The opera was put on with great planning and care, including clever set changes for the twenty scenes. Milhaud saw to it that the opera’s narrators–there were three of them–were dressed in 1910-vintage costumes in keeping with the period in which he had written the opera, even though he thought that the period in question was one of “excruciatingly bad taste.”

To his way of thinking, the opera was flawlessly produced.

The audience reacted to it with “violent demonstrations of feeling.”

Milhaud blamed the protests on the opera’s colloquial language and little realistic details in the action that occasionally prompted laughter. Whistles and catcalls and “untimely applause” came one after the other until a backlash arose in Milhaud’s defense.

Following his custom of mingling with the people in the cheaper seats during performances of his works, Milhaud was in the gallery, where students were shouting “dirty bourgeois” at the detractors in the boxes and orchestra seats. A young man next to him, applauding vigorously, became impatient with Milhaud’s lack of demonstration, turned to him and said, “Why don’t you clap--shout–cheer? You ought to come back every time they play this opera! I’m here every time to defend it!”

During intermission Milhaud introduced himself to his ardent young supporter and made a point of inviting him to all of his opening nights from then on.

In response to the protests, Opéra Comique director Albert Carré placed on every seat a copy of sarcastic reviews that, early on, had attacked Claude Debussy’s masterpiece Pelléas and Mélisande. The text of leaflets ended with the caution “Be careful.”

But it was not enough to save La Brebis égarée, which folded after four nights.

As for news from Paris, I have none except for the vigorous rehearsing of Meyerbeer’s new opera L’Étoile du Nord at the Opéra Comique, for which he tells me he has re-used only four or five pieces from his Feldlager in Schliesen, all the rest of the three acts being entirely new.

Then there’s the complete success of the instrument that I’ve often mentioned to you, which they insist upon naming Piano-Liszt. It has three keyboards--plus a keyboard of two staves with attached pedal--and without being too loud or complicated, it produces a harmonious and well-proportioned combination of piano and organ. Berlioz heard it and liked it, and in a month the instrument will be here at Weimar, where I’ll stay put for the whole winter.

We also heard in Paris, Wagner and I, two of Beethoven’s last quartets, the E-flat and C-sharp minor, played by Mr. Maurin, Mr. Chevillard and company. These gentlemen earned a special reputation last winter with their performance of B.’s last quartets, which seems well deserved to me.

The next day [Charles Joseph] Sax produced for our benefit his large family of Saxophones, Sax horns, Sax Tubas, etc., etc. Several of them, especially the Tenor Saxophone and the Alto Saxophone, will be extremely useful, even in our ordinary orchestras, and the ensemble has a truly magnificent effect....

Remény has your room at Altenburg and had a very successful debut in the Weimar orchestra as the leader of the first violins the day before yesterday at the performance of the Flying Dutchman, which I conducted. The hall was packed, the performance better than the previous ones, and the audience more sympathetic.

In ten days I’ll return to my desk to conduct William Tell and then Tannhäuser....

The opening work of the Festival was to be Mendelssohn’s Elijah, with a prominent singer, the Scottish baritone Andrew Black, in the title role. The concert was to begin at eleven in the morning, and at nine o’clock, tenor Ben Davies went to Black’s room to see if he was ready for breakfast. He was greeted by Black’s “hollow voice” coming out of the pitch darkness, saying that he was not going to sing and was returning to London immediately.

During the night, the baritone had forgotten where the light in his bedroom was, and going up to bed the night before, he had walked into the wardrobe and gotten a black eye “of such gigantic proportions that he could not face the music,” figuratively or literally.

Davies declared that he would “jolly well” see to it that Black would perform. He locked him into his room, rushed off to a theater, stole some grease-paint, and painted out Black’s black eye so skillfully that not even those in the front row at the performance could tell that Elijah’s eye had been doctored. As to the performance, an audience member familiar with the singer remarked that Black “never sang Elijah better in his life.”

As assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic twenty-five-year-old Leonard Bernstein was to sit in on all rehearsals and learn the scores well enough to be able to conduct them in place of Artur Rodzinski or any guest conductor.

On November 13, 1943, as he attended the Town Hall recital of a friend, Bernstein had a secret. Philharmonic business manager Bruno Zirato had called him to say that the eminent Bruno Walter had come down with the flu and might not be able to conduct the next afternoon’s Carnegie Hall performance.

The concert would be broadcast on CBS radio, making it a national event.

At nine o’clock the next morning Zirato called Bernstein again.

“Well, this is it. You have to conduct at three o’clock in the afternoon. No chance of a rehearsal. Bruno Walter…is all wrapped up in blankets at the hotel and says he will be happy to go over the scores with you.”

The broadcast part of the concert consisted of Schumann’s Manfred overture, Theme, Variations, and Finale by Miklós Rózsa, and the massive, complex Don Quixote of Richard Strauss—none of which Bernstein had ever conducted. After the broadcast, the concert would continue with Wagner’s Meistersinger Prelude, the only piece that the orchestra had not performed recently, but which Bernstein had conducted three years previously at a Boston Pops Esplanade concert.

When Bernstein stopped by the Carnegie drugstore for a cup of coffee, a sympathetic druggist gave him two pills. “Look,” he said, “before you go on, just pop these into your mouth. One will calm you down, the other will give you energy.”

Backstage before the concert, Bruno Zirato gave him a hug and said, “Hey, Lenny, good luck, baby.”

Bernstein took the pills from his pocket and threw them as far as he could, saying “I’m going to do this on my own.”

And he did. The concert propelled Leonard Bernstein into the ranks of world-class conductors.