GUNTHER Sullivan? Yes, quite. It appears that history has dealt the other half of Gilbert and Sullivan a cruel, cruel blow. All the same, he is playing in the BPO, which is pretty awesome; heck, if you're a tuba in the age of Wagner you get to do some pretty rad stuff here and there. Hans von Bulow, by all accounts, was not easy to work with. Like Karajan, he conducted without a score. Like Karajan, he was brilliant at what he did. Unlike Karajan, he basically gave away his wife. Granted, it was to Richard Wagner after the old man said, "I Likes. Gimme." That wife was Cosima, daughter of Franz Liszt, and writer of the longest god damn diaries ever...

As to the smoking rooms, that's entirely true. It was a long established tradition that a room filled with cigar smoke could not be penetrated by plague or disease, and then eventually heavy drinking was added just to round out the picture. This was Frederick's father's favorite way to spend an evening. Frederick found it just about the worst thing ever...

- Count Dolby von Luckner