one of whom wrote with rare unconscious humor: "Now the stab in the back has been repaid...
...Arturo Toscanini had a home of his own to settle in when he got back from Europe. He licked the housing shortage by buying a place in suburban New York...