Education: Salzburg

Once there was a riding school in Salzburg, Austria. Max Reinhardt, whose castle—Leopoldskron—overlooks the crenelated streets of the old cathedral town, sent some weeks ago an army of mercenaries against the riding school with billhook, adz, hammer, saw. They tore out the stalls, put in a pipe organ. A choir loft went where the bins had been; the walls, which still preserved the smell of saddle-soap, disinfectant and horse-manure, were transformed into cathedral columns; the tanbark became an amphitheatre for the quality. There, last week, gathered a number of deposed princes, English lords and their ladies, U. S. women and their husbands, ambassadors, famed orchestral conductors and the 1,000 fathers and mothers of the hamlet. The Salzburg festival had begun.

On the first night, Hugo Hoffmansthal’s Welt Theatre Allegorical Pageant Play was given. “One of Reinhardt’s greatest triumphs . . .” representatives of the press dutifully wired to their papers.

Rosamond Pinchot straddled a bicycle. Her white twill dress deserting her heroic limbs, her short hair a pennant in the Alpine winds, she dashed to the riding school for a rehearsal.

“Did you know,” said Director Reinhardt, “that The Miracle has been produced in six villages and towns around here. I thought it might interest you. It is just one of those things. …”

Producer Morris Gest pursued the famed Director with a document from the Equity Players inviting him to come to the U. S.

Writer Arnold Bennett conversed with Miss Pinchot between the acts of a rehearsal of The Miracle. “A very great man,” said he of Director Reinhardt.

Lady Diana Manners drove up at the wheel of a dusty limousine piled with innumerable trunks. She had started from Munich at 5 in the morning to arrive in time to rehearse.

After the final curtain fell on the first performance, Miss Pinchot and Lady Diana were called out again and again. Miss Pinchot, a slender, vigorous nun, was a rare contrast to the stolid Teutonic actress Sari Fedak, whose interpretation is more familiar to European audiences.

Salzburg hoteliers ran out of goats’ cheese, black bread and beds. Celebrated visitors, unable to procure respectable lodgings or to endure the hard cots and sunburnt goitres of the local peasantry, appealed for aid to Herr Reinhardt.

Conductor Karl Muck, with a company from the Vienna Staatsoper rehearsed Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Franz Schalk prepared to conduct The Marriage of Figaro.

Herr Reinhardt offered the houseless visitors beds in his castle. Said he: “They had no place to go. That is this festival for you. It is just one of those things. . . .”