Word: metropolitan
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...translated statement to the press: "I hope to please the American public and if I do I shall become a citizen of your country. I do not wish to be known as a Wagnerian conductor, as I love the operas of all nations." Month later, stepping into the Metropolitan's orchestra pit recently vacated by Arturo Toscanini and his bald, black-bearded co-worker Alfred Hertz, Artur Bodanzky shook his baton at four hours of Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Critics were impressed. Bodanzky stayed, became a U. S. citizen and a permanent conductor...
...after a tiff with the Met's management, Artur Bodanzky. still a Wagnerian conductor, resigned to conduct symphonies for Manhattan's Friends of Music. Said he: "I shall not say I am sorry to give up opera." To replace him the Metropolitan imported an unknown named Josef Rosenstock. After five of Rosenstock's feeble exhibitions of batonistic piddle-paddle, Manhattan critics howled him down, sent him scurrying back where he came from. General Manager Gatti-Casazza persuaded Bodanzky to return. For ten more years he went on conducting Wagnerian opera...
Last week, just as the Metropolitan was brushing off its costumes for the opening of the opera season, 61-year-old Conductor Bodanzky died of heart disease. Willy-nilly, he left behind him a reputation as a Wagnerian conductor-one of the world's best. Under his morose, buzzardy stare, Tristans and Götterdämmerungs became not only the best produced, but the most popular operas in the Metropolitan's repertory. Behind the throne of General Manager Edward Johnson, Bodanzky was a great power in the Met, had more to say about who should sing what...
...many years stocky, shock-headed Metropolitan Tenor Giovanni Martinelli nursed a secret ambition to sing Tristan, most glamorous, most gut-busting of German opera roles. But in the days when Martinelli's voice was at its sweetest, Metropolitan directors always chose a throatier Teuton for the job. Last week at the Chicago Opera, 54-year-old Veteran Martinelli finally got his chance. Playing opposite buxom Kirsten Flagstad's bosom, his white hair covered with a blond wig, Tenor Martinelli sang his part without a misplaced guttural. But between towering Soprano Flagstad and the booming orchestra led by Flagstad...
...sparky G.E. President Gerard Swope rose to his full five feet four inches, read to the assembled directors a letter, while Board Chairman Owen D. Young puffed a pipe. Nobody was taken by surprise. The previous evening they had all had a quiet evening talking about it at the Metropolitan Club: after serving 17 years together, and reaching G.E.'s retirement age of 65, Swope and Young wished to retire on Jan. 1. The directors then elected a new president and chairman (both of whom had, the evening before, been congratulated on their forthcoming election), voted a 65? dividend...