Music: Fulfillment in Manhattan

One night, 41 years ago, the Budapest Opera, had a crisis of another sort. It was nearly curtain time, and the conductor was ill. Who would conduct Carmen? In desperation, the director grabbed the 18-year-old singing coach, and ordered him into the pit. “I had no preparation,” says Fritz Reiner of that night. “It was sink or swim. I swam.”

In time, Fritz Reiner’s swimming got better and bolder. He was given a regular conductor’s job in Budapest, then became director of the Dresden Opera, and an authority on Wagner, Richard Strauss, and his own favorite, Mozart. But in the U.S., where he has spent the past 26 years, he has been known primarily as a symphony conductor.

A plump, stubby and explosive fellow on the podium, he took over the Cincinnati Symphony from famed Eugene Ysaÿe, gave it nine of the best years of its life. In Pittsburgh, which he quit last spring after a fight over managerial economies, he was known as a martinet who knew how to command good music. But all these years Fritz Reiner has been hankering for his old love. “A conductor must conduct opera,” he says. “His life is not complete unless he does.”

Last week, the Metropolitan Opera made his life complete. It signed Reiner to conduct this fall, thereby greatly bolstering its lackluster staff of conductors.