At 12:02 PM 1/23/2005, you wrote:
>--- Douglas Clark <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> > 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.

Opera people I know in San Francisco told it to me. If it's inaccurate
it's a bicoastal slander. There were a hundred rumors about German singers
and conductors who got through WW2. Wilhelm Furtwangler had to be
"de-Nazified." A cloud hung over Richard Strauss for years. Rudolf Bing,
a Jew who fled Austria for England right after the Anschluss, and who
managed Glyndebourne until the Met hired him to start the 1950 season, was
reluctant until late in his career to engage certain performers because of
their reputations, usually substantiated. Based on the fact that Karl Bohm
came to the Metropolitan at least in 1966 (I was present one Saturday
afternoon) to conduct Don Giovanni, either he was an accomplished
circumstantial liar who could cover his tracks or indeed the story may NOT
be true. Bing did not retire until the end of the 1971 season: his
opinions may have softened. When he was trying to cast his opening
production, Verdi's Don Carlo, the first choice or King Philip II of Spain
was the magnificent bass Gottlob Frick. He also had wartime reputation,
but oddly got exactly one performance as Hagen in Gotterdammerung in
1962. Erna Berger, a great soprano with a "rep," came to the Met in '49
and then managed two performances in the early 1950s--all of it was
Mozart--before she disappeared.

Is this a retraction? Maybe but not necessarily. As you said, Bohm might
have let the booze do the talking; and I will warrant that many human
beings have ready access to less-than-laudable character traits when they
drink to excess. Some things you cannot say "I'm sorry" for and expect it
to be overlooked. Or he might have hidden his past with at least as much
skill and brains as John Demjanjuk, the death camp guard who moved to
Cleveland to work in a steel mill. Herbert Von Karajan also came to the
Met, 1969, to conduct Wagner's Ring and some atypical pieces ("La
Perichole"!), and I've been hearing about Von Karajan connections since I
started attending opera 45 years ago. In the end I suppose--yawn--the
music is what matters. I'm not about to chuck my Bohm or Von Karajan
recordings either.

> (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.

The other possibility is that I was fed a bullshit diet.

Involvement? I was told a story some years ago by a rabbi in Pikesville,
MD. It concerned Hans Pfitzner, a so-so talented composer despite writing
the most boring opera in human history ("Palestrina"). Pfitzner thought
the Nazi government owned him something for his services ("I have done the
state some service and they know it.") So, the rabbi told me, Pfitzner
marched into Josef Goebbels' office and demanded a State pension as a
reward for his activities. Goebbels glared at Pfitzner and snapped
"Reward? How about a one-way ticket to Treblinka?" Pfitzner couldn't get
down the stairs quickly enough.

Ken

-------------------------------------------------

Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com

"This is the best of all possible worlds only because it is the only one
that showed up."-- Russell Edson