Walter Meyer wrote:

>And I once read that when Sir Thomas Beecham discovered that the
>Philadelphia Symphony had female players, he asked Ormandy it it didn't
>give rise to complications.  When Ormandy replied, "No", Beecham said,
>"What a pity."

Well Arturo Toscanini despite his great fame,(for me it was based only
in his superb memory,and Rythmical insigth),he was (in order to speak
sincerely) a kind of Opera conductor,as it happens whit Levine.  But the
principal fame of Toscanini maybe was his everyday histerycal disorders in
the rehearsals,and all that stuff almost everybody knows.  Speaking about
women into an orchestra,i am in doubt about this Toscanini opinion,because
one of his completely normal sides was:he like women a lot,maybe not
exactly to play an instrument, but for their beauty.But despite it i have
many fotographies in a book about Musical anecdotes (written by Rodolfo
Barbacci)where in three different orchestras are about 25 or 30% women,and
those fotos dated from the fifties.  Regards

Gerardo:.