Persuasion

In the ordinary course Toscanini would have left the country on 17 June, the day after the final concert of the 1937 Festival, but two important pieces of business detained him an extra day. Such had been the level of enthusiasm for the Festival and so content was Toscanini with the orchestra that, not only did he agree in principle to a further Festival in 1938, but on the morning of 17 June he was happy to sign an agreement with Mase for two autumn concerts in the orchestra's forthcoming standard series, to take place in October/November. As he recognised, this agreement made it impossible for him to fulfil the Paris plans for Pelléas on or around the same dates. He had in any case been in some doubt about the motives of impresarios involved and the vocal estate of the proposed Mélisande: fourteen years had elapsed since Fanny Heldy (now forty-nine) had sung that Louise which occasioned his ‘indisposition’ for a Royal Philharmonic Society engagement and eleven since she had sung her renowned Mélisande under his baton at La Scala. Moreover, further weighting the scales in favour of the BBC, the two autumn concerts would enable Toscanini to redeem the promise made at his press conference in 1935 to conduct a British choir, since the two principal works in the planned programmes were to be Brahms's German Requiemand Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The Verdi Requiem, also mentioned in 1935, would have to await the next Festival.