Tabuteau Book: Toscanini and Puccini
Wednesday May 07 2008
A major event of Tabuteau’s third season with the Met was the December 10, 1910, world premiere of Puccini’s new opera, La Fanciulla del West. Toscanini conducted, with Caruso and Destinn creating the leading roles. John de Lancie remembered Tabuteau once telling him about the rehearsals: “The masses did not have money to go to the opera in New York, so the public would attend dress rehearsals. There were many Italian immigrants. As rehearsals with Toscanini were conducted in Italian, of course they could understand him. Puccini was in the audience. He stood up and spoke to Toscanini about something. Toscanini turned around and said, “I know your music better than you do. Just sit down!”
Wow. That’s all I can say. WOW…!
patty
May 9, 2008
Sigh. I ordered my book. It was to arrive on the 30th of last month. It was lost somewhere in Tennessee or some such thing.
I have to wait until Monday now.
Double sigh.
You are making me jealous.
Triple sigh.
Liz
May 9, 2008
You have a blog?
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May 8, 2008
Yeah… Stories like this or the one you told earlier about Leon Goosens really make me wonder where I got all those romantic notions I used to have about music and musicians (chuckle)!!
What a beautiful book though, isn’t it? I just got my copy yesterday and was surprised at its size: with my bad eyesight, reading this one from cover to cover is going to take A WHILE, but it seems to flow in such a way that you can’t just open it anywhere and read at random, which is what I usually do! Hmm, many hours of great reading to look forward to
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