BULOW BITS

If you’re compiling quotes from history’s most savage conductors, Hans von Bülow basically gives you a whole chapter.

He had a special dislike for many tenors. About one he said: “Do you call that singing? I call it a disease.” During a *Lohengrin* rehearsal in Hanover he got so fed up that he threw his baton at the singer and shouted: “You don’t sing like a ‘Knight of the Swan’—you sing like a knight of the swine!”

Someone once noticed the main portrait in his apartment was the ballet leader. Bülow explained: “She’s the only woman on stage who doesn’t distress me with bad singing.”

He was also brutally literal. In Copenhagen he was introduced to an excellent cellist with a very large nose. Bülow stared for a second, declared, “That nose is impossible!” and fled.

Then there was the duke who insisted on hearing a piece Bülow didn’t want to play. Next rehearsal, Bülow appeared wearing a gigantic fake nose and said, “Gentlemen, you’re wondering where I got this nose? His Highness gave it to me yesterday.”

Petty? Absolutely. Brilliant musician? Also absolutely.