Music: Toscanini's Friend

If treatments for his "glass arm" had not kept Conductor Toscanini so long in Italy (TIME, March 14 et ante), the world première of his friend Ottorino Respighi's Maria Egiziaca might have caused more stir last week. Toscanini planned to direct the production. But instead Composer Respighi came. He relegated Philharmonic Symphony players to a dark corner of the Carnegie Hall stage. In their usual place a great gilt-framed triptych stood, spattered with stars and angels. Angels opened the triptych, disclosed three panels rudely painted to suggest a ship docked in the harbor...

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