AS HAPPENED SO OFTEN in my young life, some event or chance meeting came to rescue me from some bad or worrying situation, in this case picking me up out of my conflicted doldrums. Suddenly in mid-September I received a call from the personnel manager of the Philadelphia La Scala Opera Company to join them on first horn for a two-week tour in the Midwest. My Italian connections were evidently at work again here, as my colleague Mimi Caputo had recommended me for the job. It was a perfect prelude and preparation for my joining the Met orchestra. The La Scala Opera Company had a fine reputation, particularly in the popular Italian and French repertory: Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, Gounod, and the two ever-present perennials, “Ham and Eggs” (Cavalleria and Pagliacci). Like so many east coast regional opera companies of the time, it had access to the best singers, including singers from the Met.

It was wonderful to reacquaint myself with many of the operas I would soon be playing regularly at the Met. But also, once again, I indulged myself in my favorite habit of collecting friends. There were some really outstanding musicians in that orchestra, mostly quite a bit older than me, who became cherished colleagues. I remember particularly Luigi Penza, an amazingly dexterous cellist (whom I later frequently ran into in New York playing Broadway shows), and Arno Mariotti, not only a fabulous oboist (first chair with the Detroit and Pittsburgh Symphonies, successively) but also a man of high intelligence, with a deep philosophical turn of mind and wide-ranging artistic and intellectual interests. Arno and I really bonded deeply; we became inseparable and spent endless hours together exchanging our life stories and experiences, philosophizing, analyzing, arguing, and engaging in the proverbial desire to solve all the world's problems. I also met a wonderful, innately gifted trumpet player, Dominic Kampowski, one of those warm, easygoing, funloving personalities whom one found simply irresistible, and who in addition was a great connoisseur of Italian gastronomy. In every city he knew the best Italian restaurant, was friends with the owner or chef. They were rarely the fanciest or most expensive places, but, oh my, such authentic Northern Italian cuisine of the highest quality.