Carnegie Hall was packed with people waiting to hear Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, from the orchestra led by Dimitri Mitropoulos. The maestro came on stage, went on the podium and picked up the baton, and the music started. However after just 20 seconds, he stopped the performance, and Mitropoulos disappeared off the stage, to the surprise of the orchestra members and the massive audience. He was gone for a few minutes when everyone started getting concerned. Did he feel sick? Is the performance going to resume? Are we losing the price of the tickets? Is this going to be a wasted evening for so many music aficionados ? After around 10 minutes, Dimitri Mitropoulos reappeared, went straight to the podium again, bowed towards the crowd, as if to say ‘I’m sorry!’ and started the 7th Symphony once again. At the end the concert, the audience exploded with a long applause. A few journalists went searching for the maestro and asked him what happened at the start of the concert. He simply answered by saying “I had forgotten my Rosary beads. Without them in my pocket, I always feel distant from God.” In his entire career, Mitropoulos never gave a concert without the Rosary beads in his pocket.
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