--- Douglas Clark <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > Yes. What more can one say? Another opera theme.
> Some years before he
> > died, the brilliant conductor Karl Bohm was
> appearing at the San Francisco
> > Opera. He was taken to dinner by the (also late)
> Terry McEwan, the
> > company
> > General Manager. Bohm put a few too many under
> his belt and, in vino
> > veritas, began saying things like "We failed, we
> didn't get them
> > all." McEwan summarily fired Bohm, who was
> invited never to return to the
> > San Francisco Opera. Some people do the right
> thing, but unfortunately
> > they don't manage governments, only opera
> companies.
> >
> > Ken
> >
> I am upset about B\"ohm. I have his set of Mozart
> operas on vinyl.
>
> The names of the artists are not always given and
> therefore not easy to
> identify. Study hard.
I wouldn't give up my Bohm Mozart personally -- I
figure of Yehudi Menuhin didn't mind playing and
recording with the man after the war I can forgive a
drunken remark or two--in vino veritas is usually not
veritas in toto, often only in in vino stupidus. And
this story about Bohm I haven't been able to document
via google. (Of course Bohm, who conducted the Vienna
Symphony during the war, was "involved" to some
degree. . . exactly what that means about his
recordings of Mozart I don't know.)
McEwan took over the SF Opera in 1981 and Bohm died in
August of that year, perhaps he died from the shaming.
There's a good short story I'm racking my brains to
remember in the Picador Book of Scottish Fiction about
a reclusive composer tainted by the Nazi era -- I
think it was by Douglas Dunn(!?). It has an
interesting twist.
=====
David Latane
http://www.standmagazine.org (Stand Magazine, Leeds)
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