Duck Feathers
One of the first stories i ever heard Diana tell concerned a performance by the Rochester Philharmonic, led by Erich Leinsdorf, of the 1812 Overture by Tschaïkowsky at the Eastman Theater. The first time she told it was to Tony “Sleeze” Rocha, Elwin and me, probably in late 1974.
All three of us were still in The US Army Band (Pershing’s Own) in Washington, DC, as was a bassoonist, John Hunt who sat a few feet away from me in the band. John had been a student at Eastman before being drafted and had studied with Diana’s father’s final pupil and successor, David Van Hoessen. What i could never have known was that, not too long after Diana and i relocated to California, John returned to Rochester to become Professor of Bassoon at Eastman and principal bassonist with the Rochester Philharmonic upon the retirement of Van Hoessen.
About the infamous 1812 performance, i still remember asking Hunt, not too long after meeting Diana, if he had known about the incident and he countered that, over the decades, many tried to take credit for the prank. Diana had mentioned that fact and how delighted she was that others had as she wanted no part of being on the hook for the expensive clean-up bill — extracting feathers from the plush seating.
Other parts of the story included how she and a fellow student who aided and abetted climbed into the loft to dump several bales of duck feathers once the canons went off and how, after the deed was done, she’d left a broom nearby to get rid of footprints in the snow so as not to show that any were female.
Another detail that added to the authenticity was that her “unindicted co-conspiritor” had nose-bleed that night and, while they were awaiting the first burst of canon fire, a drop of blood from his nose fell through the aperture in the loft landing on some patron’s program. Diana said she saw the poor fellow close the program, get up and leave.
This prank made the back (filler) page of an issue of Life magazine not too long after that in their “Parting Shots” section. a couple decades later it was reported in a quarterly installment of Horizon and, on page 3 of the Winter 1993-94 issue of Rochester Review, [please link to attached PDF?] in the letters section.
One final footnote to this episode is in order. When Diana told the tale, she seemed to indicate that it was in her days as an ESM student. Yet, in 2011 when i saw the account in Rochester Review, the date (Autumn of 1952) seemed at odds with Diana’s last year as a student (1943). Only a couple years ago did the explanation come into sharp focus.
Diana always said that she was terrible at keeping track of events by year; quite understandable given all that she’d done in her lifetime. When gathering files for posting on this site and, among those relating to The Definitive Diana, where she told Marianne of Lenny Klein’s phone conversation when Diana found him again after all the decades, and how she had no recollection of his telling her of the fabulous stuffed mushrooms that Diana’s mother served before Lenny and her father went to ESM for a concert, the world made sense again.
Of course Diana would have no recollection of his being at Vick Park A. She was NOT helping Ted pack his gear for the trip to Germany but, rather, masterminding the 1812 caper.