The opera came to a halt. On to the stage of Philadelphia's Academy of Music, set to represent a Viennese ballroom of the bustle and muttonchop era, someone dragged a microphone. Entered a lean, intense, bug-eyed young man in white tie & tails. In his hand he bore a mouth organ. Impassively and impressively he proceeded to render a solo. The Blue Danube. Such was the operatic debut of the world's greatest harmonicist, Larry Adler.
The loud Philadelphian applause testified that it was all perfectly natural. The opera, old Vienna's "grand operetta" Die Fledermaus (The Bat) by Waltz King Johann Strauss, furnishes...
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