Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991
Cultural Life
Did you and your familyum, attend uh, the theater, opera?
Yes, yes. Mm-hm. Both. My father had stood in linetwenty-four hours to hear Caruso. And uh, the ??? very cheap. You could buyvery cheap opera tickets for, you know, the whole season, so we always did thatfor myself. So, and my father was a vocalist by avocation and they gave eveningsat home where they sang, you know, played the piano and sang, like ??? Lieder,that kind of stuff.
At your house?
Yes.
Did you also play?
Well my, I was given lessons for four years but Iguess I didn't, didn't take.
Have you read StefanZweig?
I've read some of his work, yeah.
He has a memoir of Vienna in the '20s and '30s in which it sounds like it was a paradise for...
It uh, it was very pleasant life. The woman whoworked for my mother-I don't want to call her a maid because she became part ofthe family. And after the war when I went to see her and I took a bath, shecame in and washed my back and said, "I've always washed your back." That wasin 1958. So it, it was a different life. And they were uh, the entertainmentwas very culturally oriented. And both theater and opera they went to. Althoughmy father was more interested than my mother.
Was your father in theFirst World War?
Uh, briefly when they. He, he was inducted and I, Idon't know, they wrote him unfit or something. But he didn't serve very long.But his youngest brother died in the war.
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