|
The Hungarian Nightingale
A meeting with Gisela Doráti, better known as 'Gizi', by BILL NEWMAN |
Our meeting happened some five years back. My close colleague Richard Chlupaty had been strongly urging me to visit her home, several kilometres the other side of Munich and about a couple of hours' journey by train from the main airport. When we arrived at our destination it was past midnight, although I could clearly discern the high mountain tops lit up by the moon in an otherwise pitch-black sky. 'Come on, this way. It's a good job I remember the landmarks from my previous visit. The second road on the right after leaving the church -- there's a large lamp post on the corner!' I was expecting Béla Lugosi transformed into a large bat at any moment; instead I espied a cosy abode, with lighting everywhere. The door was opened wide, immediately. 'We expected you about eight hours ago!' I have never quite worked that one out, but next moment I was hugged fondly by Gizi and, looking over her shoulder I saw someone I had last met in the 1960s. They say of incurable romantics that they never forget a beautiful face. Tonina was, and still is, wonderful to look at. Daughter of the great Hungarian International conductor-composer Antal Doráti, or Toni as his family and close associates called him -- she was smiling right at me, and we hadn't seen each other since then. With my then wife, and holidaying in Rome, I had decided on the spur of the moment to visit the Doráti luxury flat. He was away; instead we were invited to tour round the city landmarks by car.
Tonina, however comes second on my welcome list. His two-years' younger sister Gizi, I had never met at all, and she was also born in Hungary in 1908, which makes her 98 years of age now -- a mere 93 then, with lovely clear-cut features, a fabulous smile, her brain and memory so acute to every detail in her long, sometimes troubled, eternally changing but fascinating life. Linking arms with me, I was conducted indoors and refreshed with numerous drinks and delicious sweetmeats.
Gisela Doráti
|
Our chance meeting was to create a brand-new friendship, but this is her story in her own words, and recorded in full.
Continue >>
Copyright © 10 April 2006
Bill Newman, Edgware, UK
|