A conductor we were both surprised and delighted to meet at Glyndebourne appeared unheralded in 1955 to conduct Verdi's Falstaff.... The prelude to Verdi's Falstaff, that ripe and miraculous fruit of the extreme old age of the great composer, starts with a solo down beat for conductor. It must be observed as a dead silence by the whole orchestra, and give way to sizzling accents on the remaining three beats of the bar. There's something about the way a conductor does this which is right, or wrong. On this occasion, before he got to the bottom of the beat, we knew that this handsome young conductor was going to be among the greatest. His name is Carlo Maria Giulini - and in the many performances we gave with him there and later at Edinburgh, as well as on many a future concert platform, he was to confirm this impression to the full. << less