Lawrence in Berlin

For a year U.S. officers in Berlin had been waiting for an occasion to introduce an Allied musician to the Germans, to prove how cultured the conquerors were.

Last week the chance came. Wagnerian Soprano Marjorie Lawrence (Australian-born, but a U.S. star) turned up in Berlin to sing for U.S. troops. With her as the attraction, the U.S. Military Government hastily sponsored its first concert for a mixed Allied-German audience. She agreed to perform without pay; so did the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and a Rumanian conductor named Sergiu Celibidache. The audience was mostly U.S. brasshats and diplomatic high-hats, along with some carefully screened Germans.

Soprano Lawrence, a polio victim, appeared in her now familiar wheel chair to sing the immolation scene from Wagner's Gotterdammerung. Said one German afterwards: "Wagner has now been officially denazified."

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