Even Tommasini, who had advocated Gilbert's appointment in the Times, calls him “an unpretentious musician with no air of the formidable conductor about him.”
The idea came after an incident early this year at a three-star restaurant in Paris.Plenty of people have since come forward to complain of the treatment they received from despotic superiors.
The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever—there was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow.
If she had been a self-opinionated, domineering child, she might have become disagreeable enough to be unbearable through being so much indulged and flattered.