*http://tinyurl.com/2wx57o *is about the crisis threatening one of
Europe's oldest opera houses (probably not "the" oldest, as the story
states), Naples' San Carlo Theater.

The story speaks of the role of British troops in rescuing the house,
but it does not mention American participation, something I heard about
in Seattle some three decades ago in a first-person narrative from a man
who was there.

According to Glynn Ross, Seattle's late Mr. Opera, he started his
management career as a GI in Naples, at the conclusion of World War II,
staging productions in the San Carlo, using local talent, British and
American troops in a city devastated by the war.

One trick in that difficult situation from the man who many years later
put his "Get Ahead with Salome" banners all over Seattle was to march
local and GI "Aida" supernumeraries in one door and out the other,
continuing their appointed rounds outside the theater to enter again
and again in an extra-lengthy Triumphal March.  Gosh, I miss Glynn...

Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
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