Reiner's Ring

When Artur Bodanzky guided the San Francisco Opera Company through Wagner's Ring last year (TIME, Nov. 4, 1935), the U. S. rang with his success. It was the first time San Franciscans had heard the great tetralogy in years, the third time they had ever heard it. Faces fell when the directors announced that Bodanzky would not return this season, that plump, pleasant Fritz Reiner would succeed him. Know-it-alls began to gossip that Reiner planned to pare down expenses and substitute cheaper instruments for the prescribed tub en quartet, the indispensable bass trumpet. In London last summer Reiner quietly persuaded Philadelphia's Mrs. Curtis Bok to lend him four tuben and a bass trumpet, had them shipped to San Francisco, hired four members of the Oakland Symphony to practice up on them. This week when he hopped the Overland Express for New York, he left behind him an orchestra warm with his praises, a jubilant press, an Opera Association beaming unanimously over San Francisco's most momentous season.

Like Bodanzky, the chunky guest conductor engaged Metropolitan stars to sing the title roles. He swelled the orchestra to 73, omitted Siegfried so that Flagstad would have a less arduous schedule, reversed the order of the operas so that Gotterddmmerung could be given on the Saturday it would not conflict with a big football game.* Graciously, he staggered performances so that stars could keep appointments elsewhere. Reiner clashed only once with Stage Director Armando Agnini, over a new $1,800 steam apparatus for Gotterddmmerung to help Valhalla go up realistically in flames & smoke. The conductor barred the steam because it hissed too loud. Pleaded Agnini : "But, Maestro, there will be a scandal if we don't have the steam. The audience is expecting it." Flashed Reiner: "There will be another scandal if there is steam. The conductor will leave the pit." No steam was used, except less turbulent steam from the back of the stage.

Still only 47, Reiner has held guest conductorships in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna, more recently with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic. He led the Cincinnati Symphony through nine distinguished years, heads the Orchestra and Opera Departments of Philadelphia's Curtis Institute. He is considered an expert on Wagner, likes the moderns as well as Bach, snaps crack photographs on his Contax (see cut).

--Goetterdammerung is so long that it was given in an afternoon and evening session.

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