Gone with the Wind

No one's appreciative words seemed quite adequate to the task. But the New York Times's Critic' Olin Downes tried. Toscanini's radio performance of Otello, he wrote,'was "a performance literally unsurpassable, or indeed to be equaled in the hearing of this generation. . . . Mr. Toscanini achieved a reading of this great score which represented the summit of his own interpretive powers. . . .

"When it was over, and the time for the hoopla and the recalls and all that had come, no one wanted to make very much noise, or had very much to say, or even looked his neighbor fully in the face as he filed from the [studio] hall."

Like all broadcasts, when it was over, it had vanished with the wind. NBC had recorded the program for its files, but Toscanini was not likely to let such a version--with studio coughs and occasional minor imperfections of playing--be released to the public. Toscanini, who is now 80, had agreed to record full-length operas for RCA Victor, but had still to make the first one, La Traviata. And with the Petrillo recording ban only ten days away, it was likely to be some time before he got around to it.

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