Lennie at La Scala

Conductor Leonard Bernstein was in a swivet. Traveling in Italy, he had agreed to conduct a regular performance of Milan's proud La Scala opera, a thing which no American had ever done before. He had five days in which to learn the score--Luigi Cherubini's Medea--but he had never conducted grand opera in his life and never even heard of Cherubini's Medea. To make things worse, he had a case of bronchitis. Finally, the score with which he had to work dated from 1797, and, like most old books, it gave off dust --to which Bernstein is allergic.

Nevertheless, the rehearsals went well. "The orchestra and I leaned the opera together," he says. Opera authorities gave him every break, canceled a conflicting rehearsal of Rigoletto to give him more time. A few hours before his curtain last week, Lennie was gripped by sinusitis, but La Scala medicos fussed over him, and the 35-year-old maestro apparently thrived on their treatment.

Once the curtain was up, he was the old assured Lennie:' he bounced athletically, contorted his features in the" dramatic passages, let his face relax to an expression of drugged bliss in the lyric ones. He sang to himself and punctuated the more stirring moments with hoarse growls.

The results were fine. Out of a rather stiff and unremarkable score, with few melodic arias and a mediocre book, Conductor Bernstein produced a lively and dramatic show. At the end, white-tied Milanese cheered up half a dozen curtain calls for leading Soprano Maria Callas and Bernstein, leaned into the orchestra pit to compliment the musicians, and filed out into the plush lobby gesticulating to each other like conductors. The" critics chimed in. Bernstein, wrote top Critic Giulio Confalonieri, is "absolutely predestined to music." Milan's eminent Corriere della Sera called him "indisputably brilliant." One of few sour notes came from an elderly admirer: "He's an American? Oh, too bad."

For Lennie Bernstein, the enthusiasm was gratifying, but it also aggravated his old problem: whether he is a conductor, composer, pianist, or some workable combination of one or more of these. Opera makes a new distraction. "I'm fascinated by it,"he says. With a leave of absence from his chores at Tanglewood promised for this summer, he thinks he may go back to Europe and write a "real big opera." He is quite sure he could resist the distraction of podium and keyboard, , if only because it is harder to,,make flying trips now that the Bernstein menage includes wife, child and governess. The only trouble is, he says, "when you're conducting, you itch to compose, and when you're composing, you itch to conduct."

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