When Artur Bodanzky guided the San Francisco Opera Company through Wagner's Ring last year (TIME, Nov. 4, 1935), the U. S. rang with his success. It was the first time San Franciscans had heard the great tetralogy in years, the third time they had ever heard it. Faces fell when the directors announced that Bodanzky would not return this season, that plump, pleasant Fritz Reiner would succeed him. Know-it-alls began to gossip that Reiner planned to pare down expenses and substitute cheaper instruments for the prescribed tub en quartet, the indispensable bass trumpet. In...
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