Dear Anne Midgette

It is barely 6am, my Wendy is fast asleep and Placido's timely adieu has fired me up.  In Spanish we say 'ya era hora'.  First, to establish my bona fides:  I first heard Placido as a very young singer in a Verdi Requiem conducted by Pablo Casals at the Festival in Puerto Rico.  He was superb.  Then, on an assignment in Asuncion, Paraguay, when I was the NYT's  South American correspondent I spent a sleepless night in a hotel room watching a broadcast of his Lohengrin.  Again, quite extraordinary.  I also applaud his efforts to promote young singers--though that, as we learned in Marlboro, VT., sometimes is as problematic as it may be helpful--good for some, terrible for others.

Now,  I grew up in Buenos Aires and became a newspaperman at 17--some (las malas lenguas) say I took a job with the United Press in order to attend the rehearsals at the Teatro Colon.  Indeed, I made some that would profoundly influence my life:  Fritz Busch, Erich Kleiber, Emanuel List, Salvatore Baccaloni, Rose Bampton, Elsa Cavelti, but, above all, Willy Kapell.  The latter spent four weeks in BA in the 1940's and we must have watched every movie in town.  The fact that Newsweek published my cables about his success at the Colon opened the door to my adding occasional (frequent) pieces on artists to the daily U.P. report to the US (B.A. was Latin American HQs).

When I was transferred to Washington back in 1949 two things struck me:  the only symphony orchestra of the nation's capital, known as National Symphony had a fourth-rate conductor named Howard Mitchell (Alexander Schneider of the Budapest String Quartet would exclaim, 'look how well he wears his tuxedo') and an atrocious home known as Constitution Hall owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution--the outfit that prevented Marion Anderson from singing there.  (tell that to the kids who doubt that the country hasn't made much progress).

Last but not least, I asked somebody yesterday to forward to you a suggestion (an opportunity):  the board should audition Julien Salemkour.  He is currently the assistant conductor at the Berlin Staatsoper with Daniel Barenboim.  Had he been in Chicago he would have become an international star the night he took over from Daniel when the latter was hospitalized with a bad fever 15 minutes before a concert, a celebration of a Mozart Year that was to be televised world-wide.  Julien kept the same program which included accompanying Quastoff and Dorothea Roschmann, playing and conducting a Mozart concerto, as well as a symphony and an overture.  

I mentioned Busch.  During a quick tour of Scandinavia (UP) in 1949 I stopped over in Stockholm where the conductor's son, Hans Busch, a stage director, had staged a Barber of Seville--in Swedish.
Can you imagine the recitativo secco sung in a Scandinavian language?  I was rolling in the aisle--and
wrote a story that was published in Buenos Aires as part of that unfailing formula 'local boy makes good'.  Lest you wonder, we old agency hands were past masters at finding a 'local angle'.

Postlude:  That first year in the States (1948-49) I worked the overnight (graveyard) shift at the UP in New York and attended Columbia U during the day. (Jewish families were sticklers about degrees).
Sure enough, it did not exactly build up my muscles.  So one day I get a phone call--in Spanish with an atrocious German accent:  "Henry, es tu amiiiigo Hans...."  A week later, having secured a leave of absence from the UP, I was on my way to Bloomington, Indiana, to be his assistant at the Opera Workshop.  There I got my degree--and a dose of Americana that greatly helped me understand US politics by the time I came back to the Washington bureau--and was given the Latin beat, that included Puerto Rico (we had a big client, El Mundo, whose owner loved music) so guess where I went every time the weather got blustery.;.....to develop client relations, of course.  And, by the way, to visit Don Pau.

Abrazos,

Onkel Heinz