Conductor Gallo

Into a Manhattan brownstone house that creakily yearns for the better old days, clump musicians of the Gallo Opera Academy. Thirty, sometimes 40 of them with viols, horns, drums, assemble in the large front room--a small symphony orchestra. Giuseppe G. M. Gallo heads the academy, directs the musicians to their places, hands out scores, worries his white moustache. When all is ready, there is a pause. The orchestra waits for the little child to lead them. He is Ottavio Arturo Gallo, 8, son of Headmaster Gallo. In his life, he has not had time to learn how to read music. But he knows it by heart, so he needs no score. An observer crowded into the hallway might see the pale little fellow's reflection in one of the tall rococo gilded mirrors that reach to the ceiling. His hair is not cut short like most boys'. His eyes are so brightly black one wonders at the Gallo family's assurance of his recovery from recent illness. He raps for attention quite oblivious of the incongruity of his command. Some of the musicians follow his baton with flashes of pride, for they too are Gallos, and this Gallo boy is the world's young est conductor. On May 14, he will give a public performance in the Engineering Society Auditorium in Manhattan. Few composers, conductors, instrumentalists and singers have achieved mature fame but were "child prodigies" to start with. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart showed talent at 4, genius (in public) at 6, which was Josef Hofmann's age at his piano debut and Nellie Melba's when she first sang to Melbourne, Australia. Handel was skilled on the organ, Meyerbeer on the piano, Schumann at composing, Kreisler and Joachim on the violin, at 7. Eight-year-old Ottavio Gallo (above) has Bach and Paganini as precedents for his precocity. Chopin, Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov were first famed as nine-year-olds. Mendelssohn, Schubert, Stravinsky and Boomfield-Zeisler waited until they were 10 before startling the music world; Beethoven, Saint-Saens and Florence Easton, until they were 11. Tetrazzini trilled at 12. Jenny Lind, Pietro Mascagni, Percy Grainger, Marcella Sembrich were obscure until 18.