memoirs, 1933–77 ❧ 45
In the early 1960s, I had developed glaucoma, and the combination of
this with the chronic iritis of some thirty years’ standing was responsible for a
deterioration that was in no way arrested by an operation at the end of 1970.
The convalescence protracted itself, and concerts had to be cancelled. But
in the following spring, I revived suffi ciently to profi t by the visual pleasures
occasioned by my fi rst visit to Prague, that sad, shabby, ill-fated, but still most
beautiful of European cities. Lilacs and horse-chestnuts were in full bloom and
momentarily offset the lamentable decay of an ensemble of several centuries
of architectural masterpieces, and helped sometimes to distract attention from
the even more menacing erosion of human freedoms.
After further treatment by a Paris ophthalmologist, I regained an abil-
ity to read with reasonable facility, and by 1972, I had apparently recovered
my old stride and was playing probably better than ever before. But it soon
become evident that I no longer had the stamina that had carried me through
so many years, and every excessive strain or fatigue now took its toll in the
form of illness and cancelled concerts. Despite the many delights that accom-
panied them, the rigors of my four trips to Italy in 1972 were enough to bring
on almost anything. They included worse battles than usual with the Italian
government bureaucracy and a Benvenuto Cellini–like fl ight therefrom, near
murder by an irate cabdriver in Milan, a performance with the worst orchestra
with which I had hitherto played (later in the same year I was to play with an
even worse one!), a cold caught in Austria which so affected my hearing that
while playing Couperin in the small theater of La Scala, I was able to hear little
but occasional bursts of the “Triumphal March” from the rehearsal of Aida in
the main opera house.
But my fi rst concerts in Venice were a joy. At the time of full moon, I played
two concerts under the sponsorship of La Fenice^20 in the Palazzo Vendramin
on the Grand Canal. In Venice, I fi rst saw the newly published volumes of my
facsimile edition of the complete keyboard works of Scarlatti. Two ambitions
realized! Furthermore, if I had been a singer I would have been doubly pleased
that after my sponsoring by La Scala and La Fenice, I was headed for Bayreuth
(not for the Festspielhaus, thank heaven, but to that jewel of rococo decora-
tion, the Bibiena).^21 It was here in Bayreuth that I consummated a heresy
that forty years earlier would have shaken me with horror; I admitted that I
would willingly give all of the Ring for that fi rst act of Traviata which had rung
in my ears ever since I had left its Venice rehearsal in order to catch a train
northward.
- Venetian opera house, opened in 1792, destroyed several times by fire,
reopened in 2005.
- Margravial Opera House, interior designed by Giuseppe Galli Bibiena and
built between 1744 and 1748.
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