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In his place went Wilfred Pelletier, young French Canadian who for several years has done inestimable service behind the scenes at the Metropolitan and worn shyly the title of assistant conductor. In the summer season at Ravinia Park, to be sure, he has been a full-fledged conductor, but in Manhattan he has never had an opportunity to prove what he could do. Perhaps that was why, at Philadelphia, he scooted half apologetically through the fiddlers to the conductor's stand, bowed a stiff little bow and led off with a careful, restrained overture. But once the curtain went up, Carmen swept along at a vigor- ous pace. There were no tedious interludes between tunes, and for the first time this season the color in Bizet's score was made to match the color on the stage. To Jeritza, for her glamorous, dominating personality, to Martinelli for his loud, lush arias went the acclaim. They, how ever, sensitive to the merits of Pelletier's performance, brought him out on to the stage, left him there alone to take his first bow as conductor of a Metropolitan opera.
Ave
A second violinist yawned and hoped that no one had seen him—but the lot of a second violinist is a hard one, with rehearsal after rehearsal to fiddle through and three or four performances a week, —just so many notes and so many measures, all subordinated to the regular beat of the man who should happen to be in command. . . .
Down in the third row of the orchestra a stiff-shirted patron looked at his program and patted a perfunctory hand over gaping jaws . . . the 2,256th concert of the Philharmonic Orchestra . . . the overture to Sinigaglia's Le Baruffe Chiozzotte, Brahms' Second Symphony, Honegger's Pastorale d'Ete and Pacific 231, Elgar's Enigma Variations. ... To be sure, he had heard much of the Italian Arturo Toscanini who was scheduled to conduct, heard that he could make big music out of indifferent material, but out of Honeg- ger, Sinigaglia and the Elgar Variations? The lady beside him dropped her bag: he stooped to pick it up, sat up in time to see a great Manhattan audience getting to its feet, beating its palms together, cheering. He saw a grizzled, little man bowing from the stage, hurriedly, as if he wished all the demonstration over before it had scarcely begun. He saw him tap attention, wheel around. He heard the Sinigaglia fairly bubble with exhilaration, the Honegger noise expand into something almost heroic, the Elgar Variations spread surely and subtly into a thousand glowing colors, the Brahms become something magnificently new—the creation of Toscanini himself and of his assistants who played as they have not played since he was with them last season. . . .
When the concert was done, Manhattan critics hurled themselves into taxis, sped to their offices, sat there over their typewriters fumbling for words. Lawrence Oilman (The Herald-Tribune) finally wrote: "The greatest conductor in the world has returned to us." Samuel Chotzinoff (The World): "The center of the musical world shifted from Milan* to New York. . . . Perhaps it were better for Mr. Toscanini to make one or two appearances and depart; for if we are to hear him every week the musical scribes will be forced to shut up shop for lack of flaming adjectives."
*Where Toscanini is director of La Scala Opera House.