Word: toscanini
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...symphony conductors cost so much? If it comes to that, why is a conductor? These questions may well have been pondered by R. C. A. stockholders last January when their pudgy President David Sarnoff sent envoys to Milan to induce Maestro Arturo Toscanini to conduct ten broadcasts with the projected NBC Symphony Orchestra (TIME, Feb. 15). Conductor Toscanini asked and got a contract for $4,000 per broadcast, probably the highest price ever paid a conductor. At the behest of plump, practical Signora Toscanini, it was also stipulated that NBC should buy the Maestro a round-trip ticket from Italy...
...tradition-busting Muscovites,* Manhattan musicians formed a "Conductorless Orchestra" and gave a series of Carnegie Hall concerts. They managed to keep time with each other, played as well as some orchestras do under some conductors. But the electric fusion of tone that would have been brought forth by a Toscanini, a Stokowski or a Furtwangler was completely lacking. Financially the venture was a dismal flop...
...eyes of most of his U. S. admirers, Toscanini can do no wrong. His very rages and imprecations are treasured in musicians' memories, his broken batons are collected and respectfully preserved. In a rehearsal tantrum several years ago he rushed off the stage, scurried up the stairs to his dressing room, pounded his fists against the door of a closet until the wood paneling splintered. A lady Philharmonic subscriber heard of the incident, drove with her chauffeur to the stage entrance, begged to be given the door as a sacred relic. Allowed to carry...
...long been an art collector and ban vivant when he decided, seven years ago, to take up painting seriously. To Manhattan he brought, besides the self-portrait, some clear, flowing Italian landscapes, some easy, informal portraits. He brought as well his wife, the Countess Wally, daughter of Arturo Toscanini, famed conductor, whose hobby is painting. Herself unmusical, Countess Castelbarco likes to wear shoes modeled on those of the Medicis, made of cork, with five-inch heels, three-inch soles...
...rebellion and dissatisfaction, in the summer of 1934. Our rebellion was against conventional opera, conventionally produced and enslaved by the star system. Our hope was to introduce the arts of the theatre into opera from which they have been divorced, these many years, all over the world. Toscanini, Klemperer, Stefan Zweig and Ernst Krenek listened to our declarations. A proclamation of artistic independence was drawn up and subscribed to by these men. They all signed it. and Toscanini remarked: 'Nothing is ever being done for the real opera-only words, never action. But perhaps,' he added with...