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:.