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He was Nino Marcelli, a swart young man who laughingly says he was "born in Italy, educated in South America [Chile], civilized in the U. S." He was a protege of Pietro Mascagni of Milan, an A. E. F. bandmaster, a national prizewinning composer.
For six years he had been drumming, encouraging, scolding, bullying appreciation of music into the skulls of San Diego (Calif.) high- school students and their elders, trying to assemble a San Diego Civic Orchestra. He found a retired doctor to play the cello, an undertaker to blow the trombone, a jazz orchestra leader to beat drums, clash cymbals. He found a high-school boy bassoonist. Squads of musicians were conscripted from anywhere, everywhere. Conductor Marcelli sorted, trained, pleaded, slaved, succeeded. Finally, 80 strong, they played. The largest theatre in San Diego was packed. The able 80 threaded such intricacies as Wagner's Die Meistersinger prelude, Tschaikovsky's "Symphony Pathetique" and "March Slav," Liadov's "Enchanted Lake," without mistake or falter. Dusolina Giannini, expensive Philadelphia songstress, rendered arias. San Diegans cheered; cast about for means of making Marcelli's Symphony Orchestra permanent—a civic asset easily equal, they felt, to the boasted Los Angeles Symphony.