Music: Spurs at 24

One night five years ago, when young Thomas Schippers was conducting Menotti’s The Consul on Broadway, he got so excited that the baton slipped from his fingers and sailed over his shoulder into the audience. Since then, Conductor Schippers (pronounced shippers) has kept a firm grip on his baton, earned resounding kudos for his performances at the New York City Opera, guest stints with symphony orchestras, and this season, for another Menotti opera, The Saint of Bleecker Street (TIME, Jan. 10). Last week Kalamazoo-born Conductor Schippers, 24, won his golden operatic spurs: the Metropolitan Opera signed him to be the third U.S.-born regular conductor in its 71-year history.* He will bow in a new production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale next season, will add much-needed verve to the Met’s stable of good but greying and overworked conductors.

* The others: New Orleans’ Nathan Franko (off and on from 1899 to 1913), Detroit’s Max Bendix (1909-1910). Schippers is the youngest conductor at the Met since Walter Damrosch, who was signed in 1885 at 22.