Maestro in New England

For an opera about conspiracy and murder in colonial Boston, Giuseppi Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) has had small success in the U.S. But there are those who love it, and among them is Arturo Toscanini.* Months ago he made up his mind to conduct it again for an American audience (last time: at the Metropolitan Opera in 1915), and began restudying the score.

At 86, and perhaps a bit tired from bouts with illness this season, Toscanini made a change in his routine for the opera. Most of the piano rehearsals with the soloists took place in his home, instead of at NBC's Manhattan studios. But when everybody got together for the first orchestral rehearsals, the severe old man was obviously enjoying himself. At one point, when a percussionist thumped out four beats instead of three, Toscanini's only comment was a mocking but good-natured "Ciao!" (hello).

For both rehearsals and the two-part broadcasts of Ballo last week and this week, the maestro unobtrusively slipped on his spectacles just before he administered the downbeat. But although his figure was bent with age, it still bent flexibly with the music. His left hand, which he sometimes used to hold the podium rail, stiffly waved, patted and sliced the air while the world's most expressive baton all but drew pictures of the sounds he wanted. The orchestra played its heart out, and the soloists and chorus outdid themselves, actually made the old war horse sound like a Class One opera.

When the cheering audience had left the hall and the musicians had packed their instruments, Toscanini admirers were still marveling at the .conductor's vitality during his grueling hour and a half on the podium. "It's like the Toscanini I knew eleven years ago," said one. As for Arturo Toscanini, he is looking forward to a month of rest and study before he gives his next six concerts.

* Verdi's libretto was inspired by the 1792 murder of Sweden's King Gustavus III at a masquerade in the Stockholm Opera House, but in 19th century Italy, a direct reference was impolitic. So Verdi and his librettist shifted the shenanigans to colonial Boston, disguised the King as Britain's colonial governor, "Riccardo, Earl of Warwick."

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