I was also learning a thing or two, playing in "La Bohème" for the first Italian conductor I had met, Vincenzo Belleza. He wore the largest number of sweaters I have ever seen at one time on one man and was constantly peeling them off or struggling into them again; but the problem was that he followed the habit of Italian maestri at that time and did no conduct at all in any passages of the opera where the orchestra was not actually playing. In the first act of "Bohème" particularly where there is a great deal of gambolling about and unaccompanied singing by the students, I was totally lost and never knew when to come in again. << less