The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 211

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Aqua-Ban. woman's water pill es he will make or for program notes he will write. "But he files them in the wastebasket," exclaims his wife, Charme. "When I empty wastebaskets around the house I hold the contents for several days. If he is missing a memo, or the draft of a letter, or some production notes, I know where to look." Bomhard's thriftiness goes beyond hoarding old envelopes to make notes on.

It dates back to the earliest days of KOA when he squirreled away aluminum foil, yards of velvet, an antique bench, anything that might serve as a prop or scenery some day. His ingeniousness fascinated George W. Norton a wealthy television and radio executive. Norton not only became an influential backer of KOA but also a friend. The two men developed an interest in cooking as a hobby and relaxation.

The Norton kitchen was the scene of their experiments which, as Mrs. Norton recalls, involved a lot of dirty dishes left. Norton's death in 1964 was a loss that Bomhard says he still feels keenly. FIRST 2 Ilk. mru iviinb I L-J BANK OF LOUISVHUE i We're making your banking easier.

"NE twilight, late this fall, he English has long been the aim of Bom-hard, who reasons that if people can tell what the singers are singing, they will enjoy the show more. Sometimes good translations into English were available; sometimes Bomhard did the English version. Smith, who knew Bomhard as long ago as 193S, remembers him as having fluent, if accented, English even then. Lucile Paris, the costumer for KOA, also remembers Bomhard in the New York days, when she was at Columbia at the same time he was. "He was ebullient then, just as he is now; full of enthusiasm." "I don't think he intended to stay on in Louisville when he first came here," Fletcher Smith said.

"As I remember, he had dreams of a career in New York." Bomhard seriously entertained making a change during the year 1960 when he was on a sabbatical from KOA, conducting at the Hamburg State Opera in Germany and doing Stage direction at smaller provincial opera houses. He was offered a post at Hamburg, a famous opera establishment, but he thought it over and turned it down. He explains why and the observation is typically flavored with wry -humor. "I could not have faced being the conductor of the 19th 'Boheme' of the season, when you don't even know who the singers are until the curtain goes up. It would be routine.

It would be dull. It would not be making opera exciting to listen to." ThERE was another reason. He got a cable from Louisville and the message was: KOA won't last another season without you. Hurry home. It was an appeal he could not ignore.

He had created the Louisville opera company, with the backing financial as well as moral of citizens who saw in KOA an addition of great merit to the cultural climate of the community. "Very few people in opera had what I had in Louisville," Bomhard said recently, in a retrospective mood. "I could shape and mold every aspect of an opera production, just the way I wanted it to be. That's rare." With so much going on in his head, Bomhard may strike the casual observer as abstracted or absent-minded. The opposite is true.

He has a keen ability to concentrate. He excludes extraneous detail, however, and he is always in a hurry. Once, en route from Indianapolis to Louisville, he pulled into a service station, got gas, tossed money at the attendant and pulled away. He was still connected to the gas tank. "I wonder why the attendant didn't disconnect the hose?" he mused later, oblivious of the probability that the attendant wasn't used to moving that fast.

Although Bomhard was very proud and happy to secure the New York prima donna, Johanna Meier, as the Senta of his first essay at Wagner, "The Flying Dutchman" of two seasons ago, that didn't mean that he would remember her name. "Mr. Bomhard came bustling into the first rehearsal I attended; he was a minute or two late and in a hurry," Miss Meier recalled. 'Hello, he called out. 'Where's meaning me.

I was in the shadow of a pile of is right I said, standing up. 'Let's We all laughed and Mr. Bomhard and I got along well from that first moment." The KOA "Dutchman" was her first time as Senta. Said Miss Meier: "We got more into the heart of that score in the five days I was in Louisville than in any subsequent production of 'Dutchman' I've been in, and I have sung it often, now." Singers sometimes fly to Louisville for one day or a few hours, solely to audition for Bomhard, who is notably sympathetic and constructive in his attitude toward vocalists. Like Miss Meier they find him "warm and approachable and concerned that we are comfortable." "He may lack the finesse of more celebrated conductors and sometimes he's a little ambiguous to follow but he's one of the most dedicated musicians I've ever known and singers can trust him to guide them out of any trouble they get into up there on the stage," said James Rago, the tympanist, who is in both the KOA orchestra and the Louisville Orchestra.

"He's got a strong will. When he is hollering at us or chastizing us, we know it's for the music and there is nothing personal in what he says." To Mrs. Sloane Graff a past president of the KOA board, "one of the enchanting things about Moritz is his fondness for the vision of impending doom. He thrives on crises. He always comes through, but he can be hysterically funny talking about how things go awry backstage.

His pre-performance discussions for 'Friends of the Opera are the best show in town. Such panache that man has!" Some of this is impromptu, of course, but Bomhard has too much respect for an audience and for language, itself to talk off the top of his head. He puts notes on scraps of paper for speech Bcnsinacr's Fin Furnitur tine 1866 Downtown, St. Mitthaws. Dixie Stor 0 Kentucky Cluster Man's 19 Diamond Clutter Srtlnyrffeww 91911 touched on that friendship and on other matters in a conversation that led, perhaps inevitably, to talk of retirement.

At the University of Louisville School of Music, where he is a professor, retirement at age 70 is mandatory. Bomhard was in the living room of his home, surrounded by comfortable furniture and a few handsome old antiques from Germany. Any number of tables and chairs from the room have been used in his operas. He looks like a welterweight boxer, grown old but still trim. His hair is white and often tousled.

His blue eyes telegraph the mood of the moment: in them you read whether he is merry, morose, interested or bored. "I would like just to fade away," he said, perhaps unconsciously paraphrasing the famous MacArthur quote. "I would not like any emotional thing to come up that would harm the Kentucky Opera Association. The time for men like me is over. Everywhere there are young men of business sense taking over the regional opera companies.

Even the Met, when they tried a musician, it didn't work." The close financial ties between KOA and the of Music School, which has made possible Bomhard's services to opera as head of a performing company, seem to dictate retirement. It is typical of him, however, that he has plans for operas two years hence. "After that, well, perhaps they will let me come back and conduct a little," he said. fine Jewelers 582 2567 4th A Jttftnon fl RENT-A-CAR 11 LEASING DAY-WtEK-MONTH-YEAR i CARS-TRUCKS 2 CALL NOW 1 Bob Wilkins Leasing Mgr. 920 S.

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