Music: Local Boy

Athens awaited its moment of musical glory. Conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos was returning to his native Greece for the first time in 17 years, bringing with him the 104 members of his touring New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra. Thousands, many equipped with food and folding chairs, camped all night in front of the box office, and scalpers set the price of seats at $30. When Mitropoulos arrived four hours late at Athens’ airport, after a bumpy flight from Naples, hundreds of admirers greeted him with cries of “Yassou, yassou—Hello, hello.” and thrust bunches of tuberoses and laurel into his arms. But the maestro was in no mood for adulation. “I was sick as a dog,” he blurted into a microphone, “and I still feel ill. I’m very happy to be back. Now please let me pass.”

In Athens, lanky, egg-bald Conductor Mitropoulos (some members of the Philharmonic affectionately speak of him as “E.G.”—for egghead) visited the open-air Herodes Atticus Theater, told friends he was praying for rain so that he could play in an indoor theater and would not have to compete with the splendor of the floodlit Acropolis and Parthenon. He had his wish. A downpour washed the first concert indoors—not before King and Cabinet Ministers were consulted on the crisis. The switch came so late that Chief Baggage Master Vincent Jacoby tried to shoulder the orchestra’s harp into a bus in order to get it to the theater in time, was thrown out by the bus conductor. (He finally made it by hitching a ride on a truck.) King Paul, Queen Frederika and their two oldest children applauded the maestro’s interpretation of Schumann’s dramatic Second Symphony, and Mitropoulos joined them for a chat at the theater bar, where Princess Sophie served him a glass of water (a Mitropoulos must at intermission). When the royal couple extended him an invitation for lunch for the following day, the maestro casually replied: “I’ll try and be there if I’m not too exhausted.”

Back on the podium, he was as loose-jointed as a rag doll as he conducted Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. The frenzied applause, foot-stamping, cries of “bravo,” and rhythmic chants of Mitropoulos continued for a full 20 minutes. Next day, after an unscheduled concert for overflow crowds of the night before, Mitropoulos found that he was not too exhausted for the royal meal, after all. (“The King’s expecting me, and I hear he has a good lunch waiting.”)

By the close of his final concert that night (including Brahms’s Second and Skalkottas’ Greek Dances], Maestro Mitropoulos was getting used to Athens’ adulation. Said he: “I’m beginning to feel like Frank Sinatra.” But the Greeks had some other words for it. Mitropoulos, one critic wrote, conducted “with an Olympian serenity that was both Apollonian and Dionysian.”