The intensity just carried you away. At a certain point, I just started to cry from being so moved by what was going on. It didn't have to do with what was happening in the dramatic moment. It was the rightness of what Vmcent was doing, the sort of deep knowledge he had of the score and the love of it. On the podium, La Selva can cut a rumpled figure, cuffs shooting out, all unruly, from the sleeves of his swallowtail coat.
Some people insist there is a plot.
For whatever reason, La Selva's accomplishments at City Opera seem to have sat ill with the boss. There was no big blowup. La Selva was silently made to disappear. Rudel pooh-poohs the suggestion that it was a matter of jealousy. I wanted someone with basic stylistic information to impart to our people about Italian opera at its best, not its worst.