VICTOR HERBERT - THE BIOGRAPHY OF AMERICA'S GREATEST COMPOSER OF ROMANTIC MUSIC

The quotation is the love theme from Hero and Leander 201 VICTOR HERBERT VICTOR HERBERT ONE autumn night in the eighties a young Irishman of twenty-seven, who had passed most of his life in Germany, took his place in the orchestra pit of the Metropolitan Opera House to play the cello. His name was Victor Herbert. He had just arrived in New York, and from his obscure seat he looked around curiously at the mass of faces glowing weirdly in the vast, dim auditorium. He felt a symbolic force in the crowding immensity of the place, in the numerous dazzling points of light that leaped back from the precious stones on the hands and breasts of the women who sat in the two great curving tiers of boxes. What future was he to have in this land The conductor emerged from the depths beneath the stage to his eminence on the podium. Applause rolled over the heads of the musicians below him. He raised his baton and the opera began. Twenty-five years later, the same immigrant heard from the stage of the same theater the performance of an opera he himself had written. Similar rolls of applause came from the audience, but this time not to CO VICTOR HERBERT pass over his head in the pit. The acclaim was for him, a tribute to his artistry.