In the long dull days of touring, Howell Glynne, the Baron Ochs in "Rosenkavalier" at that time, used to love to tell of the night when he appeared to have totally lost his voice. In spite of his whispered protestations that he could not possibly sing, Kleiber, who had come to his dressing-room, told him not to worry: "Just leave it to me." When the Baron's first entry came, Kleiber drew an expressive finger across his throat and gestured to us to play pianissimo. At first Howell really had no voice but he gradually grew in confidence until by the end of the opera he was singing in full voice - no one quite knows how unless, as I genuinely believe, the force of Kleiber's personality was literally hypnotic. I had a minor mechanical disaster of my own one night in "Rosenkavalier", the first since the hiccups in "Tristan", which not even Kleiber could solve. We had hardly started playing when the pad came off a key on my basset-horn and I missed quite a bit while I felt about on the floor for it, had the good luck to find it and ram it back on the instrument where it held until the end of the performance. After the first act I hurried round to apologize to the maestro. "Don't worry - I sang it for you," he reassured me. "And anyway, only you and I and Strauss in heaven will have noticed." Quite simply, there has never been anyone like him. << less