The U.S. opera season gets off to a fortissimo start in San Francisco this week. The opening Lohengrin will star a new Swedish tenor named Set Svanholm and the Metropolitan Opera's Astrid Varnay. In the orchestra pit will be 47-year-old, parrot-nosed William Steinberg, a favorite conductor of the paladin of all conductors, Arturo Toscanini.
One day in 1933 Steinberg found his dismissal notice scrawled on the blackboard of the Frankfurt Opera House. All about him were other Jewish musicians discharged from opera and symphony orchestras. Steinberg organized the best of them into a Jüdische Kulturbund orchestra, which he conducted for two years...