Word: gianella
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There were moments of muttering that almost came to open revolt. Once Gianella herself was so upset that she flounced to the back of the podium where she had propped up a doll named Victor, and told Victor: "Bambini! Tutti bambini! [Children! They're all children!]." But by the end of the rehearsal, most of the orchestra was won over. "She was right every time she pulled us up," said a violinist. "She's a genius," said a cellist...
...Trance? Gianella's parents, Building Engineer Lido de Marco and his wife, an ex-opera singer, got their first clue to the youngster's phenomenal talent when she was four. They came home one night to find Gianella standing up in bed, her eyes shut, conducting an imaginary orchestra to the strains of Beethoven's Fifth on a neighbor's radio. Papa de Marco, shrugged the incident off as "some sort of trance...
...Mama de Marco took Gianella off to a musician, whose skepticism quickly turned to astonishment. At 4½, she made her Rome debut at the St. Cecilia Academy. A few months later, she appeared in Spain, South America and Paris, and was touted by such famed conductors as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Victor de Sabata (for whom she named her doll)-all before she could read a note of music. When she was seven, Gianella decided she wanted to conduct opera, buckled down for ten months of study. She made her debut with Traviata, in Ravenna, and now knows...
...Manchester last week, the public was as skeptical as the musicians of the L.P.O. had been. The hall was less than half full. But at the end of the performance, most of the audience stood up to cheer. Two nights later, 6,000 Londoners watched and listened while Gianella guided the orchestra with professional aplomb. Gianella started badly, muffing the opening bars of the overture to Der Freischütz, but soon found herself. Then came Haydn's Symphony No. 73-with Gianella and the L.P.O. outdoing themselves-and the Tannhäuser overture. By this time, the Albert...
Whether prodigious Gianella de Marco will really fulfill her promise as a musician is obviously a question for the future. But at week's end, with the London Philharmonic and the London public snugly in the palm of her hand, she was aiming at further acceptance. Gianella wrote a letter to "Cara Regina Elisabetta," inviting the Queen to attend her concert next week...