Re: Strange Conducting Stories

[carl-swanson]

When I was living in France ions ago, I lived with a French family for a while and both the husband and wife were professional musicians. My French was awful at the time, and one day the wife was telling me about the gig she had played the night before and the awful conductor. She said that he kept screaming at the orchestra “Regardez la bagette!! Regardez la bagette!!!” I knew the word bagette as a long thin loaf of French bread, and only realized then that bagette really meant ‘stick.’ But I had this image in my head of a conductor standing in front of the orchestra conducting with a loaf of French bread. I still get that image when I think of that story.