If, as is often the case, the second night’s programme turns out to be another story, there is the almost inevitable query on the part of the critics: “Why didn’t you do this last night?” Many of them seem to be certain that there must have been personal reasons involved in the decision, some sort of private and individually colored favoritism being exercised....
I smile and agree.
The only possible answer is: “You’re right.... I’m wrong.”
[Epilogue: Unborn Tomorrow
]
IN the minds of many I am almost always associated with ballet more frequently than I am with any other activity in the world of entertainment.
This simply is not true.
While it is true that more than thirty years of my life have been intensely occupied with the presentation of dance on the North American continent, these thirty-odd years of preoccupation with the dance have neither narrowed my horizon nor limited my interests. I have simultaneously carried on my avowed determination, arrived at and clarified soon after I landed as an immigrant lad from Pogar: to bring music to the masses. As an impresario I am devoted to my concert artists.
The greatest spiritual satisfaction I have had has always sprung from great music, and it has been and is my joy to present great violinists, pianists, vocalists; to extend the careers of conductors; to give artists of the theatre a wider public. All these have been and are leaders in their various fields. My eyes and ears are ever open to discover fresh new talents in this garden for nurturing and development. At no time in the history of so-called civilization and civilized man have they been more necessary.
Throughout my career my interests have embraced the lyric and “legitimate” theatres: witness the Russian Opera Company, the German Opera Company, American operetta seasons, revues such as the Spanish Cablagata, and Katherine Dunham’s Caribbean compilations, as but two of many; the Habima Theatre, in 1926, the Moscow Art Players, under Michael Tchekhoff, in 1935, as representative of the latter.