Music: Musical Axes

The cinema industry of the world split into ideological hemispheres last month when Great Britain, France and the U. S. withdrew from the Venice International Film Festival (TIME, July 3). Last week the musical world showed signs of a similar division. The Rome-Berlin Axis was much in evidence at Bayreuth, Wagnerian shrine, where the stodgy, Nazi-favored conductors of recent years were joined by an Italian, Victor de Sabata. In Salzburg, which Anschluss knocked off the list of international smart-spots, four of seven scheduled operas were to be given in Italian, two of them with Italian casts, under Tullio Serafin, onetime conductor...