Salzburg, 1937

Because it is full of salt, the Alpine town that grew up around the oldest abbey in Austria was called Salzburg. In the Middle Ages Salzburg was nicknamed the German Rome, and thousands of pilgrims flocked to the tremendous pageants which Princes of the Church put on there every year. In 1842 Salzburg held its first music festivals in honor of Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Salzburg's most famous son. Later Mozart festivals were meagrely attended, poor things after the city's golden past. Hardly anybody visited Salzburg except hunters and fishers who climbed up to buy wine from monks at the Peterstift, or tourists interested in crumbling Schlosser and gay peasant clothes.

In 1918 a group of musicians decided to enlarge the Mozart festivals to include other composers. Eight years later the old Winter Riding School was converted into a Festspielhaus, to seat 1,400. Salzburg's growing musical reputation blossomed powerfully in 1934 when Conductor Arturo Toscanini snubbed Nazi Bayreuth in favor of Salzburg. Thenceforth the Salzburg Festivals became the place for thousands of U. S. and European tourists to go, the playground for international socialites, the highest appointment singers & players could hope for. By last week the scurry and noise of thousands arriving, unpacking, celebrating, made the baroque little city look as important as it had been when princely, medieval spectacles brought all Europe to its door.

Steelman Myron Taylor was again at the Grand Hotel de l'Europe. So were Crown Prince Gustav Adolf of Sweden, Actor Sacha Guitry. the Bishop of Winchester, Tenor Richard Tauber. rich Mrs. Harry Guggenheim of New York. Elsa Maxwell, funster for the unimaginative rich, was expected back again. In the swank Cafe Bazar and Count Alfred Salm's tearoom across the way, chatter about the Duke & Duchess of Windsor's impending arrival all but submerged the news that King Carol of Rumania, King Leopold III of Belgium, Prince Umberto of Italy, the young Franklin Roosevelts were coming too.

Arturo Toscanini was working his men to a frazzle fo/ the traditional opening performance, Fidelio, on July 24. The spunky old man refused again to have Nazi stations pick up his broadcasts, relented only when Germany threatened to spoil Die Meistersinger by withdrawing two of its most distinguished stars--Baritone Hermann Nissen (Hans Sachs),Tenor Henk Noort (Walther). Herbert Graf had plotted entirely new staging for Mozart's Magic Flute, and Toscanini planned to conduct it four times. Of the 27 performances scheduled Toscanini would direct twelve, two more than Conductor Bruno Walter. To Walter was allotted Mozart's Don Giovanni and Marriage of Figaro, Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, Weber's Euryanthe. Conductor Hans Knapperts-busch, new to Salzburg, had the cards stacked in his favor. Rosa Pauly was to sing the title role in his production of Strauss's Elektra and nobody alive is better qualified. For the Marschallin in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, he was to have Soprano Lotte Lehmann.

In last season's operas when she sang only under Toscanini, Lotte Lehmann was the talk of the town. This year she will again be the triumphant Leonore in his Fidelio. Soprano Lehmann is his great friend as well as his most gifted artist and the old maestro, usually aloof and unbending, becomes carefree in her company, plays with his dog Pitiu. Even though another man conducts the orchestra. Toscanini cannot but be grateful that Salzburg has given her a chance, as the Marschallin, to sing her greatest role, to fall in love with a man young enough to be her son, to sing a sad song to herself, when, sitting before her glass, she realizes that her youth is gone.

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