[A-Consuelo]

А вот еще. Я просто не знаю, плакать или смеяться, когда читаю эту книгу. Столько сценок из прежних времен, все эти имена...

I had worked with Giulini on several occasions and was among his most sincere admirers. I was therefore pleased and curious when he asked me to meet him one morning as there was something he wanted to discuss with me. I turned up promptly and was all attention when he said with that serious charm of his: ‘I would like to tell you how much I have admired your work and how highly I think of you as a man and an artist.' I hastened to reply that this was also how I regarded him. Then he went on: 'I feel therefore that the time has come when you and I should drop the formal type of address to each other and use the more intimate “tu”.’
Only Giulini could have made such a courteous occasion out of what is usually a most casual change in relationships. With anyone else I might have been amused. With him I felt touched and honoured, and we sealed the bargain over a soft drink.

We were good friends and colleagues and shared some amusing experiences. He (Tancredi Pasero) was a bit of a ladies' man and once invoked my assistance in impressing the lady of his choice.
'Tito,' he said, 'I know you do some rather clever sketches and paintings. Do me a favour. Make a nice little sketch for me and I'll sign it and send it to someone I'd like to please.'
So I did a fetching little sketch of the Bay of Naples on which we were gazing and he signed it and sent it off to his innamorata of the moment. I never heard any more about it, but I hope that someone somewhere still likes her Tito Gobbi sketch signed 'Tancredi Pasero’.

Of the many professional engagements in 1971 one of my most poignant memories was of my visit to South Africa to sing Scarpia to Marie Collier's Tosca. Marie had done some remarkably good work at Covent Garden, as I knew personally from her Giorgetta in "Il Tabarro" and certainly from some of her Toscas. But she could sometimes be wild and undisciplined and needed a firm hand. When I arrived in Johannesburg I found an agitated Mr Reinecke, the head of the company, declaring that Marie was not at all good, that she was wild in her ideas about Tosca and that, in effect, he proposed to engage someone else in her place.
'Oh, no,' I said. 'Let me talk to her. We are old colleagues.' Indeed, Marie often called me 'Zio Tito' (Uncle Tito) and I felt she probably had some confidence in me.
At first she behaved like a rebellious child and shook her head when I said madly: ‘Marie, have you ever thought where Tosca came from? No? Well, she came from the Veneto, and we people who come from that region tend to have very strong feelings which we have to keep in check. In addition –‘ (and please note this, all you violent first-act Toscas!) ‘she was the Prima Donna of Rome, which is to say, in those days, the Prima Donna of the world. There was only one woman whose conduct would be more closely observed, and that was the Queen. So she conducted herself with dignity and style and "class" - and that is how you must play her.'
Whereupon she began to cry and suddenly came and put her head against me and said: ‘I don't really know anything about it, and I'm very frightened. Help me, Zio Tito - please help me.'
Oh, dear God! And the public think we have only vocal problems.

И что я искала - о Вагнере!
Back in Chicago I did something very unusual for me. I went to the opera, and, of all things, I chose Rheingold. Maestro Ferdinand Leitner, a great favourite of ours, was conducting and that was what tempted me. I will not say that I didn't envy Tilde and Carol Fox when they slipped out of the box for a surreptitious cigarette, but I did demonstrate my superior operatic stamina by remaining in my seat.