Word: conductor
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...send his hair awry. It was a night of nervousness and novelty. It was the first performance of the Philharmonic's 95th season. It was the first time in ten years that the season patrons could not look forward to a single concert under their beloved Conductor Arturo Toscanini. It was the first time that John Barbirolli, 36, had ever faced an American audience, and this audience that he was tackling at his debut was the most exacting, the most critical in the country. To many in that audience Toscanini and the Philharmonic had seemed inseparable; to nearly...
Well aware how much on trial he was, Conductor Barbirolli led off with an ornamental curtain-raiser, Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture. The audience, at once soothed by his meticulous phrasing, his insistence on broad, full tones, was no less impressed by his physical resource. Planting his feet widely, chin down, Conductor Barbirolli swayed his shoulders delicately through the lyrical passages, hunched forward to demand a pianissimo, twitched his kinetic torso and wagged his flying tails to call for quickened tempi. He guided the orchestra carefully through the tenebrous but imitative twilights of a symphonic poem by Arnold...
...Francisco opening a dapper Italian mounted the conductor's stand proud as Punch, not that he is a great conductor, or that anyone has ever called him one, but because he, Gaetano Merola, could rightfully claim credit for making San Francisco's opera thrive. For his first season (1923) there was not even an adequate stage. Quick to gamble, he spent $20,000 fixing up the old Auditorium, began importing high-priced singers. When that first season ended Impresario Merola went to the hospital with a nervous breakdown. But San Franciscans had liked his performances, wanted more, formed...
...fever. Flagstad and Melchior are returning with an established drawing power. Soprano Lotte Lehmann will be another headliner along with Rethberg, Martinelli, Lawrence Tibbett, Friedrich Schorr, Charles Kullmann, Emanuel List, all from the Metropolitan roster. Faced with the most strenuous job of the San Francisco season is the Wagnerian conductor, this year Hungarian Fritz Reiner, who proved himself top-notch at opera in the Philadelphia series two win ters ago and again last spring at London's Covent Garden...
Jooss was scarcely out on his own when old-style ballet began to impress him. He admired it for its discipline, its grace. As ballet master at the opera house in Münster he found a sympathetic collaborator in Fritz Cohen, a budding young conductor who was glad to write music for dancing. In Münster the leading dancer was Aino Siimola, a sleek black-haired Esthonian who became Jooss's wife and assistant director...