Dark, fierce-eyed Otto Klemperer has the awe-inspiring, fiery look of an Old Testament prophet. And, like Job, he has been sorely afflicted. Last week, at 61, after years of tragedy, Conductor Klemperer was making a European comeback.
Europeans remembered him as the great pre-Hitler conductor of the Berlin State Opera. Some Americans remembered his six-year success with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but more remembered sensational newspaper headlines about him.
In Leipzig, in 1932, while he was conducting a rehearsal, a railing back of him gave way and he fell over backwards, striking his head severely at the base of the skull. A brain...