Word: eckstein
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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When the late Real-Estate Operator Louis Eckstein was its hovering angel, Ravinia Park, on the North Shore near Chicago, was one of the best spots in the U. S. for summer music. Sponsored now by a committee of Chicagoans, Ravinia is still good. Its opening week, fortnight ago, attracted the largest crowd in its history, more than 10,000 people. Last week, when bolt-upright, beaky, baldish Sir Adrian Boult, music director of British Broadcasting Corp., opened his second week with the Chicago Symphony, a heat wave melted the attendance. Those who braved the swelter heard, and lustily applauded...
Twenty-six years ago Louis Eckstein, rich Chicago merchant and real-estate operator, began sponsoring summer music in Ravinia Park, 37 acres of woodland which he owned on Chicago's North Shore. Depression interrupted the concerts in 1932 and Patron Eckstein died in 1935 before they were resumed. When his widow agreed to let Ravinia be used for summer music again, 25 businessmen raised $30,000 and reopened Ravinia last summer (TIME, July 13). Back to Chicago last week went Lucrezia Bori, Leon Rothier and Mario Chamlee (Archer Ragland Cholmondeley) who had helped make Ravinia opera nationally known...
Thirty-six years ago Louis Eckstein married Elsie Syndacker, a dark, handsome University of Chicago girl, picked out for him by a Chicago woman in whom he had confided his wish to marry. Pretty Mrs. Eckstein never cared much for opera, but with devout admiration for anything her husband did she attended Ravinia every night so long as he ran it. Mr. Eckstein left her about $1,000,000. was reputed to have given her five or six million more before he died. She has been deaf to all appeals to revive Ravinia Opera, feeling that no one could...
This year Mrs. Eckstein was toying with the idea of cutting Ravinia's 37 acres into lots, at $10,000 an acre, when a delegation of 25 young Chicago business and professional men went to her with what they convinced her was a feasible plan for summer music. She agreed to let them have her Park for concerts by the Chicago Symphony, provided they would permit her to pass upon the list of conductors. With Banker Willoughby George Walling as chairman, the group quickly raised $30,000 in guarantees. Since the Chicago Symphony was also scheduled for free concerts...
...Eckstein did not attend Ravinia's revival which was launched by Conductor Ernest Ansermet. That spry, bearded Swiss gave modern Russian music many a first performance when he played for the old Diaghilev Ballet, has since guest-conducted in Europe and South America. Other Ravinia conductors who passed muster with Mrs. Eckstein were to be Willem van Hoogstraten. Hans Lange, Werner Janssen and three local men- Henry Weber, Rudolph Ganz, Isaac Van Grove. Whatever ghosts of old operatic voices lingered in the Ravinia rafters, Conductor Ansermet drowned them out with Wagner, Stravinsky, Liszt, Berlioz before taking a plane...