Pittsburgh is famed more for steel than for music. When the Pittsburgh Symphony gave its first concert eleven years ago, it was arrested for breaking the Sabbath. Four years later a home-town boy named Antonio Modarelli began to conduct. Modarelli had studied extensively in Germany, composed there two operas, Hanns Frei and Sakuntala. His Ocean Flight, a ballet-pantomime about Lindbergh helped make him the only American in the Society of German Composers.
Pittsburgh ladies liked Modarelli because he was dark and dynamic, as attractively reserved off the platform as he was wild-haired...