Music: In Salzburg

On the swift-rushing River Salzach in the Austrian Tyrol lies Salzburg, rimmed on three sides by operatic-looking mountains. There Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born and there on a lake outside the town Max Reinhardt owns a baroque castle, where he long ago began giving sumptuous parties for his troupe and for such visitors as Arturo Toscanini, Feodor Chaliapin, Paul Drennan Cravath, Greta Garbo, Edward of Wales.

About 15 miles from Salzburg in Bavaria is Berchtesgaden, Adolf Hitler’s summer snuggery. Last year the Realmleader tried, with an eminent lack of success, to sabotage the Salzburg music festival by keeping German artists and German tourists from attending (TIME, Sept. 3). This year Herr Hitler had even more cause to think bitterly of the town across the border. Salzburg hotels were full to overflowing, 10,000 foreign visitors having arrived as the music season got under way early in August. Day after day, Tomaselli’s and the Café Bazar were as international as the Place de 1’Opéra in Paris. Packjammed night after night were performances of Reinhardt’s Jedermann and Faust, operas and concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic under Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Erich Kleiber, Felix Weingartner. Last week with the festival in its final days, neither love nor money could obtain tickets for any Toscanini event or for the final Walter performances of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

Aside from a single Tristan und Isolde, poorly sung but flamingly conducted by Walter, Salzburg this year heard little of Wagner. It liked best the effete Viennese gaiety of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, the bubbling Italian gaiety of Verdi’s Falstaff, the pure charm of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutte, Il Seraglio, Figaro. Toscanini electrified audiences with Beethoven’s Fidelio but he also made a great point of reviving a disused ”Reformation” symphony by Mendelssohn, banned in Germany because its composer was a Jew. This he played last Sunday in a broadcast to the U. S., in a series sponsored by American Radiator Co.

At Toscanini’s first orchestra concert last fortnight arrived Jagatjit Singh Bahadur, Maharaja Raja I Rajgan of Kapurthala, and a pretty woman. They were late. Ignoring a strict Salzburg rule, the lean old Maharaja & friend pushed by a doorkeeper, swept down the aisle to their seats in the first row. Toscanini, who had lifted his baton to begin the last movement of a Mozart symphony, heard the commotion, turned around to glare, bowed ironically, growled: “Well, I can wait.” The sympathetic audience broke into loud cheers which for a moment the flustered Maharaja seemed to take as a personal ovation. Then the flashing-eyed Maestro turned back, flung his orchestra into the Mozart, whirled them through it at angry top speed.

Never tiring of describing the wonders wrought by Toscanini, critics nonetheless found time to talk of singers. Ablest were Sopranos Lotte Lehmann and Dusolina Giannini, both of whom were frequently to be seen around Salzburg wearing Tyrolian peasant garb. Lehmann sang in Fidelio, in Der Rosenkavalier. Unable to appear earlier because of acute inflammation of her larynx, Giannini last week sang Donna Anna in Walter’s suavely molded Don Giovanni, was this week Mistress Ford in Falstaff which Toscanini made glittering only at the expense of long, temper-frazzling rehearsals.

No kin to Banker Amadeo Peter Giannini, Soprano Giannini, 32, belongs to an exuberantly musical Philadelphia family. Her father, Ferruccio, was an oldtime opera singer. Her mother played the violin. Sister Euphemia sings. Brother Ferruccio plays the cello. Brother Vittorio is a composer who has just completed a symphony dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, commissioned by the New York State Roosevelt Memorial Committee. Last week it was reported that the Metropolitan Opera will put on his workmanlike, melodious opera, Lucedia, with Sister Dusolina singing the lead.* This was unlikely, and if Soprano Giannini appears at the Metropolitan it will be her U. S. opera debut. In 1923 she was suddenly called upon to pinch hit for Anna Case at a Carnegie Hall concert. She received excellent critical notices, earned $50,000 that year, has since toured the U. S. giving recitals. Her constant companion is a Cincinnati widow named Mrs. Bertha Lederer. A drawing card in European opera houses, dark-haired Dusolina Giannini sang Aïda, Carmen and Tosca early this summer in Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna.

*Last week formation of a Metropolitan Opera Guild was announced, with Mrs. August Belmont (oldtime Actress Eleanor Robson) as chairman. For $10 a sustaining member will be entitled to attend one Metropolitan dress rehearsal, one opera lecture. Contributing members at $30 get two rehearsals, two lectures, two orchestra seats for one opera performance. A $100 patron may attend two rehearsals, two lectures and get one subscription seat for the 14-week season.